Interpreting Player Ratings

[Thalion]

Okay, as I mentioned in a prior thread, I'm pretty clueless in how OOTP actually "works".

I surf the AH all the time looking for upgrades to my players and find myself comparing a rating, say CONTACT from a player offered for sale to a player I have on my roster.

I understand the basics. Green is better than yellow. Blue Better that green. Red = Bad. Also Higher numbers are better than lower numbers. That much I get.

My question is how much of a difference an incremental difference between two ratings really are for people to decide that an upgrade is in fact an upgrade. Obviously, I'm looking at this from a cost-benefit situation.

For example, say one card has a 65 Contact and another has a 70 Contact. (Assume everything is on a 100 point scale because that's what PT discussions seem to revolve around).

Would there be a noticeable change in a player's performance based on the changes of 5 in contact?

What are people's thoughts and/or experiences?

[atabakin]

I don't know how to compare it in absolute terms, but my sense is that there are diminishing returns as you get higher. The jump from 65 to 70 is greater than the jump from 85 to 90.

[chazzycat]

IMO there's too much random variation in baseball to expect to see a clear improvement in results from a small change in ratings. Even a big change in ratings might not pay off right away. A player with 20 points lower contact rating COULD have a better batting average for a week/month/even a full season. Sure it's less likely, but you never really know for sure. All you can do is improve the ratings the best you can and hope to see results over the long haul. Personally I tend to save up and go for more obvious upgrades than small incremental ones but that's up to you.

[Orcin]

You can look through the regular OOTP forums for lots of discussions about this. It will give something to do while at work.

Basically, contact drives some other things too, like power. The more contact you have, the more times you drive the ball into the gap or out of the park. So it’s a really important rating. I am not sure +5 is worth a lot at all. I would say +15 is pretty meaningful. As you already know, performance is dependent on a lot of things (competition level and luck) that are somewhat random, but better ratings probably mean better results in the long run.

[Thalion]

Thanks for the suggestion, Orcin.

Haven't found exactly what I'm looking for but learning some interesting stuff.

[Weaseltail]

From what I have read (and to some extent experienced):

Contact is the most important batter stat because, as Orcin said, it impacts several facets of the game

Gap is linear. Many people argue it's not very important, but in my experience (at least for my teams which are usually geared around larger parks) it's beneficial and seems to have a meaningful impact on my offense

Power is not linear. It has a much bigger impact at higher levels. So you won't necessarily see a big difference between say 20 power and 40 power, but you will see quite a difference between 60 power and 80 power.

Eye is pretty straight-forward.

Avoid K isn't very valuable. It plays into contact, but you already have a contact rating so it doesn't add anything beyond what you already see. It basically determines whether an out is made in the field or is a K. Not really important unless you do a lot of hit-and-run, etc.

I don't think small differences matter much for most stats. There's way too much randomness in the game for a few extra points to mean much.

One example, during the 2019 season my 1B (Delgado) won the league MVP award. He was an absolute monster. Come 2020, he winds up the season with 1 WAR. Same player, same great stats.

I'm sure over 100 seasons his stats will be an accurate reflection of his performance, but over a handful of seasons there's a huge variance.

I've tried to avoid expensive upgrades that don't add big stat increases. Instead, I've incorporated a lot of platoons with less expensive players who have huge splits. You can get the same performance as a diamond-level player at a fraction of the cost.

If you are going to pay up for small stat increases, I'd focus on contact and power. I think you'll get a lot more bang for your buck with those two stats than the others.

Hopefully people who know more about the game will chime in if I'm mistaken about some of the info above.

[Whoofe]

I personally disagree about avoid K.

I find it fairly important. I may not need a score of 70 or better on a player, but I surely don't want a score of 30 either

[Orcin]

Good point about power. I think 60-65 is the threshold for real sluggers.

I like to avoid k’s simply to put pressure on that guy who sacrificed defense for offense.

[stl jason]

Originally Posted by Orcin

Good point about power. I think 60-65 is the threshold for real sluggers.

I like to avoid k’s simply to put pressure on that guy who sacrificed defense for offense.

definitely.... at least putting it in play has the potential to develop into something... a strikeout is just another out (unless you get one of those strikeout/passed ball/make it to first type plays)

[Weaseltail]

The whole Avoid K stat is really interesting and there's some great info/debate on the forums re: how it works (see links below).

To the best of my understanding, AvK has no impact on batting average or the number of hits a player gets. This is because AvK is already incorporated into Contact.

Contact is just an amalgam of HR Power, AvK, and BABIP. The first two you can already see, the BABIP score is hidden. So two players with 80 contact ratings are going to get the same number of hits, even if one has an AvK score of 80 and the other an AvK score of 20. The reason is that the second player with the low AvK score has a much higher BABIP (if not, his Contact would be lower, assuming similar HR Power, which only has a small influence anyway).

