Handymans Guide #2: Understanding Batting Ratings

[biggerme]

Handymans Guide #2: Understanding Batting Ratings

In this part of guides I’m going to clarify how batting ratings translate into estimated results. This is how in game ratings work and it all you have to do is reverse engineer changes in ratings into actual values used by the game.
I have also published a guide how to understand fielding ratings which can help you understand those hidden gems.
http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...positions.html

As a background, game uses only Short and/or Byte datatype for assigning rating values which means most of the values are in the range of 1 and 255. It is recommended to take a look into what manual says about those ratings and how these are used:
Out of the Park Baseball Manual

Simple overview of player batting ratings included also as an image


There are couple of ratings that are not visible unless you open Player Editor in Commish mode and these are: BABIP, HBP and 2B-3B Split.

I have used in calculations only the 200 point scale which is available when exporting database into csv files, it easier to understand and also translate into other scales afterwards. For identifying how change in each rating impacts result I have increased number of At Bats from 550 to 55’000 and the main reason being that some of those changes are so subtle that they get rounded off otherwise. Game itself uses 550 AB’s as a baseline for estimating the results from each rating so this is what I’m going to use also and it makes easier to understand the stats also.

Results of ratings:
Contact - estimated number of Hits a player will have in 550 AB’s
Gap - estimated number of Doubles and Triples a player will have in 550 AB’s
Power - estimated number of Home Runs a player will have in 550 AB’s
Eye - estimated number of Walks a player will have in 550 AB’s
Avoid K’s - estimated number of StrikeOuts- a player will have in 550 AB’s
But reality seems to be rather more complex than those statements and I will give the formulas and how each rating impacts other ratings also.

Contact - Hits
Is calculated from 3 different ratings Avoid K’s, Babip and Power and this will be the result of total Hits a player will have. Minimum value for number of hits is set at 15.14 approximately, I have some small error somewhere which I have not found, but as it results to only 1% difference to end result it really does not matter.

Hits from AvoidK
Minimum # of Hits = 15.14
AvoidK Less than 21 =
Hits = 15.14 + ( AvoidK X 1.02 )
AvoidK Between 21 and 100 =
Hits = ( 20 X 1.02 ) + ( ( AvoidK - 20 ) X 0.1275 )
AvoidK Above 100 =
Hits = ( 20 X 1.02 ) + ( 80 X 0.1275 ) + ( ( AvoidK - 100 ) X 0.081667 )
Maximum # of Hits from AvoidK = 55.22 (does not go above that)

Now the important part, AvoidK is probably the most important and undervalued rating for any batter and this because it’s not only about avoiding StrikeOuts and getting some Hits. From AvoidK we are going to calculate a Babip Multiplier, which means the higher AvoidK the more Hits you will get from Babip rating. This is something I noticed when trying to initially come up with the number of hits from Contact rating only. It just did not make any sense initially and there seemed to be no pattern at all.

Babip Multiplier
Is a value that represents how many hits per one point of Babip player will have -
Hits from Babip=Babip X BabipMultiplier
So this means 1+1=3 for hits in short.

Minimum value for BabipMultiplier = 0.30
AvoidK Less than 21
BabipMultiplier = 0.30 + ( AvoidK + 0.02 )
AvoidK Between 21 and 100 =
BabipMultiplier = 0.30 + (20 X 0.02 ) + ( ( AvoidK - 20 ) X 0.0025 )
AvoidK Above 100 =
BabipMultiplier = 0.30 + (20 X 0.02 ) + ( 80 X 0.0025 ) + ( ( AvoidK - 100 ) X 0.0016 )
Maximum Value of BabipMultiplier = 1.08

As you can see number of hits for each point of Babip rating can be between 0.30 and 1.08, that can add up to quite a lot when a player has really good AvoidK rating.

Hits from Babip
This is one of the easiest components now after knowing the multiplier.
Babip Less than 101 =
Hits = Babip X BabipMultiplier
Babip Higher than 100 =
Hits = ( 100 X BabipMultiplier ) + ( ( ( Babip - 100 ) X BabipMultiplier ) / 2 )
(As you can notice you will get 50% less hits after first 100 points in ratings )

Hits from HomeRuns
One more thing to add to get the total number of hits and thats very straightforward
Hits = Homeruns X 0.70
How to calculate number of Homeruns is coming in the next paragraphs.

