Why the pitcher stamina problem ruins sims and really needs to be fixed

[uruguru]

I have been running a sim recently, trying to create a challenge to build a winning team. In my seventh season, I finally won the pennant and even beat the Yankees in 7 games. I was super excited until I noticed that the Los Angeles Angeles finished last with a 42-120 record. That is an incredibly bad record, even for a bad team in a bad season, so I figured something was up...

Then I realized... oh no, I'm not playing with minor leagues.

It was the pitcher stamina problem. Please bear with me while I explain what it is and what I do to fix it. I am posting this because I still believe that this is the biggest single structural problem in OOTP and something eventually needs to be done about it.

THE PROBLEM:

1) Pitcher stamina in OOTP does not reflect ability... it reflects usage. What this means is that pitchers have high stamina ratings in years in which their team used them as starters, and low stamina ratings for seasons in which their team used them as relievers. Which means OOTP managers are constrained in how they use their pitchers by however the real-world managers chose to use them. It can remove some agency from the player (you dont want to move Dennis Eckersley or John Smoltz to the bullpen? too bad)

2) For any given season, there are a finite number of pitchers capable of starting games. This problem really only becomes an issue if you are playing without minor leagues. In other words, the pool of available starters is about 5 per team, and what every team needs is 5.

3) When some teams have more than their share of starters, other teams are forced to replace them with relievers or starters who normally would not even be on an MLB roster. This is what happened to the Angels. Look at the attached screenshot of their pitching staff;

1. Dean Chance - 2.5 stars. quality major league starter. Threw 267 innings with 3.43 ERA

2. Bo Belinsky - 1.5 stars. does not belong in a MLB rotation but the Angels had no choice. 184 innings, 6.26 ERA

3. Aubrey Gatewood - 0.5 star. Did not even play in 1968! Should not even be on a team, but he is the only other pitcher they have with stamina. Went 0-18 with 74 innings (lol) and a 12.28 ERA. WTF is going on here.

4 & 5. Bob Lee and Bob Miller. 1.5 star relievers with 1/5 stamina. Forced to start.

So there you have it. 1 quality starter and 4 garbage starters, so the bullpen is massively overworked.

And the kicker? They have Wilbur Wood in the bullpen, a guy who would move to the rotation in the real world a few years later and throw multiple 300+ innings seasons. The Angels should have been able to move him to the rotation in 1968 instead of waiting for White Sox to do it in the real world a few years later.


Why is pitcher stamina implemented this way?

Obviously, I am not an OOTP dev and can't speak for them, but it seems to me that you need this for historical accuracy. When you are running a historical sim, you want real-world starters to be starters in your sim, and real-world relievers to be relievers in your sim. It makes perfect sense.

But as soon as you start allowing non-historical trades and injuries into the game, which are inevitable unless you are playing with real-world transactions, then eventually some team is going to end up like the Angels and not have enough starters.

You also see this problem A LOT with expansion teams. The existing teams will preferentially protect their starters, leaving few or none for the new expansion teams. In the real world, expansion teams would simply throw their drafted relievers into the rotation and carry on as usual. But this doesn't work in OOTP so it's not that uncommon to see expansion teams lose 140 games in their first few seasons.


How do you solve this problem?

If real-world transactions are turned on, then you don't. Everything is fine. But if you are allowing trades and injuries, then you need to create a mechanism for allowing relievers to start.

It doesn't have to be complicated or perfect, just allowable. One solution I am having a lot of success with is simply editing relievers. At the beginning of each off-season, when ratings are recalculated, I simply update the stamina rating for each pitcher to a minimum of 100. If they are already higher (max is 250), then I obviously don't lower it.

This correlates to a 3/5 stamina and technically allows any pitcher to qualify as a starter. Of course, the pitch selection of many prevent this, but at least there is no shortage of starters anymore..

A configurable 'minimum pitcher stamina' (0=no minimum) would basically slay this dragon with one swing.

You would be surprised at how well this approach works. Yes, a few historical relievers get moved into the rotation but honestly, if you look at their milb stats, most of them were starters in the minors anyway so it's not really that unbelievable. I guess the pitch selection criteria could be tightened if this were a big problem.

The pitchers in the bullpen are generally the pitchers not good enough to crack the starting rotation, which is typically how it always works.

Anyway. Be forewarned that this will eventually bite you if you play without minors!

[Lukas Berger]

This is not a game issue per say, it's just not choosing the right option to import players like Wood with SP stamina.

You have an option to set this based on career or multiple seasons. It's on the mid-right of the historical wizard setup screen. You can choose single-season, three-year period, or entire career.

[kq76]

Also note that without minors you can't send players recovering from injury on rehab assignments which ends up increasing their chances of getting re-injured. I wanted to play without minors, but I don't because of this.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

This is not a game issue per say, it's just not choosing the right option to import players like Wood with SP stamina.

You have an option to set this based on career or multiple seasons. It's on the mid-right of the historical wizard setup screen. You can choose single-season, three-year period, or entire career.

I've tried that before. Unless it's been changed, it is still an issue because using career staminas is a double-edged sword. In any given season, some pitchers will lose stamina while others gain it. If the "career" option provides the pitchers maximum single-season stamina instead of the average, that would be a great option.

