Hi everyone

Me and 11 of my friends are in a theme league. This is our first time any of us are every playing SimLeague Baseball.

I probably have a million questions, but lets start with a simple one:

Opening Day we had a team score 46 runs. As the MLB record is 30, that seems a bit high. Has anyone ever experienced anything like this?

We have a lot of other wacky statistical things going on, like we're at the 1/4 pole and one team is on pace for 400 home runs...

Are we just experiencing variance of epic proportions, or does SimLeague have some really funky RNGs?

Thanks for any info/advice, and hi to everyone!

Roger

huge run totals aren't uncommon, in the sim if you're down 10-0 after 6 innings, it's often best to leave a mop-up man to get slaughtered and throw 150+ pitches rather than waste a good pitcher. I imagine something like that happened in your example. no permanent damage to the guy's arm is gonna occur in virtual baseball.

i took a look at your league and the team hitting all those HRs drafted a bunch of HR hitters, put them in a great home run park in Yankee Stadium III, and there are almost no deadball pitchers around on other teams, so that seems about right.

great to hear 12 new players are on the site now, have fun!

This is a simulation and not real baseball, so when you throw some unusual stats against each other you can get unusual results, especially when newer players who don't know all the settings and other intricacies of the site square off against each other. If you want to learn, the best trove of info is all contained here:

https://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?topicID=462961

All good responses. Also, the algorithm used here at WIS IMO has a ton of variables in it. Chance if you will. There is a ton of luck involved here in my experience. And that results in some VERY unrealistic game performances. That's just my opinion of course. It seems a lot of realistic 2 -1 and 3 -2 type games are not interesting enough for most users. Thus hitters are given an "edge" statistically. Some set % that I don't remember. Results in a LOT of 15 - 13 type games and very few 2 -1 games.

With all due respect to laramiebob, I believe his post is misleading. WIS staff have published the algorithm they use many times over the years. From those discussions, two things appear to be true:

-- There is no explicit advantage built in for the hitter. There are implicit advantages, which I will discuss further in a minute. But there is no element of the formula that specifically tilts the outcome toward the hitter.
-- There is no "extra" variable thrown in to introduce streakiness or greater variation. So be careful how you interpret "the algorithm used here at WIS has a ton of variables in it." The algorithm includes things like: actual stats of the hitter, average stats from the hitter's real-life league, actual stats of the pitcher, average stats from the pitcher's real-life league, the park in which the WIS game is being played, the quality of the fielders, and whether the hitter or the pitcher has the platoon advantage. That's it. It spits out an outcome based on those stats, and there is a wide range of possibilities, but there is no "extra" variable thrown into the mix.

To your question...In general, I think you will find that in most 80M leagues there are far too few homers being hit rather than too many. For example, in an 80M league that I recently finished, the HR leader was 1965 Willie Mays with 38 (real life 52). 1934 Lou Gehrig hit 28, 1996 Barry Bonds hit 20, etc. 80M leagues in WIS are definitely not home run heavy.

But yes, you will occasionally see a game in which a ridiculous number of runs are scored. There are several reasons why this might happen, among them:

1.) A league of 80M WIS teams has much better offenses than any real MLB season. In any given modern season the best teams in MLB, if loaded into WIS, usually fall short of 80M. So your league is entirely composed of teams that are better than any modern MLB team. What does this mean? You are simulating something that has actually NEVER happened in MLB history. No MLB season in history has the overall quality of offenses that you have in your league. So historical MLB norms should not be expected to apply. If want something closer to that, use a cap of 60M or 70M.
2.) That said, your league has too many modern pitchers. Someone like 1982 Eckersley on your team, who gave up 31 HR in 225 innings in real-life, is facing MUCH better hitters than he faced in the 1982 AL. His HR allowed are going to be ridiculous against the best power hitters from the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s. In most 80M leagues you will see pitching staffs mostly made up of deadball era hurlers who just squelch the home run. (Unrealistically so, in my opinion, which is why the typical 80M league has such low HR numbers as I posted above.)
3.) The way WIS uses park effects is flawed. The park in which you play your game may boost (or reduce) home runs. But WIS does not adjust the underlying stats of the players based on their real life HR park. So someone like 1996 Buhner (on your league's mega-HR team) who in real life played in the Kingdome and in your league is playing in Yankee III, gets a "double boost." His actual stats - which are plugged into the algorithm - are boosted by having played in the Kingdome. Then Yankee III gives his HR chances a further boost. Yikes. Putting modern HR hitters in Yankee III is a good way to see some serious longball numbers.
4.) The way WIS incorporates the platoon advantage is also flawed (in my opinion). The way WIS incorporates the platoon advantage implicitly assumes that over a season it will balance out. But this is not the case. For example, switch hitters are always assumed to have the platoon advantage in WIS, and this gives them an edge in every PA - when their real life stats already incorporate that edge. Similarly, LH batters who face many more RH pitchers than LH pitchers in WIS, again get a platoon boost more often than not - but their real life stats already incorporate that edge. This is not the biggest reason why offense numbers can get screwy, but it plays a part.
5.) The way WIS handles players who had "career seasons" in real life is flawed. See this thread for a much longer discussion of this point.
6.) The way WIS handles pitcher fatigue is flawed. Especially in-game fatigue. A tired pitcher in WIS will just get killed - he will pitch much worse than any MLB pitcher has ever pitched, and WIS users are perfectly fine to let them throw up to 255 innings (as 06gsp suggests in his comment above). Imagine what would be happen if a lineup of MLB all-stars faced a guy throwing batting-practice pitches all game...that's effectively what happens against fatigued pitchers. This is almost certainly exacerbated in your league since, as newbies, I am going to assume many of you do not know how to properly set pitch counts for your staff. I bet many of your pitchers are tiring during the game, and getting killed. (note: there is no way to see this explicitly in the box score - the box score does not show you how your pitcher's fatigue changes DURING the game itself.) One example: you are regularly letting Radatz throw 45-50 pitches - this is way too many. He needs to be at 30 pitches maximum, and he will fatigue rapidly after that.

