2 Pitch Relievers

[MarlinsFan2014]

Has anyone noticed that 2 pitch relievers seem severely overpowering? I noticed when I imported an OOTP 20 league that their ERAs are often miniscule (like below 1). When I checked the editor, I see that often their pitches are rated over 300. I know before the default was 250. Kinda at a loss as to why these pitchers import so dominating. Relievers with 3 or more pitches seem normal.

[Biggio509]

Stretching the depths of my memory here but I believe stuff is based on the pitch ratings. So it maybe a pitcher with two dominate pitches gets better stuff than a pitcher with 2 dominate pitches and a crappy pitch. I could be wrong but I think beyond determining stuff it only affects if the game thinks a pitcher is a starter. If I remember right there is a min rating on 3 more pitches for a game to call someone a starter. That is why young pitchers sometimes project as bullpen but become starters when the third pitch gets good enough.

I am not sure the pitch ratings or number of pitches works directly into performance. I am pretty sure it affects stuff and stuff, mov, con affect the stats.

[Syd Thrift]

*Reliever* stuff is based (mostly) on the first two pitches. Relievers with less than 3 working pitches also struggle their second time through the lineup and can’t be counted on to start at all. Starter stuff is based more on an aggregate of everything the pitcher throws.

[MarlinsFan2014]

Interesting food for thought. It's a good point that their value a second time around the lineup would decline significantly... I guess what worries me is: should relievers be projected to have a 0.50 FIP or lower??? That seems almost unhittable, and it seems a high proportion of these guys are 2 pitch type relievers.

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by MarlinsFan2014

Interesting food for thought. It's a good point that their value a second time around the lineup would decline significantly... I guess what worries me is: should relievers be projected to have a 0.50 FIP or lower??? That seems almost unhittable, and it seems a high proportion of these guys are 2 pitch type relievers.

This seems like a problem

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by MarlinsFan2014

Interesting food for thought. It's a good point that their value a second time around the lineup would decline significantly... I guess what worries me is: should relievers be projected to have a 0.50 FIP or lower??? That seems almost unhittable, and it seems a high proportion of these guys are 2 pitch type relievers.

I haven’t seen that in any league I’ve done tbh and the only places I’ve seen it are when people go into the editor and give pitchers obscenely high ratings on two pitches. Like, yes, if you give a guy a 150 fastball and a 150 change, he’s going to wind up with 200+ Stuff as a reliever and that in turn is going to make him strike out insane numbers of hitters.

Not saying that’s what you’re doing but that’s the environment I’ve seen that occur.

[MarlinsFan2014]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

I haven’t seen that in any league I’ve done tbh and the only places I’ve seen it are when people go into the editor and give pitchers obscenely high ratings on two pitches. Like, yes, if you give a guy a 150 fastball and a 150 change, he’s going to wind up with 200+ Stuff as a reliever and that in turn is going to make him strike out insane numbers of hitters.

Not saying that’s what you’re doing but that’s the environment I’ve seen that occur.

This is a game I imported from OOTP 20. Larry Andersen was not this dominating before. It seems only relievers import with drastically different ratings. The new ratings then spit out crazy stat lines. Again, it doesn't seem to effect starting pitchers or position players. Mainly just relievers, and especially those who throw 2 pitches.

[Syd Thrift]

Well, if it’s going to happen to someone, I’m glad it happened to Interlake High School alum Larry Andersen.

Seriously, that looks like a bad bug. Look at those pitch ratings. Should they even be able to go over 250? I guess it’s an import issue but definitely report that...

[Questdog]

Originally Posted by MarlinsFan2014

This is a game I imported from OOTP 20. Larry Andersen was not this dominating before. It seems only relievers import with drastically different ratings. The new ratings then spit out crazy stat lines. Again, it doesn't seem to effect starting pitchers or position players. Mainly just relievers, and especially those who throw 2 pitches.

Did you ever export and import rosters for this league in OOTP 20 or 21? There was a bug where this caused relievers to get higher pitch and stuff ratings each time. It will be fixed in the next patch that is released, but will not undo what is already done.

[MarlinsFan2014]

Originally Posted by Questdog

Did you ever export and import rosters for this league in OOTP 20 or 21? There was a bug where this caused relievers to get higher pitch and stuff ratings each time. It will be fixed in the next patch that is released, but will not undo what is already done.

That must be why I had the issue...had edited a few contracts in excel and reimported. Thanks for the heads up.

[DonMattingly]

Has anyone kept track of how often pitchers throw their "bad" pitches?

Let's say you have Pitcher A who has only two pitches but that are both very strong. And Pitcher B has two strong pitches but also has one weak one.

How often will B throw his weak pitch? And is that possibly why A ends up with better stats than B?

And does the use of bad pitches vary between relievers and starters?

[Leo_The_Lip]

Originally Posted by DonMattingly

Has anyone kept track of how often pitchers throw their "bad" pitches?

Let's say you have Pitcher A who has only two pitches but that are both very strong. And Pitcher B has two strong pitches but also has one weak one.

