Chris W, who recently started up with APBA after a long hiatus, wrote in with a rather thought provoking email regarding pitching grade distribution:
I’m 7 games into a season and it’s been fun to dive back in.
I guess another question has come up as I’ve started playing, though. It’s related, I guess. And that’s the actual pitching grades.
From what I’ve read on forums and stuff, these some sort of suspect. For example, I’ve seen guys who are worse in every statistical measure than some other guy, but they get a better pitching grade because they had more Wins. Well, as we know, wins are pretty meaningless. A guy with a 1.400 WHIP and a 4.50 ERA can win 18 games for a great team and only 7 for a bad one. Do we really need to give the 18-win version an A rating when he’s *already* going to pick up plenty of wins just by virtue of pitching for a good team?!
I’ve seen some people suggest basing it on H/9, which is probably a little closer to a good idea. It kind of leaves something out… For example, two guys could have the same H/9, but one of them pitches for a team with great defense and the other pitches for a team with awful defense. Clearly, in order to compensate, the guy that pitches for the team with *bad* defense needs the *better* grade in order to make up for that. Anyhow, it’s still closer than using Wins as a way to assign pitcher grades.
Thoughts? Anybody done any work on this?
My quick and rather unscientific email response to Chris was this:
LOL, that’s APBA for you.
APBA has had a pretty reliable standard (which they have varied a bit lately I think):
if a pitcher has 20 wins, he gets a B, automatically.
if a pitcher gets 13 (lately it seems 12) wins, he gets a C, automatically.
no matter what.. I think there’s a limit for As too. Maybe 23 wins.
Now you and I both know that wins are not the best measure for a pitcher’s talents. My guess is that way back when they started this, APBA decided this was the best way to make sure each stock team got the appropriate amount of graded pitching it needed. If a division winner couldn’t get it from pitchers with low ERAs, they would certainly get it from wins. Just my theory.
But that doesn’t account for those who use the cards in leagues or draft them in other ways outside of the regular "stock" teams. Many of us draft away and pitchers end up on radically different pitching staffs. I’ll be honest though, if a pitcher on my league team has 11 or 12 wins toward the end of the season, I’m really rooting for him to get that last win. ;-)
It’s not a perfect system but it’s APBA and I’ve learned to love it because it is.
There have been some real head scratchers lately though. Casey Fossum got a C with 6 wins and a 5.00+ ERA a few years back. This year, Manny Parra also got a C (admittedly, it came with a W) with a 3-10 record and a 5.02 ERA.
I’m not complaining they were both on my team ;-)
Lately, it seems APBA is altering grades based on the MLB team they are on (whether the team needs a little ‘bump’ to achieve its actual record). I’ve also noticed that control letters come in to play a bit. I can’t help but think that the above mentioned Manny Parra would have gotten his C grade without the accompanying ‘W’.
Another worthy suggestion for the use of wins (faulty as they may be as a statistic) is that they are simple and widely recognized. Yes, APBA is played by seasoned baseball fans but perhaps APBA wants to appeal to a wider audience. One that knows about wins and ERAs and couldn’t give a whit about WHIP.
And I’ll just throw this out here… some baseball fans may not have drank the kool-aid and might not view wins as totally evil. Especially when talking about older sets, they might see the wins category as the ability to “get the job done”. Not a prevalent opinion among saber-types but they’re there. Trust me.
Thoughts?
