Historical Outlier Oddities...

[jdw]

luckymann & I briefly talking about outliers in this thread down near the bottom. My example was Mark Belanger winning the AL Batting Title in 1970 in a Historical Replay that I did recently:

Trades and Transactions

Here's a new one that "in concept" might not seem like an off the wall outlier, but actually is the more I think about it.

OOTP26
Import Settings:
Neutralized
3 Year: 1+2+1
Adjust Hitters: 200/50 (default)
Adjust Pitchers: 25/10 (default)

Scouting - Off
Coaching - Off
Injuries - Low
Long Term Injuries - Very Low
Fatigue - Low
Personality Settings - Off
Player Development - Off

Inaugural draft.

This was a bit of a test league before actually eventually running a team & drafting my own team. So players are going to be on different teams, in different parks.

1975 Dave Kingman (BAL rather than NYM)
.254/.316/.614
147-16-0-64 H-2B-3B-HR

Kingman set the new HR Record.

In concept, someone who hit 48 HR in their best season hitting 64 HR in OOTP isn't the most extreme thing I've seen. Kingman did lead the NL in AB/HR in 1975 & 1976, so in a 1+2+1 Recalc, he would have a strong Power rating.

It's a Neutralized Recalc, so he put up his real numbers 81 games at Shea. So...

The massive concern:

Contact: 23 (39); Power: 108 (108); Eye: 37 (39).

I think this is the biggest change that I've seen in OOTP26 from OOTP19 - there is greater high end / low end variance in Ratings in terms of what Viable means.

Perhaps this is a Neutralized thing, which was problematic to use positionally back in OOTP so I never stuck with it very long.

1975 Kingman
OOTP19: Contact: 41 (46); Power: 89 (92); Eye: 37 (41).
OOTP26: Contact: 23 (39); Power: 108 (108); Eye: 37 (39).

That's just an old OOTP19 league I still have that ran form 1970-88 with a 1+2+1 Recalc, though with Real Stats rather than Neutralized. That Kingman played in Candlestick, not a massive improvement from Shea like going to Wrigley.

A 23 Contact in OOTP19 just wasn't a Viable player. Just in my experience, you weren't ever going to get a .254 BA out of him except perhaps in Coors in the 90s... but the AI wouldn't even start a 23 Contact.

Speaking of Wrigley, I think perhaps playing in BAL rather than Shea might have had an impact...

Home: .246/.321/.569 with 26 HR
Road: .262/.312/.656 with 38 HR

Yeah, no... it wasn't the home park. 23 Contact OOTP Kingman hit more HR on the Road (38) than he did in the entire 1975 Real Life Campaign (36). Those 38 HR on the road are the exact same number that the Real Life MLB HR Leader (Mike Schmidt) hit in 1975.

I'm having a really hard time wrapping my head around that 23 Contact vastly more than 1975 OOTP26 Kingman hitting 26 more HR in 1975 that the real life 1975 HR King. Which alone would be an outlier, even for the NL Leader in AV/HR.

* * * * *

Another example of Extreme high end / low end variance with the most obvious extreme pitcher of the era. Here's Nolan Ryan in the two:


OOTP26 (Neutralized Recalc
1971: Stuff: 102 (107); Movement: 59 (59); Control: 7 (39).
1972: Stuff: 109 (111); Movement: 57 (61); Control: 15 (40).
1973: Stuff: 112 (112); Movement: 58 (58); Control: 21 (39).
1974: Stuff: 110 (110); Movement: 54 (60); Control: 15 (40).
1975: Stuff: 108 (110); Movement: 52 (58); Control: 11 (40).

OOTP19 (Real Stats Recalc)
1971: Stuff: 97 (103); Movement: 74 (72); Control: 21 (31).
1972: Stuff: 110 (102); Movement: 73 (73); Control: 27 (28).
1973: Stuff: 113 (100); Movement: 74 (72); Control: 29 (29).
1974: Stuff: 110 (104); Movement: 68 (68); Control: 27 (30).
1975: Stuff: 108 (106); Movement: 70 (67); Control: 22 (31).

It's Nolan. He walked a ton of people. He should have terrible control at this point. The K/9 were so extreme, his HR/9 were always Top 10, his H/9 were extreme... it mitigated the BB/9 in a way that people didn't grasp at the time.

Still... wrapping one's head around a Control of sub-20 being viable is a challenge. Granted, one was able to wrap the head around Ryan being viable at sub-30 in the past.

