Player Split Contact Rating Drops with No Scouting Update

Charlie Hough · 11-22-2020, 04:14 PM

My top hitter's contact rating recently dropped from 10 to 9 vs. righties on a 10-point scale, but there was never a scouting update for a corresponding contact rating change, and it does not show up in his scouting history in his profile. Before the season started, his overall and potential contact rating improved from 8 to 9, and he started the season as a 10 vs. righties and a 7 vs. lefties. But then suddenly in the middle of the season, his rating against righties dropped to 9.

A number of my other players have seen changes to their ratings and potential in recent scouting updates, but this player never showed up in any recent updates. The only things that have changed since the pre-season are his overall and potential ratings at 1B. Nothing else shows up in his scouting history.

But the drop in contact against righties resulted in him dropping from the top hitter in the league to the fourth-best hitter, and he's lost more than 25 points in batting average in the games since the rating changed.

I don't have a lot of experience with development in OOTP, but I always remember seeing an official scouting update or at least a historical record of any rating change like this. Or maybe a player's split ratings can change without an OSA scouting update. Does anyone have any idea if what I'm seeing is normal or a bug?

Brad K · 11-22-2020, 07:11 PM

I don't read scouting reports in great detail but don't they only give overall ratings not split ratings?

Charlie Hough · 11-22-2020, 09:21 PM

Yes, it seems that the scouting reports only give overall contact ratings, but his overall rating is now incorrect. Now that his split ratings have dropped to 9 vs. righties and 7. vs. lefties, he would no longer be a 9 overall. He would be an 8. But his scouting report says he's still supposed to be a 9 overall.

Why would my batter's split rating be dropped against right-handers if his overall contact rating is still supposed to be a 9? If you're telling me that he's suddenly declining against right-handers, at age 27, in the middle of the season and after being the best hitter in the league up to that point, it's a bit of a stretch. But, if you're going to do that, then you have to recalculate his overall rating, otherwise it's wrong.

I will probably have to edit his split rating because this makes no sense, and his batting average has now dropped another 25 points. It's a 50-point drop over the course of a few weeks, all since the right-handed contact rating dropped.

Brad K · 11-22-2020, 09:49 PM

I don't understand the problem. You didn't get a notification on him dropping, is that right? You don't get notifications on every player every month. The e mail report is just the highlights, so to speak.

Charlie Hough · 11-23-2020, 05:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brad K

I don't understand the problem. You didn't get a notification on him dropping, is that right? You don't get notifications on every player every month. The e mail report is just the highlights, so to speak.

This isn't about notifications. If a player's ratings change permanently, those changes are supposed to be logged in the player's scouting history. But this change hasn't been logged. The game appears to be able to permanently change split ratings without documenting and logging the changes in any way. On top of that, it appears able to change a split rating that would mathematically require an update to the overall rating, but it doesn't change the overall rating accordingly.

Split ratings of 9 and 7 for contact can't possibly add up to a 9 overall rating for contact, especially if the previous split of 10 and 7 was adding up to a 9 overall. But that's what the game has done with my player.

His right-handed split was originally a 10 and his left-handed split was a 7, and the game combined them into a 9 overall for contact. But now the 10 right-handed split has dropped to a 9, with the left-handed split still at a 7. But his overall contact rating is still a 9. I've done some math assuming different 100-point scale numbers underneath the cosmetic 10-point scale, and I don't see how the new splits could still add up to a 9 overall if one of the two splits dropped from a 10 to a 9. Even with rounding, the split change should have dropped the overall contact rating to an 8.

The game appears to be making permanent split rating changes without logging them, without providing proper scouting updates, and without correctly updating the overall ratings when applicable. In my opinion, that's a BIG problem if that's what's happening. I don't like things being hidden or misleadingly represented to the user or AI in that way.

Brad K · 11-23-2020, 06:14 PM

Overall ratings are rated for 75% vs R ABs and 25% vs L ABs. If you weight the ratings like that you'll come up with 8.5 which rounds to 9

ThePretender · 11-23-2020, 06:37 PM

Yeah I don't see a problem here. I have a split in one of my leagues where a guy has 10 vs lhp, 6 vs rhp and 9 overall. Think about it in terms of 1-100. For your guy It could be 99 vs rhp and 79 vs lhp. If you added that and divided by 2 it would be 89, which on 1-10 would be 9.

That being said i wish scouting reports were like they are on Statsplus where it gives every rating increase or decrease.

