Players choosing to retire instead of being forced out of the game. . .

[statfreak]

I don't know... since it is my baseball universe, I'd like the option to manually override retirement decisions... I don't consider a good player retiring the same as a career-ending injury or losing a player to free agency. Too often I have guys I grow attached to near the verge of some milestone or hit .330 the season before and they retire. I'd like the chance to correct that "error" and allow the player to continue playing.

Besides, as with everything this would be an option... I appreciate and respect that people don't want to play the game like I do... I just ask for the same respect and ability to control my baseball universe.

[ctorg]

I would definitely like the option to "unretire" players without using Pierre's editor, primarily because the editor leaves a copy of the player in the retired.dat file, so you end up with two of him.

[cacrowl]

I have had a pitcher who was 39 and still had great ratings and retire. He had like a 9 in runs, 8 in hits, K's and BB's. Quite disapointing to see him leave.

[RANGER11JP]

Originally posted by ctorg
I would definitely like the option to "unretire" players without using Pierre's editor, primarily because the editor leaves a copy of the player in the retired.dat file, so you end up with two of him.

I agree!!! I've had players still playing well or even being good roll players retire when thay had 20 hits to go for 3000 hits. Maybe we need a factor for team chemisry or leadership which might make a veteran player more valuable to a team than JUST his stats??? Especially with a guy who has been with one team his whole career or for quite some time.

JP

[BrewersFan2003]

I think as well, a player is going to want to stay with a team for a longer time if he is nearing a milestone mark, or if it a ballclub he has been with for a substantial amount of years. Also, now in baseball, I know some players still love the game in their later years despite their talent dropping, and maybe they'll have shot with smaller clubs that are willing to give them opportunities to reach that milestone. There is endless possibilities in the Out of the Park series, imo, and I hope this game just continues to grow and give the game users as much customization as it possibly can, because different people are going to play the game in different ways. And I love some of the options that have been included in OOTP 6 with the aging sliders - which is a great thing imo. I just think we should also have an option to "unretire" because I do see too many players going out after having great seasons and with having very good ratings.

[Ghorticus]

In one of my most recent solo leagues, I've had a pitcher go for 20 seasons, and retire at the age of 39. He was drafted 1st overall in the amateur draft, and went 417-101 on his career, with a 32-6 postseason record, a career 2.44 ERA and 0.91 WHIP. He won 12 outstanding pitcher awards, (seven back to back), including his last three seasons in a row, and was selected to the all-star game each and every year in his career, and he won the outstanding newcomer award in his first season as well. His ratings when he retired were still 10-9-7-10 or so, and I completely expected him to last another 3-4 seasons at that rate or at least at above average major league talent. I was shocked to see that he retired while still being so skilled, and coming off a 10-year $190 million contract to boot.

I'd like to see something like this included in OOTP6 or a future patch so that highly skilled players (and I mean REALLY skilled, as in the ability to go 26-5 with a 1.98 ERA and a 0.88 WHIP with 350 strikeouts in your last season...

[Ben E Lou]

I did a look at some real-life great players quite some time ago, and was quite surprised to see that the myth of great players "going out on top" was just that--a myth. Most of the game's best hitters stuck around until they were well below average. We're talking .220 batting averages. I'll do a search and see if I can find that info.

[Ben E Lou]

Found it. It is in this thread. (NOTE: Most of the links mentioned below no longer work, since I don't have infinite server space to post my careers. ) Here are the key points:

OK. I just took a look at some of the top hitters in the history of the game. I looked at batters with over 3,500 hits and/or over 500 homers who are retired. I looked at their careers and (subjectively) determined what was the first year that they were "in decline," meaning after that year they never put up numbers that were at or near "star-quality." (As I said, I know this is somewhat subjective, but in most cases the year was pretty obvious...) Here's what I found:

AVERAGE AGE OF FIRST "SEASON OF DECLINE": 37.65
AVERAGE AGE OF RETIREMENT: 39.95

Keep in mind, these are the EXTREMELY ELITE of baseball history. (There were exactly 20 guys in over 100 years of baseball history who fit the criteria I used...very convenient number.) It seems that it would follow naturally that these guys have better physical skills and are able to perform at a major league level longer than the thousands of below-average-to-above-average players. So, we should therefore see the "average OOTP superstar" have his first "bad" season at age 37 or 38, and be out of the game at 40. Take that for what it is worth.

