Correlation, Causation, and Beat Writers
(Caution: Really Long Post Ahead. Get a cup of coffee and make sure you have some time.)
When I look back on the 2007 season, there’s going to be memories of positive developments and frustrations alike. We had Felix in Boston, and we’ve had Felix almost everywhere else. We had Kenji Johjima’s Pull Power Swing Of Doom, and we’ve had Turbo’s Double Play Special. But, interestingly enough, one of my favorite things about the 2007 Mariner season will not have occurred on the field or even involve any members of the roster.
Instead, one of the things that has made this season enjoyable (most days) to cover has been the ability to read Geoff Baker in the Seattle Times everyday. Now, we weren’t the biggest Bob Finnigan fans in the world, so pretty much anyone would have been an upgrade as the Times beat writer for the Mariners, but Baker has delivered above and beyond what we’ve come to expect from the local writers. The blog that he has maintained has been a source of terrific information and entertaining reading on a near daily basis, and he’s shown a passion for his job that, frankly, we’re not used to seeing, even posting multi-thousand word blog entries on his days off.
Baker has embraced the ability to interact with the fans and has shown what a traditional journalist can do with the power of today’s internet intertwined. It’s been fun to read, and honestly, quite refreshing to look forward to reading the Times sports page again.
So, it’s with respect for the work he’s done this year and his willingness to open himself up to new ideas and outside opinions that I feel compelled to respond to his latest blog entry, entitled “Mound of Trouble”. Geoff – you can do better than this.
The premise of the post is completely accurate – the M’s pitching, especially the rotation, has been their downfall. That’s obviously true. No one’s going to argue that point. But, well, the analysis that led to the conclusion leaves a lot to be desired. Let’s look at the specific points raised.
To further the discussion of this morning, I received a very interesting email today from a friend of this blog, Jack Lattemann, who has done an exhaustive study of whether teams with an earned run average of 4.50 or higher can even post winning records, let alone contend for a playoff spot. Jack has graciously allowed me to pass on his findings. They don’t look good on the Mariners, who have a 4.84 team ERA despite a rock solid bullpen. He found that no team before 1969 had qualified for the playoffs. Not surprising, given the two-league format. There were a few more, post-1969, that made it. During the two-division format (four teams making the playoffs) from 1969-1993, the only playoff team with a 4.50 ERA or higher was the 1987 World Series champion Minnesota Twins, who finished 85-77 with a 4.63 ERA.
Where to start with this paragraph – how about with the glaring, obvious problem, and one that I’ve been railing on for years here – Earned Run Average, by itself, is not any real indicator of pitching quality. It’s just not. I know it’s commonly accepted as the be-all, end-all pitching statistic, but the reliance on this inherently problematic stat has led to more bad analysis over the years than just about any other statistic out there. Using ERA to draw broad conclusions about pitching ability is a great way to be wrong on a large scale.
In reality, ERA kinda sorta measures the ability of the team’s run prevention skills when a specific pitcher is on the hill. ERA doesn’t attempt to separate responsibility for said run prevention between pitcher and defenders. It doesn’t attempt to take into account the context of the run scoring environment. And, just in case those weren’t big enough problems (they are), it introduces the biases of ballpark specific official scorers by excluding “unearned runs”, which are often classified as such due to arbitrary decisions on what constitutes an error.
Baker presents this research as evidence that teams with “bad pitching” don’t make the playoffs. Unfortunately, there’s no explanation for why we should accept a 4.50 ERA as a marker for “bad pitching” in any context. As Baker notes, not one team made the playoffs before 1969 with an ERA that high, while he does recognize that the fact that, before the league championship series creation, only two teams made the playoffs, making the point essentially irrelevant.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t also point out that the run scoring environment in, say, 1917, was massively different than the run scoring environment today. The Philadelphia Athletics had the worst team ERA in the American League 90 years ago. Their ERA? 3.27. The league average was a nifty 2.66. The A’s ERA+, adjusted for ballpark and era, was 84, meaning that their pitching staff was 16% worse than the league average that season. You know who has an ERA+ of 84 this year – the Texas Rangers, with their 5.48 ERA, have also been 16% below average, once you account for the fact that today’s game is massively different than 1917’s and the fact that the Rangers play half their games in a park that is highly condusive to offense.
Now, this is an extreme example. However, the point remains – picking a random ERA number that reflects “bad pitching” and applying it to any context is going to result in a list that means absolutely nothing. If you want to use ERA to evaluate a pitching staff, you’d be forced to come to the conclusion that the Washington Nationals currently have a better pitching staff than the Chicago White Sox. After all, they have a lower ERA. Of course, everyone understands that there’s a huge difference between pitching in RFK stadium against National League hitters and not facing the DH and facing American League hitters in New Comiskey park. We wouldn’t expect Mike Bacsik to post a 4.59 ERA if he was traded to the White Sox. No one would.
So, unfortunately, the only conclusion that you can draw from the fact that the ‘87 Twins were the only team to make the playoffs with a 4.50 ERA or higher before 1993 is that the game has changed dramatically as time has gone on. Using that selected data to make any inferences about the importance of pitching in terms of a team making the playoffs is simply a misuse of statistics. It’s a conclusion that can’t be supported by the data provided. It’s the kind of thing that people who hate statistics point to when they throw out their “lies, damn lies, and statistics” cliches. Essentially, this entire opening paragraph doesn’t tell us anything useful about the 2007 Seattle Mariners. Moving on…
Now, during the wild-card era, things have changed. So far, there have been 13 teams make it with an ERA of 4.50 or more. But don’t forget, that’s out of 96 playoff teams. So, basically, even with the diluted pitching and inflated ERA totals we’ve seen over the past decade or so, there’s still only about a one in 7.5 chance of getting there.
Now, here, Baker does outright state that “things have changed”, so he obviously understands everything I just wrote above. He just didn’t do a particularly good job of explaining the limitations of the data in his first paragraph. Here, though, we’re presented with a new data problem – 13 out of 96 teams that have made the playoffs since 1995 have had an ERA of greater than 4.50, so Geoff turns that into a “one in 7.5 chance” for a team with “bad pitching” to make the playoffs.
Unfortunately, the flaws of the data won’t let you make that claim, either. The 1996 Texas Rangers are one of the 13 teams that posted a 4.50 ERA or higher and still made the playoffs, finishing 90-72 and winning the AL West. They scored 928 runs and allowed 790, so the immediate reaction is that they slugged their way into the playoffs and overcame their poor pitching staff.
Except, that’s not true. The Rangers 928 runs ranked 5th in the A.L. that year, while their team ERA ranked 6th. Toss in the fact that The Ballpark in Arlington is a hitters haven, and it becomes clear that run prevention, not run scoring, was the strength of that team. Their ERA+ was 109, meaning that they allowed 9% less runs than an average team would, considering their home park and the run environment of the American League in 1996.
