[RonCo]

Originally Posted by GCCWolverine

Getting back to the original topic - RonCo, I believe I remember seeing a thread about this sort of thing a while ago. Can't be bothered to look it up, but the gist of it is that somebody made the hypothesis that for one-pitch mode, the game automatically came up with the outcome before the pitches were thrown, and the pitches were randomly determined based upon ratings until it got to a point where something specific needed to happen - for instance, if the pre-at-bat determination was a groundout, and on a 3-1 count, you told the hitter to take, it would be a strike to go to 3-2.

The effect of causing batting averages and walk rates to skyrocket is exactly how you described. For instance, suppose the game determines that the next at bat will be a walk. In one-pitch mode, this could take anywhere above four pitches, but will tend to average around 5 or 6. In pitch-by-pitch, if the first two pitches are strikes, and now you tell the hitter to swing away, any pitch that would have been a swinging strike three turns into a foul ball, pushing the average up to 7 or 8. That, in and of itself, doesn't cause issues, but if pitch-by-pitch is pushing up the average at bat by even one pitch per hitter, then instead of the starter having thrown 84 pitches through five innings, he has thrown 106, meaning that every hitter after that is facing a more tired pitcher than they should.

I'd be interested in seeing the average pitches-per-at-bat in those games you are presenting. Again - I don't know if this is how it works - but I distinctly remember reading a thread along this argument's lines.

That was probably my original hypothesis. Markus's comments later led me to believe that he didn't calculate the outcomes first, but instead modified the result calculation by count-based values for each pitch. I would assume he would do this by modifying the league totals for that individual pitch, but I'm really just making that up. However he does it, it doesn't really seem to be working well--though you would need to do a lot more work than I've done to prove that beyond doubt.

I'll pull the pitches/PA numbers when I get a chance. But I'm pretty certain we'll see a large increase.