Pinch hitting

[gpellis]

Originally Posted by OutS|der

The game engine is the same if you sim or if you play out the games, why would it be any different by playing out the games?
Plus if that is the case then sim the pitch hitters at bat, are you saying if you do that he will get a hit but if you do it yourself he won't?

The AI may not play the game like a real person but i doubt there is an advantage by when it plays.

I don't ever sim, so I'm not sure. But I am using an MLB Quickstart from OOTP12 that's been imported to OOTP13. All I know is I've seen terrible pinch hitting from my games that I play out. Perhaps it's horrible luck for 5 years, or perhaps there's something else at play.

I've got to look at my stats for this season.

[Dutch Alexander]

Originally Posted by gpellis

You're simming though. He's playing out the games. Same as I am. I've played out every game this season. I'll take a look at my pinch hitting statistics for this year as well, and if it's possible to pull previous seasons, I'll do that as well. I'm noticing the same poor pinch hitting when playing out games.

Indeed, it only happens when playing out your games and only to the human player. Opponents AI PH seem to perform normally. That's how it seems anyway, there's no way to see the PH performance of your opponents. Also when looking at other (AI controlled) teams, PH stats look normal.

Originally Posted by gpellis

I don't ever sim, so I'm not sure. But I am using an MLB Quickstart from OOTP12 that's been imported to OOTP13. All I know is I've seen terrible pinch hitting from my games that I play out. Perhaps it's horrible luck for 5 years, or perhaps there's something else at play.

I've got to look at my stats for this season.

I've only seen it in the MLB quickstart. The one time I played historical, PH was normal as can be seen from one of my previous posts in this thread. If it happens to you 5 times and to me 7 times and it's only due to horrible luck, well the chances of that are so remote, then I think we both should start buying lottery tickets.

[Dutch Alexander]

Originally Posted by OutS|der

The game engine is the same if you sim or if you play out the games, why would it be any different by playing out the games?
Plus if that is the case then sim the pitch hitters at bat, are you saying if you do that he will get a hit but if you do it yourself he won't?

The AI may not play the game like a real person but i doubt there is an advantage by when it plays.

Well I don't know why it would be different I'm just observing that it is. I'm just trying to get this problem noticed so it might get fixed. That's why I'm asking other players who play out their games to provide some data from current or previous seasons to confirm this issue.

[ch33s3]

Seems MUCH improved over 11/12 to me at least.

In those versions bringing up a PH most automatically ended up in a 3 pitch strikeout. It got to a point where I took my chances with a bunt for hit instead of wasting a position player.

So far in 13 I have noticed 30-40% of my pinch hits either get on base or at least make contact instead of a quick out.

One of the 'fixes' that has made the game much more enjoyable over previous versions.

[Dutch Alexander]

Originally Posted by ch33s3

Seems MUCH improved over 11/12 to me at least.

Not seeing that, in my present season in v13 PH are 2 for 31 with 18 K's. Also since this does not seem to be a recognized problem I do not think anything was changed in respect to PH since previous versions.

[ch33s3]

Originally Posted by Dutch Alexander

Not seeing that, in my present season in v13 PH are 2 for 31 with 18 K's. Also since this does not seem to be a recognized problem I do not think anything was changed in respect to PH since previous versions.

That does seem low and that is pretty similar to what I experienced in the previous 2 versions of the game but so far I have had better luck with my season this year ...



They also seem entirely believable as Huff going 1 for 10 with 7K is far too real for any Giants fans.

[endgame]

I'm not sure I see anyone citing RL examples for comparison, but the reality AFAIK is the totals aren't that far removed from the game presentations. For instance, and someone is welcome to check me on this, my notes indicate the ML are hitting at about .237 this year and IIRC, last year's totals were a fair share worse at season's end. That's not right at my fingertips, but IIRC it was closer to .220, so I'm not convinced without RL data to support our comparisons we're talking about anything to cause real concern here.

In fact, after the discussion last year (or was it the year before) Markus actually did do a little tweaking in the PH area after consulting those figures. Anyone care to validate a couple of my recollections here? Again, my take on the real concern is that we haven't taken the time to examine RL data. How far off are we season to season? I'm thinking it is not as extreme as we/you imagine.

