Players hitting the wall before big milestones

[ACibella]

Anyone noticed that it seems that players really hit the wall before major milestones? 500 HR's, 3000 Hits, etc. I am running a historical replay and I have seen at least 15 players crap out before they hit a milestone and then hang around for 2 years as a worthless player before retiring without hitting the mark. It's not an age issue either, i.e. - I have Gary Sheffield, cruising along and all of a sudden at 36 with around 460 career homers his talent level nose dives and two years later he is still 25 homers below 500. Same thing happened with Strawberry in his late 30's. I've also seen guys play till 39-40 and stick around till 42 and miss the mark (Bo Jackson did it, finishing with 493 homers and playing till the age of 42).

It's not really a huge problem, I like guys who retire short of milestones, as it has happened in real life. It just seems that this happens more often than not in the game. Anyone else see this happen?


AC

[zekester91]

What are your aging and develompent set at. I really haven't played enough seasons to be able to comment on any wall, but I've been tweekeing the two and am still looking for something that will get my players close to what your seeing.

[ACibella]

I am at the default settings that come with the latest upgrade. On my laptop so I can't check what they are, but I believe they are just flat 1's across the board.

[Dark Horse]

No doubt this happens often in OOTP. i don't think OOTP has anything coded in to consider milestones and records when a player is thinking about retirement.

i kinda' prefer it that they don't drag out their careers chasing milestones and records. But i know a lot of people hate that and want to see the guys reach 300 wins or 3000 hits or whatever. Maybe it can be fixed in v2007.

[fhomess]

Originally Posted by ACibella

Anyone noticed that it seems that players really hit the wall before major milestones? 500 HR's, 3000 Hits, etc. I am running a historical replay and I have seen at least 15 players crap out before they hit a milestone and then hang around for 2 years as a worthless player before retiring without hitting the mark. It's not an age issue either, i.e. - I have Gary Sheffield, cruising along and all of a sudden at 36 with around 460 career homers his talent level nose dives and two years later he is still 25 homers below 500. Same thing happened with Strawberry in his late 30's. I've also seen guys play till 39-40 and stick around till 42 and miss the mark (Bo Jackson did it, finishing with 493 homers and playing till the age of 42).

It's not really a huge problem, I like guys who retire short of milestones, as it has happened in real life. It just seems that this happens more often than not in the game. Anyone else see this happen?

I think there's a legitimate question about what "close" is. Sheffield's 460 HR's isn't particularly close to 500, IMO. Even 475 may not be something I'd personally consider all that close. Jackson's 493 is, but depending on his ability could still be a long way for a guy of diminished skill.

On top of that, you've got the question of what is a significant milestone. In MLB, 500 HR's is significant, but in my fictional league, it may not be. I may configure OOTP so that 500 HR's is pretty mediocre because my teams play on the moon or with superballs that fly off the bat like flubber. Even in MLB, would you'd have to decide which milestones a player might be expected to try to reach. What about 400 HR's? What about 550? What about trying to crack the career top 25 list regardless of where that number is? Is 800 a significant milestone or is the fact that the player has eclipsed Hank Aaron's 755 enough?

Originally Posted by Dark Horse

i kinda' prefer it that they don't drag out their careers chasing milestones and records. But i know a lot of people hate that and want to see the guys reach 300 wins or 3000 hits or whatever. Maybe it can be fixed in v2007.

"Fixing" it will be hard considering the decision to retire from a career is intensely personal and there are different opinions among the OOTP community on what should happen.

Some of my thoughts on this would be:
1. The game needs some way to know what a significant milestone is. It seems as though there are a number of criteria that could be considered:
a. Trying to become the all-time leader (should be highly considered).
b. Trying to break the top 10 all-time (should be slightly considered).
c. Trying to crack a significant multiple of 100. There's about 20 guys in the 500 HR club and 40 guys in the 400 HR club in MLB. I'd say that any multiple of 100 is significant if fewer than 1 player per 4 seasons a league has been in existence have reached that milestone.
d. Milestones for different stats should be considered differently. A HR milestone should be weighed more heavily than a triples milestone, for example.

As well as some things that should not be considered, IMO:
a. Trying to reach a configured HOF plateau. The HOF plateaus are anecdotal in real life, as there is no stated number of HR's that will get you in the HOF.
b. Multiples of 10, 25, or 50 are not significant unless they end in 00.