I can take a guy with 1/5 rating at shortstop and play him 9 innings every night (painfullly) until my everyday shortstop gets off of the DL or I trade for new one.

But I can't do that with pitchers who have a 1/5 stamina. They last 3 innings, tops. Then I have to burn through my bullpen.

If the team is run by a human player, the problem gets solved. But if it is run by the AI, they lose 120 games.

[Lukas Berger]

More guys (significantly in most cases, depending on the year you're playing in) should gain than lose with using career stamina though.

[Lukas Berger]

We can probably consider another option here though to increase SP stamina for imports. I wouldn't expect it by release of 25 but we can probably circle back and consider this at some point after release, especially if you remind us.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by kq76

Also note that without minors you can't send players recovering from injury on rehab assignments which ends up increasing their chances of getting re-injured. I wanted to play without minors, but I don't because of this.

I also often sim with minors but the sims are a lot slower and take up a lot more disk space, obviously. Sometimes I like to play without all of that extra overhead.


What I do for injured players, if their injury is too short for a stint on the DL, is just tweak the lineups to ensure they don't start any games.

[Rain King]

I wish there was a way to run with Partial minors instead of full minors. I don't need all of the guys that played a year in rookie ball...but it would be nice to have the guys that maxed out at AA or AAA for depth.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

More guys (significantly in most cases, depending on the year you're playing in) should gain than lose with using career stamina though.

I get that. I'm sure that average pitcher stamina is above OOTP's threshold for starting so this has the effect of increasing the size of the starter pool. However, I feel like this doesn't address the root issue.... that starting pitchers are much more of a limited resource in OOTP than they are in the real world. This is what ultimately gets the AI teams in a dilemma due to trades or injuries.

Regardless, you guys are the devs and I do have a tremendous amount of respect for what you are doing within OOTP. I personally think this is a significant issue but, if you don't, then I can accept that and continue micro-fixing what I perceive to be the root problem and just let it go.

However, I will offer one last (extreme) anecdote that illustrates the flexibility that real-world relievers have that is not modeled in OOTP. Keep in mind that this is not the only example, but just a well-known one.

From the wikipedia page on Lindy McDaniel

In 1973, he entered the game in the first inning against the Tigers in Detroit and pitched 13 innings, giving up one run and winning the game 2–1.

Lindy McDaniel was used almost exclusively through his MLB career as a reliever, although he did have 11 starts sprinkled over the last 13 years of his career..

But no matter how you set the pitcher stamina (single season, 3-year, or career), McDaniel's OOTP stamina for the 1973 season is 2/5. In the editor, it's like 43, 42 and 46. Almost identical in every setting. That's a high stamina for a reliever, but he would be incapable of tossing more than 4 innings without getting exhausted.

In the real world, we can see that McDaniel was capable of throwing 13 innings in a pinch. How often would a "pinch" like that occur? Obviously very rarely.

But that illustrates my general point and there are lots of other examples of relievers just magically converting to starters. This is because every pitcher in the MLB, barring injuries, is capable of throwing 100-150 pitches in a game. Every one. After all, they all began their pitching careers as starters. That's why I manually implement a league-wide floor for pitcher stamina.

The real issue is whether they are being allowed by the team to start and throw that many pitches. Most aren't, so they work from the bullpen. But that doesn't mean they can't if something happens to one of the starters or they get traded.

[Garlon]

The game will make any pitcher with at least 40% of their G as GS a SP with SP stamina. If you load up the league with all pitchers with high
Stamina all of the legitimate good starters will perform very poorly.

I play historicals and there are plenty of SP options in any season when using career stamina.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by Garlon

The game will make any pitcher with at least 40% of their G as GS a SP with SP stamina. If you load up the league with all pitchers with high
Stamina all of the legitimate good starters will perform very poorly.

I've done this plenty of times and haven't noticed anything unusual in that regard. The only additional adjustment I've made is to increase the inning threshold to adjust/weaken pitchers to ensure that lesser-played relievers with skewed stats don't get automatically thrown into the rotation.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

This is not a game issue per say, it's just not choosing the right option to import players like Wood with SP stamina.

You have an option to set this based on career or multiple seasons. It's on the mid-right of the historical wizard setup screen. You can choose single-season, three-year period, or entire career.

ok, I just formally tested this option on the 1962 MLB season to see if it had changed since the last time I tried it.

There are 323 total pitchers in the league:

This is the count for pitchers with at least 3/5 stamina:

Stamina based on current season: 129 starters

Stamina based on 3-year period: 129 starters

Stamina based on entire career: 119 starters (!)

So no, that is not a solution to the overall problem. In fact, it seems to have made the problem worse, at least for this particular season.

I mean, for 20 teams in a 5-man era you need AT LEAST 120 starters (5 per team plus a spot starter). Preferably more because some of those starters are going to get injured. After a few years of trades, it's inevitable that some AI team is going to come up short and get hammered because they have to use relievers in the rotation. A human player will rarely notice this until it becomes so bad that suddenly someone is losing 120 games.

