I know this is a sort of sacrosanct belief to the wise old heads on these boards, but my own experience is leading me to believe that pitch calling isn't nearly as important as everyone seems to make it out to be. Using my own team in Addicted Users (located in OKC), I've had the following results over the last three seasons (in particular, pay attention to the season 48 results).

Season 46
Miguel James (65 PC): 1023 innings, 2.84 CERA
Javier Alcantara (90 PC): 442 innings, 2.95 CERA

Based on large, relatively equivalent (see methodology below) sample sizes for both, this season would argue that every 10 points of PC is worth -0.04 CERA (or effectively nothing)

Season 47
Miguel James (65 PC): 987.1 innings, 2.84 CERA
Nap Stargell (88 PC): 486.2 innings, 2.72 CERA

Based on this season. every 10 points of PC is worth 0.05 CERA (again, effectively nothing)

Season 48
Miguel James (65 PC): 931.1 innings, 3.44 CERA
Victor Olivares (22 PC): 523 innings, 3.56 ERA

This season is particularly interesting. I'd traded away some of my best pitchers so the CERA wasn't as stellar, but more relevant, I also didn't have a decent backup catcher. When James started to become fatigued, I took my backup SS in Olivares and plugged him in to the position - he had the best PC of my available options and a strong arm (side note: Olivares threw out 43.4% of baserunners, James only got 23.8%). This is useful to see since previous seasons had compared mediocre PC to stellar PC, this is the first time we'd had abysmal PC. Also, this season led to a WS win (also won a WS in season 45 with Slade Lewis (51 PC) as my primary catcher, so I'm definitely not a believer that you can't win without a high PC catcher).

As you see, the CERA wasn't notably different. Here, each 10 points of PC equates to an advantage of 0.04 CERA.

So on average, over these 3 seasons, it looks like each 10 points of PC gives an advantage of 0.015 CERA, or 2.4 runs over an entire season. Given this, I'd much rather focus on a catcher with a strong arm who will throw out 40+% of baserunners.

Methodology/Critiques
Whenever I present this, I always get a few points of pushback, so I'll go ahead and address these.

1. "It's not an apples to apples comparison since the backup catcher is often catching for the superior relievers" - luckily for us all, I'm too lazy to set defensive replacements. I ride my starting catcher all game, every game, until they are worn down below 95. I then put my backup catcher in as the starter for weeks at a time until the starter is back to 100 (and sometimes beyond that date if I'm not paying attention). In all three circumstances, the catchers were working with the same pitchers.

2. "Veteran pitchers don't need good PC, but it makes more difference for young ones" - my oldest starter in any of these seasons was 29. Some folks make great use of veteran pitchers, but I'm not one of them. I do generally have a few veteran relievers, but the percentage innings pitched by pitchers at age 31+ in these seasons was 16% (S46), 0% (S47), and 0%. In total 5% of my IP were from 31+ so this specifically considers PC impact on younger pitchers.

3. "PC makes more difference the more difference you have between various pitches" - I can't look back exactly at previous seasons, but I put lots of emphasis on P1 and P2, but nothing after that. This season, with all SP returning from last season, my rotation P3 averages 52, actually somewhat subpar. My rotation P2 is pretty good (77) compared to my P1 (80), but I'd argue that this reflects more on the importance of getting SPs with more than one decent pitch. If none of your SPs have a decent P2, you're probably not contending anyway.

4. "You had really good pitchers, PC only makes a difference for bad pitchers" - Guilty, my pitchers were very good. It's possible this critique is true. Again though, if your argument is that PC is only important to help bad teams become slightly less bad, I'm not sure that's worthy of a major investment. It seems clear though that if you have a contending team, getting a catcher with better PC isn't going to push you over the top.

5. "You play in a low-offense home-field; PC doesn't matter there, but does elsewhere" - First off, no idea why this would/could be true. Secondly, even if it was and all the difference in CERA was due to away games (i.e. they had the exact same CERA in home games), we could double the value of it to account for it being only in the half of games played away. We'd still only be at 4.8 runs saved per season in a "normal" ballpark. Still not a meaningful value.

6. "PC doesn't matter until you get it up to a certain point" - I've used what I would characterize as high PC (90,88) in these years, what I would characterize as mediocre (65) and what I would characterize as abysmal (22). In no case was there a meaningful difference. I never directly compared a 22 PC catcher (well SS actually) to a 90 PC catcher, but I also don't think that's the decision most of us are making.

I have always tried to keep this simple - based on the below from FAQ, I see a catcher with 70 pitch calling as a guy who will have a career neutral affect on the pitching staff's batting average. A guy with an 80 will have a positive .005 affect on pitching staff's batting average. A guy with a 90 will have a positive .010 affect on a pitching staff's batting average. A guy with a 100 will have a .015 affect on a pitching staff's batting average. I also assume the negative - if a catcher has a 60 pitch calling rating, I would expect that the pitching staff will have a .005 negative affect on the pitching staff's batting avg given up.

Of course, just like any other fielder, they will have good years and bad years.