[Qrusher14242]

I don't have stats, but i've always had terrible pinch hitters. Most the time i just let the pitcher hit cause i know my PH will just strikeout. I dunno if its cause i just have terrible hitters on the bench or what lol. I should look at the stats when i get home.

[Strick9]

This is a carry-over issue for me, as well. In the early versions I owned I used to play out all my games--made it through about 20 seasons in version 5, if i remember right. Then in the later versions the pinch hitting got so bad it became just a totally frustrating click-fest, so I went back to simming only.

Now with version 13 the interface was so cool and with the real-time feature I decided to go back to playing out all my games, and I'm seeing the same poor pinch-hitting performance. I've played through about 50 games of the Phillies, and I looked at my pinch-hitting report last night after reading this thread, it was even worse than I thought. The combined pinch hitters were 6 for 51 with 27 strikeouts. Also, I don't use the warm-up rule, so that doesn't seem to have any effect.

I never took the time to collect a lot of data on it, but I've got to say from this and past experience, there's got to be something going on here. It kind of takes away the immersion factor for me a little bit.

[OutS|der]

K i'm confused.
Why would the quickstart PH be worse then any other league with comparable player ratings?

If there is a problem playing out the at bat then does it go away if you sim that at bat?

Why would simming get a different result than playing out the game?

So a player edited to max ratings will strike out if brought in to PH the majority of the time if i play out the game?

[Dutch Alexander]

Originally Posted by endgame

I'm not sure I see anyone citing RL examples for comparison, but the reality AFAIK is the totals aren't that far removed from the game presentations. For instance, and someone is welcome to check me on this, my notes indicate the ML are hitting at about .237 this year and IIRC, last year's totals were a fair share worse at season's end. That's not right at my fingertips, but IIRC it was closer to .220, so I'm not convinced without RL data to support our comparisons we're talking about anything to cause real concern here.

In fact, after the discussion last year (or was it the year before) Markus actually did do a little tweaking in the PH area after consulting those figures. Anyone care to validate a couple of my recollections here? Again, my take on the real concern is that we haven't taken the time to examine RL data. How far off are we season to season? I'm thinking it is not as extreme as we/you imagine.

Well, like I mentioned before the lowest PH BA in RL MLB the past ten seasons is .152. The average BA is about .220 - .230. From the three examples I gave you can see that the BA I got from my PH over 3 seasons was .107. Now that is a big difference. Again, my pitchers are outhitting my pinch hitters. I just checked: over those mentioned 3 seasons my pitchers were 58 for 327, 54 for 331 and 37 for 322. That's 149 for 990 in total which comes down to a .151 BA. At the same time my PH were 52 for 486 in total, a .107 average.

[DCG12]

Told myself I wasn't going to get involved because I am a little burned out on this issue and testing and reporting in general, but here goes.

Originally Posted by Dutch Alexander

Not seeing that, in my present season in v13 PH are 2 for 31 with 18 K's. Also since this does not seem to be a recognized problem I do not think anything was changed in respect to PH since previous versions.

In fact Markus did make some changes this year after the strikeout issue was shown to him. This years version is definitely better in my testing and believe me I have tested the crap out of it as well as beating the drum during the last 3 betas. There is still an issue that I will get to in a minute.

Originally Posted by OutS|der

K i'm confused.
Why would the quickstart PH be worse then any other league with comparable player ratings?

If there is a problem playing out the at bat then does it go away if you sim that at bat?

Why would simming get a different result than playing out the game?

So a player edited to max ratings will strike out if brought in to PH the majority of the time if i play out the game?

There was a problem with the quickstart that was causing the strikeout issue. I don't know what the problem was but Markus said he fixed it.

Just so you know, as you keeping questioning why simming vs. playing gets different results, Markus has discussed in the past about various tweaks that result,for example in a home team having a slight advantage in the game and while he is reluctant to give away too much under the hood I believe that there may be a difference when playing vs. simming.


Now the problem this year still seems to be when playing out games and it seems to affect the human player only. Sorry Dutch but I don't think the strikeout issue is still at play here, I think you should check your PH's "eye" and "avoid K" ratings because players with poor ratings in those catergories will suffer as PH's.

