My impressions so far

Big Train · 04-17-2004, 08:03 PM

For what it's worth...I converted one of my deadball era leagues from ootp5 and then simmed a bunch of games between teams from dfferent eras ("all time great teams").

There's a lot of really good new stuff in the game. Having one endurance rating for pitchers is great. and the player development system seems to make a lot more sense and be less random than OOTP5 which is a very good thing although I haven't really tested it. I can certainly see a lot of work has gone into the financial system.

The new ratings system is confusing to me. Pitchers have *no* control over balls in play, so a broken bat ground ball is as likely to lead to a hit as a screaming line drive to the outfield? I don't buy that. I'm glad you can use the old system but I'm dissapointed that you have to turn the player editor on to see the "old" ratings. In the era I usually play in the ball was bigger hence it could not be thrown as hard and there weren't as many strikeouts. The game seems to make the assumption that any pitcher who doesn't strike people out doesn't have good "stuff" I haven't tested out enough how this effect their performance though.

I must say I liked the old system because it was based on concrete things. How do you convert stats into things like "eye" and "movement"? Does anyone know the formulas the game uses to do this?

I don't mean this to sound negative because there are a lot of very good improvements in the game and Markus et al. should be commended for working hard to once again produce a good product. I hope I will get used to the ratings changes and be able to assimilate them into my prefered style of play but right now they are confusing at best . Despite my reservations though, I would reccomend the game and think it's both still far and away the best sim of its kind and an improvement over the last version.

chrisj · 04-17-2004, 08:20 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Big Train
The new ratings system is confusing to me. Pitchers have *no* control over balls in play, so a broken bat ground ball is as likely to lead to a hit as a screaming line drive to the outfield?

The point is that once the ball is hit, the pitcher has no control over the ball. It's up to the defence now to get that screaming line drive for the out, or have it fall and risk the batter getting a double.

Hotwheelz · 04-17-2004, 08:34 PM

So that would mean that defense plays a much greater role in a teams success? That sounds good to me.

beorn · 04-17-2004, 08:51 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Big Train
Pitchers have *no* control over balls in play, so a broken bat ground ball is as likely to lead to a hit as a screaming line drive to the outfield? I don't buy that.

Glad I'm not the only one.

I see this whole DIPS thing as an overreaction. The system admits that if the ball is hit out of the ballpark, that is the pitcher's responsibility, but holds that all other balls in play are up to the defense.

The true part is that defense and luck have a very significant role in making one pitcher's hard hit ground balls lead to very different results from another pitcher's hard hit ground balls... The idea that a pitcher "got the batter to hit a hard ground ball to the shortstop" while another pitcher pitched poorly because he gave up a hard ground ball for a single was ripe to be attacked.

However, it is the battle between the pitcher and the hitter that determines the proportion of weak grounders, hard grounders, weak pop up, fly balls, line drives, and deep drives (whether they stay in or out of the park).

At the risk of repeating myself, the DIPS system taken to its extreme always makes me think of an announcer calling a long shot off the top of the outfield wall, saying, "Good thing that wasn't two feet higher or it would have been the pitcher's fault."

Clearly, the pitcher who allows good wood on the ball is going to have worse results than the pitcher who less frequently allows hard contact. And it's not just a matter of homers and gap power.

Henry · 04-17-2004, 08:57 PM

There will be continuing discussions and further modifications of DIPS, but the numbers don't lie. In the end, the statistics will show that god pitchers are still good, and bad pitchers are still bad, but the stats themselves will be clser to realty. That's a result of DIPS. Give it time, and read more as it is written.

Henry

Big Train · 04-17-2004, 09:20 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by chrisj
The point is that once the ball is hit, the pitcher has no control over the ball. It's up to the defence now to get that screaming line drive for the out, or have it fall and risk the batter getting a double.

I agree with that but my point is I think the pitcher has some control over whether the hit is a broken-bat ground ball to the infield or a screaming liner to the outfield. Pitchers can deliberately try to make pitches to induce routine groundballs (or fly-balls although that is a riskier proposition).
.

KurtBevacqua · 04-17-2004, 10:41 PM

My own initial impression is the star ratings and the scouting reports are pretty much crap now. I have a guy on a 10 point scale rated 6-5-5 and he is one gold star and the scouting report says he clearly belongs in the minors. The guy hit 17 HR and batted .308 which I think is a pretty accurate reflection of his ratings. Doesn't seem like a minor leaguer to me. I know I need to get more used to these new ratings and scouting reports, but they really seem to be sandbagging on player talents.

