Posted by titan2006 on 1/26/2022 1:04:00 PM (view original):
Okay quick question......in a theme league with AAA players i seen someone say before that there's a way to find out who the AAA player really is when they have fake names.....in my last league a AAA player hit 73 triples by himself and most games i lost because the AAA guys were jus on fire and their ratings werent even that good....how can you tell or find out who they are? And also is 73 triples in a season a record? Gotta be close. Lol

https://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?topicID=388184&page=1

This is an updated Advice for Newbies thread. The following series of posts relate to the basic playing of WIS Sim League Baseball. Most of my comments will focus specifically on open leagues (OLs) though just about everything will apply equally to other kinds of SLB leagues as well.

The purpose of this thread is NOT to give away every insight or to enable new players to suddenly create 110-win juggernauts. Much of the fun of this game is discovering unique strategies, finding new players to use, and coming up with little competitive advantages that have not gained widespread acceptance. But there is a wealth of commonly available information that, if gathered in one place, would help newbies get off to a better start and feel less overwhelmed by this site.

This is by no means 100% comprehensive. I typically tell new owners that the most valuable thing they can do is invest a few hours in reading the Sim League Baseball forum posts going back at least 5 years.

1. Game Mechanics
   1. Roster Building. You have $80M to spend on a 25 man roster, with a few requirements. You must have at least 12 position players, including at least one person at each of the 8 fielding positions. You also must have at least 4800 real-life plate appearances. You must draft at least 6 pitchers, and they must total at least 1200 real-life innings pitched. That’s basically it. In principle this is a very simple game to play.
   2. Available players. The database includes every major league player from 1885 to the present who had at least 50AB, or at least 25 IP, during the actual season. You can even use clones (multiple versions of the same player, such as the 1983 and 1984 versions of Tim Raines). Note that WIS will never let you have two of the same player-season on your roster (such as two 1983 Raines) under any circumstances. If the player’s team played fewer than 162 games, then the player’s stats will be prorated to a 162-game season. However, with one exception (see 2020, below), the required minimums are NOT prorated. So even in those short 19^th century seasons, or 1981, or 1994, etc., the 50AB/25IP minimums still apply. There are a couple of quirks to note:
      1. Multi-team players. Players who played for more than 1 team during that season will have multiple versions in the data base. They will have “partial” seasons reflecting how much they actually played for each team (provided they accumulated at least 50AB or 25IP for that team) and they will have “combined” seasons where their total stats for the season are available from each team they played for. Take 1979 Champ Summers, who played for both Detroit and Cincinnati. There are 4 versions of him in the database: one reflecting just his performance with Detroit, one reflecting just his performance with Cincinnati, and two (one for each team) reflecting his overall performance. Note that the 2 versions reflecting his overall performance do not look (or cost) the same. That’s because the two teams are in different leagues, and so his normalized stats (explained below) are different.
      2. Players who both pitched and played the field. There are occasionally guys who both pitched and played the field during the same season. Such players only appear in the WIS database as one or the other (even if they exceeded both the PA and IP minimums), depending on where they played more games. Shohei Ohtani, for example, is only available as a position player in 2021.
      3. 2020. The pandemic shortened season presented a real problem for WIS. With only 60 major league games, many fewer players reached the required 50AB/25IP minimums. For this season only, WIS prorated the minimum requirements.
   3. Player Salaries. Each player in the database has an associated salary that is a function of three things: quantity (number of PA or IP he accumulated), quality (of his overall normalized offensive and defensive performance), and – for all players from 2016 or earlier – a market-based set of adjustments that were implemented for a brief period in 2016-17. This short-lived experiment by WIS attempted to calibrate salaries based on how often players were drafted. Players who were used a lot saw their salaries increase; players who were rarely used saw their salaries decrease. While perhaps a good idea in theory, the implementation of this experiment was very flawed, and the effort was discontinued.