Charlie Hough · 11-23-2020, 07:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ThePretender

Think about it in terms of 1-100.

That's what I was doing, but all the possible combinations I was calculating were not adding up to those mathematical possibilities. But that's because I didn't realize things were weighted 75% to 25%.

Now I know, but I don't think that's a valid method. That weighting seems to be based on a rough estimate of the number of right-handed vs. left-handed pitchers in today's MLB and not on historical numbers or on each OOTP league individually, how many righties and lefties are in our league, what their roles are, and the estimated number of plate appearances a player might get against pitchers of each hand.

In the end, now I see how this is being calculated, although I disagree with the method. And I still think it's completely wrong to permanently update ANY player rating without logging it or eventually providing notifications of the change. Otherwise players all over the league could be going through changes in split ratings without GMs being able to see in a players' history or scouting reports that any of these changes happened.

Brad K · 11-23-2020, 08:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

That's what I was doing, but all the possible combinations I was calculating were not adding up to those mathematical possibilities. But that's because I didn't realize things were weighted 75% to 25%.

Now I know, but I don't think that's a valid method. That weighting seems to be based on a rough estimate of the number of right-handed vs. left-handed pitchers in today's MLB and not on historical numbers or on each OOTP league individually, how many righties and lefties are in our league, what their roles are, and the estimated number of plate appearances a player might get against pitchers of each hand.

In the end, now I see how this is being calculated, although I disagree with the method.

The game does its calculations for game play based on the L rating when the pitcher is a L and the R rating when the pitcher is a R. The Overall rating is NEVER used in the game. There's no need to adopt any of the more accurate methods you suggest to calculate overall.

ThePretender · 11-23-2020, 08:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

In the end, now I see how this is being calculated, although I disagree with the method. And I still think it's completely wrong to permanently update ANY player rating without logging it or eventually providing notifications of the change. Otherwise players all over the league could be going through changes in split ratings without GMs being able to see in a players' history or scouting reports that any of these changes happened.

Yes, that's why I mentioned scouting reports should show like they do in Statsplus. Here's an example from a league I'm in:

Stuff vs L decreased from 100 to 99
Control Potential decreased from 74 to 73
Control decreased from 74 to 73
Control vs R decreased from 76 to 75
Control vs L decreased from 72 to 71
Slider Pot decreased from 87 to 86
Slider decreased from 87 to 86

Much easier to track.

Brad K · 11-24-2020, 01:30 PM

I've noticed on occasion a players ratings change and then sometime later I get the noticed from the scout, which occurs once a month. I wonder if what's happening is a lag between the scouting resulting in the change and the report, which would make sense.

Charlie Hough · 11-24-2020, 02:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brad K

I've noticed on occasion a players ratings change and then sometime later I get the noticed from the scout, which occurs once a month. I wonder if what's happening is a lag between the scouting resulting in the change and the report, which would make sense.

Unfortunately, no. A couple of months have passed, including two monthly scouting updates across a number of players, and this change has never been reported or recorded. But I noticed the change immediately because I play out all of my games and saw the player's contact rating vs. right-handers was suddenly lower. And it's remained at that number since then.

Brad K · 11-24-2020, 06:52 PM

Oh, ok, so what I see is this.

A player's rating drops without it being reported.

The reason it hasn't been reported is he hasn't been scouted.

So would it be better for his lower rating not be shown until he's scouted? IOW, should he be performing based on a hidden rating?

Should every player whose rating drops be given a scouting report even if, for the sake of discussion, the team has an inadequate scouting budget?

Perfect knowledge makes the game less interesting and I'm OK with what you describe even if its not intended. As I've commented earlier, I've noticed a delay between ratings change and the scouting report. Makes perfect sense to me.

CBeisbol · 11-24-2020, 07:08 PM

Gotta say I agree with Brad on this one

I think

Talent changes shouldn't be reflected in the ratings until a player is scouted. So, yes, the "hidden" talent rating. But then it shouldn't show up in the ratings either, that makes no sense.

Players' underlying ratings should change over time, and maybe even fluctuate a little. This shouldn't be reflected in the ratings or scouting report until a player is scouted (unless scouting is off, obviously).

But...teams don't really scout themselves, their own players. Not the major league ones. They shouldn't be included in the scouting report at all. Except, the coaches and training staff are looking at these players every day. So, they would notice a change in talent.

So, teams should have pretty accurate and up to date information on their own players at all times.

I guess, most realistically, scouts should give periodic scouting reports on whatever they've been assigned to scout. And no ratings changes should be reflected until those scouting reports come in.

