What is the deal with Manny Parra?

[patrickgpe]

his next start is scheduled for an off day, i'd skip him and see if that helps.

[SoCal Brew Crew Fan]

His next scheduled start is Sunday in Atlanta.

[patrickgpe]

yeah i got confused on the dates, i'd still skip him though.

[Ennder]

Dillards MLE FIP is 5.28 which is higher than Parra's FIP on the year, so there are no guarantees that he'd be better. I think you send down Parra because you think it helps Parra, not because you think Dillard is the 'answer'.

[Fatter than Joey]

I think you send down Parra because you think it helps Parra, not because you think Dillard is the 'answer'.

 

Very nicely put. I agree that we don't have an obvious option to perform better.

[naivin]

I think you send down Parra because you think it helps Parra, not because you think Dillard is the 'answer'.

Correct, you do it to make the team better over the course of the season. For the Brewers to get where they want to go this year, they need Parra to produce, or they are going to have to acquire someone who can.

[44Fishy]

what I noticed last night was when he was in the stretch, he would check the runner and without giving himself enough time to really set himself or even get a good look at his target, he just snapped his head forward as he was starting his move toward home. The results were not strikes.

So then he's behind in the count and then everything goes all to hell.

 

They need to work on his mechanics. This looks like a simple fix, but not something that should be worked on at this level.

A couple AAA starts now could pay huge dividends later.

[SoCal Brew Crew Fan]

Dillards MLE FIP is 5.28 which is higher than Parra's FIP on the year, so there are no guarantees that he'd be better. I think you send down Parra because you think it helps Parra, not because you think Dillard is the 'answer'.

 

Very well put.

 

As and aside (maybe this isn't the right thread for this), when looking at FIP it seems to show the Brewers starting pitchers have been luckier than they are good. Bush, Suppan and Looper all look worse than Parra, who doesn't look that good himself. Does the FIP just not adjust properly for the type of pitch to contact types that the Brewers have or does it show it's just a matter of time before their ERAs reflect their FIP and our starting pitching is about to blow up? Could it also show the Brewers defense is dramatically improved and has been a key part of the pitchers success YTD? Trying to learn here...any thoughts?

[Ennder]

Well you probably should use xFIP and then correct for career difference between xFIP and ERA because it isn't a perfect model in any way. The bullpen doing such a good job probably helps our ERA a bit.

 

Suppan has an xFIP of 5.40 and an ERA of 5.09. His ERA has historically beaten his xFIP by a little bit so that is probably what we should expect.

 

Bush has an xFIP of 4.79 and an ERA of 4.38. He has had some luck with strand rate and given up even more HR than you'd expect which probably offset each other. Good news with Bush is his peripherals are better than last years which had a lot of luck in the final ERA.

 

Looper has an xFIP of 4.74 and an ERA of 4.24. He has the same thing as Bush going, more HR than you'd expect, better LOB%.

 

Gallardo has an xFIP of 3.87 and an ERA of 3.18 and again the story is a good LOB%.

 

Parra has an xFIP of 4.84 and an ERA of 6.75. His story is a terrible LOB%, 62.4%. That lends a little validation to the idea that he is struggling out of the stretch. The odd thing is his OPS against with RISP is still better than without.

[TooLiveBrew]

I agree with the observation on Parra that he has just had kind of a Murphy's Law season. It seems like when guys reach on him on errors or lucky seeing-eye singles, that's when he really serves up the meatballs. Of course, Ennder provided good data to suggest this isn't the case. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

 

I hope Manny can get things ironed out. He's certainly showed (including the first inning last night) why the Brewers & so many others feel so confident in him.

[jeffy]

yeah i got confused on the dates, i'd still skip him though.

 

Then who starts on Sunday?

[Ennder]

Parra's start last night was just kind of strange all around. He threw 63% of his pitches for strikes which is great, best we've seen this year from him most likely. He let 11 runners on base and 8 of them scored for a 27% LOB, that is really hard to do and is a large part of what has messed up that season long LOB%. 6 of his 11 hits allowed were groundball hits including 3 of them infield hits, so he gave up 11 groundballs and less than half of them went for outs which is pretty strange in general. He also had 2 wild pitches scoring runs both balls that hit the ground directly in front of Kendall which is the design of that pitch, but both bounced into his squared up body and bounced off of him at an odd angle scoring the runs.

