.400+ hitter, need suggestions.....

JAttractive · 08-11-2002, 02:25 PM

I have created a fictional league using modern era settings, unchanged, except that relievers appear Often instead of Very often. I have a 24 team league of actual ML team names and ballparks, removing the ones I dislike in order to keep the league a more manageable size. These teams removed include a number of hitter friendly parks and looking at the stadiums I "lose" you should actually see a reduction in hits and homers due to stadium effects (ie. I took out Colorada, Florida, Arizona, Milwaukee, Tampa Bay and Minnesota). Certainly losing Colorado alone *should* help to prevent the ridiculous seasons some simmers have encountered for players.

Here is the problem for me:
In the first two seasons the league leaders have had acceptable numbers for me. The highest batting average was a .377 and the most homeruns hit were 54. Perfect!

In the third season two players hit over .400 almost the whole year and in the final weak one drops to .396 but the other goes up to .419! The .396 hitter is hard enough to swallow for me as this should be a very rare occurence but for someone to hit over .400 and actually blow past it to hit almost .420 in modern baseball? This guy would be god-like!

So crossing my fingers I decided to turn on the editor and prayed this guy has a 10 for hitting. I tell myself that I could somehow maybe accept it if he is some sort of freak hitting machine unlike we have seen in baseball... No such luck though. This guy has an 8 for hitting and has hit .324 and .341 in the years before this! So he is not some amazing hitter and so I should conceivably see more .400 hitters as the league goes on... Yay! How wonderful!

I just can't bring myself to accept allowing such numbers for my league... everytime I look at the record book I will want to puke. If this was in a deadball era or some other era where it is not so inconceivable I could handle this value but modern baseball just doesn't see this sort of thing.

Any thoughts or suggestions? In past leagues I have turned down the hitting by 2% and found I never encountered this problem. Just that minor tweak was enough... This time though I want to keep modern settings untouched so that I can more accurately compare my league's hitters with other simmed league results.

Is their anyway to keep the modern settings and prevent this? (Ie. recalculating league totals or something).

AarNation8 · 08-11-2002, 02:53 PM

A way to make sure they do not hit that high every year....

Make sure they are playing vs. LHP , because with my experience if a guy with a 8 or 9 for RHP only plays against RHP then he will hit around .400-.450 in some cases. So you may just want to make sure they have a good rating in LHP hitting so they can start those games as well.

JAttractive · 08-11-2002, 03:51 PM

This player was on a computer controlled team so I can't really control when they play though that could be part of the explanation I am sure. I just checked his ratings again with the editor and he has a 9 vs. LHP and 8 vs. RHP.

Here is his season.

Code:

  Category       AVG HR RBI  AB   H 2B 3B   R SB CS  BB   K  OBP  SLG 
  Overall       .422 20 102 580 245 46 13 112 23  7  58 101 .476 .650 
  vs RHP        .405 17  75 412 167 33 10  84 14  3  40  73 .459 .658 
  vs LHP        .464  3  27 168  78 13  3  28  6  4  18  28 .518 .63

And in his bio we have this:

Had 5 hits with 3 RBI against Cleveland on 5/24/1962... Won Batter of the Month award on 6/1/1962, hitting .509 with 5 HR, 29 RBI... Injured on 6/4/1962 with a Strained Abdominal Muscle, out for one week... Had 5 hits with 3 RBI against Detroit on 6/21/1962... Had 23-game hitting streak snapped on 6/23/1962... Was selected to the 1962 Allstar game... Traded from Chicago (A) to Houston on 7/13/1962... Sets a new season NL-Record for Hits with 217 on 9/17/1962... Had 20-game hitting streak snapped on 9/25/1962... Won Batter of the Month award on 10/1/1962, hitting .464 with 5 HR, 19 RBI... Won Outstanding Batter Award in 1962, hitting .422 with 20 HR, 102 RBI...

In it we see he was traded between the leagues and hurt for a short time to account for his only playing 146 games (which can lead to greater skewing of results). Still 580 ABs should be enough to normalize things and he clearly faced lefties and righties and hit both over .400...

JAttractive · 08-11-2002, 06:47 PM

Any ideas on how to prevent this without directly changing numbers?

