Up until first pitch, use the comments section to predict who you think will be the Sunburst Player of the Game. (be sure to use a valid email address while leaving the comment). The commenter that correctly predicts who we will name the Sunburst Player of the Game the most times prior to the all-star game, will win two tickets to a second-half game. Runners-up get their choice of a t-shirt. [Click HERE for rules]
Check Marc Topkin’s blog for the starting lineups.
The GBT – The Good, The Bad and The Telling sandwich, where The Bad is nice and lean and the The Telling is ripe.
click above image for boxscore
THE GOOD: Wade Davis. Big Dub got stronger as the night went on, retiring the last 11 batters he faced for his second big league win…Carl Crawford. Well it wasn’t #100 or even #80, but CC did steal his 60th base of the season to set a franchise record…Defense. We really miss the defense of 2008, but every once and a while we get a reminder. Last night BJ Upton made two great catches, including one of the over-the-shoulder variety while running full speed for the first out in the 7th. And Gabe Gross showed off his QB arm to end the first, throwing out a runner at home…Well, there’s that…Last night was the Rays 81st win of the season, thus assuring them of their 2nd ever non-losing season…
THE BAD: 20,701. As in the combined attendance for the last two games, barely breaking 10,000 each night…Captain Hook. The ends of these games are really getting tough to watch. Last night Joe Maddon used 5 pitchers to record the final 6 outs.
THE TELLING: BJ Upton was back in the leadoff spot with Jason Bartlett getting the night off…With 5 games remaining in the regular season, each of the starting pitchers will now be making their final starts of the year, beginning with James Shields tonight…Rookie pitchers have started 56 games for the Rays this season.
SUNBURST PLAYER OF THE GAME: Wade Davis
DEVIL DOGS WEBTOPIA…
Up until first pitch, use the comments section to predict who you think will be the Sunburst Player of the Game. (be sure to use a valid email address while leaving the comment). The commenter that correctly predicts who we will name the Sunburst Player of the Game the most times prior to the all-star game, will win two tickets to a second-half game. Runners-up get their choice of a t-shirt. [Click HERE for rules]
Check Marc Topkin’s blog for the starting lineups.
Yesterday we showed that, over time, Wins is a good indicator of how good a pitcher is. However, with any good statistic, there are exceptions that prove the rule. Today, we will look at those pitchers for whom Wins does not indicate how well or how poorly they have pitched.
In yesterday’s post we showed that there is a strong correlation between a pitcher’s ERA+ and how often they are credited with a win. In fact, that chart gives us a formula that can be used to predict how often a pitcher will win a game based on their ERA+:
Predicted Win Percentage* = (0.0034*ERA+) + 0.0293
*In this case we are measuring Win Percentage as wins per game started. This differs from the traditional method of measuring Win Percentage in which Wins are only compared to Losses.
Using that formula, we can look at every pitcher with 600 innings pitched over the last four seasons (150ip/season) and use their Predicted Win Percentage to calculate how many games they should have won.
Surprisingly, 38 of the 51 pitchers (74.5%) were within 5 wins of their predicted total for the past 4 seasons combined (complete list after the jump). Only 7 pitchers (13.7%) deviated from their expected win total by more than 8 wins (>2 wins per season).
Not surprisingly, Josh Beckett has benefited greatly from pitching for the Red Sox the past four years. Meanwhile, Matt Cain has fallen victim to the anemic offense of the Giants. Vicente Padilla has been helped by the Rangers strong offense, having twice won 14 games despite not having an ERA under 4.50 the last 4 seasons. Meanwhile, Jarrod Washburn and Zach Duke have lost a lot of games despite pitching close to league average.
On the other hand, we were surprised to see how lucky Justin Verlander has been with the Tigers, especially when one considers that he went 11-17 last year.
Still, the most surprising aspect of all of this is that only 7 of the 51 pitchers deviated by more than 2 wins per season over the last 4 years. That is the same number of pitchers that were within 1.5 wins of their expected win total, further supporting the notion that Wins is indeed a good evaluator of a starting pitcher.
