What's More Important - Pitching or Offense?

[turdfurgeson]

Originally Posted by BMW

Reason One
Starting pitchers get a larger percentage of time affecting the outcome of a game than the offense (discarding the defensive aspect).

CC Sabathia accounted for almost 16% of the Yankees innings in 2009, while Derek Jeter accounted for barely 11% of the Yankees plate appearances in 2009. Go back in time and that 11% for a top batter will stay the same while 16% for the pitcher just grows. (1961s Yankees - Bobby Richardson 11%, Whitey Ford - 19%)

So even though a starting pitcher is playing once every 4 or 5 days, since he's delivering every pitch while he's in the game where as a batter is appearing 1 out of every 9 batters while he's in the game.

Over the course of the season, that means that a top starter pitches more than a batter hits.

Reason Two
Pitchers are much more volatile than hitters. OOTP 10 reflects this. They are harder to project from teenagers to major leaguers. Even when they get to the major league level, injuries can really send them into an unrecoverable death spiral when you least expect it.

Guys that you count on as good starters at 30 years old can be also-rans by 33, which kills you if you were the dope that gave them the seven year contract.

I prefer to develop pitchers (to mitigate against giving albatross-like long-term contracts) and sign batters via free agency.

The only issue I have with this analysis is that it does not factor in the contribution of the batter in the field.

[pbar25]

Here's why I think defense is the most important.
My NYM team is built around great defense, 1-10 ratings, throughout the last decade I'd say the average positional rating across the board has been a 9.
Majority of the seasons SS, C, & CF have been 10's.

I agree you want to have the best pitchers possible. But I think the best way to get the best pitchers is by providing them with the best defense. Then the likelihood of actually having good pitchers is greatly increased.

Are these pitchers great, or are they behind a great defense? That's always a tough question.

Teams that are just looking for 'great pitchers' might look at my staff and get all excited about the possibilities of some of the NYM pitchers joining their own rotation. But many times, there is a major difference when they are placed behind an 'average' defense.

My team : NYM
Pitcher 1: While misused within a 4-man rotation and within the AL/DH league, there is certainly a noted difference in his performance behind an outstanding defense.


Pitcher 2: Moving from a poor defense to an upper tier defense has turned this guy from AAA material into Cy Young material.


Pitcher 3: Another move from poor defense to upper tier: 5+ era to Cy Young material.


Pitcher 4: Career revival behind great defense


Pitcher 5: Great pitcher who became downright ridiculous.

[POKeefe]

Personally, I think one of the most important things behind good pitching is no black holes in your lineup. If you have a lineup with no easy outs, it makes pitchers throw more pitches and makes it so you always have an opportunity to score. I noticed that my top guys offensively may be worse than another teams, but due to my lineup depth that I score more runs at a cheaper cost.

[bucketsndimes]

That actually makes me think more about defense. Frankly, I usually forget about defensive ratings except when drafting. Maybe next time before I sign a guy I'll look closer at their defensive capabilities.

[Tony M]

I set up a fictional league and neutralised the park factors and set all batting, fielding and pitching ratings to 100 out of 200. Turned off trading and injuries and the draft.

However for one team I altered their fielding ratings to 200 out of 200.

Simmed one season.

The better fielding team had a 121-41 record and the next best was 95-67

Top 9 ERA according to game for season (just team abbreviation listed)

CHI - 3.12
CHI - 3.19
CHI - 3.29
CHI - 4.11
CHI - 4.17
LB - 5.05
MIL - 5.09
SD - 5.13
QUE - 5.15

Top 9 OAVG

CHI - .199
CHI - .203
CHI - .214
CHI - .224
CHI - .235
SI - .270
MIL - .272
CHA - .276
CLE - .277

I'm going to re-run again but lower the pitching ratings for the better fielding team to see how low they can go to remove the advantage they gain from their fielding.

[lawrence97]

Intereseting to see what the results might be, i've always favoured 3 power hitters a great obp guy to lead off and get an ace and then fill the rest with whatever i can afford, thats worked fairly well. You can usually pick up a 2or 3 star starter who can do a decent job. I don't really care about defence as long as the ratings are above 40(out of 100)

[StyxNCa]

Some people in these forums claim pitchers don't matter. You can only win with a strong lineup.

[udbacker58]

What's more important, pitching or offense?

Pitching AND Defense

That being said, I don't always follow that advice. In one online league I've gotten back-to-back 100 win seasons on a killer lineup and great defense making average pitchers look like all-stars; in another I've won 100 games 5 years running mainly with 3 stud hitters (MVP candidates every year), little defense, a great bullpen, and one great starter.

[RonCo]

Here's the only answer that makes sense: There's no magic bullet. You can win with overpoweringly good hitting, overpoweringly good pitching and solid defense, a great balance with no weakness, or just plain luck--though it's best not to rely too much on just plain luck.

[BMW]

Originally Posted by RonCo

Here's the only answer that makes sense: There's no magic bullet. You can win with overpoweringly good hitting, overpoweringly good pitching and solid defense, a great balance with no weakness, or just plain luck--though it's best not to rely too much on just plain luck.

