World Baseball Association
WBA Official Business => Season and Off-Season Threads => Topic started by: Huckleberry on August 19, 2016, 06:40:52 AM
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This is the thread for all discussion for the 2105 season, our league's sixth. This first post will be updated throughout the season and will also include links to other threads or amendment votes that come up during this time.
Next sim is TBD pending offseason owner recruiting and the offensive stats discussion and pending vote.
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OOTP Preseason Predictions:
(http://i.imgur.com/wtvAX3d.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/671suYo.png)
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Season off to a decent start for me. Lost the series in São Paulo but runs scored for the series were 17-16 in the Toucan's favor.
The defending world champion Stars were the only team to escape the first sim undefeated, they're 4-0.
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Lost two out of 3 to Singapore. Had my ace throw a shut out in the first game. Second game one of my relievers decided to choke it up.. and got shut out in the 3rd game. All my expensive offensive signings appear to have been loaded up on Aussie girls and XXXX bitter. They acted like a bunch of bogans.
Hopefully we can turn it up this week, or I may have to send in the dingoes.
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The preseason predictions are interesting. I don't think my pitching is going to be as strong as it has been, but I'd be willing to bet a 6 pack of VB that Brisbane will finish less than 24 games ahead of the Merlions
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The preseason predictions are interesting. I don't think my pitching is going to be as strong as it has been, but I'd be willing to bet a 6 pack of VB that Brisbane will finish less than 24 games ahead of the Merlions
I'll take that bet if you thrown in some SG's from Australia lol
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Kassiya became the alll time leader in wins...with 86 :)
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Ze Vargas became the all-time HR king!
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I'm hanging in there early but can't avoid the injury bug.
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Brisbane has taken over first with a 4-1 week.
See you in the playoffs lol
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Okay, so the injury bug is apparently contagious in my outfield this year. Third outfielder down, at least this one was only for about two weeks. No point putting him on the DL.
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Brisbane has a 6-1 sim with the only loss coming when Seoul's Kitaw Jalali throws a rain-shortened no-hitter against them. He still gives up a run on a walk, stolen base, groundout, groundout sequence.
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Pitching is lights out, Fielding is top notch and hitting is starting to come around.
Brisbane getting all cylinders firing.
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Is it too early for me to throw in the towel on this season and go for the top draft pick again?
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That's exactly what I'm trying to figure out for my team. They're piddling along at 0.500, not good enough for me to feel like I have a real shot but not bad enough to throw in the towel.
Yet.
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im buying :D
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9 game winning streak. 6 1/2 in front of Karachi.
The party is going on in Brisbane.
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My last 2 1st round draft picks are really disappointing me...
2104: I draft 1B Pedro Alejandre because his batting potential ratings were 8-9-7-5. One year later he's down to 6-8-6-4.
2105: I draft SP Jose Guzman because his pitching potential ratings were 9-8-7. One month into the season and he's already down to 8-7-5.
And that's why it doesn't pay to tank for draft picks.
:-\
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Glad to hear I'm not the only one experiencing that. My worst one was a pitcher named Akshey Imani. When I drafted him he was listed as having 4.0 star potential. When he showed up for spring training, his ratings had dropped so much, his potential was down to 1.0 star. I have to assume he was a skydiving enthusiast who forgot to take his parachute. Can't think of anything else to explain that much of a talent deterioration in one month's time.
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Yeah, my only #1 overall pick so far in the WBA went to crap. Control rating never developed and the potential cratered, now he's in AAA.
I think my team is just teasing me this season. A 5-1 sim means I will keep trying to compete but I have a feeling I'm just going to end up wasting a potential rebuilding year. Oh well, I'll keep trying to compete as long as it makes sense.
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Yeah, my only #1 overall pick so far in the WBA went to crap. Control rating never developed and the potential cratered, now he's in AAA.
I think my team is just teasing me this season. A 5-1 sim means I will keep trying to compete but I have a feeling I'm just going to end up wasting a potential rebuilding year. Oh well, I'll keep trying to compete as long as it makes sense.
this sentiment is why i love fast sim....no one waffles :)
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Brisbane is rolling so far. 1st in pitching, 1st in hitting and 2nd in fielding.
