Perfect Ted Williams... what gives?

[JudP]

Ted Williams was a monster hitter who only struck out 709 times in 7,706 at bats. Thats a strikeout rate of about 9%. Why would he strike out 20% of the time in OOTP? Ther man hit over .400 one season and his eye for hitting was legendary. I dont care how good the pitchers were... Ted saw the ball. But I have yet to see a good hitting Ted Williams in OOTP, despite the astronomic numbers given him on his card as a hitter. What gives? When average basball hitters are outhitting William then the algorithm needs a tune up or somebody never bothered to check out how good a ballplayer Ted Williams was.

[professor ape]

The real Ted was not going up against Koufax, Maddux, Spahn, Randy, Seaver, Clemens, and the rest of our monster staffs on a daily basis.

[Hertston]

Originally Posted by professor ape

The real Ted was not going up against Koufax, Maddux, Spahn, Randy, Seaver, Clemens, and the rest of our monster staffs on a daily basis.

True, of course, but I tend to agree with the OP about Williams' performance comparative to Collins, Brett, Simmons, etc. All are facing the same pitchers. In purely historic terms I would expect only Ruth to have consistently better hitting results, although I've no idea if the meta card actually does/will.

Many congrats on your return to PL, BTW. Sorry, hadn't noticed that before.

[ncap99]

If you are looking for any sort of historical accuracy you will be disappointed. A cards strength in PT has more to do with when it was released during the season than how that player performed in real life. That is why there is a version of Matt Harvey who is better than Cy Young peak, for example. If you start analyzing things to see where they don't make sense you'll drive yourself crazy.

[professor ape]

Originally Posted by Hertston

True, of course, but I tend to agree with the OP about Williams' performance comparative to Collins, Brett, Simmons, etc. All are facing the same pitchers. In purely historic terms I would expect only Ruth to have consistently better hitting results, although I've no idea if the meta card actually does/will.

Many congrats on your return to PL, BTW. Sorry, hadn't noticed that before.

Thank you sir! I go back to my fall back that PT is a card game first and a baseball simulator second. When I see the big names, I pretty much know they will have good cards but it seems to be a bit of a toss up as to which will be the dominant cards of the season. From a point of view of playing the game, it would be a little boring if we knew that Ted’s card would be the goal every year. That being said, I tracked the stats of cards over the last few weeks in my Diamond leagues. In over 14,000 plate appearances Ted was 5th in Runs Created per 650 Plate Appearances at 88.30. He is only behind Tris (100.59), Eddie Collins (95.59), Hamilton (91.51), and Connor (88.94). I’d say that’s pretty solid.

[JudP]

Originally Posted by professor ape

The real Ted was not going up against Koufax, Maddux, Spahn, Randy, Seaver, Clemens, and the rest of our monster staffs on a daily basis.

You don't think Ted Williams would have hit those pitchers? Why not check out the pitchers he did face? Bob Feller said he was the best hitter he ever faced and that his eyesight was so good that you couldn't get a fastball past him. Koufax, Spahn, Seaver and Clemens lost their share of games to mediocre players.... beleive me, I saw them pitch. Williams would have hit all of them, though Koufax at his best would be the toughest.

[JudP]

Originally Posted by ncap99

If you are looking for any sort of historical accuracy you will be disappointed. A cards strength in PT has more to do with when it was released during the season than how that player performed in real life. That is why there is a version of Matt Harvey who is better than Cy Young peak, for example. If you start analyzing things to see where they don't make sense you'll drive yourself crazy.

I am tending to agree with you strongly. Thanks for your comment.

[JudP]

Originally Posted by professor ape

Thank you sir! I go back to my fall back that PT is a card game first and a baseball simulator second. When I see the big names, I pretty much know they will have good cards but it seems to be a bit of a toss up as to which will be the dominant cards of the season. From a point of view of playing the game, it would be a little boring if we knew that Ted’s card would be the goal every year. That being said, I tracked the stats of cards over the last few weeks in my Diamond leagues. In over 14,000 plate appearances Ted was 5th in Runs Created per 650 Plate Appearances at 88.30. He is only behind Tris (100.59), Eddie Collins (95.59), Hamilton (91.51), and Connor (88.94). I’d say that’s pretty solid.

