The Strengths of OOTP Historical Simulations

[Spritze]

Originally Posted by Garlon

OOTP historicals only use players who actually made it to the major leagues.

and only for the years they played in the majors so they come in already "finished".

Which is the reason modders came up with the necessary mods to address this. There are a number of alternate history mods out there which DO allow you to have a minor league system and DO allow you to control the players in your system and DO allow you get unformed but historical players in a draft and DO allow all sorts of other stuff that strict (boring) historical players probably don't like, don't want and won't use. But you can.

Another plus to the historical abilities of OOTP.

[golander40]

A question that has bothered me since "day one"-----If I start a league in 1941 (example) and import several players from 1930 (example) what happens to those imported players in the following years ? What stats are used to create their ratings--- say in 1942 and beyond ? (development engine or pick up their real stats from--say 1931-32-etc ?)
This one is important to me--will help me decide how to set-up my leagues.(I play out my games--in Commish) I play alot
(very old and disabled--lots of time to be "immersed")
Thanks for all comments/answers/opinions
Gil The Ancient One
PS-Kinda hoping Garlon-Spritze-Gambo will comment

[Scoman]

E. AI Rookie Draft Logic

If you enable the option for the AI to use pre-defined draft value in the rookie draft each season you will give yourself a real challenge. Don’t expect superstar players to slip to the bottom of the first round. This aspect AI essentially uses a combination of a player’s potential (career OPS or ERA) and his career length to rank all of the available players in the draft. So when you get to the last round of the rookie draft all you have left are a bunch of guys who only had a cup of coffee in the big leagues. Whereas in the first round all of your hall of famers and all-star caliber players will get chosen.



Is this feature broken? I did a test draft of 1901 and with this checked the ai drafting is terrible.
Its much better with it unchecked.

[Cooleyvol]

Originally Posted by Spritze

and only for the years they played in the majors so they come in already "finished".

Which is the reason modders came up with the necessary mods to address this. There are a number of alternate history mods out there which DO allow you to have a minor league system and DO allow you to control the players in your system and DO allow you get unformed but historical players in a draft and DO allow all sorts of other stuff that strict (boring) historical players probably don't like, don't want and won't use. But you can.

Another plus to the historical abilities of OOTP.

Spritze, in your opinion, which is the best db to use in order to get unformed players in so that you can manage at least one level of minor leagues and get the joy of watching them develop instead of coming into the league ready to play at the ML level?

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by Scoman

E. AI Rookie Draft Logic

If you enable the option for the AI to use pre-defined draft value in the rookie draft each season you will give yourself a real challenge. Don’t expect superstar players to slip to the bottom of the first round. This aspect AI essentially uses a combination of a player’s potential (career OPS or ERA) and his career length to rank all of the available players in the draft. So when you get to the last round of the rookie draft all you have left are a bunch of guys who only had a cup of coffee in the big leagues. Whereas in the first round all of your hall of famers and all-star caliber players will get chosen.



Is this feature broken? I did a test draft of 1901 and with this checked the ai drafting is terrible.
Its much better with it unchecked.

What type of database are you using? Default? Did you modify it yourself and in order to get those changes to stick you had to remove the .odb database and use .csv files only? Or another one? I know for a fact that it works quite well with the Spritze-Gambo database from a little test I did where Koufax went 1 and Clemente went 3 in the draft after the 1954 season. That seems reasonable to me. One way to know with 100% certainty if it is broken or not is to check that draft you did and see if it runs in alphabetical order. If it does, it means that for some reason the computer cannot follow the logic and instead runs it in alphabetical order. Not good. David Aardsma first overall in his draft and Cy Young close to last in his makes the baby Jesus cry. Spritze has said that he leaves this feature unchecked when he plays. Make of that what you will.

[Garlon]

Scoman - the pre-defined draft logic only applies to rookie drafts, not initial season drafts of al the players in the league. We can improve initial draft logic next year.

[Gambo]

Originally Posted by Cooleyvol

Spritze, in your opinion, which is the best db to use in order to get unformed players in so that you can manage at least one level of minor leagues and get the joy of watching them develop instead of coming into the league ready to play at the ML level?

In my opinion it comes down to 2 databases depending on what you want.

