How Does Brooks Robinson Have 2-Star Player Potential?

[chucksabr]

In real life, Brooks Robinson had an 80-win career in which he was top five in MVP voting five times, including winning one, played in 18 All-Star games, and is in the conversation for the top defensive third baseman of all time.

So imagine my surprise when I draft him for my online league team and see that his potential tops out at two stars.

Not only that, but all his defensive metrics are below average except for his arm, and even that is only slightly above average.

See image below.

So what is the more likely explanation here?

• Brooks Robinson was a legitimately bad player IRL for his first four seasons, so once he gets into season five in my online league, his ratings and his performance will improve to more closely reflect real-life levels.
• This version of my online league randomly saddled me with a bad version of Brooks Robinson who will never be better than a two-star player.

Thoughts? Thanks.

[Mike D]

Are Ratings hidden during your draft? Did you draft him on name alone?

[Matt Arnold]

Which it is depends on what the options your league are using are. Are you using recalc or the development engine? What are your ratings, potential ratings, fielding ratings, etc... based on? From that various combination of settings, that will tell you if you're almost certainly going to get a better version of him later on, or whether the only way you'll see a HOF is if he gets extremely lucky in talent change randomness.

[chucksabr]

Originally Posted by Mike D

Are Ratings hidden during your draft? Did you draft him on name alone?

Ha ha ha! It's funny you ask the question exactly this way, because this league is one in which we draft entire last names! I drafted Robinson so I could get Frank, Jackie, Brooks, and several fill-ins at other positions.

[chucksabr]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

Which it is depends on what the options your league are using are. Are you using recalc or the development engine? What are your ratings, potential ratings, fielding ratings, etc... based on? From that various combination of settings, that will tell you if you're almost certainly going to get a better version of him later on, or whether the only way you'll see a HOF is if he gets extremely lucky in talent change randomness.

I'm not the commissioner, but I can tell you we are using 3-year recalc, double the current season. Brooks is a rookie for me right now.

I'm not sure how you mean by what our ratings are based, do you mean recalc vs development engine?

I can also tell you we do not have minors. We have reserve rosters. Not sure how much of a difference that will make ... ?

[Dave Stieb II]

As we grow and develop in this ootp world, I've already learned two things in this thread:

1. Brooks was a really, really, really slow base runner even at 19.

2. I can't take my eyes off your profile photo, chucksabr.

That's very distracting but please don't even consider changing it.

[Matt Arnold]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

I'm not the commissioner, but I can tell you we are using 3-year recalc, double the current season. Brooks is a rookie for me right now.

I'm not sure how you mean by what our ratings are based, do you mean recalc vs development engine?

I can also tell you we do not have minors. We have reserve rosters. Not sure how much of a difference that will make ... ?

Yeah, so if you're using recalc, then presumably in a few years he'll magically develop into a better player. I asked because in historical games you can disable the recalc engine (and rely entirely on the regular development engine), in which case it would be less likely that he improves over time beyond the listed potential.

[Dave Stieb II]

Which wouldn't be all that surprising having glanced at his career stats.


https://www.baseball-reference.com/p...obinbr01.shtml

[Biggio509]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

I'm not the commissioner, but I can tell you we are using 3-year recalc, double the current season. Brooks is a rookie for me right now.

That could explain it but that isn't the driver. There is another option to base potential ratings on ... . If selected recalc period only is selected it will show potential based only on the recalc period which would mean the very first year to 3 years of the career. If it were based on remaining seasons, remaining peak seasons, or peak seasons the potential would be very different. My guess is base potential is set to the recalc period. So as he gets closer to his peaks his potential will rise and probably fall in his late career. If base on recalc period is selected it probably isn't a lot different from current ratings.

[chucksabr]

Originally Posted by Dave Stieb II

As we grow and develop in this ootp world, I've already learned two things in this thread:

1. Brooks was a really, really, really slow base runner even at 19.

2. I can't take my eyes off your profile photo, chucksabr.

That's very distracting but please don't even consider changing it.

I know, right? I'm pretty good looking, ain't I? 😜

[chucksabr]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

Yeah, so if you're using recalc, then presumably in a few years he'll magically develop into a better player. I asked because in historical games you can disable the recalc engine (and rely entirely on the regular development engine), in which case it would be less likely that he improves over time beyond the listed potential.