Ratings drive the game, but at least with Historical Pitchers, one can eyeball FIP and head over to Fangraphs to refresh oneself with some WAR/250 IP calculations.

But...

* * * * *

Yeah, still not wrapping my head around Kingman with a 23 Contact not only being viable, but hitting 64 dingers in 1975 (not a big HR or Offense season like 1977, 1979 or 1987), let alone hitting 23.

In contrast, Bill North played in Fenway with these ratings in 1975:

Contact: 69 (69); Power: 13 (16); Eye: 75 (94).

I can't pull up his BABIP or Avoids K's, but they are 94/48 in 1976.

He hit .255, with a .267/.243 Home/Road split. It's worse than the .273 he hit in Real Life with a terrible hitters park at his back in Oakland.

Note: that is the level of variance that I've been used to forever in OOTP. He hit .311 in 1973 & .285 1974, which were 25 points above his Real Life numbers.

It's just... for years I've felt a *general* comfort zone with Contact. Kingman's 41 Contact for 1975 in OOTP19 was a number that I would have felt comfortable with all the way back to OOTP5.

21 Contact... I'm really having headaches wrapping my head around that in how to manage a real replay. Does one just ignore it and pay attention to what the player did in Real Life with knowledge of the Real Life Parks (which I've had good comfort about for decades)?

Or is there something that I'm missing?

[Rain King]

Power (i.e. home runs) was removed as a contributing rating towards Contact a few versions ago. It is now just Avoid K and BABIP instead of having a direct relation to batting average.

So, a player like Kingman whose batting average is very home run dependent is going to see a significant change to that rating based on that.

[jdw]

Originally Posted by Rain King

Power (i.e. home runs) was removed as a contributing rating towards Contact a few versions ago. It is now just Avoid K and BABIP instead of having a direct relation to batting average.

So, a player like Kingman whose batting average is very home run dependent is going to see a significant change to that rating based on that.

So using two players identified above:

1975 Kingman
23 Contact
108 Power
35 BABIP
2 Avoid Ks
Memorial Stadium: ~.962 AVG RHB modifier (for 1976 rather than 1975)

1975 North
70 Contact
13 Power
94 BABIP
48 Avoid Ks
Fenway Park: 1.065 / 1.114 AVG LHB/RHB (North is a switchy)

Resulted in:

.254 BA & .231 BABIP Kingman
.255 BA & .287 BABIP North

Obviously the HR help Kingman: 64 vs 1.

Avoid K doesn't: Kingman was 161 K in 642 PA vs North's 48 K in 483 PA

BB's were a little mixed: Kingman 51 BB vs 60 BB in a 160 less PA. North's BB% were a hade lower than in Real Life, while Kingman's were a shade higher. Neither were radically off.

One other thing I should note: Kingman had 99 more PA in the SIM season than in Real Life. Not enough to come close to accounting for the outlier HR number, but certainly helps.

This is perhaps dueling outliers:

1. North at the lower end of his possibilities given the season and playing in Fenway. Perhaps the injury times poorly for a month where he would otherwise have been "hot". Side note - I miss the old Streakiness which was easier to see. No idea if it's still in the game, but buried.

2. Kingman at the monstrous extreme upper end of his possibilities.

Given how Kingman was one of the least liked human beings of the 70s/80s in MLB, I wouldn't say I was happy to see him be the one to break that record.

[djc]

I have always played OOTP knowing the stats are not going to be as good as a text based game. ItÂ’s the way you can go through a career, watch a player develop from minors to majors. One thing that has always annoyed me though is all the fake players who sometimes sneak into the majors. IÂ’m interested to see how version 26 deals with negro leaguers. Are they major league or minors? I think if given the opportunity 25% or so could have been in the majors. With the remaining players in the minors might a realistic goal using the MLE stats. Has anyone tried replaying 1920s with the addition of negro leaguers to see this in action?

[Bill Veeck]

all of this...just fascinating. Oddly, I spent some time w Kingman in the late 1980s and he was just terrific on a personal level. He seemed like a gentle giant of a man. But in his playing days, he hated the press and sent one journalist a rat - poured a bucket of ice over another. Ted Williams and many other players have felt the same way toward the press but didn't go that extreme. This historical aspect of OOTP (my favorite part of OOTP) bringing Kingman back to life as that low contact HR hitter is just a wonderful thing