Historical Run Scoring Very Low

tayloraj · 03-22-2023, 07:21 AM

I'm running a historical test league and I have noticed that runs per game consistently runs significantly (15-20%) below real life. This is particularly perplexing because all the other inputs (AVG/ HR/AB, K/9, etc.) appear to be very close to real history (see attached screenshot for visual reference).
I'm wondering if there's some setting in my league that's off (I can't see one offhand) or something weird is happening that's leading to this situation.

My league files are uploaded as "03 replay03222023"

Reed · 03-22-2023, 11:56 AM

MacBook Pro 14
Very same thing as above. Started 1895 to build up a little history before 1901. Pretty much default settings. Checked historical stats after 1896 season and saw runs per game at -25 and -30%. The other stats were pretty close.
I stopped play and said heck with it. Guess I will wait a while before trying again.

Lukas Berger · 03-22-2023, 11:58 AM

Not really sure what could be causing this offhand, but we'll look into it.

Lukas Berger · 03-22-2023, 12:00 PM

What specific settings are you folks using? I know Reed mentions it's 'pretty much default', but given that in a situation like this, even one little thing can make all the difference in finding what might be causing this or not.

EDIT:

Never mind, looks this will happen with default settings too, at least in the very early years. We'll look at this more closely.

Anteater · 03-22-2023, 06:58 PM

I’m seeing this in fictional leagues using 1985 settings. Runs are about 6% low compared to expected for that year. So not as severe as the example above but still off compared to other stats that are about plus/minus 1%. The same leagues in OOTP 23 were very close to expected runs. Using autocalc in each case.

Reed · 03-23-2023, 07:08 AM

Started another league in 1901. Changed only 1 setting during league creation-change the rating based on talent rating/development to recalculate rating each year. Did not play in commissioner mode or take over a team. Started game and only thing I changed was game name (1901 instead of “new game”). Did not even look at any other tabs. Immediately fast sim to end of year. The sim stopped once with job offers which I ignored and continued sim to end of year.

Checked historical simulation accuracy.
Was surprised to see that from 1871(?) until about 1885 the runs/game were in the red about -15 to -25 %, all other stats were in green. 1885-1900 the r/game was in the green.
And the for the season I just created and sim, 1901, the run/game was in the red at -25%.

jcard · 03-23-2023, 10:50 AM

How do the run totals compare to historical league totals? Unless the problem is something along the lines of too large a game total used as the denominator, this raises questions about the integrity of the stat creation. Such a long-term disconnect between runs and the underlying components would suggest that the games are not actually being played out to generate organic results. I am not saying that this is the case, but absent a calculation error the lack of correlation needs an explanation.

Anteater · 03-23-2023, 11:12 AM

I'm playing custom with 1985 stats, not historical, but seeing the same thing with runs low and other stats close to expected. In my table attached below, actuals are the 1985 stats from baseball reference for 1985.

Charlie Hough · 03-23-2023, 04:04 PM

I am seeing the same thing in build 38. I created a historical sim starting in 1908, using all default settings except the following:

Current ratings based on current season
Potential based on remaining peak seasons
Fielding ratings based on 3-year recalc
Pitcher stamina based on 3-year recalc
Real minors and Negro leaguers enabled
Amateur draft and spring training disabled

In 1908, run scoring was 10.4% below real-life history, even though batting average and 2B/AB were 6.6% and 7.0% higher than history.

Thereafter, other stats were overwhelmingly in the green, but run scoring was 14.4% to 23.1% lower than history in every subsequent season. This included four total seasons where it was 20+% lower and four seasons where it was 19% lower.

I will test some other eras as well, but there definitely seems to be an issue here, and I would recommend looking at league total modifiers as a possible culprit. For example, I noticed that the league total modifier for fielding line drives into double-plays was massively high, at 4.0+ or 5.0+. I only checked the first and last seasons for this, but that seems strangely high. I also noticed that sac flies were at 0.600 for 1920, but I didn't check all other seasons.

tayloraj · 03-23-2023, 04:07 PM

I don't know if there was any attempt to correct this issue released in Build 38, but the issue remains. I fired up a test league for 1903 and R/G came in about 20% under real life.

Lukas Berger · 03-23-2023, 04:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tayloraj

I don't know if there was any attempt to correct this issue released in Build 38, but the issue remains. I fired up a test league for 1903 and R/G came in about 20% under real life.

