Is the way Major League Baseball is being played going to affect how the APBA cards are going to be made? No, I don’t mean what individual numbers and ratings are placed on the cards. I am referring the overall “formula” which the APBA Company uses to make the cards and perhaps the game engine itself.
Last week, I updated my Illowa APBA League stats for my Twin City Thunderchickens. I noticed that Stephen Strasburg had two shutouts for our 2019 season. Looking up his career actual stats, I found out something that surprised me…
Strasburg has only two shutouts for his entire career. Further, those two shutouts account for the only complete games in his career. That’s right, Stephen Strasburg has only two complete games in his ten-year MLB career.
That prompted me to wonder, “are we replaying APBA in a way that we want baseball to be played?” Those complete games in our APBA-verse come at a cost. Since we regulate games pitched and innings in the IAL, that means every complete game means that he needs go fewer innings or even miss a start to make up the difference.
The way pitching in general has drastically changed in the past ten years. Take Strasburg for example. He pitched 209 innings in 2019. He’s one of only fifteen pitchers who pitched at least 200 innings. Believe it or not, that is up from last year’s total of thirteen.
On Facebook, Rob Spatz has brought up the case of the Los Angeles Angels that is an unusual one but may become more frequent. The Angels put 31 pitchers on the mound in 2019. Only one, Trevor Cahill, totaled more than 100 innings pitched. He clocked in at 102 1/3 innings.
In part, Rob’s interest in this issue comes from a tournament organizer’s perspective. Many tournaments limit starting pitchers by innings pitched or by the J-factor. How the APBA Company will handle the J-factor in cases like the 2019 Angels is to be determined but will have implications if anyone wants to take that team to a tournament.
And finally, what about the big elephant in the room? The increase in strikeouts in 2019 is something that APBA may need to address.
Ten years ago, MLB pitchers struck out batters at a rate of 7.0 per 9 innings. This year, it has risen to 8.4. At our last league weekend, we were coming up with solutions, some crazy, some not so much.
- Adding 13s in the second column
- A fourth strikeout letter to complement the K, X, and Y
- Adding more 13s to the batters’ card
Keep in mind, that each change to a season is cumulative. That is, in an “extreme” year, if APBA adds more 13s as well as adds more strikeout letters to pitchers, the effect is cumulative and in essence, double the effect.
There is a precedent to this in the APBA world. In the 1968 season when the batting average was so low that APBA saw fit to add an extra hit number to the original 1968 season set cards to balance the low batting averages AND overly good pitching grades. The lesson learned here is that each card set is developed should be adjusted for that year’s league stats and not some subjective “norm”.
This all goes without saying that homeruns have increased from 1.0 HR/9IP in 2009 to 1.4 HR/9IP this year. How does that affect APBA? The power numbers are not affected by APBA pitching no matter how good they are. A 0 or a 1 or any number below 7 is going to be hit even against a Grade A pitcher. Despite the record low ERA in the MLB this year (this is the second highest ERA this century), the Grade A pitchers may have lost some of their value.
A look at three eras
| Year | Tms | R/G | ERA | CG | SHO | IP | H9 | HR9 | BB9 | SO9 | SO/W |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 30 | 4.83 | 4.51 | 45 | 26 | 43423.1 | 8.7 | 1.4 | 3.3 | 8.9 | 2.69 |
| 2009 | 30 | 4.61 | 4.32 | 152 | 63 | 43272.0 | 9.1 | 1.0 | 3.5 | 7.0 | 2.02 |
| 1999 | 30 | 5.08 | 4.71 | 237 | 64 | 43211.1 | 9.4 | 1.2 | 3.7 | 6.5 | 1.74 |
note: 1999 was a bit of an anomaly offensively.
Relevant: Baseball Reference’s League Year-By-Year Pitching–Averages
This is the point in the article when I ask myself “Am I rambling?” so I’ll stop. I will just end with a question…
Do you think The APBA Company will need to make changes to the card-making process or to the game itself to adjust to the latest changes in the game of baseball?
The bigger issue isn’t the increase in strikeouts or home runs; 13s will crowd out some of the other stuff, that happens in real baseball, too. As long as they’re carded to get the XBH/HR/K per PA right, it’ll be fine.
The thing that really warps APBA is the continued (and possibly irreversible) decline in singles. Singles as a percentage of base hits and percentage of plate appearances continue to hit all-time lows. Given that controlling singles is the APBA pitcher’s primary method of run prevention, the disappearing single can be a problem. As an extreme example, imagine a hypothetical MLB where all hits go for extra bases. How does the gameco grade then?
The likely solution if XBH/H keeps going up is to (however unthinkable) allow some grades to kill power numbers. This isn’t totally without precedent, as the Master Game a Grade 30 kills a PRN-6 with a runner on 3rd. Unthinkable to Basic Game players, I know, but grades matter only so long as singles are the basic unit of offense, and that’s increasingly untrue
The numbers comparing eras is eye opening. Appreciate the shout out. This year in Chicagoland we keep the pitching rules the same. I think for me the easy answer is go with earlier eras. Lots of food for thought.
Strikeouts are not a problem. More 13s on the cards is the solution. (This goes with a reduced number of other outs, which is exactly what is happening.)
The bigger issue for our league is with the number of pitchers being higher, the number of pitching starts and innings that are represented in the carded set may be too low for our usage-controlled league. This may be lower this year than previous years – we’re waiting to see what the carded set is this year.
As always, Steve Stein is able to break it down to the root issue. He is right and the 13s thing is the exact problem the IAL guys were trying to solve.
Maybe move to more of a Skeetersoft system. Their pitching ratings system is top notch. Really makes you feel like you are managing the pitching staff.
Interesting thoughts. I’ve long thought that pitchers ought to be graded on a curve (pun intended!) A middling hurler would be a grade C whether the league ERA is 4.49 as in 2019 or 2.98 (1968). You might break out the grades by some sort of standard deviation from the mean.
Another question because I haven’t seen a card set in a number of years: Does APBA still downgrade pitchers who threw less than a full-time load? If so, most of those Angel pitchers will end up as Ds, and maybe most of them should be anyway!
Something I thought about after our league get together. Everyone knows that APBA has traditionally stated that second column 7, 8 9’s are considered against a grade D pitcher.
Perhaps they remove that protection. It then produces a second column out that reduces the single without affecting the first column settings.