Breaking down the 2022 Pitching Grade Challenge (with the 20 grades!)

Once again, I want to congratulate James Morgan who scored 20 out of 20 in the 2022 Pitching Grade Challenge. I heard on Facebook that James just earned his league’s title so perhaps his Challenge win is more than just coincidence. He does have some APBA smarts.

Today, I thought I am going to step back and take a bird’s eye view of how everyone voted. How did we do? What pitchers did we guess right on? Who did we miss? What weird anomalies were there? For me, it’s always fun to look back.

An overview

A little background here… Back in October when I begin setting up the Pitching Grade Challenge, I search the year’s stats and start the process of choosing the pitchers. I of course, try to pick pitchers who are “on the fence” between two APBA pitching grades. I do my best to make it as difficult as I can for all of you. I also try to get a variety of pitchers in terms of quality.

Something odd happened, however.

You will find the actual APBA grades at the bottom of this article but *spoiler* all twenty pitchers I chose ended up being either a grade B or C. There were no Ds and no As awarded to the twenty pitchers in the Challenge. That includes Jose Berrios and Kyle Gibson and their 5.00 plus ERAs. As well as Carlos Rodon and his 2.88 ERA.

My thoughts? I was probably looking at the stats from a different era’s eyes. Regardless, many voters commented that this year’s Challenge was more “challenging” than previous years.

So was it more challenging?? Let’s find out.

How did you all do?

To judge the success of the APBA community, I’ll throw out two metrics here. One, the average score was 13.1 correct guesses out of 20. Not bad at all. Compare that with last year’s average of 11.1 correct guesses out of 20.

Second, a stat that is even more heartening is this: 81.2% of you guessed more right than wrong. That’s pretty overwhelming.

You can see a graphical representation of our total performance above. By far, most people correctly voted for 14 out of the 20. Glad to see the bar graph leans towards 20!

Nice work everybody!

Who did you get stuck on?

Minnesota’s Chris Archer (2-8, 4.56 ERA) was the hardest pitcher to guess correctly. Only 33.9% of y’all guessed he was a C.

Phillies hurler Kyle Gibson (10-5, 5.05 ERA) was a close second with a 35.9% guess rate. Gibson was also awarded a C grade.

If I had either of these guys (especially Archer) on my league team, I would be quite happy with the APBA cardmakers.

Who were the “gimmes”?

Each year I do the Challenge, I find I put in pitchers who seem to be obvious picks in hindsight. This year, there were two that stood out.

On both Patrick Sandoval (6-9, 2.91 ERA) and Jose Quintana (6-7, 2.93 ERA), 224 of the 245 voters correctly guessed they would be a grade B pitcher. That’s a rate of 91.4% of the total voters.

And frankly, I don’t mean to diminish those who voted otherwise by calling it a ‘gimme’. I quickly looked at the list of those participants who did and there were a couple of APBA heavyweights there.

Who was all over the place?

Interestingly, there were six pitchers in the Challenge who received at least one vote for all four APBA pitching grades.

Most of you voted correctly on five of them (Kopech was the outlier) but all six received votes for A, B, C and D.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, there were two pitchers who the voters settled on just two grades.

Kyle Freeland and the aforementioned Chris Archer both ended up being graded a C. Nobody saw fit to predict them to receive anything other than a grade C or D. Every other pitcher received votes for three or more grades.

How did Tom do?

Right after the Challenge was made official, I voted myself. Once the balloting was over, I posted that ballot on The APBA Blog.

How did I fare?

Not bad. I guessed 16 out of 20 correctly for a score of 80%. That’s a slight uptick from my two previous years’ 65% scores.

I was pretty happy with my score. When I took it, I realized how difficult I had made it. For the record, the pitchers I had missed were: Anderson, Lopez, Ray, and Wainwright. I guessed high on Lopez and Ray and low on Anderson and Wainwright.

Final thoughts

Thanks to all who participated in this year’s Pitching Grade Challenge. It’s a lot of work but I also enjoy doing it. I appreciated so many of the comments left by many of you along with your ballot. A couple of the former Challenge winners actually submitted some valuable feedback which was helpful for the future in their comments.

Many thanks to John Herson and the APBA Games Company for sponsoring the grand prize. We’re wrapping up the FIFTH Pitching Grade Challenge and that is something to celebrate!

Finally, below are the twenty pitchers that were involved in the 2022 Pitching Grade Challenge and their APBA Grades…

Tom