Mota lowers ERA by not pitching

[logan82]

Maybe if he doesn't pitch for a week his ERA will look respectable.

[Scooter1027]

Goes to show you how foolish it can be to judge a reliever by ERA, especially within a single season. One scoring change and his ERA drops half a point.

[TheCrew07]

I like Ned, but he can be a crusty fellow, that's for sure. "I don't care about scoring changes"

[brewers19]

Bueno indeed.

[Fatter than Joey]

I bet Prince doesn't think this was bueno.

[trwi7]

I want his ERA as low as possible so we have a better chance of getting picks for him after the year. Any other decisions that we can find that will lower his ERA?

[tomwopat]

Things that Ned Yost doesn't care about:

 

Scoring Changes

Auto racing where drivers are required to turn right

Getting Ejected in consecutive games

The Blogosphere

Caffeine overdose

Bad innings in "great" pitching performances

The improbabilities of triple plays

Math

[RightFieldCoder]

I agree with Ned on his quote. The manager shouldn't care whether a run is earned or unearned. His primary concern should be how many runs the other team scores compared to how many the Brewers scored. I think people would be upset if we lose 7-6 and Ned says, "That's ok because two of those runs were unearned." I'd much rather have the manager judge his pitchers on the quality of pitches one makes rather than the defense and luck behind him. And Mota still gave up a HR after the error.

[Invader3K]

It's an interesting story from a stats perspective, nothing more. Yost has no reason to be concerned about something like this.

[Fatter than Joey]

I agree with Ned on his quote. The manager shouldn't care whether a run is earned or unearned.

 

I generally agree, this is a case of stealing from Peter (Prince) to pay Paul (Mota), Mota's ERA goes down, but Prince gets an error.

 

I think though Ned could have said something less crusty though, perhaps "that's good for Mota, he's been battling, etc..."

[Never Outhustled]

Goes to show you how foolish it can be to judge a reliever by ERA, especially within a single season. One scoring change and his ERA drops half a point.

True, but Mota has a bad ERA for the 4th straight year. He is not a good pitcher.

[olliegjw]

True, but Mota has a bad ERA for the 4th straight year. He is not a good pitcher.

3.90 is not a bad ERA.

[Fatter than Joey]

3.90 is not a bad ERA.

 

His walk rate is though.

[olliegjw]

3.90 is not a bad ERA.

 

His walk rate is though.

He didn't mention walk rate, he mentioned ERA, so that's what I responded to. If he had mentioned his peripherals were bad, I would have agreed.

[Fatter than Joey]

Fair enough

[RyDogg66]

The didn't put the entire Ned quote in there. He said "I don't care about scoring changes, and anyone who does either doesn't know baseball very well or has no baseball knowledge to speak of."

[LouisEly]

For as maligned as Mota has been, even including the home run today in his last 10 outings his line has been 10 IP, 4 H, 3 ER, 8 BB, 8K. Heading into today his August ERA was 0.00 and his September ERA was 1.00. He has been quite valuable, and considering the run he had been on (1 ER in his previous 16.2 IP, including getting out of a bases-loaded-with-nobody-out jam that Villanueva got into) he was due to give up some runs. 3 ER in his last 17.2 IP is pretty darned good, and earned the right for us to get off of his back for a while.

[rluzinski]

I'm glad his last 17.2 IP have been good but if I'm making an objective assessment of his actual talent right now, it's not just not very good. He currently has a 4.13 ERA, compared to a 4.03 ERA for the 2008 NL average reliever. Before today, he had a FIP of 4.21 for this year and a FIP of 4.41 last year. FIP was terrible in 2006.

 

Real quick take, he looks like a below average reliever. He's fine as maybe a 4th option but as the setup guy? Terrible.

[dadofandrew]

He's average, but has the stuff to be dominant, as he has been for much of the year. He sure did have a bad stretch though.

[CheezWizHed]

And while I cringe everytime he heads out there, concidering that we unloaded Estrada and his salary in the Mota trade... I would say its been a postive trade. Subtraction of a below average catcher and addition of a slightly below average reliever.

[Teatoe993]

I agree with you CheezeWiz, but I know there are many here that seriously disagree.

[endaround]

No they spent money on Mota. Estrada could have just been cut at no cost. $3.2 million for a below average reliever isn't a good thing

[Fatter than Joey]

And while I cringe everytime he heads out there, concidering that we unloaded Estrada and his salary in the Mota trade... I would say its been a postive trade. Subtraction of a below average catcher and addition of a slightly below average reliever.

 

This just is not accurate -- We could have simply cut Estrada and not had to deal with Mota. I think the Mets did the best in this trade, unloading both Mota and Estrada. As endaround points out, we are paying 3.2M for Mota -- had he been making near the league minimum, I'd feel differently.

 

Mota walks too many batters.

[Ennder]

I'd call Mota roughly a league average RP. For a 1 year deal at $3M I'm fine with him.

[CheezWizHed]

No they spent money on Mota. Estrada could have just been cut at no cost. $3.2 million for a below average reliever isn't a good thing

My mistake, I thought we were on the hook for a similar contract even if we cut Estrada.

Even so, his $3.2million didn't keep us from going out and adding other salaries we needed (CC) and its only for one year.

 

Every team need some so-so guys to fill out the roster. Our problem is that he is #2 or 3 in the bullpen and not #5 or 6.