valenzuela's card.......

[scorehouse]

seems wrong to me. he pitched 264 innings and only gave up 14 hrs or 0.5/9ips. his card has 2 easily rollable hrs against lhbs. seems to me maybe 1#hr on a 2 or 12 would suffice? surely, in 264 ips in strat hrs from just the hitter's cards would exceed his 14 hr's allowed.

[mykeedee]

Have to agree, and because of this Fernando usually sucks in ATG.

[PotKettleBlack]

Pitched in fairly pitcher friendly Dodger stadium, with division games in the Stick, the Murph, and the Stro Dome in a low power league in a low power era. Context matters a lot in the construction of the cards within their contexts.

Also, people tend to remember the first half of that season, when he was deadly. Second half he was considerably more hittable. Not saying that the card should be skewed to one end or the other, but to simulate the real 'Nando, you'd need two cards. (Dodgers have a knack for finding that guy... Hideo Nomo anyone).

[scorehouse]

another point is if you're going to make a player's card so hr liable, why charge 5 mil. 3 maybe or otherwise, like so many others the card never gets used. in fact, bernie, after 6 months all rarely and unused cards should be devalued. especially on the pitching side.

[Paul_Long71]

PKB,

think you have the wrong year on Fernando. The card in question is 1984, not his crazy rookie season. In '84 he was 12-17, no great first half, hittable second half....that was a better description of his rookie year.

my 2 cents....

[Valen]

the overall record of 14 HRs in 261 innings is not real relevant to what is on the LH side of his card. You would have to look at his record against LH batters.

The card we have is the 1984 card. A quick jump to baseball-reference.com to look at his L/R splits reveals

vs RH 9 HR over 848 PA or 94.s PA per HR
vs LH 5 HR over 230 PA or 46 PA per HR

So I would expect to see more HRs on left side of card though what he has does seem a bit excessive. Factoring in the ballparks. etc is a valid point. So next step in analysis might be to look at other pitchers on the Dodgers that year and compare thier PA/HR ratio and cards. Less reliable might be to look at other pitchers in his division in similar manner.

Definitely agree given that almost every hitter in an ATG lineup is going to be a power N that card is close to useless except in just the right park.