Strange.

[David Watts]

I just started the second season of a random debut league. My Pirates drafted a 2B by the name of Bid McPhee. Bid was played in real life from 1882 - 1899 almost exclusively as a second baseman. He did play a few games at 3B and a few in the outfield. For some reason the OOTP McPhee has no position ratings at all.

Even stranger, Lou Whitaker imported as part of the inaugural draft at 36 years of age. At 37 Lou Whitaker has no position ratings. Yet he is starting at 2b for the Cubs.

[VanillaGorilla]

Originally Posted by David Watts

I just started the second season of a random debut league. My Pirates drafted a 2B by the name of Bid McPhee. Bid was played in real life from 1882 - 1899 almost exclusively as a second baseman. He did play a few games at 3B and a few in the outfield. For some reason the OOTP McPhee has no position ratings at all.

Even stranger, Lou Whitaker imported as part of the inaugural draft at 36 years of age. At 37 Lou Whitaker has no position ratings. Yet he is starting at 2b for the Cubs.

Odd, indeed.

I had Bid McPhee win 2B GG with a ZR of +7.19 and an Eff of 1.027 in 2008.

In 2009 he is only rated at 3B, but played primarily at 2B with a ZR of +5.2 and an Eff of 1.031.

Perhaps what we are seeing is the new aging fielder algorithm at work.

It is saying that Whitaker (and McPhee) have aged too much to play 2B, anymore and is, therefore, not giving 2B as a rated position. But in the case of my McPhee (who turned 28 in 2009) he was still fielding capably at 2b and, in fact, it was the AI that put him at 2b for 78 games, 76 of which were starts.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by VanillaGorilla

Odd, indeed.

I had Bid McPhee win 2B GG with a ZR of +7.19 and an Eff of 1.027 in 2008.

In 2009 he is only rated at 3B, but played primarily at 2B with a ZR of +5.2 and an Eff of 1.031.

Perhaps what we are seeing is the new aging fielder algorithm at work.

It is saying that Whitaker (and McPhee) have aged too much to play 2B, anymore and is, therefore, not giving 2B as a rated position. But in the case of my McPhee (who turned 28 in 2009) he was still fielding capably at 2b and, in fact, it was the AI that put him at 2b for 78 games, 76 of which were starts.

Thing is in my league McPhee is only 21 years old. If a player isn't rated at a position, why is he even playing. Sure he could be a DH, but he shouldn't be starting over other more qualified players. Also, McPhee was the first pick of the Pirates in the draft (2nd season, 1st overall pick of the draft). Why is the AI picking a player with no position?

[VanillaGorilla]

Originally Posted by David Watts

Thing is in my league McPhee is only 21 years old. If a player isn't rated at a position, why is he even playing. Sure he could be a DH, but he shouldn't be starting over other more qualified players. Also, McPhee was the first pick of the Pirates in the draft (2nd season, 1st overall pick of the draft). Why is the AI picking a player with no position?

Heck if I know....since there is a new fielder aging algorithm, quirky display (bugs) are quite possible. This was designed for fictional play, so some anomalies with real players are not surprising to find.

Again, the 2009 McPhee fielding numbers are from him not being rated at 2B, but being played at 2B, exclusively, by the AI. So, the program sees him as capable, even if the presented display says otherwise.

Also, I have my scouting set to Very Low, so this may also be a factor, and have overall ratings based on AI. I have no idea how these settings might be affecting such odd displays in the player profile or if they have any effect, at all....just saying what mine are.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by VanillaGorilla

Heck if I know....since there is a new fielder aging algorithm, quirky display (bugs) are quite possible. This was designed for fictional play, so some anomalies with real players are not surprising to find.

Again, the 2009 McPhee fielding numbers are from him not being rated at 2B, but being played at 2B, exclusively, by the AI. So, the program sees him as capable, even if the presented display says otherwise.

Also, I have my scouting set to Very Low, so this may also be a factor, and have overall ratings based on AI. I have no idea how these settings might be affecting such odd displays in the player profile or if they have any effect, at all....just saying what mine are.

I don't use scouting at all. Now the Cubs are starting Whitaker at 2B with no rating and some guy named Tomball with no ratings at SS. Looks like I will scrap random debut and play fictional.

[VanillaGorilla]

Originally Posted by David Watts

I don't use scouting at all. Now the Cubs are starting Whitaker at 2B with no rating and some guy named Tomball with no ratings at SS. Looks like I will scrap random debut and play fictional.

