Please post MLB Roster set issues here

[benjamindm]

The M&M boys of the Twins (Mauer and Morneau) have very average offensive ratings, in my opinion. Yet, they have been two of the best players in the AL over the past several years (Mauer - batting title 2006 and 2008, Morneau - MVP 2006) and have been phenomenal this year (both with OPS in the 1.000+ range).

[POKeefe]

Originally Posted by benjamindm

The M&M boys of the Twins (Mauer and Morneau) have very average offensive ratings, in my opinion. Yet, they have been two of the best players in the AL over the past several years (Mauer - batting title 2006 and 2008, Morneau - MVP 2006) and have been phenomenal this year (both with OPS in the 1.000+ range).

Both had correct ratings last time I checked. Especially Mauer who is one of the highest rated players in the set.

[ambill10]

I'm new to the game, so bear with me and let me know if I'm off with this stuff...

St. Louis Cardinals Starting Pitching Issues:

All Cardinals SP have very low fastball ratings (Carpenter-58, Lohse-52, Pineiro-80, Wainwright-56, Wellemeyer-29). I cross referenced some other teams and these seem very low for a ML rotation. Also, none of them possess a sinker. Under Dave Duncan's coaching all pitchers generally throw sinkers, with the exception of Wellemeyer in this group IRL.

Chris Carpenter needs a better fastball/sinker and his changeup should be a little better. As is, Carpenter has 107 Stuff. Johan Santana is at 166 Stuff. Carpenter is made of glass, but when he is healthy he stuff is near the top of the NL.

Kyle Lohse has the wrong salary for 2009. He should be at $7,125,000 for this season according to Cot's instead of the $8,375,000 he is in the current roster set. His fastball is 52 and he doesn't have a sinker.

Joel Pineiro has no sinker in the game. His sinker is his bread & butter pitch IRL with his slider being second best. The curve and change are just there keep people off balance essentially - Link.

Adam Wainwright has club options in the last two years on his contract IRL, but not even for the final year in the game. He has the bad fastball and no sinker problem, but his slider is probably a little over-rated.

Todd Wellemeyer has his best pitch being a curveball, a pitch he doesn't even throw IRL. The game has Wellemeyer walking too few and striking out too many by about 20 each way probably. The biggest problem is his awful fastball and great (imaginary) curveball.

I'll do the bullpen next with bats and farmhands to follow at some point...

[ambill10]

St. Louis Cardinals Bullpen Issues:

Cardinals Relievers continue the trend of having really poor fastballs and just having very low Stuff ratings in general for some reason. The Stuff ratings of Cardinals pitchers are similar to more AAA clubs than ML clubs.

Ryan Franklin should be the closer, although Motte got the chance on Opening Day. Franklin has closed ever since. Franklin has 66 Stuff due to 5 pitches all being either 42(3) or 57(2). He should also have about 10 more strike outs projected based on Fangraphs projections. The last year of his contract should be a club option.

Josh Kinney is a fastball/slider reliever, but his curveball is rated 3x better than his fastball.

Kyle McClellan has a change up IRL but not in the game. He doesn't use it much as a reliever, but it should exist probably.

Trever Miller is a fastball/slider lefty specialist IRL. The game has his changeup as his best pitch. He should have a <1 R/L split and a good slider. His fastall is down to more 84-86 this year and his changeup is hardly used. Switching the slider and changeup ratings would work wonders.

Dennys Reyes a fastball rating of 24 is pretty bad even for a lefty-slider specialist. His ratings show a 4.26 ERA, well above his predictions on Fangraphs.

Brad Thompson throws a Dave Duncan 2-seam fastball generally, but seems pretty good overall.

Jason Motte has a better slider than fastball in the game. His fastball is his best pitch with the slider still developing IRL. That's my only specific critique, his pitches are just flipped.

Now on to bats...

[ambill10]

St. Louis Cardinals Batters Issues:

Jason LaRue seems perfect.

Yadier Molina should have a club option in the final year of his contract, but the $ amounts are correct. Yadi is generally a little too highly rated as an offensive player currently. His potential seems reasonable, but he isn't quite as good yet as the stats that his numbers punch out. Current BABIP should be about 5 less for RH and LH. Current Gap and Current Power should be about 15 less each for RH and LH.