AvK does seem to have some impact in other areas, though. First, it leads to more chances for errors (basically what Orcin, jason, and Whoofe said above). From the links below (esp the 3rd one), it doesn't appear this has much of an impact on total runs scored, but it does have a minor one.

AvK may also play into how well a hitter does against high-stuff pitchers. A low AvK batter facing a low-stuff pitcher will be able to leverage his BABIP more (since it is probably higher than most players with similar Contact ratings and higher AvK). Conversely, a high AvK player facing a high stuff pitcher may have a better opportunity to reach base. There is some interesting info in the 2nd link about this, although it seems to me this is dependent on in what order the game engine calculates potential outcomes.

Honestly, after reading all of this, I still don't really know how important AvK is. It seems to me it is less important than the other stats, but I could be off in how I am interpreting some of the analysis other (much smarter) people have done.

Anyway, like most things in this game, it's really fascinating and kudos to Markus for designing an engine nobody seems to have been able to completely crack up to this point.


http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...d.php?t=278671

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...d.php?t=293773

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...d.php?t=107882

[Orcin]

From that second thread, this is a great post that explains it as well as any I have seen. You should at least read the tl;dr summary at the end.

Originally Posted by sansterre

First off, while I've played this game for a long time I don't make any representations that I know how the code is written. But from jiggering in the ratings editor here's how I understand it:

Eye: walk rate. The batter's Eye is mixed with the pitcher's control and a percentage chance of a walk is generated.
Avoid K's: strikeout rate. The batter's avoid K's is mixed with the pitcher's Stuff and the percentage chance of a strikeout is generated.
Power: home run rate. This doesn't convert singles to home runs, this converts outs to home runs (by which I mean, your power going up increases your batting average, if not a lot). The batter's power and the pitcher's movement are mixed (plus park effects) and the chance of a home run is generated.
Gap: doubles (and sometimes triples) rate. This *does* convert singles to doubles, so higher gap won't bump your average, just make more of your hits be for extra bases. Obviously the quality of fielding and park effect adjust the rate of doubles/triples hit, but generally it's controlled by the batter's rating.
BABIP: batting average on balls in play. This batter rating, combined with park effects and fielding controls how likely the ball they make contact with (that's staying in the park) is going to be a hit.

So where's Contact? Here's the weird part; Contact is a catch-all stat that represents batting average (against a pitcher with average Stuff). It is a combination of BABIP, Avoid K's and Power (a tiny bit of power).

So if Avoid K's is already part of the Contact rating (which it is) then why does the game bother to show it?

Because Avoid K's controls how dependent the batter's success is on a pitcher's Stuff. Imagine two batters, both with Contact 60, but one has Avoid K's at 40, the other at 70. Which will hit for better average? Generally, they'll hit for equal average, because they have equal contact. But against a soft-tossing control pitcher? The one with 40 Avoid K's will generally do better because his weakness can't be exploited, which means his higher BABIP will be leveraged more. But against high-Stuff ace? The 70 Avoid K's will do better, because he's less susceptible to being struck out.

Let me give you a more practical example. I run a lot of historical simulations with teams of all eras. When you do this the game asks you for the default stat environment for the games to be played in and I use 1971, which is sort of like an average of all trends. Where is this going?

Babe Ruth is surprisingly mortal in 1971. But why? The short answer is that his batting average in 1971 is decent, but not great.

Babe Ruth is a career .342 hitter. In 1927 he hit 356/486/772 for 12.4 WAR. But he struck out 89 times, 16.5% of the time. 16.5% is a pretty good number in the modern game, but in 1927? The average strikeout rate was 8.1%. The incomparable Lefty Grove struck out only 6 per nine innings, and only six pitchers in the AL had K/9 above 4.

Babe Ruth is the classic example of a low Avoid K's but high BABIP hitter. He struck out twice as often as league average, but the combination of him making fantastic contact and the fact that pitchers in his day didn't have high Stuff meant that he could hit above 300 almost every season.

But when moved to 1971? The league average strikeout rate was 16.1%, with the strikeout ace of the year averaging north of 9 K/9. Take a low Avoid K's batter (striking out twice as often as league average) and move him to a situation where opposing pitchers strike out batters twice as much, and suddenly Ruth strikes out a looooot. And because he's striking out a lot, his average drops even though his BABIP is still incredible. And so in these historical sims, 1927 Babe Ruth usually only hits in the 270-310 range. Does he still walk a ton? Heck yes. Does he still have crazy power? Heck yes. But his average drops a lot because he strikes out so much more, and he becomes merely one of the very best batters in the league, but no longer the best of all time.

tl;dr Contact is the batter stat that controls batting average. Avoid K's is the batter stat that tells you how much this batter will suffer against dominant pitching (which becomes especially important in the playoffs).

