Quote:
Originally Posted by Rondell Tate
In 1968, Bench had 102 assists because it took a while for the league to learn not to run on him. By 1972, there were half as many attempts and the successful steal rate had shot up from less than 50 to 56, largely because if you weren't a track star, you just didn't try running on him ... so I can see where it's hard to automatically import those numbers and have them make sense.
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Good example, here is how it works, very roughly. The 102 assists were the Arm test Bench passed, proved he had an arm, the 50 assists the next year are fairly inconsequential but the 140 games caught are not inconsequential nor is his age. What I do is spot the career mid point of his arm and his age at that point and the high point of his arm and that age. Bench's career mid point arm came out to be the square root of 2.52.
That is why the average C arm is pegged at 1. If you square the average arm of 1 you still get 1 but a .9 arm goes to a .81 for instance, this puts more separation between the C arm ratings and allows the good arms to be gooderer.
From there you let his age and the number of games played at catcher determine if his arm gets weaker rather than pegging arm to the number of assists. As you noted, the number of assists lessens because the opponents get smarter, not because Bench's arm gets weaker.
That gives you C arm strengths that make sense. OF's are even more important to be done this way because OF assists for a good armed RF'er might equal zero, but his arm should not track that number in any way. The number of assists in this case is inconsequential. The number of games played in RF is not.