Remember, Spritze's and the Gambo/Spritze database use the same statistics. The only difference statistically is mine has some changes to the fielding2.csv to make the fielding more cosmetically appeasing. (Spritze and I are working on improving this)

So...
Players debut when they made their pro debut and with real organizations. Gambo/Spritze.

Players debut at 18 for a draft league. Spritze 18 year old version.

They're all very good databases.

[Scoman]

Originally Posted by Garlon

Scoman - the pre-defined draft logic only applies to rookie drafts, not initial season drafts of al the players in the league. We can improve initial draft logic next year.

Oh ok,thanks

[Spritze]

Originally Posted by golander40

A question that has bothered me since "day one"-----If I start a league in 1941 (example) and import several players from 1930 (example) what happens to those imported players in the following years ? What stats are used to create their ratings--- say in 1942 and beyond ? (development engine or pick up their real stats from--say 1931-32-etc ?)
This one is important to me--will help me decide how to set-up my leagues.(I play out my games--in Commish) I play alot
(very old and disabled--lots of time to be "immersed")
Thanks for all comments/answers/opinions
Gil The Ancient One
PS-Kinda hoping Garlon-Spritze-Gambo will comment

The game will rate them on their incoming season. You MUST use development instead of recalc as the game ignores 31, 32 etc in your example. The challenge is development can turn a Marty Marion into a Johnny Mize and vice versa.

[golander40]

Thanks much Spritze for your time/reply.
Its kinda what I figured,but your confirmation is what I needed.
Gil The Ancient One (Still Use My Abacus)

[Biggio509]

Originally Posted by highandoutside

Biggio - what does OBD stand for? I'm having a hard time understanding what wasn't working with the neut. stats.

Pstrickert - Will 1-yr recalc get me closer to RL playing times? I want some variation in my replays, but I would like to avoid the issue of a rookie getting 500 at bats in the replay when he only had a 100 in RL.

The database file is history.obd. Neutralized stats work fine if you leave that in. If you remove the file and edit the .cvs files then the game has some bugs importing neutralized stats.

[Bristolduke]

Actually, you only have to delete the .odb to have problems with the neutralized data.

In reality, you probably aren't deleting the .odb unless you want to change the csv files for some reason.

A couple of common reasons for changing the .odb is cross-era games (e.g. random arrival of players, etc.) or correcting one of many errors in the player master file relating to age, bats, throws, retire dates, etc. These options still don't work complately.

Spritze and Gambo/Spritze DBs have created their own .odb files, so they should now work, although Spritze has not re-released his files yet.

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by Gambo

In my opinion it comes down to 2 databases depending on what you want.

Remember, Spritze's and the Gambo/Spritze database use the same statistics. The only difference statistically is mine has some changes to the fielding2.csv to make the fielding more cosmetically appeasing. (Spritze and I are working on improving this)

So...
Players debut when they made their pro debut and with real organizations. Gambo/Spritze.

Players debut at 18 for a draft league. Spritze 18 year old version.

They're all very good databases.

^ ^ ^ This.

The quality level of the Gambo-Spritze database is off the charts and if the Spritze databases use the same stats then they will be awesome too. I'm still muddling along trying to shave Gambo-Spritze down to MLBers only and only when they debuted in MLB. Question for Gambo: What does making the fielding more cosmetically appealing mean?

[Spritze]

Originally Posted by actionjackson

What does making the fielding more cosmetically appealing mean?

Means I had a very small error in one of the 2,743 formulas that produce these numbers.

[clamel]

Originally Posted by Garlon

clamel - The retirement date in lahman is not used. Players retire after the last season they played IRL. Using the actual last game played date would cause all kinds of terrible issues. Imagine having having Ted Williams on your playoff contending team in 1960 only to have him retire the day before the playoffs begin...that'd be ridiculous and unrealistic. This is why no players in OOTP are retired until after the playoffs are finished.

If you make the retirement date the earliest posible date as you mentioned you will have a league flooded with players who don't belong there. That would have significant consequences on statistical output of the individual players in the league. This would in a way be very detrimental to the simulation.

OOTP historicals only use players who actually made it to the major leagues. There is really no reason you need to manage a minor league system in historicals. All players you draft are major leaguers, and with 3-yr recalc you are not developing them in the minor leagues either like you would be in fictionals. So you are just using the minor leagues as a holding pen for your extra players. I suggest using the reserve roster for this purpose rather than a minor league team when playing historicals.

