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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 19th, 2010 at 9:23 am and is filed under Polls.
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Wins are overrated, but so is WAR -- however, WAR less overrated than wins. Some sabermetricians treat a WAR of 57 the same as someone treats 300 wins. Both are not good.
I wasn't trying to discredit your argument, just the idea that Yankee pitchers of late deserve extra credit for pitching in the AL East which has been asserted on many occasions on this blog. You just happened to bring it up when I had a chance to look into the numbers. Sorry if it came off as attempting to discredit your argument specifically.
Baltimore's offense in that period was basically average except for 1996. For 1995-1999 Baltimore was: -26, +77, +15, +5, +13.
The big negatives were because for 95-97 Detroit was -76, -89, -13 and Toronto was -88, -106, -143. Then Tampa was -192 for 1998. In 2000 BAL -63, BOS -65, TB -124 and TOR +4. 2001 was BAL -100, BOS -15, TB -115, TOR -20.
Thanks Evan, I wonder how the numbers would look if you threw out the worst team in each division given just how horrible Tampa was in those first few years.
I think Pettitte's WAR using your preferred formula of Career WAR + 7 best/2 would give you 42. He's definitely a more career guy, but his playoff numbers count more to me even if people want to argue he still has a 3.90 playoff ERA too. I'd weigh playoffs numbers a little more heavily and so 3.90 playoff ERA would be something more like 3.65 ERA.
Another problem I also have Blyleven is that even when he was on championship teams, Blyleven still wasn't the ace of those teams, so I don't buy the stuck on lousy teams argument. Why would it be unreasonable to expect one memorable dominant season from a HOF? I'm still waiting for someone to give me one season (and he only had 20) where you can actually say to yourself, "Wow, remember the year Blyleven had in 19whenever". Any dominant season, any killer strikeout season, anything. To further show you how useless the WAR(without any rationality) stat can be, take a look at who ranks under Blyleven for career WAR. Guys like Gibson, Carlton, amd Martinez. Please don't tell me that you can say with a straight face that you're taking Blyleven over any of these guys as your ace, please don't. Keep in mind those 3 guys all won CY Youngs on bad teams, so yes, it was possible for Blyleven to do the same. The difference is that Blyleven never did, let alone even get close in many votings. Andy, I do appreciate and thank you for all the work you do for the site, but again, he's a classic example of a compiler with a very good career.
Clemens is a jer_, but he should be in the Hall. I just heard Tim K. on ESPN say he thinks Arod, Bonds and Clemens could very well not get in the Hall --can we just fire Bud the Bum now!! Greenies are now illegal in the game, and you can't say they too didn't enhance performance to a degree...and, they were rampant for decades to perhaps more than a half-century. There's three tiers of PED from worst to less bad ---anabolic steroids, HGH, and cocaine/greenies, and one or another have almost always been part of the game --a bunch of hypocrites they are. You can even try the argument that greenies are every bit as bad as HGH since they were likely taken every day by many.
I get why some don't like Blyleven for the Hall, and I don't think he's a slam-dunk as many sabermetricians think he is, but he should be in (yes, I watched a good amount of Bly when I was younger). With that said, with your argument, Nolan Ryan is somewhat questionable too. Ryan never had any really memorable years and he was basically a slightly better Blyleven with 7 no-hitters and more strikeout power. Ryan is firmly in the Hall IMO, and Blyleven is a notch below that but in too.
What is appalling is these are the same guys that voted for Cy Young and MVP, and offered zero PED concessions in deliberating on the merits of their respective awards seasons. Ridiculous
I hear you, @Andy and @WanderingWinder. I'm even prepared to accept that those are the three best decision-making stats to use. But I would never make that final assessment without also knowing the W/L and save totals. One of the reasons is that neither would players. I don't think there's a player in MLB (including stathead types like Greinke and Lincecum) who would trade a 21-6 3.9 WAR season for a 16-11 5.1 WAR season or consider the latter better than the former in any meaningful way.
You are mixing apples and oranges and bananas and ham steaks and all sorts of stuff.
First, I couldn't care less what the players thought. Many of them know even less about stats than the writers. That's not really a condemnation of them, since it's not really their job to understand the stats, just to know how to play the best baseball they can.
