Historical League Observations

pstrickert · 01-26-2009, 03:14 PM

For the last few years, I've tried to get a feel for historical leagues by simming the 1974 season repeatedly. I thought I would share a few observations and, hopefully, start a conversation about it. (NOTE: I use 1-year recalc with a couple of adjustments to the LTMs -- reducing SBA to .670 and increasing errors to 1.300. I could tweak the other settings, I suppose, but these two stats need the largest corrections. BA and ERA results compare favorably with real life.)

IRL, the Dodgers won the NL West by 4 games over the Reds. L.A. had 102 wins that season. The Pirates won the NL East with 88 wins. The fourth place finishers, the Expos, trailed the Pirates by only 8-1/2 games. So, it was a competitive division race. In the AL East, Baltimore (91-71) nipped New York by 2 games. In the AL East, Oakland (the eventual World Series winners) topped Texas by 5 games. California finished last at 68-94.

For the most part, the simmed 1974 season produces credible results. I do, however, see two anomalies: the Dodgers underperform and the Angels overperform. So, I've tried to examine these teams more closely, to see if there's something about them that gives the OOTP sim engine trouble. Or, in other words, if these results expose a flaw in the OOTP sim engine.

In the NL West, the Reds often win the division over the Dodgers. That's reasonable, since the Reds won 98 games in 1974. The problem is that the Dodgers often fall to third or fourth. I haven't spent enough time checking for problems, but I have noticed that the OOTP AI never uses Mike Marshall for 200+ innings in relief (as IRL). He seldom even reaches 100 IP. That, presumably, could affect the late inning results for L.A.

I have spent a lot more time looking at the California Angels. They had a decent pitching staff in 1974, but a below-average offense. In fact, they had the lowest SLG in the AL in 1974. When I sim, I notice that SLG is right where it should be -- at the bottom. So, that's OK. For some reason, though, the team steals a lot more bases (and more successfully) than IRL. This boosts their run production for the season. (IRL, they scored the fewest runs per game in the AL.)

Perhaps the biggest issue has to do with pitching, though. The staff ERA is usually lower than IRL when I sim. Often, the staff ERA is the lowest (or second-lowest) in the AL when I sim. Looking into this further, I noticed that IRL, Bill Singer (one of the SPs) spent a lot of time on the DL. Also, Rudy May, who had an 0-1 record with CAL in real life, was purchased by the Yankees in June. With NY, he put up excellent numbers as a SP. (He has terrific ratings, as a result, in the 1974 sim.) When I sim the 1974 season, then, Singer often stays in the rotation the whole year. May, too, becomes a main cog in the starting rotation. These two differences from real life make the "sim" California pitching staff a formidable one. It is enough almost invariably to put them in contention for the division title.

What do we do about that? I think it's OK to sim the 1974 season and ask, What if? What if California had these two pitchers in the rotation for the whole season? The staff would have rivaled Baltimore's and Oakland's as the elite of the AL. But I wonder if Markus should implement an option to use real-life transaction files (which, BTW, can be found on the Internet). I wouldn't mind additional options to use as-played lineups or most-common lineups (also available on the Internet). This would give the user more flexibility in historical league play.

I'd be glad to hear about your own thoughts and observations.

TribeFanInNC · 01-26-2009, 05:58 PM

I can't fault OOTP for misusing Mike Marshall - 200 IP is a lot for a non-starter. I suppose you could try moving the sliders for 'pull reliever' for the Dodgers or Marshall specifically all the way over, but that probably still wouldn't do it. Still, you would think the Dodgers would win some of the time.

If you combine that fact the real Angels underperformed their Pythagorean record by 8 games and add two good starters to replace Bill Stoneman (11 starts, 1-8, 6.14 ERA!!!) and some mediocre Ed Figueroa starts, winning the division could happen. Especially in a mediocre division where the RL second place team had a below .500 Pythagorean record.

