Huge Number of Historical Rookies Given Bad Running Stats

[Charlie Hough]

I thought I saw this discussed somewhere years ago, but I couldn't find a thread for it. But I'm running a historical game with real minors, and many of the batters in each draft class are being given speed, stealing, and baserunning ratings of 1 on a 10-point scale.

As a general rule, all players receive 1s in all of those categories, and any exceptions seem extremely rare. This leads me to a few questions:

• Is this by design?
  
• Is it due to a lack of stats in the historical minors database, so the sim can't calculate proper ratings?
  
• Will these players develop proper ratings over time, as long as development is turned on?
  
• Does this need to be reported as a bug?

[Brad K]

Don't know what dev will do but recalc should give them proper ratings in a few years. Suggest you sim a couple years to see what happens.

[LansdowneSt]

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

I thought I saw this discussed somewhere years ago, but I couldn't find a thread for it. But I'm running a historical game with real minors, and many of the batters in each draft class are being given speed, stealing, and baserunning ratings of 1 on a 10-point scale.

As a general rule, all players receive 1s in all of those categories, and any exceptions seem extremely rare. This leads me to a few questions:

• Is this by design?
  
• Is it due to a lack of stats in the historical minors database, so the sim can't calculate proper ratings?
  
• Will these players develop proper ratings over time, as long as development is turned on?
  
• Does this need to be reported as a bug?

Can you give specific examples to be checked? So both a cause and a pattern can be discerned when the database is checked? Thanks much

[Charlie Hough]

Originally Posted by LansdowneSt

Can you give specific examples to be checked? So both a cause and a pattern can be discerned when the database is checked? Thanks much

Here are some examples from top picks in the December 1981 draft, where OOTP imported and created historical players who made their debuts in 1982.

ALL of these players had 1s for speed, stealing and baserunning, even though some had excellent stats for steals and other related categories. Most also had 1s for bunting for hits and sacrifice bunts, but sometimes a player would get a good bunt for hit rating for some odd reason.

Jose Canseco
Kal Daniels
Mike Greenwell
Cecil Fielder
Mariano Duncan
Roberto Kelly
Shawon Dunston
Steve Buechele

Here are some counter-examples where some players received realistic ratings for speed, stealing and baserunning, presumably because they had good base stealing and run scoring stats in their first season in the minors. But so did some of the previous players too, so it doesn't make sense.

Kirby Puckett
Terry Pendleton
Kevin McReynolds

Unfortunately, stats or lack of stats doesn't explain everything that's happening. For example, Kal Daniels, who is in the first list above, had 27 SB and was only caught stealing two times in 274 PA in his minor league debut season. But he still received 1s in all his running ratings. As another example, Mike Jones, who had 25 SB, 12 CS and 47 R from 64 H and 350 PA, was also given all 1s. Similarly, Mark McLemore received a 1, 1 and 3 in his running ratings, despite having good base stealing stats in 210 PA.

Here are a few ideas on what could be contributing to this, but some of these players are clear cases of OOTP simply not interpreting their real life stats correctly at all.

1. OOTP is simply not interpreting stats correctly in some cases. Mike Greenwell is a great example. In his minor league debut season, he scored 57 runs from 72 H and 37 BB in 315 PA and had 5 SB and 1 CS, but he was given 1s in all his running ratings. This shows quite clearly that something is broken or bugged somewhere.

2. In some cases, OOTP may be weakening speed, stealing and baserunning due to the minor league level of stats.

3. OOTP may be adjusting and weakening players in some cases, due to their low numbers of at-bats falling within the adjustment settings.

4. OOTP may only be looking at the first line of minor league stats for the debut season, and some players played for more than one team and had most of their stats with the second one.

5. OOTP might be weighing some stats too heavily in assessing overall speed, baserunning, etc.

[LansdowneSt]

Thanks for the examples - sometimes it's not a macro game issue but an issue specific to that row of that year on the player line of the .csv, so having the names will help isolate that and see if there is a source problem specific to that row in that massive MiLB database. Much obliged.

[Charlie Hough]

Originally Posted by LansdowneSt

Thanks for the examples - sometimes it's not a macro game issue but an issue specific to that row of that year on the player line of the .csv, so having the names will help isolate that and see if there is a source problem specific to that row in that massive MiLB database. Much obliged.

By the way, if it helps, this has happened in multiple seasons, so it's not just isolated to one year. The examples I gave were from one particular season, but it seems to be happening each year so far in my current save.