Question: Why the inconsistency with ratings across era's

Hoover36 · 06-08-2020, 10:40 PM

This is something that has long vexed me in regards to OOTP. The lack of consistency in accuracy of ratings across era's.

I started playing this game back in OOTP4. I found OOTP6.5 to be the most visually appealing and ease of use version, so I have stuck with playing OOTP6.5 for the last 10-15 years now. I bought 9, 10, 12, 17 and most recently 21, where I stumbled upon Perfect Team, which has re-hooked me. The reason I never advanced into the more modern versions of OOTP, despite the game play improvements, have been the lack in accuracy of the default loaded player rating. I have spent the last 10-15 years working in excel to generate accurate ratings for player that would actually mimic their real life performance (granted to play in OOTP6.5). Nothing frustrates me more than seeing Ty Cobb with 89 power.

What is the obsession with just plopping high power numbers on players who topped out at 12 HR's in a season...even in the dead ball era? The individual ratings go up to 255 (or at least they do in OOTP6.5), so why does power get the benefit of significant 100+ power, while contact does not?

I understand the simplicity of this example (we can get into BABIP, ect more in depth), but I am trying to be relatively concise in this example of 1910 Ty Cobb vs 2000 Mike Piazza:

Based on 550 PA:
Average - Cobb .383 (22 K's) vs Piazza .324 (70 K's)
Contact - Cobb 104 vs Piazza 95

Home Runs - Cobb 7 HR vs Piazza 38 HR
Power - Cobb 89 vs Piazza 108

Based on my calculations, the ratings for these players should be:
Cobb - 127 Contact/103 Gap/58 Power/77 Eye/95 Avoid K
Piazza - 96 Contact/55 Gap/110 Power/62 Eye/77 Avoid K

OOTP Ratings
Cobb - 104 Contact/92 Gap/89 Power/63 Eye/51 Avoid K
Piazza - 95 Contact/60 Gap/108 Power/64 Eye/67 Avoid K

Mike Piazza is relatively close from my calculations and OOTP's ratings, but Ty Cobb was...off.

I am curious if anyone else finds the inaccuracy in ratings frustrating?

Orcin · 06-08-2020, 10:54 PM

In Perfect Team, the player ratings are normalized to 2011. Ty Cobb would have hit more home runs in the 2011 environment. He also would have faced fresh power relievers instead of tired starters late in games, and he would have hit into defenses with better gloves. Those factors might account for the lower contact than your expectation. I am not trying to justify the ratings, just explaining how PT works compared to regular OOTPB.

Hoover36 · 06-08-2020, 10:59 PM

My calculation are normalized over the baseball history...may explain the reduction in contact and escalation in power. However, by normalizing to 2011 environment, one might argue that Ichiro was a better "pure" hitter than Cobb. I just can't buy that.

JTMorgan · 06-08-2020, 11:00 PM

They aren't being compared to each other. They are compared to the players of their era.

In 1910 the league leader in homers hit 10. Cobb's 8 homers were tied for fourth in the league. Similar thing with contact is shown. Can't find out his strikeouts for 1910 specifically but he struck out 4.1% of the time for his career. League strikeout rate was just over 9.0% in 1910. In 2000 it was up to 16.5% where Piazza struck out 12.7%.

So both were better than average for their time, but if you wanted to compare overall numbers without accounting for era then players over the last couple decades would generally be unplayable due to no contact. Older players like from Cobb's era would have next to no power.

Hoover36 · 06-08-2020, 11:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JTMorgan

They aren't being compared to each other. They are compared to the players of their era.

All players can be compared to all other players from any era. As thusly can be compared to one another. As you do somewhat below. You "normalize" certain stats and then make comparison. And in the OOTP universe (which is my favorite this about OOTP) these players can play against one another.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JTMorgan

In 1910 the league leader in homers hit 10. Cobb's 8 homers were tied for fourth in the league. Similar thing with contact is shown. Can't find out his strikeouts for 1910 specifically but he struck out 4.1% of the time for his career. League strikeout rate was just over 9.0% in 1910. In 2000 it was up to 16.5% where Piazza struck out 12.7%.