I'm willing to chalk Marshall up to be anomolous and the Angels to be 'What if...'.

pstrickert · 01-27-2009, 07:44 PM

Here's another observation.

I'm able to get league totals quite close to real life -- BA a point or two higher than RL, ERA about .10-.15 higher than RL. When I look at team totals, though, I notice that (after taking into account the fact that the league ERA is a tad high) I never see a team ERA below 3.00. IRL, three teams accomplished that feat: BAL, OAK, and LAD. (ATL finished with a team ERA of 3.05.) When I sim the season, the highest team ERA in each league is close to the highest team ERA in real life. But the lowest team ERA is usually about .30 higher than the lowest team ERA in real life.

What would account for these results?

EDIT: Reviewing my latest 1974 sim, I noticed that OAK (again) has a team ERA about .50 higher than RL. Several of the SPs have an ERC much lower than their season ERA. I'm not sure what this tells us, if anything. I wonder if team defense (for a team like OAK) is not influencing the outcome enough. That's only a hunch, though.

SteveP · 01-28-2009, 12:21 PM

Based only on what you've said in your post, I would suggest one thing to consider: OOTP often gets distorted results in the first season of a league, when the modifiers are all set to 1.000. If you are repeatedly playing this league with modifiers set to 1.000, you will get results that don't match real life. For example, the game will likely steal too often, and get caught stealing not often enough. If you haven't done this already, sim out a year and let the game reset the modifiers, then apply those new modifiers when you re-sim the same season. Important: the re-sim has to be a clone of the league you just simmed to get the new modifiers. I've discovered that hard way that you can't do this if you start a league from scratch each time, because there are enough differences in ratings that these new modifiers will just screw things up in that newly created league.

pstrickert · 01-28-2009, 02:33 PM

I'm aware of all that.

I've made a couple of adjustments to LTMs (see OP), including stolen base attempts. The overall league stats, as I said, look more than acceptable for my purposes right now. Still, I've noticed a few glitches. That's what I'm exploring at the moment.

SteveP · 01-28-2009, 04:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pstrickert

I'm aware of all that.

I've made a couple of adjustments to LTMs (see OP), including stolen base attempts. The overall league stats, as I said, look more than acceptable for my purposes right now. Still, I've noticed a few glitches. That's what I'm exploring at the moment.

Sorry, I missed that about the SBAs in your OP. Then, the second thing I would look at is the team strategies. The AI manager of the Angels may simply be calling a lot more steals than the real life manager did.

As for the other questions, I noticed very quickly, from doing something similar to you (a different season) how easy it is for teams to end up with different results from real life, or in successive tests of the same season. A couple of bad trades, a couple of injuries, a couple of players performing much better or much worse, can have a surprisingly large impact. Or maybe not so surprising, if you consider that winning 6-7 games you otherwise would have lost, can make a big difference in where you end up in the standings. I don't think there is any practical way to control for all those variables (in order to have teams finish the season in some predictable way) and still have a meaningful simulation of real life.

pstrickert · 01-28-2009, 05:15 PM

I appreciate the discussion.

strategy settings: I have all strategy settings in the middle for all teams.

variances: I would not expect every sim to turn out the same. However, I've simmed this same season dozens of times. I have noticed tendencies that I've followed up on -- the LA underperformance and the CAL overperformance. Now I'm trying to figure out why.

CORRECTION: In my current 1974 half-sim/half-play season, I forgot to adjust the SBAs. That explains the crazy SB numbers this time.

SteveP · 01-28-2009, 07:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pstrickert

I appreciate the discussion.

strategy settings: I have all strategy settings in the middle for all teams.

variances: I would not expect every sim to turn out the same. However, I've simmed this same season dozens of times. I have noticed tendencies that I've followed up on -- the LA underperformance and the CAL overperformance. Now I'm trying to figure out why.

CORRECTION: In my current 1974 half-sim/half-play season, I forgot to adjust the SBAs. That explains the crazy SB numbers this time.

