When people criticize OOTP for being unrealistic...

[mytreds]

Modern example: Carson Fulmer started at Vanderbuilt as a reliever, then became a starter, was drafted as a starter by the ChiSox, didn’t really pan out, now he’s middle relieving for Detroit.

I wholeheartedly agree, the game should just designate Pitchers and Closers.

[Syd Thrift]

The issue is less with “designating pitchers and closers” and more with how to display Stuff. They could just show “stuff as a starter” and “stuff as a reliever”, although I personally am for more little codes for pitchers, not less. I don’t think the SP/RP/CL designation actually makes a difference in any case, if you designate a player a reliever, their stuff as a reliever shows, but if a player designated as a SP pitches in relief I’m pretty sure the game uses the reliever algorithm to determine their Stuff for that game (and gives them the same malus for going through the order a second time, etc.).

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by itsmb8

What would happen if you changed every RP's position in the game to SP? Im curious as to what would happen with roster, rotation, and bullpen logic.

For AI teams, any pitcher who isn't in the rotation is automatically made into a relief pitcher. So you could change all the RPs into SPs, but the game would just change the ones who can't crack the rotation back into RPs. This used to happen to human-controlled teams as well, but in a recent play-through on OOTP21 I noticed that the game doesn't do this with the human-controlled team's staff.

[TomVeal]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

For AI teams, any pitcher who isn't in the rotation is automatically made into a relief pitcher. So you could change all the RPs into SPs, but the game would just change the ones who can't crack the rotation back into RPs. This used to happen to human-controlled teams as well, but in a recent play-through on OOTP21 I noticed that the game doesn't do this with the human-controlled team's staff.

Sometimes it does; sometimes it doesn't. I've never figured out why.

[BBGiovanni]

I've seen quite a few lopsided scores in world tournament play with real-life players and OOTP strawmen: some of the countries like China, England, and the Bahamas with 30 or so players in their available pool get pounded sometimes.

I'd actually like mercy rule games to be an option for just this kind of lopsided setting. I don't know whether I'd use it in MLB replays, but I'd love it for international/tournament exhibition play. Like RchW said above, in those kinds of settings in real life I don't think humans would do that.

As a real-life example, I remember winning a JV football game like 36-6 or so against a team of frosh-sophs (we had only sophomores) from a smaller (but not that much smaller) school. It's the first time I ever saw a punter in a game punt a ball backwards over his head. Over the winter, our coach told me that he was trying to run plays on offense that wouldn't work, which is why our 6'4" backup QB who made Vinny Testaverde look mobile was running option plays and keeping the ball most of the time. He still gained yards but it ate up most of the second half and we didn't sustain any drives.

It's a different sport, obviously, but the idea is the same and for those that model international or "friendly" play or play college games, it might be nice to have a checkbox that enables a mercy rule (or better yet, set the number of runs, 10-30 or whatever) to end a game. I've done this in my WBAT writeups, if a team wins by 10 or more I just describe it as a mercy rule win. But it muddies the stats, and makes the recaps unusable ("Nolan Arenado hit 5 homers today against the Bahamas...")

I never try to speculate about programming, but I'd think you could make it work like rainouts do. Instead of triggering the cancellation by the weather randomizer, it would end the game when Runs = +10 or whatever.

For real games, I think Joe from Chicago's explanation is quite solid, but for times where very imbalanced teams play one another, it would clean up the records books quite a bit and model non-professional play better.

[Ruwisc]

I do think the AI could use a little tweaking in blowouts, TBH. In real-life situations you'd never see a team go all-out to score 18 runs in an inning when they come in up 22-5, like in the OP's picture. When the outcome of a game is that far out of reach I would expect to see the winning team's hitters taking it easy, swinging a little more freely, you know, "trying to get it over with", but I've never noticed anything like that in OOTP.

I don't really see this as an issue with roster management, except in situations where a team literally only has one pitcher, etc. And the AI managers do seem to take their foot off the gas at appropriate times, like taking out star players when there's a big lead... just talking about AI batters specifically.

[Questdog]

Originally Posted by Ruwisc

I do think the AI could use a little tweaking in blowouts, TBH. In real-life situations you'd never see a team go all-out to score 18 runs in an inning when they come in up 22-5, like in the OP's picture. When the outcome of a game is that far out of reach I would expect to see the winning team's hitters taking it easy, swinging a little more freely, you know, "trying to get it over with", but I've never noticed anything like that in OOTP.