2. Players should be more inclined to keep playing than retire. Players should be less likely to retire if their stats were still good (even in limited playing time) even when their ratings indicate they no longer have the ability to play. MLB players always over estimate their ability to play.

[Curtis]

Originally Posted by fhomess

d. Milestones for different stats should be considered differently. A HR milestone should be weighed more heavily than a triples milestone, for example.

Unless you enjoy deadball play. I'd keep Sam Crawford or Ty Cobb around an extra year or two to hit a triples milestone.

I agree with your general point, though. Players should be able to tailor retirement decision criteria to match their league's style of play. In my leagues a stolen base milestone is more important than one for strikeouts by a pitcher (though possibly not for the pitcher).

[PAR65]

Why could there not be a toggle or a check box on the players card that says something like "Try to reach MILESTONE" and then a drop down with the stat and a text box that you enter the numeric value in it. This would make the game a little more realistic watching you great power hitter staying that extra year to hit 5 homers or your fading starter around to get the extra 2 wins to reach 300. Just an idea but one that would be awesome to see. My reason for this approach is because it would be very difficult to program logic into the program for all possible scenarios, but perhaps easier if it were in this format on an individual basis. The only logic the game would need to use is 1) is the box checked 2) is the milestone reached ( if so let the player retire, otherwise keep him around another year ) and perhaps 3) is the milestone attainable. The reason behind 3 is that it would be stupid to have a player try to reach the 500 HR mark when he has 300 and he is 39 years old coming off of a 3 home run season.

[Curtis]

That's such a good suggestion that I'm going to suggest that you post it in the Suggestion forum.

[ACibella]

Originally Posted by fhomess

I think there's a legitimate question about what "close" is. Sheffield's 460 HR's isn't particularly close to 500, IMO. Even 475 may not be something I'd personally consider all that close. Jackson's 493 is, but depending on his ability could still be a long way for a guy of diminished skill.

On top of that, you've got the question of what is a significant milestone. In MLB, 500 HR's is significant, but in my fictional league, it may not be. I may configure OOTP so that 500 HR's is pretty mediocre because my teams play on the moon or with superballs that fly off the bat like flubber. Even in MLB, would you'd have to decide which milestones a player might be expected to try to reach. What about 400 HR's? What about 550? What about trying to crack the career top 25 list regardless of where that number is? Is 800 a significant milestone or is the fact that the player has eclipsed Hank Aaron's 755 enough?

You've got some very good points in there. I typically play MLB-type historical sims, so I made the bonehead assumption that the 500 HR plateau was meaningful. As a whole it is not, in my current league I suppose it is. My question, maybe more importantly was the fact that guys seem to drop off a cliff, Sheffield was motoring up to 460 homers, no less than 30 in any year, he was "only" 36, which for a guy who had avoided any significant injury in his career (which he had) isn't that old. All of a sudden his talent dropped off the face of the earth. To the point that he should have probably been a AA ballplayer. I kept him in the lineup in one form or another for 2 more seasons trying to get his HOF ticket punched but it didnt happen. His contract came up, I let him walk and he retired immediately. It just seems that for a guy to bang 30 homers a year his entire career and then completely flop approximately a year and a half before he hits the HOF criteria is a little strange. If he had suffered a serious injury at 36 and never bounced back, therefore been short I could see it I guess.

After looking into my league vs Major League Baseball, here's what I've found, in the history of MLB 20 Players have hit 500 or more home runs. Excluding active players, only 7 have stopped between 450 and 500, and, taking a little creative freedom 3 of those 7 (Lou Gehrig, Stan Musial, and Carl Yastrezemski) didn't need to hit 500 to get to the hall, or, in Gehrigs case left for a pretty extraordinary circumstance. So, 7 or 27 players above 450 homers stopped between 450-500, thats a hair over 25%.

In my league, again excluding active players, 7 players have hit more than 500 homers (the league started in 1979), and 7 players have retired between 450 and 500. That's a full 50% of players stopping before what the game clearly recognizes as entry to the HOF. Granted this is a small sample size, and I don't know that the game is coded for this, or if its just coincidence, but it's pretty safe to say a larger percentage of players hang it up before locking up a HOF spot than actually do so in real life.

Just my 2 cents, has anyone else taken a look into this in their games, or am I just experiencing an anomaly?

