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Alex

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Everything posted by Alex

  1. Alex
    Sure but you've narrowed your field considerably, 43 pitchers wouldn't give every team in the league two starters. Additionally, it completely ignores young pitchers who are better than those. So again, it really tells us nothing about most pitchers in the league.
  2. Alex
    Right, I'm picking pitchers that all pitched a qualified number of innings. There are 88 of them. Their range of value and amount success is widely varying and does not really correlate to IP (except at the fringes, and there are even exceptions at the top end: Clayton Richards). Thus, how could it be the most important statistic when it doesn't even relate to how successful a pitcher was in THAT season? Cherry picking Diamond was an interesting choice. Diamond ranked 80th in IP, or the bottom 10%. Would you say 90% of the pitchers on the list were better than he was? Picking any other stat gives us a much better picture of his actual value and success. In WAR he ranked 45th. In ERA, he ranked 31st, xFIP: 42nd, K/9 86th, BB/9 4th, HR/9: 31st. So, his IP was only close in ranking him as a pitcher to his K/9, but everything else he was in the top half. So, if IP is actually the worst at showing you what kind of year he had, how can IP be the most important stat? I'd never advocate picking one stat, and you obviously have to consider IP when looking at stats to make sure they aren't flukes or small sample sizes, the same way you would with PA for hitters, as it gives context, but that is all. Again, except for the edges (Verlander, etc..), but it's a ridiculous stat to call the most important.
  3. Alex
    I'd encourage you to go to Fangraphs here: Major League Leaderboards » 2012 » Pitchers » Dashboard | FanGraphs Baseball You can play around with what stat you'd like to rank pitchers by, WAR, ERA, IP, xFIP, whatever. It's interesting to note, and not surprising that IP will correlate with what most of us consider good pitchers and bad pitchers at the extreme ends of the spectrum. However, for a massive number of pitchers, it doesn't correlate at all. Jarrod Hudson had a 3.47 ERA but only threw 187 IP, putting him in the bottom 3rd of the majors of qualified pitchers in IP. There are a ton of pitchers like this: Samardzjja, Lynn, Hellickson, Moore, Hudson... How can IP be the most important stat if there are pitchers like this in the bottom of the league in IP? Meanwhile Clayton Richard and Justin Masterson threw over 200 IP. I'd take any of the pitchers I named above over them for last season's performance. How can that be considered if IP is the most important stat?
  4. Alex
    Heh, I suppose that's true, that not pitching a lot of innings probably means that, for whatever reason (injury or performance) a pitcher won't likely pitch "a lot" in the future (whatever that number means), but it does seem like a guy is durable until he isn't as you point out.
  5. Alex
    Ok, serious question. Is pitching a lot of innings is a predictor of being durable and pitching a lot of innings in the future?
  6. Alex
    I actually think it's the opposite. If he hits better in general, the driving in runs thing will happen more often. Or, if he were to come up more often with runners on base, that would help, too.
  7. Alex
    I think that's a fair point and probably is what he meant (and why I asked), it's just that references to that I hear from the front office are almost always behind what a lot of other teams are doing in terms of statistics. I'd like to find something that's heading that direction in their comments, I guess.
  8. Alex
    I probably read too much into things, but Ryan's focus on Morneau driving in runs does not do much to persuade me they've moved beyond antiquated stats.
  9. Alex
    Do you mean the fact that they value durability over talent is a huge problem?
  10. Alex
    Not Worley?
  11. Alex
    All good points (and why I agreed with the post that single season doesn't tell you much and cited Willingham and Plouffe); however, to be fair, I read your initial posts the same way as ashburyjohn.
  12. Alex
    Thank you. It doesn't mean it's perfect, but people did seem to have a big misunderstanding of how it is calculated. One season isn't a great sample size for a few reasons (Josh Willingham and Trevor Plouffe, for example, are much better at Target Field) but it's more well thought out than simply comparing pitching staffs.
  13. Alex
    You reminded me of how I felt this time last season. And while I was still frustrated they cut payroll, I was far more hopeful than I am this season. The Twins had signed a two excellent hitters, a middle infielder who at least be solid, and Morneau and Mauer likely had to be more productive than they were the previous year. The pitching staff wasn't a big change, but Baker would be back in the rotation and hopefully Liriano could figure things out. Their back end of the rotation signing wasn't all that exciting but it was just the 5th starter. Capps was a frustration on many levels, but there was a back-up plan. Of course, we all know how the starting pitching went, but I had far more hope prior to last season than I do this, even though the team is bound to improve; it's sort of by default.
  14. Alex
    Other than in recent interviews where Dave St. Peter pretty clearly stated that Ryan has plenty more freedom to spend money than he has this offseason.
  15. Alex
    When he was signed I noted that he has a tendency to avoid the balk.
  16. Alex
    To be clear, I wasn't referring to this year but last year, clearly a wasted year of both development and evaluation for Dozier because he was way above his skill level for developmental purpose. In fact, you could see by the end of the season it had clearly messed with his confidence and he mentioned recently it also hurt his mechanics. So, just brining someone up doesn't tell you what kind of player he is going to be or could, especially if the timing is wrong. I'd agree, though, that he probably needs to be back in the majors this year, but I think it's too late. Had he played in the minors last year, I think you'd see a better Dozier this spring.
