Quick Test: Does Hold Runners matter?

Argonaut · 01-04-2021, 06:12 PM

Not all that interesting or useful of a test, but I was pondering how much of an impact the Hold Runners rating had on pitcher/team performance. In the spirit of Mark Buehrle being on the Hall of Fame ballot.

So I tested a full staff/bullpen with varying Hold Runners ratings (1-250 scale): 100 (Normal), 20 (Weak), and 200 (Strong). Texas Rangers against Seattle Mariners in Modern MLB. The Mariners have Mallex Smith who's a great base-stealer.

It has a big impact on stolen bases against, naturally. With the strong set of pitchers giving up about half as many steals as the normal set, and the weak set of pitchers giving up 2.5x the stolen bases as the strong set. But does this matter? In some ways I'd want more attempts against me because analytics say most batters shouldn't ever bother stealing.

So more important is the SB% success rate. In my test the great holders pin the opposition to 73%, while the weak holders give up 79%. This difference is definitely skirting the line from unprofitable to profitable steal attempts.

The other factor is pickoffs... I assume pitchers with high Hold Runners pickoff more men on base. This is a great asset with no downside. Free outs. And outs are really good.

So what does it all add up to? Well if you go from an entire pitching cohort of weak holders to strong holders, you can maybe expect 10 fewer earned runs and 1 more win per season. Not earth shattering, but nice to have. Practically speaking though, that will never be a real decision to make... pitchers still generate most of their value from STU/MOV/CON.

Note: My conclusions don't fully take into account unearned runs saved, extra innings, and probably some other things. I'd wager it's all mostly a wash though.

pgjocki · 01-04-2021, 09:28 PM

Interesting. Maybe that's why Lester got $150 million because they needed him to strike guys out instead of hold them on 1st.

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pgjocki · 01-04-2021, 09:29 PM

BTW, thanks. Good post.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

Charlie Hough · 01-06-2021, 06:02 PM

It sounds like you didn't control for whether or not the manager is actually using the in-game option to hold runners with these same pitchers. That means altering their delivery and pitch timing to keep runners guessing. Pitchers have a bit less control in OOTP when you're using this option while managing games, but if you use it frequently with pitchers who are great at holding runners, you won't just lower stolen base attempts and successes, but you'll also help prevent runners from advancing extra bases on base hits. It adds up to far more than just one win or 10 fewer earned runs over the course of the season.

I manage all of my teams' games in OOTP, and while I haven't run a formal data analysis in recent years, my teams consistently outperform others when it comes to ERA, runs allowed, and stolen bases against. It's largely because I try to build a great staff, but it also includes avoiding pitchers with low ratings for hold runners, and I make pretty heavy use of the hold runners option in the in-game management menu. If you do this enough, you'll see and can measure the difference it makes in helping prevent runners from being able to advance on base hits.

Unfortunately, though, if you're just running a mass test with the AI managing all the games, there's no way to know how often the AI is using the hold runners option.

Argonaut · 01-07-2021, 01:44 PM

I agree the test doesn't count for in-game management decisions, nor do I think it's really possible. In-game managing has exploits not in the spirit of an objective test though. I.E. everyone taking pitches until 2 strikes, double steals, and I'm sure some others that those who play-out games more often would know.

Garlon · 01-07-2021, 01:54 PM

I think it is possible that the game is unfortunately heavily weighting catcher arm t determine both SB attempts and caught stealing. There is almost no difference in caught stealing among catchers but there is a difference is stolen base attempts allowed it seems. I suggested in the historicals forum that the SB attempts should be very heavily weighted on the pitcher hold runner rating and the caught stealing be the catcher arm rating.

Are you able to try this test again against catcher arm ratings and look at both stolen base attempts as well as caught stealing rates?

That might tell us something more about this issue.

Argonaut · 01-07-2021, 05:35 PM

As per Garlon's request, I ran the same quick test... but with Catcher Arm as the variable rather than Hold Runners.

We'll find out if Lou Brock was right when he said that 99% of the time you steal on a pitcher.

All pitchers had 100 Hold Runners, and the Ranger C's Catcher Arms were adjusted to 100 (Normal), 25 (Weak), and 200 (Strong).

I'll add the other test to this post again for easier comparison. The only difference is I realized I could look at total runs allowed (over 162 games) rather than just earned runs in the last column.

