Too many decisions to closers

[HoustonGM]

I've noticed that an abnormal amount of closers earn way more wins/losses than compared to real life. Routinely multiple closers a year with records like 8-6, 10-4, 3-12, etc.

Has anybody else noticed this? My suspicion is that the AI is far more willing and likely to bring in closers in tie games than real life managers are, which leads to more games ending with the closer in the game. I'm not sure if there's anyway to influence this either on a leaguewide level or with your own team (when GMing of course)...

[RchW]

Originally Posted by HoustonGM

I've noticed that an abnormal amount of closers earn way more wins/losses than compared to real life. Routinely multiple closers a year with records like 8-6, 10-4, 3-12, etc.

Has anybody else noticed this? My suspicion is that the AI is far more willing and likely to bring in closers in tie games than real life managers are, which leads to more games ending with the closer in the game. I'm not sure if there's anyway to influence this either on a leaguewide level or with your own team (when GMing of course)...

That's a user setting too. I routinely set my closer to be used in the 8th+. I also set other RP to "closer" as a secondary use to try to leverage leverage.

[NoOne]

i have used closer settings at 9th and 8+. on occasion they will win 8-10 games. losses and wins are almost always because of a blown save. in real life most managers will use a closer in the nineth inning of a tie. i have always disagreed with it, but they do it with regularity in the MLB.

What kind of team you have can make a difference. when i dinked around with 'super' teams, the manager barely uses the closer because there aren't many save opportunities. 50-60ip and only 25-30ish save opportunities. so, if push comes to shove, they will use the closer in non-save opportinities only when he is severely underworked.

when i have a realistic playoff team he gets 35-50saves in a year - mostly hovers around 40 and gets 65-80innings.

maybe your closer is just bad at his job, even if he has 8 wins. you'd have to look at your game log for that closer. i bet alot of the wins he got were due to him letting the score become tied, and you won in the next half inning. check his blown saves for the year.

if you want a larger sample size to make sure, make a back up, restore the back up as trial 1, trial 2, trial 3, etc etc. run each through a quick 1 year sim and check out the stats. most likely you just experienced something flukey and any combination of the reasons i explained above.

mike henneman was notorious for having too many wins as a closer. he won 38games as det's closer from 1988-1991. i don't expect one example to convince anyone, but go ahead and look up some closers not named mariano revera or anyone else of his ilk.

Mike Henneman Statistics and History | Baseball-Reference.com

[The Game]

The CL who won awards across my 3 main leagues last year records were
5-6 40 SV 1.87
8-1 40 SV 2.07
4-4 49 SV 1.10
8-5 31 SV 1.59
6-1 41 SV 0.91
3-2 41 SV 1.40

I do not these are that far out of line.
Fernando Rodney who had the most saves last year at 49 was 1-6 2.85
In many ways these 6 guys were better then anything MLB had to offer.
2014 Major League Baseball Standard Pitching | Baseball-Reference.com

[Dyzalot]

Originally Posted by The Game

The CL who won awards across my 3 main leagues last year records were
5-6 40 SV 1.87
8-1 40 SV 2.07
4-4 49 SV 1.10
8-5 31 SV 1.59
6-1 41 SV 0.91
3-2 41 SV 1.40

I do not these are that far out of line.
Fernando Rodney who had the most saves last year at 49 was 1-6 2.85
In many ways these 6 guys were better then anything MLB had to offer.
2014 Major League Baseball Standard Pitching | Baseball-Reference.com

How does the bolded strengthen the argument that the sim is producing realistic results? Shouldn't that be a clue that maybe the sim is handling these pitchers in a way that is different from real life managers?

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Dyzalot

How does the bolded strengthen the argument that the sim is producing realistic results? Shouldn't that be a clue that maybe the sim is handling these pitchers in a way that is different from real life managers?

Iirc, The Game uses multiple large leagues, heavily modified leagues and players, with a mix of current, historical and fictional players with players he's rated himself.

There's probably not much you can take from the results he gets, they're going to be very much a-typical of what you'd get from most OOTP leagues.

I don't say that as any sort of criticism. His universes are very creative, but they certainly push the limits of what the game can do and really aren't representative of most user's likely experiences.

OOTP will produce as realistic or as unrealistic results as you could want in almost any situation. It simply depends on how you set things up and what settings you use/adjust. It's endlessly customizable and if it's not currently doing what you'd like it to do, you can usually fix that with a few settings adjustments.

[Dyzalot]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

Iirc, The Game uses multiple large leagues, heavily modified leagues and players, with a mix of current, historical and fictional players with players he's rated himself.

There's probably not much you can take from the results he gets, they're going to be very much a-typical of what you'd get from most OOTP leagues.

