K's in fictional league

Wrigley · 03-17-2003, 12:44 AM

Hi all,

I'm in need of a little advice here. It's very possible, since I'm so new to OOTP, that I just messed something up...but here's the deal:
I'm gearing up for my first solo fictional league by running a few practice leagues to iron out the kinks. Overall, stats seem pretty solid. One guy did have 64 HR's in his rookie year, but he averaged out to the 40's and low 50's overall - but he did hit 68 in one year!
One thing I have noticed is quite a few 300+ strikeout seasons. I'm just wondering what you guys are getting for pitcher's K's in a season. It seems like every year there's at least 3-4 pitchers that break the 300 mark. In fact, the past couple seasons, there's been two in each league for me. There's also another 6-8 guys that hit the high 200's (250-290).
Maybe my preconcieved notion of K's in a season is wrong. These numbers may be perfectly in line. I just thought that only the best hit the 300 K plateau - and I'm getting 3 or 4 a year. Just wondering what your thoughts are.
Just for reference (and fun) here's one of the most dominant strikeout pitchers in my league. His name is Darryl "Flash" Juneau. His performance over the years has been pretty awesome. He won the Cy Young in '03 and again in '09. He almost had 400 K's in a single season in '04 (but no Cy Young). Normally I would just count him as an abberation. Maybe he's my leagues version of Randy Johnson. My only problem is that there's a few guys putting up numbers like this. Last year he had 361 K's...pretty darn good...but he didn't even lead the majors last season. Some kid in another league had 389. The league is a modern era league - any help or advice would be appreciated.

Career Pitching Stats:

Year G GS W L ERA IP HA R ER BB K
2003 30 30 22 3 2.38 238.0 164 65 63 70 360
2004 35 35 17 7 3.13 275.2 235 103 96 79 399
2005 34 34 13 11 4.05 244.2 229 124 110 78 371
2006 35 35 20 8 3.32 265.2 219 102 98 89 345
2007 35 35 17 8 3.58 261.1 224 111 104 80 355
2008 35 35 19 13 3.31 266.1 239 107 98 74 371
2009 36 36 23 7 2.46 285.1 206 82 78 80 361

Stealth · 03-17-2003, 12:48 AM

In the past ten years Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and Curt Schilling are the only ones who have reached 300 k's. I know what you're talking about. I had a guy in a fictional league with something like 440 K's.

Dargone · 03-17-2003, 12:50 AM

I play using the baseball boom era so I have yet to have a pitcher break 300, although I think my King Hurler winner had like 292 last season. It seems to me that your strikeouts may need some adjusting, perhaps run a few test seasons until you get the numbers you are looking for. Remember, when adjusting the league totals you would want to RAISE the strikeout number to get lower totals in your league. There is a good thread around here that explains adjusting league totals very well.

ghulten · 03-17-2003, 12:51 AM

That's funny. After running my league for 85+ years, the single-season record is 280 Ks. I was worried I wasn't getting enough.

jaymac89 · 03-17-2003, 01:08 AM

I had a lot of K's too. Tomorrow I am tinkering around trying to modify the numbers to get the right result. I had a guy with 402 K's and 6 others with 300+ K's in one season.

Main concern in tweaking the numbers is the ball in play always scores more runs, if more runs are scored then ERAs climb. I like all the numbers so far except the k's. I think lowering the K's should not mess up the era of pitchers too much.

HolyCow98 · 03-17-2003, 01:28 AM

I've had a guy with as many as 472 K's...

On the one hand he k/9inn wasn't that messed up....I think it was like 10.8 which I believe has been accomplished before by a few pitchers with over 200 IP.

My small annoyance is that no matter what I put the settings at the top ten in SO is a too high. I'll get 3 guys with 310 or so K's and the 10th guy has like 270's or so....no of the individual numbers are unrealistic but the league wide it seems high..

with a base 100000 AB's I've had to set the SO's to 25000 at times to curbe it down.

Wrigley · 03-17-2003, 02:47 AM

So...would a different era other than "Modern" be a better choice to get a few better stats? The only thing I've noticed is season totals for K's is waaay high, and RBI totals are a little low. League leaders for RBI's are usually between 120-130, so not too low. I'm pretty happy with all the other stats though. I definitely don't want to mess up another stat by messing w/ the league ratings too much. Any ideas?

BTW, my boy Juneau is starting to decline in his old age. He's 36 and just posted a total of 327 in the 2010 season. His lowest total ever! It's okay though, the league's consistency won't fall away...two other pitchers finished higher than him with 372 and 359 K's.

