What a shitty group!

Just venting...

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Berd
Manager, Latrobe Lightning

It does always seem that there are a heck of a lot more good batting prospects than there are pitching prospects.  Which I suppose could mirror how it works in real life, I have no idea.  This draft there was one decent SP, and everyone else on the list is a crap shoot.

Yeah, looks like I need to ratchet up the pitching generation modifiers, seems we've had a pretty rough patch the last few drafts. I probably didn't pay enough attention to the pitching modifiers this time, but they are set basically the same for batters and pitchers.

I'll make sure that's a priority next draft. Remind me if you would, too.

The thing about OOTP is, that there are far more negative developments talent-wise than positives, so chances are even the one good SP this draft will be decent at best, and won't live up to his potential.

I'll tweak it better next time. It's not a terribly easy thing to tweak as it requires generating the draft class, which generates txt files and sims a day, then looking at resulting class. If you want to do it over, you have to kill the OOTP.exe process so's not to save the data files, manually go in and delete the generated txt files for that sim, restart OOTP8, and do it over.

Chances are good that I simply forgot to really test out the pitching class, since the modifier is about the same as the batters.

why not save the league in a different league file.. then you could test the generation modifiers extensively over multiple seasons.  We don't want to end up with a pitching "steroid" class like we did with the hitters a few seasons ago.

Tempus

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South Beach Sunburn GM

Revisting this topic, now that the disasterous August sims have all but eliminated my team from a playoff chance.

We need better pitching, period.  I see at least 5 players breaching the 55HR mark this season, and a nother 5-10 breaching 50 HRs.  It looks BA and OPS are higher across the board.

That's ridiculous.  I admittedly am being a little bit partial, here, due to the fact that my team's pitching is subpar by my standards and I have none in the pipeline.

I actually would argue that a steroid pitching class should be done to offset the steroid hitting class.  Most of the players drafted from that year,, are at the top of the boards.  I have one of those players in Camacho.  Camacho has 3 rating in HRs--he has 20 so far.  20!  TWENTY.  That is wrong, and yes it may be that he is having an anomalous year.

I do not know what other people have in theri farms, but it cannot be much.  I have only seen one or two decent SP propsects in the past 4 seasons.

Anyway, I am resurrecting this topic--plus Em said that he might need a reminder.

Finally, I may have some time to do testing--but I am not the most versed in the OOTP games, lately.

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Berd
Manager, Latrobe Lightning

let me throw this out there..

is it the pitching that's the problem?  or is it the hitters.  obviously the steroid hitting class is an issue.  but I don't think the proper response is to create another steroid class.  But even beyond those players, offense seems to be WAY up this year.

Is there something in the settings that could be causing that?  I know in the older versions of the game, grypht had settings that would basically tailor the league to certain statistical ballparks.  ie, more offense than the deadball era, but less than the "modern" era that is the game default.  Do those settings need to be revisited?  Do they even exist in this version of OOTP?

Tempus

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South Beach Sunburn GM

I don't believe I've messed with any settings like that in recent years, but it's worth checking. I'll fire up the game, and even compare it to the 6.5 settings and make sure it's kosher.

I kind of agree with Tempus that creating a super class of pitchers may not be a really good solution. Like the steroid era in baseball, we might have to wait it out, but we may have some control over how long these hitters can do what they do.

I mean, the options are many, but I'm not sure how many are good ones, or ones that everyone will be happy with. If we treated this like the steroid era, and we're now cracking down as a league, then the natural outcome of that would be to dampen the power and ratings of that class of hitters. That's obviously very dangerous and I doubt many would like the idea, especially if they own one of those monsters.

I mean, the safest option may just be to ride it out, but that could take upwards of 7-10 seasons. Any other option, whether it be "cracking down on roids", or balancing things out with better pitching, is fairly risky.

How many of that steroid class are making big bucks yet? Obviously it'd not be a good idea to dampen ratings of a superstar making tons of money...wouldn't be fair to the owner.

I'm also just throwing things out there.

Do you think it's offense league-wide, and not limited to that boom class of hitters from whatever year that was? Do we have a lot of players who've been around a while having career years all at once?

Some of this is tough to zero in on, and some of it is similar to the ebbs and flows of offense and pitching in real life. I'm open to ideas about how big of a problem this is and ways we might mitigate it going forward.

Well we are in the mid-late 70's, so I think we are beginning to move out of the deadball era, but I thought that did not really start until around the early 1980s.

The only reason I mentioned the steroid pitching class is because there are not very many good pitchers out there, period. Most of my pitchers back in the day had ratings in the upper eschelon.  Rarick was 10 10 10.  Macmillian prior to conversion from 6.5 was 7 9 8.  Tignor prior to conversion was 10 7 6.  I always had at least one pitcher in the pipeline that had that kind of potential.  Now I do not have a single pitcher that comes even near to that.  Maybe the ratings system has changed, but I doubt that, because with the exception of Dehoyos, every single one of my 6ish 8ish 6ish pitchers sucks ass.

