Is it time to just avoid prospects with a changeup that hasn't fully developed?

bombboy85 · 01-12-2019, 01:31 PM

So the changeup for prospects has long frustrated myself and many other players I know. I just ran some numbers using a spreadsheet to track a large number of my pitching prospects to see if it's just imagined that they don't develop or if it's true.

Over 1 calendar year in game I checked the percentage of pitching prospects that gained at least 1 (I use 1-20 scale) in their current pitch ratings for each pitch.

Fastball - 67% added at least 1 to their current rating
Changeup - 43% added at least 1 (The lowest overall)
Slider - 50%
Curveball - 82%
Splitter - 67%
Sinker - 75%

I didn't have enough pitchers with other pitches to really make enough of a sample.

So the changeup definitely is the lowest at under 50%.

Average added in each pitch rating (remember I used 1-20 scale)

Fastball - 1.25
Changeup - 1.33
Slider - 1.25
Curveball - 1.78
Splitter - 1.00
Sinker - 1.33

So what I've seen is that at under 50% progression pitchers can't be really counted on to develop that changeup so we almost have to disregard that in any evaluation unless it's already fairly well developed. A bit frustrating to be honest.

Shoeless' Socks · 01-12-2019, 02:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bombboy85

So the changeup for prospects has long frustrated myself and many other players I know. I just ran some numbers using a spreadsheet to track a large number of my pitching prospects to see if it's just imagined that they don't develop or if it's true.

Over 1 calendar year in game I checked the percentage of pitching prospects that gained at least 1 (I use 1-20 scale) in their current pitch ratings for each pitch.

Fastball - 67% added at least 1 to their current rating
Changeup - 43% added at least 1 (The lowest overall)
Slider - 50%
Curveball - 82%
Splitter - 67%
Sinker - 75%

I didn't have enough pitchers with other pitches to really make enough of a sample.

So the changeup definitely is the lowest at under 50%.

Average added in each pitch rating (remember I used 1-20 scale)

Fastball - 1.25
Changeup - 1.33
Slider - 1.25
Curveball - 1.78
Splitter - 1.00
Sinker - 1.33

So what I've seen is that at under 50% progression pitchers can't be really counted on to develop that changeup so we almost have to disregard that in any evaluation unless it's already fairly well developed. A bit frustrating to be honest.

I sincerely hope they fix this for '20 as it is completely broken.

NoOne · 01-12-2019, 02:18 PM

i don't know if each pitch has it's own varying rates... but any pitch that is 1/20 or 1/100 etc becomes less and less likely to develop the longer you go.

drafting a 21+ year old with a "3rd" pitch that's basically undeveloped is a roll of the dice... high risk / high reward of an SP.. but more likely an early pick wasted on a future middling RP in most cases. an 18 year old isn't as risky, but now the added time on average for development starts to increase risk too.

there's a point where i would rather roll the dice than take a safe pick. potential still trumps other things once the gap is sufficient as far as what is available if you broke things into those 2 groups. i wouldn't factor something unpredictably like TCR, but if only 1 attribute is 'off' that can't hurt compared to multiple issues.

fwiw, this is a common problem for pitchers in the minor leagues. i don't think this is by accident, unless a tweak is needed due to rate of occurence etc.. changeups are a tough pitch to master, and if you do, you tend to be pretty good in the mlb. a bad changeup gets hammered worse than bad 'other' pitches on average i bet. slow, no movement, more likely up than down, then BAM! BP fastball crushed in a game

i guess i never paid attention to which pitches develop less often.. i still wouldn't give up on a changeup pitcher. it's an awesome pitch and worth the effort. maybe just don't have all changeup rp prospects or all sp prospects etc... diversify a bit. should happen on its own most times.

edit: one thing to consider on the "half developed" thing... i'd think it's more about the raw rating than what you see in profile, which can be heavily influenced by velocity. that is only important for ~100mph guys, of course. pretty sure it augments a changeup too? maybe it's an effect of a 'better' fastball, either way...

Shoeless' Socks · 01-12-2019, 03:40 PM

The problem is that changeups almost never develop. It's not anecdotal. It's to the point that i purposely look for pitchers that don't even have a changeup.

Drstrangelove · 01-13-2019, 05:56 PM

It's true that most pitchers don't develop past the mediocre talents they possess in high school. Their stuff (pitches and speed), control and movement don't become as good as those in MLB.

I took a random sample of players (under age 25) that were in the majors after 3 years, and found the average CU improved by 18 points (scale 1-100), with improvements of 11-28 points. Avg CU improved from 41 to 59. So it's hardly accurate to suggest pitchers don't improve their CU. This is actually a good improvement as it takes a marginal pitch (41) and makes it effective. The top 4 (out of 8) were 75, 73, 70 and 67. And this was after only 3 years and three of the 8 were still only 21, 22 and 23 years old.