1. Drafting your team
   1. By a wide margin, drafting is the most important part of this game. Everything that is discussed below about managing your team is helpful. But if you have drafted poorly, no amount of in-season management is going to make you a winner. This post is not intended to tell you how to build a great team. It IS intended to help new players understand the basics and avoid some common mistakes.
   2. When you buy a team in SLB, it will show up at the bottom of the Team Center page under the heading “Draft Center Teams.” Clicking on that team will open the Draft Center. The draft center, as the name implies, is where you build your team by searching the entire SLB database and selecting the 25 players you want for your major league roster. There are 19 position player spots and 13 pitcher slots available to you, though obviously you will end up using only 25. How you use the roster is up to you, though as described above, there are some limitations (e.g. must have at least 6 pitchers, etc.) Notice that 8 of the position player spots have specified positions. That is, you must draft at least 1 player who is rated as a catcher, 1 first baseman, and so forth. Similarly, looking at the pitcher slots, you must have at least 1 player who is classified as a starting pitcher. There are technically ways to skirt these restrictions, but those are of marginal utility for new players and will not be discussed here.
   3. Roster Recap. At the top of the draft center is a useful summary of your team. It tells you at a glance, how many picks (out of 25) you have left to make, your current payroll, how much salary you have left to allocate, and (in OLs) how many PA and IP you still need to draft in order to meet the minimum requirements.
   4. The “Load from Previous Team” and “Load from Historical Team” features are largely self-explanatory; I won’t go into depth on them.
   5. Click on one of the position player slots; this will open the Player Search function. The VERY FIRST THING YOU SHOULD DO is find the “Search Preferences” drop down menus (on a PC screen these will be located on the right. From the Search Interface menu, choose Advanced, and click Save. This allows you to use all the search functionality, and you cannot build a decent team without it.
   6. Before we go into the various search fields and what they do, scroll to the very bottom of the page. At the end of the “Player Search Notes” there are two links that will allow you to download the entire SLB database (one for position players, one for pitchers) as spreadsheets. Some users find these spreadsheets to be very helpful; others don’t use them, but it’s worth knowing that they are available.
   7. Most of the player search fields are self-explanatory, and if you are at all familiar with databases, including things like sorting and filtering, the SLB search engine is very straightforward. The more fields you use, the more you can narrow your search to find precisely the player you are looking for. However, there are some elements that may not be intuitive to new players.
      1. “Min Games At” – this allows you to pick a specific position, and only see players who appeared in a minimum number of games at that position. So if you want to look at catchers who appeared behind the plate in 100 or more games, you can do that here. For OLs, there is no reason to ever set this to anything other than zero. A player who had 500 plate appearances and was used once as an emergency fill-in at catcher by his major league team can be used as a fulltime catcher by you if you so choose. There is no penalty for doing this, and it is not uncommon to see someone like 1965 Cookie Rojas used as a regular catcher in an OL.
      2. The “Include Secondary Positions” box is very important and should probably always be checked. This allows you to see EVERY player who appeared at your chosen position. If unchecked, you will only see players whose PRIMARY position was your chosen position. The 1965 Rojas, for example, will not appear in your search for catchers if this box is unchecked.
      3. The “Order By” and “Then By” boxes allow you to choose the order in which you want your players listed. Do you want to see which catchers hit the most home runs in real life? Then choose home runs in the “order by” box. For example, if I search for all catchers and choose Order By Home Runs and Then By “Salary Decreasing”, the first catcher who is listed is 2021 Salvador Perez (who hit 48 HR), then 1970 Johnny Bench (45), 2003 Javy Lopez (43), and then 1953 Campanella and 1996 Hundley (who each hit 41). Campanella is listed first because I chose “salary decreasing” as the second sort parameter, and Campy’s salary is $6.8M compared to Hundley at $4.7M.
      4. In both the “Order By” and “Then By” boxes you will see things like Stat Criteria 1, Stat Criteria 2, etc. These refer to the 8 fields just below (stat criteria 1-4 are on the left, 5-8 are on the right, though they are not labeled as such). These 8 fields can be used to select pretty much any statistic in the SLB database (provided you followed my earlier instructions and enabled the Advanced Search Features.) These boxes are incredibly valuable; most SLB players do their player searches by using these settings extensively. You can do much more sophisticated searches this way. For example, if I choose OBP for the first criteria, I can enter a minimum and maximum value immediately to the right. I’ll put in .400 as my min and 1.000 as my max. Now when I repeat the same catcher search as described above, I only see catchers who had an on base percentage of at least .400. Now the first catcher listed (because I am still ordering by home runs) is 1997 Mike Piazza, who hit 40. Salvador Perez is no longer shown because his OBP was .316; he is “filtered out” by this search.
      5. By using more of the boxes you can further narrow the players that you see. Keeping everything described above the same, I am now going to use the second stat criteria field to search for catchers who have an A+ throwing arm. This is done by selecting “Arm” in the drop down menu, and then entering 12 as both the min and max value. For all defensive ratings (fielding, range, and catcher arm), 1 = D-, 2 = D, 3 = D+, and so on up to 12 = A+. Now the search reveals that only 27 catchers in the entire database meet my criteria (A+ arm, OBP of .400 or greater). They are still sorted by home runs, so the first one on the list is 1993 Chris Hoiles (29 HR), then 1977 Carlton Fisk (26).
      6. Some of the other fields in the player search section can be very useful as well. The Season(s) field allows you look for players from a specific season or range of seasons. This field can be used two ways. The default setting allows you to specify a range of seasons by entering the first and the last. However, if you click on the small arrows icon immediately to the left, you can toggle this setting to an empty box in which you can list one or more specific seasons. For example I can enter the following: 1969;1979;1989 and I will only see players from those three seasons.
      7. The “Salary” field allows you to specify minimum and maximum salaries for players. In OLs where you have only $80M to play with, you may find it helpful to set your max salary to something like $10M; you are unlikely to draft a position player costing $10M for your roster. The “Cash Left” setting is also very helpful toward the end of the draft, if you want to see only those players you can still afford with your remaining budget. Note that the minimum salary for any player in the database is $200K. So if you have 3 spots left to fill and you have $1M remaining to spend, choosing the “cash left” option will show you only those players whose maximum salary is $600K or less, because you will need to spend a minimum of $400K on the final two players.
      8. The “Season Type” field can be used to see players based on whether they played for more than 1 team in a given season. “All” will show you all players, regardless of how many teams they played for. “Partial” will show you ONLY players who appeared for more than 1 team, and it will show you their individual stats for EACH team. “Combined” will also show you ONLY players who appeared for more than one team, but you will see their TOTAL stats for the season rather than their stats accumulated for each team individually. Doing a search for 1977 Dave Kingman will return 6 matches if you choose “All” here. Four of those matches show Kingman’s total 1977 stats, with one version for each of the four teams for which he played that season. Those are “Combined” seasons. You will also see a partial-season version that just shows his stats accumulated for the Padres, and another partial that shows just his stats with the Mets. He did not accrue enough plate appearances with either the Angels or Yankees to warrant a partial season version for them.
      9. The Pitcher Search function works exactly like the player search function, though obviously the statistics are different.

1. The SLB season
   1. SLB Open Leagues are 162-game seasons with 24 teams split into six 4-team divisions, three in each league. You will play 14 games against each of your three divisional opponents, 12 games against each of the other eight teams in your league, and 2 games against the twelve teams in the opposing league. SLB simulates three games every day, at roughly 1:10AM, 1:20PM, and 6:00PM (all times based on Eastern U.S. time zone.) So it takes 54 calendar days to play a full season.
   2. Once 24 teams have entered a league, the teams will be randomly sorted into the six divisions, and a schedule will be generated. Typically the season starts one calendar day after the schedule is generated.
   3. Transactions. Once the season starts, you can make several kinds of transactions to alter your team’s roster. First, if you go to the GM center for your team, you will see that you have been given an extra $1.6M to spend during the season. This can be used to acquire new players from the waiver wire, or to absorb additional salaries in trades, etc. You will also see that you now have 8 minor league slots available in which you can store extra players, so your roster can theoretically be 33 players. You can also release players to the waiver wire without picking anyone up. You must maintain a minimum of 22 players on your overall roster, and (as with drafting your original roster) you must always have at least 12 position players, at least 4800 real-life PA, at least 6 pitchers, and at least 1200 real life IP. If you try to make a transaction that would put you in violation of any of these requirements, it will be disallowed. OLs also enforce a minor league salary cap, which limits the total amount of salary in your AAA slots to a maximum of 10% of your overall team salary. So if you are trying to send a player to AAA and his name does not come up as one of the options, that is the most likely reason. You also cannot send the next scheduled starting pitcher to the minors (or release him to the waiver wire). All players who are acquired during the season, via trade or waiver wire pickup, will have their available PA/IP prorated based on how much of the season remains. If you pick up a 200 IP starter at midseason, you can assume that you will be able to use him for about 100 innings for the remainder of the season. Note that how much he was used by his previous team does not matter; his prorated PA/IP are entirely based on the remaining number of games.
   4. Waiver Wire. This is a pool of players that is shared among every active SLB league. Any team from any active league can pick up a player, or drop a player, at any time, which is how this list gets refreshed. The list is updated a couple of times each day. Sometimes there are decent players available; often there are just very mediocre fill-in types. An important cautionary note: picking up a player from the waiver wire incurs a transaction fee equal to 10% of the player’s listed salary. This makes using the WW an expensive proposition. Overuse is not advised. If you try to acquire a player whose total cost (salary plus transaction fee) exceeds the amount of cash you have available, you will need to release a player from your roster whose current salary can make up the difference. Finally, you will occasionally see a player’s listed salary decrease by a small amount. If a player has been on the wire long enough, his listed salary will be reduced to get someone to claim the player.
   5. Important dates to know. Your intra-divisional games always occur at the same points in the schedule: G13-20, 25-28, 56-64, 118-126, and 151-162.
   6. There is an All Star Break after game 81. Although SLB does not simulate an All Star Game, they do select an All Star Team from each league, and you will be able to see those rosters shortly after game 81 of the regular season is played. There is no actual break in the schedule, however your players will be given slight rest break (their fatigue will improve) between games 81 and 82.
   7. The deadline for waiver wire pickups and AAA callups is at 11:59PM Eastern on the day that game 120 is played. After that, you can make no adjustments to your major league roster. The deadline for making a trade is 11:59PM Eastern on the day that game 117 is played, since owners are allowed 24 hours to approve or veto any trade made by other owners.

