Let's Talk Defense

[Matt Arnold]

Originally Posted by kingcharlesxii

You can but you're playing half the games on the road so it's not as big a factor as you might think. I actually prefer neutral parks just because I want a team that can win with any park factors. Remember, your team has to hit with those park factors too.

It's less bad to do it in Perfect Team vs real OOTP though as you keep the players as long as you want them.

I find over the course of the season I tend to rebalance my roster enough that making a very imbalanced park can hurt. Like, just because my 2/3/4 hitters are all righties at the start of the year, if I get a good pull from a pack, or a great deal in the auction house, I might replace that.

The only exceptions would be if I was really going for an unbalanced team (ie. I have almost all lefties in my lineup, and I want to run a rotation of lefties as well) and then that might make sense for a season. Although in one case, I have a bunch of pitchers with bad movement, and not much power in my lineup, so I dropped my HR down. So far so good, but I am still looking for more power in the lineup (just because I supress HR doesn't mean I don't still want SOME guys who can hit a longball...)

[Maddox]

Originally Posted by DonkeyKongSr

Your OF are virtually always going to be best in LF, then RF, then CF (only the worst OF don't follow this). However, there can be bigger swings on some players, so you do need to run the calculator to optimize your OF.

Of note, in my records, I've found 6 guys who will rate over 100 at CF, 32 at RF, and 63 at LF.

For a budget 1B, there's always Brandon Belt and his 104 1B rating. However, Silver Tulowitski and Bobby Crosby should peak higher (110 & 108 according to the calculator, but 1B overcalculates by 2 points often).

I have been looking for Bobby Crosby but he has not been on the auction house that I have seen.

[DonkeyKongSr]

Originally Posted by Janks

I've have three catchers that can produce offense.

Francisco Mejia

I like Mejia, but that 45 Catcher Ability...yikes. That's like bottom 10 for pure catchers. Passed balls and terrible framing all day.

[Janks]

Originally Posted by DonkeyKongSr

I like Mejia, but that 45 Catcher Ability...yikes. That's like bottom 10 for pure catchers. Passed balls and terrible framing all day.

I agree. He's only behind the plate when Bench needs a rest against lefties.

[DonkeyKongSr]

Originally Posted by Janks

I agree. He's only behind the plate when Bench needs a rest against lefties.

If you want a good bat who can just barely play catcher, check out Josh Donaldson. Someone in my Perfect League has him as a backup. He's a Diamond barely going for the 4K minimum, but he has some existing but atrocious Catcher D.

[Maddox]

Okay here is what I have. I put $5 into points so I could get Hernandez at first. Maybe not the elite defense that a converted Tulo or similar could give me but I decided to make a tradeoff and get some offense out the position as well

Hopefully this will be an effective lineup in bronze and silver at least. The next question is based on this lineup what pitchers should I get to maximize it. Let us assume default park settings for now.

Fly ball, Neutral or Ground ball?

Since most of the pitchers will probably be silver/low gold what is my focus (I know there is some debate on this)

Stuff or Movement more important (both would be preferable along with some control but that may be asking to much out of that tier of pitcher)
Does number of pitches matter
Is somebody with 3 good pitches and one mediocre one a liability?


My bullpen by some miracle is 2nd in the entry league after 2 days so I will leave them for now.

[Thalion]

You're not going to find many pitchers who are ground ball pitchers except for the very recent ones.

To be honest, from my limited experience, since you have excellent defenders at all position (aside from LF but that will eventually change) I don't think it's going to matter much whether or not they are flyball/groundball or neutral.

What you DO want to do is keep the ball in the park though. Defense doesn't help if the ball is over the fence. Having said that, movement is your friend as a pitching staff. I swear by movement and control.

[DonkeyKongSr]

Originally Posted by Thalion

You're not going to find many pitchers who are ground ball pitchers except for the very recent ones.

To be honest, from my limited experience, since you have excellent defenders at all position (aside from LF but that will eventually change) I don't think it's going to matter much whether or not they are flyball/groundball or neutral.

What you DO want to do is keep the ball in the park though. Defense doesn't help if the ball is over the fence. Having said that, movement is your friend as a pitching staff. I swear by movement and control.

Here's all the silver+ extreme and regular groundball pitchers in my tracker. It is almost entirely Live, with a few very recent non-Lives.

