Preseason Predictions

[Yojimbo28]

I posted this in the New to the Game forum, and I apologize if this is bad form, but I saw that this subforum seems to be more active. After years of playing a different baseball simulation game, I bought OOTP 21 last night and am very impressed with the look and layout of the game and how immersive it is. I did some exhibitions and now I'm getting into my first project, which is a historical simulation with Brooklyn starting in 1930. As many of you know, the league went hitting-crazy that year, (Hack Wilson 190 RBIs, etc.). Once spring training started, I checked the preseason predicitions. The game predicts four American Leaguers and five National Leaguers to bat over .400. Should I be worried about this? I don't know how accurate the predictions are. I didn't mess with the league modifiers or anything, to my knowledge, and I even started another 1930 league and saw similar stats. I picked 1930 and was excited for an offense-heavy season, but this is a bit much.The Phillies that year had a 6.71 ERA. The game is predicting them to have a 9.40 ERA! Should I change some settings before getting things started?

[pgjocki]

Well now I know what I'm doing tonight. I do mostly current day and fictional but I'll test historical to see.

Very rarely does the preseason predictions come true but those numbers seem high.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

[Yojimbo28]

If you or anyone else had a chance to start a career (not just a single-season) in 1930 with the default modifiers for that year and see if they got the same thing, I'd be grateful. I simulated the spring training games, but I plan on playing the regular season games, so I stopped the day before Opening Day so I can make any changes I might need to. I want offense, but I don't want it to be that unrealistic.

[pstrickert]

I just tried it. PP has three hitters at .404, .402, and .400. ERA for the Phillies: 7.35.

As I understand it, PP does not use historical lineups or transactions. Nor does it use fatigue. So, the stats will be skewed.

[TomVeal]

Play the season, and see how it goes. OSA's predictions are no better than those made in real life, particularly for individual performances.

[thklein]

Originally Posted by Yojimbo28

If you or anyone else had a chance to start a career (not just a single-season) in 1930 with the default modifiers for that year and see if they got the same thing, I'd be grateful. I simulated the spring training games, but I plan on playing the regular season games, so I stopped the day before Opening Day so I can make any changes I might need to. I want offense, but I don't want it to be that unrealistic.

I just simmed the 1930 season using the default settings and all players on AI control. I had one player (Babe Herman) hit .406. The next highest average was Chick Hafey at .397. But my preseason projection didn't have anyone hitting over .400. You may have just gotten an extreme prediction.

[pstrickert]

These were the batting leaders IRL. Any one of them, by random chance, could eclipse .400 in a replay.

[Yojimbo28]

I appreciate you taking a look at it. I guess it's just what happens when you start in one of the most hitter-friendly years in the game's history. Some of the predicted averages weren't just over .400, they were in the .420s and that seemed a bit extreme. I went ahead and started playing and I'm three games in and I've scored 31 runs, but it's been against the legendarily bad Phillies from that year, so we'll see if that's the norm.

[ablobj]

Somewhat off topic, but...I found that I really started enjoying baseball sims more when I stopped focusing on how "accurate" the individual player stats were, and started focusing more on managing my team to my best ability in order to win more ballgames. If I'm managing the 1980 Pirates, I don't really care if George Brett hits .390 or .415, or if Schmidt hits 48 homers or 58. OOTP, DMB, Action, etc...There are gonna be some outliers every year, to me this makes it a little more interesting.

[thklein]

Originally Posted by ablobj

Somewhat off topic, but...I found that I really started enjoying baseball sims more when I stopped focusing on how "accurate" the individual player stats were, and started focusing more on managing my team to my best ability in order to win more ballgames. If I'm managing the 1980 Pirates, I don't really care if George Brett hits .390 or .415, or if Schmidt hits 48 homers or 58. OOTP, DMB, Action, etc...There are gonna be some outliers every year, to me this makes it a little more interesting.

It's definitely true that you'll enjoy the game less if you get concerned over 25 point swings in batting average or a difference in 10 in a home run total. If you want that level of accuracy just study the box scores from the actual games. But it would kind of defeat the purpose of a historical season if multiple players are hitting .420 every year or something. You want it to be within normal limits.

[thklein]

Originally Posted by pstrickert

These were the batting leaders IRL. Any one of them, by random chance, could eclipse .400 in a replay.

The thing that stood out to me in the sim I ran was the .ops leaders, but I just compared them the real life league leaders and they aren't that far out of whack at all. That was quite a season.

[Leo_The_Lip]

If I understood your original post, you are looking at a pre-season prediction made during Spring Training. That is a mistake if you are looking for accuracy.

The prediction issued automatically the day before the season starts is more accurate due to several factors. There are more pitchers and players in spring training and the prediction is factored using all these guys. The larger rotations are definitely factored in, a state you can verify by checking the projected starts of the leaders (low).

In any event, if you run a preseason during ST, it will change, often dramatically, for the opening day prediction.

[ablobj]

Originally Posted by thklein

It's definitely true that you'll enjoy the game less if you get concerned over 25 point swings in batting average or a difference in 10 in a home run total. If you want that level of accuracy just study the box scores from the actual games. But it would kind of defeat the purpose of a historical season if multiple players are hitting .420 every year or something. You want it to be within normal limits.

I completely agree, but we're talking about 1930...25 point swings in BA would lead to several players hitting near .420...also, as baseball fans we definitely revere many of the "magic" numbers...if the real-life batting champ hit .335, and several players in a replay hit around .360, we probably wouldn't notice it as much, since .400 is, well, .400!

