Yordan Alvarez

[BigRed75]

Originally Posted by dancariaz

(you know the old saying: past production is the best projection) and give minor leaguers some kind of penalty (20% rating decrease?)

You know the other old saying - past performance is no guarantee of future results.

[dancariaz]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

...Basing initial ratings next year on 2019 performance is going to cause too many guys like Kimbrel or Treinen or others to start out way too lot, while other guys will start way too high coming off a career year...

I guess that's where we have different opinions. I'd say their stats should be exactly based on that because that's who they are right now. If live updates work as intended then they'll be "corrected" in the right way anyway.

Personally I'd rather have starting ratings based on what actually happened than ratings based on guestimations.

[HiDesertAce]

is this still the case? 80% stats/20% ratings will determine the final ranking?

[Dogberry99]

Originally Posted by HiDesertAce

is this still the case? 80% stats/20% ratings will determine the final ranking?

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

No, I don't believe we have a plan to adjust any of the peripheral ratings. It's something we may consider down the road for future live update versions, if there's other data that we get that we could use to do smaller tweaks to stuff like stamina, holds, speed, or defense throughout the season.

This means that peripheral ratings like those pertaining to base running, defense, and pitching endurance will be based 100% on projections. I respectfully disagree with this approach.

[Matt Arnold]

Originally Posted by HiDesertAce

is this still the case? 80% stats/20% ratings will determine the final ranking?

Yes I believe so, for players who play a full season, that is the case. For a guy like Alvarez, obviously he's not going to get a full season of PA in, so his ratings will have a larger portion from projections.

Originally Posted by Dogberry99

This means that peripheral ratings like those pertaining to base running, defense, and pitching endurance will be based 100% on projections. I respectfully disagree with this approach.

At the moment, we don't merge that data in, but it's certainly something we will think about for the future. Some of it is simply related to the data that we get - for example, our stats provider does not provide all the advanced defensive metrics that ideally would be used, so to update something like defense through the season would likely have to be a manual task.

I would absolutely love to have everything update as we go, so that, for example, Ketel Marte's OF range would have increased as he played more CF throughout the season. But to me, it would also be unfair to have all that data jump after the season as well, if we, for example, went through and re-rated everyone based on this season.

[Bunktown Ballers]

Originally Posted by raslavens

Please explain/defend why he's still in the low 70s ratings-wise. Other lesser prospects have soared up the ranks with far lesser performances. I know it's a game and I enjoying playing it as such (with all its limitations and quirks), but the way he's been treated bears no relationship to reality.

You are going to be told some ZIPS stuff, but it dont explain other players across the PT system that are risinf 16 points for a 2 week span of good hitting or pitching. Tim Anderson Leading AL in hitting etc, Yoan Moncada 3rd, Yordan, I can go on and on. Rating dont mean anything, period. The game only bumps players up or down to raise money bc lots of 100 & Diamond cards are pure junk. Then you'll find that 60-70 card playing in Diamond league throwing 1-hitters, shutouts, its just so random...that's my take, but I still play bc im in to deep but next year will be different

[CurlyKarkovice]

IF it is possible (time, resources) using the updated Zips projections at the end of each month would help the Live card ratings for players weighed down by bad and inaccurate preseason projections. Or even scrap the projections part of the equation once a player hits 450 PAs so it truly is Live and not inaccurate preseason projections muddying the values. If someone is playing full-time, all year, the preseason projections are worthless if they are "wrong" or 99% "right"

Also, I have issue with people posting about a higher BABIP number as if that means a hitter should not have higher ratings.

.300 is usually the league average but that means some amount of people have to be 350s or 250s. A lot of the time high BABIP has less to do with luck and more to do with higher percentage hard hit ball rates with league leading exit velocity per ball in play. People who smoke the ball every time at the plate leading them to get more hits shouldn't be lumped into the same lucky BABIP basket. Yordan Alvarez sample is smaller than the rest sure but his MLB Avg Exit Volcity is 15th at 92mph, his hard hit ball rate is 49% at 23rd place and Barrel/PA is 5th at 10.8% Bloop singles and slap hitting it opposite way against a shift are NOT fattening his numbers.

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_leaderboard

I'd say full-time player Yoan Moncada's slow trajectory this year could be a similar instance. He's found a good rating this week at 85 overall IMO (although he's 15th in batter WAR with mostly Diamond and Perfect players) but he was weighed down by a horrible preseason projection. Projected .234/.320/.406 but with a few games left he is sitting at .316/.369/.551 and 6th in average exit velocity with career .370 BABIP (for people who don't like his league leading .400 BABIP this year). I'll admit I could be bias on him (White Sox fan) and he never has a .300 season ever again.

