Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

Got a Catcher, rated 2e8(-2)T-15(pb-6). Why does he after 114 games have 24 PB?

Most have been game-changing. As most anything a catcher does IS, on defense.

My question is, does any other factor not related to the catcher's rating have any bearing on passed balls?

I've had this catcher in other, less successful seasons where he did not perform quite as atrociously in blocking pitches.

Thanks for any help.

pb rating is a split (out of 20), it's not like an e-rating where an e8 is meant to commit 8 errors over 154 games. pb rating is checked every 40 rolls and your pb-6 will give up a PB on 30% of those. They also give up PBs off the x-chart.

Do any of your pitchers have high WP ratings? I know that effects the frequency of passed balls. I've used Joe Girardi before (pb-0) and had him charged with 2 game losing passed balls in the 1st 10 games of a season, both with Dellin Betances (wp - 20) on the mound.

That is correct--the pitcher WP rating can play a role and is especially important against teams with high OBP.

Rule 29.3
(29.3) Fielding chart adjustments

The individual wild-pitch ratings also simulate the difficulty catchers have with some wild pitchers, such as knuckleballers. When using this system, the "P/P" and "P/F" readings from the Catcher X-Chart Range Section of the Super Advanced Fielding Chart are handled differently.

These readings indicate that a possible passed ball occurs, with runner(s) on base and if no error occurs on the play.

If those conditions exist, refer to the pitcher's wild-pitch rating and roll the 20-sided die. If the rolled number is less than or equal to the pitcher's rating, then a passed ball occurs and all baserunners advance one base.

If the rolled number is higher than the pitcher's rating, no passed ball, and the batter pops out to the catcher.

The intangibles of Catcher defense are highly UNDER rated IMHO.

When a catcher commits 20 errors and give up 60 passed balls, your team is bound to fail.

I prefer my catchers to have a E, PB & T rating as close to 0 as possible otherwise he will invariably hurt you at the most critical of moments. I have lost more than one playoff series due to WP's, PB's, Balks, etc.

egvrich wrote:The intangibles of Catcher defense are highly UNDER rated IMHO.

When a catcher commits 20 errors and give up 60 passed balls, your team is bound to fail.

I prefer my catchers to have a E, PB & T rating as close to 0 as possible otherwise he will invariably hurt you at the most critical of moments. I have lost more than one playoff series due to WP's, PB's, Balks, etc.

100%^^

Thanks for the explanations, MaxPower and others. I've been playing this game for a long time, and I've never really understood the passed ball rules.

egvrich wrote:
The intangibles of Catcher defense are highly UNDER rated IMHO.
When a catcher commits 20 errors and give up 60 passed balls, your team is bound to fail.

A lot of the dead-ball and pre-1900 catchers can really kill you, it would seem, even if they have a strong arm and a range of 1.
For example here's Roger Bresnahan's 1903 catcher rating: c-1(-2)e13,T-15(pb-14)

The range and arm look good, but the errors and throwing errors will likely put Bresnahan over 20 errors for the season. And based on what I now know, the pb-14 means that Bresnahan gets a passed ball on 70% of his pb rolls (that is 14 out of 20).
So 20 errors and 60 pb (or worse) would seem to be almost a given with this HOF catcher.

Thanks for the great info here. Interesting rule 29.3 there FrankieT! That feels like a unique blemish on a player that THEIR card is unresponsible. Fitting for the thankless job of 100 tangibles and intangibles that is catching. But great proof there on something I'd think could just be suspicious/unknown (pitcher with 20-wp). I guess I figured that, but didn't know.

The rules insight iceberg would be interesting for Strat. For me, learning that x-rolls were standardized for all pitchers was a pivotal realization (process) that came way later than I would've thought.

If any of you have insights about any part of catcher defense and ~NERP, I'd appreciate you taking a look at my post about that. Definitely related to this, as the mystical nature of catcher defense is probably what's most illuded us NERP nerds. I'm more just looking for an estimate side there, but like everything else in Strat, stuff is knowable!