Pitching Splits

[hfield007]

Are pitching splits ever going to be more realistic?

In fictional every pitcher has nearly identical ability against righty and lefty, with the tiniest bit of edge going to their better matchup side.

In real life most pitchers have pretty different ability against right and left handed batters with in plenty of cases being all star caliber against one side and below average against the other.

A lot of strategy gets robbed from playing out games when pitchers are pretty much the same ability against either side of the plate.

[venflaalachi]

Same thing seems to be going on with hitters, very similar ratings against both right and left. Not sure if this is an OOTP 25 thing.

[hfield007]

the pitching thing has always existed in both historical and fictional where there is virtually no diff between their ability against left or right. historical maybe there is a reason, but to have it in fictional makes no sense. it just is not realistic and takes away from strategy when playing games out.

[venflaalachi]

Originally Posted by hfield007

the pitching thing has always existed in both historical and fictional where there is virtually no diff between their ability against left or right. historical maybe there is a reason, but to have it in fictional makes no sense. it just is not realistic and takes away from strategy when playing games out.

I agree 100%

[jbuchanan]

Having no differences in L/R splits for fictional players is totally game-breaking.

Has anyone filed a bug report?

I've been playing for 10 years and it's never been like this.

[Pelican]

What do the ratings look like for the pitchers, when you go into the editor? Is there any material difference between facing right-handed and left-handed hitters?

[Rain King]

Originally Posted by Pelican

What do the ratings look like for the pitchers, when you go into the editor? Is there any material difference between facing right-handed and left-handed hitters?

They are saying the players have split differences. They just seem to think the differences are not large enough.

IMO, the bigger question is what the stats play out to. Can anyone show issues league wide with actual platoon splits? Unfortunately, I don't think it is easy to get those numbers league-wide within the app...would probably need to export stats and do some work in excel.

[Pelican]

Ah, understood. I have seen very narrow splits for RP (typically LHP) who were known to be used against same-handed hitters, and had stats to prove they were effective this way (and far less effective versus opposite-handed hitters). The OOTP ratings did not reflect that.

Of course, this was before the idiotic "must face three hitters" rule, that effectively doomed "situational lefties" (and "situational righties", for that matter). This stupid rule makes it all too easy to pinch-hit for the second or third batter that RP "must" face. Implementing a needless change to (supposedly) speed up the game, without thinking through the impact on strategy and careers, is irresponsible and damaging to the game.

[hfield007]

Originally Posted by Rain King

They are saying the players have split differences. They just seem to think the differences are not large enough.

IMO, the bigger question is what the stats play out to. Can anyone show issues league wide with actual platoon splits? Unfortunately, I don't think it is easy to get those numbers league-wide within the app...would probably need to export stats and do some work in excel.

that's interesting, it may like you said actually work out statistically. But when playing the games out when a LH is 8/7/7 against lefties and 8/7/6 against righties (and pretty much every pitcher is like this, one of the attributes is only 1 point different) it really doesn't make you feel like there's much difference in your decision making for platoons.

If you go into the player editor and run real life players actual stats over 3 or 5 year runs and create ratings based off of those for lefty and righty you see wildly divided split attributes for many pitchers. many pitchers end up with all star caliber ability vs their better side and average quality against their worse side.the game rarely (or never from what i see) gives you anyone like that, let alone many players that have big split differences in ratings.


For instance, for historical sake: Miguel batista in a 2007 game with 3 year ratings. His control is a 5 both vs L and R.
In real life over the 2006-2008 seasons his walk rate was 13.5% vs lefties, 7.7% vs righties

The hard ratings for his control are 345 vs L and 347 vs R
His stuff only has a 5 point diff and his movement a 6 point diff.

Maybe there are limits with historical to do this right but in fictional it would be nice to see real life split abilities, in batting as well and people having some crazy differences on the mound or at the plate like Adam Lind and Lou Whitaker did in real life (but they also have ratings that dont indicate they are that much better in historical games)

[hfield007]

For fictional just looking at my 25 man roster: On a 1-10 scale

Pitchers - 4 pitchers exact same ratings, 5 with 1 attribute having a 1 point diff, 1 pitcher with 1 attribute having a 2 point diff

Batters - 11 batters with the exact same 1-10 ratings, 4 batters with only 1 skill that has a 1 point difference.

Even if platooning works out statistically, if you are playing out games and using ratings as a guide almost nobody has any kind of real platoon advantage. they are virtually identical.


FURTHER:
Looking up the hard ratings in editor for players who have a 1-10 difference in 1 attribute:
Batters - power was +3 and put him over the edge to the next 1-10 point
gap was +7 and put him over the edge to the next 1-10 point
avoid k's was +10 and put him over the edge to the next 1-10 point
gap was +1 and put him over the edge to the next 1-10 point

Pitchers -
stuff was +33 and gave 2 extra points on 1-10 scale
movement was +24 and gave 1 point on 1-10 scale
stuff was +22 and gave 1 point on 1-10 scale
movement was _+11 and gave 1 point on 1-10 scale
movement was +5 and gave 1 point on 1-10 scale
movement was +7 and gave 1 point on 1-10 scale

Small sample size it is jsut my one team in fictional. But I think it is clear on both sides of the ball platoon that the ratings are not very good for platoon splits. The small sample actually makes it seem like the issue is worse in batters than pitchers with virtually almost no difference in any of the ratings.

I do understand that a 1-10 scale will shrink the amount of differences due to their only being 10 numbers to represent the ability. But the hard ratings themselves do not show large differences in ability as we see in real life baseball, and specifically the game lacks any major differences between left and right ratings that some players are quite known for being abysmal vs one side.

[Brad K]

A pitcher is automatically a lot better against same side batters because that's in the average rating of the batters he is facing.

