Fielding

[David Watts]

I'm not a ratings guy. I don't manage. I don't gm. I just watch the game build history. That being said fielding in OOTP has me completely baffled. Nolan Arenado from everything I've read and heard, is supposed to be a really top notch defensive third baseman. His 3B ratings in OOTP (1-80 scale) have him sitting at 50. His other ratings are somewhat higher, but stay around 60 if I remember correctly.

Same goes for Omar Vizquel.

Arenado has won a Gold Glove in my game, but he's also had 20+ error seasons. The game even shifts him to 1B at times.

Vizquel is yet to win a Gold Glove.

Haven't had Brooks Robinson yet, but he be a 50 out of 80 as well?
I just don't get a good feel for fielding when watching OOTP games.

If for example I created a historical league in 1910 and had the game assign all the real players fictional names, so Ty Cobb is Rufus B. Quakenbush and Ty Speaker is Poultry Sweating. I could easily look at the hitting ratings of Rufus and know he is a stud. Same for Poultry. But, if I created 2018 and did the same, I couldn't even look at Arenado as Arenado and know if he is an elite player at 3B based on his fielding ratings.

[Rain King]

Can you provide more information on the type of historical simulation you are running?

Your comment that Arenado was moved to first base makes me think you are allowing the development engine to take over and not necessarily using recalc.

A few other thoughts.

1.) Defensive stats are pretty well documented to be difficult to accurately translate into ratings. Most of the best defensive metrics out there do not use traditional stats and do not exist for most of baseball's history.

2.) Particularly with Arenado, I wonder if Coors Field may cause problems with the statistical translation to defensive ratings since that field itself causes a much higher BABIP.

3.) You may want to search for Garlon posts on historical fielding ratings. I believe he was involved in a major re-work a version or two back that from all accounts I have seen improved things quite a bit (although I am sure it still isn't going to be perfect).

[Brad K]

I imported Arenado's 2015 year three year ratings using both 22 and 23. Got 60 both times.

I imported Robinson's 1970 year three year ratings using both 22 and 23. Got 65 both times.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by Rain King

Can you provide more information on the type of historical simulation you are running?

Your comment that Arenado was moved to first base makes me think you are allowing the development engine to take over and not necessarily using recalc.

A few other thoughts.

1.) Defensive stats are pretty well documented to be difficult to accurately translate into ratings. Most of the best defensive metrics out there do not use traditional stats and do not exist for most of baseball's history.

2.) Particularly with Arenado, I wonder if Coors Field may cause problems with the statistical translation to defensive ratings since that field itself causes a much higher BABIP.

3.) You may want to search for Garlon posts on historical fielding ratings. I believe he was involved in a major re-work a version or two back that from all accounts I have seen improved things quite a bit (although I am sure it still isn't going to be perfect).

I'm playing random debut. 5 year recalc, fielding based on 3 years. I do have development on. TCR of 10. Thing is, just for fun, I created a 2018 straight up historical league and Arenado had the exact same ratings he did in my random debut. I'm just trying to wrap my head around how one can look at a player in OOTP and know he is supposed to be a top notch defensive player.

[Rain King]

Well, then I think I would just point you to my first thought.

It really isn't going to be possible in a game that has to recreate ratings based on stats to do that in a way that gets all of the players exactly correct based on their reputation. The stats available just aren't good enough at describing defensive ability.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by Brad K

I imported Arenado's 2015 year three year ratings using both 22 and 23. Got 60 both times.

I imported Robinson's 1970 year three year ratings using both 22 and 23. Got 65 both times.

So where did Robinson's 65 sit on a scale of his 3B peers?

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by Rain King

Well, then I think I would just point you to my first thought.

It really isn't going to be possible in a game that has to recreate ratings based on stats to do that in a way that gets all of the players exactly correct based on their reputation. The stats available just aren't good enough at describing defensive ability.

Thanks. I just feel that fielding is the one aspect of my OOTP leagues that I don't really have a feel for. I see Vizquel enter the league and expect him to rack up the Gold Gloves, but 6 or 7 years in he has been unheard of.

