AI Hall of Fame voting is wonky

[uruguru]

Setting: historical season starting in 1931

At the end of the season, I want to start up the Hall of Fame. I assume that the first year or two, the nominated class will be large as a lot of the early greats get in (Cy Young, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, etc). I want this to be a "small hall" so I set the voting threshold to 90%.

I encounter several "problems"

First problem: if I use the standard "wait 5 years after retirement, then you are eligible for 10 years", then any historical player who has been retired for more than 15 years is NOT on the ballot, even though this is technically the first possible ballot for them to be on. Changing the "Years on Ballot" to "unlimited" allows the older players on the ballot, but then of course you might not want them to be on for more than 10 years. MINOR PROBLEM

Second problem: Cy Young... a first-ballot HOF'er if there ever was one. However, if you leave the "Maximum Votes per Ballot" to the default value of 10, then Cy Young gets zero votes. ZERO. But if you raise the maximum votes to 20, he gets in first-ballot with 92.2% of the vote. This is repeatable and makes no sense. MEDIUM PROBLEM. If you leave this value at 20, it doesn't take long before even marginal HOF'ers (e.g. Charlie Buffinton) will get the 90% -- which defeats the point of the 90%.

Third problem: Cap Anson (see image). I just don't know how to explain how the AI is rubber-banding on this guy with 3400 career hits, 2000 RBI & runs, and 85 Career WAR. It doesn't bother me that it took him 4 years to get in, but these were his vote totals: 6.6% -> 87.4% -> 9.4% -> 94.5%

Any ideas why these things are happening?

[edapes]

The dropping and jumping every other year is very common with players who stay on the ballot multiple seasons. There is never any slow growth trend.

The thing I notice in the Hall Of Fame voting in historical and fictional leagues is that way to many Relief Pitchers get in.

[Sweed]

What happens if you go unlimited years on ballot for the first vote or two and then change back to 5/10 year requirements?

Then do the same for Max votes per ballot, ie 20 the first year or two, then reset it to 10?

Would that get you through that first large class before returning to the 5yr -10yr -90% you want to use?

If the loose rules for year one, or years one and two, result in unwanted HOF electees could they be removed in commish mode?

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by Sweed

What happens if you go unlimited years on ballot for the first vote or two and then change back to 5/10 year requirements?

Yeah, I thought about this but then some of the 5/10 players who became eligible in the first few votes would sort of get an extra advantage.

I even tried running two separate votes each year, for 5/10 and one for older players set to unlimited -- like a Veteran's Committee vote! That helped separate out the two groups of players, but the HOF voting history in the game only retains the last vote of the year, not both. That's a minor problem, though.

The rubber banding is an issue because it forces you to keep the low vote-totals every year because Cap Anson or Cy Young might be almost elected one year, and then completely eliminated the next.

I'm not keen on changing the induction requirements each year, but it wouldn't be an issue if I held two different votes (one for 10/5, the other for Veteran's). Then maybe cancel the Veteran's votes on the first year that no one gets in?

Either way, I just wanted to see if anyone else in historical games has figured out how to bootstrap the HOF voting in a way that makes sense.


edit: I just had an idea... maybe instead of holding a special Veteran's Committee selection, I just spin up another sim in the background where those veterans would be 10/5 players (like separate sims for 1929 & earlier) and just manually induct them in the "official" sim that starts in 1930. I dunno. I'll think about it.