OK...so it has nothing to do with scouting. I will keep an eye out for these instances. I had a unrated CFer being used as CF def sub when I had the Mgr/BC fill out depth charts. What happens when you start someone else at 2B besides Whitaker and have the mgr or BC do the depth chart....does he get slotted as def replacement?

[The Game]

Originally Posted by David Watts

I just started the second season of a random debut league. My Pirates drafted a 2B by the name of Bid McPhee. Bid was played in real life from 1882 - 1899 almost exclusively as a second baseman. He did play a few games at 3B and a few in the outfield. For some reason the OOTP McPhee has no position ratings at all.

Even stranger, Lou Whitaker imported as part of the inaugural draft at 36 years of age. At 37 Lou Whitaker has no position ratings. Yet he is starting at 2b for the Cubs.

Are these your scout ratings or OSA or both? I have seen this with older players on 13 in random debut, but not for younger players. I have been using 100% accuracy for random debut league and playing stats only.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by The Game

Are these your scout ratings or OSA or both? I have seen this with older players on 13 in random debut, but not for younger players. I have been using 100% accuracy for random debut league and playing stats only.

I don't use scouting at all. It is turned off. McPhee is 21, Tomney(I think I may have said Tomball above) is 28.

[The Game]

Originally Posted by David Watts

I don't use scouting at all. It is turned off. McPhee is 21, Tomney(I think I may have said Tomball above) is 28.

Ok dont know what the problem is then. I have only seen players not have ratings in leagues with scouting on.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by The Game

Ok dont know what the problem is then. I have only seen players not have ratings in leagues with scouting on.

Whitaker may very well be explained by aging(as Vanilla said), but I can't figure out the other 2. They both are from the 1800's though. I wonder if that has something to do with it. Oh how I wish Markus would make it so we could pick a starting point for random debut. I actually have little interest in having pre 1900 guys in my leagues.

[VanillaGorilla]

Currently I have a 40 year-old Johnny Bench who is only rated at 3B and a 40 year-old Eddie Joost who is only rated at 2B.

Bench retired after his 35 y/o season and logged 5 appearances in 110 GP at C.*

Joost retired following his 39 y/o season with 20 of his 39 appearances in the field at SS.*

I have very little v14 data to go on, but these instances do seem markedly different from anything I casually observed in v13. I had wondered how the new fielder aging modifiers would work with real players and recalc and player development.

There certainly seems to be a disparity in what is being displayed as a players playability in the field and what the data in use for the simulations for the players are.

I watched the ATL AI mgr use a 26 year-old Bill Dahlen at SS throughout 2008 without any ratings. He started 97 games, had a ZR of +4.1 and a def eff of 1.011. He played no other position that year, majors or minors, other than SS. This appears to be a problem.

Hey! Maybe that's why I got fired! I had no idea who could play where!..Better to have the AI discern that than me, I guess.....

ADD: My Diamondback team was 16th out of 16 in fielding when I got fired.....hmmmmmmmm.......

[Charlie Hough]

My guess in the case of Bid McPhee is that there aren't any innings data in the database for him. OOTP requires minimum numbers of innings at a position for a player to receive a rating.

Since McPhee played in the late 1800's, the innings data may not be in the database.

But this wouldn't explain the Lou Whitaker case. So I really don't know what's causing this.

I have been annoyed with how OOTP handles player position ratings, and I've always felt that players should qualify for a position if they played for even a portion of an inning in that role. They may not qualify for good ratings at the position, but they should have it nonetheless.

[VanillaGorilla]

The thing I absolutely loved about OOTP 13 is how the player development engine and recalc worked for random debut leagues. A great example of this is Bobby Murcer's career from from my first HOF model run through. Summary here:

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...ml#post3409740

Murcer played around 2500 games as a SS in this league. Who knows if that would not have been the case had he not left baseball for Army time.

When Murcer's RL stats were pulled in by recalc in OOTP, he kept his ability and innings logged at SS and was playable at SS or the OF. It just happened that in this particular alternative history, he stayed a SS. At no time in his career do I recall witnessing Murcer as a blank at SS.

Compare that to Bid McPhee.

In spite of playing 149 games at 2B, and winning the GG there in 2008, in 2009, he has no rating at 2B. Yet his AI manager started him 76 times at 2B while only starting him 5 times at 3B, the only position that he has rated.

So, the AI is seeing him as a 2B man, is playing him as a 2B man, but he is not showing a rating as a second baseman for either his previous experience at 2B (118 starts prior to 2008) or any rating for his time played, and well played, at 2B in 2009.

