Catcher defense does affect Pitcher ERAs!

[allenciox]

So last year it is well-known that catcher defense had very little effect on Pitcher ERAs --- framing was not a thing.

So I looked at this year, across my three teams, to see what effect catcher defense is having on CERA (i.e. era of pitchers when that catcher is catching).

On all three teams, I have a platton set up: SE Yogi Berra (100, def=86) as catcher against lefties, and SE Mike Piazza (96, def=35) as catcher against righties. On all three teams, I completed the live missions fairly early on, and so have had both catchers in there for at least fourteen seasons for each. On each of the three teams, Berra has had > 11k IP (average season is around 850 to 900 IP) across that time, and Piazza has > 7k IP. So there is no question that this is enough time to evaluate the difference, knowing that I am comparing apples to apples by not doing any cross-team comparisons. Here are the results for career CERA for each with Berra's CERA listed first and Piazza's second:

Weston Pointe Caspers: 3.90/4.32
Cary Southpaws: 3.88/4.33
Perfect Pitch: 4.09/4.67

So the differences range between .42 runs per game and .58 runs per game with an average of about half a run for every nine innings. That is actually a very substantial difference and much larger than in OOTP 19, where there was a difference but it was much smaller.

Another way of looking at this might be to think that each point in DEF difference might correspond to .01 point in CERA, or one run in 100 games.

Note that this is "not" included in WAR statistics, but if you did apply it there, then a 50 point difference for your main catcher would correspond to roughly 50 runs per year, or the equivalent of about 5 WAR per season. That is huge.

[Stevie Jay]

So to wrap... you play Berra against lefties and Piazza against righties?


Forgive me for sounding stupid... doesn't Yogi bat left and Mike bat right?

[allenciox]

whoops! got it backward, Berra against righties, of course.

[DonMattingly]

Would be interesting to know if that scales linearly.

Would you get the same amount of ERA reduction going from 86 to 100?

I've seen enough posts though (and did a season worth of Harper vs Hedges on 3 teams myself) to believe defense affects ERA (and BBs and Ks, which themselves affect ERA). Maybe not to the degree they did in PT 19, but more than PT 20.

[Syd Thrift]

Yeah, there was a patch early in the year where the devs discussed this exact change.

[QuantaCondor]

I have noticed that stronger teams tend to run LHP because the strongest pitchers in the game over the past few months have been LHP (except Maddux). That effect might be showing up in Perfect Pitch's exaggerated effect, where the top BFF teams mostly stack a bunch of LHP. LHP might also be more frequently paired with pro-lefty factors, including something like +LCON boosts which could lead to higher scoring games when facing lefties. Especially since you're in OL and BFF with all 3 of these teams, I would guess that some amount of that CERA difference can be attributed to that effect. I would be it's smaller than the effect shown here, but it's worth mentioning.

It would be useful to see the difference between a Yogi-type 78 CAbil and some more extreme amount, like a Bench. There are other positions like 1B where being below average is way worse than being above average, I wonder if that applies here. And the true comparison really will come from K/9 and BB/9, rather than CERA, since those parameters have really strong, consistent fits and any big deviation over a larger sample size is likely attributable to CAbil.

[X3NEIZE]

Pretty sure the catcher defense fixed has really little to do with CERA and more to do with framing.... BB/K's ration is where the changes are....

I got 10 seasons that shows Kelly KIng throws more batters and has a lower CERA than SE Bench.

[allenciox]

Originally Posted by QuantaCondor

I have noticed that stronger teams tend to run LHP because the strongest pitchers in the game over the past few months have been LHP (except Maddux). That effect might be showing up in Perfect Pitch's exaggerated effect, where the top BFF teams mostly stack a bunch of LHP. LHP might also be more frequently paired with pro-lefty factors, including something like +LCON boosts which could lead to higher scoring games when facing lefties. Especially since you're in OL and BFF with all 3 of these teams, I would guess that some amount of that CERA difference can be attributed to that effect. I would be it's smaller than the effect shown here, but it's worth mentioning.

