Balks & Passed Balls

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by MBarrett

This right here. I've often noticed WP/PB/BKs are much more prevalent in my played out games. The end of season totals are always fine because most games just get simmed. I'd guess someone who plays out all of their games will notice the numbers are significantly higher.

I play out all of my games. 132 games into the season I have been called for 4 balks. My opponents have been called for 3 balks.

So far league average is 4.866 per team.

WP: League avg is 45.56. I've thrown 24. Opponent 36.
How could I have only thrown 24 when I play 'em out?

PB: League avg 10.5 I've thrown 9. Less than league average and I play 'em out. There's no sort for opponent.

HBP League avg. 47.36 I've hit 57 I'be been hit 33.
League high is 70 League low is 31.

So, no that's not it. Same game engine whether you sim or play.
This is what happens, in my experience, when you look at the numbers and don't rely on feel.

All data is welcome.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by BIG17EASY

In real life in 1988, there were 924 balks in all of MLB. If you've had 45 balks in half a month of play, your league is on pace for 540 balks. So your league is way behind the curve compared to real life in 1988.

Sorry , I had to look at BBR to see that this actually happened What in the hell was going on? League must have decided to place emphasis on balks that year.

But yeah, the guy you answered is playing '88 so it all looks good. Those pesky real life numbers.

[jbergey22]

Originally Posted by Sweed

Sorry , I had to look at BBR to see that this actually happened What in the hell was going on? League must have decided to place emphasis on balks that year.

But yeah, the guy you answered is playing '88 so it all looks good. Those pesky real life numbers.

Yeah that was the season they started enforcing them more strictly but after a couple of months they backed off.

[micropterus58]

This is only my observations. Balks are dramatically up in my fictional league set in 1901. I compared the 1900 league stats and balks are at least four times as many. The real MLB stats for these years are consistently low.

[Syd Thrift]

The game does an auto recalc on the eve of Opening Day (assuming you didn’t turn that off) that uses the current lineups, depth charts, and pitching staffs to figure out the stats. IME it generally gets things very close; however, if you had a bunch of low-balk guys on rosters and they were then swapped out for higher ball guys, that might push the totals upwards.

It’s also possible that there’s a floor on some of those stats like balks and wild pitches, so in a setting where there were 21 of them called the entire season in both leagues combined, the game engine simply can’t make them that infrequent. It’s still a big and if you haven’t reported it in the bug forum, please do so, but I have to say (and I’m not affiliated with OOTP I’m any way so I’m just spitballing), this is probably not high priority...

[Mat]

I am confused. Why is everyone who is having issues in this thread not mentioned what their modifiers are set at?

This would be useful info.

[NoOne]

lots of factors will impact that, mat. if anyone has different PCMs, for example, or possibly how pitchers stamina settings are setup... etc...

change the dynamic of competition without modifiers, and the stats will change in various ways.

if sp can go 8ip per start, that's going to impact batters outcomes given the same modifiers and totals. rp will always be fresh, for one thing... dpeending on what you did to the SP, they may underperform or perform in a similar fashion, either way that results in a higher league ERA in most cases - and all the factors that add up to that

the only problem with the much smaller numbers per 165k AB etc is resolution.. balks can only change by 30-50 at a time... and you may goo 100pts on the Modifiers before it actually changes outcoms in your game. *balks, pb, wp all are like this, if i recall. it is apparent when you do 100+ year sims than only change that modifer and compare rsults... same... same... same.. then huge change, because you blindly went beyond the threshold at which point it causes a change in outcomes....

it steps, it doesn't dial per .001 pts. which isn't really a "bad" thing.. it's just very small %'s that can't change any smaller than that given the engine or how it's setup inside the engine etc...

whether 330 or 300 (or 300->350 step etc), it really doesn't matter much over 162 games by 30T.

[Mat]

Yes, I should have mentioned settings in general. Saying it is out of whack is useless without providing context yeah?

[ablobj]

It's funny...I'm about 35 games into managing the 1988 Twins in a single-season replay and it seems like there are a ton of balks, but prior to this, I managed a 2013 season and balks were rare enough that I never gave them a thought. Didn't realize/remember that umps went balk-crazy in '88.

[Reggie]

Just for the record, I had a guy thrown out stretching for double in my last game. Doesn't happen often but I saw it with my own eyeballs. Wild pitches, passed balls and balks don't seem to frequent to me. They always just seem to happen at the worst possible time in the game.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by ablobj

It's funny...I'm about 35 games into managing the 1988 Twins in a single-season replay and it seems like there are a ton of balks, but prior to this, I managed a 2013 season and balks were rare enough that I never gave them a thought. Didn't realize/remember that umps went balk-crazy in '88.

If memory served, it all happened in April too. There was some new directive to enforce the balk rules harder, people complained, and so about the time May rolled along, the league went back to normalcy on that front. I *think* that was part of an effort to encourage more baserunning after the power-heavy 1987 season but there, too, the league realized that offenses were back to normal after an unseasonably warm summer the year prior (and I *think* umpires started calling the high strike more as well).

[eldur00]

Originally Posted by Reggie

Just for the record, I had a guy thrown out stretching for double in my last game. Doesn't happen often but I saw it with my own eyeballs. Wild pitches, passed balls and balks don't seem to frequent to me. They always just seem to happen at the worst possible time in the game.

Yes, it does happen that a guy tries to stretch out a single into a double and gets thrown out. I play out every single game, and I see it happen albeit really rarely. There is a bug associated to that particular play (I use old 2D engine) where there is a "double bat sound" whenever that play happens where it sounds like the player hits the ball twice. That's how I know that play happens. If I hear the double bat, it's always a player trying to stretch a single into a double but gets thrown out at second.

[CBeisbol]

I'm watching 1988 NLCS game 4 Dodgers vs Mets.
Gooden was called for a first inning balk.

The announcers mentioned, as did posters in this thread, that the league changed how balks were being enforced.

[ablobj]

UPI ARCHIVES AUG. 6, 1988
Jim Gott balked home two runs in a three-run,...
PITTSBURGH -- Jim Gott balked home two runs in a three-run, eight-inning rally, enabling the New York Mets to post a 5-3 victory Saturday night over the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Gott, who balked three times in the inning, balked home Darryl Strawberry and Kevin McReynolds to cap the eighth. New York, which has beaten Pittsburgh in five of six games over the last two weekends, increased its lead over the second-place Pirates to six games in the National League East. Montreal is 6 1-2 games behind the Mets.

I vaguely remembered watching a Pirate's game as a kid in which an irate Jim Gott kept getting called for balks. Just looked it up...1988

[NoOne]

remember that the visual representation or even the pbp could be adding things for flavor but have no real tie-in to the game engine and how things were calculated.

maybe it's missing things, too... who know for certain, but that's less likely since you have the full list of variables and what they do/represent to start when you make it.

a guy beingn thrown out whiel stealing... i would wager that anythign beyond that probability is just another quick slice and categorize to some hard coded %s or dialed further with ltm etc...

so, an "out" was determined whiel stealing, then 90% will be at 2b and 10% will be in a game of pepper etc... obviously just pulling numbers out of my arse... the resolution may or may not provide the information needed for a full pbp, so it will fill in like that on a second layer...

that example isn't meant to be specific or a guess at what might work that way.. .just an exmple of how it would work if implemented that way in any context that isn't fully resolved by the game engine.

[Syd Thrift]

I know that 1-3-6 caught stealings (pickoffs where the runner broke and the 1B had to gun it to second) are in the play by play, and I *think* there are occasional "pepper" plays like 5-2-4-1 putouts, but one issue with showing those in the game, I guess, is that if a runner is caught between two guys who throw it to each other 3 times each, the scoring is still 5-2, not 5-2-5-2-5-2. I think that out of that it's hard to know on a statistical basis how many times a player gets a single assist even though he was involved in the play more than once; it's probably tracked somewhere but it's not in the official scoring.

This is also the kind of thing I'm sure the game will get better at showing as we get more and more iterations of the 3D engine. Remember when FM got started with animations and they were just 2D circles? I realize that FM is of course much, much bigger than OOTP but they had to start smaller as well; if anything I think OOTP is way ahead of where FM was at a similar point in their history with full graphics (although I guess on the other hand I'm kind of discounting the first 15 or so years of OOTP's existence as a purely text-based sim).

[NoOne]

it doesn't keep track of the 2nd or third time they touch the ball, so it can't understand it. or if it does, it's not written (user feedback) to take advantage of that info corerctly in that one case. it's possible it's tracked in away that can't really display it in pbp correctly at moment in that specific way.

they can fix that for sure. just pops up so seldomnly compared to other areas they continually improve, i'm sure. most of that stuff is volunteer work, if not mistaken? the asthetic part of pbp, not the coding. i bet it's part of a ongoing strategy of maintainance in that area.

5-2 2-5 5-2 i know what you meant though. unless we got some spooky action at a distance happening in OotP... quantum baseball!

[jg2977]

This morning I had a 16-inning playoff game end on a passed ball. Pretty hilarious.

[Vegas Vic]

Originally Posted by Let'sGoBraves

Yep, they seem too high. When you play out games it is obvious and many games are decided by wild pitches or passed balls but nothing really happens about it year to year.

I challenge anyone to beat this one, in an ending that looks more like a Little League game than MLB.


The Reds take a 5-3 lead into the bottom of the ninth against the Braves. Solo home run, single, double, intentional walk to load the bases. Then, wait for it, wait for it......... two consecutive wild pitches to end the game.

[highandoutside]

The league totals may come out close to real world, but anyone who plays out all of their games realizes that a tremendous amount of wild pitches occur with runner on 3rd, and there are very few with runners on first or second. Something is clearly off