Help dealing with under and over-performing players

[NoKungFu]

Hello,

I'm quite new to the game and playing my first ever season.
After about 30 games into the season, I'm starting to see a few 2.5 star batters overperforming and my best 5 star player severely underperforming (one of the worst in the lineup based on stats...).

I guess my question is....at what point should I start considering the player performance\stats OVER their actual ratings?

Would it be a good idea to change my batting order based on current performance, even though I know my 5 star player is supposed to be by far my best batter based on ratings?
Should I bump overperforming batters into higher positions in the lineup if they are hot, or should I still consider them weak batters because of their ratings?

I'm afraid to make any changes because ignoring the player ratings staring me in the face feels counter intuitive and scary.

Any tips\suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks!

[AdequateRandomGaming]

Originally Posted by NoKungFu

Hello,

I'm quite new to the game and playing my first ever season.
After about 30 games into the season, I'm starting to see a few 2.5 star batters overperforming and my best 5 star player severely underperforming (one of the worst in the lineup based on stats...).

I guess my question is....at what point should I start considering the player performance\stats OVER their actual ratings?

Would it be a good idea to change my batting order based on current performance, even though I know my 5 star player is supposed to be by far my best batter based on ratings?
Should I bump overperforming batters into higher positions in the lineup if they are hot, or should I still consider them weak batters because of their ratings?

I'm afraid to make any changes because ignoring the player ratings staring me in the face feels counter intuitive and scary.

Any tips\suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks!

If we are talking only about setting your lineup like the batting order, then yes, moving a player up or down depending on current performance can definitely be a good tactic to capitalize on a hot player, and insulate a struggling player.

Depending on your scouting settings, the ratings may or may not be accurate - that is why only tinkering with your day to day lineup is a good approach, as opposed to trading away the struggling player, because at the end of the day, 30 games is a very small sample size to make that kind of decision. In that regard, I would advise to be patient and determine what it is that you have.

But yes, 30 games of struggling at the plate definitely can warrant batting a bit lower in the lineup until his game picks back up.

[billyray1984]

30 games is way too few to make trade decisions, but I'll revise my lineups about every month. I do try not to make too many big changes since players with expectations regarding the batting order or low adaptability types will not like too much monkeying around.

One very good stat to look at when you have an underperforming player is babip.

For hitters, if you have a guy who has a career .320 babip and his babip is .200 after 30 games, either he's grounding/flying out a lot or he is getting very unlucky. Either case, the problem is possibly only temporary. Same thing if you have a career bench bat with a career .250 babip with a .500 babip after 30 games. You can expect regression to the mean and should ride the hot hand while it lasts.

If the season babip deviation from the career babip is substantial, you have a player who is maybe only slumping, but if that players babip is constantly going down year after year, maybe his ratings are actually trailing his stats and the guy is regressing.

[Bobfather]

I have noticed that a lot of my best hitters don't get going until sometime in May. Cold weather factor?

[Pelican]

It might be random chance, or my imagination, but giving a slumping player a day off sometimes can help. And I agree with experimenting on the batting order. Like putting a player with a good eye in leadoff. Or a guy with good contact but poor eye second, or farther down. I like guys with good power ratings hitting lower, I hope with men on base, so that their mediocre contact and eye ratings won’t matter as much. But, yeah, I don’t like dealing with these prolonged slumps in top players. And I’m stumped when they are angry. Are they mad at me, mad at themselves, mad at the team? Bryce Harper was slumping badly and actually demanded a trade. I managed to accommodate him by dealing him to he Brewers, straight-up, for Yelich. Neither is guy is hitting much, now at mid-season. A far cry from Harp’s MVP season with the Phillies.

One suggestion would to be to check for external factors. Is the slumping guy playing in a new venue, maybe a pitcher’s park, or a hitter’s haven for a slumping pitcher? Is fatigue an issue? In setting lineups in one of my sim years, I toggled off the ability to sub for tired players. All the regulars suffered, and I finally realized all the position guys were suffering from fatigue, because they never got a day off. My bad on that. Small tweaks can have significant and prolonged consequences.

Do you use the individual coaching settings for players? Too heavy a hand can adversely affect a player’s performance by taking him out of his comfort zone. One other great idea, if you don’t play pitch by pitch, is to switch to that mode, at least while the slumper is batting or pitching. Then you may see patterns, like swinging at pitches out of the strike zone, or pitchers selling out and throwing a 3-2 pitch in a hitter’s zone. At least you can see the problem, even if you can’t directly correct it in every case.

[Brad K]

According to one of the devs hot streaks and cold streaks are completely random. When they end it's random. There is no feedback loop. There are no floors on performance. Or caps.

However the player's ratings may have dropped without it being detected by scouts. If you believe that happened then do something with the player.

[billyray1984]

Originally Posted by Brad K

According to one of the devs hot streaks and cold streaks are completely random. When they end it's random. There is no feedback loop. There are no floors on performance. Or caps.

