New Pitching Model

[sjshaw]

Originally Posted by Bluenoser

I agree with this but think it should be taken a step further. Eliminate pre-determined roles altogether. No SP, MR, or CL, just a P designation.

One can look at a kids stats to see what role he played in collage/HS. One can look at # of pitches, quality of pitches, stamina, competition, etc to make a determination on where to try him at in rookie ball. As he progresses, your assesment of him also does.

This would be more realistic imo. I realize you get the odd Strasburg type who skips the minors, but those are very few and far between.

Agree 100%. I hate the arbitrary MR/CL delineation.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by sjshaw

Agree 100%. I hate the arbitrary MR/CL delineation.

MR/CL is already just a stamped-on role in the game. You can freely move guys back and forth between CL and MR without affecting their ability to play. I'm not even 100% sure that it even has an effect on morale; I *think* that if a guy expects to be a closer and you put him in the closer role, whether you have him listed as a CL or MR doesn't matter to him.

Also, if you do other things in 12 to get the number of low-stamina MRs down, such as delete 2/3rds of them from every draft class (which is what I do), the game will freely move 6th and 7th starters into the bullpen and re-classify them as MRs. You do have to change a guy like that's role back to SP to effectively use him as a starter (the explanation has been that a relief pitcher approaches a game differently than a starter) but it can be done and is done. I personally use the roles only to clarify who is in the rotation and who isn't and who my #1 relief stopper is when I play out games.

Going back a month... guys, Markus never said that short pitchers will be created with lower ratings in all categories, just stamina. So there's no reason why a pitching Kirby Puckett couldn't be successful. He'd just have a higher chance to have a lower stamina to go with his high velocity or whatever.

[NomarHits400]

Does anyone know if this new pitching model will be reflected using feeder leagues as well? Sorry if this questions been asked before. Thanks for your help!

[OutS|der]

Originally Posted by NomarHits400

Does anyone know if this new pitching model will be reflected using feeder leagues as well? Sorry if this questions been asked before. Thanks for your help!

I would think so, it changes how pitchers are created so when a pitcher is created anywhere feeder or otherwise it would use the new model.

[t-bone shuffle]

Apologies in advance, I haven't waded through the whole discussion.

My biggest gripe with this most recent iteration of the pitching model has always been the ability to wave my magic wand, change the pitcher's position from MR to SP, and suddenly, a guy who's been throwing short relief (1 to 2 IP, 25 to 35 pitches) can suddenly become an SP, capable of throwing 6+ innings and 100+ pitches. At least in the last quarter century, this simply doesn't happen IRL. There are still some "Long Relief" guys, who can bounce back and forth, but usually this is their pre-prescribed role. Guys who are throwing only short relief do not/can not, and the difficulty invlolved in changing roles only increases the longer the player has been throwing short relief. In reality, this would require some type of stretching out period, a different between game regimen and a build up period where the the newly minted starter works his way up to a higher innings/pitches tolerance. In OOTP 12, it simply takes a few clicks of the mouse and, viola, you have a fully capable starter.

I realize that there are probably era differences affecting this issue, but at least for the current style of baseball at the ML level, this issue should be ironed out. I hope that it has.

Anyone know?

[OutfieldGrass]

This might be the improvement in OOTP13 that I am most excited about.

[Hrbek14]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

MR/CL is already just a stamped-on role in the game. You can freely move guys back and forth between CL and MR without affecting their ability to play. I'm not even 100% sure that it even has an effect on morale; I *think* that if a guy expects to be a closer and you put him in the closer role, whether you have him listed as a CL or MR doesn't matter to him.

I have always assumed that the label you give is simply for your own information and didn't affect how you should use players, so I use the method of setting all of my left handed relievers to "CL" (because it ends with "L") and my right handed relievers to "MR" (because it ends with "R") so that the game would automatically list them grouped together. I realize I could probably change other settings to do that, but this has been how I've done it and since I don't believe in a "designated" closer, I don't need to mark them with that label. I know which guy I want to bring in for different situations.

[Biggio509]

Originally Posted by t-bone shuffle

Apologies in advance, I haven't waded through the whole discussion.

My biggest gripe with this most recent iteration of the pitching model has always been the ability to wave my magic wand, change the pitcher's position from MR to SP, and suddenly, a guy who's been throwing short relief (1 to 2 IP, 25 to 35 pitches) can suddenly become an SP, capable of throwing 6+ innings and 100+ pitches.

...
I realize that there are probably era differences affecting this issue, but at least for the current style of baseball at the ML level, this issue should be ironed out. I hope that it has.

