Hmmm.... (Vargas pitching well)

[valpocrewsader]

Is this the right thread to discuss Linebrink's 0.91 WHIP, 3.20 K/BB, and .197 BAA in 23 appearances so far in '08? (Sorry, I just hadn't yet seen any mention here of Linebrink's great season (so far) in Chicago.)

[rousieboy]

No one wanted CVargas and I mean not one single GM was going to give GM DM a bag o' balls for him...his salary was not trade-worthy and if he wasn't good enough for any other pro team...why should he have been good enough for this one?

[endaround]

Is this the right thread to discuss Linebrink's 0.91 WHIP, 3.20 K/BB, and .197 BAA in 23 appearances so far in '08? (Sorry, I just hadn't yet seen any mention here of Linebrink's great season (so far) in Chicago.)

Given that its unsustainable (BABIP of .233 and a home run rate of 0.41 vs a career in Petco of 0.95) not sure how exciting it is.

 

[pete]

Throwing Vargas away was incredibly stupid. To top that they kept Dave Bush who was terrible in spring training. Its not like its a mystery that Yost is completely infatuated with him. Yost and Melvin both lied when they talked about there being a "competition" in spring when the reality was that Bush was in regardless of performance, the same way he is starting tomorrow. And people list Capuano in the list of possible starters? Good grief. I get the impression that there are a significant amount of people who would rather have a bad team with Cappy, Bushy, Matty, Jenksy and Branyan than a competitive team if they have to watch a "clown" like McClung or "chum" like Vargas.

 

I constantly hear fabricated statistics about Vargas. Nobody talks about him pitching with a bad back when the team needed him. Instead they holler about the fact that the outcome wasn't great. He was a 4.3 ERA pitcher over the first half of the year.

[logan82]

AKA Pete wrote:

He was a 4.3 ERA pitcher over the first half of the year.

He also stranded tons of runners to keep his ERA down.

[jazzytrav]

I constantly hear fabricated statistics about Vargas. Nobody talks about him pitching with a bad back when the team needed him. Instead they holler about the fact that the outcome wasn't great. He was a 4.3 ERA pitcher over the first half of the year.

 

Where are you hearing fabricated statistics? And you can't pick his first half of the year and just throw out his awful second half.

[Thurston Fluff]

Wasn't the reasoning/rumor on why Vargas was let go precisely that he wouldn't accept a bullpen role or demotion? Maybe I'm making that up.

 

I thought he had an option left like Bush did. He had to clear waivers because of his service time but when he did he didn't have a choice in the matter.

 

I constantly hear fabricated statistics about Vargas. Nobody talks about him pitching with a bad back when the team needed him. Instead they holler about the fact that the outcome wasn't great. He was a 4.3 ERA pitcher over the first half of the year.

 

Isn't cherry picking one half of one season the same as fabricating statistics?

[endaround]

They cut Vargas to save money. They could have sent him to AAA after he cleared waivers and he would have gone to keep his salary. They didn't. They wanted to save $2.6 million.

[Hate those Rodents]

Capuano was hurt and never really in the context for possible starting pitchers. Parra and Villa had proven nothing as a starter. And, personally, I preferred Vargas over Bush and Suppan. It really angered me to let Vargas go for nothing when our "pitching depth" could be better described as AAA pitching depth.

[davego]

Screw objectivity --

 

Very amusing and words to live by!

[jazzytrav]

Parra and Villa had proven nothing as a starter. And, personally, I preferred Vargas over Bush and Suppan.

 

Then I don't understand when and where Parra and Villy are supposed to prove themselves as starters. And what is your basis for liking Vargas over Bush and Suppan?

[Hate those Rodents]

Bottom line is we made a mistake in cutting Vargas, we could use him now, it was obvious our rotation was not a "strength" to be able to just up and cut a guy that pitched just as a quality #5 starter should for us last year, and he's helping the Mets instead. Instead we have Sheets and a whole lot of under-Vargas performances when our starters take the mound.

[jazzytrav]

I don't see how that's the bottom line. Did you know that Cappy would need surgery and Yo would tear his ACL?

 

And what exactly is an under-Vargas performance? Of course we could use him now, but no one was saying in March that we're definitely going to need Vargas come June.

[TooLiveBrew]

Of course if we'd kept Vargas & he was turning in typical at-Vargas starts, just as many fans would be reminding us how Melvin has no idea how to evaluate pitching.

[Hate those Rodents]

Ahhh, I'll give up because I can see that I am going to have trouble winning this arguement. I guess it just seemed silly to simply release a guy that had shown he can start in the big leagues and post double digit win totals. Those are very valuable to almost any team and sure would be for the Brewers now. I was one of the angry posters that was extremely upset that Vargas was simply released. Obviously this is a decision Doug regrets right about now. I'll turn the page and just hope we can find five capable arms going forward.

[endaround]

If Vargas was that valuable he wouldn't have had to take a minor league job. Vargas is a 6th starter at best.

[Ennder]

Ahhh, I'll give up because I can see that I am going to have trouble winning this arguement. I guess it just seemed silly to simply release a guy that had shown he can start in the big leagues and post double digit win totals. Those are very valuable to almost any team and sure would be for the Brewers now. I was one of the angry posters that was extremely upset that Vargas was simply released. Obviously this is a decision Doug regrets right about now. I'll turn the page and just hope we can find five capable arms going forward.