This is probably something I still have memories of card and dice play. It was always easy to see the elite fielders when you had check a play on the fielding chart. Harder to do when it's all computer these days.

[Syd Thrift]

I don't really do historical-historical games but what I've seen is that they tend not to produce a lot of 80 fielding players, period. The game tries to base it off of actual fielding stats and those just aren't all that informative. Like, generally, I guess, the best shortstops in the league will lead the league in assists per 9 innings, especially if you find ways to account for groundball rate (which I'm not sure is in the Lahman DB) but the real things you'd want to have access to, stuff like "what percentage of handle-able balls did this guy get to" just doesn't exist.

I feel like the real thing to do here is to hand-curate those ratings. I realize this slows things waaaay down, and on top of that nobody's come out with this kind of thing, but it kind of gets to the limitations of what OOTP is compared with, say, Strat-O-Matic and DMB. The game's strength is simply not in doing single-season replays. Frankly I think it does a very good job with them given its limitations and it kind of puts the SOM/DMB model of paying $20 or so per season to shame, but those companies do in fact invest a bunch of extra time in rating players defensively based on their reputation and that means that a SOM Omar Vizquel is more likely to play defensively like real-life Omar Vizquel than an OOTP Omar Vizquel.

It's funny because there's another post where I'm currently being accused of being an OOTP homer but this is a place where you're kind of asking OOTP to do things that OOTP is not really "meant" and to a great extent isn't capable of doing. If you really and truly are interested in single-season replays, frankly SOM or DMB do a better job of it (although to me the graphics are lowkey a big, big item that weighs OOTP back). Even if you want to run, say, the entire 1970s, I think you'll find that SOM or DMB will encapsulate it better, especially if you want to relive anomaly years like Mark Fidrych's (in OOTP/modern baseball terms, he was BABIPed up one year, but SOM will happily make him into an actual stud that one season). Yes, that is waaay more expensive than OOTP as well. If you don't have that kind of money, I'd recommend spending your own time instead to manually re-rate guys based on their rep.

I think OOTP does an A-1 job of doing the "current year + X" style that basically is the only way you can play FM and which is probably the #1 way people play the game too. Because of the work done on the above, it's also very, very good at fictional play, and additionally IMO it handles fictional play using previous eras really, really well. Using it for actual historical play is... fine, but it's *slightly* like going to Walmart and expecting filet mignon except that IMO OOTP delivers filet mignon in the areas it was built to deliver filet mignon.

And I want to be clear here too that I don't mean this in a "lol stop complaining and just do something else" way, I mean I used to play a toooooooon of SOM and DMB and IMO those games do an extremely good job at what they do. I just don't have a lot of desire to play that type of game anymore, at least for baseball, but if I did, that's what I'd use. On a similar level, I play Draft Day Sports Basketball when I want to do fictional basketball but when I want to do season replays I used Action! PC Basketball because, again, of those hand-curated seasons (also because I think Dave Koch's game handles the coaching aspect a lot better but I digress).

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by David Watts

So where did Robinson's 65 sit on a scale of his 3B peers?

Don't know. But he was the only one to make the cover of Sports Illustrated! LOL.

OK, seriously, I didn't look and where would I find a list of 3Bmen listed by defense rating?

I think Syd has the point on there not being 80 ranked fielders. I use 1-20 and hardly ever see anyone rated over 15 and if they are it lasts just a season.

[David Watts]

Thanks for the posts guys. Got to thinking, I wonder what Arenado's fielding ratings look like in the MLB Quickstart? Been so long since I loaded the quicstart. May have to do it at some point just to see.

Brad, you would know this, how did Clemente perform defensively in your Pirates play through? Was he an elite right fielder defensively in your game? Thanks

[David Watts]

I hope I didn't sound like I was whining. Not my intentions at all. Not something that would make me quit playing random debuts or historical games. Just something I was thinking about this weekend as I was watching my leagues pennant race play out. In the end, I'm playing OOTP, because I don't want to simply replay seasons. I play tons of random debut, because I can dictate the structure my league uses, the years it uses as a base and so much more. Right now in my current random debut, Tony Fernandez is the all time hits leader after 18 seasons with 3400+ hits. Stuff like this is why I love this game.

