Does OOTP Player Development Needs to Be Fixed?

[jarmenia]

Originally Posted by RonCo

I definitely agree that there's no need for a dev engine to have a specified ceiling. I understand the attractivenss of the idea of a listed "true" potential, but there's no real need for it, or value in it in the design of a development model.

If your reaction to this idea is a visceral dislike, then I suggest you think about the difference between true development and scouting. These two models need to be separated. Development needs to work as close to real life as possible across all players, _then_ scouting needs to act as a projection for how _this one player_ is most likely progress _based on all stuff known at the time of the projection_.

Scouts deal in projected peaks. The dev engine itself does not _need_ it at all.

Echoing the same theme through out this thread.

[ctorg]

Originally Posted by RonCo

I don't know that I agree. Teams draft 50+ rounds because:

1) They need to fill minor league teams rosters
2) They know they are very poor at determining who is going to make it, so they draft deep to cover the many cases where they are wrong
3) They know their opponents are drafting that deep, so to not draft that deep would give their opponents a competitive advantage
4) They know those late picks are like lottery tickets. It only takes one or two to pan out and they make it all back.
5) Minor league teams can actually make money
6) I'm sure there are other reasons...

Academically, I agree with the idea that if they could find a more efficient and cost-effective way to find talent they would do it. But I know that not every player drafted into an MLB organization is considered to have a major-league caliber top-end. So realistically, I think the minors exist because it's historically been a good investment, regardless of the number of 5-stars that appear to be available.

Okay, you're right. I was wrong.

[ctorg]

One thing I've thought for a while about scouting reports... maybe they do work this way and I just haven't seen it because I've had scouts turned off for so long, but I think scouting reports should be biased towards previous scouting reports, especially if the same guy is doing the scouting. So if a guy has a big drop in potential, I think the scout would probably see it as a relatively minor one, at least at first. A different scout might see it as a sharper drop, but still may be influenced by others' reports to a degree.

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by ctorg

Okay, you're right. I was wrong.

I'm not saying I'm right or wrong in this case because I really am not qualified to answer. I haven't really studied how real teams rate 30th-round picks, for example. So I fully admit I'm going by the seat of the pants with this opinion.

[kq76]

Originally Posted by RonCo

I definitely agree that there's no need for a dev engine to have a specified ceiling. I understand the attractivenss of the idea of a listed "true" potential, but there's no real need for it, or value in it in the design of a development model.

If your reaction to this idea is a visceral dislike, then I suggest you think about the difference between true development and scouting. These two models need to be separated. Development needs to work as close to real life as possible across all players, _then_ scouting needs to act as a projection for how _this one player_ is most likely progress _based on all stuff known at the time of the projection_.

Scouts deal in projected peaks. The dev engine itself does not _need_ it at all.

Perhaps the dev engine doesn't need them, but if people want to play with scouts off, I think projections _are necessary_, or at least most people will probably want them. Imagine only drafting off of stats and current ratings. I'd feel like I was wasting my time. Perhaps scouting can one day be made so that nobody would even consider turning off scouts, but until that time I think having a way of knowing about potentials is needed.

[andymac]

Originally Posted by kq76

Perhaps the dev engine doesn't need them, but if people want to play with scouts off, I think projections _are necessary_, or at least most people will probably want them. Imagine only drafting off of stats and current ratings. I'd feel like I was wasting my time. Perhaps scouting can one day be made so that nobody would even consider turning off scouts, but until that time I think having a way of knowing about potentials is needed.

Why? Most console games get by without them, or at least with very generic versions of them (something like Potential: B+).

[Neags23]

Originally Posted by kq76

Perhaps scouting can one day be made so that nobody would even consider turning off scouts, but until that time I think having a way of knowing about potentials is needed.

Going off of everything I've seen from this version so far, I think it's getting closer to that time.

That being said, I doubt that there will be a time when 100% of people will use scouts (unless the option to not use them goes away... which I also doubt).

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by kq76

Perhaps the dev engine doesn't need them, but if people want to play with scouts off, I think projections _are necessary_, or at least most people will probably want them. Imagine only drafting off of stats and current ratings. I'd feel like I was wasting my time. Perhaps scouting can one day be made so that nobody would even consider turning off scouts, but until that time I think having a way of knowing about potentials is needed.

One would then build a "default" projection system -- in this case probably based on the Tango research available.

