Do pinch hitters K a lot?

[Malleus Dei]

Originally Posted by TribeFanInNC

That matches about what I've seen too.

This bug needs to be squashed in the final patch.

[Tony M]

I've just created a fictional league and levelled all the batters to have ratings of 100 in AvoidK, BABIP, Gap, Eye, Power and Bunting

Simming through the season, the following splits occurred for non-pinch hitters

K : 15.7%
BB : 9.2%
Groundout : 26.89%
Flyout : 22.64%
Single : 16.58%
Double : 4.53%
Triple : 0.55%
Home Run : 2.94%
HBP : 0.97%
Catcher Int : 0.01%

For pinch hitters the split is

K : 20.56%
BB : 9.91%
Groundout : 24.78%
Flyout : 20.48%
Single : 16.00%
Double : 4.54%
Triple : 0.51%
Home Run : 2.55%
HBP : 0.65%
Catcher Int : 0.02%

There were 110052 at bats non-pinch hit, and 8625 at bats that were pinch-hit

[TribeFanInNC]

Oh sure, rain on the parade Tony

That is interesting though. So we have a couple instances where it works well and a couple where it doesn't. I wonder what the difference is. I still think there is something here causing high K rates for PH in some instances.

I wonder if it has to do with ratings generation (coupled with league setup I'm sure). If you end up with too many RPs with blue stuff ratings, maybe the result is too many Ks late in games (i.e. when PHs are batting). Could also get traced back to not enough third pitches being developed, hence too many good RPs in some instances. I know my fictional solo league is a little this way - too stuff heavy and light on control.

Hmmm...I wish it were more cut and dry than this.

[Tony M]

OK. I did the same experiment but levelled the pitchers as well. They all had 4 pitches (FB, Curveball, Changeup and Slider), and identical endurance and velocity.

The results of each at bat split by whether the batter was facing a starter or reliever (based on whether the pitcher was listed as the starter rather than their role in the database) and whether it was a pinch hit or non-pinch hit.

[Tony M]

Just to add further to this. I split it down another level to whether the batter was playing at home or away.

It seems being on the away team has an effect in being struck-out as well (perhaps I should start a thread "Do Away Hitters K a lot?")

[endgame]

Originally Posted by TribeFanInNC

I still think there is something here causing high K rates for PH in some instances.

Tony's data is pretty straightforward with the leveling in place. That being said, maybe the 'something' is the choice of pinch hitter.

[Tony M]

Originally Posted by endgame

Tony's data is pretty straightforward with the leveling in place. That being said, maybe the 'something' is the choice of pinch hitter.

Yep. It would be very difficult to create a bunch of better players and get them to only pinch-hit, but there's enough data there to show that pinch hitters do strike out slightly more than starters if all batters are equal, but certainly not at the levels of difference people with unlevelled leagues are showing.

[TribeFanInNC]

I guess it doesn't surprise me that the game can provide good K rates for pinch hitters. In fact, it is reassuring that it does. But that makes me wonder all the more why in some cases it does not.

I agree Tony's data shows that, all things equal, one should get good K rates. Which leads me to believe that something is not equal in these leagues. Either the RPs are too good or the benches are too bad. Either way there may be something going on with talent creation or talent development. Could be other explanations that aren't coming to be right now too.

My only other thought:
Let's say you have a league where the overall K rate is more like 25% instead of 18%. Would that give you a PH K rate of 40% in some non-linear fashion? Might be an interesting experiment. Maybe you could level the batters, but give then a 60 for Avoid K. Might show nothing too I guess.

Maybe I'll get motivated to play around with this topic tonight.

[Tony M]

Originally Posted by TribeFanInNC

I guess it doesn't surprise me that the game can provide good K rates for pinch hitters. In fact, it is reassuring that it does. But that makes me wonder all the more why in some cases it does not.

I agree Tony's data shows that, all things equal, one should get good K rates. Which leads me to believe that something is not equal in these leagues. Either the RPs are too good or the benches are too bad. Either way there may be something going on with talent creation or talent development. Could be other explanations that aren't coming to be right now too.

