Please take a good hard look at POWER vs CONTACT balance

[Syd Thrift]

I think the Gehringer thing has been addressed: another user has him and he does generally still hit well at Gold.

No, there is no editor in PT. PT runs based on the real game and that's where you'll find the editor. It would make sense if dead pull hitters lose out to shifts more often than spray hitters but I dont know how much that's been studied.

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[DonMattingly]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

I think the Gehringer thing has been addressed: another user has him and he does generally still hit well at Gold.

No, there is no editor in PT. PT runs based on the real game and that's where you'll find the editor. It would make sense if dead pull hitters lose out to shifts more often than spray hitters but I dont know how much that's been studied.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

The BABIP of PT cards are the same as the players in the single player game? I mean at least the ones based on single historical seasons? For something like a PEAK card there would be no sure way to see it though?

So then in general, POW will not mean a lower BA in the higher PT leagues? Seems like a no if Contact is built partially from POW.

If I have my eye on a Cap Anson card for example, is that a good idea, or do I want more of a Rod Carew type?

[Syd Thrift]

I’m not sure that Cap Anson had a super high BABIP. I know Carew is one of the poster children for it (along with Ichiro and Roberto Clemente). For regular cards I’m pretty sure they’re just taken from the season in the game (which is then in turn normalized, so a guy who hits 30 HR in an environment where the league leader hits 50 will have a lower POW than a guy who does the same where 30 HR leads the league). SE are raised a little, I guess, and PEAK from what I gather takes a player’s top ratings from a variety of years.

POW doesn’t necessarily translate to a *lower* BA but when you’re playing nothing but pitchers who will suppress your HR rate, you’ll wind up hitting fewer of them and that in turn means fewer base hits and a lower BA, several steps down the line.

[allenciox]

What Syd Thrift says is exactly right. The post that you are referring to was written by me, and I can see why that might appear contradictory, but it isn't at all.

As Syd says, CON isn't used directly by the game, it is an amalgam of BABIP, POW, and AvoidK. In a "neutral" major league environment, they are balanced so that CON, all by itself, is a predictor of expected batting average in that environment.

But, at diamond level, the balance is changed in some dramatic ways. As Syd also comments, BABIP is mostly NOT affected by pitcher at all (actually it is, a little bit, so that pitcher stats, like STU << 50 will some affect on it --- also flyball pitchers will generally have lower BABIP than groundball pitchers, with a tradeoff of allowing more HRs). But mostly, it is an opposition role between batters and fielders. There are good fielders even at bronze level in OOTP 21, but you don't find many big POW hitters there. And almost all the pitchers you will find at the higher levels have high STU so will strikeout a lot of batters.

As you ascend levels, the BABIP and also AvoidK become much more important determiners of battng average than CON itself, so the best predictor of good BA at diamond level is high CON combined with high AvoidK and low POW. High CON/low POW -> high BABIP, and high AvoidK means the batter will strike out much less against high STU pitchers than low AvoidK.

I have a working hypothesis (as I discussed in another thread) that the most important ratings are those that have high variance in a league. This is due to the league normalization which tries to match overall statistics to a particular year (2010 in the case of Perfect Team). So far, this appears borne out by the data. In diamond league, almost all the players have high POW, so there is very little variance in POW and the home runs get distributed fairly equally across players. All the players have high CON as well, you will generally find CON > 90, and almost all pitchers have high STU. There is more variance in MOV and CON between pitchers --- and thus they are far more important than STU,. On the batter side, there is more variance in AvoidK, and thus it is more important there.

[DonMattingly]

Originally Posted by allenciox

"...CON isn't used directly by the game, it is an amalgam of BABIP, POW, and AvoidK."

"...the best predictor of good BA at diamond level is high CON combined with high AvoidK and low POW. High CON/low POW -> high BABIP."

Not quite sure I understand. If CON is an artificial stat made up of other ratings, then why does it matter in Diamond Level or anywhere else? If it's a predictor only then it should affect BA.

And I thought BABIP was an actual rating, one which you can only see in an editor. But you're making it sound more like CON, only it's made up from CON and POW. Or are you talking about the stat there (in the second sentence)?

I can understand why a good AvoidK helps at the higher levels for BA. But I'm still not understanding why a high POW lowers BA or BABIP.

Is the idea that high MOV pitchers turn some HRs in to outs, so those are hits being taken away from high POW hitters (and hence would lower the BABIP stat, but not rating)?

Wouldn't a lot of those HRs turn in to doubles/triples, or does the game not ever have that be an outcome if high MOV denies what would have been a HR?

[allenciox]

Originally Posted by DonMattingly

Not quite sure I understand. If CON is an artificial stat made up of other ratings, then why does it matter in Diamond Level or anywhere else? If it's a predictor only then it should affect BA.