[Purple Cowboy]

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

I can't think of a baseball example, but Ryan Leaf comes to mind

I imagine that Chase Wright's perceived potential dropped dramatically the day after he gave up those four homers in a row and was immediately sent back down to the minors.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by RonCo

5) Minor league teams can actually make money

These days, perhaps. But in the past, minor league baseball was often not a profitable enterprise, especially at the lower classifications.

Originally Posted by RonCo

So realistically, I think the minors exist because it's historically been a good investment, regardless of the number of 5-stars that appear to be available.

Well, the relationship between the majors and minors is a long and rather complicted one. And MLB has, from time to time, complained about the amount of money it pours into player development for what seems like a very small return on investment.

A good example of that happened in 1990, when the majors and minors had to hammer out a new Professional Baseball Agreement (the agreement which spells out the exact nature of the major-minor relationship). The majors complained they were spending too much on the minors for too little return. At the AAA level, the minor club was only responsible for 3% of the team's payroll; the MLB parent was responsible for paying the other 97%. In 1989 MLB clubs were spending, on average, $5.5 million each on their minor league operations (it ranged, according to MLB, from a low of $4.3 million to a high of $8.9 million). This in return for only about one in ten minor leaguers ever playing a game in the majors, and only one in fifty lasting more than six years in the majors.

MLB wanted financial concessions. The minors were saying no. As a result, it looked like a serious split between the majors and minors was imminent.

Triple-A clubs were talking about splitting off and forming a third major league; the MLBPA was considering arguing that if no new PBA was reached the minor league players would be free agents; and MLB was talking about taking all its minor league players and setting up training camps at their spring training facilities and scores of towns would be without minor league baseball. You can find articles in The Sporting News and The New York Times about the dire state the major-minor relationship was in at the time.

As it turned out, in Dec. of 1990 a new PBA was reached. The majors got some of their financial concessions. Minor league officials estimated that MLB clubs would save at least $100,000 a year, while minor league clubs would end up paying about $25,000 more in Class A to perhaps $100,000 more at the AAA level to run their operations.

There's a long history built up in the current minor league system so it's difficult to just throw all that aside and build from scratch an entirely new system. There are a lot interests which want to keep the current system, whatever its inefficiencies, in place.

[kerouac]

First off, I'm a long-time lurker and first-time poster

Second, I'm a new OOTP 8 owner and have only gone through about 6 seasons, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

I've read this thread through about the 9th page, and am at work, so I replied without completing it, and apologize in advance if I repeat someone else's post.

Based on what I've read, the developer didn't state that stats (performance) are the ONLY thing that determines talent changes, but are one component of it. I would say that makes sense, because different people react differently to success and/or failure; by tinker with batting stances, or pitching motions, or increases/decreases in confidence, plate patience, etc.; and these reactions could change one's abilities and potential.

Also, I haven't seen anyone comment on this aspect of it, but keep in mind that in baseball, everything truly is relative. It's not like track performers who compete against a track and a stopwatch. These are people competing against each other, so while a person's individual abilities may remain close to the same, they may vary widely when compared to other people at one's position, given the player shuffling and development of others.

Now, if a guy approaching his peak was hitting .325 and on pace for a 50+ homer season, and overnight turns into a .215 hitter who won't hit but more than 4-5 homers a year, and is entirely random, that could be a problem if it is a common occurrence. This is where my "newness" comes into play, because I haven't seen that happen yet, although that doesn't mean it hasn't happened (and I missed it) or it won't happen in the future.

Anyway, this is a fascinating discussion to read, and I'm glad to add my 2 cents (sorry for the length).

[sjshaw]

So I'm taking away from this thread that we should only draft players with high work ethic and intelligence ratings and keep them in A ball where they can put up stunning numbers until they fill out, at which point they can be brought up.

Good performance and no injuries = no dev hits, right Markus?

Suuuuuuure. I've got 5 seasons under my belt that indicate the exact opposite.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by RonCo

I don't understand. Yelding was crappy from the moment he showed up, and was crappy in the minors. He played only because he had blazing speed. He was never considered to be a good ball player. Everything you heard was, "he'll be great if he can just learn to hit."

I specifically remember Yelding having one really, really good season in like AAA and sabermetrician Brock Hanke dropping a load over him. Then again, that was the same book where he recommended the Yankees bat Kevin Maas leadoff.

No, this would be a bad way to model Gonzo. He was another guy who had cruddy early numbers but played through them because he was considered to have good talent. Other than his 33-yo season, his numbers fit a perfectly normal development curve that would be just as well modeled with a better process that was fueled by ratings adjustment rather than movement based on stats.

