[ThePretender]

Originally Posted by Sweed

yes, but those are real human beings and you can certainly try to predict today's performance based on the players previous stats. You may be successful and you may not.

You're far more likely to be successful when you manage based on evidence. You can frame it as "you may be successful and you may not", but you're more likely to make the correct move if you use evidence to back up your decisions.

When you're not you can blame a lot of things based on the human being you did or did not take out of the game.

Or you can accept that in baseball even when you have the facts and make the correct decision, you can still lose. Doesn't change the fact that you should have the facts at your disposal.

OOTP is a game driven by ratings and when you put a 60 rated pitcher out there and are also told how the underlying engine treats a player on the third time around IE he becomes a 45 than that is what he becomes. So a 50 RP would always be the way to go. This is what chazzycat is asking for, the exact formula OOTP uses to he can make the best move. I don't care how much real life stats you study you won't come up with a formula that is always right.

Once again, you're missing the point. In real life we know exactly the impact of having a guy pitch the third time through the order and what the penalty is. Knowing that penalty here, or in real life, doesn't guarantee that the decision you make, whether it's backed up by stats, will mean that your starter or reliever won't perform as you expect.

In other words, even if I know my 60 SP will play like a 45 the third time through, I can leave him in (the wrong decision, mathematically) and have him allow 0 ER, and I can bring in my 75 RP, who again, mathematically, is the right move, and still blow the lead.

I could be wrong but I really don't think OOTP is even that simplistic with it's ratings. It won't be as simple as a 60 becomes a 45, other things will factor in. Is the P on a roll tossing a shutout and only giving up 1 hit?

Of course, the reason he's tossing a shut out to that point could be he hasn't gone through the third time, and this kind of thinking "Oh he's dominating so far keep him in" has cost many managers the ballgame.

Or have there been two errors behind him costing him unearned runs? I think any of us that play out our games have seen pitchers "flustered" and had a game get away from them. I've had pitchers throwing against me with ratings of 4-8-8 on the 1-20 scale pitch like the second coming of Kofax and shut me out. How did he do that for 9 innings when those ratings take a dive on the third time through?

Because, you clearly don't understand what you're arguing. The bold point makes that perfectly clear. You can have a guy succeed going the third time through. You can have a RP screw up when you remove a pitcher to avoid the third time through the order penalty. Knowing that there is a penalty, doesn't mean your next move will work out.

And it's like that for so many things. I can bring in my LOOGY to a platoon bat who sucks against LHP, and watch him hit a HR. I made the right move to have him face a LHP who he struggles against, but it just didn't work out.

The beauty of OOTP is it strives to convince me that I am seeing a real baseball game and it does a great job of that. If I know exactly how the engine works then what's the point of playing?

Because unlike in other games, knowing how the engine work doesn't guarantee you'll end up winning the game. I have a pretty good idea of how the engine works and I take advantage of that whenever I can, but I still lose games where I have an advantage, or lose games when I have a disadvantage.

The developers are changing the game so that we have similar information to real life managers. Well, guess what? Real life managers have access to third time through the order penalty stats, and can make their decisions based on that. It's not unreasonable to suggest people should have access to that same information, as managers across baseball have that information. But again, it doesn't guarantee they'll get the desired result simply because they know about this.