Home/Away Performance needs to be tweaked

[Eugene Church]

Originally Posted by statfreak

I basically disagree with homefield advantage and hope any such artificial adjustment to the home team players remains optional within OOTP.

While I don't disagree with the facts and real life results, I don't think arbitrarily boosting a home team player's ratings and decreasing a visiting team's player ratings is the answer. I want my players' ratings to be the same whether they are playing at home or on the road. I think too many users get too hung up in trying to replicate real life when the purpose of OOTP is to provide a reasonable simulation of the game of baseball.

There are just too many unknown variables and reasons why things happen in real life and trying to artifically model or account for that within OOTP seems not only pointless, but actually moves OOTP away from providing an accurate, organic, and reasonable simulation to a program that forces certain results to occur. My enjoyment of the game will be drastically reduced if OOTP does in fact begin having the home team win ~54% of the time since that would most likely mean the game results are forced and fixed and nothing I do as a user affects the outcome. At that point, OOTP ceases to be a game and is simply a program that spits out pre-determind numbers to satisfy the masses.

I hope it stays an option like it is now, too. Options are almost always a good thing.

And I don't want a game that is predictable, either. I don't want to know how the story ends like Diamond Mind. That is why I play OOTPB.

I want the game to be like real life as much as humanly possible, but realize I may not get my wish and just accept it. But I will still express my wants and desires for the game in a constructive manner...and sometimes Markus has come through with them.

I hope Markus will continue to tweak, refine and make old features better, but not at the expense of the overall purpose and goal of the the game.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by f.montoya

From the appearance of our league standings, most of the 20 teams are above .500 at home and five or six are at or above .600 at home.

Again I must reiterate: home field advantage is not about performing at .500 or better at home. It is about peforming better at home than on the road. That means something like, for example, .650 to .550 for a good team or .350 to .250 for a lousy team. The one thing in common is that teams do better at home than on the road, which has been the case for nearly five out of six teams over 100 major league seasons.

And again I have to say how curious it is that folks will complain if their league batting average is 20 points too high or low when compared to a real season or will say how unrealistic it is if the leading home run hitter has too many home runs, and yet apparently the complete unrealism of teams' home-away performance spreads are of little concern. I just find that narrowness of statistical concern odd.

[statfreak]

Again I reiterate that in real life a home team generally (almost always) wins more at home than on the road. I don't dispute nor deny that fact. I also am not trying to silence or argue with anyone. I merely want to put my .02 into the conversation. I apologize if it is contrary to your opinion.

What I take issue with is putting in a "cheat code" that makes players perform better at home than on the road. Not every player in real life is a better player at home.

I do hope there is an option for those that want an artificial and forced result to occur. I just want to let it be known there are people that don't want this to be forced upon us and made mandatory rather than optional.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by statfreak

What I take issue with is putting in a "cheat code" that makes players perform better at home than on the road.

It would be no more of a "cheat code" than the code which allows some players to do better against right-handed pitching rather than left-handed pitching. But no one gives that split any thought; it's completely accepted as a natural part of the game.

The home/away split is exactly the same kind of thing. It needs only to have the typical difference quantified statistically based on real players' stats. Earlier on the thread gmo gave a link to showed some general examples of the differences.

[Malleus Dei]

Originally Posted by f.montoya

Interesting topic here. Malleus brings up a good point in his first post and it made me take a good look at my online league. We use real historical stadiums and the GM's often consider their parks when drafting, trading, etc. From the appearance of our league standings, most of the 20 teams are above .500 at home and five or six are at or above .600 at home. Maybe the AI needs tweaking to consider it's ballpark factors when making transactions.[/URL]

Exactly correct. The AI needs tweaking, and your GM's are doing what they should be doing. Your league is, by the way, getting historical results by having GM's who pay attention to their home stadium - as according to THE HIDDEN GAME OF BASEBALL - home teams have consistently won at about a .540 rate.

Smart GM's in the MLB do tailor their team to their home stadium. Consider the Dodgers and pitching, the Yankees and left-handed power, and the Royals and speed. Since half of a team's games are played in their home stadium, teams deviate from the pattern that best fits their home field at their peril.