[fhomess]

Sorry, this is long...
I think another approach to the milestone question is to look at the types of milestones that players in MLB have seemingly held on to cross. Let's look at career HR's since that started the discussion.

I'm not going to go below Dave Winfield because the next retired player is Jose Canseco, who claims to be blackballed, and Yaz, who had 452. Yaz hadn't hit 30 HR's in a season in over 10 years, let alone 40. At age 43, he didn't really have the ability to last another 3-4 seasons it would've taken him to get to 500 even if he played well.

28. Dave Winfield - 465 - Mr. May wasn't really all that close with his final 5 HR totals being 28-26-21-10-2. Of course, he was OLD, too, retiring after his age 43 season.

27/26. Manny Ramirez/Jim Thome - both still active

24t. Stan Musial - 475 - Musial pretty clearly did NOT try to keep his career going to reach 500. He was already 42 when he hit 12 HR's in his final season for the Cards. His final 5 season HR totals do not show a significant decline, and they don't show an ability to have reached 500 in another year or two either. They were very consistent over that time period: 14-17-15-19-12.

24t. Willie Stargell - 475 - Stargell was clearly a player who stayed in the game after his skills had diminished. He hit 28-32-11-0-3 HR's in his final 5 seasons. Looking at those numbers, he was at 461 after he hit 32 HR's at age 39 and tied with Keith Hernandez as the 1979 NL MVP. No one's going to retire after an MVP season, so it's no surprise he stuck around at age 40 in 1980, although he got less than half as many AB's after a knee injury basically ended his ability to play.

23 - Frank Thomas - 487 - Still active.

21t. Fred McGriff - 493 - I think it's well known that McGriff was trying to get another job to cross the 500 HR plateau but simply couldn't get a contract from anyone. His last 5 seasons he hit 27-31-30-13-2.

21t. Lou Gehrig - 493 - We all know he retired because of his health. His last 5 seasons he hit 49-30-49-37-29-0. Ok, that's 6 seasons, but he only played 8 games in 1939.

20. Eddie Murray - 504 - Murray actually crossed the 500 HR plateau in his 2nd to last season (1996), with his final 5 season HR totals as follows: 27-17-21-22-3. I don't think his 1996 season was all that bad considering he posted an 87 OPS+ after a 130 OPS+ the season before.

19. Mel Ott - 511 - Ott looks like he tried to keep playing after his skills had declined, but it wasn't to reach 500 HR's. He posted a 150 OPS+ the year he hit #500. His last 5 seasons look like this: 18-26-21-1-0. He definitely fell off a ledge after age 36. I don't know enough about his history to know if it was injury related or not.

17t. Eddie Matthews - 512 - Matthews was better than league average every year except his last, when he posted a 98 OPS+ in limited time. His final 5 seasons his HR numbers were: 23-32-16-16-3, so he crossed 500 two years before he retired. His OPS+ during those two 16 HR seasons was lower than his career average, but there were still around 110. I don't get the impression from his stats that he was holding on, or that any particular injury caused him to stop playing, and his gradual descent emphasizes that in stark contrast to Ott.

17t. Ernie Banks - 512 - Banks was an All-Star and finished 12th in MVP voting during his age 38 season when he broke 500 HR's. His final 5 season HR's were: 23-32-23-12-3.

15t. Ted Williams - 521 - Williams is an interesting case because of two reasons: 1. He very clearly did not need to hit 500 HR's to get into the HOF. 2. He reached 500 HR's in his final season and then hung 'em up. The man posted a 189 OPS+ in his final season. His final 5 season HR totals were 24-38-26-10-29. Of course, he was 41 during that final year and would have reached 500 much earlier if not for his time serving his country. There's also the case of the fact that Williams was a prideful man who didn't want to be remembered for his 1959 season (10 HR's were a career low). He'd had a neck injury that caused his play to suffer and Tom Yawkey suggested he retired. Naturally, he came back and had another great season retiring after a final at-bat HR and another fine year. Williams didn't hold on for 500 HR's. He held on for pride.

15t. Willie McCovey - 521 - McCovey his his 500th in his 3rd to last season, with his final 5 seasons of HR's being 7-28-12-15-1. He wasn't really that good anymore, although he still played somewhat regularly. Given his numbers, I think it's actually a little more surprising that he didn't retire after the season the year he hit his 500th.