My only other thought:
Let's say you have a league where the overall K rate is more like 25% instead of 18%. Would that give you a PH K rate of 40% in some non-linear fashion? Might be an interesting experiment. Maybe you could level the batters, but give then a 60 for Avoid K. Might show nothing too I guess.

Maybe I'll get motivated to play around with this topic tonight.

Give me a few minutes and I'll do that.

[Tony M]

Leaving everything as it was, but dropping AvoidK to 20/250 gives the following

Starters strike out 23.34%, Pinch Hitters strike out at 30.87%

[TribeFanInNC]

I think I've struck out too

[RchW]

Originally Posted by TribeFanInNC

Oh sure, rain on the parade Tony


I wonder if it has to do with ratings generation (coupled with league setup I'm sure). If you end up with too many RPs with blue stuff ratings, maybe the result is too many Ks late in games (i.e. when PHs are batting). Could also get traced back to not enough third pitches being developed, hence too many good RPs in some instances. I know my fictional solo league is a little this way - too stuff heavy and light on control.

Hmmm...I wish it were more cut and dry than this.

Sorry if this is OT

My league is exactly the same. Many pitchers don't get past 45 in control. Of course for modern baseball it's not too far off the mark!

Good work by Tony on the PH stats.

[Tony M]

I've created a swathe of test fictional leagues and the split between pinch and non-pinch is greater, but not to the extremes mentioned in here.

Starters struck out between 15 and 17% of the time, and pinch hitters between 21 and 23% of the time.

[PhillieFever]

I've found this to be a big problem with the MLB roster set,with my pinch hitters striking out upwards of 60% of the time.In my historical league though, the problem doesn't exist.

[lschaef]

I have a solo fictional league where I play out all my games. For the past couple of seasons my team has been lousy at PHing.

Is there a way to find the PH numbers from the past season? I just started spring training in my league.

Reading the past posts, I wonder if the solo leagues having trouble are all leagues that have been around for a while? Could there have been an issue in importing leagues from the last version of the game?

I don't think things were bad enough to really notice it until version 10.

[battists]

I personally don't think I've seen any compelling evidence that the problem exists for anything other than OOTP 10 Major League roster games...

[TribeFanInNC]

I went back and calculated rates for my non-DH 12 team solo fictional league:

Overall League K rate: 15.1%
League K rate as PH: 32.9%
Total PAs about 45,000 with 2090 PH PAs

(Just for reference, to setup this league I ran test leagues and fiddled with LTMs to get stats to emulate 1984 NL totals. It mostly worked, though my walks and runs ended up a little high.)

It was even more noticeable for me as my team was the league high at 40% Ks as PH. During the tabulation, I also noticed that my PH walk totals are pretty low. For instance, one team only had 3 PH walks as a team.

I still think something is going on. I'm not sure the rest of my league PH totals match Tony's study either. I'll study this more later if I get time. I'd still like to figure out what is going on because to me it looks like a problem, but a preventable problem.

[Afino]

Originally Posted by RchW

Sorry if this is OT

My league is exactly the same. Many pitchers don't get past 45 in control. Of course for modern baseball it's not too far off the mark!

Good work by Tony on the PH stats.

Same.

I see a lot of 10/8/3 (on a 1-10 scale) pitchers. I even saw a starting pitcher that was 9/7/1. Of course he was horrible because of his 1/10 control rating.

[gte842d]

Originally Posted by battists

I personally don't think I've seen any compelling evidence that the problem exists for anything other than OOTP 10 Major League roster games...

thats where i've seen it. here's another nugget... even if the ph k rate is around 50% (this is anecdotal), the batting avg of ph's is like .025. there's definitely something wrong

[Malleus Dei]

Originally Posted by battists

I personally don't think I've seen any compelling evidence that the problem exists for anything other than OOTP 10 Major League roster games...

I have. But to each their own.