Is a catcher worth buying?

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by chazzycat

I would bet money with a large enough sample, we would see a direct correlation between "catcher ability" and CERA as well.

Ok, you, Kushiel, and Thalion have convinced me to give it a try.

How high does the catcher ability need to be in order to have an impact?

How many seasons should I play before drawing a conclusion? What's a reasonable sample size?

[KleineBiere]

What is a "large enough sample"?


I bought both players on the same day. Performance at perfect level

[Orcin]

A catcher ability of 108 appears to be far superior to 105. Interesting that Bench has a much better caught stealing rate with the same pitchers, same opponents, and the same arm rating.

[humboldt1498]

I have had success in perfect running a Daulton/Posey platoon. I think they are averaging about 5 WAR combined a season. It's hard to get quality offense without running a platoon.

Sent from my LG-H910 using Tapatalk

[Kushiel]

Originally Posted by Orcin

Ok, you, Kushiel, and Thalion have convinced me to give it a try.

How high does the catcher ability need to be in order to have an impact?

How many seasons should I play before drawing a conclusion? What's a reasonable sample size?

In beta I had 91 OVR Bench 104 ability and 83 OVR Varitek with 82 ability platooning. After one season I looked at the defensive stats and said "Holy Crap!." I forget the exact CERA difference now but it was a tad over a run. That is very significant. Maybe it was a small sample but I have been playing defensive catchers since. I routinely have lower team ERA's with my staff than many teams with very good pitching staffs and proper park factors too but think that they need a bat a catcher. I use the same philosophy as I believe in for all baseball get the best pitchers I can get and be strong up the middle on defense and catcher may be the biggest part of that in PT. I dunno but it works for me.

[chazzycat]

Originally Posted by KleineBiere

What is a "large enough sample"?

excellent question and I don't know the answer. but I suspect it's definitely more than two players, and importantly, players with a wider range of ratings between them.

[Thalion]

Don’t know. Matt said he looked at the code and can verify that it does influence, but he said it would be very difficult to quantify.

I figure it’s just a subjective cost v benefit thing. With the DH in place, I don’t have a problem carrying one potential weak bat I my lineup. And I say potential, because even though they may not reach their season averages in real life, I’ve been surprised some seasons in which they’ll carry their own weight and maybe give me .250 and 12 home runs.

[Renfro]

My All-Defense team has Tony Pena (138/107/111) and Charles Johnson (136/106/108). Combined generally with pitchers who have a high HOLD rating, we've had only 38 SB attempts against in 113 games (19 were successful). The next closest has 69 SB attempts. But yeah, Johnson, as a backup, is hitting .173. He started for me for two seasons, hitting .220 each of those seasons.

[max venerabel]

I grabbed the Ivan Rodriguez with the 135 overall defensive rating. My pitching staff is very happy about it -- we moved from 5th or 6th runs allowed in Perfect League last two years to #1. Not sure that's all on I-Rod, but nothing much else has changed.

He's also not a terrible hitter. At least not as terrible as most of the top rated defensive catchers i've seen.

[Renfro]

I've never seen Rodriguez' on the AH. What's his catcher stats?

[Max Venerable]

Originally Posted by Renfro

I've never seen Rodriguez' on the AH. What's his catcher stats?

Something like 105 arm, 105 catching, 135 catcher defense rating

[Mudster]

To add to the CERA conversation, when I was trying to train Harper, Baez, and Bichette at catcher, they all had CERA over 5...usually over 6. Might be because of the passed balls (Bichette averaged over 2 a game) or the total inability to throw out anyone (Under 6%).

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by Orcin

Ok chazzycat, Kushiel, and Thalion have convinced me to give it a try.

How high does the catcher ability need to be in order to have an impact?

How many seasons should I play before drawing a conclusion? What's a reasonable sample size?

It is a very small sample size but... I switched to Bench (92) with a catcher ability of 108 and Ray Fosse (86) with 106 ability in mid-May. My team ERA at the time was nearly 5 and I was in the bottom three in starter and reliever ERA in my conference. Now, in early August, my team ERA is under 4 and my starters are #1 in the conference (bullpen #6) WITH THE SAME PITCHERS and SAME BALLPARKS. Bench has a catcher ERA of 3.26 and Fosse (backup playing roughly 1/4th games) has a 3.87 CERA.

Coincidence... I doubt it. But again, it is a small sample size (75 games or so).

[chazzycat]

I'm starting to see a little correlation. Here is the data from our mini-whales league this season:

[Dogberry99]

In response to this thread, I began looking closer (in a general sort of way) at catching ability as a rating in the game. I was surprised that it seemed like there was a dearth of catchers with an ability in the 90s, with most grading out in the 80s or over 100. The graph reminded me of this anecdotal observation... Have others seen this, or am I seeing something that does not reflect the in game reality?

[DonkeyKongSr]

Originally Posted by Dogberry99

In response to this thread, I began looking closer (in a general sort of way) at catching ability as a rating in the game. I was surprised that it seemed like there was a dearth of catchers with an ability in the 90s, with most grading out in the 80s or over 100. The graph reminded me of this anecdotal observation... Have others seen this, or am I seeing something that does not reflect the in game reality?

This is all the Catcher Abilities in the 90s, which is very few, but not nonexistent like the chart above may lead you to believe...

Joe Mauer 98
Austin Hedges 96
Roy Campanella 94
Yasmani Grandal 92
Mike Scioscia 90
Earl Battey 90

[chazzycat]

Yeah, the graph is just from one league so it's not gonna include everyone.

[Dogberry99]

Originally Posted by DonkeyKongSr

This is all the Catcher Abilities in the 90s, which is very few, but not nonexistent like the chart above may lead you to believe...

Joe Mauer 98
Austin Hedges 96
Roy Campanella 94
Yasmani Grandal 92
Mike Scioscia 90
Earl Battey 90

Thanks for the list! Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that they didn't exist, merely that they were quite limited in number. That isn't very many...

EDIT: And yeah, the graph is a small sample size for sure, but it just reminded me about what I had previously seen

[DonkeyKongSr]

Originally Posted by Dogberry99

Thanks for the list! Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that they didn't exist, merely that they were quite limited in number. That isn't very many...

EDIT: And yeah, the graph is a small sample size for sure, but it just reminded me about what I had previously seen

For further emphasis on your point about the distribution (forgot to mention, these are Bronze+ only):

100s - 18
90s - 6
80s - 29
70s - 19
60s - 16
50s - 16
40s - 5
30s - 3

[Blazinghalo]

Originally Posted by Renfro

I've never seen Rodriguez' on the AH. What's his catcher stats?