Understanding how hitter ratings affect things
 

So I am a newbie who has preordered ootp 20 --- in preparation, I have read ootp 19 manual, and have some questions about how the batting ratings affect things "in-the-game" as possibly compared to real life. Any help that can be provided would be greatly appreciated.

1. Contact --- manual specifically says that contact determines "how good a player is at getting his bat on a ball" --- does that mean that it just affects things like swinging strikes or foul balls, or does it also affect, like, whether they are more likely to hit a line drive versus a pop up?

2. Eye --- in real life, eye is going to have a big effect on batting average as well as walks, as somebody with a good eye is more likely to be swinging at strikes than balls (for example, between 2015 and 2017, in the AL, ba on 0-2 count was only .157, as opposed to .363 on 3-1 count). Is this modelled this way in the game? The description for eye seems to imply it is more focused on getting walks.

3. Avoid K's --- also, in real life, someone who is good at "spoiling" pitches with two strikes is both more likely to get walks and to get hits (because they spoil pitches they don't want). Is this modelled in the game, or is it just an indicator of how likely they are to strike out?

4. Gap Power --- does gap power affect batting average in that it turns some fly balls that would have been caught into doubles and triples instead, or does it instead just modify the ratio of singles to doubles and triples? Also, same question for home run power.

Finally, is an at-bat actually modelled in the game engine based on count so that it would mimic the ability of a batter to get better hits during favorable counts than unfavorable counts?

Thanks a lot, and looking forward to playing the game!

Per the Manuel on Contact
Contact is a measure of how good a player is at getting his bat on the ball. Contact directly affects a player's batting average. Players with high Contact ratings are more likely to put the ball in play and get more hits, with a higher batting average. Contact, however, has no direct effect on what the result of a hit will be.
-- This answers the contact question.

Eye- I don't know, sorry.

Avoid K's-- If a player does not strike out, only a few things can happen.
He either puts the ball in play, or he walks.
Yes, there are other ways to reach base, but I'm trying to keep it simple.

Gap Power -- Good question. Sorry I don't know.

3-1 count -- Good Question. Sorry I don't know

Hope this helps.

contact is actually 3 ratings summarized.

Avoid K's, an unseen BABIP, and power. since you know 2 of the three, you can calculate/guesstimate the third unseen BABIP rating. should be self-explanatory as to each components effect.

i would assume stats and ai settings may have some impact too? e.g. a 6000 hr league and a 2000 home run league may weight power's proportion of Contact, or it may not. i didn't look that deep. i hope it does, or it doesn't make much sense to have same weight on power in 1902 as in 2007.

you can verify this with a moment of time spend in player editor, 100% accuracy and comissioner mode on. the latter part would take a couple leagues to flesh out. if i have to put money down, it's that it doesn't re-weight at all, but not what i hope for.

eye -- walk rate.. nothign to do with an AB or hits or doubles etc.. .think of it as it's own exclusive force.

realtive to ootp only, walking is fine unless they are elite. if elite, you are better off with a lower eye, and doubly so if elite and power hitters. even so, obp is strongly related to runs scored... the greater portion that obp is BA the better and few of the ramifications i believe that exist in RL... (e.g. if too aggressive, you will have a short career once pitchers learn your simple and easily taken advantage of)

gap is your dobudles / triples. can see in editor how it splits those up after that with the ratio.

as far as the last part... stuff is summarized, so you aren't throwing a pitch at a time in the engine's mind. some things may resolve down to each pitch, but the bulk of offense is basically per PA. the seed(s) for offensive outcome is generated one time per PA. errors are their own exclusive force applied to any ball in play.

Maybe the best way to define "avoids K's" is a "good, two-strike hitter?
They would foul off pitches until they see one they like. It is sort of a modifier of eye, or vice versa. Avoid K's really only applies when there are 2 strikes.

As to your last part the game definitely models favorable counts and provides the Stats to show BA by count.


