2015 - A Year of the Pitcher

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commish
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Re: 2015 - A Year of the Pitcher

Post by commish » Mon Sep 12, 2016 3:18 pm

Lg Lg AVG Lg ERA Year LG Lg ERA Lg AVG
CAN .235 3.08 2015 USA 2.83 .238
CAN .236 3.02 2016 USA 3.20 .234
CAN .233 3.04 2017 USA 3.04 .227
CAN .231 2.99 2018 USA 3.38 .245
CAN .234 2.99 2019 USA 3.40 .237
CAN .234 3.02 2020 USA 3.30 .242
CAN .230 2.91 2021 USA 3.30 .239
CAN .249 3.52 2022 USA 3.35 .242
CAN .250 3.56 2023 USA 3.49 .239
CAN .239 3.29 2024 USA 3.85 .253
CAN .241 3.45 2025 USA 3.69 .248

Sim conducted by Steve on 9-11-2016
In game date of September of 2017
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Al B
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Re: 2015 - A Year of the Pitcher

Post by Al B » Fri Apr 21, 2017 8:07 pm

I’ve made no secret about the fact that I don’t like how anemic our offenses are in this league. Having initially run into considerable resistance to the idea that we should do something about it, I try to limit my protests to about one a season, and only when someone else brings the issue up.

First, let me reiterate: I don’t mind a pitcher’s league. I much prefer a pitcher’s league to the juiced-up home run derby of the ’90s. BUT… this isn’t the type of pitcher’s league that I recognize; it has no historical precedent. The power is there; what’s missing is the singles. The guys with high contact ratings do fine (unfortunately, there are very, very, few of them) but almost everyone else struggles to hit .220… well, you’ve all seen the stats, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know.

Steve recently posted a graphic in Slack, acknowledging that the offenses have not increased at the rate that he predicted they would, but reaffirming his belief that they would get there eventually.

I don’t share his optimism, and yes, I am going to go into excruciating detail as to why.

I don’t want to speak for Steve, but I am presuming he’s basing his prediction on the results of a a couple of tests; one that Mike ran after our first season, and one that Steve himself ran after our third.
Let’s have another look at the results of those tests:

Mike's:
Image

Steve's:
Image

Both tests show that by the end of the testing period, the league batting average will have climbed to… well, still a very low historical level, but something at least approaching levels that have existed at some point in real baseball (as opposed to what we have now, which aren’t even close to levels that have ever existed in real baseball).

But I don’t think those tests are a good indicator of what will happen in this league. To explain why, I have to discuss things like League Totals Modifiers; the mere mention of that phrase should drive any non-dork miles away from this conversation immediately, but alas, there’s no way to explain this without wallowing in the geeky minutiae.

If you don’t know what League Totals Modifiers are or what they do, essentially they are the values which dictate what the league totals will be in an OOTP league. They can be altered by the Commissioner, and they are very powerful. You can add fifty Babe Ruths to a league, and if you keep the league home run totals modifier the same, the fifty Babe Ruths will not increase the number of home runs hit. The fifty Babe Ruths will hit most of the home runs, but they will just be taking home runs away from the non-Babe Ruths; they will not increase the total.

For some reason, when we began the league in 2015, we started out with a low League Totals Modifier for batting average; that is what produced that low average the first year. Since then averages have gone up and down, but for two consecutive years (counting the current half-year) they are lower than they were when we started. That doesn’t give me any confidence that they will get higher and stay higher; it looks more like they are “trending” towards staying close to the “norm” that was established in 2015.

The first line of Mike’s chart is our “real” 2015 totals and the rest are the results of his test. His test does not show a gradual climb towards a higher league batting average. What it shows is a sudden jump in average in both leagues during the first year of the test, and then fifteen consecutive years where the averages move very little, with the CAN average usually in the .245-.250 range and the USA average usually in the .250-.255 range. There’s nothing “gradual” or “trending” about it; it’s one giant leap, followed by year after year of consistency.

Steve’s test shows something similar, but it’s a little harder to see. Steve’s chart shows three years of “real” totals and eight years of “test” totals. In his test, the CAN average barely budges until the test’s fifth year, then it shoots up dramatically for a couple of seasons before dropping down a bit. The USA average, on the other hand, makes its great leap forward in the very first year of the test, and then doesn’t really move a whole lot over the next seven years. This makes it look like the game is moving the League Totals Modifiers differently for each league. But that’s an illusion; OOTP doesn’t use separate League Totals Modifiers for sub-leagues. As far as the program is concerned, the GLBL is one 12-team league, using a single set of modifiers, whether the sub-leagues play against each other or not. So what really happened is that the League Totals Modifier for batting average made a huge jump in the first year of Steve’s test, just as it did in Mike’s, but the jump was masked by the fact that one league became more of a hitter’s league than the other. That happened in Mike’s test, too, but it wasn’t as dramatic a change. Why would one league become more of a hitter’s league? I’m not sure, but remember that when you allow OOTP to take control over all rosters, it will make different roster moves than human managers would. Most likely the program just overcompensated a bit, since in both cases it made the sub-league that was more of a pitcher’s league to begin with into the hitter’s league.

It’s interesting that the big increase in offense happened in the first year of each test. Two times out of two is not “proof” of anything, but it’s a lead worth pursuing. Is it possible that the game behaves differently if you sim a season all the way through in one shot, as opposed to simming in four-day increments? I don’t know why it would, but that’s one possible explanation for why Mike's and Steve's tests produced results that the "real" GLBL is not reproducing.

I’ve done my own tests with fictional leagues, and I’ve seen no indication that the program goes out of its way to “correct” a League Totals Modifier UNLESS you’re using the settings that automatically configure the totals to an actual historical year. Left to its own devices the program will raise a total here and lower a total there but as far as I can see it’s all random, and usually not dramatic. Since the GLBL is not a historical league and does not use historical modifiers, I see no reason to expect anything but very gradual changes that are just as likely to reverse themselves as they are to trend towards anything. I could do more tests, and maybe I will… but at this point you’re either inclined to believe me or not inclined to believe me (or don’t care either way); posting another five charts isn’t going to make much difference.

Bottom line is, I suspect that waiting for offense to increase in this league on its own is rather like standing motionless and waiting for a fly ball to land in your glove. It might land there, but you have a much better chance of catching it if you move towards the ball.

If we want to increase offense in this league, Steve needs to change the batting average modifier. It is an easy thing to do (although I wouldn’t just change it and not run several tests to make sure the change is in the range we want). If that doesn’t happen, get used to these .220-.230 seasons. I don't think they’re going away.

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commish
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Re: 2015 - A Year of the Pitcher

Post by commish » Sat Apr 22, 2017 2:55 pm

Thanks, Al, for posting your thoughts here. I'm interested to learn what others think.

Historically, and currently, all modifiers have been set to 1.00.
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Al B
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Re: 2015 - A Year of the Pitcher

Post by Al B » Sat Apr 22, 2017 3:24 pm

commish wrote:Historically, and currently, all modifiers have been set to 1.00.
OOTP refuses to make anything that simple. For each total, there's a numeric value in one column AND a second column with a percentage. You can change the results by changing either column, or by changing both. The "1.000" you refer to is like a modifier of the modifier; it means that the game will reproduce the number in the left column at 100%. Your columns of 1.000s may remain unchanged but if the values in the columns to the left of them change, so will the league totals.

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