The stolen bases against per game are shockingly similar. I wouldn't be surprised if OOTP weighted Hold Runners and Catcher Arm equally in determining quantity of stolen bases against.

The SB% success rate shows that OOTP likely values a Catcher's Arm more in determining the % success (sorry Lou Brock). Catchers with a weak arm are definitely punished, as I'm sure they would be in real life.

Going from an average arm to a strong one isn't a huge boost. But it's way more practical to get 2 strong defensive catchers than 12 or 13 pitchers great at holding the runner. Also remember that other research shows that Catcher Ability is more important than Catcher Arm overall.

Not sure what's going on in your research, Garlon. Maybe setting stolen base strategy leaguewide to Very High skews your results?

Argonaut · 01-07-2021, 05:53 PM

Upon looking at the numbers again, perhaps Garlon is right when he says Catcher Arm doesn't matter quite as much as it should.
The difference between a weak arm and a strong one is 18%, and a normal arm and a strong arm has only a 5% difference.

Whereas Ivan Rodriguez had a career 46% caught stealing (54% SB%). And Mike Piazza had only half of that with a career 23% caught stealing (77% SB%). The difference there is 23%.
But more telling is the league average caught stealing being 31%, which Pudge was 15% better than.

So perhaps weak armed Catchers shouldn't be punished so much, and strong armed Catchers should benefit even more.

Argonaut · 01-07-2021, 06:07 PM

Out of curiosity I ran the test again with maximum Catcher Arm (250). Some more diminishing returns, as only 32% of runners were caught. Though the actual stolen bases against fell big time.

So it doesn't appear possible to replicate Pudge's 46% career caught stealing. Well, at least against the 2020 Mariners.

Garlon · 01-07-2021, 07:05 PM

What I have seen in many games where I play 1871-2019 is that Piazza and Rodriguez end up with nearly the same caught stealing percentage, however, there are fewer attempts against Rodriguez. I think OOTP needs to put the stolen base attempts on the pitcher hold runner rating and the caught stealing percentage on the catcher arm rating. I do not think these should be combined to determine attempts or determine the success rate.

For their careers, Piazza was 141 caught stealing below league average per his attempts and Rodriguez was 221 caught stealing above league average. Their careers overlapped and these are the the lowest and highest values in history. Piazza made 15 more errors than average but also had 11 fewer passed balls than average for his career, and Rodriguez made 4 fewer errors than average and had 37 fewer passed balls than average.

Argonaut · 01-07-2021, 11:06 PM

Having a look at the Pudge/Piazza real life stats... it appears teams tried to steal a lot more on Piazza than Pudge. Roughly speaking, about double the SB attempts. Makes sense, caught stealing isn't exactly an advanced stat and teams could figure out which catchers were worth stealing on more or less often.

Given my data it shouldn't be quite so pronounced a difference though. So to balance it out I would suggest the devs dampen the Catcher Arm suppression effect on SB attempts, and increase the CS% bonus for strong arms a bit more.

Garlon · 01-08-2021, 06:57 AM

Part of the problem is trying to make one rating, Catcher Arm, serve two functions, influencing SB attempts and determining caught stealing. I think having Catcher Ability serve two functions works nicely as that can influence catcher errors and passed balls, but having Arm control both aspects of stolen bases unfortunately is not working as well as intended.

I think adding another rating to catchers, such as baserunner intimidation or catcher pop time (maybe you can come up with a better name), to determine SB attempts and have catcher arm determine the caught stealing will work better, but I think adding another rating to catchers might be too much work. We do certainly have the SB attempts and caught stealing data for catchers though since 1890 to create such a rating.

If another rating was added then we could have a two ratings that determine SB attempts, one for pitchers and one for catchers. The game could then weight both of these equally, averaging them, to determine a stolen base attempt. The outcome of the attempt then gets determined by the catcher arm rating. With another rating I think that stealing will be modeled better.

Argonaut · 01-08-2021, 11:59 AM

Honestly I think the right fix is just tweaking it a bit from where it is now. Like I said, dampen the suppression effect of Catcher Arm a bit, and increase CS% for great arms.

Assume there's a 3rd rating like you suggest focused on SB suppression -- Intimidation for lack of a better word. The optimal Catcher would have extremely low Intimidation and extremely high Catcher Arm. It just wouldn't make a lot of sense.

