Figured out stat problem in early historical seasons

[Aardvark]

I think I figured out why, if you start an early (pre-1930 or so) season you get incredibly strange stats.

The problem is that early teams usually used a three man rotation with very little use of relief pitchers. Thus, the initial rosters end up being padded with lousy 18 year old pitchers (or maybe they are OK, but they still only 18), and likewise with the drafts. There was a little less use of bench players, but the net result is that maybe 90% of the at bats feature actual historical batters, but maybe only 50% of feature historical pitchers. There are a lot of pitchers with ERAs which above 7. Also, I noticed that for early seasons, while in commisioner mode, the predicted ERAs of the pitchers were in the 20s. I also wonder if we are seeing something due to park effects.

[Aardvark]

Well, it turned out I was only partly correct. The problem is that, in order to fill out modern-sized rosters, the game creates a lot of fictional rookies. These tend to be pretty good players. I fixed the problem by tweaking my rookies.init file to give pitchers a rating of 15, and position players of 5. This way the historical scrubs will be the scrubs in the replay, and the leader board won't be dominated by fictional players hitting over .500

I also created a semblance of the reserve clause by going into commisioner mode after the season, which makes players automatically sign contract extensions.

I couldn't figure out a way, save extensive hacks of the Lahman datbase, to reproduce the high number of steals early in the century.

It would be nice, maybe in next years version, to have support by decade for previous economic models (no free agency, then reduced), and also previous decades pitcher use. (Apparently the three man rotation worked because pitchers didn't throw quite as hard without men on base, and, with strikeouts being down, threw fewer pitchers per inning than they do now.)

[SFSteveG]

I couldn't figure out a way, save extensive hacks of the Lahman datbase, to reproduce the high number of steals early in the century.

Why can't this be added to the section in the input folder for each year where it has the nimbers for all the other stuff like homers and walks and K's.

[DrDoom]

Originally posted by Aardvark
the game creates a lot of fictional rookies.

Actually, as far as I can tell, the game doesn't create any fictional players when starting a historical replay. I believe the reason that Baseball Mogul is able to fill up the rosters is because it imports players at the age of 18 and not their debut year. In other words, when you start an association, not only do the players that played that year get loaded into the association but anyone who was 18 that year gets loaded as well. You could confirm this by going to any players scouting report and clicking on their name which will take you to their site on baseball-reference.com. Fictional players do, however, get imported in historical replays during amatuer drafts and therefore your solution with the rookie.ini adjustments would have a positive impact on future seasons.

[liveandletdie]

Originally posted by DrDoom
Actually, as far as I can tell, the game doesn't create any fictional players when starting a historical replay. I believe the reason that Baseball Mogul is able to fill up the rosters is because it imports players at the age of 18 and not their debut year. In other words, when you start an association, not only do the players that played that year get loaded into the association but anyone who was 18 that year gets loaded as well. You could confirm this by going to any players scouting report and clicking on their name which will take you to their site on baseball-reference.com. Fictional players do, however, get imported in historical replays during amatuer drafts and therefore your solution with the rookie.ini adjustments would have a positive impact on future seasons.

There is some exceptions to this, though. Some players are actually shown as going through college and they may be up to 22 years old and as young as 17. Also, the game will import the player to the team they first played with, not who they were actually drafted by. This dosen't only go for the 18 year olds, it also gioes for any prospect who in that year had'nt played in the majors, but there too old for a draft later (according to the AI).

[DrDoom]

Well it appears that a few fictional rookies get loaded into historical seasons after all.

[liveandletdie]

Originally posted by DrDoom
Well it appears that a few fictional rookies get loaded into historical seasons after all.

Yeah. The only years i've noticed it doing this was in 1967 (or somewhere around there) and '01 - '04