Since returning to SLB in 2014, I have enjoyed much regular season success in dual progs, averaging over 92 wins per season and making the playoffs 75% of the time. But my playoff results have been disappointing. I have won only one title, and that was in a 16 team league so I only had to win two series. I have been great at finding hitters but my pitching has been inconsistent. I think the reason why is that I rely too heavily on ERC#. I end up with a lot of control pitchers who do great against teams with weak bats, but give up too many runs to good lineups. I need to modify my runs allowed estimate to take strikeouts into account more. But I want a quantitative model for converting extra strikeouts into fewer runs allowed like I do with ERC#. Does anyone have any suggestions how to convert K’s (or K/9) into runs allowed? Any advice would be appreciated.

David

Wrong tree here.

Strikeouts have very little to do with runs or hits. An out is an out before it is a strikeout.

Strikeouts are good to protect against awful defenses, because errors and (-) plays are ground outs or fly outs that are then turned into baserunners by poor defense.

The most important stats are OAV#, BB/9#, and HR/9#, in a neutral full-database setting. WHIP# is a good aggregator of the first two.

ERA/ERC is a decent overall quality metric, but only really affects doubles and triples, and then not that much. I don't look at it that much.

Thanks for your post, uncleal. There is a lot of overlap between P with lots of strikeouts and P with low OAV. If you have a way to convert a point lower of OAV# or a point higher of OAV+ to fewer runs allowed, I would love to hear it.

You can't really do that...  It's going to depend a lot on both A) the other numbers for the pitcher and B) the opposition.  There's no nice conversion factor to make any one pitching statistic a numerical predictor of league ERA.  However, given what you have said about your pitchers, it does sound as if you need to focus a little less on WHIP and a little more on OAV.  Sounds like you're doing a good job of minimizing walks but giving up too many hits against good hitters.  So maybe you're aggregating BB/9 and OAV a little too much.  That's going to depend a lot on what seasons you're in in a dual-season prog, but the more limited the player pool, in general, the more likely it is in most eras that you're going to be hurt more by hits than walks.  That said, modern hitters (last 20-25 years) can really kill the Nolan Ryan's of the world.

From my experience, which is only recently started to pay off in .500+ winning percentage, I've noticed that there's just a lot of luck involved. I've had exactly identical teams in 2 open leagues that finished about 12 wins apart. Sometimes it's just the type of teams your opponents put together and whether or not you get the right percentages. 

I've been in a division where all of their stadiums were beneficial to my team and won 99 games, and then I've had a division where the teams were entirely different than mine and I struggled away, finishing with 88 wins. Granted both teams made the playoffs, it was was still shocking to see such a difference. Then again, I've seen 5.00 ERA pitchers, throw a no-hitter.

The fact is, just like with all games of chance, you try to minimize your risk for exposure as much as possible, but it all comes down to chance in the end.

Thanks to everyone for their posts. There is some randomness an SLB owner has to deal with, but I would rather focus on the parts of building a team that I can control instead of worrying about what is beyond my control. I also must say that many things are important in a pitcher, but it should be possible to create an algorithm which assigns a weight to various aspects of a pitcher to give some approximation of how many runs he might allow vs. league average. I admit that OAV is a better measure to use than strikeouts. I do have one question still. How does defense affect a pitcher's OAV? How much does a good defense help and a bad defense hurt, and does a pitcher's strikeout rate rise in importance when the defense behind him is poor?

"How does defense affect a pitcher's OAV?"

To answer this question, we must first understand there are two parts to this question, and how the question is sort of the wrong one.

Team fielding affects OAV not at all. Errors are not charging the pitchers with hits. They can lead to unearned runs, however. Unearned runs can cause you to lose more games in ways that aren't reflected anywhere else in a pitcher's stats, but so can your own failure to score runs.

Team range can affect OAV a marginal amount. A (+) play erases a hit, and a (-) play creates a hit. Thus, good range leads to lower OAV and bad range leads to higher OAV.

"How much does a good defense help and a bad defense hurt...?"

100 different owners will give you 100 different answers. I'm probably on the lower end of defensive impact belief, but as someone that's not me you definitely shouldn't just take my word for it.

"...and does a pitcher's strikeout rate rise in importance with the defense behind him is poor?"

Sort of, yes. Understand how the event tree works. I'll show a simplified version to show just what's relevant here:
1) Let's start by assuming an out is determined. Obviously, not all PAs are outs, but we only care about ones that are at the moment.
2) This out is decided to be either a fly out, ground out, or strikeout. A pitcher's strikeout rate is relevant here. Not sure what goes into ground vs. fly exactly, but the K-rate is definitely used to determine strikeouts. So a pitcher with a high-K rate will have more outs be strikeouts.
3a) If an out is a ground or a fly, it is put in a place on the field. A fielder must then try to make a play on the ball. In most cases they will, but there are small chances (that go up if the fielder is bad) for a (-) play or an error to allow the runner to reach base. Then record the out or baserunner advancement, then proceed to cleanup step. (If applicable, double-play and triple-play opportunities also show up here, but to detail this likely confuses the issue.)
3b) If an out is a strikeout, we record the out proceed to cleanup step.

So if you have bad defense, good strikeout rates minimize 3a) triggering at all and thus the chances for that bad defense to hurt you. But that's only a select number of outs, because no pitcher has perfect K-rates.