Destined to lose?

[wudl83]

Re: Destined to lose?

Funny thing is, that nearly in all those games which should "prove" that there is a coded destiny to lose games, you can clearly see faults made by the user. In an earlier post in this thread I told you all that I analyzed my habits to find out why I did blow so many leads. And I found it. But some guys even do not want to find out what they are doing wrong. Because they never fail, only the game fails.



Sometimes I wonder if some guys are even watching baseball games. Look at Matt Cain: he went what? 8 IP perfect against the Cards this season. I mean PERFECT. No run, no hit, no walk. A ton of ks! And in the other 1.2 combined IP he gave up 16 (!!!) ER against the Cards. If some guys here would see this in the game, they immediately would start to rage and blame the bad coding.
Baseball is a very strange, very momentum based game and guys don't realize it. I don't know why. It's so obvious...

You only have to look at the post related to Chamberlain and Robertson. Why in hell should a manager out there let play Choba another inning, after he gave up two runs and helped the opponent reduce the lead from 4 to 2? Why not immediately bring in the setup man the next inning? In 1 IP Choba had given up 3 hits and made a wild pitch already. Why leave him in? This simply is bad managing of the BP. Imagine this would be reality. Everyone would assume that the coach was drunk.

[Steven78]

Re: Destined to lose?

Joba should rarely be used in a close game and never multiple innings.

[nomo17k]

Re: Destined to lose?

I've had an (online) game in which I feel the opposing team would have felt the game has a scripted scenario implemented, if I weren't actually on the other side playing the game.

Spoiler

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/mR1eO9HtbLM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

(Excuse me for putting PCI on... I've been training myself to move PCI better.)

I was down by 4 runs in the bottom of the 8th, thought the game was over... but seeing the opposing team bringing in a mediocre setup man with a low BB/9 rating, I thought being extra patient not to swing at borderline pitches, but at the same time hacking at ones that I actually wait for would give me some hope for a comeback...

Which I did. Drew a couple walks there and there, hitting hard some pitches poorly located, a couple close calls going my way... if I am actually not trying hard to make these things happen by playing it right, the opposing team must have thought all these events were coded in to make him lose. But I wasn't a CPU.

The worst decision of the opposing team was leaving him in too long, when his pitch command and overall confidence tanked to almost nil. That's when I looked for a fastball down the middle, with a 2-0 count... I got what I wanted and put it over the fence with a power swing.



Of course, things don't always play out this way for me, but this is what can happen when relievers are poorly managed. And that's not because the game is giving artificial edge to CPU. Successful or not, it's a way of simulating baseball.

[HechticSooner]

Re: Destined to lose?

This is the thing I just absolutely LOVE about this discussion, in what ****ing world do you see a bullpen managed like the Joba example here where the wheels don't come off. Reliefers are used for an inning two at most for a reason.

[G3no_11]

Re: Destined to lose?

This is the thing I just absolutely LOVE about this discussion, in what ****ing world do you see a bullpen managed like the Joba example here where the wheels don't come off. Reliefers are used for an inning two at most for a reason.

Yeah it's humorous to see some examples given about the comeback A.I. and most of the time it is just poor baseball logic and/or managing.

The only guys who throw more than one inning are the elite relievers or relievers that are out there in a blow out trying to eat up some innings. I might be able to see the reasoning if the score was say 9-2 or 10-2 but Joba is not a guy you leave in there for 3 innings in a 4 run game. Roberts needed to be in there in the 8th unless you scored 2 or 3 more runs and even then, why not just put in a fresh arm regardless?

[wudl83]

Re: Destined to lose?

Yeah it's humorous to see some examples given about the comeback A.I. and most of the time it is just poor baseball logic and/or managing.

The only guys who throw more than one inning are the elite relievers or relievers that are out there in a blow out trying to eat up some innings. I might be able to see the reasoning if the score was say 9-2 or 10-2 but Joba is not a guy you leave in there for 3 innings in a 4 run game. Roberts needed to be in there in the 8th unless you scored 2 or 3 more runs and even then, why not just put in a fresh arm regardless?

