Too Early to Be Demoralized?

[sheethead]

I was thinking the next two should be gimmes for the Brewers

 

There is no longer any such thing for this team against any opponent, including the Astros.

 

If you judge Davis by more reasonable means he has been about the same this year as he always has been, he's just given up more runs than normal. You would also realize how poorly Dave Bush has pitched regardless of the results of his ERA.

 

I wonder if I am alone here in thinking this doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

[sheethead]

It takes 500 IP for ERA to stabilize into a meaningful value

 

Yeah, I think I read it was more like 1,200 innings. WHIP can be useful in showing how many walks and hits a pitcher is giving up per inning. For Doug Davis that number is 2.

[NievesNoNO]

A few weeks ago I thought it was too early. I have changed my mind. Wow, take down the banner and make Hoffman accept an assignment to triple A. If he denies then cut him. What do you say to the rest of the team if you continue to run him out there? Don't worry we don't hold you accountable for your performance. His past earned him the right to stick a few more games, but he's obviously done. They have a fourth of their payroll in two guys that might be hard pressed to make the cut on a lot of college teams right now, and I'm not just talking division 1 here. Blow this team up. Just start cutting guys. Hoffman, Suppan, Vargas, maybe Davis. I'm sure this is all very reactionary on my part, but sometimes change happens in an instant. We are looking up to every team in the league except for Houston. We're pretty much through a fourth of the season so even if there is a turn around it'll take a miracle to make the post season. Bring some more young arms up and lets move on.

[Ennder]

I don't think a team can lose 8 games in a row and not have it be demoralizing.

[Funketown]

If you judge Davis by more reasonable means he has been about the same this year as he always has been, he's just given up more runs than normal. You would also realize how poorly Dave Bush has pitched regardless of the results of his ERA.

 

I wonder if I am alone here in thinking this doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

If you look into it, ERA is a much worse predictor of future ERA than is a linear combination of HR/9, SO/9, and BB/9. So much of ERA is dependent on the play behind a pitcher; with a weak defense, ERA will be hugely inflated.

 

I'm worried about Davis as well, but he really hasn't pitched that differently this year than he did in former years.

[joepepsi]

I'm worried about Davis as well, but he really hasn't pitched that differently this year than he did in former years.

Right. But the problem is that Davis has always bucked his own predictors. His career has been one big anomaly. An exception that proves the rule. So saying his peripherals aren't that different than in years past isn't necessarily saying he's pitching well.

[TheCrew07]

No I just don't use ERA as my primary stat for judging pitchers. ERA is utterly worthless over a 7 game span, it means absolutely nothing. It takes 500 IP for ERA to stabilize into a meaningful value, a single season of the stat is mostly worthless. If you judge Davis by more reasonable means he has been about the same this year as he always has been, he's just given up more runs than normal. You would also realize how poorly Dave Bush has pitched regardless of the results of his ERA.

When have I ever limited my pitching analysis to ERA? Look on the minor league forum, you can count on one hand the ERA references I've made, and they are all in the context of League Leader Board posts.

 

Davis has stunk, the games haven't been close. Blame it on defense, blame it on bad luck, blame it on the small sample, I really don't care because he's been bad in my opinion. Pitching metrics are also pretty worthless in my opinion, there's no context and pitching is all about context. We argued this about Parra getting hammered when he makes hitter's pitchers, but that was bad luck too. I get it, you're into sabermetrics based on average rates to judge pitching. I'm into PITCHf/x, and more importantly location, intended vs actual. The worst thing fangraphs did was post average velocity because now that's the first thing people to point to.. "his fastball velocity hasn't declined, he'll be fine". Pitching just isn't that simple. Davis outpitched his peripherals forever, it shouldn't be surprising that it's finally caught up to him for an extended amount of time. Advanced metrics like his K rate, but the distribution of those BBs and Ks around the Hits will make all the difference in his end result, and no the distribution isn't a random event or random luck either way. Either you make your pitches or you don't, there are not many hitters that get hits on a pitcher's pitch, we're fortunate to have a guy like Braun who does have that ability on our team.

 

All of these points about Davis have already been discussed at length and beat to death in other threads. The question was simple. When does a bad start actually become a bad season? My answer would be once we pass the point the player doesn't have the ability to recover his stat line to career norms for the season. Your answer was predictably evasive and equally pointless because for whatever reason you refuse to acknowledge that small sample analysis can have value. I ask a question in the context of a single season, you reply with years, then attack ERA like I care, completely ignoring the original premise. So I guess we need to limit our discussion to players in their prime with a 3 year set of data for the conversation to have any merit? All a 3 year data set helps you do is establish a career trend, to my knowledge no one can accurately predict when or how far a given player's production will fall off, but it will happen to every player eventually. I'm done with this conversation to nowhere.