1. Preparing for the season.
   1. In the manager’s center, you have a variety of tools that determine how the players on your team will be used. When your league’s schedule is generated, WIS will automatically set these tools via a series of default settings, which should not be assumed to be the best way to use your players. This section gives a brief overview of those tools, with enough detail to help a new player get started. This tutorial is not intended to provide specific advice on how best to use each tool to get the most performance out of your team.
   2. Setting your lineups. SLB allows you to set two lineups, one for facing left-handed pitchers and one for facing right-handed pitchers. In theme leagues that use a DH, there are four lineups that can be set. For each lineup, you must select 8 players, giving each of them a fielding position and a batting order spot. You can select 8 batting order slots. The pitcher will bat in whatever slot is not selected. For any player not in the starting lineup, you can choose to set him to “bench” if you want him to be available as a sub, or to “rest” if you want him not to be used at all. If you make any transactions during the season, be sure to reset your lineups every time.
   3. To the right of your lineups (when viewed on a PC screen), there are three very helpful links that contain additional information and settings.
      1. Fielding Grades does just what it says: shows you in one place all the defensive ratings for your entire major league roster.
      2. Advanced Settings allow you to customize some of the ways in which each player on your roster will be used.
         1. The sac bunt setting (0-5) allows you to select how frequently this player will be asked to bunt in a sacrifice situation.
         2. Base stealing allows you to select how frequently this player will attempt to steal in an SB situation compared to his real-life frequency. A “3” rating here will lead to a player attempting to steal roughly as often as he did in real life, considering the opposing catcher’s throwing arm. A “5” rating will significantly increase this frequency. A “1” rating will significantly decrease it. A “0” rating will mean, effectively, never to attempt a stolen base. However, even players set to zero may occasionally attempt to steal if a hit and run play is called and the batter swings and misses.
         3. The PH and PR boxes allow to choose if you want this player to be pinch hit or pinch run for, in appropriate situations. If unchecked, the player will NOT be pinch hit or pinch run for. These settings work in conjunction with the overall PH and PR settings that you can select in the “Team Managerial Style” section. Note that these boxes do NOT determine whether a player will be USED as a pinch hitter or pinch runner.
         4. The Def Rep box determines if this player will be removed for a better defensive player, in appropriate situations. If unchecked, this player will not be replaced for such purposes. Although this box is included for pitchers, I do not believe it has effect on how pitchers are used.
         5. The Allow Rest box determines if the player will be removed from the lineup (and kept on the bench) when his fatigue falls below the autorest setting, which is determined the box immediately to the right. If this box is unchecked, the player will continue to be used, no matter how tired he becomes.
      3. The Player Hierarchies allow you to determine the order in which players are used when substitutions are needed for rest, defense, or pinch hitting.
         1. The player rest hierarchy is used in two ways. First is when a member of the starting lineup falls below his autorest setting (described above). Second is when the conditions to rest players during a blowout are met (you can set this in the Team Managerial Style section) In either of these situations, SLB will look at this hierarchy and proceed from left to right until it finds a player that it can use. That player will come into the game. Note that if no such players are found – either because the slots in this hierarchy are left empty or because every player in the hierarchy is otherwise being used, or are themselves fatigued, then the replacement will not be made.
         2. The defensive replacement hierarchy is used when the conditions for putting defensive replacements into the game are triggered (again, these conditions are set in the Team Managerial Style section.) When these conditions are met, SLB will look at this hierarchy for each position, and move from left to right until it finds an available player. You should make sure that your preferred defensive subs are ALWAYS listed FIRST in this hierarchy.
         3. The pinch hitting hierarchies are pretty self explanatory. This is where you choose the players whom you want to be used as pinch hitters, given different game situations and whether you are facing a LHP or a RHP.
         4. Note that there is no setting in which you can choose the players who are used to pinch RUN. I believe that when a pinch runner is called for, SLB simply chooses the player on the bench with the highest speed rating.
   4. Pitching staff. Here is where you select your starting rotation and your bullpen. These roles are mostly self-explanatory.
      1. Starter 1-6. Starting pitchers will be used in this order, in a continual rotation, provided they are not fatigued. You must designate someone as Starter 1. How many of the other Starter slots you use is up to you, based on what kind of rotation you want to use.
      2. Starter 2A, 2B, 3A, 3B. These settings are helpful when you have a couple of starting pitchers whose real-life IP are too low to be used in a regular rotation compared to your other starters. They will alternate each time you go through the rotation: the A pitcher will be used the first time through the rotation; the B pitcher will be used the second time through, and so on. Note that if you have a pitcher set to 2A, you MUST also set one to 2B. So, if you set one pitcher to be starter 1, and two others to be Starter 2A and Starter 2B, your rotation will look like this: 1-2A-1-2B-1-2A-1-2B. You can also use 1-2-3A-1-2-3B, or 1-2A-3A-1-2B-3B. Those are the ONLY available configurations in which this setting works.
      3. Tandem 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, 3A, 3B, 4A, 4B. This is different from Starter 2A described above. Pitchers set to tandem will follow each other in the same game. This setting can be useful for the same reasons that Starter 2A, 2B can be; alternatively, this can be useful when you want to use a pitcher as a starter but his IP/G won’t allow him to pitch deep into the game. Lastly, this strategy can be used to mimic the modern trend of using an “opener.” The “A” pitcher will pitch until he reaches his target pitch count or is removed for performance reasons or for a pinch hitter, and the “B” pitcher will follow him. If you set a pitcher to Tandem 1A, you must also have one as Tandem 1B, and so forth. You can set as many as 4 tandems. Note that if have any non-tandem starters, they must precede the tandems in your rotation. So you can have SP1, SP2, T3A, T3B. But you can’t have SP1, T2A, T2B, SP3.
      4. Closer A/B. Pretty self-explanatory. Will be used primarily in save situations.
      5. SetUp A/B. Pretty self-explanatory. Will be used in the later innings of close games, prior to the closer being brought in.
      6. LH specialist and RH specialist. Pretty self-explanatory, although this setting seems to work best when NOT used in conjunction with SetUp A/B. In most game situations, SLB seems to use SetUp A/B before LHS and RHS. I have had success setting my entire bullpen to LHS/RHS, but your mileage may vary.
      7. Long A/B. Pretty self-explanatory. Will be used in early innings, or in late innings when the game is not close.
      8. Note that in most circumstances, the pitcher designated A will be used before the pitcher designated B. So setup A will be used before setup B in most situations, all else being equal. If two or more pitchers have exactly the same designation (e.g. two pitchers are labeled SetUp A), SLB will opt for the pitcher with the lower real-life OAV first.
      9. Mop-up. Pretty self-explanatory; will be brought in when the game is out of hand. However, the mop up will occasionally ALSO be used when your settings for other relief pitchers do not match the game situation.
   5. Advanced Pitcher Settings. This link is found to the right of your pitching staff, when viewed on a PC, and is CRITICAL to managing your pitching staff effectively.
      1. The Relief box must be checked if you want this pitcher to be used in relief. A big decision here is whether you want your starting pitchers to be available as relievers if needed.
      2. The AutoRest box functions the same as it does for position players. If the pitcher is fatigued below this number, he will not be used, unless there is no other option available.
      3. Inn Available is exactly what it sounds like: when would you like this pitcher to come into the game if used in relief? But keep in mind that the SLB algorithm interprets this very literally. If you put “8” here, then that pitcher will NOT be used earlier than the 8^th inning, regardless of the game situation, unless there is no one else available.
      4. TPC (target pitch count) and MPC (max pitch count). TPC = how many pitches would you like this pitcher to throw, ideally, when he is used. MPC = what is the maximum number of pitches you would like this pitcher to throw, if game situations require that he exceed his TPC? These settings are critical to managing fatigue, both across the season and during a game. A full discussion of pitcher fatigue is beyond the scope of this overview. Do not use WIS’s recommended pitch counts! There are good posts elsewhere in the forums that discuss how to set pitch counts appropriately. I will note here that a pitcher’s real-life IP/G is the primary determinant of how long he can pitch in any game without getting fatigued.
      5. Call Bullpen. How quick a “hook” do you want to have with this pitcher? Roughly speaking: “5” = pull him at the first sign of trouble. “1” = keep him in until he reaches his TPC. Note that a “1” pitcher may still be removed if it’s a save situation and you have someone designated as a closer, or if it’s a close game late he may be pulled for a PH, etc.

