Peas in a pod

[luckymann]

Circumstances have presented an opportunity for what I think will be a fascinating longer-term observation about a couple of fictional players in my league.

Winning it all last year has allowed my A's franchise to pivot a bit to youth this year in the hope of "flattening the curve". So 2020 right now. I traded away my 4 & 5 starters and promoted Alvaro Escamilla and Dennis Wallach, my two top pitching prospects (and the two top prospects in the league at the time of writing this), who will be the studies in this thread. They made their big league debuts one game after the other.

The ratings show Alvaro Escamilla to be a fair distance further along in his development. He's also 3 years older than Dennis. He is a power GB pitcher, whereas Dennis's STUFF and MOV are similar with his CONT a few notches lower and he is a neutral pitcher, although I greatly suspect (and fear) this will eventually change to FB.

Looking at the two it's difficult to reconcile how they both max out at 80 POT. That seems a bit of a stretch for Dennis in my books, so I will be watching intently how this plays out. He has obviously benefitted from an excellent HOLD rating and of course it must be remembered that with 80 as the maximum rating there will be differing degrees of quality among pitchers with that score. Not all 80s are alike. But all are good, or at least should be.

Interestingly, it has been Dennis who has settled into the bigs better. But Alvaro just gave us his first good start, and it was a beaut, allowing just 2 runs on 2 hits over 7.

More to follow.

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by luckymann

Interestingly, it has been Dennis who has settled into the bigs better. But

Hard disagree

They have similar walk rates
But Escamilla has a ton more strike outs

He's also given up fewer home runs, but that's largely immaterial given the low number of hitters faced

Interesting that Escamilla has such a bad ERA with such good peripherals and a reasonable BABIP. Looks like some terrible sequencing luck.

The opposite for Wallach. He's given up 5 HR but just 8 runs overall. When that BABIP luck runs out that ERA will start climbing,

[luckymann]

Yep, hard to refute your logic there. Although having watched the games Wallach looked more poised.

I am expecting by season's end Escamilla will have had the far superior rookie year, as is expected from their ratings and profiles. Wallach worries me. I see him being extremely vulnerable to the longball, and increasingly so if my hunch is correct.

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by luckymann

Wallach looked more poised.

Easy to look poised with a .190 BABIP

I see him being extremely vulnerable to the longball,

Why?

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by CBeisbol

Easy to look poised with a .190 BABIP


Why?

True that.

I don't know, just a hunch from watching him. What you have picked up (and that I missed, I really need to retrain my brain to look at these things) with his BABIP, along with that 5.19 FIP will tell you statistically what I saw. Loads of well hit fly balls that fortunately fell into outfielders' mitts.

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by luckymann

True that.

I don't know, just a hunch from watching him. What you have picked up (and that I missed, I really need to retrain my brain to look at these things) with his BABIP, along with that 5.19 FIP will tell you statistically what I saw. Loads of well hit fly balls that fortunately fell into outfielders' mitts.

Well, assuming no crazy ball park or league factors, he's given up more homers than would be expected, and that rate should come down.

So, fewer homers, just with an extra runner or two on base.
And more run-scoring in the park hits,

[luckymann]

So with us at the halfway point of the season and a roster movement imminent I thought it a good time to revisit this.

After a stellar performance last season our rotation has really struggled this year, currently 12th in ERA at 4.78. This is only partly due to the new lads, as the top 3 starters have each been poor with a combined ERA in the vicinity of 4.20.

But there's no doubt Escamilla and Wallach have had huge problems adjusting to the bigs. After 14 starts apiece, their records stand at:

Escamilla 5-4 / 5.29 / 60 K in 80 IP
Wallach 4-3 / 5.13 / 29 K in 73.2 IP

Looking at their advanced stats, Wallach has given up more walks, hits and HR per 9, their walk rates are roughly compatible. Escamilla is right on league average with a FIP- of 100 vs Wallach's 123 (but falling steadily). Their BABIPs are just .08 apart now with Escamilla's the slightly higher .299.

Escamilla has shown signs in his recent starts of steady improvement. Wallach, however, has not. In fact he has been smashed all over the place to the point that I am now sending him back to MLB- for some more seasoning.

