Does it make any sense to bench a slumping player?

[Walt9]

In real life you often see a slumping player get a day or two off to sit on the bench and regroup.

I've always assumed that this wouldn't make any sense in OOTP since performance is based on ratings and presumably not affected by anything that some bench time might improve.

Anybody know any different? The game displays the slump indicator (the block of ice or whatever it is) on the lineup screen when a player is struggling. Does that mean that it's time to give the guy a day off?

[kq76]

It depends on how good they normally are. If they're a superstar, I play them. They'll get out of the slump eventually. If they're barely a starter, they sit and someone else gets the time. Sometimes the guy I give the time to instantly goes on a hot streak and sometimes the starter loses that status for good. I don't normally give my starters a whole lot of rest so whatever excuse the game wants to give me to give someone else time, I take it.

[Brad K]

One of the devs posted that when the cold indicator appears the players internal ratings are reduced a bit with the further explanation of not enough that you'd notice. That brings up a lot more questions, such as why do it if it's not enough to notice (I assume this means through casual observation although it could also mean it's not detectable by analysis due to the noise being stronger than the signal), and also that it breaks the vow of randomness the devs took.

Anyway, who knows what the right thing is. On one hand we can tell ourselves that the outcome of each at bat is randomly determined based on some probabilities we have somewhat accurate information on. But then we observe that a guy is hitting .200 after a month and we continue to play him and he hits .200 all year. Of course there's always the possibility of an unreported talent drop that will just remain a secret to those of us who don't look under the hood.

AI can be told in advance how to handle the situation by giving a strong bias for evaluation to either ratings or current year performance. For AI it's no puzzle at all! Maybe as humans we should be so lucky! LOL.

Anway, I'm opposed to us knowing too much about how the game works. And I think AI should have an advantage over humans in evaluations.

[jpeters1734]

From purely anecdotal evidence, I will bench slumping players. It seems to help somewhat when I do. sometimes it's funner to play ootp the same way a real manager would instead of trying to think about what's coded.

[pgjocki]

Options I've used in the past:

#1: Sit for two days then put back in the line-up

#2: Sit for two days then put back in the line-up but further down the order by at least 2 spots

#3: Sit for two days then only start against pitchers where he has good splits

#4: Sit for two days then only use off the bench as a defensive replacement or pinch hitter for a week to see if he starts to improve

#5: Manually create an injury and put him on the IL for 2 weeks (have to be in commissioner mode and might be considered cheating/gaming the system but it's your game, so...)

#6: Demote to AAA and see if he fixes himself

#7: Trade him and watch him become Randy Arozarena (Cards fan here so I just assume everyone Mo trades will become an MVP)

#8: If you can't trade or demote just DFA

#9: Wait it out of course - I had a season where Paul Goldschmidt his under .225 with less than 15 homeruns where nothing worked at all but then the next year he hit close to .300 with 45 homeruns and won MVP. I guess the AI was set on him having a bad year but his ratings never dropped.

Moral of the story - playing OOTP is like flying helicopters and I don't know how to fly a helicopter

[zappa1]

I bench them just 1 game maybe 2 depending how his replacement did. You can't really "uncold" them on the bench. They have to play through it. Even maybe change their spot in the batting order. Anyway, that's how I handle it.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by jpeters1734

From purely anecdotal evidence, I will bench slumping players. It seems to help somewhat when I do. sometimes it's funner to play ootp the same way a real manager would instead of trying to think about what's coded.

Yes. Despite what we've been told about it being all random and believing its true I just can't bear to keep a grossly under performing player in the lineup.

[Sweed]

As said before players in a slump, or hot streak for that matter, have their ratings go down or up a bit, hidden by fog of war. I don't know, but assume, there is a ceiling or floor for how high or low they can go.

In my experience it takes a pretty bad/good streak to get the cold/hot icon. It also doesn't take much to break the trend either. A little luck and a couple of hits drop in and the player gets back on track. Same for hot streaks except they die with balls being caught.

To the OP's question about resting a slumping player. The answers already given are in line with what I do.

For my good hitters I want them hitting their way out of it asap. I may rest them if we face a SP he's had little success against and then get him back in the lineup the next day. Especially if he will face someone he "owns" or the pitcher is L and he's R and he normally destroys LHP.

Average players I may sit to avoid good #1 or #2 starters. Get them in against the lower quality guys and hope they have some luck.

It it gets bad enough and they have options a week or two at AAA is also an option.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Sweed

As said before players in a slump, or hot streak for that matter, have their ratings go down or up a bit, hidden by fog of war. I don't know, but assume, there is a ceiling or floor for how high or low they can go.

I was stunned at the dev comment that the game gives a little help to a hot or cold streak. That contradicts their stated commitment to randomness. Then to do that and cap it, well, more contradiction. Especially since comments about the benefits of floor and ceiling on performance are immediately dismissed.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by Brad K

I was stunned at the dev comment that the game gives a little help to a hot or cold streak. That contradicts their stated commitment to randomness. Then to do that and cap it, well, more contradiction. Especially since comments about the benefits of floor and ceiling on performance are immediately dismissed.

