[NoOne]

pitchers mostly have no effect on babip, but with some pitchers after a long career you can see that they did have an influence on that result for one reason or another. This concept that a pitcher has no effect is not a proven thing.. far from it. there are numerous exceptions, so it's less likely the lottery-effect.

not sure if they normalized for defense or not, but it takes 2000+ innings (made up number but it takes a very very long time.. ~10 years) to know their babip-against. so, basically you'll never know with RP, because i don't think they ever have a sample size suitable and/or retiring soon, so age becomes a major problem to consider by the time you have a sample size suitable to use in that manner.

in ootp, you have an advantage. if you find a correlation between a pitch type and a lower babip, which like others above i am 99% certain that's in the game at the very least for KB pitch and likely a couple others to a lesser extent, you can be fairly certain it's a real cause in OotP and not coincidence.

i'm fairly sure each pitch has it's own profile of attributes. that's how you'd differentiate them... although if the game only uses overall stuff in the sim, that's just a figment of my imagination. but, how would it handle the kb and its drastic differences if it didn't at least recognize the different pitches that make up that rating.

i think what battists said is mostly right, and for an end-user's purposes probably all you need to know, but i woudln't doubt there's a bit of overlap in some cases. and, in extreme cases, can invert the decision curve.

i think we all know of some player with an extremely high rating, and 2 mediocre ones that have a long and successful career that defies what "should be." maybe he has a low control but somehow keeps his bb/9 at or below league average, etc etc....

i've seen a guy with low control keep his walks below league average his entire career and be one of the most dominant closers i've ever seen --highest save% i know off hand, but maybe not the highest ever... that'd by crazy low percentage if pure luck.

now, if that sort if stuff is extremely rare, it's just anomalous, but i think it happens enough that it is just normal and simple math of the game. (not referencing 1 good year at any point above... long-term success, suitable sample)

no matter how they did choose to make this work, there will be holes... what imean is a reference to wkelly73 rhetorical questions above... some of that stuff, not neccessarily all of it, is inevitable... they won'thave a perfectly logical solution, most likely. it's a complicated thing to model with insufficient data, so there's some personal preference and guessing invovled, inevitably.