Hey I have a question if anyone can help.  There are not hot or cold streaks in sim but if a player is hitting .270 and his actual average is .350 than doesnt that mean that he is "due" to get hot?  Can you play lineups this way?

Definitely not.

Posted by chisox378 on 7/15/2010 10:19:00 AM (view original):
Hey I have a question if anyone can help.  There are not hot or cold streaks in sim but if a player is hitting .270 and his actual average is .350 than doesnt that mean that he is "due" to get hot?  Can you play lineups this way?

No sir.  Every new plate appearance is a new event analogous to flipping a coin.  If the coin has landed head five times in the row, the odds it will land heads on the sixth toss is still 50%.

" If the coin has landed head five times in the row, the odds it will land heads on the sixth toss is still 50%."
 
Arent the chances of tails more because heads hit 5 times in a row? Not even a small percentage figues in?  So how does luck figure into simulation baseball? I have a player like this who's average is way under his actual stats so there must be something I am missing when looking at this player. Player is.....Austin McHenry with a .350 ba.

chisox78 -- I went through the same issue, and contrarian23, jfranco77 and others gave me some very useful thoughts which should be helpful to you as well.  I just bumped the thread for you.

That's a good thread you bumped, thunder.

To summarize and translate that thread into batting average terms, you might put it like this:

You have to separate the expectation for the whole season from the expectation for one at bat. There are way more factors than this, but let's say McHenry has a 35% chance of getting a hit every time he comes to the plate. Each AB is it's own, separate event. The simulated average he compiles throughout the season is nothing more than the culmination of all the 35% chance-of-hit ABs he had throughout the season. Even if he's batted .175 in his first 200 AB, though that was an unlikely and unlucky average, it has no bearing on AB# 201 - he still has a 35% chance of getting a hit. The expectation wouldn't be that he'll hit .525 in his next 200 AB to even it out, it's still that he'll hit .350 over the next 200 AB.

Thanks alot thunder, the link did help a little.  mattedesa thanks for the post, its starting to make sense.  I guess we can also factor who the batter is hitting against. And through the first 100ab my players have batted against tough pitchers.