1. Simulating the games.
   1. WIS uses a decision tree to determine the outcome of any plate appearance. This is probably the single most important thing to understand about this game. This thread provides a detailed explanation, but I will highlight some important points here.
      1. Pay attention to which stats do and do not matter. For hitters, what matters is the player’s overall walk rate, batting average, strikeout rate, and rates of doubles/triples/homers. Basically nothing else does. Things like RBIs, “clutch performance”, actual performance splits (home/road, vs LHP/RHP, etc.) do not matter at all. For pitchers, it’s basically just opponent batting average, walk rate, strikeout rate, and home run rate. Things like wins, saves, clutch performance, situation-specific stat breakdowns, etc. do not matter at all. ERA doesn’t matter much either, though it appears WIS uses that stat to help estimate how often the pitcher allowed doubles and triples.
      2. Normalization matters a ton. WIS doesn’t just look at the batter’s and pitcher’s raw stats; they also incorporate the average performance of players from the batter’s and pitcher’s respective seasons. What this means in practice is that a .300 hitter from the 1930 NL (when the whole league hit for a .303 average) will not do as well in WIS, all else being equal, as a .300 hitter from the 1908 NL (when the whole league hit for a .239 average). The 1908 guy will likely hit for a much higher average in WIS. Similarly, home run hitters from the modern era will not generally reach their real-life totals, because normalization works against them. In contrast, guys like Gavvy Cravath, Babe Ruth, and Cy Williams will often exceed their real HR totals because they produced those numbers in low-HR eras.
      3. Park matters a ton. WIS does not adjust a player’s stats to account for their actual home park, but the park in which they play in WIS matters a lot. Some parks dramatically affect offense (positively or negatively) and others have very little impact.
      4. The batter and pitcher do not have equal impact. The batter carries slightly more weight in determining the outcome.

1. Normalization. In determining the outcome of any PA, as mentioned above, WIS considers the year and league in which the player actually played. They do this through a process called Log5 Normalization. WIS also incorporates the park in which the PA occurs, and whether the batter has the platoon advantage versus the pitcher. The same link (above) that explains the decision tree also provides the following example.

