Greetings,

Curious for your thoughts/experience...I've got some pitchers whose ratings imply they'd perform better than they have, and a couple whose stats seem much better than ratings. Which is a better indication of likely success?

(re Ratings - mostly using current overall, projected overall, pitch 1, pitch 2, velocity, and control)

Players play to their ratings over time. Stats are partially a result of the quality of opposition faced.

Also when you talk about Pitcher ratings, most of us in here discuss the vsLHB/vsRHB splits first, then the other factors you mentioned. And don't just judge by Overall ratings, which are heavily influenced by Durability and Stamina. You'll find pitchers all across the minor leagues who can throw 250 innings a season but have no hope of getting major league hitters out.

Ratings only.

thanks, Gents! Interested in more people's thoughts too. Please add.

I'm a n00b to HBD but have been focused on LHB/RHB for my bullpen pitchers only...seems I need to expand my perspective...thanks for the advice!

I always say the most critical thing for you to learn is Player evaluation. Obviously getting the hang of handling the machinations of the game itself is primary. But once you're done that, your own personal evaluation of players will determine how you're spending money and what quality of team you'll have.

Agree with all above but would just add good or bad defense can also have a huge affect on pitchers stats.

I build ML roster based on ratings, but I may make line up adjustments in-season based on stats. As said above, eventually stats will play to ratings, but there can still be small sample anomalies.

1. Ratings

Successful owners swear by the ratings and they're right, the more better rated players on your team, the more wins, but as stated above, this doesn't always mean better overall rating. There are plenty of 87 overall rated 3b types that can defensively play an above average 3b for all 162 games without getting tired, but they cost you $8M a year in salary during their prime and only give you a 675 OPS. These are not guys you target, let the crappy owners draft those guys. You need the guy that hits 900 ops or pitches with a BAA of .230.

With that being said, you can't get all best players on your team and that is where you can sometimes find hidden trends in the stats. However, the developers purposely placed a lot of randonness into the game so even if you think you're being clever or cute by recognizing that a player is about to have a great year, you might be one year too early. It has happened to me many times.

Just to give another perspective on which ratings are important, I would rank them as follows (excluding the playing time ratings, stam/dur/health):

Pitchers:
1. Control
2. R split
3. GB rating
4. Pitch quality
5. L split
6. Velocity

Really I base probably 80% of my pitcher evaluation on control and R split. If a guy doesn't meet my benchmarks in either those two, he needs to tick absolutely every single other box. The rest (except velocity) are variable and can change order based on park factors or defense quality. If your defense is good enough you can ignore velocity entirely. I'm also not the biggest pitch quality guy. In my experience, good pitches can make up for deficiencies elsewhere, but bad pitches aren't the end of the world if a guy's got strong ratings otherwise.

Hitters:
1A. Eye
1B. Power
1C. R split
4. Speed
5. L split
6. Contact

For hitters, I really look at all of the top five stats almost equally, though the three at the top are the most important to me, and all roughly equal. Contact is an afterthought. It's not useless but it almost never turns a bench player into a starter or vice versa. Speed is easily the most underrated rating on offense, too. I don't have a minimum speed rating to be in the lineup like I do with eye/power/R split, but good speed is a major plus.

These are awesome perspectives...would love to see a few more.

What percentage of pitchers do you think are righty rather than lefty? Both of you rated R-Split 2-3 places higher than L-Split.

Don't know the exact percentage, but there's significantly more righties (both hitters and pitchers) in the game than lefties, much like real life. Maybe like 80-20?

I'm gonna say something which I know a lot of you will take issue with, and believe me that's fine.

When I was just a new owner someone said in league chat something about lefthanded pitchers, and one of the more successful owners in the league responded "there are lefthanded pitchers?!?" I looked at his pitching staff and sure enough, not one single lefty. So I thought, why would you do that?

dmalone01 is correct. For all the real life reasons, approximately 20% - certainly less than 30% - of individuals in baseball are righties.
Now think about the number of really dangerous star hitters in whichever world you play in. How many of them hit lefty? I'm gonna say probably less then ten.

If you look at the way players are generated, a RHP will almost always have a stronger RH split, and a LHP vice versa. It's the unique players - some would say the studs - who have reverse splits.

You might see where I went with this. Unless you have a LHP who's really strong against righthanded batters, he is at a disadvantage most of the time. So you get the owner I mentioned who decided not to use them at all.

Posted by dmalone01 on 10/23/2020 11:09:00 PM (view original):
Just to give another perspective on which ratings are important, I would rank them as follows (excluding the playing time ratings, stam/dur/health):

Pitchers:
1. Control
2. R split
3. GB rating
4. Pitch quality
5. L split
6. Velocity

Really I base probably 80% of my pitcher evaluation on control and R split. If a guy doesn't meet my benchmarks in either those two, he needs to tick absolutely every single other box. The rest (except velocity) are variable and can change order based on park factors or defense quality. If your defense is good enough you can ignore velocity entirely. I'm also not the biggest pitch quality guy. In my experience, good pitches can make up for deficiencies elsewhere, but bad pitches aren't the end of the world if a guy's got strong ratings otherwise.

Hitters:
1A. Eye
1B. Power
1C. R split
4. Speed
5. L split
6. Contact

For hitters, I really look at all of the top five stats almost equally, though the three at the top are the most important to me, and all roughly equal. Contact is an afterthought. It's not useless but it almost never turns a bench player into a starter or vice versa. Speed is easily the most underrated rating on offense, too. I don't have a minimum speed rating to be in the lineup like I do with eye/power/R split, but good speed is a major plus.

On pitching, you can get away with a pitcher that has 50 control, but it's tougher to get away with a pitcher that has 50 R split.