I honestly get more and more exasperated every season.  Should I firesell?  I tried that a couple of seasons back.  No go.  I have no SP talent, and that is what everyone wants.  I do have a superlative OF, SS, 2B, and maybe a 3B.  But most everyone else has one of those too.  So, for the next 3 seasons at least, I am stuck with the status quo.  Well except by then I will likely feature a star catcher.  Whoopeee!  Still no pitching.  And still the same mediocrity of being stuck in the middle of a draft class (because I will finish with 500 seasons every year with the current team that I have) where the single SP gets gobbled  up before it is my turn. The only way I see getting myself out of this is via free agency, and not the way you expect.  I mean by letting my good players become free agents so that I end up with a shitty team.  And that is against my religion--but I will do it if need be.

I know that this is all from my team's point of view, but I have been around long enough to see the trends and that at least lends some credibility to it.   And the fact that  a lot of teams are looking for the same thing, starting pitching, means that there is an issue.

Also, I do not think this is a fluke or--Grypht brought up the increase in offensive numbers 2 or 3 seasons ago.

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Berd
Manager, Latrobe Lightning

I mentioned the deadball era in relation to the way you are able to change the settings within OOTP. I don't think actual in game year has anything to do with the stats.

FWIW, i 100% agree that the league is more offensive than it used to be.  You only have to look at the league reference to see that.  Also, it's NOT just the steroid draft, far from it.  Look at the HR leaderboard.  There's 5 or 6 guys over 50 homeruns already.  That's unheardof with a month left in the season, and none of those guys were from the steroid class.  Hell, Salgado is leading the league, and he was one of my prospects.  and he's NEVER shown that kind of power before.  I'd wager that neither have most of those other guys.

I think the best place to start is not with jacking up the pitching talent, but with taking a long hard look at the game settings.  I'd wager that when we switched to OOTP 7 (or possible 8) that they got reset to "modern era" - which is much more like the offensive levels we are currently seeing.

The SP issue is something else i think.  You mention the 6 8 6 guys.  That was one reason I brought up Beatty in my previous post.  His ratings were actually worse than that (and his potential too) when I originally brought him up.  He was a 4th round pick, not a highly regarded prospect, but he had good AAA stats, and a good spring training, and I needed a 5th starting pitcher that season.  He turned into something quite special.

Point being - I wonder if the talent isn't there, just more well camoflauged than it used to be.  Also, I'm sure the increased offense is taking its toll on young pitching.  Guys with less than 2 or 3 years always seem to have some shaky times.

Tempus

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South Beach Sunburn GM

Purely from a "gut feeling" standpoint, I feel like the amount of young pitching talent has declined.  The first few drafts I remember in BBL (I think like 8 seasons ago), there were always at least a few very good pitching prospects, and a few more who projected to be middle-of-the-rotation starters.  Guys with good talent ratings - 8's, 9's, 10's.  I'm sure a few of those guys faultered, but for the most part, taking one of them got a promising pitcher in your system who generally was successful at the major league level.  I don't see very many of those guys anymore.  I haven't for at least three or four seasons.  Even when we had that "steroid draft class", there were only a couple great pitching prospects.  There were a lot of pitchers from that class that had an endurance of 10 as their one "special" trait, but an endurance of 10 doesn't help all that much when the rest of a pitcher's talent isn't good enough for him to remain deep in games.  Eventually, I feel like the dearth of pitching talent is going to catch up with us.  There just aren't going to be anywhere near enough "ace" level pitchers for each team to have one.  It is going to be pretty sad when you're counting on that "6 8 6" guy as your ace, especially with the influx of hitting talent.

And I do think the numbers still mean relatively the same thing as they always have.  Guys with the high ratings across the boards are great pitchers (with a very few exceptions).  Now, you might find a few overachievers, or underrated players, but there aren't very many of them.  Meanwhile, most "6 8 6" pitchers produce what they always have, borderline results.  On some teams and in some parks, they may fare better than with others.  But I'd never expect a sub-4 ERA from a pitcher with that talent level, and I'd hope to get lucky with an ERA under 5.

I do feel like the change correlates with the switch to our current version of OOTP, so maybe things will improve when we upgrade.  I don't know that we need a "steroid class" of pitching prospects, but I do feel that we should somehow try to make sure there are at least three or four top notch pitching prospects in each of the next few drafts.  I don't really want to see this become the Backyard Teeball League, but with the current trend I suspect there will be a lot more slugfest games than there were 6 - 8 seasons ago.

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Caelon
GM New York Empire

I gotta think so - I was lucky with Ed Lane, but that's about it.  And the fact that Zayx and I are both sporting near-300 HR teams - with a month to go, no less - definitely shows a serious pitching issue.  It's not just the "steroid class" of hitters, either - none of my guys were in that class, so far as I remember.  I'd support a steroid class of pitchers.  Otherwise we'll be approaching beer league softball numbers in a season or two (if we're not there already!).