Another suggestion for your thought process: the real life season may have been the statistical outlier for those two teams. If you played the same season a hundred times, you might well get a result similar to what actually happened. But it might take that many tries to get it. I have found that, in general, the same teams seem to do well each time, while the others do less well, but the specific order may vary.

pstrickert · 01-28-2009, 08:15 PM

Many people regard the 1974 Dodgers as one of the all-time greatest teams. That's debatable, of course. As for the Angels, they finished dead last in the AL West in 1974. I'm thinking about re-simming the 1974 season, but this time with trades off. I'll make all of the real-time transactions manually. I could also turn off injuries and, if I had the real-life injury information, place players on the DL manually. That may require too much work, though.

Garlon · 01-28-2009, 09:01 PM

There are aot of variales that can subtly change the outcomes. Also, remember that defensive ratings and defensive outcomes are not perfect in OOTP9 either.

I suggest setting Position Player Fatigue to High, and Hit & Run to Very Rarely.

Try just changing those two variables and see what happens.

pstrickert · 01-29-2009, 12:32 AM

I'll be sure to give it a try. Thanks, Mr. G!

TribeFanInNC · 01-29-2009, 07:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pstrickert

Many people regard the 1974 Dodgers as one of the all-time greatest teams. That's debatable, of course. As for the Angels, they finished dead last in the AL West in 1974. I'm thinking about re-simming the 1974 season, but this time with trades off. I'll make all of the real-time transactions manually. I could also turn off injuries and, if I had the real-life injury information, place players on the DL manually. That may require too much work, though.

That would be interesting...the true test of the 'what if Singer and May made 30+ starts each for the Angels'. I guess my impression is they only get you half the way there; something else probably accounts for the rest.

Another thought: if top ERAs are too high, is it because the league scores more runs or because there are not enough errors?

SteveP · 01-29-2009, 12:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Garlon

Hit & Run to Very Rarely.

Having seen this recommendation before, I still find it really puzzling. I watch each individual game very carefully, and I find that H&R plays happen quite seldom. That's assuming one can distinguish such a play from a R&H, or a simple steal in which the batter also swings. Hard to put a number to the H&R frequency, but maybe once in every 10 games for a team, if that. That's with default settings. Considering that some of those are blown plays, it's hard to imagine how H&R plays could make much of a difference one way or the other.

pstrickert · 01-29-2009, 06:34 PM

I've simmed the '74 season several times this afternoon. Setting H&R to Very Low has not made any difference that I can see.

I should add, too, that IRL the NL and AL had identical league ERAs. The BA in the AL was 3 points higher than the NL. When I sim the '74 season, the NL almost always has the higher league ERA -- often .20 higher. That is rather surprising, isn't it?

pstrickert · 01-29-2009, 07:19 PM

No matter what I do, the CAL and LA problems persist. Some more observations:

Mike Marshall pitched for more than 200 innings in relief for LA in 1974. When I sim, he's barely able to reach 50 IP. So, in my most recent sim, the Dodgers compiled a team ERA about 1 run per game higher than IRL. Marshall had an ERA of 2.55 in 40+ IP. Unfortunately, the rest of the relief corps did not pick up the slack. The team relief ERA in the sim was nearly 5.00. Yikes! No wonder LA has trouble replicating their success when I sim the '74 season. One more thing: The relief pitchers -- aside from Marshall -- converted only 4 of 20-something save opportunities.

pstrickert · 01-29-2009, 07:20 PM

. . . all of which is to say that OOTP presents us with some player usage problems.

Rondell Tate · 01-29-2009, 07:22 PM

Looking at the teams' stats, they both have poor defenses (excepting at catcher for both teams, Ron Cey and Steve Garvey). Nobody else rates much above barely average for their position. They were especially poor at shortstop (combined for 85 errors and well-below-average range on both teams).

