Please help me spot/solve my defensive issues and understand what determines defensive performance.

[DotDash]

Hi,

One of my teams is struggling more than usual in Diamond, and a lot of it seems down to defensive shortcomings: SP ERA is way higher than their FIP, and the team is rated 21st in Defensive Efficiency.
However, when I look at the individual defensive performances of my lineup, I see only one big negative contributor: Joe DiMaggio, with a ZR of -6.3 and efficiency of .960. 9 of my 13 batters (excluding DH) have a positive efficiency rating.

It gets even more confusing when I look at the league 'team fielding' statistics. My team is ranked 7th in ZR and tied 2nd for fielding percentage. The one metric it's ranked low in, is 'DEF', which seems like a catch-all metric and may be what I need to be looking at. But if a team's ZR and other individual defensive metrics seem OK, what is causing the team to be overall defensively bad, resulting in inflated ERA's?

The team leading my subdivision is ranked one spot higher in D. Eff., despite having Pete Rose play 2B (!), and using Mike Piazza as primary catcher. His Joe DiMaggio is fielding even worse than mine (-7.5 ZR, .924 efficiency.) Yet, this team does not show the gap between ERA and FIP, and the same pitchers are getting much better results, i.e. 1.5 ERA better.

I've been playing PT for years, but with each new version I feel more and more out of touch with what determines a team's performance. I thought it was common knowledge that pitcher performance depends in large part on catcher ability, and that good middle infielders are key to supress runs, but looking at the above, perhaps this has changed? Any insight more savvy players can provide is welcome.

Thanks in advance.

[daves]

Go to player search and sort fielding stats by position. You will probably find most teams are using the same players in every position. Some Jackies are doing well, some are not. Morgan actually seems better at 2b? Maybe?

But it could improve as the season progresses? I have a decent defense, but was 30th in field efficiency during the 1st month.

[chazzycat]

Oh hi! I'm in your league yet again...you can't escape me!

I think you are just getting a bit unlucky this season. When your ZR is ranked 3rd but DEFF is 10th, that means your fielders are playing well, the balls just aren't finding them. The two most likely explanations for that are random fluctuation, or +AVG park factors. But you are running a neutral park so most likely it's just bad luck.

On the flip side Blanton is getting a bit lucky since their ZR is ranked lower than DEFF, and they also run a neutral park. So with a little luck maybe you have a little regression (the good kind) headed your way in the 2nd half.

[DotDash]

Originally Posted by chazzycat

Oh hi! I'm in your league yet again...you can't escape me!

I think you are just getting a bit unlucky this season. When your ZR is ranked 3rd but DEFF is 10th, that means your fielders are playing well, the balls just aren't finding them. The two most likely explanations for that are random fluctuation, or +AVG park factors. But you are running a neutral park so most likely it's just bad luck.

On the flip side Blanton is getting a bit lucky since their ZR is ranked lower than DEFF, and they also run a neutral park. So with a little luck maybe you have a little regression (the good kind) headed your way in the 2nd half.

Hi Chazzycat,

Yeah I'd noticed you in 'my' league again, and doing quite well as usual. Am I correct in thinking you manually micro your rotation to suit each series in a season? I don't know what you're doing with that Carlton card especially (15 pitch starts?), but it seems to be working

Thanks for the comment on defense. I thought luck would not factor into defensive metrics, as 'hitting them where they ain't' can't be attributed to the fielders, but this is incorrect? Still can't get over how 2B Rose and Piazza can be viable in the hyper-optimized state of play, but perhaps it's best when there is still some mystery to the game, at least.

[chazzycat]

Luck definitely plays a significant part in defense. The hitter can do their job and hit a line drive - but the difference in outcomes is huge just based on the randomness of whether it's hit directly to a fielder vs. in the gap. Same thing for groundballs, to a slightly lesser extent, but groundballs are more common so it can be still lead to a lot of variance. So it's not really attributed to the defenders themselves - which is why your ZR looks good - but it does show up in overall defensive efficiency.

One thing that may contribute, would be if you aren't utilizing the shift slider. I kind of assume everyone shifts nowadays like they do in real MLB, but it's worth mentioning in case you haven't touched that slider. I usually put mine 1 spot short of the max.

I haven't actually touched a thing on my team this season. Zero micro whatsoever. Carlton is being used as an opener with a strict 3 BF limit, which lets him pitch back to back days. I have 3 RHP followers in my rotation and 2 fulltime lefties.

[DotDash]

I've not experimented with the sliders too much, as I really don't understand how they impact the game enough (even if I know the function of a strategy in the actual sport.) I will try out your shift recommendation, as this team is becoming worse on defense with every game, it seems (now 25th in D.Eff.)
Most of my pitchers now have much higher ERA's than they did last year in Perfect (!), and we've lost another 7 of the last 8 games.