  17. Alex
    Can someone explain what effect this would have or why there's even a theory that it would? I'm being serious here. Also, does it somehow negatively affect our pitching as well and what is Josh Willingham's super power to negate the effect?
  18. Alex
    You didn't, though. Also, your opener was that winning teams are sometimes about chemistry and saberstats, though. The 1991 crushed the stats, and especially excelled in "saberstats." As to your last point, if the team is competitive (near .500) I think most of us will be happy to say we were wrong about the staff itself, but yes, we'll probably point out that we were right in that we should have gone after better pitchers, middle infield, or whatever with the available cash, especially if a guy like Marcum is healthy and has a great year. If we're competitive but Correia is the weak link, Ryan will definitely have painted himself into a corner. I guess my return question is what if the staff, besides Worley is worse than expected (like if Diamond regresses)? What if the lineup is worse (as unlikely as I think that is)? What then? Will those of you who championed/put faith in Ryan's moves say he made some mistakes or will you, like Phil Mackey, fall back on "The Twins were never going to win a division title anyway" as an excuse for a pathetic offseason (edit: as far as improving the major league club is concerned)?
  19. Alex
    Context/era (baseball era) is important. The comparison between these two teams is, frankly, laughable, and I am sorry to put it that way. 1991 Twins staff ranked (AL): #10 in K/9, #2 in BB/9, #5 in HR/9, and #3rd in BABIP. That's a darn good staff with all that combined. Even with low strike totals, the other peripheral numbers were excellent. We'd be lucky (not to mention stunned) if the staff of next year manages those kinds of combined rankings. Including Harden is a bit of a leap. Chances of him starting at all, much less a full season is a massive leap. The 1991 Twins hitters were tops in OBP, 2nd in SLG, 1st in wOBA, #1 in AVG. They were 4th in runs, but were arguably the best hitting team of the season. Chemistry, sure, they were absolutely likeable guys, but they were an awesome team statistically as well. These two teams don't compare. They weren't gutting out wins on chemistry.
  20. Alex
    There are "struggles" and then there is just being overmatched. I'd argue that Ben Revere "struggled" in his first nearly full season in 2011. His play was a mixture of darn right terrible to solid starter type numbers. He had a rough May (34 AB), an excellent June (.294 AVG/.333 OBP), an awful July (.218/.280), an improved August (.255/.300), and a excellent Sept. (.311/.342). This, after a short stint in AAA that proved he was ready for the majors. Dozier, by contrast, didn't really have those ups and downs and didn't put together more than a couple of consecutive games of what looked like major league talent . His numbers did get slightly better, but his best full month was an OPS of .611 and he never cracked a .300 OBP. His last month started out better in terms of SLG % because of a couple of HR, but AVG and OBP were both down again. (I'll add that even though I didn't think the Twins should have called him up when they did, I don't think there was a reason to send him down at that point either and would have liked to see him finish the season).
  21. Alex
    Dozier's experience shows the danger of bringing up some players before they are ready. He got worse once he reached the majors as the season went on, and the organization ironically lost faith in him after putting him in a position where he couldn't succeed.
  22. Alex
    My point was overall whether or not the improvements in the lineup would be able to replace what was lost both defensively and offensively. I'd agree that the Twins should be better offensively next year, but as many pointed out, there are question marks. Just offensively, though, The two biggest are Parmelee and whomever plays CF. Parmelee should definitely be a plus, but I don't think it's unreasonable to assume CF won't be an upgrade offensively. Florimon's career minor league OPS is 100 points less than Dozier and even Doziers awful season was better than Florimon's MLB at bats. So, I don't think it's too big of a jump to say Dozier/Carrol/Casilla getting most of the at-bats might actually be better than Florimon/Carroll/Escobar (especially if Escobar is getting more ABs than Carroll) as frightening as that sounds. In total that leaves 4 of 8 positions (both MI spots, CF, and LF) which, at least IMO, have a good chance to be worse than last season. If Parmelee has the season everyone hopes, he'll likely make up for a good chunk of that, provided they're not too far behind last year's numbers. On the other hand if CF ends up being better then this year's lineup is dramatically improved. You did a great article last season on the starting pitching involving coin tosses, and while I think the offense will improve it does rest on some coin tosses. If a couple come up heads, the offense could be dramatically better.
  23. Alex
    I agree. The difference is Hick's age, of course. Dozier has always played well when he was a the top end of the age spectrum in the minor leagues, which is why a lot of us predicted his numbers wouldn't hold. I do have the same fear of Hicks, though, but I think he's got more chance to succeed and at least his defense is top notch.
  24. Alex
    Absolutely. Hard to argue that the rotation won't be better (even if some of us would have liked to see more done with it than was). A lot of people focus on that and think the team will be better overall just for that, but that assumes the lineup is going to be at least the same and that too often defense is getting ignored. The big lineup/defense question for me is will the CF/RF combo of Hicks(?)/Parmelee not only match Span/Revere offensively but do enough with the bat to make up for their definitely weaker defense? For me, it's very likely a downgrade overall but even just offensively unless Hicks is more than ready. For me, because of shifts like that and other questions (no real backup plan at SS, for example), the team might not be better overall than last year.
  25. Alex
    Yep, loved that one.
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