Second, you can't really compare the seasons as you are, because the choices would not break down as such. The question should be, "Would you rather have a 3.9WAR pitcher or a 5.1WAR pitcher." If the circumstances they entered into are the same, than the 5.1WAR pitcher will end up with more Ws almost every time. Even holding to your argument, you are comparing performance and results. But if you asked them going into the playoffs which they would rather be, they'd all choose the former. The 5.1WAR pitcher performed better than the 3.9WAR pitcher, but the results don't indicate that because of things out of their control.
Sorry BSK, but when I read things like this above in #111, "First, I couldn't care less what the players thought. Many of them know even less about stats than the writers", I just cringe. Things like this will do nothing other than alienate sabermetricians from writers, players and just about anybody else that likes to look at more than just WAR, ERA+ and WPA. I will say it until I'm blue in the face, there are more ways than one to evaluate a player, and most methods have merit.
I agree with you that looking at W-L and other traditional statistics are important for award voting is important, though I disagree that Andy should have spent half his morning typing 10 different stats for 13 players into the poll, especially when we all have ready access to this information on this website. I tend to favor more traditional stats, especially ERA+ (granted the + is quite traditional, but I like the idea of park adjustment) a little more for evaluating seasons for awards voting and careers (on the grounds that getting outs, however it is done it the object and it seems unlikely that a pitcher will be lucky/unlucky in terms of BABiP type stats over the course of a career), but the SABR-type stats seem better for evaluating a player's likelihood for success going forward.
But the choice of seasons you present is akin to asking whether the player would rather be lucky or good. No one wants to have poor run support or poor defense. If you asked a starting pitcher whether he would rather throw a complete game one-hitter and lose 1-0 or struggle through 5 innings, give up 5 or 6 runs, but have his team hold on or comeback for a 10-9 win he would choose the latter. But he wouldn't argue after the second game that he had pitched better than he did in the first game.
JohnQ @ 99 and Andy @ 100- thank you, you both saved me a bunch of research & put it better than I could have anyways.
And Matt Y @ 101 Other than the pre 1900 pitchers (who admittedly are plentiful on the list) there is no one who won 300 games who wouldn't be the number 1 starter on 98% of all pitching staffs. Even the weakest of the bunch (Sutton, Wynn & Ryan) were good enough to be number 1 on a pennant winner most years. And, while WAR has it's problems, I think the WAR list is generally an even better reflection of the relative worth of most of the pitchers.
I would however, take Juan Marichal (or Carl Hubbell or Jim Palmer or John Smoltz or Jim Bunning or about a dozen other pitchers lower on the list) over Don Drysdale.
How did this become a Bert Blyleven thread? I thought it was a '10 Cy Young post.
I guess this is directed at Biff or anyone else who doesn't want to believe Blyleven was dominant pitcher.
Here goes, and I don't need "WAR" or "Win Shares" to tell the story:
Blyleven was overlooked in his career because he played in the Midwest on mediocre/terrible teams before the age of ESPN, Cable, the Internet and MLB t.v. Main stream sports outlets underrated him because W/L is overrated and they put too much emphasis on W/L record. He spent 22 seasons in the big leagues and only played on 5 teams that won 90+ games in a season. And one of the teams '70 Twins happened in his rookie season and two others '88 Twins and the '89 Angels happened towards the end of his career. He was only on two teams, the '77 Rangers and the '79 Pirates that won 90+ games from the time he was 20-36 years old.
He also spent the first 10 years of his career pitching in good Hitter's Parks. He pitched mostly for average fielding teams. Also, his peak came early in his career when he was pitching out of the limelight for the early 70's Twins.
The case for Blyleven:
When he retired he was 3rd all time in K's with 3701. He's still ranked 5th all time.
He's ranked 9th all time in Shutouts with 60.
He Finished in the Top Ten in ERA+ 12 times, Top Five 7 times
He Finished in the Top Ten in ERA 10 times, Top Five 7 times
He Finished in the Top Ten in K's 15 times, Top Five 13 Times
He Finished in the Top Ten in Whip 11 times, Top Five 7 Times
He Finished in the Top Ten in K/9 14 times, Top Five 9 Times
He Finished in the Top Ten in K/BB 16 Times, Top Five 13 Times
He Finished in the Top Ten in BB/9 7 Times, Top Five 3 Times
He Finished in the Top Ten in Shutouts 10 Times, Top Five 9 Times, Top Three 7 Times.
