Fixing Inside the Park Home Runs

[CBL-Commish]

This is part 223 in my continuing saga to fix inside-the-park homers. See here for previous episodes.

The short summary is that ISTP homers are currently hard-coded as a tiny percentage of overall homers. This reflects what you see in a modern MLB-like setup. You'll see an ISTP homer in today's game when the right fielder falls down and breaks his leg, the center fielder forgot to back up the play, the ball gets lodged in groundskeeping paraphernalia outside of the ump's field of vision, and the batter is the former Pac 10 100m champion. In other words, very rarely.

But circa 1910 ISTP homers were probably about 30% or 40% of all home runs. Distant fences, lower skill levels in the outfield, players playing very shallow to cut off singles from 5' 5" 140 lb hitters... these type of things conspired to make a ball up the RF gap pretty likely to result in a four-bagger. This simply doesn't happen at the correct frequency in OOTP.

So, I'll continue to press for Markus to change the coding of ISTP homers to a variable percentage that allows for big parks and other playing conditions to result in more realistic play-by-play. This could be done in individual park effects, or league settings, or maybe some new parameter.

[CBL-Commish]

Shameless bump!

[blasek0]

Have the percentage dynamically adjust when doing a historical sim to the rate that would be accurate for that season? I imagine that'd be a ton of research to find all those, though. And probably decrease in accuracy as the seasons go further and further back.

Although, I do think this is a good idea for those that prefer historical sims.

[Cowboys3356]

Originally Posted by blasek0

Have the percentage dynamically adjust when doing a historical sim to the rate that would be accurate for that season? I imagine that'd be a ton of research to find all those, though. And probably decrease in accuracy as the seasons go further and further back.

Although, I do think this is a good idea for those that prefer historical sims.

Yes if this could be done as an accurate reflection of the time period I would support it as well. I just do not want to start seeing inside the park home runs every couple of games in my 2013 league, etc.

[thirdsaint]

I honestly don't think I've ever seen an ISTP ever in this game. Is it designated as such in the box score? Maybe I never noticed because the simulation page doesn't distinguish it from any other home run.

[stannis]

Originally Posted by thirdsaint

I honestly don't think I've ever seen an ISTP ever in this game. Is it designated as such in the box score? Maybe I never noticed because the simulation page doesn't distinguish it from any other home run.

Not in the box score, but in the game log it shows up as "Inside The Park", instead of listing a distance. They're pretty rare.

I completely agree that this issue should be fixed.

[thirdsaint]

Ah, well that explains it. I almost never look in Game Logs and it appears there's no stat that's tracked for it. I agree, should be fixed.

[CBL-Commish]

Originally Posted by blasek0

Have the percentage dynamically adjust when doing a historical sim to the rate that would be accurate for that season? I imagine that'd be a ton of research to find all those, though. And probably decrease in accuracy as the seasons go further and further back.

Although, I do think this is a good idea for those that prefer historical sims.

If the ISTPHR frequency is a derived number I think it needs to be tied to at least:
1) Park dimensions
2) Quality of fielding/fielders

But it might be easier to have a park factor number that just says X% of homers in this park are ISTP. For historical accuracy it would have to be updated, but a swag would probably do.

Originally Posted by Cowboys3356

Yes if this could be done as an accurate reflection of the time period I would support it as well. I just do not want to start seeing inside the park home runs every couple of games in my 2013 league, etc.

I want more ISTPers in my modern setup, because I have several ballparks that are larger than any current MLB park. If it's 480 to RC I have to think you're going to see a fair number of inside-the-park homers even with an otherwise modern setup.

So I'd prefer tying this to ballpark, either through dimensions or via a separate park factor for this component. In other words, Huge Park might have an overall HR factor of .85, but 35% of homers hit there are ISTP. Forbes Field might have 10% of homers ISTP. The Polo Grounds maybe in the same range with the 480' CF with the Grant Memorial and clubhouse in play.

But the vast majority of real, modern, MLB parks would have an ISTP factor of something like 0.5%.

[John J McGraw]

If this would come about, it would push me over the line to buy ver 14.

