Contact hitter can't hit

[Sinnerman]

WTF is going on here. Jennings can't hit, card has near 200 contact though. PT experts enlighten me. I wasn't expecting much more than a lot of singles but even that's not happening.

EDIT: not impressed with Gehringer platooning either.... dude should be killing righties.

[bailey]

This happens a lot. When everyone in your league has great cards at every position you can bet that some of those great cards are going to ...k.

[Sinnerman]

Originally Posted by bailey

This happens a lot. When everyone in your league has great cards at every position you can bet that some of those great cards are going to ...k.

After 1800 plate appearances? And frankly he's not a good overall batter but should have a bigger average than anyone else on the team.

[daves]

What is his OBA?

[Sinnerman]

Originally Posted by daves

What is his OBA?

Overperforming, I reckon based upon everything else.

[daves]

At least you have a great fielding shortstop. Your defense should be among the top rated?

What level are you in?

[rburgh]

get crushed at the upper levels when all the pitchers have 130 control or more.

[bailey]

I just noticed that one player in perfect league this week (a league which against all odds I am playing in this week) has used this variant Jennings for the last 8 seasons and has won the PeL twice in that span. In 2399 plate appearances the slash line is .271/.333/.338 and total WAR of 10.2 all in PeL. Perhaps, it is the defense that is this card's greatest value, or the supporting cast covers up any weaknesses.

[Sinnerman]

Just thought 190+ contact guy would... contact. All good after my 2022 experience I should know better. I would expect a few banger seasons eventually but this dude is costing me.

[Fabtron7]

Originally Posted by Sinnerman

Just thought 190+ contact guy would... contact. All good after my 2022 experience I should know better. I would expect a few banger seasons eventually but this dude is costing me.

What are his babips

[Sinnerman]

Originally Posted by Fabtron7

What are his babips

Not like his stats say.

[Buchs]

Dan Brouthers has same problem.

Me and a friend got him early on like in low silver, I had regular he had variant. He would never perform although being near the top of all players in the league in contact stat.and BABIP at the time.

I started looking at all Brouthers every year and they all usually sucked always. We couldn’t make sense of it. Seemed like something wrong with the card.

[Sinnerman]

Originally Posted by Buchs

Dan Brouthers has same problem.

Me and a friend got him early on like in low silver, I had regular he had variant. He would never perform although being near the top of all players in the league in contact stat.and BABIP at the time.

I started looking at all Brouthers every year and they all usually sucked always. We couldn’t make sense of it. Seemed like something wrong with the card.

I noticed that even in silver and low gold. I'm just ******ed thinking this time would be different. So to recap... contact doesn't matter over 100. Maybe 120? Same ****.

[Sinnerman]

Frankly would love a reply from a dev explaining why an (almost) 170 BABIP guy with 190+ contact utterly fails . Reckon they might be confused as well....

[LeeD]

It's generally true that very high ratings aren't as good as very low ratings are bad. I look at things like Stuff and BABIP as threshold ratings. You don't want them below the threshold (which has to be guesstimated and is constantly moving upward), but numbers well above it don't get you much extra.

Also with Jennings, you're not getting the non-BABIP portion of batting average, which is home runs. Someone who hits 20 home runs is also getting 20 hits, which is somewhere around 40 points of batting average.

[Lathum]

That is one of the problems in the game. Offensive players just don't put up the numbers based on their ratings. I get it is because they are facing all great pitching, but it is weird that McGwire with 174 power has hit 16, 18, and 18 HR in the last three full seasons at HG.

[HRBaker]

It would be interesting to compare the total number of runs scored at each pyramid level. I would guess a lot fewer runs are scored as you move up the pyramid - which by definition - would mean talented pitchers overwhelm talented hitters as the ratings go up.

It would seem more realistic that runs scored should stay the same at all levels if hitting and pitching ratings are treated equal. Two rosters of Perfect+ players should provide the same kind of game as two teams of Iron cards, no?

[Sinnerman]

Originally Posted by HRBaker

It would be interesting to compare the total number of runs scored at each pyramid level. I would guess a lot fewer runs are scored as you move up the pyramid - which by definition - would mean talented pitchers overwhelm talented hitters as the ratings go up.

It would seem more realistic that runs scored should stay the same at all levels if hitting and pitching ratings are treated equal. Two rosters of Perfect+ players should provide the same kind of game as two teams of Iron cards, no?