Both play in good pitchers' parks that for that season were even better than usual for the pitchers. Maybe it was a particularly smoggy year in California?

I would check the defensive ratings on both teams, as defense is generally the weakest part of baseball modeling, including in OOTP, in part because the stats are less precise than for pitching/hitting. I agree w/ the post suggesting there may be too few errors, hence too few unearned runs.

Certainly the Angels results could be due to the pitching injuries; for the Dodgers, Marshall had one of the great seasons of all time from a reliever. Until you can mess with the sliders to get him at least 150 innings, you're not going to get a good result for the club. I mean, he pitched in over 100 games, finished 83, averaged almost two innings per outing (he threw about 2/3rds of the non-starter innings for the team), had a K:BB approaching 3:1, the lowest ERA on the team and won 15 games, saving 21.

That's like having Mariano Rivera setting up for Mariano Rivera. It's crazy. Until you can convince the computer manager to ride that train like Walter Alston did, you're not going to win very often.

pstrickert · 01-29-2009, 07:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rondell Tate

Looking at the teams' stats, they both have poor defenses (excepting at catcher for both teams, Ron Cey and Steve Garvey). Nobody else rates much above barely average for their position. They were especially poor at shortstop (combined for 85 errors and well-below-average range on both teams).

Both play in good pitchers' parks that for that season were even better than usual for the pitchers. Maybe it was a particularly smoggy year in California?

I would check the defensive ratings on both teams, as defense is generally the weakest part of baseball modeling, including in OOTP, in part because the stats are less precise than for pitching/hitting. I agree w/ the post suggesting there may be too few errors, hence too few unearned runs.

Certainly the Angels results could be due to the pitching injuries; for the Dodgers, Marshall had one of the great seasons of all time from a reliever. Until you can mess with the sliders to get him at least 150 innings, you're not going to get a good result for the club. I mean, he pitched in over 100 games, finished 83, averaged almost two innings per outing (he threw about 2/3rds of the non-starter innings for the team), had a K:BB approaching 3:1, the lowest ERA on the team and won 15 games, saving 21.

That's like having Mariano Rivera setting up for Mariano Rivera. It's crazy. Until you can convince the computer manager to ride that train like Walter Alston did, you're not going to win very often.

I've adjusted the LTM for errors, so that's not the problem. Fielding percentages for LA and the league look fine. League BA and ERA, in general, look fine. I think this is one more instance (of many) in OOTP of stats looking OK on the surface. But up close, we notice that OOTP has more than a few glitches.

thehef · 01-29-2009, 08:15 PM

Could you do a test where you clone Marshall twice and put him in the Dodger bullpen as two of the setup men, too? This, of course, wouldn't solve the player-usage issue, but it might go along way to solve the riddle... Although, given the rest-of-LA's-pitching-staff numbers you've noted, we pretty much know that LA's bullpen would be significanly improved, and this would have to translate to more wins.

As for the Angels, have you tried any tests where you trim their steal frequency to get close to RL numbers, AND deal with May (get rid of him early in the season) and Singer (give him an injury or demote him) so their Games Started are more in-line w RL?

pstrickert · 01-29-2009, 08:34 PM

I like how you think, thehef.

Here's another problem I noticed during a recent '74 sim. Duane Kuiper (CLE) played only 10 games IRL in 1974. He had 22 at bats with 11 hits. Even though he was "weakened" upon import (having less than 50 AB), Kuiper still ranked among the league leaders in batting average in the sim. Who can blame the AI for playing him? Unfortunately, he messes up the Cleveland infield, forcing Jack Brohamer to play 1B (instead of 2B) and John Ellis to C (from 1B). Dave Duncan loses his starting job at C, as a result. Now, how much is that going to change Cleveland's fortunes in a 1974 sim? Probably not much. But if you're a Cleveland fan, maybe you want the 1974 lineup to look a bit more familiar. In particular, you may not want Kuiper playing a major role a year before he actually did.