For me the interesting aspect to all of this is the rookie status of the players in question; or, more specifically, how the AI treats it. We, obviously, tend to anthropomorphise these simulated players. In other words, give them human traits and expect humanistic responses in any given circumstances. But they are not human, merely simulacra thereof.

The AI engine in OOTP goes some way to narrowing this gap with the personalities they attribute each player. If you delve into the AI engine via the editor, you'll see 16 different areas in which each player is given a rating.

11 involve personality:

LEADERSHIP - DESIRE FOR WINNER - LOYALTY - GREED - WORK ETHIC - INTELLIGENCE - ADAPTABILITY - CONTROVERSY - HANDLE SUCCESS - HANDLE FAILURE - HANDLE CRITICS.

5 involve morale:

TEAM PERFORMANCE - TEAM TRANSACTIONS - PLAYER PERFORMANCE - ROLE ON TEAM - TEAM CHEMISTRY.

As I said, we tend to reconcile humanistic mannerisms for these players. So we expect that going up to the majors for the first time would elicit certain emotions and reactions from these players: nervousness to varying degrees; an unsettled feeling from being in a new environment; the questioning of one's rightfulness to be in this position and ability to handle the new higher-quality opposition--that sort of thing. Or, perhaps, the opposite: unwavering belief in one's own abilities; utter confidence that they belong to be where they now are; a sense of destiny, if you will.

The thing is, nowhere in any of the OOTP ratings can I see these sorts of things being taken into consideration. Perhaps only in ADAPTABILITY, and that only on a hunch. Or maybe HANDLE SUCCESS plays some role in how they perform, given they have just been promoted and achieved their ultimate goal of playing in the majors. But that is a real stretch.

Because as far as ratings and algorithms go, there is no difference between a player with zero years' experience and one with ten years' experience, unless the effect of that added experience has become embedded into the ratings that generate the stats and therefore the performance of the players.

Bringing this back to Escamilla and Wallach now. Why have they struggled to acclimatise to the bigs and not simply pitched like their ratings say they should?

So the table below is a breakdown of the characteristic ratings of these two players. THEN refers to at Opening Day of this season, when they were both still in MLB- and were yet to be called up to the bigs. NOW refers to after each has made 14 starts in the MLB.

The changes - or, more specifically, lack thereof - across the board offer little insight. Perhaps then it is on the ratings themselves our focus needs to be turned.

The two pitchers are relatively similar in a lot of respects. One big difference that sticks out is Wallach's adaptability being some 85 points higher than Escamilla's. This may give some explanation as to why, despite Escamilla's OVR being 20+ points higher than Wallach's, their relative performances so far have been much narrower than one might expect. The "HANDLE..." ratings may in fact be linked with this as well, with Wallach faring better across the board. The ratings show Escamilla as a more ambitious and intelligent individual, and that may be being borne out in their respective trajectories during their time in the the bigs so far, with Escamilla on the rise and Wallach headed back to the minors. This of course may simply come down to the fact that, at this moment in time, the ratings show Escamilla to be greatly advanced compared to Wallach.

All in all, fascinating stuff indeed.

I consider myself fairly intelligent, but I'm no rocket surgeon. And deeper statistical workings along with algorithms and computer logic are WAY above my pay grade. So I'm sure there are more holes in my thought process here than in a teabag. I'm hoping to learn more about all of this in the hope that it makes me a better OOTP Manager. So chime in with some thoughts as you see fit.

BTW Despite me being a massive fan of the historical elements of baseball, this is why I will always have a leaning toward the fictional save over the historical. Because with computer-generated players you have no preconceived notions about how they should perform, only the information gleaned from the ratings provided.

[Timofmars]

I doubt that adaptability could have such significant effect on game performance. I think these personality ratings affect morale (and other things like contract demands), which in turn can affect performance slightly.

I believe the 5 player morale measures can have different importance to overall morale for different players. For example, a player with 0 desire for winning seems to be unaffected by the team record. This could be bad for overall morale if there is some other type of morale factor that is low, which would be counteracted to some extent if the player cared about winning, even if the team were just playing at a .500 record.

I did a little testing in the editor, and saw of course that Desire for Winner affects how much team record morale affects overall morale. But interestingly, greed was the determining factor of how much a player cared about his own performance. Players with 0 greed didn't care at all about their performance morale level. Everything else I tested didn't seem to change the effects of overall morale.

