Okay, I have decided that I am only using catchers with an A+ arm and with good overall fielding, and good fielding at second, short and third to the degree possible (that is as high a fielding rating as possible).

Same with pitchers to the extent possible, but more importantly, unlike my previous strategies, (since I always agreed with the movie "Bul Durham" that strikeouts are "boring and fascist" and "ground balls are more democratic" - I am now going to start going with pitchers with the maximum strikeout ratio. Of course SO-BB ratio is always a trade off and the K pitchers tend to have less control, but that will be the challenge. One Mel Stottlemyre to a team at most and maybe not even. 

Keep 'em off the bases is the only way, and also NO artificial turf. None of this will completely counter Coleman and co. but it is getting so Coleman is more important than Ruth. I have lost several games because he stole all three bases, sometimes twice in a game. Stealing home is not that easy. 

The rest is realistic enough, and I looked at Coleman's performance history and the overall average is actually pretty close to his real numbers for his best years, so nothing seems untoward to me, but it is time to get serious. Every adjustment in approach and strategy lowers the absolute certainty of certain strategies by  your opponent working so that they may begin to diversify and a mutual and partial disarmament can begin. 

Keep them off base and draft a serious A++++ catcher like '64 Roseboro.

There's no differentiation in the sim for turf vs. grass, though.

Really? The groundballs don't go faster on T surface diamonds? So listing it in the ballpark choices is just for show. Ok, thanks, that helps. I have a team that is more contact, high BB to SO, speed that I am constructing (w/o Coleman and Raines) and I was going for a T park but may put them in the Bronx instead which could help some other aspects of play. Thanks.  But yeah, there are good catchers with A+ arms - Parrish, Rodriguez, others..

There are many levels of A+ arms....I think the bottom level of A+ is like a CS% of around 40.   Some guys get up to 65%.

You don't need much more than '75 Carter (50% CS) to stop the running game.

Posted by jimkelley87 on 3/15/2012 1:36:00 PM (view original):
Yea, '75 Carter, '74 or '77 Gene Tenace tend to do nicely. I haven't looked too closely at how top arm catchers do against the fastest base stealers (Coleman, Tim Raines and the like), but I've assumed that a good catcher will at least get these guys 35% of the time, in which case sabermetric theory suggests that stealing base attempts are a net loss (so I'm not too worried about it). Good offensive production from these guys as well, and they aren't too expensive.

I have done the math before and I have found that once you get upto 50% CS for a catcher, they are all close to equivalent defensively at 0.007 to 0.009 defensive RC per inning played.  For reference, a more typcial A+ arm is worth about 0.004 - 0.005 RC/inn and A to A- arms are about neutral on defense (0 RC/inn).  This means the difference between a 50% and 60% CS rate for a catcher is only about 2-3 runs a season.

Basically, this shows that typically an A+++ arm (60% CS) is not worth the cost over the A++ arm (50%) bargins like ['75] Gary Carter-- may he rest-in-peace. 

Posted by pfattkatt on 3/15/2012 9:39:00 PM (view original):
Since we all seem to agree that stealing bases at a lower than 75% rate actually hurts the offense, I prefer a lower rated arm C. Some of the 35-40% arms do the trick, meaning that if my opponents steal at 60%, they are helping me.

I don't think the sim works that way.  My studies show that the better the catcher's arm, the more valuable they are defensively.

Pfattkatt your statement suggest  a fascinating question.  When comparing say 69 Bench where both players appear in approximately the same amount of games a season and have almost an equal number of PAs, to 75 Carter, where Bench according to performance history, throws out 33 of 61(54%) of runners and Carter throws out 44 of 100(44%) in a season. Who's more effective?  Well in this scenario, the weaker armed Carter, throws out 11 of the 39 additional runners that he allows (only 71.8% succeed) which is under the generally accepted 75% standard. . Although this is very close to the standard, it seems that in this scenario the weaker armed Carter is reeling them in.  This scenario seems to only work when comparing A+ armed Catchers only, I have yet to find anyone under an 'A' armed C where this works, so I feel you and Zubinsum are both right to some degree.

Several times owners have posulated that a weaker's catcher's arm is better than a stronger one, as the weaker arm will induce more running overall and that the additional CS will offset the higher SB count.  However, the statistics provided by WIS do not support this idea. 

If you go through the run created formula and season averages, you will find a SB = .161 runs and a CS = -.389 runs.  Assuming this is true, a runner must steal at a 70.7% sucess rate to have an overall positive affect on his team's scoring.  If you plug these numbers into the performance history of '75 Carter and '69 Bench, you can calculate that their arms are worth 0.0082 runs/ inning and 0.0085 runs/inning respectively.  As I stated before, the better arm is overall more valuable on defense.

Good point zubinsum, like I stated earlier it was difficult to find a case where a comparison fell under 75%. Finding one that falls under the 70.7% that you've given would probably be virtually impossible (which proves your point).  The difference between 75% and 70.7% is a huge disparity.  The runs created formula you give seems more of an accurrate measure than the vague, rounded standard of 75%.