Under performing Warren Spahn Topic

Outside of pitch count and pull setting there isn't much I can do to manage my 1954 Warren Spahn in my progressive league. He's way under performing and I don't understand why. Lefty? His '54 season was pretty good in real life but here in the sim he is getting rocked. Pitch count 100 and pull setting 3 (started the season with a pull setting of 1). Here is a snapshot of his sim season to date.

Player SN T G GS CG SHO W L SV SVO IP H R ER HR BB SO OAV OBP SLG WHIP ERA
                                             
                                             
                                             
                                             
                                             
                                             
Spahn, Warren 1954 L 26 25 2 0 8 15 0 0 167.0 230 140 126 20 66 76 .325 .378 .492 1.77 6.79


10/14/2013 2:25 PM
his real life season:
Actual Statistics - Advanced
View General Stats                            View Awards
ERA+ OAV+ WHIP+ ERC+ BB/9+ K/9+ HR/9+
129 108 115 132 132 104 119
Hit Rate Strand Rate Walk Rate HBP/100PA BB/100PA K/100AB HR/100AB
0.262 0.769 0.074 0.09 7.32 12.72 2.25
ERA# OAV# WHIP# ERC# BB/9# K/9# Grades at P
3.04 .244 1.21 3.06 2.58 4.57 C+/B+ (.945/2.41)


10/14/2013 2:43 PM
I am using Forbes Field and this is a 1954/1992 progressive....now, this isn't a ***** or a rant. I obviously don't understand how the sim works. I'm just perplexed. It is what it is and there isn't much I can do about it but I would like to try to understand why he is so bad.
10/14/2013 2:46 PM
WIS simmed the Dodgers beating the Cardinals 89 out of 101 times. We all know that the Dodgers aren't 8:1 favorites over anybody much less the Cardinals. Sometimes the sim puts out goofy results.
10/14/2013 3:24 PM
Spahn's big problem is that he throws left handed.

I insist that there is a bug that hurts left handed pitchers in the code, but site staff disagrees.  But I guarantee you that a leftie pitcher will underperform a rightie with the same real life stats. 

10/14/2013 3:40 PM
The lefty thing made me "hide" his start by putting him a tandem B role a few starts ago...so that maybe he faces more left handed batters than he would if he was a regular starter...my thinking was that when an opponent sees a left handed starter they put in a right handed offense and vice versa...I'll see how that pans out going forward. As for the dodgers beating the cards , well, that should happen EVERY time they meet :)
10/14/2013 3:56 PM
thanks for your response guys...
10/14/2013 5:15 PM
I would agree that lefties generally seem to under-perform.  I looked up Spahn's SIM performance for 1954 -- he has only been used three times.
He averages 15 w and 17 loses compared to his 21-13 1954 record.  His SIM WHIP is 1.48 compared to 1.23 RL; and his SIM opponent BA is
.282 versus .245.  Of course, that can all be skewed by the stadium and the batters he faces, but this seems to be a consistent patterns for
LH pitchers.  There are some good lefties, but you just avoid them because of their SIM performances in the past.  Granted, they are playing often
against stacked lineups, but so are the RHP.
10/14/2013 10:23 PM
His righy/lefty splits are telling. He has faced 70% RHB and his OAV is .343 whereas his OAV versus lefties is .254.....I don't know his real life stats delineated by righty/lefty batters but I doubt his OAV was that high against righties...perhaps there is a lefty bias as Biglen and Radlynch suggests. I might relegate him to a mop up role the balance of this dismal season....golly, a $7M mop up
10/15/2013 7:49 AM
Boy, dual-season progs are really different from single-season progs!  I noticed that Spahn's real life stats aren't anything special compared to the rest of your team.  You've got 1740 real life innings and Spahn's real life OAV, WHIP and ERA are all worse than your team average.  In which case, you probably shouldn't have expected much from him to begin with.  

In a single-season prog, though, I figure a pitcher with an ERC+ of 132 would be fairly dominant...
10/15/2013 9:36 AM
crazy, I appreciate you looking into it so deeply. That took some doing. When I look at Spahn's real life numbers compared to my other starters he fits somewhere closer to the middle. ERA I have a (2.97) a (2.69) a (3.26) a (3.62) and Spahn at (3.14)....OAV I have a (.231) a (.248) a (.244) a (.260) and Spahn at (.245) WHIP I have a (1.02) a (1.15) a (1.31) a (1.33) and Spahn at (1.23) ERC+ I have a (166) a(139) a (118) a (110) and Spahn at (132)....so I do expect Spahn to perform somewhere right around what the other starters are performing yet his sim numbers are terrible by comparison....
10/15/2013 7:06 PM
Winnetka....well, the mystery gets deeper.  In 1954, RHB hit .245 versus Spahn, while lefties hit .251.  So, while Spahn is actually slightly better IRL versus RHB, in your league, he is getting killed by RHB, which is +100 over his real life stats versus RHB for 1954.  He's about what would be expected versus LHB. 
10/15/2013 8:00 PM
radlynch, I assume you're getting those numbers from baseball-reference.com.  Remember 2 things:

-- Those numbers are just estimates (b-r does not have actual splits for the batters Spahn faced...they use the overall numbers for LHB and RHB in the games that Spahn started....some of those ABs occured against relievers)
-- WIS does not use actual platoon splits (for Spahn or for anyone else)...they use Spahn's overall OAV and make a standard adjustment when he faces an LHB or RHB
10/15/2013 9:16 PM
Spahn has faced 242 LHB and 571 RHB so far this season....and according to WIS his OAV is .343 and .254 respectively....so these aren't actuals but results of some kind of adjustment? Seems odd to me that they track the number of LHB/RHB yet don't bother to track actual OAV but resort to estimates or adjustments instead.
10/15/2013 10:44 PM
The SIM-produced stats are what he has done against lefties and righties in SIM.  What contrarian meant is that WIS does NOT use real-life L/R splits in determining the outcome of a plate appearance.  Only the RL OAV is used, and it is modified by some small degree when a pitcher is facing a RH batter or a LH batter.
10/15/2013 11:55 PM
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