I think Handle Success/Failure affects how winning and losing influences their team chemistry level. If you have a poor chemistry team after losing a lot, you'll see the notices about the reasons on the team chemistry page stating that many players are upset because they don't handle losing well. Perhaps Handle Critics works similarly, affecting how a player's personal performance influences their team chemistry, like a guy in a slump getting all pissy in the dugout.

As an example of this, you can see in your data that Wallace has gained quite a bit more positive team chemistry numbers than Escamilla, despite Wallace seeming to perform worse according to his expectations as can be seen by his greater drop in performance morale. So I would attribute that to his much greater ability to handle critics (though he is also has a greater ability to handle losing, but your team seems to be not losing very much at all).

Adaptability, though, I really have no idea about what it might do.

[luckymann]

OK, let's introduce a third subject into this case study.

Meet Nomar Rodriguez. Such was my concern at the precipitous drop-off in form of my number 1 and 2 SP (McGaughey and Aiken, covered at length in THIS and THIS posts), along with the imminent retirement / departure of Strasburg, that I went against my long-held policy of drafting fully-formed starting pitchers and chose Nomar with my 2nd pick in this year's Rookie Draft. His being a southpaw sealed the deal, as I always like to have at least 2 LHP in my rotation and only had one, and all of my prospects were righties with the exception of Randy Johnson, who had gone down with a torn rotator cuff just before the Draft. It is he who has been called up to replace Wallach.

Nomar, a month shy of his 23rd birthday, is rated 80/80 with an elite changeup, three plus pitches and a below-average curveball. Pretty good stuff without being overwhelming (93-95 MPH / Neutral profile), average control and movement. Excellent stamina, hold and fielding ratings. In other words, a well-rounded player. I've attached his profile below, and have added him to the comparison with the other two. We'll follow that as this plays out.

Summarising Nomar's personality, he is close to average in most aspects, with the following exceptions: high intelligence; good at handling failure and slightly above average in the other two handling ratings.

He just made his first start and went well, pitching 6+ for a win and giving up 3 runs on 6 hits including one HR, while fanning 6 and walking one.

More on this toward the season end or if anything dramatic happens in the interim. We'll also keep an eye on Wallach's performance at MLB- (FYI his first start back there was a less-than-impressive ND in which he went 5+, giving up 5 runs on 8 hits with 7 K and 2 BB).

[luckymann]

This - somewhat ironically against Boston - was how Nomar went in his second CL start. That despite his OVR dropping a point since last start.

[luckymann]

Two seasons have passed since the OP so I thought I'd bring y'all up to date on how these guys have been going. It certainly has been fascinating to watch their disparate paths of development and success.

Dennis Wallach

As I stated in an earlier post, Wallach was the one I was most concerned about. No surprise, I got that totally wrong. After a poor rookie season that saw him sent down for more seasoning, Den came back an absolute powerhouse. His tendency flipped from FB to GB and he jumped 30 OVR points. This season he took all before him, going 22-4 / 2.24 with 253 strikeouts, falling just 3 wins short of the Triple Crown (Tom Seaver logged a record 25 wins to spoil it). He finished with a WHIP of 1.01, an ERA+ of a whopping 193, a FIP- of 62 and 6.6 WAR. His BABIP of 2.82 says this was no fluke season, or at least not by much. He won the Apollo Medal, my save's equivalent of the CYA. Just a monster year. I somehow managed to lock him down cheap, so he's ours for the next 7 years and at just 23 hopefully he'll be our SP1 for years to come.

Alvaro Escamilla

Alfie went a bit in the opposite direction to Den, not all his fault as he had a few niggles throughout the year. He went 13-6 / 3.15 with a still solid FIP- of 90 and 2.1 WAR over 154.1 innings. He is 4 years older than Wallach, so his ratings held steady as opposed to Den's quantum leap. His susceptibility to the longball persists, giving up 1.3 per 9 in both seasons so far, but fortunately - as you'd expect for a guy with a CONT rating as high as his - there weren't usually too many baserunners so it didn't hurt him, or us, too much. My plan to lock him down long-term has been put on hold for now. He's on the league min for next season then arb kicks in, so I'll play the wait-and-see game with him for now, as we are spoiled for choice in the SP ranks. There's a decent chance he'll be in the pen next year and handle Emergency Starter duties should someone else get hurt.