 

The HR hit by Uggla was on a decent enough pitch and then Parra gave a meatball changeup to Ross for the grandslam which was clearly just a bad pitch. There was a combination of just downright bad luck, mediocre pitching(2 BB, a number of line drives, some wildness overall) and one really terrible pitch.

 

Like I said earlier, that game by itself wouldn't bother me if he didn't have the rest of the season full of bad starts already.

[SoCalBrewfan]

From the JS blog:

 

Macha said Parra has been uncomfortable using a slide step, a quicker move to the plate designed to prevent base runners from getting big breaks. Macha said there was "a difference of opinion" between manager and pitcher on that subject and Parra admitted to struggling with men on base.

 

"I'm not making pitches out of the stretch that I need to make," said Parra, who left a changeup up to Ross that was whacked out of sight.

 

That jives with some of the observations above, indeed, like 44Fishy. Sounds like Parra's been asked to make a change but that it's got his mechanics out of whack with runners on base?

[JJHardy7]

Like I said earlier, that game by itself wouldn't bother me if he didn't have the rest of the season full of bad starts already.

 

You bring up a lot of good stats ennder. I think the most important stat that may 'trump' everything else right now IMO is that the Brewers are 3-8 when Parra starts and 27-14 with the other starters.

[Eddiehitsthefoulpole]

I don't like the way Manny leans back in his wind-up. I think it is difficult for him to wind-up the exact same way every time. I think we could simplify his delivery and he would have better command. What really worries me is when people talk about his confidence issues. I worry that he could be the next Wes Obermueller.

[Schlitz001]

From Adam McCalvy's blog there are no plans to move Parra.....

 

"With a pitcher, you can't just stop them and say, 'You're not pitching any more,' because then how to you get better? You can go to Triple-A; that's always an option."

But not an option the Brewers are considering for Parra.

"That's our job, to make sure he doesn't [lose confidence]," Melvin said. "If you send him to Triple-A now, you could totally lose him."

[rluzinski]

I think the most important stat that may 'trump' everything else right now IMO is that the Brewers are 3-8 when Parra starts and 27-14 with the other starters.

 

If we are trying to figure out what's wrong with Parra (which is clearly the topic of this discussion), Parra's win/loss record is of no use, whatsoever.

[valpocrewsader]

I think the most important stat that may 'trump' everything else right now IMO is that the Brewers are 3-8 when Parra starts and 27-14 with the other starters.

 

If we are trying to figure out what's wrong with Parra (which is clearly the topic of this discussion), Parra's win/loss record is of no use, whatsoever.

One of the themes of this thread seems to certainly be whether or not, for the good of the Brewers, Parra should be getting MLB or AAA starts in near future. The Brewers' record this season in Parra's starts would seem to have something to do with that discussion.

[JohnBriggs12]

What I'm trying to figure out is why the Brewers seem intent to continue coddling the 26 year old Parra. Melvin is quoted as saying "you could totally lose him" by sending him out to AAA. Removing Villanueva from rotation in 2008 after just 9 starts didn't result in "losing him" and it wasn't like Villanueva didn't have success starting in both 06 and 07 either because he did. If anything it motivated him and made him tougher. Do we really want to rely on a guy that you have to worry can't handle a trip to AAA or even the bullpen? If that move resulted in "losing him", then he's not worth having to begin with.

[rluzinski]

Right now, Parra's recent performance seems to be well out of line with even conservative expectations for him. I thought we were trying to identify what is wrong with him and what might be done to fix him. That's a very interesting topic. How does his win/loss record help answer that? I guess the answer is, because it helps to quantity the difference between his expected and actual performance but then wins and loses has to be the worst way to try and do it.