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

I don't really do historical-historical games but what I've seen is that they tend not to produce a lot of 80 fielding players, period. The game tries to base it off of actual fielding stats and those just aren't all that informative. Like, generally, I guess, the best shortstops in the league will lead the league in assists per 9 innings, especially if you find ways to account for groundball rate (which I'm not sure is in the Lahman DB) but the real things you'd want to have access to, stuff like "what percentage of handle-able balls did this guy get to" just doesn't exist.

I feel like the real thing to do here is to hand-curate those ratings. I realize this slows things waaaay down, and on top of that nobody's come out with this kind of thing, but it kind of gets to the limitations of what OOTP is compared with, say, Strat-O-Matic and DMB. The game's strength is simply not in doing single-season replays. Frankly I think it does a very good job with them given its limitations and it kind of puts the SOM/DMB model of paying $20 or so per season to shame, but those companies do in fact invest a bunch of extra time in rating players defensively based on their reputation and that means that a SOM Omar Vizquel is more likely to play defensively like real-life Omar Vizquel than an OOTP Omar Vizquel.

It's funny because there's another post where I'm currently being accused of being an OOTP homer but this is a place where you're kind of asking OOTP to do things that OOTP is not really "meant" and to a great extent isn't capable of doing. If you really and truly are interested in single-season replays, frankly SOM or DMB do a better job of it (although to me the graphics are lowkey a big, big item that weighs OOTP back). Even if you want to run, say, the entire 1970s, I think you'll find that SOM or DMB will encapsulate it better, especially if you want to relive anomaly years like Mark Fidrych's (in OOTP/modern baseball terms, he was BABIPed up one year, but SOM will happily make him into an actual stud that one season). Yes, that is waaay more expensive than OOTP as well. If you don't have that kind of money, I'd recommend spending your own time instead to manually re-rate guys based on their rep.

I think OOTP does an A-1 job of doing the "current year + X" style that basically is the only way you can play FM and which is probably the #1 way people play the game too. Because of the work done on the above, it's also very, very good at fictional play, and additionally IMO it handles fictional play using previous eras really, really well. Using it for actual historical play is... fine, but it's *slightly* like going to Walmart and expecting filet mignon except that IMO OOTP delivers filet mignon in the areas it was built to deliver filet mignon.

And I want to be clear here too that I don't mean this in a "lol stop complaining and just do something else" way, I mean I used to play a toooooooon of SOM and DMB and IMO those games do an extremely good job at what they do. I just don't have a lot of desire to play that type of game anymore, at least for baseball, but if I did, that's what I'd use. On a similar level, I play Draft Day Sports Basketball when I want to do fictional basketball but when I want to do season replays I used Action! PC Basketball because, again, of those hand-curated seasons (also because I think Dave Koch's game handles the coaching aspect a lot better but I digress).

Your point about shortstops should be overcome by unchecking the "Overall Ratings Based On All Players" box. This is supposed to create ratings comparing a player against the other players at his position. If what you're saying was true, first basemen would all be demi-gods with their defensive ratings, and I can assure you that this is not true. What David is seeing is really bizarre, because I would imagine, Arenado, and Vizquel dominate their positions in the defensive stats categories.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by David Watts

Thanks for the posts guys. Got to thinking, I wonder what Arenado's fielding ratings look like in the MLB Quickstart? Been so long since I loaded the quicstart. May have to do it at some point just to see.

Brad, you would know this, how did Clemente perform defensively in your Pirates play through? Was he an elite right fielder defensively in your game? Thanks

Yes he was. He's always had poorer than average ratings on errors in every game I've played but of course a fantastic arm. He had good enough range that for several years early in his career I played him in center.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by Brad K

Yes he was. He's always had poorer than average ratings on errors in every game I've played but of course a fantastic arm. He had good enough range that for several years early in his career I played him in center.

