I drafted this guy mostly because of his name. But I think he’ll also be a pretty good fielder in Center Field.

https://www.whatifsports.com/hbd/Pages/Popups/PlayerRatings.aspx?pid=13240589

He has kind of an unusual hitting ratings distribution though. Contact should end up around 90 when he’s fully developed, but his rating against right handers will be in the mid 30s. Also kind of a low ish batting eye (maybe around 55).

Do any of have any experience with a guy who had similar ratings splits (80-90 contact, but only 30-40 R rating)? How did that player do?

Here is a very similar player: Player Profile: Tony Brower - Hardball Dynasty Baseball | WhatIfSports

Contact plays well in hitter's parks, which they have mostly gotten rid of unfortunately. Tony hit .328 at Coors field (extreme hitters park) and .276 everywhere else. Only 1 season of data so could be a little off for what he does in his career.

Based on his current ratings and being 20, 90 contact will be very hard to get to. Be happy if he can get to 80.

Posted by ramonshaw on 2/15/2025 9:51:00 PM (view original):
Based on his current ratings and being 20, 90 contact will be very hard to get to. Be happy if he can get to 80.

I’d say 90 is optimistic. But certainly not impossible. I’ve seen plenty of college prospects increase 15-17 points in skill ratings from their first “opening day” level. My draft scouts had him at 100 contact, which does seem quite unrealistic. My guess is he ends up in the mid-high 80s.

But given all that Homer Simpson had been through, I wouldn’t put anything past him. The man has been to outer space, after all.

Posted by dyoungquist on 2/10/2025 7:23:00 PM (view original):
Here is a very similar player: Player Profile: Tony Brower - Hardball Dynasty Baseball | WhatIfSports

Contact plays well in hitter's parks, which they have mostly gotten rid of unfortunately. Tony hit .328 at Coors field (extreme hitters park) and .276 everywhere else. Only 1 season of data so could be a little off for what he does in his career.

Thanks for the comp. I could live with that production, especially if his fielding ratings progress well.

What’s up with the lack of hitters parks btw? I took about a 2-3 year break from this game, and suddenly all the ballparks have different ratings. Parks that I used to know were super hitter or pitcher friendly are now almost neutral. Was someone complaining about the park factors? I thought they added some nice variety to the game.

Couple of years ago the previous owners did a few cosmetic revisions to the game and one of them was to revisit the park factors. They ended up nerfing most of the extreme ones except for a few.

Rabbit trail.... On the ballpark issue.... When they made the ballpark ratings changes, they claimed real life MLB ballpark data supported the change to more neutral parks. What it did to this game was mostly remove the "build your team to match your ballpark ratings" strategy. Then some worlds banned the few remaining pitcher or hitter friendly parks in their private world rules.

Personally, I don't like it but it seems I'm in the minority on that view.

I for one would love more diversity in ballparks. Old Yankee Stadium made several guys careers with the short RF fence. As a RH hitter I'd love to bang doubles off the green monster. But I guess each his own.

Posted by tirebuilder on 2/17/2025 9:12:00 AM (view original):
I for one would love more diversity in ballparks. Old Yankee Stadium made several guys careers with the short RF fence. As a RH hitter I'd love to bang doubles off the green monster. But I guess each his own.

Yeah I’d like to see the diversity come back again too.

I played this game from about 2014-2021. There were plenty of things that people complained about in the forums and the world chats for years. Some were legit complaints, some were kinda dumb. But I don’t recall ever hearing anyone complain about the differences in ballpark factors.

So of course, that’s the thing that got changed while I was gone!