Evaluating Pitchers

[NoOne]

alot of it depends on expectations. not everyone has the same rotation quality for all sorts of reasons not limited to cheating.

if you are talking about an ace, i think that's roughly the same for all teams, even if you may not be able to afford the most greedy ones for an extended period of time. sticking to aces, and tone down what's necessary per cost restrictions.

Stuff is important stat as far as how high you want it to go... near max or better max plus in this case. mix that with good hr/9 and adequate bb/9 results and you have a perennial cy young candidate. a low whip basically comes along with that package too.

movement and control require some results to be certain of their effectiveness. e.g. movement is not the only factor of hr/9 and control is not the only factor of bb/9. while not the only thing they probably each factor into, those are probably the most directlly related.

in cases of deviation from expected results (assuming relative to 1/2 scale = average stats), i'd pay attention to their repertoire of pitches. what's included, ratio of qualties - e.g. 1 dark blue, 2 teals, or 1 max+ and a couple blue-green grey area types etc etc anything that you can delineate due to differences / attributes... that affects how much of each pitch is thrown. probably good stuff to take note of to figure out why. each league can be different unless challenge mode or strictly default etc...

maybe babip against related to movement too? it just takes so long for babip to flesh out. it takes 1500ip? it's high, whatever it is. i usually don't look because after that many years i've decided based on overall results.

babip is an input in your stats and ai screen too, so if auto-calculated it should be near that... larger the league the less volatile league wide babip wil be year-to-year. 30T league it may sway +/- .010-ish? maybe a bit less or more. even if not auto-calced you can eye ball it and be in a good ballpark relative to this use. ~.300? ~.305? who cares if off a little. in a ~.300babip leauge you may not be too worried about a guy around ~.310 with good results, but you start pushing ~.320-.350 on a consistent basis (NOT RP) and higher and it spells doom no matter how many k/9 or bb/9.

rp are all over the board with babip against... i've seen back to back ~.350years then a hall of fame career with 500+ save and a couple more hiccups along the way because he's an rp and that's what they do.

[stiffy]

Originally Posted by NCBeachBum

I think there would have to be some serious engine overhaul for xFIP to have a place in OOTP. IRL (I'm going to pull numbers out of my butt here for a feel example rather than look up the real ones) 10% of flyballs turn into homers, with groundball pitchers giving up homers on 12% of their flyballs vs. flyball pitchers giving them up on only 8%. So xFIP counts 10% of flyballs as homers, and that's really the only difference from plain Jane FIP. SIERA uses the pitcher tendency differences and has other improvements that could still make it valuable, but as long as movement works to determine a pitcher's homers allowed instead of groundball ratio and number of flies, xFIP would just be misleading in our environment. A park adjustment on FIP, if it isn't already in the game (I seem to recall that it is, but I'm nowhere near certain), would be more useful.

Edit: Of course, what we see wouldn't have to change all that much, were movement scores suddenly determined by groundball percentage and league HR/fly averages rather than the way it is now. Similar to how contact for hitters used to just be a number, then became a function of BABIP skill in combination with others, which hadn't been in the game before. But IIRC that was a pretty major change for the programmers under the hood.

Movement is determined in part by groundball percentage as it is. It's not like contact where it shows you the result in the editor, you have to go outside and look at the movement rating on the player profile and it changes with groundball percentage. I've seen NoOne mention in the past that pitch types can affect it to, though I haven't played enough with it to see.

If true then I believe that can align (if done correctly) with what we're learning about pitching, that pitch mix can have a significant effect on GB rate and pitchers have lowered their HRs allowed by throwing less fastballs, as they're hit on the ground the lowest of any pitch type and whiffed the least (other than sinkers).

[NoOne]

Originally Posted by stiffy

Movement is determined in part by groundball percentage as it is. It's not like contact where it shows you the result in the editor, you have to go outside and look at the movement rating on the player profile and it changes with groundball percentage. I've seen NoOne mention in the past that pitch types can affect it to, though I haven't played enough with it to see.

If true then I believe that can align (if done correctly) with what we're learning about pitching, that pitch mix can have a significant effect on GB rate and pitchers have lowered their HRs allowed by throwing less fastballs, as they're hit on the ground the lowest of any pitch type and whiffed the least (other than sinkers).

well in the sense that if you use 3 "150" pitches and swap them around, you will get different overall stuff (-and possibly individual? admitted i don't recall, but if overall is higher it must be more effective in whatever environemnt the editor is based on) in the profile and it also changes movement too. (all other things remaining the same). get the right pitches and a "103/200" movement in editor turns into ~65/100 in profile somehow. (from editor /2 and +1, so 120 is 61/100 and ~65 should be "129" not "103")

i'd wager if it's just FB and Cutter, movement is closer to spot on... there may even be a combos where you find it's below what editor should equate to if perfect translation. i've defintely seen the previous example.

stuff and movement are alike in that sense... you see how the game uses them in teh profile stuff per individual pitch and movement.

