Do you also believe that pitchers can directly influence their team to score more runs by yelling from the dugout? How about by throwing wads of bubble gum over their shoulder and saying Beetlejuce three times?
Do you also believe that pitchers can directly influence their team to score more runs by yelling from the dugout? How about by throwing wads of bubble gum over their shoulder and saying Beetlejuce three times?
While I agree wins aren't a great stat to look at, and am into advanced stats and consider myself amongst the "hipster/elitist" crowd who mostly post in here, I can say that the standard stats (Wins, ERA, BA, etc...) while not great on their own, more often than not the best guys in those categories will show up well in advanced stats.
Obviously there's the random outliers who show up well on standard stats while outperforming their advanced stats (and vice versa), but generally the best players will show up well on either scale...
edit: i'm not arguing that standard stats are more important, just that they're not without value when taken in context...
I can't stand the anti-win hipster crowd. Wins are relative, yes, but you don't win 20 games by accident. His numbers, and his season as a whole was phenomenal. And wins aren't entirely a team stat, some pitchers have the mentality to grind it out and get a win, others crumble. The team doesn't absolve, or take credit for everything good or bad that happens in a win.
See Phil Hughes/Felix Hernandez stats in 2010. Classic example.
The way I see it, pitchers are less than 50% responsible for each and every win they accumulate. The rest is run support and the play of the defense behind them, both which the pitcher has little to no control over.
Jeremy Hellickson. 3.10 ERA. Gold glove. 10 wins in 31 starts. I suppose he just isn't grindy enough.
I can't stand the anti-win hipster crowd. Wins are relative, yes, but you don't win 20 games by accident. His numbers, and his season as a whole was phenomenal. And wins aren't entirely a team stat, some pitchers have the mentality to grind it out and get a win, others crumble. The team doesn't absolve, or take credit for everything good or bad that happens in a win.
I can't stand the anti-win hipster crowd. Wins are relative, yes, but you don't win 20 games by accident. His numbers, and his season as a whole was phenomenal. And wins aren't entirely a team stat, some pitchers have the mentality to grind it out and get a win, others crumble. The team doesn't absolve, or take credit for everything good or bad that happens in a win.
If by "grind it out" you mean "sit on the bench while their team's offence puts up enough runs for them", then yes. Like I said, the best that a pitcher can do is not lose a game for you. If you want to attribute that to mental toughness, fine, that's defensible. A pitcher who cracks under pressure will give up runs and potentially cost his team the game. But on the flip side, a pitcher does not and can not win you the game.
Felix Hernandez won the Cy Young in 2010 because he was lights-out dominant and amazing. But he finished with 13 wins that year (he was 13-12). Those 13 wins put him tied for 34th, alongside or behind such pitching luminaries as:
Carl Pavano, Earvin Santan, Brett Cecil, John Danks, Bronson Arroyo, Derek Lowe, Mike Pelfrey, Brett Myers, John Lackey, Francisco Liriano, Ricky Romero, Ricky Nolasco, the-pitcher-formerly-known-as-Fausto-Carmona (Roberto Hernandez), Jonathan Sanchez, Randy Wolf and Kevin Slowey.
Obviously those players were at or near the level of Felix Hernandez. The wins say so.
This is just one example, but it is not an uncommon occurrence.
But yeah, wins totally tell you all about how good pitchers are at gutting it out and making their offence score runs for them. Like I said, a pitcher can keep you in games, and he can lose you games, but he cannot win them on his own. If you're going to attribute wins to the pitcher, you might as well attribute them to individual defenders too.
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Last edited by The Nemesis: 11-10-2012 at 11:49 AM.
Reason: spelling fix on "carmona"
Gose should be in AAA next year. Having him on the bench or starting is dumb.
I don't think starting him is necessarily dumb, but sitting him on the bench is. Personally, I won't mind if he starts in the MLB, however if he does, he should play. If he's not good enough to play everyday, then back to Buffalo you go.
AA has done well up to this point at re-signing guys for less
JB's and EE's contracts for example
People need to temper their praising AA for the Jose deal. When he signed that contract he had no leverage whatsoever. He was 1 year removed from being a fringe MLB player with the Pirates and Jays. He had one good year which was 2010 prior to signing his deal. Him going into the FA market there would have been tons of speculation that he was a 1 year wonder and could not repeat. So the numbers he signed for in Toronto were probably more than he could have gotten on the FA market at the time.
Now the gamble has paid off for AA and its just that a gamble hoping Jose would turn into something. If he returned to his Pirate days it would have been a massive overpayment for a fringe MLB player.
EE was in the same boat. He was DFA'd at one point by the Jays and only after turning around his season this year did he get a good deal. Could he have gotten the same deal on the FA market probably not, as again there was worries about his durability and ability to repeat those numbers.
Now if those guys had 3-5 years of good track records you think they would have signed those team friendlies....hell no.