I don't fully understand what recalculating the league totals and such does and hope perhaps their is an answer along those lines....

asamford · 08-11-2002, 07:21 PM

recalculating league totals does exactly what it says it does. if you hit the button it will change them to the totals your league accumulated last season. if you do this every season you will have one year with more hitting, the next year more pitching, the next year more hitting, and so on. The reason being, if your league had more hits than was in your original league totals, it will raise this number, which will in turn cause your league to have less hits. This has been explained much better than I am capable of, do a search on the forum for "recalculating league totals" and you should find plenty.

JAttractive · 08-11-2002, 07:29 PM

Actually I do understand what you mean (based on my understanding of the league numbers), thanks!

Probably this wouldn't have helped much then, and in fact may have made it worse, as the season prior I thought the homeruns and hits were a bit lower than a typical modern year.

I am at a loss then. Is it typical for you other modern era fictional league simmers to see this sort of thing?

JAttractive · 08-11-2002, 07:29 PM

Oh and thanks also for letting me know about the search function. To be honest I never even noticed it

Chief Wahoo · 08-12-2002, 01:40 AM

I know you said that you didn't want to change the settings but I would think that lowering the hits would be the only way to help your numbers unless you wanted to go in and change the player's ratings. If it were me I would just lower like you said by 2 or 3% then backup your league and run a test season to see if the numbers came out the way you wanted them to.

asamford · 08-12-2002, 04:21 AM

i know this has been said a million times, but to avoid confusion, if you want less hits in your league, RAISE the league totals. If your total hits is 40000, and you have a guy hitting .419, and you'd like that to top out at around .389 instead, you'd want to move the hit total up to around 43500... i suggest saving a copy of your league, messing around with the numbers, sim a season, check all your stats, and keep making minor tweaks with the numbers until they're coming out like you'd want them. You have to find a balance. For me, to get pitchers with nice strikeout totals, I find that the league leader in strikeouts for hitters will sometimes be above 200, but that's just something I have to live with, since I'd like to have a couple of pitchers with 300+ K's... so just be careful, that if you tune the hits down too much, you might have too many pitchers with sub 2.00 era's, but just keep playing with the numbers till you find something you're happy with, then go back to that league folder you saved, plug in your #'s and go!

Henry · 08-12-2002, 09:14 AM

JAttractive,

Be careful

I knowyour tempted to change the "league" numbers but remember your going to pull "everyone" down by doing so - just to water down two players. Given the fact this player is only rated 8/9 and your seeing normal results for everyone else, the only explanation is this guy is having a career year or stretch (like rolling double 6's 10 times in a row). I would have to believe if his ratings remain at 8/9, this will only be a temporary thing. I can say I haven't seen it to this extent in all I've played - but maybe your seeing a "once in a lifetime" performance.... I'd be tempted to go-with-it and enjoy

Henry

JAttractive · 08-12-2002, 04:05 PM

Thanks for the replies guys!

Asamford, thanks for the clarification and at one time I did have this problem. After simming out a league I found there were a lack of real strikeout pitchers so I toyed with the numbers as well. I kept raising the number until it got to the point that after a full year the top pitcher had 20 strikeouts hehe! Thats when I came to the board and people like Scott and Steve set me straight.

Normally in leagues I raise the hits in the league totals numbers by 2% which would effectively *drop* the actual hits seen in the league by 2%. With this minor change their was little effect on the era and hitters seasons and it prevented anyone from ever reaching .400 and yet still there were some decent averages (.380+) for the leaders. However as Henry points out I did still pull everyone down and I found the top ten hitters list each year look lessed than exciting. While the top hitter would usually be .360+ the last few would be lower than I like, especially when you considered the top ten list was for both leagues.

That is why I was hoping for a different solution this time around but I think I will just take Henry's advice. I will imagine it as a once in a life time season (he has hit .322, .327 and .362 in the three other seasons I have simmed out now) and keep things as they are. This is really my own problem with the league stats thus far and I probably shouldn't get too concerned.

Of course I think I just erased over my league and its all moot now anyway... UGH!

