How important is pitch calling? Topic

topoftheworl
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Savage, that's a pretty good value for the 3rd round.  One other thing to consider is that Trout's bat, while more superior than he his given credit for in this thread, not only has to overcome the PC, but the arm as well.  Savage has a superior arm, Trout does not.  Play Savage as your starting catcher for the next 7 seasons and you won't be sorry.
7/16/2012 7:00 PM
rod33
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#836 Players   Q. What are the specific effects of the pitch calling rating?
    A. Pitch calling will help/hurt a pitcher a certain amount. It's not a drastic amount because pitchers can call their own pitches. A bad catcher will hurt the pitcher a bit because he will irritate the pitcher with shake offs, calling bad pitches, etc. A good catcher will help because he maintains the flow and does a great deal of the mental work for the pitcher. That said, every pitcher at the big league level has been pitching for years (amateur and professional). They can call their own game, so a catcher with no pitch calling skills isn't going to cause them to get shelled. Over the long haul, having a catcher with a low pitch calling rating is going to cost his staff .005 - .015 points in batting average allowed which is very significant.
7/19/2012 12:33 AM
MikeT23
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Would anyone like to count how many times they contradict themselves in that reply?    If you don't want to read it all, here are the key phrases:  "not a drastic amount" and "which is very significant".
7/19/2012 8:41 AM
tedwmoore
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Plus this:  at the high end -- +0.015 in batting average allowed -- a pitcher's BAA moves from a .220 to a .235, which is not terribly significant as it only adds an additional 1.5 hits every 100 at bats.


7/19/2012 1:25 PM
fiioe11
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Is there a law of diminishing return with pitch calling?  Upgrade from 40>60 being more significant than from 60>80?
7/23/2012 6:20 PM
tedwmoore
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Posted by fiioe11 on 7/23/2012 6:20:00 PM (view original):
Is there a law of diminishing return with pitch calling?  Upgrade from 40>60 being more significant than from 60>80?
If every 10 points of pitch calling roughly equals a 0.125 (or was it 0.250?) reduction in ERA, then no.
7/23/2012 7:37 PM
MikeT23
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To be fair, that number was found using 50-80 PC catchers.   I honestly have no idea about 30/90-types.   There could be diminishing returns on the extremes.  There usually are.    It's a lot easier to move a 4.20 ERA in either direction than a 2.20 down or 6.20 up.

7/24/2012 8:43 AM
bigal888
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Posted by rod33 on 7/19/2012 12:34:00 AM (view original):
#836 Players   Q. What are the specific effects of the pitch calling rating?
    A. Pitch calling will help/hurt a pitcher a certain amount. It's not a drastic amount because pitchers can call their own pitches. A bad catcher will hurt the pitcher a bit because he will irritate the pitcher with shake offs, calling bad pitches, etc. A good catcher will help because he maintains the flow and does a great deal of the mental work for the pitcher. That said, every pitcher at the big league level has been pitching for years (amateur and professional). They can call their own game, so a catcher with no pitch calling skills isn't going to cause them to get shelled. Over the long haul, having a catcher with a low pitch calling rating is going to cost his staff .005 - .015 points in batting average allowed which is very significant.
what really annoys me here is that they try to equate what is happening in the sim to real life events.  We know there is no catcher that sits there and shakes off calls and we know there is nothing to "keeping the flow of the game going."  Everything in this game is simply the outcome of some convoluted math problem and I wish they would at least recognize that when giving us a reply.
7/24/2012 8:59 AM (edited)
dahsdebater
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Posted by tedwmoore on 7/19/2012 1:25:00 PM (view original):
Plus this:  at the high end -- +0.015 in batting average allowed -- a pitcher's BAA moves from a .220 to a .235, which is not terribly significant as it only adds an additional 1.5 hits every 100 at bats.


I think the difference between a .220 OAV and a .235 OAV is VERY significant.  Try this - take every pitcher in the SLB database with a RL OAV of .218-.222 and do an innings-weighted ERA average, then take everybody with a .233-.237 OAV and do the same.  Or do it with HBD pitchers if you want - just harder to build a database, and I think you'll find that the relationships are similar.  Anyway, I'm betting the ERA difference between those samples are bigger than you anticipate - maybe about .4-.5 runs/game.
7/25/2012 2:48 PM
MikeT23
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Thought I'd mess around with it a little.  Went back 5 seasons in MG.

Only used pitchers 98+ innings in any given season within that time(just sort of worked out to be 98 as my lower limit was 90).

Anyway .225 - .239 produced a total of 1017 innings(lower limit of 1000 IP).   .234 avg, 3.57 ERA with a total of 7 pitchers
.240 -.255(.253 was the highest qualifier) produced 1905 IP, .247 avg and 3.84 ERA with a total of 13 pitchers.
7/25/2012 4:30 PM
tedwmoore
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Posted by dahsdebater on 7/25/2012 2:48:00 PM (view original):
Posted by tedwmoore on 7/19/2012 1:25:00 PM (view original):
Plus this:  at the high end -- +0.015 in batting average allowed -- a pitcher's BAA moves from a .220 to a .235, which is not terribly significant as it only adds an additional 1.5 hits every 100 at bats.