Big Train · 04-17-2004, 11:43 PM

Yeah I noticed the same thing The scouting reports pretty much of the league I imported informed me that everyone in the league I imported pretty much sucked (including Cobb,Joe Jackson, Mathewson etc.) It's nice not to have every pitcher called the greatest arm in the league but now it's pretty much decided that everyone sucks

it was a little more accurate when I made it rely only on ratings more , but really these guys didn't have terrible seasons or anything.

soonertony · 04-18-2004, 12:09 AM

Quote:

Pitchers have *no* control over balls in play, so a broken bat ground ball is as likely to lead to a hit as a screaming line drive to the outfield?

No. A broken bat ground ball is less likely to lead to a hit. But whether balls in play are hits or outs is the responsibility of the batter, the park, the defense, and/or luck, not the pitcher.

You're right, since Voros McCracken's original DIPs theory came out, research has been done to show that pitchers have some influence over batting average on balls in play, but it's not nearly as much as we originally thought, and the new DIPs system is a vast improvement over the original OOTP engine.

BABIP just fluctuates much, much more than K's, BB's, and HR's. It's by far the thing the pitcher has the least control of.

Big Train · 04-18-2004, 12:23 AM

There's a big diference between "not as much effect as we orginally thought" and "no effect at all" . The first I can sort of agree with, assuming sound evidence, the second I think is silly.

BarryZito75 · 04-18-2004, 12:28 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Big Train
There's a big diference between "not as much effect as we orginally thought" and "no effect at all" . The first I can sort of agree with, assuming sound evidence, the second I think is silly.

When the effect that pitchers have is around 0.005 on the BAA its essentially no effect at all. The only thing that needs to be tweaked is the effect of cutters and knuckleballs.

soonertony · 04-18-2004, 12:29 AM

Well, the thing is that pitchers with better "control" over BABIP probably save anywhere from 5-10 hits per season. And you can't really determine which pitchers have superior ability in this area until their careers are over, or very near it. There's just too much noise in the data, even when using 3-year stats as ratings.

Personally I believe it's just much better and simpler the way OOTP has implemented the DIPs system.

Big Train · 04-18-2004, 01:29 AM

What I'm really wondering about has anyone applied DIPS to early pitching. There were a lot of pitchers with very low ERAs and also low strikeout totals (Because the larger ball was hard to blow by people but also resulted in a lot of routine ground balls). Was the defense just a lot better then? Or what other explaination can this theory provide? I guess I'll just have to look around for info on it.

rem · 04-18-2004, 01:36 AM

I'm nearly 100% certain that it's been applied to early pitching and knuckleballers are known to have extra ability to control ball's put in play. But I'm anything but an expert on the subject.

sadangelclown · 04-18-2004, 01:44 AM

I'm fairly certain that research shows that pitchers have great influence over fly balls vs ground balls, correct? I still don't buy DIPS 100%. It's illogical.

clarnzz · 04-18-2004, 02:20 AM

Here is something you might find useful. I dug it up from an old thread where CBLCardinals posted this, it may be something that someone in a historical league would need to adjust to get their results right:

BABIP history

AL
1912 .278
1922 .279
1932 .280
1942 .263
1952 .258
1962 .263
1972 .254
1982 .270
1992 .272
2002 .281

NL
1892 .264
1902 .273
1912 .279
1922 .288
1932 .279
1942 .254
1952 .258
1962 .274
1972 .264
1982 .272
1992 .271
2002 .279

It is interesting that it is close to the same now as the deadball era. Walter Johnson had a .260 career BABIP, Ed Cicotte .276, Pete Alexander .268, Christy Mathewson .263, Mordecai Brown .254, Rube Waddell .274 for some reference. They all are under the league averages during their time. How much of that, if any at all, could be attributed to their ballpark/defense I am not qualified to speculate.

I am also curious on looking into the somewhat contrasting effects of league totals and BABIP, such as being able to control K's and hits through league totals, as well as setting the BABIP rate independantly. I might have to load up a historical league and mess around with the the league totals and BABIP rates to see what kind of results are achieved by certain pitchers.