08-11-2002, 02:25 PM	#1
JAttractive All Star Starter Join Date: May 2002 Location: St. Catharines, Ontario Posts: 1,135	.400+ hitter, need suggestions..... I have created a fictional league using modern era settings, unchanged, except that relievers appear Often instead of Very often. I have a 24 team league of actual ML team names and ballparks, removing the ones I dislike in order to keep the league a more manageable size. These teams removed include a number of hitter friendly parks and looking at the stadiums I "lose" you should actually see a reduction in hits and homers due to stadium effects (ie. I took out Colorada, Florida, Arizona, Milwaukee, Tampa Bay and Minnesota). Certainly losing Colorado alone should help to prevent the ridiculous seasons some simmers have encountered for players. Here is the problem for me: In the first two seasons the league leaders have had acceptable numbers for me. The highest batting average was a .377 and the most homeruns hit were 54. Perfect! In the third season two players hit over .400 almost the whole year and in the final weak one drops to .396 but the other goes up to .419! The .396 hitter is hard enough to swallow for me as this should be a very rare occurence but for someone to hit over .400 and actually blow past it to hit almost .420 in modern baseball? This guy would be god-like! So crossing my fingers I decided to turn on the editor and prayed this guy has a 10 for hitting. I tell myself that I could somehow maybe accept it if he is some sort of freak hitting machine unlike we have seen in baseball... No such luck though. This guy has an 8 for hitting and has hit .324 and .341 in the years before this! So he is not some amazing hitter and so I should conceivably see more .400 hitters as the league goes on... Yay! How wonderful! I just can't bring myself to accept allowing such numbers for my league... everytime I look at the record book I will want to puke. If this was in a deadball era or some other era where it is not so inconceivable I could handle this value but modern baseball just doesn't see this sort of thing. Any thoughts or suggestions? In past leagues I have turned down the hitting by 2% and found I never encountered this problem. Just that minor tweak was enough... This time though I want to keep modern settings untouched so that I can more accurately compare my league's hitters with other simmed league results. Is their anyway to keep the modern settings and prevent this? (Ie. recalculating league totals or something).

08-11-2002, 03:51 PM	#3
JAttractive All Star Starter Join Date: May 2002 Location: St. Catharines, Ontario Posts: 1,135	This player was on a computer controlled team so I can't really control when they play though that could be part of the explanation I am sure. I just checked his ratings again with the editor and he has a 9 vs. LHP and 8 vs. RHP. Here is his season. Code: Category AVG HR RBI AB H 2B 3B R SB CS BB K OBP SLG Overall .422 20 102 580 245 46 13 112 23 7 58 101 .476 .650 vs RHP .405 17 75 412 167 33 10 84 14 3 40 73 .459 .658 vs LHP .464 3 27 168 78 13 3 28 6 4 18 28 .518 .63 And in his bio we have this: Had 5 hits with 3 RBI against Cleveland on 5/24/1962... Won Batter of the Month award on 6/1/1962, hitting .509 with 5 HR, 29 RBI... Injured on 6/4/1962 with a Strained Abdominal Muscle, out for one week... Had 5 hits with 3 RBI against Detroit on 6/21/1962... Had 23-game hitting streak snapped on 6/23/1962... Was selected to the 1962 Allstar game... Traded from Chicago (A) to Houston on 7/13/1962... Sets a new season NL-Record for Hits with 217 on 9/17/1962... Had 20-game hitting streak snapped on 9/25/1962... Won Batter of the Month award on 10/1/1962, hitting .464 with 5 HR, 19 RBI... Won Outstanding Batter Award in 1962, hitting .422 with 20 HR, 102 RBI... In it we see he was traded between the leagues and hurt for a short time to account for his only playing 146 games (which can lead to greater skewing of results). Still 580 ABs should be enough to normalize things and he clearly faced lefties and righties and hit both over .400...

08-12-2002, 01:40 AM	#8
Chief Wahoo Major Leagues Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Moro, IL Posts: 346	I know you said that you didn't want to change the settings but I would think that lowering the hits would be the only way to help your numbers unless you wanted to go in and change the player's ratings. If it were me I would just lower like you said by 2 or 3% then backup your league and run a test season to see if the numbers came out the way you wanted them to. __________________ Chief Wahoo

08-11-2002, 02:53 PM	#2
AarNation8 Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Fort Collins Posts: 38	A way to make sure they do not hit that high every year.... Make sure they are playing vs. LHP , because with my experience if a guy with a 8 or 9 for RHP only plays against RHP then he will hit around .400-.450 in some cases. So you may just want to make sure they have a good rating in LHP hitting so they can start those games as well.

