8
October

Pitcher Grades Tool on the web

Chris Witt contacted The APBA Blog to me know about a project he’s been working on. He’s come up with a web tool that will project or predict pitcher’s grades for any major league pitcher from 1876-2008.

In his words:

 

I snooped around, and got into contact with some rabid APBA players who were able to fill me in on the formulas used to create cards. That being said, I used these formulas to create what I feel are more accurate pitching grades and ratings for the Basic version of the game. Some of this was also done to take old card sets into the present – for example, implementing the ZZ and K ratings.

 

You can find Chris Witt’s pitcher’s grade tool here.

As Chris mentioned, the tool allows you to determine ZZ and K ratings for those sets that don’t already implement the ratings.  Also, it’s clear that the grades take into consideration statistics other than ERA and wins (2005 AJ Burnett with a 3.44 ERA is an A).  Chris verified this saying that opposing batting average played a big part as well.

Standard disclaimer:  Chris makes clear that these are not official APBA grades but just predictions or projections based on his formulas.

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4
October

Bruce N’s annual pitching predictions up at Between the Lines

On the APBA- Between the Lines forum, Bruce Norlander wrote:

 

With the season ending today I was thinking of doing pitching predictions this weekend. Are you guys still interested?

 

What a leading question!  Bruce aka “Padres Manager” has been doing his predictions for as long as I can remember.  They aren’t official but as a friend says, “they’re pretty darn close”.  To say that forum members were clamoring for Bruce’s swami-style forecasts would be an understatement.

So if you want to gaze into Bruce’s crystal ball, log on to the Between the Lines forum and check out his post.

And a big thank you to Bruce.  Many people in the APBA community really appreciate it.

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8
September

Could the 2011 Phillies have 3 Grade A starters?

Brian Cavanagh can finally take his mind off the weather in Philly and focus on important things like baseball and APBA.  He writes:

 

what do you think the chances are that the Phillies will have 3-4 “A” starters next season????

 

It’s a fair question.  Here are some relevant stats of the Phillies’ starting staff as of September 8:

 

W L W-L% ERA G GS CG SHO IP H R ER HR BB SO ERA+
Cliff Lee* 16 7 .696 2.47 28 28 6 6 203.2 170 58 56 15 40 204 157
Roy Halladay 16 5 .762 2.49 28 28 7 0 202.2 188 60 56 9 26 195 156
Cole Hamels* 13 7 .650 2.63 27 27 2 0 185.0 141 54 54 12 38 169 148
Roy Oswalt 7 8 .467 3.72 19 19 0 0 111.1 127 49 46 8 28 76 105
Vance Worley 11 1 .917 2.85 20 18 1 0 110.1 93 38 35 8 36 96 136
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 9/8/2011.

It’s a tough call.  APBA has been stingy with giving out Grade As to starters lately.  Jamie Garcia (2.76) and Roy Oswalt (2.70) both ended up with Bs last year.  Oswalt’s case wasn’t helped by the fact that he had control.  The extra boost of a grade bump would have over-compensated.

Assuming the Phillies continue to do well, these starters will no doubt be helped by being on a pennant team.  APBA has historically made sure that winners in real life will be winners on the cards.

That said, I’m not sure three As will be in the cards (so to speak) for the Phils.  Assuming everyone continues their rate of play (and continues to play, that makes a big difference too), my guess is that Lee and Halladay are in like Flynn but Hamels is only a distinct possibility.  He ranks fifth in adjusted ERA in the National League.   That’s pretty good but if we go solely on that (and no, I know that’s not all grades are determined), you would have ten A starters in the set.  A 2.63 ERA might be stretching it and considering Hamels has control won’t help.

One point in favor of giving Hamels an A is that currently, the Phils lead the league in ERA with a pretty formidable ERA of 3.05.  If APBA wants to make sure they maintain their pitching prowess, one way is to give their pitchers the higher grade if they are sitting on the fence.  Hamels is one such pitcher.

One last topic of relevance is one I will hit on but should probably save for another article.  It’s the radically lower ERA across the league.  In the National League right now, the ERA is a miniscule 3.83.  To compare, last year’s was 4.02, in 2009, it was 4.19 and the year before it was 4.29.  What APBA does with APBA cards will be interesting.  Will they adjust the barometer for pitching grades (I guess that might be why I think Hamels will get the B) or will they adjust each hitter’s card, making it stronger to compensate (like they did in 1968)?  It’s anyone’s guess at this point.

Hamels has a few weeks to get that ERA down.  A couple shutouts and it will be down to the 2.40 range and APBA won’t have much choice than to give him that A.  Of course, I’m no expert at APBA card predicting.  I didn’t see Manny Parra getting a C this year.

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13
November

2010 APBA baseball card predictions whet our appetite for the new season

I just wanted to point out a few links on APBA Between the Lines forum that might be useful for those who interested in predicting the 2010 MLB cards.  Check out the one on 2010 SS Fielding Rating Predictions.