He won 20 games for a bad '73 Twins team. He won 19 games for a horrible '84 Indians team and received the most votes in the Cy Young for a starting pitcher. He won 11 games for a horrible '81 Indians team during the strike and probably would have won 18 games if he was able to get 34 starts.
He won 17 games for bad '86 Twins team and he won 17 games for a bad Indians/Twins teams. He won 17 games for a bad '72 Twins team and 17 games for equally bad '74 Twins team.
He won two Championships, one with the '79 Pirates and one with the '87 Twins. He was excellent in the post season with a 5-1 record, a 2.47 ERA, a 1.077 Whip, and a 36k/8bb ratio.
Where did I say there was only one way to look at a player? All I said was that players don't really need to understand WAR or ERA+ to be good at what they do. If they do understand it, that's great. But I'd rather they understand the approach to the game that leads to the maximization of their skills. A player doesn't need to know the specific WPA of a SB vs a CS, they just need to know if and when it makes sense to try to steal (if they have the green light to do so on their own). You severely misinterpreted my point.
If players think Ws and RBIs are the most important stats to determine which players are the most talented, they are wrong. And that's okay. It's not their job to understand all of that. Just like a statistician doesn't need to know how to throw a curveball. Players play the game, writers report and analyze and write about the game, scouts observe and scout the game, and statisticians crunch numbers about the game. Each job has a different skill set, though there is obviously overlap between many of them. They need not all be on the same page of the book, so long as they are at least in the book. Far too often, sportswriters tend to be looking at completely different book. The same can be said at times for members of each of the other groups but, in my observation, sportswriters are currently the ones with the biggest gap between what they should be doing and what they are doing.
I think you mean "Matt Y." My post largely agreed with what you had to say. My point was that most players would rather win with a poor performance than lose with a good performance (or at least we would like to hope that most players feel this way).
My point about evaluating players for award voting is that I feel the awards should be more concerned with being evaluative rather than predictive. That is to say, I have no problem if a player lucks his way to an MVP, Cy Young or RoY, etc. because of an absurdly low/high BABiP. I factor in park factors to put various statistics in context, situational stats to factor out the hitting performances of teammates from Runs/RBIs. If I were working for a front office or were a fantasy player I would factor different stats differently because I am trying to predict future performance.
I voted for Lester, but Lee almost undoubtedly deserves it for completing so many games and walking so few batters. Still, I like Lester's K/9 and H/9 advantage, and I can't vote against my beloved Red Sox's ace.
So if Trevor Cahill pitched for a team like the Red Sox or Yanks, and had decent run support, he would be an eighteen game winner by now and possibly win 23-24 for the year. He won't win the CY Young because he plays for a team that can't score runs- but is that fair?
I agree that the WAR is the single best metric to evaluate a player b/c of its inclusivity, but it should be only a subset of how you evaluate a players worthiness of getting in the HALL. I think some base their decision 80% or more on the WAR, ERA+/OPS+ and WPA. 80% or even more than 50% is too high IMHO.
Generally, I agree with your stance regarding awards, but I do think that luck should be factored in if the results are close. You are right about evaluating vs predicting. Keith Law, who I generally really respect, often gets too predictive when discussing rewards. He doesn't think guys playing above their heads deserve All-Star nods and thinks that the ROY should be partly based on what a guy is likely to do in his career. I just can't support those ideas. I don't care if your year is a complete aberration... if you performed fantastically, you should be acknowledged as such. Whether you do it again matters not, because it has already been done. Otherwise, a guy like Cliff Lee might have missed his Cy Young, seeing as how it seemed so out of nowhere for him to pitch like that.
That is why I generally prefer stats that normalize for luck. If these are close and the next level down of stats, which don't/can't completely normalize for luck have one guy ahead, I'll go that way.
