APBA Math: A Look Under the Covers of APBA's Baseball Game

In this video I take a look at the APBA Baseball game design and the math behind it. People who have minimal familiarity with APBA will probably benefit the most from watching this. I welcome comments from everyone. APBA experts can surely shed some light on what I have presented here.
Links mentioned in the video:
The APBA Blog
www.apbablog.com/
Steve Stein’s APBA Card Computer:
www.compuducks...
Video about Steve Stein’s APBA Card Computer:
• Steve Stein discusses ...
Article on how to estimate a card’s batting average:
www.apbablog.c...
#baseball #dice #clubhouse #game #simulation #sim #tabletopbaseball #tabletopsports #unboxing #apba #stratomatic #statispro #sportsillustrated #math #statistics #sabermetrics #sabr

[@Allensh]

I hate to be that guy but...Seitz did not create APBA in 1931. 1931 was when National Pastime was published. Seitz bought the game as a teenager in Lancaster PA and conducted a league with his friends called the American Professional Baseball Association or A.P.B.A.. after the league had folded, he added the pitching and fielding aspects and, when Van Beek's patent expired, published APBA (by then pronounced "App-bah" in 1951. In strict terms, Seitz developed APBA but on the foundation created by Van Beek. It has varied some over the years of course as new ratings and such were added to try to make the game stay current with modern baseball.

[@steve_etzel]

No need to apologize. Thanks for the clarification. It is comments like yours that help us all learn. I think the reference to 1931 was a typo, but I'm not sure. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APBA

[@davidmorris3659]

@@steve_etzel - I may be mistaken, but I believe someone found evidence that National Pastime was based on a a previous game as well. It's a long, screwy history. I sent you an email btw on game creation. I can further explain the APBA history and card making more there with you if you wish.

[@steve_etzel]

@@davidmorris3659 This guy has done a ton of historical research on NP, APBA, etc. www.youtube.com/@baseballreplayjournal

[@spudz25]

Great education on a game that I love but really have never understood the math. Thanks for the insight.

[@rickcampione1737]

Thanks a million for taking the time to calculate whether or not the cards are accurate according to player uniqueness.

[@gandalf970]

Excellent work as always Steve, I appreciate this.

[@justinludwig726]

The double column cards are a great refinement for added accuracy. The trouble with those is almost all double results come off of the result #6, so the same double results happen each time a double is hit. Contrast with Strat which has DOUBLE**, DOUBLE***, and DOUBLE, Replay has doubles in different columns, and so on. Some of the runner advancement results off of hits in APBA aren't variable.

[@CinemaRuler]

Yes. They adjust what they give the pitcher, based on how well their team does. way the game is designed pitchers certainly "should" be based on hit's per game. (I prefer opposing slugging to compensate for basic game not adjusting any extra base hits based on pitchers. 42 are hit by pitch. 10's are occasionally stolen bases. Also players with 10 and 11's on their cards can often steal (10's often get caught stealing in that situation) when they are on first and you hit and run. I am pretty sure APBA uses intentional walks as standard walks when making cards. But that one I'm not sure of. APBA adjusts the formula slightly on occasion for outlier years (like 1968).

[@CinemaRuler]

Most cards (unless you have a really low batting average) start with having two 9's and three 8's on the card. Sometime a 10 will replace an 8. also an extra 8 is added as the last hit number if needed depending on the players individual stats. You will never have a player with more then two 9's and more then four 8's in their single column (unless it is a misprint).

[@johnnysmoke612]

I always find your baseball sim analysis very interesting. I'm sure a lot of APBA fans love the way this game plays. However; it would be nice to see if season stats for pitcher EB hits allowed come out accurate, since the game is batter card induced for results. I'm just an old SOM player and like the way a SOM pitcher card has more control over EB hits allowed by pitchers. The pitcher modifiers are a great insert into the game design, but seems like a lot of work to change what comes off the batter's card. Plus, find it interesting the base situation can influence the final result, but again, a lot depends on the base situation frequencies variable to come out right per batter. Which may turn out close to right based on the batter's position in the batting order, but can this be "APBA balled" by batting order batter positioning.

[@captaincarl8230]

I have done several pitcher replays (like '75 Jack Billingham, '72 Nolan Ryan, '86 Roger Clemens, '68 Denny McLain and others) and found that most of the time I did get pretty close to his actual EB hits allowed but I think that it was more luck of the dice than anything else. I used basic with actual starting batting orders and opposing starting pitchers. I also tried to get the actual number of batters faced close.