I could go through this process many more times, but I think you guys get the point. Even the 13 out of 96 number really doesn’t tell us anything about the respective merits of the pitching staffs of playoff teams or the importance of having a quality pitching staff in terms of winning your division. It just doesn’t. Again, moving on.
So, yes. It really does come down to the pitching. There have been 74 teams post winning records since 1921 with an ERA above 4.50. The Mariners did it several times in the late 1990s. One of the teams on Lattemann’s list is the 2003 Blue Jays, a squad I feel epitomizes the need to understand how good starting pitching will always be more valuable than hitting.
Argh. That last sentence was almost assuredly written with the intent of having me throw myself off a bridge. Okay, probably not, but if I read it too many times, I might do so anyways.
Geoff goes on to extrapolate about how the ‘03 Blue Jays show that you can score a lot of runs, but if you don’t have enough quality starters, it won’t matter. He ends his Blue Jay rabbit-trail with this paragraph:
The point of this is, the Jays had the AL’s second-best offense. They had a guy who should have been an MVP in Delgado. They had the Cy Young winner. And they still won only 86 games.
Problem #1 – the Blue Jays didn’t have the AL’s second best offense. They did finish second in the league in runs scored, but the Skydome is a nifty place to hit. It’s not Texas, but it’s one of the higher run scoring environments in baseball. When you account for context, the Blue Jays had an OPS+ of 107, meaning that their offense was 7% better than league average. The ‘03 Red Sox (118 OPS+) and Yankees (117 OPS+) both blow the Blue Jays out of the water, and while the Blue Jays did have the 3rd best offense in the AL that year, they were closer to 9th place than they were to 2nd place.
The 2003 Blue Jays were good but not great at scoring runs and average at preventing them (ERA+ of 100, the epitome of league average). Being good at one aspect of the game and average at the other is rarely a recipe for a playoff team, regardless of whether your strength is offense or defense. Using an example from the same year, the 2003 Chicago White Sox posted an ERA+ of 108. Essentially, they were as good at preventing runs as the ‘03 Blue Jays were at scoring them. Their ERA ranked 4th best in the league despite pitching in a good hitters park. They, also, only won 86 games and didn’t make the playoffs? Why? They didn’t score enough runs.
Geoff points to the ‘03 Blue Jays as evidence that “good starting pitching will always be more valuable than good hitting”. However, he doesn’t mention the ‘06 Los Angeles Angels, a team that ranked 3rd in the A.L. in ERA and had a tremendous rotation of Lackey-Escobar-Weaver-Santana, and failed to make the playoffs because they employed a bunch of terrible hitters in their line-up.
Now, Geoff’s not going out on a limb here. It’s established baseball doctrine that starting pitching is the most valuable commodity in the game, that good pitching beats good hitting, that pitching and defense win championships, etc… You’ve heard all this before. Unfortunately, it’s just. not. true.
There have been numerous studies done on the issue of whether teams should value run prevention over run scoring. Needless to say, these studies go just a bit further than sorting by ERA and counting the number of playoff squads under an arbitrarily selected number. The consensus is that, in general, a team that is strong in preventing runs will do slightly better than a team that is equally strong in scoring runs. The breakdown is accepted at about 52/48, meaning that stopping the opponent from scoring is approximately 2% more important than putting runs on the board yourself.
The problem, however, is that run prevention isn’t 100% pitching. I’ve been beating this drum for a couple of years, now, and I’ll keep beating it until people begin to realize that defense matters. An awful lot. The Detroit Tigers gloves carried them to the World Series last year. They had an average offense, an average pitching staff, and the best defense in baseball. And it got them the American League pennant.
Run prevention is probably about 52% of winning, but pitching is, at most, 80% of run prevention. The ability of the other eight guys on the field cannot be ignored, and credit cannot be simply handed to the pitcher for the strength of his teammates. In terms of value towards wins, the breakdown is close to something like this:
Offense: 48%
Pitching: 41%
Defense: 11%
No matter how you slice it, Geoff is simply wrong when he writes the following:
In other words, as you can see, it really is all about pitching. Especially starting pitching. Always has been, always will be. Through the dead-ball era, the Depression era, WWII, the onset of free-agency, expansion, advent of the wild-card, the Moneyball era and all the other so-called periods of change this game has gone through. One thing remains constant. Right now, the M’s don’t have that one thing. And they don’t have it in a division where two teams, the Angels and A’s, are loaded at starting pitching. Just hammering the point home.
It’s just demonstrably not true. It’s not. If you’re in the mood for some very mathy and hard to read evidence, here’s a table that essentially sums up the actual performances of historical teams based on their run scoring and run prevention, and adjusts for run scoring environments to give apples-to-apples comparisons. But, basically, as the chart shows, there have been winning teams that were great at hitting and not so good at pitching, just as there were winning teams that were great at pitching and not so good at hitting. In reality, pitching isn’t more important than offense. Never has been, and never will be.
Okay, that would be the end of this entirely too long post about a common misconception from a guy we like, but he just had to threw in one more statement that I can’t leave alone, just for good measure.
Do the Mariners have an MVP candidate? Uh, no.
Sorry, but they absolutely do. Ichiro Suzuki is hitting .356/.409/.466 while playing half his games in an extreme low scoring environment by today’s standards. He’s 19 for 21 in stolen bases. He’s 3rd in the major leagues in Value Over Replacement, which Keith Woolner (now working for the Cleveland Indians) created as a total measure of offensive value, adjusting for positional scarcity. In terms of VORP, Ichiro has been worth 36 runs to the Mariners offensively so far, ranking ahead of David Ortiz (35.2), Vladimir Guerrero (35.0), and Jorge Posada (32.3). The only guys in the majors who have contributed more offensively to their teams are Magglio Ordonez and Alex Rodriguez, who are both about 10 runs ahead of Ichiro based on their fantastic power displays to date.
But, when you factor in defense, Ichiro closes that gap in a hurry.
You can call me a biased fanboy if you want, but the data is on my side – through June 18th, Ichiro has been every bit as valuable as any other player in baseball. Even if you don’t think Ichiro’s glove makes up for the ten run advantage that Ordonez and Rodriguez have created with their bats to date, you simply can’t argue that there’s anyone else in the American League who should rank #3 on your AL MVP ballot right now. And, well, if the #3 guy in the league isn’t an MVP candidate, then your standards are pretty freaking high.
You know why the Mariners are currently 35-31 despite having a disaster of a starting rotation? Their center fielder is absolutely awesome.
Okay, that’s enough writing for today. Geoff, we still like you, and we’re still thrilled you’re in Seattle, and I look forward to being entertained and informed by your writing in the many days ahead. On these issues, though, I couldn’t disagree more.
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Very interesting post! Where is the best place that one can go for a detailed explanation of some of the stats you use?
you know, in his previous blog post Geoff did mention he was really tired by all the team’s travels … maybe he just was too pooped to properly parse the pitching.
Where is the best place that one can go for a detailed explanation of some of the stats you use?