Anyway, that's not "Live" at all and he ends up mostly a projection card until late August. But if the point is to get the Live cards right by September I think it works okay as well.

[Dogberry99]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

At the moment, we don't merge that data in, but it's certainly something we will think about for the future. Some of it is simply related to the data that we get - for example, our stats provider does not provide all the advanced defensive metrics that ideally would be used, so to update something like defense through the season would likely have to be a manual task.

I would absolutely love to have everything update as we go, so that, for example, Ketel Marte's OF range would have increased as he played more CF throughout the season. But to me, it would also be unfair to have all that data jump after the season as well, if we, for example, went through and re-rated everyone based on this season.

I completely understand the difficulties in updating peripheral ratings through the course of the season. Its difficult to use data that's not there. And if the process can't be automated, then forget it. There are far more important matters to attend to

That being said, when the data does become available at the end of the year, I personally believe it should be applied to Live cards. I understand the concern that it could significantly alter overall ratings. However, if significant aspects of a Live card are never based on this year's performance, then how Live are they really?

[steamrollers]

Originally Posted by Maxfire5

It's the same people to be fair.

Someone mentioned that Yordan would be ahead/near trout/yelich for OPS. Someone else mentioned sample size (half a season). Funnily enough, Hunter Dozier had an OPS over 1.000 as late as game 53. At that point, he was second in OPS in the majors, beyond Trout. He was still a bronze around 63. He has since regressed as ZIPS projected him to do. Alvarez has 82 games played, an incredibly small sample size. Regression is expected.

Notwithstanding, OPS isn't a metric they likely use either in their calculations but I could be wrong.

Further, for Jack Flaherty his FIP is 3.63 with a career 3.83 FIP. His era of 2.96 isn't likely sustainable as indicated by a career low BABIP of .250, and is very low considering league average is normally .300. His xFIP is 3.72 for the season too. This all points to significant regression for Flaherty.


Edit: FIP wise, he's the 17th best pitcher in baseball.

His “career” numbers? He is in his second season and considered one of the best young pitchers in the game. You talk like he is a ten year vet. Yes there are some numbers that aren’t necessarily the absolute elite while others are dominating. And that regression saw him go another 7 IP with 11 K’s and just 1 hit Tuesday. Yet one of the most dominating pitchers in the game with a historic second half basically only seen a couple times in the history of the game will likely end the season with a throwaway silver card. He is a perfect example of some major flaws for live cards. He could give up 10 runs in his first playoff start and it wouldn’t change the fact that at minimum this years live card should be solidly a gold and in reality a diamond. They had a chance to make up for the miss on his card with the POTM and still made it too low.

[Maxfire5]

Originally Posted by steamrollers

His “career” numbers? He is in his second season and considered one of the best young pitchers in the game. You talk like he is a ten year vet. Yes there are some numbers that aren’t necessarily the absolute elite while others are dominating. And that regression saw him go another 7 IP with 11 K’s and just 1 hit Tuesday. Yet one of the most dominating pitchers in the game with a historic second half basically only seen a couple times in the history of the game will likely end the season with a throwaway silver card. He is a perfect example of some major flaws for live cards. He could give up 10 runs in his first playoff start and it wouldn’t change the fact that at minimum this years live card should be solidly a gold and in reality a diamond. They had a chance to make up for the miss on his card with the POTM and still made it too low.

I know you're a homer. I get that. I am too. I think Soler should be rated higher. I think Whit who has the most hits in baseball by a large margin since 2018 should be better than a middle silver. I don't disagree that he should be higher than a silver, but I don't think think he's anything like a diamond/perfect. That's why his POTM card which more heavily weights current stats is still a low gold.

My point about years of data include his minor league years too. Sorry, should have mentioned that. 5 years of data(including minor leagues) suggest this is a career low for BABIP which just got lower. Pitchers *generally* can't control BABIP, so that's expected to normalize. BABIP doesn't normally go down as you up through the minor leagues and into the majors. Go and compare his stat lines to Gerrit Cole. Cole has a better K/9, better bb/9, nearly double the K/BB ratio. Cole has a higher BABIP, lower left on base percentage, lower FIP.

If you want to consider that a pitcher *does* have more control over balls in play, as opposed to the type of batter and hitters profile, we can look at some other things. Cole is generating less hard contact. Cole has a SIERA of 2.62. Flaherty has of 3.69. That's a *huge* difference. Cole's xFIP is 2.46 versus 3.67 for Flaherty. From a FIP- standpoint, Cole has a 54, Flaherty has an 82, so cole is 46% better than league average, Flaherty is 18% better.

League wise, here's the rankings with players 1 or 2 above and below him for these categories.