 

So, I have to take back the notion that it's completely irrelevent when trying to judge how well a pitcher pitched. It's simply trumped by any number or other stats. Really, the only time a pitcher's win/loss record trumps every stat is when the question is, What's the pitcher's win/loss record?

 

It's interesting to look at how much each group of players influences wins and loses. If offense and defense is 60 percent, then starting pithing is about 25 percent ) 2/3rds of 40 percent) and the bullpen is 15 percent. So even if you give the starter his share of offense and defense, they aren't even at 30 percent. By far the most from any one player but still just one part of determining the outcome of a game.

[TheCrew07]

I think you're numbers are flipped, there's no way the pitching which is involved in every play is only 25%. The offense is actually a function of the pitcher's effectiveness, not the other way around. The pitching is probably more like 60-70% of a game, a good pitcher doing his thing will keep any offense down.

[Ennder]

I think hitting vs pitching for an individual matchup is probably at best 60% pitching, 40% hitting and then defense impacts a significant portion of the outcome for pitching so in the end it probably ends up somewhere under 50%

 

The difference is a pitcher impacts every AB but a hitter only impacts 1 out of 9. A lineup of 9 Pujols is going to kill any pitcher on a regular basis, doesn't matter how good they are.

 

A dominant start by a pitcher usually ends up in a .600 WPA or less though, a pitchers impact on a game is pretty much never more than 60% of a win and then only if he pitches a completely dominant game. Your offense, your defense and their offense just plays too large of a role. On average I'd say a pitcher is responsible for less than 40% of a win and 25% for a normal start is probably pretty accurate.

[rluzinski]

The offense is actually a function of the pitcher's effectiveness, not the other way around.

 

What evidence supports that? That suggests that all hitters hit inversely proportional to the talent of the pitcher. That's not the case at all. Has Fielder and Braun just faced a lot of bad pitchers? Of course not. Not even close.

 

The numbers suggest that it's roughly a 50/50 exchange. If the league average OPS is .750 and a pitcher has a .700 OPS against and the batter has a .800 OPS, we expect about a .750 OPS in the exchange. There's obviously a lot more that goes into it but it's nothing like what you are suggesting.

 

The pitching is probably more like 60-70% of a game, a good pitcher doing his thing will keep any offense down.

 

Sure, an elite pitcher can shut down an entire team of mediocre players. That goes without saying. An elite hitter can destroy a mediocre pitcher. All I am telling you is the percentage that the starting pitcher has control of. If he has only a 30% say in what happens but that 30% is better than any other pitcher in the league, he's going to have a huge say in the outcome of the game. Think about what influence an average starting pitcher has in a game against an average offense and average defense.

[JJHardy7]

So, I have to take back the notion that it's completely irrelevent when trying to judge how well a pitcher pitched. It's simply trumped by any number or other stats. Really, the only time a pitcher's win/loss record trumps every stat is when the question is, What's the pitcher's win/loss record?

 

Well...if you have good stats you put your team in a position to win games. The only two ways W/L for a team doesn't matter is if the hitting sucks or the bullpen/pitching sucks. There's clearly a gap between starts of other players and Manny. I know baseball is a stats filled game, but winning is the name of the game. Manny just isn't putting his team in a position to win. I know that there is luck, lack of run support, etc. I'm not saying W/L of a pitcher is everything in terms of the pitcher's individual record. I do think that the team's record in games started by the pitcher is significant if that record continues to be quite different than the rest of the starters. I guess I just don't see how it's not if that continues.

 

I think this is part of the thread too. Parra's 'deal' is he's not putting this team in the best position to win games. He should be sent to AAA plain and simple IMO. I do think the Brewers are worried about where his head is at and that's why he'll get another chance. I really like Parra, but he really, really needs a veteran to help him out. Didn't CC somewhat help him out last year IIRC?

[rluzinski]

Yes, we all know Parra is pitching poorly. Most of his stats are bad. But instead of looking at his win/loss record and concluding it's obvious he needs to be sent down to AAA (which isn't obvious), maybe we can gain some real insight by looking beyond the surface stats. Or we can throw out cliches like, "Bottom line is that he isn't getting the job done" and learn nothing.