From the FAQ:
Pitch calling will help/hurt a pitcher a certain amount. It's not a drastic amount because pitchers can call their own pitches. A bad catcher will hurt the pitcher a bit because he will irritate the pitcher with shake offs, calling bad pitches, etc. A good catcher will help because he maintains the flow and does a great deal of the mental work for the pitcher. That said, every pitcher at the big league level has been pitching for years (amateur and professional). They can call their own game, so a catcher with no pitch calling skills isn't going to cause them to get shelled. Over the long haul, having a catcher with a low pitch calling rating is going to cost his staff .005 - .015 points in batting average allowed which is very significant.

That FAQ response is awful. It takes into account personal feelings and behaviors of computer generated people. Not from a modern AI computer but from 2009 type generation. Doubtful all those things are taken into consideration.

Posted by bripat42 on 6/28/2019 10:52:00 AM (view original):
I've always viewed that particular FAQ response from WIS as a bit of nonsense, mainly because it describes the effect as both "...not a drastic amount ..." and "...very significant ..." in the same paragraph. That said, the original poster's sample size of 3 seasons isn't a lot to go on for a rating that appears to be designed to have no more than a subtle influence.

The way that I interpreted it was that it isn't noticeable from game to game, but over the long haul, it is statistically significant. However, I might be reading into it too much. Nonetheless, I used a bit of common sense to figure out that every ten points of pitch calling equates to a [over the long haul] lowering of a pitcher's BAA by .005.

I might be way off, but it seems that pitch calling might be one of the most difficult ratings to determine statistical impact.

I just feel like there are so many variables that would affect PC ERAs. Some mentioned above by OP, but also who you're pitching against, who you catch, the gameflow (is the SUA coming in or a mopup guy), whatever natural variance of how pitchers perform there's built in, etc. It's really tough to quantify imo. I've seen .15 ERA per 10 points said, but I have no idea the accuracy of that. I like having good fielding teams, so I shoot for higher PC guys, but I could be way overrating them too.

Long story short: I play in two pitcher's parks. Long time ago I realized the parks naturally suppress offense enough, that I would rather sacrifice a batting slot at another defensive position, and use one of these hitting catchers that no one else seems to think is good enough for them.

Agreed with a lot of the views here, but mostly come down with damag.

There's definitely some variables I didn't/couldn't control for. I assume that over the large sample size they balance out, but it's possible my lower PC catcher always happened to be catching against weaker offensive teams. I definitely don't think it's as high as 0.15 ERA per 10 points (24.5 runs/year) or the equivalent of turning every .260 hitter into a .275 hitter. I've cited 3 seasons, but this is something I've been noticing for a while. I put a lot of emphasis on fielding overall, and generally am among the league leaders in +/- differential, just don't care much about catcher PC anymore.

That said, I'm sure it has some influence - I'm sure everything here does. But with how much attention is placed on PC, I think it's possibly the most overvalued rating in the game - even in the best case where it's only a subtle influence, you have people that refuse any sort of catcher without elite PC. I'll focus more on hitting skills and arm strength for a catcher, especially since those ratings don't increase a catcher's value to other people.

Realistically, I'd suggest other folks go and see for themselves. I can only test it out to a certain extent myself and that's what I've found, but I'd be happy to hear from other folks as well.

I use 48 PC catchers in two different leagues and typically lead the league in pitching in both playing in fairly neutral parks. Both are MVP caliber hitters. I am not convinced that PC makes much of a difference at all.

thanks for putting in the work to assemble and present this, Krindor.. It's a subject I have wondered about too. And my own experience is that the difference is hard to observe. Nice to see some actual data, however limited.

Posted by damag on 6/28/2019 4:08:00 PM (view original):
Long story short: I play in two pitcher's parks. Long time ago I realized the parks naturally suppress offense enough, that I would rather sacrifice a batting slot at another defensive position, and use one of these hitting catchers that no one else seems to think is good enough for them.

Same.

I know this past seasons with one of my teams my pitching was struggling, took out my bat with his 46 PC and added a lesser bat with his 90+ PC and pitching improved tremendously. My team improved in the win column and this might all be hard to determine if it helps or not but in my mind it does so I'm keep using higher PC rather than the better hitter. Each is own I guess.

And generally those higher PC catchers have better defense, strength/accuracy so less pass balls or errors and more caught stealing.

I have 2 interesting players that I have been watching:

Player Profile: Chuck Lange - Hardball Dynasty Baseball | WhatIfSports

and

Player Profile: Ed Payton - Hardball Dynasty Baseball | WhatIfSports

Lange has been my catcher of choice for a while until I picked up Payton. If I have a hitter like Payton and a catcher like Lange I will play both, one at C and one at RF. However, I have Player Profile: Marcell Rodriguez - Hardball Dynasty Baseball | WhatIfSports at RF. So I have been trying to get Payton in whenever I can. The guy is raking it with a league leading 1.114 OPS. However, his CERA is a whopping 4.57 with a staff pitching 4.23 with Lange catching 3.82, that is almost a run per game. Does Payton's bat makeup for that difference?

However, last season, Payton had a better CERA than Lange. So who knows.

I would start Payton and bring Lange in for the late innings. 63 is a high enough PC rating, and you need his bat in the line-up. And Lange's high PC rating will help late when you are trying to lock down a win.