[Kushiel]

Originally Posted by Whoofe

I personally disagree about avoid K.

I find it fairly important. I may not need a score of 70 or better on a player, but I surely don't want a score of 30 either

I agree. K's will never move a runner where a ground out or fly out may. One of the biggest detriments to modern day baseball is the number of strike outs. Many runners are not moved to third from second with none out because of a K. This can often directly cost a run. Many runners do not score from third with less than 2 outs because of the K. This also can directly cost a run. Hitters are so wrapped up in hitting 20-30 HRs that they strike out over 100 times missing many chances to help their team. Roughned Odor is a prime example of a little guy that should leave the HR's to the real power hitters. There are many guys like this in the Majors now.

[Weaseltail]

Originally Posted by Orcin

From that second thread, this is a great post that explains it as well as any I have seen. You should at least read the tl;dr summary at the end.

Given that a lot of teams have incredible staffs with very high stuff in PT, AvK may actually be more important than in the regular OOTP game (assuming the analysis is accurate).

[|ChelseaNS]

This underlying math on League average (set to 2010 I believe) is amazing. We're already starting to see people complain about their amazing players not living up to what they accomplished in real life.


The answer is that a league average of ERA 4.10 is going to be produced even if 30 Kershaws and 25 Koufaxes are in the league. It's just going to push my Dave Stieb : ( lower.....


To me it's really showing in Avoid K. The sim is forcing K's on guys to hit a league total and since the players of this game are fielding teams with high avoid K the sim is punishing the cards with low avoid K to hit the total.

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by |ChelseaNS

This underlying math on League average (set to 2010 I believe) is amazing.

It is 2011. Yes, it is really interesting to see how a population of all-stars perform when pitted against other all-stars. It is like a season of all-star games.

[damientheomen3]

As a note for the people that may not know how attributes work in OOTP at an in-depth level: the contact rating is generated from three attributes in the editor (in order of impact): BABIP, Avoid K's, and Power (has much less of an impact than the other two). So, whatever level of importance you assign to Avoid K's, you can use it as a baseline to determine what type of contact hitter you're getting (like a 70 contact, 20 power, 70 avoid k's batter would be less likely to get a hit from a ball put in play than a 70 contact, 20 power, 40 avoid k's player).

[Kushiel]

Originally Posted by damientheomen3

As a note for the people that may not know how attributes work in OOTP at an in-depth level: the contact rating is generated from three attributes in the editor (in order of impact): BABIP, Avoid K's, and Power (has much less of an impact than the other two). So, whatever level of importance you assign to Avoid K's, you can use it as a baseline to determine what type of contact hitter you're getting (like a 70 contact, 20 power, 70 avoid k's batter would be less likely to get a hit from a ball put in play than a 70 contact, 20 power, 40 avoid k's player).

But the 40 avoid K batter will put less balls in play than the 70. Less balls in play means less chance of moving a runner or reaching base on a error. So all things equal except that stat, I will take the 70 avoid k hitter.

[Weaseltail]

Originally Posted by Kushiel

But the 40 avoid K batter will put less balls in play than the 70. Less balls in play means less chance of moving a runner or reaching base on a error. So all things equal except that stat, I will take the 70 avoid k hitter.

I think that's right, but it also opens up more double plays. In one of the threads linked above, someone looked at this in detail after simming a few hundred games between identical teams that only differed in their AvK.

"I simmed 320 games between two teams. Both teams had identical players, with the exception that Team A had players with 99 avoid K, and Team B had players with 50 avoid K.

Team A struck out 236 times
Team B struck out 2130 times

Team A scored 1810 runs
Team B scored 1795 runs

Team A walked 1175 times
Team B walked 1287 times

Team A had a batting average of .274
Team B had a batting average of .273

Team A had an OBP of .346
Team B had an OBP of .350

Team A had a SLG% of .438
Team B had a SLG% of .441

Team A grounded into 333 DP
Team B grounded into 307 DP

Team A forced 305 E
Team B forced 261 E

Team A won 163 games
Team B won 157 games"

There may be variables that weren't accounted for - high stuff vs. low stuff SP, etc. -- but I thought the results were really interesting. There really wasn't much difference, but the high AvK team did marginally outscore/out-win the low AvK team (although the difference was so small it could be just noise). The only real differences between the teams were forced errors, double plays, walks and (obviously) K's, but none of these had a material impact on the runs/wins. And that was with one team at 99 AvK. I'd suspect when you're looking at less extreme differences (not sure if there are any 99 AvK players available in PT), the results would be even less noticeable.

[Kushiel]

I see what you mean. But I also must take into account the quality of pitching that I now face in Gold 301. It will only get better.

Probably what you do with your strategy can effect it too. So I guess it boils down to individual preference.

[Whoofe]

well this thread has been very informative