The Brewster

We often talk about "average ratings," but the real value is understanding who's actually playing...I mean, if you've got a superstar and a shlunk together, their average rating is pretty low...but an opponent is only really going to face the superstar. So, our effective ratings depend on who plays.

With that in mind, I went through and weighted our player's ratings by their PA and BF....Here are current numbers based on our data of close to the end of June.

Interesting, eh?

This is pretty cool. How tough would it be to see team by team? That might be a way to learn a lot about what you think you have versus what you have.

Just a little playing with the pivot tables. I'll see what I can do a little later.

Easier than I thought, really.

I should note that these are not based on handedness splits.

That is awesome. A lot to learn here I think.

Love it. Any way to break out SP/RP?

huh. My MOV and control are lower than I anticipated. Then again I'm running out 8/5/8 Luis Oliva every 5th day and 12/5/4 Jean Huguet recently.

Knew my power was suffering...hence trading for CarGo.

Damn, we throw some serious gas. Tops in the league in stuff and that likely doesn't include newly acquired Dillon Young(11) or Dl'ed players like Akiyama(13) and Ayala(10/13). Sanchez(8)is also on the bubble of getting cut. In a month we might top 11 for average stuff. I think I have 7-8 pitchers who throw 100 mph+. Our catchers need to wear extra padding in their gloves.

Among the things I like about these numbers is that they show how, on average, our GMs are doing a pretty good job of managing minor league systems. In a sense, they show where players fit in the minors ... and go a long way toward defining why Matt's discussion on the use of stats output in the minors can be so useful in assessing where players are on they lips of various ratings.

They also show the separation of ratings between pitcher types.

These don't, of course, take into account ballparks (or splits, as I said earlier). They also don't take into account where a guy is on the rating scale. As you get less sample size (teams vs. leagues, for example), this becomes more important. If you have five guys at the top of a rating range rather than in the middle zone, you'll obviously over-perform these numbers. So there are no certainties.

But, yeah, interesting to look at.

ae37jr wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 14, 2019 2:07 pm

Damn, we throw some serious gas. Tops in the league in stuff and that likely doesn't include newly acquired Dillon Young(11) or Dl'ed players like Akiyama(13) and Ayala(10/13). Sanchez(8)is also on the bubble of getting cut. In a month we might top 11 for average stuff. I think I have 7-8 pitchers who throw 100 mph+. Our catchers need to wear extra padding in their gloves.

Akiyama has faced 37 batters and is in the mix. As are the rest.

You guys can pull all this data yourself just by doing a filter on "all players" in game. (include BF, PA, and any rating set you want). It takes a half hour the first time you do it, then maybe 15 minutes after you figure out how.

For the top ten staffs (sorted by FIP because I wanted a park adjusted result. I'd rather use ERA+ because I'd prefer to have an "Actual" result over predictive one for these purposes, but I can't find a portable era+ table for the league. Really all using FIP over ERA did is drop Boise out of the top ten and put in Mexico City, who I all think we'd agree has a better staff) eight are above average in stuff. This makes sense because FIP is highly strikeout dependent. Only one team in the top ten by FIP is below avg in movement, and that's San Fernando (who is way above the curve in stuff). Three of the top ten pitching teams are below avg in control. Again, the most interesting one is San Fernando, who is well above avg in stuff, but decidedly below in motion and control. Maybe Randy is on to something (he also has a really weird park and some very extreme pitchers. All his guys with low control or motion have really high stuff ratings.)

As far as offense goes, we're sorting by wOBA (again to get rid of park effects, again the difference between runs scored and wOBA was just the sorting of the same top ten teams). For the top ten, six teams are above avg in contact, but notably a many of those are WAY above avg. Five of the top ten teams are above avg in gap power. SEVEN of the top ten offenses are BELOW average in power. That's pretty interesting. Every one of those teams with the exception of Montreal (who has the highest contact rating in the league) walks at a really high rate. Only two teams were below average in walk rate. Only four of the top ten teams were above avg in AVK. Notably the big power teams were all well below average.


Now, quite a few teams were within a few points of average, but it was generally one to two per category, and doesn't change much. Chris will be happy to hear me admit that I've been undervaluing the CON rating and therefore batting average, and that amazingly putting the ball in play for hits matters, especially when you have guys on base. On the pitching side, I think the only revelation is that San Fernando is weird. Movement remains king, but can be overcome if you strike everyone out.

The last note is that as Ron mentioned this doesn't take into account platoon splits. For most teams, this probably evens out. For teams like mine or Stever's who are heavily left handed, the data is probably a bit off. Still, I think there's enough of a trend.

Pitcher control has been over valued the past few years. There are so few hitters with good eyes and even fewer that are good hitters too. Of all the hitter/pitcher main ratings, control is by far the least important right now IMO.

ae37jr wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 14, 2019 2:28 pm

Pitcher control has been over valued the past few years. There are so few hitters with good eyes and even fewer that are good hitters too. Of all the hitter/pitcher main ratings, control is by far the least important right now IMO.

Good call. I've definitely been overvaluing it. You're dead on about the trend with the eye rating on batters. This ties in nicely to how the best offenses all have high EYE ratings as well.

ae37jr wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 14, 2019 2:28 pm

Pitcher control has been over valued the past few years. There are so few hitters with good eyes and even fewer that are good hitters too. Of all the hitter/pitcher main ratings, control is by far the least important right now IMO.

That's probably a fair assessment, but I'd say it depends on the pitcher just how much it doesn't matter.

It's an interesting game theory, really. Matt and I talked about it in the minors podcast.

With Eye dropping for hitters, you can get by with less control in your pitchers. On the other hand, with EYE dropping, pitchers with outstanding control will dominate that area.

Of course, with EYE dropping, if teams chose to go with weaker control pitchers, offensive players with great EYE will become more valuable because they will walk considerably more often.

Again: no free lunch. But it's probably valuable to think about these things as you make decisions on how to structure your team.

Ted wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 14, 2019 2:32 pm

ae37jr wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 14, 2019 2:28 pm

Pitcher control has been over valued the past few years. There are so few hitters with good eyes and even fewer that are good hitters too. Of all the hitter/pitcher main ratings, control is by far the least important right now IMO.

Good call. I've definitely been overvaluing it. You're dead on about the trend with the eye rating on batters. This ties in nicely to how the best offenses all have high EYE ratings as well.

ON the other hand, maybe the best offenses are only the best because they are feasting on the teams disregarding control? It's an interesting match up issue. I still fell, Alan, that you're right about it being overvalued, but I wonder how much? It would be interesting to see if there's a notable difference in offensive/run prevention consistency for different hitting/pitching, but I've asked enough of Ron today already.

The file still has an internal number of walks that it is trying to mete out in a season. If the league average EYE drops from 8 to 4 it just means the guys with a 4 will start producing like the guys with an 8 used to. And the pitchers with higher CON will give out less of those than the ones with lower.

agrudez wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 14, 2019 4:04 pm

The file still has an internal number of walks that it is trying to mete out in a season. If the league average EYE drops from 8 to 4 it just means the guys with a 4 will start producing like the guys with an 8 used to. And the pitchers with higher CON will give out less of those than the ones with lower.

This is incorrect.