gb% is different per pitch i'd guess, so you are right to think what you are thinking

the way i think about it there is a "pitch type profile." however they chose to define stuff is a range of attributes. each pitch can be different and obviously based on RL data about a slider or a change up etc...

this is why some affect movement different than others. gb% maybe be more useful to some pitches than others... and just hypothetically without thinking... a pitch could be better favoring a fly ball rather than a ground ball, if something dictates that from real life, that is. i don't know or research each and every pitch in ootp, so i won't say it isn't possible.

common sense... slider and curveball are better with a higher gb% for sure.. anything that is more effective at the bottom of the zone. maybe the pitches more effective at top are better with a flyball %? that's typically what you are trying to induce or a whiff with a high fastball.

the worst hit in baseball is a 'flyball'... worst slash results, but flyballs easily turn into HR in many contexts, i assume. does any pitch favor a pop-out and not have a high hr/9? maybe a KB? maybe multiple max+ (250) pitches too?

[NCBeachBum]

Hmm, in that case it may not require as extensive an overhaul as I thought.

[stiffy]

Originally Posted by NoOne

common sense... slider and curveball are better with a higher gb% for sure.. anything that is more effective at the bottom of the zone. maybe the pitches more effective at top are better with a flyball %? that's typically what you are trying to induce or a whiff with a high fastball.

the worst hit in baseball is a 'flyball'... worst slash results, but flyballs easily turn into HR in many contexts, i assume. does any pitch favor a pop-out and not have a high hr/9? maybe a KB? maybe multiple max+ (250) pitches too?

Yeah, that's basically right, in fact most pitchers are learning to pitch up these days due to the expanded strike zone up there and the fact that hitters can lift anything that's low these days.

Four seams and knuckleballs have about the same PU% but have the highest ISO of all pitches. Data found here. There are certain players that are able to maintain above average PU% over longer periods of time, like Chapman and Tim Wakefield.

I would love to see something where a player's pitch mix plays into the calculation of their groundball percentage.

[Drstrangelove]

Typically, I look at FIP and try to justify not using it as my final factor, although I don't make all my evaluations based upon just that one number. There are of course reasons why FIP won't give you exactly the right answer, especially if the sample size is small enough. Consistently low or high FIP over a 3 years is to me more or less enough to suggest the pitcher is much better or worse than average.

In the minors (and even on the majors), defense and luck can impact ERA+ and BABIP, a lot, imo, and I've made boo boos using those, although it's hard to ignore those when they are very good year after year. K/9 and K/BB can be misleading in isolation, but I do like those in the low minors as an indicator of potential, especially if they persist in the next level. However, a pitcher that grooves pitches and stays in the strike zone can have good K/9 and K/BB rates but not be ready for the next level.

Years ago, Bill James did a study that implied that low K rates (especially declining K rates) in the majors was an indicator of a pitcher who was potentially on the way down. I tend to view low K rates and low K/BB rates in the minors as an indicator of a sub-optimal talent.

So, there's no magic go to number, and sometimes, even the best scout can't figure it out.

[NoOne]

Originally Posted by stiffy

<snip>

I would love to see something where a player's pitch mix plays into the calculation of their groundball percentage.

i think it does already... it's a factor at least. the gb% could affect each pitch differently -- in the end the same impact can be reached this way too. i guess slightly different. it's a bit arbitrary how to set it up as long as the %'s come out right. hard to tell without full equation.

[whaleheader]

I believe NoOne is correct. My research on the game suggests individual pitch mix impacts stuff and movement, not the other way around. A lot of the complexity is hidden, which is fine.

The more I look into the game, the more I'm impressed by the quality of the underlying engine. The developers do a great job of realistically incorporating real-life player differences and game play into the sim.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by whaleheader

I believe NoOne is correct. My research on the game suggests individual pitch mix impacts stuff and movement, not the other way around. A lot of the complexity is hidden, which is fine.

The more I look into the game, the more I'm impressed by the quality of the underlying engine. The developers do a great job of realistically incorporating real-life player differences and game play into the sim.

I agree. OOTP does a great job of creating an illusion of real life baseball. Keeping the complexity hidden adds to the illusion, I don't want to know how the engine works as long as I see realistic results. To know would spoil the game IMHO.

To the original question, if one looks at the ratings (S, M, C), pitches, gb%, stamina etc. you really get a good picture of what type of pitcher you have. Add in scouting error, luck, defense behind, and parks and the game "makes" an incredibly realistic baseball world. It's amazing that these "bags of ratings" can give us the FIP, babip, BB, HRA, K\9 etc. etc. etc. that allow us to evaluate pitchers in a realistic fashion.


And all of this too applies to both batters and fielders respective of their skill sets.

[Alexdock]

A solid baseball pitching assessment can really help identify mechanical issues early, especially when performance starts to dip. I’ve seen how structured evaluations break down arm action, release point, and consistency in a way that’s easy to act on.