Errors in historical leagues

[BaseballMan]

In early baseball there were a lot and i mean a lot more errors by players.
So i understand the players having a lot of errors in the game.
The problem i see is that a lot of them happen at once in a game.
I've seen the first basemen miss being overthrown on 7 consecutive batters. Outfielders dropping the ball 5 times in a row.
This would be very rare if happened in the real leagues but it happens all the time in early leagues.
What this does is run up the score.
The errors should be there but do they need to happen all at once?
Just seems a bit unrealistic to me.

[Garlon]

Which season are you playing? During the NA seasons the league FLD was never above .849.

If you look at the 1875 season there were 4234 R but only 1531 ER, so about 64% of scoring was unearned.

In the 1875 season the average 9 inning game had about 14 errors combined for both teams.

[BaseballMan]

Originally Posted by Garlon

Which season are you playing? During the NA seasons the league FLD was never above .849.

If you look at the 1875 season there were 4234 R but only 1531 ER, so about 64% of scoring was unearned.

In the 1875 season the average 9 inning game had about 14 errors combined for both teams.

Its really bad in the 1870s.
Like i said i know there were a lot of errors leading to a lot of unearned runs but do they need to happen all at once?
Ive seen scores like 67-43 scores with 20 + errors.
If the errors didn't happen all at once it might improve that.
I know there were high scoring games in early baseball but the game seems to amplify it with errors happening all at once.

[Syd Thrift]

A cursory glance at the actual 1872 schedule shows 34-19 and 31-7 games and I’m seeing teams averaging 10+ errors a game, so even a 67 run game, while very high, isn’t outlandish, I don’t think.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by BaseballMan

Its really bad in the 1870s.
Like i said i know there were a lot of errors leading to a lot of unearned runs but do they need to happen all at once?
Ive seen scores like 67-43 scores with 20 + errors.
If the errors didn't happen all at once it might improve that.
I know there were high scoring games in early baseball but the game seems to amplify it with errors happening all at once.

Are you playing with historical players or are you playing fictional? How big is your league? What are your roster limits? What are the pitcher settings?

If I had to guess, I'd say that you might be playing too many crummy players because your rosters are too big. And it almost doesn't matter what your roster limits are, because the OOTP minimum of 15 is too big for the 1870s. So even if your roster maximum is 15, that's still about four players too many for each team. If you have the same number of teams that the NA had, then your teams will be playing a whole bunch of scrubs who have no business on the field and those guys might be the ones making all the errors.

But, like I said, that's just a guess

[Garlon]

The roster limits are not an issue with fielding unless you have too few players. It is not that the players are crummy, more likely it is that they are playing at a position they are not rated to play such as a pitcher or catcher playing SS. It is possible that is happening if injuries are enabled.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Garlon

The roster limits are not an issue with fielding unless you have too few players. It is not that the players are crummy, more likely it is that they are playing at a position they are not rated to play such as a pitcher or catcher playing SS. It is possible that is happening if injuries are enabled.

My point, though, is that the AI will use players if they're available. If there's a deep bench, then the AI, for instance, will be more likely to pinch hit or pinch run, whereas if there's only one guy on the bench it will stick with the starters.

You're right about injuries, and I'm also assuming that injuries are enabled. But until BaseballMan responds with more details, we can only guess at this point.

[BaseballMan]

I play with actual rosters. Though the dates are guessed when there is no data but players only play for teams they played for.

I know errors were high back then and there were some high scoring games.
I also understand that players may play out of position as i have seen it happen often in my replays.

But none of that is the problem i am seeing in each version.
Its not the amount of errors but that in some games they can happen
6-8 plays batters in a row.

Even a player playing out of position is not gonna overthrow 1b 6 times in one inning. It just doesn't seem realistic.
Again i'm not saying the amount of errors for the time period of the 1870s should not happen but rather they should be spread out a bit more.

[Syd Thrift]

I think the real issue is that there maybe shouldn’t be as much of an “out of position” penalty because everyone was playing out of position back then. Nobody really knew how to field like modern players and on top of that they used, to put it mildly, substandard equipment. I don’t think gloves were even a thing in the 1870s and to the extent that they might have been, they were, well, gloves in the non baseball sense of the term.

To an extent, though… man, I just think that the further you travel from baseball in 2022, the less accurate the simulation will be. As it is, a base on balls in OOTP 1871 comes on 4 balls, not “9”/3 (the official rules were that when a pitcher threw outside of the strike zone, they were warned; 3 warnings meant a ball was called, and 3 balls put the batter on first. It was also a common strategy in that era to just throw out of the zone and get the batter frustrated enough to swing anyway) and there are just fewer of them.

You can pretend, sure, but perhaps as part of that pretending you go in and give experience to players at all the positions to establish the baseline… and for batters, you set everyone to throw right so they can play on the left side of the infield (lefties did play there albeit with increasing rarity until the 1890s).

[BaseballMan]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

I think the real issue is that there maybe shouldn’t be as much of an “out of position” penalty because everyone was playing out of position back then. Nobody really knew how to field like modern players and on top of that they used, to put it mildly, substandard equipment. I don’t think gloves were even a thing in the 1870s and to the extent that they might have been, they were, well, gloves in the non baseball sense of the term.

To an extent, though… man, I just think that the further you travel from baseball in 2022, the less accurate the simulation will be. As it is, a base on balls in OOTP 1871 comes on 4 balls, not “9”/3 (the official rules were that when a pitcher threw outside of the strike zone, they were warned; 3 warnings meant a ball was called, and 3 balls put the batter on first. It was also a common strategy in that era to just throw out of the zone and get the batter frustrated enough to swing anyway) and there are just fewer of them.

You can pretend, sure, but perhaps as part of that pretending you go in and give experience to players at all the positions to establish the baseline… and for batters, you set everyone to throw right so they can play on the left side of the infield (lefties did play there albeit with increasing rarity until the 1890s).

I would prefer your suggestion that the game toned down the out of position penalty for earlier errors. I can edit the players but don't like editing players.
Its too easy for me to favor a player.
its not a big deal as i can just set some house rules
and in a way its kinda funny to watch an outfielder dropping a routine fly over and over again.
I dont see this in modern leagues so i just wanna make sure that nobody mistake that i'm saying its something wrong with the game.
Just something i think could be improved for earlier time periods for historical leagues.