Injuries make this game unplayable

[Syd Thrift]

Preliminary report on my injury.txt file: it appears that the game ignores anything longer than 12 or 13 months. At least I haven't seen anything that big yet with what little poking around I've done. And I forgot to turn off CEIs for Fractured Skull, which ironically makes things a little more interesting because just about the only 2 real in-game baseball CEIs I can think of involve fractured skulls from getting hit by a pitched ball (Ray Chapman and Mickey Cochrane; one could argue that Tony Conigliaro and Dickey Thon more or less suffered the same, although both did stage comebacks). What was the name of that guy whose arm broke in the middle of throwing a pitch a couple years back? Not Dravecky.

Anyway, accumulated injuries seem so far to be knocking guys' careers down, although I'll have to see how that holds up through 20 or 30 seasons...

[lynchjm24]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

Not Dravecky.

Tony Saunders

[GForce]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

What was the name of that guy whose arm broke in the middle of throwing a pitch a couple years back? Not Dravecky.

Anyway, accumulated injuries seem so far to be knocking guys' careers down, although I'll have to see how that holds up through 20 or 30 seasons...

Believe that was Tony Saunders.

GH

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by lynchjm24

Tony Saunders

Thanks. One of those "tip of the tongue" things. Anyway, it looks to me as though the game doesn't determine if an injury is a career-ender until after it generates the injury; if the Boolean on the injury the game comes up with is zero, the game doesn't say "hey, I need a CEI here; I have to go back until I find one". It looks to me like the CEI thing is something that we the fans can fix. I'm not saying that's the way it *should* be; I'm just saying, it sure beats waiting a couple weeks for a patch.

I'll add that the more I think about it, the more I think CEIs were a way for the game to simulate the vagaries of baseball without making injuries realistically high. And injuries weren't realistically high in the past for reasons already stated.

[TonyJ]

Pretty telling that we can think of, what, four people who actually suffered career-ending injuries that they did not come back from at all in the entire history of baseball. There are probably a few more, but it is very, very rare.

[DaveM0]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

You know, the more I look at it, the more I think that what happens is that the game first determines if there's an injury then randomly chooses one from the appropriate list. I wonder if it would handle multiple instances of the same injury as a means of making the probabilities work out a bit better...

Yeah that might be what is happening. They might have gotten the injuries and the length of the injuries correct, but when the game goes to select an injury it doesn't have a weighted effect for certain injuries. Obviously there are some injuries that are a lot more common than a fractured skull, but if it goes through the injury list and randomly picks one then each time there is an injury there is a 1 in X chance that he will get a fractured skull, while at the same time a 1 in X chance that it will be a pulled hamstring.

X being the number of injuries listed in the injuries.txt file. Could be wrong though, just depends on how the game picks the injury.

[Syd Thrift]

I can think of more, but they didn't come on the baseball field (Lyman Bostock. Harry Agganis, Thurman Munson, Gus Polidor, Tim Crews, Steve Olin, and so on).

[JimG]

Originally Posted by TonyJ

Pretty telling that we can think of, what, four people who actually suffered career-ending injuries that they did not come back from at all in the entire history of baseball. There are probably a few more, but it is very, very rare.

Does Roy Hobbs count?

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by DaveM0

Yeah that might be what is happening. They might have gotten the injuries and the length of the injuries correct, but when the game goes to select an injury it doesn't have a weighted effect for certain injuries. Obviously there are some injuries that are a lot more common than a fractured skull, but if it goes through the injury list and randomly picks one then each time there is an injury there is a 1 in X chance that he will get a fractured skull, while at the same time a 1 in X chance that it will be a pulled hamstring.

X being the number of injuries listed in the injuries.txt file. Could be wrong though, just depends on how the game picks the injury.

*Shudder* You know that if we edit the injury file to make minor ones more common by repeating them, we'll probably have to set injuries to "High" in order to make careers come out right... or raise aging modifiers... organic-ness can be *so* frustrating sometimes...

[TonyJ]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

I can think of more, but they didn't come on the baseball field (Lyman Bostock. Harry Agganis, Thurman Munson, Gus Polidor, Tim Crews, Steve Olin, and so on).

That would actually be a cool addition too. Of course, we could add those in if we wanted, but having them there would be sweet too. Every decade or so somebody gets offed

[Killing Time]

Originally Posted by DaveM0

Yeah that might be what is happening. They might have gotten the injuries and the length of the injuries correct, but when the game goes to select an injury it doesn't have a weighted effect for certain injuries. Obviously there are some injuries that are a lot more common than a fractured skull, but if it goes through the injury list and randomly picks one then each time there is an injury there is a 1 in X chance that he will get a fractured skull, while at the same time a 1 in X chance that it will be a pulled hamstring.

X being the number of injuries listed in the injuries.txt file. Could be wrong though, just depends on how the game picks the injury.

If this is correct then the fix consists of a weighted injury file with something like only 0.000001% of injuries actually being a CEI.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by TonyJ

That would actually be a cool addition too. Of course, we could add those in if we wanted, but having them there would be sweet too. Every decade or so somebody gets offed

Once patch #2 comes out to re-activate illnesses (right now they appear to have been disabled) we can probably add those in as well. Granted that we'll have to play with the probability to make sure every 3rd player isn't shot by a disgruntled husband.

