https://www.whatifsports.com/hbd/Pages/Popups/PlayerRatings.aspx?pid=10298476

These numbers make zero sense for a pitcher of this caliber.

He has given up more HR this season (6) than in the last 2 combined (over 100 innings of work). He shouldn't be this bad. (Make up is a 99 as well).
I

17.0

25

18

17

6

8

16

.329

.400

.658

1.94

9.00

It’s 17 innings. Super small sample size and bullpen pitchers can be finicky. It may be superstition but I honestly believe some games a pitcher just doesn’t have ‘it’. I put all of my bullpen pitchers to a call rating of 5 so that they don’t get shelled.

Also, his Stamina is only 15. He can only go one inning. If he gives up a walk, or someone has a fielding error, he's already running out of steam.

Obv short sample size; many also don't consider the effect of schedule. The degree of difficulty between facing possibly the 3-4-5 hitters of the best team versus the 7-8-9 of the worst team is Huge. And then consider that the 7-8-9 of the worst team can just get lucky on any given day.

In the long run, facing all the teams of the league, a pitcher like this will have his stats normalize. But on any given day - sometimes an entire outlier season - any relief pitcher can get lit up.

I've tried starting him (which worked well last season as an "opener" so he was facing the top hitters every time) I've tried him at closer. as B, as A. the home runs make zero sense. 6 HR's in 17 innings---small sample size or not--makes zero sense when I'm in a HR neutral park and don't play against Colorado and his GB/FB ratio is in the 90's.

It's like ratings don't even matter sometimes....

There was a presentation years ago by WifS staff that gives some insight into how the engine works. The site that I found that has the presentation is here. If you look at pages 14-18, it will give you the gist of what happens. The batter weighs more than the pitcher does so the chances are a pitcher who normally doesn't give up homers will eventually. It states that the batter has 60% of the influence over a HR. Even though your pitcher has a 98 for GB/FB tendency, it doesn't mean 98% of the time the hit will be a groundball.

I would like to also draw your attention to page 15. The AB is determined to be either an Out or Hit. You will notice that GB/FB doesn't seem to be indicated to affect a Hit only an Out. We don't have the code they use to simulate these games so we can only go on what they have shared in the past. It seems that once a Hit has been determined, the pitcher's side of the equation may be left out of determining what happens to the Hit.

2 of the 3 most recent HRs hit have been by LH batters. Your pitcher's numbers aren't as stellar against a LH batter. Your park is neutral to HRs. You can think of it as a great GB pitcher left a pitch up in the zone and paid for it. As stated by others, RP have a lot working against them and aren't always as stable as a starter.

Use him as a tandem #2 after a LHP is in random #1 or, have LHP starters/openers and hide him in the LRA spot so that the LHP that starts the game lures out more RHB. Then this guy comes in and has a higher probability of pitching against more RHB over the course of the season. If he's in a setup role, opener role or closer role, he is going to get hammered by LHB.

Starters, openers, closers and setup men should have more even splits. Those pitchers with uneven splits can be used more effectively in middle relief because they won't get hammered by the platooning lineups and they won't get hammered by pinch hitters.

I think you have him set up to throw too many pitches. He shouldn't be throwing 25 pitches with a stamina of 15. It's also what was said earlier.....17 innings is a small sample and sometimes guys go through a tough stretch. I would move his pitch count back down.

It’s an oldie but a goodie:

https://youtu.be/dw9qqvm-LT8?si=p1CSgDyFAOdwVuH7

I honestly pay very very very little attention to GB/FB and velocity. I’m sure those smarter then me will say why they are valuable but I had a guy with GB/FB of 0 that was a ‘hall of very good’ player.

Posted by GOEVANGO on 1/5/2024 9:19:00 PM (view original):
It’s an oldie but a goodie:

https://youtu.be/dw9qqvm-LT8?si=p1CSgDyFAOdwVuH7

Hey hey, the Ole SSSS.

Posted by hockey1984 on 1/6/2024 11:53:00 AM (view original):
I honestly pay very very very little attention to GB/FB and velocity. I’m sure those smarter then me will say why they are valuable but I had a guy with GB/FB of 0 that was a ‘hall of very good’ player.