However the player's ratings may have dropped without it being detected by scouts. If you believe that happened then do something with the player.

I also remember slumps/hot streaks (when the icon appears) being random, but anecdotal evidence does indicate that poor clubhouse cohesion or poor player morale seem to adversely affect performance on the field even if the player isn't in a slump or hot streak (when the icon appears). And we all know that anecdotal evidence is king lol.

For slumping player, I'll request a new scouting report when it gets pretty bad and my scouting report is old because scouts don't always report in good time drops in ratings, especially if your budget allocation to scouting majors is low (again, in my experience).

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Brad K

According to one of the devs hot streaks and cold streaks are completely random. When they end it's random. There is no feedback loop. There are no floors on performance. Or caps.

However the player's ratings may have dropped without it being detected by scouts. If you believe that happened then do something with the player.

I am like 99% positive that this is not the case. I mean, there is for sure a random element to them but slumps in particular can be mitigated by Work Ethic and Intelligence - this is outright stated in the manual - as well as having other players around with high Leadership and applicable coaches (I think the manager, hitting coach, and maybe bench coach are the ones to look to when it comes to guys breaking out of slumps) with high ratings in handling that "type" of player. ISTR there being some discussion as well around the notion that sitting a player for a couple days can "reset" them but I don't remember what the outcome of that was.

Whether a guy actually enters a slump or streak in the first place is, I think, the only straight-up random element...

With hot streaks I think it tends to be more random (which is one area where I differ with OOTPDev - some players in history just plain are/were more prone to long streaks than others, above and beyond random chance) and maybe that's where the confusion lies? Also of course a player has to be actually good to go on a hot streak; a guy who has the ratings to OPS .500 probably isn't considered "hot" if he's OPSing .650 in a given month.

[NoOne]

It is in the game, but it is a tiny fraction of an impact, i thought it was mentioned once? or, was it that the icons simply show up as frosty when there is a quantifiable streak of results that qualifies.. There are hints about it in the forum.. a post or two with more specific statement.. i just don't recall what it was..

it shouldn't exist, either way. The previous outcome does not impact probability.. that's liek saying if you flip a coin 3 times and get 3 heads, it increases chance you get a 4th as a head.. but it doesn't.. .still 50/50 regardless of last outcome.

either way, it is not something you can predict, so you cannot plan for it. you will just as often make a bad choice as making a good choice. i wouldn't play musical chairs. i'd trust the ratings until a suitable sample size tells you otherwise.

if sample size gets large enough that you see a lower rated player outperformig a better rated player, then i'd consider reshuffling. This is WAY more common with RP and SP than batters. except with minor differences in ratings, i don't expect to see this with batters except for 1-season wonders... so pure luck in that case.

just remember Contact is actually 3 different ratings factored together... a 50 contact is not always teh same results.. .becauses avoid k, babip and power are each considered individually.. contact is just a mashup for our eyes.

that type of dynamic is more infused into pitcher ratings... they all interrelate/overalp more, i think. whereas a batter has more single effect ratings, like Eye. simply impacts rate of walks.. nothing else really. imo it should do more.. low eye players should fail way more often ...few can have a vladi guerrero approach and not fall on their face... although that;s why current MLB has a BA in 240s and an average approach that results in feast or famine results... like someone going all-in on every deal, lol. unsophisticated...

some oddities for batters you can count on -- for one -> a lower eye is almost always better for a RBI-producing slot in lineup. Go make 2 players exactly the same, one with bit under half scale eye or even extremely low and one with an elevated eye... i gaurantee when you add up R + RBI it'll be higher nearly every single time with the lower eye. now, you'd also have to consider impact to rbi numbers in slots after that player in lineup... i still bet it overcomes any small dip, if any. Eye/patience is a hinderance to better results for most batters not batting leadoff... maybe 2nd/9th? too?


i have seen a moderately rated pitcher with some exceptional individual ratings mixed in perform at the highest levels for 7-10 years / 700-800ip. clearly, with that sample you know they are dependable and what you will get. before that point it is a guess, andn with RP in particular you don't know until the time comes you have to start worrying about age decimating their ratings.. and whatever magic they have can quickly disappear faster than a highly rated RP putting up similar numbers for same period of time... more often than not taking that similar leap with another player, more so batters, is not going to turn out well.

some guys seem to be more productive than others given same exact ratings... could be something coded we cannot see, could be random occurence that has to happen in some proportion given thousands of players and thousands of games in a year.

in general, these are 1-hit wonders if ratings don't back up resutls... unless they repeat it consistently, you know it's random and nothing you can plan for.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

I am like 99% positive that this is not the case. I mean, there is for sure a random element to them but slumps in particular can be mitigated by Work Ethic and Intelligence - this is outright stated in the manual - as well as having other players around with high Leadership and applicable coaches (I think the manager, hitting coach, and maybe bench coach are the ones to look to when it comes to guys breaking out of slumps) with high ratings in handling that "type" of player. ISTR there being some discussion as well around the notion that sitting a player for a couple days can "reset" them but I don't remember what the outcome of that was.

