Dick Allen, 1967, Utility IF, according to my scout

[Brad K]

It's true that Allen has ratings all over the IF, on good at 1B, but really, a 25 year old three time All Star as a Utility IF? He's making $300k a year.

[Brad K]

Sorry, according to my Asst. GM.

[uruguru]

314 at bats with a .255 average.

You can't be an All-Star forever.

If this is a recalc league then, yeah, obviously snap him up.

[Brad K]

I think its funny that the game calls a 25 year old three time all star making $300k a year and an acceptable fielder only at 1B a utility IF.

[Matt Arnold]

A .255 hitter with ratings at multiple infield positions is what the game sees. Given you have a full season 1962 for him it looks like you're not using recalc.

But the above comes from the team needs, and in that context, "utility infield" mostly just means someone who can play passably at multiple infield spots, it doesn't necessarily mean someone who's a scrub. You can ask for a "superstar utility infield" if you want.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

A .255 hitter with ratings at multiple infield positions is what the game sees. Given you have a full season 1962 for him it looks like you're not using recalc.

But the above comes from the team needs, and in that context, "utility infield" mostly just means someone who can play passably at multiple infield spots, it doesn't necessarily mean someone who's a scrub. You can ask for a "superstar utility infield" if you want.

I do know Brad uses recalc. This league is using historical minors, so it's not all that odd that Allen has a full years worth of stats in 1962.

[Brad K]

David is correct about my settings.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

A .255 hitter with ratings at multiple infield positions is what the game sees. Given you have a full season 1962 for him it looks like you're not using recalc.

But the above comes from the team needs, and in that context, "utility infield" mostly just means someone who can play passably at multiple infield spots, it doesn't necessarily mean someone who's a scrub. You can ask for a "superstar utility infield" if you want.

I specified average quality at least age 25 with no specification for salary.

This isn't a complaint. This is a "hey folks, look at this, isn't this funny"?

[Brad K]

Whoops! I didn't notice. He can't play 1B yet!

[Reed]

Hitting .255 in 1967 is pretty good. I think league average was low .240s. His HR total is pretty good for that number of ABs.

[Pelican]

So, he could be a Ben Zobrist kind of guy, not as versatile defensively, but more power, at least potential. I don't play with recalc, but with it on I gather he has five more tremendous years coming. Wherever he plays. And then the DH Rule. I'd snap him up.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by Pelican

So, he could be a Ben Zobrist kind of guy, not as versatile defensively, but more power, at least potential. I don't play with recalc, but with it on I gather he has five more tremendous years coming. Wherever he plays. And then the DH Rule. I'd snap him up.

I'm playing 1962 right now using historical minors, no recalc. Just made it to June 1st and Allen has 17 home runs, 40+ runs batted in and is hitting around .305. He has the Phillies in contention.

[Brad K]

Full minors has a lot of potential but MLB players having fantastic years in MLB before their RL debut is excessive. So is having career minor leaguers as the leading HR hitter etc.

Next time I'm going to solve one of those problems by deleting all the players who never made MLB but that's a nuclear solution I would prefer not to use. Concerning David's situation with Allen, I have a similar situation with Bench where he's an All Star a year before his RL MLB debut.

I'm not saying a player should never come up early but exceeding their RL first year performance a year early just doesn't seem right.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by Brad K

Full minors has a lot of potential but MLB players having fantastic years in MLB before their RL debut is excessive. So is having career minor leaguers as the leading HR hitter etc.

Next time I'm going to solve one of those problems by deleting all the players who never made MLB but that's a nuclear solution I would prefer not to use. Concerning David's situation with Allen, I have a similar situation with Bench where he's an All Star a year before his RL MLB debut.

I'm not saying a player should never come up early but exceeding their RL first year performance a year early just doesn't seem right.

I'm not using recalc, so Allen doing what he's doing doesn't bother me.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by Brad K

Full minors has a lot of potential but MLB players having fantastic years in MLB before their RL debut is excessive. So is having career minor leaguers as the leading HR hitter etc.

The reason this happens is because the OOTP AI has 20/20 hindsight that the real-world GM's didn't have.

For example, they see a guy who did well in AA and is ready for AAA. It would be absolutely insane to bring him up to the majors right away.

What they didn't know, but the OOTP AI does know, is that player is going to have a monster season in AAA and get called up the following year.

So when OOTP gives that player the ratings he needs to have that monster AAA season, the team's AI general manager looks that those ratings (based on a season THAT HASN'T HAPPENED YET) and thinks, "wow, this guy is ready for the majors. Let's bring him up now"

The change in 25 to create more distance between the MLB and AAA ratings has helped with this a bit, but the only other thing you can do to help mitigate it is to remove ratings out of the player evaluation. That's how I play, but I know it's not for everyone.

edit: another issue is that modern player evaluation is more forgiving of high-strikeout batters than in real MLB history. So a lot of high-strikeout hitters with power will get promoted earlier in historical games than they did in the real world.

[Brad K]

A monster season in AAA gets too much weight.

I don't know of a fix for the fact the computer manager and human manage can both see a player could be in MLB a year early due to his ratings being based on a not yet played AAA season.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by Brad K

A monster season in AAA gets too much weight.

I don't know of a fix for the fact the computer manager and human manage can both see a player could be in MLB a year early due to his ratings being based on a not yet played AAA season.

There is a direct fix to problems caused by the AI evaluating players based on their ratings. Just set AI evaluation to put 0 in the ratings weight. I use 0-60-30-10.


It doesn't hide potential ratings from the AI, just the actuals.

[Brad K]

If I do that then I have access to better information than the computer managers.

The true answer is that whatever formula OOTP uses to depreciate minor league performances when computing MLB ratings needs to depreciate those performances more.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by Brad K

If I do that then I have access to better information than the computer managers.

dude, you're playing with recalc.