Attendence has increased.
The move to Brisbane has been a crazy good success so far
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Hey, I don't want to make this sound like a huge complaint, because in general I think this league has been terrific fun, but I mentioned once before that the batting averages seem a little low, and today I decided to do a little study to see how things are going in the 2105 season. Here are the results.
The ABL is hitting about .249 as a whole. Sao Paulo has the highest BA (.283) and Florida has the lowest (.214).
The IBL is hitting about .238 as a whole. Brisbane has the highest BA (.270) and Black Forest has the lowest (.217).
Overall WBA batting average is .243, as near as I can figure it.
I compared these numbers to the current National League (the American League isn't a good comp because it uses the DH). The National League is hitting .253. The highest BA is from Colorado (.275), the lowest is from Philadelphia (.238).
So it appears to me that we're about ten points low. Also, we have nine teams with BAs lower than the .238 BA posted by the Phillies. If it was just one team with a horrendous team BA I'd shrug it off, but look at this list: Mexico City .237, Rome .236, Seoul .231, Buenos Aires .225, Scottish .222, Singapore .220, New York City .220, Black Forest .217, Florida .214. Are these teams playing with bats made of balsa wood?
Anyway, how does everyone else feel about this? Personally, even if the batting averages never go up, I'll still enjoy the league; it's not like we absolutely need higher batting averages in order to have fun. (My team is hitting .217, and my starting first baseman is hitting .155, but I'm still having a blast.) If I had my druthers, though, I'd like to see a little more hitting. But (a) I don't know how the other GMs feel about it, and (b) I'm not sure how easy it is to fix this.
Thoughts?
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Although it's early in the season, maybe the pitching is a little better in the Intercontinental.
I'm not sure if the league uses like a variation on having pitching become stronger or what not.. but there are still a lot of standout hitters.
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Sure, there are some standout hitters, but that's kind of beside the point. The point is that there apparently are not ENOUGH standout hitters. When our league has multiple teams hitting below .225, and none of the real-life teams are hitting below .238, it seems clear that the WBA teams just don't have as much hitting as the real-life teams. Maybe that's not a big deal, but still, it's pretty obvious that this is indeed the case.
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My take: don't mess with anything. Nothing is broke. Everything is cyclical. Leave everything alone.
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i would like to see overall talent level rise...and variabilty fall. but, ive also seen what happens when you tinker with good things and feel its not worth it.
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I think a lot of it has to due with it being a fictional league. It seems like with the OOTP leagues based off the real leagues there is more talent around the league and in the minors. In this league there is only one way to add talent to the league, through the draft. With the draft each team will get 3-4 good to great prospects but after that it starts to drop off pretty significantly. In my opinion that is where the difference in average is coming from, the lack of depth of quality players.
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That's possible, but personally I don't think these low batting averages can be attributed entirely to a lack of talented players, because if the league simply didn't have enough good players, that would mean that the league wouldn't have enough good hitters and the league also wouldn't have enough good PITCHERS, with the result that teams would be forced to use bad pitchers, and batting averages would rise. Obviously that's not happening.
Let me propose a couple of other possibilities.
Possibility #1. There's a setting somewhere in the system that's set too low for hitters, or too high for pitchers. If you do the math, the WBA batting average of .243 is only about 4 percent lower than the National League batting average of .253. Four percent is not a huge amount. If there's such a setting, and we could raise batting averages 4 percent across the board, it wouldn't have a dramatic impact. It's not like .200 hitters would suddenly become .300 hitters. A .200 hitter who gains 4 percent becomes a .208 hitter. A .220 hitter who gains 4 percent becomes a .229 hitter. A .240 hitter who gains 4 percent becomes a .250 hitter. It's barely noticeable on a player by player basis, but it would have an impact on the overall league stats.
Possibility #2. It could be that most of the GMs in this league have chosen to focus on pitching, with the result that most teams have great pitching staffs, and those great pitching staffs are keeping batting averages low. This is possible but it seems unlikely to me, because if the league is properly balanced with regard to available talent, there are only so many good pitchers available, with the result that not everybody can get good pitchers no matter how badly they want them, and some GMs are thus going to find that only good hitters are available --- all the good pitchers have been taken. So those GMs would be "stuck with" good hitters. I don't believe that's happening, or else the hitting and pitching would balance out, and they aren't; the pitchers are clearly dominating the WBA.
