[Blzer]

Quote: Originally Posted by Craigsca

But why even waste your time with it? Longoria going 10 for 10 against Pettitte is a perfect example. Oh wait, now he bats approximately .480 against him - we have him at .125. Do we now artificially uptick his performance? It shows how insane basing ANYTHING on small sample sizes really is. I'd rather you just rate the guys on last year's performance (really, if I had my way we'd probably do a mix of the past 3 years, but I understand at age 40 I'm probably not the key demographic they're shooting for) and let the game itself make the streaks, the slumps, etc. It'd be nice to call my attention to it ("Longoria steps up to the plate....he's 2 for 16 lifetime against Pettitte..."), but PLEASE don't cause me to a hit a dribbler to the 2nd basemen because of this goofy, tacked-on 2 for 16 garbage even though I physically nailed his last pitch. That's just lame.

Now I never said anything like that. Honestly, it should be a very small weight in general. But also to be honest, that's exactly what ownage is, and as I said earlier in this thread, you see it live in front of you. It doesn't even have to be that somebody is seeing a pitcher better... when you own someone, it'll show in the at-bats. That's just how baseball is.

But like I said, I'd much rather it be a weight thing. For instance, I don't want progression to be based on just last year's stats, or the last three year's stats, or the last two games, etc. I want it to be a big combination of a bunch of things that calculate how you'll be not just that at-bat, but that pitch. There's a runner on second, it's night time, you're on the road and on turf, it's 52 degrees outside, you're facing a rookie lefty, you're 35 years old, you're 1-for-2 on the night already, and you have a 1 - 0 count. I don't want to say "have the game determine what I will do based on this", I'm saying "tell me what this guy's performance level is based on this."

Your game will always have some sort of mathematics involved, though. There are always numbers working behind the big machine and sometimes you just can't stop it. But now tell me this: what if you have a guy who has a 95 speed rating, a 98 agility rating, a 90 steal aggressiveness rating, and a 96 steal success rating (let's say those are all hypothetically in the game)... now let's say that this player, for some odd reason or another, is 200-for-200 in stealing bases in the month of May, but 0-for-200 in stealing bases in the month of June. Okay, now say it's June 7th. Which should play the bigger role in him being able to steal a base? His ability, or his success rate? Maybe it's that the pitcher and catcher are just getting quicker timings in altogether and there's nothing that you can really do to stop that wheel, despite how fast he is.

I'm not talking about sample-size so much as I'm asking when the line is then drawn that these are allowed to take some sort of effect. I don't want it to be an end-all, be-all effect, but I do want them to by dynamically progressive so that Longoria isn't always just stuck with that 2-for-16 against Pettitte.