What ratings are more important for a hitter? Vs LHP and Vs RHP or their contact and power ratings? I struggle with this sometimes when choosing my lineup

vR is approximately 2x as valuable as vL because in general all hitters will face R/L in a 66-33 ratio so if you were going to calculate some kind of overall split rating it would be 2(vR) + vL. Switch hitters are inherently more valuable by about 15 split units

Some partial disagreement with pjfoster.

1) IMO, splits correlate with more than average; they also seem to me to be related to frequency of doubles. Of the points I'm making in this post this is the one I am least confident of.
2) I'm in complete agreement with him about power.
3) Contact is valuable-- it's not just the reverse of pitcher velocity, which I think is valueless. IMO contact contributes to average as well, although splits are more important.
4) pjfoster has a very good analysis of vR vs vL.

Contact is not really an important rating.
It correlates to the frequency of strikeouts which is determined AFTER the PA has been decided already.
Once a PA has been calculated and determined to be an out, THEN a low contact rating will contribute to a large number of those being SO instead of fly outs or ground outs.

What this means in the big picture, is that a team full of otherwise good hitters (but with low contact ratings) may be near the top of the league in K's (which most folks don't like), however you are also going to be on the low end for GIDP which is a good thing no matter who you are.

Also as it pertains to Velocity, I definitely don't sweat over it, BUT I wouldn't necessarily call it "valueless".
I believe (though not 100% certain) that combined with a high control rating and a high P1, a high velocity will lead to a higher K rate, than a guy with a lower VEL rating (all else being equal).

1) TL;DL doubles/triples are because splits = better hit rate, and then power = higher outfield hit rate, and then 2B/3B rate = speed + BR + manager aggressiveness. Batter's ratings are weighted approx 60% on doubles and approx 85% on triples relative to pitcher's ratings.

Splits are simply hit frequency, and then there's secondary RNG calculation of home-run-per-hit. Then on non-HR hits, there is tertiary RNG of doubles-per-hit and/or triples-per-hit. Doubles volume is influenced by total volume of hits but doubles rate (and triples rate) is some combination of power + speed + baserunning + fielder ratings + BR-aggressiveness manager setting all sewn together. Push/pull determines direction L/C/R (which matters), and Power determines frequency of pure singles ("thru the hole") vs outfield hits ("line drives" etc) and then your better baserunners are more likely to reach 2nd base on an outfield hit than slower/dumber runners


3) ehh there's some residual batting average that guys gain via contact but it's very, very low. Contact matters to any hitter with elite speed (90+), and also when you're playing against teams with poor defense. Fast guys tend to dramatically overperform relative to what their splits predict. Vs poor defense you get bonus singles on minus plays and bonus runners on errors. Also you get bonus baserunning advancement on productive outs. But aggregately its value is a tiny fraction of the other ratings.

Additionally,

[Contact is] not just the reverse of pitcher velocity, which I think is valueless.

In fact, the opposite is true. Strikeouts are extremely valuable for pitchers whereas a strikeout is essentially meaningless for hitters relative to other types of outs. It's a known paradox of real baseball. Velocity is good, contact is valueless

I somewhat disagree with contact being least important. It just depends on what type of game you play. If you like to play a lot of hit and run, swings and misses can be a killer. Also, if you have a hitter with excellent speed (95 or greater), high contact combined with high speed can turn into a few additional base hits.

Said it many times: the ratings work together. A player with shortcomings in one or two ratings can have them made up in the others. The combination of ratings determines what type of hitter he is and what statistics he will be capable of generating.

What I dislike about talking about ratings by themselves is that it's like talking about players as if you can generate them yourself. You can't. You can choose which types you look for, but it doesn't mean you're going to get them. The job is to make use of the ones you actually get.

IMO it also helps to note what patterns, what types the system tends to generate. Using CONTACT as an example, every draft you get a ton of guys like this player I have in AA... CON 19, POW 93, vsL 43, vsR 47, EYE 87. That's a typical minor league DH, averages 50 HR/130 RBI. Never going to get to the majors with that 19 Contact, though. One rating change, if that Contact was, say, 60, that's a major league hitter.

@bj regardless of what style you play, contact has the least influence on Avg/obp/slugging. By a mile. If splits predict a batting avg of let's say .250, 99 contact might get him to .275 and 0 contact might drag him down to .225. so yeah it's something but splits are influencing avg literally 10x more

As for influence vs importance, they're generally interchangeable but like I said originally, I agree that super fast groundball guys (90+ speed, less than 20 power) convert contact into infield hits. As I understand it, this is essentially a plus play for the runner.

@damag, I actually have that exact player haha Player Profile: Ezequiel Seanez. But I disagree that contact has anything to do with his successfulness whatsoever. He will fail as a big leaguer because his splits are in the 40s. It wouldn't matter if his contact was 99 or 199 or 1999. It's an out modifier, and for that specific player a strikeout has no negative or positive value. He simply sucks at getting hits. His HR/hit (power) will be approx 28% in both AAA and the ML. Just that in the ML he'll have nowhere near the hit volume (splits). Contact doesn't matter at all to a power hitter

In real life contact matters. In real life HR are actually HR/BIP not HR/hit nor HR/PA. Because that's how you start getting into launch angles and velocities and all that.

To a human brain, contact is very important because of the very logical chronological sequence that the ball must be in play before you know whether the outcome is positive or negative. But on HBD Sim it's out of order to simplify the calculation, making it illogical to our brains.

I'd agree. Players like this aren't supposed to work. Except that I rostered the one guy who did, for many seasons - Archie Danks. Arch has a bit of extra speed, but the fact is he's a slugger whose BA and OPS have always been way out of balance.

The batting average will drive you nuts, but he has monster games where he creates four or five runs by himself.

I let him go to free agency to free up his roster spot, this season he's an MVP candidate for his new team. The only difference in batting ratings between him and the guy I showed in my earlier post is that Arch has 58 CON.

And yes I know many owners wouldn't even start a player like that. When I picked up the team he was the best offensive player on it, I had to let him run.

That guy is cool, I dig his style

Archie is a switch hitter; I love those guys.

Well that's it, I always forget he's a SH! SO... maybe it isn't the contact he provides evidence for, it's probably also the additional effective points on the splits that SH provides.

Posted by damag on 7/17/2018 3:12:00 PM (view original):
Well that's it, I always forget he's a SH! SO... maybe it isn't the contact he provides evidence for, it's probably also the additional effective points on the splits that SH provides.

Indeed. Switch hitter with 43-47 expected to produce the same avg as a R/R with 43-62. Plus he's super fast, plus HR are defense-proof thus he doesn't lose out to plus plays which each mitigate the effects of low splits. Nice little player, sneaky-good