Players on your major league team, you should have near instantaneous information on regardless of scouting. This should probably extend to teams you are playing as well since your staff will be seeing them live.

EDIT: the player with the decreased split batting rating, might not have changed. The ratings are relative to other hitters in the league. So if a few other highly rated players entered the league that player's relative rating would go down, even if their actual skill didn't. This is not something a scout or coaches would be aware of. And it's a strange artifact of how computer baseball works.

Brad K · 11-24-2020, 07:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CBeisbol

Gotta say I agree with Brad on this one

I understand your pain. LOL

Charlie Hough · 11-24-2020, 08:08 PM

Scouting is turned off in my game, so Brad K's points don't apply here.

As for CBeisbol's theories, no other highly rated players have entered the league. This is a small, 8-team league with no other leagues, feeder leagues or minors in existence, and I'm in the first season of my league, and the split rating drop occurred only 6 or 7 weeks into the season. It also happened after the first-year player draft pool was created. None of the players in the pool have ratings that would qualify them to make a major league roster, let alone suddenly lower the split contact ratings of the league's best hitter. We're talking 3s for overall contact at best.

This is my own player, on my own team, with scouting and coaching turned off. And ALL other rating changes for my players have appeared in scouting updates and have been logged in their player profiles in the scouting history tab. But those have been overall ratings changes and not changes to individual splits.

Multiple months have since passed, and we're nearing the end of the season, and I've seen monthly scouting updates each time my other players have seen changes in their ratings, potential, positional ratings, etc. So no one can claim it's an issue with the player not being scouted yet, or not enough time passing, or scouting reports not being updated yet.

Clearly the game is not treating split rating changes the same way it treats all other rating changes. If I had not known what my player's splits were beforehand, there would be no record of the change anywhere in the game, and there would be no way for anyone to know that he had declined in that rating.

Brad K · 11-24-2020, 08:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

Scouting is turned off in my game, so Brad K's points don't apply here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

My top hitter's contact rating recently dropped from 10 to 9 vs. righties on a 10-point scale, but there was never a scouting update for a corresponding contact rating change, and it does not show up in his scouting history in his profile

Bold added to second quote.

Explain.

Charlie Hough · 11-24-2020, 08:30 PM

When scouting is "turned off," it just means you're not using the game's normal scouting system. You still get scouting reports whenever player ratings change. They're simply issued by OSA and they are 100% accurate. When you're not using the scouting system, the game doesn't create or rely on individual scouts or assignments, and it does not create the uncertainty or inaccuracy you get when you're using the normal system. In other words, there is still "scouting" in a sense, but it's 100% accurate and all updates and information are immediately visible to the user.

Also, all of those scouting updates and rating changes get logged in the player's profile, just like they do with normal scouting. If you click on the player's History tab and then use the sub-tab for Scouting, you will see a historical record of all his previous rating changes.

In this case, no scouting update was ever issued for my player's right-handed split rating change, even after multiple months and multiple sets of scouting updates involving all the other players on my team who had any overall rating changes in any category. And nothing was ever logged in the scouting history in his profile.

Hopefully this clears things up and explains why I am highly annoyed by this. Something like this should not be happening unless OOTP Developments deliberately coded the game so that split rating changes would not be tracked and logged the way that all other rating changes are. But that doesn't make much sense to me, especially when you're using settings designed to make everything 100% transparent and accurate to the user.

CBeisbol · 11-24-2020, 08:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

unless OOTP Developments deliberately coded the game so that split rating changes would not be tracked and logged the way that all other rating changes are.

Gotta say, this doesn't feel too scandalous to me

Matt Arnold · 11-24-2020, 08:51 PM

Not every change in a split will necessarily be tracked, yes. The way it all works, it's highly possible that the split changed enough to show a different value, but the overall didn't, and so it won't show up on the scouting history.

Basically, say a player on the 20-80 scale is a 55 contact player. If the contact rating dropped to 54, that will round to 55 still, so no change. But if his vsR contact dropped from a 58 (rounds to 60) down to a 57 (rounds to a 55), that won't necessarily show up. It's quite possible if you changed ratings scales, say, the 1-100 scale, it's possible that you would see the overall rating change in the history on there, but if using one of the other scales, you might not.