Wrigley

Steve Kuffrey · 03-17-2003, 06:53 AM

After looking at some of the numbers that I have gotten in various leagues his seemed a bit high, try going into the "advanced setup" to "league totals" and "increasing" the number of strikeouts a bit. That should help.

ctorg · 03-17-2003, 10:42 AM

Yes, if you are getting too many K's, the number of K's in your league totals (in the advanced league setup) is too low. Whether you're playing in modern era or deadball shouldn't affect anything except strategy. It's the league totals you need to fix.

rogmax11 · 03-17-2003, 12:45 PM

Maybe this would help:

Perhaps one or more of the vets out there could post settings for various eras that could serve as baselines for achieving results more in line with reality. For instance, if one wished to approximate 1954-style statistics, what numbers of 2Bs, Ks, etc have proved viable? Same thing for deadball or modern (say 1980 ) settings. and so forth.

I know that I had great troubles attempting to create fictional leagues based on golden age stats, and often the runaway K and HR totals were the first indication that things werent right. I gave up in frustration often, and resorted to simply downloading a historical season and then editing teams, names, etc.---a not inconsiderable time investment. Perhaps a small spreadsheet as suggested above would simplify life for those of us who seem to be excessively challenged in this way.

Peace.

ctorg · 03-17-2003, 01:08 PM

As far as historical stats go, the new "recalculate for historical accuracy" button works really well, as long as you hit it just before the season starts (I think it uses the starting linups of teams and such to calculate, so they have to be set before hitting the button). There was a database for historical accuracy that came out when OOTP3 was around that would still work now, if you wanted to enter the numbers yourself.

One thing to note is that when starting a historical league, you shount not enter the league totals of the year you are trying to simulate. I've seen a couple of people mention doing this. That's not what the league totals section is for. If you do this, your stats will not be accurate for the era, especially if you are playing in the deadball era.

The database I mentioned above was pretty good for historical import leagues, but wouldn't work at all for fictional "alternate history" leagues, where fictional players are generated but you still want realistic era-specific results. That's where the new button comes in handy.

Wrigley · 03-18-2003, 12:48 AM

Thanks for all the helpful responses so far. Right now my main question is what is the best way to get a completely fictional solo league's stats to be closer to reality as far as stats (especially strikeouts) go. I'm not too concerned (yet

) about getting a 1966 historical league to come out with the right stats. I just want a fictional league to be more in-line with reality. The strikeout stats don't have to be pefect, just in the right ballpark.
Any thoughts would be helpful.

Wrigley

Dargone · 03-18-2003, 12:53 AM

How many teams in your league Wrigley?

baseballbob · 03-18-2003, 01:13 AM

ctorg,

could you please go into more detail on what the 'recalculate for historical accuracy' button actually does?

I guess what I'm mostly wondering is...does it work by taking the totals of all of the starters you have listed for your season (the totals the game uses as its base for calculating the player abilities) and then adjusting the 'league totals' numbers to be such that a full season play-through of your season will produce stats similar in magnitudes to the initial player stat profiles?

And, what happens with the 'recalculate' button in the case of a historical league?
Is it the case that when players are imported from Lahman that for ratings based on career performance that all those ratings are basically lumped into an average and those average per-seasonal numbers are then the basis for the player performance? And therefore what the recalculate button would adjust the 'league totals' in reference to?

HolyCow98 · 03-18-2003, 02:23 AM

In percentages..how much do you feel you need to lower your K's in your league?

ctorg · 03-18-2003, 08:22 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by baseballbob
ctorg,

could you please go into more detail on what the 'recalculate for historical accuracy' button actually does?

I guess what I'm mostly wondering is...does it work by taking the totals of all of the starters you have listed for your season (the totals the game uses as its base for calculating the player abilities) and then adjusting the 'league totals' numbers to be such that a full season play-through of your season will produce stats similar in magnitudes to the initial player stat profiles?

And, what happens with the 'recalculate' button in the case of a historical league?
Is it the case that when players are imported from Lahman that for ratings based on career performance that all those ratings are basically lumped into an average and those average per-seasonal numbers are then the basis for the player performance? And therefore what the recalculate button would adjust the 'league totals' in reference to?

The "recalculate for historical accuracy" button looks at the ratings of the players in the league and adjusts the league total settings so that the league's statistics will be similar to whatever year you're in, no matter if you're using fictional or actual or historical players. In other words, if you have a league that's in 1901, the league totals will be adjusted so that your best power hitters will hit around 10 homers, but 15 triples would not be uncommon. I'm not sure what formula Markus used to do this, but it works well from what I can tell.