Big Train · 04-18-2004, 04:10 AM

Thanks, that's interesting and unexpected, maybe it has to do with a lot more of the hits going for singles rather than homers today. It would be interesting to compare slugging percentage on balls in play. But anyway, please post or let me know anything you find out. I'll be looking for a way to adapt this system to deadball leagues if possible.

BleacherBum · 04-20-2004, 01:40 AM

When I pull the 2002 league stats, I come up with the following:

Code:

                                     Balls In Play
      AB    H    HR     SO    AVG      AB    H     AVG   
NL  87794 22753 2595  17161  .259    68038 20158  .296   
AL  77788 20519 2464  14233  .264    61091 18055  .296

For Balls in Play avg, I just remove the HRs and SOs and recalc. This excludes sac flies, which if added back against ABs would shift the BIP avg down to .294.

So where did .281/.279 come from in the previous post? Am I overlooking something in this seemingly simple calculation?

OK, I found an answer to my own question. The .281/.279 must be based on the "pitchers formula" which has some flaws that drag down the average.

Malleus Dei · 04-20-2004, 10:42 AM

You've got to like it when someone finds their own answers to their own questions.

04-17-2004, 08:03 PM	#1
Big Train Major Leagues Join Date: May 2002 Location: Canada Posts: 402	My impressions so far For what it's worth...I converted one of my deadball era leagues from ootp5 and then simmed a bunch of games between teams from dfferent eras ("all time great teams"). There's a lot of really good new stuff in the game. Having one endurance rating for pitchers is great. and the player development system seems to make a lot more sense and be less random than OOTP5 which is a very good thing although I haven't really tested it. I can certainly see a lot of work has gone into the financial system. The new ratings system is confusing to me. Pitchers have no control over balls in play, so a broken bat ground ball is as likely to lead to a hit as a screaming line drive to the outfield? I don't buy that. I'm glad you can use the old system but I'm dissapointed that you have to turn the player editor on to see the "old" ratings. In the era I usually play in the ball was bigger hence it could not be thrown as hard and there weren't as many strikeouts. The game seems to make the assumption that any pitcher who doesn't strike people out doesn't have good "stuff" I haven't tested out enough how this effect their performance though. I must say I liked the old system because it was based on concrete things. How do you convert stats into things like "eye" and "movement"? Does anyone know the formulas the game uses to do this? I don't mean this to sound negative because there are a lot of very good improvements in the game and Markus et al. should be commended for working hard to once again produce a good product. I hope I will get used to the ratings changes and be able to assimilate them into my prefered style of play but right now they are confusing at best . Despite my reservations though, I would reccomend the game and think it's both still far and away the best sim of its kind and an improvement over the last version.

04-17-2004, 10:41 PM	#7
KurtBevacqua Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2003 Posts: 2,968	My own initial impression is the star ratings and the scouting reports are pretty much crap now. I have a guy on a 10 point scale rated 6-5-5 and he is one gold star and the scouting report says he clearly belongs in the minors. The guy hit 17 HR and batted .308 which I think is a pretty accurate reflection of his ratings. Doesn't seem like a minor leaguer to me. I know I need to get more used to these new ratings and scouting reports, but they really seem to be sandbagging on player talents. __________________ "The type and formula of most schemes of philanthropy or humanitarianism is this: A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall be made to do for D. The radical vice of all these schemes, from a sociological point of view, is that C is not allowed a voice in the matter, and his position, character, and interests, as well as the ultimate effects on society through C's interests, are entirely overlooked. I call C the Forgotten Man" - William Graham Sumner

04-18-2004, 01:36 AM	#14
rem Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: College Park, Md. Posts: 5,024	I'm nearly 100% certain that it's been applied to early pitching and knuckleballers are known to have extra ability to control ball's put in play. But I'm anything but an expert on the subject. __________________ OTBA: Washington Filibusters CLBR: Minnesota Twins 2005 Winner of LL's Pick the Loser Contest! - 15-0

04-20-2004, 01:40 AM	#18
BleacherBum All Star Reserve Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 672	When I pull the 2002 league stats, I come up with the following: Code: Balls In Play AB H HR SO AVG AB H AVG NL 87794 22753 2595 17161 .259 68038 20158 .296 AL 77788 20519 2464 14233 .264 61091 18055 .296 For Balls in Play avg, I just remove the HRs and SOs and recalc. This excludes sac flies, which if added back against ABs would shift the BIP avg down to .294. So where did .281/.279 come from in the previous post? Am I overlooking something in this seemingly simple calculation? OK, I found an answer to my own question. The .281/.279 must be based on the "pitchers formula" which has some flaws that drag down the average. __________________ Right Field Sucks! Last edited by BleacherBum; 04-20-2004 at 02:05 AM.

