Naturally, I have some thoughts. Let’s get the negatives out of the way first.

The hardest thing to keep track of is probably the correct Pitcher’s Die to use. There’s the “handedness” factor and fatigue – it can be really confusing figuring out whether you’re supposed to use a d12 or a d8! Like me, many players will probably opt to drop the “handedness” factor altogether. Adding in the effects of player “traits” might get confusing, too. Fortunately, those don’t come into play that often.

Another thing that calls for adjustment is that all the plays to infielders are ground balls. No popups or lineouts. I may have missed something in the rules, but a player should naturally feel free to turn (for example) a 6-3 groundout into a popout to short if nothing else is affected by the play. Other tinkering should be possible to allow for players to play out of position – a shortstop at second, or a starting pitcher coming on in relief. That might already be in the rules (or in the expansions); I just didn’t read them closely enough.

Speaking of player adjustments, a player should also be able to tweak the results for dramatic effect as the situation needs. You might recall that in one of my games, it happened that the score was quite close in the later innings. The Polish All Stars had the bases loaded with one out, and the batter hit a ground ball to first. The rules said it should have been a simple groundout with the runners advancing – and thus a run scoring. I’m looking at the situation – slow runner at third, smart fielder at first. NO WAY is the fielder NOT throwing home to get the forceout! So I used “Player Perogative” and turned the 3-1 groundout to a 3-2 forceout. That’s got to be allowed in ANY baseball dice game, right? Akers says the main point of Deadball is to recreate the “feel” of an actual game, so you’ve got to be able to make these sorts of decisions.

I should also note that I didn’t do much in the way of strategy. When your starting lineup has an AVERAGE “BT” of 32 (corresponding to a .320 batting average), you’re not going to be doing much in the way of bunting… I probably could have done something with defensive shifts, but I didn’t think of it.

Now the good stuff…..

It is SO DANG EASY to bring in actual players to the Deadball System! Batting average and On Base Percentage for batters, ERA for pitchers, and a modest handful of “traits” to account for all their other stats. Look, no matter how impressive the graphics might be in “MLB The Show ‘24”, who the heck really wants to replay the 2023 season? We know how it turned out! Baseball fans surely want to do things like see if a team of Brooklyn Dodgers could beat a team of Los Angeles Dodgers, or what a team where every player was Shohei Ohtani would be like.

Deadball makes it easy to explore those fantasies.

I should note that, as advertised, it took only about an hour to play a game.

Here are the series stats for my Grand Experiment:

Mets Batting Stats

Mets Pitching Stats

Polish All Stars Batting Stats

Polish All Stars Pitching Stats

(I decided to go with images instead of trying to puzzle out how to insert an Excel spreadsheet)