Alright folks, I have some good news and some bad news on the offense front.

First, the bad news: I've traced it back with backup league files, and sometime around Feb of this year, our league totals inexplicably changed.

They went from this (which is where they've been for years):


to this:


Ok, so two things strike me right off the bat:
1) Every number went down, including the AB one.
2) The ratio of everything below AB to AB changed in such a way as to (I think) boost offense at the expense of pitching, including HRs.

Previous ratio: 5950/167244= 3.56%
New ratio: 2.05%

I don't know a whole lot about how the league totals effect things yet, but apparently the lower the numbers are, the more of that stat you'll end up with, the better your ratings are. Therefore, power hitters will hit more HR if the HR league total is a lower number.

So, how did this happen? I'd LOVE to know! I haven't touched league totals since I converted the league, when I copied them line by line from the 6.5 settings. My only thought here is that at some point, some league setting having to do with recalculating league totals was set to true, and after a certain season, all totals were recalced and we ended up with those new numbers. Either that or some bug in OOTP 2007 got us.

So, as soon as I discovered this, I set the totals back to what they should be. We've already had enough damage since Feb, might as well act now to limit it as much as possible. Guess we'll have more asterisks in the record book. *sigh* I don't know what to say about this, but I've double checked all the settings and nothing about recalculating totals is enabled. Was it a bug, was it something I did but don't remember doing? I have no idea. I was stunned when I discovered it. All I know is that going forward, the commish needs to double check league settings, totals, etc before every season starts to avoid this sort of thing in the future.

So this issue certainly has had an impact on things, but we still have the steroid class, and wimpy pitching prospects that are only aggrevating it.

We can fix the first issue quickly and easily, but the second one is far messier.

I'm open to ideas on the pitching prospect situation. Should we wait it out? Should we boost up a draft class or two to compensate? Should we do some crazy thing where we pick certain pitching prospects picked in rounds 1-3 of the last season or two and give across the board talent bumps? (which would have roughly the same effect as if I'd applied the correct modifier to the player creation numbers for pitchers.)

I'm just throwing out stuff, but obviously whatever we do, it has to be fair, and it can't wreak havoc on the league finances.

one obvious issue with that "crazy" suggestion is that people picked good batters over bad pitching, so bumping the pitchers that were picked would have to be considered unfair.

wow.  i'm sorta shocked that i was right about that.  it did feel right though.  Definitely a lesson learned for the future, but not that big a deal i think.  bugs happen, we move on.  At least it was something that was applied evenly for everyone.

I still would be extremely leery about making any kind of "steroid" pitching class, and the "crazy" suggestion has a lot of question marks about it as well, not the least of which is you would be rewarding people for not picking the best players available, which were very much hitters.

I think the best thing we can do is convert to v9, and run some test seasons to see if the pitching issue solves itself.  Hell, people could be doing that now.  Import, quicksim the end of this season in a test environment, and then run 10 years or so and see what the totals look like.

Glad you caught the issue Emrys.  Good eye!

Tempus

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South Beach Sunburn GM

Well, I've run a few of 10 season sims with some different settings, and have settled on what looks like the most realistic results. If I start out 1977 with the league totals set to what we want them to, and set the player creation mods back to the default of 1.0 for modern day baseball, then 1977-1987 looks pretty balanced.

The HR totals settle back down a bit, with some seasons seeing 60, some not. Looking purely at batting avg. versus ERA, things look pretty good to me, with BA settling down a bit to around .240-.250, and ERA in the low 4s to high 3's. I looked at each season, and at the avg, HRs, wins, ERA, etc, and things look pretty good. I looked at some other things, like stolen bases, etc, and one sim had a guy get like 156, but that was one of those natural anomalies that crop up once every 100 years or so, so it's acceptable.

So far, I'd say the thing to do is to reset player creation mods to near default of modern day (which Skydog and RonCo of OOTP boards recommend anyway, after exhaustive statistical analysis), ensure that league totals are where we want them to be (what we had in 6.5, which happens to be almost the same as the default for modern day in OOTP9), and monitor the league totals after each season.

Further, as a compromise and to mitigate the effect of the 'roided batter class, I recommend a very, very slight increase in next season's pitching creation modifiers. Not a 'roid class, not even close, but just to add a few more quality MR and SP to the mix so that 5 years from now, there's a little counterbalance to the 'roid batter class. It wouldn't be any more than a slight bump in talent, but it can't hurt.

One thing i noticed, and I haven't found out why on the boards, is that after 10 years of simming, the league totals had changed again. From what I can see, even with that, the offensive vs. pitching output ratio remained about equal, and things like HR numbers didn't balloon up.

None of the "recalc" options are turned on, so I'm not sure why the totals are changing, but all I can tell you is that even with the change, the last sim still had a good balance between pitching and hitting stats.