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Austrian mook posted:Closer seems an interesting position, they're just there to play a single inning? Why? How valuable to a team is a good closer? A good closer is, I suspect, vastly more valuable to the fans of a team than the team itself. As to why a closer (usually) only pitches a single inning, the idea behind most closers is that - hopefully - they'll be lights-out pitchers who you can trust with your team's close lead in the ninth inning; you don't have to worry about the other team clawing their way back to tie the game and send it into extra innings or even win it outright because you've got your A-NUMBER-ONE reliever in. Since you ideally want your closer available to pitch whenever a save situation arises - and you don't know how often that'll happen - you don't want to strain the guy's arm too much, especially as you might need him to pitch on consecutive nights; thus, you keep the guy's workload as light as possible and save him for the game's final inning. Other posters can tell you a lot more about how 'valuable' a closer is, using Actual Numbers that I haven't researched recently, but to all accounts a shutdown closer does seem, anecdotally at least, to be beneficial to the team in a psychological, if not statistical, sense. Koji Uehara's 2013 season with Boston did, if you believe interviews, make a lot of the Red Sox' players feel "less pressure" in a close game, because they were certain that Koji could come in and shut down any batters the other team had; how much that actually matters is, to say the least, debatable. Uehara, interestingly enough, was basically plucked off the scrap heap by Boston as a setup man and got handed the closer's job basically by default when the two 'proven closers' on the team, Andrew Bailey and (groan) Joel Hanrahan, got hurt; he proceeded to turn in a season performance that was unbefuckinglievable, which no one really saw coming. The moral of the story is that the whole notion of knowing who can and can't be an amazing closer is pretty much bullshit; like so many things in baseball, it's all just educated guessing.
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May 22, 2014 08:43
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Popete posted:Don't forget winless yet MLB leading 1.62 ERA Jeff Samardjiza. Let's say Samardjiza keeps this up all season (doubtful) and, wins aside, appears as the clear frontrunner for the NL Cy Young. Let's say by the end of the season he's gotten maybe 4 wins. Does anyone think the lack of wins would disqualify him from contention from the idiots who vote for Cy Young awards, or do you think it'd be such a statistical aberration that they'd take a step back and go "Wow, the Cubs are really awful, but he's clearly the best pitcher in the NL this season so we'll throw him a bone"?
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May 22, 2014 17:25
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Given Felix Hernandez' win despite a 13-12 record, and the fact that 11-14 Chris Sale finished higher than 18-6 Bartolo Colon last year, I'd say he'll have a decent shot if there's no reasonably close. Any sort of sensible alternative and he's toast. Like if Kershaw goes 17-6 with a 2.50 it doesn't matter if Samardzija has a 1.50 ERA if he has a 4-7 record or whatever with a billion NDs.
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May 22, 2014 18:05
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He'll get his wins when he is traded to an actual baseball team hopefully before he turns back into Jeff Samardzija.
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May 22, 2014 18:06
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Imasalmon posted:It's just like how movie studios will insure a star actor's health while making a movie. Or even like car insurance, for a simpler example. Rates, terms, and conditions will vary, depending on whatever the team negotiates with the insurance company for whichever player contract they want insured. Pretty much, thanks!
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May 22, 2014 18:54
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I saw million dollar arm, what was the reality of those two kids? Are they ever gonna play?
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May 26, 2014 02:15
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Austrian mook posted:I saw million dollar arm, what was the reality of those two kids? Are they ever gonna play? No, Rinku had injury problems in the low minor leagues and Dinesh went back to India.
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May 26, 2014 02:20
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ElwoodCuse posted:No, Rinku had injury problems in the low minor leagues and Dinesh went back to India. Oh, well that sucks. Oh well, it was a pretty alright movie at least.
