The Starting Rotation

[topper09er]

Jeff Suppan's 3 full seasons in MKE:

07: 4.62 ERA, 4.42 FIP, 2.5 WAR

08: 4.96 ERA, 5.51 FIP, -0.2WAR

09: 5.29 ERA, 5.70 FIP, -0.7 WAR

 

Randy Wolf in MKE:

10: 4.17 ERA, 4.85 FIP, 0.7 WAR

 

 

 

Suppan was much better than Wolf in their first years in milwaukee, then Suppan completely fell off a cliff. You cant just assume forever that every player will be able to revert back to their previous year's pace, players get older and skills diminish. There have been 100s of MLB pitchers who have hit a wall in their age 34 season. Wolf has been absolutely crushed in spring training and by the 2 major league teams he has faced this season. He dominated yesterday but I have a feeling outings like that will be pretty common against the pirates this year.

[topper09er]

I agree. Most fans overreact way too quickly. I'm very confident Wolf is going to end up with a 4-4.25 ERA just like he usually does and I'm okay with that.

But when will this end, will he just be able to maintain a 4-4.25 ERA until he is 55 years old? No, he will drop off at some point. Although there are no specific stats that point to this season being worse than usual for him, by watching this guy pitch I am of the opinion that he will be worse than last year, and by next year we will be regretting the huge contract he has which will keep him in the rotation until August of 2012. That is what I meant by Jeff Suppan 2.0, we will regret his contract and it will keep him in the rotation longer than he would if he was a young cheap guy we could just put in the pen.

[CheezWizHed]

Although there are no specific stats that point to this season being worse than usual for him

 

Can we at least wait until the sky is actually falling then?

[Ennder]

Suppan was much better than Wolf in their first years in milwaukee,

 

Really depends on the stats you like. FIP and WAR(at least when based on FIP) are pretty weak stats for pitchers for my money and even if you use something like xFIP you have to look at career trends between xFIP and ERA and make a manual adjustment to get a lot of value out of it. I'd say Wolf was better than Suppan in his first year but yeah Wolf's year wasn't great, he struggled for way too much of the first half. They might regret the 3rd year but that isn't nearly as big a deal as Suppan where they regretted 2.5 years of the deal.

[Jose Cardenal]

You do realize that Wolf's 2010 numbers are skewed by the one start in Pittsburgh last year where he sucked it up and was left in for 5.2 IP while giving up 12 Earned Runs. Remove that start and he still pitches 210 IP with an ERA of 3.77. That is better than Gallardo and Greinike last year and worthy of the contract he was given.

 

He also had 20 quality starts in '10. Amoung those with less than 20 QS: MarkBuehrle, Cliff Lee, Matt Garza, Johan Santana, Yovani Gallardo, Tommy Hanson & Johnny Cueto. QS is not a great stat but it does give you an idea of how often a pitcher gives his team a chance to win.

 

While Wolf is not great he is much better than Suppan ever was and I am not worried about the contract he was given.

[rluzinski]

We should expect a pitcher of Wolf's age to get progressively worse from year to year, not necessarily drop of a cliff. If he was was a true 4.2 ERA pitcher last year, we might expect a 4.35 ERA from him this year from just being one year older (I don't know what the actual average age curve looks like). On average, pitchers lose something like half a MPH every year, so that can explain just about all the drop I think.

[bullox]

Remove that start and he still pitches 210 IP with an ERA of 3.77. That is better than Gallardo and Greinike.

You can't arbitrarily remove games and say they were better than so and so after that. If you are going to do that, you might as well remove the worst starts from all of the pitchers you are comparing, or better yet, go with their actual statistics with nothing removed.

[zzzmanwitz]

Someone should calculate how well he did if you remove his 2 worst starts and 4 best starts. I think that would give you a typical Wolf outing.

[topper09er]

Wolf's average start minus best 4 and worst 2 from 2010 (for ease I ranked best and worst starts based on game score):

 

IP 6.08

H 6.32

R 3.04

ER 2.79

BB 2.71

SO 4.18

HR 0.75

HBP 0.29

ERA 4.13

WHIP 1.49

 

Replacement level pitching for Wolf last season was a 4.70 ERA. Thus we can expect him to be pretty close to replacement level.

 

Edit: The ERA was wrong before, by a lot.

[zzzmanwitz]

Thanks Topper. I am okay with that output for my 5th starter (I consider Narveson our 4th at this point).

[logan82]

Remove that start and he still pitches 210 IP with an ERA of 3.77. That is better than Gallardo and Greinike.

You can't arbitrarily remove games and say they were better than so and so after that. If you are going to do that, you might as well remove the worst starts from all of the pitchers you are comparing, or better yet, go with their actual statistics with nothing removed.