Anyway, I guess if you have a great appreciation for pitching, the WBA is the place to be.
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We will definitely visit this after this season, but I also definitely do not want to change any settings during the season.
For the record, the league is based on 1995 totals as stated in the rules:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/1995.shtml
This actually makes this situation worse than you're saying because the overall MLB batting average was .267 in 1995 versus .256 this year. When I started the league I wanted a slightly higher batting average and lower strikeout/home run environment than modern baseball.
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(http://i.imgur.com/Y74REPk.png)
There are the current settings.
Anyone experienced enough with settings to figure out what we should do in the offseason? I found this thread:
http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/board/suggestions-future-ootp-versions/250133-more-stats-input-league-total-modifiers.html
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My take: don't mess with anything. Nothing is broke. Everything is cyclical. Leave everything alone.
Leagues will ebb abd flow just like real baseball. I see no issue at this point. The best are the best regardless of their actual numbers.
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I agree with that in theory but we are definitely having an issue with depressed offense league-wide. Besides, I don't mind having this discussion every season, heck it happens in real life too every time the numbers seem out of whack with previous years.
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Baseball today is all about the hitting and homeruns. If you want to compare numbers to the past, homeruns are way way up and have been for 25+ years. Should we fix that by reducing the number of homeruns hit, or do we now call it the norm? (It's the norm now, everyone expects a ^%$#ton of homeruns.) Homeruns are great and all, but quite frankly they are BORING now that everybody and their brother can hit one by just being there and waving the bat around a bit. I guess it all comes down to expectations, and people today expect what they see today. I don't subscribe to that way of thinking, but then again I am older then the average ootp player.
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After further reading it looks like what I haven't been doing is selecting 1995 as the season year and then hitting auto-calc modifiers every preseason.
http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/board/earlier-versions-ootp-general-discussions/209987-my-favorite-new-feature-autocalc-league-total-modifiers.html
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I feel like I've stirred up a hornet's nest; sorry, didn't want to upset anybody. But I enjoy this league too much to remain quiet when I see something I think needs fixing. If we as a group choose not to fix it, okay; the league will still be fun. But if we can fix it this offseason, we should at least consider it.
I just went to baseball-reference.com (terrific site, by the way) and got the National League totals for BA and HRs. I avoided the American League because the DH inflates their numbers; we don't use the DH, so the NL stats seem more appropriate for us. Here are the numbers from 1995 through 2015, the last season for which there are complete numbers:
Year NL overall BA NL HRs per game
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1995 .263 0.95
1996 .262 0.98
1997 .263 0.95
1998 .262 0.99
1999 .268 1.12
2000 .266 1.16
2001 .261 1.14
2002 .259 1.00
2003 .262 1.05
2004 .263 1.10
2005 .262 0.99
2006 .265 1.10
2007 .266 1.04
2008 .260 1.01
2009 .259 0.96
2010 .255 0.93
2011 .253 0.88
2012 .254 0.94
2013 .251 0.89
2014 .249 0.83
2015 .253 0.94
As you can see, HR totals were way up during the "steroid years," but they're down to a more normal level now. I don't know how the WBA stacks up with regard to HR totals; haven't done the math. Offhand, I think our HR totals are okay. But our batting averages are definitely low, even compared to the rather low BAs of 2014-2015 (and quite a bit lower if you want to use 1995 as a baseline).
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Huck, what's the net effect of not hitting auto-calc? The league "drifts" on its own? (I don't know that such an organic drift is bad, but want to understand before opining).
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
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Well my pitchers are certainly doing everything they can to keep league averages up this year.
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Huck, what's the net effect of not hitting auto-calc? The league "drifts" on its own? (I don't know that such an organic drift is bad, but want to understand before opining).
Not sure yet. Still looking into it but I think that drift idea is probably it.
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No hornets nest as far as I am concerned. I am pretty opinionated, but I am quite aware that they are just my opinions and generally not shared by others. I love a good discussion and debate, and certainly never mean to offend or annoy anyone.
