1) I'm totally convinced that they do something to encourage crazy 9th inning comebacks. 

2) I think they totally screwed up the defense. Normalizing the defense was a big mistake.

3) I think they randomly put a hex on players to encourage use of the waiver wire. When the 1921 Babe Ruth can't hit home runs in the new Yankee Stadium something is fishy.

All that being said, I try to remind myself that we are all playing with the same flaws.

Some deadball era players were good fielders, some great like Honus Wagner. The fielding stats should be normalized in such a way that it reflects how relatively good fielders were with respect to other of their era. There is no reason to think that a fine fielder in 1908 would not have been good had they played today if allowed to play with a freakin' glove. 

So the need to use modern players to have a decent defense is a mirror-image of having to use deadball pitchers to keep home runs down - the best pitchers of 1906 would still have given up more HRs in 1936 or in 1996  than they did in 1906, again the normalization should be relative to their era, so a pitcher who gave up more than an average number of HRs/100 AB  in 1906 should give up a good number to Mark McGwire or Babe Ruth or whomever, not nearly none, because a lot in 1906 was 7 all year. 

I know that normalization works first for one's season and then compares it to the overall baseball average - as far as I can make out for HRs the average comes out somewhere like 1940 or 1965, low for modern seasons, but even these numbers would be impressive compared with what we often have in OLs. 

Further, some normalization of the SB/CS stats for deadball runners is also in order and also for deadball catchers - again I would say that having deadball runners rated relative to their era and then treated as though they were modern -so if someone who stole 45 bases and was caught 40 times was actually among the very best in 1901, because managers expected you to run every time you were on base in that suicidal era that presaged the attacks on the trenches in WWI years later as a base running strategy, then treat him as though he were among the good base runners of 2015, if instead that sucked even in 1901, then treat him as a bad 2015 base runner. Or something. 

Finally, change the pricing for deadball pitchers - they are overused because their innings are cheap because their pitch counts are low because they did not strike anybody out because they did not have to because hitters could not hit home runs. So you can't afford a four, let alone a five-man rotation in a simulation of a game where 4-5 man rotations have been standard for over 100 FRICKIN' YEARS !!. 

The biggest thing to me is the general skew towards offense. This observation comes mostly from progressives, where it seems batters almost always out-perform their real life numbers while pitchers almost always do much worse. How does one "correct" this in a theme? Perhaps, teams must use at least half of their salary on pitching?

best line I've read in the forums lately is....

"managers expected you to run every time you were on base in that suicidal era that presaged the attacks on the trenches in WWI years later as a base running strategy"

well done sir.

Italyprof, I don't recall seeing a post of yours with which I've agreed more. I beat a couple of those issues into the dirt with WIS staff and in forums years ago. It didn't seem like staff understood the concept of picking up the curve from one season (or era) and simply placing it upon the average, modern type. Conceptually, they just have to perform the mathematics that fit and balance the first bell curve (season or era of seasons) onto the center of the master curve.  Arrrgghhh...

And redwings, I also appreciate his sentence formation and the following comment.

And matt, exactly!  They admitted that (instead of adjusting deadball pitchers mo-better, making sure Maddux '94 was very, very high priced, etc.) they just boosted batting "by ten percent," whatever that means. Recently, they've said they have been considering reversing that. Then again, they've been considering a lot of things, though perhaps not getting the Murdochs to divest them.....

Matt, I think I have a way to adjust for that.  Also, a harsh way that others have used, to deal with deadball pitching. Just disallow it.

Another thing that doesn't skew in regards to deadball base stealers: if they're so bad at stealing, why aren't there more A and A+ catchers' arms in the deadball era?  There are only 13 deadballers in the database with 500+ PA/162 with A+ arms.  Who the hell is throwing these guys out?

A problem that I have is they adjust fielders by pretending they have a modern glove and make fewer errors, but at the same time the deadball pitchers still give up very few home runs to modern hitters. If deadball pitchers could actually face modern hitters they would give up a lot of homers. I think the problem is they make everyone play together as if it were 1909, when they should make everyone play together as if it were 2015.

Posted by pinotfan on 5/14/2015 2:28:00 PM (view original):
Another thing that doesn't skew in regards to deadball base stealers: if they're so bad at stealing, why aren't there more A and A+ catchers' arms in the deadball era?  There are only 13 deadballers in the database with 500+ PA/162 with A+ arms.  Who the hell is throwing these guys out?

WIS estimates all CS numbers for the seasons in which is was not an official stat. So if you go to BBR, you'll notice there is no stat for years for CS (I think up until the 1920s or early 1930s). Take 1887 Hugh Nicol and his league leading 138 SB. http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/n/nicolhu01.shtml 0 CS because the information does not exist.

Back in 2005 or so, WIS estimated CS for all players without an official stat. Prior to this time, every player without a CS stat literally had 0 CS. Nicol was 138/138...a 100% success rate. He could steal 200 in a season on steal 5 easily. All the deadballers could.

So WIS used some historical formula to make up the CS for all these players and then adjusted their salaries. That's why the rates are so poor. My guess is that they don't have the CS% for catchers either and are also using some historical formula.

The ballparks don't seem to matter much. When I load up with triplers & pick a favorable park; they don't get nearly as many 3B's as one would expect. The same holds true for doublers in what should be a favorable park for them.

Posted by Midge on 5/14/2015 2:56:00 PM (view original):
A problem that I have is they adjust fielders by pretending they have a modern glove and make fewer errors, but at the same time the deadball pitchers still give up very few home runs to modern hitters. If deadball pitchers could actually face modern hitters they would give up a lot of homers. I think the problem is they make everyone play together as if it were 1909, when they should make everyone play together as if it were 2015.

I tend to agree... or at least they might make everyone play together like it's 1946-2015. But if they do that, they may have to have a separate version for in-season themes such as progressives. That would be more work on their part, but it would be great for us!

I think WIS' overall base-stealer vs. catcher schema is pretty brilliant. (And I think including pitchers in the equation would be next to impossible, though it's a big, big factor in real life.)