I thought the normalization of league stats means the same amount of runs are scored in every PT league, every season (among various other stats). I could be wrong. Anyhow I've stopped complaining about Jennings bat after looking at some other contact players in the league and their career numbers in diamond leagues. Shouldn't I have done that before getting my card?!?!? DUH.

Ichiro V5 doesn't hit well, in addition to Jennings V5. Two Ozzies V5 same boat. Lajoie isn't looking good at this level, Gheringer V5 meh and not just mine. Most shocking of all is how underperforming the one PTCS Wade Boggs 103 card has performed over the last 5 seasons in high diamond. Four newer Fred Dunlaps participated, and early on he's more of mixed bag with some horrible to decent showings, although extreme pull might nerf him a lot. There's 2 Frisch in the league including mine, 4 full seasons each and interestingly each one so far seems to be outperforming relative to other contact hitters.

So it's not an anomaly with this specific Jennings card. Just to note, all these years I've used the 20-80 ratings in the base game where 50+ contact is good, 60+ contact is great, 70+ is amazing. Forgive me for thinking 190+ contact would be decent heh. But PT format is totally different (at higher league levels, at least), when every card has amazing stats none of them do.

TLDR: oh well

[cwhitman]

Originally Posted by HRBaker

It would be interesting to compare the total number of runs scored at each pyramid level. I would guess a lot fewer runs are scored as you move up the pyramid - which by definition - would mean talented pitchers overwhelm talented hitters as the ratings go up.

It would seem more realistic that runs scored should stay the same at all levels if hitting and pitching ratings are treated equal. Two rosters of Perfect+ players should provide the same kind of game as two teams of Iron cards, no?

every single league has approximately the same league totals: you can look at that every week.


the way the normalization works, is if you had two leagues, one with nothing but 40 overall pitchers and the other with perfect pitchers, the 40 overall pitchers would perform exactly the same as the perfect pitchers. league performs the same regardless of player quality: it's just the distributions are different. you can check that by looking at the html of any league file every week

[alanohio]

Normalization isn't why best hitters can't hit.

Normalization does not erase player differences or suppress elite talent; it only adjusts league wide totals so that the simulated environment produces a targeted run level over a full season. The mechanism operates globally, not individually: it re-scales the frequency of events such as hits, home runs, and walks to keep a league’s aggregate output within expected historical bounds. Crucially, normalization does not alter the relative match-up advantages between hitters and pitchers. A superior hitter still wins more plate appearances than an inferior one, and elite pitching still suppresses offense more effectively than weak pitching. When hitters struggle in Diamond and Perfect, the cause is not normalization reducing their individual capabilities but the disappearance of weak opponents combined with the exceptional defensive and pitching strength those hitters now face. The environment is harder because the competition is exponentially stronger, not because normalization has flattened talent.

As teams migrate upward through the PT pyramid, a fundamental transformation occurs in the competitive environment. Lower-tier leagues exhibit a wide spread in player quality - strong hitters routinely face mediocre pitchers, defenses contain exploitable weak spots, and statistical output often reflects the presence of these soft targets. By contrast, Diamond and Perfect leagues concentrate elite talent so tightly that a different statistical ecosystem emerges. Even hitters with ratings far above 100 find their production compressed.

These six reasons are paramount in explaining what the OP asked...


1. Talent Compression and the Disappearance of Weak Competition
2. Pitching Improvements Outpace Hitting Improvements
3. Defense Becomes a Run-Suppression Machine
4. Ratings Above 100 Provide Diminishing Marginal Advantage
5. Elite vs. Elite Match-ups Reshape the Offensive Profile
6. Statistical Compression Is a Natural Consequence of Equalized Elite Talent


The league environment in Diamond and Perfect is not hostile to hitters because normalization is flawed; it is hostile because every player on the field represents the peak of their archetype. Weak pitchers, poor defenders, and exploitable match-ups, the lifeblood of superstar statistical lines, have been eliminated.

The result is that offensive output collapses toward league means. Hitters who previously feasted on inferior pitching lose the context that made their ratings translate into standout performance. Pitchers gain more from their rating advantages than hitters do from theirs, and defenses compound those effects.

In fact, it was these reasons that made me decide to only play PT until the All Star break (like many others). At that point PT becomes less of a baseball game and more of a Master-class in spreadsheet analysis. For mathematicians and statisticians that may be their slice of Heaven, but for me - I love the stories of baseball, which led me to fictional worlds full of unknown players.