Not breaking out the tinfoil, but...

[ConStar]

Had this happen to me in a game the other day and it just felt artificial, as if I was getting too much of a lead and the AI was intentionally trying to hold me back:

Had bases loaded with no out and a relatively slow-running catcher on third base. Batter drives a ball deep into the gap. I can't remember the exact play-by-play statement but the LF either "had his back to the wall" or "crashed into the wall" when he made the catch, etc. Anyway, he throws the runner from third out at home.

Checking the game log afterward at least confirmed this as a deep fly ball.

What made it more interesting at the time is that earlier in the game, this same catcher scored from second on a ground ball hit to the LF with less than two outs, meaning he didn't have any kind of artificial lead.

The LF in question is a better-than-average defensive player but he's not a superstar with the glove. And I can count the number of LFs in baseball who can throw a runner out at the plate on a tag from third when their back is against the wall -- that number is zero.

Anyway, this is either a failure in the way the PBP was communicated back to me, or a guy with a 14 OF arm rating is really Bo Jackson.

What made me make this post is that, after almost four seasons with the game, I finally found the report that (I guess) tells you how you did at the end of the year relative to preseason expectations. My figures for the three complete seasons were 1, -1 and 1.

I just want to make sure there's not some internal metric here that's saying, "Hey, that guy's doing too well, let's bring in a McGuffin here to put things back in order."

[IsaacR]

Sample size. Anybody can make a great play.

[RchW]

And the pbp can be misleading.

[Dyzalot]

Originally Posted by ConStar

The LF in question is a better-than-average defensive player but he's not a superstar with the glove. And I can count the number of LFs in baseball who can throw a runner out at the plate on a tag from third when their back is against the wall -- that number is zero.

Cespedes? Alex Gordon maybe?

[ConStar]

Originally Posted by IsaacR

Sample size. Anybody can make a great play.

True, but that's not a great play. That's an unrealistic play.

We obviously can't check this for ourselves but I'd wager you could line the entirety of MLB outfielders up with their backs to the LF gap wall and there's not a single runner (well, maybe Bartolo Colon) that is in danger on that play.

Heck, even the runners from second and first advanced on that play. But a professional player coming from third can't make it? We're talking about a throw of 370-ish feet to cut a guy down. There was no relay.

[ConStar]

Originally Posted by RchW

And the pbp can be misleading.

This is the explanation I'm leaning to.

[IsaacR]

Originally Posted by ConStar

True, but that's not a great play. That's an unrealistic play.

We obviously can't check this for ourselves but I'd wager you could line the entirety of MLB outfielders up with their backs to the LF gap wall and there's not a single runner (well, maybe Bartolo Colon) that is in danger on that play.

Heck, even the runners from second and first advanced on that play. But a professional player coming from third can't make it? We're talking about a throw of 370-ish feet to cut a guy down. There was no relay.

He probably blew up Twitter with that play.


Also the PBP could've misled you. A deep fly ball doesn't always go to the wall.

[RchW]

Originally Posted by ConStar

What made me make this post is that, after almost four seasons with the game, I finally found the report that (I guess) tells you how you did at the end of the year relative to preseason expectations. My figures for the three complete seasons were 1, -1 and 1.

I just want to make sure there's not some internal metric here that's saying, "Hey, that guy's doing too well, let's bring in a McGuffin here to put things back in order."

Can you post a screenshot of that? Not aware of any report comparing preseason predictions with real results. Is it possible you mean the Pythagorean record differential. That is found in expanded standings.

[battists]

It's just a limitation in the pbp engine.

The pbp engine knows the general area that a ball is played, like in the retrosheet stat sheets. When people write the pbp text, they sometimes take a little creative liberty, because 9 times out of 10 (or more than that) you're going to get results that are within the realm of possibility.

You just happened to run into a very particular scenario that exposes the weaknesses in that engine. It's not something that is likely to get "fixed" because in order to do so you would need the engine to get exponentially more detailed, and that would mean you would need exponentially more pbp text and so on.

