MLB Random Thoughts - Week 13 [6/25 - 7/1]

[NAHSTE]

I saw Bauer's line but for those who watched him, how did he look today? Just saw a little snippet on MLB network about his debut.

Fastball looked great, he stuck to his philosophy and ran it up in the zone. Curve ball command was lacking, and all of the hits he allowed were on breaking stuff, including an 0-2 curve to Chipper.

He was getting squeezed a bit by a stingy home plate ump, but either way it's clear he has some command issues. Improving that will be his quickest route to reaching his full potential. Stuff is crazy though, fastball was 92-96 (sat at 93) and not straight at all, and he was throwing a really wacky change-up/screwball thingy that just darts horizontally across the zone around 85 MPH.

[Rudi]

Mike Leake has 7 quality starts in his last 8 starts (2-0 2.82)

:leake:

[FedEx227]

Who cares about quality starts? MOAR WINZ.

[Rudi]

Not his fault the offense has been shit. 2.82 ERA over 8 starts I'll take that any day

[FedEx227]

Trust me, I totally agree with you.

[Leftwich]

MadBum is too good.

[MVPete]

Nick(Sigona) shared this last night lol.

[NAHSTE]

Not his fault the offense has been shit. 2.82 ERA over 8 starts I'll take that any day

Yes it is. Gotta improve that win tool, otherwise he's not a true ace. True aces know how to win.

You think Ivan Nova sits there and complains about run support? HELL NO! He just goes out there and wins, 'cause that's his goddamn job.

[Leftwich]

Yes it is. Gotta improve that win tool, otherwise he's not a true ace. True aces know how to win.

You think Ivan Nova sits there and complains about run support? HELL NO! He just goes out there and wins, 'cause that's his goddamn job.

[Warner2BruceTD]

"I could care less about a no-hitter," he said. "I want wins tagged next to my name. The game is hard enough as it is to grind out year after year . . . I’ve got three wins at this point in the season. It’s frustrating."

Don't get me wrong, i'm not disagreeing with the basic idea here, but there is one thing a major league starting pitcher cares about when he takes the mound, and that's securing the win. If they give up 5 runs and win, they are happy. If they give up 2 runs and lose, they are mad. If they have a 10-run lead in the third, they don't care about giving up 4 solo home runs on 2-0 counts and leaving the game in the 7th with an 11-4 lead. That's a great outing in their mind. If he loses 2-1, he's mad at himself for the mistake pitches he made and doesn't think he was good enough.

I'd be willing to wager that 98% of pitchers have no clue what FIP or ERA+ is, let alone what these numbers are for them at the moment. But I bet most of them can instantly tell you what their W/L record is. Because that's the end game when they step on the mound.

The pitcher quoted above pitched a fantastic game, easily his best to that point in his season, but lost a no-hit bid late. His team won, but they were not ahead when he left the game. To him, he did not do his job.

W/L record is pretty far down the list of things you should use if you are breaking down a pitcher, but to say it doesn't matter at all is ignoring the nuances of the game. More often than not, a starting pitchers W/L record is a close approximation of what they "deserve". If you disagree, show me the list of 300 game winners who were bad pitchers, show me the pitchers with winning percentages over .530, .540 over a sustained period of time who were bad pitchers, show me the good pitchers who were losers over sustained periods of time. You may find a few outlier examples, but the fact of the matter is the larger the sample size, the more likely W/L record is a close approximation of what a pitcher deserves. Focusing on small sample sizes like a rough 1-0 loss or Ivan Nova 2011 is kinda silly, but quite frankly, despite the annoying Yankee fan talk, Ivan Nova did his job last season.

So, actually, yes, winning is his goddamn job. Keeping a low SIERA is not.

[NAHSTE]

Don't get me wrong, i'm not disagreeing with the basic idea here, but there is one thing a major league starting pitcher cares about when he takes the mound, and that's securing the win. If they give up 5 runs and win, they are happy. If they give up 2 runs and lose, they are mad. If they have a 10-run lead in the third, they don't care about giving up 4 solo home runs on 2-0 counts and leaving the game in the 7th with an 11-4 lead. That's a great outing in their mind. If he loses 2-1, he's mad at himself for the mistake pitches he made and doesn't think he was good enough.

I'd be willing to wager that 98% of pitchers have no clue what FIP or ERA+ is, let alone what these numbers are for them at the moment. But I bet most of them can instantly tell you what their W/L record is. Because that's the end game when they step on the mound.

The pitcher quoted above pitched a fantastic game, easily his best to that point in his season, but lost a no-hit bid late. His team won, but they were not ahead when he left the game. To him, he did not do his job.

W/L record is pretty far down the list of things you should use if you are breaking down a pitcher, but to say it doesn't matter at all is ignoring the nuances of the game. More often than not, a starting pitchers W/L record is a close approximation of what they "deserve". If you disagree, show me the list of 300 game winners who were bad pitchers, show me the pitchers with winning percentages over .530, .540 over a sustained period of time who were bad pitchers, show me the good pitchers who were losers over sustained periods of time. You may find a few outlier examples, but the fact of the matter is the larger the sample size, the more likely W/L record is a close approximation of what a pitcher deserves. Focusing on small sample sizes like a rough 1-0 loss or Ivan Nova 2011 is kinda silly, but quite frankly, despite the annoying Yankee fan talk, Ivan Nova did his job last season.