I don't see the contradiction. The hot and cold streaks are based on random chance both for if/when they start and if/when they end. These streaks aren't based on the computer deciding Joe B. is going to start a streak today and he wakes up with the hot icon and inflated ratings. It starts with a player randomly putting together a string of results. IOW the rating "bump or decline" comes after performance, ie as a result of random output. The rating "bump or decline" will also continue on or return to "normal" because of player output, not because the AI thinks it's time for it to end or there was a predetermined timeframe set by the AI.

As I said I have no idea about a floor or ceiling, but I would hope there is none. That may seem extreme but would allow a way for extreme outliers to happen "naturally". I'd also think by random chance extreme outliers due to streaks would be, well, extremely rare with them being more likely to end rather than go on and on due to randomness. Even if a player gets a hike from a contact rating of 6 to 7 it doesn't mean he's now a .600 hitter and Dimaggio's streak is going to easily fall. Batters with a 7 contact rating are able to go 0 for 5, just not as likely as a 6 contact player. Difference being the batter that was inflated to 7 now regresses back to his normal 6 when he goes 0 for 5. It works the same for a player declining from 5 contact to 4. The 4 rated player is still capable of
having an output at the plate that will end the cold streak.

If it works the way I think it does, and I think it does (an opinion based on playing out every inning of thousands of games) then I think it's a brilliant feature. IOW it allows for an ebb and flow of play/results that one sees in real life. The longer a streak goes in OOTP, whether hot or cold, the user has to wonder "when will this end", "how long can he keep this up?", etc. Then comes a game where the streak ends. Even with the underlying ratings being
"pumped up" or "reduced" bad dice rolls (randomness) affect performance in a way that ends the streak, whether it be a hot or cold streak.

Over the course of time these hot and cold streaks balance out due to? Randomness. More likely than not a player ends up with a "normal" season. But maybe due to randomness one get's that one season where random chance has a player on a "against all odds" hot streak that carries him to a .400 avg or 60+ HR's, while the rest of the league hits at a normal level.

My 2 cents.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Walt9

In real life you often see a slumping player get a day or two off to sit on the bench and regroup.

I've always assumed that this wouldn't make any sense in OOTP since performance is based on ratings and presumably not affected by anything that some bench time might improve.

Anybody know any different? The game displays the slump indicator (the block of ice or whatever it is) on the lineup screen when a player is struggling. Does that mean that it's time to give the guy a day off?

There are a lot of factors that go into streaks and slumps but yes, in a nutshell, sometimes it makes sense to give a guy a couple/few days off to break it - conversely you can try to put them into situations where they're specifically most likely to succeed - for instance, for a left-handed batter, rest them / remove them vs lefties but let them continue to hit against RHPs.

Your coaching staff can also have a decent effect on slump-breaking, as can the player's own Intelligence and Work Ethic ratings. That also means that sometimes a guy with low ratings in those just doesn't break out of them. I've gone so far as to send veterans down to AAA to work out their stroke. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't (I should add that I play with ratings off so I have no idea when there's a TCR or age-related hit). There's a guy in my save right now who couldn't break .200 in either the major leagues or AAA last year (and got cut by his old team as a result); he had a really good spring and it looks like he might just have caught a bug for an entire year, which is a thing that happens IRL too.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Sweed

I don't see the contradiction. The hot and cold streaks are based on random chance both for if/when they start and if/when they end. These streaks aren't based on the computer deciding Joe B. is going to start a streak today and he wakes up with the hot icon and inflated ratings. It starts with a player randomly putting together a string of results. IOW the rating "bump or decline" comes after performance, ie as a result of random output. The rating "bump or decline" will also continue on or return to "normal" because of player output, not because the AI thinks it's time for it to end or there was a predetermined timeframe set by the AI.

As I said I have no idea about a floor or ceiling, but I would hope there is none. That may seem extreme but would allow a way for extreme outliers to happen "naturally". I'd also think by random chance extreme outliers due to streaks would be, well, extremely rare with them being more likely to end rather than go on and on due to randomness. Even if a player gets a hike from a contact rating of 6 to 7 it doesn't mean he's now a .600 hitter and Dimaggio's streak is going to easily fall. Batters with a 7 contact rating are able to go 0 for 5, just not as likely as a 6 contact player. Difference being the batter that was inflated to 7 now regresses back to his normal 6 when he goes 0 for 5. It works the same for a player declining from 5 contact to 4. The 4 rated player is still capable of
having an output at the plate that will end the cold streak.

If it works the way I think it does, and I think it does (an opinion based on playing out every inning of thousands of games) then I think it's a brilliant feature. IOW it allows for an ebb and flow of play/results that one sees in real life. The longer a streak goes in OOTP, whether hot or cold, the user has to wonder "when will this end", "how long can he keep this up?", etc. Then comes a game where the streak ends. Even with the underlying ratings being
"pumped up" or "reduced" bad dice rolls (randomness) affect performance in a way that ends the streak, whether it be a hot or cold streak.