01-26-2009, 03:14 PM	#1
pstrickert Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 15,741	Historical League Observations For the last few years, I've tried to get a feel for historical leagues by simming the 1974 season repeatedly. I thought I would share a few observations and, hopefully, start a conversation about it. (NOTE: I use 1-year recalc with a couple of adjustments to the LTMs -- reducing SBA to .670 and increasing errors to 1.300. I could tweak the other settings, I suppose, but these two stats need the largest corrections. BA and ERA results compare favorably with real life.) IRL, the Dodgers won the NL West by 4 games over the Reds. L.A. had 102 wins that season. The Pirates won the NL East with 88 wins. The fourth place finishers, the Expos, trailed the Pirates by only 8-1/2 games. So, it was a competitive division race. In the AL East, Baltimore (91-71) nipped New York by 2 games. In the AL East, Oakland (the eventual World Series winners) topped Texas by 5 games. California finished last at 68-94. For the most part, the simmed 1974 season produces credible results. I do, however, see two anomalies: the Dodgers underperform and the Angels overperform. So, I've tried to examine these teams more closely, to see if there's something about them that gives the OOTP sim engine trouble. Or, in other words, if these results expose a flaw in the OOTP sim engine. In the NL West, the Reds often win the division over the Dodgers. That's reasonable, since the Reds won 98 games in 1974. The problem is that the Dodgers often fall to third or fourth. I haven't spent enough time checking for problems, but I have noticed that the OOTP AI never uses Mike Marshall for 200+ innings in relief (as IRL). He seldom even reaches 100 IP. That, presumably, could affect the late inning results for L.A. I have spent a lot more time looking at the California Angels. They had a decent pitching staff in 1974, but a below-average offense. In fact, they had the lowest SLG in the AL in 1974. When I sim, I notice that SLG is right where it should be -- at the bottom. So, that's OK. For some reason, though, the team steals a lot more bases (and more successfully) than IRL. This boosts their run production for the season. (IRL, they scored the fewest runs per game in the AL.) Perhaps the biggest issue has to do with pitching, though. The staff ERA is usually lower than IRL when I sim. Often, the staff ERA is the lowest (or second-lowest) in the AL when I sim. Looking into this further, I noticed that IRL, Bill Singer (one of the SPs) spent a lot of time on the DL. Also, Rudy May, who had an 0-1 record with CAL in real life, was purchased by the Yankees in June. With NY, he put up excellent numbers as a SP. (He has terrific ratings, as a result, in the 1974 sim.) When I sim the 1974 season, then, Singer often stays in the rotation the whole year. May, too, becomes a main cog in the starting rotation. These two differences from real life make the "sim" California pitching staff a formidable one. It is enough almost invariably to put them in contention for the division title. What do we do about that? I think it's OK to sim the 1974 season and ask, What if? What if California had these two pitchers in the rotation for the whole season? The staff would have rivaled Baltimore's and Oakland's as the elite of the AL. But I wonder if Markus should implement an option to use real-life transaction files (which, BTW, can be found on the Internet). I wouldn't mind additional options to use as-played lineups or most-common lineups (also available on the Internet). This would give the user more flexibility in historical league play. I'd be glad to hear about your own thoughts and observations.

01-27-2009, 07:44 PM	#3
pstrickert Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 15,741	Here's another observation. I'm able to get league totals quite close to real life -- BA a point or two higher than RL, ERA about .10-.15 higher than RL. When I look at team totals, though, I notice that (after taking into account the fact that the league ERA is a tad high) I never see a team ERA below 3.00. IRL, three teams accomplished that feat: BAL, OAK, and LAD. (ATL finished with a team ERA of 3.05.) When I sim the season, the highest team ERA in each league is close to the highest team ERA in real life. But the lowest team ERA is usually about .30 higher than the lowest team ERA in real life. What would account for these results? EDIT: Reviewing my latest 1974 sim, I noticed that OAK (again) has a team ERA about .50 higher than RL. Several of the SPs have an ERC much lower than their season ERA. I'm not sure what this tells us, if anything. I wonder if team defense (for a team like OAK) is not influencing the outcome enough. That's only a hunch, though. Last edited by pstrickert; 01-28-2009 at 12:44 AM.