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May 26, 2014 02:44
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Both of them were always more valuable from a PR standpoint than as actual prospects. They were typically old for the leagues they played in and the learning curve is obviously immense. Rinku did throw 72 strong innings in A ball in 2012; you can take a look at his top-100-prospect-teammate Stetson Allie to see that even that is a pretty sweet achievement. (You could also look at the Pirates' Lithuanian project, Dovydas Neverauskas, who is currently blowing up there.) The remaining awesome-story foreign guy in the Pirates' system is now Mpho Gift Ngoepe, who is from South Africa. He's in AA as a 24-year-old, with a good glove and speed and a lot of walks, but strikes out a ton and has no power. He's a longshot to make the Show, but it's possible he could develop into a utility infielder. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnJZzGq11rU Mornacale fucked around with this message at 03:24 on May 26, 2014 |
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May 26, 2014 03:16
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Mornacale posted:The remaining awesome-story foreign guy in the Pirates' system is now Mpho Gift Ngoepe, who is from South Africa. He's in AA as a 24-year-old, with a good glove and speed and a lot of walks, but strikes out a ton and has no power. He's a longshot to make the Show, but it's possible he could develop into a utility infielder. I desperately want Gift Ngoepe to make the majors so I can get his baseball card. The dude has such a great story; I've never seen him play but I love him anyways. The SI article linked above is an astonishingly good read and you should all read it immediately or else you are bad people.
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May 26, 2014 08:08
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:The SI article linked above is an astonishingly good read and you should all read it immediately or else you are bad people. Agree with this man. I read it a good while back, and usually my memory sucks but when I saw the name "Gift" I recalled almost all of the story it's that good.
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May 26, 2014 14:09
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Does anyone still teach the Baltimore Chop or have defenses improved to the point that non-Mike-Lowells don't bother with it anymore?
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Jun 10, 2014 00:32
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So, how do I read stats? What is a good ERA look like? What's a good OBP?
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Jun 12, 2014 23:00
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Austrian mook posted:So, how do I read stats? What is a good ERA look like? What's a good OBP? League average OBP last season was .318, but in 2000 it was .345 League average ERA last season was 3.87, but in 2000 it was 4.77 There are versions of these stats that adjust for league context as well as park effects. I would start with the Fangraphs offensive primers for a good explaination of some useful stats and what they mean. Specificaly, read the entries for OBP, OPS & OPS+, wOBA, wRC+ Pitching is harder to pin down with a single stat.
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Jun 12, 2014 23:11
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Austrian mook posted:So, how do I read stats? What is a good ERA look like? What's a good OBP? It depends. Like, a lot. Especially with ERA, the run-scoring environment is going to change things dramatically. An ERA of 3 meant something very different in 1968 when no one scored any runs than it did in 1998 when people scored a million runs - seriously, league average ERA in 1968 was under 3, it was crazy. And you also have to take into account park effects and all that stuff. That said, for ERA, I tend to assume anything under a 4 is decent to good, anything under a 3 is good to great, anything above a 4 is decent to bad. For OBP, anything over .390 is great, anything over .340 or so is pretty good, anything maybe below .320 or so is pretty bad (but I am less confident in this than I am with ERA). You can also look at stats like ERA+ or OPS+ that take into account scoring environment and park effects, and that are also normalized so that 100 is the league average, if you just want a quick look at how good a specific guy is.
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Jun 12, 2014 23:17
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Really I was just looking at the Mariners rotation, I know Felix and Iwakuma own hugely, but I guess Young and Elias are pretty solid lower rotation guys as well. Our bullpen looks decent and we've got Rodney to close! Things look pretty solid from the pitching front for the Mariners, if only I could say the same about our hitters. Oh well, Jones has been pretty okay for a rookie and I'm sure theyll do something in the off-season (no)
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Jun 12, 2014 23:44
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Also bullpen guys will have lower ERAs because they only face a few batters and don't have to pace themselves.
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Jun 13, 2014 00:03
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Austrian mook posted:Really I was just looking at the Mariners rotation, I know Felix and Iwakuma own hugely, but I guess Young and Elias are pretty solid lower rotation guys as well. Our bullpen looks decent and we've got Rodney to close! Things look pretty solid from the pitching front for the Mariners, if only I could say the same about our hitters. Oh well, Jones has been pretty okay for a rookie and I'm sure theyll do something in the off-season (no) Pitching is the only way we are above 500. We're way on the bottom for almost every offensive category, its kind of funny actually
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Jun 13, 2014 00:52
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bawfuls posted:
This is so true. ERA isn't the best stat because it can vary a lot due to external factors (defense, park factors, simple bad luck) but some pitchers can keep it relatively low in spite of not having the best peripheral stats (or stats that usually combine to show a more complete picture of the pitcher than just ERA). You really have to look at a variety of stats and look at stats over a the course of a few seasons if you want to know how sustainable a pitcher's performance is.