Click on “USSM Orientation” at the top of this page. Follow the links (”Evaluating Pitching” and “Evaluating Defense”). When you’re done there, I’m sure there will be more posts pointing to articles at The Hardball Times, etc.
Yeah, the one or two big hangups that traditional sportswriters have is that they ignore park effects (the other thing is a fascination with power for hitters and ERA for pitchers). Which is REALLY kinda stupid. If you KNOW Safeco is a pitchers park, doesn’t that kinda sorta mean that offensive numbers are artificially depressed here? I have yet to read a writer who really understands that and uses that in his writing…(and who doesn’t rely on ERA for relievers….).
Another in a long list of great posts that make me a better, more-informed Mariner fan. Keep ‘em coming, Dave!
I have a theory about positve and negative mental associations being tied to quantity of occurrences. Basically, it’s easy for a human to come to the conclusion that a guy like Jose Vidro is a good hitter, because a relatively high number of his opportunities result in a positive emotional reaction. In Vidro’s case, a single.
On the other hand, a huge number of Mike Cameron’s opportunities result in a negative emotional reaction, thanks to his high strikeout rate and low batting average. So, fans got frustrated by his performance while he was in Seattle.
By quantity, Vidro will likely contribute more “yay!” plays to the Mariners this year than Cameron did during his time in Seattle. My theory is that the brain is pretty good at summing the amount of times a guy disappoints or enthuses (?) us, but lousy at dealing with the degree of impact that the reaction actually should hold. We intuitively understand that hit = good and strikeout = bad, but when it comes to differentiate between types of “yay!” and “boo!” experiences, we struggle.
All that to say that I think sportswriter bias towards ignoring park effects and overrating quantity stats is a natural bi-product of covering the team on a daily basis. By watching essentially every play all year long, they develop strong emotional sentiments about the players performance, and they naturally gravitate towards the statistics that confirm what they already feel.
Man, I’m wordy tonight. I should go to bed now.
Great article. Thanks for posting it–this is the stuff I love reading here.
(And I contend Cameron could have hit five home runs that game he hit four. He was given a meatball and I swear he decided that four was good enough.)
Very interesting post! Where is the best place that one can go for a detailed explanation of some of the stats you use?
The Hardball Times has a detailed glossary of statistics that they use. Baseball Reference is the best historical site for statistics. Baseball Prospectus and Fangraphs both have statistics unique to their sites.
I tried to explain all the stats I was using in this post, and really just kept it to simple measures like OPS+ and ERA+, which take pretty commonly accepted numbers and just account for the context of the environment. Nothing too fancy in this post.
4: I’d tend to disagree that ‘the one or two big hangups that traditional sportswriters have is that they ignore park effects (the other thing is a fascination with power for hitters’. Traditional baseball writing loves batting average. It also loves power hitting, but the love for average leaves power under valued. IMterriblyHo. Look at all the love scrappy little guys with 295/335/380 lines (Juan Pierre, I’m looking at you).
Delightful piece of analysis. Thanks
Roger – didn’t Cameron also have a 360′ fly out at the wall in that game in Comiskey?
And Dave, the knock on Cameron always seemed to come from certain commentators. He was always a big fan favorite at the park. I was at the first San Diego game last month and he got the biggest cheer of any player not called Ichiro.
Fantastic post Dave. I read Baker’s blog before I saw this post and had been hoping you or Derek would post something regarding Baker’s flawed analysis. Sure enough, as soon as I checked USSM you had. Although I expect the M’s to struggle even more going forward, this site still makes this team a lot of fun to follow.
Awesome. Really, just awesome.
Thank you very much for this piece. The sooner everyone realizes that Baseball is about scoring more runs than the other team the sooner this nonsense about needing a great rotation in order to win.
Starting a movement to get Adam Jones in LF would be a good way to improve the team and one of the results of such a move to the casual fan would be to improve the pitching as well.
Re: Tiger Defense
It’s no coincidence that when their defense fell apart in the WS they got beat by a very ordinary team.
…it’s probably another reason Yankee team always under perform their OMG THY R TEH AWESOME!!!1 110 win predictions: their defense stinks because their lineup is composed of 30-something guys who have long since peaked defensively… and Robinson Cano.
Great post Dave. Thank you very much for the insightful analysis.
And I couldn’t agree more with what you wrote on Ichiro. Great stuff.
It’s just my strong impression, but I have the feeling that Baker has a slant against Ichiro. It’s subtle but inserted insidiously in many of his pieces.
Like this “Do the Mariners have an MVP candidate? Uh, no.” thing.
WRT the Yankees, it’s always unreasonable to predict 110 wins for somebody, but they really were a really good team going into this year. I think the last three or four years of no-particular-age-related-decline is all coming due this year.
And to think of all the Yankee fans that sneered when they signed Damon away from Boston. I’ve seen multiple suggestions that he be moved to 1b to solve New York’s yawning chasm there. /sneer
#6: So would Adam Dunn make fans bipolar?
It’s just my strong impression, but I have the feeling that Baker has a slant against Ichiro.
I don’t think this is true. I think, like most people, Geoff undervalues defense and overvalues HR and RBI. Because he doesn’t value the things that Ichiro is great at, he naturally comes to the conclusion that he’s not as good as we think he is.
I don’t think it’s an anti-Ichiro bias. If Luis Castillo was having this kind of year while playing gold glove defense at second base, I doubt Geoff would consider him an MVP candidate either. Most sportswriters associate MVP with run producer, and Ichiro doesn’t produce runs in the normal fashion.
I agree with Dave in #21. Anti-Ichiro bias can be discerned when the people start complaining about his lack of “leadership,” how he is only focused on himself, and how he continues to speak Japanese and employ a translator for media and interview sessions. Geoff has not met this criteria.
I don’t get it. Why isn’t team ERA an accurate measure of a team’s ability to prevent runs?
I understand that it doesn’t factor out home ballpark, and differentiate between runs given up by the pitcher and runs given up by the defense.
But in the end, the team DOES play half its games in its home ballpark. Why should we factor that out? It’s where they actually play.
And the pitcher usually DOES have (almost) the same defense behind him for the season. Why should we factor that out?
By the same logic, it seems that runs scored should be an accurate measure of a team’s ability to score runs.
No, it doesn’t factor out home ballpark, or opposing pitcher, or opposing defense. But you know what, the numbers are derived from ACTUAL ballparks that they played in. As for the opposing pitcher/defense, aren’t there enough games with each team (at least within the league, definitely within the division) to average out the difference?
I undersatnd that you can’t compare these stats across seasons.
Also, you can’t use these stats earlier in the season if you’ve had a disproportianately large number of home or away games, or games against a particular team.
But otherwise, it seems like a pretty accurate measure to me.
9: “Traditional baseball writing loves batting average.”
