Player rating mechanism

[KBLover]

Re: Player rating mechanism

Is this simming or playing?

Playing. I play every ML level game for my team in all my franchises.

Also, while that is a good point that on balance a player may be worse but has different skill sets and therefore may succeed better with a certain team, the fact that you can sort through and find a pitcher with a high K/9 or H/9 or whatever you want and target them supports the argument for a more 'fog of war' element.

I can look up that same information in fangraphs right now, and I'm not even in the baseball industry. I can only imagine what kind of information they have.

And considering either playing or simming, the batted ball profiles are barely even mentioned (and don't seem to play heavily in terms of push/pull...or AT ALL in terms of GB/FB/LD rates...I don't see how I have more information in MLBTS than I can get off Fangraphs and/or Brooks Baseball, etc).

If anything, the ratings are MORE obscure than real information. How much movement does a pitcher's curve have? With pitch F/x, I can go find out. In MLBTS how do I know how much Huff's 12-6 moves? How do I know if that's what his rating should get or if he's just "on" (or "off" as the case may be). Just how much movement does "72 movement" represent? What does that translate to?

And if you want to say that I don't know how they'll perform going forward...I get that same experience. Chris Taylor is batting .230 for me after years of being a steady .270-.280 hitter. Just out of the blue. Same ratings, same spot in the lineup, I play the same way with him...no dice. Matt Stiles, a high-rated reliever...sucked. He's currently sulking in AAA because I couldn't give him away at the deadline. Paco Rodriguez was fine...until 2 years of 6 ERA and 5.50 ERA...same ratings that gave him about 150 saves in 4 years. Had to dump him. Stroman fell apart. Traded him to make room for (then much) lower-rated Huff.

You could say "well you knew you were making the right move"...doesn't do me a darn bit of good to know I was "right" when my lead off man is OBP'ing in the .270's or my closer posting 5+ ERAs in back-to-back seasons. Being "right" doesn't win ball games. Adapting to the oddities that happen does.

I do not rely too heavily on overalls and look at individual ratings and it sounds like you have a pretty good idea (more so than me) of how you would like to build a team and what attributes you value. Do you think it is a bit unrealistic and removes some of the challenge to be able to say 'I want a guy who pitches to contact and induces easy ground balls for my high level defense to field' and then be able to go sort by the exact rating that you are looking for and find the exact guy to suit your needs?

How? Don't we know who the contact pitchers are in real life? Is it a mystery that Buehrle or Dickey or Mike Leake gets fewer K's than league average? That Maddux would strike out fewer hitters than Roger Clemens? That Randy Johnson's "Mr Snappy" will K guys at a rate Wakefield's knuckler could only dream of? We know who the contact pitchers are. Who the flyball guys are, etc.

I could make a list of contact pitchers with X or higher GB rate and put a rotation together. In MLBTS? I have K/9....but where's the GF rate? And I have more information than irl? I have one BIG question mark...how many flyballs will he give up? Do I have Brett Anderson and his 66% GB or Price and his 40%? In MLBTS...it's as much random as it is anything else and if I'm selecting for contact types (low K/9, low BB/9), then the batted ball profile is key information, imo.

Then, just like in real life, when I use these guys on the mound, I might get what it says on the tin, or I might not. Or maybe not as often as I hope. Maybe the balls will fall in despite my defense. Or maybe I throw a few 85-pitch CGs because of my defense.

I have plenty of "fog of war" in my franchises. I get surprised or disappointed often. I end up with position battles unexpectedly (Jorge Mateo and his 49/19 is trying to "wow" me with his speed and surprising hitting...and it's working...I've benched Addison Russell for now as a result in my fantasy draft Red Sox). The list goes on, especially in my Marlins franchise. Huff being one of them - I thought he'd be a "guy who never lived up to his potential", then suddenly he just started putting it together - and I mean on the field, not just watching his ratings go up - the ratings lagged his performance for a long time. I kept saying "the shoe is going to drop on him"...and it never did.

Meanwhile I created Tyler Kolek and give him the same "will he learn control?" question mark. Let's say I hope the real Kolek does better than my created version. Incredibly slow developer (had A potential, dropped to low B), got out of AAA due to injuries...posted a 4.50 ERA, send back down...never been back since. Nice top prospect.

Taylor Guerrieri in MLB13 is another example. Just out of nowhere turned into a "finesse power pitcher" somehow. Another kid I threw in because he was ripping up AAA and I thought "they are going to get him one day" and I was ready with my moves...but never needed them. Then after about 2 years of that...THEN his H/9 skyrocketed, he was already going it on the field. Wil Myers right before MLB14 dropped was hitting over .400 with a 32-game hit streak. I don't think a 70 Contact translates into that (yeah, he was still in the 70's).

So, I think I get plenty of unexpectedness. Whether or not the moves were "certain" to be "right" doesn't mean much when I'm trying to win games day-to-day and adjusting to what my players throw at me (even as I control them lol), be it the "right" ones or not.

[nomo17k]

Re: Player rating mechanism

...

So, I think I get plenty of unexpectedness. Whether or not the moves were "certain" to be "right" doesn't mean much when I'm trying to win games day-to-day and adjusting to what my players throw at me (even as I control them lol), be it the "right" ones or not.

This is actually wrong though, unless you can try hard not to believe in attributes not exposing the true event frequencies used by the game... the fact is they are exposing the "seeds".

Any random process, you can be correct in the outcome only in a probabilistic sense, even if you know what that probability of event is.

For example, even when you send a "true" .270 hitter to bat for you, 73% of the time he would fail. That's a very high failure rate, and not very distinguishable with 74% failure rate with a "true" .260 guy, just by feeling. But just because the "true" .270 hitter got unlucky in one at-bat (or one season for that matter) and performed worse than the "true" .260 hitter does not make him intrinsically worse.... he was just unlucky in the opportunities that you used him in. That's one layer of uncertainty, because it is a random event.

Another layer of uncertainty is that, in real life, it is very difficult to know the difference between .270 and .260 hitters to begin with (due to what would be "fog of war" factors)...

But if you know who is a "true" .270 hitter, you'd be fool not to use him over a "true" .260... Since attributes expose this type of information, you actually *can* play the game this way, and if you don't, you are clearly not employing optimal strategy, basically for no reason.


People who want the true attributes to be obscured (in appropriate modes... they should still be editable as they are right now) are not saying the first kind of uncertainty above is an issue. It is the second kind of uncertainty that is not very well simulated in the game.


Of course, you could make an argument (in large part that seems to be what KBLover is implying) that given that there are always multiple factors/attributes in play, that you cannot always quickly make the most optimal decision even when theoretically you can, as I described using a very simplistic example of batting average... that would be true.... unless some serious amount of $$$ is at stake, nobody would care to play games that way.


But in a lot of more interesting and what should be more realistic cases, knowing the true nature of attributes get in the way of enjoying the "realistic uncertainty" that really is what makes simulation games fun.

The best example is the evaluation of rookies just coming up from minors... in reality there are always so many uncertainties involved in how they could make adjustments, maintain the level of performance he showed in minors, etc., which makes making roster movements fun....

Is this rookie really better than my veteran guy right now? Which should I play him more?

It's a difficult (but fun) decision in real life, but with The Show you don't really have to wonder.... because for the most part you can simply compare attributes and get a sense who's better already.

Not very fun.