Please take a good hard look at POWER vs CONTACT balance

[DonMattingly]

Originally Posted by dkgo

Everyone knows the league totals are pegged. It is not even up for debate, the developers have told us thats how it works and we have all seen it.

But by trying to counter the high contact low power meta you will end up with lots of empty homers and low obps

So you're telling me that if Ruth is facing Irabu in a bandbox, the code that handles the AB is secretly looking at league totals and curbing Ruth from hitting a HR if a lot have already been hit in that league?

[Orcin]

Several of the SE live mission reward cards have high contact...
Bagwell 99
Suzuki 96
Piazza 95
Williams 95
Yaz 94
Berra 91
Snider 91
even Kiner has 88, and most of them have high power too (but not Ichiro)

… but peak Bonds has 99 CON. So why is he unplayable and the others are not?

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by DonMattingly

So you're telling me that if Ruth is facing Irabu in a bandbox, the code that handles the AB is secretly looking at league totals and curbing Ruth from hitting a HR if a lot have already been hit in that league?

Yes, although it is probably not that simple. But the total number of home runs per league per year is fixed.

[eldur00]

Originally Posted by DonMattingly

So you're telling me that if Ruth is facing Irabu in a bandbox, the code that handles the AB is secretly looking at league totals and curbing Ruth from hitting a HR if a lot have already been hit in that league?

Yes, but league totals are for everything in the game. Pitcher stats also have league totals as well, not just Homeruns.

That is why no matter what, chances are you'll never see a season of PT with 4 guys hitting 60 hrs, even with all the firepower teams carry...because there is a hardcoded limit to how many HRs are distributed.

Also, the stats are meant to be in line with the 2010 season (I believe...someone can correct me but I believe it was 2010 or 2011).

[2tango2]

Originally Posted by Orcin

Yes, although it is probably not that simple. But the total number of home runs per league per year is fixed.

That's weak...why are they fixed? The more I'm learning about how this works the less enjoyable this game is becoming

[HemBear]

Don’t really have enough knowledge of the meta to debate this either way but it stinks when my four year old son (my designated pack opener) opens a perfect Babe Ruth and ask who he is. I tell him about the Bambino and how he is probably the greatest baseball payer to ever live. He then gets exited and asks if we will play him and I have to tell him nope because his “perfect” card is not good enough. I know there is an algorithm that is setting these cards but when the best player of all time in a sport (at least by consensus or argument) cannot even be kept on a roster, something is wrong. It’s like getting a perfect Gretzky I a hockey game and saying he can’t play. I love this game and all,but that is an undefendable thing that Ruth of al people can’t succeed in the game.

[dkgo]

Originally Posted by 2tango2

That's weak...why are they fixed? The more I'm learning about how this works the less enjoyable this game is becoming

Because thats how the entire game has always worked.

Not fixed as in it will always hit a number on the dot, but there is a target and every league will be roughly the same. Which is fine if the rating algorithm took that into account so you could see good numbers from power hitters, but instead high contact hitters eat up too much of the pie.

[2tango2]

Originally Posted by dkgo

Because thats how the entire game has always worked.

Not fixed as in it will always hit a number on the dot, but there is a target and every league will be roughly the same. Which is fine if the rating algorithm took that into account so you could see good numbers from power hitters, but instead high contact hitters eat up too much of the pie.

Other than because that is how it always worked, is there a reason? Serious question, not flippant

So basically loading up on Power guys is a fool's folly and better off getting guys with better Gap power....meh

[dkgo]

I mean, that's how the game simulation engine is built not just perfect team. It literally is the game not some setting to toggle on and off.

[DonMattingly]

Originally Posted by Orcin

Yes, although it is probably not that simple. But the total number of home runs per league per year is fixed.

I would love to see a league then with all low Iron pitchers and no hitters with less than a 100 Power, and with every park having a 1.1 modifier for home runs.