I don't really see this as an issue with roster management, except in situations where a team literally only has one pitcher, etc. And the AI managers do seem to take their foot off the gas at appropriate times, like taking out star players when there's a big lead... just talking about AI batters specifically.

In real life, every at bat is used against the player in contract negotiations, so I do not think anyone is taking it easy much....

The only time I can remember hitters not trying hard is when I was in college and our team was up 3 to 0 in the 4th inning and we could see a big storm heading our way. The batters were all ordered to bunt into outs to get to the 5th and make the game official as quickly as possible.....

[Sharkn20]

The last 2 versions have been pretty random heavy, specially coming playoff time, after several versions OOTP20 is going to be my last one unfortunately, it just doesn't make sense to spend so much time playing a game with such a heavy weighted RGN. I understand you have to have some randomness in this kind of games, but nowadays is just too much.

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

[Syd Thrift]

The game does randomly determine results, yes. I don’t understand what this is a criticism of. Are you angry that the best teams don’t win in the playoffs enough? Unfortunately the best teams lose a *lot* and just as IRL it’s often better to be hot in September and October than good (or at least healthy). If the best team every year won the World Series, the Mariners would have won in 2001...

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by Sharkn20

The last 2 versions have been pretty random heavy, specially coming playoff time, after several versions OOTP20 is going to be my last one unfortunately, it just doesn't make sense to spend so much time playing a game with such a heavy weighted RGN. I understand you have to have some randomness in this kind of games, but nowadays is just too much.

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

Why do you think this version is more random?

[itsmb8]

The Marlins are leading the NL East, the Orioles are above .500, the Phoenix Suns literally just went 8-0 in the bubble, a .0329% chance of that happening according to ESPN...

Sports are EXTREMELY random. Get over it. Sorry.

[Brad K]

How is something more random than random?

[mytreds]

I wouldn’t say sports are extremely random. They have the tendency to be random to a degree, but studies have shown that sports are more consistent than you think.

The problem with a simulator is knowing how to program randomness into a “realistic” format.

[Syd Thrift]

Ok, but the real question is, are sports vague???

[Bobfather]

So as I understand it nothing can happen in OOTP until it happens in MLB first? Where is the fun in that? Also playing games out may change your perspective as you would see everything unfold.thus having context.

[luckymann]

In the latest season of my fictional league that also features a huge amount of both game-derived and imported-by-me players, with all of the tweaks I have programmed in to suit my own gameplay preferences, this is how the stat output matched up against the 2011 totals I'd used:

(12-2016 CL v 2011 IRL YEAR)

• AB: 194637 v 165353 (1.17x)
• H: 49423 v 42267 (1.17x)
• 1B: 33163 v 28418 (1.17x)
• 2B: 10194 v 8399 (1.21x)
• 3B: 1069 v 898 (1.19x)
• HR: 4997 v 4552 (1.10x)
• TB: 76746 v 66118 (1.16x)
• BA: .254 v .255
• OBP: .316 v .321
• SLG: .394 v .399
• OPS: .711 v .720
• K: 41006 v 34488 (1.19x)
• SB: 4365 v 3279
• CS: 1703 v 1261
• SB%: 71.93% v 72.22%

• IP: 51067 v 43527 (1.17x)
• ER: 22378 v 19067 (1.17x)
• ERA: 3.94 v 3.94
• BABIP: .296 v .295

I mean that is an amazingly accurate replication. Cap doffed to the programmers. I understand it's all based on maths and stats but still, I made a fair few changes, and it still managed to hold incredibly true.

[kriscolic]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

Translation: "Let me post a line score without any surrounding context that might explain the seemingly aberrant result and then complain that it's evidence that the game is broken."

Strange results like this can be caused by a number of factors. In my experience, this happens a lot when position players pitch, either because they're inserted into a game that's already a blowout or because there aren't enough pitchers on the staff to begin with (a common problem in lower minor leagues, such as the GCL). That, in turn, is the result of either the gamer not paying attention to rosters in the low minors or else relying on historical rosters even where those rosters are incomplete or inadequate. I'd rank that as 50% the game's fault and 50% the gamer's fault.