EX GB
Blake Treinen - 96
Jose Fernandez - 91
Zach Britton - 88
Dallas Keuchel - 84
Jeurys Familia - 83
Carlos Martinez - 80
Marcus Stroman - 80
Aaron Bummer - 79
Charlie Morton - 79
Scott Oberg - 77
Andrew Chafin - 76
Jace Fry - 74
Scott Alexander - 73
Alex Claudio - 72
Mark Melancon - 72
Pedro Strop - 72
Dylan Floro - 71
Richard Bleier - 70
Adam Kolarek - 70


GB
Clayton Kershaw - 99
Craig Kimbrel - 90
Jordan Hicks - 89
Patrick Corbin - 89
Walker Buehler - 87
Dellin Betances - 85
Felipe Vazquez - 83
Jameson Taillon - 81
Dellin Betances - 80
Kyle Hendricks - 80
Robert Stock - 79
Kyle Freeland - 79
Joakim Soria - 79
Alex Wood - 78
Jeremy Jeffress - 78
Luis Avilan - 76
Nathan Eovaldi - 74
Xavier Cedeno - 74
Adam Cimber - 73
Tanner Scott - 71
Jose Alvarez - 71
Zach Duke - 71
Zack Godley - 70

[Janks]

If you need a backup infielder, Bucky Dent (OVR 48) and/or Bud Harrelson (OVR 60) are possible options.

[Dogberry99]

I think you're going to like that team. It should serve you well.

Keith Hernandez will give you excellent production, both offensively and defensively. I would personally be planning to upgrade 1B to a tall middle infielder with acceptable defense and great offense, but Hernandez ensures that this won't become a priority for a long, long time.

It might also be marginally better to train Ichiro in LF and McReynolds in RF. Something to consider, especially since that way both project to be triple digits in their positional ratings.

While I don't think there is a clear cut consensus on pitching yet, the trend seems to be shifting towards high movement in particular. I seem to be more forgiving on control (to a point, at least) than many, but to each their own. As I've said elsewhere, focusing on pitchers with a ground ball or extreme ground ball profile is not a viable strategy. The BABIP will be too high, they are painfully short in numbers (iirc, for starters. 2 diamonds [Kershaw, Fernandez], a handful of high golds [Corbin, Buehler, Keuchel, maybe someone I'm forgetting...] and not much more beyond low low golds and high silvers), and most of those available have low movement, control, or both. I tried to focus on them, and while it didn't stop me from getting to Diamond, it definitely was not what got me there.

Late Edit: DonkyKongSr busting out the lists I made once but only wish I still had! (and yes, I really do type slow )

Although, 1 more to add, the 2015 Keuchel card (86 OVR) is also Ex GB, and with the best Movement value I've seen in game. I picked him up recently, and I'm hoping for good things.

[Maddox]

Thanks for the tip. I have swapped McReynold's and Ichiro's positions. Best to do it now since I have 3 more days of 24/7 simming in the entry league to get them as high as I can. That should be almost a full season worth of games.

[daves]

So what is ZR or Zone rating represent?

[atabakin]

Originally Posted by Maddox

Thanks for the tip. I have swapped McReynold's and Ichiro's positions. Best to do it now since I have 3 more days of 24/7 simming in the entry league to get them as high as I can. That should be almost a full season worth of games.

Keep in mind that positional training in entry league does not carry over to bronze, so while this could be helpful in showing how high the players can train in a short amount of time, you won't reap the benefits once you enter actual league play.

[Maddox]

Well, crud. I did not know it did not carry over.

I picked up Bud Harrelson to backup all of the infield spots and Jackie Bradley Jr to backup all of the outfield positions.

[omniart]

Just wanted to say that I like your experiment, Maddox, and I like the team that you put together. I think that you will be surprised at how well it does. Also, I very much agree with Thalion's statement that you need to keep the ball in the park. For pitchers, Movement is key.

[<Pion>]

Originally Posted by Thalion

What you DO want to do is keep the ball in the park though. Defense doesn't help if the ball is over the fence. Having said that, movement is your friend as a pitching staff. I swear by movement and control.

Checking the stats of all pitchers in 30 leagues showed that as a whole, extreme FB pitchers have a lower ERA than extreme GB. As you cross the spectrum from extreme GB to extreme FB, the ERAs go steadily down... 4.27 / 4.21 / 4.19 / 4.09 / 4.00

While HRs went up as you move to extreme FB, Hits and Walks went down. Ex GB walked batters at a rate of 3.9 per 9 innings while Ex FB is 3.0. In the same manner, hits went from 9.2 to 8.7 so BB+HA per 9 innings is 13.1 for Ex GB and 11.7 for Ex FB.