If there's anything that deserves a 3rd rating for Catchers it's Pitch Framing. Right now it's tied into Catcher Ability which I'm sure affects passed balls and minor things that don't come up much like fielding foul ball popups. Those are quite different than framing. But honestly I don't mind how it is with just Ability/Arm. It just seems Arm needs some adjustment.

Garlon · 01-08-2021, 12:20 PM

I agree with your suggestion about dampening the suppression effect and Catcher Arm on stealing ability. This should be in some way averaged with the pitcher Hold Runner rating, which probably needs a better import process for historical games. We can calculate the stolen base attempts per times reaching base against any pitcher since about 1925 if stolen base and caught stealing are in the game database, those statistics are available on baseball reference, and for seasons from 1871-1924 there is team data we can use and apply that to all pitchers who played for that team that season.

I am against the pitch framing being any more significant though. I am not convinced that the data is reliable or that it shows a consistent and significant skill. We also do not have any historical data on this, so that would be adding a fudge factor to historical games and muddying the actual pitcher vs batter probabilities.

Syd Thrift · 01-08-2021, 01:00 PM

Ok, but is there statistical evidence that catchers have much of an ability to influence steals against them outside of their caught stealing percentages in real life? It’s my admittedly undocumented experience that in game players steal for close to the same success rate against good catchers as bad but attempt way more vs bad ones. That’s an argument that that should get flattened out though more than that we should add a “pop time” rating that IRL is something individual pitchers and not catchers influence.

It’s definitely the case, though, that pitchers do have a huge influence over caught stealing rates as well as attempt rates. It’s hard to find data on this but i know Fooliah Baseball for instance looked at that catcher from 10 years ago who finished with something like a 5% caught stealing rate and found that this was actually caused by the pitchers on that team (the Pirates?) throwing from a windup with men on base. I remember Chris Widger getting similarly dinged one year in Montreal in the 90s. And again, I wish I could find stats but I’m almost positive that the best pitchers at holding runners have rates better than I-Rod, even taking the fact that most pickoffs don’t count as caught stealing into account (and of course there are guys who are terrible at holding runners who are worse than any catcher but that’s to be expected since catchers who can’t throw out runners generally don’t keep their jobs).

Even in Rodriguez’ case I specifically remember people complaining that he’d often call for fastballs in good steal situations regardless of whether or not the guy on the mound had a good fastball that day. I’m not sure how you’d put that into a game like OOTP - I guess you could have it reflected in a relatively low “range” rating but then you’d have people complain that the all time greatest catcher shouldn’t have a 40/80 fielding or whatever.

I guess what I’d like to see is teams deciding whether to run or not based far more on their lead off of first (and therefore the Hold Runners rating) than the catcher’s arm. While there is probably some reluctance to steal off of guys with cannons I don’t think it’s nearly as big of a difference as the game makes it out to be, and if a runner has a green light and a good lead, he’s going to assume he’s going to make that base regardless of who’s behind the plate.

Matt Arnold · 01-08-2021, 02:01 PM

Thanks for looking at the data

Certainly there is supposed to be a larger impact of pitcher hold than C arm, at least in regards to steal attempts, but it's possible there's other factors at play, especially at the extremes.

Feel free to keep poking, and we can certainly look at what changes might make sense to make on this down the road.

Garlon · 01-08-2021, 02:09 PM

I was testing some fielding results and I have a save of a 1954-2019 replay using real lineups and transactions.

Piazza
Real: 23% of 1756 attempts and -60 ZR
OOTP: 26% of 1469 attempts and +3 ZR

Rodriguez
Real: 46% of 1447 attempts and +169 ZR
OOTP: 35.8% of 1659 attempts and +43.9 ZR

I want to see the difference between them be more than this, but if everyone else is fine with this then we should keep things the way they are. According to baseball reference there is about a 229 difference in runs saved between them and in OOTP it is a mere 40 runs saved, but I think OOTP might not be calculating ZR correctly for catchers for some reason.

If you are wondering about real plays made, Piazza was -15 errors, +11 passed balls, and -141 caught stealing. Rodriguez was +4 errors, +37 passed balls, and +221 caught stealing. On these plays Piazza was a total of 145 plays below average and Rodriguez was 262 plays above average.

If strong catcher arm ratings resulted in more caught stealing that would also decrease the caught stealing from catchers with weaker catcher arm ratings and the caught stealing results may turn out better.

