Calling Game ability

[RonCo]

Though I'd like to see the experiment repeated a few times before tanking those ratios as given, sansterre's numbers are in the same direction as others I've run in similar studies. (The other issue with those numbers is that they will change depending on your overall environment, but directionally they seem in the right ballpark and give credence to Markus's comment above).

[Dyzalot]

Originally Posted by ThePretender

Well, I'll be upfront in that I think the negative consequences for playing poor defensive players should be increased significantly at all positions, so I guess I'm just not surprised the penalty is lower than it realistically should be for catcher via your experiment. If typically I use a 7 defensive catcher, the downgrade to 4 defensively is 15 runs, and I can quite easily find a bat worth more than that who can play defence that poorly and get more value.

Really shouldn't be so easy to do that, if you ask me. Should start going down a lot more at the lower levels, not a linear drop.

The fact that they are already as important as a 2nd baseman or left fielder when looking at only the framing aspect makes me worried that overall catcher defense has too much influence.

[Rosco Peabody]

Originally Posted by Dyzalot

The fact that they are already as important as a 2nd baseman or left fielder when looking at only the framing aspect makes me worried that overall catcher defense has too much influence.

Me too. I feel like defense plays WAYYY too much of a factor in the OVR rating. A guy who is a middling hitter and plays great defense MIGHT find a starting spot on a team, but a guy who plays poor defense but is a great hitter is GUARANTEED to start. However, this game makes a guy who hits great and plays defense terribly a borderline starter

[sansterre]

Originally Posted by Dyzalot

The fact that they are already as important as a 2nd baseman or left fielder when looking at only the framing aspect makes me worried that overall catcher defense has too much influence.

Perhaps, but please remember the power of narrative.

Let us say that you have two catchers.

One is a league average hitter, and an average fielder (5 catcher ability out of 10), making him probably 3 WAR.

One is just below league average, but has a 10 catcher ability (out of ten). This player will have a WAR around 2-2.5.

Let us stipulate to the numbers that my study suggested above, that the one point of CA (in the 1-10 scale) is worth 3.5 runs per year, so the second catcher's fielding is worth 17.5 runs, making him clearly better.

And yet.

You will never once be able to watch a game and think "aha, watch my awesome catcher frame pitches super-well! That definitely wouldn't have been a strikeout without him!" And it never shows up in his stat column; instead all of his pitchers will look unusually good (because their Ks and BBs contribute far more to their stat line than his).

Year in, year out, you'll be playing this 2-2.5 WAR catcher, perhaps intellectually appreciating the theoretical value of his pitch framing, yet knowing that you have a 3+ WAR catcher on your bench, a player you don't need to use your imagination to see working.

In other words, I think that catcher ability may be the single most powerful fielding attribute in the game. But it's also the one that you'll have the hardest time seeing. In a game with scouting it'd be a crapshoot; maybe your guy is a great pitch framer, maybe he's average, how the heck would you know?

It's kind of like the player development budget. It's psychotically powerful, yet works in a way that you can never point to something and say "see, that's my player development budget at work!" You set it up and trust the numbers, but know that confirmation that you're making a good investment will never happen.

I appreciate the investments without narrative payoff being a little overpowered. Because they're by far the easiest to underestimate in gameplay.

[Dyzalot]

Originally Posted by sansterre

Perhaps, but please remember the power of narrative.

Let us say that you have two catchers.

One is a league average hitter, and an average fielder (5 catcher ability out of 10), making him probably 3 WAR.

One is just below league average, but has a 10 catcher ability (out of ten). This player will have a WAR around 2-2.5.

Let us stipulate to the numbers that my study suggested above, that the one point of CA (in the 1-10 scale) is worth 3.5 runs per year, so the second catcher's fielding is worth 17.5 runs, making him clearly better.

And yet.

You will never once be able to watch a game and think "aha, watch my awesome catcher frame pitches super-well! That definitely wouldn't have been a strikeout without him!" And it never shows up in his stat column; instead all of his pitchers will look unusually good (because their Ks and BBs contribute far more to their stat line than his).

Year in, year out, you'll be playing this 2-2.5 WAR catcher, perhaps intellectually appreciating the theoretical value of his pitch framing, yet knowing that you have a 3+ WAR catcher on your bench, a player you don't need to use your imagination to see working.

In other words, I think that catcher ability may be the single most powerful fielding attribute in the game. But it's also the one that you'll have the hardest time seeing. In a game with scouting it'd be a crapshoot; maybe your guy is a great pitch framer, maybe he's average, how the heck would you know?

It's kind of like the player development budget. It's psychotically powerful, yet works in a way that you can never point to something and say "see, that's my player development budget at work!" You set it up and trust the numbers, but know that confirmation that you're making a good investment will never happen.

I appreciate the investments without narrative payoff being a little overpowered. Because they're by far the easiest to underestimate in gameplay.

I really don't know what you are arguing here. The player development budget isn't that powerful and doesn't have a large effect on your prospects. Also, if I had the two catchers in your hypothetical scenario then I could compare their catcher ability through the use of ERA, K/9 & BB/9 specific to each catcher. Since they are working with the same staff, it shouldn't be too hard to evaluate.

I just don't want things in OOTP to have a big impact if you can't show they have a big impact in MLB. Also, considering how often teams will move a player out of the catcher position in order to get him more plate appearances and extend his career, it would appear that MLB teams don't value catcher defense as much as you do.