Can't disagree with giving the nod to the less lucky player, so to speak, as a tie breaker of sorts. If memory serves, Keith Law was a scout for the Blue Jays or had a front office job of some kind with them before he became a writer. Perhaps just a held over occupational hazard to have that line of thinking. Fortunately, I think he is generally out of step with that thinking, at least with respect to RoY. Voters seem to like the story of the player that came out of nowhere without much hype as opposed to the heavily touted prospect. Might almost make up for situations like this year where some writers seemed ready to anoint Heyward NL RoY before the season started and even while he was in the midst of an extended slump/stint on the DL, even though there were plenty of other, more deserving candidates.
OK, since Blyleven and Pettitte and level of competition continue to be discussed, I'll chime in with a little something from my ongoing research of 200+ game winners against each other. I know, a million asterisks, since some guys pitched in relief or were just starting or finishing their careers or had better offenses or whatever. Plus, lots of games where only one had a decision. Just sayin'.
Career, in games where both 200GW had the decision, counting postseason, Pettitte is 19-15, including 4-3 vs. Pedro (most common foe) and 3-3 vs. Moyer. As a Yankee, he is 18-14, including 13-6 in World Series winning seasons and 3-5 in 2001 and 2003.
Blyleven is 26-40. He's tied with Red Ruffing for worst win-loss differential. His best is against Sutton, 4-1, and worst against Gaylord Perry, Frank Tanana and Steve Carlton (0-4 vs. each). Most common foe is Morris (3-3). He did have a winning record in all three division-winning seasons (2-0 in '70, 4-3 in '79 and 2-1 in '87).
Does this help or hurt a case for either? I'm not sure without further data. But it does make me wonder if Berty fed off weak foes or if he was just betrayed by teammates against the really good ones.
August 19th, 2010 at 7:00 pm
Wins are overrated, but so is WAR -- however, WAR less overrated than wins. Some sabermetricians treat a WAR of 57 the same as someone treats 300 wins. Both are not good.
August 19th, 2010 at 7:09 pm
Regarding #99, I hope sabermetrecians take up Tiant's cause after Bly goes in. Tiant should be in IMO.
August 19th, 2010 at 7:14 pm
Matt Y,
I wasn't trying to discredit your argument, just the idea that Yankee pitchers of late deserve extra credit for pitching in the AL East which has been asserted on many occasions on this blog. You just happened to bring it up when I had a chance to look into the numbers. Sorry if it came off as attempting to discredit your argument specifically.
Baltimore's offense in that period was basically average except for 1996. For 1995-1999 Baltimore was: -26, +77, +15, +5, +13.
The big negatives were because for 95-97 Detroit was -76, -89, -13 and Toronto was -88, -106, -143. Then Tampa was -192 for 1998. In 2000 BAL -63, BOS -65, TB -124 and TOR +4. 2001 was BAL -100, BOS -15, TB -115, TOR -20.
August 19th, 2010 at 7:21 pm
Thanks Evan, I wonder how the numbers would look if you threw out the worst team in each division given just how horrible Tampa was in those first few years.
August 19th, 2010 at 7:31 pm
David,
I think Pettitte's WAR using your preferred formula of Career WAR + 7 best/2 would give you 42. He's definitely a more career guy, but his playoff numbers count more to me even if people want to argue he still has a 3.90 playoff ERA too. I'd weigh playoffs numbers a little more heavily and so 3.90 playoff ERA would be something more like 3.65 ERA.
August 19th, 2010 at 7:52 pm
Andy,
Another problem I also have Blyleven is that even when he was on championship teams, Blyleven still wasn't the ace of those teams, so I don't buy the stuck on lousy teams argument. Why would it be unreasonable to expect one memorable dominant season from a HOF? I'm still waiting for someone to give me one season (and he only had 20) where you can actually say to yourself, "Wow, remember the year Blyleven had in 19whenever". Any dominant season, any killer strikeout season, anything. To further show you how useless the WAR(without any rationality) stat can be, take a look at who ranks under Blyleven for career WAR. Guys like Gibson, Carlton, amd Martinez. Please don't tell me that you can say with a straight face that you're taking Blyleven over any of these guys as your ace, please don't. Keep in mind those 3 guys all won CY Youngs on bad teams, so yes, it was possible for Blyleven to do the same. The difference is that Blyleven never did, let alone even get close in many votings. Andy, I do appreciate and thank you for all the work you do for the site, but again, he's a classic example of a compiler with a very good career.
