Truth to the Brewers stinking against crappy pitchers?

[mothershipconnection]

If this has been looked at before, I apologize for wasting time.

 

It often seems to be completely accepted as fact that recent Brewers teams have been killed by awful pitchers. I personally don't have the know-how or premium site membership to assess the validity of this notion, but I figure someone's gotta.

 

So here's the challenge to the statheads: give us a breakdown of how the Brewers have fared over the last X years vs. SP's (or pitchers in general) with ERA's within certain ranges. Do we really score less than the opposing pitcher's ERA when it's 5+ and above ERA when it's 3 or less?

[pitchleague]

sure seems like it, doesn't it? Personally, if I'm an advanced scout, I'm telling my manager, "don't even bother with your good pitchers starting against Milwaukee. Throw your worst guys out there to start the game. Heck we'll call some career minor leaguer up if need be." Is it because we can hit good fastballs but the slower fastball and other junk not? Is that why we have no problem, it seems, with the aces of the majors (it seems)?

[rluzinski]

Do the Brewer batters perform closer to average than to a pitcher's ERA if it's extreme? Of course they do! If a pitcher has a very low or high ERA, at least part of that is a result of luck. Fans see an oppossing pitcher with a 8 ERA and thank that means that the Brewers should crush him every time. That just isn't true. The guy probably is more like a true 5.00 ERA pitcher, in skill.

 

I'm working on a study to see how the Brewers have done this year against starting pitchers and their projection (including their performance from this year), which is the correct perspective to have. We'll see how it turns out

[mothershipconnection]

Sure, a streak of bad luck could end against the Brewers. What I'm asking is whether a pitcher with a high ERA over the course of a whole season or career actually allows fewer runs versus the Brewers, as that's the perception (e.g. a guy like Glendon Rusch, who always sucks, will do better against the Brewers).

[BillScottCanRake]

So here's the challenge to the statheads: give us a breakdown of how the Brewers have fared over the last X years vs. SP's (or pitchers in general) with ERA's within certain ranges. Do we really score less than the opposing pitcher's ERA when it's 5+ and above ERA when it's 3 or less?

 

I guess my question would be more like:

 

How does the Brewers performance against +5.00 and sub-3.00 ERA guys compare with that of the rest of the league?

 

Why would I ask that question? Because we watch 150+ Brewer games per year and tend to remember beating up on Yohan Santana while being shut down by Mark Redmond. If you see that sort of thing often enough it's easy to conclude "Dang, the Brewers do really well against the best pitchers, but when we face bad ones we are terrible."

 

But most of us haven't seen enough games by other teams to know whether or not what the Brewers are doing is being done by most of the rest of the teams in baseball or if they are odd-balls. We don't see (or remember) when Diamondbacks do the same thing, or when the Yankees beat up on Josh Beckett and King Felix and are shut down by Carlos Silva and Garrett Olson. And even if we remember the occasional game, most of us don't watch 150+ games played by another team.

 

I really wish I had the time to pick another team outside the Brewers and watch them closely for a full year to see if a lot of the perceptions fans have about the Brewers are accurate or not. I suspect that in general Milwaukee performs roughly the same as most other teams do when facing guys with higher and lower ERAs. And I suspect that most fans of other teams probably feel the same way we do.

[rluzinski]

What I'm asking is whether a pitcher with a high ERA over the course of a whole season or career actually allows fewer runs versus the Brewers, as that's the perception (e.g. a guy like Glendon Rusch, who always sucks, will do better against the Brewers).

 

And what I'm trying to explain is that, if you see a pitcher in June with a 6.6 ERA, without knowing anything else about him, you'd expect the Brewers to score less than 6.6 earned runs per 9 innings against him. That's because, most likely, that pitcher's skill ERA is less than 6.6. Now, if you want to use a career ERA for a guy who's racked up 600+ innings, that's a lot better, of course. I think that right way to tackle this is to compare a pitcher's projected ERA to their performance with the Brewers. A pitcher's projection is out statistical best guess at a pitcher's true talent level, after all.

[Oldcity]

I'll throw out another observation that I have, although it is just an observation. It seems to me, in general, the Brewers tend to struggle more with soft-tossers than most teams. This may speak to their overall lack of patience and discipline as a team. Most of the younger hitters seem to crush fastballs more than most players and struggle against off-speed pitches more than most. Would probably be tough to prove or disprove this though...

[thablingster]

It seems to me, in general, the Brewers tend to struggle more with soft-tossers than most teams.

Yeah, I noticed that, too. It appears that we tend to struggle against soft tossing control pitchers, but that could just be due to the illusion of how fat the guy's pitches look in the zone with the Brewers not hitting them. When a guy throws a 97 MPH pea over the outside corner (see: Jimenez, Ubaldo) you don't expect to hit it, but when Josh Fogg and Glendon Rusch are shutting you down, it feels concerning.