I just ran the same experiment with my 50ish season fictional league, adn actually things look a lot better than I would have thought. I realized that since the league was about 1/2 of the lenght of time of real baseball, there should be 10 "elite" players to match the 20 "elite" players of the 100+ years of real baseball. Here are the numbers I found, again for the elite battters:

AVERAGE AGE AT FIRST "DECLINE" SEASON IN REAL LIFE: 37.65
AVERAGE AGE IN OOTP 5.01: 36.8

AVERAGE AGE OF RETIREMENT IN REAL LIFE: 39.95
AVERAGE AGE IN OOTP 5.01: 39.1

Both are about .8 years below the "real" numbers, but the spreads between "decline year" and retirement are identical: 2.3 years.

Alright boyz. My 100-season 5.10 sim finished during the night. I've looked around a little, and ran the numbers on 20 of the greatest in that universe. A few comments before I give the hard numbers....

1. Definitely there's a more varied development curve. There are guys who drop off the table, (Example: Abram Feemster) which definitely happens to some superstars in real life. (Now that I've done a little research, I can show you that some of the game's elite had OOTP5-like declines, and trust me when I say that this was NOT my intuition on the matter at all. Ted Williams is the only one who really "retired in his prime" numbers-wise. The rest quit because they were done.) There are also guys who slowly decline over several years. Example:Michael "Bleeder" Arline

2. I actually had difficulty determing a "year of decline" for several guys this time, because a handful had "spike seasons" in their late 30's. (In other words, a 40-45 homer guy might have had 2 or 3 seasons in their mid 30's of 25-30 homers, but then hit 42 at age 37 or something like that...) Example: Gil "The Bull" Martinez

3. While the overall averages got even closer to reality, something still seems amiss. I'll explain in my next point.

4. It seems to me that the stars don't know when to quit. Too many 38-42 year old former superstars are playing until they get released, rather than hangin' 'em up after a subpar season or two.

5. Sixfour may have a bit of a point about youngsters having solid seasons. While it is VERY rare for a 19-21-year-old to have a solid year, it does happen once in a blue moon. (Aaron, Mantle, Gooden, Williams, Ruth). Looking through the career leader board, I'm not seeing anyone have a solid season before age 22 or 23. RETRACTION!!! I didn't look hard enough. Check out Fred "Snake Eyes" Acuna. He had a very nice season at age 19. If there is one, I'll guarantee that there are others...

OK. Here are the numbers, for the stars:

REAL LIFE AVERAGE AGE OF FIRST YEAR OF DECLINE: 37.65
OOTP5.01 AVERAGE AGE OF FIRST YEAR OF DECLINE: 36.80
OOTP5.10 AVERAGE AGE OF FIRST YEAR OF DECLINE: 37.45

REAL LIFE AVERAGE AGE AT RETIREMENT: 39.95
OOTP5.01 AVERAGE AGE AT RETIREMENT: 39.10
OOTP5.10 AVERAGE AGE AT RETIREMENT: 39.65

REAL LIFE # OF YEARS OF DECLINE BEFORE RETIREMENT: 2.30
OOTP5.01 # OF YEARS OF DECLINE BEFORE RETIREMENT: 2.30
OOTP5.10 # OF YEARS OF DECLINE BEFORE RETIREMENT: 2.20

The average numbers with 5.10 are obviously INCREDIBLY close to the way things have happened in baseball history. I'm uploading this universe to a web site if anyone wants to take a look. There are a few freaks of nature on the leader board worth looking at. This universe can be found at: www.younglifenorthdekalb.com/dynasty

I wish I had posted the specifics of how poorly the game's stars performed in their last season or two. I remember that it was shocking to see that it has happened with regularity.

--Ben

[Steve Kuffrey]

Thanks for the recap of this excellent and insighful post and research.

[sixfour210]

I'm not disputing that players don't start to decline around age 37 or that they retire around 39-40. Or even that the decline period is around 3 years. What I AM saying is that I think the decline should be slightly lesser than it is and players should retire because of their own personal decision and not because they simply have ZERO ratings left.

[Henry]

Originally posted by sixfour210
I'm not disputing that players don't start to decline around age 37 or that they retire around 39-40. Or even that the decline period is around 3 years. What I AM saying is that I think the decline should be slightly lesser than it is and players should retire because of their own personal decision and not because they simply have ZERO ratings left.

