Player Popularity distribution
 

Can anyone give a rough estimate of what percentage of players in a standard MLB-level league typically turn out to be extremely popular, very popular, popular, well known?

I ask because player popularity is all out of whack in my new historical league and I want to make some edits to get things in order a little better. I understand there's not likely to be some set in stone numbers (if there are, probably only the developers know); I just want to get an idea of what kind of distribution you might see in a mature fictional league or maybe even the current MLB roster set.

Player Popularity distribution
 

I am not sure how you would base that. Your guys that are on the club for a long period of time and are generally good people or colourful ones would be the most popular. Or by simply just by being amazing at the game.

Either way, it is such a team by team thing that it would be hard to say unless others know more than I about it

I finally got around to loading the 2013 MLB quickstart to check the popularity distribution and am posting the numbers in case anybody searches for this info in the future.


1260 total MLB players

National Popularity

15 - Extremely popular (~1%)
30 - Very popular (~2.5%)
30 - Popular (~2.5%)
60 - Well known (~5%)
85 - Fair (~7%)
150 - Insignificant (~12%)
895 - Unknown (~70%)

(Local Popularity distribution was roughly the same)

When you say it's "out of whack" - what do you mean?

And what numbers are you basing this off? Is there some real world data somewhere that you're comparing it to?

I've never heard of distribution % being kept in pro sports for how many of each type fan there was. How would you measure it, poll every single fan?

Well if it is geared this way for all the ootp games then I would say top 3 fields need to be increased 5X imo if compared to RL.

Do you have some real life numbers?

This has nothing to do with real life or real fans or polling fans or whatever you are reading into it.

Rather, when you create a league with OOTP, it generates roughly x percentage of players as extremely popular, y percentage as very popular, z percentage as popular, etc. You can see this if you create some test fictional leagues. You'll never get 50 percent of players as extremely popular or whatever; it's based on some kind of a distribution. I simply wanted to get an idea of this OOTP-generated distribution so that I could compare it against my historical league, for my own personal purposes. That's all.

What is your basis for saying it's "out of whack"?

Out of whack compared to what?

If there's no real life data to support the percentages, then you have nothing to base it on. OOTP would most likely generate them randomly, since it has no real world data to base it on either.

If you have 9 Stud All-Stars on your team, should they all be "extremely popular"? If you have 9 duds, should they all be unpopular?

A league with a lot of talent is likely to have more "extremely popular" players than a league with fewer studs and more even distribution. It will constantly change.

Doesn't matter what is being read into it, you need something to base this on, you can't just say distribution should be x, y, and z.

I think he means that his league is "our of whack" with all other OOTP leagues that he has played. He doesn't seem to be questioning whether the data is realistic or not, but what the normal distribution is in a typical OOTP league.

I'm not sure the quickstart is the best place to figure that out, however. I don't know if the popularity info is entered manually or distributed by the game.

So what is normal distribution?

If I have a league with 6 teams, 150 players, and 25 of them are studs, do I have 25 extremely popular players?

If I have a league with 6 teams, 150 players, and 17 of them are studs, do I have 17 extremely popular players?

If I only have a small handful of studs, but a lot of players who are hard workers with good attitudes and do stuff in the community and with the fans, are they all extremely popular?

After you've answered #1 and #2, then tell me which of those two totals, 17 or 25, is normal.


Distribution will and should always vary.

Popularity is not in a 1 to 1 correlation with ability......

In my 24 team fictional league, in the inaugural draft there were 10 Ex. Pop, 16 V. Pop., 34 Pop., 49 Well Kn., 51 Fair, 63 Insig., rest unknown......

In the Inaugural draft, all players had the same rating for National and Local Popularity......

I'm aware of that and never said it was 1-1.

Out of whack compared to what *I* think they should be in my real players mid-1980s historical league, based on living through and following baseball very closely during that era, and out of whack relative to what I've seen in my other OOTP leagues.

The game obviously doesn't know these are real players. It generates the popularity tags based mainly on ratings, not randomly. It does a rather good job of it, but for example if a superstar happened to have a bad or injured season the year the historical league was created and a fringe player had a great fluke season, the game quite reasonably might tag the superstar as insignificant and the fringe player as extremely popular. That bugs me and will bug me each and every time I look at those two players. As a historical simmer, I like to "fix" these things.

However, I can't just start changing things willy-nilly. I don't want an *unreasonably* high/low number of "popular" players, because it impacts attendance, financials, player movement, etc. What is a reasonable or unreasonable number? I have no clue. It's a question that can't be answered. But for my purposes, roughly reflecting the distribution you see in a newly created fictional game or the MLB quickstart is as good as anything. If the game in a new league generally labels 1 percent of players extremely popular and 2.5 percent very popular, etc., or whatever, then I'm comfortable keeping my edits roughly in line with those numbers. Then things take off and popularity is all determined by what happens in the game.

Thanks, this is about what I saw in my tests (if you can call them that). Assuming 24 teams would be a pool of about 725 players, here are your numbers compared to the percentages I posted above.

10 Ex. Pop (1% = 7)
16 V. Pop. (2.5% = 18)
34 Pop. (3% = 22)
49 Well Kn. (5% = 36)
51 Fair (7% = 51)
63 Insig. (12% = 87)
rest unknown

223 players insig. or above (yours)
221 players insig. or above (posted percentages)

Not exact obviously and every league will be different, but roughly in the same ballpark.

Well, I see what you're saying/asking for, but as to the bolded/underlined above - why would that bug you? It's very realistic. There's been plenty of popular players who were nothing more than journeymen. There's been plenty of All-Stars that fans can't stand. And seeing guys have off years and falling out of favour or having a fluke year and gaining favour is very normal and realistic.

I agree, you can think of many hypothetical examples where it's a completely realistic occurrence . But I'm talking in my case about a historical league and real life examples I know to be clearly and obviously wrong. Moreover, I'm not doing this only for some idea of historical accuracy. I *enjoy* researching these issues, and then fixing these things. So even if I could pretend that everything is realistic without changes, I personally wouldn't want to.

I understand what you're trying to accomplish, however these are not hypothetical examples - they are real world.