Things I've learned about myself while playing OOTP

[Pdubya64]

As I mentioned in a roundabout way earlier- we are early enough in the Sabermetrics lifecycle that there are very few statistics that even begin to approach direct correlation. Essentially, we don't have the tools right now to get there. Too many variables that we don't understand well enough.

I believe Baseball is one of those things where due to humans being the major factor in the equation there is no possible way, at least at our current brain capacity, for us to predict outcomes simply and efficiently. Just not gonna happen. So... instead, you do what amounted in the old days to "reading the tea leaves" and look at a whole bunch of stats, past behavior, trends, outliers, etc. (anything you can get your hands on) and try your best to massage an answer that you can defend if asked later.

If this stuff was easy, we would all be doing it. Baseball players are not robots we can program to perform in a predictable manner, well, at least not yet. It is easy to get our brains to recognize the patterns in OBJECTIVE data. We are not nearly as good at working with SUBJECTIVE data. Humans lack the ability required to make such leaps in cognitive thinking.

Not sure Baseball would be fun if you ended up knowing how everyone was going to turn out.

[The Wolf]

There is always going to be a significant random element in players stats, not only because of the quality and performance of both the player's team and his opponents' team and park and weather factors and health issues, but also because so very many things - if not everything - have so much pure luck involved in them.

But we do what we can, because we must.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

But we do what we can, because we must.

I think you mean, "We do what we must because we can" — the Aperture Science motto!

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

I think you mean, "We do what we must because we can" — the Aperture Science motto!

Nope. I am not Cave Johnson. Really. Any resemblance is purely superficial.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Nope. I am not Cave Johnson. Really. Any resemblance is purely superficial.

"All right, I've been thinking. When life give you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons! What I am supposed to do with these?!? Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am?! I'm the man who's going to burn your house down—with the lemons! I'm gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!"

[HomerOne]

1) My scouting director and I agree about draft picks about as much as Siskel and Ebert agreed on movies.
2) I will NEVER be as good a writer as Orcin or Hendu Style.
3) Turning off the option to add more games to the schedule, franchise relocation and change team nickname has been a most positive experience. Don't get me wrong. I'm sure the "Columbus Colonels" would be a fine organization. I'm just not in a hurry to see them.
4) I NEVER had this much fun playing Baseball Mogul.
5) I am an addict. LOL

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

"All right, I've been thinking. When life give you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons! What I am supposed to do with these?!? Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am?! I'm the man who's going to burn your house down—with the lemons! I'm gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!"

That was my father's approach. I just quietly give the lemons to someone else.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by HomerOne

1) My scouting director and I agree about draft picks about as much as Siskel and Ebert agreed on movies.
2) I will NEVER be as good a writer as Orcin or Hendu Style.
3) Turning off the option to add more games to the schedule, franchise relocation and change team nickname has been a most positive experience. Don't get me wrong. I'm sure the "Columbus Colonels" would be a fine organization. I'm just not in a hurry to see them.
4) I NEVER had this much fun playing Baseball Mogul.
5) I am an addict. LOL

Awesomeness!

[GiantYankee]

Originally Posted by themonk

Great thread! In a nutshell what I found out is that I'm mostly old school as far as my approach to OOTP and baseball is.

1. I like to play fictional. I don't want to be a disappointed if a player in real life doesn't perform as expected. Playing fictional gives me a fresh start, so to speak, since I don't have expectations regarding my players.

2. No DH for me.

3. I like to play with a small league (8-16 teams). It keeps things simple and manageable for me. It also makes it easier for me to be familiar with the players in my league.

4. I prefer short seasons (usually a 60-game season). Find it too tedious to play a full 162-game season.

5. I like to play 1950s baseball where the starting pitcher is expected to finish the game most of the time. What I also like about 1950s style of baseball is that I see more bunts, steals and home runs.

6. No interleague games for me.

7. Finances not important to me. Most of time I play without finances. In my baseball universe everyone plays simply for the love of the game.

8. No wildcards. Wildcards were introduced so that the owners can make more money, as far as I'm concerned.

Originally Posted by Bluenoser

This is almost a mirror image of what I do. I even ran one league with only 4 teams. I played (watched - was in Commish mode) every game out of every season for 22 years. It was cool in a way because I felt like I knew every single player on a personal level. It was boring in a way too, because it became repetitive after a while. Since then I've never gone with less than 8 teams, but 12 is usually the norm. Like themonk, it keeps it simple and makes it much easier to know the players.

1. I'm way more anal and OCD than I realized.
2. I enjoy creating leagues almost as much as actually playing them.
3. 8 or 16 team leagues are my favorite.
4. Prefer shorter seasons for playing out games.
5. My new interest is creating leagues in Australia. Having an 8 or 16 team league in the U.S. just doesn't work for me.
5. Sabermetrics make a lot more sense to me. Helps when playing short seasons because I'm not always focused on total W, HR, RBI.

Bluenoser and themonk-
What size rotation do you use in your leagues that play 60 or so games? Do you use minor leagues too? Any tips?

[Bluenoser]

Originally Posted by GiantYankee

1. I'm way more anal and OCD than I realized.
2. I enjoy creating leagues almost as much as actually playing them.
3. 8 or 16 team leagues are my favorite.
4. Prefer shorter seasons for playing out games.
5. My new interest is creating leagues in Australia. Having an 8 or 16 team league in the U.S. just doesn't work for me.
5. Sabermetrics make a lot more sense to me. Helps when playing short seasons because I'm not always focused on total W, HR, RBI.

Bluenoser and themonk-
What size rotation do you use in your leagues that play 60 or so games? Do you use minor leagues too? Any tips?

I use 4 man rotations, and set stamina to normal or high, depending how big a pen I use. I like to use AA and rookie for minors.

I often create my own schedules too. eg: I am running an 8 team league now with a 112 game schedule. Teams play 4 game series then have an off day.

[The Wolf]

Worth reading:

DIPS, Springsteen, and why offense is declining - Beyond the Box Score

[TribeFanInNC]

Originally Posted by HomerOne

4) I NEVER had this much fun playing Baseball Mogul.

hahaha...I'll extend the topic to "Things I Found Out About Myself (and life) While Playing Baseball Mogul..."

1) I don't care about the price point of fake hot dogs
2) Never make the acronym of your product 'BM'

[The Wolf]

Unless, of course, it is BM.

[themonk]

Originally Posted by GiantYankee

1. I'm way more anal and OCD than I realized.
2. I enjoy creating leagues almost as much as actually playing them.
3. 8 or 16 team leagues are my favorite.
4. Prefer shorter seasons for playing out games.
5. My new interest is creating leagues in Australia. Having an 8 or 16 team league in the U.S. just doesn't work for me.
5. Sabermetrics make a lot more sense to me. Helps when playing short seasons because I'm not always focused on total W, HR, RBI.

Bluenoser and themonk-
What size rotation do you use in your leagues that play 60 or so games? Do you use minor leagues too? Any tips?

In my league I use a 4-man rotation. Pitcher stamina is set to Very High, since I expect my starting pitchers to finish most games.

Present league setup consists of 8 teams with a custom made 60-game schedule. Teams play a 3-game series on Fridays and weekends.

Right now, I don't play with minors. Instead, I play with a 15-man reserve roster.

Also, league is based on a fictional country.

By the way, I also enjoy creating leagues as much as playing them. In fact, I spend more time setting up my leagues than playing them... :-)

[The Wolf]

I keep seeing people write that last line.

[Brummer's_Stealing_Home!]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Please explain to me how FIP is subjective.

From FanGraphs:

"For those curious, here’s the formula for FIP:

FIP = ((13*HR)+(3*(BB+HBP))-(2*K))/IP + constant

The constant is solely to bring FIP onto an ERA scale and is generally around 3.20. You can find historical FIP constant values here, or you can derive the constant by taking league-average FIP and subtracting that from league-average ERA."

FIP believer here, but how is the constant determined in different run-scoring environments in OOTP? I sincerely hope that the constant isn't 'constant' as figured by OOTP.

And more importantly, can anyone tell me a valid statistical way to judge defense in OOTP? Range is a junk stat, IMHO, but how reliable are the OOTP calculations for ZR and Eff? Heck, does Eff even measure anything from an individual player's stat perspective?

[Brummer's_Stealing_Home!]

Also, I think a lot of the whole "debate" about sabermetrics is made at the 30,000 foot level. There are different aspect to sabremetrics:

- Development of better stats in general. This is where most of the debate in this thread lies. There is no argument that sabremetrics has developed better stats than some of the historical stats (FIP and xFIP vs. ERA, for example), and before that it made some pretty pedestrian (IMHO) observations about which traditional stats were better than some others. Bill James didn't invent OBP, and neither did Billy Beane or Baseball Prospectus. Heck, any 12 year old playing Strat-o-Matic baseball on his bedroom floor knows that OBP > Batting Average when it comes to choosing a leadoff hitter. Anyway, I digress. Just because the stats are better doesn't mean that they are perfect, just better. There is also a lot of debate that confuses whether stats are better used as a more precise indicator of historical value, or as a predictor of future performance. Those are two different uses for any stat, and they all have their strengths and weaknesses as both.

- Scouting vs. Stats. This is a tired old saw. I would hope that most thinking folks today realize that both are necessary. IRL, drafting on the basis of stats alone is pretty close to a fool's errand (at least with respect to high school players, and to a slightly lesser extent for college players). Stats are practically non-existent for international signings, so scouting is still of utmost importance.

- Precision vs. Usefulness. Sabremetric stats are developed for many purposes. WAR and OPS are pretty blunt tools with very important purposes - they allow you to compare players from different positions, and their value to a team. Their bluntness does not make them any less useful, but it does mean that they are not the be-all and end-all of player evaluation. How a player provides value (or offense) matters. Not all 750 OPS shortstops are created equal after all. Personally, I'd rather have a xxx/350/400 shortstop than a xxx/250/500 shortstop, for instance.

A lot of the debates miss the context of what is being debated, and talk past each other quite a bit.

[The Wolf]

FIP | FanGraphs Sabermetrics Library

[The Game]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

FIP | FanGraphs Sabermetrics Library

based on this:
Rating FIP Excellent 2.90 Great 3.25 Above Average 3.75 Average 4.00 Below Average 4.20 Poor 4.50 Awful 5.00No pitcher in 2013 was Awful as no one had a FIP higher then 4.79.
I picked up that book you recommended I am 5 pages in. Also since 2 of my SP suck with high BB I am gonna look for FA with low FIP and try that. Alot will vary whether I can sign them as I am already $600 K over budget.
Why is is the top 4 FIP leaders all have GB% under 50%?