Historical Season

[Michaelryan]

How accurate are the ratings? I'm doing a historical 2001 season in commisioner mode and so far the ratings seem way off. Ichiro 47 Arm and Roberto Alomar 55 for position rating? Omar Vizquel 52 position rating. Wow! Does Position rating translate to glove skill or does infield error translate to glove skill? I'm using the 0-100 scale also.

[Brad K]

What did you select for the ratings base? The number of years.

Do you have scouting on? If yes, what is the accuracy setting?

What data do you have that indicate the ratings should be different?

[Michaelryan]

Originally Posted by Brad K

What did you select for the ratings base? The number of years.

Do you have scouting on? If yes, what is the accuracy setting?

What data do you have that indicate the ratings should be different?

I did 0-100 scouting scale, and chose commisioner mode so the scouting should be 100 % accurate. The combined gold gloves for those three players and the eye test. Anyone that follows baseball would know that ichiro had a cannon for an arm.

[Brad K]

"Anyone that follows baseball would know ichiro had a cannon for an arm" is not data and will not fly here.

Data is Ichiro had 8 assists in RF in 2001 while the league leader for RF Raul Mondesi had 18.

[Dave Stieb II]

Originally Posted by Brad K

"Anyone that follows baseball would know ichiro had a cannon for an arm" is not data and will not fly here.

Data is Ichiro had 8 assists in RF in 2001 while the league leader for RF Raul Mondesi had 18.

Which means absolutely nothing when grading arm strength. The stronger the arm an OF has, the less likely runners are to try and advance on him. So your smug reply does not fly with me.
Sometimes there truly are "lies, damned lies and statistics".
It's blasphemy to the analytics crowd on these boards, I know, but stats are dangerous if not combined with a good dose of common sense.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Dave Stieb II

Which means absolutely nothing when grading arm strength. The stronger the arm an OF has, the less likely runners are to try and advance on him. So your smug reply does not fly with me.
Sometimes there truly are "lies, damned lies and statistics".
It's blasphemy to the analytics crowd on these boards, I know, but stats are dangerous if not combined with a good dose of common sense.

Yet after two years of 8 OF assists each he jumped up to 12 in 2003 and mostly stayed well above 8 until 2009. After that he never reached 8 OF assists in a year again.

To fit your theory he would have started off with a strong arm, then gotten weaker for six years, and then gotten strong again. And regardless of how good a throwing an OF is, throwing out runners relies not upon the OFers objective ability but rather the runner under rating the ability.

[Brad K]

If you will look at the advanced stats arm rating which includes throw outs and runner advance or not advance

https://www.baseball-reference.com/p...01-field.shtml

you will find him to be quite near average for 2001 and 2002. This supports the rating in the game for 2001. Note that depending on your settings player imported ratings can be somewhat different from raw ratings.

[Brad K]

If you will look at the advanced stats arm rating which includes throw outs and runner advance or not advance

https://www.baseball-reference.com/p...01-field.shtml

you will find him to be quite near average for 2001 and 2002. This supports the rating in the game for 2001. Note that depending on your settings player imported ratings can be somewhat different from raw ratings.

[Brad K]

For 2001 Alomar has a RF/9 of 4.70 against a league RF/9 of 4.86.

Omar Vizquel is RF/9 of 4.31 against a league RF/9 of 4.49.

I see nothing wrong with the ratings on these three players. I suggest your memory of how good they were is from a different part of their careers.

[Brad K]

For 2001 Alomar has a RF/9 of 4.70 against a league RF/9 of 4.86.

Omar Vizquel is RF/9 of 4.31 against a league RF/9 of 4.49.

I see nothing wrong with the ratings on these three players. I suggest your memory of how good they were is from a different part of their careers.

[Dave Stieb II]

Originally Posted by Brad K

Yet after two years of 8 OF assists each he jumped up to 12 in 2003 and mostly stayed well above 8 until 2009. After that he never reached 8 OF assists in a year again.

To fit your theory he would have started off with a strong arm, then gotten weaker for six years, and then gotten strong again. And regardless of how good a throwing an OF is, throwing out runners relies not upon the OFers objective ability but rather the runner under rating the ability.

I looked at the stats....from 2001 to 2008 he had 8-12 assists every year and the total started to decline in 2009 and he never had that many again.

So it is entirely inaccurate to claim that to "fit my theory" he started strong and then got weaker and then got strong again.