Human nature tends to want to boil down complex situations into simplistic terms.

Baseball is a team sport and regardless of whether or not you can quantify that pitching is x% more important that hitting doesn't mean that you should go whole hog on pitching because of that number.

It's going to be slight, and if it wasn't slight you wouldn't have to ask the question. Because over 120+ years of baseball teams would naturally put 90% of their resources (money, scouting, training) into pitching and 10% into batting. (If you are to believe the platitude that pitching is 90% of the game). And they don't.

Building a team is done in a marketplace, and you need to compete for the best value. If the best value on the market in terms of expected production versus the cost you have to pay is a left fielder, and you happen to have no left fielder, overspending on a #1 starter on a long term deal that will put your team into debt will be the poor choice, even if you believe that pitching is more important than hitting.

I find that the best thing to have on any team (and sure, it may seem obvious), is to have a very low-cost player that is a perennial CY or MVP candidate. It doesn't matter whether he's a pitcher or a hitter, if you have someone producing at the top of the league prior to their free agent years, that's where you get the most value.

When it comes time (using modern day terms) to give out that 5-7 year $100 million+ contract, you only dare give those contracts to the ultra-consistent, top-level players (i.e. mid-career, always producing .900+ OPS seasons). You try your best never to give that to a pitcher, unless the guy is injury free and if he remains injury free is so good he's a flat out lock for the HOF. Even excellent pitchers tend to fluctuate in performance too much, much more than hitters.

The place where most people fail on that step is ultra-consistency. When you have a young prospect who is progressing every season (.650, .750, .800, .900, .800, .900) that isn't they guy you give the $100 million+ contract to. GMs always value that player as if he were destined to hit .900+ over the next 5-7 years. You want to give out that money to Albert Pujols consistency players, because you don't want to be paying a Vernon Wells type guy that kind of money when you could get a comparable .750-.800 OPS guy on the free market for half that price and a quarter of the commitment time.

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by BMW

Human nature tends to want to boil down complex situations into simplistic terms.

...

Building a team is done in a marketplace, and you need to compete for the best value. If the best value on the market in terms of expected production versus the cost you have to pay is a left fielder, and you happen to have no left fielder, overspending on a #1 starter on a long term deal that will put your team into debt will be the poor choice, even if you believe that pitching is more important than hitting.

Yes, the answer is -- you win most easily by finding the useful things that other guys aren't paying for, and buying them cheap. Then you can overpay for anything else you Must Have to cover a hole.

Based purely on the "balance" theory (which is certainly flawed in some ways, but logically sound) you can say that you pay for run creation (offense) of run reduction (pitching/defense). If you can win either way, you could then argue offense is worth 50%, and pitching and defense is worth 50%, so maybe split pitching 35%, defense 15%.

On the other hand, you have 10-12 pitchers and 13-15 hitters, so you can weight value to headcount, too, which would then say each individual pitcher was worth more than each individual hitter...again, flawed because each of these types of players gets unequal playingtime, but interesting to think about.

Bottom line: you win by getting any type of collection of players who are better at what they do than other players.

[AirmenSmith]

For me it has always been pitching. I try to find the guys that can go the distance in games and then bring in a setup guy,if needed, then my closer. I'm real big on guys finishing games and not being treated like babies. I basically have 4 starters. Then 1 starter that fills in and is also in the bullpen. Then I have a setup guy and closer. So for me I need about 7-8 guys on my pitching staff.

Now for offense I like speed and defense. I love to lead the league in stolen bases so I look for the fastest guys around. This seems to work great for me when I play.

One thing to factor in is your stadium. If your stadium sucks for pitching then it won't be as big a factor. I think a lot of ppl forget to look at what there stadium is good with and that can cause a lot of problems for you team.

I made one stadium with petco parks stats and my pitching, when at home, was averaging about 1-2 runs against the whole season. But on the road my pitchers would give up 2-4 runs a game. Stadiums play a big part.

[StyxNCa]

Originally Posted by AirmenSmith

For me it has always been pitching. I try to find the guys that can go the distance in games and then bring in a setup guy,if needed, then my closer. I'm real big on guys finishing games and not being treated like babies. I basically have 4 starters. Then 1 starter that fills in and is also in the bullpen. Then I have a setup guy and closer. So for me I need about 7-8 guys on my pitching staff.

Now for offense I like speed and defense. I love to lead the league in stolen bases so I look for the fastest guys around. This seems to work great for me when I play.

One thing to factor in is your stadium. If your stadium sucks for pitching then it won't be as big a factor. I think a lot of ppl forget to look at what there stadium is good with and that can cause a lot of problems for you team.

I made one stadium with petco parks stats and my pitching, when at home, was averaging about 1-2 runs against the whole season. But on the road my pitchers would give up 2-4 runs a game. Stadiums play a big part.

You build teams just like I do. I love starters who can average more than 5 IP per start. I always go into a game looking for a complete game from my starters but I have a top notch closer in the event they don't.

Speed and defense here also!