Alternative "era_stats.txt" File for You to Try

[Seviien]

My preferred way of playing OOTP is to setup a fictional league, run 50-75 years of history starting in 1901, and then take over a team. In prior versions, I noticed that stats would swing wildly around WW2 era and ~1987. Turns out, real life MLB had some odd stats those years too, so OOTP was just mirroring reality in a way.

Still, the results felt "off" somehow. Averaging 5 year blocks of stats for each year gave smoother, and to me better feeling results, and that is the major change in the attached file.
(For anyone really interested, I normalized all stats to 100k at bats and then took 2 years prior, 2 years after, and the year in question, averaging all of them together. Derived stats, like OBP, weren't averaged, but derived using the appropriate forumla and the averages of the underlying stats like hits and BB.)

The other major change is that the HR binge of the late 1990s is muted. It's still there, but it's set to 105% of the peak HR rate from 1901 and 1980. The HR rate still peaks in the year 2000, but it's a linear walk up from 1990, and then walk down to 2011. The 2011 level is set at the 90th percentile of the HR rate between 1901 and 1980. That's 2539 per 100k AB, which is ~10% lower than the actual 2011 level of 2747 per 100k AB.

25% of the reduced HR were changed into 2B, the rest were turned into outs. No hard math to back that up, other than a chart showing that HR rate and 2B rate tend to move in opposite directions historically.

In 10 different 16-team test leagues, the single season HR record was consistently in the mid 60s with a 162 game schedule. In those same test leagues, the 2011 HR leader was usually in the mid 40s.


As far as installation, you'll want to go into your OOTP data folder when OOTP isn't running, and find the folder called "database." Inside, you'll want to change the name of the "era_stats.txt" file to something like "era_stats - default.txt". That way you can easily go back if you don't like these results. Then just drop the attached file into the folder. Results probably won't take effect until the offseason. I'd try it with a test league too, before using it with any leagues you're heavily invested in - just to be safe.