People need to temper their praising AA for the Jose deal. When he signed that contract he had no leverage whatsoever. He was 1 year removed from being a fringe MLB player with the Pirates and Jays. He had one good year which was 2010 prior to signing his deal. Him going into the FA market there would have been tons of speculation that he was a 1 year wonder and could not repeat. So the numbers he signed for in Toronto were probably more than he could have gotten on the FA market at the time.
Now the gamble has paid off for AA and its just that a gamble hoping Jose would turn into something. If he returned to his Pirate days it would have been a massive overpayment for a fringe MLB player.
EE was in the same boat. He was DFA'd at one point by the Jays and only after turning around his season this year did he get a good deal. Could he have gotten the same deal on the FA market probably not, as again there was worries about his durability and ability to repeat those numbers.
Now if those guys had 3-5 years of good track records you think they would have signed those team friendlies....hell no.
good pt
but can you see AA start handing out 15 million a yr to everyone 3-5 yrs with (big stats) good track records ?
or is he more likely to trade them when that time comes?
The thing is signing players early and hoping they pan out is his MO and will continue as long as he is GM.
He has done it with Escobar, EE, Bautista, and Lind. I am sure I am missing others. He will do the same with Morrow if Morrow is interested in a long-term deal.
The way I see it, pitchers are less than 50% responsible for each and every win they accumulate. The rest is run support and the play of the defense behind them, both which the pitcher has little to no control over.
Jeremy Hellickson. 3.10 ERA. Gold glove. 10 wins in 31 starts. I suppose he just isn't grindy enough.
2nd luckiest pitcher in baseball behind Kyle Lohse. Frankly, 10 wins on a good team suits his advanced stats just fine.
The Rays would be smart to trade Jeremy Hellickson.
He's going to make league minimum salary next year, and is under control till 2016.
His surface stats point out that he is a top 20 pitcher in baseball and only 25 years old, but behind all of those stats, it is clear he's extremely lucky and without the luck, is a replacement level pitcher. Luck is a symptom of regression. I don't really want to post a bunch of these metrics since it seems only a few people on this board actually care for them.
So yeah, his value is extremely high right now and the Rays would be smart to trade him while other teams think he is a top 20 pitcher; but is actually really a replacement level pitcher.
I'd move him for a bat instead of Shields, Price, etc.
Just because a pitcher is lucky it means its time to deal him?
This my view only about Sabremetrics and why it maybe good to evaluate some part of a players game you cannot ignore the other aspects of the game. Which quite a few do in here by totally dismissing the stats the game was built on.
How can you project what a pitcher will become. What if a team suddenly adds payroll and their team becomes an offensive juggernaut that changes everything same if the team loses a bunch of players. You cannot predict rosters or makeup of teams anything past the present.
Was it lucky that the ball hit the 3rd base bag in the World Series which in turn changed momentum of a series.
How to you quantify momentum, nerves, lucky bounces, playing conditions.
Why is it that some pitchers get tons of run supports for their games while the same pitcher on the same team gets less? How do you quantify that? Its the same team, same hitters why with some guys on the mound they will put up 8 runs and the next night they will only put up 4 runs for the next guy?
The game is played by humans and there are so many other factors that play into the game such as score of the game could dictate how a pitcher attacks a hitter or pitching around the 8th place hitter to get to the pitcher....that would screw up the 8th place hitters true batting rankings how does Sabre-metrics take that into account.
Listen I agree Sabre-metrics are the new wave that young people are attaching cause its easy to create a math formula to create an outcome but the game is played by human who react differently to all situations not by robots who are rigid and have no brain to compute different situations.
If it was so easy to predict all the results by Sabre-metrics why even play the games on the field....play them in some board room with computer and 30 nerds.
Give me a lucky pitcher who's wins 18 games vs a pitcher who's Sabre stats are better but only has 9 wins. At the end of the day its wins that make the playoffs.
That is how you end up with Cordero. All the "luck" signs pointed to him sucking and who ended up being right? Romero got a ton of support at the beginning of the year and none at the end. I would say that is a perfect example of everything evening out in the end.
It is very ignorant to just say the other stats are irrevelent and that you should only worry about what is on the surface.
That is how you end up with Cordero. All the "luck" signs pointed to him sucking and who ended up being right? Romero got a ton of support at the beginning of the year and none at the end. I would say that is a perfect example of everything evening out in the end.
It is very ignorant to just say the other stats are irrevelent and that you should only worry about what is on the surface.
And for every Romero there is John Lackey who before moving to Boston had great Sabre stats and once in Boston it all went to ****. What changed? The ballpark, the pressure of a big contract, big market fans expectation, injuries, new teamates chicken and beer clubhouse diets. So many factors go into what makes a player.
The problem is Sabremetrics try to make it black and white and there is such a grey area to the game that you cannot properly evaluate solely on those advanced stats. You cannot quantify the players makeup with Sabrestats.
