Combs or Delahanty

When my DH is injured I bring Gipson 2(-3)e2 in to my outfield and let one of outfielders play DH. Combs is 1(+3)e10 and Delahanty is 2(-2)e11. Which one makes more sense? Any feedback appreciated. Chompsky

what is the arm rating of your 2 corner OF's

as for just the fielding there is no comparison. Combs all the way. i would use Combs regardless of arm strength. i'd rather get the out in CF than worry about a runner advancing.

don't know the exact number but ~ 1/20 is close to a 2/1, in CF. so 1/10 is much better than a 2/11

My RF is King 2(-4)e13,
CF is Combs 1(+3)e10
and LF is Delahanty 2(-2)e11


When my DH is injured, I plan to have Gipson 2(-3)e2 come to play LF and have Delahanty play DH. It is a small but tangible upgrade (better arm, fewer errors).

But at what point would an increase in arm outweigh the loss of range, specifically going from range-1 to range-2?
A change in 6-arm might not be enough...so where would the threshold be? Perhaps no change in arm strength would outweigh the loss in range. It makes me curious, though.

I don't follow your numbers, Scorehouse. But thank you very much for your feedback.

Chompsky

Scorehouse probably refers to various charts that have been produced that evaluate fielding charts treating errors as hits and calculating the resulting runs created or other similar calculation for each. They can then be compared on that basis. We can roughly call that defensive runs saved.

I have viewed several and created some of my own. The difficult part is what you are dealing with. How much does an arm rating create or take away? I have never settled on any calculation that I liked and had confidence in.

Arm ratings for me are difficult to quantify. I can convert all the outcomes on the fielding charts to runs created or slugging, etc and I can estimate how many times during a season that fielding comes in to play. But how much is 6 points on an arm rating worth? How often during a season will it come in to play. I suspect it may be a lot more often than fielding ratings. For CF for example fielding ratings only factor in on 3 places on the pitcher card. The arm however may impact whether HAL runs or not on multiple plays each game. That could lead to a lot of extra bases leading to a lot of runs. For that reason I would be reluctant to put a +3 in CF.

I look at from this standpoint -

The odds of rolling a CF(X) on any one play is 1.4%. Assuming you face 36 batters in a game (Min 27 + 9), the odds that any batter will hit CF(X) is 1.4%*36= 0.504 batters. Roundup and we can assume that 1 batter out of 36 will roll a CF(X).

Without the X-Charts handy, I will assume that 1-3 are hits for 2 CF, and 0 for a 1 CF. So there is 15% chance for a hit vs 0% chance. But also need to consider that the odds a runner can advance with less than 2 outs. A 2 CF allows more chances for advancement than a 1.

The other side of the equation is the arm. Each + adds 5% for advancing runners to be safe, each - reduces that chance by 5%. So a +3 arm adds 15% chance for an advancing runner to be safe. A 1-17 runner would have an 85% chance to advance against a zero arm OF. Against a +3 it is technically 100% (though I believe a 20 is always an out, so 95%). It allows a 1-10 runner who has a 50% chance to run normally, to advance with 65% chance of success.

So assuming 9 baserunners in a game, what chance does a hitter have to hit either FB to CF, or an open ended single to CF that would allow a chance for advancement. That is harder to calculate without a baseline of the average singles and FB to CF, but I would assume it to be more than 1 per 36 batters.

Even without the baseline, I would say the odds are that the arm will come into play more often in a game than a CF-X.

I read an article in SOM World that estimated that a -3 arm in CF would allow - 0.7 runs in 162 games while a +3 would allow 14.8. The break even number for throwing arm was estimated at -1.5.

- The Sheik