Still struggle to understand the Make Bad setting
 

I still struggle to make sense of this feature.

I used to play mostly 1 year recalc leagues and would simply go with the default OOTP settings.

Now I see a lot of folks recommending different settings.

What would be the best options for a 3 year recalc league?

What are the best for a 5 year recalc league?

Thanks. My current league I used Garlon's setting from a post he made a year or more ago. I think it was 50 40 10 and 8.

It's pretty simple at least for batters. You don't want a guy who is 12 for 30 rated as a 0.400 hitter ever. A little more complex for pitchers but again you can't have a pitcher allowing 7 hits in 22 innings being rated as allowing only 2.86H/9 innings. You can change the threshold pa and ip to suit who should be made bad.

But how does this work for 3 year recalc and 5 year recalc.

I think the default setting is 300 at bats. So using three year recalc, does that adjust all hitter with less than 300 at bats over that 3 year period. Or does it adjust all players with less than 300 per season/900 hundred at bats? I know this is me being an idiot and I've played this game forever. Mainly why I've always simply used the default.

If you use weaken hitter with 300 ABs and you are using 3 year double weight then effectively the computer will weaken hitters with less than 300+ (2*300) + 300 =1200ABs. That is assuming the player played the 3 years in question. At least that is my understanding after reading a post last year that had Garlands input. I think Garland uses 5 year recalc and his weaken/adjust hitters/pitchers settings were VERY low. I do not remember but I think it was in the neighborhood of 50/25 for hitters and 10/7 for pitchers.
I use 3 year double weight recalc and I use 150/75 hitters and 25/10 for pitchers and that seems to work pretty well.

If you use 300 with 3-yr recalc then yes it will be looking for 900 AB over those 3 seasons. The values you put in will basically be the average per season.

For 1yr recalc I think you could move it down from the default of 300 to more like 200-250. I figure since in a full season a player generally gets about 500 AB that I want my sample size for the ratings to be at least 500 AB as well for either 3yr or 5yr for a player to get their full ratings based on their stats. So 500/5 = 100, so you can go with 100 AB for a 5yr or 167 for a 3yr. I used to go with this as the high value and approximately half of that for the low value, but now I am considering boosting these.

So for 3yr I suggest setting the upper value no more than 200 and the lower value maybe no lower than 100. For 5yr, I suggest no more than 170 on the upper value and maybe no lower than 70 for the lower value.

For pitchers you have to consider that the game quadruples the value for SP's.

I use 14 IP for 5yr because 14*4*5 = 230 IP. I think 230 IP is a good sample because you figure even the best pitchers have a WHIP of 1.00 and if you figure there are 3 outs to get in the inning an average pitcher will face at least 4 batters per inning and 230*4 = 920, or nearly 1000 batters faced. The game uses probabilities only to the thousandth anyway, so we don't really need more than this to get accurate ratings. Raising the values more for the import settings will only cause more players to be underrated if you feel you have too much talent in the league. If you think your best players are underperforming try moving the import settings up a bit to make a handful of players in the league not quite as good.

You got me there. I've never used recalc.:o

Alright folks, here comes he ultimate stupid question from someone that's played this game since Season Ticket 2. Are you ready?

If I set up a historical game, turn recalc off and go strictly with the OOTP development engine, do the make bad settings even matter? Since you aren't using 1, 3 or 5 year recalc, what should they be set at?

It will matter for the initial import and the import option for the Potential will matter as well.

If your playing real transaction (not real lineups) using 1 year recalc and plan on continuing on season to season, what would you set the weaken hitter/make bad settings to? What would you set the pitchers settings to?

I see OOTP recommends lowering hitters by at least 50% when using real lineups, but does the same apply when using only real transactions?

I don't want to put a layer of smog over hitter that smothers them, but I want hitting .400 to mean something. Thoughts.

Depend on if you are ok with a player with 250 at bats in real life hitting .400 or 60 home runs then set it to 249/50. Are you ok with a player with 201 at bats in real life hitting .400 or 60 home runs in YOUR league then set it to 200/50.
Are yo ok with a player with 101 at bats in real life hitting .400 or 60 Home runs then set to 100/50. I think you get the picture.

What I'm trying to avoid is creating a situation where guys like Williams, Musial, DiMaggio hit .400 every other year. I really want to avoid having guys hitting .450 or higher entering July or August. Not anti .400, just want it to mean something. I guess my concern is, if I make too many guys bad, do I end up making the good/great players into super heroes/video game stars.

I don't want to cripple pitchers, but I don't want to make sub 2 ERA's and every season deal either. Just trying to find the sweet spot.

I understand what you are saying. The higher you set weaken/adjust, the good players will even have better seasons. I think and you may want to check but there are just a couple players if any that had 150-300 at bats that hit close to .400. When I player 1 year recalc, I used 200/50 for batters and 40/15 for pitchers. I still had more outliers, .400 hitters, than I wanted so I switched to 3 year double weighted and that seems pretty reasonable. In a test league I set up I had 14 .400 batting average seasons between 1901-1960.

I tend to go with Recalc Off, based on OOTP Engine, and Potential = Adjust for Remaining Seasons.

So to piggyback off the above stuff, how does the import effect a rookie struggling and getting only 40-80 AB or say 30-50 IP? E.G. Derek Jeter has 48 AB in 1995 but struggled hitting .248/.294/.375

Presumably if you set it for 'Make Bad' of 100+ AB, Jeter in theory would come in with bad ratings correct?

So would the balancing act be to lower the Import to say 25-30 AB or instead just make basing potential off 'Peak Seasons'? The conundrum with the former is getting the guy who had 35-40 AB and hit .300+ though.

Jeter will initially have a replacement level season but potential will start with whatever his import potential is, after that it is all up the the development engine.