SkyDog OOTP2K7 Fictional League Settings, v1.0

[gordyhulten]

You've got fewer minors, which may be having an effect, although I'm at a loss as to why.

I've got 24 teams in all levels, down to Rookie, and a 15 round draft, FWIW.

[Amazin' Blue]

Originally Posted by gordyhulten

You've got fewer minors, which may be having an effect, although I'm at a loss as to why.

I've got 24 teams in all levels, down to Rookie, and a 15 round draft, FWIW.

That's the best I can figure as well except for this... while the overall ERA gets lower and lower year after year, the Bob Gibson year phenomenon starts right away.

I suppose it's still possible that the minors are causing this in some way. I suppose I'll try one with fuller minors but I hate to do that because I'm not exactly rife with processing power on this machine if you know what I'm saying.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by gordyhulten

You've got fewer minors, which may be having an effect, although I'm at a loss as to why.

I've got 24 teams in all levels, down to Rookie, and a 15 round draft, FWIW.

Huh. That's actually fewer players in the draft than recommended, although now that you can use ghost players that's more of a general guideline than a requirement for a stable league. FWIW, the rule of thumb is 5 rounds per level of minors. The real-life draft is 50 rounds long for the same number of levels that you have but since roughly half of the players drafted don't end up playing a single game with the drafted team (due to high schoolers choosing to go to college instead, teams picking non-baseballers in the hopes that they'd choose a safer sport than football or basketball (Charlie Ward was one of many players chosen by an MLB team), draft and follows that didn't work out, and so on), it more or less evens out.

As for ERAs and so forth going that low, random chance in the form of the kinds of players the CPU generates, who gets hurt, and who gets those one in a million ratings boosts can drop a league ERA by half a run. I like the 1980s as well as anybody else, but when you have a league that is based at around a 4.00 earned run average, it's not all that strange to see it slide down to 3.60 (or up to 4.40, for that matter). The '80s were, in a manner of speaking, a transitory period in baseball between the deadball era 60s and the high-flying 90s. There were years where things seemed to regress (1981 - NL ERA: 3.49) and others where it was almost like they'd time-warped into the 90s (1987).

Now that weather varies from one location to the next, even the locations of the games during the summer months can have an effect on the end of year results. Half a run off isn't totally out of the ordinary. That being said, if multiple people are having the issue in multiple leagues on the default settings, I for one would be happy to regress and look at it. I should add here that as a beta tester I simmed out my fair share of leagues, some of which were manually adjusted to recreate the stats of the 1980s, and I didn't get anything like leagues uniformly seeing their ERAs go down into the 3.5s.

[gordyhulten]

Originally Posted by Amazin' Blue

That's the best I can figure as well except for this... while the overall ERA gets lower and lower year after year, the Bob Gibson year phenomenon starts right away.

I suppose it's still possible that the minors are causing this in some way. I suppose I'll try one with fuller minors but I hate to do that because I'm not exactly rife with processing power on this machine if you know what I'm saying.

One more thought - check to be sure that your park factors aren't all pitching-heavy. It could just be that, thru random chance, yours ended up skewing your stats.

[Amazin' Blue]

Just to clarify... these aren't default settings, these are SkyDog's settings. Also I've done three sims of thirty years each and seen the same results with these settings.

Also, the drop in league ERA to the 3.60 ranges isn't the problem, it's the sub 2.00 ERA seasons happening every year that is. That's the case even when my leagues hit the target 4.00 ERA.

Also it seems like you're saying my ten round draft for two levels of minors is spot on. So I wouldn't think that's the problem.

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

Huh. That's actually fewer players in the draft than recommended, although now that you can use ghost players that's more of a general guideline than a requirement for a stable league. FWIW, the rule of thumb is 5 rounds per level of minors. The real-life draft is 50 rounds long for the same number of levels that you have but since roughly half of the players drafted don't end up playing a single game with the drafted team (due to high schoolers choosing to go to college instead, teams picking non-baseballers in the hopes that they'd choose a safer sport than football or basketball (Charlie Ward was one of many players chosen by an MLB team), draft and follows that didn't work out, and so on), it more or less evens out.

As for ERAs and so forth going that low, random chance in the form of the kinds of players the CPU generates, who gets hurt, and who gets those one in a million ratings boosts can drop a league ERA by half a run. I like the 1980s as well as anybody else, but when you have a league that is based at around a 4.00 earned run average, it's not all that strange to see it slide down to 3.60 (or up to 4.40, for that matter). The '80s were, in a manner of speaking, a transitory period in baseball between the deadball era 60s and the high-flying 90s. There were years where things seemed to regress (1981 - NL ERA: 3.49) and others where it was almost like they'd time-warped into the 90s (1987).

