I have seen a bunch of decent pitching prospects with only one good pitch that never perform up to their other ratings. Has anyone found a minimum second pitch rating for successful major league pitcher?

I feel it is dependent on just how good that P1 is.

I like to see 150 minimal as a total for the two pitches combined.
So if his P1 is 90 I may allow his P2 to be in the low 60s, but other factors also come into play. What's his splits? Control?
The higher those other ratings are the less critical the P rating. Though the P ratings are never unimportant.
Personally, I like to see that P1 be in the mid to upper 80s as a minimum.

I gave this guy a little bit of a run in Seattle - Placido Grandal. He didn't have a lot of innings in him so I let him walk as soon as he went to his second Arb. As you can see, nothing special in control and splits, but the GB/FB, Vel, and P1 were excellent. But I'm pretty sure he's the only pitcher I've ever used in the majors with a P2 lower than 60.

He's not doing great his year, but Hector Canseco (https://www.whatifsports.com/hbd/Pages/Popups/PlayerStats.aspx?pid=6179295) has put together a very strong career with a P2 of 53.

I tend to have mixed success with two-pitch pitchers, regardless of how good their pitches are.

Posted by Jtpsops on 7/4/2018 12:19:00 PM (view original):
I tend to have mixed success with two-pitch pitchers, regardless of how good their pitches are.

Could it be that typically 2 pitch pitchers are relievers and so therefore each season is a small sample size?
That will cause a much wider discrepancy from season to season.

I don't think I've ever seen a pitcher with "Starter" DUR/STA and only two pitches. Even in tryout camps, even if that third pitch has a rating of 10 or 15.

Oh, hey. I forgot. Jordan Borders has been such a successful closer for me for so long, I almost never noticed his P2 has never been above 60.

Do we assume that P1 is the pitch a guy throws most often? And P2 is the second-most often, and so on? I see guys who have a higher P3 than P2, or higher P4 than P1. Or high P1, P2 and P4, but a trash P3.

Posted by LoboOne04 on 7/5/2018 1:07:00 PM (view original):
Do we assume that P1 is the pitch a guy throws most often? And P2 is the second-most often, and so on? I see guys who have a higher P3 than P2, or higher P4 than P1. Or high P1, P2 and P4, but a trash P3.

I don't think that is necessarily true.

Two almost identical questions from a dev chat years ago. One is from 2009 and the other is from 2011.
They seem to disagree slightly. But both answers call the P1 a pitcher's "out pitch".

In a theoretically identical situation (catchers, fielders etc..) would a pitcher with pitches of 90-80-70 be expected to perform identically as a pitcher with pitches of 70-80-90? Or does the pitch order matter? (sickchangeup - Hall of Famer - 1:29 PM)

The pitch order matters, but not that much. The first pitch is his out pitch.

So there isnt much of a difference between an 80/60/70 pitcher and a 70/80/60? (a_ersberg - Hall of Famer - 2:25 PM)

Generally, a pitcher's first pitch is considered his out pitch, his second pitch is used to set up his out pitch and the other pitches are off speed or off balance pitches. That is the way the engine views them, so in your example there is a difference between the two pitchers.

Thanks. I think I had seen that before and forgot, or didn't quite understand.

Posted by LoboOne04 on 7/5/2018 1:07:00 PM (view original):
Do we assume that P1 is the pitch a guy throws most often? And P2 is the second-most often, and so on? I see guys who have a higher P3 than P2, or higher P4 than P1. Or high P1, P2 and P4, but a trash P3.

Plot twist- the pitchers don't actually "throw pitches" on HBD. The Sim evaluation is plate appearance by plate appearance, not pitch by pitch.

After each plate appearance the Sim does some RNG to assign a number to how many pitches took place in the at bat, but it's retroactive.

From what I observe, P1-P5 is secondary RNG (after hitter split v hitter split), expressed exclusively as average pitch as opposed to Dev chat's explanation that pitch sequence matters, which acts as the pitcher's influence on slugging percentage. In the batter-pitcher interaction, the batter is weighted about 66-33 with regards to slugging.

Also 5-pitch pitchers are scaled differently than 4, 3, and 2 pitch pitchers because the null values are not averaged in as zeroes and because the "par value" for each P is different, approximately 80-70-55-40-25 (I think it's actually closer to 82-68-54-40-24)

Because of this, pitchers with better avg pitch will keep more balls in the park and will therefore benefit from plus plays more often and have lower OAV. But there's no pitch sequence or anything like that, they're all evaluated together at the same time as an average

I would agree with that ^, it would be kinda nuts to program the game going pitch-by-pitch.

It can't, their servers could never have the bandwidth. Would be way too many calculations, it would take 2-3 hours to sim each cycle for all the leagues

Pitches are the equivalent concept to "stuff", because once per season when the headlines rank "best stuff" it's ranking average pitch. So guys with better stuff give up less quality hits than guys with worse stuff.

Player Profile: Bum Sweeney is a prime example of this (50 vL), Player Profile: Robin Pillette to a lesser extent (61 vR), Player Profile: Melky Quixote (63 vR) for sure esp in Seattle. They keep the ball in the park more often and benefit from better defense more oftena. It artificially raises their splits basically. But it's not like if Quixote "throws p3" it's a home run and if he "throws p4" it's a groundout. No, he just benefits by having p1 be +7 relative to par, p2 +14 relative to par, p4 +34 relative to par, and p5 +20 relative to par. P3 is "below par" but if you flipped p3 and p4 in sequence they would "balance out" and both be the same amount of aggregate plus relative to par. That's why a guy like him is historically good even with sub-65 vR

As a corollary to this, catcher "pitch calling" isn't actually literal pitch calling because there is no pitch sequence. Based on MikeT's (and others') old numbers, it appears to be functioning at the same frequency as pitch FRAMING. And if you compare HBD numbers to real life framing stats of the top guys like the Molinas vs DH scrubs like Ryan Doumit, the influences on OAV are similar. It's like a + play for the catcher that isn't scored on the player card but appears ... somewhere else. I think it shows up in team stats as better K/BB ratio because of extra "strike out looking"s or something.

That's my theory at least. People have realiably measured the actual effects but nobody knows for sure why or how. Pitch calling is "magic" but it can't actually be magic, it must be in the formula somewhere. Based on my experience it's ^^ this