You can't arbitrarily remove them but I think it clearly illustrates one of the problems with ERA and just how much of an influence a manager can have on it. If it was obvious Wolf was struggling and was pulled his numbers would have looked a lot better. Getting left in just once a year to give up 5 more runs is a difference of 0.25 ERA over 180 innings.

[dlk9s]

Remove that start and he still pitches 210 IP with an ERA of 3.77. That is better than Gallardo and Greinike.

You can't arbitrarily remove games and say they were better than so and so after that.

It's not arbitrary when you are removing what is clearly an outlier that severely skews a player's stats.

[PlayerHader]

I agree. Most fans overreact way too quickly. I'm very confident Wolf is going to end up with a 4-4.25 ERA just like he usually does and I'm okay with that.

But when will this end, will he just be able to maintain a 4-4.25 ERA until he is 55 years old? No, he will drop off at some point. Although there are no specific stats that point to this season being worse than usual for him, by watching this guy pitch I am of the opinion that he will be worse than last year, and by next year we will be regretting the huge contract he has which will keep him in the rotation until August of 2012. That is what I meant by Jeff Suppan 2.0, we will regret his contract and it will keep him in the rotation longer than he would if he was a young cheap guy we could just put in the pen.

It'll end when we starts to lose his "stuff." It won't happen at 34 just because he is 34 and that is when it happens to pitchers. He's still touching 90 with a good curveball (which he still hasn't gotten command of yet) and a cutter.

[topper09er]

Remove that start and he still pitches 210 IP with an ERA of 3.77. That is better than Gallardo and Greinike last year and worthy of the contract he was given.

If you remove Gallardo's worst start, 7 ER in 3.1 IP, his ERA was 3.56.

[endaround]

Suppan's first year in Milwaukee was one of Suppan's best seasons in years. Wolf has been a better pitcher over his career than Suppan was.

[danzig6767]

I'm not interested much in studying sabermetrics, but i have read on here a few times where i believe it was fangraphs that puts a rough dollar value on the season a player had. What was Wolf basically worth last year?

[rluzinski]

No, you CAN'T remove what you consider an outlier. Data is data.

[TooLiveBrew]

I'm not interested much in studying sabermetrics, but i have read on here a few times where i believe it was fangraphs that puts a rough dollar value on the season a player had. What was Wolf basically worth last year?

FanGraphs includes the dollar value on all player pages. Wolf was valued at $3M last season by their formula.

[danzig6767]

Narveson had some untimely walks in that third inning, but other than that, i thought he pitched well again. The two hits in that inning were simple grounders to second that resulted in hits because Weeks was shifted up the middle. I don't recall a single hard hit ball off Narveson all game. In fact, i don't remember the Nationals really hitting a single ball hard off any of our pitchers tonight.

 

Four runs on walks, an error, a SAC fly, and two grounders in the 3rd inning that

would have been outs if Weeks was playing where he normally is without a

shift.

[danzig6767]

I'm not interested much in studying sabermetrics, but i have read on here a few times where i believe it was fangraphs that puts a rough dollar value on the season a player had. What was Wolf basically worth last year?

FanGraphs includes the dollar value on all player pages. Wolf was valued at $3M last season by their formula.

Thanks

 

That surprises me. I would think 215 innings at a 4.17 ERA which is decent would have a value quite a bit higher than only 3 million dollars. What am i missing given the dearth of starting pitching overall in baseball?

[logan82]

WAR is based off of FIP.

[danzig6767]

Hmmm

 

I know that WAR means wins above replacement, but have no clue at all how FIP is calculated. So are they basically saying that Wolf's 4.17 ERA was lucky and that he really should have given up more runs, thus it lessens the dollar value that they placed on the year he had? In general though, i have to believe in today's baseball that a starting pitcher who throws 215 innings with a decent ERA like 4.17 has to be worth significantly more than 3 million dollars given that pretty much all to nearly all teams would be absolutely thrilled to get 215 innings at that ERA for only three million out of a 4th-5th starter.

[logan82]

I am not sure about the total calculation but it relies heavily on strikeouts and walks. I believe it normalizes HR and BABIP. They are trying to separate out a pitcher from the defense behind him.

[mothershipconnection]

No, you CAN'T remove what you consider an outlier. Data is data.

 

There's no problem with excluding a datum if you make it clear that this was done. What you can't do is say "if we remove this, the value drops to X, therefore, the value is X". It's perfectly fine to say that "he was actually pretty good except for one awful game", because you're conceding that there was an awful game, and not pretending it didn't happen.

[Ennder]

I am not sure about the total calculation but it relies heavily on strikeouts and walks. I believe it normalizes HR and BABIP. They are trying to separate out a pitcher from the defense behind him.

FIP normalizes LOB% and BABIP more or less.

xFIP normalizes HR% as well.

 

None of them are perfect but FIP is just an odd choice to use for WAR. ERA tells what happened better than FIP and xFIP shows true skill level better than FIP so why use the middle one.