August 19th, 2010 at 9:29 pm
Clemens is a jer_, but he should be in the Hall. I just heard Tim K. on ESPN say he thinks Arod, Bonds and Clemens could very well not get in the Hall --can we just fire Bud the Bum now!! Greenies are now illegal in the game, and you can't say they too didn't enhance performance to a degree...and, they were rampant for decades to perhaps more than a half-century. There's three tiers of PED from worst to less bad ---anabolic steroids, HGH, and cocaine/greenies, and one or another have almost always been part of the game --a bunch of hypocrites they are. You can even try the argument that greenies are every bit as bad as HGH since they were likely taken every day by many.
August 19th, 2010 at 10:02 pm
Biff @ 106,
I get why some don't like Blyleven for the Hall, and I don't think he's a slam-dunk as many sabermetricians think he is, but he should be in (yes, I watched a good amount of Bly when I was younger). With that said, with your argument, Nolan Ryan is somewhat questionable too. Ryan never had any really memorable years and he was basically a slightly better Blyleven with 7 no-hitters and more strikeout power. Ryan is firmly in the Hall IMO, and Blyleven is a notch below that but in too.
August 19th, 2010 at 10:49 pm
What is appalling is these are the same guys that voted for Cy Young and MVP, and offered zero PED concessions in deliberating on the merits of their respective awards seasons. Ridiculous
August 19th, 2010 at 10:56 pm
I hear you, @Andy and @WanderingWinder. I'm even prepared to accept that those are the three best decision-making stats to use. But I would never make that final assessment without also knowing the W/L and save totals. One of the reasons is that neither would players. I don't think there's a player in MLB (including stathead types like Greinke and Lincecum) who would trade a 21-6 3.9 WAR season for a 16-11 5.1 WAR season or consider the latter better than the former in any meaningful way.
August 19th, 2010 at 11:12 pm
Bureaucratist-
You are mixing apples and oranges and bananas and ham steaks and all sorts of stuff.
First, I couldn't care less what the players thought. Many of them know even less about stats than the writers. That's not really a condemnation of them, since it's not really their job to understand the stats, just to know how to play the best baseball they can.
Second, you can't really compare the seasons as you are, because the choices would not break down as such. The question should be, "Would you rather have a 3.9WAR pitcher or a 5.1WAR pitcher." If the circumstances they entered into are the same, than the 5.1WAR pitcher will end up with more Ws almost every time. Even holding to your argument, you are comparing performance and results. But if you asked them going into the playoffs which they would rather be, they'd all choose the former. The 5.1WAR pitcher performed better than the 3.9WAR pitcher, but the results don't indicate that because of things out of their control.
August 19th, 2010 at 11:36 pm
Sorry BSK, but when I read things like this above in #111, "First, I couldn't care less what the players thought. Many of them know even less about stats than the writers", I just cringe. Things like this will do nothing other than alienate sabermetricians from writers, players and just about anybody else that likes to look at more than just WAR, ERA+ and WPA. I will say it until I'm blue in the face, there are more ways than one to evaluate a player, and most methods have merit.
August 20th, 2010 at 12:10 am
Bureaucratist @110,
I agree with you that looking at W-L and other traditional statistics are important for award voting is important, though I disagree that Andy should have spent half his morning typing 10 different stats for 13 players into the poll, especially when we all have ready access to this information on this website. I tend to favor more traditional stats, especially ERA+ (granted the + is quite traditional, but I like the idea of park adjustment) a little more for evaluating seasons for awards voting and careers (on the grounds that getting outs, however it is done it the object and it seems unlikely that a pitcher will be lucky/unlucky in terms of BABiP type stats over the course of a career), but the SABR-type stats seem better for evaluating a player's likelihood for success going forward.
But the choice of seasons you present is akin to asking whether the player would rather be lucky or good. No one wants to have poor run support or poor defense. If you asked a starting pitcher whether he would rather throw a complete game one-hitter and lose 1-0 or struggle through 5 innings, give up 5 or 6 runs, but have his team hold on or comeback for a 10-9 win he would choose the latter. But he wouldn't argue after the second game that he had pitched better than he did in the first game.
August 20th, 2010 at 12:28 am
JohnQ @ 99 and Andy @ 100- thank you, you both saved me a bunch of research & put it better than I could have anyways.