The only reason I said anything is that I'd prefer to wait and see if things 'average' out on their own before making any changes. I am in an online league thats been going for 13+ real years and 40+ years in game, and it has seen some fairly substantial stat changes over the years, and it does bounce around between hitting and pitching at times just as I think we should expect. The same things have been discussed in that league, but we never made any changes and things seemed to have worked themselves out each time.
Now if we are shooting for a specific era stats wise and consistantly not achieving it then I guess something may need to be done.
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It's very true that statistical trends fluctuate and that sometimes problems correct themselves. But if Huck is aiming for this league to hit about .265, and it's instead hitting .243, that's a problem which (in my opinion) is unlikely to correct itself; the gap is just too large. I believe it's going to require manual intervention.
By the way, in an earlier post I listed the BA and HR numbers for the National League over the past 21 years, so I decided to do a quick study of the WBA's home-run rate in the 2105 season. Our rate is 0.93 HRs per game. That's right in line with the National League's rate, so no problem there. The problem seems to be confined to batting average.
(For those who may be curious ... the highest HR rate at present is Karachi's, at 1.43 per game. Lowest is Florida's, at 0.59 HRs per game.)
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Was the batting avg higher in previous seasons for this league? I never really paid attention to it.
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Here are the numbers:
2100 --- ABL .247, IBL .247, WBA total .247
2101 --- ABL .251, IBL .253, WBA total .252
2102 --- ABL .257, IBL .242, WBA total .250 or .249
2103 --- ABL .261, IBL .246, WBA total .254 or .253
2104 --- ABL .254, IBL .245, WBA total .250 or .249
We're at .243 overall in 2105, which is an all-time low. Could go up some by end of season, of course. Still a long way from the goal of .265 or thereabouts.
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Hmmm, perhaps the issue has nothing to do with the underlying league numbers. Have you all looked at the teams? There are a total of two 8's and eight 7's in contact in the whole league. ( I only looked at starting lineups.) Nearly every team I look at has better pitching then hitting in my opinion. Either the draft hitting is weak, or hitters are not developing very well.
(IBL only)
ABL has 2) 8's and 11) 9's
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Hmmm, perhaps the issue has nothing to do with the underlying league numbers. Have you all looked at the teams? There are a total of two 8's and eight 7's in contact in the whole league. ( I only looked at starting lineups.) Nearly every team I look at has better pitching then hitting in my opinion. Either the draft hitting is weak, or hitters are not developing very well.
(IBL only)
ABL has 2) 8's and 11) 9's
Karachi definitely does not. :)
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Mumbai was SUPPOSED to be an offensive juggernaut with good enough pitching to compete.
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Clifford Mitchell with a no-hitter.
Santo Domingo with another good week and another outfield injury.
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Bah, tried to post an image but no luck.
I have a player saying;
Please don't insult me with a minor legue offer. Let me restate my demands:
A minor league contract.
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Maybe offer a 50k signing bonus?
I had some weird contract experiences this off season, too. Players saying they need more money, then asking for exactly what I offered.
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Bah, tried to post an image but no luck.
I have a player saying;
Please don't insult me with a minor legue offer. Let me restate my demands:
A minor league contract.
That's an OOTP overall issue. I've had that happen multiple times both in online leagues and solo games. It's extremely frustrating.
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So proud of "Fudd" Mitchell for his no-hitter. We needed a win badly.
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Active 37-game hitting streak in the ABL-AAA league:
http://www.worldbaseballassociation.com/reports/news/html/players/player_1641.html
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Brisbane 53-20. 10 games in front. Looking good as a whole. Attendance is up 24 percent compared to the last year in Tokyo. Starting pitching is hitting on the good beat, but the bullpen is dominant with a 2.08 ERA. Defense is ranked 4th in effiency and hitting is lights out. Just added another power hitter so let's see what it looks like down the stretch. 15 players with at least a 1 WAR.
Who's coming to Brisbane for the playoffs?
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There will be a sim schedule change. We will not have a sim on Sunday and additionally next Monday night's sim will be late, most likely at or after 10:00 pm central instead of 9:00 like usual. This serves two purposes.