Argonaut · 01-08-2021, 02:50 PM

Hold Runners and Catcher Arm seem to have almost exactly a 50/50 split on suppressing stealing attempts in OOTP. I'm not sure if this aligns with real-life baseball or not, beyond anecdotal thoughts. I'm sure you could figure something out statistically but it would be a massive project.

I said before to maybe dampen Catcher Arm suppression of stolen bases, but from Garlon's above post, maybe this isn't needed? It seems that perhaps runners should try to steal more on weak arms though. But we definitely need bumping up the CS% of a strong arm.

It seems like SB% stays within historical accuracy when you run a sim. Around 66%? So looks like Catchers' CS% are getting pulled to the middle, when weak Catchers like Piazza should get punished a tiny bit more, and strong Catchers like Pudge should get a nicer CS% boost.

Framing has been discussed elsewhere, and it's in OOTP under Catcher Ability. It has more of an effect in OOTP21 than in OOTP20 and before. I like this and don't think it needs changing, at least until we have robo-umps.

Charlie Hough · 01-08-2021, 03:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Argonaut

I agree the test doesn't count for in-game management decisions, nor do I think it's really possible. In-game managing has exploits not in the spirit of an objective test though. I.E. everyone taking pitches until 2 strikes, double steals, and I'm sure some others that those who play-out games more often would know.

The hold runners option isn't an exploit, though. It's one of the options the AI uses, and it's available in one-pitch mode. If you could just set up an AI vs. AI test and know how often the hold runner option is used, then you could truly measure the overall effect of the hold runners rating for pitchers. But unfortunately OOTP doesn't give us a way to do this for the AI.

SR000 · 04-06-2022, 05:47 PM

I think you have to throw averages out to a great degree when evaluating. If indeed you have a catcher that makes the opposition think twice, then generally only the better base stealers will have a green light and thus a potentially higher success rate enters the equation. Attempts are really the main barometer.

Obviously in real life if you go into a series and Piazza is behind the plate, you are going to think about running more than if Rodriguez is (hats off to him if he did indeed call fastballs at the right time!)

As for Brock, of course you steal on the pitcher. The catcher is fixed. If you have the green light at that point it's a question of what the next pitch might be and what kind of lead you get. The runner can't worry about the throw. The catcher either nails him or he doesn't.

01-04-2021, 06:12 PM	#1
Argonaut All Star Starter Join Date: Apr 2019 Posts: 1,085	Quick Test: Does Hold Runners matter? Not all that interesting or useful of a test, but I was pondering how much of an impact the Hold Runners rating had on pitcher/team performance. In the spirit of Mark Buehrle being on the Hall of Fame ballot. So I tested a full staff/bullpen with varying Hold Runners ratings (1-250 scale): 100 (Normal), 20 (Weak), and 200 (Strong). Texas Rangers against Seattle Mariners in Modern MLB. The Mariners have Mallex Smith who's a great base-stealer. It has a big impact on stolen bases against, naturally. With the strong set of pitchers giving up about half as many steals as the normal set, and the weak set of pitchers giving up 2.5x the stolen bases as the strong set. But does this matter? In some ways I'd want more attempts against me because analytics say most batters shouldn't ever bother stealing. So more important is the SB% success rate. In my test the great holders pin the opposition to 73%, while the weak holders give up 79%. This difference is definitely skirting the line from unprofitable to profitable steal attempts. The other factor is pickoffs... I assume pitchers with high Hold Runners pickoff more men on base. This is a great asset with no downside. Free outs. And outs are really good. So what does it all add up to? Well if you go from an entire pitching cohort of weak holders to strong holders, you can maybe expect 10 fewer earned runs and 1 more win per season. Not earth shattering, but nice to have. Practically speaking though, that will never be a real decision to make... pitchers still generate most of their value from STU/MOV/CON. Note: My conclusions don't fully take into account unearned runs saved, extra innings, and probably some other things. I'd wager it's all mostly a wash though. Attached Images __________________ Texas Rangers Dynasty (Est. 1972) Hartford Whalers Dynasty: Brass Bonanza

01-04-2021, 09:28 PM	#2
pgjocki All Star Starter Join Date: Jun 2013 Location: Maryland - just outside DC Posts: 1,585	Interesting. Maybe that's why Lester got $150 million because they needed him to strike guys out instead of hold them on 1st. Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk __________________ - - - World Series championships: 1926, 1931, 1934, 1942, 1944, 1946, 1964, 1967, 1982, 2006, 2011

