H/9, Clutch "Skills" need to be removed

[lvann4x]

For some time now, it's a relatively accepted theory that pitchers have very little influence over BABIP against them over a large sample size.
Therefore, I think The Show should remove the H/9 "skill" from their rating system, since it's really just a rating of luck, according to most studies.
Where the H/9 skill rears it's ugly head is in Franchise Mode over several seasons. Take a mediocre pitcher who had a low BABIP against in real life last year, and thus had a lower than expected ERA, W/L, etc.
The Show will give him an inflated H/9 skill, which will make him uncharacteristicly lucky for several years to come (or possibly his career) in Franchise Mode.
On the other hand, an above average pitcher who had a high BABIP last year in real life will be doomed to bad luck for years to come in Franchise Mode.

In fact, if it were up to me, I'd remove HR/9, K/9, and BB/9 as actual "skills". The only real skills a pitcher has are the effectiveness of his pitches and his ability or lack there of to use them in a manner that gets hitters out. His pitches and how he uses them determine what his K/9, BB/9, and HR/9 will be, combined with the caliber of hitters he faces.
A BB/9 rating is redundant. Pitchers already have a Control rating. Control should give you a good idea of what his BB/9 will be whether his games are simmed OR played.
The expected K/9 and HR/9 should be a combination of Velocity, Movement and Command/Control of his pitches, combined with a rating that should possibly be added to the Show, something to represent his "Pitchability", "Pitching IQ", "Deceptiveness" or "Awareness".
If K/9, HR/9 and BB/9 ratings were simply metrics the game used to tell you what to expect from a pitcher at a glance, that'd be fine, but they're not. They're actual "skills" that can be leveled up or down, and are used to determine results.
Finally, the Clutch rating needs to go away. I guess it'd be fine to have it as a "trait", like in Madden (a guy is either clutch or not). But a 1-99 rating on Clutch is ludicrous, just as Durability is. No one can say that Derek Jeter is 96 Clutch, and David Ortiz is only 94 Clutch. Jeter is 2% more "clutch" than Ortiz? How could anyone know that. If The Show wants that in the code, that's fine, but we as gamers should experience that, not know that degree of separation in "Clutch" beforehand.
Really, I'd prefer clutch be left out of a players ratings, as lots of research has suggested that "Clutch" is not a predictable trait, and may be a fallacy altogether as an attribute a player possesses.

[Caulfield]

Re: H/9, Clutch "Skills" need to be removed

The clutch magnifier is so small it shouldnt greatly affect much so it should be fine to leave in . As long as real stats like risp are used to determine it . I cant say much about the others though.

[KBLover]

Re: H/9, Clutch "Skills" need to be removed

For some time now, it's a relatively accepted theory that pitchers have very little influence over BABIP against them over a large sample size.

In general, that's probably true. However, there are pitchers who keep low (or high) BABIPs over a longer term. Rivera, for example.

Little control <> no control.

H/9 should be tightly clustered around whatever average is with "developing" it difficult, but not totally removed.

Batted ball type alone influences BABIP. Pitchers with high K rates have shown some tendency for lower BABIPs, etc.

Therefore, I think The Show should remove the H/9 "skill" from their rating system, since it's really just a rating of luck, according to most studies.
Where the H/9 skill rears it's ugly head is in Franchise Mode over several seasons. Take a mediocre pitcher who had a low BABIP against in real life last year, and thus had a lower than expected ERA, W/L, etc.
The Show will give him an inflated H/9 skill, which will make him uncharacteristicly lucky for several years to come (or possibly his career) in Franchise Mode.

That's more an issue with rating Joe Pitcher, assuming The Show even uses BABIP to set the H/9 rating. They might just use H/9.

In fact, if it were up to me, I'd remove HR/9, K/9, and BB/9 as actual "skills". The only real skills a pitcher has are the effectiveness of his pitches and his ability or lack there of to use them in a manner that gets hitters out. His pitches and how he uses them determine what his K/9, BB/9, and HR/9 will be, combined with the caliber of hitters he faces.

So you want to remove the /9 that relate to the three "true" outcomes? The three areas that pitchers have the most influence over? The three that relate to FIP, which is considered better than ERA?

