Right aging and random talent modifiers for modern day MLB League

[The Wolf]

Phightin, I just wanted to say thank you for all the work you did on this and for sharing it all with us. You've made it possible for all of us to have a better game.

[madJ]

Thank you very much for the time and work you put into this one. I will cerainly give this settings a try.

[Mets Man]

Originally Posted by phightin

Won't give you a graph Mets Fan but I'll throw some hard data at you to hopefully show what I'm trying to emphasize.

Using MLB.com stats to simply look at the top 50 pitchers in the MLB last year based on ERA and qualifying (all have minimum 160 innings pitched).

Ages 2011 Top 50 MLB Starting Pitchers
Major League Baseball Stats | MLB.com: Stats
Average Age = 28.72

# of pitchers aged 30+ = 18

# of pitchers aged 33+ = 10

# of pichers aged 35+ = 6

As you can see there really are not that many guys 30+ and into their mid thirtys that are "top pitchers" IRL. The average age of a top pitcher in his prime last season was right around 28. and while certain pitchers can pitch well once they get to 33 and over in age there are very very few who actually can. Guys like Halladay, Lee, Hudson, Dickey, etc are all rare exceptions.

Interesting enough when looking at the same spectrum of data for my Modern Day MLB League in 2036 (.375 ageing, .900 Dev) Average age of the top 50 pitchers by ERA the average age is actually slightly HIGHER!

Average age = 29.26 so slightly higher

# of pitchers aged 30+ = 22 slightly higher

# of pitchers aged 33+ = 10 spot on

# of pitchers aged 35+ = 4 slightly lower

So as you can see all the age distributions for the top pitchers in the league using this setting, VORP, and I assume WAR as well will all measure out close to real life. For whatever reason, top MLB pitchers are trending younger and that's why there are a vast amount of top aces in the game.

Now with that said there most likely is a lower distribution, although I wouldn't say major but somewhat there, of older pitchers throughout the entire league. However, that's something I have to live with because as I said before if you crank down the Dev settings or age modifier guys start hangining on too long and there's too many good 33+ and 35+ top pitchers in the game. I would go through and check year by year periodically and I counted 50-55% at times pitchers aged 30+ in the top portion of my league which is off from real life. My personal preference is to take a top down approach when it comes to this stuff as I would rather get the that right than have my league dominated by older guys etc.

Thanks for the research and data. I'll probably use these. One thing I'm having trouble deciding is the injury frequency setting. Right now I switched from Average to Low. The reason? Well, I find Average has a realistic number of injuries (I know it's been said that it's actually less than modern day real life), but there are too many serious injuries where guys are sent to the DL for months, sometimes the whole year. I can't count the number of times I've seen a guy get a torn labrum or torn UCL. I think real life, lots of players get injured, but a lot of those injuries are minor day-to-days or just week(s) injuries. With the Low setting, I think the injury rates are too low, but it feels more like the right number of serious injuries. So I don't know what to do here. Do you get my dilemma? What do you use?

[Thundercrack]

Originally Posted by Mets Man

Thanks for the research and data. I'll probably use these. One thing I'm having trouble deciding is the injury frequency setting. Right now I switched from Average to Low. The reason? Well, I find Average has a realistic number of injuries (I know it's been said that it's actually less than modern day real life), but there are too many serious injuries where guys are sent to the DL for months, sometimes the whole year. I can't count the number of times I've seen a guy get a torn labrum or torn UCL. I think real life, lots of players get injured, but a lot of those injuries are minor day-to-days or just week(s) injuries. With the Low setting, I think the injury rates are too low, but it feels more like the right number of serious injuries. So I don't know what to do here. Do you get my dilemma? What do you use?

We've been told countless times that the average setting adheres to statistically accurate injury rates, and I don't doubt it, but for me, and I think many others here, it just doesn't "feel" right. Too many players out for too long, and bottom line is, this is a game, meant to bring enjoyment. So set it to low, and enjoy.