1923 Babe Ruth facing 2000 Pedro Martinez in a neutral park – how often will Babe get a hit against Pedro?

Inputs:

• Ruth’s actual batting average (.393)
• 1923 AL league batting average (.283)
• Pedro’s actual opponent batting average (.167)
• 2000 AL league batting average (.276)
• Babe is left-handed and Pedro is right-handed (Babe gets a 4.5% advantage from this)
• The batter carries more weight than the pitcher in determining whether the outcome of a PA is a hit (WIS uses a 53.3-46.7 split in favor of the batter rather than 50-50)

Here’s the formula before the platoon adjustment:

H/AB = ((1.066*AVG * .934*OAV) / LgAVG) /
((1.066*AVG * .934*OAV) / LgAVG + (1.066- 1.066*AVG )*(.934- .934*OAV)/(1-LgAvg))
Where, LgAVG = (.934*PLgAVG + 1.066*BLgAVG)/2

The 1.066 and .934 reflect the 53.3-46.7 weight in favor of the batter.The output of this formula is a .2502 chance of a hit, which WIS increases by 4.5% to .2614 since Babe has the platoon advantage.Park factors would also increase or decrease the result.

If you’re savvy with Excel, you can input this formula and play around with it to see how the outcome changes as the League Averages change.In other words, you can see how much normalization matters.If Ruth came from a league like the 1908 NL where the overall average was .239 instead of .283, the outcome would be .286 rather than .261.Because Ruth’s average would have occurred in a more challenging environment for hitters, the formula gives him more credit for his .393 performance and the expected outcome is more likely to be a hit.Likewise, if Ruth had performed in the 1930 NL (league average = .303), then the outcome of this calculation would be .252: Ruth’s performance would be discounted somewhat because it occurred during the most-inflated offensive context during the 20^th century.

If your eyes glaze over when you read the last couple of paragraphs, don’t worry about the formulas.You never have to do these calculations.What’s important to remember is that the league the player played in matters.And therefore, when I search for players to draft, I almost never look at the raw stats, I look at the stats that are followed by the “+” and “#” signs, which have done all the work for you.The “+” signs compare the players performance in that stat to the league average that season.Numbers greater than 100 are better than average, less than 100 are below average.The “#” signs basically show you how the Log5 Normalization calculation comes out against an “average” opponent.In general, when comparing players, I am much more interested in how their “+” and “#” stats compare rather than how their raw stats compare.All else being equal I want the guy with the higher “+” number and the better “#” number.

For example, Carlos Beltran in 2006 hit 41 HR in 617 PA for the Mets.Cy Williams in 1923 hit 41 HR in 636 PA for the Phillies.Williams’s HR/100PA# is 9, while Beltran’s is 6.Williams will hit many more HR, all else being equal, than Beltran will in WIS.

1. Kinds of theme leagues and what they mean

The simplest themes take the idea of an OL and change them in one or more ways:

• Different cap (anywhere from 30M to 255M)
• Roster restrictions (only using players from certain years, or with certain characteristics, etc)
• Most themes do not have the PA and IP minimums that are required by OLs
• Some themes use AAA players, who may either be drafted at the same time you draft your major league roster, or else will be randomly generated by the SLB engine.

You will occasionally other very specific themes, some of which are described below.
Franchise Leagues: Construct a team out of players from 1 franchise.(For example, all Red Sox).Most franchise leagues are very specific about adhering to historical accuracy. So a Dodgers franchise typically means the entire history of the Dodgers (Brooklyn and Los Angeles).There is a good thread here that discusses accurate franchise histories.Please do your homework.1895 Hughie Jennings and 1964 Brooks Robinson should never be on the same team in a franchise league, even though both played for clubs named the Baltimore Orioles.

Twist Leagues: The basic idea is to take an actual MLB team season, and construct your roster from those players, but using any season of their career (that’s the “twist”).So, if you pick the 1986 Red Sox, you can use any player who played for the 1986 Sox, but from any season in their careers.You could have 1971 Tom Seaver, 1998 Roger Clemens, and 1978 Jim Rice all on this team.Most twist leagues allow you to use any player from the roster on www.baseball-reference.com, even if they didn’t accumulate enough PA or IP to be part of the WIS roster in your base season.

Soup Leagues: Each member of your team must meet a different criteria.Examples include Season Soup (each player must come from a different season), Alphabet Soup (each player’s last name must start with a different letter), Franchise Soup (each player must be from a different historical franchise), etc.

Progressive Leagues: Easily the most popular of themes, progressives basically mirror the experience of being a real MLB GM season after season.The idea of progressives is that you keep your players and advance from season to season.A full explanation of progressives is beyond the scope of this thread.See this link for more detail.

