multiple 60+ homerun players
 

I tend to play fictional leagues utilizing default mlb settings for the league, playoffs, roster sizes and so forth. In past editions I have always selected a particular year in the stats/ai setting screen to set a starting statistical target for my league that I like.

No matter which year I import, when I do like a ten year sim, the offensive stats are insane. I have been using the 1993 stats to import several times now for testing. This should result in a modest level of homeruns and batting average with a relatively low strikeout total. Every time I sim for about ten years, however, I end up with multiple 60+homerun seasons including multiple players in single years hitting that number. In one season, I wound up with an 80 homerun guy, a 74 homerun guy and three more 60+ homerun guys. This seems to happen regardless of which year of stats I try to target in my league.

Am I missing some new box or setting now? I see no one else with this complaint, so I can only assume I am an idiot and need remedial OOTP help despite the fact I have been around since like OOTP2 or something.

All suggestions welcome.

Are you using autocalc to set your league total modfiers on opening day each new season?

Can be done manually or there is a check box that makes sure it is run before each new season. Has to be done before any games are played. After a game is played the option to run autocalc disappears until the next season. Best run on opening day since rosters are now set.

Other than that I would have no idea what else would be the cause.

There are 3 unchecked boxes on this screen. The top one starts with "Lock league total stats". The second starts with "Automatically adjust league totals modifiers for accuracy" and the third starts with ""austomatically control in-game engine "

I assume you are referring to the middle option?

I left these unchecked in previous versions of OOTP with the idea that I wanted to allow a little randomness and the possibility that some day, maybe someone could actually have an 80 hr season. How strict am I locking down the stats when this is checked?

Thanks for the response.

I leave my first two checked like this for my 1985 fictional game. I get very good accuracy and do not need to manually auto calc. You can verify league totals are correct for your chosen year before starting and you should hit your stats fine. Remember that stats adjust for number of games played so your sim totals may not match actual league totals but the rates per PA will be right. As an example, my 1985 league has 24 teams, but MLB had 26 teams that year but rates were good.

Thanks for the info. While I like a certain baseball era like most of us nerds, I still want to maintain the remote possibility of something insane happening. Part of the fun for me to see that one absurd year in a hundred where some pitcher or some hitter has some ridiculous record statistic of some kind, How tight does this hold to the targeted stats?

evolution
 

One last question. If I check these boxes, what effect doe sit have on the league evolving. I currently have my league set to evolve over time, but with only certain item related to gameplay allowed to evolve. Will this evolve over time or will my league play be relatively static if I check these boxes?

If you have low injury or fatigue settings in your league that could be related to a higher probability that individual players will put up higher counting stats than usual.

Use high (realistic) injury settings and default fatigue settings

typically, I use traditional injury settings and default fatigue. I just hate the number of realistic injuries after spending all of that time putting my team together.

Checking those boxes keeps the league averages the same year over year which is what I want. There is individual variation but the trend remains flat. I turn off league evolution because I don’t like those type of changes - just personal preference.

I've had a similar issue. I created a test fictional league in 1985 and ran it through to the end of 2022. I used default settings for everything and have it set to automatically adjust league totals each season.

In the home run leaderboards, there are:

3 80+ HR seasons (from 3 different players)
6 70+ HR seasons
39 60+ HR seasons

The career home run leader has 1187(!!!) and played for 23 seasons.

I compared the 2018 numbers in my fictional league to the real-life American League numbers (since my league uses the DH).

The American League had 1.19 HR per game league-wide in 2018. My fictional league had 1.42 HR per game. So the issue might be with league totals and not with individual ratings distributions.

There were also 9 players with 3000 hits over the 38-season sim which seems high but isn't out of the realm of possibility.

Pitching stats seemed pretty realistic on the other hand.

Obviously this is just one sim and it could be an outlier but my first impression is that something definitely seems off with the league totals in this version.

Are the players who hit 60+ HRs our performing their expected HRs as shown in the editor?

The problem could be as simple as not hitting autorecalc if you selected 1993 after game creation. Old school pro-tip auto recalc each season for the year you want to match. You will know this might be the case if your league total is off. It should be about 4100 HR total for 1993. You can look at league stats to see if that is right. Go to teams stats and you will see a total at the bottom in my first run game I am 3 years in with only 4700 HRs in 2023 so mine are way down. It should be around 6000 based on 2021, this is about 2020 levels with a full 162 game season. I just took out of the tin settings and didn't recalc for 2023.

If the recalc doesn't fix the problem report a bug and send game files.

If the league totals are what they should be, this is a little harder to figure out.

Essentially there are 2 factors.

1. Number of HRs
2. How those HRs are distributed.
The first is league totals if it is off the league totals aren't working you should have about 4100 in 1993 or a similar number in 2014. 2017 was a banaza year for HRs.