Anyone know?

I am not sure this is Markus' view but my view has always been that tiredness is relative. It doesn't say that SP A with 15 stamina and MR B with 15 stamina will be able to pitch fewer innings when fresh. What it says if player A is a SP he is listed as tired for longer because his role says he needs to be ready in 4 day. Tired meaning if you use him today he won't be ready for the next start. The reliever is "tired" after fewer pitches because he won't be available on demand like a reliever should be. So a starter that pitches 5 innings stays tired longer because you need him fresh on the 5th day. A reliever becomes tired sooner but gets over it faster because you may need him tomorrow. To me that just tiredness is relative to the role and tells more about if the player is ready when he might be needed than how many pitches he can effectively pitch in a given game if fresh.

I believe the difference in tired helps the AI to use MRs and SPs correctly. It does not in my completely non-empirical opinion affect how many pitches the guy can effectively throw that day. A 15 stamina guy will be able to throw the same number of pitches in any role. Just as a releiver fewer pitches shows him as tired after the game because the AI needs to realize you have to conserve pitches if you want him to be available tomorrow.

I could be wrong but I have always thought the role just affected when a guy turned yellow and the game said tired and therefore possibly not available for the next game. It never seems to affect how many pitches a guy who is fresh can throw in a game before performance is hurt. I think stamina alone affects that. Again I can't prove that but I have accidentally left guys with a MR role in the rotation and it has never seemed to make a difference in innings pitched. It does show the guy labeled MR as more tired after the game though signaling to the AI he can't be used tomorrow.

[Biggio509]

Originally Posted by Hrbek14

I have always assumed that the label you give is simply for your own information and didn't affect how you should use players, so I use the method of setting all of my left handed relievers to "CL" (because it ends with "L") and my right handed relievers to "MR" (because it ends with "R") so that the game would automatically list them grouped together. I realize I could probably change other settings to do that, but this has been how I've done it and since I don't believe in a "designated" closer, I don't need to mark them with that label. I know which guy I want to bring in for different situations.

I haven't seen it as much in 12 but I have played deadball pre-closer era mostly but I think MR versus CL can affect morale if a guy thinks he is a closer and you put him as MR sometimes he gets mad. I could be wrong it may be solely based on if he is in the closer slot in the pitching depth chart.

[t-bone shuffle]

Originally Posted by Biggio509

I am not sure this is Markus' view but my view has always been that tiredness is relative. It doesn't say that SP A with 15 stamina and MR B with 15 stamina will be able to pitch fewer innings when fresh. What it says if player A is a SP he is listed as tired for longer because his role says he needs to be ready in 4 day. Tired meaning if you use him today he won't be ready for the next start. The reliever is "tired" after fewer pitches because he won't be available on demand like a reliever should be. So a starter that pitches 5 innings stays tired longer because you need him fresh on the 5th day. A reliever becomes tired sooner but gets over it faster because you may need him tomorrow. To me that just tiredness is relative to the role and tells more about if the player is ready when he might be needed than how many pitches he can effectively pitch in a given game if fresh.

I believe the difference in tired helps the AI to use MRs and SPs correctly. It does not in my completely non-empirical opinion affect how many pitches the guy can effectively throw that day. A 15 stamina guy will be able to throw the same number of pitches in any role. Just as a reliever fewer pitches shows him as tired after the game because the AI needs to realize you have to conserve pitches if you want him to be available tomorrow.

I could be wrong but I have always thought the role just affected when a guy turned yellow and the game said tired and therefore possibly not available for the next game. It never seems to affect how many pitches a guy who is fresh can throw in a game before performance is hurt. I think stamina alone affects that. Again I can't prove that but I have accidentally left guys with a MR role in the rotation and it has never seemed to make a difference in innings pitched. It does show the guy labeled MR as more tired after the game though signaling to the AI he can't be used tomorrow.

Thanks, but either you are completely missing my point, or I'm missing yours.

My point, and I'll try to make this brief, is that currently, at the MLB level, pitchers who have been throwing short relief for 3 months (for example), cannot/do not wake up one day and begin throwing 100+ pitches/6+ innings in real games. Whether this is a result of stamina issues or rather arm/player health and safety approaches is probably subject to debate. What's not, is that it simply is not done currently.

In OOTP 12 all one need do is change the pitchers designation from MR (or Closer for that matter) to SP and once he's at 100% rest, he is capable of, and will throw 100+ pitches. Despite the fact that he might not have thrown more than 35 in a game for 90 or so days.

Regardless of the why's, it simply does not happen in current MLB level baseball, and OOTP should reflect this.