[sansterre]

Originally Posted by Dyzalot

I really don't know what you are arguing here. The player development budget isn't that powerful and doesn't have a large effect on your prospects. Also, if I had the two catchers in your hypothetical scenario then I could compare their catcher ability through the use of ERA, K/9 & BB/9 specific to each catcher. Since they are working with the same staff, it shouldn't be too hard to evaluate.

I just don't want things in OOTP to have a big impact if you can't show they have a big impact in MLB. Also, considering how often teams will move a player out of the catcher position in order to get him more plate appearances and extend his career, it would appear that MLB teams don't value catcher defense as much as you do.

If your point is that the game is making catcher ability more powerful than it is in reality, that's a reasonable position, but hard to argue (in either case) since we understand catcher defense less well than other kinds of defense.

Catcher ERA is moderate garbage. It's better than nothing, but if the catcher only affects Ks and BBs (and not by that much), referencing it by a formula that also includes HRA and BABIP is going to generate a ton of noise. I mean, you're right technically in that it's a reference point, I just don't think it's a good one.

How do you know that the player development budget is weak?

Bear with me:

Imagine that bumping your budget to its max for a year would give a 1 point bump (1-10 ratings) to 25% of your batting prospects' Contact, a 1 point bump to 25% of their Gap Power, a 1 point bump to 10% of their Power, and a 1 point bump to 25% of their Eye? Imagine also that this slowed the degrading of potential by 10%, so instead of your farm system shedding 10 points of contact potential (or whatever) in a year it only lost 9.

Take a second to unpack that (because its phrasing is cumbersome, for which I apologize). Isn't that insanely powerful? Obviously most of the bumps will happen to players you don't care about, but some of them will happen to good players and those bumps will add up pretty quickly.

I'm not saying the above is how it works (although from some numbers I've run, it's in the ballpark in the general if not in the specific). But for the sake of argument, consider the idea that it does.

How would you ever know? Player development is already pretty random. Sometimes guys hit their potential, usually they get in the neighborhood and sometimes they fizzle out. Imagine if all the probabilities got shifted hard in the good direction. Would you notice? How would you tell? There'd be no discernible difference between a player that improved naturally and a player that improved because of the development budget.

All I'm trying to say is, something can be powerful without being noticeable. This is probably more of a philosophical argument than a baseball argument. If your position is tied to what Catcher Ability should be I can't really comment, since I don't really have a dog in that hunt. My job is to be as good at the game as possible; I'll leave the should to the programmers and the MLB fans.

[Dyzalot]

Originally Posted by sansterre

Catcher ERA is moderate garbage. It's better than nothing, but if the catcher only affects Ks and BBs (and not by that much), referencing it by a formula that also includes HRA and BABIP is going to generate a ton of noise. I mean, you're right technically in that it's a reference point, I just don't think it's a good one.

Which is why I also included K/9 & BB/9 as other data points to evaluate.

Originally Posted by sansterre

How do you know that the player development budget is weak?

Because every time a newer player asks why his draft prospects don't develop even though he is spending X amount of dollars, the veterans of the forum inform him that the amount you spend towards player development has very little to do with how your prospects develop. It has an effect, just very small.

How would you ever know? Player development is already pretty random. Sometimes guys hit their potential, usually they get in the neighborhood and sometimes they fizzle out. Imagine if all the probabilities got shifted hard in the good direction. Would you notice? How would you tell? There'd be no discernible difference between a player that improved naturally and a player that improved because of the development budget.

Because the programmers here often answer questions and if they don't then someone will usually go out and create a test league controlling for other variables and sim thousands of seasons to see the results. It isn't that hard to generate an adequate sample size in OOTP by just simming seasons.

[frangipard]

Originally Posted by RonCo

As some have said, the impact of catcher defense in OOTP is more than framing. It's fewer PB, fewer WP, better control of the running game (which can actually have a negative effect, oddly), and actually fielding the position. Add all those up and I think the impact of a catcher's defense is probably fairly significant.

IIRC, it has previously been disclosed that framing accounts for something on the order of 70% or so of the C DEF rating. The rest covers blocking. This is more or less in line with what research has shown.

Also, notably, a catchers ability to field balls in play (e.g. bunts) is supposedly based on his various IF ratings.

[Sharkn20]

Trying to dig a bit deeper in here. Are we referring in this thread to the Position Ratings for Catcher or Defensive rating Catcher Ability?

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

[ThePretender]

Originally Posted by frangipard

IIRC, it has previously been disclosed that framing accounts for something on the order of 70% or so of the C DEF rating. The rest covers blocking. This is more or less in line with what research has shown.

Also, notably, a catchers ability to field balls in play (e.g. bunts) is supposedly based on his various IF ratings.

Is that still the case though? As teams emphasized framing more, the gaps between ability/results in framing became smaller.

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by Sharkn20

Trying to dig a bit deeper in here. Are we referring in this thread to the Position Ratings for Catcher or Defensive rating Catcher Ability?

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

Cathcer Ability rating, not the resulting total defensive rating at catcher.

[stiffy]

https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/9...-tyler-flowers

It's almost as if Ben Lindbergh was reading this thread.

In my opinion, this is evidence that catcher ability should progress much more than it does currently in OOTP. When you draft catchers, the guys with poor ability/arm stay that way, they might progress a couple points if you're lucky.

I think we should see more catchers with lower ability (6-10 on the 20 point scale) when drafted, but more of them progress into the 12-16 range over time. IRL catchers with near-major league ready gloves in the draft are almost non-existent. It's one of the reasons you rarely see high school catchers drafted highly.