Fielding in Historical Games, impossible results

[Garlon]

There are some significant problems with fielding in historical games. Players are not only not performing as they should, but they are also putting up both good and bad fielding stats that are outside the range of what is even possible. The reason that this is occurring in the game is that players are not importing with proper ratings for what OOTP needs in order to provide the proper results.

I had OOTP play 1901-2018 and then took a look at the results. I have done this before and was well aware of the problems. This has been a significant issue for many editions of the game. I used Base Fielding Ratings on Career Stats for the import.

There are many impossible results and I will show you some of them here. You can of course look at any of your own saved leagues and go to League History>Retired Players and sort through the fielding stats at each position.

For reference, if you are wondering what is a good Defensive Efficiency for a SS for an entire career, Bill James has Ozzie Smith at 1.05, making 621 plays above average in his career. As a note, I have calculated +/- plays for every player as well and for Smith I came out with 639 - extremely close to the value Bill James provides.

I will be posting results of various players.

[Garlon]

Here is Ernie Banks. BBR has him as the 24th best defensive SS on the career list with +62 ZR. In OOTP he manages -440 though. If you are wondering what is perhaps the limit of what is possible, Derek Jeter has -186 on BBR and played 20 years at SS compared to roughly half of that for Banks. Had Banks continued to play SS the rest of his career in OOTP maybe he could have made it to -1000. Banks in the game only played about 1000 games at SS, whereas Jeter played over 2500.

Now take a look at his DefEff of .704. This means he was only making about 7 out of every 10 plays that an average SS was making in the game. For reference, Derek Jeter was possibly the worst defensive SS in the history of baseball and he was about .935 for his career.

Take a look at Banks FLD% of .950 in the game. His real SS FLD% was .969. You might ask, what are the odds of this happening just by randomness? Well this is fairly easy to answer. This can be tested using binomial probability. https://stattrek.com/online-calculator/binomial.aspx

For Banks we know that 3.1% of his plays (1.000 - .969 = .031) he made an error. In OOTP he had 3661 Total Chances at SS and made 182 errors, whereas had he fielded .969 for his career he should have made 113 errors in that many opportunities.

It turns out that the odds of him making this many errors or more just by luck or randomness, exceeds 1,000,000:1 against. It is that unlikely to happen. He is how to use the Binomial calculator in the link provided and how to understand the results: Where it says probability of success you can either type in the player real error rate as a decimal, for number of trials you type in the player's total chances at the position, and for successes you type in the player errors at the position. Then press calculate to get the results. You should then be looking at either the third to last or the last result, the ones that have P(X less than or equal to x) or P(X greater than or equal to x). For Banks we see that the odds of him performing this poorly by randomness is the last value of <0.000001, which means that for him to have made 182 or more errors is greater than 1,000,000:1.

[Garlon]

Here is Troy Tulowitzki. He fielded an outstanding .987 at SS, whereas his real FLD% is .974. He should have made about 209 errors, but he only made 108, or roughly has as many. The odds against chance for this are over 1,000,000:1 as well.

For Tulowitzki we have the opposite issue as compared to Banks, where he is making far too few errors. Here you should look at the third to last value that shows the odds of him making 108 or fewer errors. Against we get <0.000001

[Garlon]

Here is Frank Thomas. He has -65 DRS for his career on BBR. OOTP has him at -496, with a DefEff of .756. Frank Thomas was probably one of the very worst defensive 1Bmen ever. I have him at 166 plays below average for his career. To be fair here, he played more at 1B in OOTP, about triple as many defensive innings. So we should possibly expect about -200 DRS, still not the nearly -500 he ended up with in the game.

His real stats have him at 497 assists in 8383 innings at 1B. In OOTP he played 23521. So we should expect close to 1500 assists at his rate, which is very poor, but he only made 837 assists in the game.

[Garlon]

Here is Dan Gladden who was a plus defender at both LF and RF with a combined +18 DRS on BBR. Now look at his OOTP results.

[Garlon]

Here is Pete Rose. He was probably not a great defensive infielder as BBR has him at -21 DRS in 5408 innings at 2B, but in OOTP he got to -47 in only 900 innings and had a DefEff of .702, meaning he could only make 7 out of every 10 plays that an average 2bmen did in the game. I have him at about .929 DefEff as an infielder in my file.

[Garlon]

Here is Honus Wagner. Fangraphs has him at 67 DRS. He had a real FLD% at SS of .940, but in OOTP he was .953. This is another odds against chance of greater than 1,000,000:1 against. Should hre really have been able to save +445 runs with his defense?

