[rockford]

Well … it looks like another “Homer Hillebrand” issue has come to light, only this time from the offensive side of the equation.


If you came in late, the issue of OOTP managers using pitchers that had no business being in the starting rotation was first talked about in Post #59, back on page 3 of this thread. As a result, it’s become routine to make sure each team’s rotation consists of the four pitchers who started the most games IRL. (There are some minor exceptions, but you get the idea: Let’s see how these teams do with the players they actually used the most.)


I was aware that “Homer” situations could be happening with lineups, but kind of brushed it off on the assumption that it would be difficult for one batter to have the same impact as a starting pitcher. The aforementioned Homer Hillebrand, for example, won six Pitcher of the Year awards and finished second four more times in 10 seasons … even though there were seven other pitchers on his team who started more games than he did IRL that year. His real-life workload did not in any way validate him as a top four starter, and taking advantage of statistics that were generated from a small sample size is simply unfair.



But the recent recap of Season 5 revealed two players who had an outsized impact after being inserted into the starting lineup when they didn’t really belong there. We’re talking about Mike Donlin of the 1911 Giants, and Sammy Byrd of the 1932 Yankees.


Donlin was with the Giants for only 12 games in 1911. OOTP has him as the starting CF. Fred Snodgrass, who started 151 games IRL for the Giants, got just 18 starts from the OOTP manager. Donlin was .333 with 1 HR in his 12 games with Brooklyn, but boasted a .583 slugging percentage in that short frame. That translated into .318 with 20 HR as a full-time starter in OOTP, good enough to finish 11th in MVP voting. Snodgrass was .294 with 1 HR as a starter in 1912. He was .325 with 1 HR in 140 plate appearances in OOTP. That’s nothing to sneeze about, but I imagine Donlin’s left-handed bat may have been more important to the OOTP manager. Understandable, but not acceptable for a guy that played considerably less than 10 percent of that team’s games IRL.


Sammy Byrd started 44 games but appeared in 105 for the 1932 Yankees, often in CF in relief of 33-year-old Earle Combs, who was in his penultimate year as a starter. OOTP turned Byrd into a full-time starter at the expense of Ben Chapman. Chapman started 149 games IRL, hitting .299 with 10 HR. OOTP gave him just 28 starts (.271, 4 HR in 197 plate appearances). Byrd parlayed his extra 98 starts into a .282, 20 HR performance in 619 plate appearances (close to triple the PA he logged IRL) and finished fourth in MVP balloting.



So … Season 6 of Pool 1 is already in the books, and the recap will be coming soon. But starting in Season 7, all lineups will be checked to make sure they’re composed of legitimate starters, a process that will continue to the end of the GTOAT tourney. This will likely slow things down a bit, but it will hopefully move us closer to the goal of getting a better idea how these teams may have fared if a tourney such as this was possible in real life.