And I thought BABIP was an actual rating, one which you can only see in an editor. But you're making it sound more like CON, only it's made up from CON and POW. Or are you talking about the stat there (in the second sentence)?

I can understand why a good AvoidK helps at the higher levels for BA. But I'm still not understanding why a high POW lowers BA or BABIP.

Is the idea that high MOV pitchers turn some HRs in to outs, so those are hits being taken away from high POW hitters (and hence would lower the BABIP stat, but not rating)?

Wouldn't a lot of those HRs turn in to doubles/triples, or does the game not ever have that be an outcome if high MOV denies what would have been a HR?

ok, again, from another thread, the way an AB is processed internally in OOTP is by a series of opposition rolls:

1. What happens before an ab is complete: HP (opposition roll between batter HP rating and pitcher HP rating -- both hidden in PT), base stealing attempts, pickoff attempts, etc.

2. Is it a Walk? (opposition between Pitcher CON and batter EYE)
3. Is it a homerun(opposition roll between batter POW and pitcher MOV)/strikeout (opposition roll between batter AvoidK and pitcher STU) --- since these seem to be completely independent of each other, it is as if they occur simultaneously
4. Else the batter hits the ball and it becomes an opposition roll between batter BABIP rating and relevant fielder rating based on how and where the ball is hit, which depends on opposition roll between pitcher gb % and batter tendencies). Now that logs reveal exit velocity from swing there is evidence that BABIP affects average exit velocity.

Nowhere is CON used in the opposition rolls. If you look at player editor, you can see the expected number of Ks that a batter will get against average MLB pitcher for a given AvoidK rating, and expected number of HRs a batter will get for a given POW rating. BABIP applies to all other ABs so that CON is computed to be a direct indicator of BA in that envirionment.

[allenciox]

BTW, notice what is missing here compared to real baseball --- the count does NOT affect outcomes. Whether the batter hits the ball on a 3-0 count or on an 0-2 count does NOT appear to alter the probability of that being a hit or an out. People have identified in other threads how to exploit that when playing out a game in pitch by pitch mode.

[DonMattingly]

Originally Posted by allenciox

ok, again, from another thread, the way an AB is processed internally in OOTP is by a series of opposition rolls:

1. What happens before an ab is complete: HP (opposition roll between batter HP rating and pitcher HP rating -- both hidden in PT), base stealing attempts, pickoff attempts, etc.

2. Is it a Walk? (opposition between Pitcher CON and batter EYE)
3. Is it a homerun(opposition roll between batter POW and pitcher MOV)/strikeout (opposition roll between batter AvoidK and pitcher STU) --- since these seem to be completely independent of each other, it is as if they occur simultaneously
4. Else the batter hits the ball and it becomes an opposition roll between batter BABIP rating and relevant fielder rating based on how and where the ball is hit, which depends on opposition roll between pitcher gb % and batter tendencies). Now that logs reveal exit velocity from swing there is evidence that BABIP affects average exit velocity.

Nowhere is CON used in the opposition rolls. If you look at player editor, you can see the expected number of Ks that a batter will get against average MLB pitcher for a given AvoidK rating, and expected number of HRs a batter will get for a given POW rating. BABIP applies to all other ABs so that CON is computed to be a direct indicator of BA in that envirionment.

OK so if it's not determined to be a home run, then why would POW lower BA? It seems to me a player with a high POW and high BABIP (the rating) should be more likely to get a hit than a player with a lower POW and lower BABIP rating.

All you really need to look at if I am understanding this right is the AvoidK rating and the BABIP rating.

Unless what you mean is the higher a CON rating is, the higher one can infer the BABIP rating must be if the POW rating is low.

So there is nothing about the POW rating itself that lowers BA, it's just that given equal CON ratings, the lower the POW, the higher the BABIP rating should be. But you'd need to look in the editor to be sure.

[DonMattingly]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

I’m not sure that Cap Anson had a super high BABIP. I know Carew is one of the poster children for it (along with Ichiro and Roberto Clemente). For regular cards I’m pretty sure they’re just taken from the season in the game (which is then in turn normalized, so a guy who hits 30 HR in an environment where the league leader hits 50 will have a lower POW than a guy who does the same where 30 HR leads the league). SE are raised a little, I guess, and PEAK from what I gather takes a player’s top ratings from a variety of years.

POW doesn’t necessarily translate to a *lower* BA but when you’re playing nothing but pitchers who will suppress your HR rate, you’ll wind up hitting fewer of them and that in turn means fewer base hits and a lower BA, several steps down the line.

Looking at the AB determination algorithm a couple of posts above, I would think that all other things being equal (here really the BABIP rating and AvoidK) that if it's determined you're not getting a home run, the odds of still getting a hit are exactly the same, regardless of the POW rating.