Yes, although Dave seems to view ERA as the antichrist of baseball stats (”the reliance on this inherently problematic stat has led to more bad analysis over the years than just about any other statistic out there.”) I’d say that batting average has had a longer hold and skews things more badly.
“pitching is, at most, 80% of run prevention.”
Is there a website or article that you can send us to, to get an in-depth look at the research? I’ve used 90% as a rule of thumb — no stats at all backing that up, just going by observation and gut feel.
Also being a Reds fan, I’d argue that pitching is about 110% of run prevention….ba boom boomp….
I don’t get it. Why isn’t team ERA an accurate measure of a team’s ability to prevent runs?
I understand that it doesn’t factor out home ballpark, and differentiate between runs given up by the pitcher and runs given up by the defense.
But in the end, the team DOES play half its games in its home ballpark. Why should we factor that out? It’s where they actually play.
And the pitcher usually DOES have (almost) the same defense behind him for the season. Why should we factor that out?
Well, if all you’re trying to accomplish is to get a historical result of what actually happened, you should just used runs allowed. There’s no reason to introduce the abritrary “earned runs” into the equation if you have no interest in separating credit for pitcher and fielders.
But, in reality, that’s not what anyone cares about. People care about ERA because they believe it gives them a tool to compare pitcher quality. People want to be able to say that Jarrod Washburn is better than Paul Byrd, or that Johan Santana is better than Roy Halladay, or that Jeff Weaver is worse than everyone. ERA portends to give them such a tool – it just does a bad job of it, and lends itself to poor analytical conclusions such as the “good pitching is always more valuable than good hitting” canard.
But otherwise, it seems like a pretty accurate measure to me.
It’s a historical record of what happened. It’s not a particularly good method of evaluating talent. And really, that’s what baseball discussions are usually all about, because the point is to have a more talented team than your divisional opponents, and you can’t let contextually influenced performances discolor your opinion of a player’s talent level.
I agree, but frustration with Cameron came from people who loved him, too. Lots of people griped about his strikeouts and cheered him just the same. I mean, how could you not like Cameron? He may be the most delightful person I’ve ever seen play baseball.
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Dave, I wonder if even 11% is too low a figure for fielding. It seems like much of the time that a team “overachieves” to the World Series, they turn out to be an awesome fielding team: the Tigers, the White Sox, the Angels. (And both the Angels and the White Sox immediately took steps that damaged their defense, suggesting even they didn’t know what their strengths were.)
Hm, ERA is better than wins and losses. But it’s a pretty blunt instrument otherwise because it measures other people’s contributions, as well as the pitchers’.
Binary thinking. It has no capability, as you say, of saying how much or to what degree.
I expect this kind of thinking out of the casual fan. No excuse, though, for a sportswriter to engage in this.
Is there a website or article that you can send us to, to get an in-depth look at the research? I’ve used 90% as a rule of thumb — no stats at all backing that up, just going by observation and gut feel.
Most of the in depth research has been published in books, not online. Bill James talked about this in the ’80s in his yearly Asbtracts, where he made the now famous phrase “A lot of what we think is pitching is actually defense.” There’s also studies on defensive value in each of the last two Hardball Times Annuals, as well as Dayn Perry’s book “Winners”, and, if you’re really interested in the nitty gritty of defensive research, you should purchase a copy of The Fielding Bible by John Dewan.
Historically it seems like every year the MVP is based on who has the most HRs, highest batting average, and the most RBIs. Whereas the Cy Young is based on Wins, ERA, and K’s. All six stats (except maybe K’s) tell us next to nothing on how valuable a player truely is.
Are we any closer today than we were 10 years ago where sports writers/broadcasters/fans in general recognize that RBI’s and HR’s aren’t always the best way to evaluate the Most Valuable Player?
Dave, I wonder if even 11% is too low a figure for fielding. It seems like much of the time that a team “overachieves” to the World Series, they turn out to be an awesome fielding team: the Tigers, the White Sox, the Angels. (And both the Angels and the White Sox immediately took steps that damaged their defense, suggesting even they didn’t know what their strengths were.)
Nate Silver introduced a concept a couple of years ago that he called “The Secret Sauce”, which shows that teams that are heavy on defense and bullpen do better in the playoffs that teams that are heavy on sluggers. So, there may be something to it in a short playoff series, where depth isn’t a significant factor and a larger contribution is made by the team’s 16 best players (9 hitters, 4 starters, 3 relievers).
Over the course of a 162 game season, though, I’m comfortable with the 11% mark.
Are we any closer today than we were 10 years ago where sports writers/broadcasters/fans in general recognize that RBI’s and HR’s aren’t always the best way to evaluate the Most Valuable Player?
Absolutely. We’ve come a long way in the last 10 years. Keep in mind, part of Baker’s reasoning for why Ichiro isn’t an MVP candidate is that his OPS isn’t high enough. 10 years ago, it was a landmark accomplishment to get the words “on base percentage” printed in a column of a major newspaper. Forget using OPS as any kind of analytical tool.
We’re just continuing to try to push knowledge forward. It’s a process, but the change in how sportswriters cover baseball in the last 10 years is dramatic.
To be fair, ERA is better for teams than for individual pitchers — at least if you park-adjust it.
But this kind of “research” by our poor old “Jack Latteman” is exactly the kind of bogus statistics work that’s always driven me mad. Any kind of analysis that tries to rate teams on how good they are by looking at only half, or a little less than half, of the equation is a waste of time.
If you adjust runs allowed for park, that’s good enough; if you’re just looking at teams, it doesn’t matter whether defense is 10% or 20% or 50% of defense+pitching. I think most folks use “pitching” to mean “defense+pitching” anyways, just as I tend to use “defense” to mean that — pitching IS a form of defense, right? But offense still matters just as much (and “offense” is “hitting+baserunning”, remember.
You always have to keep in mind, that most sports writers have to write articles geared towards the casual baseball fan. I assume a large majority of the readers do not have much knowledge of any stats beyond ERA or OBP, so the points you bring up are too complex for these people to understand.
Um isn’t that their JOB to make these points understandable?
And, really…what’s so damn hard about accounting for park effects?
If I recall correctly, ERA is a stat was developed in order to separate pitching from defense. In old-timey baseball it wasn’t uncommon for a pitcher to surrender a hundred unearned runs or more a season. Some baseball enthusiasts took note it didn’t seem fair to penalize a pitcher for his fielders errors, hence the need to separate the earned runs from the unearned. Also, at the same time, pitchers were no long throwing a complete game every start, with the modern invention of the “relief pitcher” it also seemed prudent to measure the runs on a per inning basis in stead of per game, hence the need for an average.
AS defense improved due to better equipment and better athleticism form the fielders, the stat became more and more irrelevant to the point where, today, there’s no point in separating the two.
The next time use want to quote its usefulness remember, ERA is a hundred year old, outdated stat that has no bearing on modern baseball. [Insert Dave's line about horse and buggy v. car here].
there’s another error here that wasn’t pointed out:
…But don’t forget, that’s out of 96 playoff teams. So, basically, even with the diluted pitching and inflated ERA totals we’ve seen over the past decade or so, there’s still only about a one in 7.5 chance of getting there.