There's a few more studies around that have shown that "most" players, do in fact lose their abilities before they retire. a "few" quit before then - and this is mirrored in OOTP to about the right level. 100 year simulations will bring about the right number as what happened in real life.

Henry

[Steve Kuffrey]

Originally posted by sixfour210
I'm not disputing that players don't start to decline around age 37 or that they retire around 39-40. Or even that the decline period is around 3 years. What I AM saying is that I think the decline should be slightly lesser than it is and players should retire because of their own personal decision and not because they simply have ZERO ratings left.

Then you have folks on the other side of the issue who "have said' why did "so and so" retire he still had _______ ratings. Just stating the other issue which has come up before and will again.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally posted by Henry
There's a few more studies around that have shown that "most" players, do in fact lose their abilities before they retire. a "few" quit before then - and this is mirrored in OOTP to about the right level. 100 year simulations will bring about the right number as what happened in real life.

Henry

Yeah. As I said, when I looked into this I was expecting one result, but came up with something entirely different. Despite what we might think, in real life most guys play until the bitter end. And, upon further thought, it is just common sense. Think about an average, non-superstar ballplayer on the back side of his career. He's still a fairly young adult: 32-37 years old. He has never held a job besides playing baseball, has made $300K-$2M for the last 5-10 years, but he never finished (or maybe even went to) college and if he can't land a job as a coach somewhere, he'll be lucky to make $50K outside of baseball. He's probably put enough away to put those three young kids through college, but he (and his wife) would sure like a little more cash stored away to maintain the standard of living to which they've grown accustomed--and they hope to be around at least another 40 years or so! As long as someone--anyone--will pay him the major league minimum to ride the pine, he's likely to keep playing.

Now, I think there's still room for improvement--specifically those drop-off-the-table veterans in the middle of the season. I'd like to see most of the big ratings drops of veterans happen between seasons, and not be shown immediately (i.e.--his stats drop off before his ratings do.)

[Henry]

I'd like to see most of the big ratings drops of veterans happen between seasons, and not be shown immediately (i.e.--his stats drop off before his ratings do.)[/B]

The "off season" thing has been mentioned before, but I also like the "ratings before talents" idea... maybe for guys over 35 ?

Henry

[Ben E Lou]

Originally posted by Henry
The "off season" thing has been mentioned before, but I also like the "ratings before talents" idea... maybe for guys over 35 ?

Henry

That sounds good, but I still go back and forth on it. This is a tough area to be realistic. "Stats only" isn't realistic, because in real life, I'd get to see more than just stats--I'd definitely have some measure of player evaluation. I like to use "reduced" ratings because I think it strikes a good balance. However, the fact is that sometimes a guy comes to spring training and it clear that he's lost a step, his bat speed is slow, etc. His worth in the manager's eyes (i.e., his "rating") goes down immediately, and a weaker performance follows. The manager didn't need any stats to know that the guy was just about done for.

I just had another thought: during the season, let ratings/talent changes be hidden for a while--for ALL players. That way, the guy who is paying close attention to his team can notice before-the-fact that his 36-year-old LF hit .135 last month, or that his 23-year-old AA 2B hit .387 last month, and act accordingly. Rather than allowing ratings/talent updates to happen every single day of the season, let them happen less often: I'm thinking Spring Training, May 15th, July 1st, August 15th, and October 1st--roughly 6 weeks apart.

Heck, such a system could add another layer of difficulty. Let the AI teams see their players' talent/ratings change daily like it is now, but the human player would have to be paying attention to see it as quickly.

[Cuss16]

I personally would like a button for retiring players manually, only because of the kind of online leauge i run.

[cknox0723]

Originally posted by Cuss16
I personally would like a button for retiring players manually, only because of the kind of online leauge i run.

Cuss, I have had the same request before but a nice workaround is to give the player in question a career-ending injury. Just go in to the editor, change their status to "Injured", and type in "254" for the length of the injuries. (This is how I do it in OOTP4 - if it doesn't work for you, let me know.) If you do this just before hitting "Proceed to Next Season", the player will retire the same time as a normal retiree. However, if you do it during, say, free agency or the regular season, you've got to wait until the next offseason to see them show up in the retired list.

Craig