More stable relationships between ablities would be nice

[Joshv02]

Players like this really shouldn't exist.

Here is a switch hitter who is a "normal" hitter (i.e., not spray/pull) who is rated 8 5 6 5 5 (avg/2b/hr/bb/k).

He also is 9/10/10 in speed/stealing/baserunning.

Now, this could be fine -- he is average at just about all aspects of hitting. But, because of the way (it appears) that the engine works, he produces a line like this:

677 PAs: 22 HRs and 9 doubles. (His minor league numbers were similar, which shows that the park factors aren't playing a large role.)

I think players who are good enough atheletes to be a 9/10/10 in speed should be good enough to hit for at least league average doubles power if they have league average HR power. More often than not, they should have > avg 2B power.

Overall, I think this has to do with the overall player generation engine. This has gotten much better over the past few versions (OFers who have good range almost universally have >5 speed, and usually are 7+), but this is one place where I'd like to see it improved.

Thx.

[rcbuss]

Originally Posted by Joshv02

Players like this really shouldn't exist.

Here is a switch hitter who is a "normal" hitter (i.e., not spray/pull) who is rated 8 5 6 5 5 (avg/2b/hr/bb/k).

He also is 9/10/10 in speed/stealing/baserunning.

Now, this could be fine -- he is average at just about all aspects of hitting. But, because of the way (it appears) that the engine works, he produces a line like this:

677 PAs: 22 HRs and 9 doubles. (His minor league numbers were similar, which shows that the park factors aren't playing a large role.)

I think players who are good enough atheletes to be a 9/10/10 in speed should be good enough to hit for at least league average doubles power if they have league average HR power. More often than not, they should have > avg 2B power.

Overall, I think this has to do with the overall player generation engine. This has gotten much better over the past few versions (OFers who have good range almost universally have >5 speed, and usually are 7+), but this is one place where I'd like to see it improved.

Thx.

One could say that he hit 17 gappers last year, but turned nine of them into triples with his amazing speed. Even so, 17 (non-HR) XBH in 623 AB is much less than one would otherwise expect from your usual hitter. With his ratings (8565) in 2013, I have him pegged for a park-neutral 24 2B/3B and 22 HR in his 623 AB. So he hit seven less 2B/3B than we would expect, but hit the 22 HR that we would've expected. This could be a chance occurrence.

Looking at the ratings for this year's IOSBL ammy draft, there are a few hitters with Gap Talent < Power Talent (e.g., 5-6, 6-8, 6-9, 6-10, 7-10), but the vast majority have Gap =, >, or >>> Power. In Henriquez, you have the combination of great speed, Gap < Power, and what could be a fluke low-2B season for him, all of which really helps to skew his extra-base hit distribution for 2013 (8-9-22).

I also noticed a very strong correlation between Gap Talent and Speed, though there are exceptions (from this year's draft class alone, your Edgar Martinezes: Gap 7-Speed 1, 4-1, 9-4), and your speedy hitters who have a knack for not hitting the XBH (6-8, 7-9).

Players who have such a low 2B+3B/AB ratio almost always hit few HR (e.g., http://www.baseballprospectus.com/dt/thomaro02.shtml, http://www.baseballprospectus.com/dt/nixonot01.shtml, http://www.baseballprospectus.com/dt/bergebi01.shtml, http://www.baseballprospectus.com/dt/youngcy01.shtml). Occasionally, you'll see low-2B/3B, high-HR variants like McGwire, Kingman, but rarely. Henriquez falls somewhere in between.

Henriquez' ratings progression is consistent with his statistical output while in the minors; his gap rating seesawed between 4 and 5 from age 19-24, while his Power went from 1 (age 19) to 6 (age 23), including a Power Talent bump to 6 at age 22. He was consistently hitting more 2B/3B than HR through his age 20 season at AA (2010). In 2011 at AA, at age 21, he "blossomed" or "grew into his frame", as a scout might say, turning some of that gap power into HR-power. The paired progression of these two ratings over time would have the appearance of a young player developing more power as he grew older and stronger, gradually hitting more of his XBH over the wall, instead of just to it.

That said, I agree with Josh, in that Henriquez does seem to have a unique skill set. If there were a lot more like him, I'd be more concerned.

Here's another player from the IOSBL who defies reason (3-10-10-5 ratings):
http://www.invitationonlysports.com/...rts/p1804.html

[swampdragon]

Originally Posted by Joshv02

Players like this really shouldn't exist.

Here is a switch hitter who is a "normal" hitter (i.e., not spray/pull) who is rated 8 5 6 5 5 (avg/2b/hr/bb/k).

He also is 9/10/10 in speed/stealing/baserunning.

Now, this could be fine -- he is average at just about all aspects of hitting. But, because of the way (it appears) that the engine works, he produces a line like this:

677 PAs: 22 HRs and 9 doubles. (His minor league numbers were similar, which shows that the park factors aren't playing a large role.)

I think players who are good enough atheletes to be a 9/10/10 in speed should be good enough to hit for at least league average doubles power if they have league average HR power. More often than not, they should have > avg 2B power.

Overall, I think this has to do with the overall player generation engine. This has gotten much better over the past few versions (OFers who have good range almost universally have >5 speed, and usually are 7+), but this is one place where I'd like to see it improved.

Thx.

That's right, of course. His power should give you doubles off the wall, and his speed should turn some of the singles into doubles. And maybe that is where you adjust. If speed turned singles into doubles at something like the rate it turns doubles into triples, you wouldn't have this anomaly. What's happening is that the speed is turning doubles into triples, and they're not being replaced.

[mauboy]

Eh. Give him another season.

For all you know, he may like stealing second instead of getting doubles?

[mlyons]

Originally Posted by swampdragon

That's right, of course. His power should give you doubles off the wall, and his speed should turn some of the singles into doubles. And maybe that is where you adjust. If speed turned singles into doubles at something like the rate it turns doubles into triples, you wouldn't have this anomaly. What's happening is that the speed is turning doubles into triples, and they're not being replaced.

Well, speed doesn't turn singles into doubles the way it turns doubles into triples. Whereas players who hit lots of triples are almost invariably quite fast (the top 4 this season were Jose Reyes, Carl Crawford, Juan Pierre, and Ichiro Suzuki), speed doesn't really correlate to doubles at all, either positively or negatively. Of the top 10 doubles hitters this season, most had quite average speed, with only two of them (Alfonso Soriano and Brian Roberts) especially noted for being fast. It's worthwhile to note that none of those top 4 triples hitters were in the top 50 leaguewide in doubles. There's a pretty good indication that doubles do indeed get translated into triples by speed without being replaced by singles turning into doubles.

[gmo]

Check out my boy Herme Coronas Jr and his 2B/HR ratio of 0.385 (319/829) for his career. Using the Lahman database through 2004, there are 2229 players with at least 20 doubles and at least 20 HR in their careers. Of those players, the only 2B/HR ratio below 0.5 in Mark McGwire at 0.432, and there are only 11 more players below 0.6, 19 more below 0.7, and 39 more below 0.8.

Granted the whole of the Lahman does not mean all that much as lower 2B/HR ratios are much more common recently, and one example player like mine does not prove anything. But I believe my extreme case is not such an outlier in the game as it would be in MLB and is another like the one presented at the top helping demonstrate there are times when the game fails to produce players with a realistic combination of skills. Gap power seems to be involved in such cases fairly commonly.

Another case that has been discussed is here with a different (too many HR with too few BB). Overall I think the game does pretty well, but this area does still need some work. Do left-handed-throwing catchers and infielders still get created?