01-04-2021, 09:29 PM	#3
pgjocki All Star Starter Join Date: Jun 2013 Location: Maryland - just outside DC Posts: 1,585	BTW, thanks. Good post. Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk __________________ - - - World Series championships: 1926, 1931, 1934, 1942, 1944, 1946, 1964, 1967, 1982, 2006, 2011

01-06-2021, 06:02 PM	#4
Charlie Hough Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 3,640	It sounds like you didn't control for whether or not the manager is actually using the in-game option to hold runners with these same pitchers. That means altering their delivery and pitch timing to keep runners guessing. Pitchers have a bit less control in OOTP when you're using this option while managing games, but if you use it frequently with pitchers who are great at holding runners, you won't just lower stolen base attempts and successes, but you'll also help prevent runners from advancing extra bases on base hits. It adds up to far more than just one win or 10 fewer earned runs over the course of the season. I manage all of my teams' games in OOTP, and while I haven't run a formal data analysis in recent years, my teams consistently outperform others when it comes to ERA, runs allowed, and stolen bases against. It's largely because I try to build a great staff, but it also includes avoiding pitchers with low ratings for hold runners, and I make pretty heavy use of the hold runners option in the in-game management menu. If you do this enough, you'll see and can measure the difference it makes in helping prevent runners from being able to advance on base hits. Unfortunately, though, if you're just running a mass test with the AI managing all the games, there's no way to know how often the AI is using the hold runners option. Last edited by Charlie Hough; 01-07-2021 at 01:38 PM.

01-07-2021, 01:44 PM	#5
Argonaut All Star Starter Join Date: Apr 2019 Posts: 1,085	I agree the test doesn't count for in-game management decisions, nor do I think it's really possible. In-game managing has exploits not in the spirit of an objective test though. I.E. everyone taking pitches until 2 strikes, double steals, and I'm sure some others that those who play-out games more often would know. __________________ Texas Rangers Dynasty (Est. 1972) Hartford Whalers Dynasty: Brass Bonanza

01-07-2021, 01:54 PM	#6
Garlon Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2004 Posts: 4,254	I think it is possible that the game is unfortunately heavily weighting catcher arm t determine both SB attempts and caught stealing. There is almost no difference in caught stealing among catchers but there is a difference is stolen base attempts allowed it seems. I suggested in the historicals forum that the SB attempts should be very heavily weighted on the pitcher hold runner rating and the caught stealing be the catcher arm rating. Are you able to try this test again against catcher arm ratings and look at both stolen base attempts as well as caught stealing rates? That might tell us something more about this issue.

01-07-2021, 05:35 PM	#7
Argonaut All Star Starter Join Date: Apr 2019 Posts: 1,085	As per Garlon's request, I ran the same quick test... but with Catcher Arm as the variable rather than Hold Runners. We'll find out if Lou Brock was right when he said that 99% of the time you steal on a pitcher. All pitchers had 100 Hold Runners, and the Ranger C's Catcher Arms were adjusted to 100 (Normal), 25 (Weak), and 200 (Strong). I'll add the other test to this post again for easier comparison. The only difference is I realized I could look at total runs allowed (over 162 games) rather than just earned runs in the last column. The stolen bases against per game are shockingly similar. I wouldn't be surprised if OOTP weighted Hold Runners and Catcher Arm equally in determining quantity of stolen bases against. The SB% success rate shows that OOTP likely values a Catcher's Arm more in determining the % success (sorry Lou Brock). Catchers with a weak arm are definitely punished, as I'm sure they would be in real life. Going from an average arm to a strong one isn't a huge boost. But it's way more practical to get 2 strong defensive catchers than 12 or 13 pitchers great at holding the runner. Also remember that other research shows that Catcher Ability is more important than Catcher Arm overall. Not sure what's going on in your research, Garlon. Maybe setting stolen base strategy leaguewide to Very High skews your results? Attached Images __________________ Texas Rangers Dynasty (Est. 1972) Hartford Whalers Dynasty: Brass Bonanza Last edited by Argonaut; 01-07-2021 at 05:44 PM.