 

[Fatter than Joey]

Here are some my thoughts... (crappy = 5.00+ ERA)

 

1.) Adam Eaton, was one of the worst regular starters in the NL last year (30 starts 6.29 ERA). He won 10 games last year even with that cruddy ERA. This stems from a couple of things,

 

a.) Even the worst MLB teams win 70 games a year. That means that a 30 game starter can expect to see 8-12 wins a year. If you look at any year, and pitchers with ERA's over 5, you will see that a lot of them get 8-12 wins a year.

 

b.) A pitcher with a 6.00 ERA does not give up 4ER in 6IP in every single start, they may give up 0ER in 6IP on Monday and 8ER in 6IP on Friday.

 

In short if a 5+ ERA guy is pitching and getting 10-12 wins in a season -- that pitcher has probably beaten half the teams in the league. Every team has "crappy" starters, and crappy starters won 215 games in the NL last year. There were 785 losses in the NL last year. This means that a crappy pitcher wins a game almost 27% of the time. This means that almost one of every 4 games the Brewers lose, it will probably come against a "crappy pitcher".

 

2.) We call pitchers "crappy" at points in the season. In May Dave Bush was crappy -- but not so much in June/July. Defining a pitcher like Homer Bailey who has 13 career starts "crappy", is probably a big stretch as well.

[Fike85]

Fans of opposing teams probably feel the same way when they get shut down Bush and McClung, less recently to Parra, and to a lesser extent Suppan.

 

On the other side of the matter, doesn't it also seem that the Brewers rake when at least two of Counsell, Rivera, Dillon, and Kapler are in the lineup? Just a thought.

[Oldcity]

Other things that "seem" true are: The Brewers make more outs on the bases than most teams, and opposing pitchers seem to get hits at a higher-than-average rate. I wonder how many of these things are actually true.

[Jay Zahn]

Nobody's mentioned the De Le Rosa start this past Thursday. Over the course of his career De La Rosa's worse than Fogg, worse the Rusch, likely worse than Homer Bailey will turn out to be. And we got him, 7 runs in 3 and two thirds. The problem is that peope's expectations are too high. They think the Brewers should do that to De La Rosa as an average or hit those guys that way most of the time. That's unrealistic. Thursday was De La Rosa's second worst start of his 11 this year, so really the Brewers had an excellent day against him even given how bad he is. De La Rosa does have some good starts this year too - a one hitter through 5 innings against the White Sox, followed by a 10 strikeout day against the Indians.

[Jay Zahn]

Other things that "seem" true are: The Brewers make more outs on the bases than most teams, and opposing pitchers seem to get hits at a higher-than-average rate. I wonder how many of these things are actually true.

From the Reds' perspective yesterday they gave up a home run to a pitcher and made two errors in the last two innings. They probably think they gave the game away.

[TooLiveBrew]

Nobody's mentioned the De Le Rosa start this past Thursday. Over the course of his career De La Rosa's worse than Fogg, worse the Rusch, likely worse than Homer Bailey will turn out to be. And we got him, 7 runs in 3 and two thirds. The problem is that peope's expectations are too high. They think the Brewers should do that to De La Rosa as an average or hit those guys that way most of the time. That's unrealistic. Thursday was De La Rosa's second worst start of his 11 this year, so really the Brewers had an excellent day against him even given how bad he is. De La Rosa does have some good starts this year too - a one hitter through 5 innings against the White Sox, followed by a 10 strikeout day against the Indians.

 

Excellent post. It's all expectations. Especially when it comes to Glendon Rusch, many Brewers fans are convinced that a high ERA on the scoreboard means that only crappy teams would struggle against said pitcher.

 

I agree with FtJ -- when I saw Homer Bailey labeled a 'crappy pitcher' in another discussion, I just about blew a gasket. He's as highly-touted a SP prospect as there is, but since there's no cute line ('Well, he's just a product of the NY hype-machine') to tag on it, apparently he just gets called 'sucky' based on a handful of innings' ERA... then when he goes out & puts his great talent on display, it's not 'Wow, that Bailey guy has a great arm', it's 'Wow, the Brewers get owned again by some scrub!'

[dadofandrew]

Lots of things go unnoticed if you're getting 6.8 runs a game like Parra is. His ERA isn't that much lower than McClung's, and yet Manny is mentioned right along with Sheets and CC by many. Seth would have 10 wins if they score 7 runs a game for him too.

 

Guys like Rusch and the like have good games, Sabathia had a bad pair at the beginning of the season...they aren't machines, their numbers are averages, not absolutes.

[Postseason2006]

The problem is that Rusch is a journeyman and a spot starter now. There is no reason for the horrible hitting against the guy. I can agree with someone like Kevin Slowey but Rusch? The guy sucks.

