Rick Honeycutt had a 20-year career as a starter and reliever for several teams, ranging from 1977 to 1997. Among the many teams with which Honeycutt served time were the Mariners, Rangers, Dodgers, Athletics, Yankees, and Cardinals. He would finish with a 3.72 lifetime ERA and a 109-143 loss record. His lifetime WHIP was 1.315. (WHIP = the sum of walks plus hits, divided by innings pitched.)
On September 30th, 1980, as a Mariner starter (he would go 10-17 that year), he taped a thumbtack to his finger with a band-aid, using it to scuff the ball. In a game against the Royals, Willie Wilson hit a double for Kansas City and ended up at second. Looking at Honeycutt from behind, he noted the thumbtack and brought it to the attention of the umps. Honeycutt was given the boot and the league would suspend him for ten days.
To add insult to injury, not only did Honeycutt whine about the ineffectiveness of his technique -- he had only scratched three balls and none of them did what he wanted them to -- but walking back to the dugout, he thoughtlessly wiped the sweat from his forehead with his tacked finger, gashing his forehead and almost putting out his eye.
(* * *)
One of the problems with Baseball Mogul and OOTP is that, of course, you can't duplicate events like this. Adding some sort of "cheat engine" which might generate a random number and conclude that a player every five years or so would get caught at doing something stupid would be a pointless act. The power posters on the Baseball Mogul message board would claim it would be a waste of time for Clay to have to program something like this; I have a more practical vote against it -- we only know the cheaters who got caught. There might have been guys in baseball who spent twenty year careers cheating here and there but never got caught at it.
One can laugh at these real life absurdities, but like it or not, they do actually affect game play. Undoubtedly, Honeycutt missed a start or two during his suspension. As the years go by, a baseball axiom becomes all the more apparent -- "in the end, all you have is your stat line".
All Honeycutt has his is 1980 stat line, all the Lahman database has is his stat line, and all the Baseball Mogul engine has is his stat line. The Baseball Mogul AI doesn't know why Honeycutt missed a tenth of the season, and it will automatically assume that the reason he missed those games was because of health, which impacts Honeycutt's overall health rating.
Clearly, a "sim head" has one of two options, if he remembers Honeycutt's thumbtack drama: to have a sim where Honeycutt is caught "after the fact" (after a completed game and assign him a fake injury that will take him out of ten games), or to assume Honeycutt was never caught in the dynasty. In any event, Honeycutt's health rating should be readjusted to assume that he would have made those missing starts barring the incident. However, the question then becomes "how do you do it?"
Is health in Baseball Mogul on a linear scale? If a player has a health of 50, do we assume that the statistical mean of games he would miss is 81 (i.e., 50 percent of all games)? If a player has a health of 100, do we assume that he plays every game that season?
I'm sure the answer among most dynasty players would be, "Who gives a damn? Ten games is an eyeblink." However, if you're the kind of player who wants a dynasty where Joe Blow did not have a career-ending injury in real life -- for example, a world where J. R. Richard does not have a stroke -- these questions begin to count.
Another dynasty where health questions might be important is a "steroid-free" dynasty. If you want to adjust stats so that Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, and Roger Clemens (*) were not steroid-users, you might be of the school that the health in their later careers should be adjusted upward, to eliminate the muscle pulls and breakdowns that steroid abuse is known to cause. The question of how to adjust health is important.
The only solution is probably a comprehensive list of suspensions in baseball. From that point, the dynasty player can decide how he (or she (**)) wants to change things.
(*) Yes, I know Roger Clemens never tested positive for steroids.
(**) Are there any females playing BM or OOTP? I believe there was one who played OOTP and posted; I have never heard of a female playing Baseball Mogul who posted on the boards there.
1 comment:
I've noted in various games that if you are trying to write about it / try to have it make sense, sometimes you have to look at the EFFECT of an event and not necessarily a cause.
For example, it'd be easy enough to find a player who takes a minor injury, and simply tell the world that he scuffed the ball and was suspected. OOTP CEIs can be banishments for controlled substances, that kind of thing.
Ignoring the question of the steroid abusers, I see your point where Honeycutt's missing 10 games might (theoretically) affect his overall health. If I remember the Thumbtack incident I'm more likely to use that 'in place' of one of his injuries. If he continues to have injury trouble - well, maybe he keeps trying. Or maybe that gash in his forehead was worse than we thought.
In short, I think except for really big issues (like a year long suspension or something else that might really torque off the statistical modeling) I'd be inclined to let it go.
Now regarding the alleged abusers. I think I once suggested to you the simplest way to deal with a steroid free era was to freeze the league modifiers at 1985 (or whatever) levels - so if 1985 power is 0.7 modern day (off the top of my head) - leave it there.
I wouldn't modify health. Though logically I see your argument (increased muscle pulls and the like), just look at Bonds and Clemens. They've both had very, very long careers and I'm more likely to put any decline in their productivity up to age (and possibly going clean) rather than vulnerability due to past excesses.
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