And Matt Y @ 101 Other than the pre 1900 pitchers (who admittedly are plentiful on the list) there is no one who won 300 games who wouldn't be the number 1 starter on 98% of all pitching staffs. Even the weakest of the bunch (Sutton, Wynn & Ryan) were good enough to be number 1 on a pennant winner most years. And, while WAR has it's problems, I think the WAR list is generally an even better reflection of the relative worth of most of the pitchers.
I would however, take Juan Marichal (or Carl Hubbell or Jim Palmer or John Smoltz or Jim Bunning or about a dozen other pitchers lower on the list) over Don Drysdale.
August 20th, 2010 at 1:23 am
How did this become a Bert Blyleven thread? I thought it was a '10 Cy Young post.
I guess this is directed at Biff or anyone else who doesn't want to believe Blyleven was dominant pitcher.
Here goes, and I don't need "WAR" or "Win Shares" to tell the story:
Blyleven was overlooked in his career because he played in the Midwest on mediocre/terrible teams before the age of ESPN, Cable, the Internet and MLB t.v. Main stream sports outlets underrated him because W/L is overrated and they put too much emphasis on W/L record. He spent 22 seasons in the big leagues and only played on 5 teams that won 90+ games in a season. And one of the teams '70 Twins happened in his rookie season and two others '88 Twins and the '89 Angels happened towards the end of his career. He was only on two teams, the '77 Rangers and the '79 Pirates that won 90+ games from the time he was 20-36 years old.
He also spent the first 10 years of his career pitching in good Hitter's Parks. He pitched mostly for average fielding teams. Also, his peak came early in his career when he was pitching out of the limelight for the early 70's Twins.
The case for Blyleven:
When he retired he was 3rd all time in K's with 3701. He's still ranked 5th all time.
He's ranked 9th all time in Shutouts with 60.
He Finished in the Top Ten in ERA+ 12 times, Top Five 7 times
He Finished in the Top Ten in ERA 10 times, Top Five 7 times
He Finished in the Top Ten in K's 15 times, Top Five 13 Times
He Finished in the Top Ten in Whip 11 times, Top Five 7 Times
He Finished in the Top Ten in K/9 14 times, Top Five 9 Times
He Finished in the Top Ten in K/BB 16 Times, Top Five 13 Times
He Finished in the Top Ten in BB/9 7 Times, Top Five 3 Times
He Finished in the Top Ten in Shutouts 10 Times, Top Five 9 Times, Top Three 7 Times.
He won 20 games for a bad '73 Twins team. He won 19 games for a horrible '84 Indians team and received the most votes in the Cy Young for a starting pitcher. He won 11 games for a horrible '81 Indians team during the strike and probably would have won 18 games if he was able to get 34 starts.
He won 17 games for bad '86 Twins team and he won 17 games for a bad Indians/Twins teams. He won 17 games for a bad '72 Twins team and 17 games for equally bad '74 Twins team.
He won two Championships, one with the '79 Pirates and one with the '87 Twins. He was excellent in the post season with a 5-1 record, a 2.47 ERA, a 1.077 Whip, and a 36k/8bb ratio.
August 20th, 2010 at 5:44 am
Evan-
Where did I say there was only one way to look at a player? All I said was that players don't really need to understand WAR or ERA+ to be good at what they do. If they do understand it, that's great. But I'd rather they understand the approach to the game that leads to the maximization of their skills. A player doesn't need to know the specific WPA of a SB vs a CS, they just need to know if and when it makes sense to try to steal (if they have the green light to do so on their own). You severely misinterpreted my point.
If players think Ws and RBIs are the most important stats to determine which players are the most talented, they are wrong. And that's okay. It's not their job to understand all of that. Just like a statistician doesn't need to know how to throw a curveball. Players play the game, writers report and analyze and write about the game, scouts observe and scout the game, and statisticians crunch numbers about the game. Each job has a different skill set, though there is obviously overlap between many of them. They need not all be on the same page of the book, so long as they are at least in the book. Far too often, sportswriters tend to be looking at completely different book. The same can be said at times for members of each of the other groups but, in my observation, sportswriters are currently the ones with the biggest gap between what they should be doing and what they are doing.