I've never understood the performance fluctuations in this game, and defense was one of the few area's where I felt comfortable in just trusting 'higher number = better'. Going from: winning Diamond (with playoff RNG luck) -> ending just below .500 in Perfect -> just above .500 in Diamond with dismal defense / pitching, while actually improving the team's players every week is just weird to me.
The recent cards are really underperforming for me by the way: Waner (hitting .251), Crawford (.243) and incredibly pricey pack pull George Davis (.204!) are a detriment to the team compared to whoever they replaced. So that doesn't help.

Thanks again for the tips. Edit: and thanks for the willingness to share your tactics in general, most players guard that stuff like Fort Knox, I would imagine.

[professor ape]

Watch out for shortstops and third basemen with lower arm ratings. That will hurt their performance. Range is most important for second basemen and for first base, make sure they have a good error rating. Height also has an impact at first base but personally I haven’t dug that deep. At catcher people are obsessed with the catcher ability rating. That is important but don’t ignore the catcher arm. Being able to throw out base runners is very helpful at the higher levels. In the outfield, left is the most forgiving position. You want crazy range in center and a big arm in right.

[DotDash]

Originally Posted by professor ape

Watch out for shortstops and third basemen with lower arm ratings. That will hurt their performance. Range is most important for second basemen and for first base, make sure they have a good error rating. Height also has an impact at first base but Personally I havenÂ’t dug that deep. At catcher people are obsessed with the catcher ability rating. That is important but donÂ’t ignore the catcher arm. Being able to throw out base runners is very helpful at the higher levels. In the outfield, left is the most forgiving position. You want crazy range in center and a big arm in right.

Hi Prof. Ape,

That's just it though, I think I have all of these covered:

3B: George Davis (rated 117!), with arm 99. Versus lefties it's Wander Franco, with arm 89 (I see this card used all the time, so it must be at least decent.)
SS: Arky Vaughan like 90% of players.
2B: Robinson (range 95), splitting time against righties with Joe Morgan (range 99.)
1B: just replaced Musial, who would not hit, with Sisler vs. righties, while Foxx handles lefty pitchers. Many people have Pete Rose here, who I think is rated a bit lower defensively than these two.

I always prioritize Catcher Defense (I kept bronze Mike LaValliere around for his defense in Perfect League for a while, in PT... 19? 20?), so I had McCarver and Freehan, both with C-Ability of 105. They were controlling the running game fine, as the stolen base attempts against was among the lowest in the league. % caught stealing also normal. This morning I did replace McCarver with the new Mauer card, as defense was bad already and McCarver was not hitting at all either.

W.r.t. the outfield, I was always convinced that CF was way more important than the corner spots, but prior to this year's launch, someone posted a team building bible that got a lot of praise, which, IIRC, stated that both corner spots were actually more important than CF. Anyway, I have Willie Wilson (119 rating LF), Sam Crawford splitting duties with Al Kaline (107 and 124 rating RF respectively), and Joe DiMaggio (105 CF.)
Crawford and DiMaggio could be replaced with more defense-only options, but this would cost many runs on the offensive side, and these cards do fine on other teams.

I have implemented the shift settings recommended by Chazzycat, but Defensive Efficiency remains 25th in the league. Overall performance is still poor despite adding peak Maddux, as the team just lost 3 games by 3-2 in a row, and is two games below .500 for August so far.

I'll see what happens the rest of the year, and might turn this neutral team to the cheese side for next season, with more extreme strategy settings if I can find a comprehensive resource explaining how these impact PT performance in particular. Also, note that I have never struggled with this aspect of the game in the previous editions, it just feels.... different now.

Thanks for the response, and best of luck with the remainder of the season.

[professor ape]

You look pretty solid. Remember that at the higher levels most everyone has a strong defense so small variances will quickly make the difference between being in the top ten and being in the bottom third. Luck plays a huge factor even at the season level. My defense is ver close to yours. Last week my Def Eff rank was 8th or 9th in the league while this year I am in the middle of the pack at 14th. To me the best indicator is to check your ERA against your FIP. If you see an ERA that is higher than your FIP at the end of the season, then you likely should make some tweaks. Even then, luck will add a lot of noise.

[DotDash]

Originally Posted by professor ape

You look pretty solid. Remember that at the higher levels most everyone has a strong defense so small variances will quickly make the difference between being in the top ten and being in the bottom third. Luck plays a huge factor even at the season level. My defense is ver close to yours. Last week my Def Eff rank was 8th or 9th in the league while this year I am in the middle of the pack at 14th. To me the best indicator is to check your ERA against your FIP. If you see an ERA that is higher than your FIP at the end of the season, then you likely should make some tweaks. Even then, luck will add a lot of noise.

