I was thinking about Torre's decision to not start Soriano last night. If it worked or not or was the reason for the outcome is not the purpose of the question.

Based upon the information we have and the why text sims operate would anyone make the same choice in any baseball game.

Since text sims are really all about probabilities, why would we start a lower rated player (Wilson) over a higher rated one (Soriano).

Todd

That's the problem with OOTP. It's just a fancy-ass calculator (FAC). I don't get any sense that there is a streakiness al gore rythm built in for individual players. Of course the FAC has a clutch rating which may or may not affect a player's performance - so who knows what is going on under the hood.

That said (grrr), I don't think any simmer in his right mind would sit someone based on performance, since the game ties directly to ratings.

Maybe if you could introduce more of a fog of war aspect to the game then simmers would be more apt to go with the hot hand, since actual performance would be one of the few metrics left ...

Actually, I've done it in OOTP. If one of my players consistently struggles, I sit him. I mean, if he's been pretty bad over the last 15 games, for instance, I may not want to take the chance of him doing badly in a 16th game.

Just because a guy has lower ratings doesn't necessarily mean that he's not going to do as well. There must be some kind of factor hidden from us, otherwise my 3/3/4 backup catcher wouldn't go on a 10-game hitting streak and hit .360 over those ten games, while my 6/8/5 starter went his last 15 games hitting under .200.

I actually do it all the time in OOTP. I tend to halfway ignore ratings by a certain point in most seasons. I know what markus has written about there not being any special "streak" code in it, but there is something in the game somewhere that I am not seeing in ratings that causes odd things happen with season to season variations.

I think the solution to this is 'war of fog' -- Torre doesn't have a 'rating' for these guys, he just has to guess. Not knowing anything about baseball, maybe Torre just started to have second thoughts? I think that's why ratings shouldn't really be available in these types of games -- we should just go by what we see on the field.

If you study gambling theory at all you know that there is a principle based on hot and cold streaks used by professional gamblers. This is how they decide which tables to sit at and which ones not to. You can usually tell right away if a particular dealer is hot or cold.

I think the same thing applies to OOTP, or any other sim. Numbers, within a closed system, do naturally occur in certain patterns. The best way to break a pattern is to turn it off. Walk away from a blackjack table or sit Soriano.

Originally posted by Pumpy Tudors
Just because a guy has lower ratings doesn't necessarily mean that he's not going to do as well. There must be some kind of factor hidden from us, otherwise my 3/3/4 backup catcher wouldn't go on a 10-game hitting streak and hit .360 over those ten games, while my 6/8/5 starter went his last 15 games hitting under .200.

Of course he would. Over the course of a 162 game season and a lengthy career, it is a virtual certainty that a 3/3/4 player will go on a really hot streak. It doesn't mean he is "hot," it just means probalities will inevitably play out that way.

I'm all for streakiness in sports sims, but I'll be damned before I play another baseball game with a ridiculous "clutch" rating for batters.

I've had seasons in ootp where a much lower rated player had better stats than my current starter did, in fact he's been doing so well (2 years straight now), I traded my starter who's still batting around 0.250 for his new team.

I like this randomness in ootp, that's why simming, say 20 years first before starting your dynasty, gives you valuable data on how players will do and leaves ratings as only a secondary determinator between two like stat players.

Todd