13.02 Too many players with 50+ doubles

[HoustonGM]

Another thing I can't seem to reconcile like with the starting pitcher usage issue...

I'm getting leaguewide doubles totals that are roughly accurate to real life - around 8,900 per year.

However, there's usually 8-10 guys that reach the 50 double mark. In real life, there's usually only 2 or 3.

How can the leaguewide results be accurate, yet the distribution be so off? The only thing I can think of is that the doubles just simply aren't being spread out accurately across players, but I have no idea what can be done to fix that.

[filihok]

I've wondered this before.

How does the number of players that appear in a season of mogul compare to the number of players that appear in a real life season.

[HoustonGM]

I've wondered this before.

How does the number of players that appear in a season of mogul compare to the number of players that appear in a real life season.
950 players received at least 1 plate appearance in 2009.

664 players recorded at least 1 out as a pitcher.


In a sim I just ran, there were 589 pitchers that recorded 1 or more outs and 1011 players that received at least 1 plate appearance.

[filihok]

Well...that ain't it then

[HoustonGM]

FWIW, I think I'm noticing similar things with steals - accurate leaguewide totals, but too many with 45+ .

[ewing6]

my first season with houston rosters in 2010 all of the top 10 had 50 doubles 4 had 60(1 had 68 :O) and 2 had 59, then in 2011 1 guy had 58 and the restin the 40's.

[HoustonGM]

Regarding this (http://forum.sportsmogul.com/showpost.php?p=1472054&postcount=11), some early testing with 2009 and 2010 default rosters, the league leaderboard does seem relatively accurate. However, the leaguewide totals are 300-500 doubles lower than the real life 2007-2009 average of 8,983. I am, however, able to increase the simulation settings to get more accurate leaguewide numbers without significantly distorting the leaderboards.

With sims of my rosters, the pattern I'm noticing is that the guys at the top of the leaderboard with 50+ doubles nearly always are all speedsters - Jose Reyes, Michael Bourn, Ichiro Suzuki, etc. I can't figure out why this is. I'm going to continue looking into it and testing some things out...

[Mizerak]

With sims of my rosters, the pattern I'm noticing is that the guys at the top of the leaderboard with 50+ doubles nearly always are all speedsters - Jose Reyes, Michael Bourn, Ichiro Suzuki, etc. I can't figure out why this is. I'm going to continue looking into it and testing some things out...

Maybe the result of an awful lot of players stretching singles into doubles, rather than people hitting deep doubles to begin with?

[HoustonGM]

Maybe the result of an awful lot of players stretching singles into doubles, rather than people hitting deep doubles to begin with?
Perhaps, but, why does this seem tied to my rosters?

I was thinking that it might have something to do with the triples, since my simulation setting for triples is set so low since there we so many. Perhaps the game compensates by stopping fast runners at 2B rather than letting them go for three when the setting is set so low? I've been meaning to adjust the predicted triples numbers in my rosters, anyway, as I realized, due to projection system regression, nearly every player was projected for at least one triple. I figure that doing a leaguewide adjustment of the predicted triples numbers will lower the number of triples without me having to set a low simulation setting and, hopefully, this will help deal with the doubles issue.

I already checked the predicted doubles for the common offenders, and they're all guys with relatively LOW predicted doubles, as speedsters generally don't accumulate doubles, so, it's not their predicted stats.

[HoustonGM]

Clay, one thing I realized just now... the "Extra Bases" strategy is one of the strategies that is affected by this bug (http://forum.sportsmogul.com/showthread.php?t=201994), so when you run sims with the default rosters, either in 2009 or 2010, 28 of the 30 teams have the Extra Bases strategy set down VERY low, which explains why those sims don't show this issue.

I've adjusted the strategies for the individual teams (using real life as a guide), and I'm finding that turning down the Extra Bases strategy is helping to alleviate the 50+ double problem... HOWEVER, I do think there is an issue with speedy guys stretching singles into doubles too often - fast guys are nearly doubling their predicted doubles rates and are dominating the doubles leaderboard.

[HoustonGM]

Okay, tweaking with the strategy settings, I've bee able to reduce the number of 50 double guys. What I said above applies though - too many doubles for the speedy guys. Reyes/Crawford/Pierre led the league with 57/56/55 doubles, respectively. None of them have ever topped 37, and they usually only hit around 30 or less. They're all predicted to have 20-25 in 550 or so at bats. This issue is unrelated to my data, I believe.

The key, though, is to eliminate this while keeping overall doubles the same...

[HoustonGM]

Okay, through adjusting the strategy settings, I've been able to get the doubles leaderboard and leaguewide totals to resemble real life in most sims with my rosters. Every once in a while, there will be a sim with 7+ guys with 50+ doubles or one or two guys with 60, but it's much improved.

The fast guy thing seems to have been lessened, perhaps with input from me manually adjusting some of the guys' predicted doubles even lower than their already relatively low numbers, but the speedy guys are still routinely besting their predicted doubles rate by a significant amount.

