[struggles_mightily]

Originally Posted by dashby

Again, probably been said many times before but, in my book, plausible is playing a season with MLB rosters and getting a statistical/standings outcome that is very similar to what happened in real life.

The Major League Baseball season is a really bad test of the abilities of baseball teams, though, isn't it? It plays itself out only once. It doesn't control for extraneous variables such as injury, unexpected poor performance, or similar. The Major League Baseball season is not really intended to divine the "true talent" levels of the participating teams, and cannot do this with tremendous accuracy.

I don't believe anyone expects every team to end up in the same positions. I don't believe anyone expects every pitcher and batter to have identical stats. Don't believe anyone is suggesting "identical".

Neither did I suggest that posters had such expectations. The word "identical" appears nowhere in my post. I'm not interested in playing the "well, what percentage deviation from real life is acceptable?" game. I'm trying generally to question the usage of "real life" as a reference point with which to measure the "plausibility" of OOTP's simulations.

We should see most of the players having stats within a 5-10% statistical range of what they really did. There might be spikes that vary tremendously from real life. But, if these spikes are the trend and the 5-10% range is the exception there are problems with that game's statistical engine.

Again, I'm not sure that real life should be used as a basis. I wonder what results would be gained by comparing OOTP outputs with, say, PECOTA projections? I'm sure that OOTP probably does have some problems -- its A.I. is off in a number of areas.

It's also important to divide roster-set problems (mis-rated players and so on) from OOTP problems, though, isn't it? (Admittedly, the lines have been blurred in terms of responsibility since OOTP started endorsing roster sets. But these issues still have to be seen as separate, I'd have thought.)

For example, I played the 2006 season in OOTP 9 10 times. Cleveland finished 1st in the Central 1/2 of those times (they were in reality 4th and 18 games out). Minnesota, who won the division, finished in 1st only once.

Interesting that you should pick that season and those teams. Did you know that Cleveland under-performed their Pythag that year by 12 games? That's incredible. They 'should' have finished 90-72. Minnesota slightly over-performed their Pythag (three games) and 'should' have finished 92-70.

The Central had four really good teams that year -- Cleveland, the Twins, Detroit and Chicago all finished with Pythagorean Records which included 90 or more wins. Any division winner in that context would be very, very "plausible" -- though Kansas City probably shouldn't be finishing first any more than, say, 5% of the time.

I certainly don't think it implausible that an Indians team loaded with guys like Travis Hafner, Victor Martinez, Grady Sizemore and CC Sabathia could win an, albeit strong, division 10-20% of the time. That projection might even under-estimate Cleveland slightly, though they did get a lot of important contributions from fringy players that year (Ben Broussard, Eduardo Perez, Jeremy Sowers etc).

Were you also upset when the Cardinals didn't win it all or even make the playoffs? That was a mediocre team that won a World Series. I'd hate it if OOTP faithfully recreated that outcome in a majority of repetitions.

Player stats were just all over the place...except close to where the real season indicated they should have been. Many more similar anomalies.

In my historical play, I don't usually see player stats that I would call "all over the place." Could you give some examples?

Just takes all the fun out of playing seasons that you know what the "True" outcome was.

I think that people place far too much emphasis on "real" events. OOTP's task should not be to approximate closely the results of the real baseball season -- a bad, un-controlled, un-repeated "test" -- but to produce results which are "plausible" with reference to the talent levels of teams and players.