I don't say that as any sort of criticism. His universes are very creative and intriguing, but they seem like they'd push the limits of what the game can do and simply aren't representative of most user's likely experiences.

OOTP will produce as realistic or as unrealistic results as you could want in almost any situation. It simply depends on how you set things up and what settings you use/adjust.

If that's the case then why is he using results from his leagues to make an argument about what is or should be happening in a standard league? And I'll disagree with the bolded.

[Anyone]

I think in general the game is willing to use closers in tie games more often than most modern managers. This is where "management style" should come in outside of as a guide to where the sliders are likely to be.

A Sabermetric manager should be as willing to use his closer in tie games as with a lead, and tend to avoid using him with a 3+ run lead. A Tactician, and sometimes an Unorthodox manager, should be willing to use his closer in a tie game as well, if he's well rested.

But certainly a Conventional manager should never use his closer in a tie game, saving him for a "save situation," outside of the 9th+ inning at home, when if it's tied then a save situation for that game is impossible (taking the lead = winning). That pattern is not IMO the best use of a Closer, but it is certainly what's "Conventional" in today's game.

[SirMichaelJordan]

Raise the reliever usage up in the player & Stats screen in the settings menu?

I had a problem with minor league teams using their starters too long in games, so I set pitcher stamina from low to very low in the specific leagues and that fixed things so now I don't even have to set pitch count limits.

Maybe some settings can also help tune this.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Dyzalot

If that's the case then why is he using results from his leagues to make an argument about what is or should be happening in a standard league? And I'll disagree with the bolded.

Don't ask me why, I couldn't tell you

As for disagreeing, well that's your prerogative but I'd say you may not fully understand what the game is really capable of.

[Dyzalot]

I disagree because I am fully aware of the limitations of the game. Not knocking OOTP. Just disagree with your statement that by tweaking the settings you can make it as realistic as you could want.

[RchW]

Originally Posted by Dyzalot

I disagree because I am fully aware of the limitations of the game. Not knocking OOTP. Just disagree with your statement that by tweaking the settings you can make it as realistic as you could want.

I disagree with you and absolutely get what I want by tweaking.

I have 2 leagues for sure and 3-4 others in development where I can manipulate things to emulate several variants of recent MLB stat output. I've mixed dominant SP ala mid late 1970's with steroid era HR results in batting then transitioned into less batting output more SB and high RP usage via lower SP stamina.

[Dyzalot]

Originally Posted by RchW

I disagree with you and absolutely get what I want by tweaking.

I have 2 leagues for sure and 3-4 others in development where I can manipulate things to emulate several variants of recent MLB stat output. I've mixed dominant SP ala mid late 1970's with steroid era HR results in batting then transitioned into less batting output more SB and high RP usage via lower SP stamina.

Oh I agree that if you focus on the forest it can look pretty realistic. It is when you look at the individual trees that you see all of the strange, unrealistic stuff that can't be fixed by tweaking the settings.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Dyzalot

Oh I agree that if you focus on the forest it can look pretty realistic. It is when you look at the individual trees that you see all of the strange, unrealistic stuff that can't be fixed by tweaking the settings.

A lot of that is simply the result of how math works. The game uses real math to get its results. It doesn't rig outcomes at all.

So sometimes you'll see things that look off, but are simply the result of outcomes that are on the extreme ends of probability and are maybe a few standard deviations off from the expected norm one way or another.

That could be "fixed" by rigging the game, building in brakes that cut players off and make them bad once they start to get unusual results in a season, but that's not the vision Markus has for the game, nor is it something that most of OOTP's users want either.

Even at that, there are settings that will drastically affect individual player outcomes as well as those of the entire league's forest. Things like the make worse/bad settings for historical leagues f.e.

[endgame]

Good to keep in mind, as well, that the term realistic is specific to its league reality. That is, any settings- with some of exceptions, of course -produce realistic results based on those settings. I think the point is, any element of those results that, in your world view is unrealistic, can usually be adjusted toward your desired result.

[ezpkns34]

All this talk about tweakin got me jonesin

[RchW]

Originally Posted by Dyzalot

Oh I agree that if you focus on the forest it can look pretty realistic. It is when you look at the individual trees that you see all of the strange, unrealistic stuff that can't be fixed by tweaking the settings.

I don't focus on the forest. I really wish you would have a proper conversation here and stop telling me (and others) what I'm doing or thinking. You have no clue what I am doing or thinking.

[Dyzalot]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

A lot of that is simply the result of how math works. The game uses real math to get its results. It doesn't rig outcomes at all.

So sometimes you'll see things that look off, but are simply the result of outcomes that are on the extreme ends of probability and are maybe a few standard deviations off from the expected norm one way or another.

