Roadmap for Dominant Pitching

[HornsManiac]

I must say that developing pitching (especially starters) is my specialty. For the last five seasons in a row the Cy Young Award winner has been one of my pitchers... and three different guys have won the award during that time.

Here are some of the things I do that may help some of you who are having problems.

1) I ONLY draft starting pitchers with very few exceptions. The reason I do this is because the AI will always draft a young hitting prospect over a young pitching prospect. This is to our advantage because we can draft SP with "#1 starter" potential deep into the draft. I have drafted this type of talent as late as the last few picks of round #3! I can then draft quality MR pitchers in the last two rounds.

2) By drafting so many pitchers year after year I can always keep the best ones and trade the others for young position players and the occasional established veteran. Although the AI passes over young pitching talent in the draft it will give a lot for young pitching when making trades.

3) Age becomes an important factor when I am dealing with pitching prospects. I try to draft the really young ones in the under 20 age range. Once the pitchers have reached the age of 25 and are not good enough to play AAA I trade them. In most cases the scouts will still be calling them a "future star" so they are very valuable to the AI, but too old for me. Keep in mind I have lots of pitching talent to pick from so I can afford to deal away a 25 year old SP the scout seems to love for a great hitting prospect or veteran. Earlier someone said the best of the best develop quickly and I agree with them. I have had guys win 18 games who were 22 years old. For this reason I know a 25 year old pitcher still in AA will never be good enough to make my team's big league rotation so they are ideal trade material. Also, the oldest pitchers in AAA are great for trading as well assuming I won’t be needing him on my major league team after all.

4) When I evaluate pitching talent a few things are very important to me. The things I look at the most are potential with ratings in hits and runs being the most important. This is a no-brainer of course. Then I want to make sure that they have equal or close to equal potential against batters from both sides...very important!!! Many pitchers can be dominant against one side and mediocre against the other. IMO, if a pitcher can't get everybody out I don't need them! The next thing I look for is their endurance rating which helps my bullpen out so much it is invaluable.

5) Also, I always make sure I have a good scout and coaches, of course.

This works to perfection. In fact it works so well that I am never paying too much money to my pitching rotation. When one of my guys becomes a free agent and asks for an unreasonable amount of money I don't sell the farm to keep him. I simply trade him away for a ton of good young talent and then I bring up another pitcher from AAA. My AAA starters all have ratings of six or higher in avoiding hits and/or runs. These guys can pitch in the majors, maybe not be dominant yet, but still solid enough. So in a nutshell if you do this the right way you will always have around ten SP with ratings of six or higher at your disposal. This of course is a dominant major league rotation as well as a AAA rotation that could pitch for most other major league teams. I am fortunate enough to be at the point where my staff never rebuilds… just reloads.

[Civ2boss]

Wow, great tips!

[Falcon52]

A couple questions.

1)Do you play in a pitcher's park or hitter's park?

2)What kind of defence do you have? Great, good or decent?

The reason I ask both is because even when I have pitchers who score in the 6-8 range in both "avoiding runs" and "avoiding hits", they still will be lucky to have an ERA under 5.00.

At one point, my rotation was made up of 4 guys that had a scouting report of "truly dominating", and all had 7 or higher in avoiding runs, and 8 or higher in avoiding hits. But my team ERA was still around 5.30, and of the 4, only one had an ERA under 4.00, and two of them had ERA's over 5. In contrast, the top guys in the league (whose ratings arent as high as my guys) had ERA's around 2.50-2.85.

[HornsManiac]

My team is the Braves with fictional players and I am in about my 15th season. I am not sure if their park favors pitching or hitting.

I would guess your pitching problems are likely caused by one or more of these factors.

1) Check to make sure these "dominating" pitchers are dominant against both LHB and RHB. A few RBIs from the batters the pitcher is weak against can kill any ERA.

2) Make sure the "truly dominating" pitcher doesn't have problems with consistency. If they are lights out for three starts and then get shelled every fourth start their ERA will of course rise.

3) Make sure you are taking them out of the game as soon as they get tired. If they pitch six great innings, but get tired and blasted in the seventh inning it will hurt their ERA even if they still win the game.

4) Check to make sure they have a good selection of pitches. The AI hitters are smart and if your guy only throws a fastball and slider the good hitters will blast him even if he is so "dominating" his fast ball is 110 mph. Well not that fast, but you get the idea.

5) Check the pitcher's control. Walks lead to runs that will hurt his ERA.

6) Finally, the better your defense is the easier any pitcher's job will be.

The "roadmap" I use and outlined above will enable you to keep the absolute best of the best on your team. You can weed out the ones who have some of these minor to mediocre flaws and trade them to the AI where you get a future batting champ and they get this "dominating" pitcher and his 5.00 ERA.

Hope this helps you guys out!

[Tree]

"I try to draft the really young ones in the under 20 age range."

This flies in the face of the best strategy to use in real life, of course. In reality, drafting high school pitchers (18 and 19 year olds) is much more risky than drifting college players (21, 22). Then again, in real life 22-year-old pitchers who enter the draft are a lot better than the ones who enter the draft in the game. I'd like to see that change.

[Dwolfson20]

The 22-year-olds who are coming into the draft may not be as good as they should be, but I have found that their ratings develop a lot faster than an 18-year-old's does. This helps make it pretty realistic in my opinion.

[HornsManiac]

[quote]Originally posted by Dwolfson20:
<strong>The 22-year-olds who are coming into the draft may not be as good as they should be, but I have found that their ratings develop a lot faster than an 18-year-old's does. This helps make it pretty realistic in my opinion.</strong><hr></blockquote>

I have not seen this, or maybe never noticed. One thing I have seen over and over again is the best guys are pretty good players even very early. These are the ones I am always trying to draft and develop.