I think the difference between a .220 OAV and a .235 OAV is VERY significant.  Try this - take every pitcher in the SLB database with a RL OAV of .218-.222 and do an innings-weighted ERA average, then take everybody with a .233-.237 OAV and do the same.  Or do it with HBD pitchers if you want - just harder to build a database, and I think you'll find that the relationships are similar.  Anyway, I'm betting the ERA difference between those samples are bigger than you anticipate - maybe about .4-.5 runs/game.
I'll just piggy back on the bit of work done by others: from their findings, and this is at the high end according to HBD (where a low PC catcher is adding 0.015 BAA), we might expect an additional 0.20 - 0.25 in ERA. Again, not terribly significant.

Caveats: (1) we still do not have a metric for evaluating PC and walk rates; (2) BAA and ERA do not rise and fall in unison in MLB, and there is no reason to assume a difference in HBD -- by this I mean that GB/FB rate, HR/9, SO/9, BB/9, etc will all impact a pitcher's strand rate, and because of this some pitchers can be effective with a higher BAA than others; and (3) all of this must still be balanced against offensive value and other defensive stats such as PB rate and CS%.
7/25/2012 11:58 PM
deathinahole
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.25 ERA is 41 runs a season, which is how much more RC that catcher would need to have over the one with better defense.

Just saying.

I'd really prefer that you didn't discover the benefits of an 85 PC with above avg arm strength and accuracy, because then I would be able to pick them up for $327k and rotate them around every 3 seasons.
7/26/2012 10:23 AM
MikeT23
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Yeah, me neither.   After all, after making the playoffs 11 times in 37 seasons, you must have lot of secret strategies that we're all craving to find.
7/26/2012 10:29 AM
tedwmoore
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Posted by deathinahole on 7/26/2012 10:23:00 AM (view original):
.25 ERA is 41 runs a season, which is how much more RC that catcher would need to have over the one with better defense.

Just saying.

I'd really prefer that you didn't discover the benefits of an 85 PC with above avg arm strength and accuracy, because then I would be able to pick them up for $327k and rotate them around every 3 seasons.
It is only 41 runs a season if you give up that deficit over an entire season, which almost no one who plays an offense-first catcher does because of rest/defensive replacement.  If a guy catches 130 complete games (or 1170 innings) at -0.250 ERA he will give you a 32.5 run differential.  That can be matched in offense. 

Just saying.

I tend to use defense-first catchers, but for the past three seasons I have experimented with Hardball Dynasty – Fantasy Baseball Sim Games - Player Profile: Matty Torres as my primary catcher in New Orleans.  Other than the 33 PC his defense is pretty decent -- more passed ball than I would like, but for his career he has thrown out 27% of base stealers -- and his offense is ridiculous:  This season he is hitting 326/468/569, and his 9.857 RC/27 is second in the world.  Hardball Dynasty – Fantasy Baseball Sim Games - Player Profile: Lawrence Barker, my backup, is giving me half of Torres' offensive production (for their careers Barker has offered about 40% less offense).  During that same period, Barker's cERA has ranged from 0.290 to 0.50 lower than Torres'.  Maybe I am still in a deficit here in runs created vs runs allowed, but my team ERA with Torres as the primary catcher and Barker as the backup has been pretty good (this season things got screwed up by my vacation, which began just as spring training was ending, and when I returned the AI had run all my relievers into 0(0) and one starter had not been used at all -- we had like a 7 ERA or something) and Torres has been my best offensive player. 
7/26/2012 11:19 AM
deathinahole
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Posted by tedwmoore on 7/26/2012 11:19:00 AM (view original):
Posted by deathinahole on 7/26/2012 10:23:00 AM (view original):
.25 ERA is 41 runs a season, which is how much more RC that catcher would need to have over the one with better defense.

Just saying.

I'd really prefer that you didn't discover the benefits of an 85 PC with above avg arm strength and accuracy, because then I would be able to pick them up for $327k and rotate them around every 3 seasons.
It is only 41 runs a season if you give up that deficit over an entire season, which almost no one who plays an offense-first catcher does because of rest/defensive replacement.  If a guy catches 130 complete games (or 1170 innings) at -0.250 ERA he will give you a 32.5 run differential.  That can be matched in offense. 

Just saying.

I tend to use defense-first catchers, but for the past three seasons I have experimented with Hardball Dynasty – Fantasy Baseball Sim Games - Player Profile: Matty Torres as my primary catcher in New Orleans.  Other than the 33 PC his defense is pretty decent -- more passed ball than I would like, but for his career he has thrown out 27% of base stealers -- and his offense is ridiculous:  This season he is hitting 326/468/569, and his 9.857 RC/27 is second in the world.  Hardball Dynasty – Fantasy Baseball Sim Games - Player Profile: Lawrence Barker, my backup, is giving me half of Torres' offensive production (for their careers Barker has offered about 40% less offense).  During that same period, Barker's cERA has ranged from 0.290 to 0.50 lower than Torres'.  Maybe I am still in a deficit here in runs created vs runs allowed, but my team ERA with Torres as the primary catcher and Barker as the backup has been pretty good (this season things got screwed up by my vacation, which began just as spring training was ending, and when I returned the AI had run all my relievers into 0(0) and one starter had not been used at all -- we had like a 7 ERA or something) and Torres has been my best offensive player. 
2 PC catchers, with aggressive pinch hitting, = 41 runs. You reduce the plate attempts, but it's still 9 innings of defense (or more)

Assuming that calc is right. I have .5 ERA between 85 and 50, with the strong arm. So, seems close enough to say .2-.25 ERA for a 20 PC gap.
7/26/2012 11:26 AM
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