The problem is batting average. Every league I have tested my team always hits below .190. Last year in MLB both AL and, more importantly, NL teams both hit .214.

In the league I am playing right now which is fictional and is half way through the season PH's are hitting .136 and pitchers are hitting .186 but pitchers have struck out far more than PH have. In the NL last year PH's struckout about 28% of the time. In my league they are currently striking out @ just under 30% so not bad.

The other issue is power hitting. PH's when they do get hits for human teams don't hit doubles or HR's like they should. There were 70 PH HR's in the NL last year in 3645 AB's. In my test league I have never had more than 2 Hr's in a season. Doubles are just as bad.

Ok as to Markus. I don't think we have gotten across to him yet that it is a playing out vs. simming issue. In a recent thread he made the comment that in his test sim batting averages looked ok and that is the problem, if you sim or look at teams that the human doesn't control the numbers look acceptable.

I will post in the beta forum and see if I can get him to revisit this issue. I will point him to this thread also.

[DCG12]

Here are stats that I have been using from ESPN

[gpellis]

This is my small sample size from my current season.

[OutS|der]

If it's a simming vs playing out issue does the problem go away if you sim the PH at bat?

[DCG12]

Originally Posted by OutS|der

If it's a simming vs playing out issue does the problem go away if you sim the PH at bat?

Not sure how you would sim the individual AB. You're either in the game playing or you're in the schedule screen simming. If you are suggesting leaving the game and using the live score function and then jumping back in the only thing I can think is PITA. Also why look for work-arounds if we can get it fixxed

[OutS|der]

Originally Posted by DCG12

Not sure how you would sim the individual AB. You're either in the game playing or you're in the schedule screen simming. If you are suggesting leaving the game and using the live score function and then jumping back in the only thing I can think is PITA. Also why look for work-arounds if we can get it fixxed

I mean the option to sim the at bat, i believe it's the space bar. It plays out the at bat for you so i consider it simming.
Also is there a difference in result in one pitch mode vs pitch by pitch, as one pitch mode you only really get to pick how to approach the at bat be it take a pitch or swing away the rest of it is simmed.

[Dutch Alexander]

Originally Posted by OutS|der

I mean the option to sim the at bat, i believe it's the space bar. It plays out the at bat for you so i consider it simming.
Also is there a difference in result in one pitch mode vs pitch by pitch, as one pitch mode you only really get to pick how to approach the at bat be it take a pitch or swing away the rest of it is simmed.

I never use the spacebar so I couldn't tell you. I could try it out but it would take some time obviously to acquire some meaningful data. I don't think there is a difference between one-pitch mode and pitch-by-pitch mode. I usually toggle between the two modes during the game choosing one or the other depending on the game situation. Obviously I have no hard data either way but from experience I would say it makes no difference.

[DCG12]

Originally Posted by OutS|der

I mean the option to sim the at bat, i believe it's the space bar. It plays out the at bat for you so i consider it simming.
Also is there a difference in result in one pitch mode vs pitch by pitch, as one pitch mode you only really get to pick how to approach the at bat be it take a pitch or swing away the rest of it is simmed.

It makes no difference whether it is one pitch or pitch by pitch mode the result is the same. I have tried both ways. Like Dutch I also switch between the two depending on game situation.

Just to be clear most people on the forum refer to simming as playing from the schedule screen i.e finish today or sim until date x. If you enter the game and use the "broadcast" or "webcast" screens that is playing or managing the game whether it be one pitch or pitch by pitch hence my confusion

[OldFatGuy]

Originally Posted by DCG12

Told myself I wasn't going to get involved because I am a little burned out on this issue and testing and reporting in general, but here goes.

Yeah, I said the same thing to myself, because I get dam tired of being told it's crap when I know it's not. I did some extensive testing in 12, and found compelling evidence, but was never sure when "enough" was enough for the sample size crowd, and just quit. Changed my leagues to the unbaseball travesty the DH, and moved on.

FWIW, I did extensive testing and it "seemed" as though the problem was not only limited to those playing out games, and not only limited to the human player, but it was also limited to the human player pinch hitting FOR THE PITCHER.

For some reason pinch hitting for position players didn't show the same dreadful downfall.

And this will be my lost post in this thread because I'm not going to get into it again.