Rare things that NEVER happen

[injury log]

Originally Posted by injury log

- .400 hitters are not .400 hitters in every game. One day they play against Nate Cornejo and they become .500 hitters, and one day they play against Pedro Martinez and they become .300 hitters. And not only are they less likely to hit against Martinez, they're also less likely to get chances to hit, because their whole team will get outs more often.

Just to illustrate how important this can be, if you give a .400 hitter - that is, a guy who has a 40% chance of a hit no matter what - 5 AB a game for 25 games, his chance of hitting in every game is about 13%. If instead you give him two games against an awful pitcher, and give him 6 AB with a .500 average, and two games against a great pitcher, and give him 4 AB with a .300 average, his chance of a 25-game hit streak drops from 13% to about 10%.

So the bonus he gets against bad pitchers is nowhere near as valuable as the penalty he suffers against good pitchers. If you are ignoring the variable quality of pitching, you're overestimating the likelihood of hitting streaks.

[tcblcommish]

I have played 5 seasons in my fictional league and I haven't had anyone hit 4 homers in a game yet though I have had this happen in the past games I have played. Previous versions of OOTP I mean.

As far as Hitting streaks go, in my 5 seasons, I have seen 16 hitting streaks over 20 games and 2 over 30.

In real life, only 16 times has 4 homeruns been hit since 1871. So it's not even close to a common thing and if it didn't happen in 100 years in Ootp it wouldn't really bother me too much.

[RchW]

Originally Posted by injury log

You guys are ignoring about a dozen crucially important factors that should make long streaks far less likely than your calculations are telling you:

- players don't average 5 AB per game. They walk, they sacrifice, they get hit by pitches, the rest of their team doesn't hit.

- players leave games due to injury, ejections, etc

- .400 hitters are not .400 hitters in every game. One day they play against Nate Cornejo and they become .500 hitters, and one day they play against Pedro Martinez and they become .300 hitters. And not only are they less likely to hit against Martinez, they're also less likely to get chances to hit, because their whole team will get outs more often.

I've never had the impression that long hitting streaks are too rare in OOTP - if anything, they seem to happen more often than in real life, but I'v enever studied it in detail. As for 4 HR games, OOTP is just using a batter's probability of hitting an HR in each AB. If 4 HR games are less common in OOTP than in real life (and I don't know that they are), then it must be that on rare occasions a player is more likely than in OOTP to hit a HR in each at bat, for whatever reason (extreme weather, because he is 'hot', because on some days pitchers are worse in real life than they ever are in OOTP, something like that).

Good post sir.

I checked two current leagues for 30 game and more hitting streaks. Based on seasons played both OOTP leagues showed 0.35 streaks/season. MLB shows 0.39 streaks/season. I'm no statistician but that does not raise any concerns at all.

I'm all for pushing OOTP to be the best and to get things right in all ways possible but I really don't see much to be concerned about.

[muz]

Originally Posted by injury log

You guys are ignoring about a dozen crucially important factors that should make long streaks far less likely than your calculations are telling you:

- players don't average 5 AB per game. They walk, they sacrifice, they get hit by pitches, the rest of their team doesn't hit.

We've been talking about the fictional player I created in order to test the hitting streaks. He hits .420, almost never walks, and the lineup is so stacked that he gets 5 PAs almost every game.

- .400 hitters are not .400 hitters in every game. One day they play against Nate Cornejo and they become .500 hitters, and one day they play against Pedro Martinez and they become .300 hitters. And not only are they less likely to hit against Martinez, they're also less likely to get chances to hit, because their whole team will get outs more often.

This is a good point, as I mentioned above. Variability in outcomes works against hitting streaks. A .500 hitter is unlikely to have a long hitting streak if he goes 4-4 in half his games and 0-4 in the other half.

As for 4 HR games, OOTP is just using a batter's probability of hitting an HR in each AB.

Do we know that's true? I've gone to some lengths to create a 4 HR game and it was tough. I've had games where my team hits 15 HR and no 2 or 3 HR.

I finally got a 4 HR game by having a lineup full of bashers, suspending half my opponent's pitching staff leaving only guys with very low movement and low GB/FB percentages, and cranking up the park factors to 200% HR.

I don't care about 4 HR games per se, as much as what it tells about the game mechanics. I wonder whether the match engine somehow does an in-game balance instead of random outcomes.

[brokenbat]

CCBL Online League 1937 to midway 1945

Ken Keltner 4HR hitting 4 for 4 1940

9 players with 6 hits in a game, Roy Carlyle 7 in a game 1938

Over 30 players with streaks of 20+, Dom Dallesandro streak of 30 1942

Rare things are rare and batting rare things are rarer still because so many things have to come together to make it possible. But they do happen!

[Le Grande Orange]

For the 15 times in which a player hit 4 home runs in a game between 1876-2006, here is the year in which happened: 1894, 1896, 1932, 1936 (10 innings), 1948 (11 innings), 1950, 1954, 1959, 1961, 1976 (10 innings), 1986, 1993, 2002 (2; May 2 and May 23), and 2003.

