A Tough One: How Should OOTP Handle This?

[Charlie Hough]

I just created a new saved game starting in 1980, and I was reviewing the free agent list and noticed that Andre Thornton was on the list with awful ratings.

Thornton missed the 1980 season in real life after injuring his knee in spring training and after having to undergo a second surgery to correct damage that wasn't completely repaired the first time. Then he missed most of 1981 due to a broken hand and then the players' strike.

But he was a major power hitter for Cleveland and came back with a monster year in 1982, followed by a few more really strong seasons. But that will never be possible now that OOTP has imported him with such bad ratings, especially since I'm letting the development engine take over after creating the game. He wasn't even given good potential, even though I set potential ratings to be based on remaining peak seasons.

OOTP seemingly imported him this way because I used single-season recalc for the initial player creation. I am having the development engine take over after the initial creation, but I want players with actual 1980 statistics to have their batting and pitching ratings initially determined by their 1980 stats. However, if there are no stats for Thornton in 1980, why doesn't OOTP use his 1979 stats to import him instead?

To me, it's too harsh to ruin this player and hurt the Cleveland organization this permanently because he missed a season with an injury.

I tried re-importing him based on his 1979 stats, but, of course, that means he has no 1979 history in a 1980 game. It shows his last season as 1978.

Also, I don't want to base preliminary ratings on a three-year recalc to avoid this, because that tends to alter player performances, team rosters, and relative team strengths too drastically.

Are there any good ideas for OOTP could potentially be updated to give the user better options on how to handle this?

[luckymann]

Import him as his 1980 version then go into the editor and give him the stats you want, be it 1979 or whatever you think is fair.

For mine, in this instance I'd use 1979 for CUR and 1984 for POT. Not perfect, but totally realistic given the desires you have outlined and fairly straightforward. Not sure what more the game can do to make it easier to work around singular circumstances like this over which it has no control. Certainly I see no need for any kind of wholesale change as you imply might need consideration.

Keep this in mind. While I've never had it confirmed (nor, really, do I want it to be), I 100% believe that historical players are "imprinted" at import so that, no matter what edits you make to them, they will gravitate back toward that proto version they were created as. So, Andre might need a yearly grease and oil change to keep him in line with where you want him to be.

You don't mention how his D ratings have imported - they might need an edit as well, as I presume would his injury proneness ratings.

Hope that helps.

G

[thehef]

I agree with luckyman in that your best bet in this scenario is to manually edit Andre... I mean, OOTP is doing what it's supposed to do if you are using 1-year recalc at import and then letting the development engine take over. Obviously, 3- (or 5-) year recalc at import, plus recalc instead of dev engine moving forward would pretty much solve your issue. But I get that's not what you want.

As to your question...

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

Are there any good ideas for OOTP could potentially be updated to give the user better options on how to handle this?

Some time ago I suggested that OOTP add to the player editor an option to recalc a player at any time. This would enable you to go into Andre's record and - at whatever time you choose - instantly give him a 1, 3 or 5 year recalc, while leaving all other players alone. (It would also allow us to much easier try what if's such as "what if Buckner, Russell, Ferguson, and Wynn didn't have injury-filled / off years in 1975... would the Dodgers have been able to make a run at the Big Red Machine?")

I think a few people saluted the idea, but not enough for it to go anywhere...

[Charlie Hough]

Originally Posted by luckymann

Import him as his 1980 version then go into the editor and give him the stats you want, be it 1979 or whatever you think is fair.

Thanks for the suggestion. Actually, what I needed to do was import his 1981 version and then enter his 1979 stats and calculate new current ratings based on those. I used 3-year recalc for fielding ratings and remaining peak seasons for potential when creating my saved game, and I used the same settings for the new import. It didn't give him much injury proneness at all, so overall everything looks good, although his contact potential doesn't seem to match what his actual contact potential is in the editor.

Hopefully this works well, and I hope OOTP doesn't "imprint" players in the way you suspect. I would rather not have to keep going in and editing him every season.

[Charlie Hough]

Originally Posted by thehef

OOTP is doing what it's supposed to do if you are using 1-year recalc at import and then letting the development engine take over.

I disagree. How you do define what it's supposed to do when there are no stats to recalculate? It's arbitrarily deciding that the player should be treated like a class-A ballplayer and given extremely low ratings, but there is no statistical basis for doing this. If it's not based on stats, then I have a problem with it.

In cases where a player was already imported previously, and you're using recalc instead of development, when you sim to seasons that players missed in real life, their ratings are not recalculated to weaken them to the point of ending their career. But it's doing this on an initial historical import of a player who played previous seasons but doesn't have stats for the current season.

OOTP is not being consistent here, and I realize that this is a bit of an obscure problem and request, but it's not a one-off or limited instance. There are many players in the database who missed entire seasons, and while not all of them are stars or significant, this problem occurs with most years when you happen to start a new saved game.

Originally Posted by thehef

Some time ago I suggested that OOTP add to the player editor an option to recalc a player at any time. This would enable you to go into Andre's record and - at whatever time you choose - instantly give him a 1, 3 or 5 year recalc, while leaving all other players alone.

This would definitely be an ideal fix for situations like this, so maybe it can be requested again. And maybe we can get enough people to sign on.

[Pelican]

One odd thing is, in my 1971 sim, both Bobby Tolan and Rico Carty missed the whole year due to injury. OOTP has them as free agents, I guess since they didn’t play. But their ratings are based on excellent 1970 seasons, so I didn’t have your problem. I toggled off “actual missed seasons” so each was available. I shamelessly signed Tolan for my Phillies, and he is having a solid year. Carty ended up with LA and is hitting well for a Dodger team that has trouble scoring runs.

Of note is that Thornton was in the Phillies minor league system in 1971. He hit a ton in AAA, classic “three true outcomes”.

[Brad K]

If you create the game with with import full history "yes" it will import players who did not play in the starting year but played before and after. They will be free agents. If you create the game without a full history import then those players will show up in the game the next year they played assigned to the proper team.

Its not just injured players who are affected. When full minors are not enabled then those who played MLB before and after but were in the minors that year also show up as FAs.

[Charlie Hough]

Thankfully, these free agent cases are relatively few when you're initially starting a saved game. Usually the players are inconsequential because their real-life stats were bad, both before and after they missed seasons, so their ratings are usually low, and no one ever signs them. But every now and then, you can have a weird case like Andre Thornton, where ratings are wrecked when they shouldn't be.

On top of this, when using real minors, there are bizarre cases where a new rookie is imported with Hall of Fame current ratings, all based on limited action in rookie A ball. A great example is Doug Potestio when he's imported in 1980. His real-life stats were excellent in class A but weren't properly adjusted for their league level, so his current ratings are calculated as if he should immediately be the next Walter Johnson in MLB.

I wrote about this elsewhere, and I've reported some examples to OOTP Developments, so hopefully they'll figure out why these happens in race instances. But I've had to delete players like this from my saved games because they are so insanely overrated.

[Brad K]

The players who played in the minors in the game beginning year and aren't available unless full history is selected are consequential. Without them there may be a shortage of players to fill in for injuries. For example, if a team had no SS injuries and didn't need to call one up for a time from the minors, the OOTP team will not have a minor league SS available to call up.

For my current start 1951 save I imported full history then deleted history which left the FA players. I think there were about 70. Then I assigned them to the appropriate organizations which was usually easy to determine, the exception being players who played for independent minor leagues.