Thanks for that comment.... thats some good information.

[professor ape]

Originally Posted by JudP

You don't think Ted Williams would have hit those pitchers? Why not check out the pitchers he did face? Bob Feller said he was the best hitter he ever faced and that his eyesight was so good that you couldn't get a fastball past him. Koufax, Spahn, Seaver and Clemens lost their share ofg games to mediocre players.... beleive me, I saw them pitch. Wiulliams would have hot all of them, though Koufax at his best would be the toughest.

I find it interesting that we all (me included) get a little bent when great hitters don’t perform as we would expect but we tend to be more understanding that pitchers like Peak Koufax aren’t going to have outstanding ERAs or high strikeout totals. The bottom line is that great hitters will appear to underperform against top pitching and strong pitchers will look human when facing the best hitters.

[JudP]

Originally Posted by professor ape

I find it interesting that we all (me included) get a little bent when great hitters don’t perform as we would expect but we tend to be more understanding that pitchers like Peak Koufax aren’t going to have outstanding ERAs or high strikeout totals. The bottom line is that great hitters will appear to underperform against top pitching and strong pitchers will look human when facing the best hitters.

Thanks for commernting.... this is a great topic for discussion. I'd like to see the game heading toward some semblance of consistency. Being difficult to win is not the issue, but inconsistency is a proiblem.

You make my point in a way. Great pitchers seem to come down to earth a little but still pitch well. But hitters that were feared for their ability to see and hit the ball take unusually bad drops in perfoirmance... they dont just drop to mediocrity. And following that logic, how do hitters that were mediocre at best have great seasons agains those same pitchers?Can you picture any universe where Ted Williams would hit .209 while some mediocre players hit .300? Its easy to just sell poor players, but shouldn't a game using real players have some sempblence of what those players played like?

I guess what I'm saying is that if the contact, power, eye,etc... ratings mean absolutely nothing.... then why bother with them at all? The ratings seem to hold better for pitchers than for batters, but they're still often far off the ability these players had.

As to a comment that was made that the games would be boring if the players all performed like their ratings..... well, why do all the teams have mostly the same players? That's not boring? Don't yoiu get tired of your lineup and the opposition lineup being the same, regardless of how yoiu feel about ratings. Out of all the cards out there, I'd say my lineup and the oppositions have about 6 or 7 of the same players in it.

My personal solution to this is that I just spend less trime playing. There are so many players, but the performance data tends to favor only a ferw players. Just check the Diamond league best p;itchers in any of the leagues..... its all Johnson, Maddux, Spahn, Koufax. Go figure.....

Thank you for the discussion... good to hear all the opinions..

[bdawg]

Originally Posted by JudP

Ted Williams was a monster hitter who only struck out 709 times in 7,706 at bats. Thats a strikeout rate of about 9%. Why would he strike out 20% of the time in OOTP? Ther man hit over .400 one season and his eye for hitting was legendary. I dont care how good the pitchers were... Ted saw the ball. But I have yet to see a good hitting Ted Williams in OOTP, despite the astronomic numbers given him on his card as a hitter. What gives? When average basball hitters are outhitting William then the algorithm needs a tune up or somebody never bothered to check out how good a ballplayer Ted Williams was.

I have to agree with you. And in OOTP22, my Ted Williams is hitting .175 in the Diamond League. WTF? Seriously? I even moved him to vs R lineup only, and it hasn't improved.

Looked at others in the league, not much better. Most are hitting around .200.

Meanwhile, he's headed for a 16 HR season. 16. And he probably has the highest HR rating in the game, and one of the highest Contact. His Avoid K's is low for a Diamond League hitter at 91, but even my Pete Rose who has a 93 Avoid K's and a lower Contact rating has never hit less than .260 in Diamond.

If you're going to put ratings on cards and then the players don't perform as well as other players of similar ratings or worse, what's the point of ratings?

[ubernoob]

Originally Posted by bdawg

I have to agree with you. And in OOTP22, my Ted Williams is hitting .175 in the Diamond League. WTF? Seriously? I even moved him to vs R lineup only, and it hasn't improved.