08-11-2002, 06:47 PM	#4
JAttractive All Star Starter Join Date: May 2002 Location: St. Catharines, Ontario Posts: 1,135	Any ideas on how to prevent this without directly changing numbers? I don't fully understand what recalculating the league totals and such does and hope perhaps their is an answer along those lines....

08-11-2002, 07:21 PM	#5
asamford Banned Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Snellville, Georgia Posts: 1,769	recalculating league totals does exactly what it says it does. if you hit the button it will change them to the totals your league accumulated last season. if you do this every season you will have one year with more hitting, the next year more pitching, the next year more hitting, and so on. The reason being, if your league had more hits than was in your original league totals, it will raise this number, which will in turn cause your league to have less hits. This has been explained much better than I am capable of, do a search on the forum for "recalculating league totals" and you should find plenty.

08-11-2002, 07:29 PM	#6
JAttractive All Star Starter Join Date: May 2002 Location: St. Catharines, Ontario Posts: 1,135	Actually I do understand what you mean (based on my understanding of the league numbers), thanks! Probably this wouldn't have helped much then, and in fact may have made it worse, as the season prior I thought the homeruns and hits were a bit lower than a typical modern year. I am at a loss then. Is it typical for you other modern era fictional league simmers to see this sort of thing?

08-12-2002, 04:21 AM	#9
asamford Banned Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Snellville, Georgia Posts: 1,769	i know this has been said a million times, but to avoid confusion, if you want less hits in your league, RAISE the league totals. If your total hits is 40000, and you have a guy hitting .419, and you'd like that to top out at around .389 instead, you'd want to move the hit total up to around 43500... i suggest saving a copy of your league, messing around with the numbers, sim a season, check all your stats, and keep making minor tweaks with the numbers until they're coming out like you'd want them. You have to find a balance. For me, to get pitchers with nice strikeout totals, I find that the league leader in strikeouts for hitters will sometimes be above 200, but that's just something I have to live with, since I'd like to have a couple of pitchers with 300+ K's... so just be careful, that if you tune the hits down too much, you might have too many pitchers with sub 2.00 era's, but just keep playing with the numbers till you find something you're happy with, then go back to that league folder you saved, plug in your #'s and go!

08-12-2002, 09:14 AM	#10
Henry Hall of Fame Join Date: Dec 2001 Posts: 6,498	JAttractive, Be careful I knowyour tempted to change the "league" numbers but remember your going to pull "everyone" down by doing so - just to water down two players. Given the fact this player is only rated 8/9 and your seeing normal results for everyone else, the only explanation is this guy is having a career year or stretch (like rolling double 6's 10 times in a row). I would have to believe if his ratings remain at 8/9, this will only be a temporary thing. I can say I haven't seen it to this extent in all I've played - but maybe your seeing a "once in a lifetime" performance.... I'd be tempted to go-with-it and enjoy Henry

08-12-2002, 04:05 PM	#11
JAttractive All Star Starter Join Date: May 2002 Location: St. Catharines, Ontario Posts: 1,135	Thanks for the replies guys! Asamford, thanks for the clarification and at one time I did have this problem. After simming out a league I found there were a lack of real strikeout pitchers so I toyed with the numbers as well. I kept raising the number until it got to the point that after a full year the top pitcher had 20 strikeouts hehe! Thats when I came to the board and people like Scott and Steve set me straight. Normally in leagues I raise the hits in the league totals numbers by 2% which would effectively drop the actual hits seen in the league by 2%. With this minor change their was little effect on the era and hitters seasons and it prevented anyone from ever reaching .400 and yet still there were some decent averages (.380+) for the leaders. However as Henry points out I did still pull everyone down and I found the top ten hitters list each year look lessed than exciting. While the top hitter would usually be .360+ the last few would be lower than I like, especially when you considered the top ten list was for both leagues. That is why I was hoping for a different solution this time around but I think I will just take Henry's advice. I will imagine it as a once in a life time season (he has hit .322, .327 and .362 in the three other seasons I have simmed out now) and keep things as they are. This is really my own problem with the league stats thus far and I probably shouldn't get too concerned. Of course I think I just erased over my league and its all moot now anyway... UGH!