The percent of post season teams with ERA over 4.5 is NOT the same thing as the percent of teams with ERA over 4.5 that made the postseason.
It’s subtle, but possibly major.
Getting past the statistics for a moment, I think the reason baseball people believe in the “pitching wins ballgames” idea is that their long experience tells them great pitchers can regularly shut down great hitters. Offenseive lineups rarely have the same consistent impact on top-tier pitchers. It’s hard to deny that 8 or 9 times out of ten, a J.J. Putz or a Johan Santana is going to win the batter-pitcher confrontation, no matter the hitter.
The thing they neglect to factor into their bias is that great pitchers are a rare commidity (due to scarcity, injury, more uncertain development, etc.). In the real world of MLB, it seems much less likely you are going to assemble 5 or six shutdown-type starters that it is you’ll assemble a lineup of 7-9 really good hitters. Even 2 or three great starters gets to be a challenge. In a nirvana world where we could assemble any number of consistent, reliable top-tier shutdown starters, then one might take the point that pitching wins championships.
Until someone figures out a way to consistenly corner the market on repeatable, sure-fire uber-pitchers, the challenge is to understand and exploit the nuances of the market to generate the largest repeatable, sustainable (positive) gap in runs scored versus runs allowed. That implies that as times and circumstances change, so might your strategy. Since this thinking works against some time-tested bromides, it is often missed or ignored.
Understanding this is where guys like Beane and Shapiro keep handing us our lunch.
Hmm. Well, I always thought the theory that “good pitching always beats good hitting” was based on the knowledge that a “good” hitter still fails 70% of the time. So, as long as a pitcher’s keeping that failure rate very high, he’s got a natural advantage against every hitter.
Colorado – I think you risk perpetuating a form of the same flawed reasoning.
Contrary to what you assert above great hitters do not post an OBP of .150 against the great pitchers as they would if ” or 9 times out of ten, a [great pithcer] is going to win the batter-pitcher confrontation”. If Santana really could do that he’d make Bob Gibson look like Jeff Weaver. He’d be the best pitcher in history and then some.
If Johan Santana had to face a lineup stacked with, say, 2000 vintage Edgar Martinezs he would no longer look like Johan Santana.
You’re absolutely right on this, Dave, but I’ve never understood how people could possibly be this stupid. If it matters to you what outcomes these events produce, why not measure them?
Except Ichiro already won the MVP once, and he’s having a better season with the bat now than he did then (better than he ever has, in fact). And he’s playing a premium defensive position, which he didn’t then.
There’s no way someone can think Ichiro’s 2001 warranted MVP consideration but his 2007 doesn’t without also asserting that the run-scoring environment has changed dramatically in those 6 years.
I’d love to see someone try to make that argument.
The percent of post season teams with ERA over 4.5 is NOT the same thing as the percent of teams with ERA over 4.5 that made the postseason.
It’s subtle, but possibly major.
It’s not even that subtle.
#44 — Ichiro’s 2001 MVP also had a lot to do with the “novelty” of a Japanese position player in MLB and the fact that he was one of the best players on a team that won 116 games in the regular season. If Ichiro had produced the exact same numbers and the M’s had won 84 games and missed the playoffs he would not have won the MVP. He is having a better year, up to this point, than he did in ‘01, and, if the M’s finish in a manner that most people expect, 80 some wins and 3rd place in the AL West, he will not come close to the top five in AL MVP voting.
I don’t understand how anyone could look at the entire history of baseball and claim that there is only one way to win a World Series. Every year, the champion has a different mix of starting pitching, relief pitching, defense, and offense. It’s an interesting game, and there’s more than one way to play it.
Even if someone wants to claim that starting pitching is very important, the very existence of outliers like last year’s Cardinals make statements like “It really does come down to the pitching,” useless hyperbole.
There’s no way someone can think Ichiro’s 2001 warranted MVP consideration but his 2007 doesn’t without also asserting that the run-scoring environment has changed dramatically in those 6 years.
With the introduction of steroid testing, the run-scoring environment has arguably changed to make Ichiro’s skills even more valuable now. Although in a large-scale statistical sense, the products of that environment are probably still similar enough that any change isn’t clearly demonstrable.
He is having a better year, up to this point, than he did in ‘01, and, if the M’s finish in a manner that most people expect, 80 some wins and 3rd place in the AL West, he will not come close to the top five in AL MVP voting.
Admittedly true, but not defensible.
Every time there’s a new discussion about evaluating pitching, I come back to a couple of simple ideas.
Why not develop a simple index using the run value of each outcome and actual results for each pitcher, i.e., multiply the run value of BB by the number of BB allowed, multiply the run value of Line Drives by the number of LD allowed, etc. and sum the results? Maybe divide/multiply by some constant to make the result look like ERA.
Has this been done? If we did it at the team level, would there be a strong correlation with team wins?
Also, why not simply calculate the number of outs/batters faced or runs/batter faced?
#47, dont forget luck, which plays a massive roll in the playoffs, if everyone clicks, the team wins, if everybody slumps all at once, they don’t.
#48, Playing CF helps his relative value a whole lot. If he’d been playing CF in 2004, man, the VORP #’s he would have put up.
Dave,
I’m a bit confused. While I agree that Baker’s blog doesn’t provide a compelling analysis for the “causation” argument… isn’t it at least an argument for correlation? (Or is that what you were saying?) ERA may not be the best measure of pitching, but it is at least a positively correlated variable upon which you can measure a teams success. Is there a regression analysis that shows which statistics are most highly correlated with winning percentage?
There may be better measures out there, but that doesn’t completely negate Baker’s argument that bad pitching (as measured by team ERA) reduces your playoff odds.
Has this been done? If we did it at the team level, would there be a strong correlation with team wins?
It has been, and it’s called linear weights. Its origins go back to Pete Palmer and “The Hidden Game of Baseball”, and is now primarily being pushed forward by Mitchel Lichtman and Tom Tango.
#48, Playing CF helps his relative value a whole lot. If he’d been playing CF in 2004, man, the VORP #’s he would have put up.
Ichiro’s 2004: .372/.414/.455
Ichiro’s 2007: .356/.408/.466
He’s basically having that season again (slightly fewer hits, but more walks and more power), but now he’s playing CF.
Excellent timing. Derek Jacques’s Prospectus Toolbox today is about DIPS.
Fantastic post, Dave, and one that continues to contribute to my evolution as a thinking, analyzing Mariners fan. I was one of those people who came to USS Mariner at the time when the organization was getting ready to cut ties with Mike Cameron — and I felt it was the right thing to do because a) I overvalued the psychic anguish of Cammy’s strikeouts; and b) completely undervalued Cammy’s defense.