Whew, that's good news. Thanks.

I suppose there's still an outside chance he develops into a two-star player max anyway? One of those 1 in a 100 or 1 in a 1,000 (or whatever) deals? Even if, I won't sweat that.

[chucksabr]

Originally Posted by Biggio509

That could explain it but that isn't the driver. There is another option to base potential ratings on ... . If selected recalc period only is selected it will show potential based only on the recalc period which would mean the very first year to 3 years of the career. If it were based on remaining seasons, remaining peak seasons, or peak seasons the potential would be very different. My guess is base potential is set to the recalc period. So as he gets closer to his peaks his potential will rise and probably fall in his late career. If base on recalc period is selected it probably isn't a lot different from current ratings.

This is a 15-season league, and in fact I rotated him in beginning with the second season, so I get his first 14 years, i.e., 1955 to 1968 (his top WAR year).

[Biggio509]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

This is a 15-season league, and in fact I rotated him in beginning with the second season, so I get his first 14 years, i.e., 1955 to 1968 (his top WAR year).

How the game calcs potential is based on the setting base potential on. Default I think is on remaining seasons.

So if you have Brooks Robinson in 1955 and the settings are to base potential on recalc period only, it is based only on 1955 to 1957. The top war year won't apply until you get to 1965. Robinson hit .098, .227, and .239 in those years with 3 HRs total. None were a full season of play. So my guess is the setting base potential on recalc period only given him 2 stars. When the game recalcs in 1958, the new period potential is based on would be 1958-1960. You probably will see a huge jump in potential in 1958.

This is an option the league may have chosen. If you had default settings of remaining seasons or remaining peak years it would have calculated the potential based on 1995 to maybe 1974 so the potential would have been much higher.

In the end it doesn't make much difference. OOTP development will only work between recalcs. I think the development engine will raise or lower ratings based on potential in the 3 year period then reset based on the stats of the next 3 year period. So what is happening if you base potential on the recalc period only you have a ceiling of the stats in the period. Essentially Brooks performed like a 2 star in his first 3 season so the potential won't let him develop better than he did. If the setting were whole career or remaining seasons he would probably have 5 star potential which means Brooks could potentially develop faster than in real life and do much better than he did in part time play in 1955 to 1958. So setting potential to recalc period only means nothing whacky happens with young players in the first couple of years where there is a chance if you use remaining seasons a kid develops much faster in real life and is performing like his peak in the second or third year.

[Dave Stieb II]

This makes perfect sense and is very insightful.
I don't play much historical but if I decide to start another game this is important information to consider depending on what I want out of the game.

[chucksabr]

OK, I think I might have gotten a little bit of insight into why Brooks Robinson, an 80-win player according to FanGraphs and a 78-win player in Baseball Reference's eyes, is considered a 2-star potential in my game.

Here is how his real-life stats are reported in my game:



Take a look at the bottom right-hand corner where I have circled his lifetime WAR, according to OOTP:

19.9.

Nineteen-point-nine!

And to be clear, all his lifetime batting stats on this card are a perfect match for his actual stats on FanGraphs or B-R.

I get that OOTP might not necessarily report or calculate WAR in the same way either FG or B-R does. But in what world is a 19.9 WAR a reasonable translation of his real-life WAR of 80?

Is there a reasonable explanation for this?

[Matt Arnold]

In-game real WAR values are heavily skewed, since we don't get advanced data dumps for fielding stats, we don't have anything to base fielding stats on, so end up only being able to assume they're basically an average fielder at best. So anyone who derives the vast majority of their value from defense will show with bad career WAR numbers.

That being said, the historical importer does look at different values when it creates defensive ratings, so I expect when the recalc kicks in, his ratings should be better than that.

[chucksabr]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

In-game real WAR values are heavily skewed, since we don't get advanced data dumps for fielding stats, we don't have anything to base fielding stats on, so end up only being able to assume they're basically an average fielder at best. So anyone who derives the vast majority of their value from defense will show with bad career WAR numbers.

That being said, the historical importer does look at different values when it creates defensive ratings, so I expect when the recalc kicks in, his ratings should be better than that.

OK, here is another data point:

In another game I am running on my OOTP, Brooks Robinson's career WAR on his real life OOTP card is listed as 46.7.