Nomar Rodriguez

The third pea in the pod had a bit of a shocker this season, and if he was a righty rather than a lefty and not 24yo he'd be trade bait in my books. His OVR has dropped 16 points since I drafted him in the middle of last season and his performance has dipped commensurately. He went 9-4 / 4.42 this year, spending some time on the IL, some time in the minors and some time in the bullpen. A .312 BABIP could mean he was a bit unlucky, but there's more to it than that. I just don't know what it is. Nothing in his stats is godawful, just below average. But you don't expect "just below average" from a guy with his tools. So I'll be giving him the eagle eye come next year.

Once final pitcher of note. I traded for Jeff Pittman a few seasons back as a LH setup guy, a role he performed well for us until the middle of this season, when I suddenly noticed he was ranked the best SP in the league. What the? I thought to myself, that can't be right. But sure enough it was. Injuries and poor form then conspired me to test out the theorem and, whaddyaknow, he was a revelation, going 11-1 / 2.43 with an ERA+ of 178 and a FIP- of 60. His great season was capped off with a sublime performance in Game 2 of the Apotheosis (World) Series in which he pitched 6+ innings of one-hit ball and fanned 13. Again, he's only just turned 23 so fingers crossed he's a cornerstone of our rotation for some time to come.

[luckymann]

Just before I go, while on the topic of the Series in this save, I wanted to share the Game 5 box score with you, in which we clinched the win in 18 epic innings. My staff struck out 30 of their batters over the course of the game, which tops the IRL record by 4. We tied the game with a solo shot on our next-to-last out and then had 5 consecutive innings in which we had the go-ahead run at third with less than two outs and stranded them, before Josh Gibson finally singled one in and our closer nailed it down for the trophy. Needless to say I needed a good long lie down after that experience...

[CBeisbol]

First, thanks for updating. Always interesting to see how these things turn out

Second, based on their ratings, I think you saw a 90% outcome season from Dennis and a 10% outcome season from Escamilla. I'd expect their results to converge next season. I'd definitely expect Nomar to be the least productive of the three.

Pittman should also be very good, just live with the walks

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by CBeisbol

First, thanks for updating. Always interesting to see how these things turn out

Second, based on their ratings, I think you saw a 90% outcome season from Dennis and a 10% outcome season from Escamilla. I'd expect their results to converge next season. I'd definitely expect Nomar to be the least productive of the three.

Pittman should also be very good, just live with the walks

Absolutely agree. I've got Bob Gibson pretty much ready to rock and roll as well, struggling to find slots for all of them. Nice problem to have, though.

[luckymann]

So this guy was a pretty good long reliever for us last season, but not off the charts good or anything.

Then over the offseason he is completely transformed and is now rated the top starter in the whole league!

Look at this makeup. As an RP, his STU rating jumped from 100 to 130 in five months! Even as a starter it has stayed at 111.

Trust me I am not complaining, but it was completely unexpected.

[ALB123]

Originally Posted by luckymann

So this guy was a pretty good long reliever for us last season, but not off the charts good or anything.

Then over the offseason he is completely transformed and is now rated the top starter in the whole league!

Look at this makeup. As an RP, his STU rating jumped from 100 to 130 in five months! Even as a starter it has stayed at 111.

Trust me I am not complaining, but it was completely unexpected.

You owe me one shirt, luckymann.

I couldn't stop staring at the screenshot of Scott Young's Profile page. My eyes were transfixed on his ratings for the pitches he throws. My goodness. After about 20 minutes, the collection of drool on my shirt, saliva and smokeless tobacco juice, will never wash out. You hypnotized me with the sexy Change-Up, fierce Fastball, and knee-dislocating Curveball ratings. Where can I get myself a Scott Young? I have plenty of budget space!

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by ALB123

You owe me one shirt, luckymann.

I couldn't stop staring at the screenshot of Scott Young's Profile page. My eyes were transfixed on his ratings for the pitches he throws. My goodness. After about 20 minutes, the collection of drool on my shirt, saliva and smokeless tobacco juice, will never wash out. You hypnotized me with the sexy Change-Up, fierce Fastball, and knee-dislocating Curveball ratings. Where can I get myself a Scott Young? I have plenty of budget space!

I know - ridiculous!! Let's hope he lives up to it. His first start was underwhelming...