If the legal totals are right and you have 3 or 4 guys who have ratings well above everyone else and that means they are getting too big a % of the HRs to divvy out. You need power to be a bit more evenly distributed.

So if autocalc doesn't fix it I would file a bug report and send game files. The PCMs aren't giving a realistic distribution or the league totals aren't working right for some reason. Knowing if the league totals are right gives an idea if it is the engine that gets the numbers for the season right that is bugged or something wonky is happening in distribution giving 2 or 3 Babe Ruth's and a bunch of mighty Casey's.

Ignore the attached image I attached when I thought it might have something to do with the era and I can't delete it now.

Curious how do your league totals match the real totals. If you look at team stats you can compare HRs and Hits to real numbers in the MLB. Baseball Almanac has total homeruns for each league and combined leagues each year. I assume it has hits too.

Like I was getting before I am wondering if the league totals are off or if it is because the distribution of players are off. Maybe you are getting appropriate league stats but the player creation is giving you a wonky distribution with a few stars and a bunch of scrubs. Meaning the few top players are getting way too many of the hits and HRs. You could have right totals and a bunch cup of coffee guys with a few Ken Griffey Jrs. If pitching looks right I fear it is the distribution of hitters created.

These are my stats in 2023. I didn't do anything on creation to change league stats and didn't auto-recalc in 2023. My HRs are about half what they should be. Again I didn't do anything but it suggests something is off with league totals HRS in 2021 were almost 6k and I have about 2400 in the AL. I just realized I didn't look at combined but it is 4700 combined when 2021 was around 6k HRs. So something is off but I didn't recalc either.

Attachment 872406

The LTM routine stands for LEAGUE Total Modifiers. But the talk here is about what would be PTM, PLAYER Total Modifiers. There is no such routine.

Yes that is a quicker way at what I was saying.

Still we don't know from the info if the problem is with LTM giving too many total HRs so the leaders have too many HRs or if the total number of HRs is right but the top is getting too big of a share of the total.

What happens when you select a year after creation and hit auto-calc is not just the LTM's change but so does everything else under it like position modifiers and all the pitching modifiers. These look like fielding and pitcher stamina mods so it shouldn't affect HRs other than maybe stamina?

If the player's ratings are the problem that is the traditional PCMs this affects ratings on creation of players at the start and new players. Changing those take a long while to see though because it just means different ratings for new players and it doesn't change existing players. So it takes years until you get a critical mass of new players in the majors to see it.

I suspect the problem is not hitting autocalc mods. If you just select a year for totals in the creation all the mods stay at 1. So selcting 1993 on creation and not auto-calcing after game start and the initial draft is done if you have one puts some neutral year below 2021 and well above 1993. For instance autocalcing with 2021 gives a little above 1.2 on HRs. 1993 gives .672 for HRs. So if you select 1993 at creation and don't autocalc you get 1 on HRs which will put you much closer to 2021 for HRs than 1993. With 1 on HRs I got about 4700 HRs in the 2023 season a 14.6% bigger number than the 4100 of 1993.

That is why I asked if the league totals are off. In other words did you see around 4100 total HRs but 3 guys with 60+ HRs. If you did the problem is in player creation. If the 4100 is off the problem is with the LTM. If you get 5000 HR with 1993 settings you either didn't autocalc or the mods aren't working right.

So I would check your LTM's first. If you chose 1993 totals and don't see a HR mod of .672 or something around that. You didn't auto-calc.

And for kind of the same reason why I asked what their expected HRs were in the editor.

OK, here is the problem. When you create a 1993 fictional league, the option "Automatically adjust league total modifiers..." is enabled. However, the option "Lock league total stats" is not. So when simming to 1994, the game uses the real 1994 totals and adjusts the LTM accordingly, so you get players hitting 60 HR.

In order to achieve a stable 1993 environment, you must enable the option "Lock league total stats" (under the league totals in the "Stats & AI" tab of league setup), that will create a stable 1993 era no matter how long you simulate.

Just took a look now. "Wiggly" Willie Gallindo is the guy who had an 88 HR season, and he just hit 73 in 2022. The editor has him hitting 40 HR in a modern, neutral environment.

There was another 73 HR hitter in 2022. The editor has him hitting 38 HR.

In fact, there are several players hitting too many home runs each year in this save, which I'm just now realizing. It's a 24-team league. Here are the top 10 HR totals for the 22 season:

t-1. 73
t-1. 73
3. 67
4. 62
5. 61
6. 53
t-7. 52
t-7. 52
9. 51
t-10. 49
t-10. 49

Does the league home run rate match the LTM rate? If yes, then all I can think of is the talent distribution of your fictional players doesn't match the talent distribution of the real life players who created the LTM data. Maybe I'll think of something else!