[Malleus Dei]

Originally Posted by statfreak

Again I reiterate that in real life a home team generally (almost always) wins more at home than on the road. I don't dispute nor deny that fact. I also am not trying to silence or argue with anyone. I merely want to put my .02 into the conversation. I apologize if it is contrary to your opinion.

What I take issue with is putting in a "cheat code" that makes players perform better at home than on the road. Not every player in real life is a better player at home.

I do hope there is an option for those that want an artificial and forced result to occur. I just want to let it be known there are people that don't want this to be forced upon us and made mandatory rather than optional.

Statfreak is correct that a cheat approach is a bad idea, beause it always is; such cheats are almost always used in gaming to compensate for weak AI. Specifically a cheat it is a poor way to model the actual .540 home field advantage. What is needed instead is a GM AI that will take its own home field into account and which will build a team to get the best results out of that home field.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Malleus Dei

Your league is, by the way, getting historical results by having GM's who pay attention to their home stadium - as according to THE HIDDEN GAME OF BASEBALL - home teams have consistently won at about a .540 rate.

Yes, .540, on average, throughout over a hundred years of major league seasons. Are you saying that five out of six GMs over 100+ major league seasons have manage to tailor their team to the particulars of their home park?

As I said, it's a part of the reason, but there's no way it alone can account for the longevity and widespreadness of the differences, such as the numbers such as I posted earlier.

[Malleus Dei]

Originally Posted by f.montoya

But I do believe there are other off-field factors that affect performance on the road vs at home. I just don't know if that's worth writing into the code. I mean it's variable. There are some players that can absolutely dominate wherever they play. There are players who suck at home and not on the road. To just blanket the entire universe of teams with a code that says "all players must suck just a little" for road games just may not be the answer.

Interestingly enough, there was an analysis done a few years ago that showed that the only measurable difference between home and road teams was that the home team struck out just a little bit less and walked just a little more that the away team did. The rest of the .040's worth of impact (.540-.500) therefore had to come from how the team was designed to take advantage of the home field - better pitching in a pitcher's park versus more power in a power park versus more speed in a turf park with big alleys and so on.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Malleus Dei

Statfreak is correct that a cheat approach is a bad idea, beause it always is; such cheats are almost always used in gaming to compensate for weak AI.

I'll repeat myself:

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

It would be no more of a "cheat code" than the code which allows some players to do better against right-handed pitching rather than left-handed pitching. But no one gives that split any thought; it's completely accepted as a natural part of the game.

The home/away split is exactly the same kind of thing.

[Malleus Dei]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Yes, .540, on average, throughout over a hundred years of major league seasons. Are you saying that five out of six GMs over 100+ major league seasons have manage to tailor their team to the particulars of their home park?

LOL, no, I wrote that it's .540 on average. While any smart GM will design his team to take advantage of his home stadium, I haven't run the numbers to get a percentage of smart GM's and to the best of my knowledge no one else has either. Have fun doing it!

But you'd have to be pretty dumb to try to build a speed team for Yankee Stadium or a power team for Dodger Stadium.

[Malleus Dei]

As to the righty/lefty split: LGO, have you looked at Diamond Mind Baseball yet? I really think that you should.

http://www.diamond-mind.com/products/index.html

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Malleus Dei

The rest of the .040's worth of impact (.540-.500) therefore had to come from how the team was designed to take advantage of the home field - better pitching in a pitcher's park versus more power in a power park versus more speed in a turf park with big alleys and so on.

Look again at the splits by position of finish I posted for the 1901-1960 MLB years. The spread between home and away winning percentages was as high as .104 (seventh place finishers in the AL), which translated into the club winning 12.8% more games at home than it would have based on its overall winning percentage.

If you directly compare the home percentage to away percentage, the difference was the clubs winning 29.4% more games at home than on the road (.4582/.3542).

[Malleus Dei]

LGO, what's your point? It's only logical that some teams will tailor their teams better to their parks than others will.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Malleus Dei

LGO, what's your point? It's only logical that some teams will tailor their teams better to their parks than others will.

Yes, sure. But there's simply no way that fact alone can expain all the differences, which is what you seemed to be suggesting. That's what I'm reacting to.

