Playoff results still way too random! Playoff pitching results very unpredictable!

[Schaefling]

I just finished a season where I had the best record in the league with the best team batting average and the best ERA in the league only to get swept by the wilf card team in the first round. I also had incredible defense.

My pitchers were totally shellacked in two of the games giving up 9 and 12 runs per game with a team that usually gave up less than three per game. Even in othe other game I gave up 5 runs meaning all three games saw my team giving up far more runs than normal. At the same time a team with an ERA over 4.00 (mine was well under 3.00) totally dominated my batters.

Even more galling the other team spent nothing that right nothing for farm systems and scouting while I spent very large amounts. This team was apparrentaly not penalized during the regular season or during the playoffs for spending NOTHING on farm teams and scouting. I call this not only totally unrealistic but absolutely ludicrous and a slap in the face to managers who spend serious time in the game working on their expenses. Please tell me how a team in real life which spends nothing on farm systems and scouting even gets into the playoffs let alone sweep the best team in the majors! Please, please, tell me!

I can see this happening but it seems like in Baseball Mogul Online it is much more likely for the wild card team to win than for the team with the best record to win. This is just plain backwards as far as I am concerned. As is rewarding teams which spend next to nothing on their expenses so they can have inflated salaries for top notch players.

Back in Novemeber and December after changes were made to starting pitching performances results in the playoffs were a lot better. The best teams still lost but not nearly as often and when they did lose it was almost always to teams with solid pitching staffs. Usually the games were incredible pitching duels with extra inning games occurring fairly often. When you lost under these circumstances you could at least say teams with good pitching and good defense were the winners.

Now it seems like the game engine has reverted to the way it was before we started paying monthly for the game. I have to say the results in the playoffs now often stink and managers often go unrewarded for intelligent and thoughtful gameplay.

I have asked this question on other post recently and still have received no reply. But I will ask again. Has the game engine been modified lately? Has there been a reversion to an earlier game engine? What the heck is going on with starting pitching in the playoffs these days? PLEASE, PLEASE, respond with an explanation. I would, in fact, appreciate a response from Clay himself. Thanks.

[John]

You have complained about this over and over!

You sure are persistent...:D

[James Grove]

Hi, Schaefling -

We have not updated the BBMO engine in several months -- ever since we went into overdrive on BB2K3 development.

According to the servers, we last updated the BBMO engine on Jan 1, 2002.

We are, however, on the verge of introducing the new 2K3 engine code into BBMO. After we post it and give it a chance to run we can reassess the performance of the new code.

There will be a big announcement when the new engine goes live.

Thanks for playing,
James Grove

[alexanbo]

The Arizona Diamondbacks won the World Series and from I can tell they're farm system isn't great. They spent a lot of money on paying their major league talent and had to cut back in a lot of other areas such as administration and scouting.

Maybe a way to look at those expenses is that zero is the base level of spending that is the bare minimum but a finite amount. In much the same way National TV Contract money isn't given to each team becaus it's the same for each team, the zero level of expenses represents some base level of spending that all teams must pay. You could even pretend that this base level is covered by the National TV contract that the MLB has.

[Schaefling]

I certainly would like the new version of Baseball Mogul Online to be less random with its playoff results. I will keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.

I also want to point out that I am not alone in thinking this way. After Aschatz complained about losing nine playoff appearances in a row in the first round in one league, onethumb made the following comments in a post to Aschatz's thread:

"Playoffs seem to be extremely random." Referring to Baseball Mogul Online

"...baseball is pretty random during the regular season, but in the playoffs most guys seem to step it up a notch. A Cy Young pitcher will generally not get shelled for 8 runs in 2 1/3 innings in the playoffs ... especially not year after year.:) " Apparrently referring to experiences of his own with Baseball Mogul Online.

Even though no major changes to the game engine have taken place after 1/1/02 I stilll wonder if some small change may have caused the game to revert to more random pitching results in the playoffs.

I know for a fact that the way starting pitching is use at the end of the season has changed and that pitchers in the minors are not used in exactly the same way for the last three games of the season as they were back at the start of January. I still wonder if one of these minor changes somehow did not create a more marked if inadvertent change in pitching performances in the playoffs.

I have observed a noticeable change in pitching performances in the playoffs in the last few months which leads to more random results. Perhaps this is coincidence as I now manage in less leagues and have less observable data to compare. I do not think this is the case though and my track record has been quite good when it comes to finding glitches.

[Schaefling]

Alexanbo reminded me of this point.

Will there be a stronger correlation between spending on farm systems and scouting both in the regular season and during the playoffs in the new version?


Right now there does not seem to be any correlation at all in the playoffs with respect to how much money is spent on farm teams and scouting. It sure would be nice if there were a noticeable difference.

I can see a difference during the regular season but at this point in time it does not seem to make any difference at all in the playoffs.