I said it wrong. I know it´s the year, the end of it that is used. However with injuries enabled in the game players might retire earlier, don´t they?
If this happens you get more retirements than you should.
This will bring back the fact that perhaps the game would have the "last" year to retire only be a guideline. Just as an un-historical injury can stop Nolan Ryan prior to his final year, so should some possibility be that a Cup-of-Coffee player should play on a couple of years over his final ML last year.
This CoC player could be forced to return to the majors thanks to perhaps an earlier injury to Nolan Ryan.
Many CoC players are called to the majors thanks to an injury IRL.
Retirement on them will bring your "backups" depleted.
In my case I prefer just a Triple A team below the majors just to get those "odd" players some playing time. Filling out that 40-man roster too.

I don´t tick the Disable Player development so that players can alter during a season (as I understand it), AND most certain players that have "gone" over his historical last performance still have some alteration in their development. This brings up a chance of a little flicker in historical happenings. Can Cubs win the World Series ???
After all having history repeat itself 100% would be boring....

[Garlon]

clamel - mixing real ad fictional player development together would produce results tha you definitely do not want. Anyway, each year there is an abundance of CoC players in the draft. So there's really no need to extend the careers of any players. Each team in the league will have close to 40 players available to them anyway even with players retiring on time (or early if it is a CEI) depending on the time period. Also, remember IRL some players would come uo for a handful of games and then get sent back down to the minors for several years before being callled up again...with OOTP historicals these players will of course be available in the game any year between thei first year and their last. There ar more than enough players.

I actually like to play with 20 teams from 1901-1960 instead of 16, and still the teams have plenty of players to fill their rosters.

You actually should check the Disable Player Development option in historicals. If you don't do this then your player ratings are going into fictional development each season and that causes alot of weirdness in the results IMO.

[clamel]

Garlon,
you´re probably right with disable player development.
To add is the problem with managers and coaches. Doing historical those guys are fictional from the start anyway. Their mssion should in the game to improve players and with historical settings they are close to useless.

Probably best running as is, without scouts and coaches.
Still the player amount is still in doubt.
Starting several times in 1987 I still have teams with even less than 40 players to work with. Perhaps unretire some players that IMHO should have some years left to play. Those pesky CoC guys.
I can stand having players popping up very late in their careers in the Big league, like Chris Coste and others, but "early retirement can be handled with unretire these guys, I think.

However I came to think about the other aspects of contracts playing with the "standard" DB.
Free Agents gets a bit wrong, doesn´t it. Coste will have NO pro-years when he enters the majors... How does it affect arbitration ?
And possible other things concerning financials and contracts....

[lt2cents]

Originally Posted by rich12545

This is very good. The only thing missing so far as I can tell is realistic financials during the reserve clause era.

The absence of reserve clause era as an option is a big gap in the game. The best approximation now seems to be to set FA to 25 years and use arbitration to simulate the old fashioned owner favored contract negotiations. But it leaves much to be desired.

Also, if it is correct that a single number scales all financials for each year it does not well reflect that the ratios of gate income to player salaries, etc. varied from era to era. How hard can it be to make each of these factors table based when several other historical inputs to the game come from annualized tables now? Broadcast income etc. did not all track together over time.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by lt2cents

How hard can it be to make each of these factors table based when several other historical inputs to the game come from annualized tables now? Broadcast income etc. did not all track together over time.

OOTP's current financial model simply isn't structured to handle that level of realism. It would need at least some sort overhaul to do so.

One of the core problems is that a club in OOTP only has one major expense: the player salaries. That's it. In the real world, clubs have a lot more things they have to spend money on, such as team operations (e.g. travel, spring training, etc.), stadium operations, minor league operations, and so forth. That lack of additional expenses means if you enter in revenue numbers that are roughly realistic, teams in the game will rapidly accumulate cash since they don't have nearly enough things to spend money on compared to their real-life counterparts.

The percentage of expenses which player salaries have accounted for over the history of MLB has varied enormously, from as low as just 20% to a high of 60%.

[lt2cents]

I would like to see that increase in the level of realism- including at least a simple minor league financial model, but all I am referring to here is simply to have a table of annual values for player salaries, gate, media, and merchandising, allowing the ratios between them to vary. The single financial coefficient is distorting.