Best stealers underperforming historical success rates

[Zeth]

Originally Posted by 68pirate

I haven't looked into this, but I wonder if historically low success rate stealers aren't running at all. For example, in 1979 Mike Cubbage had 9 attempts and only one successful steal. If the AI isn't running him at all, those caught stealings might be transferred to guys that do run. That way the overall numbers match up in the historical comparison, even though the distribution doesn't match individually.

In that era a lot of slow players had horrific SB success rates on few attempts like that, and it was usually because most of the CS were botched hit-and-runs. I don’t know if or how OOTP models that.

[mibstingray2]

Originally Posted by xgeoff

I believe this has been going on for a while. In OOTP20 I had a team with a lot of players with high base stealing ratings (80+). Their stealing %'s were terrible, and one of them (Martin Dihigo) got caught stealing over 50% of the time.

I wondered if it was just bad luck in terms of running into catchers with good arms and/or pitchers with good 'hold runner' ratings. So I went and reviewed a number of games (not exhaustive, but a sample of about 5 games) where he was caught stealing and in every occasion the catcher's arm and pitcher's rating was marginal at best.

Very frustrating. Not as thorough analysis like yours, but some anecdotal evidence to go along with what you are saying.

Yeah, I'll second the pitch by pitch base stealing. VERY FRUSTRASTING to see a base runner with a speed of 70 VS a LHP pitcher with a hold runners of 85, and a catcher with an arm of 79, being held on, walk to second without a throw, and then steal 3rd for not holding him on 2nd.

Then, you're up, with an 85 STE on first, vs a 68 catcher, and a RHP below 50 hold, either throw to 1B until he picks him off (sometimes 5-6 throws each pitch), OR throw the runner out by 3 steps on a steal. Sending forced runners seems to just add to the lower than should be SB% of a given player on a human team vs an AI. Also, not talking simmed steals based on team preference settings (which can alter a lot). I think the human manager is at a big disadvantage vs AI on base stealing.

I know a lot of people playing PBP notice different things, and maybe spawn different outcomes based on their calls, soooo look at the data, which doesn't always show a clear picture.

[Garlon]

For the league totals modifier, the calculation is based on stolen base attempts per times reaching first base, which is H - 2B - 3B - HR + BB + HBP. The player speed rating should be based upon the same calculation. It was at one time, but I noticed that the ratings did not seem right too since I knew the formula for the modifier. The stealing bases rating should be a translation of their stolen base success rate.

If you want to improve the success rates of the top stealers in a historical league, simply go to your strategy setting and set Stealing Bases to Very Often. Your league leaders will get reduced a bit but their success rate will increase when you do this because this setting will cause more of the weaker base stealers to attempt stealing more often and more of the caught stealing will get distributed to those players allowing the best stealers to be more successful over the course of a season.

The combination of rating the players on SB attempts per times reaching first base and selecting the appropriate strategy setting will resolve this problem.