If you want to say pitch ratings themselves should be rated as K/9, HR/9, BB/9, then that might could work. But I don't see how throwing them away would reflect pitchers any better. If anything, what needs to be added is a GB/FB rate, but not all pitchers allow the same HR/FB rate, so HR/9 could be used for that.

[Bobhead]

Re: H/9, Clutch &quot;Skills&quot; need to be removed

For some time now, it's a relatively accepted theory that pitchers have very little influence over BABIP against them over a large sample size.

That's not true at all.

There was a study about 16 years ago that analyzed this, and it was misinterpreted/misconducted to suggest that BABIP is not influenced by pitchers, however what was actually found is that BABIP is a highly volatile stat (which was already true for batters anyway).

It is true that a pitcher's own BABIP can vary a lot from year to year, which is where the misinformation came from. But it is also true that pitcher A's BABIP for his entire career tends to correlate with other metrics and measures of success, as well as K/9. See the long quote at the end of this post, specifically, the very last few sentences of it.

Source: http://sabr.org/research/many-flavor...y-and-overview

Studies Proving McCracken Wrong

Tom Tippett of Dimaond Mind Baseball observed that soft-tossing lefties such as Moyer had low BABIPs despite low strikeout rates. In Moyer’s case, he made up for it with an exceptionally low walk rate.McCracken’s work got people thinking about pitching performance with fielding factored out. The thinking manifested itself in forms ranging from insults directed at McCracken’s work and sanity to thoughtful and thorough research by those looking to prove or disprove his idea. The two leading responses to McCracken’s work came in July 2003 from Tom Tippett at Diamond Mind Baseball and in February 2004 from Mitchel Lichtman at Baseball Think Factory.

Part of what most made Tom Tippett’s work compelling was that he drew his data from a much longer period, 1913 through 2002, than did McCracken, who initially looked at only two seasons, 1998 and 1999.

Tippett drew three main conclusions:

Pitchers do influence BABIP.
A pitcher shows statistically significant BABIP consistency across the length of his career.
Small influence over BABIP (much smaller than influence over strikeouts and walks) is still significant because such a large percentage of balls are put into play.
Tippett observed that McCracken may have been misled by the bad BABIP numbers that Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson, and Pedro Martinez had in the 1999 season. Most seasons they posted BABIP numbers lower (better) than the league average. Also of note: Six of the top 35 pitchers in career BABIP were knuckleballers (Charlie Hough was the best overall), and soft-tossing lefties like Jamie Moyer had low BABIPs despite low strikeout rates. (In Moyer’s case, he made up for the low strikeout rate with an exceptionally low walk rate.) Successful pitchers with low strikeout rates and high BABIPs—Tommy John is an example—led Tippett to suggest further research on the ability of pitchers to induce double-play groundballs.23

Mitchel Lichtman’s sample was from the twelve year period 1992–2003. In his article on DIPS at Baseball Think Factory, he analyzed different kinds of BIP (balls in play) and defined six categories:

infield line drives
outfield line drives
infield pop flies
outfield pop flies
outfield fly balls
non-bunt groundballs

He calculated the percentage of BIP that each of these categories represented, the BABIP for each category, and the year-to-year correlations for each of those. Lichtman found that, while McCracken was correct in that a pitcher does not have much control over his overall BABIP, he does have considerable control over individual components such as groundball and fly-ball rates. Additionally, he found that park factor and defense exert considerable influence over year-to-year correlations.

[Nulap]

Re: H/9, Clutch &quot;Skills&quot; need to be removed

I think a change to the clutch rating is in order. Or a change in how it's gained. I don't think clutch should be something you can put points into rather it should be performance based. Something simular, perhaps, to the mlb 2k series. Coming through in clutch situations improves it and you can lose rating by not performing in those situations.

[cardinalbird5]

H/9, Clutch &amp;quot;Skills&amp;quot; need to be removed

The control rating has little to no impact and I disagree about h/9. I don't believe all balls in play are created equal and pitchers with hard sinkers like Arrietta constantly pitch against their FIP due to their low amount of hits allowed. Sure defense has an impact on hits allowed but I think the attribute is implemented well in the game.

The clutch rating though I agree with. It does nothing in game and their allocated ratings for clutch are inconsistent. I actually like the pitching clutch attribute though. Its a good representation of a pitchers LOB pct and has a small effect on gameplay but nothing drastic.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk