OOTP Team History Project - OOTP 9 Changes

As you all know by now, I have tracked team standings and totals basically since the inception of the league. (I'm missing most of the data for 2002, but have everything else.) Well, I went ahead and entered in the 2013 season data and there's a lot of interesting information there. This post will focus on the changes between this year's numbers and the prior seasons, under previous versions of the game. So, without further ado:

1. Home teams won 52.2% of the time. That's the highest figure since the 2003 season, which I think was played under version 5 of the game.

2. There were only 64 extra inning games (or 10.3 per team), the lowest figure by far. The previous low was 83 and the total was usually in the 90s.

3. A lot fewer one-run games too: 233 (19.4 per team). The previous low was 264.

4. Offense jumped way, way, way up--far surpassing the previous high of the 2003 campaign in version 5 of the game. Some of the changes:

* Runs per game - 5.01 (previous range 4.79-4.28)
* Batting average - .278 (.263-.245)
* Doubles - 3503 (3071-2788)
* Home runs - 1926 (1818-1672)

5. On the other hand, walks, strikeouts, and steals all fell within prior ranges.

6. One possible explanation for this offensive explosion is that BABIP substantially increased. This version of the game doesn't seem to give team or league BABIP figures, but my proxy calculations show a BABIP of .317. Until this year, league-wide BABIP always ranged between .284 and .295.

7. Although fielding percentage remained roughly constant at .981 (all league years are between .981 and .983), the percentage of unearned runs (of total runs) rose to 10.00%. The prior range was 8.30% to 9.60%. I'm not sure what the explanation for this is.

I'll do a post on team records later, but I thought these changes were interesting and worth sharing.


P.S. One of the offensive numbers from 2003, when corrected for the change from 8 to 12 teams, is more than this year's results. There were 1,433 home runs that year, which equates to 2,150 in a 12 team league.