[TooLiveBrew]

There is no reason for the horrible hitting against the guy.

 

The entire discussion in this thread has been to address this kind of absolutism. Should it be expected that fewer teams will struggle against someone like Rusch? Yes. Is there "no reason" or 'no excuse' for struggling against him? No.

[Fear The Chorizo]

Here's my take:

 

The Brewers have problems with pitchers who have good enough command to consistently deliver marginal pitches that get called strikes by umps with liberal strike zones. I think the Brewers have faced these "whipping boy" pitchers more often with an ump with a big outside, or low and away corner, than an ump with a tight zone. Since they don't make an adjustment to go the other way with the pitch, or even adjust their position in the batter's box to take a marginal pitch away from a scrub starter and make him challenge hitters, starts turned in by Glendon Rusch-caliber starters turn into infield practice for the SS and 2B.

 

You put Glendon Rusch out there with a typical Tim McClelland zone and a team that realizes what he's trying to do, and Rusch gets abused the 2nd time through the order, if not sooner.

[Ennder]

I absolutely dread facing a teams backup C with RISP, every time that is a game winning hit.

 

Wonder if that one is true~

[owbc]

I decided to look into this to see if there is anything unexpected, but I only did it for March 31-April 31, which accounts for a total of 162 IP by opposing starters. I used the 2008 ERA for the pitchers, which averaged to be 4.23, while the Brewers offense managed only 3.83 R/9 in this period. This makes sense, since the Brewers had trouble scoring runs in April and offense usually picks up in the summer.

 

Anyway, breaking it down farther:

 

For Mar/Apr:

Opposing starters with an ERA under 3.5: 57 2/3 IP, 22 ER, 3.43 ERA

Opposing starters with an ERA between 3.5 and 4.5: 36 2/3 IP, 21 ER, 5.15 ERA

Opposing starters with an ERA over 4.5: 67 2/3 IP, 26 ER, 3.46 ERA

 

 

Thus, at least for this relatively small sample, the Brewers performed poorly against "bad" and "good" pitchers and great against "average" pitchers.

 

I wish I had the time to extend it to the rest of the season/last season.

[mothershipconnection]

Lots of things go unnoticed if you're getting 6.8 runs a game like Parra is. His ERA isn't that much lower than McClung's, and yet Manny is mentioned right along with Sheets and CC by many. Seth would have 10 wins if they score 7 runs a game for him too.

 

After a shaky start, Manny's had a really good stretch, as he had a 2.59 ERA in June and is at 2.70 in July. Over the same span, McClung is 3.68 and 3.86. I just wish Manny could go 6+ with some predictability.

[rluzinski]

I'm still tinkering with my spreadsheet and haven't checked ANY of the results for accuracy yet, but I'm ready to give out a taste of my findings. I am comparing the Brewers' performance against each starter to that pitcher's rough, up to date projection. The projection is something like 60% 2008 Marcels (projections from before the season started) and 40% current season ERA (although the exact weight takes into account how many IP each pitcher has this year).

 

He's my preliminary list of "crappy pitchers" (pitchers with a projected ERA over 4.75):

 

Delarosa, Fogg, Rusch, Olsen, Redman, M. Hendrickson, Livian Hernandez, R. Liz, G. Reynolds, Piniero, Moehler, Badenhop, O. Perez (WSN), C. Morton, Nelson Figueroa! and Chacon.

 

That's looks like a pretty crappy bunch of pitchers. Does that seem to be a fair list? Here's the preliminary findings:

 

Weighted Projected ERA: 5.12

Actual ERA Against Brewer Batters: 5.42

 

So far, I see no evidence that Brewers perform any worse than expected against bad pitchers. In fact, the opposite seems have been true so far. But before I'm willing to stand behind that claim, let me finish up and make sure I didn't make a mistake. I'll try and write something up before the end of the All Star break.

 

Here's the spreadsheet:

 

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pjOhZzPpnP_O8WWYqCYFrKQ

[ILuvDaBush]

How about taking out the lefties who regularly can pump it up to 95 (Liz/DeLaRosa/Olsen)? To me, that's not really a crappy pitcher, that's a bullseye for all our hitters to salivate over. edit: except Counsell-NO SOUP FOR YOU! Next!

[rluzinski]

Delarosa has the worst projection out of the entire bunch. I'm not going to remove him because he can throw hard with the wrong hand while sucking.

 

I hope this doesn't turn into a cherry picking exercise, where someone says, "Yeh, but if you only look at pitchers who are x, y, z, the Brewers suck against all bad pitchers!" That's not being objective. That's fishing for a desired conclusion.

[trwi7]

I think the numbers of right handed pitchers vs left handed pitchers would be pretty interesting. Most of us expected this lineup to feast off left handed pitchers with all of our right handed hitters. It's the right handed pitchers that many were concerned about.