thebruce44

If Washburn really did change his delivery for the better he would have had a better FIP this year than his career numbers right? it would be something significantly better than his career numbers correct? You would think something like that would change a pitcher and make them better. Yet it didn't do that all it did was put him back to where his career numbers were at. Except that he did pitch much better than his career numbers despite what his end of the year FIP was. I believe we just had the discussion that stats need to be inspected along with a reality check. In this instance, FIP for the entire season is fairly worthless (unless you know where to find FIP splits for when he was with Seatle vs Detroit, i.e. before he was injured). Baseball reference does have ERA+ for both of those timeframes and the results show a much improved pitcher regarless of league and home park: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/w/washbja01-pitch.shtml An ERA+ of 164 for his 133 IP in Seattle shows that those were the best innings he has ever pitched (in fact those are Cy Young type numbers), while his 43IP at 62 ERA+ in Detroit was terrible. His career ERA+ is 109 by the way. Is this a pitcher who finally figured it out and then got injured? Perhaps, and that would go along with all the reports I read and that have been posted here. Might as well let Peterson and our scouts take a look at him. Either way, his season long FIP needs to be thrown out in my opinion. Here is an expanation for ERA+ showing that it is adjusted for league and home park: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjusted_ERA%2B

We have two people (me being one of them) who have heard reports that Washburn changed his delivery for the better. He has had significantly better numbers than Looper and Soup the last 4 years. If Peterson takes a look at him and likes what he sees, I don't see why we wouldn't persue him if the money and years were right just because some people think he is the next Soup. I can understand why you would be gunshy here, but I hope Melvin isn't.

Yo did very well, but you can see that he did suffer in the second half: Games 0-82: 104.2 IP, 2.75 ERA, 1.15 WHIP Games 82-162: 81 IP, 5.00 ERA, 1.53 WHIP Hopefully there are no lingering issues next year and further shows why the Brewers were right to skip his starts and shut him down towards the end of the year.

Do you think the Brewers intended to pay $20 million for just replacement level results? Obviously not.

Per Tom Verducci: "Why can't they throw 200 innings? Simply put, they're not conditioned for it yet. It's like training for a marathon. You need to build stamina incrementally. The unofficial industry standard is that no young pitcher should throw more than 30 more innings than he did the previous season. It's a general rule of thumb, and one I've been tracking for about a decade. When teams violate the incremental safeguard, it's amazing how often they pay for it." http://www.fangraphs.com/...ect-candidates-for-2009/ Ideally, Clay would have been shut down at 165 or so innings this year, then would have gone for 200 IP next year. Every pitcher is different though, as someone like Lincecum is just a freak. Young arms are so valuable, I would follow this rule to a tee if I was a manager/gm, even in a playoff race.

My only knock on him if you look at the Hardy for Buchholz thread from earlier this season was his lack of IP in his career... but in 2009 he finally got up over 150 IP and broke 190 so he should be good to go for the future. I actually look at this as a huge negative. Going from 134.2 IP to 191 IP is pretty scary for a young pitcher. Thats a 56.8 inning increase. Perhaps the Red Sox never planned on keeping him so they didn't worry about bringing him along slowly.

Thanks Coach. Let Angel know we are all pulling for him.

Stephen Strasburg received $50m for 6 years without having to throw a pitch in an MLB game. I would equate that to getting paid. I'm not saying this is the norm, but for many first round picks, they are overpaid from the beginning. That outlier of a contract (along with Weeks and whoever else gets a MLB contract each year) doesn't have much to do with the general salary structure of the game.

What happend to Moustache March? I never considered Movember.

I saw Cage the Elephant last night at the Cubby Bear. I wasn't a huge fan of the CD, but they put on a pretty amazing show. It was by far the rowdiest crowd I have ever seen at such a small venue and the band fed off of it and got into the mix quite a bit.

If someone is arguing that I am trying to invalidate the methodology, they are missing the point. My argument from the beginning of this thread was the dollar value Fangraphs is placing on WAR. Then why post this? I also feel badly for people who believe they understand exactly what goes into computing WAR, when in actuality there is no way most people could possibly know all the variables Fangraphs uses to come up with their numbers. Key variables are proprietary information, and not available to the public. Or this? I simply am not in tune with having to multiply by 2.5, put to the power of the wind/continental divide, doubled and then taken as the reciprocal to end up at the conclusion that Nyjer Morgan is more valuable than Ryan Braun. Its comical to me. How can you expect people to not defend or try to explain to you the methodology and usefulness of a metric you mock? Then, when someone provided information you asked for, you told them to stop insinuating that you didn't already understand what you asked for. I go back to the point of this thread... $5.2 million for Gabe Kapler's .239/.329/.439 in 238 plate appearances??? Not even close. And nobody is arguing with you on that one. Everyone seems to be in agreement that the value statistic on the site isn't very useful unless you understand it is to be taken in a vacuume. The debate started when you and several others claimed that WAR was arbitrary and proprietary information that was useless. That screams a lack of knowledge on this particular subject to me so I, like others, have tried to provide you with information to help you make a more informed decision. I am not trying to call you out, and I think you make a lot of valid points here, but I am also not sure what you expect me and other posters to do.

