Catcher defense?

[dkoulomzin]

All,

I think I understand the impact the Catcher's defensive ratings have on the running game, but can anyone advise on how important defense at C is for making outs that aren't caught stealing?

-Dan

[hechojazz]

If you call up a pitcher's card, you'll generally notice one "CATCH-X" result on each side of the card (one against RHB, the other against LHB). The catcher's range therefore will come into play in determining whether your catcher made the play or not, so range is important to that extent (obviously not as important as with the SS, for example). Also, your catcher is rated for passed balls and errors, which obviously can have an impact...so the arm rating isn't the end of the story.

:)

[dkoulomzin]

So over the course of a season, how many outs do you think a 1 is worth over a 4?

[hechojazz]

Well, one of the major number crunchers will have to give you an answer to that, but I figure most owners are content with a catcher with a decent arm that can hit.

[Ragnarokpc]

I'm not a stat cruncher . . . but I do just about everything I can to avoid 4's in my defense. Guys with a 4 rating can't get to anything, and this results in extra hits. And though I said I'm not a number cruncher, I can guve you a few tips . . .

P, 1B, RF & LF have 2 chances per card of coming up;
C, 3B, CF have three chances per card of coming up;
2B has six chances of coming up;
SS has seven chances of coming up.

What I mean by this is the number of dice combinations that will make up each of the X plays. I'm looking at Oil Can Boyd's card. in '83 vs. Lefties, 5-3 is a LF(X) play. There are two ways to get 5-3; the dice read 5-1-2 or 5-2-1 (first-second-third). There are two SS(X) readings, 5-4 and 5-5: these break down 5-1-3, 5-2-2, 5-3-1; and 5-1-4, 5-2-3, 5-3-2, 5-4-1. That's seven different ways to hit that result. This can be used for any result, if you really want to calculate it out. But here's your shortcut.

2 or 12 - 1
3 or 11 - 2
4 or 10 - 3
5 or 9 - 4
6 or 8 - 5
7 . . . - 6

So that guy with one HR on his card at 3-7 [i:82fd65c8cb]should[/i:82fd65c8cb] hit just as many HRs as the guy with the impressive-looking card with HRs on 1-2, 1-3, and 1-4.

Getting back to your question . . . you can see the catcher's card-X comes up as often as your third baseman or centerfielder. In my humble opinion, his defense should be roughly as important as theirs. 3B tend to have higher error ratings, but dribblers that go for base hits because your catcher is a sloth are going to cost you just like those fading liners in CF that your guy couldn't reach or the infield single your 3B couldn't get to fast enough. And with a four in any of those positions, there will be quite a few. Even a 3 is a somewhat significant improvement.

I've gone on a bit long, I hope you find this useful. I can't give you an exact number of base hits that a four will allow compared to a one, but it will be significant . . . at least one hit every few games could be attributed to this deficiency, I would guess.

[yak1407]

What you can't factor in is the randomness of the dice rolls. That explains why some players with good cards will underperform and others with bad cards will overperform.
The same holds true for defensive ratings. If that X number is not rolled, it doesn't hurt you. If it does, then you pay the price for having the 4 at that position. And, while in most cases the rolls balance out, there are always extreme cases.

[MARKWEAVER]

The randomness does get factored into what you expect to see, but of course what you are actually going to observe in a finite number of rolls can't be known in advance. That being said, there is only a 1.4% chance (3/6^3) of having a CATCH-X on any "normal" at bat (not sure how H&R or squeeze plays factor in), so over a season with, say, 6000 batters, give or take, you'd only expect to observe a CATCH-X about 83 times (about 1 every 2 games). Personally, I'm not going to lose sleep over having a 4 behind the plate.