It would be useful to see the difference between a Yogi-type 78 CAbil and some more extreme amount, like a Bench. There are other positions like 1B where being below average is way worse than being above average, I wonder if that applies here. And the true comparison really will come from K/9 and BB/9, rather than CERA, since those parameters have really strong, consistent fits and any big deviation over a larger sample size is likely attributable to CAbil.

Yes, that is possible that some of the effect could be due to facing more lefties or righties, but this is the best data I have.

As to your second point, I would love to look at effect on K/9 or BB/9, but where I got the data is in the "career fielding stats" tab for the players, which does not include that information. If you have another idea where to get the information that you describe, it would be great to utilize it.

Note that CERA is a great thing to use here as a "general" indicator of how valuable each catcher is, because all the effects on catcher defense as well as catching base stealers should be reflected in it.

If other people want to look at their catcher results, it would be great to include those! One of the nice things about analyzing catchers is that CERA only reflects when they were used as a catcher (so use in other positions is not affected by it) and, since catchers get tired easily, data on at least two catchers is available for every team.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by X3NEIZE

Pretty sure the catcher defense fixed has really little to do with CERA and more to do with framing.... BB/K's ration is where the changes are....

I got 10 seasons that shows Kelly KIng throws more batters and has a lower CERA than SE Bench.

Well, yes, I’m not even sure what you’re getting at here. Catcher rating would decrease BB/9 and HR/9 and increase K/9 and what CERA is showing is the results of those changes. There’s no *direct* ability for anyone in the game to influence their own ERA except by those methods and some of the individual idiosyncrasies of each pitch (2 seam fastballs, sinkers, and splitters increase gb% and I believe lower HR rate, 4 seamers increase flyballs, curves and sliders increase splits, circle changes and screwballs lower and sometimes reverse them, and so on).

[X3NEIZE]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

Well, yes, I’m not even sure what you’re getting at here. Catcher rating would decrease BB/9 and HR/9 and increase K/9 and what CERA is showing is the results of those changes. There’s no *direct* ability for anyone in the game to influence their own ERA except by those methods and some of the individual idiosyncrasies of each pitch (2 seam fastballs, sinkers, and splitters increase gb% and I believe lower HR rate, 4 seamers increase flyballs, curves and sliders increase splits, circle changes and screwballs lower and sometimes reverse them, and so on).

KK/BB does not always translate in runs.... CERA is influenced by a ton of other factors, like bad defense.... good framing helps improve pitcher K's and BB...

So like i said, CERA is not the best indicator of the patch fix... period. You'll figure it out.

[DonMattingly]

Originally Posted by X3NEIZE

KK/BB does not always translate in runs.... CERA is influenced by a ton of other factors, like bad defense.... good framing helps improve pitcher K's and BB...

So like i said, CERA is not the best indicator of the patch fix... period. You'll figure it out.

There's no denying though that less BBs = less baserunners = less runs, and more Ks = more outs = less runs. There's a very strong correlation between CERA and BBs and Ks.

And the possible confounding factors you're bringing up are accounted for in many people's tests as they use the same team - same defense and same pitchers, same park.

I don't think anyone cares what the exact CERAs are, or at least I don't, what I am looking at is the difference/delta in CERAs between the good defensive catcher and the bad one.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by X3NEIZE

KK/BB does not always translate in runs.... CERA is influenced by a ton of other factors, like bad defense.... good framing helps improve pitcher K's and BB...

So like i said, CERA is not the best indicator of the patch fix... period. You'll figure it out.

Whoever said that it was? I literally just made that point in my post and went a step further to say that nothing in the game has a direct effect on ERA. Reading comprehension.

[X3NEIZE]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

Whoever said that it was? I literally just made that point in my post and went a step further to say that nothing in the game has a direct effect on ERA. Reading comprehension.

Whatever you say dude...