- This topic has 47 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 2 years, 2 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
However, this isn’t the track and field, but rather a team sport. How many times last year did you see a Cardinal relief pitcher pitch effectively in garbage time, only to stink up the joint in a close contest?
Kittridge was asked to hold a lead, and he didn’t do it, and we eventually lost he game. Who cares what he does in a mop up role tomorrowI was trying to illustrate to you that you were using WAR as and end be all stat for the results. Yes team wins matter at the end of the day. He has consistently pitched well in high leverage games though and one “bad” game doesn’t make Kitty useless. If anything, the blame is incorrectly being placed on Kitty when it should be on Lynn for walking 2 batters.
Does anyone really believe that O’Neill would have a 1.035 OPS this year if he had stayed in STL? I certainly don’t therefore I don’t blame the Cardinals for trading him. The question we need to ask ourselves is why do many players perform better after they leave? That is a HUGE question to answer.
Interesting metrics. One thing is on the runs, like with O’Neill having 34, you need to deduct home runs as they add an RBI and a run. Just using RBI and runs is double-counting for homers.
Regardless, I think trades where you are moving a player from an area where you have depth to acquire a need is fine under a couple of circumstances – if you are in contention or if the guy you are dealing is an older player.
And even in our trade, I would have done it had we dealt Burleson. While we had outfield depth, we also have a few primary DH guys. What you want to stock pile is athleticism, as those are the type of players that will be more likely to improve. Plus you can utilize them in a number of ways.
Although this was a one-for-one deal, it reminded me a little of the Mulder-Haren trade. Others were involved in that one but on the surface I did not like it as at that time Haren was one of the few guys on our staff that had strikeout stuff. Mulder was more of a contact-type pitcher, plus struggled the second half of the year before we swung the deal. It just looked like we were getting a guy trending downward and the guy we traded just might be ready to take the next step.
As a silver lining to this deal, if we continue to languish in the lower echelons of the division but Kitty is lights out, he would be a prime candidate to move at the trade deadline for potential future value.
Burly would have been my choice to trade as well as I don’t like DH only types, but I doubt he really had much value or still has much value to warrant someone trading for.
A lot of times, a relief pitcher’s job is to prevent inherited runners from scoring, so effectiveness in doing that is important, but it does not reflect in their ERA. For that reason maybe look at inherited runners scored percent, or IS% on the Baseball Reference site. It is labeled other ways elsewhere I have noticed. The stats on BRef are usually current through the day before, but I didn’t check how current this is. I also don’t know how accurate it is.
As of now, league average IS% is reported as 37%. Here is what is shown for Cardinals relievers:
King 100%
Robertson 100%
Kittredge 75%
Gallegos 50%
Pallante 50%
Thompson 40%
Fernandez 17%
Some others have 0%Here is a link to it, and scroll down to “Team Relief Pitching”
https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/STL/2024-pitching.shtml
WAR also tries to account for a single players contributions and not the team’s and thus tries to assume everything the player does in isolation.
This is incorrect.
From Baseball Reference:
xRA_def, Adjusting for Team Defense
A great deal of work has recently gone into the study of Defense-Independent Pitching Stats (DIPS). We agree with the validity and importance of most all of this work, and some would argue that you shouldn’t charge the pitcher for runs allowed in the way we do since it is often not the pitcher’s fault, but the defense’s. Our view is that, while the pitcher may have been unlucky or lucky in certain ways, we are trying to measure the value of the recorded performance–not its repeatability–and that we can account for defense in different ways.To account for defense, we find the overall team defensive runs saved, which uses Baseball Info Solutions’ Runs Saved from 2003 on and Total Zone before 2003. We then compute the number of balls in play allowed by the team and the number of balls in play allowed by the pitcher, and assign the negative of the proportional team defensive runs to the xRA_ppf values.
xRA_def = (BIP_pitcher)/(BIP_team) * TeamDefensiveRunsSaved
Assume the replacement level RP has a ERA of 4.5 on average (generous estimate), and they would have allowed 7 runs in that same amount of 14 innings. That is 6 runs of difference in high leverage situations where the game is on the line.
I calculated the maximum runs saved based on this year’s ERA, not last year’s.
Does anyone really believe that O’Neill would have a 1.035 OPS this year if he had stayed in STL?
No. I have stated in other threads that I don’t think he would perform the same here. Part of it is organizational values.
Then, you have to add in the O’Neill/Marmol feud from last year.