[Garlon]

If a team is losing 120 games it is more likely that the team does not have defensive substitutes at some positions and the starters are playing the entire season fatigued. Or simply that they do not have enough pitchers on their team. If you have 10 pitchers on the active roster you will not lose 120 games, even if some of them do not have true SP stamina. Even a reliever used in a starting role will tend to give you 3-4 when they start games.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by Garlon

If a team is losing 120 games it is more likely that the team does not have defensive substitutes at some positions and the starters are playing the entire season fatigued. Or simply that they do not have enough pitchers on their team. If you have 10 pitchers on the active roster you will not lose 120 games, even if some of them do not have true SP stamina. Even a reliever used in a starting role will tend to give you 3-4 when they start games.

Did you see the screenshot of the Angel's rotation? They had 10 pitchers, but their #3 starter was a pitcher who didn't even play in 1968. He averaged 3.5 innings per start with a 12+ ERA. Their #4 & #5 "starters" were relievers with a 1/5 stamina. Their pitching staff allowed 945 runs, or 5.8 runs per game.

This was not caused by the fatigue bug. Attached are the batter stats for the Angels (42-120). Sorted by strikeouts, since excessive strikeouts are the biggest indicator of fatigue. It looks fine to me.

[eauhomme]

They need to do stamina the same way they now do positional ratings, the current and potential rating (maybe hidden, though, so it's not obviious).

This would allow a stamina 3 reliever (on a 20-point scale) to stretch into a starter with longer outings, maybe maxing as an 8 for some, but 16 for others. But maybe another reliever is not capable of stretching at all. And a starter who goes to the bullpen maybe slowly loses stamina, and has to gradually get it back through short starts or long relief.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by eauhomme

They need to do stamina the same way they now do positional ratings, the current and potential rating (maybe hidden, though, so it's not obviious).

This would allow a stamina 3 reliever (on a 20-point scale) to stretch into a starter with longer outings, maybe maxing as an 8 for some, but 16 for others. But maybe another reliever is not capable of stretching at all. And a starter who goes to the bullpen maybe slowly loses stamina, and has to gradually get it back through short starts or long relief.

That's the thing, though. They can all already start. They don't need to be stretched. The only issue is how much effectiveness should they lose when they are pacing themselves for 7-9 innings instead of trying to blow past every hitter in their one inning of relief.

In the majors, Billy Wagner made zero starts in 853 appearances. He is the typical one-inning closer. But before he was called up from the minors, he had made 73 starts in his 83 appearances.

Billy Wagner could have been a major-league starter, but the Astros didn't have a spot for him in the rotation in 1996 when they already had guys like Doug Drabek, Greg Swindell, Darryl Kile, Shane Reynolds and Mike Hampton already solidly established.

As a result, they put him at closer and he excelled, and they never had a need to take him out. Billy Wagner was a closer because of the team's needs, not because he couldn't start.

So now everyone thinks of Billy Wagner (and career closers like him) as guys whose arms would fall off if they threw more than 3 innings. Which is completely untrue.

A manager should be able to throw Billy Wagner in the rotation at any time and he should have the stamina for it. However, his effectiveness should drop accordingly so that managers are encouraged to keep him in the bullpen for better historical realism. But if they really needed him to start? He should be able to.

[Brad K]

There will be enough high stamina pitchers if full historical minors are used. However this can create its own unrealistic situation. Discussion HERE in historical forum

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by Brad K

There will be enough high stamina pitchers if full historical minors are used. However this can create its own unrealistic situation. Discussion HERE in historical forum

Yes, when you look at milb stats then it becomes clear that a lot more pitchers are capable of starting that you would see from just MLB stats.

The question is how much of a penalty should you apply when projecting milb stats to mlb ratings? That's a difficult question..

If the real-world Astros had put Wagner in the rotation, do I think he could matured into a 20-game winner? Yeah, quite possibly. Would I like to see that happen in an OOTP sim? Tougher question, but probably not.

However, would I like to be able to throw him in the rotation if one of my starters gets an arm injury they didn't get in real life? Yes, absolutely. He might be my best option until I can acquire a replacement starter or until the injured starter comes back.

[Brad K]

It appears from the experience of luckymann and me using historical minors that there is not a penalty applied to minor league stats in all cases. It is likely there is a downward adjustment and then a randomization around those values. Or perhaps the normal development engine is applied to the resulting values.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by Garlon

The game will make any pitcher with at least 40% of their G as GS a SP with SP stamina. If you load up the league with all pitchers with high
Stamina all of the legitimate good starters will perform very poorly.

hey sorry for the bump but I just wanted to added that I finally saw this behavior for the first time.

Normally, I have been fixing the staminas on Opening Day and never noticed anything like what you were saying.

Then the other day I had the bright idea of doing it on the day BEFORE Opening Day just so the changes would be reflected in the preseason predictions. Well, when I did that then all of the starters ratings fell through the floor as you suggested. After a brief analysis, I can see all of the ratings are recalibrated on Opening Day.

So I just wanted to give you a thumbs up on that insight. When that happened, I thought "ah ha! internet opinion confirmed!"

I'll go back to updating the staminas on opening day!