Coach, sorry if you have answered this before, but I have a question about catchers calling a game. It seems like a lot of the praise we have heard for Kendall has been for the way he handels pitchers and calls a game. It makes me think that when coaches and scouts talk about catcher defense, they are not just talking about fundaments, footwork, and athletic ability, but also about experience and general baseball knowledge. Could this be one of Angel's shortcomings at this point? Is this something you worked on with him or have you heard what the Brewers are doing in regards to this aspect? How often does the next pitch come from the dugout and not even from the catcher? If it is often, why not pay Kendall to sit in the dugout and relay in pitches to a much more athletic catcher? Any input would be greatly appreciated as this is something I don't really know much about myself. Thanks!

Washburn changed something in his delivery this year that he claimed was helping him stay on top of the ball. I imagine his numbers suffered with Detroit due to his injury, but thats just my best guess. If Peterson or our scouts think the change he made was legit, he could be a high reward, low risk type of signing Melvin was looking for. It should also be considered though that the last time Washburn was effective was also the last time he was in a contract year.

I am going to try to make an analogy that may be way off and not make sense to some people, but it is how I view WAR and similar statistics/measures. In my line of work, designing interstate highways, there are often several valid layouts for a roadway. Often several designs will be presented with various plus and minuses to each. I often have one design I prefer right off the bat. Someone else in my office will sometimes prefer another design, and a third person at the DOT may prefer the third one. In other instances, one design will be obviously the best choice to the majority of people and the decision is fairly easy. One way to discuss the designs is to make a decision matrix. Without explaining the entire methodology it is at its core a list of weighted plusses and minuses for each option. In the end, you are able to arrive at a final score for each option. Over time, this methodology can be adjusted so that when one option is obvious the matrix hopefully arrives at that being the best solution. The decision matrix is never the end all, be all. It is an attempt to quantify the decision process since it can otherwise be difficult to compare a bunch of subjective opinions. I view WAR similar to a decision matrix. It isn't perfect and hopefully over time adjustments will be made to refine it. Right now, it is an attempt to quantify the "who is better than who" opinions we all have and to show just how much better one player is than another. It is not the end all, be all, but it is a great first step in those types of discussions and the best "objective" resource currently available for well rounded player comparisons. I don't like when I see people say something along the lines of "I don't need WAR to tell me player A is better than player B, I just know." That is your opinion and is perfect valid, but why knock an attempt to quantify a range of opinions when better options are not available? Ideally we would just put two players side by side and compare their OPS, but that doesn't give us the whole picture when you factor in position or defense. You may have your opinion and prefer to stick to it, but unless you are able to watch every MLB game to effectively judge defensive value while simultaneously coming up with your own way to compare different positions, I think an attempt to use statistics the way WAR does is just as valuable. Furthermore, in reading this thread you will notice that most of the people who understand WAR and its value have pointed out that it is valuable but not perfect. Most of the people who seem to not like it look at a few end results they disagree with or even the player value and decide the whole idea is ridiculous. There are plenty of posters in between and the "closed minded" comment isn't directed at them. All that I am asking is that you do a little more research than "Kapler was supposed to be worth this much" or "Morgan isn't more valuable than Braun in my opinion" before you arrive at the conclusion that fangraphs is ridiculous.

Looper had some half way decent statistics this year Other than wins (slightly useless "stat"), what was decent about Looper? I don't need Fangraphs to tell me that he was a bottom scraping SP in the league in 2009, most of his stats will tell you that. Yea, he was pretty bad all around. I was thinking of a discussion I had with some people during the season (not on this board) about how Parra had actually been much better than Looper at that point in the season, as shown in nearly every statistic besides ERA and Wins. Looking back on the season stats now though, Looper was just god awful. Maybe someone like Carlos Villinueva before this year is a better example, or Soup when he was in his final year with the Cardinals. ERA is a flawed statistic in its own right. The point was that with most statistics you can find plenty of examples that don't pass the stink test just like the Morgan vs Braun issue. That isn't a good reason in my mind to say Fangraphs or WAR is ridiculous though.

I feel bad for people who are so closed minded that they will just call Fangraphs ridiculous without trying to understand some of the information provided there. So I hope you see that I am not being "close-minded" - I am flat out disagreeing with their methodology with specifics. Agreed. That comment was not addressed at you at all.

Most of us understand perfectly well how WAR is calculated and how they arrive at the average $ figure per win and simply don't agree with the methodology involved. It seems like half this thread was people asking how it is calculated, so thats why the "you don't know enough" card was played.