[phightin]

Originally Posted by Mets Man

Thanks for the research and data. I'll probably use these. One thing I'm having trouble deciding is the injury frequency setting. Right now I switched from Average to Low. The reason? Well, I find Average has a realistic number of injuries (I know it's been said that it's actually less than modern day real life), but there are too many serious injuries where guys are sent to the DL for months, sometimes the whole year. I can't count the number of times I've seen a guy get a torn labrum or torn UCL. I think real life, lots of players get injured, but a lot of those injuries are minor day-to-days or just week(s) injuries. With the Low setting, I think the injury rates are too low, but it feels more like the right number of serious injuries. So I don't know what to do here. Do you get my dilemma? What do you use?

Injuries are tough nut to crack with this game. I think part of the problem isn't necessarily the rates or even severity that they occur in but more so how they are presented. I'm sure this is difficult to implement so by no means is a request but I'll use the recent example of Halladay and his shoulder injury. IRL Halladay has a condition with his shoulder and will miss about a month of the season maybe a little more. He may come back sometime in July pitch for 2-3 more weeks only to find that the condition worsens or is more severe than originally thought and than be shut down for the year (6-9 months) after. IRL this is almost presented as one injury that manifests itself over two different DL stints and plays out over the course of a season. Guys go on the DL come back once or twice for a few weeks only to find out they cant play and then are shut down. Now with that said in OOTP you would simply get a message saying Roy Halladay has severe should inflamation and will be out the next 9 months. It's tough but I have learned to live with. I'm thankful that injuries at least most of the time dont seem to be the death spiral ratings drop they use to be. I will say using high while there seems to obviously be more injuries throughout the league the rate of severe and minor day to day ones seems to be accurate. The severe injury rate is probably the same as classic but appears greater on the classic setting because there's less injury totals. Hence they occur at a higher rate but still are accurate.

Now with that said my problem with injuries isnt the severity but the rate at which they occur during the entire season. For example injuries should not be as prevelant during August/September/Playoffs than they are during April/May. What I have experimented with to try to counter this is using High Settings from preseason through May. Classic in June and July, Low in August, and then Very Low during September and the Playoffs. I was attempting to try to go through all the injuries from my previous season to see how it played out but stopped as it was overwhelming.

Personally I have grown to like having to deal with injuries to an extent because it makes the game more challenging for myself. I can understand though where other people are coming from and want a different lower approach, so it's all personal preference.

[molarmite]

Can you edit your original post and put the numbers that you used in there to make it easier for everyone to find?

[Winnipeg59]

Would you have to adjust with the release of each patch (assuming more are on the way of course)?

And wouldn't the objective of the developers be to nail this within the game itself eventually? And don't misunderstand, I'm not being critical I'm just suggesting that the team does such a great job with this game that aging and talent modifiers that mimic real life would be a detail to get this as close to real life as possible!

13 is a fine piece of work!

[madJ]

I still have a question about this one. How many draft rounds should be used with those settings? After playing some seasons with the standard settings there appeared to be a decline in talent in the whole league. I even noticed that the number of players overall decreased over time.
Then I increased the number of rounds for which players are created for the draft from 35 to 45. That solved the problem with the decreasing number of players. But with the original settings it led to younger teams overall. I can now build a team that competes for the World Series every season only with guys under 27.

So what I'm worried about is that the suggested settings in this thread combined with a 30 round draft with 45 rounds of created players would lead to a inflation of talent while I'm not sure if 35 rounds of created players would be enough to avoid running out of players.

[phightin]

Originally Posted by Winnipeg59

Would you have to adjust with the release of each patch (assuming more are on the way of course)?

And wouldn't the objective of the developers be to nail this within the game itself eventually? And don't misunderstand, I'm not being critical I'm just suggesting that the team does such a great job with this game that aging and talent modifiers that mimic real life would be a detail to get this as close to real life as possible!

13 is a fine piece of work!

I don't think barring something major from the developers that anything in 13 will cause these modifiers to need to be adjusted. I know Markus tweaked the injuries slightly but other than that I don't anticipate any other patches greatly effecting the ageing. However, when OTTP 14 comes out I'm sure they may need to be adjusted.