Again, I do not disagree that there are many other better ways to model player development

Also, I'm not sure that Gonzo had a "normal" track of player development. He basically stayed the same between the ages of 23 and 30, then had a big year in his age-31 season, had the one huge age-33 season, and then went back to his age-31 level for a couple of years. One way one could model that would be to say that the age-33 season was an aberration provided a bump to his ratings that offset normal decline over the next 2 seasons. I'm definitely not saying it's the *only* way, but it's definitely *a* way, and I am not a fan of throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater with this.

I don't think we disagree so much on this. I want a *lot* of variables to influence player development, and for stats to be one of them. Actually, I'd like stats to be a very minor influence, the way I'd like things like morale to be a very minor influence. I'd like to see just enough there that an astute player can occasionally take advantage of this, but not nearly as much influence as stats have right now and not even so much that it turns into a way one can consistently "game" the system. Heck, I wouldn't mind seeing BMI being a factor, and nearly as large a factor as stats, which should tell you about how small a factor I think stats should be.

I do think that stats should have a bigger effect in one way, and that's with young players in the minor leagues. If a team decides to play guys above their level of ability a la the Kansas City Royals in the 90s and early 2000s or the Seattle Mariners right now, they should expect to see a lot of busted prospects.

I think they are equal.

I think that fixing pitching (and again, I don't mean by dropping the current system and adding in a pitch and physics-based system, although if the game doesn't go that route within the mid-ranged future somebody else will and it'll be left in the dust) solves about half of this other problem and that therefore makes it about 3 times bigger. Also, the myriad problems with pitchers make their career stats come out bad, and not just to people who read Tangotiger a lot:

- I have a guy in my deadball era league with something like a 12-to-1 K/W ratio, which is just insane for that era. I mean, it's cool that he's a good pitcher, but guys who ended up with a lot of IPs have not been able to maintain that sort of ratio until very recently (I think Bret Saberhagen was the first man who came close)

- Additionally, pitchers manage to pitch through a lot more seasons than in real life, which creates a ton of guys with 240-245 won/loss records. That's just asinine. Almost as asinine as hitters in historical leagues ending with 900 homeruns, actually. Mediocre pitchers do not get 500 career decisions because eventually they get hurt and the difference between mediocrity to replacement level is a lot closer than the drop from greatness to mediocrity.

- And then on top of that, you get guys coming out of the draft projected as middle relievers, which is even more asinine than having 10 guys in your historical leagues with 240+ wins and losing records.

It's a huge problem, and just because you haven't decided to make it your pet problem doesn't make it any less of one.

Back to the rest of the discussion... I also agree wholeheartedly with the idea of removing, or at least mostly removing, potential altogether. Scouts have long talked about a guy with "the baseball face" who "will fill into his body". That's nice, but it just doesn't seem to me like an accurate way of defining how good a player might be when they're 27. I will say that if the game went this route it'd have to be careful... gap power at a young age ought to translate into real power, patience at lower levels might not translate into patience in the bigs, especially if that patience isn't combined with a reason for pitchers to not throw the players strikes

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by ctorg

Okay, you're right. I was wrong.

Another aspect of that that wasn't mentioned and that isn't likely to be part of the game any time soon is that in most seasons a team is lucky if it signs half of its draft picks. Most late-round picks aren't so much the Mike Piazza sign him because his dad is friends with the major league manager types as they are high schoolers and underclassmen who are likely to go to/go back to college and the occasional straight-out athlete (Heisman Award winner/crappy NBA point guard Charlie Ward was drafted, for example) who just maybe might want to give baseball a try. Also, there's that need to make sure the rookie league club has a utility infielder, backup catcher, and so on. That's got to be the toughest job in baseball, telling one of those kids not to get his hopes up because he's only going to be needed to cover injuries until the next draft class comes out.

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

I don't think we disagree so much on this.

I'm sure if we were just sitting around and talking we would probably agree on way more things than we disagree on. And I'm not even sure if our areas of "disagreement" are very far apart.

I think that fixing pitching (and again, I don't mean by dropping the current system and adding in a pitch and physics-based system, although if the game doesn't go that route within the mid-ranged future somebody else will and it'll be left in the dust) solves about half of this other problem and that therefore makes it about 3 times bigger.

