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OOTP 18 - General Discussions Everything about the 2017 version of Out of the Park Baseball - officially licensed by MLB.com and the MLBPA.

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Old 05-20-2017, 10:58 AM   #1
el_habes
Minors (Rookie Ball)
 
Join Date: Jun 2014
Posts: 23
Super High BABIPs?

I'm playing through a standard 2017 MLB season (currently in mid-May in game), and I've noticed that especially in my minor league affiliates, the pitchers' BABIPs are really high. For example, on my AAA affiliate, just 4 of 14 pitchers have a BABIP below .300 and 3 have a BABIP above .400. My AA team has 10 pitchers with a BABIP above .300 (and again, with many more much higher). The trend continues with my single-A teams as well. The result is that my minor pitching staff ERAs are sky-high, despite some better peripheral numbers like strikeout and walk rates.

On a possibly related note, I called up a AAA starter to make a spot start for an injured SP, and noticed that despite having a velocity range of 91-93, he was sitting mid-80s all start long (needless to say, he got shelled).

I've never messed with any of the sliders or coefficients that would affect anything like this - it's a standard start-up. I do cap pitch counts for my minor league starters. Is there any setting or anything to do with the coaching staff that might affect this? Or should I ride it out and let the regression gods do their work?
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Old 05-21-2017, 06:59 AM   #2
Bears5122
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Join Date: Mar 2003
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Interesting question. I know at the major league level you're looking at BABIP being at .303. Now in real life that goes up a bit in the minors although I'm not sure if OOTP accounts for that aspect.

I did run a couple simulations and noticed that minor league BABIP was coming in higher across the board than the majors. This makes sense as fielders are not as developed. Although it seemed to differ a lot based on what league it was.

My theory (and correct me if I'm wrong) is you're seeing a mix of playing with worse fielders in the minors along with perhaps park factors playing a role too. For instance, the parks in the Pacific Coast League (AAA) are very hitter friendly and their offensive numbers in real life tend to be higher than their counterpart the International League (AAA). For instance the PCL has an average 17 points higher than the IL and score about 0.7 more runs per game. Running a few simulations today, this is quite close to what I'm seeing in OOTP.

So my first suggestion would be to see how your overall BABIP is stacking up against other teams in the same league (it's available under team pitching stats for the league). Then I'd see if you're by chance playing in a hitter friendly park by looking at the stadium factors for the team (believe it's under the settings tab on the team home page). If it still seems really far off, it could be something wrong with your defense that I'd look into. I know sometimes in the minors I get caught playing guys at positions they aren't skilled at so they can improve. But that will hurt your pitchers BABIP. If everything looks good there, it's either bad luck or some weird bug.

I'm curious to see what you find as it's something I haven't looked into that much till now. So please let me know what you discover. As for the poor stats, I'm not sure it really matters as long as stuff like K/BB rate are good.
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Old 05-21-2017, 11:24 AM   #3
el_habes
Minors (Rookie Ball)
 
Join Date: Jun 2014
Posts: 23
Thanks for the reply. I didn't know that minor league BABIPs were higher than in MLB IRL (aside from the PCL) - I assumed poorer fielding would be offset by poorer hitting. After looking at the team pitching statistics, they're a bit high across the board - generally all in the .320-.350 range, but not as egregious compared to other teams. I hadn't thought of poor fielding, and I have a hunch that might be the case. I tend to just set my lineups/fielding to "Ask Manager to set all lineups" but I'll take a closer look at my minor league lineups and at how my pitching staff is set-up, and let it run for a month or so to see if anything changes.
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Old 05-21-2017, 04:38 PM   #4
Bears5122
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Join Date: Mar 2003
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Quote:
Originally Posted by el_habes View Post
Thanks for the reply. I didn't know that minor league BABIPs were higher than in MLB IRL (aside from the PCL) - I assumed poorer fielding would be offset by poorer hitting. After looking at the team pitching statistics, they're a bit high across the board - generally all in the .320-.350 range, but not as egregious compared to other teams. I hadn't thought of poor fielding, and I have a hunch that might be the case. I tend to just set my lineups/fielding to "Ask Manager to set all lineups" but I'll take a closer look at my minor league lineups and at how my pitching staff is set-up, and let it run for a month or so to see if anything changes.
Tough to find real data on the minors but this is from 7 years ago and shows the differences in leagues.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-m...-introduction/

BABIP does seem a tad high for me too in the minors. My guess is how the AI puts players in lineups. It tends to focus on potential more so a younger guy with more potential who can't field well might be playing SS because he needs to be in the lineup everyday.

I also feel like OOTP underrated defensive ability of prospects. Defense seems to typically be ahead of offense in a prospects development most of the time in real life. I think a lot of AA guys can hold their own defensively in the majors but not offensively. In the game it treats defense and offense the same in the development process it seems.

One other thing is that the league defaults to a .303 BABIP in the settings. I'm not sure why since the least 6 years have had a BABIP of .300, .299, .299, .297, .297, .295. Perhaps that setting is just too high which is causing inflated numbers at all levels. Maybe lowering that to .299 or .300 would be more realistic. Would love to hear from anyone on the staff if there is a reason it's set at .303.
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