Full list of pitchers expected wins versus observed wins after the jump…
It is time for one of our favorite annual features, the Anti-Pennant Race, the race for the worst record in baseball. The reward for the “winner” is the first pick in next year’s amateur draft. Last year marked the first season in which the Rays did not win the race, having won the Anti-Pennant in 2006 and 2007.
Without further ado, we present the 4th Annual David Price Sweepstakes* and the race for the top pick in the 2010 draft!
Notes on the Anti-Pennant Race...
*In 2006, the top pick was not a sure thing, but David Price was the clear favorite. Without an obvious favorite for the 2008 draft, we decided to name this feature after the inaugural namesake and have kept it ever since.
The GBT – The Good, The Bad and The Telling sandwich, where The Bad is nice and lean and the The Telling is ripe.
click above image for boxscore
THE GOOD: Zuper Duper Utility Zorilla. Ben Zobrist is so awesome, he started the game at first base, hit a home run and made a catch near the right field wall to possibly save the game in the 9th. He has now started a game this season at every position except catcher and pitcher. Now if we can get him to start a game at manager. That would be cool…Willy Aybar. Aybar has played more games in September (21) than any other month and the regular PT is serving him well, as he is hitting .302 with a .407 OBP. Last night it was a pinch-hit 3-run HR in the 8th to tie the game.
THE BAD: Jeff Niemann. 10 baserunners in 3+ innings. Joe Maddon on Niemann: “He just had no command today, and I truly believe a large part of it is fatigue.” But we bet he still makes his last start later this week…3:17. As in the time it took to play a late-September game between two not-in-contention teams. Why? Ask Captain Hook, Joe Maddon. He used 6 pitchers to get the final 9 outs.
THE TELLING: The Rays 4 home runs set a team record. They have now hit 193 this season. Three of them were of the solo variety which is standard for the Rays this season. Of the 193 home runs, 124 (64.2%) have come with the bases empty…
SUNBURST PLAYER OF THE GAME: Willy Aybar.
DEVIL DOGS WEBTOPIA…
Up until first pitch, use the comments section to predict who you think will be the Sunburst Player of the Game. (be sure to use a valid email address while leaving the comment). The commenter that correctly predicts who we will name the Sunburst Player of the Game the most times prior to the all-star game, will win two tickets to a second-half game. Runners-up get their choice of a t-shirt. [Click HERE for rules]
Check Marc Topkin’s blog for the starting lineups.
Sunburst leaders and the contest leaderboard is after the jump…
| Evan Longoria | 18.5 |
| Ben Zobrist | 16.5 |
| Carlos Pena | 12 |
| Carl Crawford | 10 |
| BJ Upton | 10 |
| Jeff Niemann | 8 |
| Jason Bartlett | 8 |
| David Price | 7 |
| Willy Aybar | 6 |
| James Shields | 5 |
| Scott Kazmir | 5 |
| Gabe Kapler | 4.5 |
| Dioner Navarro | 4 |
| Pat Burrell | 4 |
| Gabe Gross | 2.5 |
| Matt Garza | 2.5 |
| Andy Sonnanstine | 2 |
| Matt Joyce | 2 |
| Wade Davis | 2 |
| Lance Cormier | 1.5 |
| Gregg Zaun | 1 |
| Aki Iwamura | 1 |
| Grant Balfour | 1 |
| Reid Brignac | 1 |
| Winston Abreu | 0.5 |
How many times have you seen it written or heard somebody say:
“Wins is a useless way to evaluate a starting pitcher”
We have heard it so many times, that we have started wondering why we still track Wins for pitchers.
There are certainly reasons to believe this. How many times have we seen a pitcher give up less than 3 runs in 8+ innings and not win the game? Or how often do we see a great pitcher on a bad team win 12 games or fewer?
But does this mean Wins is a completely useless statistic? Over time, shouldn’t a a good pitcher win more games than a bad pitcher, regardless of other factors?
To answer this question, we looked at every pitcher over the last four seasons (2006-2009) with at least 600 innings pitched (150ip/season). We then removed anybody that had more than 10% of their appearances in relief. We ended up with a list of 51 pitchers. We tallied up their wins (as a starting pitcher) in those four seasons and compared it to their ERA+*.