If that's not what you're really suggesting, then, as Rosanne Rosannadanna used to say, "Never mind."

[Malleus Dei]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Yes, sure. But there's simply no way that fact alone can expain all the differences, which is what you seemed to be suggesting. That's what I'm reacting to.

LGO, it surely can explain almost all of it and almost certainly does. The rest? Toss in the small bonuses of players getting a better night's sleep at their own homes than in hotels (and of players not carousing all night while away from their spouses), not having any travel fatigue, the additional moral support provided by home fans, and the effects of park familiarity (improved walk and strikeout rates, better grasp on the defensive aspects of the field) and you have it all.

But these things are minor.

You like to look at data - check the Yankee's records when they had left-handed power versus when they did not.

[QuestGAV]

Originally Posted by Malleus Dei

LGO, what's your point? It's only logical that some teams will tailor their teams better to their parks than others will.

I think your "smart GM" theory gets busted up a bit by the fact that bad teams had the biggest change between home and road success. Economical GMs maybe, GMs with younger teams most likely, but smart? Doesn't look supportable.

[Malleus Dei]

Originally Posted by QuestGAV

I think your "smart GM" theory gets busted up a bit by the fact that bad teams had the biggest change between home and road success. Economical GMs maybe, GMs with younger teams most likely, but smart? Doesn't look supportable.

1. Theory? It's what happens. Fact: baseball teams tend to tailor themselves for their home field. Fact: baseball teams tend to win more games at home. If you or anyone else is trying to say that there is some form of mystic home field advantage voodoo going on to cause this - as opposed to home field advantage being derived from exploiting a park’s specific features by drafting and trading for the players whose talents best mesh with the home field - then let's hear the alternate explanation to account for the very real advantage. Bear in mind that the major statistical difference between home and away teams is that home teams walk more and strike out less.

2. Regardless of the level of talent that a team has, it can still be tailored for its home field (FYI, I've *played* on non-pro teams that were specifically tailored for their home parks). It might perhaps even be relatively easier to do it with only a lower tier of available talent.

[gmo]

Originally Posted by Malleus Dei

Interestingly enough, there was an analysis done a few years ago that showed that the only measurable difference between home and road teams was that the home team struck out just a little bit less and walked just a little more that the away team did. The rest of the .040's worth of impact (.540-.500) therefore had to come from how the team was designed to take advantage of the home field - better pitching in a pitcher's park versus more power in a power park versus more speed in a turf park with big alleys and so on.

There seems to be 3 common hypotheses for better results at home than away in the aggregate:

(1) Player just perform better at home

(2) Home teams are better because they tend to be a better "fit" for their home park than their opponents

(3) There is a structural advantage to batting last

The third I do not think is that meaningful. Home teams win about 52% of extra innings games. If batting last was some big advantage, that number ought to be higher than the overall 54%, but instead it is smaller. That means in a 9 inning game, whatever is giving the home team the HFA is more likely to accumulate and push them over the top for the win compared to a "shorter" continual 1-inning game starting with the 10th inning because it is tied. There may indeed still be some meaningfulness to batting last, but I am still doing some experimenting with that.

The second I believe can be meaningful, but I do not think it is a dominant factor. To show this I quote some items from this thread I linked previously...

It is not everything, but it was what was available, so I took 2001-2003 MLB data:

First off, the wins and losses. Home teams had a 3-year average winning percentage of .538 (from seasons of .524, .542, .550), much in line with the historical average.

Now the non-W/L numbers. Batting average, OBP, slugging, and OPS are all about 3.5% higher for home teams (3.35%, 3.72%, 3.68%, 3.70%, respectively to be exact).

Per plate appearance, home teams
*walk more (by 7.5%),
*strike out less (by 6.0%),
*score more runs (by 6.5%).

Also per plate appearance, home teams hit more home runs (by 2.4%), more doubles (by 2.5%), and more triples (by 17.4%). But I think those HR, 2B, and 3B rates are misleading if you look at extra base hits divided by total number of hits. Here are the percentages of total hits-
*going for HR: 11.98% for home teams, 11.99% for away teams;
*going for 2B: 20.07% for home teams, 20.08% for away teams;
*going for 3B: 2.27% for home teams, 1.98% for away teams;
*going for 1B: 65.69% for home teams, 65.95% for away teams.