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Jun 13, 2014 15:37
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Drunk Tomato posted:Pitching is the only way we are above 500. We're way on the bottom for almost every offensive category, its kind of funny actually Remember when Felix pitched a perfect game and we won off a single run scored in like the 8th? Just, Mariners as gently caress. This team used to have so many good hitters and now we have like, Cano and Seager. I love this dumb team, I remember someone telling me we almost signed Tanaka as well, could you imagine?
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Jun 13, 2014 17:14
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Austrian mook posted:Remember when Felix pitched a perfect game and we won off a single run scored in like the 8th? Just, Mariners as gently caress. This team used to have so many good hitters and now we have like, Cano and Seager. I love this dumb team, I remember someone telling me we almost signed Tanaka as well, could you imagine? The pitching staff would allow 300 runs all year and we'd go 74-88.
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Jun 13, 2014 21:47
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my favorite quick and dirty stats OPS and OPS against.
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Jun 13, 2014 22:31
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Austrian mook posted:Remember when Felix pitched a perfect game and we won off a single run scored in like the 8th? Just, Mariners as gently caress. This team used to have so many good hitters and now we have like, Cano and Seager. I love this dumb team, I remember someone telling me we almost signed Tanaka as well, could you imagine? Well it is the Mariners, we can't have hot bats and good pitching at the same time. Well about every 10 years the stars align... so maybe soon.
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Jun 14, 2014 02:17
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tadashi posted:This is so true. ERA isn't the best stat because it can vary a lot due to external factors (defense, park factors, simple bad luck) but some pitchers can keep it relatively low in spite of not having the best peripheral stats (or stats that usually combine to show a more complete picture of the pitcher than just ERA). You really have to look at a variety of stats and look at stats over a the course of a few seasons if you want to know how sustainable a pitcher's performance is. here's a good example of why ERA is an extremely flawed stat: in a game earlier this year, CC Sabathia gave up 3 home runs. He was only charged with 1 earned run.
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Jun 14, 2014 16:42
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bluh posted:here's a good example of why ERA is an extremely flawed stat: in a game earlier this year, CC Sabathia gave up 3 home runs. He was only charged with 1 earned run. What? How? I thought Home Runs were always credited to the pitcher giving them up (ignoring men on base via error, catcher interference, etc), so he should definitely have at least 3 ER?
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Jun 14, 2014 16:54
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Everblight posted:What? How? I thought Home Runs were always credited to the pitcher giving them up (ignoring men on base via error, catcher interference, etc), so he should definitely have at least 3 ER? If an error occurs on what should have been the third out, all runs scored after that are unearned.
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Jun 14, 2014 17:16
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Deteriorata posted:If an error occurs on what should have been the third out, all runs scored after that are unearned. I feel like I saw a Mariners game as a kid where the pitcher gave up like 5 runs after a two-out error, so none of them were earned.
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Jun 14, 2014 17:57
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Deteriorata posted:If an error occurs on what should have been the third out, all runs scored after that are unearned. Only for the team and the pitcher who in the game at the time of the error. If another pitcher comes in for relief, he doesn't get that benefit of the doubt. So with 2 outs with Pitcher A pitching, Hitter B reaches on an error. Pitcher C comes in relief, and then promptly gives up a homerun to Hitter D. Pitcher A would be charged with an unearned run, Pitcher C would be charged with an earned run, and the team gets 2 unearned runs.
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Jun 14, 2014 18:07
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I was watching Ken Burns' Baseball a few weeks ago, the one on the 1910s (the third inning?), and I feel like someone on this board (probably jefferson), cast doubt on the accuracy on the popular narrative of both the Black Sox Scandal and Ty Cobb. Am I remembering this correctly? Even if this is correct, does someone care to remind me why the popular narratives are wrong?
