Quote:
Originally Posted by pstrickert
Spritze, do you have any thoughts about fielding ratings in OOTP? How can we improve them? What stats would produce more representative ratings? What do you think of the DefEff stat? Is it simply 1-BABIP for the team?
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Yes, fielding ratings can be improved. I think rather than add new stats of some kind one should see what can be done with the stats available in Lahman. Lahman is sort of the stats standard for OOTP and perhaps one should see what can be done with that data for a start.
My job for the last 26 years as a database consultant has been to take the old adage garbage in/garbage out and change it to garbage in/useful info out for a wide range of companies and government agencies. This training gives me some extra tools to see info perhaps a bit differently than some.
If one takes the Lahman files as the garbage in part of the equation and fielding ratings as the good stuff out it is real clear that there is plenty of ignored historical data that is available in the standard Lahman db. The first thing to note is that the Lahman folk do not mean to hide useful info and so they don't. It is there, hanging out, having a beer. Hence the title line of this post. The companies I work with have collected the data they need too. They just don't always see it.
For instance one poster in this thread thought OF assists were not a terribly good indicator of OF Arm rating. OF assists by themselves make this statement totally true! But there is other info in the Lahman that if combined with OF assists results in ratings for OF arms that can match real life pretty darn good. The top 50 players in OF arm can (arguably of course) be the players one would think ought to be there.
The other half of the equation is the effect fielding ratings have in OOTP. It is easy to see there is not enough of a spread between the good and bad fielders. A good arm in RF needs to keep the runner from trying for third or home. I play out every game and don't notice any difference in this play whether the fielder in right has an arm rating of 25 or 125. I am sure there is a difference but it is miniscule. I saw one of Ichiro's first games, the game against the A's where he threw out the runner at third with a spot on laser throw and noted no one tried to take an extra base on him, ever, for what seemed like a year but was actually probably only a month or two. Still that sort of thing should be modeled. Mazeroski on the DP, should be modeled.
And I don't mean modeled outside the game by some extra db shenanigans but inside the game, as just another formula.
I am guessing here but given how spot-on the batting and pitching is in OOTP I am thinking Markus just hasn't got around to spot-oning fielding yet.