Quote:
Originally Posted by thehef
Here's an alternative that I *think* would work for Fidrych if you wanted your "what if" to apply to The Bird, but otherwise didn't want your game varying much from history. IOW, you wanted one-year recalc, but wanted to see what Fidrych might've done...
1) After his first two seasons (76 & 77, his only good ones; 78 was good but too brief & would likely be affected by your "adjust" or "make bad" settings), you would need to dummy up his ratings for each year where he has real stats (78, 79 & 80; you'd need to go up thru 83 if you are importing real minor-leagues). You could do this by a) copying his previous years' ratings and then maybe (or maybe not) tweaking those a little, or b) entering his previous year's (or slightly different) stats and converting those to ratings (there's a button for this)... You'd need to do this each year where he had real stats.
2) After his real-life retirement, he should be good to go, with the engine taking over.
Now, I say this from the perspective that, with historical transactions, OOTP will turn guys like Ted Williams and Joe Di Maggio into free agents for the years they miss due to WWII. And then I override this and re-assign them to their teams so they don't miss seasons, and for me they play like the HOFers that they are. However, I believe David Watts has experienced something different (they become scrub-like).
The other caveat: So I try something similar with Sandy Koufax. However, since he actually retired at the top of his game, I don't have to dummy up any stats or ratings. Rather, after I unretire him and put him back on the Dodgers, he's still great. But that greatness frequently lasts what we might consider to be too long - well into his 40's sometimes. This didn't used to happen (several versions ago). With more recent versions of OOTP, I'm not so sure that the engine takes over; rather, it might be that Koufax's superior ratings just stay that way in perpetuity, or something like that...
At any rate, one of the "what if's" that I like to try once in awhile is to healthy-up the 1975 Dodgers to see if they can compete with the Big Red Machine. LA was a 102-win team the year before and made few changes the following year. But Bill Russell, Bill Buckner, Joe Ferguson, and to a lesser extent, Jimmy Wynn, were significantly slowed by injuries. And Tommy John missed the entire season. So for Russell, Buckner, and John, I average out their stats for 74 & 76 to come up with "what if healthy" 75 stats and use those to base ratings on. Ferg and Wynn are both a bit different cases so I pretty much just use their 74 numbers...
What would be cool is if we could select, say 1-year recalc for the game in general, but at any time go to a player's Editor page and click - for him only - something like "apply 5-year recalc." And his ratings would be overridden by a 5-year recalc. And the reverse scenario: the game is in 5-year recalc mode, but at any time you could apply a 1-year recalc to a player. This would open up a bunch of cool "what if" possibilities.
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This'll be great for fredbeene's questions, so thank you. I think (but I can't confirm because I haven't gone through their war seasons) that Teddy Ballgame and Joe D would be covered off by the player development part. I use 5-year double weighted with the development system on at default. Not sure what effect this'll have on all the war year (and others who missed many seasons in a row) guys, but I think it might help get them through those blank seasons with much less damage than recalc alone would. I'm also playing Random Debut, with which I can't use historical transactions for obvious reasons, so I don't think I'll be affected by the free agent part, but I can't know for certain until I see them in action.
With Koufax, I think what you're describing would happen with recalc only. At least that's what happened with prior versions. I haven't played a long, long running game since OOTP16 though, so I may not have seen what you're talking about in the more recent versions.
Awesome 1975 Dodgers' concept, and the different recalcs for the game in general and individual players is absolutely mindblowing. This suggestion belongs in the suggestions for future versions thread. Seriously. I ain't no programmer, so I have no clue about how difficult it would be to do that (I would think very difficult), but if Markus could do it, as you say, it would open up a whole bunch of cool "what if" possibilities. Amazing that the Dodgers were able to finish second (albeit a looong way behind the Big Red Machine, but still 88-74 is nothing to sneeze at) in 1975 with all those guys out.
"The Toy Cannon" was such an underrated player. You have to squint hard to see it, but between 1965-1976, he was a very good player, with the exception of 1971. Superb at getting on base with excellent power in the heart of a huge era for pitchers? Move him from CF to RF, and I'm all over that. Had he played in a more sabermetrically inclined era, he would've been properly appreciated, but alas.