Fixing SOM’s Clutch Hitting Mechanic

Have you ever played a board game and come across a gameplay mechanic, or feature that just doesn’t quite make sense or add up? No matter how many times you re-read the rule, it seems to fall flat or not add any value to the rest of the game. Almost, as if it was tacked on or not thought through in how it relates to the rest of the game. This happens. Most of the time, hopefully, the mechanic doesn’t have a large impact on gameplay so that you can skip it or at least muddle your way through what you can, and hope that it works out. Other times it can be flat out frustrating. In this post I’m covering one such mechanic and hopefully a solution, in an old board game favorite of mine, Strat-O-Matic Baseball.

What is SOM (for the uninitiated)?

Strat-O-Matic (aka SOM), makes extremely realistic, data driven, dice based, sports board games. It all started with baseball back in 1961, since then they’ve expanded into the other major three sports (hockey, football, basketball). I’ve never played the other games, but if they’re anything like the baseball version I’m sure they’re just as fun. The game is touted as having 3 games in 1. Really, it’s just a Basic, Advanced, and Super Advanced version of the same game. Each adding a level of realism with different gameplay mechanics fitting to the sport, difficulty, and, what comes down to, more dice rolls for a more statistically accurate experience. 

A Little History

I’ve been playing SOM since I was a kid. My uncle got me into it with an OG 1986 set, which I still own. I then pulled my BFF into it, and for two numbers and baseball nerds SOM was a match made in heaven. We did drafts, built schedules, standings, team stat sheets and tracked it all (back then it was all by hand, uphill both ways, in wooden pants). Safe to say, we didn’t have many friends. Years past, SOM moved from closet to closet with each new apartment, and collected dust. Then 2020 happened. Stuck at home, bored out of my mind and tired of how easily Zoom calls sucked the life out of…anything, I reached out to my BFF and a couple other baseball nerd friends with a crazy idea. SOM isn’t overly complicated to play, it’s dice rolls and looking up outcomes on charts. So my crazy idea was, we each buy a version of the game and play over Zoom. After figuring out the logistics and honor system, it wasn’t a hard sell, within a couple days we’d picked a season we wanted to play (2004) and placed our orders. 

Fast forward a bit and we’re now three seasons in (we play 36 game seasons), just ordered two more years to play, and have a hefty Google Spreadsheet that tracks everything from player stats, standings, league leaders, and individual game box scores (maybe I’ll share in another post). A far cry from the wooden pants, stats by hand days. When we first started we jumped into the Advanced version. It was a good balance for keeping games on the shorter side, but provided all the realism we wanted from a baseball game.

We’ve easily logged over 100+ games in the past year, after that many games you start poking holes in mechanics or finding things that are weak. One such mechanic in the Advanced version is the “Clutch Hitting” feature. It feels tacked on at best and isn’t nearly as interesting or as fun as it could be. So we came up with a solution that, so far, has tackled all the issues we have with it.  

How Does Clutch Hitting Currently Work?

In the Advanced version of the game, a clutch moment is defined by runners in scoring position with two outs. That’s fair. According to SOM, defining “clutch” is in of itself difficult, which is also fair, and there aren’t many real world instances of it occurring, giving it a low statistical significance. In turn, this makes it hard to quantify in a data driven board game, but they do in some shape or form and the secret formula I don’t think is out there. On hitter cards there is an Omega symbol next to a certain number of outcomes. If that outcome is rolled in a Clutch Moment, the opposite of the listed outcome occurs (i.e. if the outcome is listed as a Flyball(B), which is an out, and it’s a clutch moment, the Flyball(B) turns into a Single** and vice versa). If the outcome is positive, then it turns into an automatic out. You can see how it feels like a blunt solution to a nuanced mechanic. Furthermore, it doesn’t feel like a clutch moment. In a real game there’s a bit more on the line in those moments, everyone is nervous, fans on their feet, pitchers take a little extra time before delivering a pitch, batters try to act as cool as a cucumber at the plate. This mechanic doesn’t provide for any of that, and falls flat as is. 

Clutch Hitting v1.0

After our first season using the rule book version of Clutch Hitting we decided, to put it simply, that it sucked. We liked the concept but it wasn’t fun and was such a let down when rolled. Now, in our first season we hit it about 15 times total, the next season about 10. So not enough to totally sway a season or any single player stats, but was enough that when it did come up it was annoying. So we built a chart. SOM works on dice rolls, 3-d6 die to determine majority of outcomes and a d20 roll for split outcomes and special rolls (stolen bases, injuries etc). We thought OK, three things; 1) How do we make this feel like a clutch moment? 2) How do we keep it balanced with the rest of the gameplay? 3) How do we give different players an opportunity? And it felt like it should fall on a d20 roll. 

After some quick chatting we decided we’d include 3 parameters. First, player slugging percentage (.SLG) would act as the baseline range of success. Second, a player’s total RBIs for the season as a modifier, and finally, whether or not the batter was home or away as a second modifier. We then built a simple table of .SLG% as the baseline success range. (e.g. if a player’s .SLG% was between .400 – .500 their baseline success rate would be 1 – 5 of a d20 roll) Then RBIs and Home / Away modifiers would add or subtract from the baseline. Player rolls the d20, if it lands within the success range, it’s a Single** (each * is the number of bases runners can advance), if it’s outside the range, it’s a popout. Below is the first version. 

Notes:

1. Clutch moments are active with 2 outs and runners in scoring position
2. Success range can never be lower than 1 or greater than 20

After a season of playing with this it was already a better solution. It was much more interesting, and having it come down to a d20 roll gave it that clutch moment feel. Of course, we realized .SLG% was the wrong baseline as it only benefited players who were extra base hitters. So we made an update for v2.0.

Clutch Hitting v2.0

Version 2.0 biggest update was switching from .SLG to .AVG for the baseline success range. This just made sense, and v1.0 may have been swayed by a friend who loves .SLG% as a stat, but that’s another story. Batting .AVG opened the opportunities up and is a better representation of a players overall ability to hit and isn’t just focused on extra base hits. Below is what that updated chart looks like.

Clutch Hitting v2.1

This version we haven’t implemented yet, but plan to for our next season. We found there was the possibility of having a 0 success range (although we do state 1 is the lowest and 20 is the highest) if a player had <.250 .AVG, < 78 RBIs and was Away. But this seemed easy to fix. So the tweak will be to increase each range with the lowest starting at 10% success rate or a baseline 1 – 2 d20 roll etc. Here’s how that’ll look.  

I should add that these were created based on the 2004 season. They may need to be tweaked for other seasons, or maybe not. I think at least maintaining that the best possible success rate is around 50% (baseline range + modifiers) you’re in good shape. Clutch moments are thought of as ‘hitter moments’ but hey, gotta give some love to pitchers coming through when the game is tight. It’s been a fun addition to the game and has made these moments feel like actual clutch moments, and a gameplay mechanic that doesn’t feel tacked on.