Normalization exposed

Postby Valen » Mon Oct 10, 2011 8:20 am

For those who go by single season replays one factor should be kept in mind. It does not matter if the seasons are very accurate for 90% of the cards. Average performances are easy to duplicate. What is difficult for the 50/50 model to duplicate are the extreme pitching performances.

Can Eckersly go through a season and only walk 4 batters?
Can Cliff Lee go through a season and only walk 14 batters?
Can Brandon Lyon give you 78 innings and only allow 2 HRs?
Can Feliciano give you 62 innings and only give up 1 HR?

I have run multiple simulations on the 68 season and each time Gibson's ERA is 20-30% higher than his real life era. And that is with the statistical accuracy feature that attempts to correct for the board game flaws turned on.

It is these pitching extremes that the game engine cannot duplicate without special code.
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Postby Valen » Mon Oct 10, 2011 11:16 am

I just simmed the 2010 AL season. Cliff Lee walked 47 batters. This is more than twice the rate of real life and it was against the same opponents he faced in real life. CJ Wilson walked 102 compared to a real life 98.

This was not the result of facing allstars. This was plane and simple the inability of the strat model to reproduce extreme performance relating to walks. It easily and accurately reproduced the control of Wilson which was close to league average. But the model could not and never will be able to reproduce the extreme control exhibited by Cliff Lee in 2010. This puts him at a disadvantage especially when you pit him against ATG hitters which easily reproduce their offensive stats no matter how extreme.

Similar problems exist in reproducing other extreme performances regarding number of HRs given up and I would bet hits of all type. This has the effect of pushing the all time great pitching performances toward more average pitcher level results. Since all of our top ATG pitchers performances were extreme in nature and the model cannot reproduce this extremeness the balance will always fall toward the hitters.

Of course the Alexanders and Gibsons will in a relative sense outperform the Vuckovichs but not by as much as they probably should. Not saying this makes the game useless, just stating the facts.

This is one of the major reasons I would like to see pitcher clutch at least as an option.
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Postby The Last Druid » Mon Oct 10, 2011 11:20 am

Well said. WE NEED CLUTCH PITCHING. PLEASE TURN IT ON.
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Postby macnole » Mon Oct 10, 2011 2:21 pm

Yes...pitcher clutch...ENGAGE!

Any stat model has trouble at the tails of the distribution. It is unfortunate however that it finds a way with hitters but not as much with pitchers.

CLUTCH
CLUTCH :idea: :idea: :!: :!:
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Postby macnole » Mon Oct 10, 2011 2:22 pm

[quote:288dfe2dc4="Petrosian"]Well said. WE NEED CLUTCH PITCHING. PLEASE TURN IT ON.[/quote:288dfe2dc4]
Keep this at the top...bump...
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Postby drfreeze49 » Mon Oct 10, 2011 4:06 pm

[b:1ef008d702]Pitching clutch[/b:1ef008d702] is an [b:1ef008d702]important factor[/b:1ef008d702]...however...I [b:1ef008d702]can't[/b:1ef008d702] for the [b:1ef008d702]life of me[/b:1ef008d702] do not understand why [b:1ef008d702]Strat-O-Matic.[/b:1ef008d702]..does not [b:1ef008d702]show clutch [/b:1ef008d702]on the card like they show [b:1ef008d702]clutch hitting[/b:1ef008d702]...just sayin
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SEASON REPLAY

Postby 1787 » Mon Oct 10, 2011 4:15 pm

STRATOMATIC the board game as concieved in attempt to recreate a single season is totaly on the mark, sure you can argue over some stat descrepencies but when a season is replayed its amazing how close the results match up at seasons end. A friend of mine once replayed the entire 1956 AL season, rolling the dice for every game on the schedule [it took him 2 years to complete] the Yankees won the pennent Mantle won the triple crown. The stats for the players were amazingly close. We bastardize the game in these high salary allstar mixed era seasons,of course the results will be skewed but its great fun to imagine Ruth vs Martinez,Bonds vs Alaxander so we play but dont blame Stratomatic for the results,that was never the games intent.
BILL
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Postby rburgh » Mon Oct 10, 2011 6:59 pm

I had the original issue computer game. Some brave soul observed that the player stats were coming amazingly close to the real-life numbers, so he took it upon himself to do a little experiment. He took a scrub from that season, made no changes to the play results on his card with the card editor, but juiced up his stat line.

Lo and behold, the guy started hitting like crazy. Then all hell broke loose.

I guess you could perform the same experiment with the current computer game. I doubt you would get the same result. I'm not going to waste my time trying.

As far as "normalization" goes, we get a lot of posts on the order of, "so-and-so is hitting .145 after 42 games, I hope normalization kicks in." Or "Bonds hit 60 HR in the first 81 games."

But in all of the threads on this board, has anyone EVER posted something on the order of "Bonds had a first half where he pretty much did as expected, but he hit 60 HR in the second half."? Or, "so-and-so had a pretty normal first half of the season, but he hit .175 in the 2nd half."?

I thought not.

Why? Because we don't notice players when they are pretty much doing as we expect. So if Barry DID have a season where he hit 37 HR in the first 81 games and ended with 97, it's likely we wouldn't remember that he hit 60 in the 2nd half.

What is thought about as "normalization" is merely the extreme unlikelihood of a random number that generated 350 random numbers more than a couple of standard deviations away from a normal distribution to then turn around and do the same thing in the same direction with its next 350 random numbers.

I will waste my time performing the following experiment with Barry. I'm going to run 50 seasons where I log his stats at the halfway point and at season's end. I'll report back to you when I'm done. It probably won't happen soon.
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Postby nevdully's » Mon Oct 10, 2011 7:05 pm

Here I'd hope somewhere in all that you'd answer my questions...Maybe next time.
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Postby The Last Druid » Mon Oct 10, 2011 7:49 pm

What happened when all hell broke loose? Did Richman ever address the issue anywhere?
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