August 20th, 2010 at 8:48 am
BSK-
I think you mean "Matt Y." My post largely agreed with what you had to say. My point was that most players would rather win with a poor performance than lose with a good performance (or at least we would like to hope that most players feel this way).
My point about evaluating players for award voting is that I feel the awards should be more concerned with being evaluative rather than predictive. That is to say, I have no problem if a player lucks his way to an MVP, Cy Young or RoY, etc. because of an absurdly low/high BABiP. I factor in park factors to put various statistics in context, situational stats to factor out the hitting performances of teammates from Runs/RBIs. If I were working for a front office or were a fantasy player I would factor different stats differently because I am trying to predict future performance.
August 20th, 2010 at 9:05 am
I voted for Lester, but Lee almost undoubtedly deserves it for completing so many games and walking so few batters. Still, I like Lester's K/9 and H/9 advantage, and I can't vote against my beloved Red Sox's ace.
August 20th, 2010 at 10:25 am
So if Trevor Cahill pitched for a team like the Red Sox or Yanks, and had decent run support, he would be an eighteen game winner by now and possibly win 23-24 for the year. He won't win the CY Young because he plays for a team that can't score runs- but is that fair?
August 20th, 2010 at 1:20 pm
#114,
I agree that the WAR is the single best metric to evaluate a player b/c of its inclusivity, but it should be only a subset of how you evaluate a players worthiness of getting in the HALL. I think some base their decision 80% or more on the WAR, ERA+/OPS+ and WPA. 80% or even more than 50% is too high IMHO.
August 20th, 2010 at 6:46 pm
Evan-
You are right that I meant Matty Y.
Generally, I agree with your stance regarding awards, but I do think that luck should be factored in if the results are close. You are right about evaluating vs predicting. Keith Law, who I generally really respect, often gets too predictive when discussing rewards. He doesn't think guys playing above their heads deserve All-Star nods and thinks that the ROY should be partly based on what a guy is likely to do in his career. I just can't support those ideas. I don't care if your year is a complete aberration... if you performed fantastically, you should be acknowledged as such. Whether you do it again matters not, because it has already been done. Otherwise, a guy like Cliff Lee might have missed his Cy Young, seeing as how it seemed so out of nowhere for him to pitch like that.
That is why I generally prefer stats that normalize for luck. If these are close and the next level down of stats, which don't/can't completely normalize for luck have one guy ahead, I'll go that way.
August 20th, 2010 at 8:31 pm
BSK-
Can't disagree with giving the nod to the less lucky player, so to speak, as a tie breaker of sorts. If memory serves, Keith Law was a scout for the Blue Jays or had a front office job of some kind with them before he became a writer. Perhaps just a held over occupational hazard to have that line of thinking. Fortunately, I think he is generally out of step with that thinking, at least with respect to RoY. Voters seem to like the story of the player that came out of nowhere without much hype as opposed to the heavily touted prospect. Might almost make up for situations like this year where some writers seemed ready to anoint Heyward NL RoY before the season started and even while he was in the midst of an extended slump/stint on the DL, even though there were plenty of other, more deserving candidates.
August 21st, 2010 at 1:54 am
OK, since Blyleven and Pettitte and level of competition continue to be discussed, I'll chime in with a little something from my ongoing research of 200+ game winners against each other. I know, a million asterisks, since some guys pitched in relief or were just starting or finishing their careers or had better offenses or whatever. Plus, lots of games where only one had a decision. Just sayin'.
Career, in games where both 200GW had the decision, counting postseason, Pettitte is 19-15, including 4-3 vs. Pedro (most common foe) and 3-3 vs. Moyer. As a Yankee, he is 18-14, including 13-6 in World Series winning seasons and 3-5 in 2001 and 2003.
Blyleven is 26-40. He's tied with Red Ruffing for worst win-loss differential. His best is against Sutton, 4-1, and worst against Gaylord Perry, Frank Tanana and Steve Carlton (0-4 vs. each). Most common foe is Morris (3-3). He did have a winning record in all three division-winning seasons (2-0 in '70, 4-3 in '79 and 2-1 in '87).
Does this help or hurt a case for either? I'm not sure without further data. But it does make me wonder if Berty fed off weak foes or if he was just betrayed by teammates against the really good ones.