Road to Release 6: A Trip into History

[battists]

Road to Release 6: A Trip into History
Bernard Malamud wrote, "The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology." It's a sentiment shared by a wide variety of baseball fans, as evidenced by how many of our customers enjoy playing historical simulations. Today's Road to Release focuses on some of the improvements to our historical simulation engine in OOTP 11. (As usual, click on thumbnail to see a larger version of the picture!)

Historical Replay Accuracy Screen
Many historical simmers want a simulation experience that differs from what happened in the real world, but was at the same time similar in historical accuracy. In OOTP 11, we have added a new Historical Accuracy page specifically with these users in mind. When you play a historical league, the Historical Accuracy page will gradually get filled with a comparison of several key statistics between your simulated season and the actual real-world season from the same year!



For example, in the image above, we have performed a simulation from 1976-1984, using out-of-the-box historical settings. The image above describes how our simulated seasons compare to those true seasons. So, at one easy glance, you can have a sense of how close to the real world your simulated season was!

Improved Historical Settings and Wizard
In previous versions, historical options were kind of scattered through the game creation process. We've collected everything into a new Historical Settings tab that covers just about everything in one handy place:



Additionally, when you use the Historical League Wizard now, there is a nice little recap for each season in history!



Historical Improvements
Of course, improvements to historical simulations aren't just limited to new and improved screens. Here are some of the other behind-the-scenes historical changes that might interest you history buffs:

• We have added a new Line Drive Double Play Modifier. This new modifier, combined with the old ground ball DP Modifier, now allows us to have our total league double-play rates match history every season. A side effect of this is that our scoring rates are also more accurate to history each season.
• Spritze and Garlon have neutralized the defensive stats for each season for every player in history. This was all done based on Bill James' work in his book "Win Shares." Some of the things that they tackled included:
  1. Calculated estimated defensive innings for all players 1871-1953. (Real defensive innings are already in Lahman for 1954-present)
  2. Adjusted for balls in play against a team. Teams that had great strikeout-pitching staffs therefore had fewer balls in play for the defense behind them to make.
  3. Adjusted double-plays by comparing a team's actual double-plays versus their expected double-plays.
  4. Adjusted for team BABIP against. This is a specialized BABIP factor which essentially accounts for Defensive Efficiency. Players on good defensive teams get a boost.
  5. Adjusted for left-handed pitching. Left-handed pitching affects the fielding stats of third basemen, first basemen, and second basemen.
  6. Adjusted Flyballs/Groundballs. Teams that had flyball-pitching staffs had their outfielders' putouts slightly reduced and their infielders' stats slightly increased.
  7. The end result of this is that players with the best abilities end up with the best defensive stats per 9 innings played. Much has been said by stat people about Derek Jeter's defense at SS throughout his career. Well, after Spritze and Garlon neutralized all of the fielding stats, it turns out that Jeter has been the worst defensive SS in the AL nine times in his career!
• We've added a new database expressly for handling league totals/modifiers in the first year of a sim, with the result that first year of a sim is more accurate than ever, and users can now run long-term sims using the "1-year recalc" feature! (You can see in the Historical Accuracy screenshot above how accurate the first season was!)

All-Time Baseball Greats Quick-Start
We always love it when the community contributes to the game, and over the years forum-members have added a lot to OOTP. This year is no different, as we've elected to package Cooperstown's "All-Time Baseball Greats" quick-start with the game! Fans of baseball have discussed, argued and feuded over players from different eras and how they compare. This quick-start by OOTP community member Cooperstown allows you to have some fun playing with the best players throughout MLB history. Now the ultimate Murderer's Row features DiMaggio, Ruth, Mantle, Gehrig, and Maris! The new Gashouse Gang features Hornsby, Musial, Pujols, Medwick, and Hafey! How about the upstart Mariners with Boone, A-Rod, Junior, and Martinez with Ichiro leading off?

