How can you tell defense matters in 3d played out games?

[Roy Tucker]

I know defense definitely matters in this game. And I know I can check the fielding stats afterwards to see how players are doing.

My question is when playing out a game in 3d, is there any way of knowing in the moment if a player made a great or terrible defensive play?

[mtbullock]

Ootp defensive ratings and metrics, errors, and outfield assists have always fascinated me; part of the reason I got addicted and have been playing my summers away since 2009. The ebb and flow of how and why a fielder sacrifices an out because of a bad route to the ball or errant throw both maddens and drives me to further understand the game. But the answer to your question is multifaceted. If you are referring to wanting to view a player make a spectacular defensive play, mlb the show style, that’s not what you’ll get playing out a live game. But the announcers will key you in when a fantastic play is made.

I get off on a +hitter that’s rated 30 in left field (1-100 ratings) having a solid season with little errors and a couple outfield assists while hitting 38 home runs. But when you look deep into the metrics the more likely conclusion is that they didn’t make any great plays, only the routine ones and if I had a 98 rated left fielder, my pitching may have had less hits against over the course of 162 games. To delve deeper into what I mean this forum is the place to go:

https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...d.php?t=329441

That’s the fun of OOTP and what makes me keep coming back, if I’m playing a division where there are a lot of good lefty hitters I can try to expose left field with a poor defender who will hit 35 bombs and only cost six million dollars. If I’m in a division with some heavy hitting right handed hitters, I may be less likely to expose left field and try to spend better money for a great defender in left that’ll only hit 20. Not sure if I answered your question and I went kind of deep but your question got me going this morning.

[MathBandit]

This may be a much simpler answer than what you're looking for, but the way I try to evaluate defense, both in the OOTP animation and when watching real baseball is...how often does the player make an out?

Take the SS for example. On balls hit on the ground to the left side of second, are many of them outs? Do a lot of them seem to either get through, or be fielded with no throw? If anything, I think the 'WebGems' style plays are actively misleading much of the time, since how easy or hard a fielder makes a play look doesn't tell us anything about how easy or hard a play it was.

Here's a RL example I like to point to. Most people agree Ozzie Smith is *the* single best defensive SS. Many people disagree pretty wildly on how good Jeter was defensively at SS (let alone the fact one of the best defensive SSs of his generation was playing 3B beside him for many years). How can we tell how Jeter's defense compares to The Wizard's though, especially back in the day where we don't have fancier defensive stats like today? Errors and Fielding Percentage are of course both worse than useless, so comparing their Fielding Percentage (which is very close; .978 vs .976). We don't have UZR, DRS, or OAA for most of their careers.

What we do have, though, is something much simpler and more basic that tells us all we need to know. Ozzie played just under 22k innings at SS, Jeter played a little over 23k innings. Ozzie had 9375 Assists and 4249 Putouts; comparatively, Jeter only had 6605 Assists and 3820 Putouts. That's a *lot* more times Ozzie Smith got the batter out.

[Rain King]

I do wish there was the concept of "star" plays (both successful and unsuccessful) and that we could see that information during gameplay, which is (I think) what the OP was getting at.

[mtbullock]

Originally Posted by Rain King

I do wish there was the concept of "star" plays (both successful and unsuccessful) and that we could see that information during gameplay, which is (I think) what the OP was getting at.

I'm almost certain that when a 5 star play is conducted the PBP will announce it.

[Art Deco]

Originally Posted by mtbullock

I'm almost certain that when a 5 star play is conducted the PBP will announce it.

Yeah the PBP will usually say stuff like "what a gem" "or X made a player most fielders don't make" and conversely you'll see "the defense let them down there" or "a fielder with better range would have made that play", or comments to that effect.

[NavalHistorian]

I have a question that's somewhat related to this one.

Most years, I spend almost all of my time playing the Perfect Team mode but I think the question I have is related to how OOTP works rather than just related to the Perfect Team mode.

I haven't charted this so I definitely acknowledge I could be entirely wrong, but in both OOTP 22 and OOTP 21, pitchers (and SPs in particular) seem to commit more errors than they do in real life MLB.

Has anybody found this to be true in OOTP overall?

[MrDov]

I do believe the game tracks star plays, if that’s where plays are bucketed by % converted. In OOTP22 I was toying with what data shows up in exports and one of the things I noticed was fielding stats like “number of opportunities on plays 81-100” and now many plays made in that bucket. I didn’t go much further than that to see if that data is available within the game normally or if that’s export only, but regardless OOTP does keep track of that and so it should be possible for them to use that during game broadcasts.

[Eugene Church]

It would be nice to know the fine defensive plays in games in the animation mode... I no longer look at the text PBP.

I play out all of my OOTP games in 3D... I see 3-5 diving plays in the OF per game... really can't tell from the animation if the infield plays are web gems or not... outfield plays don't show them either.

I do not have documented facts to show it, just casual observations, but IMO OOTP has far too many diving plays compared to real baseball... there are usually only 1-2 web gems a game in real baseball... I keep scoreboards at each game I attend and use an * to indicate an outstanding catch or throw... ** for a great catch or play... rarely does my scorecard show more than one web gem a game.

[MathBandit]

Originally Posted by Eugene Church

It would be nice to know the fine defensive plays in games in the animation mode... I no longer look at the text PBP.

I play out all of my OOTP games in 3D... I see 3-5 diving plays in the OF per game... really can't tell from the animation if the infield plays are web gems or not... outfield plays don't show them either.

I do not have documented facts to show it, just casual observations, but IMO OOTP has far too many diving plays compared to real baseball... there are usually only 1-2 web gems a game in real baseball... I keep scoreboards at each game I attend and use an * to indicate an outstanding catch or throw... ** for a great catch or play... rarely does my scorecard show more than one web gem a game.

I mentioned this earlier, but whether a play involves a dive or not has very little correlation as to if its a good defensive play.

Kevin Pillar got the nickname Superman for all his WebGem diving catches in CF. He was a crap defender.

[NoOne]

Originally Posted by Roy Tucker

I know defense definitely matters in this game. And I know I can check the fielding stats afterwards to see how players are doing.

My question is when playing out a game in 3d, is there any way of knowing in the moment if a player made a great or terrible defensive play?

what you see is a reflection of the calculation of various probabilities. Certain thngs are simply given in proper proportion after the fact.. the 3d animation doesn't cause anything. the game isn't actually played out on a digitial field... the location of balls is not really part of the causality... it is determined after the outcome is decided.

they calculate a hit or not.. an error? etc... then the rest is just a facade... possibly forced into certain proportions, like ball locations etc... some correlation to type of hit is possible, since that is part of the real calculations.. so, a double won't often show up as an infiled location or very near it.. but i'm sure it's possible.. someone somewhere has gotten an infield double in 100-some years of baseball, i'd wager.

there is no way to know if it was a boring double play or an acrobatic one, no. if they say it in the text description output, it's fabricated for our enjoyment.