Some issues: Catcher offense, positional injury distribution, reliever decisions, pitcher usage

[james17]

Agree with item 2)...but most of my catchers suck in my league. And it's very hard to find ones that don't in the drafts.

[koohead]

30 year fictional sim with MLB setup (R through Triple A minors).

- 3 of my top historical players eligible for the HOF are Catchers.
- Historically 5 of the top 10 position players in terms of WAR are Catchers.
- This past season, 3 Catchers were in the top 20 as far as WAR.

Not completely impossible, though gut test does seem to say these numbers are high.
Looking at 2015, the top full time Catchers were Salvatore Perez, Wilson Ramos, and Brian McCann...with McCann being around 135th in terms of ABs. Looking at my fictional sim, I had 1 Catcher in the top 35, and 5 more in the next 35. that's 7 Catchers in the top 70 in terms of ABs. That does seem a bit high to me.

[koohead]

I *think* the concern I have is that Catchers are just another position as far as the AI creation and development algorithms are concerned, and Catchers have just as good a chance to be offensive studs as 1B, CF, SS, 2B, 3B, etc. From a fictional standpoint, makes sense. Based on historical baseball data, it doesn't seem to fit right.

[injury log]

The game generates too many good offensive Catchers at player creation in all the testing I've done.

Cinnamon Scudworth is right about injury distribution by position. Injuries almost exclusively happen in games in OOTP. This is not what happens in real life - in real life, often a pitcher will complain of soreness between starts, for example. This leads to two problems:

- players involved in more potentially injury-causing plays are more likely to get injured in OOTP. That's obviously true in general, almost tautologically, but becomes a problem when the plays that cause injuries in OOTP are different from the plays that cause injuries in real life, or when the probability of injury on a certain play is different in OOTP than in real life. Certain positions (and certain types of players) become too susceptible to injury. Outfielders are injured far too often in OOTP.

- just as important, and I think the root cause of most complaints about the number of injuries in OOTP: if players only get injured during games, then the players who get injured most are the players who play most. Those are the good players. The bad players don't get injured as often, because they play less. I want to confirm the extent of this problem with more real life data, but I have the impression good players get injured far more often in OOTP than in reality. It's when users lose their entire starting outfield that injuries seem to be a problem. If instead they lost their starting LF, a backup catcher and a mopup reliever, the injuries would be more tolerable (and I'd contend more realistic).

The injury model hasn't been revised in several years, and some more recent changes to the game have likely thrown off a lot of the frequencies, which at one time were very close to realistic (on the realistic setting). Hopefully this area gets some attention for v18.

[thriller13]

Originally Posted by byzeil

The lack of interest may be that maybe many people aren't seeing what you are seeing? Not saying you aren't seeing it but how wide spread is it?

I ran a test overnight. An out of the box 45 year sim starting in 2016 using the MLB setup (just MLB and minors). I wiped historical stats so I'm only looking at stats from OOTP. I changed no settings in OOTP (except for turning off facegen and baseball cards).

Players with 300+ career HR'sin the 45 year sim:
C - 9
1B- 29
2B- 3
3B- 19
SS- 16
OF- 36

Other than 2B being very low that seems to be a pretty reasonable distribution.

As for players playing 150+ games in a season. I looked at the 45th year of the sim:

C- 0 (though 16 played 140-149 games)
1B- 15
2B- 15
3B- 11
SS- 12
OF- 29

Again, seems reasonable distribution though overall that seems like an awful lot of players playing 150+ games.

Next I am going to run a 45 year fictional league out of the box and see what I get there.

Thanks for taking the time to test this. All of my experience has been with fictional leagues.
I am currently in year 41 in my main solo fictional league. 537 is my career HR leader so it's not an overly offensive league. My breakdown of players with over 400 career HR's is as follows:

C - 8
1B - 9
2B - 2
3B - 5
SS - 2
OF - 10

This distribution isn't completely unbelievable but it also doesn't seem like the distribution that MLB produces. Catcher is a defensive position in general. Johnny Bench and Mike Piazza are out of the ordinary. Something feels like it is slightly out of whack either with stamina or positional injuries. Anxious for your results of your test.

[SirMichaelJordan]

Ugh, Just witness the AI sign a backup catcher for 10 mil per year...Of course he's on a NL team and can't play DH. He would be a great candidate to play 1st as there is a hole. AI just wont't convert him...



Update-


As I was predicting, the same team just spent another 10 mil to fill the hole at 1st Base. Talk about wasting money...

[NoOne]

to those where the catcher is playing too much: still have default positional fatigue? they can reach ~150g with "if starter tired" sub setting at the default positional fatigue setting.

however, dropping that setting down a tick may have effects on other positions that you do not want. so, you'll have to test each and see which one you prefer overall. remember, everyones' perception of what is happening cannot be met.


**********

don't use MLB players to start the testing that was mentioned above about HR and C... they are only the first bit of the league and different than created fictional players.

so, using real MLB is going to taint your sample relative to what you are trying to learn about the game.


***********

perceptions leading to investiation is good... stopping at the "feeling" is bad.

[Reed]

I am not having any problems with catcher usage. I play historical and maybe that has something to do with it. Just played a 1907 season, 152 games, 16-20 consecutive days between scheduled days off, injuries off, fatigue set to "high". Catchers had the fewest Games Started-between 115-120. 1B and some OFs had the most GS-between 140-145. Anyway, just my observation.

[nebradska]

Originally Posted by Reed

injuries off

That's going to skew your games started upward for other position players. Most people play with injuries.

[Hoiles]

Originally Posted by injury log

The game generates too many good offensive Catchers at player creation in all the testing I've done.

Cinnamon Scudworth is right about injury distribution by position. Injuries almost exclusively happen in games in OOTP. This is not what happens in real life - in real life, often a pitcher will complain of soreness between starts, for example. This leads to two problems:

- players involved in more potentially injury-causing plays are more likely to get injured in OOTP. That's obviously true in general, almost tautologically, but becomes a problem when the plays that cause injuries in OOTP are different from the plays that cause injuries in real life, or when the probability of injury on a certain play is different in OOTP than in real life. Certain positions (and certain types of players) become too susceptible to injury. Outfielders are injured far too often in OOTP.

- just as important, and I think the root cause of most complaints about the number of injuries in OOTP: if players only get injured during games, then the players who get injured most are the players who play most. Those are the good players. The bad players don't get injured as often, because they play less. I want to confirm the extent of this problem with more real life data, but I have the impression good players get injured far more often in OOTP than in reality. It's when users lose their entire starting outfield that injuries seem to be a problem. If instead they lost their starting LF, a backup catcher and a mopup reliever, the injuries would be more tolerable (and I'd contend more realistic).

The injury model hasn't been revised in several years, and some more recent changes to the game have likely thrown off a lot of the frequencies, which at one time were very close to realistic (on the realistic setting). Hopefully this area gets some attention for v18.

Great post about the injuries; we'll need to mark this down in the suggestions for the next version. Earlier in the year, I did mention this in another thread and was looking to scrape the injury logs to get some concrete info on injuries, never got around to doing it for this version, I guess. But you do notice that, for e.g. outfielders with good fielding ratings tend to get long-term injuries making defensive plays, often in blowout games which can be very vexing.