11-22-2020, 04:14 PM	#1
Charlie Hough Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 3,644	Player Split Contact Rating Drops with No Scouting Update My top hitter's contact rating recently dropped from 10 to 9 vs. righties on a 10-point scale, but there was never a scouting update for a corresponding contact rating change, and it does not show up in his scouting history in his profile. Before the season started, his overall and potential contact rating improved from 8 to 9, and he started the season as a 10 vs. righties and a 7 vs. lefties. But then suddenly in the middle of the season, his rating against righties dropped to 9. A number of my other players have seen changes to their ratings and potential in recent scouting updates, but this player never showed up in any recent updates. The only things that have changed since the pre-season are his overall and potential ratings at 1B. Nothing else shows up in his scouting history. But the drop in contact against righties resulted in him dropping from the top hitter in the league to the fourth-best hitter, and he's lost more than 25 points in batting average in the games since the rating changed. I don't have a lot of experience with development in OOTP, but I always remember seeing an official scouting update or at least a historical record of any rating change like this. Or maybe a player's split ratings can change without an OSA scouting update. Does anyone have any idea if what I'm seeing is normal or a bug?

11-24-2020, 07:08 PM	#14
CBeisbol Banned Join Date: Aug 2019 Location: Ban land in 3...2... Posts: 2,943	Gotta say I agree with Brad on this one I think Talent changes shouldn't be reflected in the ratings until a player is scouted. So, yes, the "hidden" talent rating. But then it shouldn't show up in the ratings either, that makes no sense. Players' underlying ratings should change over time, and maybe even fluctuate a little. This shouldn't be reflected in the ratings or scouting report until a player is scouted (unless scouting is off, obviously). But...teams don't really scout themselves, their own players. Not the major league ones. They shouldn't be included in the scouting report at all. Except, the coaches and training staff are looking at these players every day. So, they would notice a change in talent. So, teams should have pretty accurate and up to date information on their own players at all times. I guess, most realistically, scouts should give periodic scouting reports on whatever they've been assigned to scout. And no ratings changes should be reflected until those scouting reports come in. Players on your major league team, you should have near instantaneous information on regardless of scouting. This should probably extend to teams you are playing as well since your staff will be seeing them live. EDIT: the player with the decreased split batting rating, might not have changed. The ratings are relative to other hitters in the league. So if a few other highly rated players entered the league that player's relative rating would go down, even if their actual skill didn't. This is not something a scout or coaches would be aware of. And it's a strange artifact of how computer baseball works. Last edited by CBeisbol; 11-24-2020 at 07:11 PM.

11-22-2020, 07:11 PM	#2
Brad K Banned Join Date: May 2016 Location: St Petersburg Florida USA Posts: 6,693 Infractions: 0/2 (4)	I don't read scouting reports in great detail but don't they only give overall ratings not split ratings?

11-22-2020, 09:21 PM	#3
Charlie Hough Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 3,644	Yes, it seems that the scouting reports only give overall contact ratings, but his overall rating is now incorrect. Now that his split ratings have dropped to 9 vs. righties and 7. vs. lefties, he would no longer be a 9 overall. He would be an 8. But his scouting report says he's still supposed to be a 9 overall. Why would my batter's split rating be dropped against right-handers if his overall contact rating is still supposed to be a 9? If you're telling me that he's suddenly declining against right-handers, at age 27, in the middle of the season and after being the best hitter in the league up to that point, it's a bit of a stretch. But, if you're going to do that, then you have to recalculate his overall rating, otherwise it's wrong. I will probably have to edit his split rating because this makes no sense, and his batting average has now dropped another 25 points. It's a 50-point drop over the course of a few weeks, all since the right-handed contact rating dropped.

11-22-2020, 09:49 PM	#4
Brad K Banned Join Date: May 2016 Location: St Petersburg Florida USA Posts: 6,693 Infractions: 0/2 (4)	I don't understand the problem. You didn't get a notification on him dropping, is that right? You don't get notifications on every player every month. The e mail report is just the highlights, so to speak.

11-23-2020, 06:14 PM	#6
Brad K Banned Join Date: May 2016 Location: St Petersburg Florida USA Posts: 6,693 Infractions: 0/2 (4)	Overall ratings are rated for 75% vs R ABs and 25% vs L ABs. If you weight the ratings like that you'll come up with 8.5 which rounds to 9

11-23-2020, 06:37 PM	#7
ThePretender All Star Starter Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 1,331	Yeah I don't see a problem here. I have a split in one of my leagues where a guy has 10 vs lhp, 6 vs rhp and 9 overall. Think about it in terms of 1-100. For your guy It could be 99 vs rhp and 79 vs lhp. If you added that and divided by 2 it would be 89, which on 1-10 would be 9. That being said i wish scouting reports were like they are on Statsplus where it gives every rating increase or decrease.