One of the great pleasures of growing as a Mariner fan the last few years has been in having Dave Cameron prove me wrong about Mike Cameron. It’s posts like this that keep me growing and thinking and learning in new ways.
Thanks, Dave.
Evan, I thought I’d read that Ichiro was actually ahead of his 2004 pace for hits? Well, I guess we can probably say it’s unlikely he’ll repeat his torrid second half from that year, so maybe it doesn’t matter.
Dave,
Great stuff, as always.
Do you have an opinion about whether the M’s should trade Ichiro if he says, “I’ll give the M’s the same chance to sign me in the offseason as 28 other teams.”
-Alex
I’m a bit confused. While I agree that Baker’s blog doesn’t provide a compelling analysis for the “causation” argument… isn’t it at least an argument for correlation?
It could have been, if he (being the guy who sent Baker the data) wouldn’t have used an arbitrary, non-contextually adjusted number to run the analysis. For what Baker was trying to show, he’d have been a lot better off using ERA+.
And, as the title of this post implies, when I sat down to write it, I was going to include some comments on the correlation versus causation thing. It got long enough to where I left that argument out, but yes, essentially, the gaping hole in Baker’s post is taking a list that suggests (poorly, but still suggests) correlation and turning that into a causative statement.
As I’m sure we’ve all learned by now, correlation is not causation. I could show an extremely high correlation between Mariner losses and Sean White’s appearances. Practically every time he’s pitched, they lost. The correlation would be very, very high.
However, if you then take that correlation and conclude that Sean White is causing the Mariners to lose, and they’d win more if they’d stop using him, you’re just going to be wrong. Sean White pitches in games the Mariners are already very likely to lose, eating up innings in games when the team is down by a lot of runs after the starter has been chased. He appears because the team is losing, but the team is not losing because he appears. There’s correlation, but obviously not causation.
Writers get this wrong all the time.
There may be better measures out there, but that doesn’t completely negate Baker’s argument that bad pitching (as measured by team ERA) reduces your playoff odds.
I explicitly stated in the post that Baker’s conclusion about the Mariners pitching woes costing them a shot at the playoffs are correct. The critique is of the subpar analysis that got him to the conclusion, and the overreaching conclusions he draws from data that simply doesn’t support his claims.
Obviously, if we took 50 teams with low ERAs and 50 teams with high ERAs, and were asked which group would have more playoff teams in it, the correct choice would be the low ERA pod. But that does not mean that pitching is more important than hitting, or that ERA is a good way to evaluate a team’s chances of making the playoffs.
Evan, I thought I’d read that Ichiro was actually ahead of his 2004 pace for hits? Well, I guess we can probably say it’s unlikely he’ll repeat his torrid second half from that year, so maybe it doesn’t matter.
I meant on a per plate appearance basis.
Though, since his batting average is lower by 16 points, the only way he could be ahead of his 2004 pace is if he’s getting more plate appearances per game than he did in 2004 (which he might be – the 2007 team offense is much better).
Oh, and he’s drawing more walks (10 extra points of IsoPa), so he needs even more plate appearances per game to make up those hits.
Alex,
http://ussmariner.com/2007/05/24/ichiro-the-underrated/
I’m in the don’t-trade-Ichiro camp.
Oh wait. If someone’s measuring Ichiro’s 2007 season against his 2004 season date by date, he probably is ahead of that pace. But he did hit .463 in August that year, and we probably shouldn’t bet on that happening again.
Really, Evan? You’re willing to bet against Ichiro doing anything?
He could hit .900 for a month and I’d just say “yup, that’s Ichiro”.
I’d pay to see that.
and, yay, I’m off to the game this evening. Mariners vs Pirates, which has to be one of the all time best match-ups of team names.
I didn’t say I was willing to bet against it. I said I we shouldn’t bet for it.
You’re right, though. He’s hit .516 over the past 7 days. There’s no reason to believe he couldn’t do that for a month.
But hey, since we’re discussing it (and you did most of the work back in 2005), here are Ichiro’s month-by-month batting averages since April 2002:
2002: .316 .404 .353 .321 .282 .248
2003: .243 .389 .386 .342 .242 .273
2004: .255 .400 .274 .432 .463 .379
2005: .356 .288 .243 .364 .244 .331
2006: .287 .371 .386 .317 .233 .333
2007: .305 .357 .414
I bundled October and September.
We should totally run a correlation on that chart and the number of “pitchers have figured out how to pitch Ichiro/he’s lost a step/he doesn’t care about the team” articles that appeared during his slumps. I wonder if people will ever just accept the fact that singles are inconsistent?
That’d be contrary to human nature. We look for patterns, and upon finding them tend to ascribe causes.
Who has been more valuable to their team this year?
Ichiro or Torii Hunter?
Ichiro.
Aside from blowing him away in VORP, he’s a better defender. Hunter’s not the elite fielder he once was.
That’d be contrary to human nature. We look for patterns, and upon finding them tend to ascribe causes.
If human nature is that wrong, as rational beings we should aspire to rise above it.
One thing I noticed looking at all this Ichiro data is that his platoon split seems to have disappeared this season. He’s hitting right about what he has against lefties over the previous 3 seasons (he was weaker against righties).
arrrrrrr.
A few things:
- While ERA is an important measurement, it’s much more telling for starters than relievers (based on total IP). Obviously a reliever can pitch well 30 out of 32 times, but if he’s knocked around those two times his ERA balloons and doesn’t reflect his typical performance.
- Personally I use WHIP as the #1 measurement of a pitcher’s ability. Look at the top historical WHIPs and you’ll not coincidentally see the best single-season pitching performances. Secondarily I look at adjusted ERA+.
- Team ERA can be misleading; a team with two #1 starters and three #4-5 starters may have a mediocre ERA, but those two aces can carry the team and have an even greater impact come playoff time. Another reason it can be misleading: demotions/releasings/trades of poor pitchers that caused the season ERA to swell.
Personally I use WHIP as the #1 measurement of a pitcher’s ability. Look at the top historical WHIPs and you’ll not coincidentally see the best single-season pitching performances. Secondarily I look at adjusted ERA+.
Maybe we should make the link to the Evaluating Pitcher Talent article bigger. And bold. With flashing lights and arrows.
Don’t use WHIP. There are better options.
#70 — Also consider the home parks. Hunter’s ‘07 power would be sapped by the Safe. An earlier post by Dave listed the CFers one would or should take before Ichiro. I believe the list included two names, Sizemore (Grady not Tom) and Beltran. I agree with that.
By the way if nobody has noticed, Ichiro is doing amazing this year. If he keeps this upfor the 2nd half of the year its will be his best year ever.
.356/.408/.466 in Safeco is equivalent to OPS+ of 138! In addition OPS undervalues the high OBP and BA he has so he’s even more valuable than that.
To compare the average CF has a line of .265/.331/.409 in a neutral park.
