Off Topic
I realized after the fact that I left out one piece of OOTP neepery that probably should be noted. I say that because in general I’ve come to the view that in MOST ways that application of general baseball knowledge is probably good enough for running an OOTP team. Baseball is baseball, and the sim engine is actually no longer particularly bad at doing anything except occasionally creating the odd unicorn or two in the form of weird players.
There is one aspect of the game engine that still comes to play when assessing players, thought, and that is the whole Stuff vs. AvK part of the results engine.
If one is playing a standard OOTP solo game, I think everything is fairly okay. But we don’t play a standard OOTP solo game (nor do most online leagues I’m aware of). Our players ratings get bloated—and in particular, pitcher’s Stuff. I haven’t “done the math and run my sim of the sim” in a little while, but it’s still my opinion that with pitcher Stuff amplified, a hitter’s AVK can be quite important. If nothing else, I view it as an indicator of how “accurate” the game’s attempt to calculate that hitter’s Contact rating is liable to be. Ultimately this gets down into the ordering of the game engine’s results calculation, but for our purposes here it’s enough to say that I view low AvK to mean that the Contact rating is less reliable, and high AvK says I can trust it more.
Anyway, there’s that. I'm not sure how much it really impacts things, but it's something I think about in evaluating and planning for the use of my players through the system.
And, as Sean would say, that’s a quick two points!