11-24-2020, 01:30 PM	#11
Brad K Banned Join Date: May 2016 Location: St Petersburg Florida USA Posts: 6,693 Infractions: 0/2 (4)	I've noticed on occasion a players ratings change and then sometime later I get the noticed from the scout, which occurs once a month. I wonder if what's happening is a lag between the scouting resulting in the change and the report, which would make sense.

11-24-2020, 06:52 PM	#13
Brad K Banned Join Date: May 2016 Location: St Petersburg Florida USA Posts: 6,693 Infractions: 0/2 (4)	Oh, ok, so what I see is this. A player's rating drops without it being reported. The reason it hasn't been reported is he hasn't been scouted. So would it be better for his lower rating not be shown until he's scouted? IOW, should he be performing based on a hidden rating? Should every player whose rating drops be given a scouting report even if, for the sake of discussion, the team has an inadequate scouting budget? Perfect knowledge makes the game less interesting and I'm OK with what you describe even if its not intended. As I've commented earlier, I've noticed a delay between ratings change and the scouting report. Makes perfect sense to me.

11-24-2020, 08:08 PM	#16
Charlie Hough Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 3,644	Scouting is turned off in my game, so Brad K's points don't apply here. As for CBeisbol's theories, no other highly rated players have entered the league. This is a small, 8-team league with no other leagues, feeder leagues or minors in existence, and I'm in the first season of my league, and the split rating drop occurred only 6 or 7 weeks into the season. It also happened after the first-year player draft pool was created. None of the players in the pool have ratings that would qualify them to make a major league roster, let alone suddenly lower the split contact ratings of the league's best hitter. We're talking 3s for overall contact at best. This is my own player, on my own team, with scouting and coaching turned off. And ALL other rating changes for my players have appeared in scouting updates and have been logged in their player profiles in the scouting history tab. But those have been overall ratings changes and not changes to individual splits. Multiple months have since passed, and we're nearing the end of the season, and I've seen monthly scouting updates each time my other players have seen changes in their ratings, potential, positional ratings, etc. So no one can claim it's an issue with the player not being scouted yet, or not enough time passing, or scouting reports not being updated yet. Clearly the game is not treating split rating changes the same way it treats all other rating changes. If I had not known what my player's splits were beforehand, there would be no record of the change anywhere in the game, and there would be no way for anyone to know that he had declined in that rating.

11-24-2020, 08:30 PM	#18
Charlie Hough Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 3,644	When scouting is "turned off," it just means you're not using the game's normal scouting system. You still get scouting reports whenever player ratings change. They're simply issued by OSA and they are 100% accurate. When you're not using the scouting system, the game doesn't create or rely on individual scouts or assignments, and it does not create the uncertainty or inaccuracy you get when you're using the normal system. In other words, there is still "scouting" in a sense, but it's 100% accurate and all updates and information are immediately visible to the user. Also, all of those scouting updates and rating changes get logged in the player's profile, just like they do with normal scouting. If you click on the player's History tab and then use the sub-tab for Scouting, you will see a historical record of all his previous rating changes. In this case, no scouting update was ever issued for my player's right-handed split rating change, even after multiple months and multiple sets of scouting updates involving all the other players on my team who had any overall rating changes in any category. And nothing was ever logged in the scouting history in his profile. Hopefully this clears things up and explains why I am highly annoyed by this. Something like this should not be happening unless OOTP Developments deliberately coded the game so that split rating changes would not be tracked and logged the way that all other rating changes are. But that doesn't make much sense to me, especially when you're using settings designed to make everything 100% transparent and accurate to the user.

11-24-2020, 08:51 PM	#20
Matt Arnold OOTP Developer Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Here and there Posts: 16,089	Not every change in a split will necessarily be tracked, yes. The way it all works, it's highly possible that the split changed enough to show a different value, but the overall didn't, and so it won't show up on the scouting history. Basically, say a player on the 20-80 scale is a 55 contact player. If the contact rating dropped to 54, that will round to 55 still, so no change. But if his vsR contact dropped from a 58 (rounds to 60) down to a 57 (rounds to a 55), that won't necessarily show up. It's quite possible if you changed ratings scales, say, the 1-100 scale, it's possible that you would see the overall rating change in the history on there, but if using one of the other scales, you might not.