This quick-start has the best players in history for each major league franchise. There are 40 players for each team - 25 position players and 15 pitchers. Players were chosen based on several factors; most emphasis was given to a single year (career) performance. For competitive balance, players were chosen for teams as long as they played at least a partial year for the franchise. The computer AI has set the lineups and rotations.

Preorder OOTP 11 Today!
We hope you're enjoying the Road to Release. We have some more enjoyable features planned, but there won't be THAT many more! Preorder your copy now!

Preorder now for Windows/Mac or for Linux!

Previous Road to Release Articles
If you missed one of the previous RTR articles, here are some quick links for you:

• Road to Release 1: The Interface Tutorial
• Road to Release 2: Player Comparison, Manager Notes, and Single Game Records
• Road to Release 3: Drafting realism like you've never seen before!
• Road to Release 4: Making History with OOTP 11
• Road to Release 5: New Skin, Operation Sports Preview, and a Few More Tidbits

[megamanmatt]

Don't suppose you might have a syringe so I can just pipe this straight into my blood stream would you?

[Gavyl]

The recap is really cool!

[Faaip De Oiad]

You guys have been busy, well done.

[JackRules1]

I'm a fictional player (well, I'm not fictional, but my dynasty is), but this may get me to take a shot at playing some historical leagues. Coopertown's quick start seems very interesting. Thanks for all the hard work, everyone!

[bosunmate]

I'm strictly a Historical player so i can't express how excited i am to start, hurry up opening day....

[Bobbuttons]

I recall that in the last version, if you were doing a historical sim (which is what I use OOTP for in nearly all my solo leagues) I ran into the following problem:

I sim through the entire history of baseball to around present day, where I will take over a team. When I was playing the previous versions, up to 6.5 or so, I believe, I would easily be able to create a version of myself at the proper age and enter him into the league. I prefer that my OOTP persona has playing experience before becoming a manager/GM. Since the addition of being able to recalculate stats every year or over a two or three year period, I haven't been able to do that. The game reads that my created player has no stats for a given year in the database, so it re-rates him with garbage ratings at the end of each year. So he'll have a little start, be a highly rated prospect, then ratings crash and he's released and retired within 2 years.

I hope a workaround has been thought of.....

[Juiceman612]

Wow, love the new historical accuracy screen and the recap screen is really cool as well.

I'm a little confused on the 1-year recalc - is that something built-in or an option we'll have to check?

[battists]

Originally Posted by Juiceman612

Wow, love the new historical accuracy screen and the recap screen is really cool as well.

I'm a little confused on the 1-year recalc - is that something built-in or an option we'll have to check?

This was always there, it's in the game options:

"Determines the base to be used for player ratings recalculations. You can choose 1, 3, or 5 years. For example, using 3-year recalc in 1988 means that player ratings will be recalculated based on 1987+1988+1989 statistics."

OOTP Baseball Manual - Options Page

However, the 1-year recalc never worked very well for long-term sims, and now it will. Other historical fans may be able to better explain.

[robc]

Originally Posted by Bobbuttons

I recall that in the last version, if you were doing a historical sim (which is what I use OOTP for in nearly all my solo leagues) I ran into the following problem:

I sim through the entire history of baseball to around present day, where I will take over a team. When I was playing the previous versions, up to 6.5 or so, I believe, I would easily be able to create a version of myself at the proper age and enter him into the league. I prefer that my OOTP persona has playing experience before becoming a manager/GM. Since the addition of being able to recalculate stats every year or over a two or three year period, I haven't been able to do that. The game reads that my created player has no stats for a given year in the database, so it re-rates him with garbage ratings at the end of each year. So he'll have a little start, be a highly rated prospect, then ratings crash and he's released and retired within 2 years.

I hope a workaround has been thought of.....

I know that this wouldn't be convenient but what if you exported him just before the recalc and then reimported him after the recalc?

Would that preserve your ratings and his accumulated stats?

