Thanks to reader Jeff Papas for this week’s Monster Card. And what a Monster card it is! You like 2s?? 1916 Limb McKenry’s got 2s for you. All the way out to 61.
Jeff says:
“Baseball-reference.com has some fun info on him — the most notable being that four of his seven big league hits were triples.
I used this card on 4/18 of my 1916 replay, which stats indicated was McKenry’s last start in the major leagues, against Pittsburgh. Despite his D1W McKenry pulled off one of those wonderful APBA unpredictabilities, pitching a complete game win. I also hit that 61-2 in each of his first two at-bats, the second time turning it into a home run due to the on-base situation.”
Thanks, Jeff. This ranks up there as one of the best!
Yeesh. It’s cool, but it’s also a little disheartening that APBA doesn’t take small sample size into account.
This actually came up with me for a rival game company this weekend, but I was pleased to see they DID account for small sample size. I was worried their 2011 card for Craig Counsell was going to be unrealistic against LHP. He had only 6 PA against lefties last year, but went 2-for-6 with a double, I think. I was pleasantly surprised to look at his card and see that, no, if you used him full-time against lefties he was going to hit more like .160 instead of .333.
Wonder if APBA would ever change their formulas to account for that? I just don’t see cards like this one you just posted as really being all that fair. Has anybody seen any pitchers who were carded and only went 1-for-1 that year? Curious.
Hi Chris,
You raise a good point and probably one APBA has struggled with for years. On one hand, there’s your valid argument of making cards too strong for limited playing time.
Then there’s the other argument of why downgrade a card? Isn’t the replayer capable of deciding of how to use that card? The downside of that argument is that there are some league players who don’t give two hoots about reality and would overplay McKenry unless there were rules in place to prevent them.
I don’t know of any 1 for 1 batters off hand but I’m pretty sure APBA would down grade them in the sense that they wouldn’t (for example) have 36 hit numbers on their card.
You gotta have the 12 and 35 at least, right? :)
Again, good points.
Tom
Good points, Chris. I personally think that if a card such as this is abused — i.e. using McKenry as a regular starter or as a pinch-hitter (not terribly far-fetched since I have to resist that temptation with 1916 Babe Ruth constantly) then the small sample size would be an issue.
In this case, though, I’m using an as-played pitching schedule and a house rule that pitchers can’t be used as pinch hitters. So I personally have no problem with McKenry’s ‘day in the sun’. Ironic though that he was 2-for-5 in that replay game just as in real life.