1. What each salary cap level is like

One way of thinking about what different cap levels mean is as follows:
60M – roughly the equivalent of an average current MLB team. For example, the 2021 Phillies (record: 82-80) have a 25-man roster that costs $59.9M in the WIS database.
70M – roughly the equivalent of a very good current MLB team.The 2018 Boston Red Sox cost roughly $75M
80M – Elite MLB teams (the 1998 Yankees cost ~83M).
90M – Best MLB teams in history (the 1906 Cubs cost ~88M; the 1927 Yankees cost ~110M, but they are an outlier because of the Ruth/Gehrig salary inflation that occurred during dynamic pricing)
100M-110M – All Star Teams from any given league
120M – Great players having their best seasons
140M – Top-tier HOFers having their best seasons
Anything above 140M – The best individual seasons in baseball history
If anything, these descriptions slightly understate the quality of teams you are likely to be competing with at each cap level. An experienced WIS player can almost certainly put together an 80M team that would consistently beat the 1927 Yankees.
Two conclusions:

• When playing 80M leagues (like open leagues), you are simulating a league with an overall quality of players that has NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPENED. This is not real baseball. You should not expect realistic performance at that salary cap level. Most players will underperform their real life stats, because they will be playing against competition that is, on average, much better than what they faced in real life.
• The key to building successful teams is understanding how to get the best value for dollar at each cap level. While most players will underperform their real life stats at 80M, not all will underperform equally, and some will actually overperform under the right circumstances.

1. AAA – In many leagues, you are allocated a certain number of AAA players when your season starts. In some themes, these players are assigned randomly to you by the WIS engine. In other themes, you can choose your own AAA players. All AAA players are REAL major league players from the WIS database, but in some themes they are given disguised names and instead of seeing their real stats, all you see are a set of player ratings describing a few of the player’s characteristics. Some themes allow you to see the real names of the players (but not the seasons they came from). In almost all cases, it is possible to identify exactly who your AAA players are (real name and actual season). It is highly recommended that you do this. This thread explains how to do it.

While the exact numbers will vary, for themes that use “average quality” AAA you can expect something like 1500-2000 total PA from your 6 position players, and 75-150 total IP from your two pitchers. Although they will be listed as having a salary of $200,000, their actual salary (and actual value) will be much higher than that.

1. A few drafting tips
   1. Forget who the player is – all that matters is his underlying statistical record. A very common newbie mistake is to stock their roster with favorite players, who inevitably underperform.
   2. Always remember which stats matter and which ones don’t. Go back to the decision tree. Things like how many RBI the hitter had, or how well he hit in clutch situations, don’t matter at all. Similarly, pitcher wins and saves don’t matter at all, and ERA matters very little. Other things that don’t matter: clutch hitting, leadership, outfielder throwing arms, actual platoon splits (WIS uses a standard platoon adjustment that is the same for every player), actual situational stats (Pat Tabler was famous for having an unreal batting average when the bases were loaded; Jim Palmer famously never gave up a grand slam; such idiosyncratic stats are not included here. Both Tabler and Palmer will perform the same with the bases loaded as they will under any other circumstances.)
   3. Don’t buy too many – or too few – PA. Another common newbie mistake is to pay for way more PA than you need. WIS allows all position players to accumulate 10% more PA than actual. Similarly, pitchers are given a 10% pitch count buffer for the season. Your players will start to fatigue if at any point they are on pace to exceed those levels of usage. This means that in an OL, you rarely need more than 5000 PA, and in some parks you need less than that. Good owners are skilled at squeezing every possible plate appearance out of their lineup and won’t pay for PA that they won’t use. By spending less on quantity, they can spend more on quality.
   4. Remember to take into account your ballpark. You can decide which park you want to use, and then pick your players; or you can draft your players and then pick the park that you think best suits them. But either way, remember that the park can play an enormous role in how your players perform. Even mediocre players will put up big offensive numbers in Coors, Mile High, or Hilltop. In contrast, even excellent offensive players will see their performance seriously damped by Safeco, Petco, and other offensive graveyards. Two good questions to ask yourself as you’re searching for players: (1) What offensive skill does my park reward the most? (2) What offensive skill does my park penalize the most? In general you want to gravitate toward players with the skills that your park rewards. Putting a bunch of low-average power hitters in The Astrodome or Target Field is a good way to waste your money.
   5. The basic ideas of this section should serve you well no matter what kind of league you are drafting for:
      1. Set your max (and possibly min) salary requirement
      2. Set your min (and possibly max) PA/162 requirement
      3. Set any “must-have” defensive criteria (if you want an A+ arm for your catcher, for example)
      4. Set any “must-have” offensive criteria (sometimes you may be searching for a slugger so you’re focusing on SLG#, but you might want a minimum OBP# for him as well)
      5. Sort by the stat criteria that is most important to you
      6. Don’t just grab the guy at the top of the list – compare the first few names and try to understand why some guys cost more than others.
      7. Finally, tinker with your search parameters a little bit. Do you really need an A+ arm, or could you make do with an A or A- arm? How much more offense could you buy in that case? Could you accept slightly fewer PA, and would you get a much better player if you did?