(1B avg = .274/.355/.454 and LF/RF ~ .270/.340/.440)
In addition Ichiro is a great CF now which adds a lot more value to him as a player and as always he’s a great baserunner racking up 19 SB vs only 2 CS.
Mr. Dave: Well, I’m new here and hadn’t seen that article before. Glad I’ve had the chance to read it. Naturally if one wants to sift through layers and layers of stats, figures, and variables one can hone pitching quality indicators to a very fine edge. I maintain that among the more pedestrian pitching stats, WHIP is a good indicator of pitching performance–certainly more so than ERA. It may not be scalpel-like in its precision, but it’s not a club, either.
#79, WHIP is not defense or park adjusted, and does not account for slugging. FIP and xFIP are better than ERA or WHIP, but still need to be park adjusted. I like looking at GB%, K%, and BB% as my “quick and dirty” look at pitchers.
Even if a reliever gets knocked around, if he inherits baserunners, they don’t go on HIS ERA; they go on the starter’s.
(And that’s something I don’t think a lot of sportswriters emphasize).
Naturally if one wants to sift through layers and layers of stats, figures, and variables one can hone pitching quality indicators to a very fine edge.
All the stats mentioned in that article are easily accessible from the Hardball Times stats pages. It’s just as easy to lookup FIP as it is to lookup WHIP.
I maintain that among the more pedestrian pitching stats, WHIP is a good indicator of pitching performance–certainly more so than ERA.
Sure. The model T was also an improvemnt over the horse and buggy. I wouldn’t suggest using either today, though.
WHIP has a lot of problems, and will lead you to assigning credit to the pitcher for things he’s simply not responsible for.
and, yay, I’m off to the game this evening. Mariners vs Pirates, which has to be one of the all time best match-ups of team names.
Sounds like a Decemberists concert to me.
#80: Point taken. At the same time pitchers need to adjust to their home parks; a pitcher playing for the Rangers or Rockies would do well to learn how to pitch low in the zone and work on his sinker/splitter. Maybe that’s too much wishful thinking.
#82: Yes, those figures are easily accessible, but many of those more telling formulae are rather complicated. I was referring to a situation in which one doesn’t have access to those figures–just the basic numbers, like IP, H, ER, etc.
[check out the caps button key]
Yes, those figures are easily accessible, but many of those more telling formulae are rather complicated. I was referring to a situation in which one doesn’t have access to those figures–just the basic numbers, like IP, H, ER, etc.
Can you give me an example of when you would be in a situation where you really need to make a convincing point about a pitcher’s ability level and are only allowed to use basic stats? I can’t think of one.
Really, any pitcher would do well to learn how to pitch low in the zone and work on his sinker/splitter.
I’ve heard some pitchers say they like to work up in the strike zone. Why? It’s like saying “Well, I like driving on the wrong side of the road. Sure I get into the occasional head-on accident, but there are times I can cover a lot of ground when traffic from the other direction is really light.”
#87, pitching up in the zone leads to more strikeouts, so it’s not always bad.
Some of the best pitchers in the game have flyball tendancies, like Johan Santana and Ben Sheets, but are able to keep the runs off the board by striking a lot of guys out and avoiding walks.
I think we’re oversimplifying. Not every pitcher is a good ground ball pitcher. Pitchers should pitch to their own strengths.
Some pitchers, and I’m thinking Jeff Weaver here, would do better if they stopped trying to be something they’re not. See earlier USSM post, “Maybe Try a Four-seamer”.
http://ussmariner.com/index.php?s=maybe+try+a+four+seamer
There are times when a fastball up in the zone is a good pitch. There are few times when a hanging breaking ball is a good pitch.
MrMackie, you’d do well to check out the pitching stats page on hardballtimes.com (both the basic and the THT), read some of the articles, and go over their comprehensive glossary page. Be sure to read the “Pitching Runs Created” article by David Gassko, among others. Also visit http://www.tangotiger.net. I used to be like you, caring only about the more rudimentary stats, but have expanded my horizons in recent years. If you play fantasy baseball (as I do) it’s worth familiarizing oneself with the more accurate benchmarks of player performance.
#86: Maybe he wasn’t trying to make a convincing point, or maybe he’s just not used to the more modern statistical arrays we are. I didn’t familiarize myself with those stats until a few years ago, when I started playing fantasy baseball in earnest.
On Ichiro: Park-adjusting means that his value increases. This does not mean that his hitting stats will rise accordingly in a hitter’s park.
Since Ichiro is such a heavy groundball hitter, I think he’s going to put up similar lines in a lot of ballparks. A ground-ball base hit in Fenway is the same as one in Safeco.
Combine this with the vast expanses of outfield in The Safe, and that means that Ichiro has more value to the M’s than virtually any other team in baseball. (Detroit might rival, for similar reasons.) And that’s just baseball value. It doesn’t include marketing value.
Yeah, a slow slider that doesn’t break much and drops into the middle of the zone is rarely good thing. A 95 mph 4-seamer up and away can be a great pitch to get guys to chase, or up and in to keep guys honest, etc.
re #84, I agree that the Rangers/Rockies should be out after guys with good sinkers, but you can’t completely blame the pitcher if he’s a bad pick for his org. I wish the M’s could get their hands on a high K flyball guy, I think someone like that could put up great #’s at Safeco, especially if they’re left handed, and we could put together a decent defensive outfield (ie ditch the two statues in the corners).
#94 – But park effects don’t just affect homeruns.
Ichiro career home: .330/.378/.440
Ichiro career away: .334/.378/.439
Those lines look more-or-less identical to me.
Getting back to the main point of this post, here are a few examples in recent years of very good teams (95+ wins) with very middling team ERAs:
2006 Yankees: 4.41 ERA (#6/14 in AL), 97-65
2005 Yankees: 4.52 ERA (#9/14), 95-67
2004 Yankees: 4.69 ERA (#6/14), 101-61
2005 Red Sox: 4.74 ERA (#11/14), 95-67
2003 Red Sox: 4.48 ERA (#8/14), 95-67
2003 Braves: 4.10 ERA (#9/16 in NL), 101-61
I was going to go more in-depth, but I’m working and this is taking too long.
)
#98, why go more in-depth, use pythag w/ pythagenpat as the X variable. If you have a 5 RA team (similar to a 4.5 ERA team) and a 5.7 RS team (great offense), you’d be expected to win 92 games, which is close to playoff caliber.
The M’s had a couple 4.5+ ERA teams that made the playoffs (95 and 97)
What about Sizemore and his lack of D ability I really don’t trust those D numbers.
100: That ‘97 team was a blast. Every game was high anxiety – one of the best offenses ever, along with one of the worst bullpens ever. I wonder how many times we scored 10+ runs. At least the rotation (from what I recall) was pretty good. I believe that was Griffey’s one and only MVP season.
In other words, as you can see, it really is all about pitching.
And all this time I’ve been under the impression that winning baseball was about scoring more runs than your opponent does.
I guess this means we’ll have to really break the bank for some free agent starters this winter!