Chris Duncan is a left fielder at this point. It has been his primary position for more or less 3 years. He can play first as well, but he is on the MLB All-Star ballot as an outfielder. Duncan should probably have +10 in Gap and -10 in Power. Also, he has a severe LH/RH career platoon split so the difference in his ratings in that regard should be more drastic.

Albert Pujols should be a team option in his final contract year. Hard to argue with any offensive numbers. I would argue though that his defensive Infield Range should be more like 162 than the 62 it is currently. Pujols covers a ton of ground defensively and has won a Gold Glove at 1B.

Skip Schumaker should have a stronger Infield Arm. It is the only good thing about Skip at 2B, he has a strong arm. Offensively, Skip should have a more drastic LH/RH platoon split based on his career numbers. His RH BABIP should be a little higher based on his 2008 performance against RH pitching probably.

Joe Thurston no complaints.

David Freese hard to judge due to injury. Seems reasonable, although power hitting ability seems somewhat lofty.

Khalil Greene is it possible for Social Anxiety Disorder to be added to the Diagnosis tab for injuries? Offensive numbers are more 2007 Khalil Greene than current Khalil Greene.

Brian Barton did not make the ML team out of Spring Training. Lofty power numbers projected by ratings.

Ryan Ludwick no complaints.

Colby Rasmus could justifiably have another 20 points added to his Outfield Range. He covers a lot of ground in CF.

Rick Ankiel BABIP too high. Power too high. Doesn't hit for much power or average against LH pitching IRL.

Brendan Ryan should be a SS, not RF. He is a very good defensive SS, especially Infield Range could be higher. Offensively looks accurate.

I'll do farmhand issues tomorrow sometime probably...

[Nutlaw]

Nice work, ambill10. I agree entirely.

[udbacker58]

Originally Posted by ambill10

St. Louis Cardinals Batters Issues:

Albert Pujols I would argue though that his defensive Infield Range should be more like 162 than the 62 it is currently. Pujols covers a ton of ground defensively and has won a Gold Glove at 1B.

Skip Schumaker should have a stronger Infield Arm. It is the only good thing about Skip at 2B, he has a strong arm.

Colby Rasmus could justifiably have another 20 points added to his Outfield Range. He covers a lot of ground in CF.

Brendan Ryan should be a SS, not RF. He is a very good defensive SS, especially Infield Range could be higher. Offensively looks accurate.

Working on tightening up the defense for the first patch, so you should expect many of these things to be covered. I agree that Pujols' range was low, but it won't be raised to 162, you have to remember that he has good range for a 1B. 162 is good range for a 2B, and I think we would both agree that may be a little much.

[johndoe8865]

Would someone with a more thorough knowledge of projections than myself, please check out the Cincinnati Reds system and see if anything sticks out as needing to be tweaked?
Thanks a lot. This is the best baseball game ever created either graphically or text IMO.

[KySteveH]

I am doing a comprehensive Reds review now.

One question for the roster makers...how far down in the system should I look? In order words, which players are actually rated, and which are just randomly assigned numbers? I don't want to post a list of players that seem "off", if those players were never really rated in the first place. That wouldn't be fair.

[KySteveH]

Oh, one more quick thing...when posting to this thread, do you guys actually want a list of the individual players who have either "0" or "1" for ratings? What about pitchers with no pitches, or fielders with no postitions? I would think those would be easy enough to find globally, but I would be glad to list them out as well...

[ambill10]

Originally Posted by udbacker58

Working on tightening up the defense for the first patch, so you should expect many of these things to be covered. I agree that Pujols' range was low, but it won't be raised to 162, you have to remember that he has good range for a 1B. 162 is good range for a 2B, and I think we would both agree that may be a little much.

Thanks! I'm still new to this, so I'm not sure what a good rating is for some categories. I'll touch on some AAA Memphis Redbirds roster issues this afternoon if I have time.

[injury log]

Originally Posted by KySteveH

Oh, one more quick thing...when posting to this thread, do you guys actually want a list of the individual players who have either "0" or "1" for ratings? What about pitchers with no pitches, or fielders with no postitions? I would think those would be easy enough to find globally, but I would be glad to list them out as well...