[Syd Thrift]

OK, but pitchers do, generally speaking, switch from starter to relief and back all the time, and in addition the vast majority of guys drafted either started in college or HS or have absolutely filthy stuff that they can throw for an inning or two (closers in the OOTP parlance).

Okay, so yeah, IRL you have to stretch out a bit before you can start. This *is* somewhat reflected in the way the game determines stuff for starters vs. relievers (IIRC relief "stuff" is much more heavily based on a guy's first couple pitches and velocity than starter "stuff"), but sure, there ideally should be some sort of transition period. However, in order to have that transition period in the first place you have to first accept that the vast, vast majority of pitchers could be stretched out in this manner if they absolutely had to be, and that's the big step the game's taking this year.

The other big issue with forcing teams to stretch out guys like this is that it's one more area where the AI, since it's not human, is going to be sub-optimal in some peoples' eyes. I don't have such a problem with this as an incremental improvement but I want to make sure that the "half the league is MRs" issue is fixed before we move on to the "pitchers should have to have some sort of transition time between starting and relief".

Finally, in many cases it's just not true that guys need to stretch out all that much depending on how they're pitched. The Mariners are starting a couple of guys they expect to eventually start for them in the bullpen this year - Erasmo Ramirez and Hisashi Iwamura - so they can get work. If Blake Beavan sucks or Kevin Millwood gets hurt, I'm sure either guy will get worked right into the rotation. Going back a few decades, teams' top relief pitchers were often their top starters as well. Lefty Grove is a guy who instantly springs to mind as far as this goes. The game's changed since then, sure, but without evidence that pitchers who recently threw in relief actually pitch worse than similarly talented guys who didn't, I for one don't see a reason to introduce this particular complexity into the game.

[t-bone shuffle]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

OK, but pitchers do, generally speaking, switch from starter to relief and back all the time, and in addition the vast majority of guys drafted either started in college or HS or have absolutely filthy stuff that they can throw for an inning or two (closers in the OOTP parlance).

Okay, so yeah, IRL you have to stretch out a bit before you can start. This *is* somewhat reflected in the way the game determines stuff for starters vs. relievers (IIRC relief "stuff" is much more heavily based on a guy's first couple pitches and velocity than starter "stuff"), but sure, there ideally should be some sort of transition period. However, in order to have that transition period in the first place you have to first accept that the vast, vast majority of pitchers could be stretched out in this manner if they absolutely had to be, and that's the big step the game's taking this year.

The other big issue with forcing teams to stretch out guys like this is that it's one more area where the AI, since it's not human, is going to be sub-optimal in some peoples' eyes. I don't have such a problem with this as an incremental improvement but I want to make sure that the "half the league is MRs" issue is fixed before we move on to the "pitchers should have to have some sort of transition time between starting and relief".

Finally, in many cases it's just not true that guys need to stretch out all that much depending on how they're pitched. The Mariners are starting a couple of guys they expect to eventually start for them in the bullpen this year - Erasmo Ramirez and Hisashi Iwamura - so they can get work. If Blake Beavan sucks or Kevin Millwood gets hurt, I'm sure either guy will get worked right into the rotation. Going back a few decades, teams' top relief pitchers were often their top starters as well. Lefty Grove is a guy who instantly springs to mind as far as this goes. The game's changed since then, sure, but without evidence that pitchers who recently threw in relief actually pitch worse than similarly talented guys who didn't, I for one don't see a reason to introduce this particular complexity into the game.

Thanks, I agree with a lot of what you say. In particular I'm on board with always not making it more difficult for the AI.

In my original post, I accounted for the long/swing guys, which certainly do exist, but a vast majority of these guys are put into this role specifically (for the reasons you suggest) and their preparation routine reflects this. I also acknowledged that different era's will certainly require different reflections on this.

And certainly, I'll take the changes to the way pitchers are generated over anything that covers the issue in question. I'm really looking forward to this.

I'm just uncomfortable with things when they are so obviously at odds with with reality. The example I cite is quite prevalent and completely out of sync with the current reality.

I can live with it, I was just hoping it had been addressed.

Thanks again for your thoughts. I appreciate it.

[Biggio509]

Originally Posted by t-bone shuffle

Thanks, but either you are completely missing my point, or I'm missing yours.

What I am getting at is I don't think role has anything to do with how many pitches they can throw in one day but rather how long it takes to recover. IIRC, stamina is even more about recovery time than pitches a guy can throw in a day. So a guy can throw 100 pitches in a game in a game if his label is SP or MR. The difference is after the game how long it takes for the AI to say he is fresh again. MR will recover a little faster since they are expected to only throw a few pitches in the next game and not 100 every time they take the mound.

