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One of the most interesting things to emerge from this discussion is the impossibility of separating defense from pitching, which, of course, is the whole point of DIPS. What I am after, however, is a way to evaluate pitching talent independent of defense. In other words, when you draft a pitching prospect, presumably you're drafting for a future team whose defensive strengths and weaknesses will have altered significantly. We will of course need to learn much more about the rating system for OOTP6. And, as Skipaway suggests, we will need to learn much more about the OOTP6 engine before we can make many conclusions. For example, Craig suggests that the OOTP6 engine was influenced by play-by-play data, which I assume refers to the study that distinguished between line drives, ground balls, fly balls, and pop outs for purposes of BABIP. Pitchers, if I remember the study right, have *some* influence over preventing line drives. That might mean, even if only in the terms of the limited study posted above, that it is not accurate to assign pitchers league average doubles and triples as a percentage of their number of hits on balls in play. That confirms Oakland's stat wizard Paul de Podesta, who, if I am remembering Moneyball right, believed that pitchers had some influence over preventing extra base hits. It will be quite a task to sort this out--but what fun. And Henry I will gladly submit any final results for the baseball simulations group.
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