Slump Busting - Options, Advice, Stiff Drink?

[pgjocki]

So before getting to deep into a woe is me story here a few of my standard go to options when a guy is slumping:

1 - Move position in batting order
2 - Highlight platoon to his strength
3 - Let him rest a day or two
4 - If he has options send to AAA
5 - Trade
6 - Cut

So I have the wonderfully young Dylan Carlson with the St. Louis Cardinals and to start the season here are his stats:

AB - 31
H - 3
2B / 3B / HR - 0
SO - 9
BB - 11
AVG - 0.065
OPS+ - 11

So completely understand that this is a tiny sample size but yikes, this is a very rough start of the season. Besides batting him 9th is there anything I can do or just let this ride?

I'm playing this particular league out in pitch by pitch so each game takes 15-20 minutes unless my bullpen makes it interesting (for the other team and most definitely not for me) and besides calling up Burleson from Memphis I don't have a lot of other options at the moment.

Anyway, I'm running low on whiskey so looking for ideas.

[Brad K]

"So completely understand that this is a tiny sample size"

There's the answer.

[Pelican]

Yeah, relax, and if the trend continues after 100 PA, I agree with your listed alternatives. But first, why not just give him a day off? It works IRL sometimes, so why not in OOTP? As far as batting order position, don’t ignore a change to leadoff. To a guy like Carlson, that could be a message to stop swinging for the fences, and just either make contact or take a walk - - get on base and use your speed. With a gifted talent like that, the XBH will come. Meanwhile, maybe trade RBI for RS, and HR for OBP.

[GTAltman]

Look at his fielding stats. If his glove is above average don't worry about his bat. Think of him as a bad hitting pitcher and deal with it.

OR rearrange your lineup to better protect him
If he's RHB, go L-L-R-L-L or vice versa - but you get the picture.

[MathBandit]

Unless something has gone catastrophically wrong in terms of K% or BB%, I generally will give my established hitters (or even promising prospects) a minimum of 400-500 PAs before I make any real changes to playing time.

[Syd Thrift]

1 won’t do anything, 2 increases his chance of getting hits and getting hits is the best way to break a player out of a slump, 3 works as well, 4 is fine if it’s more than 31 at bats maybe, and 5 and 6 are crazy talk with this small of a sample size. You’re looking at basically 5 groundouts or what have you that if they fell in, you wouldn’t be complaining.

Even if it was, say, 3-31 with 20 Ks, that would be cause for concern. But here? The K rate isn’t even terrible in modern terms. He’s getting BABIPed to death right now; I’m not even sure this is counts as a slump inside of the engine. I’ve seen players have far, far worse stretches and come out ahead of them.

[Bobfather]

If this was midseason you probably would not even notice, or at least care all that much. Keep playing him.

[Ty Cobb]

What's the worst that can happen? Besides, one of these will erase the bad feeling quickly.

[actionjackson]

Choice of stiff drink depends on the gravity, and duration of the slump. As both rise, so does the level of alcohol content. Once you reach wood grain alcohol level, it might be time to re-evaluate the slumping player, for the sake of your health.

[Charlie Hough]

Originally Posted by Bobfather

If this was midseason you probably would not even notice, or at least care all that much. Keep playing him.

"Keep playing him" certainly isn't working with Leon Roberts, one of my historical players in my 1979 game. He's had one of the most abysmal seasons I've ever seen compared to a player's ratings and his rea- life stats. I kept playing him for a long time and then started platooning him based on matchups, and I've tried moving him in the lineup, but nothing has ever worked.

Once in a while he'll have a game where he gets a couple of hits and seems like he's finally going to get into a groove. But then he goes right back to doing nothing but drawing the occasional walk.

We're 120+ games through the season, and he's hitting .187 with 6 HR and 26 RBI, .250 OBP, .336 SLG, and a 0.3 WAR in 235 AB.

In real life, he hit .271 with 15 HR and 54 RBI, .352 OPB, .451 SLG, and 3.7 WAR in 450 AB.

His ratings and talent have remain unchanged all season, so it's not that his skills have diminished in any way. He has just been awful all season, and no one was ever interested in trading much of anything for him because his stats were so rotten.

[Pelican]

Wow, sounds like you are a victim of TCR. I do recall Roberts being an inconsistent and streaky player; but that stat line is worse than mere inconsistency or a bad patch. I have a feeling it is not going to get any better. And I’m not sure you can do anything but bench him. I mean, for curiosity sake, you could release him, see if he gets picked up, and if that changes anything.

I am struggling through a mediocre 1971 with Dick Allen, who IRL excelled for LA that year, and then won the AL MVP in 1972 with the Pale Hose. He’s not that awful, but only 10 HR in September, and 55 RBI hitting fifth or sixth in a decent lineup. He’s even playing a decent LF, though no arm at all. I keep thinking he’ll bust out, and now it’s too late.

[pgjocki]

Originally Posted by Ty Cobb

What's the worst that can happen? Besides, one of these will erase the bad feeling quickly.

Big fan, thanks for sharing

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Pelican

Wow, sounds like you are a victim of TCR. I do recall Roberts being an inconsistent and streaky player; but that stat line is worse than mere inconsistency or a bad patch. I have a feeling it is not going to get any better. And I’m not sure you can do anything but bench him. I mean, for curiosity sake, you could release him, see if he gets picked up, and if that changes anything.

I am struggling through a mediocre 1971 with Dick Allen, who IRL excelled for LA that year, and then won the AL MVP in 1972 with the Pale Hose. He’s not that awful, but only 10 HR in September, and 55 RBI hitting fifth or sixth in a decent lineup. He’s even playing a decent LF, though no arm at all. I keep thinking he’ll bust out, and now it’s too late.

If he’s a vet and the ratings aren’t seen to go down, it’s almost certainly not TCR. Even very low scouting will update you on if a vet declines almost immediately.

It’s possible though that it’s just wildly bad luck. If memory serves, the standard deviation for batting average is around 25 points for a full season. That means that roughly 2/3rds of the time a player who has the ability to hit .260 will hit between .285 and .235. A third of the time though they’ll hit above or below those totals, and about 5% of the time they’ll hit above .320 or below .210. If that seems really low, bear in mind that there are going to be somewhere around 250 seasons like this in a given season, meaning that given normal distribution you should still expect like 12 or 13 guys to hit way above or way below their projected mark. And around a third of *those* players will hit above .345 or below .185… so in every 30 team league there’s likely to be a guy or two who would hit below the Mendoza Line out of sheer bad luck.

It’s a low chance but are the other possibilities, for instance that your scout whiffed on him like 3 straight months (scouts just don’t do that for veteran players, like a guy who’s been in the league for even 5 years gets a wildly anomalous report 0% of the time), higher or lower? To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, we remove the impossible and we’re left with the improbable sometimes.

[tm1681]

You could try e-mailing Mark Grace because he had some opinions on slump busting but I'm not sure if they'd really apply to OOTP