 

This is pretty much the cause of your issues. Vargas showed he can post below replacement level statistics and the team happened to score a ton of runs in his starts so he got double digit wins. He has not proven anything close to being able to consistently get double digit win totals. Wins are a heavily luck based stat that have almost no value when judging a pitcher.

[kramnoj]

If Vargas was that valuable he wouldn't have had to take a minor league job. Vargas is a 6th starter at best.

 

That is overstating things. He was cut when teams basically had their rotation set. Vargas is a 5th starter, but he's not so much an improvement that you send down a young guy to make room for him, because you care more about the future of the young guy. He is a nice guy to have around when a starting pitcher goes down. The Brewers decided they didn't want to spend something like $2 million to have an extra starter sitting in AAA or putting him in the bullpen making noise. They obviously decided that the available talent was comparable enough to Vargas that they could weather any short term injuries or rough spots.

 

I agree with that move. I would rather save $2 million for a much higher impact player.

[THEbrewguru]

People complaining about cutting Vargas or making him out to be more than he is is classic hindsight.

 

Not one person was saying how good a pitcher Vargas was back in March. At this point in time, I'm more intriqued with McClung than Vargas. With Vargas, you knew what you were going to get: 5 IP, 9 H, 5 ER, 2 K, 6 BB.

[rluzinski]

He is a nice guy to have around when a starting pitcher goes down

 

Isn't that basically the definition of a #6 starter?

 

ZiPS projected him as a 5.0 ERA pitcher for 2008. Furthermore, Vargas has only averaged about 5-1/3 innings per start over his 113 career starts. In over 22% of his career starts, he failed to even go 5 innings. He's kind of falls somewhere between a long reliever and a starter, really.

 

Let's compare that to another bottom of the rotation starter, Dave Bush. He's averaged about 6 innings per start over 112 career starts (some have come in the AL, so that might not be complately fair?) and he's failed to go at least 5 innings in about 15% of his starts.

 

Would I like to have him around right now? Of course. Considering the circumstances at the time, I just didn't think it was a travesty when they got rid of him, so I'm not going to use hindsight to revise that opinion.

[kramnoj]

Isn't that basically the definition of a #6 starter?

 

He is a 5th starter as I have seen it demonstrated in threads at bbtf. I don't have much doubt that he would have been signed as a 5th starter on a year deal if he was a free agent all offseason.

 

over 22% of his career starts, he failed to even go 5 innings. He's kind of falls somewhere between a long reliever and a starter, really.

 

I think that would actually be a good description of most 5th starters.

 

Edit: http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/primate_studies/discussion/starting_rotation_analysis/ is the best look at rotation spots that I have seen.

[jazzytrav]

Isn't that basically the definition of a #6 starter?

 

He is a 5th starter as I have seen it demonstrated in threads at bbtf. I don't have much doubt that he would have been signed as a 5th starter on a year deal if he was a free agent all offseason.

 

I don't understand how there can really be a debate about whether a guy is a 5th starter or a 6th starter. He's a 6th starter on some good-pitching teams, and a 5th starter on crappy teams. In the beginning of the year on the Brewers, he was about a 6th-7th starter. Right now, he might be the 5th. Unfortunately we can't predict a string of bad luck in the future.

[kramnoj]

I don't understand how there can really be a debate about whether a guy is a 5th starter or a 6th starter.

 

There is debate because people have different understandings of certain terms. It seems somewhat common to argue so strongly against one position that the original position goes too far. In his career, Vargas has an ERA+ of 92. He's had years where he looks like a 3-4 and years where he looks like a 5. If Vargas was a pre-arby player, I don't think there's a chance of the team cutting him. Unfortunately, he was awarded a $3 million salary, and the market determined that he wasn't actually worth that (I personally think that's an argument against what some players make in arbitration, but that's fodder for a different thread).

 

I think it's important to properly value what Vargas was and not undersell him in order to prove a point. He's a major league starter, because that's what the current talent pool is. It is just wrong to say that he is a 6th starter at best. It is an unsupportable claim.

[logan82]

I think that our pitchers outside of Sheets and Gallardo were all pretty equal so I wouldn't have been to upset with whoever made the rotation.

[rluzinski]

He is a 5th starter as I have seen it demonstrated in threads at bbtf.

 

What methodology did they use to define how good a #5 starter should be in in terms of both ERA and average innings/start? The only attempt at defining ERA by starting rotation I've ever seen is from Jeff Sackmann a few years back:

 

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/how-good-is-your-4-starter/

 

While interesting, I don't think you start matching those results up with a pitcher's projections and call it a day. The biggest problem that I see is that you are going to see a larger spread in ERA by spot in the rotation because of random variance. There's also the issue of injuries turning a #6 pitcher into a #5 one, which in turn defines what an acceptable #5 supposedly is. You run into that problem when you say an average 2B hit so-and-so for a year and then comparing that to player x's expected performance. Shouldn't you really compare him to only players who were projected as starters before the season started?

 

A better way to approach a study like that is to see how teams set up their starting rotation during the first week of the season and track only those players for the year. You could also just look at preseason projections for starters, calling the 30 best a #1 the next 30, #2, and so forth. Heck, maybe that's exactly what those BBTF threads did?

 

I think that if an NL pitcher is projected to have a 5 ERA, he's closer to someone who would fall into the #5 spot at some point in the year, as opposed to earning that spot out of spring training. I reserve the right to be proven wrong http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif