Cincinnati Reds 4, St. Louis Cardinals 0 in Strat-O-Matic 2020 season simulation game 23

Wade Miley’s best start of the young sim season led the Cincinnati Reds (10-13) to their second shutout pitching performance in the past three games, this time scoring a 4-0 blanking of the St. Louis Cardinals (13-11) in the middle game of a three-game series at Busch Stadium.

That was the result today as Strat-O-Matic games of Glen Head, N.Y., continued its announced plan to simulate the entire 2020 Major League Baseball season on a day-by-day basis for as long as actual game play is on hold.

Help set the lineup, batting order for the simulated Reds:

Have you ever dreamed of your opportunity to “manage” the Reds? Now is your chance. Learn more below!

On Sunday, the sim Reds blanked the Yankees, 2-0, behind Trevor Bauer’s masterful outing. Today, Miley pitched one out into the seventh before Pedro Strop, Michael Lorenzen and Lucas Sims collaborated with him on the shutout pitching performance. In only two of the nine innings did the Cardinals have a runner reach as far as second base.

On offense, the Reds struck in the top of the second inning on a leadoff homer by Eugenio Suarez (his team-leading seventh), immediately followed by a double by Mike Moustakas and a run-scoring single by Freddy Galvis, his first of three hits. However, the opportunity for a bigger inning was missed when Shogo Akiyama grounded out to leave the bases loaded. In the fifth, Jesse Winker drove in two with a single, his second of three hits for the game.

Redleg Nation commenter/manager Redsfan4life earned his second win. He will have the chance to be the envy of his peers by winning his third game in the lineup-crafting role Wednesday. He will have the task of trying to find a way to shake Luis Castillo out of a very uncharacteristic slow start to the season. Perhaps a closed-door heart-to-heart chat is in order … or a special session with pitching coach Derek Johnson … or maybe just a quick trip over to the Budweiser Brew House just outside the stadium before the game. If we are fortunate, he’ll share his strategy with us here at Redleg Nation.

Redsfan4life also has the opportunity to help break a frustrating streak of the sim Reds in rubber games of three-game series. At no time this season have the sim Reds won the deciding game of a three-game series when they have had the opportunity to do so.

The Reds pulled back within two and a half games of the second-place Cardinals with the win. First-place Chicago won to remain five games ahead of the Reds, tied for third with Milwaukee.

Here is the box score, as provided by Strat-O-Matic:

C-Pinch Hit For Strop In 8th Inning
D-Subbed Defensively (RF) For Castellanos In 8th Inning

A-Pinch Hit For Hudson In 5th Inning
B-Subbed Defensively (3B) For Gomber In 7th Inning
E-Pinch Hit For Webb In 9th Inning

Standings following the April 21 games:

The 2020 schedule as currently constituted has the Reds and Cardinals playing the rubber game of their three-game series at Busch Stadium in St. Louis Wednesday. Luis Castillo pitches for the sim Reds, and lefthander Kwang-hyun Kim pitches for the Cardinals. For the season, St. Louis has a 3-2 advantage over Cincinnati in the five games between the teams to date.

Help set the lineup, batting order for the simulated Reds:

Have you ever dreamed of your opportunity to “manage” the Reds? Now is your chance.

Strat-O-Matic has agreed to allow Redleg Nation to submit the Cincinnati Reds’ lineups for each day’s simulated game. We want all of our readers who want to participate to get involved.

Here is how it will work:

• In each wrap up of that day’s simulated game, Redleg Nation will post the opposing starting pitcher for the next game. You will know who the pitcher is and whether he is left-handed or right-handed, and you can use that information in creating a lineup for the next game, and submitting it in the comments below. “Splits” such as performance vs. left-handers or right-handers are replicated in the Strat-O-Matic game algorithm, and therefore should be considered.
• We will accept lineups from every reader who wants to submit one. The lineup that will be submitted to Strat-O-Matic each day will be the one that receives the most positive replies (in effect, “yes” votes) from readers other than the submitter. In case of ties:
  • First tiebreaker: Lineup submitted by the reader who has had the fewest number of opportunities as a “manager.”
  • Second tiebreaker: Lineup submitted earliest in the comment thread. (So get your lineup in “early” each day.)
• What is “early?” Redleg Nation posts these articles daily between 5 and 6 p.m. Eastern time. Strat-O-Matic’s deadline for us to submit a lineup for the next day’s game is midnight. On most days, we’ll do this before “bedtime,” which is typically between 10:30 and 11 Eastern time.

Redsfan4life will have priority for Wednesday since he submitted a winning lineup for Tuesday. Have fun with this! If you have any questions, please post them in the comment string below. Here are the “managerial records” of our Redleg Nation participants to date:

About Strat-O-Matic

Strat-O-Matic has been in the sports simulation business since the 1960s. A USA Today article contained this explanation:

Strat-O-Matic and other baseball simulations use statistics from the previous season to create “cards” for each player on a roster. The team managers select the batting order and the starting pitcher. From there, a series of dice rolls and calculations determines the outcome of each at-bat.

Strat-O, as it’s known to longtime players, first gained its immense popularity as a board game. The company has since expanded to a downloadable Windows version and one that’s played online. A few years ago, it introduced Baseball Daily – a new iteration that combined the player cards from the previous season with statistics from the real season being played at the same time.

Unlike many video games, the Strat-O-Matic results are based on algorithms that account for players’ actual past performance. It’s not a game played with a joystick that relies more on the skill of the person with the video game controller in his or her hand.

The simulation software will keep comprehensive statistics for all teams for the season, so we’ll be able to track year-to-date leaders in many statistical categories. Our current plan is to provide statistical leader summaries here at Redleg Nation each Sunday. You can follow the season at Strat-O-Matic.com, where they plan to post the results from each day’s schedule at 2 p.m. Eastern time.

News/Notes from around baseball

One of the things we would have during the season in the game threads was a section comprised of news and notes for the day. While there’s a lot less going on these days in the baseball world than usual for this time of year, there still are some things that are worth highlighting. When there are, we’ll be adding them to these daily simulation threads.

It’s been a day that we actually published multiple articles already that featured plenty of news and notes because they felt a little more important than just being a footnote in this article. Still, not everyone comes to the site directly through the front page, so we’re going to link to our stories published earlier today below.

Big changes coming to Minor League Baseball

In a fight that seemed to hit the back burner when the COVID-19 pandemic hit us all, the public fighting between Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball ended. And it seems that Major League Baseball is going to be able to use their ability to survive the storm to get exactly what they wanted in the first place. It’s being reported that Minor League Baseball will agree to reduce the number of affiliated teams from 160 down to 120 beginning in 2021. There are still a lot of unanswered questions that need to be figured out, and it’s going to change how the Cincinnati Reds farm system looks next year in a rather big way.

Minor League Baseball to agree to reducing the number of teams

The Players carry all of the risk in the plan to restart baseball

Sheryl Ring takes a look at the talks between Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association over how things could go if and when baseball restarts, and comes to a rather simple conclusion that the players are taking just about all of the risk in these plans, while also being asked to take a pay cut by the owners. A lawyer, Ring argues the legal side of the agreement as proposed, too. It’s an interesting read over at Beyond The Box Score if you are interested in that sort of thing.