Control, splits and pitches are what make a good pitcher a good pitcher. The velocity and groundball rating will make a good pitcher better, but won't do much for a pitcher that has poor control, splits and pitches.

Posted by tlowster on 1/5/2024 4:51:00 PM (view original):
Use him as a tandem #2 after a LHP is in random #1 or, have LHP starters/openers and hide him in the LRA spot so that the LHP that starts the game lures out more RHB. Then this guy comes in and has a higher probability of pitching against more RHB over the course of the season. If he's in a setup role, opener role or closer role, he is going to get hammered by LHB.

Starters, openers, closers and setup men should have more even splits. Those pitchers with uneven splits can be used more effectively in middle relief because they won't get hammered by the platooning lineups and they won't get hammered by pinch hitters.

I slightly disagree with this.

I agree that pitchers with wide platoon splits are diminished as starters, because your fellow owners do a much better job than simmy of exploiting platoon advantages. Starting lineups will be much richer in the platoon advantage than pinch-hitters will be. Where I disagree is that I don't think it matter too much which relief role you put a pitcher with wide platoon splits in; they've all looked about the same in my experience, and that's because I think simmy does a bad job selecting pinch-hitters.

Posted by tlowster on 1/7/2024 12:38:00 AM (view original):

Posted by hockey1984 on 1/6/2024 11:53:00 AM (view original):
I honestly pay very very very little attention to GB/FB and velocity. I’m sure those smarter then me will say why they are valuable but I had a guy with GB/FB of 0 that was a ‘hall of very good’ player.

Control, splits and pitches are what make a good pitcher a good pitcher. The velocity and groundball rating will make a good pitcher better, but won't do much for a pitcher that has poor control, splits and pitches.

Velocity, I'm pretty certain, is valueless; it turns other outs into strikeouts, reducing "productive" outs but also reducing double plays.

My regressions show GB/FB to be of equal value to pitches. Maybe turns HRs into singles... imo splits and control are the dominant ratings.

So, and this is hot take time, but I feel like I've been here long enough to stir the pot (My 2 World series in 100 seasons or whatever speak for themselves )

For me Velocity is valueless in starters. Its cool to get strikeouts and looks great on the stats when your guy strikes out 10+ but when you have a pitcher facing between 20-30 batters a game having 10 strikeouts (which is a lot) doesn't really have a ton of value.

In bullpen guys I think the value of velocity goes up exponentially. A lot of bullpen guys will inherit runners and while double plays are nice, I'd rather have strikeouts because far too often I have a bullpen guy come in with runners on 2nd and 3rd or bases loaded with no one out. Times when balls in play are dangerous and strikeouts have massive value.

I think two years ago or so I learned that the sim calculates out vs. hit before it calculates type of out. This is important because of many things (i.e. stadium effects, fielding, K's, double plays, etc.).

So, if the affect of the stadium is calculated within the earlier "out vs. hit calculation", instead of being factored-in during the later "type of out calculation", this tells me something that, in real life, would be counter intuitive -- in an extreme hitters park, great defense is more valuable than having a high K rate. In real life, if you don't want your little league ball park to kill you, you would ideally have a bunch of heat throwing arms to keep the ball from being in play, but in hbd, since the out vs. hit calculation is so early, the K only does one thing -- prevents your defense from making a negative play or error. In HBD, having a higher K rate, does not cut down on amount of Homers or other hits. In hbd, the higher the K rate, the less valuable your defense is behind you. So, in hbd, if you already run a good defense, the K rate will only marginally help your pitcher by preventing your good defense from turning an out to a hit or an out to error. This marginal uptick to a pitchers production is difficult to see because the high K rate also, unfortunately, gives the pitcher a downtick in the number of double plays, but not all double plays. The higher K rate only prevents routine double plays from happening. It does not prevent positive play double plays from happening because, if you remember from above, a routine double play comes from an "out", but a +play double play comes from a hit that a great play in the field prevented from becoming a hit and turned ot into two outs. The K is not going to prevent hits/HRs, it is going to prevent your defense from making an error or negative play. This is likely why most folks think that velocity adds zero value. If they're already running a great defense, the value is difficult to see, but if you don't consistently run a great defense out there, the velocity rating can add more value.