01-28-2009, 05:15 PM	#7
pstrickert Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 15,741	I appreciate the discussion. strategy settings: I have all strategy settings in the middle for all teams. variances: I would not expect every sim to turn out the same. However, I've simmed this same season dozens of times. I have noticed tendencies that I've followed up on -- the LA underperformance and the CAL overperformance. Now I'm trying to figure out why. CORRECTION: In my current 1974 half-sim/half-play season, I forgot to adjust the SBAs. That explains the crazy SB numbers this time. Last edited by pstrickert; 01-28-2009 at 05:42 PM.

01-29-2009, 06:34 PM	#14
pstrickert Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 15,741	I've simmed the '74 season several times this afternoon. Setting H&R to Very Low has not made any difference that I can see. I should add, too, that IRL the NL and AL had identical league ERAs. The BA in the AL was 3 points higher than the NL. When I sim the '74 season, the NL almost always has the higher league ERA -- often .20 higher. That is rather surprising, isn't it? Last edited by pstrickert; 01-29-2009 at 06:36 PM.

01-26-2009, 05:58 PM	#2
TribeFanInNC Hall Of Famer Join Date: Oct 2007 Posts: 4,019	I can't fault OOTP for misusing Mike Marshall - 200 IP is a lot for a non-starter. I suppose you could try moving the sliders for 'pull reliever' for the Dodgers or Marshall specifically all the way over, but that probably still wouldn't do it. Still, you would think the Dodgers would win some of the time. If you combine that fact the real Angels underperformed their Pythagorean record by 8 games and add two good starters to replace Bill Stoneman (11 starts, 1-8, 6.14 ERA!!!) and some mediocre Ed Figueroa starts, winning the division could happen. Especially in a mediocre division where the RL second place team had a below .500 Pythagorean record. I'm willing to chalk Marshall up to be anomolous and the Angels to be 'What if...'.

01-28-2009, 12:21 PM	#4
SteveP Moderator Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 3,109	Based only on what you've said in your post, I would suggest one thing to consider: OOTP often gets distorted results in the first season of a league, when the modifiers are all set to 1.000. If you are repeatedly playing this league with modifiers set to 1.000, you will get results that don't match real life. For example, the game will likely steal too often, and get caught stealing not often enough. If you haven't done this already, sim out a year and let the game reset the modifiers, then apply those new modifiers when you re-sim the same season. Important: the re-sim has to be a clone of the league you just simmed to get the new modifiers. I've discovered that hard way that you can't do this if you start a league from scratch each time, because there are enough differences in ratings that these new modifiers will just screw things up in that newly created league.

01-28-2009, 02:33 PM	#5
pstrickert Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 15,741	I'm aware of all that. I've made a couple of adjustments to LTMs (see OP), including stolen base attempts. The overall league stats, as I said, look more than acceptable for my purposes right now. Still, I've noticed a few glitches. That's what I'm exploring at the moment.

01-28-2009, 08:15 PM	#9
pstrickert Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 15,741	Many people regard the 1974 Dodgers as one of the all-time greatest teams. That's debatable, of course. As for the Angels, they finished dead last in the AL West in 1974. I'm thinking about re-simming the 1974 season, but this time with trades off. I'll make all of the real-time transactions manually. I could also turn off injuries and, if I had the real-life injury information, place players on the DL manually. That may require too much work, though.

01-28-2009, 09:01 PM	#10
Garlon Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2004 Posts: 3,756	There are aot of variales that can subtly change the outcomes. Also, remember that defensive ratings and defensive outcomes are not perfect in OOTP9 either. I suggest setting Position Player Fatigue to High, and Hit & Run to Very Rarely. Try just changing those two variables and see what happens.