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no it really doesn't. this is why the 'take a pitch' exploit works so well, because there's virtually no negative impact from waiting until 2 strikes to swing at a pitch in ootp. (i wish it did, i always thoguht it 'threw pitches' beacuse it's the same logic as averaging it out, but just re-running that bit of code after each result of a pitch -- nope, just averaged out. which makes alot of playing games out asthetic in nature, lol)

i think they've attempted to hinder it a bit. i recall a note about it in a long past changelog, but could be wrong. it still works wonders.

basically you'll win a ~normal % the first two games of any 3+ series against 1 team, then absolutely increase %s to win the third+ game with a blown out bullpen.

may have reduced effect in playoff contexts, but can still help a bit.

this is possible because the seed for 'success' doesn't get re-rolled after a pitch is thrown during a PA. no matter the count, it's still that same random seed, which determines outcome from the very beginning of the PA.

if you crash and restore, it doesn't renew the seed, or it didn't fairly recently, so you can verify this.

you won't find a situations where it's a guarnateed 'anything', but you'll see that some AB are basically high-% extra base or hr. you'll find some that are guaranteed outs except for the ~1/50 balls in play errors that will occur (based on league fielding pct, if not modern, high frequency for example).

do some things matter per pitch? for sure. if you play different defense it will change the %s one way or another. the engine doesn't really think about pitch or location... that's all averaged out. so, applying other stuff per pitch gets a little "gamey" as some on the forums would say.

e.g. it doesn't even consider that playing a shift requires to pitch accordingly to that side of the plate. or, whether a FB or CB is thrown when someone tries to steal etc etc...

so, some stuff can be applied between pitches of same PA and have a real effect, but it'll be limited by how the major portions of a PA is calculated.

you get that certain "low enough" seed and it really doesn't matter if you bunt, sacrifice or take a pitch until strikeout, because only an error is going to save that PA. and, it doesn't matter if it is the 1st pitch or the 5th.

Avoid Ks is not related to eye. Eye is for walks and is off by itself.

Avoid Ks appears to apply with fewer than 2 strikes and when playing out a game as a high avoid K guy with medium low contract is hard to H&R with. He won't leave a runner hanging often with a swing and miss but neither will he be a successful H&R guy because he doesn't put the ball in play often. Basically its a situation of low probability of the best outcome and low probability of the worst outcome.

That doesn't make sense. Avoid K should kick in when there are two strikes so that player is less likely to strikeout. Why would it apply with fewer than two strikes? If that was the case a guy with a low avoid K would strike out as often as a guy with high avoid K.

I believe it applies regardless of the count. perhaps I should have included the word also when saying it applied with fewer than two strikes.

the take a pitch exploit wouldn't work if it re-assessed the total probability each pitch relative to new contexts/variables. it does not. so 0-2 really doesn't matter compared to 0-0 as far as your percent chance of getting a good outcome. it was already worked out in proportion at a lower resolution. the percentages still play out properly over time, but they were crunched before 2 strikes in the count. (*mostly.. as in enough to make this exploit the best possible way to win in ootp)

i'm sure some subtle things may change, but nothing of great impact.

otherwise, why does take a pitch work? you should avearge 1 run or less if you took a pitch until 2 strikes every single AB in RL.

playing out games isn't much different thanspectating unless you are abusing an exploit to increase advantages, really. in fact, the choices you have mostly reduce chance of winning rather than help -- in that you are more likely to choose a lower-percentage option than the right one, because there are far more of bade choices than good. i'm sure the new defensive stuff is a bit more impactful. i have not done this exploit since those were inserted, i think.

l/r split is heavily dependant on pitches thrown etc... so if stuff is just averaged and the random seed is rolled once per PA, it's fairly limited in effect after that point. the numbers were already crunched when it determined likely outcome from the seed.

(*** simplified... 1 seed value does not have a discrete outcome. there are other factors at play, but just not the bulk of the total pie. many things are already summarized in a lower-res modeling.)

