[Furious]

A couple of seasons ago a GM in a fictional league I’m in began starting a player at second base with a Turn DP rating of 1 (this is a 1-5 ratings league). I thought he was out of his mind, but this isn’t a guy who doesn’t know what he’s doing; in fact, he’s the most successful GM in the history of our league. His explanation was that he wasn’t sure the Turn DP rating in OOTP has much of an effect on double plays; he was willing to test it, anyway.

Sounds counterintuitive to me; why have a rating if it doesn’t do anything? I didn’t like the implications (what other ratings might not mean anything?), but I’d rather know than not know, so I set up a more extensive test.

I’ve tested things this way before; set up a league with all teams exactly identical in every detail, except the one that I’m trying to find something out about.

For this test I set up a six-team league, 140-game schedule, injuries off, player development off, morale and chemistry off, all parks identical, all teams exactly identical except the second baseman. The second baseman is the same (DP rating of 4; 140 “under the hood”) on four of the teams, but on one team he has a Turn DP rating of 5 (200 under the hood), and on one team he has a Turn DP rating of 1 (30 under the hood).

I ran ten seasons; not ten consecutive seasons where the players are a year older every year, but ten of the same season (I made ten copies of the league file and ran a year with each copy).

I’ve attached an Excel file for anyone who wants to look at the data, but here’s the nutshell version: the GM with the crazy idea was right: it makes almost no difference what the second baseman’s Turn DP rating is.

In the ten seasons, the second baseman with the 5 rating turned an average of 103 double plays a year. The four second basemen with the 4 rating averaged 101, 97, 97, and 95 double plays a year, respectively, and the second baseman with the 1 rating turned an average of 88 double plays a year. The average for all six over the ten seasons was 97.

So, according to my tests, the difference between a player who is good at turning the double play and a player who, according to his ratings, should be absolutely terrible at it is nine double plays a year.

So it’s not quite accurate to say that the Turn DP rating is meaningless; it’s just nine plays a year away from being meaningless.

Some might argue that turning the double play is the most important skill for a second baseman; some might even say that it is the skill that basically defines the position, as in, if you can’t do it, you can’t play the position.

But in OOTP, pretty much everybody can turn the double play. I didn’t run tests to see if a player with no Turn DP rating at all could turn a double play, but I’ve also never seen a player with ratings at the other infield skills who didn’t also have a Turn DP rating, so I didn’t want to waste my time testing something that doesn’t actually occur in OOTP.

I don’t think this reflects reality. I don’t think there is that little difference between a player with very poor double play skills and a player with very good double play skills. Bill Mazeroski is in the Hall of Fame, mostly as the result of his excellence in turning the double play. Say what you want about whether he belongs there, but he didn’t get there by doing something that almost anybody can do.

Is this something that can be fixed? Can the effect the Turn DP rating has on double plays be increased? I’m not a programmer; I don’t know how difficult this would be to tweak without messing up other things. But if it’s too difficult to fix or too low a priority, maybe OOTP should just get rid of the Turn DP rating altogether. If it doesn’t really do anything, why have it?