In a world without home runs...

[zoomzilla]

I need help creating a game world without home runs. I want the stats to resemble modern day numbers in terms of hits, runs, BA, ERA and so on, except all the runs and rbi's produced come from non home runs. I've tried messing with the modifiers by dropping home run totals to deadball era numbers, but all that seems to accomplish is taking away all rbi's produced from home runs. In three simmed seasons the highest rbi total was 92. I'm also getting era leaders all in the sub 1.00 range, way to low for modern comparison.
Im currently running a sim based on deadball stats with the modifiers inflated but it's still way to low to compare to the modern day. Any suggestions on how to accomplish this?

[Questdog]

Well, you can't get the same total of runs from two different sets of numbers, if the only difference is that one has average home run production and one has none at all......to get the same runs output, something in the no homers set of numbers has to go up to compensate, and by quite a big margin. Two areas to consider that will keep batting average about the same is walks and errors.

[hopeful1212]

Yeah, if you want to take away HR, but keep roughly the same number of runs scored you're going to have to turn some other part of the offense up, or all of the other parts of the offense up. Basically, you'll need more hits, walks, and/or doubles/triples.

[Ike348]

You could either A) Change all of the ballparks in your league home run factors to 0.000 or B) change the player creation modifiers to 0 in power

[snepp]

Here are the weights given to the various events in the Fangraph's wOBA calculation for the 2012 season.

wOBA = (0.691×uBB + 0.722×HBP + 0.884×1B + 1.257×2B + 1.593×3B +
2.058×HR) / (AB + BB – IBB + SF + HBP)

Home runs obviously carry the highest weight, if you eliminate them you have to compensate accordingly amongst all the other categories.

Here's my back of the napkin example, apologies in advance for likely mucking this up.

There were 4,661 home runs hit in the ML in 2013. Using the weights in the wOBA calculation that's a total roughly 9,592 (4,661 x 2.058) that would have to be redistributed elsewhere to end up with the same general offensive output. Having twice as many triples hit (772) would account for 1,230 of shortage (772 x 1.593). 50% more doubles (4,111) would add another 5,170. That leaves 3,610 additional singles required to make up for the remainder (1230 + 5170 = 6400; 9592 - 6400 = 3192; 3192 / 0.884 = 3610), an increase in singles of roughly 13%.

I have absolutely no idea how well this would work (if at all) within OOTP when adjusting the modifiers.

[Questdog]

But he wants batting average to be the same, so you can only add as many singles as the number of home runs you take away. Thus, look to walks and errors.....you can also mess with the rate that players score from the bases, but this would take expert level skills and the place to edit it is would be accessible to every league you play, so unless they are all going to be homerless, you probably want to avoid that.....

[hopeful1212]

Originally Posted by snepp

Here are the weights given to the various events in the Fangraph's wOBA calculation for the 2012 season.

wOBA = (0.691×uBB + 0.722×HBP + 0.884×1B + 1.257×2B + 1.593×3B +
2.058×HR) / (AB + BB – IBB + SF + HBP)

Home runs obviously carry the highest weight, if you eliminate them you have to compensate accordingly amongst all the other categories.

Here's my back of the napkin example, apologies in advance for likely mucking this up.

There were 4,661 home runs hit in the ML in 2013. Using the weights in the wOBA calculation that's a total roughly 9,592 (4,661 x 2.058) that would have to be redistributed elsewhere to end up with the same general offensive output. Having twice as many triples hit (772) would account for 1,230 of shortage (772 x 1.593). 50% more doubles (4,111) would add another 5,170. That leaves 3,610 additional singles required to make up for the remainder (1230 + 5170 = 6400; 9592 - 6400 = 3192; 3192 / 0.884 = 3610), an increase in singles of roughly 13%.

I have absolutely no idea how well this would work (if at all) within OOTP when adjusting the modifiers.

That's a good start, but I'm pretty sure that you'd need even more walks, singles, double, etc than that, because while HR will obviously add no value, some of the value of everything else will also decrease (since you're less likely to be driven in from a HR after hitting your single in this league compared to the current MLB).

[David Watts]

My suggestion is to create Prince Fielder clone him and tell him it's the post season.

[snepp]

Originally Posted by hopeful1212

That's a good start, but I'm pretty sure that you'd need even more walks, singles, double, etc than that, because while HR will obviously add no value, some of the value of everything else will also decrease (since you're less likely to be driven in from a HR after hitting your single in this league compared to the current MLB).

I completely agree, but my napkin ran out of room.

[snepp]

Originally Posted by Questdog

But he wants batting average to be the same, so you can only add as many singles as the number of home runs you take away.

Ah yes, I missed that part. Guess my napkin wasn't worth the tree it was made out of after all.