It should be easy to program. Simply add another category for each year on the League setup statistics page. Then add some phrases for it in the pbp and it's done. The game is basically already setup for it.

[Righty Groove]

It would be cool to have ITP Homeruns separated from regular, over-the-fence homeruns.

I wouldn't expect it to be tied to park dimensions, since (If I remenber correctly) they're only cosmetical, i.e. all that matters is the park factors. So if a park had a 500ft outfield wall but a high HR-factor, you'll just see a lot of 500+ft bombs.

But having ITP HRs separated would make possible for a vintage, no-outfield-wall league I dreamed of long ago. Every HR would basically be a triple hit by a speedy guy, or a really, really long triple. How awesome is that.

[Déjà Bru]

Oddly, aside from the ironic mention in the OP, there has been no reference to running speed. I would be greatly disappointed to see a batter with a red number speed rating hit an ITPHR merely because the related park factor of 0.5% was due.

[D-BacksJosh]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

Oddly, aside from the ironic mention in the OP, there has been no reference to running speed. I would be greatly disappointed to see a batter with a red number speed rating hit an ITPHR merely because the related park factor of 0.5% was due.

Hey it still happens. If Paul Konerko can get one anybody can.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by D-BacksJosh

Hey it still happens. If Paul Konerko can get one anybody can.

Yeah, but as CBL-C says, all of this other stuff has to happen: "The right fielder falls down and breaks his leg, the center fielder forgot to back up the play, the ball gets lodged in groundskeeping paraphernalia outside of the ump's field of vision..."

[D-BacksJosh]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

Yeah, but as CBL-C says, all of this other stuff has to happen: "The right fielder falls down and breaks his leg, the center fielder forgot to back up the play, the ball gets lodged in groundskeeping paraphernalia outside of the ump's field of vision..."

And he still almost gets thrown out at the plate, lol.

[John J McGraw]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

Yeah, but as CBL-C says, all of this other stuff has to happen: "The right fielder falls down and breaks his leg, the center fielder forgot to back up the play, the ball gets lodged in groundskeeping paraphernalia outside of the ump's field of vision..."

This would be good and a real way to implement ip home runs would be great. But I'd be happy to just see the percentage occuring each year and the appropriate speil in the pbp. Even a slow runner back then could have hit one under the right circumstances. This would be very easy to implement in ver 14 and then maybe next year it could be expanded and made more accurate.

[Markus Heinsohn]

If someone could provide (PM) me with a % of ITPHR per ballpark / era / year database then I could add it to the game...

[Ceej]

So I googled several variations of the phrase "all-time list of inside-the-park-home runs" to see if such a thing existed, and apparently it's a case of good news and bad news. The bad news is that no such list appears to exist, but the good news is that everything we need to make one is readily available.

I wound up on this page, which talks about Baseball-Reference acquiring the rights to the SABR Home Run Encyclopedia, which includes notations for inside-the-parkers. The physical book is still available on Amazon, but I don't know if the book arranges the homers in a chronological list or by park or what, so I couldn't say how useful it would be to obtain a copy. B-R offers a play index table that probably would show ITPers, but you need a subscription to see the entire generated list and it only works for seasons since 1945. HOWEVER, there's another, albeit tedious way we can extract inside-the-parker data from B-R, by going to the HR log for every single player.

Let's take a sample team, the 1910 Pittsburgh Pirates. I sort the roster by HR so I can easily see who hit at least 1 home run that year. Now I go through each batter on the roster and click on the gray "HR log" tab under the red "Standard Batting" header. I find out that the first guy I look up, John Flynn, hit all six of his career home runs in 1910. He had no inside-the-parkers, but he did hit 4 of his 6 round-trippers at home. I need to note over-the-fence home runs side-by-side with inside-the-parkers so I can do a percentage calculation at the end of all this, so my notation starts out 4/0. The next guy, Honus Wagner, didn't hit any ITPers in 1910 either, but 2 of his 4 came at home, so I'm up to 6/0. Tommy Leach hit 4 home runs in 1910, all at home, and 3 of those were ITP, so now I'm at 7/3. And so on and so on... I find that Pittsburgh batters hit 17 home runs in Forbes Field in 1910, and 10 of those were ITP.