Now that weather varies from one location to the next, even the locations of the games during the summer months can have an effect on the end of year results. Half a run off isn't totally out of the ordinary. That being said, if multiple people are having the issue in multiple leagues on the default settings, I for one would be happy to regress and look at it. I should add here that as a beta tester I simmed out my fair share of leagues, some of which were manually adjusted to recreate the stats of the 1980s, and I didn't get anything like leagues uniformly seeing their ERAs go down into the 3.5s.

[Syd Thrift]

A. The 2005 NL, which had an ERA of around 4, had Clemens sporting the sub-2.00 ERA. The '94 NL, which had a much higher league ERA, witnessed Greg Maddux's 1.56. So it's not completely out of bounds to have a guy or two with a sub-2.00 ERA even in leagues where the overall ERA is higher. Now, if you have 4 or 5 guys like that year after year after year, that's another story, but...

B. Is it the same guy doing it every year? One of the cool things about OOTP is that occasionally you'll get a guy who will absolutely dominate the league, as in a pitcher who can post deadball era type stats in the 90s a la the two guys listed above, or a guy who can hit .320 with 30 homers in the late 60s. This can also be a factor.

[Amazin' Blue]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

A. The 2005 NL, which had an ERA of around 4, had Clemens sporting the sub-2.00 ERA. The '94 NL, which had a much higher league ERA, witnessed Greg Maddux's 1.56. So it's not completely out of bounds to have a guy or two with a sub-2.00 ERA even in leagues where the overall ERA is higher. Now, if you have 4 or 5 guys like that year after year after year, that's another story, but...

B. Is it the same guy doing it every year? One of the cool things about OOTP is that occasionally you'll get a guy who will absolutely dominate the league, as in a pitcher who can post deadball era type stats in the 90s a la the two guys listed above, or a guy who can hit .320 with 30 homers in the late 60s. This can also be a factor.

As far as A) goes... yes, a couple guys every year and often four or five.

In fact, in these three leagues, there is no elite pitcher who doesn't have a sub 2.00 season or FIVE. Also, it's basically a pre-req that to win the Cy Young you have to have an ERA around 1.80 or below.

Something's not right since SkyDog said he simmed with these settings and got like 10 of these seasons over the course of 100 years. I'm getting at least one every year.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Amazin' Blue

Something's not right since SkyDog said he simmed with these settings and got like 10 of these seasons over the course of 100 years. I'm getting at least one every year.

Actually...

Originally Posted by SkyDog

My league had 15 ERAs under 1.75 in 100 years. It has happened 8 times in the last 50 years in MLB. Works for me.

[Syd Thrift]

I'm generating some history for a dynasty league I've been wanting to run, and I just set league totals to match 1984 - IOW, the totals are even more in favor of pitchers than in Skydog's settings, although the lower amount of Ks probably means there aren't as many extreme guys so that may balance things out a bit. So far, I'm getting a guy with a sub-2.00 ERA right around every other year, which is just about exactly where things really were during the decade of my youth. It's also for the most part the same guys flirting with the low ERAs every year.

It's something of a known issue that pitchers in OOTP are a bit more stable than they are in real life, which is something of a problem with fictional leagues but a near-necessity for historical ones so there's a bit of a trade-off. Nobody - or at least very few people - want to play out leagues where there's nearly as great a chance that Brad Holman strings together a couple of good seasons as Jose Lima, even though that may be more realistic. Pitching is pretty chaotic.

[thbroman]

SkyDog, just out of curiosity, why did you choose to use 5-man rotations for your "1950s-style" league? That's not exactly what they were doing in those days . . . .

[phillypaul]

First, thank you for the guidelines and template Skydog!!

I need help


I've downloaded Skydogs template and started to use it last night and wanted to sim 10-20 years and then take over the worse team. But, I've now tried it 3 times and each time I get to mid June and I start getting error messages about teams not having enough pitchers.

It's with the majors and I get this message on June 14th or June 22nd. Happens with minors ghost on and off.

"American League HAS NO PITCHER AVAILABLE" which leads to the next error when I click "ok"...."National League HAS NO PITCHER AVAILABLE" which leads to the next error when I click "ok"...."Game: No Starter Substitute Found"

Anyone have any advice?

