As noted previously, Gordon Titchener came up on top on this year’s Pitching Grade Challenge with a perfect 20 out of 20. I’m still wondering how he did it.
How about the rest of us?
Well, results were kind of all over the place. On the one hand, 47 of the 141 voters correctly guessed at least sixteen or better. A total of 106 were right on more than half (11 or more). The highest demographic were the ones who guessed right on sixteen. There were 20 of them.
Stumpers
Which pitcher was the toughest to predict? Wow! We all really missed on a few!
The honor goes to big Framber Valdez of the Astros. Only 23.4% of you knew that APBA would grant Valdez a grade C. Framber Valdez ended the 2020 season with a 5-3 record with a 3.57 ERA.
Valdez wasn’t the only outlier. Sonny Gray (5-3, 3.70) was guessed correctly by only 36.2% of APBA fans.
Ryan Yarbrough (1-4, 3.56 ERA), Kevin Gausman (3-3, 3.62 ERA) and Chris Paddack (4-5, 4.73 ERA) also showed they were difficult to predict and came in under the halfway mark.
Freebies
The easiest grades to predict was a close one between Carlos Carrasco and Randy Dobnak. A total of 127 of you thought that Carrasco (3-4, 2.91 ERA) would be a grade B and that is exactly what he became for a 90.1% accuracy.
You all came close with Dobnak (6-4, 4.05 ERA). 126 voters correctly checked the grade C box with him.
Head-scratchers
Maybe you noticed strange with Dobnak’s numbers from above… I sure did.
Interestingly, three pitchers received votes for all four grades (A, B, C, and D). There was obviously a variety of opinion about Dobnak, Nathan Eovaldi (4-2, 3.72 ERA), and Tyler Glasnow (5-1, 4.08 ERA).
Maybe it was wishful thinking from some who owned these pitchers in their league.
Tom’s score
As always, I unofficially took the Challenge. How did I do? I scored 13 out of 20 (65%). Not as good as in the past but certainly okay.
In all seven of my incorrect guesses, I overestimated what grade the card makers would give the pitcher. I either gave too much weight to the effect that wins would play in distributing the grades or just didn’t calculate it correctly.
In a cursory look at the ballots, it seems many others also overestimated the grades as well.
Overall score of all voters
13.2 out of 20
The average score for all entries came in just above 13. Not too bad. Thanks, Gordon Titchener for bringing that average up!
Thanks again to everyone who participated!!
