Player Size Adjustment By Era

[chucksabr]

There were no players who were 6' 6" and 250 pounds in 1800s baseball. Only in OOTP would that happen. A player that size today would have been more like 6' 2" and 200 back then.

This could probably be easily handled in the player creation engine that assigns size. A modifier could be applied to it changing every decade. in 2010 the average height of a player was 73.5 inches and weight was 196 pounds. If you factored that down by 0.25% in height and 0.8% in weight every decade, you would end up with the average players being 71 inches and 175 pounds in 1870. That's probably about right, and would be consistent with this article about the subject.

[Gil Thorp]

Excellent suggestion and one I'd like to see implemented.

[olivertheorem]

Surely somebody somewhere has charted the average height and weight of pro baseball players over the years.

[The Game]

Originally Posted by olivertheorem

Surely somebody somewhere has charted the average height and weight of pro baseball players over the years.

Paging LGO.

[Questdog]

Originally Posted by olivertheorem

Surely somebody somewhere has charted the average height and weight of pro baseball players over the years.

Would take about 5 minutes to do.....so that is no hindrance to the feature....

But I think OOTP players are even bigger than modern real life players....

[Meanie]

So if you created a league in the years 4598, would the players be an average of 8'4" 392lbs? That would be AWESOME!!

[chucksabr]

Originally Posted by Questdog

Would take about 5 minutes to do.....so that is no hindrance to the feature....

But I think OOTP players are even bigger than modern real life players....

In the test league I'm running to address a separate issue, the average height of the 2013 fictional major leaguer is 73.6 inches, and the average weight is 210 pounds. So the height is right on, but the weight is more by 14 pounds, at least taken against the average major leaguer of 2009.

Interestingly, the average minor leaguer for the same season is 73.6 inches, but only 201 pounds. Maybe because the average minor leaguer is 23 years old and hasn't completely filled out yet?

[Ceej]

So who were the biggest and tallest real life 19th century players? I would guess Roger Connor (6'3", 220 lbs.) and Big Dave Orr (5'11, 250)?

Doing a quick runthrough looking for the shortest I found Tom Morrison (5'3", 145), Cub Stricker (5'3", 138) and Yale Murphy (5'3", 125). I don't think anybody not named Eddie Gaedel has ever been listed as less than 5'3".... Yo-Yo Davalillo in 1953 was the last major leaguer listed as 5'3" to date.

[Questdog]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

In the test league I'm running to address a separate issue, the average height of the 2013 fictional major leaguer is 73.6 inches, and the average weight is 210 pounds. So the height is right on, but the weight is more by 14 pounds, at least taken against the average major leaguer of 2009.

Interestingly, the average minor leaguer for the same season is 73.6 inches, but only 201 pounds. Maybe because the average minor leaguer is 23 years old and hasn't completely filled out yet?

That is very close to the data I compiled at the first of the year....

Do you mean the minor leagues in OOTP or real minor leaguers? Because I think real minor leaguers would be much less than 201 lbs. average, though I have no data. If it's that the OOTP minor leaguers are lighter than the OOTP MLB players, I have no explanation for this off the top off my head, because I don't think weight changes over time for OOTP players.....

[chucksabr]

Originally Posted by Questdog

That is very close to the data I compiled at the first of the year....

Do you mean the minor leagues in OOTP or real minor leaguers? Because I think real minor leaguers would be much less than 201 lbs. average, though I have no data. If it's that the OOTP minor leaguers are lighter than the OOTP MLB players, I have no explanation for this off the top off my head, because I don't think weight changes over time for OOTP players.....

OOTP minor leaguers.

[Questdog]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

OOTP minor leaguers.

My best guess would be that bigger players hit more home runs in OOTP and therefore make it the majors more often than lighter players who have less power.....

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by The Game

Paging LGO.

Nope, sorry, not in my areas of interest - when it comes to player-level data, I leave that to others. Now, if it was something about club finances or league operations or things of that sort, then I could probably help.

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by Meanie

So if you created a league in the years 4598, would the players be an average of 8'4" 392lbs? That would be AWESOME!!

[joefromchicago]

I have often wanted to see something like this, but I think that OOTP factors in a relationship between player size and their abilities. For instance, taller players will, all else being equal, have a better shot at becoming pitchers, while a short player (no less than 5' 8") will probably end up in the middle infield.