Looked at others in the league, not much better. Most are hitting around .200.

Meanwhile, he's headed for a 16 HR season. 16. And he probably has the highest HR rating in the game, and one of the highest Contact. His Avoid K's is low for a Diamond League hitter at 91, but even my Pete Rose who has a 93 Avoid K's and a lower Contact rating has never hit less than .260 in Diamond.

If you're going to put ratings on cards and then the players don't perform as well as other players of similar ratings or worse, what's the point of ratings?

They are but you need to read them as a formula.


A player with 100 Contact/0 Power/100 Avoid K's will hit for an infinitely higher average than someone that is 100/100/100 in those 3 stats.



Contact is an amalgamation of BABIP + Power, not a straight rating. So Player A would have a super high BABIP score. Player B would be average. Given the same number of at bats, Player A would hit for a better average just because the BABIP score is much higher.

[Abnerdoubleday]

Originally Posted by ubernoob

They are but you need to read them as a formula.

A player with 100 Contact/0 Power/100 Avoid K's will hit for an infinitely higher average than someone that is 100/100/100 in those 3 stats.

Contact is an amalgamation of BABIP + Power, not a straight rating. So Player A would have a super high BABIP score. Player B would be average. Given the same number of at bats, Player A would hit for a better average just because the BABIP score is much higher.

But the question is why would the last .400 hitter in the major leagues have a PEAK card that results in a mediocre batting average?

[bdawg]

Originally Posted by ubernoob

They are but you need to read them as a formula.


A player with 100 Contact/0 Power/100 Avoid K's will hit for an infinitely higher average than someone that is 100/100/100 in those 3 stats.



Contact is an amalgamation of BABIP + Power, not a straight rating. So Player A would have a super high BABIP score. Player B would be average. Given the same number of at bats, Player A would hit for a better average just because the BABIP score is much higher.

I'll preface this by saying I agree 100% with Abnerdoubleday.

Now onto the reply to the other part of your comment...

I get it. But Rose is only 2 pts higher in AvoidK. 2 pts shouldn't translate to a .269 avg vs .a 181 avg. I'll explain why that doesn't make sense below.

Here are some cards with Contact/AvoidK/ ratings, and their typical performances at Diamond level (I'm looking at my players and about the first few teams in my league that show up on player search, and giving a rough average):

Pete Rose 113/93: .270
Ted Williams: 114/91: .215
Sam Crawford: 101/98: 240
Arky Vaughan: 95/102: .225
Wander Franco: 99/93: .260
Joe Mauer: 109/87: .255
Lou Gehrig: 102/89: .220
Mike Trout: 121/84: .265

Where's the rhyme or reason here? Friggin Wander Franco hits .260 with 99/93 and Ted Williams hits .215 with 114/91? And if your answer is "AvoidK is a more important stat" then how do you explain Joe Mauer and Mike Trout? You just told me +5/-2 means jack between Williams and Franco, but +7/-7 means Trout is a far better player than Williams?

The system is broken, and there are important hidden ratings that DON'T contribute to the visible ratings scales. Mike Trout is a perfect example of this. And I'm not even going to get into pitching, because I could show even moreso with pitching how the ratings don't make sense compared to performance.

[bdawg]

Originally Posted by bdawg

I'll preface this by saying I agree 100% with Abnerdoubleday.

Now onto the reply to the other part of your comment...

I get it. But Rose is only 2 pts higher in AvoidK. 2 pts shouldn't translate to a .269 avg vs .a 181 avg. I'll explain why that doesn't make sense below.

Here are some cards with Contact/AvoidK/ ratings, and their typical performances at Diamond level (I'm looking at my players and about the first few teams in my league that show up on player search, and giving a rough average):

Pete Rose 113/93: .270
Ted Williams: 114/91: .215
Sam Crawford: 101/98: 240
Arky Vaughan: 95/102: .225
Wander Franco: 99/93: .260
Joe Mauer: 109/87: .255
Lou Gehrig: 102/89: .220
Mike Trout: 121/84: .265

Where's the rhyme or reason here? Friggin Wander Franco hits .260 with 99/93 and Ted Williams hits .215 with 114/91? And if your answer is "AvoidK is a more important stat" then how do you explain Joe Mauer and Mike Trout? You just told me +5/-2 means jack between Williams and Franco, but +7/-7 means Trout is a far better player than Williams?