A description I'd use is most pitchers who can't improve will fail to reach MLB. So some pitchers improve and become MLB pitchers, while most don't. I think that replicates reality. I don't expect all of my pitchers to constantly get better. Some will. Most won't.

stealofhome · 01-14-2019, 05:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drstrangelove

It's true that most pitchers don't develop past the mediocre talents they possess in high school. Their stuff (pitches and speed), control and movement don't become as good as those in MLB.

I took a random sample of players (under age 25) that were in the majors after 3 years, and found the average CU improved by 18 points (scale 1-100), with improvements of 11-28 points. Avg CU improved from 41 to 59. So it's hardly accurate to suggest pitchers don't improve their CU. This is actually a good improvement as it takes a marginal pitch (41) and makes it effective. The top 4 (out of 8) were 75, 73, 70 and 67. And this was after only 3 years and three of the 8 were still only 21, 22 and 23 years old.

A description I'd use is most pitchers who can't improve will fail to reach MLB. So some pitchers improve and become MLB pitchers, while most don't. I think that replicates reality. I don't expect all of my pitchers to constantly get better. Some will. Most won't.

CU is curveball in the game or is that just your designation? OOTP uses CH for changeup.

Drstrangelove · 01-14-2019, 07:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stealofhome

CU is curveball in the game or is that just your designation? OOTP uses CH for changeup.

Ahhh, good question. Luckily, I can answer that. When I created the reports, I first manually edited the individual pitch canned report and removed all the pitches except the change. (No acronyms. It spells out the pitch.) The edited report still shows one pitch and it's the changeup.

RonCo · 01-15-2019, 02:52 PM

I think the issue being addressed here is that young pitchers created with "1" changeups (on a 1-10 scale) very often do not develop up, and the perception is that this rate of "non-development" is much higher for changeups than it is for other pitches.

I don't yet have actual development rates for all prospect pitchers, but I've done some work with the online league I'm in that shows by the time you get to the majors, about 25% of changeups are still locked at "1." Another 25% sit in some middle-state, and about 50% get developed up to their potential.

I'd guess this means that across an entire baseball universe, the changeup progression is fairly ugly.

So--as best I can tell--the game seems to be using primarily the changeup to regulate who can start and who can't as they go through the minors, and that the changeup seems to develop in paths that other pitches don't take. I'm making that last bit up, though. I don't know if it's true or not.

NoOne · 01-15-2019, 05:04 PM

relating to RL:

i think that's typical in life too... changeups are hard to learn.

most differences between SP and RP is a developement of their off-speed pitch.

this is likely on purpose. whether it needs tuning, i'd trust the amount of data they mined vs. a weekend warrior

(as i read that last line: specifically not about ronco's post, lol... about any similar situation where they use RL data to make any portion of the OotP model. sometimes it is proven to be off and they adjust it.)

people like ron take the time to do some data mining and provide quantative evidence. ootp is very responsive to these things... when it's done right and reproduceable results.

this topic would be difficult to work on. the misinformation in local sports writing is horrendous. it's like a good salesman that never disparages any product he sells, even the pile of s%#t. everything is typically going "peaches" when talking about prospects.

i found this link:

http://m.mlb.com/glossary/pitch-types/changeup

even the mlb says it's a make or break pitch for starters and that nearly all of them have it.

all seems right on this topic at the superficial level.

01-12-2019, 01:31 PM	#1
bombboy85 Major Leagues Join Date: Jul 2013 Posts: 455	Is it time to just avoid prospects with a changeup that hasn't fully developed? So the changeup for prospects has long frustrated myself and many other players I know. I just ran some numbers using a spreadsheet to track a large number of my pitching prospects to see if it's just imagined that they don't develop or if it's true. Over 1 calendar year in game I checked the percentage of pitching prospects that gained at least 1 (I use 1-20 scale) in their current pitch ratings for each pitch. Fastball - 67% added at least 1 to their current rating Changeup - 43% added at least 1 (The lowest overall) Slider - 50% Curveball - 82% Splitter - 67% Sinker - 75% I didn't have enough pitchers with other pitches to really make enough of a sample. So the changeup definitely is the lowest at under 50%. Average added in each pitch rating (remember I used 1-20 scale) Fastball - 1.25 Changeup - 1.33 Slider - 1.25 Curveball - 1.78 Splitter - 1.00 Sinker - 1.33 So what I've seen is that at under 50% progression pitchers can't be really counted on to develop that changeup so we almost have to disregard that in any evaluation unless it's already fairly well developed. A bit frustrating to be honest.