- Gives owners a full three days to work out trade deadline deals.
- Gets us to the one week voting period on the current amendment vote (or at least close enough as far as I'm concerned).
Regarding #2, if 90% of votes are YES at that time then the amendment will take effect immediately, meaning that trades of draft picks between leagues will be allowed on Monday night right before the trading deadline.
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I have installed the latest patch on my machine now. That means you must install it before exporting for tomorrow's sim or the team file won't import properly. And after tomorrow's sim you won't be able to download the updated league file if you haven't installed the latest patch.
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2 wild card spots in the ABL, 3 teams all within a game of each other.
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Oh, and congratulations to Washington for being the first to clinch their division this season. São Paulo is likely to join them in the next sim.
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There are a ridiculous FIVE teams within 3.5 games of the second IBL wild card, with about 20 games left to play.
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Brisbane at Seoul apparently got postponed by weather so there is one final regular season game remaining. Then a playoff game for the 2nd IBL wild card spot will be scheduled between Karachi and Mumbai.
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Change of plans. Because OOTP scheduled the ABL playoffs to begin on 9/22, I will be manually adding the Karachi/Mumbai game to the schedule on 9/21 and re-uploading the league file in just a moment. I will post here when it's done.
The game will be played in Mumbai as they won the regular season series between the two teams 13-11.
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New league file is up, HTML reports updating now after addition of the wild card playoff game.
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ABL Semifinals:
Series begin Tuesday 9/22/2105, best of 7 in a 2-3-2 format
Rio de Janeiro (85-71) @ São Paulo (94-62)
Santo Domingo (83-73) @ Washington (102-54)
IBL Semifinals:
Series begin Wednesday 9/23/2105, best of 7 in a 2-3-2 format
Mumbai (83-74) @ Brisbane (103-53)
Singapore (92-64) @ Paris (81-75)
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Through Game 5 the home teams are 5-0 in the WBA Championship Series and Paris leads Rio de Janeiro 3 games to 2.
Draft pools were revealed during the sim tonight and are now available in-game (draft utility will not be fired up until the in-game calendar turns to 2106).
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Going back to the issue of level of offense in the WBA now that the season is complete. Remember that the settings are based on MLB in 1995. I will use the NL numbers from that year considering we have no designated hitters in the WBA.
1995 National League: 0.263 AVG, 0.331 OBP, 0.408 SLG, 4.63 R/G
Here are the historical ABL numbers, using a slash line format in the same order as above (so the 1995 NL was 0.263/0.331/0.408/4.63)
2100 - 0.247/0.325/0.386/4.15
2101 - 0.251/0.327/0.396/4.31
2102 - 0.257/0.333/0.396/4.34
2103 - 0.261/0.340/0.409/4.67
2104 - 0.254/0.329/0.395/4.43
2105 - 0.249/0.325/0.379/4.30
IBL Numbers:
2100 - 0.247/0.323/0.382/4.16
2101 - 0.253/0.326/0.391/4.28
2102 - 0.242/0.319/0.371/4.08
2103 - 0.246/0.318/0.381/4.11
2104 - 0.245/0.319/0.382/4.16
2105 - 0.237/0.309/0.369/3.81
There are the facts. Now we can discuss potential action.
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My personal opinion is that the ABL is on the borderline but still playable and reasonable. If I had a personal vote I might ride out the standard fluctuation one more year without anymore information.
However the IBL seems to be way out of whack and potentially in need of immediate attention. The 2105 IBL league batting average was lower than any real-life season in National League history. Only the 1967 and 1968 American League had lower batting averages, and that prompted the real-life change of lowering the mound.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/NL/bat.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/AL/bat.shtml
But because my intent has always been for the owners to run the league more than the commissioner in as many cases as possible, just like real life, we will have a vote for each league. I have no problem if the IBL wants to hit auto-calc while the ABL votes not to do so. Differences between the two leagues don't bother me. There's also another possibility while we take our standard short recruiting break once the offseason gets here - with the league owners' permission I could run some tests by simming 5 years in both of two cases. One where I hit auto-calc every year and one where I don't after turning all teams onto AI control. Would the leagues be interested in that prior to the votes?