[endaround]

"Davis outpitched his peripherals forever, it shouldn't be surprising that it's finally caught up to him for an extended amount of time."

 

That makes no sense. That's like saying because you got heads 10 times in a row your going to get a string of tails. It doesn't work that way.

[SoCal Brew Crew Fan]

I know it's bad when the Cubs losing brings me no joy...yeah, I'm demoralized.

[Ennder]

Davis has a career ERA of 4.37, career xFIP of 4.43 and a career FIP of 4.41.

 

He doesn't generally outpitch his peripherals.

 

When does a bad start actually become a bad season?

 

I again would answer it with I don't judge a pitcher by ER. Davis hasn't had a bad start to the year, he's had a lot of balls find holes for singles which has led to a lot of ER. All of his other stats are exactly where I would have expected them to be except for a .415 BABIP. Even just watching the game it was really easy to see that he was having bad luck as every groundball hit just happened to be between 2 players.

[sheethead]

So Doug Davis will be just fine once the defense starts lining up where the balls will be hit? Is it possible the balls are finding the holes because Davis' pitches are extremely easy to hit this year? I guess I don't get where this is leading. Doug Davis is terrible. Trevor Hoffman is terrible. These two, along with Suppan, Vargas, and Hawkins, are the main reasons for the complete demoralization of the team and fanbase.

[endaround]

Davis isn't giving up a bunch of line drives. If he was, yeah his pitches are too easy to hit. He has a GB% above his career norm. The fact that the Brewers aren't turning them into outs is account of bad defense and luck. Davis is "pitching to contact" and see what that gets you with the Brewers? Hoffman is an entirely different story.

[Beast Light]

I was thinking the next two should be gimmes for the Brewers

 

There is no longer any such thing for this team against any opponent, including the Astros.

 

If you judge Davis by more reasonable means he has been about the same this year as he always has been, he's just given up more runs than normal. You would also realize how poorly Dave Bush has pitched regardless of the results of his ERA.

 

I wonder if I am alone here in thinking this doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Don't worry, you are not alone.

[rluzinski]

I was thinking the next two should be gimmes for the Brewers

 

There is no longer any such thing for this team against any opponent, including the Astros.

 

If you judge Davis by more reasonable means he has been about the same this year as he always has been, he's just given up more runs than normal. You would also realize how poorly Dave Bush has pitched regardless of the results of his ERA.

 

I wonder if I am alone here in thinking this doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Don't worry, you are not alone.

I'm guessing you are a believer in the results being all that matters.

[DuWayne Steurer]

I'm guessing you are a believer in the results being all that matters.

Shouldn't they be? Who's going to sit around at the end of the season and say "Well, we're 74 -88, but it was a lot of bad luck!" At some point, the results have to outweigh everything else. Sure, DD and Hoffman have had horrible luck. I agree that the useful metrics would indicate that they haven't pitched as poorly as the numbers seem to show on the surface. But the end result is.......they're 15-24 and sliding. The season's a quarter of the way over. Is it over for them? No, but they're in a pretty deep hole at this point. Baseball, as with any business, is results oriented. As it should be. The stats are great predictive tools, but being able to predict something, and seeing it happen are two different things.

 

I don't care if DD has a 4.5-ish FIP at the end of the season if he has a 6 ERA and a 7-14 record, the results say he had a bad season. An unlucky season, but I'm less concerned *at this moment* about what the peripherals suggest DD *should* do based on what he's actually doing.

[Postseason2006]

Hoffman have had horrible luck.

He also had a ton of good luck last night when the ball was put in play.

[SoCal Brew Crew Fan]

RoCoBrewfan]

I'm guessing you are a believer in the results being all that matters.

Shouldn't they be? Who's going to sit around at the end of the season and say "Well, we're 74 -88, but it was a lot of bad luck!" At some point, the results have to outweigh everything else. Sure, DD and Hoffman have had horrible luck. I agree that the useful metrics would indicate that they haven't pitched as poorly as the numbers seem to show on the surface. But the end result is.......they're 15-24 and sliding. The season's a quarter of the way over. Is it over for them? No, but they're in a pretty deep hole at this point. Baseball, as with any business, is results oriented. As it should be. The stats are great predictive tools, but being able to predict something, and seeing it happen are two different things.

 

I don't care if DD has a 4.5-ish FIP at the end of the season if he has a 6 ERA and a 7-14 record, the results say he had a bad season. An unlucky season, but I'm less concerned *at this moment* about what the peripherals suggest DD *should* do based on what he's actually doing.