I too agree that the goal should be for the developers to use these ageing parameters for a modern mlb setting. However, the thing is there are so many people who play this game with fictional leagues etc that I'm not sure if having a true to life modern day MLB age spectrum is the overall goal. The one definite request I do have though is that I would like there to be two distinct talent change modifiers one for batting and for pitching. The reason why is because IRL pitchers will tend much more batters to be erratic and inconsistent or flame out during the careers. It's not really something thats a one size fits all solution.

Originally Posted by molarmite

Can you edit your original post and put the numbers that you used in there to make it easier for everyone to find?

Sure will.

Originally Posted by madJ

I still have a question about this one. How many draft rounds should be used with those settings? After playing some seasons with the standard settings there appeared to be a decline in talent in the whole league. I even noticed that the number of players overall decreased over time.
Then I increased the number of rounds for which players are created for the draft from 35 to 45. That solved the problem with the decreasing number of players. But with the original settings it led to younger teams overall. I can now build a team that competes for the World Series every season only with guys under 27.

So what I'm worried about is that the suggested settings in this thread combined with a 30 round draft with 45 rounds of created players would lead to a inflation of talent while I'm not sure if 35 rounds of created players would be enough to avoid running out of players.

TBH I think if anything using these settings will slightly INCREASE the overall number of talent throughout your league so the standard should work fine. In general there will be more guys maintaining a high level of play longer in their careers true to real life so you wont need to worry about a decrease at all. Also the nice thing is you won't or at least should not be able to build a team of guys under 27 that can compete for the WS every year. There should be enough good 30+ year olds to balance everything out.

[madJ]

Originally Posted by phightin

TBH I think if anything using these settings will slightly INCREASE the overall number of talent throughout your league so the standard should work fine. In general there will be more guys maintaining a high level of play longer in their careers true to real life so you wont need to worry about a decrease at all. Also the nice thing is you won't or at least should not be able to build a team of guys under 27 that can compete for the WS every year. There should be enough good 30+ year olds to balance everything out.

So essentially I should turn back to 35 rounds of created players. That's all I needed to know. I'll test the settings myself but didn't want to flood the game with players right from the start.
Thanks again for the research you did.

[RchW]

Originally Posted by Winnipeg59

Would you have to adjust with the release of each patch (assuming more are on the way of course)?

And wouldn't the objective of the developers be to nail this within the game itself eventually? And don't misunderstand, I'm not being critical I'm just suggesting that the team does such a great job with this game that aging and talent modifiers that mimic real life would be a detail to get this as close to real life as possible!

13 is a fine piece of work!

They do. My modifiers are typically in the 0.9 to 1.1 range. I'd call that nailed.

[evanbarth]

So the consenus is to use the .250/1.000/.375/.900?

Also, I see the two of you were way differnet on talent change -- one had 67 and the other 38 -- which do you recommend and why?

[phightin]

Originally Posted by RchW

They do. My modifiers are typically in the 0.9 to 1.1 range. I'd call that nailed.

See I take issue with this because from the figures that were posted on here I wouldn't say the default modifiers for ageing are close to real life MLB parameters. Development is fairly close but ageing as pointed out from figures, graphs, charts, etc from people like Eiskrap and others on here are off.

I'm still trying to tinker with things even tonight to make them better. I don't take issue with how the game works cause at the end of the day people here will have different reasons for playing it but for people like myself who want it to mirror as close to real life as possible this is something I care about.

[rjl518]

very interesting indeed

[Mets Man]

Originally Posted by evanbarth

So the consenus is to use the .250/1.000/.375/.900?

Also, I see the two of you were way differnet on talent change -- one had 67 and the other 38 -- which do you recommend and why?

Honestly, in my opinion I think even 38 is too high for me.

I'm looking for a setting where you'll have consistent year-to-year performers from the marquee names, with occasional variability (ie. off-years by some, total drop offs and occasional surprises).

I've lowered mine down to 34 now because I feel like you just can't rely on anybody year-to-year. Off years are happening too often and too predictably for some of the best players. As I've said, I do want off years to happen to some players on occasion, but I just feel the frequency in which it's happening is too prevalent.

I believe the game is random enough even without all the random talent changes. Don't believe me? Try setting this to 1 and see if you see any off years? I'm willing to bet that you'll still see a lot of variability, so the game doesn't get boring and too predictable.