This is my 5th week and I just graduated 2 teams out of Rookie, the other to Iron. They all went through Rookie with me hoarding cheap power hitters and upping the home run modifier of my home park, and the dongers were flying out of there like crazy. I've moved on from a lot of those players but I still have the Kiners, an Ott and a Klein as examples:

Kiners:







Klein:



Ott:

[QuantaCondor]

Originally Posted by DonMattingly

I would love to see a league then with all low Iron pitchers and no hitters with less than a 100 Power, and with every park having a 1.1 modifier for home runs.

This is my 5th week and I just graduated 2 teams out of Rookie, the other to Iron. They all went through Rookie with me hoarding cheap power hitters and upping the home run modifier of my home park, and the dongers were flying out of there like crazy. I've moved on from a lot of those players but I still have the Kiners, an Ott and a Klein as examples:

Most of the discussion (well, basically all of it) revolves around how cards perform at DL and PL. Power is probably at its most effective at very low levels, but a lot of things are effective down there. These examples would not remotely hold up in even a gold or diamond league where SE Yaz, Bagwell, Yogi are running rampant.

If you want to study how the game engine works, you can go into offline and set up a certain league environment and test things yourself. The rest of us already know what would happen, but if you don't believe us you can go try it.

[dkgo]

Your rookie league is like 25 teams who opened the starter packs then quit playing. Any real power hitter is going to get a big piece of the HR pie

[DonMattingly]

Originally Posted by QuantaCondor

Most of the discussion (well, basically all of it) revolves around how cards perform at DL and PL. Power is probably at its most effective at very low levels, but a lot of things are effective down there. These examples would not remotely hold up in even a gold or diamond league where SE Yaz, Bagwell, Yogi are running rampant.

If you want to study how the game engine works, you can go into offline and set up a certain league environment and test things yourself. The rest of us already know what would happen, but if you don't believe us you can go try it.

There's a way to run single player leagues with the PT21 cards?

At those highest levels there are also Aces running rampant with scary high Movement ratings.

[QuantaCondor]

Originally Posted by DonMattingly

There's a way to run single player leagues with the PT21 cards?

At those highest levels there are also Aces running rampant with scary high Movement ratings.

You don't need actual PT21 cards. It's the same engine. Just custom create a league with 2010 HR normalization, a bunch of power, and low MOV pitchers. If the league environment is set up right, it should target 2010 totals just like PT does. It's not some coincidence that every PT league at every level reaches 2010 totals, it's a feature of the engine.

Also, MOV doesn't necessarily scale like POW does. The SEs that have high POW are more likely to appear before a bunch of high MOV pitchers do as you go up the levels, and in any case in all the levels on the way up there is no way that every single league would, by coincidence, all reach 2010 HR totals if there wasn't some normalization. And the second you turn the normalization off, power is out of the window. In tourneys, for example, there's no apparent connection to 2010 HR totals so the dinger numbers are all over the place. Any amount of analysis will tell you that league HR totals are roughly constant; this is not one of the harder aspects of PT to figure out. Not to mention we also know this is true from developer comments.

[DonMattingly]

Originally Posted by QuantaCondor

You don't need actual PT21 cards. It's the same engine. Just custom create a league with 2010 HR normalization, a bunch of power, and low MOV pitchers. If the league environment is set up right, it should target 2010 totals just like PT does. It's not some coincidence that every PT league at every level reaches 2010 totals, it's a feature of the engine.

Also, MOV doesn't necessarily scale like POW does. The SEs that have high POW are more likely to appear before a bunch of high MOV pitchers do as you go up the levels, and in any case in all the levels on the way up there is no way that every single league would, by coincidence, all reach 2010 HR totals if there wasn't some normalization. And the second you turn the normalization off, power is out of the window. In tourneys, for example, there's no apparent connection to 2010 HR totals so the dinger numbers are all over the place. Any amount of analysis will tell you that league HR totals are roughly constant; this is not one of the harder aspects of PT to figure out. Not to mention we also know this is true from developer comments.

When you say MOV doesn't scale, that helps make the argument that at lower levels POW works and it stops at higher levels when MOV comes to town.

At any rate if I get the time I might try a single player league to see what happens. One comment by one Dev doesn't convince me.

By that theory if I make a league with all lower power hitters and stud high MOV pitchers, the hitters should all hit more homers than their ratings say they should right?

[QuantaCondor]

Originally Posted by DonMattingly

When you say MOV doesn't scale, that helps make the argument that at lower levels POW works and it stops at higher levels when MOV comes to town.

At any rate if I get the time I might try a single player league to see what happens. One comment by one Dev doesn't convince me.

By that theory if I make a league with all lower power hitters and stud high MOV pitchers, the hitters should all hit more homers than their ratings say they should right?

If you think that the HR totals all match 2010 numbers at all levels by coincidence, you are kind of suggesting that the rate at which pitchers get better MOV matches the rate at which hitters get better POW. My comment was to point out that there's no reason we expect this to be true, and in particular the Live SEs (which start to appear in big numbers in silver and gold) have way more POW than the corresponding pitchers have MOV, so there should be a difference in leaguewide HR rate between diamond, gold, silver, bronze, iron, etc. because there is this imbalance between when the high-power hitters become available and the high-movement pitchers become available. But there isn't; the leaguewide HR rate is the same everywhere.

Yes, it's true that if you have a bunch of high-MOV pitchers and low-POW hitters in a league that is using a stat normalization, the low-POW guys will hit more HRs than you'd expect.

You should think of power (and eye, and all stats really) as buying you a portion of the league's HR/BB/K totals. In some lower leagues, the POW you spend will get you a lot of HR probability because the other batters are more POW-poor and your POW looks like a lot compared to their meager amounts. Your Klein and Kiner look really wealthy compared to the live silvers and golds you see in your Rookie league.

In higher leagues, everyone's way more POW-wealthy, so your same amount of POW buys a smaller slice of the league-wide-HR pie. Kiner is now not so wealthy; compared to Yaz, Ruth, Ted Williams, Yogi, he's not so comparatively rich any more. So his POW which once bought him a lot of HR% now doesn't do the job because there are so many other high-power guys who need to be fed as well. The pitchers with their MOV stats do something similar: The guy who has low MOV has to eat a larger share of the league's HRs, while the guy with high MOV gets to avoid it more. But the two stats don't actually interact in a league-wide way. In other words, it doesn't matter if the average MOV is 50 or 100, the same procedure applies and the same amount of HRs will be doled out to the group regardless. This is what is meant when people say a "league normalization" is used: that, by definition, the leaguewide average POW and MOV amounts won't affect the total number of HRs given out. That is, the number of expected HRs is "normalized" to match a certain amount, roughly.

And the comments aren't coming from one dev, it's coming from looking at the data in the league. I promise if you look at your leaguewide HR totals this week, it will match 2010 to within 5% or so (probably tighter than that). You can repeat this analysis if you want, but all the questions you're asking have already been looked at and answered by the members of the community combing over data. This isn't some guess we're all making because it feels right (kinda like you're doing now), we all have come to this conclusion because that's what the data showed.

[Thundercrack]

[QUOTE=Orcin;4662459]Several of the SE live mission reward cards have high contact...
Bagwell 99
Suzuki 96
Piazza 95
Williams 95
Yaz 94
Berra 91
Snider 91
even Kiner has 88, and most of them have high power too (but not Ichiro)

… but peak Bonds has 99 CON. So why is he unplayable and the others are not?[/QUOTE

I assume they’re talking about DL and PL, where those cards are mostly unplayable as well

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by Thundercrack

I assume they’re talking about DL and PL, where those cards are mostly unplayable as well

So a card needs triple-digit contact to be playable in diamond leagues?

[dkgo]

If it has high power then probably. The whole point is that cards with very low power are better than ones with high power even at the same contact which is nonsensical. Power essentially takes away contact points in practice.

[Thundercrack]

Originally Posted by dkgo

If it has high power then probably. The whole point is that cards with very low power are better than ones with high power even at the same contact which is nonsensical. Power essentially takes away contact points in practice.

This does seem to be the case. Ichiro is the only one that maintains a decent average most of the way up, ergo..