Marcus has said that the fielding has been overhauled for v14. I have not played enough v14 seasons to see how this works over a span of decades, yet. My guess is that it will work just fine, as long as the AI is in control. There does appear to be an issue (not calling for a fix, this is just a preliminary and tentative observation/hunch) with how the positional fielding ratings are displayed on the player cards.

Is this a game breaker? No. It is a game hinderer, though. I whip through seasons quickly and I don't want to take the time to play a league as a stats only league. I can adjust and my project will continue and I will play as a manger (until I get fired and go on hiatus), but this is something that is definitely different from v 13 and has a detrimental impact on human game play in a random debut environment. It is such a detriment that David says he is shelving his random debut league...and that is sad, but I completely understand why he is doing so.

[David Watts]

Again, my main problem with this issue is the fact that the AI is playing someone at a position that he has no ratings for. Grant it, the player is playing the position he played in real life, but if all he has is this ( - ) displayed for 2B, he should not be starting at that position. If Lou Whitaker lost his 2B rating due to age or from being used as a DH primarily during the prior season, I could live with that, even though a complete loss does seem drastic to me. The problem for me is that the AI clearly isn't taking defense into consideration at all when it trots out a (-) player. This is a problem.

[VanillaGorilla]

Originally Posted by David Watts

The problem for me is that the AI clearly isn't taking defense into consideration at all when it trots out a (-) player. This is a problem.

On the contrary, the AI is in fact taking defense into consideration when it trots out a player without a displayed rating at the position. The problem is that the AI sees the player as able to play the position but a human looking at the player card does not. This makes things rather difficult for in game managers when selecting PH/DH and def subs.

When managing a team, I sometimes make a "defensive line-up" based on these ratings. If I have a guy who is not rated at a position, I don't start him there, obviously, when looking to maximize defense. That this information is not available (and until you started your thread I didn't know that the information was not available to me as a human manager) is the problem for me.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by VanillaGorilla

On the contrary, the AI is in fact taking defense into consideration when it trots out a player without a displayed rating at the position. The problem is that the AI sees the player as able to play the position but a human looking at the player card does not. This makes things rather difficult for in game managers when selecting PH/DH and def subs.

When managing a team, I sometimes make a "defensive line-up" based on these ratings. If I have a guy who is not rated at a position, I don't start him there, obviously, when looking to maximize defense. That this information is not available (and until you started your thread I didn't know that the information was not available to me as a human manager) is the problem for me.

So if what you're saying is true, what stops the AI from trotting out Adam Dunn at SS, David Ortiz in Center and Prince Fielder behind the plate? If a player has the rating of (-) at a position, he should perform accordingly. So in the case of the above mentioned Cubs, with a (-) rated Whitaker at 2B and a (-) rated Tomney at SS, I would expect a disaster in the field. Otherwise, what's the purpose of a 20 rated Mark Belanger?

Oh and believe me, I'm not real picky when it comes to lineup decisions. I play them out, but I play fast. I manage only and for the most part I allow the AI to set my lineups.

[VanillaGorilla]

Originally Posted by David Watts

So if what you're saying is true, what stops the AI from trotting out Adam Dunn at SS, David Ortiz in Center and Prince Fielder behind the plate? If a player has the rating of (-) at a position, he should perform accordingly. So in the case of the above mentioned Cubs, with a (-) rated Whitaker at 2B and a (-) rated Tomney at SS, I would expect a disaster in the field. Otherwise, what's the purpose of a 20 rated Mark Belanger?

Because they don't actually have ratings there, displayed or not.

A player that caught my eye while I was managing was Joe Kappel, another 1880s player who was serving as my back-up catcher. The AI would stick him in CF with no CF rating, and I would put in a def sub (I will click through innings when I am ahead and then decide on def subs).

Then I noticed that he was listed as the defensive replacement in CF in the line-ups I made where I asked the manager for the depth charts after I decided who I wanted to play. I was still replacing him with guys that had ratings. When I say 'ratings' I mean the positional ratings on the profile page.

We don't see David Ortiz playing second base without a rating, but we do see Lou Whitaker and Bid McPhee. In the case of McPhee, playing there primarilly, but getting no rating for it. In the case of your Whitaker, he got the start at 2B as an old guy instead of some better young bat who wasn't rated at 2B.

The AI is putting the players in there for a reason and not putting the Dunns and Ortiz's there for a reason.

I just pulled up my v 13 Whitaker. He played his last season at age 38, and had a 10 (on a 20 scale) rating at 2B. It makes sense for the AI to start a similarly aged Whitaker in your league, if he has that kind of def ability, still.

