1920-1921 with historical minors

[David Watts]

Just quick simmed 1920 and 1921 using historical minors. Noticing that the top pitchers on teams are starting way too many games. In real life the most games started by a pitcher was 40 games for both 1920 and 1921. In the quick sims I ran numerous pitchers are starting 50+ games. For example, 1921 has 4 pitchers that started 54 games, 2 that started 53 and 3 more that started 52. That's just the pitchers I see on the leader boards. In the 1921 real MLB, Pete Alexander threw 363.1 innings, the most in both the AL and NL. In my 1921 quick sim, 2 pitchers have 450 innings pitched, then the board goes like this,445, 439,436, 433,432, 430 and 426.

[David Watts]

Also, if you start in 1946 and turn off ghost players, you soon hit a roadblock due to minor league teams having illegal rosters. First I encountered was Kingsport. They had zero players.

[David Watts]

Sad to report that this has now also become part of straight historical(no historical minors). Tons of pitchers starting 50+ games and tons pitching 400+ innings. However, if you change to "strict occasionally start the highest rested" you get better results. So it looks like always start the highest rested is broken.

[David Watts]

Changing to "strict, occasionally start the highest rested" does improve matters when using real minors as well. Just have to remember to change this from the default each season.

[Spritze]

The default I use for the 1920's-1950's is Rotation Size = 6, Starting Pitchers can appear in relief, Strict rotation - occasionally highest rested

This allows starters to lead the league in saves which always happened back the.

[Spritze]

Originally Posted by David Watts

Also, if you start in 1946 and turn off ghost players, you soon hit a roadblock due to minor league teams having illegal rosters. First I encountered was Kingsport. They had zero players.

The standard roster size was 16-18 in that year for three lowest minors classifications. If you use 25 you do run out of players of course. The Major League reserve roster size was also only 18 while the minor league reserve roster were limited to 6-14 depending on the level.

This may be automated in OOTP18 but for now I attached the current roster size file to one of your earlier posts.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by Spritze

The default I use for the 1920's-1950's is Rotation Size = 6, Starting Pitchers can appear in relief, Strict rotation - occasionally highest rested

This allows starters to lead the league in saves which always happened back the.

"Always start the highest rested" has always worked fine. I've used it forever. Now it's broken. Just quicked simmed the 1946 season and there are at least 9 guys that started 50+ games and at least 9 pitchers that pitched over 400 innings. The high for innings pitched is 448 innings pitched. I always felt "Always start the highest rested" was the option that best simulated periods in baseball when strict rotations weren't used. Quick simmed 1947 with "strict, occasionally start highest rested" and if fixed the 50+ starts problem, but you know longer get the spread that models non rotation years like you do with "always start the highest rested." I then simmed 1948 with 6 man rotations, "strict, occasionally start highest rested" and I the highest amount of games started for any pitcher is 30. 1949 Now a 6 man rotation with "always start highest rested" might be the way to go. Tigers staff 41 starts, 38 starts, 36 starts, 22 starts, 15 starts, 2 starts. I like this breakdown, but the 6th starter only participated in 2 games all season. Now I will do 1950 with 6 always, but let starters relieve as well. Tigers staff 41 games 39 starts, 40 games 33 starts. 35 games 30 starts, 34 games, 30 starts, 16 games 13 starts. 9 game 7 starts, 20 games 2 starts. Nice breakdown there

[Spritze]

Originally Posted by David Watts

"Always start the highest rested" has always worked fine. I've used it forever. Now it's broken.

I have never used this option in the last few years as in the past it always has produced too many 40-50 game winning seasons for pitchers. Perhaps it works best with the lowest stamina setting?

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by Spritze

I have never used this option in the last few years as in the past it always has produced too many 40-50 game winning seasons for pitchers. Perhaps it works best with the lowest stamina setting?

Sometimes I think you and I play different games. I've have used start the highest rested forever. 30 wins in a season for a pitcher has always been a huge accomplishment. I would never use it with a 4 man rotation, but with a 5 man staff it has always worked until this patch.

Fired up OOTP 16 and played 1946 with "always start the highest rested. High Stamina. Top start guy has 39 games started. Top inning guy has 326.

Just did 1921 with OOTP16. High stamina, always start the highest rested. Top pitcher games started had 41. He pitched in 48 games starting 41 and was second in wins with 27.

[risp2out]

Yeah. Something is broken with the out-of-the-box settings for pitching rotations in OOTP17. I started a league in 1918 to test how the game would deal with the introduction of the historical minors in 1919 and beyond. Everything seemed pretty normal 1918-1920, but then, starting in 1921, the number of starts and innings pitched by the top of the rotation exploded, way out of sync with anything IRL. Here's the leaderboard from the end of the 1922 season (1921 was comparable, but I didn't take a screen shot.) I will start a separate thread about this, but wanted to share as it is pertinent to this discussion.