Yeah, the guys who weren't rated will be those guys with a 1 in Gap Potential or in Control Potential. We can find those guys easily enough. We're definitely going to try to clean these guys up for the next patch, but the main issue is the time involved in rating each player - to do this properly takes quite a bit of research. Because of that, we won't be able to do too accurate a job with some of the minor league filler type players. What would be useful is to know which players with these '0' ratings might be 'important', for whatever reason - whether because they ranked on some prospect lists, were high draft choices, or are otherwise well known - if we know about those guys, we can rate them accurately, time permitting. We've rated everyone on the BA team top 30 lists, but we haven't always checked Sickels' or BP's lists, for example.

[POKeefe]

Only thing I can say about Ambill's critique is saying things like "BABIP is too high" doesn't really work. I really prefer the new stats to ratings system that the dev team created. Makes it much easier. That was you can just pop in the stats of a projection and it gives you the ratings. That's why I think it's easier to just say "AVG is too high by 20 points" or something of that nature. Things I noticed about the Red Sox:

Clay Buchholz has less potential than Justin Masterson in the set which isn't true. Buchholz was always known to have ace-2 potential, but more risky to reach it. Masterson is known to have 2-3/top set-up man swing potential with a likely chance of getting to it (which he did).

Over inflated ratings for Will Middlebrooks. He's extremely raw almost to the point of calling him a recently signed international player. I think his potential rating is a bit too generous considering the chances he reaches that are very very slim.

Ratings too low for Casey Kelly. Kelly is the best arm in the Red Sox system under AA right now and has 1-2 potential. I think he was a bit underrated in the set.

Also, Federowicz and Wagner are both guys that have the potential to be big league catchers. Wagner more glove than bat, but Federo shows good potential as a decent contact hitter.

[Jay Elias]

Minor issue, but Miguel Abreu (AA Bowie - Orioles) is listed and rated as a 1b when he has been primarily a 2b this season and for his career. In fact, he's never played a single play at 1b in his minor league career.

Miguel Abreu Minor League Statistics & History - Baseball-Reference.com

Two other Orioles' minor league pitchers without pitch ratings are Nathan Nery and Ryan O'Shea. I'm still looking, but have been unable to find scouting reports for either, but both have had success as starters for Low-A Delmarvra this season.

Finally, starter Alfredo Simon begins the season for the Orioles on the DL for several weeks. In reality, he began the season healthy and made three (poor) starts before going down for the season and possibly for his career with torn elbow ligaments.

[southside_hitmen]

Brett Cecil - SP
Should also have a 4-seam fastball and slider. From the BA prospect handbook "His 4-seam fastball creeps into the mid 90's in relief stints". They also say his two seamer is his best pitch followed by his slider as those are his two "plus offerings".

His sinker comes in the 88-92 range, so adjust his fastball velocity accordingly.
His Sinker is his best pitch, followed by his slider. His curveball should be his third best offering, with the change-up fourth. Also got to throw the 4-seamer in there (probably close to the change in ratings). I would switch the potential of his curveball and sinker, putting the sinker in the 130's for potential with the curve around the 110 mark. Also grade his slider out somewhere in between the two with a potential in the high 120's low 130's. His change-up rating is about right on the money. I also might drop his current rating on the curveball to the high 90's low 100's due to it being his third pitch. He projects as a middle of the rotation starter with worst case scenarios being a back-end starter/reliever. He was a closer in college. In the roster his current potential with scouting off has him at 1 1/2 stars, so he probably could use a boost as he is ranked third in the Jays system by BA, and 4th by BP.


Ricky Romero - SP
Needs a Slider and two-seamer added to his pitch rep. From BA "He had some success in Triple-A when he emphasized his high 80's 2-seamer, a slower version of his curve, and a fringy slider". I would rank his sinker right baout average, and make his slider in the 50-75 range. I would also maybe drop his current ratings slightly and add some potential for growth to his potential ratings. He is still young and figuring it out on the mound, plus he's a prospect.


