Brewers have the 4th best bullpen in MLB

[Ennder]

I think ERA and WHIP are worthless over 70 IP, those stats are about as useful as W's or SV's over that sample for judging a pitcher. Seriously if you want to quote WHIP or ERA to me as a judge of pitchers it better be over 400+ IP or I just don't find it useful.

[Gopher74]

I think ERA and WHIP are worthless over 70 IP, those stats are about as useful as W's or SV's over that sample for judging a pitcher. Seriously if you want to quote WHIP or ERA to me as a judge of pitchers it better be over 400+ IP or I just don't find it useful.

I understand your point, but I don't find any other stat as important as how many runs a pitcher allows. As I said, you can use those stats to explain WHY he wasn't as good, but you simply can't say that a pitcher who in one game gives up 10 runs was just as good as he was in another game when he gave up 2 runs.

 

That's just missing the most basic element of baseball. It's really a very simple game.

 

[logan82]

ERA will tell you results, but it will not tell you how well somebody pitched. I know it sounds like the same thing, but it isn't. Gagne is a good example last year. He had a slightly better K/BB ratio in Boston and people thought he actually pitched better, but had worse results.

[Gopher74]

ERA will tell you results, but it will not tell you how well somebody pitched. I know it sounds like the same thing, but it isn't. Gagne is a good example last year. He had a slightly better K/BB ratio in Boston and people thought he actually pitched better, but had worse results.

This statement suggest that I don't understand when the case is really that I just don't agree.

 

The thing is, this type of logic leaves out far too many aspects of actual performance that can't be quantified. For instance, if a pitcher's grooving pitches and getting drilled, thereby more balls falling in for hits as opposed to last year or the year prior when he was sawing guys off, or getting the ball off the end of the bat leading to more easy outs, that shows up as just pure dumb luck in a differential of BABIP.

 

That's just an example. Again, I find a great deal of value in this logic, but it just doesn't explain away everything. Salomon Torres wasn't as good in 07 as he was prior.

[dadofandrew]

ERA will tell you results, but it will not tell you how well somebody pitched.

 

 

Isn't OBP just a way of measuring results? It does not measure how hard a guy hit the ball, or how many times he was a victim of a wide strike zone, or how many times he was retired by a fantastic defensive play. While many folks think these things even out, there are some that look at 23 spring training AB's and make a judgement about the future development of a player.

 

To me, ERA's a pretty darn reliable stat. Sure some guys get lucky, but there are also plenty of pitchers who annually have higher WHIP's and consistently seem to do better than you'd expect. It's not good fortune if you do it every year.

[Ennder]

I think ERA and WHIP are worthless over 70 IP, those stats are about as useful as W's or SV's over that sample for judging a pitcher. Seriously if you want to quote WHIP or ERA to me as a judge of pitchers it better be over 400+ IP or I just don't find it useful.

I understand your point, but I don't find any other stat as important as how many runs a pitcher allows. As I said, you can use those stats to explain WHY he wasn't as good, but you simply can't say that a pitcher who in one game gives up 10 runs was just as good as he was in another game when he gave up 2 runs.

 

That's just missing the most basic element of baseball. It's really a very simple game.

 

 

We will agree to disagree~. The defense and hitters have as much or more to do with how a pitcher pitches than the pitcher does himself. Sometimes you make your pitch perfectly and they hit a HR. Sometimes you get a groundball and your defense misses it. The only way to judge a single game is to watch it, the sample sizes are just too small to accurately judge a start by stats (unless a guy walks 10 guys or something of course).

 

Over 70 innings the variance on ERA/WHIP are just way too high to tell a story of how a pitcher pitched, that is why the stat jumps around so much year to year for RP even though most of their peripherals stay pretty steady.

[Fatter than Joey]

Gagne is a good example last year. He had a slightly better K/BB ratio in Boston and people thought he actually pitched better

 

K/BB is sort of a flawed stat to compare as well, as it does not consider how many batters are faced. If PAs are consistent then you can go ahead and use that ratio -- but it is erroneous to look at a ratio like K/BB and compare it to another sample if the samplespan is different.

 

I don't think anybody reasonable can conclude that Gagne pitched better in Boston.

 

Bos -- 18.67IP 9BB 26H 22K = ~91PA

Tex -- 33.33IP 12BB 23H 29K = ~135PA

 

He just got lit up in Boston. My guess is that the answer is probably as simple as he got gassed pitching 50+ innings for the first time in 3 years.

 

Now, I certainly wouldn't be scared of signing Gagne because he got lit up for 18+ innings at the end of last year, but something happened that allowed him to get pounded.

[Ennder]

He also had a DER of .761 for Texas and a .561 in Boston. His xFIP was 4.19 for Texas and 4.21 for Boston which suggests it was just variance.

 

The samples are so small it is impossible to judge what happened for sure without watching him pitch. He was very lucky in Texas and it at least looks like he was extremely unlucky in Boston.