Over the entire league, the average HR rate per 550 PA was 2 HR's. However, hitting 8 HR's wouldn't mean their rating would be 4x as high as average. My calculations account for this anyway, but the factor is not 4x.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JTMorgan

So both were better than average for their time, but if you wanted to compare overall numbers without accounting for era then players over the last couple decades would generally be unplayable due to no contact. Older players like from Cobb's era would have next to no power.

Not actually true about current players. Batting average for the entire league in 1910 was .250, in 2000 it was .270. Again, my ratings account for that and only shows that Cobb should in fact be significantly higher in contact than the 104 he is.

Hoover36 · 06-08-2020, 11:15 PM

For context, when I used to run OOTP leagues, my specialty was was the whatifsports model of taking players from any era and pitting them against one another in a realistic fashion. They maintained the integrity of their performance from their era normalized over the entire history of baseball statistics.

My question (rephrased) still is, do people actually like seeing Ty Cobb (or the like) with excessive power?

Hoover36 · 06-08-2020, 11:42 PM

I have spent the last 15 years thinking and calculating these types of things, so I may be the only person that is interested in this type of exercise/question. But to appease my curiosity, I went back to 1871-1910, these were the only players that my calculations would have given an 89+ power rating to:

1884 Edward Williamson 27 HR in 466 PA (111 Power)
1884 Nathaniel Pfeffer 25 HR in 504 PA (109 Power)
1889 John Milligan 12 HR in 292 PA (98 Power)
1887 William S. O'Brien 19 HR in 479 PA (96 Power)
1889 Samuel Thompson 20 HR in 578 PA (90 Power)
1893 John Clements 17 HR in 427 PA (96 Power)
1895 John Clements 13 HR in 322 PA (92 Power)
1889 James Holliday 19 HR in 618 PA (90 Power)
1894 William Joyce 17 HR in 458 PA (92 Power)
1899 John F. Freeman 25 HR in 634 PA (96 Power)
1900 William J. Sullivan Sr. 8 HR in 251 PA (92 Power)
1900 Michael Donlin 10 HR in 297 PA (96 Power)
1901 Samuel Crawford 16 HR in 559 PA (90 Power)

justpatrick · 06-09-2020, 04:50 AM

To answer your question, yes, I like that guys like Cobb and Crawford are power hitters in PT. They were regarded as sluggers in their era and they certainly would have hit for power in 2011. Frank Baker would have more lived up to his nickname had he played in an era with a more lively ball, so yeah, I think it´s cool.
Of course there are some anomalies, such as when Tommy Leach led the league in HRs but all six were inside the park. Leach has a high power rating in PT which doesn´t reflect his true ability, but who´s to say that the homers he hits in the game aren´t inside the park?

In fact your list leads off with an anomaly, Ned Williamson´s 1884 season. I´m sure you are aware that 1884 was the only year a ball hit over the right field fence in Lakefront Park was a homer. Because of it´s incredibly short porch (200 feet iirc), every other year balls hit over that fence were ground rule doubles.
So for me there´s so many contradicting factors that I have no problem with sluggers being sluggers no matter what the era.

Now don´t get me started on the atrociously inaccurate fielding ratings, those I have a real problem with.

dkgo · 06-09-2020, 09:01 AM

Normalizing players from wildly different environments across 150 years into a single rating scale is obviously going to have some variance from person to person depending on how you do it.

During his peak Cobb was first or second in the league in HRs. 89 power passes the smell test

Marleigh · 06-09-2020, 09:18 AM

these are the stats of a SE 100 Babe Ruth in my current Diamond league, clearly there is something busted about the ratings when the Ruth that hit .356 with 60 HR in 1927 (the year its based on) is maxing out at these sorts of stats, I'm not saying he should be hitting 60 homers every year but he should not be hitting sub 200 over 5 seasons.