Absolutely right. No manager out there would have let Joba pitch another inning. Especially (we don't know it, but maybe there were some lefties coming up) with particular matchups. The setup-man is there for a reason. You should use him in close games to SET UP for your closer.

I bet that most of the AI-comebacks are caused by:
- starters left in for too long
- relievers left in for too long
- throwing bad pitches because "the hitter is bad" and "so I don't care"
- bad management of matchups (righty vs. lefty, lefty vs. righty left in)

[HechticSooner]

Re: Destined to lose?

Absolutely right. No manager out there would have let Joba pitch another inning. Especially (we don't know it, but maybe there were some lefties coming up) with particular matchups. The setup-man is there for a reason. You should use him in close games to SET UP for your closer.

I bet that most of the AI-comebacks are caused by:
- starters left in for too long
- relievers left in for too long
- throwing bad pitches because "the hitter is bad" and "so I don't care"
- bad management of matchups (righty vs. lefty, lefty vs. righty left in)

Or at least use the long relief guy for long relief. Multiple innings don't go to the guys who at most throw two in a row, no matter what you think the energy looks like. Plus I bet that this guy had the fastball thwacked, probably started 60 % of at bats with a first pitch fastball leading up to this, and still thought that the reliever that just had has fastball sent right back at his lips should throw it first pitch to the next guy, AND the guy after that. Confidence is in the game for a reason!

[KBLover]

Re: Destined to lose?

Just curious if anyone else here has games where they feel like no matter what; they are just destined to lose that particular game? For example: just played Marlins and after a couple of bloopers I gave up in 2nd inning they hit a home run. Bottom of the 2nd I tie it up 3-3. Top of 3rd couple more bloopers and polanco pulls a shot to right field to make it 6-3 off a ball I threw way low out of the zone.

Proceeded to hit every ball at someone throughout the remainder of the game. Hit some balls hard, but everyone was right at someone and even resulted in several double plays. Those are the games where I say to myself 'I'm just not supposed to win this one'. Not blaming the game or anything; it's just baseball. I like that the game so accurately emulates the sport.

Just curious if anyone else encounters the same thing? Or maybe sometimes I just don't concentrate hard enough and it's strictly on me lol.

Heh like in my first franchise game ever. Talk about a "welcome to the Show, rook" type moment.

Strasburg on the mound, Not having his top stuff, but I'm fighting through innings, picking up some K's getting out of trouble.

But the Nats couldn't hit. It's like WTF. 1-0 turned into 2-0, turned into 3-0.

Then I think maybe we'll get some momentum. Got out of a bases loaded, 0 outs jam unscathed, I'm like YEAH - let's go!

Get two on with one out. Hit into a force at second, but the DP was broken up so Zimmerman is up as the tying run.

He goes down on 4 pitches. ARGH.

End up losing 3-0. So Nats-like, unfortunately.

[G3no_11]

Re: Destined to lose?

Absolutely right. No manager out there would have let Joba pitch another inning. Especially (we don't know it, but maybe there were some lefties coming up) with particular matchups. The setup-man is there for a reason. You should use him in close games to SET UP for your closer.

I bet that most of the AI-comebacks are caused by:
- starters left in for too long
- relievers left in for too long
- throwing bad pitches because "the hitter is bad" and "so I don't care"
- bad management of matchups (righty vs. lefty, lefty vs. righty left in)

Another thing to kind of add on to this. Use your closer!!! Even if it is a 4 run lead and he's not going to get the save. Put your closer in and let him shut it down.

It's totally fine and realistic to use your closer in a 4 or even a 5 run lead. Your closer is probably one of the best pitchers on the team if not THE best. If you don't want to use him in a non-save situation, then I would suggest at least keeping him warmed up so he is ready to go at any point in the 9th.

[HechticSooner]

Re: Destined to lose?

