Strategy Settings (Garlon & Others)

[Garlon]

This is Mark McGwire from the same save I mentioned earlier.

Real .263/.394/.588 with 93 HR per 1000 AB

OOTP: .264/.393/.571 with 90 HR per 1000 AB

[Brad K]

I realize from your earlier goal statement that you're interested in the elite players. However presenting this as a "way to play" without showing what it does to the non elites doesn't allow people to make an informed decision about whether to try your method.

[Garlon]

Give me a player and I will post their results.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by Garlon

Give me a player and I will post their results.

What about a guy like Tom Brookens? John Wockenfuss? And since you don't use injuries, Mark Fidrych?

[Garlon]

Here are those three players.

OOTP vs Real

Brookens:.252/.301/.377 vs .246/.296/.367

Wockenfuss:.263/.345/.414 vs .262/.349/.432

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Garlon

Give me a player and I will post their results.

Sample size of ONE?!?!?!

Thanks, but I'll pass until you're truly interested in discussing this.

[Garlon]

Seriously?

Give me several players and I will post their results. I just put up 3 players that were requested.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by Garlon

Seriously?

Give me several players and I will post their results. I just put up 3 players that were requested.

When you do these replays using high fatigue and retire according to history, do you have players that are forced to play totally exhausted because their team only has one catcher, or one shortstop? I've tried to do this before and the retirements tend to decimate rosters. I always end up stopping after one season, because the rosters are in such bad shape to start the second season.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Garlon

Seriously?

Give me several players and I will post their results. I just put up 3 players that were requested.

Good job. So it seems I guessed wrong.

If your extreme settings were able to produce superior results you've posted without other negative effects, you'd be giving them a universal recommendation. But you're not. You greatly restrict the circumstances under which they're recommended. If the extreme settings were without serious flaw, OOTP would be using them as defaults.

[Reed]

Originally Posted by Brad K

Good job. So it seems I guessed wrong.

If your extreme settings were able to produce superior results you've posted without other negative effects, you'd be giving them a universal recommendation. But you're not. You greatly restrict the circumstances under which they're recommended. If the extreme settings were without serious flaw, OOTP would be using them as defaults.

IMO, I think it depends on what you want. If you want players to mimic their up and down career as in real life, then use 1 year recalc and OOTP default settings. If you want players to mimic their “career” stats then Garlon’s method works very well. Using 1 year recalc I think you have a lot more outliers in my experience.

[Brad K]

It doesn't make sense that with stealing and hit and run set to max for all of history and some other settings all one way or the other that players are going to mimic their real stats on an overall basis. It appears they mimic their BA/OBP/SLG stats.

Extremes come with penalties. The penalties of these settings just haven't been revealed.

[thehef]

Not to belabor this, but I think that someone coming up with some sort of answers (to complete the sentences) to these...

Originally Posted by thehef

- If you are using real transactions (thus, players playing in the same ballparks as in real life) and real stats, then the affect will be...

- If you are using real transactions (thus, players playing in the same ballparks as in real life) and neutralized stats, then the affect will be...

- If you are not using real transactions (thus, players not necessarily playing in the same ballparks as in real life) and are using real stats, then the affect will be...

- If you are not using real transactions (thus, players not necessarily playing in the same ballparks as in real life) and are using neutralized stats, then the affect will be...

The middle ground between the first two above & last two above is when you don't have historical txns but have players importing to their actual/historical teams. Then you end up with many - but not all - guys playing in their actual home parks.

... would be enormously helpful to a) those simply considering how best to setup their historical game, and b) those would want to test historical scenarios but want to have a general idea of what to expect, what to look for, etc.

For examples, one of the answers might be "... you are most-likely to get results that are closest to real life..." or "... you are most-likely to get results that would reflect if all players were playing in the same park..."

I'm not suggesting that either of those example-answers would apply, but just as examples, I think answers along those lines - brief, simple, pithy - would be a good starting point.

Can anyone answer these?

Note: I believe Reed's most-recent post starts to answer the first one, but not quite sure.

[Garlon]

I do not have any issues with teams being short on players with retire according to history enabled. There are teams that occasionally end up with one catcher but I think this is more of an issue with how the computer is handling drafting. If a team has only one catcher then the computer should target a catcher in the 2nd round of the draft but instead it will continue to grab what it considers better talent rather than drafting for needs.

Regarding the stolen base settings, remember that there is a modifier for both stealing attempts and success rates, so the strategy setting is only influencing distribution. Having said that, for years I have been saying that the best stealers are getting caught too often because the worst stealers are not making enough attempts so caught stealing gets redistributed a bit improperly. If you use Very Often as your strategy setting you will get better success rates of your top base stealers than on lower settings. You can try this yourself. However, even on the very often setting the weakest stealers are not attempting enough. This is a known issue that Markus and company are going to look at more.

As for the reason regarding the Batter 200/67 import settings, 200*5 seasons = 1000 AB. I think this is enough of a sample size to say that we have a good idea of the player talent level. The modifiers in the game use 3 decimal places, so the outcomes cannot be refined more than per 1000 either in the game.

For pitchers I suggest 25/8. For a SP the 25 is quadrupled to 100 and then multiplied by 5 seasons for 25*4*5 = 500 IP sample size, which is at least 2000 Batters Faced, again this is a reliable sample too.

Please ask for more player results and I will post them. I do not see how you can say that OPS looks correct but somehow the player is still not performing correctly.

[thehef]

Hey Garlon,
I'm thinking that your experience & knowledge would make you the best candidate - outside of the developers themselves - to answer the questions (finish the statements) in post #52 above. Can you do that? Or if not, can you recommend another use who might be able to do that?

Thanks in advance!