It's a complicated issue, with likely multiple causes. We're still more in the analysis phase still than in the actively fixing stage. But it's quite high on our list of things we're working on.

Reed · 03-25-2023, 06:10 AM

My theory. From middle of the night, can’t sleep, simple so probably wrong.

Runners on base when batter gets a hit are to conservative in their base running.
For example. Runner on 1st stops at 2nd instead of advancing to 3rd when batter gets a hit, or runner on 2nd stops at 3rd instead of scoring when batter gets a hit.

This could explain why runs/game are down while the other stats above are in the green. It could also be more of a factor in seasons that rely more on base running (early 20th century) than home run era seasons where base running is not quite as much of a factor.

atlbrave1 · 03-25-2023, 09:20 AM

Pretty sure the error modifiers aren't working as noted in thread here:

http://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/s...d.php?t=345128

While the % change does not seem drastic, due to the way fielding % is calculated the difference in 1908 for example is 1 baserunner per game. That's not the whole cause obviously, but would appear to be one cause as the fielding % is pretty much constant in the screenshot which does not align to historical events.

swampdragon · 03-25-2023, 10:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by atlbrave1

Pretty sure the error modifiers aren't working as noted in thread here:

http://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/s...d.php?t=345128

While the % change does not seem drastic, due to the way fielding % is calculated the difference in 1908 for example is 1 baserunner per game. That's not the whole cause obviously, but would appear to be one cause as the fielding % is pretty much constant in the screenshot which does not align to historical events.

I think this is the culprit. I'm not seeing nearly enough errors in 1901, and I don't think I've seen a two base throwing error yet.

Edit: Let's take 1908. The fielding percentage that year was ,959. The OOTP fielding percentage was .987. That's less than one third of the errors actually committed during the real season, and I think it would be more than one baserunner per game. Something like thirty percent to one-third of the runs scored in 1908 were unearned. The difference is enough to reduce runs scored by 20% or so. I've done a bit of rounding and mental arithmetic instead of being careful, but I'm in the ballpark. As the actual fielding percentage goes up over the years, the discrepancy shrinks, which is what happened in the table in the original post.

Charlie Hough · 03-25-2023, 12:06 PM

League total modifiers should receive a thorough review as well. A few messages ago, I reported some numbers that seemed awfully extreme and suspicious to me, and they would potentially negatively impact run scoring.

In OOTP 23, there were problems where the sim was calculating extreme league total modifiers for a couple of modifiers at times, and I had to adjust them when those cases occurred. But it wasn't consistent, even in saved games created with the exact same season and settings. In this case with run scoring in OOTP 24, it seems consistent across people's saved games.

venflaalachi · 03-25-2023, 01:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by swampdragon

I think this is the culprit. I'm not seeing nearly enough errors in 1901, and I don't think I've seen a two base throwing error yet.

Edit: Let's take 1908. The fielding percentage that year was ,959. The OOTP fielding percentage was .987. That's less than one third of the errors actually committed during the real season, and I think it would be more than one baserunner per game. Something like thirty percent to one-third of the runs scored in 1908 were unearned. The difference is enough to reduce runs scored by 20% or so. I've done a bit of rounding and mental arithmetic instead of being careful, but I'm in the ballpark. As the actual fielding percentage goes up over the years, the discrepancy shrinks, which is what happened in the table in the original post.

I think it's the errors as well. I've played out games in the 1870s and 1880s with OOTP 24 and I am not seeing close to the number of errors I saw in OOTP 23. If there is an error most games have just 1 error, I remember in OOTP 23 it was common to see 5+ errors combined in a lot of games.

atlbrave1 · 03-25-2023, 02:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by swampdragon

I think this is the culprit. I'm not seeing nearly enough errors in 1901, and I don't think I've seen a two base throwing error yet.

Edit: Let's take 1908. The fielding percentage that year was ,959. The OOTP fielding percentage was .987. That's less than one third of the errors actually committed during the real season, and I think it would be more than one baserunner per game. Something like thirty percent to one-third of the runs scored in 1908 were unearned. The difference is enough to reduce runs scored by 20% or so. I've done a bit of rounding and mental arithmetic instead of being careful, but I'm in the ballpark. As the actual fielding percentage goes up over the years, the discrepancy shrinks, which is what happened in the table in the original post.