Yep if you're within 5 hell maybe even 6 depending on your pen and you aren't warming the closer for case **** you're going to flirt with trouble

[BoomerHB52]

Re: Destined to lose?

Absolutely right. No manager out there would have let Joba pitch another inning. Especially (we don't know it, but maybe there were some lefties coming up) with particular matchups. The setup-man is there for a reason. You should use him in close games to SET UP for your closer.

I bet that most of the AI-comebacks are caused by:
- starters left in for too long
- relievers left in for too long
- throwing bad pitches because "the hitter is bad" and "so I don't care"
- bad management of matchups (righty vs. lefty, lefty vs. righty left in)

Using Joba in one inning is painful.. Using Joba for more than that is just to jump off of the Everest heads first.

It happened to me earlier playing against the Rangers. Winning 3-0 in the 7th, my SP was dealing having allowed only two hits so far. His energy was just in the middle, and he was reaching the 70 pitch count. Of course my thought was "Hey, im going to start warming up my 7th inning man just in case.. But im going to let my SP gets through this one" But because Baseball is the best sport, the unexpected-kind of expected happened. Single, double, dropped flyball by the SS. 3-1 man on third and first. 0 outs. Two consecutive huge K's. But then, a walk. Bases loaded two outs. Line hit through the 3B line... But wait. The ball hit the bag (my 3b was already in the motion of reaching for the ball down the line) and went to the opposite field. The ball ended up between 2nd and 3rd. Safe.
Next batter, hits a ground ball to SS, my fielder reaches it makes the throw with the Jeter motion... The ball is in the air.. It is... It is... Safe. The runner was already celebrating the safe when the ball was caught by the 1B.

So there you go. Pitcher dealing and collapsed lol (bad luck also)

[HechticSooner]

Re: Destined to lose?

Using Joba in one inning is painful.. Using Joba for more than that is just to jump off of the Everest heads first.

It happened to me earlier playing against the Rangers. Winning 3-0 in the 7th, my SP was dealing having allowed only two hits so far. His energy was just in the middle, and he was reaching the 70 pitch count. Of course my thought was "Hey, im going to start warming up my 7th inning man just in case.. But im going to let my SP gets through this one" But because Baseball is the best sport, the unexpected-kind of expected happened. Single, double, dropped flyball by the SS. 3-1 man on third and first. 0 outs. Two consecutive huge K's. But then, a walk. Bases loaded two outs. Line hit through the 3B line... But wait. The ball hit the bag (my 3b was already in the motion of reaching for the ball down the line) and went to the opposite field. The ball ended up between 2nd and 3rd. Safe.
Next batter, hits a ground ball to SS, my fielder reaches it makes the throw with the Jeter motion... The ball is in the air.. It is... It is... Safe. The runner was already celebrating the safe when the ball was caught by the 1B.

So there you go. Pitcher dealing and collapsed lol (bad luck also)

The walk should have been the straw that broke his pitching arm for the night!

[nomo17k]

Re: Destined to lose?

I think Nomo is pretty close on this assessment. In fact, at some point during the discussion of '11 or '12 Russell or another developer participated in one of those "how to successfully finish games" threads. That developer was fairly open in discussing the lesser quality/skills of relievers versus starters. While I agree with their general assessment, I think it may be a bit overdone in the game.

Couple that with the fact that it seems that there is a severe compounding effect with each successful hit (perhaps it operates through confidence - which for relievers can be destroyed quickly). What I mean is this, as long as I keep people off base things tend to proceed normally. But, let me give up a hit (a seeing eye single, a scorcher, doesn't matter), and it seems exponentially easier for the next batter to follow that up with a hit - especially in those late game situations.

You must be talking about this post:

http://www.operationsports.com/forum...post2043493906

I'm intending to pass this down to my grand kids even if The Show gets discontinued after this year. Even if the interweb and civilization vanish due to the next World War, I make sure they pass this information down to the next generation orally.

...