From a SIERA standpoint, Flaherty is on par with Kershaw, Matthew Boyd, and Lucas Giolito.

From an xFIP standpoint, he's on par with Lucas Giolito, Kyle Gibson, and Robbie Ray.

From an xFIP- standpoint, he's on par with Kyle Gibson, Matthew Boyd, and Sonny Gray.


I honestly don't know those cards off the top of my head, but they aren't ringing a bell as upper golds and diamonds, except Kershaw who has dramatically fallen down the ratings.

Every projection has regression for him expected. It doesn't happen on one start. Thank you for kindly pointing out my regression for him and him having a great start. If he exceeds the expected regression, great. Regardless, this dataset will help projections for next year.

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by steamrollers

Yet one of the most dominating pitchers in the game with a historic second half basically only seen a couple times in the history of the game

I thought this statement was a bit over the top... even for a Cardinals fan. But you have a good point...

[chazzycat]

The reasons Flaherty isn't rated higher:

1) The first half happened too. You can't just throw that away and only look at his second half. He pitched to a 4.6 ERA and 4.75 FIP in the first half. That's a full half the season of mediocre performance.

2) His second half, while I admit has been excellent, is not quite as great as it looks on the surface. Don't get me wrong - he is pitching really well and seems to have made significant adjustments that are driving the results. But, he's ALSO getting the benefit of a lot of good luck. That BABIP of .222 in the screenshot above is 2nd lowest in MLB for the 2nd half, and most baseball analysts would agree that's not likely to be sustainable. Likewise, he's also rocking a 94% strand rate this second half (highest in MLB). That's a second red flag that he's getting lucky and his ERA should be expected to regress.

3) The game's pitching model does not have a rating for pitcher BABIP. That is a hitter rating. Regardless of anyone's opinion on whether pitchers can influence BABIP in real life...in the game, they can't. So if a pitcher's main reason for success is giving up a tiny number of hits - well, don't expect them to have good ratings. It's just not how the game works.

For more context, Fangraphs just looked at the NL Cy Young race, it's a pretty good article:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-2019...g-voter-guide/

[Dncarnes]

And yet, Luis Severino went from a 91 to a 95 based on 2 starts and 9 innings pitched this entire year. How does that bump him 4 points compared to a career of 527 innings?

The system seems maddeningly inconsistent. Very conservative in Y. Alvarez' case, although his preseason rating was based solely on minor league numbers (darned impressive ones, though), and even after 213 ridiculous AB in AAA and 298 AB in the majors he's still at a 73?

I seriously question a system that moves one player with a well-established baseline of performance 4 points to a mid-Diamond based on 9 innings, and hasn't moved a ROY candidate past a low Silver rating after an incredible year across AAA and ML? Granted he's no defensive whiz, but he's a DH--he doesn't need to be.

I'm not even going to go into the "Future Star" cards like Mackenzie Gore, who has a Diamond rating card with 21.2 innings in AA as his most advanced experience. That, my friends, is just silly. (Maybe I'm thinking of Casey Mize, but same issue.) I'll play the game, but it could be vastly improved in some aspects if it wants to have any semblance of reality.

[Maxfire5]

Originally Posted by Dncarnes

And yet, Luis Severino went from a 91 to a 95 based on 2 starts and 9 innings pitched this entire year. How does that bump him 4 points compared to a career of 527 innings?

The system seems maddeningly inconsistent. Very conservative in Y. Alvarez' case, although his preseason rating was based solely on minor league numbers (darned impressive ones, though), and even after 213 ridiculous AB in AAA and 298 AB in the majors he's still at a 73?

I seriously question a system that moves one player with a well-established baseline of performance 4 points to a mid-Diamond based on 9 innings, and hasn't moved a ROY candidate past a low Silver rating after an incredible year across AAA and ML? Granted he's no defensive whiz, but he's a DH--he doesn't need to be.

I'm not even going to go into the "Future Star" cards like Mackenzie Gore, who has a Diamond rating card with 21.2 innings in AA as his most advanced experience. That, my friends, is just silly. (Maybe I'm thinking of Casey Mize, but same issue.) I'll play the game, but it could be vastly improved in some aspects if it wants to have any semblance of reality.

I have no explanation for the future legend cards. Lol.


Severino though, was coming off successive seasons of decreasing FIPS from 3.07, to 2.95. Both are remarkable, and significantly better than the aforementioned Flaherty.

Purely hypothetical, but at this point in the season, the ratings are now to their highest point for weighting current season stats. Since he has pitcher a total of 9 IP, a BABIP of .278, and a FIP of 1.33, it's probably weighing too much on that. Think earlier in the season, the swings wouldn't be as dramatic because they weighing more on projections than live stats. Now they may be weighing around an 80/20 split as opposed to a 99/1 split earlier (projection/current). His end of season FIP projection would put him 8th among pitchers, just ahead of Verlander, if he had pitched all season.