Here, we can get a pretty good idea what happened with the small bits of evidence found in the screen cap. The game recap says that the key hits were off of pitchers M. Thompson, R. Mercedes, and N. Shoaf. The Red Sox GCL franchise in 2005 didn't have anyone named Thompson, Mercedes, or Shoaf on its roster. Indeed, the Red Sox didn't have anyone in their entire minor league organization with those last names. A bit of detective work, however, can solve that puzzle.

No major leaguer has ever been named Shoaf, but a "Nick Shoaf" played five games as a relief pitcher for the Kansas City T-Bones of the independent Northern League in 2005. That must be the "N. Shoaf" who gave up a three-run homer in the top of the eighth. Firing up OOTP and creating a 2005 game with historical minors, it turns out that "R. Mercedes" is Roque Mercedes, a reliever in the Brewers' organization who never made it above AA. There were three Mike (Michael) Thompsons playing pro ball in 2005. My guess is that the M. Thompson who gave up five runs in the top of the first was Mike Thompson, who pitched briefly for the Braves' GCL club.

All three of those players were pitchers, it's true, but they were all bad pitchers and they were all relievers. The fact that Thompson, a two-pitch reliever with a low stamina, started the game is a red flag that indicates something isn't right. Either every starter was tired, or else there were no starters on the team - a common enough problem in the low minors, but one that can be addressed through some basic roster management on the gamer's part.

So what can we conclude here? A game in the lowest rung of the minors was a blow-out because one team didn't have good pitching. I'd venture to guess that a large majority of OOTP players wouldn't even care about that kind of result, as their focus is solely on developing players in the minors and getting them playing time, regardless of the final score. For those people who really care about getting accurate results for their Gulf Coast League games, they should be prepared to put more time and effort into getting the league settings right and monitoring the league for any imbalances among the rosters.

Well, it's the Florida State League, not the Gulf Coast. FSL is High-A (in real life, anyway), or the third from the top. But that's almost beside the point.

You're not really making a persuasive case here. You're saying that this happened because the AI is terrible at constructing minor league rosters. Well, yeah, that's obviously true. And instead of saying "Welp, that's just how the game is" I'm saying "Here's a way that the game could be improved". (To be clear, the Mets were my organization and the Red Sox were AI controlled.) This is a game that strives for realism, is it not? Is it realistic for an organization to staff one of its affiliates with only relief pitchers?

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by kriscolic

You're not really making a persuasive case here.

And you are? I note that you didn't dispute my point that posting a line score with very little context doesn't do much to support your position. So I guess we agree on that.

And we can also agree that the game needs to do a better job with roster management in the low minors. But you post one game's results and, on that basis, claim that the game is broken. I disagree. The game can be improved to help prevent this type of result in the future, but the gamer can do some things right now to help as well. So what steps are you taking to make sure that there are no blowouts in the low minors?

As I mentioned in my previous post, most OOTP'ers probably wouldn't care about a game in the low minors ending in a 45-9 score. You, on the other hand, evidently do. That being the case, you need to put the effort into the game to make sure that your priorities are being met. OOTP has so many options for the user to modify the game that there's really no reason for someone to just throw up his hands and say "OOTP needs to play the game the way I want it to play." You don't like it? CHANGE IT!

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

As I mentioned in my previous post, most OOTP'ers probably wouldn't care about a game in the low minors ending in a 45-9 score. You, on the other hand, evidently do. That being the case, you need to put the effort into the game to make sure that your priorities are being met. OOTP has so many options for the user to modify the game that there's really no reason for someone to just throw up his hands and say "OOTP needs to play the game the way I want it to play." You don't like it? CHANGE IT!

No
The problem isnt with the user, it's with the game

AI teams not having enough pitchers is something that needs to be fixed in the game

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by CBeisbol

No
The problem isnt with the user, it's with the game

AI teams not having enough pitchers is something that needs to be fixed in the game

Does OOTP have a problem with roster management for teams in the low minors? Yes, without question. Does an imbalance exist between starters and relievers in the low minors? Yes, I'd say that's true as well. Can OOTP improve in this area? Undoubtedly. Is a user justified in declaring, based on the results of one game, that OOTP is broken and that the user is helpless to take any steps to mitigate the situation? No. A thousand times NO.