Mon Apr 13, 2015 5:00 pm
So I'm reading Grantland, and they are talking about how Lester refuses to throw over to first to check the runner. And they asked, how bad would opponent stolen bases be if Lester was the worst pitcher at holding on a runner? Here is an excerpt.......(I assume Strat "altered" Lester to a +9 )
"After Lester’s outing on Sunday, I reached out to representatives from five of the longest-established and best-respected baseball sims: Baseball Mogul, Diamond Mind Baseball, Dynasty League Baseball, Out of the Park Baseball, and Strat-O-Matic Baseball. These games can get addictive — my college roommate, who played more than one, is still wondering what happened to the second semester of sophomore year — but they’re also deeply customizable and statistically rigorous enough to double as testing grounds for scenarios as far-fetched as Lester’s actual life.
With each of these programs, we can simulate a season (or seasons) in which Lester has the least control over the running game that the software’s settings permit.3 In Baseball Mogul, for instance, each pitcher has a “Pickoff Move” rating and a separate “Holding Runners” rating. Zero out the default skill settings and you get a Lester who’ll never throw over and baserunners who are well aware that he won’t.
In Out of the Park, pitchers have a “hold rating” on a 20-point scale. Lester received the minimum one point. Dynasty has a “Pickoff” number, a “Hold Frequency” grade, and a “Hold Success” score. Virtual Lester got a 1, an F, and a +4, respectively, the worst possible assessment in each area. In Strat, pitchers have a triple-tiered “Pickoff Rating.” We gave Lester the lowest. Then we compared the simmed full-season performance of the edited Lester in each game to his simmed full-season performance with default settings intact. Here are the results, with Diamond Mind excluded.
Unaltered Lester Altered Lester
Sim ERA SB/CS ERA SB/CS
Dynasty 2.52 16/5 3.56 45/8
Mogul 3.15 19/10 3.89 36/2
OOTP 2.76 14/5 3.43 25/9
Strat 3.04 7/4 3.14 34/9
All of the above results were based on either single sim-seasons or slightly larger (but still small) sim-season samples, which means they’re subject to large fluctuations. Dynasty reran Lester’s 2014 in Boston and Oakland with his new (lack of) skills, while the other three games projected his 2015 performance in Chicago. Each sim started with a different understanding of the offensive environment and Lester’s true talent, so the “Altered” stats for each game should be compared only to the “Unaltered” stats from the same title. Although the magnitudes vary, there are a couple constants: Altered Lester always allows many more steals and significantly more runs, though not enough runs to totally derail his season."