League Totals and the Low Minors - Why doesn't it work??

[koohead]

I've been messing around with league totals this weekend but for the life of me can't figure out why my Rookie level minor leagues all have ERAs around 1 and AVGs below .200. I've tried the game default, I've entered actual league totals from the 2009 season, and I've tried it with and without the "adjust game engine to match league totals" option, but my stats all seem to be way pitching friendly. I don't see this type of discrepency at the other levels, so why the problem at the lowest level? Even reading the manual I see that it was mentioned that the option box may not work for the lowest of levels but figured me entering actual league totals from the 2009 season would help with it. Anyone have any ideas?
Oh, and yes, I have a MLB universe with all the right number of teams at the right levels.

[gord]

I have noticed the exact same thing for several iterations of the game. Rookie leagues are incredibly pitching-heavy and it's hard to evaluate your hitters at this level.

[Markus Heinsohn]

The problem is that the ratings of players at this level is sometimes so low (depends on the league) that the engine has a hard time calculating proper results. This will be fixed in OOTP 11 since players start out with higher ratings when being drafted.

[Cryomaniac]

Will it be that the AI wont draft people who are 1-1-1, or will it be that there are no 1-1-1 players?

And wouldn't it be better if the engine could actually handle all sorts of ratings?

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

Will it be that the AI wont draft people who are 1-1-1, or will it be that there are no 1-1-1 players?

And wouldn't it be better if the engine could actually handle all sorts of ratings?

There are no 1-1-1 players anymore.

Well the engine cannot handle what's not there... no ratings = no good results

[kq76]

I'm curious about this Markus because it was only a couple weeks ago where I was saying in my online league that I wished that amateurs would have higher potentials so we had more hope in them. My question to you now is: when you say overall ratings (you said "overall" in your update thread), are you referring to just the overall potential ratings or just the overall current ratings or maybe even both? In addressing koo's question it sounds like you at least mean the current ratings, but I'm not sure if you also mean potentials.

See, the way I envisioned it was you leave the current ratings alone and you have the potentials higher to start with and then slowly over time the potentials come back to earth for most players while they stay high only for the superstars. That way you wouldn't really have to change development much at all. You play with the current ratings, however, and it brings up concerns of throwing the balance of a pre-existing leagues out of whack. Anyway, I'm sure this will be thoroughly tested so I myself am not worried, but I am very curious on whether you intend on having potentials start higher too or if it's just the currents that you'll have start higher.

As for the problem brought up in this thread, maybe an alternative way of tackling it is just to magnify the ratings. For example, IIRC we once only had the 1-10 scale then we got the 1-100. Maybe for the minor leagues you should work with decimal places which would effectively, but not actually, bring in a 1-1000 scale.

[Markus Heinsohn]

That would open a big can of worms and would result in a recoding of much of the development engine. I was talking about 'current' ratings, not potential. The player creating & development is so balanced that it keeps the league talent level very constant over time.

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

There are no 1-1-1 players anymore.

Well the engine cannot handle what's not there... no ratings = no good results

This is a rather semantic point, but surely if there are no players generated with 1-1-1 ratings then whatever is the lowest level generated should be labelled 1-1-1.

[DCG12]

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

This is a rather semantic point, but surely if there are no players generated with 1-1-1 ratings then whatever is the lowest level generated should be labelled 1-1-1.

Time to insert Spinal Tap reference

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don't know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.

[Dogzilla]

It's the adjustment to the wooden bat.

[koohead]

Originally Posted by Dogzilla

It's the adjustment to the wooden bat.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!

Okay...I'm somewhat following the ratings discussion. I'm guessing the engine is coded assuming a range of ratings for players in that league, and determining statistics and outcomes based on the assumption that there are x% of 10 rated players and x% of 5 players and lasting x% of 1 players. If that distribution were accurate, then the stats would be comparable to the league totals. But because there are so many more lower rated players at the lower end of the minors the stats will always be skewed in the "negative" direction. So if anything, I would need to make the league totals highly offense-based and run the risk of having a handful of obnoxiously performing studs in order to have the league total "make sense". I think I'll stick with the "adjustment" mentality and just try to compare my players to the league norm (or evaluate based on ratings more at that level vs stats).

[koohead]

dola

I'm guessing leagues who use feeders aren't seeing this problem huh?