I don't think a high POW means you're being robbed of anything once the "HR or not" part of the AB determination is done.

I think what is going on is this. Say you have two players who both have the same AvoidK and the same CON. One has a much higher POW. Under the covers, the player with the lower POW most likely has a higher BABIP. The higher BABIP is why he'll end up with higher BA.

Of course I see what you're saying as well, that against lower MOV pitchers, the high POW hitters will get some extra hits in the form of dongers.

[Coriolanus]

Originally Posted by DonMattingly

OK so if it's not determined to be a home run, then why would POW lower BA? It seems to me a player with a high POW and high BABIP (the rating) should be more likely to get a hit than a player with a lower POW and lower BABIP rating.

All you really need to look at if I am understanding this right is the AvoidK rating and the BABIP rating.

Unless what you mean is the higher a CON rating is, the higher one can infer the BABIP rating must be if the POW rating is low.

So there is nothing about the POW rating itself that lowers BA, it's just that given equal CON ratings, the lower the POW, the higher the BABIP rating should be. But you'd need to look in the editor to be sure.

The reason POW ends up lowering AVG is because a certain player's POW is set to create, let's say 40 HRs per 600 ABs in a "neutral" environment.



But because of the lack of variability (all the POWs are high) and the high Pitcher MOV ratings as you move up, HRs/600 AB ends up getting pushed down. so instead of getting 40 HRs he's pushed down to 22.


Now he's lost 18 hits regardless of defense or anything. That will depress your average by 18/600 or .030 before anything else.

Also remember, HRs are not a ball in play, so they don't increase your BABIP

[DonMattingly]

Originally Posted by Coriolanus

The reason POW ends up lowering AVG is because a certain player's POW is set to create, let's say 40 HRs per 600 ABs in a "neutral" environment.



But because of the lack of variability (all the POWs are high) and the high Pitcher MOV ratings as you move up, HRs/600 AB ends up getting pushed down. so instead of getting 40 HRs he's pushed down to 22.


Now he's lost 18 hits regardless of defense or anything. That will depress your average by 18/600 or .030 before anything else.

Also remember, HRs are not a ball in play, so they don't increase your BABIP

Before the game's algorithm determines if there is a non-HR type of hit, it checks to see if there is a HR. So if two players have the same AvoidK and BABIP Rating, they have the same chance to get a non-HR hit. The higher POW hitter will actually end up with a higher BA because he'll get some extra hits as HRs.

The confusion IMO comes from the CON rating and how it's used and computed. High CON low POW guys have a higher BABIP rating under the covers. Guys with equally high CON ratings and a high POW will have a lower BABIP rating under the covers. CON doesn't determine BA outcomes at all, it is an artificial metric only which comes from POW and BABIP. So a hitter with less POW yet with the same CON as a high POW peer will have a higher BABIP rating which is the source of his CON metric.

For example, and I am sure this is not the exact math used (I'm guessing CON = POW + BABIP / 2), but I think it's generally the right idea:

Hitter A has a 100 POW and a 100 BABIP and a 100 CON.

Hitter B has a 50 POW and a 150 BABIP and also a 100 CON.

Let's say they both have a 100 AvoidK.

A gets a 100 BABIP + 100 AvoidK when figuring out his chances for non HR hits. CON has nothing to do with this at all for either hitter.

B gets a 150 BABIP + 100 AviodK for his non HR hits. B is clearly going to get more non HR hits, he's 50 rating points ahead of A.

Hitter A might normally add a bunch more homers than B against "mortal" pitching, but against historic MOV greats, those HRs are greatly reduced.

And just to be clear, there are two different kinds of BABIP. There is the stat, which you're talking about when you say HRs don't increase your BABIP. And then there is the rating, which is fixed (at least in PT, not sure about single player) and along with AvoidK determines your chances to get a non-HR hit.

[Coriolanus]

so far as I understand it you are wrong.


It decides a HR type hit


THEN decides all kinds of other stuff.


Please read above because your confusion is related to you not reading/digesting what other people who have been doing this for a very long time (tip of hat to AllenC) and understand very clearly. Instead of talking do more listening. Me I'm outtie. I don't think your educable.

[DonMattingly]

Originally Posted by Coriolanus

so far as I understand it you are wrong.


It decides a HR type hit


THEN decides all kinds of other stuff.


Please read above because your confusion is related to you not reading/digesting what other people who have been doing this for a very long time (tip of hat to AllenC) and understand very clearly. Instead of talking do more listening. Me I'm outtie. I don't think your educable.

I think you need to work on your reading comprehension because I literally just said that.

Was that too many words for you maybe? That's your problem.

I think from your post you don't get that when people are talking about BABIP they mean the rating, not the stat. Which would mean you're lost.