01-29-2009, 12:32 AM	#11
pstrickert Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 15,741	I'll be sure to give it a try. Thanks, Mr. G!

01-29-2009, 07:19 PM	#15
pstrickert Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 15,741	No matter what I do, the CAL and LA problems persist. Some more observations: Mike Marshall pitched for more than 200 innings in relief for LA in 1974. When I sim, he's barely able to reach 50 IP. So, in my most recent sim, the Dodgers compiled a team ERA about 1 run per game higher than IRL. Marshall had an ERA of 2.55 in 40+ IP. Unfortunately, the rest of the relief corps did not pick up the slack. The team relief ERA in the sim was nearly 5.00. Yikes! No wonder LA has trouble replicating their success when I sim the '74 season. One more thing: The relief pitchers -- aside from Marshall -- converted only 4 of 20-something save opportunities.

01-29-2009, 07:20 PM	#16
pstrickert Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 15,741	. . . all of which is to say that OOTP presents us with some player usage problems.

01-29-2009, 07:22 PM	#17
Rondell Tate Minors (Double A) Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 169	Looking at the teams' stats, they both have poor defenses (excepting at catcher for both teams, Ron Cey and Steve Garvey). Nobody else rates much above barely average for their position. They were especially poor at shortstop (combined for 85 errors and well-below-average range on both teams). Both play in good pitchers' parks that for that season were even better than usual for the pitchers. Maybe it was a particularly smoggy year in California? I would check the defensive ratings on both teams, as defense is generally the weakest part of baseball modeling, including in OOTP, in part because the stats are less precise than for pitching/hitting. I agree w/ the post suggesting there may be too few errors, hence too few unearned runs. Certainly the Angels results could be due to the pitching injuries; for the Dodgers, Marshall had one of the great seasons of all time from a reliever. Until you can mess with the sliders to get him at least 150 innings, you're not going to get a good result for the club. I mean, he pitched in over 100 games, finished 83, averaged almost two innings per outing (he threw about 2/3rds of the non-starter innings for the team), had a K:BB approaching 3:1, the lowest ERA on the team and won 15 games, saving 21. That's like having Mariano Rivera setting up for Mariano Rivera. It's crazy. Until you can convince the computer manager to ride that train like Walter Alston did, you're not going to win very often.

01-29-2009, 08:15 PM	#19
thehef Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 4,858	Could you do a test where you clone Marshall twice and put him in the Dodger bullpen as two of the setup men, too? This, of course, wouldn't solve the player-usage issue, but it might go along way to solve the riddle... Although, given the rest-of-LA's-pitching-staff numbers you've noted, we pretty much know that LA's bullpen would be significanly improved, and this would have to translate to more wins. As for the Angels, have you tried any tests where you trim their steal frequency to get close to RL numbers, AND deal with May (get rid of him early in the season) and Singer (give him an injury or demote him) so their Games Started are more in-line w RL?

01-29-2009, 08:34 PM	#20
pstrickert Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 15,741	I like how you think, thehef. Here's another problem I noticed during a recent '74 sim. Duane Kuiper (CLE) played only 10 games IRL in 1974. He had 22 at bats with 11 hits. Even though he was "weakened" upon import (having less than 50 AB), Kuiper still ranked among the league leaders in batting average in the sim. Who can blame the AI for playing him? Unfortunately, he messes up the Cleveland infield, forcing Jack Brohamer to play 1B (instead of 2B) and John Ellis to C (from 1B). Dave Duncan loses his starting job at C, as a result. Now, how much is that going to change Cleveland's fortunes in a 1974 sim? Probably not much. But if you're a Cleveland fan, maybe you want the 1974 lineup to look a bit more familiar. In particular, you may not want Kuiper playing a major role a year before he actually did.