My whole point is to NOT rely on OF assist stats to gauge arm strength but If I were relying on OF assist stats this would indicate that he started strong, then got weaker starting in 2009 AND STAYED WEAKER. Period. Full stop.

As for the second part of your opinion this is simply not true. Certainly there are times when a runner will underrate the the throwing ability of an OF'er but there are plenty of times when either the runner or base coach will make a nano-second decision based not entirely on ability but what they perceive as the percentages.
For several years I watched Jesse Barfield dig balls out of the RF corner and throw out fast runners at home plate - not because the coach or runner underestimated Barfield's throwing ability but because they felt the percentages were in their favor regardless.

That's part of the human element of the game - the split second decision making. Or was - most of that's been washed from the game because of the addiction to analytics. Thank goodness for the Randy Arozarena's of the world.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Dave Stieb II

My whole point is to NOT rely on OF assist stats to gauge arm strength

I provided an alternative stat.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/p...01-field.shtml

which addresses your concerns. You didn't comment.

[Michaelryan]

Originally Posted by Brad K

For 2001 Alomar has a RF/9 of 4.70 against a league RF/9 of 4.86.

Omar Vizquel is RF/9 of 4.31 against a league RF/9 of 4.49.

I see nothing wrong with the ratings on these three players. I suggest your memory of how good they were is from a different part of their careers.

Outfield assists mean nothing when evaluating a player's arm. Also when youre evaluating Vizquel and Alomar you are tying in range, defense, arm strength and arm accuracy when the "position rating" translates to "glove skill" which they were incredible at. Range, throwing accuracy and strength are different categories so there's no need to throw in UZR rating or RF/( whatever stat fits your argument. Their range could have been average at that point in their careers, but there glove skill was elite, which is what position rating translates to.

[Dave Stieb II]

Originally Posted by Brad K

I provided an alternative stat.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/p...01-field.shtml

which addresses your concerns. You didn't comment.

Unfortunately, the link is broken. Please provide it again. I can't participate for the next while but "I'll be baaack" this evening. Cheers.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Dave Stieb II

Unfortunately, the link is broken. Please provide it again. I can't participate for the next while but "I'll be baaack" this evening. Cheers.

I should have tested it. Sorry.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/p...01-field.shtml

Let's see if it works by the insert link button.

If not, the info in on Ichiro's BR page. Hover Finders and Advanced Stats and then select Fielding.

[WestCoastGuy]

I was in Seattle from 2000-03, and it was clear that Ichiro had an extremely strong arm, regardless of what the stats say. He did not win 10 Gold Gloves because people felt he was average in the field, and much of his reputation was due to how strong his arm was. For what it's worth, he also won three Fielding Bible awards, which were not awarded until 2006.

[Brad K]

The stats that combine throw outs and extra base/no extra base indicate a strong arm starting 2003.

This year we're going to hit 20,000 all time MLB players. Its clearly impractical to rate this number of players based on subjective opinions or reputation. Selectively rating just a few would result in protests from all quarters, and justifiably so.

[The Game]

Originally Posted by Michaelryan

I did 0-100 scouting scale, and chose commisioner mode so the scouting should be 100 % accurate. The combined gold gloves for those three players and the eye test. Anyone that follows baseball would know that ichiro had a cannon for an arm.

Being in Commish Mode does not mean stats are 100%. Changing stats to 100 % accurate will make stats 100% accurate. League Settings - Stats & AI? forgot where its at.

[WestCoastGuy]

Originally Posted by Brad K

The stats that combine throw outs and extra base/no extra base indicate a strong arm starting 2003.

This year we're going to hit 20,000 all time MLB players. Its clearly impractical to rate this number of players based on subjective opinions or reputation. Selectively rating just a few would result in protests from all quarters, and justifiably so.

Thanks for the response. It's so unfortunate as his arm was so powerful and so accurate, but I understand your reasoning.

All I can think of is giving Golden Glove winners some sort of bonus in the ratings, but I'm unsure of the specifics of how that could be done in a fair and accurate manner, especially since Golden Gloves don't indicate which aspects of fielding play they excelled at.

[Dave Stieb II]

Originally Posted by Brad K

The stats that combine throw outs and extra base/no extra base indicate a strong arm starting 2003.

This year we're going to hit 20,000 all time MLB players. Its clearly impractical to rate this number of players based on subjective opinions or reputation. Selectively rating just a few would result in protests from all quarters, and justifiably so.

Yes. That is fair.