Mark Rzepczynski - SP
Need to add a fringy curveball to his pitch rep. From BA "His curveball is a tick behind his slider, but he might not need it more than a show me pitch". I would suggest a 50-'s to 60's rating on it. I would also boost his sinker a bit, as it is considered his best pitch. BP even says "In a system filled with pitchers who keep the ball on the ground, Rzepczynski arguably has the best sinker of any of them, making up for below-average velocity with tremendous late life". I would think this means a major upgrade on it into the 110-130 range.


Tim Collins - MR
Need to add a well below average change to his ptich rep. From BA, "he doesn't have much of a change-up". He profiles as a situational lefty, with LHB going 7 for 69 against him last year with 27 strikeouts. I would make his platoon split larger.


Scott Cambell - 2B
Also needs a rating at 3rd base. Played primarily third in the Arizona Fall League. From BA, "He throws well enough to handle third base. Campbell is ready for Triple-A and could factor in the Blue Jays plans next season if they need a lefthanded hitting, offensive oriented option at 2nd or 3rd base.

More to come later on the Jays...

[jbmagic]

Are injuries based on opening day? I hope so.

[mgom27]

I was hoping as of today.
Expansion option needs to be disable or 4-4-09 needs to be pushed back to like 4-1-09 because we are not in Preseason but Edit League Structure can stay active.

[CoachDirty]

I'm assuming this goes in this area:

On the Major League Baseball Setup Universe. (When you are in advanced mode and set up a Major League Baseball Setup, Complete minors etc. fictional players)

Anyway, it defaults to: The Northwest Arkansas Travelers affiliate of the Angels, and The Arkansas Naturals an affiliate of the Royals.

It SHOULD be: The Northwest Arkansas Naturals, affiliate of the Royals and Arkansas Travelers affiliate of the Angels. Also, Northwest Arkansas should be based in Springdale AR and the Arkansas Travelers should be based in Little Rock.

Basically you just have the teams reversed from what they should be.

[KySteveH]

Originally Posted by injury log

Yeah, the guys who weren't rated will be those guys with a 1 in Gap Potential or in Control Potential. We can find those guys easily enough. We're definitely going to try to clean these guys up for the next patch, but the main issue is the time involved in rating each player - to do this properly takes quite a bit of research. Because of that, we won't be able to do too accurate a job with some of the minor league filler type players. What would be useful is to know which players with these '0' ratings might be 'important', for whatever reason - whether because they ranked on some prospect lists, were high draft choices, or are otherwise well known - if we know about those guys, we can rate them accurately, time permitting. We've rated everyone on the BA team top 30 lists, but we haven't always checked Sickels' or BP's lists, for example.

So, what does that mean when you didn't rate someone? Are their ratings random? Or are they appropriate for the level they are at? Or something else?

I guess what always confuses me about the roster sets is that there are some rated players , some non-rated players, and maybe some partially rated players, but no indication of which are which. I understand that most of the minor leaguers are really just names with bogus ratings, but it would be cool if I could know exaclty which ones those are. Then I could either rate them, or randomize them, or give them league average stats, or something.

It's not just gap potential or control potential, BTW. I've seen the "1" ratings in stuff, control, speed, and stealing, too. I've also seen it for infield range, which is okay...except for infielders, of course!

This set is by far the best major league set I have seen. If there is anything I could assist with to get in cleaned up a bit, I would be happy to help.

[southside_hitmen]

Wilfredo Boscan - SP
I think his velocity needs a boost. In the roster it is 86-88 at the moment. BA has it at 86-92, with the ability to dial it up to 93. BP has it at 88-91 and can dial it to 93. I think he also needs a sinker added to his repertoire. From BP, " He sets up hitters with an 88-91 mph sinker that he can dial up to 93 when he needs a little extra". BA also defines it as he locates his fastball well to both sides of the plate and can run it back across the outside corner against lefthanders". Maybe replace the fastball with the sinker.

Neil Ramirez - SP
Needs a big boost in his velocity. The roster has him at 83-85, while BP has him in the low 90's and touching 95. BA has him at 91-94 while touching 96. He also has a 1 rating for movement right now. BA has him at 15th in the system while BP has him at 10th and a 3-star prospect. He struck out 52 in 44 innings last year in Rookie league ball. Link to his stats from last year He was on a strict pitch count which limited him to less than 5 innings 11 of 13 start, explaining his record. His control at 26 also seems low.