That’s not “Contreras is not as good as he appears”, it’s not “Contreras has been lucky, and will regress to the mean”, its’ “Due a shellacking”. It’s absolutely the Gambler’s Fallacy writ large in its purest form.

The give away is “due”. In systems with no memory, there is no concept of “due”. He’s as likely to be exceptionally good again (lucky), as he is to be exceptionally bad (unlucky). Fate will not hand out a shellacking, just because it previously handed out a few excellent starts.

“This coin has tossed tails four times! It’s due a head!”

or did he say:

“This coin has tossed tails four times! Don’t conclude from that that it is a coin likely to keep throwing tails! Rather I predict that there is a 50-50 chance for it to throw a head this time! Wouldn’t it be nice if it threw a head against the Mariners today?”

We’re all just idiot fan boys arguing for ERA, aren’t we?

Contreras is due for a shallacking. His ERA doesn’t come close to matching his performance so far.

hey! look! The Gambler’s fallacy.

“This coin has tossed tails four times! It’s due a head!”

Dave, please, please, please, take just one statistics/probability course.

One would need to take Contreras’ starts, know what pitch was called, see where it was thrown, get a rating on the effectiveness of execution, see the result, and get a rating on the effectiveness of the result, and ideally get all that on video. Ideally, one would also want to control for the hitters, not simply handedness, but what kind of hitters they are, what kind of pitches they can handle, etc.; real scouting report kind of controls. At the end of that, one might conclude, just as a for instance, that a broad class of hitters, mostly RHers, can’t lift his forkball if he executes with it, leading to a weak ball in play, and furthermore that Jose throws the fork-er on different counts with men on base which crosses up the batters even more. —And even then, one would only have an explanation which fits ONE individual, an explanation which _no other player_ can reproduce since they can’t execute his fork-er. So the overall predictive models continue to predict perfectly well for everyone except him. His result is ‘unpredict-able’ by that model, which is not to say that it is either unexpected or chance.

In this context, it should be no surprise that it’s far, far more difficult for hitters to produce individual-specific effects: the pitcher knows what he wants to thrown, and has a chance to execute, but the hitter has to make the best of what he gets, and in real time.

However, I would also not be surprised if _defensive player_ can also produce small, individual-specific skews, not to the extent of pitchers, but real ones. Some guys are just BETTER at positioning, for example. And so on.

Obviously, Mike, you and I don’t disagree, and everything else you’re arguing has nothing to do with the only point I’ve tried to make in this thread.

DIPS and xFIP and all that stuff aren’t perfect. We know that. But that’s essentially irrelevant to the discussion we were having.

No one argues that pitchers can’t have an effect on balls in play. The point is that the effect is much smaller even where it exists compared to what’s commonly believed.

Contreras will not maintain a 1.41 ERA. That’s a strawman. A big one. No one thinks that. He will, however, maintain a sub-4 ERA over the course of the year. Whether that’s due to the Sox’ defense or his forkball/LD% (or above average HR rate) is beyond me. In the end, all I care about are the results. I have a feeling that Jose could strike more guys out, and will start to do just that as the season progresses. He will, to borrow a phrase, regress to the mean of his career averages. That point’s moot, though, and I stand by my earlier one: DIPS and xFIP have great utility, but need to be placed in context when referencing specific players. For example: Mark Buehrle regularly outperforms the ERA his peripheral statistics would suggest by 20%. Ergo, we should adjust that prediction by 20%. That’s the new prediction, based on the model and its specific relationship to the player in question. That’s a frank adjustment based on his career.

Jose Contreras’ statistics will catch up to him, somewhat. His ERA will increase, and he’s not dominant enough to pitch 1.41 ERA ball all year long. He’s dominant enough normally, and he’s certainly not dominant enough with a lower strikeout rate. On the flip side, his LD% and K totals should return to his career averages, which even underrate him since they include his time with the Yankees. On the whole, he should continue to outperform his projections due to that same low HR rate, low LD%, and career norm K totals.

The guy’s for real, and he’s been for real for a really long time.

BP did some studies base on McCrackens theory on pitching effect on batted balls put in play turning into hits and found that some pitchers do seem to exercise some control (Moyer being one of them). What’s really cool is that some pitchers can control is but there is no evidence that any batter controls balls put in play turning into hits.

However, the best way to indicate good pitching is always high k/9, and high k/bb ratio. Guys that miss bats and don;t give up walks are the most effective pitchers.