Random(?) Changes in Potential

[Curtis]

This may not qualify as a tech support issue, but it has really annoyed me, and seems to make player evaluation worthless. I am running 9.1.6, Mac version.

I spent about twelve hours going over my entire system and writing down the player overall/potential at each of several positions, then deciding which position and which level the players should be.

Tonight I was spending some time specifically on the minors, and I noticed that three of the players had radically changed ratings. (I quit looking after finding these three, not wanting to waste more hours on this.) No days had passed in the game, though I had turned it off and on twice since first noting the results. Scouting is OFF, and I have not clicked the 'rescout' button..

Shimamura (3B/SS) was 22/32, (2B) was 22/26, now 22/23 all positions
Umeda (2B/3B) was 22/37, (SS) was 22/34, now 22/23 all positions
Momotami (3B/SS) was 23/31, (2B) was 23/24, now 23/23 all positions

Note that Umeda's and Shimamura's relative positions have also changed. They are ranked by potential above, and obviously Umeda's potential used to be higher.

It seems equally obvious to me that if no time goes by in the game, regardless of whether scouting is enabled, the evaluation of the players that I'm looking at (whether it's right or wrong) should not change.

[Tony M]

Is this a side-effect of having potential calculated against all players or all players in said position?

Moving players around the minors and setting their positions may have that effect if they are being compared against their ilk.

[Curtis]

They are being compared against players at their own position. I don't THINK moving them from level to level should affect their potential, since the overall/potential is rated in comparison to an arbitrary major league. (In this universe there are very few players with green or blue numbers, which is correct, since this universe tops out at the International level.) I can't swear to it, but I don't think those players changed levels during my recent review.

I don't have as much hard evidence of it, but some other players who have NOT changed levels have also been affected. I evaluated my players in three groups. Monday was for infielders, Tuesday for outfielders and Wednesday for the minor league review. In between each the game was shut off and restarted.

Tuesday was a short day, so I also looked over what deficiencies I'll need to draft (draft in ten days) or trade to compensate for. While doing that I noticed that I had five starting pitchers with yellow numbers in their potential — two with yellow overalls and three with red overalls. Yesterday I only had two starting pitchers with yellow potentials — both with yellow overalls.

Unfortunately, I did a major review of my pitchers only a month ago, so I didn't feel the need to write down the names and exact numbers this time through, but three of my minor league starters have been majorly downgraded overnight, and I haven't moved any of them around since that review last month.

[Nutlaw]

Originally Posted by Curtis

They are being compared against players at their own position.

As I understand it, this is the source of your problem. As other players in the league are set to different positions, an individual player's relative worth at his position may change drastically, especially in smaller leagues where there aren't many players to compare them to. Have you considered rating by all players, rather than by position?

As for the ratings changing when closing and reopening the game, I believe that OOTP will reset the OVR/POT scale each time it reopens, so with players moved around to new positions, you wouldn't see the changes until you re-opened the program (or progressed to various points in the game year).

[Curtis]

Thank you for the reply, Nutlaw. I have to say that this qualifies as a major disappointment. I'll quote something I posted in a thread in General Discussions:

"I haven't tried that yet {changing to rating vs. all players}, but I don't like the idea. How can you compare a shortstop to a starting pitcher? What if the game engine values apples higher, while I value oranges higher? And to top it off, if the game engine DOES value apples higher, I'll never know!"

Rating vs. other players at same position seems to me to be the logical way of doing things, and it seems like it should be the default. If this complaint isn't going to get a tracking number, then you might as well close it. This is a BAD design decision.

[Simon_Nesbit]

Curtis I think it only compares batters with batters and pitchers with pitchers.

Essentially it's a manual over-ride for the overall/potential summary calculations.

Do you want to know how good your SS is compared to other SS, or how good he is as a hitter, compared to other hitters?

[Curtis]

How good he is compared with other shortstops, but since the game engine evaluator doesn't take fielding into account (and probably not the intangibles, either), that's really a forlorn hope.

Let's think about this: If you have the best hitting shortstop in the league, would you trade him for the tenth best-hitting outfielder, even if the outfielder is one hundred points better in OBPS? Off the top of my head, I wouldn't. This could really become a complex equation, though. Are they both average fielders? How good a hitter (and fielder) is your second option at short? How good a hitter (and fielder) is the outfielder you'll be bencing if you pick up the new guy? There's a whole lot of balancing to do here, and that's part of the GM's art. But, if you're comparing all players (or even all hitters), it becomes easy — the shortstop is a 69 and the outfielder is a 73, so you make the trade.

[Simon_Nesbit]

Surely you don't make calls on overall or potential though (unless they are dramatic)?

It's an easy way to sort, then you make your own individual calls after that.

Think of it as a filter - taking 100 options down to 5. 5 options you can do in your head (or on paper) - 100 you can't.

[Curtis]

I make calls about who will be in my system based upon their potential AT A POSITION. For example, in my Oriental universe, my Nippon Ham Fighters have two minor league affiliates and primary roster limits of 28, 28 and 35 players, so I keep the seven catchers and six first basemen with the best potentials. Ties are broken in favor of trying to keep the best available balance of right- vs. left-handed batters.