[RchW]

Originally Posted by muz

I don't care about 4 HR games per se, as much as what it tells about the game mechanics. I wonder whether the match engine somehow does an in-game balance instead of random outcomes.

It tells you nothing about the game mechanics, especially considering the changes you made.

[muz]

Originally Posted by RchW

It tells you nothing about the game mechanics, especially considering the changes you made.

Well, if I thought it told me what I wanted to know, I wouldn't be here asking questions.

It sounds as if others get 4 HR games, so I don't know why I've never seen them except under extraordinary circumstances. I've run a lot of seasons.

[injury log]

Originally Posted by muz

I don't care about 4 HR games per se, as much as what it tells about the game mechanics. I wonder whether the match engine somehow does an in-game balance instead of random outcomes.

If you're asking whether the game does things expressly to prevent 4 HR games or long hitting streaks, no, it does not. But baseball is a complicated thing, and it is a certainty that OOTP doesn't model everything perfectly. So, for example, does it happen in real life that batters are "locked in" for a day? That they see the ball especially well in certain conditions, or hit especially well against certain pitchers? Or that pitchers hang a lot of breaking balls some days and not others? If these things happen at all, I don't think anyone knows precisely how much of an influence they have, if any, on in-game outcomes. So there is no chance OOTP models all of these phenomena perfectly. And if any of these effects do exist, they would have an influence on the likelihood of streaks and 4 HR games.

If anything, I'd expect a game developer to want more long streaks and 4 HR games, not fewer, just because that would be more exciting for people playing the game. But OOTP doesn't try to do that either.

[OBSL Commish]

Originally Posted by D-BacksJosh

I love the smell of hardcore mathematics in the morning.

"Smells like. . . probability. . . This thread will be over soon. . ."

[JohnHoward]

Originally Posted by OBSL Commish

"Smells like. . . probability. . . This thread will be over soon. . ."

Ah, here's one we used to tell while hanging around the old Cray XK6:

How can you tell which statistician is the masochist?

By the Markov chains.

[OBSL Commish]

Originally Posted by JohnHoward

Ah, here's one we used to tell while hanging around the old Cray XK6:

How can you tell which statistician is the masochist?

By the Markov chains.

Nice one!

[The Game]

Originally Posted by muz

Well, if I thought it told me what I wanted to know, I wouldn't be here asking questions.

It sounds as if others get 4 HR games, so I don't know why I've never seen them except under extraordinary circumstances. I've run a lot of seasons.

Why are you so worried about 4 HR games and 60 game hitting streaks? If they happen they happen. if they don't they don't, no biggie. There are many things that go into having a 250 maxed out player do any of those.

[abefrohman]

Incidentally, the Atlanta Braves lost that game in 1986 where Bob Horner hit four home runs. In fact, he had to pay the kangaroo court in the clubhouse.

[VanillaGorilla]

Originally Posted by abefrohman

Incidentally, the Atlanta Braves lost that game in 1986 where Bob Horner hit four home runs. In fact, he had to pay the kangaroo court in the clubhouse.

What gets lost in Horner's 4 HR game is the even more incredible feat that the Expo's Mitch Webster hit 1.

[VanillaGorilla]

Originally Posted by muz

If you say so. I don't mean that to be snide; I just don't really understand your methodology. I still think you've oversimplified what is actually a complex mathematical model, but 1) maybe I'm wrong or 2) maybe the simplification doesn't make much difference in the end.

As far as too few 30 game streaks, well there were way too few -- about 40% too few. The problem we're having now is that I didn't run enough seasons to distinguish random chance or some factor in the game.

attn bolded

The 40% differential is meaningless without the context of sample size.

For running four seasons, the odds of getting a figure 40% less than the expected result are about 23 in 100.

Run your test 40 times, and you will expect to get 53 30 game hit streaks. If you had 40% fewer than that number, 32 streaks, the odds of that happening would be 1 in 1000.

Double the 40 seasons to 80, and a result 40% less than expected is about a 1 in a million shot.

Not all 40% differentials are equal in their indicative value.

[RonCo]

I think it's interesting to see how hard it is for folks to get their heads around probability, randomness, and sample size.

Let's also not forget that there's a human element to Dimaggio's streak,as it was extended by a scoring controversy when a likely error was scored as a hit.

[RchW]

Nice to see you Ron. How is the writing coming along?

[RonCo]

Doing well. This has been a very good year for that aspect of me.

[RonCo]

To think about muz's situation another way, with the amount of testing he has done if he were getting the "right" amount of streaks it still would not be good enough to say the game's design was "perfect." Sample size and distribution is the gateway to being able to say _anything_ with certainty.

But none of that keeps us from "feeling" things, and a game's fun quotient is directly related to how we feel, regardless of what is real.