Pitching Stats and Development Questions
 

1.) Is there any reason not to use FIP- (Fangraph's park and league adjusted FIP) over FIP? Is there any reason not to use any adjusted stat over their default counterpart? OPS+, etc.

2.) Is WPA useful?

3.) It seems that most of the battle with developing SPs is simply to get the ones with promising stuff to learn three good pitches. Most highly rated young prospects will have two potentially great pitches and something like 3/13 out of 1-20 for a third pitch when coming into the system, and most of them will never learn that third pitch and end up a serviceable reliever at best. I usually play modern day Red Sox saves and I don't ever remember Anderson Espinoza panning out as his third pitch never approaches average. What are the things I can do, besides the usual stuff like making sure prospects don't get blocked, hiring good personnel, looking for good make-up, etc, that will maximize the chances of a prospect learning a third pitch well enough to start?

4.) Should I interpret a drop in velocity for young pitchers as a sign of talent decline? And about how often do SPs who are converted to relievers get a boost in velocity and vice versa?

5.) Does G/F% matter if I have a good defensive outfield?

6.) Lastly, is the way to read pitching BABIP in that I should expect better/worse performance based on if I think my defense is better or worse than what the pitcher had?

Thanks

Refresh hoping that someone smarter than I am can answer the questions above.

I will follow this one

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I'll try on a couple of these.

1) Depends what you're doing really. If you're comparing players to each other then the adjusted stat is the way to go, especially if the players in question have a similar number of PA's or IP. I mainly use straight FIP just to compare to ERA to see if a result is likely sustainable or not.

2) You could use it if you want to incorporate that into who wins league awards, but other than that it just kind of tells a story rather than being predictive of future results in any way.

5 and 6 are sort of tied together. If you have a good defensive outfield then a FB pitcher is not a bad thing to have. Plus a FB pitcher should naturally allow a lower BABIP than an equally talented GB pitcher over a longer period of time. And yea you should see if a pitchers BABIP was really high with a bad defense and it's not an unreasonable expectation to expect it to drop when switching to better defense, but it's far from the only factor.

A question about comparing FIP to ERA, say if I'm trying to decide who to send down in June, pitcher 1 has a low ERA but high FIP, pitcher 2 has a high ERA but low FIP. Even though 2 has technically been pitching better than 1 and has a higher WAR, the results are not the case, and statistically unsustainable performances can often last for an entire season. As a manager, the ERA is really all that matters in the short run, so would you send down 1 or 2? Does it make a difference when comparing relievers with less IP than starters in consideration of sample size? I never send down the low FIP/high ERA guy in hopes that his results will regress to normal, but that rarely happens and I often pay for it.

Same thing for batters, if someone's in a slump and has an unusually low BABIP, do you bench/send him down even though the slump may very well be due to bad luck? Are there other stats to consider?

Yea it can get tricky in these situations. Take a look at their strikeout % and walk %. Even though K's and BB's feed directly into FIP, it can still be very useful to look at them separately. These are especially good for when deciding on relievers.

I suppose other things you can do is look to see who has the better velocity and repitoire.

It kind of comes to a gut call sometimes. Often I'll go with the guy who's actually getting it done until he proves he can't anymore.

And at the end of the day if it's still a coin flip in your mind, you could look into going with the best contractual situation. Who's got more minor league options remaining, etc.

1) FIP and xFIP (or FIP-) tell different stories. FIP is just about walks/strikeouts/home runs allowed, which can be valuable, whereas the adjusted stats apply a league-average home run rate. That can also be valuable, but sometimes it doesn't make sense to apply a league-average home run rate. For example if you are looking to acquire flyball-prone pitchers because you play in a big park like SF or SEA, then using FIP- is going to make them look much worse then they are likely to perform in reality. It doesn't take too many home runs to drastically change someone's ERA, so applying the wrong HR/FB ratio can really make a difference.

Example: last year Jeff Samardzjia had a bad year. By most measures including FIP- he was not good. However...he has a pronounced flyball tendency, and is right-handed. San Francisco's park is the best in baseball at suppressing left-handed home runs, whereas the White Sox stadium is one of the worst. So it really doesn't make sense to apply a league-average HR rate. I'm guessing, that was a major factor in the Giants decision to offer him $200 million. If they had looked solely at FIP- they would not have ever signed him. So far, the results are very encouraging with a 2.66 ERA and 2.78 FIP this year.