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Jun 14, 2014 18:14
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Basically Cobb's biographer, Al Stump, was completely full of poo poo. I'll let Prime Minister Pete Nice give you a long introduction and to a very in depth PDF http://haulsofshame.com/blog/?p=874 In the case of the Black Sox, the popular narrative is Eight Men Out, which is full of errors, particularly in the case of its portrayals of Joe Jackson and Eddie Cicotte Groucho Marxist fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Jun 14, 2014 |
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Jun 14, 2014 18:26
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Twin Cinema posted:I was watching Ken Burns' Baseball a few weeks ago, the one on the 1910s (the third inning?), and I feel like someone on this board (probably jefferson), cast doubt on the accuracy on the popular narrative of both the Black Sox Scandal and Ty Cobb. Am I remembering this correctly? Even if this is correct, does someone care to remind me why the popular narratives are wrong? A lot of the worst Ty Cobb stories came from the Al Stump book, who was later discredited. E: Shockingly beaten
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Jun 14, 2014 18:27
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Groucho Marxist posted:Basically Cobb's biographer, Al Stump, was completely full of poo poo. I'll let Prime Minister Pete Nice give you a long introduction and to a very in depth PDF Thanks for the link. Yeah, I should have specifically asked about Joe Jackson. I think it was jefferson who said the book portrays him as a small-town, illiterate rube, but that he was more of a factor than what Eight Men Out presents. I can't remember what was said about Cicotte.
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Jun 14, 2014 18:38
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Groucho Marxist posted:Basically Cobb's biographer, Al Stump, was completely full of poo poo. I'll let Prime Minister Pete Nice give you a long introduction and to a very in depth PDF I've mentioned it a few times, but there's a book called Burying the Black Sox about the scandal that reveals (shockingly) the owners didn't really give a poo poo who was guilty or not and so appointed landis to paint with broad strokes. They were partially right to do so since two of the three previous World Serieses were considered suspect and were likely thrown as well. When Landis did the hatchet job, he promised players leniency if they testified, and Comiskey helped push some players in that direction. Landis' idea of leniency was kicking them out of the game for life as opposed to jail time I guess which he had no legal authority to do. The league was happy because it hosed over Comiskey and everyone hated Comiskey anyway. The trial was a complete joke from the start and the "confessions" of a few players may have been completely made up for the sake of cleaning the game up. the story of ciccotte and joe Jackson are still largely incomplete and probably always will be. There's no doubt that a number of the players threw games, it's just that we'll never know who did what for sure because the trial was so sloppy and Landis et al had no desire or interest in being honest and fair. The broken bones fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Jun 14, 2014 |
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Jun 14, 2014 19:26
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If the best possible batting order will always be OBP, highest to lowest, why hasn't Theo or Beane told their manager to write the lineup that way for a season, maybe updating weekly?
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Jun 14, 2014 20:06
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Because you just can't order your manager to make the lineup the way you see fit.
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Jun 14, 2014 20:31
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Everblight posted:If the best possible batting order will always be OBP, highest to lowest, why hasn't Theo or Beane told their manager to write the lineup that way for a season, maybe updating weekly? Best possible batting order isn't OBP highest to lowest, it's probably not a big effect, and you have to please the players. That said, BJ Upton and Derek Jeter shouldn't be batting second.
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Jun 14, 2014 20:56
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jackofarcades posted:Best possible batting order isn't OBP highest to lowest, it's probably not a big effect, and you have to please the players. You'd generally want high OBP for the first couple guys, preferably with a guy hitting second who can hit to right field to move the runner from 1st to 3rd. Then you want your high slugging percentage guys who can drive the runs in. I never really cared about the bottom three or four in the order when I coached, although I probably should have. Of course, it doesn't actually work that way most of the time, but the percentages are in your favor, at least.
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Jun 14, 2014 21:05
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Everblight posted:If the best possible batting order will always be OBP, highest to lowest, why hasn't Theo or Beane told their manager to write the lineup that way for a season, maybe updating weekly? Not only is that not the best batting order (your #3 hitter should be the 5th-best, breaking up same-handed platoon hitters is actually valuable, etc.), writing that in assumes that whatever subset of a player's stats you're using is perfectly predictive of their performance on a given day. While statistics are excellent at predicting performance over a long sample, discounting a lot of the "intangible" factors that form silly narratives, managers absolutely have access to information that can affect day-to-day optimal lineups.
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Jun 14, 2014 22:09
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Groucho Marxist posted:Basically Cobb's biographer, Al Stump, was completely full of poo poo. I'll let Prime Minister Pete Nice give you a long introduction and to a very in depth PDF Was this really written by one of the guys in 3rd Bass? EDIT: holy crap, it was. When worlds collide! Lumpy fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Jun 15, 2014 |
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Jun 15, 2014 01:32
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Lumpy posted:Was this really written by one of the guys in 3rd Bass? EDIT: holy crap, it was. When worlds collide! Yeah these days he's an authority on forged memorabilia, mostly because he was a forger in the past.
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Jun 15, 2014 02:03
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