From my perspective the problem with WAR, VORP, Win Shares and other complicated intricate measurement systems is they don't really tell us much more than simple stats like OPS, *OPS+, K:BB ratio, and other handy, easy to get to measurements. I realize the more complicated systems are attempting to measure defense, but it seems they always grossly overvalue it. I am not going to say what you do or don't know, but your post makes me think you don't know enough about these metrics to make a fair assessment of when and how they could best be used (I don't mean that to sound condecending so I apologize if it comes off that way). I don't have a great handle on them either so I am not the best person to explain it. I will just point out a few instances. OPS is just raw offense. You wouldn't want to use it to compare JJ Hardy to Prince Fielder. It has nothing to do with how well they play their respective defensive position; it has to do with the fact that a SS isn't expected to hit as well as a 1B. JJ should be compared to other SS's and Prince to other 1B for the offense they provide. OPS+ suffers from the same deficiency, except it at least adjusts for the year. If you wanted to compare just Yount's offense in '82 to Prince's offense in '08, you could use OPS+. However, in doing so would you say that Prince's '08 was as good as Yount's '82 when looking at everything? No, that would be foolish since Yount provided nearly the same offense (at least adjusted for the time period) from SS. VORP would be a better way to measure that since it takes position and year into account. Now I feel like I am rambling too, but hopefully there is a point in there somewhere.

Fair enough, I am not trying to discount people who oppose me. I don't think this argument is between you and me Backupcatchers, I think we are arguing about what other people have said and I think it sounds like both of our opinions are somewhere in the middle. The problem I have is with people who think Fangraphs or WAR are crap because the value rankings aren't accurate. If you are skeptical because you understand WAR and what goes into it, thats fine with me. To discount a resource like Fangraphs because of the value statistic is "close minded" in my opinion and you are putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage in your search for baseball knowledge (sorry that came out so corny). That's why I wish Fangraphs would just get rid of that column since people don't seem to understand it, especially if someone made those statements about Hardy and Cam (although I think the Cam one is a legit argument but thats for another thread). Sheethead: You have found a legitimate place where WAR has overvalued a player because it accounts too much for defensive statistics. WAR isn't perfect, but there are plenty of other instances where statistics have showed one player is more valuable than another when that wasn't the case. For example, Looper had some half way decent statistics this year, but WAR shows that he was basically the worst starting pitcher in baseball. I think WAR and FIP is more accurate there than ERA or other measures. Taking all of these statistics together along with a reality check provides a pretty good picture. Discounting one statistic from your repertoire because of a few examples or because the "player value" statistic is ridiculous means you have one less source of information to go from and I can't get behind that stance.

as opposed to the open minded people who ignore the fact that it doesn't match up with what really happens. Call me closed minded but if reality and mathematical formulas don't match up I tend to think it's the calculations that have it wrong not reality. Using fangraphs to compare one player to another is different than saying fangrpahs has correctly calculated a players value in real life. I don't think anyone made such a definitive claim as "fangraphs correctly calculated a players value in real life." The only definitive claims I have seen in this thread are that Fangraphs is ridiculous, which is a close minded stance. If you don't want to use Fangraphs or WAR at all, that is your decision and I won't try to change your mind. I do think you are neglecting a very legitimate source of information for the wrong reasons though since the player value is the least important and useful statistic on the site.

People really get hung up on that player value column when that isn't even the point of the site or WAR. I feel bad for people who are so closed minded that they will just call Fangraphs ridiculous without trying to understand some of the information provided there.

I would hesitate to call it an addiction, as it minimizes those folks who are going through real addictions, withdrawal, and so on. Yea, because caffeine and sugar aren't real drugs. What you are saying is the same as a coke head playing down an alcoholic or compulsive gambler, or a meth addict playing down a coke head. Addiction is addiction and vices are different for everyone. Anyone who successfully quits something like this has my admiration.

There's no downside here and he's all we really have at this point in time. At the other end of the spectrum, your post is also a pretty narrow assessment in my mind. Look at Sheets for example. He was very healthy, and then struggled through injury plagued years. Several young pitchers pull a Liriano or Volquez every year. How many of them actually come back and are as good as they are before that? Why get on the hook for 6 years when we still don't even know what we have? Besides, arby pitchers aren't nearly as expensive as arby position players. There is tremendous downside and the fact that he is all we have would be a terrible reason to lock him up.

well I sure miss a leadoff hitter who steals bases and can hit for average/above average Those 2 years we "missed" Pods, he batted .275 if you actually want to evaluate a leadoff hitter with BA. I would prefer to use OBP as Tedaldada said, which was .340 for those two years (good, but not above average). Weeks career OBP is .352 and has peaked at .374 when he was 24 years old. He has also provided power. No question about it, we never missed Pods.

If you equate Fielder with Pujols (and his numbers this year certainly equate), then he's not as replaceable as you think. Pujols was worth almost 2 wins more than Fielder this year, which is huge. As good as Prince was, his defense and the fact that he plays first base don't make him worth what he will earn after his Arby years. Add in the fact that it is very possible he will not consistantly provide the offensive numbers he did this year, and I would be looking to trade him as some team is going to give him way too much money.