My last team had '89 Greg Maddux, Cy Young Award winner, and he got bombed. ERA was almost 8.00. My home field was Tiger Stadium, which is hitter friendly, but still, the guy won a Cy Young that year. It's a strange and unpredictable game.

Hmm...not sure what you're looking at, but Greg Maddux did not win the Cy Young Award in 1989.  Mark Davis did.  Maddux won 4 Cy Young awards: 1992-95.

I had two `94 Madduxes (Maddices?) in OL's and worked both to the bone.   Their combined record was 46-27 with an average ERA of 2.63 and an average OAV of .233.  Paired both of them with Joss `08.  One team went 99-63 and lost in the 1st round of the playoffs.  The other went 91-71 and just missed the playoffs.  Not my greatest teams, but Maddux did everything I could ask of him.  About to start three more OL teams with Maddux `94, one team with Maddux `95 and several teams with Pedro `00, Maddux `94 and Joss `08.  Can anyone say budget hitters?.  

Greg Maddux '94 (R)

86 (88)

51

26-15

0

347.1

2.82

.237

1.14

4.82

1.97

13.31M

Greg Maddux '94 (R)

72 (89)

51

20-12

0

347.2

2.43

.229

1.08

5.00

1.86

13.31

I have looked at pairing the '94 and '95 Maddices, but it seems prohibitively expensive if I want to get to 1200 quality IP.

Posted by zubinsum on 3/14/2011 2:27:00 AM (view original):
I have looked at pairing the '94 and '95 Maddices, but it seems prohibitively expensive if I want to get to 1200 quality IP.

I've been able to build a 1200-1225 qualify IP staff using the the '94 and '95 Maddi. Cost $44,300,000 with team pitching totals of .211 OAV, 0.95 WHIP, 5.12 k/9, 1.79 bb/9 and 0.25 HR/9. 6 righties and 3 lefties before the AAA. If I was willing to sacrifice a bit on the BB/9, I could get the cost down to about $42,000,000

Okay, my bad, Maddux did not win Cy Young in '89, but he was 19-12 with an ERA of 2.95, pitching his home games at hitter-friendly Wrigley Field.

Posted by badcentury on 3/14/2011 2:10:00 PM (view original):
Okay, my bad, Maddux did not win Cy Young in '89, but he was 19-12 with an ERA of 2.95, pitching his home games at hitter-friendly Wrigley Field.

Without knowing what league type and salary cap you were working with here, let's just start by saying that '89 Maddux shouldn't be that good at all, especially compared to the '94 and '95 versions the thread was discussing.   It's about the 3rd worst version of Maddux you can find.

His WHIP was 1.28, and normalizes to an even worse 1.32.  Wins, ERA, and Cy Young voting are pretty much irrelevant.   Stats-wise, he's on a plain with guys like 2000 Livan Hernandez, 1980 Doyle Alexander, 2008 Mark Buehrle, and and 2005 Jason Marquis.  Don't get caught paying for the brand name.

Posted by badcentury on 3/14/2011 2:10:00 PM (view original):
Okay, my bad, Maddux did not win Cy Young in '89, but he was 19-12 with an ERA of 2.95, pitching his home games at hitter-friendly Wrigley Field.

I've addressed this before too, but apparently a player's real life home park has nothing to do with anything.

So when it comes to the SIM, 50 RL HR at Citizens Bank = 50 RL HR at Petco

doubletruck, I'd be interested to see more of the peripherals on your [insert favorite plural of Maddux] seasons. Is it just the W-L record that has you down? It's a sabermetric-friendly group here and wins has been judged to be one of the absolute worst stats in baseball. I wonder what your record in [insert favorite plural of Maddux] no decision games are across that spread of seasons you posted.

First off, I am a newbie, so bear with me. I guess my point is that '89 Maddux was a pretty good pitcher, though certainly not on a level with, say '94 or '95. I know not to expect a player's performance here to exactly mirror his real life performance. I was just surprised at how much it varied. I didn't expect to get an ERA of 8.00 from a pitcher with a real life performance of 2.95. And I second doubletruck's question: does real life ballpark affect hitters? And if so why not pitchers?

Posted by badcentury on 3/16/2011 5:33:00 PM (view original):
First off, I am a newbie, so bear with me. I guess my point is that '89 Maddux was a pretty good pitcher, though certainly not on a level with, say '94 or '95. I know not to expect a player's performance here to exactly mirror his real life performance. I was just surprised at how much it varied. I didn't expect to get an ERA of 8.00 from a pitcher with a real life performance of 2.95. And I second doubletruck's question: does real life ballpark affect hitters? And if so why not pitchers?

Badcentury -- `89 Maddux was so-so by Maddux standards.  As someone else posted, don't pay for the brand name.  Keep in mind that, for the most part, pitchers in SIM will perform quite a bit worse than they did in RL.  They are facing full rosters of All-Stars every time they pitch, which they didn't do in RL.  The typical $80 MM OL team, as has been discussed in other threads, is quite a bit better than all the great baseball teams in history -- better than the `27 Yankees Murderer's Row team, the `75 Reds Big Red Machine, the `61 Yankees, etc.   How would `89 Maddux have done if he was pitching against the `27 Yankees every day?  Not so well.  In SIM, expect him to do worse.

It's usually helpful to look at a player's SIM Performance History.  Don't get addicted to it, but it's one helpful tool among many.  If you look at the SIM Performance History for `89 Maddux, he was used 12 times with an average ERA of 5.77, an average WHIP of 1.71 and an average OAV of .300.  Probably not what you were looking for in terms of numbers.  This is predictable.  His ERC is 3.20, his ERC# is 3.44.  I generally try to steer clear of pitchers with ERC/ERC# much over 2.30 except as innings eaters.