[Lex Logan]

Clay, one thing I realized just now... the "Extra Bases" strategy is one of the strategies that is affected by this bug (http://forum.sportsmogul.com/showthread.php?t=201994), so when you run sims with the default rosters, either in 2009 or 2010, 28 of the 30 teams have the Extra Bases strategy set down VERY low, which explains why those sims don't show this issue.

I've adjusted the strategies for the individual teams (using real life as a guide), and I'm finding that turning down the Extra Bases strategy is helping to alleviate the 50+ double problem... HOWEVER, I do think there is an issue with speedy guys stretching singles into doubles too often - fast guys are nearly doubling their predicted doubles rates and are dominating the doubles leaderboard.

Is there any good way to keep track of outs on base? If players are stretching too much they should be getting thrown out a lot.

[HoustonGM]

Not sure how to look into that.

However, I haven't been looking at this, but just now noticed it - the number of outfielder assists are off-the-charts. In 2009, 16 outfielders totaled 10 or more assists, with the league leader having 16. In sims, I'm getting 10 or more guys reaching 20 outfield assists, and some players sometimes reaching 30 or more. That's with my rosters. With the default rosters, the 20+ assist guys are reduced, but there are still 25-30 guys reaching 10.

Clay, any ideas on what could be causing this? I hadn't looked at this prior to adjusting the extra bases strategy so that the 50+ doubles guy went down, so I don't know if this is a by-product of that or not. As I said though, the outfield assists are high even in the default rosters, though not close to what I'm seeing with my rosters. Perhaps the game doesn't use the cut-off man often enough? Correct me if I'm wrong, but, in real life, the cut-off man would get credit with the assist rather than the outfielder. If the game isn't using the cut-off man realistically, this could cause increased outfield assists without necessarily causing there to be too many baserunners thrown out.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. I apologize if it appears that I'm being too nitpicky with all these stats - I'm just a stickler for realistic statistical output. It's just frustrating.

[HoustonGM]

There's about 1300-1400 outfield assists per sim with my rosters, and this total is actually probably low because it doesn't include guys whose primary position is in the infield yet played some time in the outfield. In real life, there's about 850 total per year.

The default rosters have about the same (actually slightly less) than real life, yet still have extra guys reaching 10 and 20 (only a couple per year reaching 20 rather than the 10+ in my rosters).

So, it's something in my rosters, but I can't figure out what...

And, note, this is already with arm ratings appearing very low across the board, with no outfielder having an arm rated above 80!

[HoustonGM]

And this may or may not be related, but it appears that leaguewide error totals are about 400-500 errors short of real life (overall errors, not any specific position). This goes for both default rosters and my rosters.

[HoustonGM]

Okay, the way I had to fix the issue was to turn down every team's Extra Base strategy setting way down, which is how the default rosters have it set for every team. This greatly reduced the number of outfield assists, and also seemed to handle the issue above regarding speedy players getting too many doubles.

So, this isn't really an issue, so long as the extra base strategy setting is set very low for every team...but I would think that the "average" setting should produce the realistic results, rather than having to turn it way down... but, since the default settings get realistic results, this issue can be put on the back burner.

[mattygerst]

Good find.

[HoustonGM]

I'm still seeing a few too many guys with 10+ assists, but 20 is few and far between now, and the leaguewide numbers are relatively accurate, so I can deal :p

[av8njosh]

I've noticed that many hits that should be simply nothing more than singles (ie singles back up the middle to center, or between SS and 3B to left) are being constantly stretched into doubles by the AI, at a rate of 3-5 per game in PBP mode with about half making it safely. I can't be sure, but it seems that this possibly has to do with the new 'base coach'. In any case, seems that this would cause both the increase in doubles as well as an increase in outfield assists

[drshuey]

From playing PbP one thing I am noticing that there are a lot of guys on opposing teams with speed in the 60's going for extra bases when the OFers aren't very deep and have arms in the 90's. I don't know if that formula used to see if an OFer is able to have an assist is off or not, but this could account for the extra doubles you are seeing HGM. Same thing happens with guys tagging up against OFers with guns for arms. The team I am playing with has Morgan in CF with an arm rating of 91, yet there are still a ton of players stretching doubles when he has the ball in the not-too-deep OF.

[WHAK0985]

I just started playing BM2011 and noticed that the incidence of stretching singles into doubles and doubles into triples has increased noticeably in the dozen or so games I have played in PBP. It is MUCH easier for players to stretch singles into doubles, even players with substandard speed. I'm sure this is the reason why there are so many doubles.

Ozzie Smith, who hit more than 30 doubles once in his real life career, just hit 6 doubles, ALL being singles stretched into doubles via the bench coach option, in a 7 game span. And no coincidence they all came after I switched my dynasty from BM2010 to BM2011.