Article: Twins To Sign RHP Kevin Correia

[whydidnt]

Here's what the 'normalized' stats for Correia do. We keep the 3 Most effective starters we had last year. AKA the ones who kept a decent ERA, Diamond, DeVries and Deduno. We leave their innings intact. We then input Correia's adjusted numbers. This leaves us with 379 1/3 innings to fill. If we keep it averaged, aka we got 380 innings of 6.36 (the ERA of the rest of the guys who trotted out there) the rotation surrenders 502 runs. That's 26 runs less than the original total. AKA 2.6 Wins. This is calculated at fangraphs to be worth roughly 13 million on the open market. Unless we're arguing that Fangraphs WAR value is inaccurate, Correia last year was worth more than he's reportedly contracted for 2013-14 to the Twins.

Putting aside the fact that even Fangraphs thinks that WAR for pitchers has problems, I don't for a minute think 2.6 wins is meaningful to a team that lost 95 games. Let's not forget that last year was Correia's best in the last 3, if he regresses further that 2.6wins might turn into 1 or zero wins. I don't see the point in spending the 5 million for a guy who is going to be negligibly better than any old guy in the system. If the Twins had 4good starters already and were just looking a #5, it might be a different story.

[LoganJones]

One last bit that's interesting, and less dependent on averaging. If you just use NormalizedCorreia to make 29 starts and knock out out Blackburn and Marquis's starts, you're left needing 2 Swarzak starts which were pretty much all 4 inning 4 run affairs, so we can say that's 9.1 innings of 8.1 ERA. Then we mostly are using actual starts that actually happened (apart from the computer starts that NormCor made). The only issue would be rest, but since were just trying to place value, we can forgive some of these slight inaccuracies.

 

This gives the starting rotation 896 inning allowing 491 runs. This means NormCor is worth 37 runs to last year's rotation. That's almost 4 wins (18.5 Million in FanGraphs dollars). This contract is NOT that outrageous.

[YourHouseIsMyHouse]

I love the quality start stat. What matters for a start is did you give your team a good chance to win or not. Much better than ERA which blends every start together. Now, whether or not the precise definition is correct can he debated, but I find the stat highly useful for assessing performance.

 

Well maybe useful until you consider nearly every pitcher in baseball can average one. (4.50ERA>)

[Mike Sixel]

Um, I was not, and never would, talk about pitcher wins. I thought it was clear I was talking about the likelihood a team wins. Does not really matter anyway.

[Mike Sixel]

Did no one read the part where I said the precise definition is debatable? Not sure how I could have made that more clear. I have completely lost interest in this topic.....

[twinsfaninsaudi]

How is it that they didn't sign Paul Maholm last year?

[LoganJones]

He wanted to stay in the NL.

[twinsfaninsaudi]

He wanted to stay in the NL.

 

Thanks. I feel better now.

[ericchri]

Putting aside the fact that even Fangraphs thinks that WAR for pitchers has problems, I don't for a minute think 2.6 wins is meaningful to a team that lost 95 games.

 

No moves are allowed unless they improve the team by at least 5 wins over last year...