Thanks for the thread of threads, I haven't read it yet, but will.

Speaking of deadball pitchers, has anyone figured out if thats a plus or a good strategy? We have one guy in the league who took only pitchers who had not given up any home runs, and he has given up 10 in about 50 games, and is in first place at 34-15.

Basically we're all just trying to game the game. Every game has biases, and I don't know if anyone has figured out what the biases are here. Like I used to play Statis Pro baseball as a kid, and the game was biased in terms of hit and run, steals, that sort of thing...

Also I checked with customer support, the players salaries currently don't change, so really the game should just become determining who is overvalued and who is undervalued. Unless every player is valued exactly correctly, in which case then we're truly all playing a random number generator league. Which is fine as this has been a distraction for me and my friends during Covid-19, but if there no concept of over valued or under valued, then I can stop spending all this time running spreadsheet calculations and just 25 guys I like :)

Figuring out who is overvalued and undervalued is EXACTLY how you win in this game.

My understanding of switch-hitters is that they are always neutral. No platoon adjustments at all. Can't remember the source of this, but I do remember it changing the way I looked at SH when I found out.

Posted by laramiebob on 5/16/2020 11:32:00 AM (view original):
Lot of flaws if you ask me.............. lotta random chance, too IMO.

I wouldn't say they're flaws, so much as different ways we'd implement things to simulate more realistically across eras. The way it's done isn't a flaw, it's just simplistic in these areas and doesn't account for things that we understand better since the time this part of the engine was last updated. The engine works as it should and the results can be extrapolated pretty accurately when you understand the inputs and interactions. So, it's not "flawed" as implied here, but "flawed" in that it doesn't account for better knowledge of how to utilize statistics and inputs for more realistic results. If you remember that there are elements of game play and game theory here as well that aren't present in real baseball, you'll also understand why it will never be 100% how any one in particular would describe real cross-era simulations.

Posted by skunk206 on 5/16/2020 1:17:00 PM (view original):
My understanding of switch-hitters is that they are always neutral. No platoon adjustments at all. Can't remember the source of this, but I do remember it changing the way I looked at SH when I found out.

Correct, switch hitters don't have an advantage, they just don't have a disadvantage. Same handed matchups are penalized 5% whereas opposite-handed matchups are not penalized at all. Again, though, this is similar to the "flawed" above in that I don't think contrarian was using "advantage" to convey that the sim boosts them, but more that they have an "advantage" in that they are penalized.

Posted by bucrogers315 on 5/16/2020 12:16:00 PM (view original):
Thanks for the thread of threads, I haven't read it yet, but will.

Speaking of deadball pitchers, has anyone figured out if thats a plus or a good strategy? We have one guy in the league who took only pitchers who had not given up any home runs, and he has given up 10 in about 50 games, and is in first place at 34-15.

Basically we're all just trying to game the game. Every game has biases, and I don't know if anyone has figured out what the biases are here. Like I used to play Statis Pro baseball as a kid, and the game was biased in terms of hit and run, steals, that sort of thing...

Also I checked with customer support, the players salaries currently don't change, so really the game should just become determining who is overvalued and who is undervalued. Unless every player is valued exactly correctly, in which case then we're truly all playing a random number generator league. Which is fine as this has been a distraction for me and my friends during Covid-19, but if there no concept of over valued or under valued, then I can stop spending all this time running spreadsheet calculations and just 25 guys I like :)

Exactly this... it is still a game though it is based in reality and there's been more than one debate on here about playing the game vs "playing the game." I'm one who likes to push every boundary of the game side of it and see how the engine works and the extremities. There are others who only want it as realistic as possible.

Contrarian mention above that if you're looking for realistic, $60-70m caps are best, and that is accurate, though I would also add that single-season progressive leagues are also great for that, but you still have to understand some of the other aspects still play a part in both of the above (pitcher fatigue, ballpark double-dipping, etc)...

Otherwise, welcome to the lot of you and have fun!

Contrarian23 - in the point you make here:

3.) The way WIS uses park effects is flawed. The park in which you play your game may boost (or reduce) home runs. But WIS does not adjust the underlying stats of the players based on their real life HR park. So someone like 1996 Buhner (on your league's mega-HR team) who in real life played in the Kingdome and in your league is playing in Yankee III, gets a "double boost." His actual stats - which are plugged into the algorithm - are boosted by having played in the Kingdome. Then Yankee III gives his HR chances a further boost. Yikes. Putting modern HR hitters in Yankee III is a good way to see some serious longball numbers.

Out of curiosity, is this opinion or based on some factual knowledge?

So basically what you are saying is something like: let's say we know players who played in Coors Field got a 20% boost to the offensive number (I'm totally making up the 20%). And then, if we draft those players and put them in Coors Field, we get 20% on top of their already inflated stats? I thought they did a normalization to first set everyone's stats to a 1.0 era and a 1.0 park, and THEN they would apply park factors...

Lots of great stuff here guys I will continue to dig into it.

They normalize to era, not to park.

Players are normalized to their individual league for that single season. A 2019 AL player is normalized against the 2019 AL. That's why you'll see slightly different normalized numbers for guys with combined seasons for both and NL and AL teams the same year.