THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Out of the Park 2007

OOTP 2007 is a baseball computer game.  A few weeks ago, I was offered access to a pre-release version.  At the risk of sounding like a classic Phil Hartman (RIP) character, I’m just a simple guy, and the enormous number of parameters under my control scared and confused me.  But, for serious gamers, the game’s got tons of fans.  But, that’s not why I’m here.  Apparently, something I did made it into the game:
http://www.ootpbaseball.net/clubhouse.php?view=news&gid=26&id=1304

Previous versions of the game, however, had every skill rising and falling in a standard umbrella pattern. OOTPv2007 is different. For the first time, it is modeling each skill as a separate component.  Quite honestly, one of the biggest challenges that I looked at when I began testing player aging was to determine what baseline to use to assess quality. In the end I focused on work published by TangoTiger.

I’ve been meaning to update those charts that he references.  Hopefully I can get to that at some point soon.  Also, if anyone wants to make use of my Win Expectancy (WE) and Leverage Index (LI), as Fangraphs is using them, just ask.  I grant a free licence, as long as you don’t charge your readers/customers (extra) for them.