[alexanbo]

Well seems to me this is working correctly because we're not getting any revenue for this period so i like that it ignores the spending after the regular season ends.

[faulk28]

for the playoffs it still won't matter because everybody will just jack up there expenses for the playoffs to 999 across the board...if expenses matter in the playoffs then we better get the revenue for the playoffs so we can also get charged for the expenses during a playoff run

[whoadae]

I felt the same way about the playoffs too.

[lancelot55]

I had Livian Hernandez one year and he won 31 games and had a era close to one. His record in the playoffs was 1 and 6. Luckily I still one the series, but that was ridiculous.

[kaill]

as i've said on a different thread on this topic, clay has said in the past that once a pitcher gets past a certain number of starts, his performance suffers. I think the number of starts is 32 or 34, I can't remember. So, this might explain why your pitchers are getting knocked around a bit more than usual.

You also have to remember that in the playoffs your ace pitcher will be generally facing a very good offensive team, which will raise their ERA. Several very good pitchers in MLB have so-so records in the playoffs (for example, Randy Johnson before last season).

Not to totally disagree with the thread; I also have noticed that playoff results seem a bit random. But in a short 5 or 7 game series, anything can happen. If the 115 win Mariners can lose in the playoffs, so can any of your BMO teams!

[modred]

The problem with using gross number of starts is that they don't tell the whole story. The more important factor in pitchers wearing down at the end of the season is the number of pitches thrown. A pitcher who makes 35 starts with an average of 100 pitches an outing and an A endurance rating should still be going strong while a similar pitcher who average 120 pitches should some more variation in his stats, he shouldn't drop off the face of the earth though.

[Miketay77]

Schaefling should be happy about the updated engine if it is indeed fixed. After all, he HAS won 4 World Series in a row.

[georgefc3]

Playoffs are short series and the results of short series are always random.

I can give you a long, detailed analysis of statitics if you like.

Also, SCOUTING and FARM should not affect playoffs at all. Basically SCOUTING does two things. It helps you analyze the skills on your team if you use AUTOSORT. Secondly, it helps you when you are selecting players from the free agent draft. You will get a better handle on who the good players are and how good they are. This will help you build a better team. But once your team is built it will not help the players be better than they otherwise would be.

FARM is something altogether different. It does two things. It helps you at the end of the season by giving you more and better quality minor leaguers. This is something that will help you YEARS down the road. This is basically an investment in the FUTURE. The second thing it does is that it spends money on coaches and training for MINOR LEAGUES. So if you spend a lot of money on your FARM system, it will help minor leaguers with their develpment. They will improve faster than if you skimped on FARM.

From that, you can see that neither of these things will help you directly in the playoffs. They will help you build better future teams.

There is one thing I've found helpful in the playoffs. It is called PRAYER!!

:D

[takaplan]

The expenses do not take into effect the money you spend during the playoffs, since you wouldn't be paying for it.

The expenses average your rank over the last 162 regular season games to come up with your true rank, so raising your expenses in the playoffs and offseason will not help you.

[Schaefling]

Playoff results are more predictable than they were 2-3 months ago although I'm not sure how long they will stay that way. Much more often than before the teams with the best record in each league make the World Series and the team with the best record of all quite often wins the World Series. This does not happen all the time by any means but much more frequently than in the past.

However, it looks like this may change to some extent now that player ratings are not as accurate as they once were. I have noticed recently that player rayings are not nearly as reliable as they once were. And not only does there seem to be greater fluctuation in actual batting and pitching stats (fieldling does not seem to be affected) making player ratings much less reliable than in the past some players perfomances are off the wall in comparison to their stats with mediocre and poor players sometimes having solid to even excellent seasons.

Personally, I don't like these changes but am wondering what the rest of you think. It is definitely going to make it harder to "master" the game so to speak with player ratings no longer being anywhere near as reliable as they once were.

P.S. I have another thread which talks about the change in player ratings. I suggest posting your comments about player ratings under this recently started thread. Thanks.

[misterblond]

I don't know. Sometimes there are abberations, and a few guys play above their heads or below, but most of the time, the better players are the ones to perform. Just like in real baseball. Sometimes people just come on like gangbusters, remember Kevin Maas of the Yankees? Probably not, but he once was belting homeruns at a never before seen pace. There has to be some randomness, or there would be no point in even simming the games. Too much randomness is also no good, so there's got to be a happy medium.

As far as the playoff results are concerned, I'm pretty satisfied. My L.A. team in 'GM Baseball' league has at least won the NLDS in five straight years (each time being the team with more wins in the regular season). In the first four of those years, I made it to the world series just once and lost. None of those four teams were real powerhouses (100 wins on average). Last season, my team won 113 games and had a team ERA under 3 runs. It was the best team in baseball and it went on to win the world series. This example seems like a pretty accurate portrayal of the fact that things are as they should be. That's all.