As far as importing from Lahman's database, it bases the ratings of the player on the year you import, but it bases the player's talent levels on his career. So if you import 1987, you will get a Wade Boggs who hit .363 with 24 home runs, quite a lot of homers for Mr. Boggs. His talent level for homers, though, will probably be "fair", which will cause his home run rating to decline with time.

ghulten · 03-18-2003, 10:46 AM

I started my fictional league in 1980, with 24 teams in 4 divisions. I did the initial draft, adjusted markets, and then hit recalculate for historical accuracy. After running 120 years or so, all the stats seem to be very 1980-like with little variation. My K record is 270 or so, my top HR season was 50. I did have a guy bat .427, but everything seems very balanced and consistent for the first 120 years.

On the other hand, you should see how big my league folder is getting!

rogmax11 · 03-18-2003, 11:09 AM

What happens if you want to progress from deadball to some other era? Do you manually amend the league totals to switch eras and then continue on with recalc?

ctorg · 03-18-2003, 11:18 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by rogmax11
What happens if you want to progress from deadball to some other era? Do you manually amend the league totals to switch eras and then continue on with recalc?

You can hit the button at the beginning of each season and it will set the totals for that season.

Wrigley · 03-18-2003, 09:20 PM

I have a League comprised of 20 total teams. 2 leagues, each with 2 divisions of 5 teams each.
I'm not sure what percentage strikeouts need to be lowered to ge them to a more realistic level. I'm not even sure that overall league totals are too high. I'll have to check that when I get home tonight.
I'm just getting individuals with really high numbers each season. 300 K's should be a benchmark for all-star type strikeout pitchers. In my league 3-4 guys hit 320+ each year, and probably 8 or so finish in the mid-to-high 200's. Usually, a great indication of a great strikeout pitcher is if his K's exceed innings pitched. In my league it's very, very common for starting pitchers with 200+ innings to consistently exceed that in strikeouts.

I'll check on the league totals when I get home.

Thanks

Wrigley

03-17-2003, 12:44 AM	#1
Wrigley Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 47	K's in fictional league Hi all, I'm in need of a little advice here. It's very possible, since I'm so new to OOTP, that I just messed something up...but here's the deal: I'm gearing up for my first solo fictional league by running a few practice leagues to iron out the kinks. Overall, stats seem pretty solid. One guy did have 64 HR's in his rookie year, but he averaged out to the 40's and low 50's overall - but he did hit 68 in one year! One thing I have noticed is quite a few 300+ strikeout seasons. I'm just wondering what you guys are getting for pitcher's K's in a season. It seems like every year there's at least 3-4 pitchers that break the 300 mark. In fact, the past couple seasons, there's been two in each league for me. There's also another 6-8 guys that hit the high 200's (250-290). Maybe my preconcieved notion of K's in a season is wrong. These numbers may be perfectly in line. I just thought that only the best hit the 300 K plateau - and I'm getting 3 or 4 a year. Just wondering what your thoughts are. Just for reference (and fun) here's one of the most dominant strikeout pitchers in my league. His name is Darryl "Flash" Juneau. His performance over the years has been pretty awesome. He won the Cy Young in '03 and again in '09. He almost had 400 K's in a single season in '04 (but no Cy Young). Normally I would just count him as an abberation. Maybe he's my leagues version of Randy Johnson. My only problem is that there's a few guys putting up numbers like this. Last year he had 361 K's...pretty darn good...but he didn't even lead the majors last season. Some kid in another league had 389. The league is a modern era league - any help or advice would be appreciated. Career Pitching Stats: Year G GS W L ERA IP HA R ER BB K 2003 30 30 22 3 2.38 238.0 164 65 63 70 360 2004 35 35 17 7 3.13 275.2 235 103 96 79 399 2005 34 34 13 11 4.05 244.2 229 124 110 78 371 2006 35 35 20 8 3.32 265.2 219 102 98 89 345 2007 35 35 17 8 3.58 261.1 224 111 104 80 355 2008 35 35 19 13 3.31 266.1 239 107 98 74 371 2009 36 36 23 7 2.46 285.1 206 82 78 80 361