[Yojimbo28]

Originally Posted by Leo_The_Lip

If I understood your original post, you are looking at a pre-season prediction made during Spring Training. That is a mistake if you are looking for accuracy.

The prediction issued automatically the day before the season starts is more accurate due to several factors. There are more pitchers and players in spring training and the prediction is factored using all these guys. The larger rotations are definitely factored in, a state you can verify by checking the projected starts of the leaders (low).

In any event, if you run a preseason during ST, it will change, often dramatically, for the opening day prediction.

I went back and checked when it was almost Opening Day and the predictions had scaled back to more sensible numbers. Sensible for 1930 at least! That makes sense, though, about the spring training players skewing the stats. Thanks for the response!

[lencombs]

You could save the league as a Quickstart, then just sim out the season with your settings and make sure everything looks normal, then load your Quickstart and make any adjustments you want before playing out the season.

[thklein]

Originally Posted by ablobj

I completely agree, but we're talking about 1930...25 point swings in BA would lead to several players hitting near .420...also, as baseball fans we definitely revere many of the "magic" numbers...if the real-life batting champ hit .335, and several players in a replay hit around .360, we probably wouldn't notice it as much, since .400 is, well, .400!

Yes, but the problem is that .400 is already at the high end of the "swing." If a player hits 25 points higher than he did in real life, it's no big deal. If he hits 25 points higher than anyone did in real life, that's an issue. Even if, in real life, he had the highest batting average. There always going to be some variance, but the guys that are leading the league are approach the high point of their believable outcomes. In other words, they aren't leading the league because they are better than everyone else. They just got better outcomes in that particular season. For example, if a player has a range of reasonably likely batting averages of .280 to .330 and he happens to hit .330 in real life (meaning he had his best reasonably likely season), it's an issue if the sim shows him hitting .355. But if he hit .300 in real life, it wouldn't be an issue if the sim had him hit .325.

This makes sense in my head, but I'm not sure it's making sense when I try to put it into words. Basically, adding .25 points to a batting average becomes an issue when the batting average is already at the extreme high end.

[pstrickert]

This is one reason some users use 3-yr recalc rather than 1-yr. The stat target is not a single "outlier" (Maris' 61 HR season, for example), but a 3-yr average (Maris' 44.3 HR average for 1960-62).

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by thklein

Yes, but the problem is that .400 is already at the high end of the "swing." If a player hits 25 points higher than he did in real life, it's no big deal. If he hits 25 points higher than anyone did in real life, that's an issue. Even if, in real life, he had the highest batting average. There always going to be some variance, but the guys that are leading the league are approach the high point of their believable outcomes. In other words, they aren't leading the league because they are better than everyone else. They just got better outcomes in that particular season. For example, if a player has a range of reasonably likely batting averages of .280 to .330 and he happens to hit .330 in real life (meaning he had his best reasonably likely season), it's an issue if the sim shows him hitting .355. But if he hit .300 in real life, it wouldn't be an issue if the sim had him hit .325.

This makes sense in my head, but I'm not sure it's making sense when I try to put it into words. Basically, adding .25 points to a batting average becomes an issue when the batting average is already at the extreme high end.

It's exactly this

Imagine OOTP were not a baseball sim, but a coin flipping sim

We know coins have about a 50/50 split but they don't alternate exactly.

So suppose we had a real life coin that we flipped 10 times and it came out 7 heads. If we put that coin into the simulator and made 7/10 the baseline, we would get, to say the least, unrealistic results

[ablobj]

Originally Posted by thklein

Yes, but the problem is that .400 is already at the high end of the "swing." If a player hits 25 points higher than he did in real life, it's no big deal. If he hits 25 points higher than anyone did in real life, that's an issue. Even if, in real life, he had the highest batting average. There always going to be some variance, but the guys that are leading the league are approach the high point of their believable outcomes. In other words, they aren't leading the league because they are better than everyone else. They just got better outcomes in that particular season. For example, if a player has a range of reasonably likely batting averages of .280 to .330 and he happens to hit .330 in real life (meaning he had his best reasonably likely season), it's an issue if the sim shows him hitting .355. But if he hit .300 in real life, it wouldn't be an issue if the sim had him hit .325.

This makes sense in my head, but I'm not sure it's making sense when I try to put it into words. Basically, adding .25 points to a batting average becomes an issue when the batting average is already at the extreme high end.

Yes, it makes perfect sense, I just hadn't thought about it that way. My reasoning was that, although a .420 AVG "seems" a lot higher than a .400 AVG, it's really only 5% better, and if a $40 computer game can get the BA's 95% accurate, ehh, that's good enough for me.

But you're reasoning makes a lot of sense...If a bowler with a 200 average improved by 5% to a 210 average, seems believable. If a bowler with a 280 average improved by 5% to a 294 average, uhh, not likely.

But how would the game prevent the best of the best from having something like a 5% increase in BA? The only thing I can think of is some sort of statistical "governor" in the engine that would lead to automatic outs once a player crossed whatever the built-in threshold might be.

[ablobj]

Originally Posted by CBeisbol

It's exactly this

Imagine OOTP were not a baseball sim, but a coin flipping sim

We know coins have about a 50/50 split but they don't alternate exactly.

So suppose we had a real life coin that we flipped 10 times and it came out 7 heads. If we put that coin into the simulator and made 7/10 the baseline, we would get, to say the least, unrealistic results

I can imagine the Owner goals:

-Upgrade the nickel to a quarter
-Filp at least 60% tails.

I'd definitely subscribe to Silvam's Historical 3D Coin mod!