I don't think I'd ever seen a player rated below 40 speed until drafting in thejuice's tournament here and landing Pirates catcher Earl Smith, who had a 23 in 1927. Smith in fact has 4 seasons rated below 40, and goes as low as 15 (tied for lowest I can find among position players). Of course, Earl has 81 speed in 1922 before beginning his plummet below 40 starting in 1925, so without knowing his biography I'm left to wonder if he lost a leg in there or wore a tire iron around his ankles but still managed to be a solid hitter and catcher ...

Anyway, using advanced search I found 37 player-seasons in the entire sim who are rated under 40. C Mike Fitzgerald is also honored 4 times (he miraculously jumps to 59 in 1991 before regressing to 34 in '92), but the king is 1970s utility Padre Dave Roberts with 5 seasons.

Rather amazingly, Roberts got faster as he aged according to the sim. He busted out with three seasons over 50, including a pair of 58s. Roberts was mostly a catcher and 3b, but he logged a lot of time at 2B and SS too. How slow could he have been? I mean, he stole 28 bases and was caught 7 times in his career. He managed 7 triples. This can't be right.

I mean, the slowest guy I ever actually watched play had to be Mike LaValliere, who managed 5 career triples and stole 5 out of 20 successfully. He's consistently rated 40-43 his whole career, which seems about right. But I digress ...

Why does the sim have this small group of players rated so low in speed, with no clear rhyme or reason? Is this just a glitch that I'm just getting around to discovering?

It’s been a widely held view that Ernie Lombardi was the slowest big league ball player of all time. His SIM speed rating is 40 and above for all his seasons. I am wondering what the likes of Earl Smith or Dave Roberts have done to earn lower speed ratings than the slowest runner in mlb history.

the Roberts rating is completely inexplicable, I was trying to find a pattern in the below 40 guys, but there's nothing

The speed rating is calculated, not assigned. So by definition it's impossible for there to be "no clear rhyme or reason."

I don't know exactly how WIS calculates speed, but I assume it's one of the numerous variations on the old Bill James speed rating. Typically this includes percentage of times on base scoring a run, number of triples hit, SB/SBO, SB%, and sometimes extra bases taken (IE percentage of going first to third or 2nd to home on a single, or first to home on a double).

If you search for players with a max of 40, though, you will see that hundreds of players have 40 exactly. Makes me think at some point the coding was altered to make that the floor. A few guys managed to elude that somehow. It seems that something is wrong with the calculation if it's putting a couple guys in the teens in baseball history, a cluster in the 30s, and then pretty much every other slow guy at 40.

Posted by redcped on 4/1/2020 12:46:00 PM (view original):
If you search for players with a max of 40, though, you will see that hundreds of players have 40 exactly. Makes me think at some point the coding was altered to make that the floor. A few guys managed to elude that somehow. It seems that something is wrong with the calculation if it's putting a couple guys in the teens in baseball history, a cluster in the 30s, and then pretty much every other slow guy at 40.

yeah, it's either a glitch or someone at WIS thought it was funny to randomly assign low speed ratings to certain players

1973 Dave Roberts had 11 SBs on 13 attempts and hit three triples, he should be about average and is instead one of the slowest players of all time.

In the particular case of Dave Roberts... I think it's clear that a switch happened. The pitcher Dave Roberts has unusually high speed ratings for the years 1972-1975 and 1978. The hitter Dave Roberts has unusually low speed ratings in those identical 5 seasons.

In which case 1973 Dave Roberts should have a 67 speed rating, since that's what the pitching Roberts has in 1973.

By Jove, you've got Bingo!

Tom Brown has a few 45-50 early on, then mostly in the 90's...the Molina brothers should be at or near the bottom.

how does haystacks calhoun cc sabathia have 30s in speed...he couldnt beat monty stratton after his injury in a race.

Frankly, if the equation WIS uses is closely related o the original Bill James equation, runs/times on base is a significant part of the calculation. Sabathia played on a bunch of good offensive teams, so he probably scored a lot. Also, his denominators are tiny as an AL pitcher for the part of his career you're referencing, so random chance has a lot to do with it...

I forgot dh league

Posted by dahsdebater on 4/1/2020 1:07:00 PM (view original):
In the particular case of Dave Roberts... I think it's clear that a switch happened. The pitcher Dave Roberts has unusually high speed ratings for the years 1972-1975 and 1978. The hitter Dave Roberts has unusually low speed ratings in those identical 5 seasons.

Excellent detective work!

So is there any chance a little thing like this would ever actually get fixed?

Yeah, they fix stuff like this that takes very little time. Submit a ticket.