Essentially saying the system isn't setup to handle a player who was expected to have 30+ starts make his first appearance with less than two weeks to go in the season. The swing in rating could be heavily influenced by his small sample size.

Again, entirely hypothetical, just my guess.


Also, I cant stress this enough, overall means nothing besides determining quicksell value. Look at the independent ratings. I recall Alvarez having horrible running abilities and defense too. That'll hinder a cards overall.

[chazzycat]

Severino was injured all year, so those 2 starts represent his entire body of work for the season. If they were the first two starts of the year, no one would be shocked by a 4 point bump, considering they were extremely dominant starts. In those two starts, he struck out 40% of batters, walked just 6%, and didn't give up a single homer. Those are the actual stats that correspond to STU, CON, and MOV ratings. So they went up exactly as should be expected.

[Dogberry99]

Originally Posted by Maxfire5

Essentially saying the system isn't setup to handle a player who was expected to have 30+ starts make his first appearance with less than two weeks to go in the season. The swing in rating could be heavily influenced by his small sample size.

Why would the game handle Severino any differently than any rookie being called up as the rosters expand?

[Maxfire5]

Originally Posted by Dogberry99

Why would the game handle Severino any differently than any rookie being called up as the rosters expand?

Rookies aren't projected for a sub 3 FIP. Specifically Flaherty. Regression is expected based upon their peripherals.
Severino was and is expected to be dominant.

[Dogberry99]

Originally Posted by Maxfire5

Rookies aren't projected for a sub 3 FIP. Specifically Flaherty. Regression is expected based upon their peripherals.
Severino was and is expected to be dominant.

Would AJ Puk starting as a high gold be an acceptable comp?

[Maxfire5]

Originally Posted by Dogberry99

Would AJ Puk starting as a high gold be an acceptable comp?

It would be. He's an FV of 55, as opposed to Flaherty at 50. Overall #20 prospect in baseball. Flaherty is #65. I don't have an answer for why he debuted at 88, but I'd also remind you that he's fallen from an 88 to 80 in a very short amount of time. They have nearly the same FIP in the season and projections are near that too. I didn't look at any other metrics for him, but it appears Puk is headed down into the silvers to be with similar pitchers like Flaherty, Giolito, and Gibson as mentioned in a previous post.

I'm not privy to their equations; no one is. I'm just looking at what metrics I think are part of their equations based on discussions and their comments on other threads. WHIP, ERA, wins are not part of that.

[steamrollers]

Originally Posted by chazzycat

The reasons Flaherty isn't rated higher:

1) The first half happened too. You can't just throw that away and only look at his second half. He pitched to a 4.6 ERA and 4.75 FIP in the first half. That's a full half the season of mediocre performance.

2) His second half, while I admit has been excellent, is not quite as great as it looks on the surface. Don't get me wrong - he is pitching really well and seems to have made significant adjustments that are driving the results. But, he's ALSO getting the benefit of a lot of good luck. That BABIP of .222 in the screenshot above is 2nd lowest in MLB for the 2nd half, and most baseball analysts would agree that's not likely to be sustainable. Likewise, he's also rocking a 94% strand rate this second half (highest in MLB). That's a second red flag that he's getting lucky and his ERA should be expected to regress.

3) The game's pitching model does not have a rating for pitcher BABIP. That is a hitter rating. Regardless of anyone's opinion on whether pitchers can influence BABIP in real life...in the game, they can't. So if a pitcher's main reason for success is giving up a tiny number of hits - well, don't expect them to have good ratings. It's just not how the game works.

For more context, Fangraphs just looked at the NL Cy Young race, it's a pretty good article:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-2019...g-voter-guide/

I had read that article and it was a good one. Since then Flaherty has went another 14 innings with 0 runs, 3 hits, 3 walks and 17 strikeouts. He would have finished the game today but they were cruising so they pulled him after dominating in Maddux fashion with only 69 pitches through 7.



Basically everything you said is why some live cards by the end of the year can be way off where their rating should be. "his ERA should be expected to regress" yet it kept going down as he kept dominating. At some point the cold hard results should play a larger role as the season wears on and not predictor stats that think there should be a regression coming. The very numbers you use to state why Flaherty shouldn't be highly rated are basically the same as Verlander so if we just cherry pick a few numbers I suppose he should drop about 20 points. It can't be both ways.



I do agree that those stats you focus on should play an important role for his initial rating next season. One can't expect this historic run to be the new normal going forward but for a live card that has one last update he should get a massive boost.