Thoughts?
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Sure, do that. It would be added info with which to decide how to vote.
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Personally, I want to see batting averages increase in the IBL by at least 20 points. Whatever it takes to have that happen, I'm in favor of it. It's embarrassing to have my team hitting in the .220s. I used to show my team's stats to some buddies who are baseball buffs, but lately all I've been showing them is my won-lost record. If I showed them a lineup where all the hitters are around .230 (which is what I've got), they'd think I had assembled the worst team ever.
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I still think it's because the drafts have been slim on hitters, and this years draft looks much better in that regard to me. There seem to be more high star potential hitters this year then the last 2 in comparison to pitchers. I think it should be left alone as we are playing and making moves based on these 'numbers'. If we start monkeying with them that could all change, and not in good way in my opinion. To me it is all relative. the best re the best regardless of the actual numbers. I know I am in the minority here, but I just don't like it when leagues start messing with the numbers.
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Although I asked to see the test runs, I am with Claybor totally. This isn't about whether someone is embarrassed to show his team stats to his friends. Messing with settings is not a good idea. And something that suddenly changes the equation might well make strategy and planning done over time instantly obsolete.
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If the decision is made to stick with the status quo, it won't be the end of the world; it's still fun to run a team, to watch the pennant races play out, and so on. But as Huck points out, the IBL had a batting average of .237 this past year, which is lower than any batting average posted by the National League in its entire 140-year history. That even includes the deadball era. Part of the fun of playing OOTP is the feeling that you're running a real baseball team; these absurdly low batting averages make it seem less real. It's like the distance from home plate to first base in the IBL is 120 feet. If we have the opportunity to correct this and give our league historically accurate batting averages, instead of historically inaccurate batting averages, I think we should seize the opportunity. Let's not be afraid of change. Some changes are for the better.
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I am not so much against the change as afraid that it could have detrimental effect. If a change is decided on, perhaps something gradual in small steps?
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Unfortunately someone smarter than I would have to figure out small steps. My plan is to use the auto-calc modifiers button that is designed to keep stats in line with the historical league totals that the league is using. From what I understand, which isn't much when it comes to these settings, it may cause an instant jump toward 1995 levels.
I will go ahead and run the 5 season tests this weekend once the WBA Championship Series is over. That way everyone can have as much information as possible when voting.
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I am completely in favor of changing whatever needs to be changed in order to make my team instantly the best in the league. But since not even God has that power I will withhold my vote until after the 5 year sim results from Huck.
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I prefer more offense...but OOTP changes tend to have unintended consequences, and i dont like those. all IBL teams are on the same page, so be it (as long as it doesn't affect us in the championship)
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Paris wins the 2105 WBA Championship 5 games to 2.
I will be attempting to run the 5 season auto-calc tests this weekend and we also need a new owner for the Scottish Claymores.
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Congratulations to Paris! The Afro-Euro Division rules!
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Congratulations to Paris! The Afro-Euro Division rules!
ditto and concur
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Congratulations to Paris! The Afro-Euro Division rules!
Boo.
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Congratulations to Paris! The Afro-Euro Division rules!
ditto and concur
Also boo. ;)
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Actually I was just joking when I said that the Afro-Euro division rules. Our division had the worst cumulative record in the WBA. But one of our teams ended up as the world champ, so I've got to crow about that, at least.
Congratulations to Rio for not only posting its first-ever winning season, but making it all the way to the Finals. Now, that's progress. That's a team that's really starting to hit its stride.
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Congrats to Paris, and a great run by Rio.
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I've been travelling abroad for a while, so I'm a little late in weighing in on the topic of offseason adjustments. I'm OK either way - adjusted or not.
One influence that could be at play here that I haven't seen discussed in other posts is park factors. I know my park is definitely big, and definitely favors pitchers. I never really chose these factors intentionally in 2001, and have not changed them since. If the average park is big (with park factors << 1.000), we'll see depressed offense. For reasons unrelated to this overall issue, I'm planning on adjusting my park factors throughout my minors, and probably also at the ML level this offseason to factors that are closer to neutral