Why does one game show Brooks with a 46.7 real life WAR, and another game show Brooks with a 19.9, even though all the counting stats are exactly the same?

Bonus questions:

• If my one game I'm concerned about is showing Brooks to be a 19.9 WAR player in real life, will he maintain that "real life" WAR for the entire 15 season run of this game I'm playing, meaning, Brooks will be only an average player at best and not a Hall of Famer? Or will the WAR listed on the "real life stats" card actually rise as his career progresses through the seasons in the game?
• Does Brooks being on the reserve roster for a few years affect his career performance trajectory differently than if I put him on my active roster right away?

[Hoiles]

Brooks didn't play more than 50 games in the MLB IRL in his first 3 seasons, so his inital fielding ratings would take a hit with the default settings. With recalc, he'll turn into a better player, which could be exploited in the draft vs the AI. It's just a trade off between historical accuracy vs game challenge, though if you're in an online league then the latter doesn't matter.

[Matt Arnold]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

OK, here is another data point:

In another game I am running on my OOTP, Brooks Robinson's career WAR on his real life OOTP card is listed as 46.7.

Why does one game show Brooks with a 46.7 real life WAR, and another game show Brooks with a 19.9, even though all the counting stats are exactly the same?

Bonus questions:

• If my one game I'm concerned about is showing Brooks to be a 19.9 WAR player in real life, will he maintain that "real life" WAR for the entire 15 season run of this game I'm playing, meaning, Brooks will be only an average player at best and not a Hall of Famer? Or will the WAR listed on the "real life stats" card actually rise as his career progresses through the seasons in the game?
• Does Brooks being on the reserve roster for a few years affect his career performance trajectory differently than if I put him on my active roster right away?

It's possible the different WAR values are based on different talent levels too. Again, advanced numbers aren't necessarily imported, so I could certainly see him have a lower wRC+/OPS+/etc... type numbers in some leagues relative to others. In a standard MLB game we do have league stats from historical years so they should line up close to their actual values, but they'll differ in other environments.

Due to that, you might see his real-life WAR values change over time if you go back to look at them. But those values are simply data - how he actually performs for you is separate from that. He might be the best player your league has ever seen, but his real life stats will still show a 20-WAR career. Or he might never bat in your league, and he'll still show career stats.

As for the last point, if you are relying on the recalc engine to change his ratings every year, then whether he's on your pro roster or reserve roster shouldn't matter.

I know you mentioned you're not commish in your league, but the various historical options are detailed a little in the online manual: https://manuals.ootpdevelopments.com...-settings-page I'd certainly encourage anyone in a historical (or historical-ish online league) to understand what options are at play in their games. Knowing what options are at play should hopefully help guide any in-game decisions.

[chucksabr]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

It's possible the different WAR values are based on different talent levels too. Again, advanced numbers aren't necessarily imported, so I could certainly see him have a lower wRC+/OPS+/etc... type numbers in some leagues relative to others. In a standard MLB game we do have league stats from historical years so they should line up close to their actual values, but they'll differ in other environments.

Due to that, you might see his real-life WAR values change over time if you go back to look at them. But those values are simply data - how he actually performs for you is separate from that. He might be the best player your league has ever seen, but his real life stats will still show a 20-WAR career. Or he might never bat in your league, and he'll still show career stats.

As for the last point, if you are relying on the recalc engine to change his ratings every year, then whether he's on your pro roster or reserve roster shouldn't matter.

I know you mentioned you're not commish in your league, but the various historical options are detailed a little in the online manual: https://manuals.ootpdevelopments.com...-settings-page I'd certainly encourage anyone in a historical (or historical-ish online league) to understand what options are at play in their games. Knowing what options are at play should hopefully help guide any in-game decisions.

I used fWAR to figure out which players should be playing in which years, which of course includes defense. I did notice that many average defenders or defense-first players show lower, sometimes much lower, WAR in OOTP than in FanGraphs, whereas guys with only hit tools, like Frank Thomas and Miguel Cabrera, show much higher WAR in OOTP, which seems to track with what you say.

Sounds to me like you might be implying that the 80 fWAR I relied on to bring Brooks Robinson on board my team will probably be a better indication of how he will perform, across the 14 seasons I am using him, than the 19.9 WAR on the OOTP card I am seeing right now, here in his first season. Would that be fair to conclude?