To get the total number of hits for a player just use following formula - ( Hits from AvoidKs + Hits from Babip + Hits from HomeRuns)

There is only one drawback of this method, if you are in online league you do not know Babip rating so here is an example of code I did at some point to calculate number of hits from Contact rating only.

            if (Contact<18) {
                Hits = 19+(2.058823529411765*Contact);
            } else if ((Contact>17) and (Contact<35)) {
                Hits= 55+(1.058823529411765*(Contact-17));
            } else if ((Contact>34) and (Contact<69)) {
                Hits= 73+(1.121212121212121*(Contact-34));
            } else if ((Contact>68) and (Contact<101)) {
                Hits= 110+(1.125*(Contact-68));
            } else if ((Contact>100) and (Contact<136)) {
                Hits= 146+(0.5428571428571429*(Contact-100));
            } else if (Contact>135) {
                Hits= Contact-135;
                Hits= 0.55*Hits;
                Hits= 165 + Hits;
            }

As you can notice probably it does not take into account Homeruns, but at least it tries to do as much as it can.

GAP - Extra Base Hits
As mentioned this rating will result in # of Doubles and Triples, it has caveat, it does not use 2B/3B Split rating which was introduced in OOTP 13. And this is mainly because it’s not possible even to export this value into files and the only place you can see it is Player Editor.

As a beginning this rating does not impact any oher result besides the one mentioned, how many hits will be Extra Base Hits the only thing you will get out of it. Pattern itself is very simple and was very fast to discover:
For every 30 Points of Gap player gets 8 Doubles and 0.57 Triples, after knowing that it is very easy to calculate the totals:
Doubles = GAP X ( 8 / 30 )
Triples = GAP X ( 0.57 / 30 )

Power - HomeRuns
As mentioned before a value of 70% of Homeruns is translated into additional Hits in Contact rating. One important thing about power rating is that it behaves slightly differently than other ratings. When you will at some other ratings and resulting stats you will notice that Buck per Point diminishes as higher the rating gets, so usually every point after 100 gets you less number of hits, doubles, strikeouts, etc. Only Eye work the same way as Power rating.

Homeruns from Power
Power Less than 101 =
Homeruns = Power X 0.16
Power Greater than 100 =
Homeruns = ( 100 X 0.16 ) + ( ( Power -100 ) X 0.34 )

As an example Power(100) results in estimated 16 Homeruns but Power(200) results in estimated 50 Homeruns, again using 550 AB’s as baseline. So rookies that are not ready yet to be promoted but have potential in Power rating really should wait until they get above 100.

Eye - Walks
Not much to say, very easy to formulate. Only thing to remember that real impact on number of Walks drawn starts when rating is above 100, instead 0.5 walks per rating point you will get 1 Walk per Rating point after 100.

Walks from Eye
Eye Less than 101 =
Walks = Eye / 2
Eye Greater than 100 =
Walks = ( 100 / 2 ) + ( Eye - 100 )

AvoidK’s - Strikeouts
Probably it’s already obvious what comes next so here it comes … but it’s all upside down.

Strikeouts from AvoidK
Starting Value from which to deduct is 400 K’s, meaning AvoidK(0) results 400 K’s in 550 AB’s, ouch...
AvoidK Less than 21 =
Strikeouts = 400 - ( AvoidK X 10 )
AvoidK Between 21 And 100 =
Strikeouts = 400 - ( 20 X 10 ) - ( ( AvoidK - 20 ) X 1.25 )
AvoidK Greater then 100 =
Strikeouts = 400 - ( 20 X 10 ) - ( 80 X 1.25 ) - ( ( AvoidK - 100 ) X 0.8 )
Minimum # StrikeOuts is 10, whatever the AvoidK rating it does not go below.

Conclusions
As you can see there are plenty of numbers now available to calculate at least some expected values for Avg, Obp, Slg, Ops and even Runs Created. I have used it and found some Pitchers hiding in Draft Pool with exceptional Hitting ratings.
To adjust these calculations to your own ratings use following rules:
Ratings 1 - 20 : Multiply by 10 to get in game rating
Ratings 1 - 100 : Multiply by 2 to get in game rating
Ratings 20 - 80 : I have not bothered to figure that one out...

best of luck trying out these formulas

... and also added VB functions that can be used either in Excel or Access or if you get really wicked in Word...

biggerme

[hfield007]

these results based on modern day settings?

[biggerme]

Good point, yes they are and Global Modifiers don't impact at least in game those results. These might be as old as the game is so Modern Day is a good question indeed ...

Originally Posted by hfield007

these results based on modern day settings?

[biggerme]

Added VB functions as attachment also to post which can be used Excel and Access

[daves]

Thanks