Valen wrote:Strato will never admit to making a rating mistake. But in my opinion on the Murray card and many others like him is he does not deserve the R4 rating. No way he regularly went 4 innings that year while only pitching 69 innings.
For Murray, the inning count is skewed because he didn't come up until early July (which creates a different set of problems). He averaged more than 2 innings per outing (32 games), and he went at least 4 innings 3 times, and at least 3 innings eight other times. (Notably, on September 22, he pitched 2 innings in the first game of a doubleheader, and 4 more in the nightcap).
The issue for me is not whether he's a R4 as compared to R3 -- it's that he's included in the ATG set in the first place, based off of a fluky half-season that is completely out of line with the rest of his career. There's no good reason why the most dominant reliever in the card set -- and probably the most commonly used -- is based on a fluke card. The problem is compounded when the super-reliever strategy is factored in, such that he regularly pitches more innings than any reliever in MLB history has ever pitched. As Murray appears to be used in nearly all leagues, even at $100M caps, that suggests that his card is significantly underpriced. At the very least, if SOM doesn't replace it outright, I'd like to see a significant price increase.