Joey Gallo: A Story of a Vegas boy who ruined OOTP

[Matt Arnold]

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

As everyone's alluded to, there are so many reasons this could be happening. If league evolution is on, the league modifiers might have changed drastically, Gallo might have received a big talent boost from the game etc. etc.

That OOTP can change in all those ways is a positive thing, just like in reality the run environments/league rules etc don't stay static. Unless you want them to. If you do, like the OP seems to want, you can always just lock the league totals/modifiers, set talent change randomness down to 1 and you'll never get outliers like this.

Either way is a perfectly legitimate way to play the game, but there's no reason to blame the game or retire from playing it when it's just doing what it's designed to do.

The tools to keep this sort of thing from happening or to let it happen are all in the individual player's hands, to use as they like.

Most likely something in the modifiers went off. Don't know if they got intentionally shifted away, or something with the influx of talent in the league, but it happens, and it's fixable (as mentioned, just hit auto-calc).

My last game had the numbers go off the rails for a few years, although that was in the 2060s. I had guys routinely hitting 70+ HR, one guy got 85 one year before I double checked. And yeah, the HR modifier was up to something like 1.5. Dropped it down to 1 at mid-season and then auto-calced the next year and things were back to normal after that.

I'd love to add some extra pieces in to prevent this, but it's the sort of thing that you don't always want to prevent, since maybe someone does want the numbers to creep away from them.

[KentCol]

In 2018 he hit 61 for me. In September in 2019 and he's at 38.

[GoPedro99]

I had him break the single season record in a league I played. I regularly see him break 50 or 60. So it’s not really out of the realm of possibilities. I have yet to see him be traded to the Rockies tho. Still waiting for that

[dbqs]

Hey, 2020 hasn't happened yet... this may be entirely realistic!

[dkgo]

nearly everything is unrealistic until it happens for the first time

[dannibalcorpse]

Originally Posted by BIG17EASY

I think it was in OOTP 18 that I ran a few sims just for fun and Trevor Story had some massive home run totals. To me, it's all part of the fun of the game. Once you advance the game one day, it's all fictional from then on. Anything can happen.

I decided to run a Rockies franchise and starting my 3rd season, I wish I had that Trevor Story - I non-tendered him after a .152/.219/.324 year with 100 Ks in 279 PAs in 2019. He signed a minor league deal with Los Angeles, let's see where that goes.

Cody Bellinger has been my out of this world power guy - in 2018 he hit .309/.387/.670 with 64 HR and 171 RBI(!!!), and followed it up with a .312/.409/.697 with 63 more homers and 156 RBI. Currently the two-time reigning NL MVP.

[Pineywoods OOTPer]

Originally Posted by Orcin

The only thing that ruins OOTP is not being able to play it.

Well said...I had to take six weeks off due to the AMD hiccup(s) and a stubborn to update Windows 10 build...

That drove me nuts.

[Pineywoods OOTPer]

Originally Posted by Westheim

This.

Also, how can Joey Gallo's future home run totals be "historically inaccurate"? Just because nobody has hit 79 dingers so far, nobody ever will?

I never said anything because I was an OOTP noob aka rookie at the time but some guy named Hank Aaron hit 88 homers in one season, I think it was 1966 on my historical sim way back in OOTP 12.

And the funny thing was, there was this crazy doctor out there saying "when Aaron hits 88 homers, you're going to see some serious **** " to some kid named McFly....I believe his first name was Marty.

[Brad K]

I don't get this complaint. But then I don't get playing into the future.

[jeffw3000]

At this time next year when Joey Gallo has 58 home runs, everyone will be saying, "see how realistic this game is".

[jpeters1734]

it's your game, play it your....or don't

[Fyrestorm3]

I doubt the OP is following this thread, but just to add an anecdote to this for anyone who might have the same kind of complaint:

After playing out a couple of years in my fictional league, I suddenly noticed one season that nearly all of my players were experiencing a drop-off in batting average. It was something I had originally attributed to a team-wide slump, but when I started noticing other players who had career .300 averages batting in the .270 range, I decided to check the league history index. And lo and behold, the league batting average (which had held steady for 4 years at ~.275) had dropped to almost .240. Something had gotten screwed up in my league's modifiers - I had recently tinkered with the files while porting the game onto a flash drive and re-installing and yada yada so I'm sure something happened along the way. Now, I could have fixed it and moved on. But I decided to roll with it. I bumped the modifiers up slightly, but I decided my league had skidded into a pitcher-friendly era, and a decade or so down the road, I'll start tilting it back in favor of the batters.

My point is, this was not an error on the part of the game. Even if I had nothing to do with it, and the modifiers went wacky on their own (unlikely), the game is only doing what it was told to do. Every player and every stat in every game is just a bunch of data; the game is not going to see a player hit 80 home runs and go "oh gosh, that's not right, I have to fix that!" Doing it that way would force people to play the game a certain way, and that is so very much not what OOTP is about. The biggest draw of OOTP is being able to customize your experience. I remember someone once setting up a league on the moon, with completely absurd home run numbers to account for the lower gravity. Being able to do that is a feature, not an error in programming.