The system is broken, and there are important hidden ratings that DON'T contribute to the visible ratings scales. Mike Trout is a perfect example of this. And I'm not even going to get into pitching, because I could show even moreso with pitching how the ratings don't make sense compared to performance.

Listen, I'm not going to give you my background because I hate it when people think their background makes them an expert. But I will say this: even understanding the players are affected by the other players in the league, including opposing pitching, the translation of the visible ratings to stats doesn't make sense in any mathematical scale.

The only thing that makes sense is that somehow the game ends up changing grades based upon the other players in the league. In essence, it's like a teacher grading on a curve. So my 110/95 guy ends up ranking 24th in the league in contact and 198th in avoidk, so the game adjusts his rating accordingly. Which is mathematically disingenuous and completely and utterly ridiculous. The reason the game should give a value is so you can mathematically analyze it, and if the above is true, you can't.

Even so, none of that explains why people like Wander Franco and Mike Trout FAR outperform their ratings compared to other players, and why Ted Williams ends up hitting .200.

[AdmiralTrey]

Originally Posted by bdawg

I'll preface this by saying I agree 100% with Abnerdoubleday.

Now onto the reply to the other part of your comment...

I get it. But Rose is only 2 pts higher in AvoidK. 2 pts shouldn't translate to a .269 avg vs .a 181 avg. I'll explain why that doesn't make sense below.

Here are some cards with Contact/AvoidK/ ratings, and their typical performances at Diamond level (I'm looking at my players and about the first few teams in my league that show up on player search, and giving a rough average):

Pete Rose 113/93: .270
Ted Williams: 114/91: .215
Sam Crawford: 101/98: 240
Arky Vaughan: 95/102: .225
Wander Franco: 99/93: .260
Joe Mauer: 109/87: .255
Lou Gehrig: 102/89: .220
Mike Trout: 121/84: .265

Where's the rhyme or reason here? Friggin Wander Franco hits .260 with 99/93 and Ted Williams hits .215 with 114/91? And if your answer is "AvoidK is a more important stat" then how do you explain Joe Mauer and Mike Trout? You just told me +5/-2 means jack between Williams and Franco, but +7/-7 means Trout is a far better player than Williams?

The system is broken, and there are important hidden ratings that DON'T contribute to the visible ratings scales. Mike Trout is a perfect example of this. And I'm not even going to get into pitching, because I could show even moreso with pitching how the ratings don't make sense compared to performance.

You also have to factor in whether or not those players are being platooned or if opener strategies are forcing them to start against same-handed pitchers frequently... For example, you've given a rough average of a .225 for Arky Vaughn, which is pretty low and understandably frustrating. My Arky Vaughn has a .288 career BA over 12 seasons (6 in diamond, 6 in gold) because other than the first season (when he hit .246) I've only let him face righties while benching him against lefties.

Ted Williams only has a 76 avoidK against lefties. That's going to result in a very poor batting average in diamond and above, or even in gold honestly.

My Ted Williams hit .240 with 25 HR in diamond this week playing against righties. He hit .283 with 25 HR in gold last week. He's performed fine for me so far. I don't play with my ballpark settings, either.

There's also the DH factor to consider, because if I remember correctly there's around a 10% penalty in hitting ratings for players used at the DH position.

With all of that being said, I agree that Ted Williams should be made in such a way that he outperforms other lesser hitters. I'm not sure what the answer is. I love PT for sure, but it's definitely weird that a guy like Wander Franco performed really well (.283 BA over 22 seasons) for me until I replaced him with George Brett, but a legend like Ted Williams has virtually no chance at hitting .300.

[ubernoob]

Originally Posted by bdawg

I'll preface this by saying I agree 100% with Abnerdoubleday.

Now onto the reply to the other part of your comment...