I mean, it's not out of the realm of possibility, but I just don't see him going there.

Just my two cents though.

[Dyzalot]

Also possible that the runner tripped and fell on the way home. Seen that happen in real MLB so it is possible. Just wish that when strange things like that occurred the PBP would reflect so we'd have an explanation as to why something way out of the ordinary resulted.

[ConStar]

Originally Posted by RchW

Can you post a screenshot of that? Not aware of any report comparing preseason predictions with real results. Is it possible you mean the Pythagorean record differential. That is found in expanded standings.

It's in the History section of the team's Info tab. There's the record you got, then an "Exp Rec" and a +/-. Maybe I'm assuming wrong on that but that looks like the game is telling me what I got versus what it thinks I should have gotten.

[battists]

Originally Posted by Dyzalot

Also possible that the runner tripped and fell on the way home. Seen that happen in real MLB so it is possible. Just wish that when strange things like that occurred the PBP would reflect so we'd have an explanation as to why something way out of the ordinary resulted.

Dyzalot, the problem is that the pbp engine simply isn't advanced enough to realize that something "out of the ordinary" occurred. It just knows that a ball was hit to a certain general location on the field, resulting in an out, and then it runs an algorithm based on the outfielder's arm rating and the baserunner's speed and baserunning ratings to decide whether the runner made it home safely.

Let's say OOTP has decided the ball went to location 7D on this sheet. OOTP knows the ball was in 7D, and the engine says "give me a line of pbp for a fly ball out in 7D," and the pbp engine gives it back "against the wall" text or whatever. But then it calculates the runner going home, and the engine has no way of knowing the pbp just said it's against the wall. That's all just TEXT, not any data the game engine can interpret. So it does the math and says "give me a line of pbp for the runner getting home safely."

Part of the problem is that the pbp HAS to take SOME poetic license, otherwise the pbp would be unbearably boring in most cases. The alternative to reduce the frequency of things like this would be to remove all of these special cases from the pbp.

Not sure if this is making any sense. Just trying to give you an understanding of why stuff like this happens occasionally.

['94 EXPOS]

Originally Posted by ConStar

True, but that's not a great play. That's an unrealistic play.

We obviously can't check this for ourselves but I'd wager you could line the entirety of MLB outfielders up with their backs to the LF gap wall and there's not a single runner (well, maybe Bartolo Colon) that is in danger on that play.

Heck, even the runners from second and first advanced on that play. But a professional player coming from third can't make it? We're talking about a throw of 370-ish feet to cut a guy down. There was no relay.

Just to clarify.....the runners at 1st and 2nd moved up because of the throw to the plate.

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by ConStar

It's in the History section of the team's Info tab. There's the record you got, then an "Exp Rec" and a +/-. Maybe I'm assuming wrong on that but that looks like the game is telling me what I got versus what it thinks I should have gotten.

That tells you how your actual record compares to your Pythagorean record (i.e. expected record), not your preseason prediction. The Pythagorean record is computed based on your number of runs scored vs. runs allowed.

[RchW]

Originally Posted by ConStar

It's in the History section of the team's Info tab. There's the record you got, then an "Exp Rec" and a +/-. Maybe I'm assuming wrong on that but that looks like the game is telling me what I got versus what it thinks I should have gotten.

Yeah that's your Pythagorean record. It's based on runs scored and allowed not a prediction. Your numbers suggest that your team was full value for it's record, neither lucky or unlucky.

See this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_expectation.

[Dyzalot]

Originally Posted by battists

Dyzalot, the problem is that the pbp engine simply isn't advanced enough to realize that something "out of the ordinary" occurred. It just knows that a ball was hit to a certain general location on the field, resulting in an out, and then it runs an algorithm based on the outfielder's arm rating and the baserunner's speed and baserunning ratings to decide whether the runner made it home safely.