So maybe you want "normal" stats across the board - a tweak to the modifiers will give you that. Maybe you're only upset because you hate Joey Gallo - go edit the guy and plummet his ratings. Maybe you just desperately want him on your own team - you can force a trade through for him. The most important thing for players of this game to understand is that everything that happens in this game is able to be edited, and as such, you - and you alone - have complete control over what is realistic in your league. At its core, this is a baseball sim, not an MLB sim. What that means is up to you.

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by Fyrestorm3

I doubt the OP is following this thread, but just to add an anecdote to this for anyone who might have the same kind of complaint:

After playing out a couple of years in my fictional league, I suddenly noticed one season that nearly all of my players were experiencing a drop-off in batting average. It was something I had originally attributed to a team-wide slump, but when I started noticing other players who had career .300 averages batting in the .270 range, I decided to check the league history index. And lo and behold, the league batting average (which had held steady for 4 years at ~.275) had dropped to almost .240. Something had gotten screwed up in my league's modifiers - I had recently tinkered with the files while porting the game onto a flash drive and re-installing and yada yada so I'm sure something happened along the way. Now, I could have fixed it and moved on. But I decided to roll with it. I bumped the modifiers up slightly, but I decided my league had skidded into a pitcher-friendly era, and a decade or so down the road, I'll start tilting it back in favor of the batters.

My point is, this was not an error on the part of the game. Even if I had nothing to do with it, and the modifiers went wacky on their own (unlikely), the game is only doing what it was told to do. Every player and every stat in every game is just a bunch of data; the game is not going to see a player hit 80 home runs and go "oh gosh, that's not right, I have to fix that!" Doing it that way would force people to play the game a certain way, and that is so very much not what OOTP is about. The biggest draw of OOTP is being able to customize your experience. I remember someone once setting up a league on the moon, with completely absurd home run numbers to account for the lower gravity. Being able to do that is a feature, not an error in programming.

So maybe you want "normal" stats across the board - a tweak to the modifiers will give you that. Maybe you're only upset because you hate Joey Gallo - go edit the guy and plummet his ratings. Maybe you just desperately want him on your own team - you can force a trade through for him. The most important thing for players of this game to understand is that everything that happens in this game is able to be edited, and as such, you - and you alone - have complete control over what is realistic in your league. At its core, this is a baseball sim, not an MLB sim. What that means is up to you.

What you experienced is a league evolution event (you probably missed the news article), when the league batting AVG is over .270 for a while there is a chance the league decides to lower the mound (aka decrease the AVG league modifier) so batting AVG drops about 20 points.

The league evolution can be disabled in the league options.

[Fyrestorm3]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

What you experienced is a league evolution event (you probably missed the news article), when the league batting AVG is over .270 for a while there is a chance the league decides to lower the mound (aka decrease the AVG league modifier) so batting AVG drops about 20 points.

The league evolution can be disabled in the league options.

I've had league evolution off since OOTP13 - though you're probably still right. Makes more sense for me to have screwed up a single checkbox than the modifiers themselves.

[Matt Arnold]

Originally Posted by Fyrestorm3

I've had league evolution off since OOTP13 - though you're probably still right. Makes more sense for me to have screwed up a single checkbox than the modifiers themselves.

It's also possible that the league just kind of naturally evolved over time, or, alternately, the league modifiers got out of sync with the league average stats. This can happen without having the explicit league evolution kick in.

[bigdgp2]

It's August 15th, 2017. These are from imported 2017 rosters. Joey Gallo's got 56 HRs in 93 hits.. He's hitting .216/.319/.622. Haha.

[Jerry Helper]

Originally Posted by Westheim

This.

Also, how can Joey Gallo's future home run totals be "historically inaccurate"? Just because nobody has hit 79 dingers so far, nobody ever will?

Just because it is possible doesn't mean it isn't completely improbable. And then we're going to throw in another 70 home run season the next year? The reason we play OOTP is for the real life accuracy, cartoon baseball isn't fun. OP almost certainly has some settings issues that he needs to fix, but his original point is completely valid.

[drewandpedey]

Just imagine seeing Barry Bonds' stats before they happened, no one would believe them! In real life, Joey Gallo hits HRs at a monstrous rate, and if for some odd reason his contact stats improved, he would be adding a few more HRs, if he was able to get a lot of at bats on a high run scoring team, thats a few more HRs. If the overall offense in the league goes up, that's even more HRs, if he has a career year, he'd add a few more to his total. In a simulation Joey Gallo hitting 79 bombs in a year seems pretty possible to me.

[Cactusguy21]

I had
34
45
32
36
39
39
32
10
8

Over that span his OPS+ only hit 100+ twice, showing that he struggles to produce offensively as a whole.

And as for "numbers getting out of hand", I personally enjoy that. If you were playing this game back in the 1970s, and your simulation churned out today's stats, you'd probably say "hey, that's totally inaccurate!" The game changes in ways we can never predict, and that's what I love about OOTP.

Interestingly enough, in my game, batting averages have gone way up. The game has become much more focused on contact all of a sudden. Part of that might be my obsession on stockpiling high-contact prospects though

[drewandpedey]

Surprised you are having issues with only Gallo and not stanton & bellinger as well