OK all you DIPS supporters, I know you're ready to jump all over me but please hear me bear in mind that I'm not making any comments on DIPS as applied to the modern era. It might be a great theory when applied to todays pitchers. The thing is, other than watching some games on the tube I'm really not that interested in the inner workings of today's game. My interest is in the historical aspect of baseball and specifically in the 1900-1950 period. My feelings on this aren't based on "emotion" but the stats as I interpret them. I have upmost respect for Bill James who I consider perhaps the greatest baseball mind ever so my feelings aren't coming from an anti-sabermetric bias,
The thing is that baseball has changed a lot in the last 80 years and one of the changes has been an ever increasing number of strikeouts. I posted a while ago about looking at Grover Alexander in 1915 [perhaps one of the greatest pitching seasons in league history] and how his BABIP was 50 points lower than that for the league or for the rest of the pitchers on his team and also for his career his BABIP was significantly lower than average.
But anyway, today when I was looking over the 1920 debut pitchers that I am editing I came across many examples which I think DIPS would find it hard to explain. One such example was Eddie Rommel. Now Eddie Rommel wasn't a Hall of Fame caliber pitcher by any means but he pitched 12 years with the A's from 1920-1932 and went 171-111 with a 3.54 ERA. Considering the climbing ERAs of the time this made him one of the better pitchers in the AL. But what I really noticed were his average season stats on baseball reference.
232IP 245HA 12HR
65 walks 54 strikeouts
His control is good and homers allowed are average for the time and of course strikeouts are amazingly low. So how does the extreme version of DIPS written in to OOTP6 handle this? does it say that he doesn't have any "stuff" and there fore isn't good? That is an incorrect conclusion because compared to his contemporaries he was good.
And he is not an isolated incident, there are many pitchers from this era. who have similar stat lines [for the sake of brevity I won't bother listing all of them].
What I cann't help feeling is that some people are taking a piece of modern baseball theory and extrapolating it back into the past. "If I believe this works now it must have always worked.". These people may not care much if their assumption is correct, To those of us who really care passionately about accurately representing the stat ratios of earlier eras this kind iof attitude is really distressing.
I know nothing about computer programming but it seemed to me that this would be relatively easy to fix by either making the OOTP5 engine acailable to online leagues. Showing the "hits allowed" rating without the player editor having to be on or to add a BABIP rating for each pitcher rather thatn have it league wide. This woud allow the advocates of DIPS to knock themselves out with it while still allowing us historical simmers and others who maintain skepticism about it to use the system which we enjoy more and feel is more accurate,
I've been playing OOTP since version 2. I have loved every version and often thought that buying OOTP was the best $30 I spent all year by far. It has opened up a whole new world to me of the richness of in depth baseball history not to mention creating numerous firendships so I am truly graetful for the game. That hasn't exactly changed with OOTP6. I see many positive aspects and improvements to the game. and that is why this lack of real choice about the pitching engine has saddened me. So Markus if you're listening I'm begging you and sincerely hoping you will give online leagues a real choice of which engine to use by allowing people to see the "old" ratings without the editor or add an option for a BABIP rating for each pitcher in an upcoming patch.
Thank you for reading and allowing me to vent a little
Mike