The thread you should be reading, but aren't!

[jcard]

Originally Posted by Bunktown Ballers

Would be nice if a pre-set option of this would be available upon purchasing the game "Out The Box" instead of one trying to figure out the best option to get the best results. But have a check box option to choose it or not. Just saying!!!!

Bunktown Ballers

The fact that we are for months reluctant to even start saves on the latest version because of nagging settings uncertainty and reported game breaking bugs (player generation, development, etc.) are indictments of the product sold. I no longer care whether the problem is a lack of commitment to getting the defaults correct before release or a tacit admission that there are no solutions attainable by any amount of dial-tweaking the existing software. In the end, the net decrease in the quality of my experience is the same.

[LansdowneSt]

Originally Posted by jcard

Really, broad realism and one-year recalc via blunt algorithm are basically an incompatible ends / means pairing. There are lots of similar problems. For example: a player who was an All-Star in years X-2, X-1, X+1, and X+2, but got only 100 ABs in year X due to injury is treated no differently for that year than some lifetime minor leaguer who got called up for the final month and feasted on September pitching (including a lot of pitchers who he had just spent five months batting against in AAA, though know these same matchups are given the frisson of “MLB-quality”). Similarly, the 4x multiplier for starter thresholds (vs reliever thresholds) makes modern seasons virtually impossible in terms of having enough decent starters without permitting a number of small sample size relief heroes.

You have the option to double-weight the 100 AB in year X to hit 200 AB.

[HonusWagner]

Case in point - thousands of views and only a half dozen (albeit strong) contributors.

And it's not mentioned in the online manual.

[jcard]

Originally Posted by LansdowneSt

You have the option to double-weight the 100 AB in year X to hit 200 AB.

That would do nothing in terms of distinguishing whether a the statistics put up in those at bats were a small sample from a perennial MLB All-Star or the greatest four weeks in the career of an organizational player. An example would be something like Garciaparra in 2001. In the midst of a run of All-Star seasons he missed most of that year with injuries, while performing at a level below that of the surrounding years but still pretty decent for a shortstop (.289 / .352 / .470). He is treated no differently than Roosevelt Brown (491 career plate appearances) or Mark Little (282 career PAs), who were similarly productive hitters as Garciaparra in virtually identical samples (NG 91, RB 92, ML 90). That is just the fact of how the one-year recalc works. Given that system, the only realistic way to avoid many of the issues cited is to begin with a curated database that manually has incorporated these distinctions.

[jcard]

Personally, I would recommend an option where when the threshold was not reached in the default recalc period, the game tried to backfill the shortfall by progressively drawing from additional surrounding years. This would be to the benefit of players who were established MLB players with a track record who happened to have missed a lot of time during the default recalc period (particularly for one-year recalc).

[No Pepper]

Originally Posted by jcard

Personally, I would recommend an option where when the threshold was not reached in the default recalc period, the game tried to backfill the shortfall by progressively drawing from additional surrounding years. This would be to the benefit of players who were established MLB players with a track record who happened to have missed a lot of time during the default recalc period (particularly for one-year recalc).

Isn't that the point of 3 or 5 year recalc then? There's a balance to strike of what you want and what you get out of OOTP, especially when you start considering individual players over the collective. We have the ability to edit individual players to adjust to our liking.

"Pitcher ratings are adjusted to sample size, so a pitcher with 100 AB in a season, even if he performed good, will be rated lower than a position player with 600 AB and the same stats" - that this is by design

.

Does this apply to "two-way players"? These guys must be "identified" differently than good-hitting pitchers.

[jcard]

Originally Posted by No Pepper

Isn't that the point of 3 or 5 year recalc then?

I am addressing situations where, for example, the user wants to use one-year recalc as the default check, but if a player falls short of the threshold for that season the game first uses additional season data from his career. Only if the career (or selected maximum base period window) fails to cover the shortfall would the game then apply the A / W adjustments. It might make it easier for users to use one-year recalc without feeling that smaller sample size players were misrepresented positively or negatively. Personally, I would not play with recalc (just my preference), but I was trying to offer potential options to those who do use it (also: even playing with just the development engine, your starting player pool is still created by the recalc option active during game creation; I will have to look into how subsequent draft classes / FAs are generated).

[BaseballReplayJournal]

Originally Posted by Pelican

My guess is that the early PCL had players who were not ready or able in 1915 to journey across the country, on the hope of playing in MLB.

Apologies for jumping on a single quote that is secondary to the point of the thread — but this stood out to me.


Based on my research, it's not only PCL players who decided that it wasn't worth it to journey across the country to try to play in either the American or National Leagues. You see the same thing in the pre-WWI era among minor leaguers who were already playing in the east.


My favorite example is Harry Pattee, a player who is probably as obscure as they come. Pattee played half a season for Brooklyn in 1908. As I was doing research for this article, I learned that Brooklyn had actually signed Pattee as early as 1906, but had difficulty convincing him to leave the New England minor league circuit to play in the big city.


It turns out that Pattee had good reason to stay away from Washington Park. Washington Park was located across the street from a number of factories, and was constantly covered in smog and dust.


Pattee suffered an injury in 1908 when a piece of ash from one of those factories blew into his eye. He then injured his knee when he tried to come back from that eye injury, and wound up going back to the cleaner air of the minor leagues, never to return to the majors.


Now, the really crazy thing about this is that Pattee wasn't the only minor league player that Ebbets signed but couldn't convince to actually move up to the big club. The Superbas had a lot of difficulty convincing players to play in Washington Park — and had a real rough time convincing fans to watch games there. This particularly evident if you start researching the National League championship teams of 1899 and 1900 — the attendance was pitiful both years, and the old newspapers were filled with rumors that the Superbas were going to move to Washington DC midway through 1900.


Sometimes it wasn't the player's choice. You get guys like Hunky Shaw, who was a star in Tacoma in 1906 and 1907 and wound up being picked up by the Pirates in early 1908. The Pirates were in desperate need of a third baseman, and Shaw was a good fielder and known for his hitting skill. However, Honus Wagner's return from his holdout (which was reported as a "retirement" at the time) shook things up considerably in the lineup. Outfielder Tommy Leach wound up moving over to third base, and Shaw ended up with a single plate appearance in his major league career before moving back to the minors.


Shaw is the sort of player designed for OOTP — and frustrates me to no end as a result. I wish the minor league database before 1915 or whenever it starts in earnest were more complete. Anybody playing a 1908 replay is going to wonder why the Pirates had a "pinch hitter" who only strikes out — and anybody managing that team is going to be in trouble if Leach is injured.


The real interesting part is that Alan Storke had been Pittsburgh's third baseman in 1907. He decided to go back to Harvard in early 1908, which is the reason why the Pirates picked up Shaw in the first place. That's another odd transaction that you don't see much anymore.



The point, though, is that it was pretty common in those days for other things to keep otherwise good players from having major league careers. Sometimes their progress was blocked, and internal clubhouse politics ensured that they'd have no chance. Sometimes they didn't want to play there themselves.


The more I look into the old history, the more I realize that player movement was more common in the railroad days than I first thought. Of course, there are also some funny stories in books like The Glory Of Their Times about newly arrived young players getting lost on the way to the ballpark.