... snip ...
It's a huge problem, and just because you haven't decided to make it your pet problem doesn't make it any less of one.

Actually, the pitching model is one of my pet projects--one I gave most of my summer and fall of 2007 attempting to resolve. Over the past year I have spent considerably more of my time on the pitching engine than the development engine (though, to a degree, the two are intertwined). I consider these two items to be the most important elements of OOTP that should be worked on. So, though I weight them equally, I'll agree with either priority. This thread was about development, so I spent my time discussing development.

And, realize that the second bullet in your list (guys pitching long enough to register too many wins) is probably a development problem -- not a pitching model problem.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by RonCo

One would then build a "default" projection system -- in this case probably based on the Tango research available.

Good idea there.

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by injury log

Tango's data only covers MLB; there is absolutely no reason to think the model applies to minor leaguers- it would be ridiculous to analyse data on the top 1% of a population and hope the conclusions would apply to the other 99%.

I decided that I need to respond to this, just because it's an argument that comes up several times and is not correct. It is, in fact, quite normal to use very small sample sizes to adequately analyze entire populations. Small sample sizes are the entire foundation of proper polling ("good" national polls are often made up on less than 1,000 people and are considered accurate with a 95% confidence factor if the sample has been properly designed). The challenge is to ensure your sample population is comprised of a group that is truly representative of the entire population. In this case, we're attempting to find a population of baseball players who are representative of all players who played baseball.

The Tango data has a few areas of concern here, which I'll touch on. But realize that Tango data is definitely "correct" in that it is real and is taken from a sample that consists of all qualifying baseball players who played from 1919-1999. This is a pretty large number of baseball players. If you are going to turn your back on the idea of using Tango as your backbone I figure, even with the sample issues below, you really ought to be replacing it with a system supported by research that is at least as good as Tango's.

Issues related to the Tango data:

Selective Sampling: Those players in the sample were considered good enough that a manager played them enough to qualify. There certainly exists a chance that people who make the majors develop differently than people who do not, but realize there also exists a chance that all baseball players do develop in the same basic fashion. Since we have no other data to fall back on, we get to use our human intuition on what we think is the right bet. Personally, if I were forced to bet my house on which was more correct, I would bet on the data we've got as being right because as you look at the breakout of skill acquisition and degradation, it just makes sense in the big picture. Again, though...that last is my opinion.
Regression: In order to remove an element of random chance, Tango regresses the raw data to mean. There are always arguments that suggest one level of regression is better than the next. This influences the shape of the curves a bit, and could be tweaked one way or the other a little in order to enhance gameplay without drawing too many complaints from statistical wonks.
Apples & Oranges: Pitcher data (especially) is based on slightly different parameters than pure OOTP rating schemes are, hence require a bit of leeway in their application. This is why I really have not pressed really hard to have the curves match perfectly, just that the shapes are proper. This is why OOTP users are moderately comfortable with hitters--the shapes match Tango pretty well. Someday maybe we'll get there with pitchers.

I hope no one would point to Tango and say "That's the bible." I know Tango himself would not. But it is the best real data we have. I have yet to see any argument to go a different direction that seems to be based on anything beyond vaporous thoughts of how things "ought to work."

The closest we get is the very fine work Garlon has done with historicals, which is designed at the high level around the thought of "force the stats that really happened in 1922 to happen in 1922." Personally, I think that's the wrong way to go unless your goal is to design an air-tight historical sim and nothing else. But though I wouldn't write the game around it (I prefer a game the is based on sound processes rather than constrained by forced outcomes) I respect the idea immensely and find his work to be impeccable.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by RonCo

And, realize that the second bullet in your list (guys pitching long enough to register too many wins) is probably a development problem -- not a pitching model problem.

IMO it's a problem with the way the game assigns injuries. Catchers have a similar but less-documented issue.

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

IMO it's a problem with the way the game assigns injuries. Catchers have a similar but less-documented issue.

I'm sure you could use injuries to blunt the development issue, but the data I've taken in the past says pitchers' development path in v2007 is not correct--and extends out a bit too long over the entire population of a league's pitchers.

[endgame]

Originally Posted by RonCo

I'm sure you could use injuries to blunt the development issue, but the data I've taken in the past says pitchers' development path in v2007 is not correct--and extends out a bit too long over the entire population of a league's pitchers.

I recall you looking at this specific aspect of development, and perhaps there's been a change. This can't be addressed on the front end with an adjustment to the default aging modifiers?