Do wins, losses and e.r.a affect how a pitcher develops? It appears that a few owners before me didn't take care of pitching prospects, and they ended up with double digit losses and some jaw dropping ERAs. Will s#itty stats hurt them?

who knows? Pitching and defense are overated, offense wins rings

Quote: Originally posted by a_ersberg on 10/21/2009Do wins, losses and e.r.a affect how a pitcher develops?

The predominant belief is that development is affected by playing time, coaching, makeup and training budget.

A number of people have suggested that if a player is "over his head" - playing at the wrong level (and producing bad stats), - his development will be negatively affected. I believe this (can't prove it, though).

Having taken over a couple previously abandoned teams, I believe the bad stats of the previous years, or even previously in the season (if pitching while fatigued) have ZERO effect going forward. Apart from making their stats page look awful, there's no carryover I can see.

blanch13 is correct about the things that affect development. If your team was previously abandoned, it might have had too few pitchers, meaning your "prospects" were pitching while fatigued. Doing so raises the potential for injury, but only in the season while they are fatigued. Additionally, if the team was abandoned, the coaching quality may have been sub-par, which could have set back development of those pitchers.

WIS claims that players will stagnate if they are overmatched at a level and struggle, and I believe this to be true. I had a great young pitcher just this past season who was chugging along with his progression until he had a terrible 2nd half and he barely progressed at all during that time. I think WIS players are better at developing when they're happy and winning, just like most real life players.

One thought here:

A pitcher who is pitching "over his head" will certainly throw more pitches per inning and likely will throw more per at bat and plate appearance. Thus, given a certain Sta/Dur combo, he will log fewer innings/ab/pa than he would have at a more appropriate level. It's not clear to me whether "playing time" for pitchers is represented by pitches thrown, IP, AB, or PA. If it is pitches, it should not matter if he is over his head. If it is AB or PA, then it would matter some b/c of higher pitches/ab and likely more walks. If it is IP, then it could have a huge effect.

In fact, now that I think about it, if your pitcher is getting bombed badly enough that he can't get deep in his pitch count, then it doesn't matter how they count playing time, it will have some effect. Even with a call bullpen setting of 1, a guy will tend to throw fewer pitches on average when pitching badly than when pitching well.



This doesn't seem to factor in for positional players, as they don't get pulled from games in the same way.