Interesting metrics. One thing is on the runs, like with O’Neill having 34, you need to deduct home runs as they add an RBI and a run. Just using RBI and runs is double-counting for homers.
Agreed. My mistake.
I think trades where you are moving a player from an area where you have depth to acquire a need is fine under a couple of circumstances
The problem was, the Cardinals did not have the depth they thought they had.
The last two years, they got burned by not having pitching depth at Memphis. This year, they got burned by not having outfield depth at Memphis.
There are two other adjustments Baseball Reference makes, specifically for relievers. One is valid, one is not.
First, the valid one:
xRA_sprp, Adjusting Averages for Starters and Relievers
In the current MLB environment, relievers have much lower ERAs than starters. Relievers come in, throw gas for an inning or less, and then leave, so for recent years we set this difference league-wide at .1125 runs/game and then from 1960-1973 it is set at .0583 runs/game.Now, the invalide one:
WAA_adj, Adjusting for Leverage
As RA_replacement_adj currently stands, starters would be far, far more valuable than relievers; e.g. most average starting pitchers would be viewed as more valuable than Mariano Rivera in even his best seasons. The flaw in our reasoning above is that closers and many relievers are used in the highest leverage situations. These situations have a much larger ability to impact the outcome of the game than 0-0 top of the 1st, so we adjust the RA_replacement_adj with a leverage multiplier. An average leverage is 1.0, while many closers will approach an average of 2.0 for the season while mopup relievers might be at 0.7.These are abitrary numbers, based on perception, not analytics. In a 0-0 game for 9 innings, all innings are equally important.
This is the most fundamental flaw of all: They claim to account for earned runs and unearned runs, but not inherited runs scored.
They claim to factor leverage into their calculations, but do not account for blown saves.
At its most basic level, our pitching WAR calculation requires only overall Runs Allowed (both earned and unearned) and Innings Pitched.
I think you just threw “when it matters” into the trash can, LACF. If high leverage is invalid, then we might as well pick names from a hat.
The game context per inning, is real, just like the score.
No reliever wants to enter w/2 on and no outs, including Kitt. Rather than be overly concerned with who is to blame for the runs scoring, what about those 2 leadoff BB’s to start that inning? ERA got this right, the runs belong to Lance.
I think you just threw “when it matters” into the trash can, LACF. If high leverage is invalid, then we might as well pick names from a hat.
Agreed, leverage is absolutely something that matters. Poor bullpens have harpooned many a teams’ seasons, especially in October.
I think you just threw “when it matters” into the trash can, LACF. If high leverage is invalid, then we might as well pick names from a hat.
Their methodolgy is invalid.
They are arbitrarily assinging values.
WAR is a multivariate regression model. If you think something is a legitimate variable, the coefficients have to be created by the regression analysis, NOT by assigning 2 for 9th inning and 0.7 for mop up duty.
Speaking of multivariate regression modeling – how much colinearity do you believe there is in WAR?
Before Kitt threw a pitch, there was an mlb avg chance 1.3 runs would score. That’s the two BB’s part that you are not acknowledging.
We hoped neither would score, but results says 1.3 runs expected. Carry on, I feel like I’m repeating myself.
Last night, the game was lost in the 7th inning.
According to Baseball Reference, the pitchers in the 9th inning had 2X as much leverage as the pitchers in the 7th.
Everyone agree that the pitchers in the 9th are twice as valuable as the pitchers in the 7th?
Reply #251090:
1) agree
2) disagree. gmLI when entering the game was….
Kitt 1.54 (7th)
Fernandez 0.97 (8th)
King 0.65 (9th)
(Fangraphs)3) Leverage Index (LI) depends on the inning, score, outs and the number of runners on base. We can’t just generalize by innings alone.
Tied to start the 7th should should always have a higher LI than behind to start the 9th.
Each individual game context (especially the score) drives the LI for both teams. It’s just as different as every game is.
From the winners perspective yesterday…
gmLI when entering the game was:
Diekman 1.91 (7th)
Ottovino 2.48 (8th)
Diaz 3.46 (9th)Win expectency drives LI by the score, for me. That’s my simple overview.
As the remaining outs dwindle down LI gets high with a close lead. Or, the LI drops, because you’re behind and about out of outs. Always two sides of that LI coin.
Everyone agree that the pitchers in the 9th are twice as valuable as the pitchers in the 7th?
I don’t think that can be said as a certainty. It depends on how the game is progressing. Sometimes the key point in the game is the sixth, seventh or eighth inning, and you need to get through that before you even have a chance in the ninth.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.