A big part of the 4.79 ERA was the park, but yeah that bullpen was god-awful, and yeah that offense was incredible.
#103, yeah, us and every other team (breaking the bank for starters). I think it’s the stupidest thing. You’re right scoring more runs than your opponents wins games. I think it’s stupid what teams are doing because pitching is WAY more volitile than hitting, you have a fair idea of how a hitter is going to do in a park, age, etc, with pitchers, people lose their stars quickly, and the unexpected Joes take their places way too often to justify making FA starting pitching a priority. I haven’t looked at the numbers, but I bet teams get burned worse on starting pitching than on offense and defense because of the inherent volatility.
Well, the volatility and the overpayment starters seem to get. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t root for the M’s going after a star pitcher.
It’s too bad the M’s didn’t take a chance on that other dreadful Cardinals starter from last year (Marquis). Funny how his season is about the polar opposite of Weaver’s. I am glad Zito opted for San Fran instead of Seattle, as his best days seem behind him – and at the tender young age of 29. Good lord does Zito walk a lot of guys (40 BB in 83 2/3 IP).
For now I’d be happy if the M’s sign Tomo Ohko for the remainder of the season. As badly as he pitched for ths Jays this year he couldn’t do any worse than our band of merry tossers. Oh yeah, and release HoRam.
*Tomo Ohka, that is.
Geoff has weighed back in on the subject
#101 — Given Sizemore’s youth and power, he is probably more valuable over the long term, if not now, than Ichiro.
#107 and 108 — Okha was signed by the Cardinals. I think I read this on mlbtraderumors.com.
I like Geoff, but he missed the point again. Oh well. He’s not going anywhere, so we’ll turn him around eventually.
#97
I would imagine Ichiro’s home and road stats are so close is due to the fact that most of his hits are either on the ground or soft flies that land in front of the center fielder. Neither of those events are influenced as much by home park as say if he were trying to crank every pitch over the fence. I think that same nature of his hits is also reflected in his doubles rate.
True. But I think Dave’s point is that this kind of hitter is more valuable to the Mariners (though, perhaps not as much as a left power hitter) than other teams because it isn’t depressed by the confines of SAFECO. A more subtle point, but I think is quite important.
I’ve toyed with the numbers and while Ichiro is the same on the road as at home, it’s like netting 3-5 runs compared to what another team would gain because of the lack of a home/road split. He may not be 3-5 runs better because of Safeco, but that’s the value to the M’s. He’s simply worth more, and I mean more as in wins, to the M’s than any other team.
You know, if Geoff would just use ERA+, he could make his point within the constraints of his argument.
Sigh. Well, better than the alternate universe where Finnigan would be all Griffey all the time this week.
Geoff’s point is almost valid. The M’s offense is good, but it’s not good enough to carry such an awful rotation. His conclusion and analysis lacks though because he only looks at ERA, but the fact that the M’s need better pitching peformance to get into the playoffs is valid. This is the point where we could really use Jarod Washburn pretending to be Jamie Moyer at least until the break (when we can try and pick up a pitcher). I know that’s not likely, but one could only wish.
Yea, that’s the frustrating thing – Geoff’s mostly right, but he’s just using bad analysis to prove it.
If he just posted that “teams with bad pitching generally don’t win”, no one would disagree with him.
I hate Win Shares. No stat that gives players more or less credit based on the performance of their teammates should ever carry any weight in a serious discussion.
Since Win Shares are a measure of contribution to actual team wins, if the team doesn’t win any games, no player on the team is assigned any win shares for that period, regardless of how well he played.
Geoff probably feels bad for this Lattemann fellow, since he used his name and analysis for his post – which was really torn apart here. Seems like he’s stuck in a spot where he has to defend some false conclusions in order to save face for his friend.
We’ll get Geoff turned on to WPA in lieu of Win Shares. It’s exactly what he wants to measure (hits that matter, high leverage performance, etc…), and it’s 100 times better than Win Shares.
What other stats should we use in analyzing pitchers? I do think era is overrated.
I like BAA (batting average against). Am I also a moron?
http://ussmariner.com/2006/08/29/evaluating-pitcher-talent/
I thought the chief park effects for Safeco are that it suppresses both home runs AND singles, but provides a boost to doubles and triples.
Ichiro’s numbers don’t support that, but he’s a bloody freak.
I don’t like leverage, either. Not until someone demonstrates that performance in high-leverage situations is a skill. Otherwise you’re just rewarding luck.
In the context of an MVP discussion, though, it carries some weight. Vlad hit a walkoff home run the other day off Chris Ray that was worth .65 wins. With a single swing of the bat, he turned a likely loss into a win.
That happened, and it had a tangible effect on the Angels record. It held a lot of value to the team.
He might not be able to keep hitting walkoff home runs every time he bats in the bottom of the 9th, but it doesn’t diminish the real contribution that he made with that swing. And, in terms of an MVP discussion, I can see the perspective that you should reward players for events that actually occurred.
I’m not sure I would vote that way, but I think there’s merit in the reasoning of those who would.
It’s when people try to use WPA or Win Shares or similar things to evaluate talent that it becomes a problem.
I think someday in the future WPA will be useful for HoF voting, for example if someone outperforms their expected WPA consistently, that might serve as a shot in the arm for borderline cases. I think in ~ 15 years we should have a much better idea of which (current not past) players deserve HoF since we can look at their career via things like WPA and measure their career defense with things like UZR.
For hitters Win Shares are nifty, as long as you ignore Fielding Win Shares, that’s where the value of winshares figuratively comes off it’s wheels while driving down the road.
Okay, I get what you’re saying. Since you’re looking for value, you’re measuring anything that helped the team, regardless of whether is was the result of skill or luck.
I can see why people would want to count that in their MVP debate. I just think those people are wrong. It’s like giving credit to drunk drivers who don’t happen to hurt anyone.
My one issue with some of these newer stats is that no one is attempting to run them on older seasons to see if the quantitative data is reflecting the qualitative perception.
I’m reminded of how Bill James gave Craig Biggio insane value in the Historical Abstract, but then you look at Fielding Win Shares and see how he overvalued middle infield defense and wonder if Biggio was benefiting too much from that bump.
Which stats are you referring to, dw? Win Probability is a mathmatical formula. It’s just win expectancy put into practice based on current run scoring environments.
no one is attempting to run them on older seasons to see if the quantitative data is reflecting the qualitative perception.
No one?
I would propose that bad pitching causes high ERA, therefore making it a reliable stat for judging a team’s season pitching.*not individuals – sample size*
ERA+ would be better because it adjusts for park effects, but Baker is writing this article for the common fan, justifying the use of a rough stat.
4.50 seems arbitrary, but it’s a run every other inning, making it easy and understandable to use as a marker.
RA is better than ERA, especially at the team level, but also at the individual level.
re Dave’s comment 111: seems like you’re starting to succeed, see Baker’s latest blog entry.