Thanks, that makes me feel a lot better.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by actionjackson

Your point about shortstops should be overcome by unchecking the "Overall Ratings Based On All Players" box. This is supposed to create ratings comparing a player against the other players at his position. If what you're saying was true, first basemen would all be demi-gods with their defensive ratings, and I can assure you that this is not true. What David is seeing is really bizarre, because I would imagine, Arenado, and Vizquel dominate their positions in the defensive stats categories.

They kind of don't though, that's the thing. Defensive stats are just plain not like offensive stats, where it's easy to see a guy hit like 60 dingers and be like "yep, he's clearly got that 80 power". Just taking one season from Ozzie Smith where he won the Gold Glove, right in the midst of when he was considered an ATG:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/l...fielding.shtml

BBRef tracks this F2O% number which I don't think is even in the DB that the game generates ratings from, and even by that somewhat advanced metric the Cardinals are essentially tied for the best mark with the Astros, Giants, and Padres. In the AL, you'd add the Orioles, White Sox, and Rangers (in fact, the Cal Ripken O's are slightly ahead). Which of those starting SSes deserve top overall ratings? At that, some of those guys - Cal, Ozzie Smith, and Ozzie Guillen for 3 - have good reps, but some of them represented are Scott Fletcher, who played an awful lot of 2nd and 3rd even in his prime years, and Garry Templeton, who by that point in his career did not have a great rep at short. And on the flip side, Spike Owen often gets talked about as a great fielder from that period but both of his teams ranked near the bottom in that metric. Rafael Santana was essentially only playing the position for the World Champions because of his stellar D and the Mets, too, are not rated highly. And all that said, there's *certainly* no huge gulf in ability to clearly separate the good from the bad, and I suspect that's true for most seasons.

Fielding is really hard to quantify that way, in large part because we just plain haven't had access to the kinds of numbers that can really parse out who's good and who isn't until very, very recently. Before like 2015 you've got basically assists, putouts, and errors.

[luckymann]

There's no doubt it can be a bit hit and miss, depending on settings and style of save for the most part.

Here's Ozzie Smith in a dev only save

And here he is in a 3-year recalc save with dev on (scouting is also LOW for this, 100% for the top one)

He's a bit older in the top save but was never rated in either as highly as I thought he would be.

the second save, by way of comparison

Stat outputs as follows:

Save 1, dev only

Save 2, 3-year recalc plus dev

Interestingly, his corresponding ZR is slightly higher in the save where he had the slightly poorer ratings. This, of course, could be due to the different era environments of the respective saves.

So many things at play with D ratings, as have been discussed. The similar issues that plague deep IRL analysis of fielding are at play - better range leads to more errors leads to lower ratings. And while ZR stats are produced in a save, I don't think it has much to do with the ratings a player receives.

[David Watts]

Just had Mark Belanger import as part of my amateur draft. I now have a 26 year Vizquel and a 19 year old Belanger in my league.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

I don't really do historical-historical games but what I've seen is that they tend not to produce a lot of 80 fielding players, period. The game tries to base it off of actual fielding stats and those just aren't all that informative. Like, generally, I guess, the best shortstops in the league will lead the league in assists per 9 innings, especially if you find ways to account for groundball rate (which I'm not sure is in the Lahman DB) but the real things you'd want to have access to, stuff like "what percentage of handle-able balls did this guy get to" just doesn't exist.

I feel like the real thing to do here is to hand-curate those ratings. I realize this slows things waaaay down, and on top of that nobody's come out with this kind of thing, but it kind of gets to the limitations of what OOTP is compared with, say, Strat-O-Matic and DMB. The game's strength is simply not in doing single-season replays. Frankly I think it does a very good job with them given its limitations and it kind of puts the SOM/DMB model of paying $20 or so per season to shame, but those companies do in fact invest a bunch of extra time in rating players defensively based on their reputation and that means that a SOM Omar Vizquel is more likely to play defensively like real-life Omar Vizquel than an OOTP Omar Vizquel.

