Anomalous Relief Statistics

[Swimmer]

Here's something I haven't seen before. I'm running a league using 1937 PCMs and league totals. I've got league totals locked and autocalc set on. I've run about 45 years of time.

Poking around through my results, I've uncovered some truly weird stats that a number of relief pitchers have accumulated. Pretty much like nothing I've ever seen before, and I go back to OOTP 2.

I have a cohort of relievers that have posted huge numbers of appearances, but not a lot of innings, and nevertheless have posted huge numbers of both saves and wins. They have very unremarkable ERA, OppAVG, WHIP, and K/9 numbers.

For instance: look at this career line:
1825 G, 0 GS, 241 W, 164 L, 333 SV, 109 HLD, 3117 IP, ERA 3.80, oAvg .251, WHIP 1.42, K/9 4.9

Looking year to year, he has 14 consecutive years with both double digit wins and double digit saves, and with one exception during that run, over 100 appearances each year. No starts at all. Openers/followers are not enabled in this league. He has a year where he won 25 games, and saved 27, leading both of those statistics. In that year he had 104 appearances and only 179 innings pitched.

There are about 25 relievers in the game that have similar stats. Very high appearances, relatively low innings, large numbers of both wins and saves. Other stats good but unremarkable. If you sort career stats by appearances, there's a chunk of relievers who all have 1700 or more appearances and general stats like this, and then there's a gap all the way down to the high 1400s, and then there are more normal numbers after that.

The thing is, I can't even think of what mechanism would create this. Most of the players overlapped about a 25 year period starting about 8-10 years after the beginning of the league and finishing up about 10 years before now. I didn't notice it when it was happening, and it's not happening now.

Any thoughts from the gurus about what would create a bubble of players like this?

[Findest2001]

Originally Posted by Swimmer

Here's something I haven't seen before. I'm running a league using 1937 PCMs and league totals. I've got league totals locked and autocalc set on. I've run about 45 years of time.

Poking around through my results, I've uncovered some truly weird stats that a number of relief pitchers have accumulated. Pretty much like nothing I've ever seen before, and I go back to OOTP 2.

I have a cohort of relievers that have posted huge numbers of appearances, but not a lot of innings, and nevertheless have posted huge numbers of both saves and wins. They have very unremarkable ERA, OppAVG, WHIP, and K/9 numbers.

For instance: look at this career line:
1825 G, 0 GS, 241 W, 164 L, 333 SV, 109 HLD, 3117 IP, ERA 3.80, oAvg .251, WHIP 1.42, K/9 4.9

Looking year to year, he has 14 consecutive years with both double digit wins and double digit saves, and with one exception during that run, over 100 appearances each year. No starts at all. Openers/followers are not enabled in this league. He has a year where he won 25 games, and saved 27, leading both of those statistics. In that year he had 104 appearances and only 179 innings pitched.

There are about 25 relievers in the game that have similar stats. Very high appearances, relatively low innings, large numbers of both wins and saves. Other stats good but unremarkable. If you sort career stats by appearances, there's a chunk of relievers who all have 1700 or more appearances and general stats like this, and then there's a gap all the way down to the high 1400s, and then there are more normal numbers after that.

The thing is, I can't even think of what mechanism would create this. Most of the players overlapped about a 25 year period starting about 8-10 years after the beginning of the league and finishing up about 10 years before now. I didn't notice it when it was happening, and it's not happening now.

Any thoughts from the gurus about what would create a bubble of players like this?

Most likely they were stoppers. Stoppers are basically the Nolan Ryans of the RP world. They pitch anywhere from 1-5 innings. They play a lot. They are the 1950's-1990's closers, basically. Except they excel in getting wins during key, high-leverage situations. I have had several stoppers have 20+ saves, 15-20 wins, 100 appearances, 150+ innings in the same season.


That's my guess based on my experience, and my understanding of the stopper role, anyways.

[Reed]

What are your setting for using relievers/closers? Very rarely, rarely, normal, etc.. what is their stamina setting? Very low, low, normal, etc..