[Bobbuttons]

Originally Posted by robc

I know that this wouldn't be convenient but what if you exported him just before the recalc and then reimported him after the recalc?

Would that preserve your ratings and his accumulated stats?

That is an interesting question. I just may try that and find out. That's thinking outside the box.

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by Bobbuttons

I recall that in the last version, if you were doing a historical sim (which is what I use OOTP for in nearly all my solo leagues) I ran into the following problem:

I sim through the entire history of baseball to around present day, where I will take over a team. When I was playing the previous versions, up to 6.5 or so, I believe, I would easily be able to create a version of myself at the proper age and enter him into the league. I prefer that my OOTP persona has playing experience before becoming a manager/GM. Since the addition of being able to recalculate stats every year or over a two or three year period, I haven't been able to do that. The game reads that my created player has no stats for a given year in the database, so it re-rates him with garbage ratings at the end of each year. So he'll have a little start, be a highly rated prospect, then ratings crash and he's released and retired within 2 years.

I hope a workaround has been thought of.....

Couldn't you make some stats up for him and put them in the database?

[fhomess]

Originally Posted by Bobbuttons

I recall that in the last version, if you were doing a historical sim (which is what I use OOTP for in nearly all my solo leagues) I ran into the following problem:

I sim through the entire history of baseball to around present day, where I will take over a team. When I was playing the previous versions, up to 6.5 or so, I believe, I would easily be able to create a version of myself at the proper age and enter him into the league. I prefer that my OOTP persona has playing experience before becoming a manager/GM. Since the addition of being able to recalculate stats every year or over a two or three year period, I haven't been able to do that. The game reads that my created player has no stats for a given year in the database, so it re-rates him with garbage ratings at the end of each year. So he'll have a little start, be a highly rated prospect, then ratings crash and he's released and retired within 2 years.

I hope a workaround has been thought of.....

Honestly, this seems like a pretty special case. Isn't the workaround just to check your ratings before the recalc, then edit them back right after it? Or to turn off recalc and let the historical players develop in the game?

EDIT: and I shoud've read further... :P

[Syd Thrift]

Although I play fictional, I do so using historical infos. That first screenie is really going to help; doing 1933 in Thriftlon, for example, I started out going "WTF THIS IS THE 30S AND THE OFFENSE IS WAY TOO LOW GAME BORKEN" and I had to go in and manually calculate all the stuff the game looks at to realize that it was actually really, really close. Now with one screen I can decide whether to yell at Markus on the Internet or not.

[Syd Thrift]

dola,

Now that we have such solid year to year numbers for steals and so on, can we get rid of the era modifiers, by which I mean those little drop down boxes where you can set stealing frequency from "Very Low" to "Very High"? 99% of the issues with historical accuracy I see come in a year where the game changes one of these settings and also recalcs the league totals.

[Cornelius McGillicuddy]

This is one feature I really like. But I'm still confused about how the game handles players from different eras. Say for example I set up a game in 1960 with players from 1900 through 1980. How can pitching stamina, home run totals, etc be equalized to 1960?

[Curtis]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

…doing 1933 in Thriftlon, for example, I started out going "WTF THIS IS THE 30S AND THE OFFENSE IS WAY TOO LOW GAME BORKEN"

I know I hate it when my game gets borken.

[RchW]

• We have added a new Line Drive Double Play Modifier. This new modifier, combined with the old ground ball DP Modifier, now allows us to have our total league double-play rates match history every season. A side effect of this is that our scoring rates are also more accurate to history each season.

I hope this is available for fictional leagues too. DP rates have a huge effect on realism, even for so-called "fictional" leagues.

[Bobbuttons]

Where the next RTR? We were told we'd get one at least every other day... it's been 3 days now. I'm freaking out, man. I need my fix!

[battists]

Originally Posted by Bobbuttons

Where the next RTR? We were told we'd get one at least every other day... it's been 3 days now. I'm freaking out, man. I need my fix!

Posted now. Sorry, had to drive to NY.