Are there hidden player stats?

[overparduffer]

Are there hidden player stats that affect things like hitting in the clutch late in the games or hitting with runners in scoring position?

I ask because I wanted to know if it is a waste of time to look at the multitude of batting statistics and make managerial decisions based on them. Should I only worry about the players' actual ratings?

[Tony M]

Not hidden, but they're only visible in the database dumps are

fatigue points
rust

In each player record there are batting ratings for Overall, vs Left Handers, vs Right Handers and Potential.

There are seven bytes in these sections

Contact
Gap
Power
---
Eye
Avoid K's
Hit by Pitch

I'm not sure what the fourth byte is as there's nothing in the data dumps to suggest what it could be used for. It's not any of the running ratings as they appear later on in the record, as does BABIP because this is a new rating it's near the end of the record.

I haven't tried changing this unknown byte yet to see what effect it has - probably be the only way to find out as I don't think SI will tell us what it means.

[Curtis]

Markus has said that some players are coded to do especially well or badly against some other players. Someone (Waninski, I think) wrote in about a lifetime below average hitter who always seemed to do well against one particular pitcher, asking whether it was a fluke or intentional coding. After several of us posted back about how small sample size can skew the numbers and make it LOOK like a batter 'owns' a pitcher (or vice versa), Markus chimed in to tell us that it was actually coded into the game.

[Tony M]

Originally Posted by Curtis

Markus has said that some players are coded to do especially well or badly against some other players. Someone (Waninski, I think) wrote in about a lifetime below average hitter who always seemed to do well against one particular hitter, asking whether it was a fluke or intentional coding. After several of us posted back about how small sample size can skew the numbers and make it LOOK like a batter 'owns' a pitcher (or vice versa), Markus chimed in to tell us that it was actually coded into the game.

So far based on a very small sample of 3 attempts...

I started a new league and went to the first day and found the pitcher who was starting and edited the lead-off opposition batter to have a record of 100H and 100HR from 100AB against this pitcher.

Played out the season. His average for the season was 0.299, and against this pitcher he was batting 0.406

I tried again the following two seasons with a different pitcher / batter combination but set the BvP stats to 50HR and 199H from 200AB. First season, the batters average was 0.286 but only 0.250 against the pitcher, and the second season the average was 0.261 but only 0.166 against the pitcher.

The next season I did on the 100/100/100 setting and still got a drop from normal average of 0.216!!! to 0.146 against the pitcher.

I wonder if there's some correlation between some of the stats and the rating vs individual pitcher that needs to be investigated. Increasing his BABIP to 250 and going through a season gave an average of 0.382 with an average of 0.303 against said pitcher after resetting to 100/100/100...

If only the batter vs pitcher stat fields didn't roll over at 256 for AB, H and HR it'd be easier to do long term stat runs.

[bailey]

Trying to find unusual performance in batter vs. pitcher would be like finding a needle in a haystack because you wouldn't know if it was the beneficiary of hard-coding or small sample size. Anyway, the original question is interesting because I'd like to know if batters or pitchers who are "hot" continue to remain "hot" or is it just a fluke of random numbers with no promise of similar performance in the next game. So can hitters be "hot" (or "cold") because of a feature in the coding that randomly selects players occasionally to perform outside of their normal ratings for a few game weeks? Kind of like Civilization 4's "golden age" where your civ is unusually productive for 10 turns.

[Tony M]

Just looking through the players again I've found another 7 areas that could be hidden variables.

After Weight, Height, Uniform Number, and Experience comes a series of 14 bytes that are in order

unknown
unknown
Greed
unknown
unknown
unknown
Leadership
Loyalty
unknown
Play for Winner
unknown
Work Ethic
Intelligence
unknown (this one I'm not sure is a missing stat as it's quite often 0)

but the gaps between the various personality traits seem to imply that they are used for something but what I'm not sure...

Maybe Markus will enlighten us...

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by bailey

Trying to find unusual performance in batter vs. pitcher would be like finding a needle in a haystack because you wouldn't know if it was the beneficiary of hard-coding or small sample size. Anyway, the original question is interesting because I'd like to know if batters or pitchers who are "hot" continue to remain "hot" or is it just a fluke of random numbers with no promise of similar performance in the next game. So can hitters be "hot" (or "cold") because of a feature in the coding that randomly selects players occasionally to perform outside of their normal ratings for a few game weeks? Kind of like Civilization 4's "golden age" where your civ is unusually productive for 10 turns.

It's implied in the manual and reported by players elsewhere that hitters can get into longer than random slumps (the manual states that work ethic is used in part for "slump management"). I'd imagine that there are certain skills that allow a player to ride a hot streak for longer than random as well. And I'm almost positive there's something out there for "clutch" as well but most players don't have it and it doesn't do a whole lot for players that do.