How important is defense at catcher?

[chazzycat]

no you're right...the stats available in the sim module are fairly limited. I think using overall runs scored/runs allowed is the best way to go.

But actually the difference between runs allowed and ERA could be significant. Passed balls lead to unearned runs. So I'm guessing it's even worse for low ability guys than the numbers above suggest.

[<Pion>]

Originally Posted by chazzycat

no you're right...the stats available in the sim module are fairly limited. I think using overall runs scored/runs allowed is the best way to go.

But actually the difference between runs allowed and ERA could be significant. Passed balls lead to unearned runs. So I'm guessing it's even worse for low ability guys than the numbers above suggest.

I'm doing a secondary study where instead of doing the different percentiles, I'm just comparing one of the worst defensive catchers (Burgess) to one of the best (Perfect Bench). In this study, I'm looking at all the categories.. runs scored, avg, hr, sb, bb/9, k/9, etc. The first two teams I played them against was the best SB team with no power (the '82 Cardinals) and then I compared them against the '82 Red Sox who were the opposite (bad stolen base but good power). I'm also doing all other 1982 teams to get an overall league average of teams
From the first two teams, I found that the Runs Scored dropped 0.167 (per game) for the Cardinals whereas the ERA dropped 0.13. For the Red Sox, the drop was 0.115 in runs scored and 0.09 in ERA. So as expected, the team that relies on speed were affected a lot more with the better CARM. One thing to note is that the SBs were 53% of what they were against Bench compared to Burgess, so nearly half as many SBs (for both the Red Sox and Cardinals). So CARM effected SBs the same for each team, but had less of an effect on the Red Sox since they rely on power rather than speed.