[robc]

Originally Posted by Mets Man

Honestly, in my opinion I think even 38 is too high for me.

I'm looking for a setting where you'll have consistent year-to-year performers from the marquee names, with occasional variability (ie. off-years by some, total drop offs and occasional surprises).

I've lowered mine down to 34 now because I feel like you just can't rely on anybody year-to-year. Off years are happening too often and too predictably for some of the best players. As I've said, I do want off years to happen to some players on occasion, but I just feel the frequency in which it's happening is too prevalent.

I believe the game is random enough even without all the random talent changes. Don't believe me? Try setting this to 1 and see if you see any off years? I'm willing to bet that you'll still see a lot of variability, so the game doesn't get boring and too predictable.

Yes, there is a lot of variability just due to the randomness used to generate results. If we got a perfect distribution only 68% of batters who hit .300 in real life would be between .282 and .318 in OOTP. The rest would vary by an even greater margin. As you can see there can be a big difference and still have statistically plausible results.

[phightin]

Originally Posted by Mets Man

Honestly, in my opinion I think even 38 is too high for me.

I'm looking for a setting where you'll have consistent year-to-year performers from the marquee names, with occasional variability (ie. off-years by some, total drop offs and occasional surprises).

I've lowered mine down to 34 now because I feel like you just can't rely on anybody year-to-year. Off years are happening too often and too predictably for some of the best players. As I've said, I do want off years to happen to some players on occasion, but I just feel the frequency in which it's happening is too prevalent.

I believe the game is random enough even without all the random talent changes. Don't believe me? Try setting this to 1 and see if you see any off years? I'm willing to bet that you'll still see a lot of variability, so the game doesn't get boring and too predictable.

38 could work well. I'm not sure as I've never tested anything but 67. I know a lot of people on here claim 50 is the ideal number so I may try that at some point. I will say though that I have noticed many guys still performing consistently over the course of their career with these ageing and development modifiers and the randomness set at 67. I've thought about lowering it to 50 or 60 though. The one thing, and correct me if I'm wrong, that I think the lower randomness number will affect though is the rate surprise draft picks develop and turn into stud professionals. For example from what I have gathered with the randomness set very very low mostly 1st/2nd rounders will develop into good players while guys picked in the mid to late rounds will all mostly not pan out. IRL most 1st/2nd rounders have a greater chance of turning into good players but there's still quite a few mid level draft picks that make it and even become great.

I've concluded that these modifiers are the way I'm going for now until something better comes along or someone does more research. Things still aren't perfect but I've chalked that up more to how the game works, and the fact being that by fixing it will have a ripple effect and cause other problems. For instance IMO there's still a tad too many guys aged 30-32 that maintain a high level, but tad not enough 34-35 years old still. I can live with this because it's a hell of a lot better than the default mess and having no good older players, but by trying to fix one it will hurt the other. It's still much closer to real life than the defaults as said before. On the opposite end there probably isn't enough batters who get called up at age 20-21 from the minors, but again thats more how the game works. If I tried to crank up the devlopment modifiers it would decrease the number of good older players which will cause bigger problems. Still again a hell of a lot better than the deafults.

I'm about to start a thread that probably has to do with a different issue other than directly relating to modifiers that plays into the career numbers of hitters and pitchers. It should be interesting.

[Mets Man]

Originally Posted by phightin

38 could work well. I'm not sure as I've never tested anything but 67. I know a lot of people on here claim 50 is the ideal number so I may try that at some point. I will say though that I have noticed many guys still performing consistently over the course of their career with these ageing and development modifiers and the randomness set at 67. I've thought about lowering it to 50 or 60 though. The one thing, and correct me if I'm wrong, that I think the lower randomness number will affect though is the rate surprise draft picks develop and turn into stud professionals. For example from what I have gathered with the randomness set very very low mostly 1st/2nd rounders will develop into good players while guys picked in the mid to late rounds will all mostly not pan out. IRL most 1st/2nd rounders have a greater chance of turning into good players but there's still quite a few mid level draft picks that make it and even become great.