04-17-2004, 08:34 PM	#3
Hotwheelz All Star Starter Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Pacific Northwest Posts: 1,620	So that would mean that defense plays a much greater role in a teams success? That sounds good to me.

04-17-2004, 08:57 PM	#5
Henry Hall of Fame Join Date: Dec 2001 Posts: 6,498	There will be continuing discussions and further modifications of DIPS, but the numbers don't lie. In the end, the statistics will show that god pitchers are still good, and bad pitchers are still bad, but the stats themselves will be clser to realty. That's a result of DIPS. Give it time, and read more as it is written. Henry

04-17-2004, 11:43 PM	#8
Big Train Major Leagues Join Date: May 2002 Location: Canada Posts: 402	Yeah I noticed the same thing The scouting reports pretty much of the league I imported informed me that everyone in the league I imported pretty much sucked (including Cobb,Joe Jackson, Mathewson etc.) It's nice not to have every pitcher called the greatest arm in the league but now it's pretty much decided that everyone sucks it was a little more accurate when I made it rely only on ratings more , but really these guys didn't have terrible seasons or anything.

04-18-2004, 12:23 AM	#10
Big Train Major Leagues Join Date: May 2002 Location: Canada Posts: 402	There's a big diference between "not as much effect as we orginally thought" and "no effect at all" . The first I can sort of agree with, assuming sound evidence, the second I think is silly.

04-18-2004, 12:29 AM	#12
soonertony Bat Boy Join Date: Apr 2002 Posts: 14	Well, the thing is that pitchers with better "control" over BABIP probably save anywhere from 5-10 hits per season. And you can't really determine which pitchers have superior ability in this area until their careers are over, or very near it. There's just too much noise in the data, even when using 3-year stats as ratings. Personally I believe it's just much better and simpler the way OOTP has implemented the DIPs system.

04-18-2004, 01:29 AM	#13
Big Train Major Leagues Join Date: May 2002 Location: Canada Posts: 402	What I'm really wondering about has anyone applied DIPS to early pitching. There were a lot of pitchers with very low ERAs and also low strikeout totals (Because the larger ball was hard to blow by people but also resulted in a lot of routine ground balls). Was the defense just a lot better then? Or what other explaination can this theory provide? I guess I'll just have to look around for info on it.

04-18-2004, 01:44 AM	#15
sadangelclown Minors (Double A) Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 127	I'm fairly certain that research shows that pitchers have great influence over fly balls vs ground balls, correct? I still don't buy DIPS 100%. It's illogical.

04-18-2004, 02:20 AM	#16
clarnzz All Star Starter Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Following everyone off a cliff. Posts: 1,522	Here is something you might find useful. I dug it up from an old thread where CBLCardinals posted this, it may be something that someone in a historical league would need to adjust to get their results right: BABIP history AL 1912 .278 1922 .279 1932 .280 1942 .263 1952 .258 1962 .263 1972 .254 1982 .270 1992 .272 2002 .281 NL 1892 .264 1902 .273 1912 .279 1922 .288 1932 .279 1942 .254 1952 .258 1962 .274 1972 .264 1982 .272 1992 .271 2002 .279 It is interesting that it is close to the same now as the deadball era. Walter Johnson had a .260 career BABIP, Ed Cicotte .276, Pete Alexander .268, Christy Mathewson .263, Mordecai Brown .254, Rube Waddell .274 for some reference. They all are under the league averages during their time. How much of that, if any at all, could be attributed to their ballpark/defense I am not qualified to speculate. I am also curious on looking into the somewhat contrasting effects of league totals and BABIP, such as being able to control K's and hits through league totals, as well as setting the BABIP rate independantly. I might have to load up a historical league and mess around with the the league totals and BABIP rates to see what kind of results are achieved by certain pitchers.

04-18-2004, 04:10 AM	#17
Big Train Major Leagues Join Date: May 2002 Location: Canada Posts: 402	Thanks, that's interesting and unexpected, maybe it has to do with a lot more of the hits going for singles rather than homers today. It would be interesting to compare slugging percentage on balls in play. But anyway, please post or let me know anything you find out. I'll be looking for a way to adapt this system to deadball leagues if possible.