Monday, May 25, 2009

Formula Builder

Well sports fans, I have just come in from the first use of the new formula builder in the copious draft conflagration. I am here to say that it is not the most ingenious add on in the precarious draft realm. I think the changing of the pitchers OVR did more to fix the draft than the formula builder helped. It may not have worked well for me because I have such a lopsided use in scouting, 20 vs 6 that leans towards College. I didn't use the formula builder as the drafting tool of choice, but did use it to see how it worked.

They split the formula builder into sections: General ratings, Position Player ratings, Pitcher Ratings and College vs High School. Each rating is on a scale of 1 to 10 with a default of 5 except the College vs High School which uses a ladder effect based on 1 by tenths. They also have a tester group so you can see what will happen to the rankings of players as you make the changes which is cool.

The General Ratings uses Durability, Health, Speed and Makeup. Why Patience wasn't in the formula builder is beyond me.

The Position Player Ratings used most of the fielding and hitting ratings of course. However the push/pull tendency was absent, I know, maybe I am the only one that uses that to any relevance.

The Pitching Ratings were all used.

Where it failed for me was pretty simple. There wasn't much to choose from in hitting really. But when the formula was applied it kept putting this defensive SS that couldn't hit in the top 3 along with a pitcher that really could only be used as a closer as the first pick. Ok, so maybe a shutdown closer like him is really worth the first pick, but not when you need starters. The SS was actually a late second round pick at best and the pitcher a mid first rounder. Another thing that I didn't like were pitchers with a good first, second, and fourth pitch with an anemic third pitch couldn't be moved down far enough to suit me. When I tried to fix that, it would move the position players up and all pitchers down. Another problem were catchers, setting the PC caused a myraid of things to happen. You will also need to move the unsignable ones down manually as always as this part didn't change.

For me it didn't work and it did a better job the old way. It took me 30 minutes to set the draft up the old way where I was still fiddling with the formula builder for an hour or so and couldn't get it right.

Where it might be a joy to work with is if you have an even split or close to it in scouting.

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