You are correct, I was reading Baseball-Reference incorrectly. 1.71 Team Errors per game in 1908 vs 0.53 Team Errors in 2022, so yes, would be about 2.4 more errors per game assuming everything else is the same (balls in play being the primary everything else in this situation).

Lukas Berger · 03-26-2023, 12:33 PM

This should be (mostly) fixed in the new patch we've just released.

https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...d.php?t=345365

We fixed the problem with the errors modifiers and the run numbers now fall within the green range on the historical accuracy report.

They're still a touch lower than ideal even so, so we'll keep looking into that.

swampdragon · 03-26-2023, 04:13 PM

Thanks for such a quick response.

Anteater · 03-26-2023, 06:21 PM

I did a quick check on my custom league that uses 1985 stats (not a historical league) and the runs per game increased from 5% below expected to 2% below expected. That's a big improvement and a level that I can live with. Thanks for the fix.

03-22-2023, 07:21 AM	#1
tayloraj Minors (Double A) Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: Philadelphia, PA Posts: 163	Historical Run Scoring Very Low I'm running a historical test league and I have noticed that runs per game consistently runs significantly (15-20%) below real life. This is particularly perplexing because all the other inputs (AVG/ HR/AB, K/9, etc.) appear to be very close to real history (see attached screenshot for visual reference). I'm wondering if there's some setting in my league that's off (I can't see one offhand) or something weird is happening that's leading to this situation. My league files are uploaded as "03 replay03222023" Attached Images

03-22-2023, 11:58 AM	#3
Lukas Berger OOTP Developments Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Nice, Côte d'Azur, France Posts: 19,918	Not really sure what could be causing this offhand, but we'll look into it. __________________ lukas@ootpdevelopments.com Order Out of the Park Baseball 25! Need to upload files for us to check out? Instructions can be found here

03-22-2023, 12:00 PM	#4
Lukas Berger OOTP Developments Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Nice, Côte d'Azur, France Posts: 19,918	What specific settings are you folks using? I know Reed mentions it's 'pretty much default', but given that in a situation like this, even one little thing can make all the difference in finding what might be causing this or not. EDIT: Never mind, looks this will happen with default settings too, at least in the very early years. We'll look at this more closely. __________________ lukas@ootpdevelopments.com Order Out of the Park Baseball 25! Need to upload files for us to check out? Instructions can be found here Last edited by Lukas Berger; 03-22-2023 at 12:19 PM.

03-23-2023, 11:12 AM	#8
Anteater Minors (Double A) Join Date: Apr 2022 Location: Florida Posts: 132	I'm playing custom with 1985 stats, not historical, but seeing the same thing with runs low and other stats close to expected. In my table attached below, actuals are the 1985 stats from baseball reference for 1985. Attached Images

03-23-2023, 04:04 PM	#9
Charlie Hough Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 3,625	I am seeing the same thing in build 38. I created a historical sim starting in 1908, using all default settings except the following: Current ratings based on current season Potential based on remaining peak seasons Fielding ratings based on 3-year recalc Pitcher stamina based on 3-year recalc Real minors and Negro leaguers enabled Amateur draft and spring training disabled In 1908, run scoring was 10.4% below real-life history, even though batting average and 2B/AB were 6.6% and 7.0% higher than history. Thereafter, other stats were overwhelmingly in the green, but run scoring was 14.4% to 23.1% lower than history in every subsequent season. This included four total seasons where it was 20+% lower and four seasons where it was 19% lower. I will test some other eras as well, but there definitely seems to be an issue here, and I would recommend looking at league total modifiers as a possible culprit. For example, I noticed that the league total modifier for fielding line drives into double-plays was massively high, at 4.0+ or 5.0+. I only checked the first and last seasons for this, but that seems strangely high. I also noticed that sac flies were at 0.600 for 1920, but I didn't check all other seasons. Last edited by Charlie Hough; 03-23-2023 at 04:30 PM.

03-22-2023, 11:56 AM	#2
Reed All Star Starter Join Date: Oct 2013 Posts: 1,947	MacBook Pro 14 Very same thing as above. Started 1895 to build up a little history before 1901. Pretty much default settings. Checked historical stats after 1896 season and saw runs per game at -25 and -30%. The other stats were pretty close. I stopped play and said heck with it. Guess I will wait a while before trying again.