Thanks,
Paul

[ravinhood]

Perhaps you should fill your minor leagues with fictional players. I don't understand why people want to play with ghost players in the first place. I have at least 25 players on every team in every league past present an any in the future.

[jeffjones66]

Originally Posted by gordyhulten

You've got fewer minors, which may be having an effect, although I'm at a loss as to why.

I've got 24 teams in all levels, down to Rookie, and a 15 round draft, FWIW.

Same here. To be honest, I've just simmmed one season with SkyDog's settings, but the results were exceptional.

Just wanted to add another 'thank you' to SkyDog for the OP. What he's looking for in his results is what I've been looking for as well, and I think he just saved this OOTP noob a lot of testing time!

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by phillypaul

First, thank you for the guidelines and template Skydog!!

I need help


I've downloaded Skydogs template and started to use it last night and wanted to sim 10-20 years and then take over the worse team. But, I've now tried it 3 times and each time I get to mid June and I start getting error messages about teams not having enough pitchers.

It's with the majors and I get this message on June 14th or June 22nd. Happens with minors ghost on and off.

"American League HAS NO PITCHER AVAILABLE" which leads to the next error when I click "ok"...."National League HAS NO PITCHER AVAILABLE" which leads to the next error when I click "ok"...."Game: No Starter Substitute Found"

Anyone have any advice?

Thanks,
Paul

How many rounds long is your draft?
Are any of those teams human controlled?

[Sven Draconian]

Anybody know if I should use the settings for all minor league teams as well, or if these should only be used for the majors.

If Majors only, what should I use for the minors?

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by thbroman

SkyDog, just out of curiosity, why did you choose to use 5-man rotations for your "1950s-style" league? That's not exactly what they were doing in those days . . . .

It's not intended to be a 1950s style league.

Originally Posted by SkyDog

For those who are unfamiliar, I like setting up fictional leagues with settings that don't necessarily mirror the last 5-10 years of baseball, but more the 1950-1995ish years.

It's a wide stretch of seasons that I'm covering, and I chose the five-man rotation because I'm of the opinion that it creates the necessity for a little more strategy in roster-building,

[thbroman]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

It's not intended to be a 1950s style league.It's a wide stretch of seasons that I'm covering, and I chose the five-man rotation because I'm of the opinion that it creates the necessity for a little more strategy in roster-building,

Ahh, true. I misread the span of years in your original post. Personally, I dislike 5-man rotations because they make 20-game winners too rare. OTOH, I sometimes find them too common with 4-man rotations. . . .

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by thbroman

Ahh, true. I misread the span of years in your original post. Personally, I dislike 5-man rotations because they make 20-game winners too rare. OTOH, I sometimes find them too common with 4-man rotations. . . .

I wonder what would happen if you tried a 4-man with very low pitcher endurance and high use of relief pitchers and pinch hitting for pitchers. It's not what I'd want, but I'd imagine it would lower the 20-game winners.

[thbroman]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

I wonder what would happen if you tried a 4-man with very low pitcher endurance and high use of relief pitchers and pinch hitting for pitchers. It's not what I'd want, but I'd imagine it would lower the 20-game winners.

I'll try messing with the various ratings a bit and if I come up with anything interesting I'll post it here.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by thbroman

I'll try messing with the various ratings a bit and if I come up with anything interesting I'll post it here.

I screwed around with it some this morning. It's definitely do-able with four man rotations, although you can get some screwy numbers if you overdo it. I didn't write down the settings, but I just ran a quick season with 4-man rotations, but with pitcher endurance at (I think) very low, relief pitcher usage on the high side (often or very often) and pinch hitting for pitchers on the high side (often or very often). The leader in IP had around 230 innings (in 41 starts), and only one guy had 20 wins. I know I didn't go as extreme as possible with these settings, so I'm sure it's possible to nearly eliminate 20-win seasons with a 4-man rotation if you used closers and relief pitchers Very Often, set endurance to Very Low, and pinch hit for pitcher Very Often. By the same token, I ran some tests a few weeks ago with a 5-man rotation where I was getting guys with 36-38 starts and over 300 IP, by increasing pitcher endurance and lowering usage of closers/relief pitchers/pinch hitters for pitcher. The range possible there is very, very wide, and I'm quite certain you can get what you're looking for by playing with those settings enough.

One reason I'm working on v1.01 of my settings, actually, is that I'm not happy with IP in v1.00. I'd like the league leader in most years (with a 5-man) to be in the 235-250 range, but for workhorses to come along from time to time who can throw over 275. I'm started a 100-year sim early this morning with what I hope will be my final attempt at 1.01.