[Ankit]

Originally Posted by TonyJ

It would also be cool to see players get TJ'd and come back with more velocity (that actually does happen nowadays).

This effect is only temporary. At most, the increased velocity lasts for 5 months, more likely case is 2-3 months. I have read and heard numerous cases of this as a Phillies pitcher (Randy Wolf) went through this last year and was fairly well-covered here in Philly.

[Ankit]

Syd Thrift (Post 49) and DaveM0 (Post 46), you are right. I took a look at the injuries.txt file and there are too many injuries with CE Possible Bool = 1. The DTD% for many injuries are too low and there are too many injuries where the minimum inj time is too high. Also, the minor injuries need to be duplicated so that major injuries are not selected too often, as is the case right now.

I think the total number of injuries in the Injuries.txt file should be about 500 with at most 5 having a CEI possibility. About 350 of the 500 would be minor injuries with serverity ranging from 1 days to 90 days. Of the 350, 90 would have 100% DTD chance, while the others would be less so that a player would have to be out for a few days.

The rest (145) would be major DL injuries with lengths running from 14 to 550 days (Tommy John Surgery). The quickest way to do this would be to have generic injury titles (Minor Injury, DTD Injury, Major Injury, Catastrophic Injury (i.e., CEI possible)). Then, if someone cared to give them specific names, they could do as they please. What do you think?

[Elendil]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

I can think of more, but they didn't come on the baseball field (Lyman Bostock. Harry Agganis, Thurman Munson, Gus Polidor, Tim Crews, Steve Olin, and so on).

Donnie Moore.

[Claybor]

Yay, realistic injuries, now our fictional baseball players can be just as much a bunch of P*****s as todays ballplayers are. Bigger, stonger and faster then players in the past, but unable to play through a hangnail. No knock on the game, it is adjustable, and can be turned off, I just get tired of modern day ballplayers and attitudes of the players and fans alike.

[TonyJ]

Old ballplayers never die...

[Syd Thrift]

Personally, I'm kind of liking the way injuries seem to look on my sim so far. Again, it doesn't appear to like injuries longer than 365 or so days (I've yet to see someone get the TJ surgery and miss more than 13 months). Still, all the injuries mean that guys aren't playing into their late 50s. There's a guy (that Finnegan Duke guy I mentioned in another thread) who hit 883 homeruns in his career and who was chugging along until he broke his foot at age 38 and missed the entire season. He came back to hit .312 with 39 homeruns the next year despite missing 27 games with other assorted injuries before losing it in 2025. He's also the career leader in hits with 3678. One other guy is over 3,000 but a couple of active players near the ends of their careers are close. The next highest player in homeruns has 640. He's 36 and looks like he's starting to slow down a little. Interestingly, both players were/are high-average hitters with not a lot of patience at the plate (actually, Duke looks like a Don Mattingly type; the only season in which he topped 100 Ks was his last).

Pitching-wise the leaders in wins have 254 and 252 respectively, which sadly is probably pretty realistic given today's pitcher endurance - every generation thinks its 300-game winners are the last, but this time around I really think that Clemens and Maddux are about it. The career ERA leader, one Ferris Douthwaite, went 15-9 his age 39 season and then got put on the shelf at age 40 with back spasms the next year and retired after 4 horrible starts (0-2, 13.1 IP, 8.10 ERA). One really interesting player is the #1 guy in innings pitched, Antonin Hhavanac. This native of the hated Czech Republic experienced a renaissance of sorts - after going just 40-51 his previous 4 seasons and an ERA over 4 each of the last 3, he went 13-8 in 2026 with a 3.62. Most interesting is the way the aptly named "Mad Bomber" has played his entire career to date with one team.

Other oddities...

Paulie Gillepatric went 17-0 with a 1.96 ERA as a starter in 2016. He went an amazing 134-37 in a 7-year stretch in the middle of his career but following a horrendous 2018 (a misleading 13-12 with a 4.75 ERA) he was converted into a reliever and won just 15 games the rest of his career. A fractured skull towards the end of that 17-0 season appears to have been the thing that led his career astray. He was still only 31 after that undefeated year.

One thing I'm seeing a lot of are players getting a bunch of niggling injuries their last 2-3 seasons in the bigs. Often they'll get a bunch in the same year that apparently convince them that the game is too painful to stay with. Great stuff. This is why I'm reticent to play with the injury file too much. I don't *want* players to just say "aw heck, I just think I'll quit because I'm almost 40." I want to document that their bodies told them to stop.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Claybor

Yay, realistic injuries, now our fictional baseball players can be just as much a bunch of P*****s as todays ballplayers are. Bigger, stonger and faster then players in the past, but unable to play through a hangnail. No knock on the game, it is adjustable, and can be turned off, I just get tired of modern day ballplayers and attitudes of the players and fans alike.

Just edit all the arm injuries to "dead arm" and the back and leg injuries to "aches and pains" and you'll be able to simulate baseball of 100 years ago perfectly.

[Claybor]

Or 30 years ago, 40 years ago, 50 years ago, when baseball players played baseball. They get more "fragile" every year.