How about an insane bump in stolen base numbers to go along with the additional walks/hbp/errors?

[Ike348]

Originally Posted by David Watts

My suggestion is to create Prince Fielder clone him and tell him it's the post season.

This.

[Righty Groove]

I did something similar a while back. In a fictional universe based on amateur-level baseball, all ballparks' outfields were simply open space, i.e. no outfield fence.

Basically, you couldn't hit a homerun unless it was inside the park.

Fittingly, I increased the amount of doubles, triples and also hits in general. Ks and BBs remained the same. Homeruns were set to zero.

It kind of worked, there were no over-the-fence homers. Some inside-the-park HRs occured, but sadly way less then I wanted. Of couse, you can't control ITP HRs and regular HR separately, so...

I would suggest you set doubles to around 1.5, and triples up to a little over 2.0, maybe increase SB attempts and SB succes % aswell.

Anyway, it was plenty of fun, so I just wanted to say I hope you enjoy your fantasy aswell.

[zoomzilla]

Originally Posted by Righty Groove

I did something similar a while back. In a fictional universe based on amateur-level baseball, all ballparks' outfields were simply open space, i.e. no outfield fence.

Basically, you couldn't hit a homerun unless it was inside the park.

Fittingly, I increased the amount of doubles, triples and also hits in general. Ks and BBs remained the same. Homeruns were set to zero.

It kind of worked, there were no over-the-fence homers. Some inside-the-park HRs occured, but sadly way less then I wanted. Of couse, you can't control ITP HRs and regular HR separately, so...

I would suggest you set doubles to around 1.5, and triples up to a little over 2.0, maybe increase SB attempts and SB succes % aswell.

Anyway, it was plenty of fun, so I just wanted to say I hope you enjoy your fantasy aswell.

That's the basic idea. I've always loved the idea of an alternate baseball history where ballparks never brought in the walls(if they even had them to begin with) or if a ball struck over the outfield fence was considered a foul.

Originally Posted by snepp

Here are the weights given to the various events in the Fangraph's wOBA calculation for the 2012 season.

wOBA = (0.691×uBB + 0.722×HBP + 0.884×1B + 1.257×2B + 1.593×3B +
2.058×HR) / (AB + BB – IBB + SF + HBP)

Home runs obviously carry the highest weight, if you eliminate them you have to compensate accordingly amongst all the other categories.

Here's my back of the napkin example, apologies in advance for likely mucking this up.

There were 4,661 home runs hit in the ML in 2013. Using the weights in the wOBA calculation that's a total roughly 9,592 (4,661 x 2.058) that would have to be redistributed elsewhere to end up with the same general offensive output. Having twice as many triples hit (772) would account for 1,230 of shortage (772 x 1.593). 50% more doubles (4,111) would add another 5,170. That leaves 3,610 additional singles required to make up for the remainder (1230 + 5170 = 6400; 9592 - 6400 = 3192; 3192 / 0.884 = 3610), an increase in singles of roughly 13%.

I have absolutely no idea how well this would work (if at all) within OOTP when adjusting the modifiers.

I'm going to try to work with this in mind. In my league I've upped the triples, doubles and hits, but left everything else alone. I'm a little worried though because in every simulated league so far I've had a huge dichotomy. The top three BA guys are always above or close to .400 while the top three ERA guys are below or hovering right around 1.00. It seems like the game is trying to "make up" for the inflated batting numbers.

[zoomzilla]

Snepp's calculations definitely had a positive effect. Things are normalizing. No one hit .400 but it was too close for my liking. Top 3 were all in the .390's. I think .400 should be the benchmark, but I'm not opposed to deadball batting average leaders in the .370's Leading RBI was in the 130's.
Pitcher ERA's are coming up, which is good to see because I turned the pitchers stamina up to near deadball levels and starting rotations are 4. Rosters only carry 4 relievers as well. This should mean pitchers era's are generally up because even pitching more innings per game the runs are modern day level, meaning an ERA of 4.00 should be pretty good, sometimes really good. Runs per game was 5.3, about what I'd like to see- give or take 10%.
Batter WAR is off the charts though. Top three were 19.8, 14.4 and 10.5. Steals need to come up but that's not hard. I wonder if it will contribute to overall runs per game. percentage is around 64%. I should also mention this is a 154 game schedule. Modifiers have been lowered slightly to reflect this.

[snepp]

Convert some of those singles into a few additional doubles/triples/walks/hbp/etc, you can get those batting averages down a bit without losing any runs. If you spread the value of the singles around to a little bit of everything it won't throw any one area too far out of whack.

[Questdog]

walks add to scoring without changing average at all.......

[jaysdailydose]

Originally Posted by David Watts

My suggestion is to create Prince Fielder clone him and tell him it's the post season.

But David... this young man actually wants players to get hits...