[Garlon]

Here is Terry Turner. Fangraphs has him at +61 DRS in his 741 games at SS, in OOTP he played 1819 games at SS, so we should roughly expect +149 DRS, but he has +323. For his career he has +104 DRS on Fangraphs across 2B/3B/SS. For reference, I have him at +205 infield plays above average in my file and I'd say that is very much in line with Fangraphs. I have him as a 1.021 DefEff as SS, but in OOTP. I have him as about a 1.03 DefEff as an infielder and in OOTP he was 1.094 at SS.

[Garlon]

Here is Bucky Dent. He has +65 DRS in BBR over his 11758 innings at SS. In OOTP he was able to get +161 in 13,971 innings at SS. His real FLD% was .976 and in OOTP he had .984 at SS. The odds of this are 270,000:1 against, so hey we are under a million to one here.

[Garlon]

Here is Steve Yerkes. He has -16 DRS on Fangraphs across his 2483 total chances at 2B/3B/SS. In OOTP in just 794 total chances he was at -99 DRS. His DefEff at SS was .717 in the game, but I have him at roughly .970 in my file.

[Garlon]

Here is Jim Delahanty. Fangraphs has him at -82 DRS across his 4545 total chances as an infielder. In OOTP he had 7864 infield total chances, so at the same rate we should expect about -141 DRS in the game, but he had -498 DRS as an infielder in the game. He has a .795 DefEff at 2B in OOTP, but he was probably more like a .961 though. This is what happens to players who receive low ratings in the game. They will perform far beyond what has ever occurred in the history of the game.

[Garlon]

Here is Tommy Harper, who had -32 DRS across his 1460 infield total chances according to BBR. In OOTP he had 3343 total chances, so he should be around -73 DRS proportionately, but he has -149 and only has a DefEff of about .85

[Garlon]

Here is Tim Jordan. Fangraphs has him at -23 DRS across his 5474 total chances playing 1B. In the game he had 8763 total chances, so we should expect around -37, but he had -263 with a DefEff of .791, but he actually had a better fielding percentage in the game.

[Garlon]

Here is Mike Piazza and Ivan Rodriguez. Take a look at the rate they are throwing out players attempting to steal a base against them.

[Garlon]

Here is Johnny Berardino. Fangraphs has him at -58 DRS across his 4298 total chances plaing infield. In OOTP he had -186 DRS in 2146 total chances playing the infield.

[pstrickert]

Originally Posted by Garlon

Here is Ernie Banks. BBR has him as the 24th best defensive SS on the career list with +62 ZR. In OOTP he manages -440 though. If you are wondering what is perhaps the limit of what is possible, Derek Jeter has -186 on BBR and played 20 years at SS compared to roughly half of that for Banks. Had Banks continued to play SS the rest of his career in OOTP maybe he could have made it to -1000. Banks in the game only played about 1000 games at SS, whereas Jeter played over 2500.

Now take a look at his DefEff of .704. This means he was only making about 7 out of every 10 plays that an average SS was making in the game. For reference, Derek Jeter was possibly the worst defensive SS in the history of baseball and he was about .935 for his career.

Take a look at Banks FLD% of .950 in the game. His real SS FLD% was .969. You might ask, what are the odds of this happening just by randomness? Well this is fairly easy to answer. This can be tested using binomial probability. https://stattrek.com/online-calculator/binomial.aspx

For Banks we know that 3.1% of his plays (1.000 - .969 = .031) he made an error. In OOTP he had 3661 Total Chances at SS and made 182 errors, whereas had he fielded .969 for his career he should have made 113 errors in that many opportunities.

It turns out that the odds of him making this many errors or more just by luck or randomness, exceeds 1,000,000:1 against. It is that unlikely to happen. He is how to use the Binomial calculator in the link provided and how to understand the results: Where it says probability of success you can either type in the player real error rate as a decimal, for number of trials you type in the player's total chances at the position, and for successes you type in the player errors at the position. Then press calculate to get the results. You should then be looking at either the third to last or the last result, the ones that have P(X less than or equal to x) or P(X greater than or equal to x). For Banks we see that the odds of him performing this poorly by randomness is the last value of <0.000001, which means that for him to have made 182 or more errors is greater than 1,000,000:1.

I simmed 1901-2018 using 1 yr recal, real lineups & transactions, base fielding ratings on current season. Here's Mr. Cub:

[pstrickert]

Originally Posted by Garlon

Here is Honus Wagner. Fangraphs has him at 67 DRS. He had a real FLD% at SS of .940, but in OOTP he was .953. This is another odds against chance of greater than 1,000,000:1 against. Should hre really have been able to save +445 runs with his defense?

This is what I see for the Flying Dutchman:

[Spritze]

my Banks is also dissimilar to Garlon results.
so is everyone else I checked.

[Garlon]

The original post says Base Fielding Rating on Career Stats. Using 1yr or 3yr will produce different results.

[pstrickert]

Right. But it might be helpful to know if different settings produce better or worse results. At least I'd think so. You never know, we might even find a glitch somewhere.