Quote:
Originally Posted by rpriske
What I am trying to determine is when to run. It has been established pretty strongly that attempting to steal with a success percentage of under 75% is a negative strategy.
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The problem with this is that there is no way to determine the statistical probability of a successful steal in real life. Sabermetricians can cite every conceivable stat from the past, but that says nothing about the present circumstance. No mathematical or statistical model can be applied to the present to predict the result. Not rationally. This is because the assumption that future results will resemble past outcomes is a logical fallacy.
There are numerous factors that you would have to control for anyway, most of which are never recorded or accounted for statistically. For example, what is the condition of the ball, the humidity, the level of perspiration in the catcher's hand, the wind speed and direction, the psychological state of all involved, the tagging ability of the player who will receive the ball, etc., etc., etc.
In real life, part of a manager's job is assessing some of these intangibles and not merely managing according to theoretical percentages based on past results. Honestly, if we want to manage everything according to sabermetric models, then we don't need managers. We can simply turn everything over to AI and have a notebook PC in each dugout that displays each decision.
So I throw all of that nonsense about playing the percentages out the window and make my judgments based on the ratings of the players involved, the game situation, and my inclinations of the moment.
With OOTP, at least you know that there is a baseline success rate based on real life tendencies. That will be adjusted based on the relative ratings of the players involved, so you have some sense of the chance of success. But you can't pinpoint whether a given circumstance will be 70% or 75% or 80%. But think about it: if it's 74%, then you never steal? If it's 75%, you steal every time? That's arbitrary, isn't it? And, even if you could know the percentage in the game, then you would have access to information that no real life manager could ever have. No real life manager can ever know what the chances of success are for a given steal attempt that he's considering. So this would be an artificial and unrealistic indicator.
Personally, I love to steal bases and will heavily use the options to steal, run and hit, and hit and run. I don't like relying on the next couple of guys to hopefully advance the runner over and then get a base hit to score a run. If I see a ratings match-up that I like, I'm going to send my runner. In reality, I'm probably playing to something like a 75% percentage, but I don't worry about that. Since I like to use the hit-and-run, I end up with quite a few steals by players who aren't necessarily great base stealers, especially on hit-and-run plays where the batter doesn't make contact. The percentages in those cases are supposedly lower, but that doesn't stop me.
If I have a batter who isn't strikeout prone but maybe isn't a great hitter for average, then I'm more likely to send the runner on a hit-and-run or run-and-hit, to at least move him over on contact or maybe get a steal. Again, I'm not going to trust that an average to below-average hitter is going to get a base hit.
If I have a great match-up but a batter who is highly prone to strikeouts and not putting the ball in play, then that changes things. I'm going to be more particular about whether I try a hit-and-run, but if the runner is really great, then I might steal or do the run-and-hit anyway. If the runner is good but there's a significant risk of him getting thrown out if the hitter doesn't put the ball in play, then I might be more cautious.
Things may depend on the game situation too. If I'm one run down in a tight game, but there are no outs and my runner is on first, then I probably won't try to steal. There, I don't want to risk wasting the tying run by getting my runner thrown out. But I might use a hit-and-run depending on the batter. If I'm pretty confident that the hitter will at least make contact, then I know that it's almost a certainty that my runner will at least end up at second, in scoring position with only one out. At best, he might end up at third on a single or he'll score on a double or bigger hit.
I've managed this way in computer sims for the past 30 years, and it never fails me. I'm able to rack up a lot of steals and score runs that I probably wouldn't have gotten otherwise. And generally my teams do extremely well and can outperform their base offensive ability.