14. Jimmie Foxx - 534 - Foxx's last few seasons were decidedly low on HR's, as he went 36-19-8-0-7. He was #2 in HR's at the time.

Beyond Foxx you get to Mickey Mantle, Mike Schmidt, and Reggie Jackson, none of whom can really be argued held on to get to 500.

So... moral of the story, it doesn't seem like there have been very many players who held on to try to reach 500 HR's. Throughout most of MLB history, the 500 HR plateau wasn't really something most players had the option of trying to hold on to get to, with McGriff being one guy of note who wanted to but couldn't. For those of you curious, there are 12 players who retired with between 380 and 400 HR's. 4 of them had between 395 and 400 HR's and at least 3 of those would've been a good bet to get to 400 if they'd stuck around for another season. Notably, Al Kaline and Andres Galarraga both retired at 399.

If you look at the career wins leaderboard for pitchers, it's pretty clear that more players held on to try to reach 300 wins than those who tried to reach 500 HR's. We've also got about the same number of players in each group. Early Wynn looks like a great example, with his one and only win in 1963 (his final year) being win #300.

One thing that struck me when thinking about it was that the 300 win plateau was established as a level of excellence far earlier in the century than the 500 HR plateau. 500 HR's was broken by just a couple of guys until the 1960's. Many of the 300 win guys had done so by the 1930's. It used to be that 500 HR's was considered the same way we now consider 600 HR's. You don't have to get to 600 HR's to be considered a pretty dang good hitter. Getting to 600 is like icing on the cake. The same used to be true of 500 HR's, but after the 1990's it's not so much the case anymore.

[Curtis]

Originally Posted by fhomess

17t. Ernie Banks - 512 - Banks was an All-Star and finished 12th in MVP voting during his age 38 season when he broke 500 HR's. His final 5 season HR's were: 23-32-23-12-3.

14. Jimmie Foxx - 534 - Foxx's last few seasons were decidedly low on HR's, as he went 36-19-8-0-7. He was #2 in HR's at the time.

I've been reading some baseball histories lately, and I'd just like to comment on these two.

Ernie Banks was being encouraged to retire by the Chicago sportswriters starting the year before he got his 500th (that second '23' year you have listed). He was very nearly immobile due to injuries (which I think could be said of Willie Stargell at the end, too) and looked bad at the plate. By that age 38 year he was considered an embarassment, and by his final season a joke. On the day he played his final game it was widely expected that he would announce his retirement, but in the end he didn't make up his mind until a couple of months after the season ended. (It's possible he was pushed by Mr. Wrigley, who may have informed him that he would always have a job with the Cubs, but that he might be restricted to batting practice only if he stuck around. That's a rumor.) In his case, he didn't hang on to reach a milestone; he hung on because he loved playing so much that he just couldn't let go.

Jimmy Fox, a phenomenon in his time, is probably more known today as the fictional character Jimmy Dugan in "A League of Their Own". It turns out that movie was a pretty accurate portrayal of him. He fell off the table late in his career when knee injuries and alcoholism caught up to him. "Women At Play: The Story of Women in Baseball" verifies that he later overcame his drinking, at least for a time, and did become a manager in the All American Girls League, but it's silent on whether his reform was permanent, or whether there was any correlation between the two.

Although he was off the end of your chart, Willie Mays held on at least two seasons (his Met years) longer than he should have. In his case, he had vague dreams of catching Babe Ruth. I actually remember those years. Although he made the All Star team either one or both of those seasons, they were strictly honorary. His stats may not look too bad, but his fans, me included, just felt sorry for the guy for not recognizing that his time had passed. His retirement was induced when the Mets quietly told him that if he didn't retire the would not renew his contract, and some backstage searching around convinced him that no one else would pick him up.

[fhomess]

Thanks for the summaries of those guys. I didn't know some of that history.

Originally Posted by Curtis

In his case, he didn't hang on to reach a milestone; he hung on because he loved playing so much that he just couldn't let go.

I think cases like Banks here are pretty good examples of what's far more common. Players hanging on simply because they want to play regardless of specific milestones.

[jerrycapo]

Originally Posted by Curtis

That's such a good suggestion that I'm going to suggest that you post it in the Suggestion forum.

I believe this suggestion also deserves a referral to the suggestion forum.

Seriously though, please do add the drop down idea to the suggestions forum. That one is really good.

[Curtis]

*sigh* Okay, I'll take care of that.