Hot / Cold and Season Tendencies

[usa_hank]

I've seen a lot of talk about PT variance of player performances in previous seasons when I lurked. But there was never really talk about how a bad season starts. And I don't know if I'll get the answer with this, but I figured I'd ask.

Is a player's bad start to a season a complete random chance of performance, is it a symptom of having a bad starting "roll" for his hot/cold modifier at the start of the season (assuming this is a thing), or is it the root cause of having a bad cold streak? Maybe it really doesn't matter, to be honest, but it'd be nice to come up with a statistical reason why players perform the way they do.

For instance, my variant starter (who has fantastic ratings even not as a variant) has just had horrible starts to this season and last, and thusly (whether the cause or a symptom) he's been absolutely awful in both, so much so that I completely pulled him off my roster midway through this season. I'm not playing a guy with a 6.6 ERA through 19 starts, not even keeping him on my bullpen. The guy should be a top-20% performer per his ratings, not a bottom-20%.

And since everyone's answer to bad pitching seasons seems to be "it's probably his fatigue" I regularly check that my starters are all at 100% rest before starting, and I keep my starters on a pitch count (specific starters adjusted for stamina).

Besides, this isn't just limited to pitchers, this is for hitters too. Have had many a hitter start horribly and they rarely dig themselves out of it to a point where the season looks even average for them. I'm willing to bet that players here can attest to the fact that seeing a good card pull out of an early season slump is an outlier rather than the norm.

As another strange datapoint, it's very rare that a new card I acquire and put into my roster midweek performs well for the season. There have been the occasional outlier here (i.e. my Billy Wagner I brought in Wednesday has been killing it), but it's like 75% failure rate when bringing in new players, as a guess over time.

So two questions here:

1 - What is the root cause for a bad season and is their first start or two a cause or a symptom of this?
2 - Does anyone else typically see "newly acquired cards" put into your mid-season roster generally perform badly?

[usa_hank]

I'm also wondering, if the team is doing well, do new adds to the team play better? I know situationally, it's better for a player's stats to come up to bat with men on base (pitchers throwing from the stretch typically give up more hits). I imagine OOTP has built that into the sim. So I imagine a good-playing team makes each player's individual performance better (and you typically see this on the top teams in the league).

That said, my team is doing very well in HD this season, and so coincidentally the couple of players I've added mid season have also been doing well. I'm leaning toward that player performance, especially offense, is a symptom of other things like a good performing team overall and maybe a good hot/cold roll when first brought in on the season. But I'm curious how others feel.

[daves]

I was in first place for the 1st 3 days in Perfect league, then POW, I am now struggling to even be a 500 team.

This after making player upgrades like Vida Blue and Tex Hughson. However, upgrades rarely work.

[cwhitman]

i have not seen any statistical evidence of anything like that being the case. there is potentially remnants of the "rust factor" from the base game ported over, but i have not seen any data to suggest it does exist at this point. people's minds remember the things they don't expect, which is players struggling at first, and don't remember the times that they did perform according to expectation.

[usa_hank]

Originally Posted by daves

I was in first place for the 1st 3 days in Perfect league, then POW, I am now struggling to even be a 500 team.

This after making player upgrades like Vida Blue and Tex Hughson. However, upgrades rarely work.

Ugh been there (not in Perfect though, but others). You're right, upgrades rarely seem to help very much for me as well. Coincidentally, we often "upgrade" the most when we aren't doing well too. Which is why I wonder if there's a correlation.

[usa_hank]

Originally Posted by cwhitman

i have not seen any statistical evidence of anything like that being the case. there is potentially remnants of the "rust factor" from the base game ported over, but i have not seen any data to suggest it does exist at this point. people's minds remember the things they don't expect, which is players struggling at first, and don't remember the times that they did perform according to expectation.

I have a good memory and pay attention to tendencies, tyvm.