Exploring the Batting Attributes

There's a plethora of batting attributes we see on our roster pages. When you look at your player in the index, those attributes aren't necessarily the same (though for batting over pitching, they are typically much more exact values). Primarily, you will notice that on your roster page it's called BABIP, but in the index there is Contact. These 2 are not the same. Contact in the sim is a combination of BABIP, Avoid K's, and Power.

For a start, this is what a default 0 TPE batter looks like in the sim:


I gave every position 200 xp - meaning that is your defensive rating if that is your primary position. 1B is the easiest position to play, it's all about height. This is a 6'8 player, good for a 57 rated 1B. Contact is rated at 26.

That's pretty easy stuff to see. In this next one, I increased BABIP to 50 on both sides.


This increases Contact to 39. So, in a scenario where all 3 contact attributes are at 25, contact is 26. A 100% increase in BABIP increases contact by 50%.



This time, I set BABIP back to 25, and increased Avoid K's to 50. As you can see, the Avoid K's stat increased to match exactly with a roster page of 50. In this case though, Contact only increased to 33. It lists a contact rating of 33 because it rounds up, it is actually 32.5 - a 25% increase in contact from a 100% increase in Avoid K's.



The final attribute included in contact is Power. This is has a much smaller effect on contact, but it does have a benefit of increasing the Power attribute exactly. Power itself is a very strong attribute, and the fact that it contributes to both Power and Contact is very important. The amount it contributes to contact is indeterminate, but my estimate is 12.5% increase.

These numbers largely hold true over further increases, with slightly diminished returns. At 100 BABIP, Contact is 63 (based on the initial test, it would be 65), 100 Avoid Ks give 41 Contact (47 based on initial change), and 100 Power gives 41 Contact as well (intial test would have led this to be 35).

Avoid Ks faces the biggest drop off in terms of returns. Geting Avoid K's to 50 results in 33 contact, an increase of 7. Increase it another 25 to 75 (keep in mind the steeper TPE cost of this) increases contact to 37, just an increase of 4. Increasing to 100 is just another increase of 4 to contact. It seems most efficient to leave avoid Ks at 50 for a little while. Increasing from 50->60 adds 2 to contact, but 60->65 doesn't add any. Then from 65->75 adds 2 more.

With Avoid K's at 50, Increasing BABIP to 50 brings Contact ot 48. Increasing BABIP to 60 brings an increase of 5 contact, to 53. 70 BABIP brings a contact of 61. 80 brings it to 69. BABIP is consistently a strong attribute to increase contact. Having Avoid K's at 50 provides a strong increase when combined with BABIP.

With BABIP increased, let's revisit Avoid K's. With BABIP at 70, Avoid K's 50, contact is 61. Increasing Avoid K's to 60 now will increase Contact to 66. With BABIP at 25, increasing Avoid K's to 60 was previously only 2 points in Contact - now it's 5. Essentially, Avoid K's is completely complementary to BABIP - early on maybe Avoid K's can help, but it slows it's effect on contact quickly unless BABIP has been increased.

What about Power? We'll step back on Avoid K's for now. With BABIP at 60, contact is 43. If we increase Power to 50, Contact goes to 45. Miniscule increase. Increasing Power to 60 is another increase of 2. But what if we go back to having Avoid K's? BABIP 60, Avoid K's 50, has 53 Contact. Increasing Power to 50 now brings Contact to 58 - another increase of 5. Increasing Power to 60 brings contact to 62 now. BABIP at 70 makes Contact 70.

Avoid K's on it's own drops off in effect after 50 rating. BUT, getting that initial 50 rating appears to be incredibly important in the effects of BABIP and Power on your overall Contact rating. BABIP 60, Avoid K's 50, Power 40 is a pretty low cost grouping that I find quite a good balance for Contact - it results in 56 contact and with 40 power gives strong potential for home runs (at least at this overall TPE level).


Now let's take a look at fielding.


These are base ratings. 1B go height all the way. Everyone else will need some combination of Range, Arm, and Error, and 2B and SS will need Turn Double Plays as well. How much of each do you need? Let's start with what is typically the most important attribute. Range. Outfield and Infield ratings are separate, but since they also clearly separate by infield/outfield positions, it's easy to do both at the same time. Let's start by increasing range to 50.



Here you can see which positions essentially see range as "the only stat". Shoutout to 1B for getting a ridiculous improvement. LF takes a big boost from range, and we see RF, 2B, and then SS and CF also gain some. Range is incredibly important to SS and CF, but because those 2 positions are so difficult to play, even 50 isn't enough to see massive gains there. What about 100 range?



Where we can see that initially 2B and RF showed bigger initial increases, they are impacted by other attributes much more, so their rating from range doesn't increase as much. Range is so important to CF, the rating skyrockets to 95. It's a slow climb but Range is the one that matters in CF. LF and 1B max out all thanks to range.

Let's pivot a little bit here to Error. It's not necessarily going to see a huge effect on ratings, but it is still very important. If a ball is hit where it should be an out, you don't want to be giving up free hits/bases/runs on errors.


100 rated Error doesn't do much for ratings, except 1B, but it does help your play.


Like Avoid K's however, it is a nice complementary attribute. With 50 range, error suddenly changes ratings quite a bit. Whereas with 50 range a SS was 5 rated, and with 100 error they were 1 rated, with both of those together, they are 28 rated.


With 50 range and 50 error, these are the position ratings. Pro tip: be 6'8 if you're gonna play 1st base. Now with that baseline, we'll take a little look at how arm effects various positions.


With 50 arm, some positions don't change much. But others you can see arm is extremely important. 3rd base most of all, but also RF. Shortstop got a small increase. Positions like Shortstop and 2nd base only see small increases from most of the attributes, largely because they require ALL of the attributes, and usually in large amounts.


At 70 in each of the main 3 and 50 in TDP, SS and CF still lag well behind at just over 50 rating. The other 2 outfield positions are quite highly rated, while 2nd and 3rd aren't rated as well but are still quite a bit better than SS or CF.


At 90 in both range and arm, 70 error and 50 TDP, almost every position is over 90 rated except shortstop - way down at still just 75 rated. Even at 90 error and 70 TDP, shortstop is still only rated an 88. You need to increase EVERYTHING for shortstops. It is an incredibly difficult position to play defensively.

At 90 range, error, arm, and 70 TDP only SS, 3B (99 rating) and CF (92 rating) are not 100 rated defensively. At 100 range, CF and 3B hit 100, and shortstop STILL DOESN'T. 98 rated.

Catchers are quite simple, they only have 2 attributes, and they both effect the rating equally. 100 ability and 25 arm is a 66 ratings, and vice versa is also a 66 rating. Both attributes at 85 is just enough to reach 100 rating at catchers.

To sum up defensively: 3B, RF require arm as their primary attribute. Range is important but arm is primary. 2B, SS are the only ones that need TDP. Both require heavy investment in range, error, and arm, SS requiring more than 2B. 1B requires height and then the most miniscule amount of range and/or error. LF is all about range. CF is all about range as well, but you'll need some error to max it out. You won't max out CF if you don't max out range though. Catcher needs a mix of both arm and ability equally.

So there you go, some insight into how OOTP's attributes combine to effect your player.

Thanks symm, very interesting.

1500 word article
week 1 claimed 06/06
week 2 06/13
week 3 06/20

Love this!