01-12-2019, 02:18 PM	#3
NoOne Banned Join Date: Apr 2015 Posts: 7,273 Infractions: 0/1 (3)	i don't know if each pitch has it's own varying rates... but any pitch that is 1/20 or 1/100 etc becomes less and less likely to develop the longer you go. drafting a 21+ year old with a "3rd" pitch that's basically undeveloped is a roll of the dice... high risk / high reward of an SP.. but more likely an early pick wasted on a future middling RP in most cases. an 18 year old isn't as risky, but now the added time on average for development starts to increase risk too. there's a point where i would rather roll the dice than take a safe pick. potential still trumps other things once the gap is sufficient as far as what is available if you broke things into those 2 groups. i wouldn't factor something unpredictably like TCR, but if only 1 attribute is 'off' that can't hurt compared to multiple issues. fwiw, this is a common problem for pitchers in the minor leagues. i don't think this is by accident, unless a tweak is needed due to rate of occurence etc.. changeups are a tough pitch to master, and if you do, you tend to be pretty good in the mlb. a bad changeup gets hammered worse than bad 'other' pitches on average i bet. slow, no movement, more likely up than down, then BAM! BP fastball crushed in a game i guess i never paid attention to which pitches develop less often.. i still wouldn't give up on a changeup pitcher. it's an awesome pitch and worth the effort. maybe just don't have all changeup rp prospects or all sp prospects etc... diversify a bit. should happen on its own most times. edit: one thing to consider on the "half developed" thing... i'd think it's more about the raw rating than what you see in profile, which can be heavily influenced by velocity. that is only important for ~100mph guys, of course. pretty sure it augments a changeup too? maybe it's an effect of a 'better' fastball, either way... Last edited by NoOne; 01-12-2019 at 02:28 PM.

01-13-2019, 05:56 PM	#5
Drstrangelove Major Leagues Join Date: Jun 2014 Posts: 346	It's true that most pitchers don't develop past the mediocre talents they possess in high school. Their stuff (pitches and speed), control and movement don't become as good as those in MLB. I took a random sample of players (under age 25) that were in the majors after 3 years, and found the average CU improved by 18 points (scale 1-100), with improvements of 11-28 points. Avg CU improved from 41 to 59. So it's hardly accurate to suggest pitchers don't improve their CU. This is actually a good improvement as it takes a marginal pitch (41) and makes it effective. The top 4 (out of 8) were 75, 73, 70 and 67. And this was after only 3 years and three of the 8 were still only 21, 22 and 23 years old. A description I'd use is most pitchers who can't improve will fail to reach MLB. So some pitchers improve and become MLB pitchers, while most don't. I think that replicates reality. I don't expect all of my pitchers to constantly get better. Some will. Most won't. Last edited by Drstrangelove; 01-13-2019 at 06:04 PM.

01-12-2019, 03:40 PM	#4
Shoeless' Socks Minors (Double A) Join Date: Jul 2017 Posts: 163	The problem is that changeups almost never develop. It's not anecdotal. It's to the point that i purposely look for pitchers that don't even have a changeup.

01-15-2019, 02:52 PM	#8
RonCo Hall Of Famer Join Date: Aug 2003 Posts: 10,396	I think the issue being addressed here is that young pitchers created with "1" changeups (on a 1-10 scale) very often do not develop up, and the perception is that this rate of "non-development" is much higher for changeups than it is for other pitches. I don't yet have actual development rates for all prospect pitchers, but I've done some work with the online league I'm in that shows by the time you get to the majors, about 25% of changeups are still locked at "1." Another 25% sit in some middle-state, and about 50% get developed up to their potential. I'd guess this means that across an entire baseball universe, the changeup progression is fairly ugly. So--as best I can tell--the game seems to be using primarily the changeup to regulate who can start and who can't as they go through the minors, and that the changeup seems to develop in paths that other pitches don't take. I'm making that last bit up, though. I don't know if it's true or not.

01-15-2019, 05:04 PM	#9
NoOne Banned Join Date: Apr 2015 Posts: 7,273 Infractions: 0/1 (3)	relating to RL: i think that's typical in life too... changeups are hard to learn. most differences between SP and RP is a developement of their off-speed pitch. this is likely on purpose. whether it needs tuning, i'd trust the amount of data they mined vs. a weekend warrior (as i read that last line: specifically not about ronco's post, lol... about any similar situation where they use RL data to make any portion of the OotP model. sometimes it is proven to be off and they adjust it.) people like ron take the time to do some data mining and provide quantative evidence. ootp is very responsive to these things... when it's done right and reproduceable results. this topic would be difficult to work on. the misinformation in local sports writing is horrendous. it's like a good salesman that never disparages any product he sells, even the pile of s%#t. everything is typically going "peaches" when talking about prospects. i found this link: http://m.mlb.com/glossary/pitch-types/changeup even the mlb says it's a make or break pitch for starters and that nearly all of them have it. all seems right on this topic at the superficial level.