01-07-2021, 05:53 PM	#8
Argonaut All Star Starter Join Date: Apr 2019 Posts: 1,085	Upon looking at the numbers again, perhaps Garlon is right when he says Catcher Arm doesn't matter quite as much as it should. The difference between a weak arm and a strong one is 18%, and a normal arm and a strong arm has only a 5% difference. Whereas Ivan Rodriguez had a career 46% caught stealing (54% SB%). And Mike Piazza had only half of that with a career 23% caught stealing (77% SB%). The difference there is 23%. But more telling is the league average caught stealing being 31%, which Pudge was 15% better than. So perhaps weak armed Catchers shouldn't be punished so much, and strong armed Catchers should benefit even more. __________________ Texas Rangers Dynasty (Est. 1972) Hartford Whalers Dynasty: Brass Bonanza Last edited by Argonaut; 01-07-2021 at 05:58 PM.

01-07-2021, 06:07 PM	#9
Argonaut All Star Starter Join Date: Apr 2019 Posts: 1,085	Out of curiosity I ran the test again with maximum Catcher Arm (250). Some more diminishing returns, as only 32% of runners were caught. Though the actual stolen bases against fell big time. So it doesn't appear possible to replicate Pudge's 46% career caught stealing. Well, at least against the 2020 Mariners. Attached Images __________________ Texas Rangers Dynasty (Est. 1972) Hartford Whalers Dynasty: Brass Bonanza

01-07-2021, 07:05 PM	#10
Garlon Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2004 Posts: 4,254	What I have seen in many games where I play 1871-2019 is that Piazza and Rodriguez end up with nearly the same caught stealing percentage, however, there are fewer attempts against Rodriguez. I think OOTP needs to put the stolen base attempts on the pitcher hold runner rating and the caught stealing percentage on the catcher arm rating. I do not think these should be combined to determine attempts or determine the success rate. For their careers, Piazza was 141 caught stealing below league average per his attempts and Rodriguez was 221 caught stealing above league average. Their careers overlapped and these are the the lowest and highest values in history. Piazza made 15 more errors than average but also had 11 fewer passed balls than average for his career, and Rodriguez made 4 fewer errors than average and had 37 fewer passed balls than average.

01-07-2021, 11:06 PM	#11
Argonaut All Star Starter Join Date: Apr 2019 Posts: 1,085	Having a look at the Pudge/Piazza real life stats... it appears teams tried to steal a lot more on Piazza than Pudge. Roughly speaking, about double the SB attempts. Makes sense, caught stealing isn't exactly an advanced stat and teams could figure out which catchers were worth stealing on more or less often. Given my data it shouldn't be quite so pronounced a difference though. So to balance it out I would suggest the devs dampen the Catcher Arm suppression effect on SB attempts, and increase the CS% bonus for strong arms a bit more. __________________ Texas Rangers Dynasty (Est. 1972) Hartford Whalers Dynasty: Brass Bonanza

01-08-2021, 06:57 AM	#12
Garlon Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2004 Posts: 4,254	Part of the problem is trying to make one rating, Catcher Arm, serve two functions, influencing SB attempts and determining caught stealing. I think having Catcher Ability serve two functions works nicely as that can influence catcher errors and passed balls, but having Arm control both aspects of stolen bases unfortunately is not working as well as intended. I think adding another rating to catchers, such as baserunner intimidation or catcher pop time (maybe you can come up with a better name), to determine SB attempts and have catcher arm determine the caught stealing will work better, but I think adding another rating to catchers might be too much work. We do certainly have the SB attempts and caught stealing data for catchers though since 1890 to create such a rating. If another rating was added then we could have a two ratings that determine SB attempts, one for pitchers and one for catchers. The game could then weight both of these equally, averaging them, to determine a stolen base attempt. The outcome of the attempt then gets determined by the catcher arm rating. With another rating I think that stealing will be modeled better.

01-08-2021, 11:59 AM	#13
Argonaut All Star Starter Join Date: Apr 2019 Posts: 1,085	Honestly I think the right fix is just tweaking it a bit from where it is now. Like I said, dampen the suppression effect of Catcher Arm a bit, and increase CS% for great arms. Assume there's a 3rd rating like you suggest focused on SB suppression -- Intimidation for lack of a better word. The optimal Catcher would have extremely low Intimidation and extremely high Catcher Arm. It just wouldn't make a lot of sense. If there's anything that deserves a 3rd rating for Catchers it's Pitch Framing. Right now it's tied into Catcher Ability which I'm sure affects passed balls and minor things that don't come up much like fielding foul ball popups. Those are quite different than framing. But honestly I don't mind how it is with just Ability/Arm. It just seems Arm needs some adjustment. __________________ Texas Rangers Dynasty (Est. 1972) Hartford Whalers Dynasty: Brass Bonanza Last edited by Argonaut; 01-08-2021 at 12:00 PM.