I've concluded that these modifiers are the way I'm going for now until something better comes along or someone does more research. Things still aren't perfect but I've chalked that up more to how the game works, and the fact being that by fixing it will have a ripple effect and cause other problems. For instance IMO there's still a tad too many guys aged 30-32 that maintain a high level, but tad not enough 34-35 years old still. I can live with this because it's a hell of a lot better than the default mess and having no good older players, but by trying to fix one it will hurt the other. It's still much closer to real life than the defaults as said before. On the opposite end there probably isn't enough batters who get called up at age 20-21 from the minors, but again thats more how the game works. If I tried to crank up the devlopment modifiers it would decrease the number of good older players which will cause bigger problems. Still again a hell of a lot better than the deafults.

I'm about to start a thread that probably has to do with a different issue other than directly relating to modifiers that plays into the career numbers hitters and pitchers. It should be interesting.

I concur with phightin here. So far so good with these settings (modifiers). The only difference I have with my settings is the AI Evaluation to emphasis a little more current stats than ratings, the talent change randomness set to 34 and the injury frequency set to Low. I'm finding it much more enjoyable now that I don't see an excessive number of players go down for season ending injuries. I do still see some, but it's not too bad. I would like to see a bit more day-to-day injuries, but I could live with this.

Honestly, the amount of talent randomness with draft picks and young players is already enough for me. A lot of my minor leaguers (and others on other teams) who were drafted as 5 star prospects have turned out to be duds now. It's by no means a sure thing or even close to it. On the other hand, I haven't really seen a lot of low draft picks (bad prospects when drafted) turn out to be studs. Then again, I never really checked, as I wouldn't recognize one of these guys if I saw them.

I tend to see more talent drops than talent gains. I think it may just be in my head, or just more salient to me.

Take it for what its worth.

I'll let you know how things go as my career progresses.

[Killebrew]

Here's an example of what the OOTP13 Talent Change Randomness modifier will do for rookie drafts. I ran two 100 year test sims with identical settings except for Talent Change Randomness. One league using a Talent Change Randomness modifier of 67 (left column in the image below), the other with a Talent Change Randomness modifier of 100 (right column in the image below). I've split the batters and pitchers total VORP, then included the combined batter/pitcher VORP in the bottom tables (with VORP totals rounded up).

Some other test notes...
- To prepare for the tests I used the same base created league with all the same settings, then made two copies of the league and adjusted just the Talent Change Randomness setting for each league.
- The tests used 32 team leagues with 10 rounds of rookies generated each season, for 10 draft rounds.
- The numbers below represent total VORP in 100 seasons for MLB level players that were drafted during the test sims, so all stats from the players initially created for the test leagues were ignored.


The numbers show that lowering the Talent Change Randomness setting will ensure better 1st rounder results along with worse results for players drafted later on. That will surprise no one, but the extent of the difference may or may not be a surprise. I would imagine using a Talent Change Randomness setting of about 33 would result in the same percentage difference.

[Mets Man]

Originally Posted by Killebrew

Here's an example of what the OOTP13 Talent Change Randomness modifier will do for rookie drafts. I ran two 100 year test sims with identical settings except for Talent Change Randomness. One league using a Talent Change Randomness modifier of 67 (left column in the image below), the other with a Talent Change Randomness modifier of 100 (right column in the image below). I've split the batters and pitchers total VORP, then included the combined batter/pitcher VORP in the bottom tables (with VORP totals rounded up).

Some other test notes...
- To prepare for the tests I used the same base created league with all the same settings, then made two copies of the league and adjusted just the Talent Change Randomness setting for each league.
- The tests used 32 team leagues with 10 rounds of rookies generated each season, for 10 draft rounds.
- The numbers below represent total VORP in 100 seasons for MLB level players that were drafted during the test sims, so all stats from the players initially created for the test leagues were ignored.


The numbers show that lowering the Talent Change Randomness setting will ensure better 1st rounder results along with worse results for players drafted later on. That will surprise no one, but the extent of the difference may or may not be a surprise. I would imagine using a Talent Change Randomness setting of about 33 would result in the same percentage difference.

Awesome analysis Killebrew. Besides draftees, I'm actually more concerned with established veterans undergoing random talent changes. I think young players should be more prone to changing their talent, but veterans should more or less maintain their talent levels more often aside from age factors.

But that's just me.