Why player performance is so erratic

[Drbugboffin]

Yes, why? Been playing 4 seasons now, and dismayed by the seemingly extreme up and down performance of a player from season to season, i.e., bats .300+ one season, then struggles to hit .200 the next. True, I'm playing only 43-game seasons, but still. Come on OOTP, why can't players perform around their mean (i.e. ratings) each season? I've looked in the game settings but can't seem to find any way to make players' performances more consistent. Is this just the way it is with OOTP?

[billyray1984]

The fact that you are playing sub 50 games season is the answer wether you like it or not. Any hitter (not named Tony Gwinn) can have a bad stretch and hit poorly for 43 games. That's less than two months of baseball.

Baseball is high variance. To adress your issue, lowering the talent change randomness and lengthening the season will reduce variance from season to season.

[Syd Thrift]

TCR won't even really have a massive impact except over time, so if you're having the game recalc ratings according to historical player ability, any randomness is eliminated at the end of the year. If you're doing fictional leagues, which it sounds like this person isn't since they're implying actual players aren't producing at their rates, even if you raise TCR to 200 I don't think you'd actually see a lot.

But yeah, 43 game seasons means you're going to get a lot of variance. There's even a lot of variance for a 162 game season - IIRC the standard deviation for batting average over 550 or so at-bats is about 25 points and so right about each team on average will have a guy who hits either 50 points too high or 50 points too low. For a quarter of that length... yeah, it's still going to be all over the place for some numbers. Others - I think K rate is one - lock in a bit earlier. Still more - HR rate's one that can have huge outliers - often don't lock in for 162 games per se to the point that it's possible for a guy like Brady Anderson to hit 50 dingers in a year even in real life.

[billyray1984]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

TCR won't even really have a massive impact except over time, so if you're having the game recalc ratings according to historical player ability, any randomness is eliminated at the end of the year. If you're doing fictional leagues, which it sounds like this person isn't since they're implying actual players aren't producing at their rates, even if you raise TCR to 200 I don't think you'd actually see a lot.

But yeah, 43 game seasons means you're going to get a lot of variance. There's even a lot of variance for a 162 game season - IIRC the standard deviation for batting average over 550 or so at-bats is about 25 points and so right about each team on average will have a guy who hits either 50 points too high or 50 points too low. For a quarter of that length... yeah, it's still going to be all over the place for some numbers. Others - I think K rate is one - lock in a bit earlier. Still more - HR rate's one that can have huge outliers - often don't lock in for 162 games per se to the point that it's possible for a guy like Brady Anderson to hit 50 dingers in a year even in real life.

I never seriously played historical with recalc on so I can't comment, but with fictional players or historical rookies imported with only the dev engine on and no recalc, from season to season, I've found that lowering the tcr does seem to produce less variance in regards to performance relative to the shown scout ratings than with a high tcr (150 +). Very anectodal since I haven't played thousands of identical seasons obviously and the sample size is still only 162 games per season, but I do prefer a higher tcr due to this.

With a tcr around 100 I never got crazy outlier seasons from league average guys, but with it bumped to 150 (or more), I sometimes get guys around the league who were very average for years who decide to light the league on fire for a single year and then never do it again (i.e the Lonnie Smith special).

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by billyray1984

I never seriously played historical with recalc on so I can't comment, but with fictional players or historical rookies imported with only the dev engine on and no recalc, from season to season, I've found that lowering the tcr does seem to produce less variance in regards to performance relative to the shown scout ratings than with a high tcr (150 +). Very anectodal since I haven't played thousands of identical seasons obviously and the sample size is still only 162 games per season, but I do prefer a higher tcr due to this.

With a tcr around 100 I never got crazy outlier seasons from league average guys, but with it bumped to 150 (or more), I sometimes get guys around the league who were very average for years who decide to light the league on fire for a single year and then never do it again (i.e the Lonnie Smith special).

Yeah, I have both aging and development relatively flattened out in my league but TCR set to 150 and yeah, there are totally Brian Downings and even better, Jim Morris types who were nothing special until they got a big ol' TCR in their 30s that turned them into starting quality players or a while. There's a guy in my save who was a career pinch-hitter who must have had a TCR boost in there somewhere because he got picked up in the expansion draft and in 2 years with his new team he's hit 62 HRs (he's 36 and his lifetime total is 84).

You get sudden downgrades as well of course and I frankly prefer it being more or less random than nearly always coming from injuries. People pick out patterns where none exist a looot and I find it more fun to be like "oh, Scott Lammers must have started pressing this year, which caused his HR rate to drop in half" than to actually have tangible reasons. The one downside I see to this approach is that, I think because of the fact that development is flattened out, the draft feels more like the NFL draft where most players in the higher rounds turn into something, but I'll live with that (and again thanks to TCR you do get guys who were never one anyone's radar suddenly turning into quality players).

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Drbugboffin

can't seem to find any way to make players' performances more consistent. Is this just the way it is with OOTP?

Its the way it is with your season length.