After I do the batters, now I have to look up all Pittsburgh pitchers who gave up at least 1 home run in 1910 and do the same counts for those. Turns out they gave up 8 home runs at home, and three were ITPers. So that's total of 25 home runs given up at Forbes Field that year, 13 being inside-the-parkers, or 52%! So this IS doable, and since Markus just indicated he is receptive, it's just a question of number-crunching. I wonder if it would be worthwhile to further divide it up by left-handed batters vs. right-handed batters, because you had some parks that were cavernous to one side and had short dimensions on the other. I'm leaning towards not because it will make the numbers more swingy.

[John J McGraw]

I also did a google, didn't find much, and emailed Markus about it.

ITPH is not an additional stat. A home run is a home run. It's candy for the pbp during the deadball era. It adds fun to the game for those of us who pbp the deadball era. Someone on this forum said the percentage is 30%. Or make it 50% based on the post above. Sounds good to me. Figure that amount for those 20 years, add some nice lines to the pbp and it's done. Really, it doesn't matter what the exact real percentage is. In the modern era, the percentage is so negligible it doesn't matter but if Markus wants, he can figure maybe 1.5% for 30 years and then .5% thereafter. Simple.

[hfield007]

from 1951-present 0.63% of homeruns are ITP, or 1 in every 158

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by Ceej

So I googled several variations of the phrase "all-time list of inside-the-park-home runs" to see if such a thing existed, and apparently it's a case of good news and bad news. The bad news is that no such list appears to exist, but the good news is that everything we need to make one is readily available.

I wound up on this page, which talks about Baseball-Reference acquiring the rights to the SABR Home Run Encyclopedia, which includes notations for inside-the-parkers. The physical book is still available on Amazon, but I don't know if the book arranges the homers in a chronological list or by park or what, so I couldn't say how useful it would be to obtain a copy. B-R offers a play index table that probably would show ITPers, but you need a subscription to see the entire generated list and it only works for seasons since 1945. HOWEVER, there's another, albeit tedious way we can extract inside-the-parker data from B-R, by going to the HR log for every single player.

Let's take a sample team, the 1910 Pittsburgh Pirates. I sort the roster by HR so I can easily see who hit at least 1 home run that year. Now I go through each batter on the roster and click on the gray "HR log" tab under the red "Standard Batting" header. I find out that the first guy I look up, John Flynn, hit all six of his career home runs in 1910. He had no inside-the-parkers, but he did hit 4 of his 6 round-trippers at home. I need to note over-the-fence home runs side-by-side with inside-the-parkers so I can do a percentage calculation at the end of all this, so my notation starts out 4/0. The next guy, Honus Wagner, didn't hit any ITPers in 1910 either, but 2 of his 4 came at home, so I'm up to 6/0. Tommy Leach hit 4 home runs in 1910, all at home, and 3 of those were ITP, so now I'm at 7/3. And so on and so on... I find that Pittsburgh batters hit 17 home runs in Forbes Field in 1910, and 10 of those were ITP.

After I do the batters, now I have to look up all Pittsburgh pitchers who gave up at least 1 home run in 1910 and do the same counts for those. Turns out they gave up 8 home runs at home, and three were ITPers. So that's total of 25 home runs given up at Forbes Field that year, 13 being inside-the-parkers, or 52%! So this IS doable, and since Markus just indicated he is receptive, it's just a question of number-crunching. I wonder if it would be worthwhile to further divide it up by left-handed batters vs. right-handed batters, because you had some parks that were cavernous to one side and had short dimensions on the other. I'm leaning towards not because it will make the numbers more swingy.

Sounds like it might be a lot of work, but it could probably be done then.

If it helps, I just did the 1910 Philadelphia batters, disregarding home / away, and they hit 4/22 ITPHRs, which is about 18.2%.

Originally Posted by hfield007

from 1951-present 0.63% of homeruns are ITP, or 1 in every 158

Ideally it would be better if it was year by year, but that is definitely helpful.