Pitching:Hitting Balance; Wouldn't it be nice if.. Topic

...batting weren't artificially boosted anymore, even after all these updateless years now, and we were all treated like adults again?
11/24/2018 2:54 PM
Are you telling me Chone Figgins CANT bat .300 off Maddux???
11/24/2018 4:35 PM
It would be even nicer if deadball pitchers didn't shut off most of the HR power and if 1920s-1930s pitchers who have great normalized stats could be as effective in competitive leagues as they should be.
11/25/2018 5:11 PM
Posted by PennQuaker on 11/25/2018 5:11:00 PM (view original):
It would be even nicer if deadball pitchers didn't shut off most of the HR power and if 1920s-1930s pitchers who have great normalized stats could be as effective in competitive leagues as they should be.
This first.

Also didn’t the 1920s teams do the best in that one decades tournament?
11/25/2018 11:05 PM
Posted by d_rock97 on 11/25/2018 11:05:00 PM (view original):
Posted by PennQuaker on 11/25/2018 5:11:00 PM (view original):
It would be even nicer if deadball pitchers didn't shut off most of the HR power and if 1920s-1930s pitchers who have great normalized stats could be as effective in competitive leagues as they should be.
This first.

Also didn’t the 1920s teams do the best in that one decades tournament?
I think the 1940s teams had the best records.
11/27/2018 11:58 AM
Posted by ArlenWilliam on 11/24/2018 2:54:00 PM (view original):
...batting weren't artificially boosted anymore, even after all these updateless years now, and we were all treated like adults again?
What do you mean "artificially" boosted?

Every stat is averaged between the batter and pitcher and weighted with individual weightings. All of those weightings skew towards the batters because statistical analysis shows that this is actually what happens in MLB baseball. They didn't just make up weighting factors. They calculated them based on, IIRC, several years' worth of batter-pitcher head-to-head matchups.
11/28/2018 1:20 PM
Also, looking back at your old threads where you've complained about this, I strongly suspect that you misunderstood what this "10% boost" entails. At least, a little while back you were convinced it just meant there would be more hits and more walks. In reality it means that the batter just plays a bigger role in the outcome of the plate appearance. So for example, I think for the "is there a hit" question in the decision tree, the probability of a hit is based on something like .57*batters hit rate + .43* hitters hit rate.
11/28/2018 1:41 PM (edited)
Dahs, I think your interpretation is open for debate. I am not making a declaration of what "10% boost" meant.

What I've consistently seen since they gave a "10% boost" to batting is that coincidentally, batting averages, for instance (for individual players or in comparable or MLB-reality based leagues) figure to be about one one-hundredth higher.

However, by your interpretation, the weighing still seems arbitrary and skewed. Weighting based upon what, exactly, in this probabilistic model? Why put a thumb on the scales when we're simply dealing with the data?

By the way, they once responded that they were seriously considering reversing the 10% boost. Thanks.
12/6/2018 2:54 PM (edited)
Posted by PennQuaker on 11/27/2018 11:58:00 AM (view original):
Posted by d_rock97 on 11/25/2018 11:05:00 PM (view original):
Posted by PennQuaker on 11/25/2018 5:11:00 PM (view original):
It would be even nicer if deadball pitchers didn't shut off most of the HR power and if 1920s-1930s pitchers who have great normalized stats could be as effective in competitive leagues as they should be.
This first.

Also didn’t the 1920s teams do the best in that one decades tournament?
I think the 1940s teams had the best records.
"Wouldn't it be nice..." But, to what end/model exactly?

Now, effectively, dead-ball players are presumed to bring their old equipment with them (literally, Cy Young gets to throw softer simulated baseballs, while Greg Maddux has to throw the harder balls; also, their bulgy, flimsy gloves, though they do a bit of sewing-up via WIS' interpretation of normalization -- and the gloveless ones get a bit of a glove).
12/5/2018 2:05 PM (edited)
If it doesn't pop out at you, maybe the best way to see the unjustified skew in favor of batting vs. pitching is to look at the collective stats in progressive leagues. Compare them to the actual seasons, in baseball-reference.com.

It begins to motivate one to seek a better pastime.
12/8/2018 2:21 AM (edited)
What progs are you looking at? I'm no longer in any progs, but my experience was that the closer you got to using the full field, the closer the stats got to the RL numbers. Which makes sense. Any time you distill the talent down, batters will come out ahead in a model that weights the batters more heavily than the pitchers. But in the progs I've been in that had basically the number of teams that were in the league, the kind that require below-average AAA just to make sure everybody can handle fatigue, the numbers have closely mirrored the real world numbers from the same seasons. I'd be interested in seeing your numbers that disagree with this...

I only include numbers like AVG/OBP/SLG here. The fact that we know, basically perfectly, how good all of our players are in the sim means that run scoring is likely to be a little bit inflated over RL. Real-world managers tend to be pretty poor at optimizing lineups.
12/8/2018 5:17 PM
The fact that we know, basically perfectly, how good all of our players are in the sim means that run scoring is likely to be a little bit inflated over RL. Real-world managers tend to be pretty poor at optimizing lineups.

That's a great point. We choose our players, and set our lineups, based on what's already happened. We're not going to be surprised by a star player suddenly getting old, or a no-name showing up out of nowhere and playing great. In progs, the star player gets cut if he's done contributing, and the no-name gets drafted early.

Another reason batters outperform pitchers in progs is there's no way really to misuse a full time batter (say, 650+ PA). Whereas a pitcher, no matter how many innings he has in real life, can be sent to the mound tired, or can have a pitch count that's too high for his RL IP/G. And of course it's a vicious circle -- if some owner's misusing his pitchers, some other owner's batters are padding their stats.
12/8/2018 5:39 PM
To answer the question (I thought I said this at the outset about progressive leagues) across the board, they show a skew/weight toward hitting. It wasn't that way years and years ago now, before the mysterious "10% boost toward batting." Longstanding MLB average for batting average is what, .261, is it? Where MLB seasons would in real life come out to be .261, in times past, its progressive league season would approximate that. Since the change, they are approximately ten to twelve "points" higher, give or take, from what I've seen, i.e., somewhere around .268 to .276.

Please pardon me for not having records in my shirt pocket, behind my glasses protector. ;-)
12/22/2018 5:19 PM
(Batters get fatigued-down too, not just pitchers, but for the most part, both are pretty well maintained in prog. leagues, along with the very poorest pitchers and batters unused or less used.)
12/22/2018 5:23 PM
Posted by PennQuaker on 11/25/2018 5:11:00 PM (view original):
It would be even nicer if deadball pitchers didn't shut off most of the HR power and if 1920s-1930s pitchers who have great normalized stats could be as effective in competitive leagues as they should be.
From what I've seen PQ, there is also special favor granted to the better and best deadball pitchers in terms of avoiding extra-base hits, compared to later pitchers. I don't know how it happens, I suppose it's probably based on the entire picture including ERC# -- which of course is also based upon, thus skewed by, home runs given up, in the entire collective mix of stats.

Just play Jake Arrieta, for example, vs. a deadball pitcher that is comparable aside from the home runs; note the number of doubles and triples given up by each.
12/22/2018 5:28 PM
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