I still don't understand overall ratings

[tysok]

Originally Posted by fantom1979

Here is another example I thought of this morning:

Worst Pitcher in the League has a 20 rating
Madison Bumgarner (from post #1) has a 27 rating
Matt Cain (also from post #1) has a 74 rating
Best Pitcher in the League has an 80 rating

So the game rates Bumgarner 9 points from being the worst pitcher in the league, while Matt Cain is 6 points from being the best pitcher in the league, and yet their stuff/control/movement, pitches, and stats show them to be much closer than that.

Well Cain and Bumgarner seem to be that Cain has MLB stats to back up his ratings, make him a higher rated overall than Bumgarner who hasn't. That being a result of the weights used to determine ratings.

While maybe not the entire problem here, maybe it's a high bit of the problem in that particular situation. We look at the individual pieces and see them exactly the same, but Cain is rated far higher because he has used those individual skills in MLB and has proven himself... while Bumgarner has all the skills but hasn't proven it... yet we know that if Bumgarner comes up he'll do the job (assuming scouting is off or on the same for each player) just as well as Cain. It looks ridiculous because the individual ratings equal, but they say Bumgarner sucks... which is ridiculous.
Maybe the problem isn't that overall is tied to the weighting in such a manner, but that the rest of the scouting isn't.

Let's say Cain is correct at an overall 74, and his stuff is 70. I haven't looked back at the screen so I'm just picking numbers.
-Now we have a fictional guy we call John. Behind the scenes (actual rating) his stuff is the same, all is exactly the same as Cain, and he was just drafted.
-John doesn't look great though, he's compared to the rest of his draft class and shown to be one of the best there. But his stuff says he's a 30, and his overall mirrors at 30.
-After he destroys Rookie ball for two weeks we see his overall go to 35 and his stuff go to 35. Outclassing the rest of his rookie ball brethren.
-We move him up to A ball, where he destroys that for two weeks and his stuff moves up to 40 and overall is at 40. Again outclassing his A ball mates.
-We move him up to AA, where he destroys that for two weeks. His stuff moves up to 50 and overall moves up to 50, and again outclasses other AA players.
-We move him up to AAA and he destroys that for 2 weeks. Now we see his stuff at 60 and his overall at 60, and outclasses everyone there as well.
-We move him to to the bigs where he puts up the numbers as well as Cain does and after a few weeks we see his true value at 70 stuff and 74 overall.

My point, perhaps the problem isn't that stats figure so prominently in the overall figure, but that stats don't figure into the rating itself at all.
For some reason we see that Bumgarner has the same ability as Cain in every way, but overall he's crap.
If the scout thinks that taking all into account he's crap, how can he be saying he currently has the individual abilities to be the same guy as Cain? When it comes to the overall rating the scout is acting like the guy has never thrown a pitch in his life... but for his individual ratings he's seeing what the guy will do in the majors.

Just my 2 cents (although by the length I think it may be a full quarter).
It shouldn't just be his overall that's tied to stats.
It shouldn't just be obscuring the ratings alone to get the individual components.
If the guy has the greatest stuff rating (true not scouted) in the world but gets unlucky in his first year of playing rookie ball and strikes out no one - we should see lots of potential, but the current should be pretty darn low. Wouldn't you think? If it's chosen to weight stats high enough.

[fantom1979]

Originally Posted by thamolas

One thing nobody mentioned: I'm fairly certain that with the new model, the number of pitches in a player's arsenal affects overall rating.

I am sure that it does (or at least it should), but as I mentioned in my previous post, even if you add up the players stuff/movement/control, pitches, and stats, the overall rating should not be as far apart as it is for those two pitchers.

[fantom1979]

Originally Posted by tysok

If the guy has the greatest stuff rating (true not scouted) in the world but gets unlucky in his first year of playing rookie ball and strikes out no one - we should see lots of potential, but the current should be pretty darn low. Wouldn't you think? If it's chosen to weight stats high enough.

I have no problem with stats being used in the overall formula, and I have no problem with Cain being rated higher than Bumgarner. I have a problem with the amount that it has Cain rated over him.

Bumgarner is currently has a 4.5 era in AAA, but has him rated slightly above the worst pitcher in the entire league (27 vs 20).

If Bumgarner has great stuff and is getting lit up like a Christmas tree, I have no problems with the game knocking his rating down. IMO, his current rating using just stuff/movement/control, and the pitches he throws would be about a 60. If the game wants to knock off some of his overall rating because he has never pitched in the majors, thats fine. But there is no way he becomes a 27.

A 'single A' pitcher with ratings of: 1 movement, 1 stuff, and 1 control, that throws one pitch with a rating of 1, and has a 14.27 era, has an overall rating of 20. The game is saying that Bumgarner is barely better than this.

[kikker]

The confusion for me is MORE than just pitchers. After the discussion here, I adjusted my AI ratings to be 60% ratings, 25% this season, 10% 1 year ago, 5% 2 years ago. I did this before any of the scenario below happened.

I had a minor league catcher who showed overall rating of 38 and a potential of 67. I moved him to the big leagues to be my backup catcher. Next round of scouting, he becomes overall 22, potential 24.

?

What happened? OK, I still have stats in the equation for overall rating, so I can see that maybe that dropped (although I don't think I want it to). Why did his potential drop? Did Markus say it should be unaffected?

[ambill10]

If I have overall ratings enabled I just stick with 100% Ratings on the evaluation sliders. The stats just make too many people 20/21 overall.

I edited Chris Duncan to be more realistic for a simulation I'm running, but the ratings equivalent of his 2009 stats still makes him a 21 overall with 100% ratings. I mean, he should be considered a below average left fielder, but that should be more of a 35-40 type overall rating, not a 21.

I think I am going to have to turn off overall ratings before they drive me crazy.

[kq76]

*shakes his head at Markus's upcoming patch thread*

How are we going to convince him guys? I really don't want to as I'm behind in too many other things but I feel like we need a comprehensive study that it makes it so blatantly obvious to everybody that he has no choice, but to do something about it. Might as well wait until after the first patch with its changes to potential and let other issues get resolved asap.

I think what it must be is that as long as the league stats are coming out alright, what's he care if there's too many great and awful players and too few average players. Trying to shift those correct league stats to a different group of players might just be something he doesn't want to take on right now. And if so, if he needs or wants time away for awhile, I'm cool with that, I'm sure most of us are. But dang it, sooner or later this should be made to make sense.

Heck, that might not even be needed. Ignoring the overalls, maybe the players making the stats are perfectly in line with reality, it's just that two virtually the same players are rated so differently overalls-wise and it's somehow skewed to the ends of the spectrum. Make two almost identical players have similar overalls, stats and scouts not factoring into it, and maybe we don't care if the distribution looks a little off. I think I'm fine with that. It's stuff that's in my face like players having overalls that there's no way they should that really gets me. At least overalls would be usable then, not mislead you.

What are your thoughts?