What we see is a very clear trend. As a pitcher’s ERA+ goes up (bigger values are better, 100 is average), their win total goes up. Are there exceptions? Of course. Every statistic has exceptions. But even in the face of contradictions, we still see a decent correlation (r-squared = 0.51**).
Of course, a pitcher’s win total will be affected by the number of starts they make. So, instead of wins, let’s see if ERA+ can be used to predict a pitcher’s win percentage, and vice versa.
Now we see an even stronger correlation (r-squared=0.54) indicating that wins is actually a very good indicator of how good a pitcher is. Quite simply, better pitchers win more games.
The problem with Wins as an evaluator of starting pitchers is not that it is useless statistic. It is simply a matter of sample size. In a single game, a win or no win is not a good indicator. Why? Small sample size (n=1). However, ERA, for example, is a per inning stat. So in a single game, a pitcher’s ERA will have 5-9 data points (n>>1). Over the course of a full season, stats like ERA+, FIP and tRA have a sample size of 150-220 for each pitcher.
Can we use Wins to evaluate a pitcher over the course of one season? Maybe. We are talking about 28-33 starts. That is still a small sample size considering the number of factors that are involved. But we can be relatively certain that an 18-game winner is better than a 5-game winner (with similar number of starts). The other variables should be less of a factor in that case. However, when comparing two pitchers with a similar number of wins, those other factors (team defense, scoring, ballpark, etc.) become much more important.
So should we use Wins when voting for the All-Star teams or the Cy young Award? Probably not. Stats like ERA+, FIP and tRA are still better measures of how good a pitcher is (although we have minor quibbles with each). However, that does not mean Wins is a useless category. Over the course of several seasons or even a career we should be able to get a decent idea of how good a starting pitcher has been based on how often they win games.
TOMORROW: We will take a look at the individual pitchers that do deviate from the trend and have either been very lucky or very unlucky. You might be surprised how small the list is.
Notes on the above post are found after the jump
It is time for one of our favorite annual features, the Anti-Pennant Race, the race for the worst record in baseball. The reward for the “winner” is the first pick in next year’s amateur draft. Last year marked the first season in which the Rays did not win the race, having won the Anti-Pennant in 2006 and 2007.
Without further ado, we present the 4th Annual David Price Sweepstakes* and the race for the top pick in the 2010 draft!
Notes on the Anti-Pennant Race...
*In 2006, the top pick was not a sure thing, but David Price was the clear favorite. Without an obvious favorite for the 2008 draft, we decided to name this feature after the inaugural namesake and have kept it ever since.
The GBT – The Good, The Bad and The Telling sandwich, where The Bad is nice and lean and the The Telling is ripe.
click above image for boxscore
THE GOOD: Death by Singles. The Rays scored 7 runs in the 8th and 9th on 6 singles, 3 walks, a hit by pitch and scored the go ahead run on a Fernando Perez safety squeeze. Again, why teams don’t have all of their infielders 10 feet from home plate when Perez is batting left-handed is beyond us, but we’ll take it…The New Bucs. Or is it The Old Devil Rays? Either way, the Rays are still not the worst team in the Bay Area.
THE BAD: David Price. 94 pitches in 5 innings. Only 58 for strikes. Not his best day… Randy Choate. After scoring 3 in the top of the 8th to pull within 2, Choate can’t give up a home run in the bottom of the 8th. Just can’t happen. That is the sort of the thing that will usually kill a team’s hope. And to think he got the Win for that effort is sad…Improbable And Rare. The Rays rallied from down 3 in the 9th for the win. How many times did they do something similar in ’08? Once a week? Once every 2 weeks? This year, we can probably count them on one hand that is missing a couple of fingers…That’s Gross. As Gabe Gross goes, so go the Rays? Gross went 0-3 and is now 3-31 (.097) in September.
THE TELLING: With 7 games remaining, the Rays need only finish 3-4 for a winning record…The loss by the Rangers moved the Red Sox one win or one Rangers loss away from clinching at least a tie for the AL Wild Card…Next up for the Rays is Baltimore, who just lost their 10th consecutive game. Who was the last team to lose to the Orioles? If you answered the Rays, you win!
SUNBURST PLAYER OF THE GAME: Ben Zobrist.
DEVIL DOGS WEBTOPIA…