[@CinemaRuler]

Great job. Your are pretty close to APBA’s formula % for extra base hits when making the cards… 2= 97% 2B, 3% HR 3= 24% 2B, 63% 3B, 13% HR 4= 61% 2B, 33% 3B, 06% HR 5= 61% 2B, 06% 3B, 33% HR 6= 94% 2B, 3% 3B, 3% HR

[@danielescobedo8460]

Really enjoying all your videos on Baseball math. My Brothers and i played many games with APBA and so this Brings back memories. About simple math we always looked at each number is a value of 18, so on the batter in your video 1=18 homeruns 5= 7 home runs 6= 1 home run so 18 + 14 + 1 Equals 33 homeruns on his card Base on balls 18x4=72 base on balls 13x6=108 stk outs. And that what i did for a very fast Idea of a hitters value I remember Babe Ruth had 3 ones 18x3=54 home runs plus the others 5,6 ext. We where in jr. High school when we played APBA APBA im 67 yrs old. Anyway thank you for your hard work enjoy your channel. One more question what baseball board games would be your Top 5. For statistical accuracy. And top five overall

[@steve_etzel]

Your shortcut math is a clever idea. My knowledge of games is pretty narrow and there are a lot of games out there. For accuracy, Strat-O-Matic would be high on my list (despite some challenges with the so-called 50-50 model). My impression is that Season Ticket Baseball is very accurate. I know the designer has put a lot of analytical work into it. I think Statis Pro Advanced is accurate as well. In terms of games I like, the vintage SI Baseball and Batter Up (Astra) games have some nostalgic appeal for me. For SI Baseball particularly, its simplicity is appealing, but the pitcher charts in the original game were not all that accurate. Same thing for original Statis Pro baseball. Besides these, Payoff Pitch is pretty good.

[@danielescobedo8460]

Thanks for your input. I will check out pay off pitch as it's For modern. I never played strat-o-matic or statis pro but I'm Aware of them.

[@danielescobedo8460]

Just noticed that season ticket baseball is free to help started out. So I will take a look at it thanks.

[@APBAChatter]

Well done! Have you considered evaluating games from a team perspective to possibly determine stronger teams with particular game dynamic? Example, Strat may favor a team with stronger pitching more often than a better hitting team while APBA might give an advantage to a better hitting team.

[@steve_etzel]

I haven't done that type of analysis, other than paying attention to peoples' season replay reports. I think with enough time and resources you could run a computer simulation of the games. You would probably want to run tens of thousands of plate appearances to remove statistical variability. My gut feel is that neither of Strat or APBA would be noticeably biased toward pitching or hitting. What I would be most curious about would be how the APBA pitching would turn out in that type of simulation. I suspect the results will be directionally accurate, but given the nature of the pitching grades (especially in the basic game) APBA might not be as accurate as Strat, at least for individual pitchers. Most people that do season replays report that team pitching statistics come out pretty well, even if the individual pitchers may not be as accurate.

[@farpointgamingdirect]

Steve's APBA Card Computer is a very useful tool. I think you can even choose where to place the 12 result. Too bad it doesnt generate fielding ratings

[@steve_etzel]

I don’t know anything about APBA fielding ratings but I suspect I could come up with something if I tried.

[@DiceBaseballDigest]

Spritz appropriated National Pastime and added pitching grades and named it APBA. There is no copyright because it wasn’t his.

[@CinemaRuler]

1985 was the first year they started copywriting for the 1984 set. There are plenty of strikeouts that aren't 13's from pitcher's modifiers for strikeouts...X, Y, K's

[@steve_etzel]

Thanks for all your comments, including this clarification about strikeouts.

[@CinemaRuler]

@@steve_etzel No problem. I look forward to if you post APBA stuff in the future. I usually hit up daily a bookmarked saved KZbin search for new posts about APBA.

[@craigsell8541]

Go Buccos. Thx for the video

[@UraniumMilk]

How realistic do you think it would be to use this knowledge to make a career on baseball betting? I got really good at poker for a while but living in the US I found they have made it too inconvenient to play for actual money. Anyway you are more focused than most people in our distracted society and focus can most often translate to profit.

[@steve_etzel]

Interesting question. My focus has been on using math and statistics to replicate baseball history, as opposed to trying to predict the future. I was very focused in my working career and that worked out ok. As for poker, I don’t think my brain works fast enough, plus I’ve come to rely on my spreadsheets as a crutch.

[@davidmorris3659]

I don't think it would because first off, each game differs in it's approach, and how 'accurate' it is (or the beauty is in the eye of the beholder you might say). APBA would be a perfect example of why you would NOT want to use it as a 'gauge' because of what makes it 'tick'. Now, I'm 'pretty versed' in APBA and could make my own cards long ago. It's 'convoluted math' because of the structure of the game itself (goofy things like a secondbaseman can only get hit by a pitch in a certain base situation, or make an error - that kind of thing). It should be noted as well that Seitz's calculations were quite different than those of the originator (Van Beek), and even Ron Mura's (who I believe still makes the cards today). The boards shown in the video are old as well and I think there are at least two newer versions of them in 'notebook form). That all said, while it works OK to get the BASIC batter stats, it just fails on the logic aspect of it all. I can't think of a tabletop sim out there today that I would use as a projection for my own $$ anyway simply because they lack the detail needed.

[@UraniumMilk]

​@@davidmorris3659Thanks for your thoughts, seems like it's domain specific then. I know very little about these baseball sims, I just like Steve's videos and in general everyone involved in this rarefied world of baseball sims seems smart and likable. Eight years ago when I was playing poker everyday there were often baseball fans at the table much more than other sports. One of the guys I played with actually managed a merchandise store at the Major League stadium. There's definitely some cross over between the two. I know my reply is veering off but thanks a lot for your informed opinion about my original question. 🙂 It's really cool when someone who actually knows what they're talking about on a subject gives their thoughts on it.

[@egghead3173]

@@steve_etzel Sir, you can't have your laptop at the poker table.