[DennisS]

This is a terrific thread, and will help a lot of people to develop their teams.

I also attempt to draft the very best players available. I look at the hitters first, put unless you have a top 6 pick, pickings are pretty slim.

Pitching, especially MR's, are generally excellent for the first 2 or 3 rounds.

Don't forget walk and strikeout ratings for the pitchers, they are important.

Cheers.

[Killebrew]

[quote]Originally posted by Dwolfson20:
<strong>The 22-year-olds who are coming into the draft may not be as good as they should be, but I have found that their ratings develop a lot faster than an 18-year-old's does. This helps make it pretty realistic in my opinion.</strong><hr></blockquote>

This is true and applies to postion players devel too, at least in OOTP3 it did. I have seen a little bit of 17-20 year old devel in v4 but mostly it still follows v3's path which basically allowed no devel at all until age 20. This area of the game is pretty good for deep draft strategies too. A 22-23 year old pick is often on the verge of AA so you can sometimes draft based on that knowledge in case you are full at that position in A ball.

[jor31]

great thread....

also i dont think he forgets those ratings he just dosent value them as highly....

[HornsManiac]

[quote]Originally posted by DennisS:
<strong>
I also attempt to draft the very best players available. I look at the hitters first, put unless you have a top 6 pick, pickings are pretty slim.</strong><hr></blockquote>

DennisS- You made my point without even realizing it.

There is very little first class talent in each draft. The hitting talent will almost always be drafted before the pitching talent. As I said earlier the human player can swallow up all of the great young pitching prospects while the AI is busy sifting through the draft looking for hitters which they will be doing throughout the first 3 rounds. Unless you are drafting in the first half of round one IGNORE BATTERS. The key is to draft all of the pitchers you can so that you will always have a plethora of great young arms in your system. These guys are invaluable to your pitching staff and invaluable to the other teams' as well. This is a win win proposition for the human player and the smart one TAKES IT EVERY TIME.

[GiantsRule]

This game is incredibly depth wise I had no idea mature pitchers developed quicker than an 18 year old that is so cool!

[Dargone]

Great thread

[JML]

[quote]Originally posted by HornsManiac:
<strong>
the AI will always draft a young hitting prospect over a young pitching prospect. This is to our advantage because we can draft SP with "#1 starter" potential deep into the draft.

Although the AI passes over young pitching talent in the draft it will give a lot for young pitching when making trades.

Once the pitchers have reached the age of 25 and are not good enough to play AAA I trade them. In most cases the scouts will still be calling them a "future star" so they are very valuable to the AI, but too old for me.


</strong><hr></blockquote>

You've given some great advice here, but I can't resist playing devil's advocate. Because of the points I quoted, I think you're seriously taking advantage of the AI. Some of these suggestions look more like loopholes to me.

I don't mean to offend, I just think that these are good examples of why a lot of people play with self-imposed house rules.

[ 04-06-2002: Message edited by: JML ]</p>

[HornsManiac]

I disagree let me explain why...

The other teams are drafting the players they think are the best, which is usually hitting prospects, but also sometimes they do take pitchers early. Pitching is the hardest part of a team to be consistently great at, so my theory is to draft more of them so I can have more to choose from in spring training, minors, etc.

Down the road when I weed them out and trade the ones I don't want I am not "cheating" the AI into a bad trade. These guys are still great pitching prospects that will most likely have solid big league careers... just not with my team where the expectations of pitchers is always much higher than other clubs. In fact it is doing the guys a big favor. They get a shot in the bigs instead of my AA team.

I see this as a team with pitching as their top priority from the ground up so there is obviously more interest in the pitchers each draft day.

[Lamorak]

Good tips!
But I agree that younger draftees (under 21) tend to take more time to develop.

I personally view it as a implication of the
talent/ratings/age triangle. Let me try to explain how I see it.

If a player hasn't reached neared his potential by 25-26 the importance of the talent rating becomes less. EX- A 27 yr old with a brilliant:talent but a '3':rating in avoiding runs is unlikely to ever reach his full potential.

However, if a 22 yr old with good talent in avoiding runs already has a 4 rating, then it's very likely he's going to develop quickly and match or exceed his potential.

When drafting a player I look at all three and ask myself:

A) What are the players ablities now?
B) What is the players potential?
C) How long does the player have to get A to B given that skill development levels off at 25-27?

[Daimyo]

Originally posted by HornsManiac
I must say that developing pitching (especially starters) is my specialty.

LOL... this takes on whole new meaning now.

[Dargone]

[cloakscott]

I've been using basically this same strategy in my fictional league (40 years worth of simming). However, here are some other things I've noticed:

A lot of my 18 year old draftees do in fact flame out for one reason or another (very often they get injured before they make it to the show).

My 22-24 yo draftees develop quicker, but often with not as high peaks.

Some (many even?) pitchers peak at older ages, like 30 or so. I've traded away a lot of 25 yo prospects that were stuck in A or AA and they've eventually developed on the other team into dominating starters. The 22-24yo draftees especially seem to fit in this late blooming category, as they often get up to a 7 rating on runs/hits by 26, but jump to 8 or even 9 at age 30..

However, these facts don't mean that Horns' strategy won't work, as I've still managed to develop a dominating staff, year-after-year using much the same idea. I've just also happened to help out some other teams in the process . This is why it might not be a loophole. Those 25yo AA players turn into dependable starters more often than not it seems, so they are possibly worth a position player.

[Specs]

What you do, is you go into "Ratings" and simply turn the editor on. Then, what you need to do is hit "avoiding hits" and then press enter. This puts the value as "0", and the pitcher will be fully developed.