One of my favorite tools / toys has been the Salary Calculator based on the work of Joseph Ka (I apologize for not knowing the name of the person who actually made the calculator itself). I find it useful in any number of ways, from understanding the game engine to getting a sense of how much training players on the TL have received during the season.
My question: At the end of the last season, I ran my players through the calculator to get projections of this season's salary. This season's salaries just came through, and I find that there are differences between what the calculator predicted and what actually emerged. Without going into excessive (and revealing) detail, of my squad of ten players, 4 had salaries higher than predicted, 3 lower, and the other 3 were more or less spot on. My question is what does this information tell me?
I don't think the calculator is faulty. From the thread that introduced me to it, I learned this was based on much data, and the ranges by which the salaries are off (3 to 9 percent) seem pretty reasonable, especially if one realizes that the calculator is accurate in several cases. So . . .
In those cases where the salary is more than the calculator predicted, I am wondering if I am finding out which players may be ready for "pops" with training -- that is, the calculator can not realize that my "average" rebounder is actually a very high "average" (which the game engine would see) and is close to being a "respectable" rebounder.
The trouble with this, however, is that it does not explain those players with lower-than-predicted salaries. Which, to my way of thinking, leads me back to the very nature of the calculator itself and suggests to me that the level of precision of the calculator is a bit fuzzier than I anticipated, which means, unfortunately, I have no indication of what players may be close to a "pop".
I get caught up in my own loops, so I writing this in the hopes of others offering their ideas about what may or may not be going on.