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by DonMattingly

Hitter A has a 100 POW and a 100 BABIP and a 100 CON.

Hitter B has a 50 POW and a 150 BABIP and also a 100 CON.

Let's say they both have a 100 AvoidK.

By the editor, when:

BABIP = POW = AVK = 100; CON = 101
BABIP = 150, POW = AVK = 100; CON = 140

So you will not have a situation where

BABIP = POW = AVK = CON = 100

[DonMattingly]

Originally Posted by RonCo

By the editor, when:

BABIP = POW = AVK = 100; CON = 101
BABIP = 150, POW = AVK = 100; CON = 140

So you will not have a situation where

BABIP = POW = AVK = CON = 100

Yeah I am not claiming to know the exact formula used to calculate CON.

The point I am trying to make is that if two players have the same CON, the one with the lower POW rating will have a higher BABIP rating.

And that higher BABIP rating is what is leading to the higher BAs, especially in leagues where the pitchers are all-time greats with extremely high MOV ratings.

[DonMattingly]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

I’m not sure that Cap Anson had a super high BABIP. I know Carew is one of the poster children for it (along with Ichiro and Roberto Clemente). For regular cards I’m pretty sure they’re just taken from the season in the game (which is then in turn normalized, so a guy who hits 30 HR in an environment where the league leader hits 50 will have a lower POW than a guy who does the same where 30 HR leads the league). SE are raised a little, I guess, and PEAK from what I gather takes a player’s top ratings from a variety of years.

POW doesn’t necessarily translate to a *lower* BA but when you’re playing nothing but pitchers who will suppress your HR rate, you’ll wind up hitting fewer of them and that in turn means fewer base hits and a lower BA, several steps down the line.

I have Anson's PEAK card now, so I'm not sure which year they pull BABIP from - the year with the highest rating from his career? If so it should be from his 1881 year, I looked at that in an editor and it was very high. He only had 1 HR that year and had a 10 POW. He also led the league with a .399 BA so it makes sense his BABIP would be way up there.

His PEAK card though is probably taking his POW from 1884 as it has an 85 POW. No idea if the PEAK cards calculate CON the same way single season cards do, or if they just pull the highest CON rating from any single season of his career.

His card has a 101 CON but its BABIP is a shrouded secret - I guess unless someone makes a hex editor app to be able to see it.

[Syd Thrift]

You asked earlier if one can infer from a high CON and low POW that the hitter must have a high BABIP. What people are saying is, yes, that’s exactly it (assuming Avoid Ks is also in the same range). On top of that, I think allenciox is right on the money when he says that high variance stats are probably more important in high tier fantasy leagues and both Avoid Ks but especially BABIP will have high variance (Avoid Ks because it’s already baked into CON, which in turn what gets used to produced the Overall rating, and BABIP for the same but on top of that it’s not visible and therefore can’t be used directly to sort batters, etc.).

Then there’s the fact that everyone uses good fielders at the highest levels, but, while that would depress BABIP in a real life scenario, in a fantasy setting where everything including BABIP is normalized, all that does is make, say, 70 fielding the average, and the Ichiros of the world still have .350 BABIPs because, probably, the BABIP variance is somewhat close to normal (or at least closer than POW).

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by DonMattingly

The point I am trying to make is that if two players have the same CON, the one with the lower POW rating will have a higher BABIP rating.

This is not always true.

And that higher BABIP rating is what is leading to the higher BAs, especially in leagues where the pitchers are all-time greats with extremely high MOV ratings.

Players with high BABIP will always, of course, generally have higher batting averages than players with lower BABIP.

It is true that if pitchers suppress HR more than the game thinks they will, that batting averages will not be as high as the game's calculated CON might suggest they will be.

It is not necessarily true the low POW hitters will have better batting averages in leagues where MOV is high, however. It's a more complex system than that.

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by DonMattingly

Yeah I am not claiming to know the exact formula used to calculate CON.

The point I am trying to make is that if two players have the same CON, the one with the lower POW rating will have a higher BABIP rating.

CONTACT is a function of BABIP, POW, and AvK, so it is possible for cases of two players with equal CONTACT ratings to have situations where the Higher BABIP rating (and low POW) is paired with a considerably lower AvK rating whereas a lower BABIP rating and higher POW rating will come in paired with a higher AvK...and, again, still have constant CONTACT.

The difficulty you're having right now is that you've latched onto the idea of grouping low POW/high BABIP players as a single entity. This makes you look at everything from an angle that is not really "right" even though it can appear to be right at times.

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

YOn top of that, I think allenciox is right on the money when he says that high variance stats are probably more important ...

This is always true, no matter the league/sport/system. If most skills/factor in a game are about equal, the few that have high variance in the population will drive "value" (i.e. importance).