Think of the stats as an explanation of what has been happening. If we dig a little deeper than ERA, which may not explain the whole story in mid-May, it appears Davis has had some bad luck. The prediction would be he reverts to his mean of a mid 4's ERA. Yes you are right, Davis is having a bad season although with Hoffman it appears to be more than luck. Should we start bailing on all guys having a rough patch yet appear to be doing better than their results? The opposite criticism has been leveled that we didn't "sell high" on guys like Hardy or Hall when they had value.

Process > outcome won't always work, but is the key to long term success.

 

[markedman5]

Hoffman's season so far has little to do with luck.

 

He is giving up almost 5 home runs for every 9 innings pitched.............

 

I mean come on..........its ok to say someone is just pitching badly.......Hoffman himself said it today...... “I feel prepared and ready to go out there. I’m just not getting it done.”

[Invader3K]

Oh, I don't think there's anyone believing there is something unlucky about Hoffman at this point. It's obvious he doesn't have his changeup working, and if he doesn't have that pitch, he has nothing. It's not like he's giving up seeing eye grounders. He's giving up hits that are crushed, and too often over the wall.

[SoCal Brew Crew Fan]

To be clear markedman, I agree...with Hoffman, it's not luck. His change up location is way off. I was referring to Davis.

[rluzinski]

I'm guessing you are a believer in the results being all that matters.

Shouldn't they be? Who's going to sit around at the end of the season and say "Well, we're 74 -88, but it was a lot of bad luck!" At some point, the results have to outweigh everything else. Sure, DD and Hoffman have had horrible luck. I agree that the useful metrics would indicate that they haven't pitched as poorly as the numbers seem to show on the surface. But the end result is.......they're 15-24 and sliding. The season's a quarter of the way over. Is it over for them? No, but they're in a pretty deep hole at this point. Baseball, as with any business, is results oriented. As it should be. The stats are great predictive tools, but being able to predict something, and seeing it happen are two different things.

 

I don't care if DD has a 4.5-ish FIP at the end of the season if he has a 6 ERA and a 7-14 record, the results say he had a bad season. An unlucky season, but I'm less concerned *at this moment* about what the peripherals suggest DD *should* do based on what he's actually doing.

Fans have the luxury of only caring about what has already happened. The powers that be have to estimate who are the best players available at any given moment throughout the entire season. Sometimes the results perfectly reflect that, sometimes they sort of do and sometimes they don't at all.

[Fear The Chorizo]

the only bad luck Hoffman's had to this point is that major league stadiums don't have 450' power alleys...that's about the only way he'd get his BABIP down at this point.

 

Doug Davis is allowing just about 2 hitters per inning on base, with only a small percentage of that tied to any perceived bad luck - he's been horrible this season, and the only reason his sabermetric stats look decent is because they're being compared to the rest of the horrible Brewer pitching staff. For all the bad luck Davis may have had, he's also had his moments when he's been rocked and was lucky to get out of innings without further damage. Frankly, luck evens out, and you make your own luck.

[YoungGeezy]

In a way it is kind of nice that the Brewers are off to such a bad start because every year it seems like they start hot get really cold after the all-star break. Hopefully it will be the other way around this season. I think a lot needs to be changed if they have any hope at making any type of run though. Macha doesn't have the respect of the players the way Dale and Willie do and he also doesn't stand up for his players the way Yost did. Those are small but big things. Coming into the job everyone knew about Macha and how the reason the A's got rid of him was because he could not connect with the younger players at all and when you have as many young guys as the Brewers do, that is extremely big problem.

 

IMO I thought Willie should have never been fired from the Mets and if he was with any other team outside of New York he wouldn't have gotten the boot. Personally I thought he was a great manager. Not only does he connect with the players but he really works with them to get better. There is no doubt in my mind that the Brewers would improve from replacing Macha wit Randolph.

 

Dream situation, Macha fired, Willie promote,d Dale to Bench coach (or stay hitting coach) with Yount moving into which ever one Dale doesn't do (they are best friends and he likes Milwaukee, have to think he'd be open for it.)

 

I know we all complained about Ned but I actual really miss him. It was annoying how no matter what a player did wrong, he would take 100% of the blame but that is actually a really good thing. He connected with the players, he did his best to get them to a winning team, was patient and knew how to work with the young guys, and overall was a good manager. Of course he made mistakes but compared to Macha..... ughhhh Yost was a god. Plus Yost wouldn't have destroyed Gamel eighter or given up on Parra so bad that he was the 7th or 8th choice to start a game when he without a doubt has the 2nd best stuff of any pitcher on the team.

[endaround]

The great Willie Davis had a leadoff hitter with a sub .300 OBP for an entire season. So no, he isn't an improvement.

[brewmann04]

Willie is not what we need as manager.