[Mariner and Giants Fan]

These RP stats are not to dissimilar to Mike Marshall circa 1972-1975, so it is not unheard of.

[Swimmer]

Originally Posted by Reed

What are your setting for using relievers/closers? Very rarely, rarely, normal, etc.. what is their stamina setting? Very low, low, normal, etc..

Relievers - Rarely/Closers Very Rarely. Interestingly, both Hooks are set to Very Quick, which doesn't seem right for 1937. Pitcher stamina is High.

[Swimmer]

OK. I restored a backup and loaded 1937 strategy settings to check. 1937 strategy is by default a -5 (very quick) hook for both starters and relievers. Use of relievers and closers is rarely and very rarely.

In fact, the very quick hook setting is throughout the dead ball era. I've loaded strategy from multiple years all the way back to 1871, and the hook is always very quick. That doesn't seem right to me.

[Swimmer]

Originally Posted by Mariner and Giants Fan

These RP stats are not to dissimilar to Mike Marshall circa 1972-1975, so it is not unheard of.

It does, especially his Cy Young year. But, Mike Marshall is a bit of an outlier. I have dozens of relievers building up stats like that.

Also, Marshall's 106 games played in 1974 is still the MLB record. No one else IRL is over 100 games played. In my universe, I have hundreds of relievers with over 100 games played in a season, with the record as 148. It takes 136 games played in my universe just to get you onto the leaderboard.

Career wise, the record in my universe for games is 2792 (!). The real life record is 1252.

[Findest2001]

Originally Posted by Swimmer

It does, especially his Cy Young year. But, Mike Marshall is a bit of an outlier. I have dozens of relievers building up stats like that.

Also, Marshall's 106 games played in 1974 is still the MLB record. No one else IRL is over 100 games played. In my universe, I have hundreds of relievers with over 100 games played in a season, with the record as 148. It takes 136 games played in my universe just to get you onto the leaderboard.

Career wise, the record in my universe for games is 2792 (!). The real life record is 1252.

With that bolded part being key, your experience is definitely out of the ordinary. In the heyday of pitching I would expect 5-10 pitchers AT MOST having numbers like that (dead ball numbers), but not so many the leaderboard is filled. That's absurd.

[Swimmer]

Update:

It was definitely the Hook settings. Combining a Very Quick Hook with use of relievers and closers set to Rarely and Very Rarely creates situations that the game obviously doesn't handle well. Thanks for making me look at that more closely, I hadn't noticed that.

I changed the Hook back to default and ran a couple of years ahead. Presto, back to normal.

Now the question is, how did the hook setting get to -5? I certainly never set it at that. I've started a test league in 1937, and the hook is set to default. In fact, I've tried a number of years from the deadball era to today, and the hook always starts at default, and changing the year within the game does not change it from default.

I have no idea how it got set to very quick, but I'll certainly be watching that in the future...

[bertha]

subscribed, this seems like a very interesting thread

[damientheomen3]

Originally Posted by Swimmer

Update:

It was definitely the Hook settings. Combining a Very Quick Hook with use of relievers and closers set to Rarely and Very Rarely creates situations that the game obviously doesn't handle well. Thanks for making me look at that more closely, I hadn't noticed that.

I changed the Hook back to default and ran a couple of years ahead. Presto, back to normal.

Now the question is, how did the hook setting get to -5? I certainly never set it at that. I've started a test league in 1937, and the hook is set to default. In fact, I've tried a number of years from the deadball era to today, and the hook always starts at default, and changing the year within the game does not change it from default.

I have no idea how it got set to very quick, but I'll certainly be watching that in the future...

I noticed the other day one of my OOTP 19 leagues switched itself up at some point from 0's in the hook settings to what I believe is the modern day setting, -3 for starters and -5 for relievers. Considering that was a feature that iirc was added in during an OOTP 19 patch, maybe there's a bug that's switching leagues to the modern day setting for the feature.