One of the many unique features of the NeL was the fact that so many of the position players spent at least some time - usually in the early part of their career - as a pitcher.
When I came up with the concept for the EL, one of the first things I realised was that I was going to struggle to have enough pitchers and catchers. So I made the decision at that early stage to enable as many guys as possible who played even a small portion of their game time at either of these slots to be given ratings there.
Of course, I didn't want this to cause unrealistic scenarios. So I had to be judicious with how I did it. Most importantly, just because a player was going to get some ratings at P, I didn't want those ratings to be unreasonably good.
Eric Chalek only gives two-way ratings for five players in his MLEs, which form part of my ratings methodology: Martin Dihigo, Lazaro Salazar, Bullet Rogan, Ted Radcliffe and Eustaquio Pedroso. And while
Bernardo Baro is one of the players EC covers (he gets 13.4 career MLE WAR), he does so only as a hitter.
According to Seamheads, IRL Bernardo pitched 282.1 innings for a career ERA of 5.20 or 76 ERA+, which indicates he was a fairly ordinary hurler and explains why he eventually moved into the outfield, where he obviously thrived. Still, as I explained, I needed players like him to at least have the option of being used as a pitcher, and when the game also gave him ratings there that seemed broadly in keeping with his historicals (30 STU / 58 MOV / 55 CONT / 90-92 VELO / 45% GB) I decided to let them be and see where things went from there.
Between 1968 and 1970, he performed pretty much as you might expect, perhaps a little better: 21-12 with a slightly above league average ERA. This season, however, he has exploded into one of the league's best performers, going 12-1 / 1.95 and already almost doubling his career pWAR. He's obviously been a wee bit lucky, with his BABIP down 30 points to just 239, but not that much given his opponents BA metric has fallen even further from 259 to just 213. This improved performance has obviously helped his Liberty Stars jump to the top of the WC American at the time of writing.
Jim Riley suggests a serious leg injury suffered chasing a foul ball might be behind his switch from mound to outfield, something that won't play a factor here. And given he has hardly set the league alight at the plate - hitting just 223 in his EL career - we may see him continue in this SP role for some time to come, especially if he keeps going like he is at present.