03-17-2003, 12:50 AM	#3
Dargone Hall Of Famer Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Interwebs Posts: 2,862	I play using the baseball boom era so I have yet to have a pitcher break 300, although I think my King Hurler winner had like 292 last season. It seems to me that your strikeouts may need some adjusting, perhaps run a few test seasons until you get the numbers you are looking for. Remember, when adjusting the league totals you would want to RAISE the strikeout number to get lower totals in your league. There is a good thread around here that explains adjusting league totals very well. __________________ I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken -- and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived.-Margaret Mitchell

03-17-2003, 01:08 AM	#5
jaymac89 Minors (Single A) Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Walnut Creek, CA Posts: 69	I had a lot of K's too. Tomorrow I am tinkering around trying to modify the numbers to get the right result. I had a guy with 402 K's and 6 others with 300+ K's in one season. Main concern in tweaking the numbers is the ball in play always scores more runs, if more runs are scored then ERAs climb. I like all the numbers so far except the k's. I think lowering the K's should not mess up the era of pitchers too much. __________________ "I have nothing to declare except my genius." --Oscar Wilde

03-17-2003, 01:28 AM	#6
HolyCow98 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Douglasville, GA Posts: 2,735	I've had a guy with as many as 472 K's... On the one hand he k/9inn wasn't that messed up....I think it was like 10.8 which I believe has been accomplished before by a few pitchers with over 200 IP. My small annoyance is that no matter what I put the settings at the top ten in SO is a too high. I'll get 3 guys with 310 or so K's and the 10th guy has like 270's or so....no of the individual numbers are unrealistic but the league wide it seems high.. with a base 100000 AB's I've had to set the SO's to 25000 at times to curbe it down. __________________ NPBL Enjoying its 60th season Georgia GM

03-17-2003, 06:53 AM	#8
Steve Kuffrey Administrator Join Date: Jul 1999 Location: S.E. TN - Georgia born and raised Posts: 17,036	After looking at some of the numbers that I have gotten in various leagues his seemed a bit high, try going into the "advanced setup" to "league totals" and "increasing" the number of strikeouts a bit. That should help. __________________ Steve Kuffrey DABS Atlanta Braves - 2008 Eastern Division Champ *DBLC Atlanta Braves - 2011, 2014 East Division Champ, 2012, 2013 NL Wildcard Baseball Maelstrom-Montreal Expos-2013 Tourney winner, 2014 WC Team Sparky's League - Tampa Bay D'Rays Epicenter Baseball League - Astros 2014 The CBL Rewind - Phillies '95

03-17-2003, 12:48 AM	#2
Stealth Registered User Join Date: Apr 2002 Posts: 144	In the past ten years Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and Curt Schilling are the only ones who have reached 300 k's. I know what you're talking about. I had a guy in a fictional league with something like 440 K's.

03-17-2003, 12:51 AM	#4
ghulten Minors (Double A) Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 135	That's funny. After running my league for 85+ years, the single-season record is 280 Ks. I was worried I wasn't getting enough.

03-17-2003, 02:47 AM	#7
Wrigley Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 47	So...would a different era other than "Modern" be a better choice to get a few better stats? The only thing I've noticed is season totals for K's is waaay high, and RBI totals are a little low. League leaders for RBI's are usually between 120-130, so not too low. I'm pretty happy with all the other stats though. I definitely don't want to mess up another stat by messing w/ the league ratings too much. Any ideas? BTW, my boy Juneau is starting to decline in his old age. He's 36 and just posted a total of 327 in the 2010 season. His lowest total ever! It's okay though, the league's consistency won't fall away...two other pitchers finished higher than him with 372 and 359 K's. Wrigley

03-17-2003, 10:42 AM	#9
ctorg Global Moderator Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Queens, NY Posts: 9,848	Yes, if you are getting too many K's, the number of K's in your league totals (in the advanced league setup) is too low. Whether you're playing in modern era or deadball shouldn't affect anything except strategy. It's the league totals you need to fix. __________________ My music "When the trees blow back and forth, that's what makes the wind." - Steven Wright Fjord emena pancreas thorax fornicate marmalade morpheme proteolysis smaxa cabana offal srue vitriol grope hallelujah lentils

03-17-2003, 12:45 PM	#10
rogmax11 All Star Starter Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 1,320	Maybe this would help: Perhaps one or more of the vets out there could post settings for various eras that could serve as baselines for achieving results more in line with reality. For instance, if one wished to approximate 1954-style statistics, what numbers of 2Bs, Ks, etc have proved viable? Same thing for deadball or modern (say 1980 ) settings. and so forth. I know that I had great troubles attempting to create fictional leagues based on golden age stats, and often the runaway K and HR totals were the first indication that things werent right. I gave up in frustration often, and resorted to simply downloading a historical season and then editing teams, names, etc.---a not inconsiderable time investment. Perhaps a small spreadsheet as suggested above would simplify life for those of us who seem to be excessively challenged in this way. Peace.