So if I'm trying to decide between my own guys, should I even bother with FIP instead of just looking at ERA? Since they all pitch in the same park and have the same defense behind them and whoever doesn't pitch well because of those factors isn't really my concern.

Also Samardzija was offered 90 million, still kinda surprised but makes sense especially considering what you explained.

Well FIP is generally more predictive of future ERA, I wouldn't discard it. Some pitchers can still be luckier than others even with the same environment/defense, because of BABIP and sequencing luck.

Oops...yep my bad. Point stands though.

I was also wondering why xFIP/FIP- isn't in this game. I'd love to have that alongside FIP.

FIP- is in the game, have to sort by advanced stats.

1 & 2 -- use a plethora of stats to make decisions. i wouldn't make any decision based solely on 1 stat. personally, i don't like the all-in-one stats for the same reason i don't like the Overall rating... they can be useful, but they are far from precise at the moment. war, wpa, wrc would fall in this category.

also, if you are not 100% stats, trust the ratigns over statistics - while applying common sense. when i say ratings, i mean individual ratings of a FB or a currveball or movement and control etc... not overall ratings. if a SP has 80stuff / 70move / 60con he's going to pitch well no matter what his current stats tell you (ignoring complexities of pitch selection - ie at least 3 types and not all fastballs)....

it you are 100% stats or "Very Low" scouting accuracy, then also include statistics into your evaluation - but only if sample size allows its use. otherwise, account for the additional potential error in the results.

simple fact with normal scouting: ratings far exceed predictive ability of stats. far, far, far exceed. and, 100% accuracy? not even worth comparing to stats... a 100% accurate rating simply "is" the player's probability of success. :p

3) the guys you speak of i may keep as SP in the minors but i know they will never be SP in the majors... very rarely does a lagging 1/XX pitch ever develop when the other 2 are nearly topped-off. if it's a 1/80 in AAA give up on that pitch ever developing... but it's ok to start them in the minors.

if this is common, it's due to how you are drafting them. stop drafting a 3-pitch SP that has 1 extremely terrible pitch - i hesitate to say it... sometimes one pitch is a little lower, but what i am talking about is an extreme case. (4-pitches - 1 can be terrible, of course).

i really don't have the problem you are describing, so it must be a difference in how we draft. you are too often setting yourself up for a SP that cannot ever be an SP in the MLB (99% of the time).

a 50/80 SP can be a really good pitcher. maybe that's part of it. you need a different perspective on what a competent SP is compared to a batter. heck even 40's/80 can be good starters with the right combinations of abilities.

so, more often take the SP that is rated lower, but has 3 pitches... because that other SP is really just a RP in SP clothes at the time of the draft.

prospects getting blocked? shouldn't happen with pitchers, you can shuffle a lesser talent around.. who cares if a 20-30 out of 80 is playing in the wrong minor league tier. it is a big deal for a well-rated prospect you actually care about.

if you somehow have 2 position players developing in parrallel, split time at their position, use a 2nd position or DH to get extra time.. this will bge nothing but a boon later on by having additional positions with experience.

i'm pretty sure # of games played isn't supremely important to development... e.g. 50% might be enough in addition to remaining on the active roster (ie injuries/unemployment hurt development of course). you may not even have to do all that extra stuff to get them playing time, but do it just in case :p

4) the only thing a RP gets when changed from an SP is a slight boost to Stuff, if i recall. check manual for that.

if a younger pitcher loses velocity, i'd assume it's just a random occurence... you see it continue to dip, then i'd be worried. i don't see pitchers in their mid-20's lose velocity often... so, most likely just a random talent change.