Let's say OOTP has decided the ball went to location 7D on this sheet. OOTP knows the ball was in 7D, and the engine says "give me a line of pbp for a fly ball out in 7D," and the pbp engine gives it back "against the wall" text or whatever. But then it calculates the runner going home, and the engine has no way of knowing the pbp just said it's against the wall. That's all just TEXT, not any data the game engine can interpret. So it does the math and says "give me a line of pbp for the runner getting home safely."

Part of the problem is that the pbp HAS to take SOME poetic license, otherwise the pbp would be unbearably boring in most cases. The alternative to reduce the frequency of things like this would be to remove all of these special cases from the pbp.

Not sure if this is making any sense. Just trying to give you an understanding of why stuff like this happens occasionally.

PBP engine should know what the odds are though right? So like any baserunning play that occurs at a 1 in 100000 rate should come with a fascinating description. So suppose based on the runner at third's speed, the relative depth of the ball and the arm of the outfielder the runner should be safe going home from third 99.999% of the time. Well if he ends up "out" then generate a pbp that explains it like maybe a squirrel runs out in front of the runner and startles him or if he should be out 99.999% of the time and he is safe maybe a bird flies in front of the thrown ball to deflect the ball. It shouldn't be difficult to have a database of weird plays that pop up whenever something extremely rare happens like a pitcher pitching a ball, hitting a sea gull and making it explode. (happened in real life)

[battists]

Originally Posted by Dyzalot

PBP engine should know what the odds are though right? So like any baserunning play that occurs at a 1 in 100000 rate should come with a fascinating description. So suppose based on the runner at third's speed, the relative depth of the ball and the arm of the outfielder the runner should be safe going home from third 99.999% of the time. Well if he ends up "out" then generate a pbp that explains it like maybe a squirrel runs out in front of the runner and startles him or if he should be out 99.999% of the time and he is safe maybe a bird flies in front of the thrown ball to deflect the ball. It shouldn't be difficult to have a database of weird plays that pop up whenever something extremely rare happens like a pitcher pitching a ball, hitting a sea gull and making it explode. (happened in real life)

Right, but again, to get to that level of detail, Markus would have to make the entire engine exponentially more detailed than it is today.

Again, not saying it's impossible. I'm just trying to explain why things like this can happen in OOTP 16.

[Dyzalot]

Guess I'm not understanding then. If anyone remembers the tabletop baseball game Pursue the Pennant they had a feature like that, sort of. You used three, ten sided dice for results and if it came up all zeros (1 in 1000) then they had a totally separate chart you would roll on for all kinds of strange plays. Like if the field was wet then maybe the outfielder slips and falls. Maybe a HBP leading to a "donnybrook". It gave a unique element to the game. With OOTP some things can happen that are extremely rare in terms of results but you don't get the story behind what caused such a rare result such as a player tripping over second base on the way to third so he has to hold or an outfielder trying to throw the ball but it slips out of his hand and travels twenty feet or other such things that would give context to plays that look like they might be sim engine issues without such context.

[battists]

Originally Posted by Dyzalot

Guess I'm not understanding then. If anyone remembers the tabletop baseball game Pursue the Pennant they had a feature like that, sort of. You used three, ten sided dice for results and if it came up all zeros (1 in 1000) then they had a totally separate chart you would roll on for all kinds of strange plays. Like if the field was wet then maybe the outfielder slips and falls. Maybe a HBP leading to a "donnybrook". It gave a unique element to the game. With OOTP some things can happen that are extremely rare in terms of results but you don't get the story behind what caused such a rare result such as a player tripping over second base on the way to third so he has to hold or an outfielder trying to throw the ball but it slips out of his hand and travels twenty feet or other such things that would give context to plays that look like they might be sim engine issues without such context.

Well, at the end of the day, I'm not the programmer, so I'm not sure I can help clarify much further.

Hopefully Markus will find a way to keep improving things!

[The Wolf]

Has anyone else noted what tiny (and often imaginary) things people are complaining about these days? The only exceptions I can see are the trade AI, the defensive AI, and the in-game AI, and we veterans were complaining about those things back in the days of version 6.5 and will probably be complaining about them in the days of version 26.

The quality of the game is just amazing. Simply amazing.