It's funny because there's another post where I'm currently being accused of being an OOTP homer but this is a place where you're kind of asking OOTP to do things that OOTP is not really "meant" and to a great extent isn't capable of doing. If you really and truly are interested in single-season replays, frankly SOM or DMB do a better job of it (although to me the graphics are lowkey a big, big item that weighs OOTP back). Even if you want to run, say, the entire 1970s, I think you'll find that SOM or DMB will encapsulate it better, especially if you want to relive anomaly years like Mark Fidrych's (in OOTP/modern baseball terms, he was BABIPed up one year, but SOM will happily make him into an actual stud that one season). Yes, that is waaay more expensive than OOTP as well. If you don't have that kind of money, I'd recommend spending your own time instead to manually re-rate guys based on their rep.

I think OOTP does an A-1 job of doing the "current year + X" style that basically is the only way you can play FM and which is probably the #1 way people play the game too. Because of the work done on the above, it's also very, very good at fictional play, and additionally IMO it handles fictional play using previous eras really, really well. Using it for actual historical play is... fine, but it's *slightly* like going to Walmart and expecting filet mignon except that IMO OOTP delivers filet mignon in the areas it was built to deliver filet mignon.

And I want to be clear here too that I don't mean this in a "lol stop complaining and just do something else" way, I mean I used to play a toooooooon of SOM and DMB and IMO those games do an extremely good job at what they do. I just don't have a lot of desire to play that type of game anymore, at least for baseball, but if I did, that's what I'd use. On a similar level, I play Draft Day Sports Basketball when I want to do fictional basketball but when I want to do season replays I used Action! PC Basketball because, again, of those hand-curated seasons (also because I think Dave Koch's game handles the coaching aspect a lot better but I digress).

Syd, I bumped a thread in the OOTP21 historical forum in which Garlon showed how guys were having extreme ZR's in historical play--Ripken with a 74 for example. I know Garlon has revamped the historical fielding over the past couple versions

My question for you(a fictional player) is, what are the ZR's like in fictional play. Can you look at Shortstops in particular. Just curious, as fielding ratings in fictional seem to be a lot higher than those doled out in historical.

[Charlie Hough]

Originally Posted by David Watts

My question for you (a fictional player) is, what are the ZR's like in fictional play. Can you look at Shortstops in particular. Just curious, as fielding ratings in fictional seem to be a lot higher than those doled out in historical.

Isn't there a known issue with player ratings being too high across the board in the initial player creation for fictional leagues? Subsequent players are supposedly not created with ratings as high.

That could be why you're noticing elevated fielding ratings at certain positions. If I'm not mistaken, there are some folks who work around this by simming a few seasons and then deleting everyone and creating a new player pool. But I'm not sure if I'm remembering all of this correctly.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by David Watts

Syd, I bumped a thread in the OOTP21 historical forum in which Garlon showed how guys were having extreme ZR's in historical play--Ripken with a 74 for example. I know Garlon has revamped the historical fielding over the past couple versions

My question for you(a fictional player) is, what are the ZR's like in fictional play. Can you look at Shortstops in particular. Just curious, as fielding ratings in fictional seem to be a lot higher than those doled out in historical.

My experience is that in order for a player to be a worthy shortstop in a fictional league they should probably have a 60 or higher overall at the position. You can get away with a 50 there if they’ve got good offense or if you’re just plugging a hole but even a 45, which is supposedly average, is not going to cut it. Does that mean they’re too high? Perhaps that’s the issue; I only know what I have in front of me. Also I think shortstop and center field are outlier positions in that regard because there’s such a big premium defensively - even 8th the fictionalized 70s you can get away with 40 rated 2nd and 3rd basemen if their tools are in the right places (a third baseman has to have a good arm and at least not terrible hands; a second baseman can conceivably lack range if they also have good hands and can turn double plays). Also I think the 20-80 scale encompasses all players who are rated to play somewhere and one deal with fictional leagues is that often you have third basemen for instance who are 20/80 to play shortstop but, if they were a historical player, would never get an inning there IRL.

But I do think that compared to historical leagues, you do get 80/80 guys at short and center, which very rarely happens in historical leagues, and that’s not even a knock on all the work Garlon et al have done; as noted, I think it’s a simple issue with historical fielding stats, period.