So if there's no penalty to a batter for taking pitches until two strikes, is there no penalty for a pitcher who pitches out until there are three balls?

well, there's no exploit for the pitcher to go to 3 balls... you are just running up your own pitch count. But, i guess you shouldn't feel bad about pitching out with a speed-demon, i guess.

although i think using it this way may not be a net positive? but you could try and compare a large enough sample to know for sure. i bet it's no problem to pitch out upto 0-3, but may have different dynamics. i'm not smart enough to wrap my head around it free-balling.


also this is from the other direction. a BB may be their own %, but i don't think so -- they have to share the same PA pie. from what i saw with that exploit in past, i don't recall a dip in walk rate, but i could be wrong. not something i looked at. it can dip as long as other things rise and still be an exploit, though.

errors are going to happen ~1/50 no matter what the seed is. they have their own 'roll' of the dice, so to speak. exclusive force that can rear its head occasionally for any batted ball in play or any error that is possible out of play? lol. is there?

if the walk-rate for the batter is unchanged, it's irrelevant to go to 3-0 too, yes.

the exploit works due to fatigue. by the 3rd+ game in a row they are using tired arms and position players off the bench. you may have a normal game while SP is in, but after that you will very likely score more than a few runs in the last few innings.

any slight loss while going to two strikes, which isn't that severe, are easily overcome for a gigantic ROI later. it's got to be slight, because those first 1-2 games aren't blowouts for the other team.

but yes... if the seed doesn't change, it's the same odds at the end. i think they have done some things a few releases ago to try to combat this exploit... after that 'patch note' (from memory) about it, it still worked, if i recall, and it still worked well.

if we could use one of the other choices to determine or guesstimate the random seed, that could tip off more exploits.

or, like someone did, they just found the random seed and then locked a good value to it, from what i hear... some cheating within the online portion of the game at one point. that stuff is fun to do on your own, but not with competition involved. kinda meaningless, really.

i haven't playe dout games in at last 2 years at this point. when i did use this exploit it was in the playoffs, lol. i'd always play the playoffs out the first few years i owned the game. once i started doing that, i didn't lose many WS, lol.


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fwiw, when a batter steps up to the plate in real life, the outcome is already determined. just because we can't percieve it doesn't make any difference. the brain chemistry, the wind, and everything else is going to do what it does because of the previous domino of actions and reactions etc etc. far too complicated for a human brain to track, and far beyond our technology at the moment. reality is on tracks. chaos theory is poorly named, because it isn't chaos at all.. it is simply following the rules. everything is repeatable and consistent, in spite of feelings otherwise. chaos is reference to a less organized system or universe etc, but it's still predictable because it follow very specific rules, so it is hardly chaos.

Three pitch outs only with big stealing threats on base would probably only happen 0-2 times a game. Not much to inflate the pitch count.

Haven't done a study bu casual observation indicates something different may be happening to the batter/pitcher seed when there is a runner involved. Like a new seed created for the specific pitch involving a steal attempt or hit and run.

Oh, there is one more thing I read at one point that I had forgotten about --- and that is that the game uses a "zone" system, where each hit ball goes to a particular zone. Assuming I am not reading more into this than is present, there might be an additional oppositional roll if there is a defender in that zone that might modify the result of the play turning some outs into hits or errors or some hits into outs.

nah, you can crash and reload the baseball game from save point before crash and see the same results repeat

if you get a 'worst-range' roll you will fail 49/50 times and the 1 time will be an error.

not all seeds are absolute outcomes, but the extremes are likely close to absolute.

a very high 'roll' will almost always be XBH etc.. but maybe not always a HR and still an occasional out -- possibly related to the fielding-related stuff. there's more than one "roll" referenced, but it's likely generated at beginnning of AB too, if/when ball gets into the field based on how the other portions seem to work. maybe some things are 'rolled' on demand, but not likely a whole lot.

the stealing thing may have it's own seed generated (or just a different matrix of results and use the same ab seed is possible too), sure. but it's mutually exclusive of the AB-seed one way or another as far as effect.

better late than never reply, lol --

I’ll add one small nuance that you didn’t really ask about.

If a player has a high contact rate, he seems to be far less likely to swing through a pitch on a hit and run play.