I don't think I've ever understood Temper and Patience ratings.  Do either of these affect how a player responds to playing time?  For example, does a player with poor patience not handle a bench or platoon role well?  Does a pitcher with poor temper react poorly to being taken out of the rotation and put into the bullpen?

I feel like these are real life considerations managers have to deal with.

I don't think anyone has ever found a real correlation to anything except patience and a player's tendency to leave for FA while temper leads to more HBP. Players with 55+ patience ratings are more likely to re-sign than guys with patience ratings <55. Temper, I believe, has something to do with how often a guy gets hit by pitches, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. 

I generally just use the patience rating as a gauge of whether or not I'll be able to sign a prospect long term after his arb years. 

Patience is also the key rating in determining demotion hits. 

Temper determines how often a player is ejected from games, but it doesn't happen all that often in any case.  Also, presumably as an "Easter Egg" for HBD players, since it's not documented anywhere, players with very low temper get hit by the pitch more.

That HBP aspect actually does make some sense. If I know a guy has a short fuse, and he's a dangerous hitter, I'd plunk him on the chance he'd get himself tossed from the game. At worst, you put him on first base instead of him doing worse damage.

Posted by volk on 4/21/2012 1:29:00 AM (view original):
That HBP aspect actually does make some sense. If I know a guy has a short fuse, and he's a dangerous hitter, I'd plunk him on the chance he'd get himself tossed from the game. At worst, you put him on first base instead of him doing worse damage.

This is not unreasonable-- but in HBD it's LOW temper guys that gets hit, as if the pitcher pitches inside more to guys that he knows won't charge the mound.

Ah, I see. I thought the lower the rating, the shorter the fuse. Just goes to show you how little attention I've paid to that rating.

Seems to me, at least pitchers, that pitchers with a patience rating of lower than 35 get impatient when they don't advance after a good season. This shows up in their next season's stats going downhill noticeably. Ratings improvement seem to vary per player.