Again I don't mind some of the stats when its able to define an outcome that has no grey area to it such as OPS. Things like WAR drive me nuts
WAR basically looks at a player and asks the question, “If this player got injured and their team had to replace them with a minor leaguer or someone from their bench, how much value would the team be losing?” This value is expressed in a wins format, so we could say that Player X is worth +6.3 wins to their team while Player Y is only worth +3.5 wins.
So a Yankee bench player is Andrew Jones, Eric Chavez, Eduardo Nunez while the Jays had Mike McCoy, Rajai Davis and Omar Vizquel. Each team war number would be different and there cannot be any comparison between players or teams cause the Yanks bench is way better than the Jays bench and that would create a different war number for each team. So how can you compare.
Each team has different players and at AAA each team has different players there is not definite standard numbers that war is say .220 avg 3 hr, 14 rbi 3 sb. 201 OBP. You cannot measure something that is not real and put it up against that fake object. If every team had the same player or they used a static number for the stats as mentioned above then yeah it could work.
Just because a pitcher is lucky it means its time to deal him?
It's no different than a team taking a chance on a player who's unlucky while the team trading said player thinks he sucks because of his surface stats.
Luck is a symptom of regression. When you have a pitcher who is coming across as a top 20 pitcher but in reality is closer to a replacement level pitcher, you should move him before you know, reality settles in.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ryno23
This my view only about Sabremetrics and why it maybe good to evaluate some part of a players game you cannot ignore the other aspects of the game. Which quite a few do in here by totally dismissing the stats the game was built on.
You keep saying this over and over and over with no adequate argument for why the other aspects that the 'few in here' miss should be held higher than stats, which are a mathematical representation of reality.
It reminds of the Republican commentators and other political commentators who claimed that Nate Silver was just trying to demoralize the Republican party and that his predictions aren't based in reality. Well, it turns out, they were wrong.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ryno23
How can you project what a pitcher will become. What if a team suddenly adds payroll and their team becomes an offensive juggernaut that changes everything same if the team loses a bunch of players. You cannot predict rosters or makeup of teams anything past the present.
How does a team adding a bunch of 'offensive juggernauts' and 'payroll' change a pitcher's performance? More particularly, how does this affect a pitcher having an extreme amount of luck? Are you really saying that if Bautista, Edwin, and Lawrie are suddenly off the team, Morrow will be a different pitcher? If so, how does this exactly happen? And how does this affect Morrow's luck?
Quote:
Originally Posted by ryno23
Was it lucky that the ball hit the 3rd base bag in the World Series which in turn changed momentum of a series.
Um, yes? How many times can you count over a course of the season that a ball hit in play ends up hitting the 3rd base bag?
And, how can you even prove that this play changed the momentum of the World Series?
Quote:
Originally Posted by ryno23
How to you quantify momentum, nerves, lucky bounces, playing conditions.
This is exactly my point, can you even prove that it exists if you cannot adequately quantify it? And even assuming that you can prove it exists, can you show me why I should hold this in a higher regard than statistics that present a correlation to what is most likely to occur?
Quote:
Originally Posted by ryno23
Why is it that some pitchers get tons of run supports for their games while the same pitcher on the same team gets less?
This preciously shows why wins shouldn't be considered a legitimate stat; it depends greatly on luck rather than performance on a given day.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ryno23
How do you quantify that? Its the same team, same hitters why with some guys on the mound they will put up 8 runs and the next night they will only put up 4 runs for the next guy?
I have to ask this again, what does this have to do with a pitcher's individual performance being predicated on luck?
How are you getting to a team's ability to score runs, which a pitcher has no control over.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ryno23
The game is played by humans and there are so many other factors that play into the game such as score of the game could dictate how a pitcher attacks a hitter or pitching around the 8th place hitter to get to the pitcher....that would screw up the 8th place hitters true batting rankings how does Sabre-metrics take that into account.
How does score of the game affect a pitcher's luck?
Quote:
Originally Posted by ryno23
Listen I agree Sabre-metrics are the new wave that young people are attaching cause its easy to create a math formula to create an outcome but the game is played by human who react differently to all situations not by robots who are rigid and have no brain to compute different situations.
You're missing the bigger picture; sabremetrics are a mathematical representation that eliminates the conventional usage of prejudice, emotion, and bias to dictate reality.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ryno23
If it was so easy to predict all the results by Sabre-metrics why even play the games on the field....play them in some board room with computer and 30 nerds.
No sane person who uses sabremetrics has ever claimed that it represents all of reality. Instead, it is used as a method for better determining what happens in reality and what is likely to occur.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ryno23
Give me a lucky pitcher who's wins 18 games vs a pitcher who's Sabre stats are better but only has 9 wins. At the end of the day its wins that make the playoffs.
The pitcher who "only has 9 wins" doesn't necessarily imply that he helps his team win less games than the pitcher who has won 18 games. I hope you know that right?