[risp2out]

FWIW, I have not tweaked the stats settings at all. This is what the game shows for 1922 settings. I guess the "Default" setting for 1922 is 5-man rotation, start highest rested. In previous editions, I never messed around with out-of-the-box historical settings and never got wildly inappropriate stats like this. I'm not sure where this is coming from.

[risp2out]

Basically all teams have three starters who made nearly all of the starts. The fourth and fifth starters seems to get fewer than 10 starts (the fifth maybe even fewer than five). It's ridiculous.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by risp2out

FWIW, I have not tweaked the stats settings at all. This is what the game shows for 1922 settings. I guess the "Default" setting for 1922 is 5-man rotation, start highest rested. In previous editions, I never messed around with out-of-the-box historical settings and never got wildly inappropriate stats like this. I'm not sure where this is coming from.

It was introduced with this patch. Believe me I've simmed or played 1919-1921 so many times with 17 that I would have noticed pitchers starting 50+ games and throwing 400+ innings. Start highest rested has been the default for as long as I can remember.

[risp2out]

Originally Posted by David Watts

It was introduced with this patch. Believe me I've simmed or played 1919-1921 so many times with 17 that I would have noticed pitchers starting 50+ games and throwing 400+ innings. Start highest rested has been the default for as long as I can remember.

Interesting. Thanks for the insight. I had been deep in a fictional league I created, and it was the patch that got me to test out some historical to see how it was working now. I'm glad I caught it in a fast-sim test run b/c usually I play really slow and I wouldn't have caught it until I was well into the season and everything was FUBAR. I hadn't ever really paid attention so long as my results were good, and I don't think I've tweaked historical settings since maybe OOTP9 or 10.

[risp2out]

quick update: I went back through the history, and the problem started even before 1921, just not quite as egregiously. So, yeah, it seems like the default for rotations is just off.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by risp2out

quick update: I went back through the history, and the problem started even before 1921, just not quite as egregiously. So, yeah, it seems like the default for rotations is just off.

I just hope we aren't seeing the death of "Always start the highest rested." For years it's been the best option for simulating the periods in baseball when teams didn't follow a strict rotation. I'm really starting to wish straight historical/random debut was 100% separate from this historical minors invention. Why break something that wasn't broken.

[risp2out]

The tremendous advantage of historical minors is that players become professionals while young and raw. Straight historical makes it impossible to meaningfully trade an established player for prospects, which is a key kind of trade in almost any era. I love "rewriting history," and I like a fair amount of variability in where individual players wind up, in their injury and durability statuses, and even in how they perform within reason. OOTP's greatest strength in that regard has always been that it simulated the overall league, year, and era beautifully while allowing for those individual differences. I think historical minors offers the next logical step in that regard (and what could be a genuine breakthrough) because we will see the "what if" scenarios that I love played out all the way down. You can draft potential superstars with less certainty about how they'll turn out, and you can truly build a farm system (or trade it away to win now). I'm not ready to give up on it just yet, but I think the necessary step is to first insure the integrity of league, year, era results, and then work out how the individual players' career arcs are shaped within those results.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by Spritze

The standard roster size was 16-18 in that year for three lowest minors classifications. If you use 25 you do run out of players of course. The Major League reserve roster size was also only 18 while the minor league reserve roster were limited to 6-14 depending on the level.

This may be automated in OOTP18 but for now I attached the current roster size file to one of your earlier posts.

I sure hope it's automated for 18. In the meantime, if I start a 1946 historical league with historical minors without a draft, I thought players were put on their actual teams to begin with. So, roster limits or no roster limits, should teams begin their existence without players?

[Spritze]

Originally Posted by David Watts

I sure hope it's automated for 18. In the meantime, if I start a 1946 historical league with historical minors without a draft, I thought players were put on their actual teams to begin with. So, roster limits or no roster limits, should teams begin their existence without players?

One of the things I have asked for is that the roster AI pause for a week after loading the new players before they get horsed with. That way a player might have a chance to look things over. Right now the AI instantaneously releases players to free agency before the gamer has a chance to do anything. I note that this release bug is hitting on every game type not just historical.

[Spritze]

Originally Posted by David Watts

Sometimes I think you and I play different games. I've have used start the highest rested forever.

As I mentioned I have not. It seems that other than you and me nobody tests nothing so it is good that we play OOTP differently. We catch more bugs in our teeth that way. There are not enough hours in our days to find all the goofynesses but I appreciate your help it bringing down the ones we can.

I think I need to brush my teeth now. That last bug was a big dragonfly. I think it breathed fire.