Historical Simmers: Debut Year Question

[arod23]

In Ankit's great DBs, he changed a player's debut year to the year in which the player had a reasonable amount of ABs or IPs. This was done so that the rookie ratings better reflected a players abilities and not based on a cup of coffee.

While this made the OOTP sims more reflective of players' actual historical performance in the long run, having players not debut when they actually did makes some of us obsessive-compulsive types cringe.

Using Lahman without modification so that players debut correctly is not a solution. This results in very poor historical accuracy (in terms of general expectations rather than direct comparison of sim vs. actual history).

Garlon and I are working on modifiying Lahman 5.3 for use in OOTPBM 2006 and are wondering what the community would like.

We could:

1) Continue with the Ankit model and ignore some players' early years (cups of coffee), having them debut when they have reasonable playing time.

2) Have them debut in their actual debut year but modify their stat line to better reflect rookie level performance.

#2 means that their year will be correct but their stats will not be. Hmmm, fixing one inaccuracy with another??? For example, we could make all rookie seasons a percentage "worse" than their career averages or peak seasons, e.g. Cobb would bat .290, Ruth would hit 20 HRs, etc. Not sure what the right percent should be at this point but looking for some feedback.

This would not affect players who had signficant playing time in their debut year, e.g., Pujols. Their debut stats would be the same. We would only apply this to those players who did not have enough ABs or IPs.

Any other thoughts/suggestions on dealing with this issue?

[andymac]

I would definitely favor #2.

[Gambo]

Take a look at my database ver 3.5

I already have it set up so that every player imports according to their actual professional debut in so far as a could get, and in the right organization (1960 on is pretty much everybody). I used ankits seasonal averages and then adjusted the talent levels for each year until they made their major league debut/played significantly. Trust me... it isnt easy. The formulas I used came out quite good IMHO.

There are a bunch of things that are basic but you have to consider such as when you create a database of this sort is when your done you have to make sure the pitching and batting totals match up or your league will be screwy.

I like the idea of what you guys are doing and is somewhat what I wanted to add to mine later. If you guys want some help or would like to use some of the information I gathered let me know.

[99Ballons]

Originally Posted by arod23

In Ankit's great DBs, he changed a player's debut year to the year in which the player had a reasonable amount of ABs or IPs. This was done so that the rookie ratings better reflected a players abilities and not based on a cup of coffee.

While this made the OOTP sims more reflective of players' actual historical performance in the long run, having players not debut when they actually did makes some of us obsessive-compulsive types cringe.

Mogul actually tracks each player's exact debut year and retirement year (and draft year where appropriate), and builds the historical databases accordingly. Also they have unique ratings for every player, not just stuff that loads in guy who went 12-for-21 one year and calls him a ".571 hitter" that year. It's really nice not having to worry about those "super players" sneaking in, and yet still getting all the guys from the DB that year.

Anyway this isn't a Mogul plug (although I do really like the game) but a hope that Markus can do the same in OOTP.