01-08-2021, 12:20 PM	#14
Garlon Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2004 Posts: 4,254	I agree with your suggestion about dampening the suppression effect and Catcher Arm on stealing ability. This should be in some way averaged with the pitcher Hold Runner rating, which probably needs a better import process for historical games. We can calculate the stolen base attempts per times reaching base against any pitcher since about 1925 if stolen base and caught stealing are in the game database, those statistics are available on baseball reference, and for seasons from 1871-1924 there is team data we can use and apply that to all pitchers who played for that team that season. I am against the pitch framing being any more significant though. I am not convinced that the data is reliable or that it shows a consistent and significant skill. We also do not have any historical data on this, so that would be adding a fudge factor to historical games and muddying the actual pitcher vs batter probabilities.

01-08-2021, 02:01 PM	#16
Matt Arnold OOTP Developer Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Here and there Posts: 15,719	Thanks for looking at the data Certainly there is supposed to be a larger impact of pitcher hold than C arm, at least in regards to steal attempts, but it's possible there's other factors at play, especially at the extremes. Feel free to keep poking, and we can certainly look at what changes might make sense to make on this down the road.

01-08-2021, 02:09 PM	#17
Garlon Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2004 Posts: 4,254	I was testing some fielding results and I have a save of a 1954-2019 replay using real lineups and transactions. Piazza Real: 23% of 1756 attempts and -60 ZR OOTP: 26% of 1469 attempts and +3 ZR Rodriguez Real: 46% of 1447 attempts and +169 ZR OOTP: 35.8% of 1659 attempts and +43.9 ZR I want to see the difference between them be more than this, but if everyone else is fine with this then we should keep things the way they are. According to baseball reference there is about a 229 difference in runs saved between them and in OOTP it is a mere 40 runs saved, but I think OOTP might not be calculating ZR correctly for catchers for some reason. If you are wondering about real plays made, Piazza was -15 errors, +11 passed balls, and -141 caught stealing. Rodriguez was +4 errors, +37 passed balls, and +221 caught stealing. On these plays Piazza was a total of 145 plays below average and Rodriguez was 262 plays above average. If strong catcher arm ratings resulted in more caught stealing that would also decrease the caught stealing from catchers with weaker catcher arm ratings and the caught stealing results may turn out better. Last edited by Garlon; 01-08-2021 at 02:41 PM.

01-08-2021, 02:50 PM	#18
Argonaut All Star Starter Join Date: Apr 2019 Posts: 1,085	Hold Runners and Catcher Arm seem to have almost exactly a 50/50 split on suppressing stealing attempts in OOTP. I'm not sure if this aligns with real-life baseball or not, beyond anecdotal thoughts. I'm sure you could figure something out statistically but it would be a massive project. I said before to maybe dampen Catcher Arm suppression of stolen bases, but from Garlon's above post, maybe this isn't needed? It seems that perhaps runners should try to steal more on weak arms though. But we definitely need bumping up the CS% of a strong arm. It seems like SB% stays within historical accuracy when you run a sim. Around 66%? So looks like Catchers' CS% are getting pulled to the middle, when weak Catchers like Piazza should get punished a tiny bit more, and strong Catchers like Pudge should get a nicer CS% boost. Framing has been discussed elsewhere, and it's in OOTP under Catcher Ability. It has more of an effect in OOTP21 than in OOTP20 and before. I like this and don't think it needs changing, at least until we have robo-umps. __________________ Texas Rangers Dynasty (Est. 1972) Hartford Whalers Dynasty: Brass Bonanza Last edited by Argonaut; 01-08-2021 at 02:53 PM.

04-06-2022, 05:47 PM	#20
SR000 Minors (Single A) Join Date: Mar 2015 Posts: 61	I think you have to throw averages out to a great degree when evaluating. If indeed you have a catcher that makes the opposition think twice, then generally only the better base stealers will have a green light and thus a potentially higher success rate enters the equation. Attempts are really the main barometer. Obviously in real life if you go into a series and Piazza is behind the plate, you are going to think about running more than if Rodriguez is (hats off to him if he did indeed call fastballs at the right time!) As for Brock, of course you steal on the pitcher. The catcher is fixed. If you have the green light at that point it's a question of what the next pitch might be and what kind of lead you get. The runner can't worry about the throw. The catcher either nails him or he doesn't.