1. Decide how you want to structure your pitching staff. There is no magic formula for how to do this. A reasonable number of innings for an OL is 1350, though depending on your park you may go a little higher or lower. I’m probably going to buy one or two $200K-$225K pitchers to serve as my mop-up men. These guys will give me 50-75 innings across the season that I can use when a game is out of hand, or I can start them occasionally if I know I’m going to be resting a lot of players in my starting lineup. After that I am probably going to do something like the following:
   1. Draft 900-1000 SP innings. You can do this with a 3- or 4-man rotation (which are most common). Experienced owners can do this with a 2-man rotation, or will often use the Tandem/Starter/A-B settings to put together unbalanced rotations. I recommend not doing this with your first few teams. For the most part, I want all 3-4 starters to be good, but I’m probably going to spend more on the first 2 than the last 1 or 2. Why? If we make it to the post-season, my top 2 starters are going to pitch a disproportionate number of innings, so I want them to be really good. The 3^rd (or 4^th) starter will move to long relief at that point.
   2. Draft a 40-50 IP closer. Needs to be excellent across the board. OAV# under .200, WHIP# under 1.00, low HR/9#.
   3. Draft 75-125 innings of set-up men. Need to be very good across the board, maybe a little less effective than your closer. One thing to watch with both closers and set-up men is their actual IP/G. A lot of modern relievers have IP/G less than 1.0, because their real-life managers use them to face 1-2 batters with the platoon advantage. I dislike drafting these guys because they tend to fatigue very rapidly after throwing 10-15 pitches in a game.
   4. Draft 150-200 innings of long relief. Again, a little less effective than your set-up men.

1. Basic statistical concepts. This thread is not intended to serve as a complete introduction to probability and statistics. There are many good resources online if you want something like that. However, there are some very basic concepts that are important to understanding this game.

Sample size – In small numbers of PA and IP, anything is possible. Even in a full-seasons worth of PA and IP, significant variation can and will happen. A very common newbie mistake is to overreact to early season performance, start dumping players on the waiver wire, very quickly eating up your salary budget with the 10% waiver wire fee. For no reason.

It is easy in Excel to build a model of a .300 hitter.I have a spreadsheet in which I simulate 75 sequences of 200 at bats for this “player.”His batting average varies from .210 to .380.Based on nothing but random chance.In other words, it is ludicrous to look at a player 1/3 of the way through the season and say that he is over- or under-performing.Unless you can point to a very specific reason for it (you picked a player who is harmed by your home park, or most of the other teams in the league have parks or pitching staffs that work against your player’s strengths) it is quite likely that there is no cause for the outcome you are seeing other than random chance in a small sample.For relief pitchers, this is even more significant.A pitcher who has 1-2 bad outings early in the season may never pitch enough innings for his ERA to come back down to what you expect.

Be very very very careful about dumping players on the waiver wire just based on perceived underperformance.It’s a good way to completely destroy your team.

Random Variation – Most people dramatically underestimate how streaky random data can be. People expect sequences of 100 coin flips to basically go HTHTHTHT. Coin flips don’t work like that, and neither do simulations. Purely random data will generate many more streaks and longer streaks than people expect. A human tendency is to look for “reasons” why this is happening, even though there is no reason at all. Almost every study that has ever been done on things like hitting streaks in baseball or hot hands in basketball has found that there is no real effect there. Random data is streaky. Don’t waste your time trying to figure out why your ace pitcher just got shelled 3 starts in a row, or why your cleanup hitter is batting .175 over his last 100 at bats. It happens.

Independence – Every PA, every IP, every game in WIS is completely independent. The algorithm does not build in hot streaks or cold streaks for players, or teams, or managers. WIS is not out to get you just because your team that had been 35-20 just went on a 9 game losing streak. There are many possible causes for this: you just faced a run of really good teams, or teams with pitching staffs uniquely positioned to do well against your offense, or teams in parks that do not play to your strengths, or your guys may have been fatigued, or it may just be (altogether now) small sample size and random variation.

Apologies for the weird numbering...in the Word document in which I wrote this, it is all very nicely outlined. When I cut and pasted into this series of posts, the outline numbering did not port over correctly.

I trust the content is still readable

Excellent stuff as always contrarian!

Here's a question I've been unable to wrap my head around on normalization and pitching and more specifically ... the 1987 Creature from San Francisco, Rick Reuschel.
Late in his career, Reuschel threw just 50 innings with a few starts, but typical Reuschel, they were quality innings so I signed him at $1.8M for 50 IP with an ERC+ of 198, a 525 HR+ and 270 BB/9+ and a ERC# of just 1.98 and a 1.25 WHIP#.
But conversely, his ERA rankings were very average. ERA+ .... instead of significantly higher ... is slightly lower at 95. ERA#? Not under 2. Not under 3. Not even under 4 at 4.19.
So ... with those contrasting numbers of cream of the crop/elite "+" rankings, but average to below average ERA numbers, whether "+" or "#" I didn't know what to expect from him in this $100M cap league.
I spot started him a few times and used him in long relief and he was great. 7-2 ... 3.34 ERA ... 1.25 whip over 60 innings. I couldn't ask for more from a $1.8M reliever in even an open league, much less one with a $100M cap.

So with that in mind, explain what 87 Reuschel is and how those seemingly relatable numbers are so starkly different. A follow-up I guess would be would you rather have the pitcher with the better ERC or ERA numbers?

Thanks for this info. It's a great read.

I’m sure others wil weigh in as well, but I don’t ever use ERA as a metric when I’m building my teams.

The things I search for are #oav/#whip/#hr9/#bb9/oav+/hr9+

occasionally I’ll search for #erc but very rarely