How often will B throw his weak pitch? And is that possibly why A ends up with better stats than B?

And does the use of bad pitches vary between relievers and starters?

I haven't done any real research into this, merely eye-balling stats. My theory is that guys with one lousy pitch tend to have bad MOVEMENT and when they throw the lousy pitch, it tends to leave the park. Again, merely my observations over many seasons, and not a real attempt to comb through data to see which pitches are hammered.

[OutS|der]

Originally Posted by Questdog

Did you ever export and import rosters for this league in OOTP 20 or 21? There was a bug where this caused relievers to get higher pitch and stuff ratings each time. It will be fixed in the next patch that is released, but will not undo what is already done.

So that's where that issue came from. I lost a league I have over 1000 hours in editing and making changes and noticed this bug way to late to save it.
Luckily I had a backup so I only lost a few hundred hours but still was shocking to see it.

I was getting ready to export/import soon as well. So glad I saw this first

[Argonaut]

Originally Posted by DonMattingly

Has anyone kept track of how often pitchers throw their "bad" pitches?

Let's say you have Pitcher A who has only two pitches but that are both very strong. And Pitcher B has two strong pitches but also has one weak one.

How often will B throw his weak pitch? And is that possibly why A ends up with better stats than B?

And does the use of bad pitches vary between relievers and starters?

The game doesn't work that way. It's not keeping track of what a pitcher is throwing pitch-by-pitch. (Well actually it is, but it's kind of cosmetic as far as I can tell). It considers his whole arsenal for a given plate appearance.

In your example, Pitcher B will actually be a better pitcher. Adding another pitch is almost always a net benefit, even if it's a bad pitch.

Based on my testing (which is not akin to saying I know the source code or anything, so not infallible)... I can only think of 2 scenarios where adding another pitch (even a very poor one) is a negative:

1. Adding a Fastball to a Knuckleballer's arsenal is not good as it takes away the BABIP bonus.
2. A pitcher with absolutely maximum Stuff and several great pitches... adding a pitch that slightly decreases MOV and CON like a Cutter would be a slight negative.

[DonMattingly]

Originally Posted by Argonaut

The game doesn't work that way. It's not keeping track of what a pitcher is throwing pitch-by-pitch. (Well actually it is, but it's kind of cosmetic as far as I can tell). It considers his whole arsenal for a given plate appearance.

In your example, Pitcher B will actually be a better pitcher. Adding another pitch is almost always a net benefit, even if it's a bad pitch.

Based on my testing (which is not akin to saying I know the source code or anything, so not infallible)... I can only think of 2 scenarios where adding another pitch (even a very poor one) is a negative:

1. Adding a Fastball to a Knuckleballer's arsenal is not good as it takes away the BABIP bonus.
2. A pitcher with absolutely maximum Stuff and several great pitches... adding a pitch that slightly decreases MOV and CON like a Cutter would be a slight negative.

Good stuff! This will make me more likely to pick up pitchers with a couple of clunker pitches, to date I've tended to avoid them and go for guys with less pitches but no poorly rated ones.

[1991Twins]

Originally Posted by OutS|der

So that's where that issue came from. I lost a league I have over 1000 hours in editing and making changes and noticed this bug way to late to save it.
Luckily I had a backup so I only lost a few hundred hours but still was shocking to see it.

I was getting ready to export/import soon as well. So glad I saw this first

Wish I had seen this in time. Made several quickstarts and edited contracts/prospects/etc in Excel. Guessing these leagues are ruined now. Only the relievers are way off base...everything else looks good. Editing each reliever by hand would be a monumental task.

[Syd Thrift]

Well, you could always keep Larry Andersen as is...

[1991Twins]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

Well, you could always keep Larry Andersen as is...

So far, I think I can salvage the quickstarts if I click the box for a 3 year recalc with a double weighting of the current year. Doing some tests to see if it will work out. Don't worry, Larry Andersen stays pretty good in his old age from what I see.

[1991Twins]

In case anyone ever had this bug, I was able to fix it for my MLB Historic League Quickstarts. Since I had edited contracts to accurate lengths for each season in the 1990s, I didn't want to throw away all of the work I had put in. I was able to export the original file (with the messed up relievers). Then, I let the game recalculate the ratings. I exported a 2nd file that contained the default pitcher ratings. I copied over only the pitching columns to the original file and voila! everything is as good as new. This fix only works though if you are using MLB rosters. If you are going to do it, be very careful that all of the player IDs indeed match up. I'm so glad I was able to save my projects!!! Hope this may help someone.

[ALB123]

I just wrote a post about 2-pitch relievers in a different thread I had created about setting up an MLB Pitching Staff. In my case, I had just created the *** & KBO leagues and I believe I screwed something up. Almost every single team in *** had a bunch of 4-Star thru 5-Star players -- all Closers were 5-Star. Anyway, I noticed the vast majority only threw 2-Pitches. I was wondering if this was common in Asian baseball leagues. I've seen some ridiculous numbers, but nothing nearly as high as the OP.