Whether a guy actually enters a slump or streak in the first place is, I think, the only straight-up random element...

With hot streaks I think it tends to be more random (which is one area where I differ with OOTPDev - some players in history just plain are/were more prone to long streaks than others, above and beyond random chance) and maybe that's where the confusion lies? Also of course a player has to be actually good to go on a hot streak; a guy who has the ratings to OPS .500 probably isn't considered "hot" if he's OPSing .650 in a given month.

My post was based on my memory of this

https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...+streak+minors

Please see posts by Markus

#4

The game does not specifically create hot or cold streaks for players, no. Random variance takes care of that well enough.

The game just indicates them with the indicators when they happen.


#9

I believe once you actually get the indicator, there's an extremely slight boost or drop to their ratings until you get out of the streak or slump but it's not dramatic enough you should be able to discern with the naked eye, just looking at on player's production.

But as far as I know, there's absolutely nothing in-game to trigger slumps or streaks more often than random variance does naturally.

[Syd Thrift]

I’m sorry guys but real life baseball is not a series of coin flips. Baseball players run much more streaky than random chance would suggest and this isn’t even a new concept. Here’s a paper from 1993 on the subject:

https://web.colby.edu/baseball/files...Albright-1.pdf

And yes, I agree that getting into and out of good and bad streaks is the random part. Staying in them, especially slumps, is affected by the stuff I talked about. I have no idea if it’s a small effect or not. Like I said, I think that it should probably be a larger effect for some players, which is part of why I think OOTP hitting streaks tend not to run as long as real life ones (the AI not accounting for them when they rest players and then use them as pinch hitters is another).

[Brad K]

Yes, its been my impression for a while that randomness in OOTP doesn't match real life.

[Brad K]

Here's something from my current game. This is Tony Armas. Look at 82 and 83. First screen shot is in the game. Second is real life performance.

I'm using three year recalc, no weight, dev on.

[Brad K]

Mid season he was hitting .165 with, 6 or 7 home runs. AI manager still insisted on hitting him cleanup apparently based on ratings and previous year. I decided the scout must be way off and forced him into hitting seventh.

[Pelican]

Agree with Syd that hot and cold streaks are part of the game, and thus glad (in a masochistic way) to have that realism in OOTP. Actually, though, it's a fact that some players are more "streaky", while others are consistent, day in and day out. Not sure but I would bet that an algorithm could be developed for that? Not sure the view would be worth the climb. And it's really more complex, in that players can and do change over their careers, becoming more or less (usually less) consistent. And of course "speed never takes a day off" - unless the player has a sore quad or something. In the game, I'll deal with hot and cold by obtaining an updated scouting report, a day off, moving up and down in the lineup, ultimately a trade.

[Brad K]

We already have players who perform way above or way below what's plausible. I think it's not workable for the game to create streaks on top of that. Additionally any data on a player's real life streakiness is going to be an insufficient sample size.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Brad K

We already have players who perform way above or way below what's plausible. I think it's not workable for the game to create streaks on top of that. Additionally any data on a player's real life streakiness is going to be an insufficient sample size.

I’ve posted data elsewhere that confirms that players actually are more streaky in real life than random chance would suggest. As for your example… well, we hate attributing luck to real life events but at approximately the same time that Tony Armas, a rated .230 guy in the first place, was hitting .180 for you in your OOTP universe, Gorman Thomas hit .155 over 160 at bats before being shut down, then went on to have a couple more good seasons with non-.155 averages before ending his career with another really awful hitting slump. Reggie Jackson also had a season in the early 80s where he couldn’t break the Mendoza Line and then proceeded to hit .234 - not great but not under .200 either - over the last 4 years of his career.

Batting average has a relatively large amount of spread, or at least the margin between what we consider a good hitter and a bad one are very small. IIRC the standard deviation for straight up BA is 30 points, which means that if you were to run 100 Tony Armas 1982-83 seasons, you should expect him to hit below .200 in around 17 of them and under .165 in around 5. The year you’re posting is a small outlier but frankly not huge.

[NoOne]

wood, brad_k knew the exact post, lol.

glad they adhere to law of independent resutls.

Reduced streakiness is a outcome of how they are defined. the model is too nice or missing something etc. while 'confidence' cannot make you better than what you are physically capable of, it does potentially us make fall short of what we are capable when insecure and fearful. If it were in the game without giving a boost, it might increase that volatility a bit?

if they are also less streaky in a positive way, i'd say that something is off in the equations used... in a video game, to keep it in perspective.

[Mat]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

I’m sorry guys but real life baseball is not a series of coin flips. Baseball players run much more streaky than random chance would suggest and this isn’t even a new concept. Here’s a paper from 1993 on the subject:

https://web.colby.edu/baseball/files...Albright-1.pdf

The article you posted does not support your interpretation.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by NoOne

wood, brad_k knew the exact post, lol.

Uh... remembered and found the exact post.