I am In a league with an 80 million cap, and players are restricted to the years between 1929 and 1979.

My season is basically over at the halfway mark because of woeful performances by three key players

1 1957 Ernie Banks
Actual splits of .285/.360/.579. .939 OPS
My WIS. .223/.301/.344. .645 OPS


2. 1979 Ron Cey
Actual. .281/.389/.499. ..888
My WIS. .221/.302/.360. .662

3. 1971 Al Kaline. .294/.416/.462. .878
My WIS. .229/.315/.327. .642

My question is: As you are putting a team together in the draft center, how are you supposed to know/anticipate that you will get performances like this that so far away from reality? What am I doing wrong?

Banks hit 47 homers that year and has only 7 at the halfway mark in my league. How was I supposed to anticipate that happening when I was putting my team together? Very frustrating!

Any suggestions?

1) You mention just raw numbers there. This (perhaps wrongly) indicates to me you're not considering normalization/log5 as much as you should, perhaps.

2) Don't expect HR numbers in Open Leagues to be anywhere near real life numbers. The use of deadball pitchers, especially 1908 Addie Joss, is highly stifling. I wouldn't bother drafting HR hitters in Open Leagues if I could help it. And in general, this means that power hitters will be depressed in all their stats.

3) Perhaps your players aren't suited for their ballpark.

4) Don't forget most real teams are well under 80M cap. Numbers will be worse at 80M than real life.

5) Consider checking performance histories.

6) Small sample size. (Even a full season is technically a small sample size. Variance happens.)

7) In the case of Banks, 50's hitters are notoriously awful. Even Willie Mays is almost never worth it

Question.  In the case of a well designed SIM/algorithum (which we'd supposedly want here)  WHY should "50's hitters are notoriously awful" be the case?

Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, etal were NOT notoriously awful hitters in real life.  IMO, this is an example of one of the deficiencies here at WIS with the Baseball SIM formula.  IF and when an update happens I sure hope that a NEW better formula (event tree/chain?) is employed.  1961 Mickey Mantle should NOT go thru a WIS progressive season and hit less than 35 HR's.  THAT is unrealistic.

In how many single-season progressives does Mantle 61 underperform?

In the most recent one in which I participated he hit .353/.477/.728 with 64 HR, 163 RBI, 157 runs and was easily his leagues MVP.

There is, in my opinion, an underlying flaw in the algorithm that allows deadball pitchers to be too effective at supressing the power numbers of hitters from later eras, but I typically find single season prog stats to be highly - almost eerily - realistic.

Posted by uncleal on 1/17/2016 12:20:00 AM (view original):
1) You mention just raw numbers there. This (perhaps wrongly) indicates to me you're not considering normalization/log5 as much as you should, perhaps.

2) Don't expect HR numbers in Open Leagues to be anywhere near real life numbers. The use of deadball pitchers, especially 1908 Addie Joss, is highly stifling. I wouldn't bother drafting HR hitters in Open Leagues if I could help it. And in general, this means that power hitters will be depressed in all their stats.

3) Perhaps your players aren't suited for their ballpark.

4) Don't forget most real teams are well under 80M cap. Numbers will be worse at 80M than real life.

5) Consider checking performance histories.

6) Small sample size. (Even a full season is technically a small sample size. Variance happens.)

Your points are basically right uncleal, but he did write that the players in the league he is in are restricted to 1929-1979, so there are no deadball pitchers in the league.

In fact the pitchers from the 30s and 40s should be serving batting practice. Other than the strong pitchers of 1962-1979, there should not be much to worry about for hitters like Banks, Kaline etc.. And after all Banks, Kaline etc. put up their numbers in precisely those decades with those pitchers. 

The 80 mil is a bigger issue - since a staff might be Koufax, Gibson, Spahn and someone else good but at a cheaper price. Facing those guys daily would drop anyone's average. 

The ballpark is a big question - are you playing in the Astrodome? Dodger Stadium? Shea? 

Still, it is true that it is frustrating here at WIS that after years of mentioning it we are still facing the underperformance of so many great modern era players, in many cases those we most want to play because we saw them in real life. Hard to be emotionally attached to how Ed Delahanty does. 

But yes, do make sure you set your search criteria at the bottom of your Draft Center screen for "advanced" and then look closely at the + and the # stats and, as uncleal suggests, the performance histories. These are the first line of ways to check that you minimize the likelihood of dramatic underperformances. But they happen. 

"In how many single-season progressives does Mantle 61 underperform?"

If it's your progressive team, and you've waited and built (around Mantle) for the 1961 season and it happens................................ you likely will view that occurance as "one too many"

Performance histories only include open leagues.

Ugh...Looking at your team, you seem to have way too many righty power hitters. Moderate average power hitters and especially righties fare especially poorly in the sim.

To answer your questions:
1). Look at performance histories and # stats. In general for an OL in a neutral park I estimate right handed hitters will hit 0.020 below avg # stats; lefties will hit 0.010 below their avg #; switch hitters will hit close to their avg #. Typically I expect modern power hitters to have about 50% at most of their real life home runs. Switch hitters again fare better tho

2) See my first comment above. More importantly by choosing a bunch of moderate average righty power hitters you have put all your eggs in one basket. Your team lacks speed or very good left handed hitters. Sometimes it pays to diversify your strategies a bit.

Lastly, more often than not when you see performance way out of line with reasonable expectations, it is just luck. Unfortunately most of us attribute what is good luck to our skill at managing and drafting, so we only recognize when we are unlucky.

how about pills.

Posted by zubinsum on 1/19/2016 9:51:00 AM (view original):
Ugh...Looking at your team, you seem to have way too many righty power hitters. Moderate average power hitters and especially righties fare especially poorly in the sim.

To answer your questions:
1). Look at performance histories and # stats. In general for an OL in a neutral park I estimate right handed hitters will hit 0.020 below avg # stats; lefties will hit 0.010 below their avg #; switch hitters will hit close to their avg #. Typically I expect modern power hitters to have about 50% at most of their real life home runs. Switch hitters again fare better tho

2) See my first comment above. More importantly by choosing a bunch of moderate average righty power hitters you have put all your eggs in one basket. Your team lacks speed or very good left handed hitters. Sometimes it pays to diversify your strategies a bit.

Lastly, more often than not when you see performance way out of line with reasonable expectations, it is just luck. Unfortunately most of us attribute what is good luck to our skill at managing and drafting, so we only recognize when we are unlucky.

Well Put, I was going to say the same thing. Too many righties for an open league.  Its good to have a solid right handed power threat that you can plug in the middle of your order especially in HR hitting parks and pitchers that give up the long ball but too many is no good. Think of all the Joss and Mathewsons and other dominant dead ball pitchers that suffocate righties with averages below .300.  Things may change a little when the update takes place, there may not be as many Joss to deal with.

Just how SIM is. There are just some people that never do well.

There are no Joss and Matthewsons becuz the years of this league were restricted to 1929 thru 1979. But I "get" the other points.