03-17-2003, 01:08 PM	#11
ctorg Global Moderator Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Queens, NY Posts: 9,848	As far as historical stats go, the new "recalculate for historical accuracy" button works really well, as long as you hit it just before the season starts (I think it uses the starting linups of teams and such to calculate, so they have to be set before hitting the button). There was a database for historical accuracy that came out when OOTP3 was around that would still work now, if you wanted to enter the numbers yourself. One thing to note is that when starting a historical league, you shount not enter the league totals of the year you are trying to simulate. I've seen a couple of people mention doing this. That's not what the league totals section is for. If you do this, your stats will not be accurate for the era, especially if you are playing in the deadball era. The database I mentioned above was pretty good for historical import leagues, but wouldn't work at all for fictional "alternate history" leagues, where fictional players are generated but you still want realistic era-specific results. That's where the new button comes in handy. __________________ My music "When the trees blow back and forth, that's what makes the wind." - Steven Wright Fjord emena pancreas thorax fornicate marmalade morpheme proteolysis smaxa cabana offal srue vitriol grope hallelujah lentils

03-18-2003, 12:48 AM	#12
Wrigley Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 47	Thanks for all the helpful responses so far. Right now my main question is what is the best way to get a completely fictional solo league's stats to be closer to reality as far as stats (especially strikeouts) go. I'm not too concerned (yet ) about getting a 1966 historical league to come out with the right stats. I just want a fictional league to be more in-line with reality. The strikeout stats don't have to be pefect, just in the right ballpark. Any thoughts would be helpful. Wrigley

03-18-2003, 12:53 AM	#13
Dargone Hall Of Famer Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Interwebs Posts: 2,862	How many teams in your league Wrigley? __________________ I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken -- and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived.-Margaret Mitchell

03-18-2003, 01:13 AM	#14
baseballbob Minors (Double A) Join Date: Feb 2003 Posts: 101	ctorg, could you please go into more detail on what the 'recalculate for historical accuracy' button actually does? I guess what I'm mostly wondering is...does it work by taking the totals of all of the starters you have listed for your season (the totals the game uses as its base for calculating the player abilities) and then adjusting the 'league totals' numbers to be such that a full season play-through of your season will produce stats similar in magnitudes to the initial player stat profiles? And, what happens with the 'recalculate' button in the case of a historical league? Is it the case that when players are imported from Lahman that for ratings based on career performance that all those ratings are basically lumped into an average and those average per-seasonal numbers are then the basis for the player performance? And therefore what the recalculate button would adjust the 'league totals' in reference to?

03-18-2003, 02:23 AM	#15
HolyCow98 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Douglasville, GA Posts: 2,735	In percentages..how much do you feel you need to lower your K's in your league? __________________ NPBL Enjoying its 60th season Georgia GM

03-18-2003, 10:46 AM	#17
ghulten Minors (Double A) Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 135	I started my fictional league in 1980, with 24 teams in 4 divisions. I did the initial draft, adjusted markets, and then hit recalculate for historical accuracy. After running 120 years or so, all the stats seem to be very 1980-like with little variation. My K record is 270 or so, my top HR season was 50. I did have a guy bat .427, but everything seems very balanced and consistent for the first 120 years. On the other hand, you should see how big my league folder is getting!

03-18-2003, 11:09 AM	#18
rogmax11 All Star Starter Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 1,320	What happens if you want to progress from deadball to some other era? Do you manually amend the league totals to switch eras and then continue on with recalc?

03-18-2003, 09:20 PM	#20
Wrigley Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 47	I have a League comprised of 20 total teams. 2 leagues, each with 2 divisions of 5 teams each. I'm not sure what percentage strikeouts need to be lowered to ge them to a more realistic level. I'm not even sure that overall league totals are too high. I'll have to check that when I get home tonight. I'm just getting individuals with really high numbers each season. 300 K's should be a benchmark for all-star type strikeout pitchers. In my league 3-4 guys hit 320+ each year, and probably 8 or so finish in the mid-to-high 200's. Usually, a great indication of a great strikeout pitcher is if his K's exceed innings pitched. In my league it's very, very common for starting pitchers with 200+ innings to consistently exceed that in strikeouts. I'll check on the league totals when I get home. Thanks Wrigley