[hfield007]

Originally Posted by Brad K

A pitcher is automatically a lot better against same side batters because that's in the average rating of the batters he is facing.

In my post above though, the batter seem to have even less of a difference in split ratings. Only a few points on that 550 point scale.

From a manager perspective it means I never have a platoon situation in my lineup. Which is unrealistic. The ratings tell me my Lefty's are just as good against lefties as they are against righties with almost no difference.


The game should do a better job creating splits ratings that reflect how real life works. If you use real life stats of players to create ratings for left and right manually you see a lot of lefties who are for instance 8/6/7/7/6 against righties and then 5/6/5/6/4 against lefties and there is actually something you'd have to manage. But the game doesn't create players like this seemingly at all. Despite it being very common

[hfield007]

Did a test within OOTP 25. 30 team base fictional league.

Of the 1413 players who had at least a 25 power rating vs righties (on a 20-80 scale, every 5)

108 players had a rating +/- 5 on the 20-80 (every 5) rating scale
1305 players had the exact same 20-80 rating for left/right handed power.

no one had a 10+ difference.

This defeats all strategy unfortunately and hurts the game. Stratomatic which isnt even that great at least gets more realistic splits than this.

[hfield007]

I Can't do a 1:1 comparison because when you export OOTP 24 data it gives you the raw 0-250 ratings

(actually wish they would go back to this, i dont like that it exports the 20-80 every 5 ratings instead of the raw data anymore, but that is a different issue)

But a 30 team fictional in OOTP 24 produces similar results.

Of 1,411 batters on the 0-250 scale. 77 of the batters had at least a 20 point split difference in power on the 0-250 scale. Which on that scale is about a 5 point diff on the 20-80 scale.

When i look within the game itself and look by power ratings at all players, no one in OOTP 25 has a 10 or more difference on the 20-80 scale between left and right. Again, just not realistic. In OOTP 24, you see a handful of 10 point differences on the 20-80 scale, and two with a 15 diff.

This isn't a new problem with the game. It has always existed. It seems worse this year as the ratings seem much tighter and have made what was already a problem with the game into a much more unlivable issue. I just hope at some point it gets fixed. We need more realistic splits to create worlds where management decisions are tougher than they currently are. It is very common in real life for non elite players to be much better against one side and the ratings should show it.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by hfield007

In my post above though, the batter seem to have even less of a difference in split ratings. Only a few points on that 550 point scale.

From a manager perspective it means I never have a platoon situation in my lineup. Which is unrealistic. The ratings tell me my Lefty's are just as good against lefties as they are against righties with almost no difference.


The game should do a better job creating splits ratings that reflect how real life works. If you use real life stats of players to create ratings for left and right manually you see a lot of lefties who are for instance 8/6/7/7/6 against righties and then 5/6/5/6/4 against lefties and there is actually something you'd have to manage. But the game doesn't create players like this seemingly at all. Despite it being very common

Clearly it is messed up in 25. However with the prior implementation there were minimal L/R difference in ratings for pitchers and large ones for batters. The correction for 25 is not larger pitcher splits but to reimplement the 24 and older system. The output will be reasonable if this method is used.

I think it's not possible to rate both batters and pitchers so the full effect of their splits is visible in their ratings and get the correct output.

[hfield007]

Originally Posted by Brad K

Clearly it is messed up in 25. However with the prior implementation there were minimal L/R difference in ratings for pitchers and large ones for batters. The correction for 25 is not larger pitcher splits but to reimplement the 24 and older system. The output will be reasonable if this method is used.

I think it's not possible to rate both batters and pitchers so the full effect of their splits is visible in their ratings and get the correct output.

This has always existed. Even if you go to 24, the splits were slightly better and more likely to be seen in batters, but still there are no cases of batters in 24 being drastically better against one or the other (ratings wise) but this is pretty common in real life. I guess all in all the ratings in the game just feel much too "samey" and I hope they do something to improve this aspect.

At what point do you just say give them one contact rating and eliminate the split rating because it isnt different anyway. If the splits work out stat wise regardless it's nice, but it doesn't help in the 8th inning when i am trying to determine who to bat against a reliever and the ratings aren't indicative of the skill they have against each side.

[Brad K]

Are you in favor of the entire split difference being determined by the batter ratings?

[hfield007]

Originally Posted by Brad K

Are you in favor of the entire split difference being determined by the batter ratings?

In a perfect world pitchers and batters have realistic splits in that it shows me their actual ability vs each side just like players have in real life.

In absence of that, i'd live with at least the batters having some level of difference between their left/right abilities.

Ideal world for batters we at least see some extreme cases in every league where a few guys on each team have substantial differences. I want to have to make tough decisions, not send the same lineup regardless of who is on the mound.

[snepp]

Random musing...

Anyone remember Adrian Vidal from the v5 days? Dude had crazy hitting splits. He was Bonds against lefties, and Mendoza against righties.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by hfield007

In a perfect world pitchers and batters have realistic splits in that it shows me their actual ability vs each side just like players have in real life.

In absence of that, i'd live with at least the batters having some level of difference between their left/right abilities.

Ideal world for batters we at least see some extreme cases in every league where a few guys on each team have substantial differences. I want to have to make tough decisions, not send the same lineup regardless of who is on the mound.

It takes some fancy calculations for game play calculations if the ratings show the full splits for both batters and pitchers. Let's say a batter performs 20 points worse against same side pitching and he's facing a pitcher who does 20 points better against same side batters. When they are combined the result is going to be more than a 20 point drop in BA.

This brings up the question of whether we saw real life ratings for splits before OOTP 25. I can say the random splits in the pre-real-splits era seemed to hit in the vicinity of the real life differences.

As is often the case it's nearly impossible to test to find the answer due to there being so much noise with the signal. It's something a dev could answer though.