How does the game decide how players are going to perform in a season?

[SmooveMove]

I'm in August of my franchise, and Yangervis Solarte is leading the league in batting with an average somewhere above .355., as well as 14 homers. He has pretty average contact and power attributes, nothing to warrant this amazing hitting season. Meanwhile David Wright is floundering. He's hitting below .260 and has maybe 6 home runs. He has very good contact ratings, including a 99 versus lefties.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, things shouldn't be black and white as far as attributes effects on stats go, but how does the game decide who's going to perform well and who isn't? Are players just randomly chosen or is there a reason why there will be random guys like Solarte chosen to outperform players with way better hitting ratings. Just curious.

[rjackson]

Re: How does the game decide how players are going to perform in a season?

The game doesn't decide how they are going to perform in a season as far as I know. It does a dice roll every pitch and every swing from location of the pitch to quality of contact (contact rating helps here) to angle leaving the bat etc etc etc. You can see this in the batter analysis window if you change result I thin it is to "hit chance".

You have all of these individual events that have multiple dice rolls influenced by ratings and your PCI location and timing. Then, there is still the luck factor. Maybe Wright is smoking liners right to people? Maybe Solarte dropped in a couple Texas leaguers? Add all of that up and you get the season's performance and natural variance that you can also expect in real life.

[HypoLuxa13]

Re: How does the game decide how players are going to perform in a season?

Adding to what rjackson said, another factor into the algorithm I think is the pitcher ratings for H/9, K/9, BB/9, and HR/9. Those factor into the "dice rolls", so to speak. Maybe in addition to general variance and "bad luck/good luck" for the hitters, Wright happens to be facing better pitching overall through the season than Solarte has? I would suspect that over time things will normalize, and you wouldn't see this discrepancy year after year (unless Wright regresses quickly in the game because of age)

[kehlis]

Re: How does the game decide how players are going to perform in a season?

I've always likened it to strat I matic baseball which was all I played growing up.

Each player has a card with their tendencies and potential outcomes which are then determined by a dice roll, I just like to think of the user input in the show as the dice roll.

[Moonripple]

Re: How does the game decide how players are going to perform in a season?

You also have to factor in streaks. If Solarte is performing above what his ratings would predict (either because of favorable pitching matchups, protection from his lineup, or plain dumb luck), he may eventually end up on a hot streak which makes him more likely to continue his above average performance.

[rjackson]

Re: How does the game decide how players are going to perform in a season?

Streaks can raise or lower potential, but I don't think it affects any of these dice rolls. If it does, I'm sure it wouldn't be more than 5% or a +1 to any D&D players out there (nerd joke!).