Over the course of time these hot and cold streaks balance out due to? Randomness. More likely than not a player ends up with a "normal" season. But maybe due to randomness one get's that one season where random chance has a player on a "against all odds" hot streak that carries him to a .400 avg or 60+ HR's, while the rest of the league hits at a normal level.

My 2 cents.

Yeah, it's well documented that baseball players are a lot more prone to streaks and slumps than random chance would dictate. This game is not Strat-O-Matic and if you want a cards and dice based game, there are other/better ones out there.

[letsgobuccos]

If I have someone on the bench who is broadly similar, or in a super high leverage game, yes. Otherwise it seems they have a good chance of breaking out of the slump with an unexpectedly good game, relative to any baseline we could imagine anyway


And I think maybe starting pitchers are more difficult to sit than batters or hiding relievers. I do an opener game once in a while but it seems like starters can rebound quite well. Or maybe it's a case of a finesse pitcher in large league with low contact on average

[eauhomme]

I suspect there is a hidden consistency rating somewhere. Some players seem to be all over the place, and others seem to be completely dependable. This makes sense as it happens in real life.

In my current sim, I had Bo Bichette hit about .240 with 4 homers, making $16 million in the process. He had mashed the year before for a different team, and mashed again after I traded him away. Happens in real life, too.

I usually build for depth, so if a player is in a hole, I'll bench for a bit, and then send him down if necessary. If he's in too deep, I often trade him and hope he doesn't suddenly figure it out against me.

[Brad K]

A consistency rating requires the game monitor a player's output, have a floor and ceiling for that output, and adjust output to keep it within the floor and ceiling. When asked to put floors and ceilings on output the devs have refused saying it would allow players to game the situation knowing a player would be improving or declining in the near future.

The discussion occurred when it was discovered Real Stats rated Roger Maris for much fewer than the 61 HRs he actually hit in 1961 while real stats in the same year rated Mickey Mantle for most of the 54 home runs he actually hit. The logic behind this is Maris never hit close to 61 in another year and that if rated for 61 randomness would allow him to often exceed 61 which would not be realistic.

Mantle hit close to 54 several times so the idea of him exceeded 54 was decided to be not so unrealistic. Thus he was rated for close to the actual number of HRs he hit.

In conclusion, there is no consistency rating in the game. Unless the devs are secretly being inconsistent with their stated policy on randomness.

[Humboldt KA]

-Anecdotally, I do observe that "hot" and "cold" icons are easy to lose. I've seen players gain one and lose it again in the same game.

BUT:
-In my mileage it is much harder for "cold" pitchers to recover b/c they give up hits to the 1st 2-3 batters > 50% of the time. It can take forever to recover based on a couple of decent outings, sometimes to next season. (Really painful when I have to pitch an otherwise top pitcher "cold" and he immediately loses my lead and the game. )

-Moving them down to AAA for 2-4 weeks doesn't help. The "cold" icon doesn't show in the minors, but when I bring them back the icon is still there. (Admittedly, I gave up doing this after 3 tries w/different pitchers; now I just send them down and wait till next year.)

-Much harder to tell with hitters.

Question: Does anyone know whether hot/cold affects 2-way players both ways, or pitchers' hitting?

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Humboldt KA

Question: Does anyone know whether hot/cold affects 2-way players both ways, or pitchers' hitting?

Interesting question. The cold icon displays in the batting lineup for pitchers. I assume despite the location that is for pitching not hitting.

A two way player, who knows? Is there a primary position in two way? Or are they considered equal? If there's a primary it seems that is what would prompt the cold icon. If not, I suppose either could but we wouldn't know without checking the player's recent performance in both areas.

[md40022]

I tend to think the hot/cold icons affect the player's ratings a bit more than what the devs have told us. I don't have stats to back that, it just seems that a hot or cold player in general performs a little better or worse than "a barely noticeable ratings bump" --- Just my opinion on that

To the OP's initial question though, I do normally give a player an off day or two if he's slumping bad. No clue if it helps anything or not. In fact, it probably doesn't. Still though, in my fictional manager world it just seems like the right thing to do.

[Desert_Nomad]

Originally Posted by jpeters1734

From purely anecdotal evidence, I will bench slumping players. It seems to help somewhat when I do. sometimes it's funner to play ootp the same way a real manager would instead of trying to think about what's coded.

Exactly!!

[Brad K]

When I am "managing" games (I use quotes because all I do is handle lineups and substitutions) I'll move a slumping star lower in the order. A regular player I'll pull him from the lineup and put him in the lineup late if I have a good lead or am way behind. I think they need some ABs to break a slump.

If I'm not "managing" I'll cut back on a player's starts, especially against LH SP if he's a leftie.

SPs if I'm "managing" they'll get pulled early. RPs get to be mop up relievers.

None of this would be right if each AB was truly a random event. So the question becomes how much do we believe the devs statements of randomness and the slump bump not being noticeable? However managing this way is something that might be done in real life.