I make calls about where in the system they will be placed based upon a combination of (primarily) their overall at a position and the minor league system evaluation report, with ties broken by handedness and (rarely) by age.

And it isn't how I make these decisions that results in my .350 winning percentage; it's my horrible drafting ability. My system appears to work much better for free agent signings and waiver wire pickups than it does for drafting.

[Nutlaw]

Originally Posted by Curtis

Rating vs. other players at same position seems to me to be the logical way of doing things, and it seems like it should be the default. If this complaint isn't going to get a tracking number, then you might as well close it. This is a BAD design decision.

Well, what kind of ticket would you like to see? If you are going to rate a player by his position, how would you want to see the game handle players who can field multiple positions? As things stand, a player who can play catcher and first base is rated against other players set as catchers when he is set as a catcher and is rated against other players set as first basemen when he is set as a first baseman.

Fielding is taken into account for OVR/POT ratings.

[Curtis]

Originally Posted by Nutlaw

Well, what kind of ticket would you like to see? If you are going to rate a player by his position, how would you want to see the game handle players who can field multiple positions? As things stand, a player who can play catcher and first base is rated against other players set as catchers when he is set as a catcher and is rated against other players set as first basemen when he is set as a first baseman.

Fielding is taken into account for OVR/POT ratings.

To take your last statement first, I have tried taking a player and changing his position rating from 0 to 100. Neither his overall nor his potential change. That would seem to imply that fielding is NOT taken into account. Edit: I tried this again with the 2008 Mets historical, and Carlos Delgado DID change from a 50/50 to 64/64, so at least in historical games this works as you say.

As for how multi-position players should be rated, they should vary by position. As you can see from my first post, those players DID vary, but now they don't.

And for what kind of ticket I'd like to see, I don't think players' ratings should change without something happening to change them. In the examples I gave their potentials dropped radically with no time elapsing in the game.

By the way, time has now advanced three days in that game, and the starters' potentials have recovered, but the infielders are still at their reduced levels. As I mentioned in my second post, these pitchers did not have their positions changed, but they dropped 20-30 points in potential, and now they've gained it back. That shouldn't happen, either. As an aside, they are all on the ML roster (spring training), which the infielders are not.

[Nutlaw]

Originally Posted by Curtis

To take your last statement first, I have tried taking a player and changing his position rating from 0 to 100. Neither his overall nor his potential change. That would seem to imply that fielding is NOT taken into account. Edit: I tried this again with the 2008 Mets historical, and Carlos Delgado DID change from a 50/50 to 64/64, so at least in historical games this works as you say.

And for what kind of ticket I'd like to see, I don't think players' ratings should change without something happening to change them. In the examples I gave their potentials dropped radically with no time elapsing in the game.

As for defensive ratings, it will depend upon how you edited your players. If you edit their experience at a position, their OVR/POT ratings won't change. If you edit their component defensive ratings (IF Arm, OF Range, etc), you will see a resulting change.

OVR and POT ratings are relative to the rest of the league. That won't change. When rating by position, you might see a shift in the scale after teams change around the primary positions of their players. That won't likely change either.

I'm a bit more concerned if you had starting pitchers shift in POT by 20-30 points. This is occuring only during the first year of a saved game? When did the POT shifts happen? The start of Spring Training? No one turned 30 years old, did they?

[Curtis]

Originally Posted by Nutlaw

I'm a bit more concerned if you had starting pitchers shift in POT by 20-30 points. This is occuring only during the first year of a saved game? When did the POT shifts happen? The start of Spring Training? No one turned 30 years old, did they?

Rather near the end of it. I just finished ST tonight. The players involved were 21-25 years old.

[Nutlaw]

Originally Posted by Curtis

Rather near the end of it. I just finished ST tonight. The players involved were 21-25 years old.

And no jumps after progressing to the regular season?

This is the first year of your saved game, yes?

[Curtis]

This IS the first year of my game, yes. I have not yet progressed to the regular season. I tend to work in spurts, and my last took me to the amateur draft at the end of spring training.

I have noticed that some of my hitters have had increases in their potentials, but this is likely not part of the same problem since A) nearly two weeks have gone by, and B) half of them also increased their overalls.

Something which MAY be part of the same problem is that, except for the players who have the same values for all positions (mostly 22/22 or 23/23), none of my players have the same ratings at any two of their positions, where previously most of them had the same value at two with the third different. (Note: I am speaking of either generic outfielders who are rated at LF/CF/RF or generic infielders who are rated at 2B/3B/SS. There are approximately 19 of each in my system.)

Seriously, Nutlaw, I think you should close this thread. It isn't likely to be noticed by many players — only those who play multiple sessions without advancing the date AND quit the game between sessions AND write down the ratings for their players — and it would seem to be almost impossible to reproduce. It may still have something to do with it being a converted 2006 universe. I'm sorely tempted to just start over with a new version 9 universe, except that I hate to lose the 1000+ hours put into it.

[Nutlaw]

Originally Posted by Curtis

Seriously, Nutlaw, I think you should close this thread.

Okay.