I am using Ron Hassey on my 3rd straight team and am happy enough with the offense he provides to put up with his c-4(+1)e3,T-4(pb-2) defense. In fact, I actually like having a somewhat weaker arm behind the plate because it tends to delete baserunners against those teams who use an aggressive steal setting. In my current league, Hassey is second in the league (behind Simmons, of course) with 87 steals against over 84 games... that sucks, right? But, then consider that the SB % against him is only 0.707... this means that he's erased 36 baserunners. Contrast that with Tony Pena, who has allowed 26 SB with 0.553, which means that he's only erased 21 baserunners. So, sure, Hassey has given up 60 (60! damn!) more bases than Pena, but that doesn't worry me too much since a fair number of those were 3b steals (why does Hal insist on trying to steal 3b so often? there should be separate aggressiveness settings for 2b and 3b, IMO), which don't really help all that much. In fact, in my most recent series, which was against a team that runs A LOT, they stole 9 bases, but Hassey threw out 7 runners... only 2 of the SBs went on to score (one would've scored anyway). I'll take those results any day!

Bottom line, the SB can be an effective weapon in the right situation (which I don't necessarily trust Hal to recognize), but in general it's just not that important to me. So, whenever you're playing me, feel free to steal as much as you like.

[Mean Dean]

[quote:0536b3f0b8]Getting back to your question . . . you can see the catcher's card-X comes up as often as your third baseman or centerfielder. In my humble opinion, his defense should be roughly as important as theirs.[/quote:0536b3f0b8]
Oh, no; not even close. Because, if there's no one on base for the CATCH-X, then it literally does not matter who the catcher is. And even when there is someone on base, there's still a whole bunch of ways in which a CATCH-X still won't hurt you. Recycling my earlier post (sorry for the repetition):

[quote:0536b3f0b8]A 4 has a higher chance of a possible passed ball on a CATCH-X: 45% higher than a 1, 30% higher than a 2, or 15% higher than a 3 (non-cumulative.) But, there's only a 1.4% chance on any given roll of a CATCH-X to begin with, so it only happens once every couple of games. And even if you do roll the CATCH-X and do also roll the possible PB, it's only a possible PB -- whether the PB actually happens in turn depends on the pitcher's WP rating. So it's really not a big deal.[/quote:0536b3f0b8]
The only other difference catcher range rating makes is blocking the plate. Here is a post from "Kombat" at the SOM Fan Forum about how that works.

[quote:0536b3f0b8]On every play at the plate there will be a 10% chance that the catcher's ability to block the plate will come into play. Whatever the runners safe number is, if that number is rolled and the one above that, then the catcher can try to block the plate. In other words, the last number in the safe range and the first number in the out range. If the runner has a 75% chance to score, then his safe range would be 1-15, and the out range 16-20. If a 15 or 16 is drawn then the catcher will try to block the plate.

So once that is established, the new safe range is determined by the catcher's fielding rating.

1 = 1-2 (10%)
2 = 1-6 (30%)
3 = 1-10 (50%)
4 = 1-14 (70%)
5 = 1-18 (90%)[/quote:0536b3f0b8]
So that makes a little more difference, since when the plate is successfully blocked, it converts a run to an out. I'd still think that it only comes up a handful of times per year, though.

I'd be very surprised if range were not the least important part of a catcher's defense. Arm should come first; then PB and T rating.

[YountFan]

the only D that matters is the ARM and maybe the T rating, but who you can uses 4's a C easy and even Ted Simmons' arm won't kill you (unless you playing real smallball), but then it still won't kill you.

[canauscot]

Thanks Dean TSC, some good info in there.
OK, so good range helps block the plate sometimes and also reduces the 'possibility' of a PB, but you also said "whether the PB actually happens depends on the pitchers WP rating"
How does that work? The catcher already has a PB rating, are they somehow added with the pitchers WP?

I'm bemused that a catcher's range rating plays no part in cutting down hits from bunt attempts or whatsmore isn't referred to in a sort of GB (Catcher)? sense. Surely a more fleet footed catcher reduces the number of bunts for hits and gets to more balls pounded into the dirt in front of the plate. I would have thought a super-advanced "Catch-X" would be checking his range to see if he makes that sort of play.

Without that sort of thing, the catcher range does seem to be his least important rating.