random debut draft - ratings weirdness
 

Joe Garagiola, age 22, is rated an 80 overall, 80 potential. He drafts by the AI well ahead of 21 year old Lou Gehrig, ahead of Greg Maddux, or 27 year old Christy Mathewson who instead is rated 64 overall, 64 potential.

I have the five year recalc on - does that matter? It might in the cases of the young players listed - 20 year old Musial for example, but not for Mathewson, and in any case at age 22 Gargiola should not drafted ahead of 21 year old Gehrig.

Needs a little tweaking.

BUT...maybe it is because I had the ratings be based on positions, not on all players? I gather that might account for it, in which case, Garagiola drafting ahead of Gehrig is my bad.

I suspect that definitely has something to do with it.

Thanks. Still, I would suggest running a few random debut drafts to check. I adjusted, did not end up with an all-star team, but there is definitely a leap in quality of players available later in the draft.

Mostly that is a good thing, as I thought the paucity of solid players was the one distraction playing random debut historical leagues, which otherwise I love. But maybe some adjusting of the AI's evaluation.

There were some very good players still available for example in round 33 or 34 the next time I ran a draft for a league I will now actually play through.

Mainly the AI did not seem to be able to evaluate potential among rookies - players of 20 right before their first historical seasons, I noticed. So it was skipping future stars until the very late rounds. Wanting a challenge, I skipped most of those so they would end up elsewhere, but a player like Bip Roberts, or a 31 year old Vince Coleman can be in the starting lineup and should be drafted at least in the first 25 rounds.

Apparently pstrickert has contacted you about an issue regarding the contact ratings in historical leagues. He wrote me in my post about the AI drafting in random debut leagues, asking if the two might be related. In my reply I note some anomalies regarding contact ratings of players known to make good contact and with stats in real life to show. Here is our exchange:

It might be related, though I did not import any players. These are only the players that the inaugural draft included as the default.

Hank Aaron, age 20, struck out 39 times in 509 PA. His contact rating is 40, his home run rating is 75/80 though, which is right. Though how you hit homers by missing the ball is unclear.

ps - why did all those great hitters - Aaron, Dimaggio, Yogi, Klu, hit so many homers and still never strike out? Why is no one studying how they hit and teaching it again? Why is everyone today in baseball Adam Dunn or Dave Kingman?

But I digress. So, clearly there is a contact ratings issue.

Keith Hernandez age 20, before is MLB debut admittedly, is a 35 rating for contact. Again, not someone who struck out a ton of times, though much more frequently than Aaron.

Bernie Williams, age 31, struck out 95 times in 700 PA (697 to be precise) and has a 35/40 contact rating.

But is that the basis for the AI not drafting players?

So these weird contact ratings ARE ONLY the case in random debut.

I ran a 1964 straight up historical league - Willie McCovey is at 50/60. Pete Rose 55/70. Max Alvis 50/50. Willie Horton 45/60. Hank Aaron 70/70.

All is as it should be. So only in random debut are we having this problem with contact ratings.

Ok, thanks for the additional clarification! We'll take a closer look at this.

fixed!

Wow ! that was fast. I will try it out and see what it look like now.

Talk about great service and communication with customers.

Many thanks from us in the random debut historical league community !

Just to clarify, it won't be fixed in your game till the build we release on Friday.

So you won't see any changes now, just when that build comes out.

Thank you for clarifying that Lukas. Okay, will hold off till Friday and in the meantime play as if it were spring training games.

When the final version is ready for download Friday, will we have to disinstall the beta version, or does the definitive version "cover" and incorporate the beta version?

Thanks again !

oh, one last question - what is the state of neutral stats in OOTP20? Can we use them again? The consensus was that they were broken in the last two versions of the game I think. Thanks.

You should just be able to install over the beta with no problems.

Not really sure on the neutral stats, though I seem to vaguely remember some changes/fixes here. Will try to remember to look it up.