Innings Pitched Argument

Walla Walla · Post by **Walla Walla** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 9:35 am

This last year I tried going an allstar pitching route. This was in the online 12 team draft. First thing I heard half way through the draft was how I had screwed everyone in the league by not drafting the normal way. Did I win no. I ended up .5 behind second place. Did I hurt the others from winning the overall? No. They had a chance to pad thier stats on the hitting side.

This would have helped them in the overall. But most of them just gave up after the draft didn't go the way it was suppose to. To his credit Todd Zola was in this draft and drafted like a pro.

He won the league going away. The lesson is the rules don't matter if you can't adjust in the draft.

bjoak · Post by **bjoak** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 11:00 am

Originally posted by Walla Walla:

This last year I tried going an allstar pitching route. This was in the online 12 team draft. First thing I heard half way through the draft was how I had screwed everyone in the league by not drafting the normal way. Did I win no. I ended up .5 behind second place. Did I hurt the others from winning the overall? No. They had a chance to pad thier stats on the hitting side.

This would have helped them in the overall. But most of them just gave up after the draft didn't go the way it was suppose to. To his credit Todd Zola was in this draft and drafted like a pro.

He won the league going away. The lesson is the rules don't matter if you can't adjust in the draft.

Walla, you need to perform well in all ten categories to win the overall. There are a finite number of points that can be gained on the hitting side. For example, if you would have finished 50th in ERA and AVG with a normal draft, in a hitting heavy draft, you might get up to 25th in AVG but your ERA drops back to 200th.

Instead of having an average of 50th place, you get an average of 112. If you want to argue you'd be 1st in AVG, I'm not going to go through the trouble of explaining why that's unlikely, but for argument's sake you'd still end up 100th if that happens.

It is mathematically impossible to pad a sub-par or even average pitching staff with good hitting and win the overall, or at least it would have been for the previous six seasons. Maybe next year everyone will perform like crap and you can win with this strategy.

[ October 31, 2009, 05:10 PM: Message edited by: bjoak ]

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 7:32 am

I asked STATS for the total number of innings pitched for all 2500 teams in the NFBC this year heading into the final weekend to make sure that all teams were within our rules of having a minimum of 700 IP. All but 239 teams or 95% of all NFBC teams had 1,200+ innings pitched for their teams.

I was going to post them all here, but that would have been a waste of space. Here are the 51 teams (2% of all NFBC teams) who may have finished with less than 900 innings pitched with their totals:

691.1

692.0

696.0

698.1

699.1

700.1

701.0

702.2

705.0

705.2

706.1

707.1

708.2

708.2

711.2

712.0

716.1

716.2

718.1

726.0

736.1

737.0

739.1

741.0

741.0

743.0

743.1

749.1

750.2

751.2

756.0

758.2

761.0

782.0

790.1

792.0

805.0

822.2

826.0

838.1

851.1

864.2

867.0

870.1

872.2

875.0

876.1

876.2

877.0

884.0

892.0

893.2

898.0

Now again, this was before the weekend's games, so I'd say that less than 2% of all NFBC teams had 900 or less innings pitched. Conversely, 33 teams had 1700 or more innings pitched, so almost the same number of teams load up on starting pitchers. Their totals included:

1698.0

1700.0

1702.1

1706.1

1706.1

1707.2

1711.1

1711.1

1712.0

1712.1

1712.2

1714.2

1716.0

1728.0

1731.2

1743.1

1743.1

1744.1

1748.0

1750.2

1756.0

1763.1

1773.0

1794.1

1809.2

1812.2

1816.2

1872.0

2700.0

2834.0

2892.2

2893.1

2952.0

3076.2

3099.1

Now you could just as easily make a rule forcing folks to have relievers, but nobody has brought up that point.

The point I'm trying to make is that fewer than 2% have 900 IP or less and another 2% have an average of almost 200 IP per pitcher on their roster. We allow for some creativity in the NFBC, but the bottom line is that very few owners are throwing off the competition if you look at the cold, hard facts of numbers.

CC's Desperados · Post by **CC's Desperados** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 7:55 am

I don't know where you got those bottom seven inning pitched numbers from, but it is impossible to achieve 2700 innings pitched.

I bet the five teams that failed were from slow drafts.

If you raised the total to 800 innings, you would have the same ratio.

Can you post the pitching points for the 30 teams with the fewest innings pitched and the 30 teams with the most innings pitched?

[ November 03, 2009, 02:57 PM: Message edited by: CC's Desperados ]

Navel Lint · Post by **Navel Lint** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 9:05 am

Originally posted by CC's Desperados:

I bet the seven teams that failed were from slow drafts........

Can you post the pitching points for the 30 teams with the fewest innings pitched and the 30 teams with the most innings pitched? Two teams in my Slow DC league finished with less than 800IP. One team had 670 innings, the other had 776.

The team with 670 IP finished 7th overall in the league and had 41 pitching points, which was the 9th highest total in pitching.

The team with 776 IP finished 9th overall and had 32 pitching points, which was the 11th highest total in pitching.

The two teams finished 1st and 3rd in Saves.

The two teams finished 14th and 15th in Wins and K's

Thunder · Post by **Thunder** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 9:51 am

a couple guys have been ripped on this thread for going the reliever route..i'd be curious to know how many innings their team/teams pitched.

bill

KJ Duke · Post by **KJ Duke** » Fri Nov 06, 2009 7:58 am

Originally posted by Greg Ambrosius:

The point I'm trying to make is that fewer than 2% have 900 IP or less and another 2% have an average of almost 200 IP per pitcher on their roster. We allow for some creativity in the NFBC, but the bottom line is that very few owners are throwing off the competition if you look at the cold, hard facts of numbers. Greg, this makes a stronger case for raising the limit because a) it won't affect the strategy of many owners, and b) the few that do it will have an unusual impact on their particular league - I still believe 800-900 is an ideal limit.

Asumijet · Post by **Asumijet** » Sun Nov 08, 2009 10:04 am

Originally posted by Kentucky Reign:

a couple guys have been ripped on this thread for going the reliever route..i'd be curious to know how many innings their team/teams pitched.

bill Not that I think anyone was getting ripped. I had a successful all-RP strategy in the Mag 1 league. And pitched 797 innings. Would have stopped at 700, but my 47 points were locked-in. "Lucked" into having both Carpenter and Pinero has my inning eaters. I tried it despite the fact that the league only paid 1st place.

Again, I think the strategy is not all that "fun" and probably won't intentionally set out to try it again. But I disagree that the strategy decreases the "risk" or that it some how cheats the game.

Why not have the same discussion on the other end of the spectrum. How is 2-start streaming any more or less "cheating" the game?

kgrady · Post by **kgrady** » Thu Nov 26, 2009 5:44 am

Although I don't see myself doing it, I have no problem with a person punting Wins and Ks. That said, I like having an innings limit because it forces an owner to actually use active pitchers. Otherwise, an owner could draft three closers and use six other DL'd pitchers to preserve his ratio categories. That's something I would object to. 700 innings certainly precludes this from happening.

Kevin