Orcin · 06-09-2020, 10:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hoover36

My question (rephrased) still is, do people actually like seeing Ty Cobb (or the like) with excessive power?

Yes, I like it.

justpatrick · 06-09-2020, 10:14 AM

With Ruth I surely feel for you, it seems that Ruth along with some of the other great inter-war hitters, never fails to disappoint.

However, if you google who he hit those 60 homers off, you will find that, yes, there were a few great pitchers, there were a few more good pitchers, but for the most part they were garden variety average hurlers who could have been replaced by guys just as good dwelling in the upper minors. In PT parlance, a lot of iron and bronze guys.

In the PT world, even the lowliest of teams would be an all-star team in real life, so the competition Ruth goes up against is much tougher than what he faced in 1927.
It still sucks though that guys like Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx, Greenberg, and so on should not live up to how we perceive them.

Matt Arnold · 06-09-2020, 10:19 AM

The problem on the whole is always that if your lineup is Cobb, Ruth, Dimaggio, Gehrig, Trout, Bonds, etc... you can't really have them all hitting .350+ and/or with 50+ HR, since then your Pedro, Maddux, Spahn, Johnson, Rivera, etc... pitching staff aren't going to show numbers anywhat related to their career numbers.

dkgo · 06-09-2020, 10:55 AM

Even understanding that, an OPS+ constantly under 100 does seem off for perfect Ruth. The homers are there and the walks + strikeouts seem fine, but that is a .190 BABIP across almost four seasons worth of games. Either really really really terrible luck combined with a full-blown pitcher's park or something questionable.

dkgo · 06-09-2020, 10:58 AM

No one expects him to OPS close to 1.200 like his real stats, but he should still be among the top OPS in the league since all the hitters in the league are facing those same pitchers, which was generally the case in PT20 for a 100 Ruth.

Hoover36 · 06-09-2020, 11:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by justpatrick

Now don´t get me started on the atrociously inaccurate fielding ratings, those I have a real problem with.

In OOTP6.5 I am fairly certain that there was no importing of range for real players. IT just assigned a random range factor. The fielding percentage would import (though anything below .930 would be bumped up to .930, so you would have to manually change real fielding %'s below .930 to their correct %). I could import Ozzie Smith one time with a 36 range factor and do it again and it would import at 89.

I think real baseball is still struggling to fully understand defensive metric, though it gets better every year.

I agree that the defensive ratings can be frustrating. I also think the defensive ratings across era's becomes really troublesome. When all SS's fielding % on average in .943 70 years ago and .972 10 years ago, how do you "normalize" those players to a current era while still being true to the players performance.

It took me about 10 years to finally come to way of calculating range for players that got me close enough for comfort.

Syd Thrift · 06-09-2020, 11:06 AM

Part of the issue is that the homers really aren't "there". If you were to truly normalize Babe Ruth's 1920 to 2011 numbers his card would have him hit 100 or more HRs in a year. In real life he personally IIRC hit more homeruns than any other *team* except one and also more HRs than four teams *combined*. He alone represented something like a third of the AL's total HR output. People would complain about him belting 120 HRs a season in rookie ball even though that's perfectly accurate.

The BABIP does seem low but there too I think it might be given some maluses just to make the card a 100 and not a "if you have this card you will automatically win your league" deal. IRL Ruth's BABIP in 1920 was .365, a number that would be in the top 30 or so best BABIPs since World War II. Doing that *on top of* everything else he does is, well, insane.

justpatrick · 06-09-2020, 11:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

Part of the issue is that the homers really aren't "there". If you were to truly normalize Babe Ruth's 1920 to 2011 numbers his card would have him hit 100 or more HRs in a year. In real life he personally IIRC hit more homeruns than any other *team* except one and also more HRs than four teams *combined*. He alone represented something like a third of the AL's total HR output. People would complain about him belting 120 HRs a season in rookie ball even though that's perfectly accurate.

