Stealing in OOTP

[kevrock]

Maybe it's the league I'm in (we have pretty solid catchers and catcher arms across the board), but even very skilled stealers don't pull very efficient stealing rates.I have a player with 75 speed and 80 steal. One year he managed 40 stolen bases and 11 CS. Other years he's more like 32:18. I see similar SB:CS rates across the board in our league.

I can't remember where I read it -- maybe The Book -- but to come our on top with stealing, you have to be very efficient, and I'm not seeing that efficiency anywhere in our league.

I've pretty much given up trying to steal by changing my team strategy, but wanted to check in here. Is our league a bit atypical? Is there any point to stealing in OOTP? Does it give you any advantage in sims?

I'm in an online league, so my concerns are how stealing is reflected in sims... it's been a while since I played out a game.

[Cinnamon J. Scudworth]

This is anecdotal, but it seems to me like the best base stealers in OOTP have just good (but not great) speed ratings, with great steal ratings. It seems like players with both great speed and great stealing try to steal early in the count every time they get on base, and consequently get thrown out more often on pitch-outs and whatnot (they also try to steal 3rd too often, IMO).

[pstrickert]

Originally Posted by kevrock

Maybe it's the league I'm in (we have pretty solid catchers and catcher arms across the board), but even very skilled stealers don't pull very efficient stealing rates.I have a player with 75 speed and 80 steal. One year he managed 40 stolen bases and 11 CS. Other years he's more like 32:18. I see similar SB:CS rates across the board in our league.

I can't remember where I read it -- maybe The Book -- but to come our on top with stealing, you have to be very efficient, and I'm not seeing that efficiency anywhere in our league.

I've pretty much given up trying to steal by changing my team strategy, but wanted to check in here. Is our league a bit atypical? Is there any point to stealing in OOTP? Does it give you any advantage in sims?

I'm in an online league, so my concerns are how stealing is reflected in sims... it's been a while since I played out a game.

I entered this issue into the bug report DB. Hopefully, Markus will have a chance to look at it for OOTP15.

[BeancheBlanco]

When I play out my games and manually steal bases, I find it pretty easy to steal often and at a high percentage. In my franchise, I consistently have the most stolen bases by far (granted I have a few good base stealers). I'm not sure if it's because I abuse bad catchers or if the game is designed that way. I'm not sure if what you are saying is just a statistical anomaly or if it's true, but if it IS true, then one possible explanation is that the AI attempts stolen bases at the same rate against all catchers when you simulate games. In real life (and when you do it manually), you tend to attempt more steals against worse catchers, hence leading to a higher percentage.

[RchW]

Originally Posted by kevrock

Maybe it's the league I'm in (we have pretty solid catchers and catcher arms across the board), but even very skilled stealers don't pull very efficient stealing rates.I have a player with 75 speed and 80 steal. One year he managed 40 stolen bases and 11 CS. Other years he's more like 32:18. I see similar SB:CS rates across the board in our league.

I can't remember where I read it -- maybe The Book -- but to come our on top with stealing, you have to be very efficient, and I'm not seeing that efficiency anywhere in our league.

I've pretty much given up trying to steal by changing my team strategy, but wanted to check in here. Is our league a bit atypical? Is there any point to stealing in OOTP? Does it give you any advantage in sims?

I'm in an online league, so my concerns are how stealing is reflected in sims... it's been a while since I played out a game.

Adjusting league wide stolen base attempts and success rates is very easy in OOTP. It's probably one of the most stable stat outputs from year to year. Just have your Commish look at the league total modifiers vs the previous year stat output.

Getting individual players rates up to the 90% mark is a little more challenging for OOTP as replicating the exact talent distribution as RL baseball must be difficult within the wide range of settings available in-game. The distribution of SB in OOTP is wider than RL ie more players have a few SB and the leaders have slightly less than RL. Over the last 9 seasons the average success rate of the SB leader is 84%. IRL there are players every year who get into the high 90% often 100% rate but they are opportunists like Jeter or Pedroia not leading base stealers like Ellsbury. It doesn't surprise me that a ratings based game has trouble with this.

OOTP may not produce the same set of base out states as real life baseball. It could be as simple as the the conditions for individual players to steal successfully do not occur at the same rate in each game in OOTP. That being said I get success rates in the 83%-88% for the top 5-6 in SB which matches the RL average above.

See the comparison below.

My fictional 2063 season.

2650 SB 1019 CS 72.8% success rate. Top individual SB% 83-88.

Projected 2013 MLB (20% left in season).

2666 SB 1010 CS 72.5% success rate. Top individual SB% for SB leaders 90-92.

Can't get much better than that.

[pstrickert]

This is what I posted on the beta forums during testing in the spring (after running a long-term sim from 1901-2012):


Maury Wills:

SB: 714 (sim) - 586 (real)
CS: 458 (sim) - 208 (real)

In the sim, he was CS at least 29 times in 10 different seasons (twice exceeding 50 CS). In real life, he was CS at least 29 times just once (31, in 1965). The best base stealers in OOTP get caught too often.

IRL, nobody was CS in a single season more than 42 times. That was the all-time high. In this sim, 100 players were CS in a single season 44 times or more. The all-time high was 68. Granted, most of these were in the deadball era -- but still, they far surpassed the CS leaders IRL.

[VanillaGorilla]

Originally Posted by pstrickert

This is what I posted on the beta forums during testing in the spring (after running a long-term sim from 1901-2012):


Maury Wills:

SB: 714 (sim) - 586 (real)
CS: 458 (sim) - 208 (real)

In the sim, he was CS at least 29 times in 10 different seasons (twice exceeding 50 CS). In real life, he was CS at least 29 times just once (31, in 1965). The best base stealers in OOTP get caught too often.

IRL, nobody was CS in a single season more than 42 times. That was the all-time high. In this sim, 100 players were CS in a single season 44 times or more. The all-time high was 68. Granted, most of these were in the deadball era -- but still, they far surpassed the CS leaders IRL.

For this test, what injury and fatigue settings did you use?

For my current league, using very high injuries and high fatigue, from 2004 through 2091 (2012 settings since 2012, for SB) the most CS I have had is 27. My top single season SB total is 94.

Certainly something drove down Wills' success rate in your sim. If you had low fatigue rates, then better catchers were playing more often. With my settings, 137 games is a lot for a catcher to play in a season.

In any case, if he played more games per season than IRL, his seasonal CS numbers should be up from RL, also, even with a constant SB%.

[pstrickert]

I enabled historical transactions and as-played lineups.

[VanillaGorilla]

Originally Posted by pstrickert

I enabled historical transactions and as-played lineups.

1 year recalc?

[pstrickert]

Yessir.

[VanillaGorilla]

Originally Posted by pstrickert

Yessir.

Wow....heck of discrepancy. Am tapped out of ideas.

How did the aggregate SB numbers look for Wills' years?

[r0nster]

I have a player that gave me 100 SBs 3 out of 4 seasons .... I make him run with every chance he gets. Have not changed any settings with stealing bases although it be said I didn't know you could make variations on the SB dept. Interesting to say the least.