I get it. But Rose is only 2 pts higher in AvoidK. 2 pts shouldn't translate to a .269 avg vs .a 181 avg. I'll explain why that doesn't make sense below.

Here are some cards with Contact/AvoidK/ ratings, and their typical performances at Diamond level (I'm looking at my players and about the first few teams in my league that show up on player search, and giving a rough average):

Pete Rose 113/93: .270
Ted Williams: 114/91: .215
Sam Crawford: 101/98: 240
Arky Vaughan: 95/102: .225
Wander Franco: 99/93: .260
Joe Mauer: 109/87: .255
Lou Gehrig: 102/89: .220
Mike Trout: 121/84: .265

Where's the rhyme or reason here? Friggin Wander Franco hits .260 with 99/93 and Ted Williams hits .215 with 114/91? And if your answer is "AvoidK is a more important stat" then how do you explain Joe Mauer and Mike Trout? You just told me +5/-2 means jack between Williams and Franco, but +7/-7 means Trout is a far better player than Williams?

The system is broken, and there are important hidden ratings that DON'T contribute to the visible ratings scales. Mike Trout is a perfect example of this. And I'm not even going to get into pitching, because I could show even moreso with pitching how the ratings don't make sense compared to performance.

I literally told you what the "Hidden" rating was.


Contact is an amalgamation of Power + BABIP + AvK.



Ted Williams = Contact of 114, Power of 194, Avoid K of 91


His Power is huge, and his Avoid K/Contact are way less. This tells you he has a ****ty BABIP. He will never hit for a high average.


Wander Franco = 99 Contact, 81 Power, 93 AvK.


He has a decent BABIP score, because contact is higher than both Power and Avoid K.


Mike Trout = 121 Contact, 102 Power, 84 Avoid K


The avoid K is too low to be a top card, but this card has the best BABIP score of the 3 I posted.



It's truly simple to figure out. You just need to know what you are looking at.


It why cards like Tony Gwynn (121 Contact/56 Power/105 AvK) are huge. They won't strike out and they have huge BABIP scores compared to the power hitters. They are much more likely to hit .300 than the others in the league.

Think of contact like this (Power+AvK)/2))*BABIP = contact. It's not quite that cut and dry, but you can guesstimate BABIPs very easily by looking at those 3 stats. Players fall into archetypes. The best hitters in this game would be Contact/Gap/Eye/AvK maxed with 0 power.

It's why a card Like Eddie Collins has the stats it puts up.

FWIW, most cards will fall into average or below average BABIPs. It's why there are meta cards.

[SF Giants]

Originally Posted by JudP

shouldn't a game using real players /from different eras/ have some sempblence of what those players played like?

No

[ncap99]

Like it was mentioned above, leagues are normalized to what an average year looks like. So if it is normalized to 2021, the league as a whole should hit .244. If the whole league is nothing but Ted Williams, Ted Williams will hit .244 (on average). That means some will hit .320 and some will hit .188, etc.

[chazzycat]

Originally Posted by AdmiralTrey

There's also the DH factor to consider, because if I remember correctly there's around a 10% penalty in hitting ratings for players used at the DH position.

It's much smaller, more like 3%.

Originally Posted by AdmiralTrey

With all of that being said, I agree that Ted Williams should be made in such a way that he outperforms other lesser hitters. I'm not sure what the answer is. I love PT for sure, but it's definitely weird that a guy like Wander Franco performed really well (.283 BA over 22 seasons) for me until I replaced him with George Brett, but a legend like Ted Williams has virtually no chance at hitting .300.

Yep the game has always been harsh on HR-hitting sluggers who also had great contact skills & batting averages. Those types of players are just so elite & so rare (Ruth, Williams, Bonds) that I don't think the algorithm for translating stats to ratings handles them very well. Across baseball history, sluggers tend to strike out too much and have lower averages, which I believe is why the system is set up that way. It handles the majority of players pretty well. But in these extreme cases it just falls apart, and of course these "extreme" cases are the players we love the most.

This year actually seems a bit better than previous, for what it's worth. Ted and Ruth are both getting significant play in the highest levels despite these perceived shortcomings.