Edit - Tomorrow I plan on seeing what the average movement and control is for the five categories. I would not be surprised if as a whole, the Ex GB pitchers have lower control and stuff. Don't know how else to account for increased walks and decreased Ks. We'll see...

[Maddox]

I'll look forward to your results Pion.

Looking at the pitchers in the few leagues I am in (entry pool and two gold leagues) high movement seems to be on of the toughest ratings to find, especially high movement and average or better stats in the other ratings.

As for Flyball vs Ground ball, so far in very limited sample my current GB pitchers have seen the most improvement from my defensive lineup. I guess that if I really wanted to make this an experiment I could maybe get 2 GB pitchers, 2 FB pitcher and a neutral and see who excels.

I could also look closely at my game logs since the pitchers show how many GB vs FB were hit. I could check those against hits allowed and runs scored.

Right now I have a little over 5,000 points for pitching thanks to my $5 purchase of points. Maybe I could get to 6000 by Sunday.

[Leo_The_Lip]

Has anyone else tinkered with the 'infield in' settings to basically play for two all the time? Except for Bottom of the Ninth and game tied situations?

This is the Casey Stengel strategy as discussed in the Bill James book about managers (a great read).

To that end, I have Belanger (now trying Thon to get more power) and Oquendo. Basically Iead the league in pitching and defense and double plays, which is an almost impossible thing to do historically--only Stengel's Yankees accomplished it.

Essentially I never play the infield in and always get two. So for me, Turn Double Play is a priority, right after range.

[<Pion>]

From what I've seen, one of the biggest things potentially affecting ExGB pitchers is the total lack of decent pitchers. There is only one pitcher (Jose Fernandez) that is below the league average for actual ERA and ratings (STU/MOV/CON), and he isn't below by much at all (4.12, average starter is 4.28). In contrast there are around 25 to 30 ExFB pitchers with a lower than average ERA and some are a lot lower (excellent pitchers).

Seeing the discrepancy in quality pitchers, I thought it would interesting to compare the most similar pitchers I could find where one was ExGB and the other was ExFB. The choices are limited with there not being a large number ExGB types, but Stan Bahnsen (57/61/65 ExFB) and Dallas Keuchel (56/65/65 ExGB) looked similar in STU/MOV/CON. Though Keuchel had the better eFIP, his actual ERA is higher (4.64 to 4.40). Looking at the ratings (and then stats), I would have expected Bahnsen to have a very slight edge in Hits given up, Keuchel to have an edge in HRs given up, and for a tie in BBs. The BBs played out as expected with 3.0 per 9 innings for each. Bahnsen had a slight edge in K/9 with 5.4 to 5.2 which is a bit more than I expected when looking at 57 STU to 56, but nothing alarming there. Hits and HRS were the surprising thing. The player who was the ExGB pitcher and had better movement gave up more HRs (0.9 to 0.8), but the surprise was hits which was a large advantage for Bahnsen (9.7 to 10.2).

I'm going to continue looking at these two and see if Bahnsen's numbers were against lower level leagues which could account for the difference. I also want to look at their OPS by bringing doubles and triples into the mix through SLG to see what I find there as well.

EDIT - The numbers are skewed by Bahnsen never having been in a Perfect league while Keuchel had a huge 6.12 ERA in 465 innings. However, if I look at the levels they have in common, Keuchel had a very slight edge at Bronze/Silver (4.26 to 4.28), but Bahnsen turned it around at Gold/Diamond (4.51 to 4.67). Still suggests to me there is something inherently better about FB pitchers than GB (or some influence such as defense that helps them more, perhaps the ease with which you can find better OF defenders and don't need as many?)

[jd200600]

Originally Posted by stl jason

had decent luck with Cochrane so far with my pre-ww2 team.... ignoring his first/partial season, he's done a solid job compared to what other catchers have done for me (course, it's only been silver league and half a season in gold so far; so no telling what would happen at higher levels, depending on where your team(s) are at).

I am rolling with Cochrane right now as well! He is performing the best for me, but he is still at .240 BA and .297 OBP. (Diamond League).