Indeed, my overall SP ERA was more than a run higher than FIP, which is what prompted me to make this thread
Since implementing Chazzycat's shift recommendation, team defensive efficiency crept up from 25th to 18th in the league, and we actually went on a decent run in the end - only to miss the playoffs (which seemed completely out of reach for most of the season) by losing a tiebreaker game. And of course OP Maddux was my losing pitcher by surrendering 7 runs in 3.1 IP Perhaps I'll learn not to make midseason additions someday - they almost always seem to underperform.

Thanks again for the recommendations!

[ChessSafari]

Hi! The zone and def ratings were really wonky and unreliable for awhile (there is another thread concerning this) but it looks to me like the devs may have made some improvements in the most recent patch, since there have been significant retroactive changes to the defensive stats.

I evaluate my position players using WAR per 600 PA. The OOTPB-22 stats have factored both defense and offense into the WAR metrics. Now that I have multiple seasons in Diamond, including a couple of trips to the playoffs, I filter for Diamond only stats. FWIW, here are my top position players based on WAR/600.

Best wishes to you and your team.

My team has been right at .700 def eff and top 3 ZR in the conference during the past three seasons.

C - Mauer 7.83 (small sample obviously)
McCarver 3.21
Cooper - 2.58
Piazza - 2.44

1B - Pujols (used mostly at lower levels Gold and below)
Cash - 2.73
Gehrig - 2.29
Foxx has NOT done well for me.
First base is the most dynamic position as I also use Mauer (and Rose, Musial, Crawford & Charleston depending on who is elsewhere at any point in time)

2B - Morgan - 4.28
McAuliffe - 4.21 (very weak offensively, but great in the field at 3 important positions - good back-up if surrounded by great hitters. Worthless as DH)
Robinson - 3.98 (v. LHP)
Grich - 2.63
Biggio - 2.57

3B - Ventura - 3.72
Wright - 3.62
Beltre - 2.56 (rarely used anymore)

SS - Appling - 3.88 (with Jackie as back-up)
Reese - 2.61 (small sample, probably won't play if you have some combination of Appling/Arky/Jackie)

LF - Raines - 3.83 (he's still hanging in there, thanks mostly to his stealing prowess)
Crawford - 3.47 (likely to overtake Raines soon)
Rose - 2.92 (backs up multiple positions and can DH both sides)

CF - DiMaggio - 3.67
Charleston - 3.36
Flood - 2.72

RF - Thompson - 3.65
Ott - 3.60 (has done worse in recent weeks as better pitchers have been released)
Waner - 3.55
Crawford - 3.47
Baines - 2.66

Surprisingly bad for me (compared to other teams' results) have been Medwick, J. Collins, Franco, Fernandez, Sandberg, Crandall, Schmidt, McGwire and many others not mentioned. I have made all of the missions except for the high PP packables and rare tourney rewards, so have tried most of the players in the game. I sold Arky early in order to complete some missions (plus a few others, e.g. Yaz, Kaline where I had position overload). Appling has been so good for me that I haven't looked back on the decision to part with Arky.

Hope this info, added together with other data you have collected, is helpful.

P.S. I can also post the ERA/FIP comparisons for my top 30 pitchers, but I don't want to spam your thread. Let me know if those are of interest to you.

[DotDash]

Thanks ChessSafari,

I used to do something similar (see attached) in PT20, even going so far as to estimate how many team wins above replacement would be needed in an average year to reach the postseason, and then calculating whether each of my individual players contributed enough per Plate Appearance to warrant keeping on the team

So much of my time is going into pack opening, selling off surplus cards, and managing the 10000 card limit for three teams, that I don't have as much time to actually play the game as I used to. There also doesn't seem to be as much use to do analyses like these, now that all (good) teams are using basically the same players, with only slight variation - which is mostly determined by what type of cheese is employed by a player. Determining why one player's copy of a card performs differently from another's is difficult for me, because there are so many variables (park factors, strategy sliders, etc.)

Do you know whether "ZR" in OOTP refers to Ultimate Zone Rating, by the way? I used to interpret ZR as defensive runs saved, as in previous versions of PT the ZR number used to be much higher for elite defenders than UZR would ever generate (as in +45 ZR), but I have noticed ZR being lower across the board this year.
My DiMaggio went from -3.0 in 2045, to -5.0 in 2046 (in Perfect) to -16.0(!) ZR last year. That's below the reference number for 'Awful' in the Fangraphs UZR definition (https://library.fangraphs.com/defense/uzr/).
Arky Vaughan averages about 25 ZR for me, and Willie Wilson in LF had a 23 ZR rating two years in a row. This is above the Gold Glove reference number (+15) given by Fangraphs...
As many teams use both DiMaggio and Vaughan, I doubt my cards are performing much worse (-16) or much better (+25) than the versions on other teams, and I do believe UZR is a relative rating. So yeah, I still don't get what ZR actually means after all these years

Best of luck to you as well!

Edit: Man, I miss running out Gold cards in Perfect league - Mike Tauchman, Garry Maddox, Pee Wee Reese, even Bronze LaValliere was viable for a good while. So many more ways to compete back then