It makes sense for Bid McPhee to play 2B and win GGs. It doesn't make sense that after playing 2B for 250 games and winning a GG that he doesn't have a rating there.

It makes sense that he can play second base the following year, almost exclusively. It does not make sense that he starts the 2009 season with no 2B rating and ends the 2009 season with no 2B rating in spite of starting close to 80 games there and having played 149 games there in 2008.

If Adam Dunn was getting the start then I would say that defense is not being considered. But these are guys that should have ratings at these positions. They did have ratings at these positions in v 13. And in v13 if they didn't have ratings at these positions, after 300 games played at the position over 3 seasons they would have ratings there.

The ability to play the position is there for McPhee and Whitaker. The information regarding this ability is not being displayed for the human user.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by VanillaGorilla

Because they don't actually have ratings there, displayed or not.

A player that caught my eye while I was managing was Joe Kappel, another 1880s player who was serving as my back-up catcher. The AI would stick him in CF with no CF rating, and I would put in a def sub (I will click through innings when I am ahead and then decide on def subs).

Then I noticed that he was listed as the defensive replacement in CF in the line-ups I made where I asked the manager for the depth charts after I decided who I wanted to play. I was still replacing him with guys that had ratings. When I say 'ratings' I mean the positional ratings on the profile page.

We don't see David Ortiz playing second base without a rating, but we do see Lou Whitaker and Bid McPhee. In the case of McPhee, playing there primarilly, but getting no rating for it. In the case of your Whitaker, he got the start at 2B as an old guy instead of some better young bat who wasn't rated at 2B.

The AI is putting the players in there for a reason and not putting the Dunns and Ortiz's there for a reason.

I just pulled up my v 13 Whitaker. He played his last season at age 38, and had a 10 (on a 20 scale) rating at 2B. It makes sense for the AI to start a similarly aged Whitaker in your league, if he has that kind of def ability, still.

It makes sense for Bid McPhee to play 2B and win GGs. It doesn't make sense that after playing 2B for 250 games and winning a GG that he doesn't have a rating there.

It makes sense that he can play second base the following year, almost exclusively. It does not make sense that he starts the 2009 season with no 2B rating and ends the 2009 season with no 2B rating in spite of starting close to 80 games there and having played 149 games there in 2008.

If Adam Dunn was getting the start then I would say that defense is not being considered. But these are guys that should have ratings at these positions. They did have ratings at these positions in v 13. And in v13 if they didn't have ratings at these positions, after 300 games played at the position over 3 seasons they would have ratings there.

The ability to play the position is there for McPhee and Whitaker. The information regarding this ability is not being displayed for the human user.

I think what I might have to do is simply turn the ratings off altogether. It's not like I need them for the way I play the game. I don't build teams. For me it's all about watching a league grow history and the storylines that develop along the way.

[VanillaGorilla]

Originally Posted by David Watts

I think what I might have to do is simply turn the ratings off altogether. It's not like I need them for the way I play the game. I don't build teams. For me it's all about watching a league grow history and the storylines that develop along the way.

Same for me. The bigger question is this:

If what appears to be happening is happening (displayed defensive ratings not correlating to actual defensive ratings in use by the sim and the sim AI) for historical players, is it happening for fictional players, as well?

We have no idea Whoo "Blue" Litaker should have a 2B rating, or not. Is he being stuck at 2B simply because he projects to hit close to .300 and the AI is not taking defense into any consideration, or is he actually a GG candidate at 2B but showing no rating at 2B while having a @B rating.

I just opened up my McPhee in the editor (why didn't I think of this before?!!?).

He displays on his player card a 4 at 3B, and that is it.

In the editor he is maxed out in experience (200) at 2B with a 164 rating.

He has 54 exp at 3B with a 42 rating.

He has a 62 exp at SS with a 42 rating.

Check out your Whitaker and see what is there for him.

What is happening is what I thought was happening. I would have chalked it up to Very Low scouting settings for me, but since you said you are not using scouting, this looks like a bug.

[David Watts]

I deleted the league. I did check both McPhee and Whitaker though. Both had 200. Where you have the 164, both had ---, or nothing. Unlike you, my McPhee was not rated for 3B.

I was able to up McPhee's infield range using the editor and he did receive a 2B rating. I just feel icky doing that, so I changed it back. I tried the same with Whitaker and no matter how high, he never received a rating at 2B. Very strange.

I even turned on recalc when I simmed out the season, hoping that when the recalc was performed McPhee would acquire the 2B rating, but nothing changed.