[gmo]

In playing out games I was noticing it seemed like there were an inordinate number of opposite field home runs. My team's sluggers were predominantly listed as "pull" type hitters, yet I saw a lot of pokes going out the other way. Initially I just figured going to the opposite field was grabbing my attention so it appeared too common but nothing was really out of whack. Plus, I didn't really know what to consider "out of whack" since I was not very familiar with any directional hitting/fielding stats.

I assumed this had been examined, but searching on the board under hitter type, spray, pull, normal yielded only a couple explanations of what those types should mean. I still figure that somebody has done this before, but since you can with OOTP, I decided to experiment with a test league. I controlled all the fielder ranges, pitcher handedness, and batter handedness. I varied the hitters to be either all pull, all spray, or all normal. I looked at initially only outfield putouts since I wasn't sure what fielding stats to examine for IF and don't know of a way to account for anything beyond fielding stats. I found that regardless of hitter type the percentages of outfield putouts were constant for each OF position. In other words, whether all the hitters were pull, spray, or normal, RH hitters had ~31.5%, ~39.5%, and ~29% of OF putouts go to LF, CF, and RF respectively, and LH hitters had ~27.5%, ~38%, and ~34.5% of OF putouts go to LF, CF, and RF respectively.

Those numbers appear about right in the universal sense compared to one resource I found (http://www.baseballstuff.com/btf/sch...lding_opps.htm ) showing over a period LH pitchers having 27.9%, 39.7%, and 32.4% of OF outs by LF, CF, and RF respectively, and RH pitchers having 32.4%, 39.3%, and 28.3% of OF outs by LF, CF, and RF respectively. But shouldn't hitter type have some effect in the game? Is hitter type just eye candy? Does hitter type affect hits but not outs? Is examining it this way useless? Is my methodology flawed? Just curious.

[Treches]

Eye candy, just like the pitch types.

[Cowboys3356]

Yes I don't think it has an impact on gameplay beyond the play by play. I have had plenty of "spray hitters" hit 50 homers so I don't think it really means anything.

[gmo]

Well, hitter type being currently just eye candy is reassuring in the sense that my data certainly were showing that to be the case. On the other hand, it is disappointing the attribute is meaningless. It would seem to be very simple to have three pull, spray, normal "where's it hit?" schemes for each handed hitter type rather than just one.

Presumably the attribute is in the game because there is it least a hope or intention to utilize it in the future. You can also get into whether, either with pull/normal/spray or as a separate attribute, you should include hitter fly/ground ball tendencies. The pitcher ground ball percentage as addressed in another recent thread appears to maybe be more than just eye candy.

It would be nice if these things and such like pitch types were meaningful as they are in RL... Derek Lowe gets lots of ground ball outs, Raffy Palmeiro now essentially only yanks the ball. But would it be easy incorporate it and account for wanting to "try" to say pitch a double play ground ball, hit a sacrifice fly, or hit behind a runner at second with none out? For instance, right now you can play the infield in to try to keep a runner on third from scoring on a ground ball to SS, 2B, or 1B, but presumably at the price of making a hit through the infield more likely (by reducing IF ranges?). However, the runner action is set by the infield - you cannot send the runner on contact and force a play at the plate with the IF in. I can imagine pitches, hitter types, etc can be tough to program completely. The stats work out in the long run, so when I sim a season, I don't care about this stuff, but playing out a game it matters to me.

[ctorg]

I think Markus said that it affects where the guy hits the ball most often, but this might only be in cases when the ball stays in the park, or perhaps only for outs.

[Steve Kuffrey]

Just like in real life, spray hitters more often go the other way, pull hitters pull the ball more often, and normal hitters
produce the average distribution of hit directions. The numbers don't "always" play out like this but this is from what Markus told me.

[gmo]

Originally posted by Steve Kuffrey
Just like in real life, spray hitters more often go the other way, pull hitters pull the ball more often, and normal hitters produce the average distribution of hit directions. The numbers don't "always" play out like this but this is from what Markus told me.

Hmmm. That is what I had figured originally upon seeing that player attribute. But my experiments show that, at least in OF putouts, it does not have an effect. I ran multiple 8-team league seasons for each setup of all the hitters set to one type and to one handedness, so I did not just compare 3 fluke seasons. Averaged over all those seasons the percentage of OF putouts by each OF position did vary with batter handedness but did not vary at all by hitter type for each handedness.

In just averaging over the seasons for only one team when all hitters were RH, the percentage of IF assists by each IF position did not vary either among the pull, normal, and spray cases. I can say nothing at all about hits, but unless I've really screwed something up somehow the OF data and a taste of the IF data say hitter type isn't doing anything. Oh well, minor problem if it is one.

[kingpin1976]

Originally posted by gmo
Hmmm. That is what I had figured originally upon seeing that player attribute. But my experiments show that, at least in OF putouts, it does not have an effect. I ran multiple 8-team league seasons for each setup of all the hitters set to one type and to one handedness, so I did not just compare 3 fluke seasons. Averaged over all those seasons the percentage of OF putouts by each OF position did vary with batter handedness but did not vary at all by hitter type for each handedness.

In just averaging over the seasons for only one team when all hitters were RH, the percentage of IF assists by each IF position did not vary either among the pull, normal, and spray cases. I can say nothing at all about hits, but unless I've really screwed something up somehow the OF data and a taste of the IF data say hitter type isn't doing anything. Oh well, minor problem if it is one.

Damn I wish I had that much time on my hands

[Crapshoot]

I actually am not a big fan of having things like this for eye candy purposes- I like having information that I can use, and this could potentially detract from it. Again, it would be wonderful to see the game engine develop of this...