[Garlon]

I am not sure what you man by "the effect will be".

When you select real stats OOTP will make an adjustment to player HR power based upon their historical home stadium and some type of overall adjustment to HR power for players, regardless of other settings.

When you select neutralized stats then the game will not apply a home ballpark or overall adjustment to HR power for players and take their neutralized stats and translate them directly into their ratings, regardless of other settings.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by Garlon

I am not sure what you man by "the effect will be".

I'm looking for a way to complete those sentences that would give both veteran and new historical OOTP gamers a clear idea of what they would be getting if using those combination of settings/selections.

Originally Posted by thehef

For examples, one of the answers might be "... you are most-likely to get results that are closest to real life..." or "... you are most-likely to get results that would reflect if all players were playing in the same park..."

I'm not suggesting that either of those example-answers would apply, but just as examples, I think answers along those lines - brief, simple, pithy - would be a good starting point.

[thehef]

I'm still very much interested in the answers to those questions from above... Don't want to divert from that, but I have a question that I'm hoping someone here will be able to answer:

On the player editor panel, right side, underneath offensive ratings, we see Resulting Stats (in a neutral, modern Major League environment). In looking at the stats for some 1973 Dodger players, this is clearly as advertised (batting avg's & HR's are higher than in real life, presumably reflecting the fact that Dodger Stadium was quite the pitchers' park back then).

However, what I don't get:

1) I'm playing 1-year recalc, real stats. Why then am I not looking at real stats (converted to 550 AB's)?

2) If I want to do a what-if scenario of, say, averaging Bill Buckner's, Bill Russell's, and Tommy John's 1974 & 1976 stats and using those for 1975 to see how LA would do with those guys being healthy in '75, how would I do that? I can easily come up with the avg stats from '74 & '76, but how am I to know how to convert those to "Resulting Stats, in a neutral, modern Major League environment?" (Yes, I suppose I could create 1974 and 1976 games for the sole purpose of getting the "resulting stats" for those two years, and then average those, but that's a fair amount of work...)

Am I missing something here?

[Garlon]

As far as the stats in the editor I think those assume some modern BABIP along with some possible adjustments based on home ballpark when using real stats and an additional HR adjustment.

If you are playing a replay of a season, then 1yr recalc with historical lineups and transactions is my suggestion. Regarding your 1975 Dodgers example, just use 3yr recalc for that.

There is no need to be concerned with the modern environment phrasing. OOTP needs to convert everything to per 550 AB for batters and per 900 AB against for SP and 300 AB against for RP. From there the game determines the outcomes along with the adjustments the league totals modifiers provide.

You will get around the issue of players missing seasons historically or being injured or not getting playing time if you use 5yr recalc with 300/67 for batters and 25/8 for pitchers. The default that OOTP uses is 300/50 and 40/10, which is what Markus selected for 1yr recalc values. For 5yr recalc though lower values will work fine because those import values are an average per season, not a total overall value. So 200 AB with 5yr recalc is 1000 AB over 5 seasons, and 25 IP is 25*4*5 = 500 IP for SP while you still need 25*5 = 125 IP for relievers to import without adjustments.

If you use the neutralized stats the import will not make any additional adjustments to HR for batters so perhaps try those. I suggest when setting up your league do not simply select optimize for single season or optimize for career, rather you should set up everything yourself. For career I use 3yr fielding and entire career for pitcher stamina.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by Garlon

If you are playing a replay of a season, then 1yr recalc with historical lineups and transactions is my suggestion. Regarding your 1975 Dodgers example, just use 3yr recalc for that.

That's fine if I want every player on 3-year recalc, but it doesn't work for my "what if?" scenario, that being "What if the '75 Dodgers were healthy - how would they have fared against The Big Red Machine?"

If I just go with 3-year recalc, then I'm not getting the awesome, 108-win Reds vs essentially a the - potentially/essentially - 102-win '74 Dodgers. Instead, I'm getting the 103-win (avg) Reds vs the 94-win (avg) Dodgers. Not what I want.

So it sounds like what you're saying is that OOTP provides a mechanism to input stats in order to have those create ratings. However, that mechanism is not for inputting real stats. And thus rendering the function nearly useless, unless is able to convert real stats to something that aligns with whatever OOTP is doing with those real stats?

Originally Posted by Garlon

You will get around the issue of players missing seasons historically or being injured or not getting playing time if you use 5yr recalc with 300/67 for batters and 25/8 for pitchers. The default that OOTP uses is 300/50 and 40/10, which is what Markus selected for 1yr recalc values. For 5yr recalc though lower values will work fine because those import values are an average per season, not a total overall value. So 200 AB with 5yr recalc is 1000 AB over 5 seasons, and 25 IP is 25*4*5 = 500 IP for SP while you still need 25*5 = 125 IP for relievers to import without adjustments.

So, if settings are 300 for batters, and a player averages 275 AB's over a 5-year period, with two of seasons being 300+ and three of them being less than 300, will he be adjusted in each season, or only in the seasons in which is below 300?

Also, what of L/R splits? If a player is over the threshold for total AB's, but has minimal AB's vs LHP, is he only adjusted/weakened on his AB's vs LHP, or is he not adjust vs LHP because total AB's exceed the threshold?

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Garlon

If you use the neutralized stats the import will not make any additional adjustments to HR for batters so perhaps try those. I suggest when setting up your league do not simply select optimize for single season or optimize for career, rather you should set up everything yourself. For career I use 3yr fielding and entire career for pitcher stamina.

Just discovered this. On single season recalc with setting optimized for single season play Roger Maris 1961 imports rated at 55 HRs. Mickey Mantle imports rated at 64. Considering their comparative real life performances clearly the neutralized files DO adjust HRs.