To get one of these guys, you must:

(a) Be so awful that you have one of the first five picks in the amateur draft or
(b) Spend $5,000,000,000,000 on a bonus to an international prospect or
(c) Hope that someone can't afford theirs and lets him become an FA, where you then must make a maximum offer.

Did I miss a pathway? I am halfway through my fourth season as an HBD owner and it seems like ace starting pitchers are just plain impossible to get any other way.

A) With the new ratings, this probably isn't true anymore
B) Yeah, probably
C) Pretty much.

How do you think you should be able to acquire an ace?

Posted by MikeT23 on 2/29/2016 12:19:00 PM (view original):
A) With the new ratings, this probably isn't true anymore
B) Yeah, probably
C) Pretty much.

How do you think you should be able to acquire an ace?

With the new ratings being fuzzy you mean?

Posted by MikeT23 on 2/29/2016 12:19:00 PM (view original):
A) With the new ratings, this probably isn't true anymore
B) Yeah, probably
C) Pretty much.

How do you think you should be able to acquire an ace?

I get what you're asking here, so first let me say that I don't think acquiring an ace should be easy.

At the same time, if you're looking at domestic prospects you also shouldn't absolutely need one of the top five picks in the draft to get one. I'm hoping that the fuzzy scouting ratings will take care of this problem, but currently if you look at the top twenty or so starting pitchers in the leagues I am in, all of them were either international prospects or were taken in the top ten picks in the draft. Nowhere in HBD do you see Cliff Lee (4th round pick) or Jake Peavy (15th round pick). It is tough even to find ace pitchers who were drafted in the mid- to late first round, which in real life includes players like Cole Hamels and C.C. Sabathia.

By the way, when I just went to baseball-reference to look up top pitchers of this era, I was somewhat surprised by the number of them (Greinke, Kershaw, Verlander, Price, Scherzer) who were high first-round picks. Frankly I didn't realize that the association was that strong, so that was a bit of ignorance on my part. So yes, the most common path to an ace pitcher should be a really high pick or an international FA... but there should occasionally be someone like Lee or Peavy who emerges as an ace after not being a first-round pick. It should be unlikely but not virtually impossible.

Well, when you say "ace" I assume you are not talking about the best pitcher on a staff. I assume you're talking about one of the top 10 pitchers in the league. My uneducated, non-researched guess is that 2 of the first 5 picks in every draft are SP. So there will be a strong correlation to top pitchers being taken there. As for IFA, yes, owners are going to spend bucketloads on top pitchers. And, finally, should one get away to FA, max money will be required because that's how it works in HBD.

While the new fuzzier ratings are more likely to produce an "ace" in the mid to late first round, it's unlikely we're going to see 15 round picks becomes top 10 pitchers. If that were to happen, we'd be seeing a lot of high picks being flops(like a Brien Taylor). I can GUARANTEE you that will be very unpopular with users. Very unpopular.

1/ One of my teams has an SP1 (should be an SP2 really) who was a 20ish pick in the "old days." Poor VSL and GB/FB so he's vulnerable but otherwise super consistent. Obv I liked him better than some owners who would drop him on draft boards for that.

2/ IFA is what it is.

3/ Seems to me that FA thresholds depend on your world. In one of mine the owners generally let big pitchers go when they get too pricey. In another, the owners hold onto SP1s forever and FA is always barren.

Should I assume the second world is MG? 'cuz I haven't had an "ace" there for probably 15 seasons.

https://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerRatings.aspx?pid=4589091

Drafted 8th. Probably dropped in the draft because he was an 'Unsure'

https://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerRatings.aspx?pid=3343894

Picked up for $8 million a year and a type B pick.

https://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerRatings.aspx?pid=5662605

Picked 24th overall. People fear a GB/FB 0 for some reason.

https://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerRatings.aspx?pid=6054891

Traded from a team that was rebuilding.

Not all of these guys are ACES every year, but they have all been in the running for the Cy more then once.

Even back before the fuzzy ratings you could get a top notch player late but you had to do the work. You had to draft the guys that were 'probably won't sign' and then have to convince them to sign. Nothing great comes without hard work.

Posted by hockey1984 on 2/29/2016 1:42:00 PM (view original):
https://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerRatings.aspx?pid=4589091

Drafted 8th. Probably dropped in the draft because he was an 'Unsure'

https://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerRatings.aspx?pid=3343894

Picked up for $8 million a year and a type B pick.

https://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerRatings.aspx?pid=5662605

Picked 24th overall. People fear a GB/FB 0 for some reason.

https://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerRatings.aspx?pid=6054891

Traded from a team that was rebuilding.

Not all of these guys are ACES every year, but they have all been in the running for the Cy more then once.

Even back before the fuzzy ratings you could get a top notch player late but you had to do the work. You had to draft the guys that were 'probably won't sign' and then have to convince them to sign. Nothing great comes without hard work.

The fact that the Cy Young engine, and the voters in Riley, don't adequately adjust for park effects does not make them élite pitchers. An average pitcher, in an average world, with an average defense behind him, will run about a 3.60 ERA in SD (NL). (In all fairness, Riley is a little hitting-heavy, so 3.75 or so might be more realistic). Your guys' career ERAs are 5-15% lower than that; that's not a top-ten-in-Riley pitcher. Further, you also help your pitchers by (at least this season) throwing an above-average defense behind them.

"Aces" still cost a ton, no matter how hard you work. You have, however, clearly demonstrated that with the kind of hard work you've described, you can build a very nice run-prevention team with a manageably-costed rotation, and without an "ace."

I know this is about ace starting pitchers but i was wondering if wis gives enough weight to the pitch calling stat for catchers to help pitchers out

Posted by zercon on 3/1/2016 2:15:00 AM (view original):
I know this is about ace starting pitchers but i was wondering if wis gives enough weight to the pitch calling stat for catchers to help pitchers out

MikeT did a post on it a while back.

Old study but 10 pts in PC equated to .12 ERA. I compared about 20 seasons of data several years ago.

Postscript: Picking 14th in the draft in my currently active league, I got a pitcher I had rated as the second-best available starter in the entire player pool. So either the fuzzy ratings had an impact or I am just evaluating pitchers differently than other owners in that league. (From what I can tell it is the first of these, not the second.)

Let's clarify exactly what we're talking about when we say "fuzzy ratings."

The draft has been refined in that since we can't see current ratings anymore, we have to trust projections. In order to trust projections, we have to invest more budgetary money. This is leading more owners to go either/or College/HS. More owners are seeing and trusting less projections therefore the player pool is being redistributed.

The original problem was that everyone could sleepwalk through the draft and the players would come off the board in order of quality, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10. Everyone had more or less the same draft board, and by the time you got above the 20th pick owners were already punting the draft anyway.

The new system rewards owners who work on their draft, who invest their money in scouting and who do some diligence in pre-ranking their players. You get what you put into it, is how I'm seeing it play out.

While I acknowledge that certainly some owners get shorted on a few ratings here and there, when I see an owner posting that he hates the new fuzzy ratings, most of the time I think it's just someone who doesn't like to work on his draft.

That pretty much sums it up.

It's not been all peaches and cream for me but I've found I'm getting value in the 4th-6th rounds. Sometimes my 2nd pick is better than my 1st. So, to me, I might miss with the 14th pick(and get a 1 arb guy) but, if I get a starter in the 3rd round and another 1 arb guy in the 5th, it's a pretty solid draft. Before I might be guaranteed a 10 season guy with the 14th pick but I'm getting nothing in the 3rd/5th round. There's just less of a guarantee when you're picking in the top half of the first round.