That could be "fixed" by rigging the game, building in brakes that cut players off and make them bad once they start to get unusual results in a season, but that's not the vision Markus has for the game, nor is it something that most of OOTP's users want either.

Even at that, there are settings that will drastically affect individual player outcomes as well as those of the entire league's forest. Things like the make worse/bad settings for historical leagues f.e.

Not what I was talking about. My "forest" being stats you see at year's end. The "trees" are the individual plays that the players make. Just looking at the stats, it all looks pretty realistic but as soon as you watch a few games you see the problems the AI has with making realistic decisions on things even as simple as having the best defensive alignment in place with the eight position players in the lineup. No amount of settings tweaking can fix that stuff yet.

Originally Posted by endgame

Good to keep in mind, as well, that the term realistic is specific to its league reality. That is, any settings- with some of exceptions, of course -produce realistic results based on those settings. I think the point is, any element of those results that, in your world view is unrealistic, can usually be adjusted toward your desired result.

True but if by "realistic" you mean "a realistic simulation of modern day baseball" then there is a real life model to compare it to. No settings tweaking can fix some of the strange substitutions, defensive alignments or illogical pitching changes and non-changes.

Listen guys, the game is awesome. It is pretty darn close to what I dreamed of being able to do back when I fell in love with Strat-O-Matic as a kid. But that doesn't mean it is perfect and I take exception to the assertion that you can "make it as realistic as you want". No. I can't. At least not yet. Maybe someday.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Dyzalot

Not what I was talking about. My "forest" being stats you see at year's end. The "trees" are the individual plays that the players make. Just looking at the stats, it all looks pretty realistic but as soon as you watch a few games you see the problems the AI has with making realistic decisions on things even as simple as having the best defensive alignment in place with the eight position players in the lineup. No amount of settings tweaking can fix that stuff yet.



True but if by "realistic" you mean "a realistic simulation of modern day baseball" then there is a real life model to compare it to. No settings tweaking can fix some of the strange substitutions, defensive alignments or illogical pitching changes and non-changes.

Listen guys, the game is awesome. It is pretty darn close to what I dreamed of being able to do back when I fell in love with Strat-O-Matic as a kid. But that doesn't mean it is perfect and I take exception to the assertion that you can "make it as realistic as you want". No. I can't. At least not yet. Maybe someday.

I don't want to come across as confrontational here and I apologize for not knowing how to phrase this question better so it doesn't sound kind of condescending, that's not my intent at all, but do you watch real baseball a great deal?

Real players, teams and managers constantly, constantly make stupid, bone-headed decisions or even just seemingly sub-optimal decisions I disagree with. They throw to the wrong base, they try to take an extra base when they shouldn't and get thrown out, they sub relievers at the wrong time, play players at the wrong positions (heck Yuniesky Betancourt started at SS in the majors for how many years? Wilmer Flores is starting at SS in the majors now!), they don't pinch hit when they should and do when they shouldn't etc. etc. etc.

A lot of the ai stuff you've posted is far, far less egregiously incorrect than the typical stuff I see every day when watching real life games.

I'm not saying there's no room for improvement with the ai. There clearly is, and Markus, Andreas and Matt would be the first to admit that. They spend a great deal of time working on it every version.

I agree that maybe 50% of the stuff you've posted are places the ai could be genuinely improved, but the other 50%, imo, are areas that are judgement calls at best, where the ai is already probably more consistently strong than many rl managers and players are.

I may be totally off base, but I get the feeling you want to have an ai that always makes the mathematically optimal decision in every circumstance during games. But that would be totally and completely contrary to real baseball. I imagine the ai could be programmed to do that, but what would be the point? The results would then be far more unrealistic than they are now.

[The Game]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

Iirc, The Game uses multiple large leagues, heavily modified leagues and players, with a mix of current, historical and fictional players with players he's rated himself.

There's probably not much you can take from the results he gets, they're going to be very much a-typical of what you'd get from most OOTP leagues.

I don't say that as any sort of criticism. His universes are very creative, but they certainly push the limits of what the game can do and really aren't representative of most user's likely experiences.

OOTP will produce as realistic or as unrealistic results as you could want in almost any situation. It simply depends on how you set things up and what settings you use/adjust. It's endlessly customizable and if it's not currently doing what you'd like it to do, you can usually fix that with a few settings adjustments.

None of the award wining CL were edited. Only one was a clone of a former ML player. The one with the 0.91 ERA is Trevor Hoffman. I did use 3 different eras modern, 2002 & 1992 that year.

My point was that for the most part, the CL in my game are right around what MLB has. Therre will always be some variance to RL and a game.