Again, that's just a surmise, but if it's true, then having era-appropriate player sizes wouldn't be as simple as just changing a few numbers.Similarly , I've always wanted to see the game incorporate rule changes, like the adoption of the foul strike rule or the constant tinkering with the number of balls needed for a walk or the number of strikes needed for a strikeout in the nineteenth century. That, however, would probably be a nightmare to program.

[chucksabr]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

I have often wanted to see something like this, but I think that OOTP factors in a relationship between player size and their abilities. For instance, taller players will, all else being equal, have a better shot at becoming pitchers, while a short player (no less than 5' 8") will probably end up in the middle infield.

Again, that's just a surmise, but if it's true, then having era-appropriate player sizes wouldn't be as simple as just changing a few numbers.Similarly , I've always wanted to see the game incorporate rule changes, like the adoption of the foul strike rule or the constant tinkering with the number of balls needed for a walk or the number of strikes needed for a strikeout in the nineteenth century. That, however, would probably be a nightmare to program.

I don't see why this would be programming challenge. Take every height and weight for all the players born in the 1980s, and for every decade they are born before that, adjust it down by a certain appropriate percentage. They can continue to put the shorties in the middle infield and the Lerches on the mound. Or no? What am I missing?

[Bluenoser]

I'm indifferent on this as the game currently works - put it in or leave it out.

When weight and height actually have an effect on players ability in game, then I'll be much more in favour of it.

AFAIK the only time these have any effect, from what Markus has said, is that taller pitchers are more likely to develop, but it's not a huge difference apparently.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

I don't see why this would be programming challenge. Take every height and weight for all the players born in the 1980s, and for every decade they are born before that, adjust it down by a certain appropriate percentage. They can continue to put the shorties in the middle infield and the Lerches on the mound. Or no? What am I missing?

If the program is designed to view 6' 2" players as tall and 5' 8" players as short, then that's a problem if the average height is 5' 8". I doubt that the program looks at averages rather than absolute numbers.

[chucksabr]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

If the program is designed to view 6' 2" players as tall and 5' 8" players as short, then that's a problem if the average height is 5' 8". I doubt that the program looks at averages rather than absolute numbers.

I'm not sure on what basis you believe this, but I think game either does, or could, view the distribution of heights assigned to fictional players based on standard deviation from the average height it has stored within, and that's what the adjustment would respond to.

Just for the sake of discussion, let's build on your example and say that currently, 6' 2" is tall, 5' 8" is short and 5' 11" is average, for players born in the 1980s. (Whether those are the actual numbers is irrelevant to the discussion.)

Let's say the the adjustment for players born in the 1880s is -4%, meaning the assigned height for a group of players born in the 1880s, including bands of tall, average and short players, is -4% versus a similarly sized group of players born in the 1980s.

That would mean that for players born in the 1880s, their tall player wuld be -4% shorter at 5' 11", their average player would be -4% at 5' 8", and their short players would be -4% shorter at 5' 5". Starting with a base height level for players born in the 1980s, for players born 100 years earlier, every category would be adjusted down -4% from the current height guidelines, and heights would be assigned based on that.

IOW, using this method, at no point would the game say, "the average height of a player in the 1880s would be 5' 8", which I think is short, so this does not compute". It would say, "the average height of a player born ten decades prior to the current norm would be 5' 11" minus the ten-decade adjustment of -4%". It would never make a value judgment on what it thinks is tall or short. It would simply make the adjustment.

Am I making sense?

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

I'm not sure on what basis you believe this

On a couple of things:

1. OOTP's well-known bias toward modern-day statistics, including things like player origins, which are still hard-coded into the game. Baseball has seen profound changes over the decades, but OOTP thinks that every year is 2013;

2. Some simple logic: adjusting player sizes should (as you point out) be relatively easy, if all that was needed to do was to adjust the numbers, but since the developers didn't make that simple change, that suggests that the change isn't so simple after all; and

3. My knowledge of computer programming is informed by the belief that all computers are inhabited by invisible pixies who make everything run by means of magic. Consequently, I can say anything I like about computer programming in the complete confidence that someone smarter than me will tell me that I'm laughably wrong.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

My knowledge of computer programming is informed by the belief that all computers are inhabited by invisible pixies who make everything run by means of magic. Consequently, I can say anything I like about computer programming in the complete confidence that someone smarter than me will tell me that I'm laughably wrong.

You're wrong. Computers are inhabited by pixlims, which are half-pixie and half-gremlin. That explains why sometimes things work brilliantly and other times things go horribly wrong.