03-22-2023, 06:58 PM	#5
Anteater Minors (Double A) Join Date: Apr 2022 Location: Florida Posts: 132	I’m seeing this in fictional leagues using 1985 settings. Runs are about 6% low compared to expected for that year. So not as severe as the example above but still off compared to other stats that are about plus/minus 1%. The same leagues in OOTP 23 were very close to expected runs. Using autocalc in each case.

03-23-2023, 07:08 AM	#6
Reed All Star Starter Join Date: Oct 2013 Posts: 1,947	Started another league in 1901. Changed only 1 setting during league creation-change the rating based on talent rating/development to recalculate rating each year. Did not play in commissioner mode or take over a team. Started game and only thing I changed was game name (1901 instead of “new game”). Did not even look at any other tabs. Immediately fast sim to end of year. The sim stopped once with job offers which I ignored and continued sim to end of year. Checked historical simulation accuracy. Was surprised to see that from 1871(?) until about 1885 the runs/game were in the red about -15 to -25 %, all other stats were in green. 1885-1900 the r/game was in the green. And the for the season I just created and sim, 1901, the run/game was in the red at -25%.

03-23-2023, 10:50 AM	#7
jcard Major Leagues Join Date: Oct 2015 Posts: 470 Infractions: 0/1 (1)	How do the run totals compare to historical league totals? Unless the problem is something along the lines of too large a game total used as the denominator, this raises questions about the integrity of the stat creation. Such a long-term disconnect between runs and the underlying components would suggest that the games are not actually being played out to generate organic results. I am not saying that this is the case, but absent a calculation error the lack of correlation needs an explanation.

03-23-2023, 04:07 PM	#10
tayloraj Minors (Double A) Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: Philadelphia, PA Posts: 163	I don't know if there was any attempt to correct this issue released in Build 38, but the issue remains. I fired up a test league for 1903 and R/G came in about 20% under real life.

03-25-2023, 06:10 AM	#12
Reed All Star Starter Join Date: Oct 2013 Posts: 1,947	My theory. From middle of the night, can’t sleep, simple so probably wrong. Runners on base when batter gets a hit are to conservative in their base running. For example. Runner on 1st stops at 2nd instead of advancing to 3rd when batter gets a hit, or runner on 2nd stops at 3rd instead of scoring when batter gets a hit. This could explain why runs/game are down while the other stats above are in the green. It could also be more of a factor in seasons that rely more on base running (early 20th century) than home run era seasons where base running is not quite as much of a factor.

03-25-2023, 09:20 AM	#13
atlbrave1 Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Apr 2002 Posts: 231	Pretty sure the error modifiers aren't working as noted in thread here: http://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/s...d.php?t=345128 While the % change does not seem drastic, due to the way fielding % is calculated the difference in 1908 for example is 1 baserunner per game. That's not the whole cause obviously, but would appear to be one cause as the fielding % is pretty much constant in the screenshot which does not align to historical events.

03-25-2023, 12:06 PM	#15
Charlie Hough Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 3,625	League total modifiers should receive a thorough review as well. A few messages ago, I reported some numbers that seemed awfully extreme and suspicious to me, and they would potentially negatively impact run scoring. In OOTP 23, there were problems where the sim was calculating extreme league total modifiers for a couple of modifiers at times, and I had to adjust them when those cases occurred. But it wasn't consistent, even in saved games created with the exact same season and settings. In this case with run scoring in OOTP 24, it seems consistent across people's saved games.

03-26-2023, 12:33 PM	#18
Lukas Berger OOTP Developments Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Nice, Côte d'Azur, France Posts: 19,918	This should be (mostly) fixed in the new patch we've just released. https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...d.php?t=345365 We fixed the problem with the errors modifiers and the run numbers now fall within the green range on the historical accuracy report. They're still a touch lower than ideal even so, so we'll keep looking into that. __________________ lukas@ootpdevelopments.com Order Out of the Park Baseball 25! Need to upload files for us to check out? Instructions can be found here

03-26-2023, 04:13 PM	#19
swampdragon Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2002 Location: The Lonely Mountain Posts: 2,509	Thanks for such a quick response. __________________ “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies." -- C.S. Lewis

03-26-2023, 06:21 PM	#20
Anteater Minors (Double A) Join Date: Apr 2022 Location: Florida Posts: 132	I did a quick check on my custom league that uses 1985 stats (not a historical league) and the runs per game increased from 5% below expected to 2% below expected. That's a big improvement and a level that I can live with. Thanks for the fix.