[15.00] 400+ strikeouts in a season...in 1909! But nothing happened to DICE...

[TheThirdMan]

The Cardinals' Oscar Jones was a mild-mannered pitcher who went 15-13 in 1905, and he got sent to the minors for 1906 and most of 1907. Apparently down in AAA he studied pitching under a super ninja warrior shuriken master, because on his return to the bigs, this happened:



Yes, that is really 433 strikeouts in 1909, and 311 strikeouts with two months to go in 1910. This is for a pitcher whose fastball rating is 47, and in an era where 150 strikeouts usually gets you in the top ten in the league. Jones isn't the only pitcher I've seen do this--Fred Mitchell of the Braves got demoted and apparently studied under the same ninja master, striking out 350 in 1909.

Plus, there seems to be something else going on with Jones and Mitchell. You'd think with 433 strikeouts and only 7 HR given up in 1909, Jones' DICE would be absolutely fantastic. But it isn't...maybe his DICE is based on his "true" strikeout rate, instead of the depicted one.

There's one other freaky thing going on with Jones, but I think it's true coincidence instead of a bug: he's thrown three no-hitters in one and a half seasons. Everybody else in the game universe combined has thrown five in 9.5 seasons.

[HoustonGM]

Plus, there seems to be something else going on with Jones and Mitchell. You'd think with 433 strikeouts and only 7 HR given up in 1909, Jones' DICE would be absolutely fantastic. But it isn't...maybe his DICE is based on his "true" strikeout rate, instead of the depicted one.

DICE includes walk rate as well.

[TheThirdMan]

I'm looking up the wiki on DICE. What does Clay Dreslough know about....oh. OK, anyway: Jones' DICE in 1909 should be ((13*7)+(3*(135+47))-(2*433))/415+3 or 2.45. Yeah, that's right.

Wait a minute, though...Jones hit 47 batters in 1909? That put in him first place by 17 HB. The guy in second place with 30...you got it, Fred Mitchell, the other guy with the weird strikeout total.

What this is telling me is that something got really goofed up with Oscar Jones. A player has normal stats for a number of seasons, then suddenly has off-the-charts stats in both strikeouts and hit batters? Something's not right.

[MichelleWie]

Steriods.

[Jeff Olsen]

Probably a case of the game not knowing what to do with two guys continuing to pitch after their real life counterparts left the bigs.

[TheThirdMan]

The above was weird enough, but here's a genuine bug thrown up by one of our two strikeout kings.

The following is Fred Mitchell on the 1910 Boston pitching card, with his Scouting report directly beneath it. All of his 1910 stats match up...except for strikeouts. On the lineup card (and in the list of league leaders) Mitchell is credited with 271 Ks--but in his scouting report, he's got 396 Ks. Which, by the way, averages out to 11.91 K/9: this guy is like a genetic fusion of Aroldis Chapman and Nolan Ryan.



I've never seen this before--Mitchell had 407 Ks in both the pitching card and his scouting report for 1909.

BTW, the 1st Division strikeout leader list is a sight to behold: 1. Oscar Jones (STL), 384. 2. Fred Mitchell (BOS), 271. 3. Ed Walsh (PHI), 185.

[TheThirdMan]

Jeff: The league I'm running has plenty of pitchers who have gone long past their real-life careers (I've shut down injuries in this game, because everything is run off of commissioner mode, because I didn't want the AI to make any trades, because it's a city-of-birth league...many players are still going strong into their late 30's to early 40's). But only Jones and Mitchell seem to have been affected by it.