Of course, not all the analysis in the BTL posts is solid (APBA will never give Jeter a 7 when he wins a Gold Glove despite what some will say) but the discussion is lively and at the very least will give you a sense what the new set will look like. 

One good source of solid predictions that usually aren’t too far off base is BruceN1 aka “’Padres Manager”.  He’s done this for a few years now and gotten pretty darn good at it.  Here is a link to Bruce’s pitching predictions on BTL for this year.  Honestly, I haven’t gotten a chance to look at them in depth (but will soon!). 

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20
October

2009 APBA Card Predictions

Every year at the end of the MLB season and when APBA releases their carded player list, our league gets a pretty good idea how the APBA baseball cards will look like for the following year.  Like clockwork, our tireless commissioner, Mike Bunch, releases his predictions for the IAL league players. 

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking… some guy just slaps some numbers together, right?  All I know is Mike has been doing this for years and all of us in the IAL agree he the best. 

Caveat:  he predicts just the players in the IAL (but you’ll find a good amount of the starting players from the MLB in the list):

Here are his predictions (in pdf form).

I will say this… predicting baseball APBA cards seems to be getting harder in the last few years.  The APBA Game Company seems to be

  1. varying their formula just a tad
  2. perhaps being a little more inconsistent
  3. and implementing unconventional methods (first column 6 on a double column card comes to mind,  varying combinations of 8s and 9s, too)

APBA used to be SOOOO easy to predict.  Ok, maybe not easy but it seemed to follow a certain formula.  Not so much anymore. 

Oh, if you must know, my team in the prediction sheet is the Thunderchickens.  Unfortunately, Mike is probably spot on with my pitching forecast.  I had three starting pitchers who either retired or were out with injuries for the year. 

Time to rebuild… again. 

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18
September

Predicting 2009: TBZ’ guest blogging project

For those interested, I convinced six writers to guest blog for The Baseball Zealot writing an article a day for one week.  The topic was predicting the MLB end-of-year awards and postseason predictions. 

Guest bloggers ranged from our own Teddy Ballgame to Baseball Musings’ David Pinto. 

Organizing the project was a lot of work but it was fun and the articles are top notch.

You can read them here.

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6
November

Predicting the Pitchers

In the time of year between the end of the MLB season and time that the cards come out, it seems all we have to hang on to are our hopes for the next season’s card set.  And a big part of that are predictions.  No one claims to have APBA’s secret formula for making cards but a few have come close to predicting what they may be. 

And in this in-between period, that’s all we have. 

Bruce Norlander has traditionally posted his predictions of pitcher’s grades on the APBA Between the Lines Forum for many years and judging by the forum’s comments, many are grateful, it seems, if only for a glimpse of what the upcoming set will look like.  Bruce’s tireless work is much appreciated by the APBA community.

You can find Bruce’s predictions on this post on the APBA Between the Lines forum.  If you’re not a member (and if you’re an APBA fan you really should be), you’ll need to register first.  Don’t worry, it’s free. 

Also, Mike Bunch, who is the commissioner of the Illowa APBA League, also puts out his yearly predictions.  A couple days after the last day of the season, Mike posts his predictions for hitters’ cards and pitching grades for those players in the IAL.  For my money, he’s pretty much on the mark.  Maybe next year, I’ll challenge him do the whole league.

You can find Mike’s predictions on the Illowa APBA League web site. 

What I thought I’d do was compare the pitching grade comparisons from Mike and Bruce and find out where they differ.  The point of this was not to see who is right and wrong (who are we to say?) but more a case of curiosity of which pitchers were borderline. 

A couple of points before we get started:

Again, Mike only predicted the pitchers in our 10-team league

Mike used letter grades… Bruce used MG grades

When I compared Mike’s and Bruce’s pitching predictions, I was impressed on how much they actually agreed.   Among the pitchers in the iAL at least, they only disagreed three times. 

And here they are:

 

Matt Cain

 

GS IP W-L BB K ERA
34 217 2/3 8-14 91 186 3.76

 

Bruce’s Prediction:  8Y

 

Mike’s Prediction:  BX

 

 

Zack Duke

 

GS IP W-L BB K ERA
31 185 5-14 47 87 4.82

 

Bruce’s Prediction:  4Z

 

Mike’s Prediction:  CZ

 

 

Daisuke Matsuzaka

 

GS IP W-L BB K ERA
29 167 2/3 18-3 94 154 2.90

 

 

Bruce’s Prediction:  15XW

 

Mike’s Prediction:  BXW

 

Even on the cases of Matsuzaka and Duke, the predictions differ by just one Master Game grade so they weren’t off by much. 

On Cain however, there’s a bit of a difference. 

Anyway, food for thought.  Thanks to Mike and Bruce for their hard work all these years making the wait for the cards that much more bearable. 

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