That's called selection bias. For a pitcher to hang around long enough to accumulate that many innings, chances are he's pretty damn good to begin with. Obviously no bad pitcher is going to rack up a lot of wins, because sooner or later he'll lose his job.

Also, Ivan Nova was the 50th best qualified starting pitcher among ERA last year. Sure, he did his job, which was "be less than terrible and the league's top offense (or damn close to it) will take care of the rest" ... But a good pitcher that does not make.

[Warner2BruceTD]

That's called selection bias. For a pitcher to hang around long enough to accumulate that many innings, chances are he's pretty damn good to begin with. Obviously no bad pitcher is going to rack up a lot of wins, because sooner or later he'll lose his job.

OK.

Show me the shitty pitchers who didn't stick around long and were out of baseball within 5 years, who had sparkling W/L records.

If you stink, you aren't going to win a lot of games, which is kinda the point here. This idea that wins and losses have nothing to do with the pitchers and how they perform is pure bullshit.

[Warner2BruceTD]

Current top ten in xFIP (W-L). I picked xFIP because it gives gob a boner. You could do the same with FIP, SIERA, ERA+, or any geek stat that tickles your fancy, the results will be similar:

Strasburg 9-2
Greinke 9-2
Dickey 11-1
Lee 0-4
Gio 10-3
Wainwright 6-7
Hamels 10-3
Scherzer 7-3
CC 9-3
Sale 9-2

Two oddities, all of the others have tremedous win/loss records that match how well they've pitched.

If you flip it to the bottom ten, I won't list them all here, but you get people having bad years like Randy Wolf & Mike Minor, and *SHOCK*, the two current major league LOSS LEADERS, Hector Noesi & Brian Matusz (9 losses each). The one oddity of the group is 8-2 Clay Buccholz.

So even over the small sample size of about half of a season, it's pretty clear that if you pitch well, you will probably win a lot of games and not lose too many. If you pitch badly, you will probably loss a lot and not win that much.

But yeah, a pitchers W/L record is a team stat, right?

[NAHSTE]

Current top ten in xFIP (W-L). I picked xFIP because it gives gob a boner. You could do the same with FIP, SIERA, ERA+, or any geek stat that tickles your fancy, the results will be similar:

Strasburg 9-2
Greinke 9-2
Dickey 11-1
Lee 0-4
Gio 10-3
Wainwright 6-7
Hamels 10-3
Scherzer 7-3
CC 9-3
Sale 9-2

Two oddities, all of the others have tremedous win/loss records that match how well they've pitched.

If you flip it to the bottom ten, I won't list them all here, but you get people having bad years like Randy Wolf & Mike Minor, and *SHOCK*, the two current major league LOSS LEADERS, Hector Noesi & Brian Matusz (9 losses each). The one oddity of the group is 8-2 Clay Buccholz.

So even over the small sample size of about half of a season, it's pretty clear that if you pitch well, you will probably win a lot of games and not lose too many. If you pitch badly, you will probably loss a lot and not win that much.

But yeah, a pitchers W/L record is a team stat, right?

Just to get more data points out there, here's 2011 by xFIP:

Halladay 19-6
Kershaw 21-5
Lee 17-8
Bumgarner 13-13
McCarthy 9-9
Sabathia 19-8
Cain 12-11
Luebke 6-10
Garza 10-10
Greinke 16-6


Looks like the correlation has less to do with the quality of the pitcher and more to do with the strength of that pitcher's offense. Bumgarner, Cain, McCarthy and Luebke did not do anything that Sabathia didn't do, other than, you know ...

[Warner2BruceTD]

Just to get more data points out there, here's 2011 by xFIP:

Halladay 19-6
Kershaw 21-5
Lee 17-8
Bumgarner 13-13
McCarthy 9-9
Sabathia 19-8
Cain 12-11
Luebke 6-10
Garza 10-10
Greinke 16-6


Looks like the correlation has less to do with the quality of the pitcher and more to do with the strength of that pitcher's offense. Bumgarner, Cain, McCarthy and Luebke did not do anything that Sabathia didn't do, other than, you know ...

Again, i'm not arguing the basic point here. I'm with you. I'm kinda sorta arguing that completely tossing W/L out the window as a product of the team is over simplifying.

This reminds me of the Sabathia/King Felix Cy Young debate (I picked Felix, btw)

Felix's metrics were better almost across the board. Of course, he was also pitching in closer games more often (pretty much every start), so had to pitch with maximum effort almost all of the time. Sabathia had the luxury of big leads at times that allowed him to pitch at 70% effort or whatever, and lay in the 2-0 fastball with a few MPH taken off, or not have to look for K's as often, etc. Felix rarely had the luxury to simply be efficient and to just get off the field. CC could at times, because he would still...wait for it...win the game, despite a two out double in the 7th up 6-1. He's not killing himself or pitching with the same intensity as he would in a close game to get that guy out. So my devil's advocate argument was that Felix had to pitch better than CC, he didnt have the luxury not to.

I have no idea what this has to do with the topic at hand, I just kinda went off on that. This is good stuff though.