The BABIP does seem low but there too I think it might be given some maluses just to make the card a 100 and not a "if you have this card you will automatically win your league" deal. IRL Ruth's BABIP in 1920 was .365, a number that would be in the top 30 or so best BABIPs since World War II. Doing that *on top of* everything else he does is, well, insane.

That´s very true, it was amazing how far ahead of his contemporaries Ruth was, and were he to match that performance in PT it would fail the sanity check, so insane is a good choice of words.
With the earlier argument that players in the past didn´t face fresh relievers, I took my own advice and googled Ruth´s homerun output for 1927 and was surprised to find that only 20 of his 60 were hit in the 7th inning or later. I would have expected it to be more, something around half. I don´t know what it means, but there it is.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, that 27 team won quite a few games so at home he wouldn´t have come to bat in the 9th, so maybe then one third is a decent number to hit late game.

Syd Thrift · 06-09-2020, 12:07 PM

FWIW I took a quick look at the AL totals in 1927 and they back up what I sort of figured: in those days, there were no night games or, I believe, any form of lighting. So a lot of the time those late inning matchups would come as the sun was setting and the air was getting a little cooler. There’s a small drop off in hitting in general from the 6th, which looks like (slightly) the most offense heavy inning, on out. So Ruth getting a third of his HRs in that period means that if anything he had a very slight proclivity towards that period.

CBeisbol · 06-09-2020, 12:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by justpatrick

EDIT: Now that I think about it, that 27 team won quite a few games so at home he wouldn´t have come to bat in the 9th, so maybe then one third is a decent number to hit late game.

So, it'd make sense to look at plate appearances

Innings 1-3: 273 PA 21 HR = 13 PA/HR
Innings 4-6: 212 PA 19 HR = 11.1 PA/HR
Innings 7-9: 193 PA 18 HR = 10.7 PA/HR
*https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...01#post4656201

He homered more often in the late innings

But

Those are pretty small samples to draw conclusions on. Especially based on events like homeruns that happen infrequently.

His tOPS, which compares a players' performance in a split to the league average in that split, is as follows.

1-3: 249
4-6: 202
7-9: 248

His overall performance in innings 7-9 was about equal, relative to the league, as his performance in innings 1-3. And drop off in 4-6

Again, this is probably sample size noise more than any real change in performance.

06-08-2020, 10:40 PM	#1
Hoover36 Minors (Double A) Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: NV Posts: 197	Question: Why the inconsistency with ratings across era's This is something that has long vexed me in regards to OOTP. The lack of consistency in accuracy of ratings across era's. I started playing this game back in OOTP4. I found OOTP6.5 to be the most visually appealing and ease of use version, so I have stuck with playing OOTP6.5 for the last 10-15 years now. I bought 9, 10, 12, 17 and most recently 21, where I stumbled upon Perfect Team, which has re-hooked me. The reason I never advanced into the more modern versions of OOTP, despite the game play improvements, have been the lack in accuracy of the default loaded player rating. I have spent the last 10-15 years working in excel to generate accurate ratings for player that would actually mimic their real life performance (granted to play in OOTP6.5). Nothing frustrates me more than seeing Ty Cobb with 89 power. What is the obsession with just plopping high power numbers on players who topped out at 12 HR's in a season...even in the dead ball era? The individual ratings go up to 255 (or at least they do in OOTP6.5), so why does power get the benefit of significant 100+ power, while contact does not? I understand the simplicity of this example (we can get into BABIP, ect more in depth), but I am trying to be relatively concise in this example of 1910 Ty Cobb vs 2000 Mike Piazza: Based on 550 PA: Average - Cobb .383 (22 K's) vs Piazza .324 (70 K's) Contact - Cobb 104 vs Piazza 95 Home Runs - Cobb 7 HR vs Piazza 38 HR Power - Cobb 89 vs Piazza 108 Based on my calculations, the ratings for these players should be: Cobb - 127 Contact/103 Gap/58 Power/77 Eye/95 Avoid K Piazza - 96 Contact/55 Gap/110 Power/62 Eye/77 Avoid K OOTP Ratings Cobb - 104 Contact/92 Gap/89 Power/63 Eye/51 Avoid K Piazza - 95 Contact/60 Gap/108 Power/64 Eye/67 Avoid K Mike Piazza is relatively close from my calculations and OOTP's ratings, but Ty Cobb was...off. I am curious if anyone else finds the inaccuracy in ratings frustrating?