Walks and strikeouts show the greatest differences (along with runs) among the stats, so I do not think the BB & K differences can be minimized. I do not see any reason to attribute the differences in BB & K to how a team was constructed. Perhaps someone else can translate those different rates of walks and strikeouts and get run or even win expectancy differences from them. The distribution of hits into 1B/2B/3B/HR were essentially identical for home and away team, but I do not see that as necessarily evidence either way. Just because players distribute their hits the same way home and away, it does not have to mean a big bopping or small-ball team must be in their home parks matching up better against their opponents there.

Another reason to question the magnitude of the fit-to-the-park influence is the teams in the average parks. Not every team has a home park extreme in some way. Suppose one-third of the teams play in neutral parks, while the other two-thirds are extreme in opposite directions from that. How do you exploit a neutral park? If you go in one direction like pitching-heavy or power-hitting when your park is neutral to that factor, how would that benefit you at home? When you played on the road you ought to find benefit some places (like a power hitting team going to a small park or a Coors Field), but that should be balanced out by playing in opposite sorts of road locations that are at the other extreme. That third of teams then will not have any expected differences between their home & away performances, and that would mean the other two-thirds should have 150% of the average differences to get the totals up to what it observed. Furthermore if you fail to have all supposedly smart GMs who build well their teams to suit the parks, that means the ones who are smart and do so must be causing an even greater percentage of the average home/away differences.

Then there is the whole question of how HFA would be explained in football, basketball, and other sports played in/on identical fields or the like if the HFA in MLB was taken as simply a result of park differences. If those other sports have HFA for other reason, that begs an explanation for why baseball would lack that and have it mostly from just park differences.

I do not rule out last at-bat or how the GM made the team from having some effect, but I think the largest factor is players just putting up better numbers at home. Of course not every single hitter should walk 7.5% more, strike out 6.0% less, and hit at an average 3.35% higher when playing at home. But if there is a home field advantage option activated in the game that is trying to mimic MLB results, in total the results should average out to around that. I agree with keeping it an option recognizing that not all would want a HFA built into the game or at least not want something that exactly matches MLB. However, like has been noted above HFA, for whatever reason, is a well-established fact in MLB and other sports that if desired must be programmed into the game one way of the other.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Malleus Dei

Fact: baseball teams tend to tailor themselves for their home field. Fact: baseball teams tend to win more games at home.

That only implies correlation, not causation. It's not that team's build for their home park to some degree which is being debated, but rather how much of an impact that has on the final results.

I'm saying that such tailoring cannot be the primary cause for a team's better performance at home. It may be a contributing cause, but it is at best one of many equal factors.

Anyway, I'm currently crunching some numbers to determine what happened with four teams who played in cookie-cutter, circular, symmetric ballparks. Specifically, the Astrodome, Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, Olympic Stadium, and Riverfront Stadium. As these parks were all symmetric in their dimensions, tailoring a team to its park would be of little use in them so any home field advantage in the results cannot be explained by it.

[Malleus Dei]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

I'm saying that such tailoring cannot be the primary cause for a team's better performance at home. It may be a contributing cause, but it is at best one of many equal factors.

What other factors besides tailoring are there, LGO? Better familiarity with the field? Sleeping at home? Travel fatigue? Regular eating habits? Less carousing? The cheers of the home crowd? Given that the statistical differences are negligible, the major factor has to be how much the team is tailored to the field - and, if the team likes to cheat, how well the field is tailored to the team by watering/not watering/mowing/not mowing/slanting the field to maximize home team advantage. Legally, teams also move their fences in and out (the Padres just got the okay to do so this week) to better tailor their field to their team. How this translates to OOTP: a better GM AI which will tailor a team to its home field will replicate home historical field advantage. This is based on the data in Montoya's post above, where humans doing just that in OOTP matched the actual home field advantage rate in the MLB. Conclusion: the game needs a much more home-field-oriented GM AI.