In my experience what you describe is happening a guy can throw 100 pitches or he can't changing his role doesn't seem to effect how many pitches he can throw in one game. It does affect how long it takes him to recover and pitch again though.

If your argument is more about the AI switching guys from MR to SP to much in other words too many guys who can throw 100 pitches then I see your point. I could be wrong but it just seems every pitcher I have started in a game, his role has no effects on how many he can pitch that day rather when he is available again.

[Syd Thrift]

It absolutely effects how many pitches a guy can throw in a game. If you put an iffy-stamina pitcher in the game as a SP he can give you 90-100 pitches (in the modern game, more if it's an older period and he' gotten good rest) before being exhausted, whereas if you do that with the exact same player designated as a MR, you'll get 2 or 3 innings. I agree that CL vs MR is cosmetic but MR vs SP is not.

[oman19]

My big debate right now is weather or not to trash my current league which I started and am 13 seasons into it in order to take full advantage of the reduced number of MR's we will see. What to do what to do?

[injury log]

Originally Posted by ike121212

Does height really have a relationship to stam or effectiveness? Seems questionable, so I poked around a little bit. No big surprise that SABR explored the topic.


Does a Pitcher's Height Matter

"As you can see in table 1 (Starting Pitching Effectiveness), the data show no evidence of a statistically significant correlation, for starting pitchers, between height (in inches) and any of the customary measures of pitching effectiveness."

And later on the article says:

"While drafted shorter players are just as likely to become established major-league relief pitchers and established major-league pitchers in general, taller pitchers are more likely to become established major-league starting pitchers. "

which to me suggests that shorter pitchers are less likely than taller ones to have high Stamina. The author chalks up that finding to the absence of opportunities for shorter pitchers, but doesn't provide evidence to support that conjecture, so who knows what's really true.

In any case, I found the methodology of the study very questionable, since it never accounts for selection bias. Because there is (well-founded or not) a prejudice in baseball against shorter pitchers, you'd normally expect the shorter pitchers who are actually given an opportunity to be especially gifted to begin with. If an MLB team is choosing between drafting a mediocre short pitcher and a mediocre tall one, it will always pick the tall one. The article never seems to account for that bias, which makes its conclusions pretty questionable.

Further, as this article suggests:

Originally Posted by endgame

At least one height observation: MLB Innings Pitched by Pitcher's Height

shorter pitchers essentially never pitch many innings in MLB. Now, that article doesn't delve into the reasons, so it's hard to draw conclusions about how OOTP should be modeling things (should there be fewer shorter pitchers, or should shorter pitchers have lower Stamina?), but it's not as if height should be ignored completely if we're interested in modeling real life.

[Biggio509]

NM. Made irrelevant by the next post.

[Biggio509]

Just as a test I went back to 12 and changed one of my starters to MR and left him in the rotation. First game he pitched 9 innings despite the MR title. His ERA was higher than average. I will see how the innings look at the end of the season.
McCoy
year G GS IP IP per game
1910 34 34 289 8.5
1911 38 38 294 7.7

Doesn't seem to be a huge effect on innings when I switched him to MR less than 1 IP per game difference. However, ERA rose from 2.06 to 3.27. So there was a difference there. Was he getting tired earlier but the AI still using him or was it a bad year? I am not sure. It could also be league totals. League ERA went from 2.70 in 1910 to 3.26 in 1911.

The fact it makes little to no difference in sims if the guy is labeled MR or SP in the rotation seems to indicate the tiredness is nothing more than a marker to tell you he needs to be pulled to be able to perform when needed next. In this case IP per game were slightly less when I made McCoy a MR but left in the rotation but well above 2 or 3 IP per a game. His ERA did rise more than league average. In 1910 he was below league average in 1911 he was just about league average. That could be caused by a lot of things. His ERA went up over 1 but league average went up by .56 so at least some of this was probably league total differences going from 1910 to 1911.

In conclusion, I believe when you have the guy at MR, and the game says he is tired it is telling you if you want him to pitch tomorrow or the next day pull him now rather than he is out of gas. Note I just simmed the whole season I didn't play a single game out.

[Lafayette53]

I'm curious how this feature is working for people so far..?

Since its one of the better looking features for me and I have some time to kill while I download/install this baby

[ike121212]

Originally Posted by oman19

My big debate right now is weather or not to trash my current league which I started and am 13 seasons into it in order to take full advantage of the reduced number of MR's we will see. What to do what to do?

If it bugs you half as much as me, it's an easy decision!