06-08-2020, 11:15 PM	#6
Hoover36 Minors (Double A) Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: NV Posts: 197	For context, when I used to run OOTP leagues, my specialty was was the whatifsports model of taking players from any era and pitting them against one another in a realistic fashion. They maintained the integrity of their performance from their era normalized over the entire history of baseball statistics. My question (rephrased) still is, do people actually like seeing Ty Cobb (or the like) with excessive power? Last edited by Hoover36; 06-08-2020 at 11:17 PM.

06-09-2020, 04:50 AM	#8
justpatrick Major Leagues Join Date: Jul 2018 Location: Czech Republic Posts: 305	To answer your question, yes, I like that guys like Cobb and Crawford are power hitters in PT. They were regarded as sluggers in their era and they certainly would have hit for power in 2011. Frank Baker would have more lived up to his nickname had he played in an era with a more lively ball, so yeah, I think it´s cool. Of course there are some anomalies, such as when Tommy Leach led the league in HRs but all six were inside the park. Leach has a high power rating in PT which doesn´t reflect his true ability, but who´s to say that the homers he hits in the game aren´t inside the park? In fact your list leads off with an anomaly, Ned Williamson´s 1884 season. I´m sure you are aware that 1884 was the only year a ball hit over the right field fence in Lakefront Park was a homer. Because of it´s incredibly short porch (200 feet iirc), every other year balls hit over that fence were ground rule doubles. So for me there´s so many contradicting factors that I have no problem with sluggers being sluggers no matter what the era. Now don´t get me started on the atrociously inaccurate fielding ratings, those I have a real problem with. __________________

06-09-2020, 09:18 AM	#10
Marleigh All Star Reserve Join Date: Jul 2019 Location: UK Posts: 541	these are the stats of a SE 100 Babe Ruth in my current Diamond league, clearly there is something busted about the ratings when the Ruth that hit .356 with 60 HR in 1927 (the year its based on) is maxing out at these sorts of stats, I'm not saying he should be hitting 60 homers every year but he should not be hitting sub 200 over 5 seasons. __________________

06-09-2020, 10:14 AM	#12
justpatrick Major Leagues Join Date: Jul 2018 Location: Czech Republic Posts: 305	With Ruth I surely feel for you, it seems that Ruth along with some of the other great inter-war hitters, never fails to disappoint. However, if you google who he hit those 60 homers off, you will find that, yes, there were a few great pitchers, there were a few more good pitchers, but for the most part they were garden variety average hurlers who could have been replaced by guys just as good dwelling in the upper minors. In PT parlance, a lot of iron and bronze guys. In the PT world, even the lowliest of teams would be an all-star team in real life, so the competition Ruth goes up against is much tougher than what he faced in 1927. It still sucks though that guys like Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx, Greenberg, and so on should not live up to how we perceive them. __________________ Last edited by justpatrick; 06-09-2020 at 10:15 AM.

06-08-2020, 10:54 PM	#2
Orcin Hall Of Famer Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: Indiana Posts: 9,881	In Perfect Team, the player ratings are normalized to 2011. Ty Cobb would have hit more home runs in the 2011 environment. He also would have faced fresh power relievers instead of tired starters late in games, and he would have hit into defenses with better gloves. Those factors might account for the lower contact than your expectation. I am not trying to justify the ratings, just explaining how PT works compared to regular OOTPB.

06-08-2020, 10:59 PM	#3
Hoover36 Minors (Double A) Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: NV Posts: 197	My calculation are normalized over the baseball history...may explain the reduction in contact and escalation in power. However, by normalizing to 2011 environment, one might argue that Ichiro was a better "pure" hitter than Cobb. I just can't buy that.

06-08-2020, 11:00 PM	#4
JTMorgan Bat Boy Join Date: May 2020 Posts: 2	They aren't being compared to each other. They are compared to the players of their era. In 1910 the league leader in homers hit 10. Cobb's 8 homers were tied for fourth in the league. Similar thing with contact is shown. Can't find out his strikeouts for 1910 specifically but he struck out 4.1% of the time for his career. League strikeout rate was just over 9.0% in 1910. In 2000 it was up to 16.5% where Piazza struck out 12.7%. So both were better than average for their time, but if you wanted to compare overall numbers without accounting for era then players over the last couple decades would generally be unplayable due to no contact. Older players like from Cobb's era would have next to no power.

06-08-2020, 11:42 PM	#7
Hoover36 Minors (Double A) Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: NV Posts: 197	I have spent the last 15 years thinking and calculating these types of things, so I may be the only person that is interested in this type of exercise/question. But to appease my curiosity, I went back to 1871-1910, these were the only players that my calculations would have given an 89+ power rating to: 1884 Edward Williamson 27 HR in 466 PA (111 Power) 1884 Nathaniel Pfeffer 25 HR in 504 PA (109 Power) 1889 John Milligan 12 HR in 292 PA (98 Power) 1887 William S. O'Brien 19 HR in 479 PA (96 Power) 1889 Samuel Thompson 20 HR in 578 PA (90 Power) 1893 John Clements 17 HR in 427 PA (96 Power) 1895 John Clements 13 HR in 322 PA (92 Power) 1889 James Holliday 19 HR in 618 PA (90 Power) 1894 William Joyce 17 HR in 458 PA (92 Power) 1899 John F. Freeman 25 HR in 634 PA (96 Power) 1900 William J. Sullivan Sr. 8 HR in 251 PA (92 Power) 1900 Michael Donlin 10 HR in 297 PA (96 Power) 1901 Samuel Crawford 16 HR in 559 PA (90 Power)

06-09-2020, 09:01 AM	#9
dkgo Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2010 Posts: 2,152	Normalizing players from wildly different environments across 150 years into a single rating scale is obviously going to have some variance from person to person depending on how you do it. During his peak Cobb was first or second in the league in HRs. 89 power passes the smell test

06-09-2020, 10:19 AM	#13
Matt Arnold OOTP Developer Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Here and there Posts: 16,237	The problem on the whole is always that if your lineup is Cobb, Ruth, Dimaggio, Gehrig, Trout, Bonds, etc... you can't really have them all hitting .350+ and/or with 50+ HR, since then your Pedro, Maddux, Spahn, Johnson, Rivera, etc... pitching staff aren't going to show numbers anywhat related to their career numbers.

06-09-2020, 10:55 AM	#14
dkgo Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2010 Posts: 2,152	Even understanding that, an OPS+ constantly under 100 does seem off for perfect Ruth. The homers are there and the walks + strikeouts seem fine, but that is a .190 BABIP across almost four seasons worth of games. Either really really really terrible luck combined with a full-blown pitcher's park or something questionable.

06-09-2020, 10:58 AM	#15
dkgo Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2010 Posts: 2,152	No one expects him to OPS close to 1.200 like his real stats, but he should still be among the top OPS in the league since all the hitters in the league are facing those same pitchers, which was generally the case in PT20 for a 100 Ruth.