I assume this "lower quality reliever effect" would impact simmed games as well as user-controlled games, so one thing I did at the end of an '11 The Show season was compare the number of Blown Saves (per team) in a full season of the game to what actually happened on the field in real life. In the particular season (162 user-controlled games played on all-star pitching and hitting), the number of blown saves in the game was slightly elevated from that in real life but honestly not to the degree that I was expecting.

The average number of blown saves (again, per team) was 23 in the game (range: 12 - 31), and 19 in real life (range: 8 - 27). In the game, the mode (most frequently occurring value) was 21 blown saves - 7 teams, including my user controlled team registered this value. In real life, there wasn't a single mode, 4 teams each had 16, 19, and 25 blown saves.

...

Source for 2011 MLB stats: http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/team/_/...ded/order/true

You don't really need to wait for a season to get meaningful info on this. Since 2002, the save %s (= 100 x sv / (sv + bs)) for the entire MLB leagues fall in the range of 66 - 69%. Pretty consistent with little fluctuation. So if the game is simulating things close to real life, we should see similar numbers.

I did look at this when I did this blog post, but the number I got was 66.6%. That was in MLB 12, all CPU vs. CPU games mostly played in April and a few days in May. (I actually expect simmed games to work fine in this regard... reason being that confidence doesn't matter in those games.) While it's on a lower side of the MLB range I cited above, I would not call this a "statistically significant" drop in save conversion rate (in fact, it's within the standard deviation... 67.6 +/- 1.5 % is for 2002 - 2012 seasons, 1.5% being the standard dev).

When I looked at the scoring tendencies like in that blog post, I would say there may be something funny going on (at times, but not always) which suggests some issues with pitchers, but even when the closers coming in the game are slightly more ineffective than the real-life counterparts, they aren't drastically so. At least it's not showing up very strongly in blown save.

So while in general I do agree that there might still be some game balance issues likely caused by all those late-inning factors (starters tiring, relievers not being effective with low confidence, pitches losing effectiveness when overused), the effect is actually not so drastic. The overall game balance, for the most part, is fine in my eyes. Some people tend to see or not see this more than others, because they manager pitchers better/worse than CPU does.

[HadlerT]

Re: Destined to lose?

It mainly comes down to using your starting pitcher and your bullpen as efficiently as possible.

Keeping Joba the Hutt in for 3 innings wasn't a smart move. It's actually eye-opening that utilizing your bullpen is what it comes down to.

[JTommy67]

Re: Destined to lose?

I've never found myself complaining about it, but I must be honest that I've noticed there are games where the cpu batting strategy goes into gorilla mode. From the get go, they start swinging at anything close, stop taking first pitches, and pound anything near the zone. Thankfully I don't notice it too often, but it's easy for me to detect. It's not one or two hitters that do this but the entire lineup.

If in the first inning I see this is happening, I simply resign myself to it and decide that I'm not going to throw anything across the plate. I wind up walking a lot of batters until I can get them to chase a bit or get ahead in the count. You'll give up runs, have to pull the starter early and burn through the bullpen, but you can keep the game competitive and tough out a win sometimes. I'll even go so far as to walk guys with the bases loaded (early in the game) if I have to. One run is not as bad as four.

Doing this I have had some interesting things happen, like my starter giving up 6 runs in the first two innings and then throwing 4 shutout innings after that. It's rare, because I will usually pull the starter when it's that bad but if his confidence/pitches are not too bad I may leave him in a bit longer.

It does show that it's possible to work out of it.

While it's possible to deal with, I agree that whatever causes this is a bit overdone at times. But I only see it maybe 20% of the time. As far as the late innings are concerned, I'm in agreement that the majority of times I've blown a lead I can almost always point to a really dumb move on my part. That said, there are those times when you're going to feel like you're playing out a script. As long as they make video games, you will always have that feeling. Thankfully, The Show limits those feelings for me more than any other game. Whenever I get that feeling, I just think back to when I used to play a lot of Madden, and then I feel better.

I use classic pitching on AS level with default sliders, btw.