For an older pitcher, i'd be a bit more concerned... you'll know shortly if he is losing his arm. over the course of a year he will have mutliple drops in velocity. if you see that happening, get rid of them ASAP and no questions asked about what you get in return. If it drops once in 12 months, it's a red flag and i'd try to get rid of him soon, but he might hang on for a while, too.

a couple examples:

so, if i see a 35-year old drop from 95-97 to 93-95 (2 drops)... i'm looking to get rid of him before his power-pitching repertoire turns to total crap. even one drop at that age is a bit scary... is it TCR or a sign of things to come? (talent change randomness setting - TCR) the younger they are, the more willing i am to wait and see.... maybe if this guy was 31-32 instead of 35, i'd strongly consider waiting and seeing.

if i see a 25-year old drop from 94-96 to 93-95 i'm not too concerned at that age.. it's most likely just TCR rearing its ugly head.

if it's a junk ball pitcher, how fast they throw becomes less important to their results. But, even a knuckleballer needs a fastball of some sort...

5) g/f % - affects hr i bet... probably more important to have a good infield defense for a groundball tendency compared to benefit of good OF and flyball tendency. you won't find a black-and-white answer to this question.

the real rate that causes the most damage is line-drive rate. fb are easy outs, but also more likely a hr... gb require a decent defense to take advantage of ... etc etc.. there are alot of moving parts to this.

i care more about stuff(including pitch selection) movement and control than i do anything else... at best it's a good tie-breaker between 2 very similar choices.

6) babip - it will take 10 years (guesstimate) to know opposing batter's babip of a SP... whatever length required, 1 or 3 years doesn't come close to cutting it - even more so with a reliever. it's extremely volatile from year-to-year. it's unlikely that you will have enough data to accurately evaluate most pitchers in regard to BABIP for many pitchers.

From link below:
"● Players that don’t allow many balls in the air (higher GB% with lower FB% and LD%) generally have higher BABIPs and batting averages against, but allow fewer extra base hits."

This link has good information for 5 and 6 - can use terms from the article to google more information from there. you can see from the one bullet that i pasted... it is a double-edged sword... higher gb% is proably more consistent but won't peak as low as a FB% pitcher, nor as high.

GB%, LD%, FB% | FanGraphs Sabermetrics Library

A pitcher can give up meaningless solo home runs that have no bearing on the outcome of the game and that hurts his FIP.

If the team is winning more often with one guy instead of the other, that's the guy you keep.

CBD - that stuff is better predicted through ratings than with results, because results contain factors the player cannot control. therefor the picture gets a little muddled.

what you said is correlated, don't get me wrong, but the ratings are a cause for those results in the video game. understanding causation trumps correlation every day of the week.

if you play 100% stats or possibly "Very low" scouting accuracy, then i'd weigh the results more as you mention.

if you're gonna pick one stat to go by, FIP is certainly better than W/L record...

1) FIP- is better than FIP. The same for OPS+/OPS.

2) It is, although I think it doesn't work very well in the game for pitchers. It does for batters

3) If they have a third weak pitch, it depends on how strong are the other 2. If stamina is more than 5/8 or 50/80, then you can try him as SP and see how it goes. You can look at pitches / IP and IP / game. If pitches / IP is over 22-25 in a large number of IPs or IP / game is below 5-5.5, then perhaps he's better as a reliever. I've seen Espinoza win Cy Youngs in many simulations with K/9 over 11.0 and BB/9 around 3-4 with that 3rd weak pitch.

4) Yes, it's a decline. If it is just once, don't worry, if it happens twice, start to. The second question... I think the velocity doesn't increase, just that they use their fastball at a higher % over the max velocity. You can see it during games (there is no data saved about velocities or pitch usage afterwards)

5) No, it doesn't. It is nice to have 3 good outfielders, but a low GO% means more line drives and flyballs, which mean more HRs.

6) I read BABIP as an extension of other stats. If FIP- is 90 and BABIP is .400, then that FIP- should be lower. If it is .230, the pitcher is having luck.

Pitching stats not appearing
 

Hi ootp fans:http://1865987047.rsc.cdn77.org/boar...es/thumbup.gif


This is my 2nd post. Where should I post issues like this one.http://1865987047.rsc.cdn77.org/boar.../confused1.gif
Pitching stats wins, loss, save and holds not updating in the setting line ups area, they remain 0, even though the pitchers should have all the above. Anyone else have this problem.http://1865987047.rsc.cdn77.org/boar...ies/mellow.gif


WallyGunner http://1865987047.rsc.cdn77.org/boar...1_rolleyes.gif