Pitcher Ratings

[Clay Dreslough]

As we consider expanding pitcher ratings for BB2K7 (which will become more important in setting matchups if we make Play-By-Play interactive), which type of Scouting Report would you rather see?

1) Paragraph:

Huston Street has average velocity (88-90) on his fastball with some late movement. He has a plus slider and an outstanding curve. He occasionally throws a splitter as an out pitch to left-handed batters.

2) Numerical:

Pitch Ratings:
Fastball: 78
Curve: 93
Slider: 85
Splitter: 67

[Lobsteve]

Would you do the same thing for position players? It would be nice to have consistency of course.

What about having both the paragraph and the stats? Have one show in the scouting report and have the other available in a pop-up from the scouting report (much like the change-position dialog).

[dolfanar]

Can we vote against having pitch ratings altogether?

[Clay Dreslough]

Originally posted by dolfanar
Can we vote against having pitch ratings altogether?

You can now.

[dolfanar]

Originally posted by Clay Dreslough
You can now.

doh... already voted for paragragh. Well, just to articulate why I *would* vote no

Just concerned how the ratings will be assigned, particularly with players from the Lahman DB. My guess will be that anyone with really good velocity will have a good fastball, anyone with good control will have a good curveball or off speed stuff, etc... so it will be statistically derived, which means that it may, and likely will vary from real life. Unless you plan on going in and rating pitchers individuallyf rom 1901 on...

[Clay Dreslough]

I would plan to do it like I do rosters and salaries in BB2K6.

If 2005Rosters.csv lists a team for a player, it puts him on that team. If not, it puts him on the team he was on in 2004.

If it lists a salary and contract years, it adds them. Otherwise it calculates them.

So we'd create a text file with pitch ratings. If the ID number matched, it would load the pitch ratings. Otherwise it would derive them in a way somewhat similar to what you discussed.

Then it's just a question of how complete we can make that file in the next 9 months.

Clay

[adam]

This is great and all, but can we fix the other stuff first? (rookie strength, roster composition, minor leagues, expansion draft (either us doing or it doing it properly), etc?

[robinhoodnik]

I like both really. Can you put the paragraph on the players biography and the ratings next to his endurance,control,power,movement? Also would there be a way to see hitters performance history against a given pitcher or as a minimum against a certain pitch? Ex. Kevin Millar 1B
Fastball 85
Curve 74
Change 68
Knucklehead 100

Ex.2, Joe Nobody has good numbers against John Doe this Year he's hitting .347 with 3 Hr. this year and is .306 with 8 Hr. and 23 RBI. over his career.

[Rand]

This is great and all, but can we fix the other stuff first? (rookie strength, roster composition, minor leagues, expansion draft (either us doing or it doing it properly), etc?

Yeah, what he said. /\

[amdaily]

This is great and all, but can we fix the other stuff first? (rookie strength, roster composition, minor leagues, expansion draft (either us doing or it doing it properly), etc?

Seconded. I haven't played this game in a three weeks because of the outstanding bugs. If a new version with all these new features and then some came out today, I would not buy it because the same old bugs are still there.

[Clay Dreslough]

This is great and all, but can we fix the other stuff first? (rookie strength, roster composition, minor leagues, expansion draft (either us doing or it doing it properly), etc?

Yeah I'm definitely not working on Pitcher Ratings right now. It's just important that I take a few minutes to post a poll so that when I do sit down to work on next year's new features, I have already collected some feedback and suggestions.

Clay

[ladawson]

They had that way back in Tony LaRussa Baseball 4 - still have the 10+ yr old game. Was kind'a neat.

Gotta make sure you have a few more pitches though, like:
fastball, changeup, curveball, slider, knuckleball, screwball, sinker, forkball . . .

The slider & screwball would especially be important if you're going to introduce righty/lefty splits

[Rand]

If you really have to go by pitch type, I'd suggest that you KIS it as much as possible.

Fastball
Offspeed pitch
Breaks away from RH
Breaks away from LH
Breaks away from either (there's your curve plus screwball combination)

That's it.

What they're called doesn't matter, since names are almost always just a new fad for an old pitch. When they work right they either rise, drop, break left, or break right. Too few pitchers have had real success with other types, like a knuckleball or folly floater (for example) to have them in the game.

The main reason I wouldn't go with pitch types is that we can't call pitches anyway. From a gamer perspective, a pitcher is either effective or he isn't, and there's nothing that we can do about it.

Maybe just go with just two more categories for pitchers: Effectiveness verses LH and effectiveness verses RH (assuming you're doing the LH/RH thing).

[Clay Dreslough]

They had that way back in Tony LaRussa Baseball 4 - still have the 10+ yr old game. Was kind'a neat.

Gotta make sure you have a few more pitches though, like:
fastball, changeup, curveball, slider, knuckleball, screwball, sinker, forkball . . .

The slider & screwball would especially be important if you're going to introduce righty/lefty splits

Yeah I actually created and programmed all the pitch ratings in Tony LaRussa Baseball 3, and we used the same code in TLRBB4. I think we had 12 different pitches. But I could be wrong.

I'm pretty sure we only used 4 bits, so we couldn't have had more than 16 pitch types...



Clay

[Rand]

Yeah I actually created and programmed all the pitch ratings in Tony LaRussa Baseball 3, and we used the same code in TLRBB4. I think we had 12 different pitches. But I could be wrong.

I'm pretty sure we only used 4 bits, so we couldn't have had more than 16 pitch types...



Clay

That's so cool

So is BBM going to get programmed for pitch by pitch with the new fixed rating of relative ability with that type pitch getting combined with the control rating to determine if he can place it over a particular part of the plate, or make look like it's going for that part of the plate but break out of the strike zone, and then factor in what should happen when it ends up in a particular area around the plate verses batters who like pitches inside, like them outside, high, low, punch outside heat, pull inside heat, take curves, don't swing ahead in the count, try to foul off junk when behind in the count, etc?

How about a Ted Williams type moving toward the pitcher's floater so instead of it being a folly for him, it's just a hung curve? Or a knuckleball thrown in hot wet weather with no breeze, where it becomes a very slow sinker?

That would be so cool