Rotation's numbers are alarming

[Funketown]

Your run support analogy is a poor one because that's a factor which was completely out of his control at the time, unlike allowing baserunners before or after unearned runs cross the plate.

It's not a perfect analogy but it's part of my point that defensive performance is not under the pitcher's control and it should not be factored into how we evaluate their performance.

 

Unearned runs happen so randomly and infrequently that to try and find a pattern as to which pitchers are more susceptible to giving up the most unearned runs is foolish. You're looking at an extremely small portion of the picture and trying to explain it to a level that we just can't understand.

[Bernman23]

That's a classic case of confirmation bias. I showed you they weren't random events through correlations in multiple situations and it had zero effect on your preconceived notion. Now that's foolish.

[Funketown]

That's a classic case of confirmation bias. I showed you they weren't random events through correlations in multiple situations and it had zero effect on your preconceived notion. Now that's foolish.

I'm not the one who's guilty of having a confirmation bias . I'm not disagreeing with you because my preconceived notions differ from yours. You're looking for a pattern where there very well may not be one. If we assume a some random distribution of unearned runs over the course of a few seasons, we're going to see some pitchers give up more and some give up less. There just isn't enough information out there to reach your conclusions.

 

In his career, Greinke has given up .36 unearned runs per 9 innings. Chen has given up .45 unearned runs per 9 innings.

 

The league average for (ERA-RA) in the NL is 0.36 this year. Last year it was 0.37. The year before it was 0.33. In his career, Greinke has given up an average number of unearned runs per nine innings, despite his defense sucking during his career. When meaningful data is used, it's pretty difficult to reach your conclusion.

[rluzinski]

"Marcum has never allowed more than 5 unearned runs in a season, and only 13 in his entire 700+ inning career, which you can credit to his obvious mental toughness."

 

What is league average for a pitchers with a smiliar FB/GB ratio? How good was his defense behind him? To presume it is a result of "mental toughness" is quite the stretch.

 

Greinke has played for bad defensive teams and also has had a lot of unearned runs. Without knowing anything more, I can't really conclude anything but the obvious. The fact that you think you've made a strong argument proving Marcum's strong mental toughness and Greinke's lack of it with a few unerned run totals is puzzling, to say the least.

EDIT:

"The league average for (ERA-RA) in the NL is 0.36 this year. Last year it was 0.37. The year before it was 0.33. In his career, Greinke has given up an average number of unearned runs per nine innings, despite his defense sucking during his career."

I like to see this kind of data a lot more than anecdotal evidence.

[Bernman23]

No, you absolutely are guilty of confirmation bias. You brought up the Royals' defensive statistics and then ignored the comparative unearned run totals of pitchers on that staff, which is inherently more relevant.

 

I can't verify the accuracy of all your league-wide statistics, but Greinke being poor relative to his staffs at keeping unearned runs from crossing the plate has happened for 4 straight years now (even though he's been theoretically the best pitcher on his staff), which now constitutes a pattern.

 

Just like it was a pattern that Parra became consistently poor at it, naturally because of how he visually got frustrated on the mound, and would start to be wild and then guide one over the plate to compensate.

 

It's silly to act like success in certain situations is random because a tendency isn't abundantly clear when you throw all the numbers into an average and there isn't a major deviation.

 

Rickie Weeks used to suck in clutch situations early on his Brewers' career because he was such a nervous guy as you see during his interviews. He eventually built some confidence and now doesn't suck as much, so if you looked at his career as a whole, he wouldn't look so bad in the clutch. But that didn't change the fact that he did suck at one point and it wasn't a random event. We saw his tendency to get nervous reappear in a bigger stage during the all-star festivities.

 

For Greinke he's developed a lack of confidence most times he faces adversity, like after an error, which he deserves discredit for, because it hurts his teams.

[Funketown]

Okay, I'm done with this. I tried to show you that if you don't focus on just a few numbers your pattern can't be found. Oh, and my numbers are from baseball-reference.com. I didn't just pull this data out of a hat.

 

I'm not arguing with your comments because of preconceived notions. I'm saying you're using worthless data to try to prove something that simply cannot be inferred based on your evidence. That's not confirmation bias.

 

Edit: Oh, and from 2008-2010, Greinke gave up .41 earned runs per nine innings. The Royals gave up .40. I guess that's irrelevant though, because my preconceived notions are preventing me from seeing the fact that Greinke did not, in fact, give up significantly more unearned runs per nine innings than the rest of the Royals staff.

[Thurston Fluff]

I agree that just using FIP is probably too extreme. The pitcher should get some credit for the result of balls-in-play. How about, average ERA and FIP, to at least give defenders some of the credit for sucking?

 

I have long wondered why there isn't some sort of system that does that. It seems silly to not use data because it isn't entirely on the pitcher when there is a fair share of credit/blame on him. Maybe add team defense into it then adjust the ERA to what it would be with an average defense.

[rluzinski]

I have long wondered why there isn't some sort of system that does that.

 

The more advanced projection systems adjust for team defense. FIP works very well when your sample is small (like in a half season) because luck plays a huge role in the results of balls in play. If your sample size is huge (a career), ERA pretty much is all you need. In between you want to give the pitcher, the fielders, the park and luck their fair share. Here is an excellent discussion on the topic:

 

http://www.tangotiger.net/solvingdips.pdf

 

Page 18 they come to the conclusion:

 

"So, what we are saying is that we have a 10/6/4 split between pitching/fielding/park, in, that order. Luck plays a part, and that is dependent on the sample size. When n=1, it's almost all luck. When n=1 million, luck is not involved."

 

Over 700 balls-in-play (about a season), they break it up like this:

 

luck : 44%

pitch: 28%

field: 17%

park : 11%

 

This is 8 years old, though, so there might be better stuff out there but clearly, luck still plays a significant role over a season or less.

[endaround]

Isn't that the purpose of tERA? It takes into account batted ball types. And again the Brewers aren't among the Phillies, Giants and Braves but are in the next group. The Phillies, Braves and Giants are alla round 3.5 whilte teh Brewers and Cardinals at right around (4.07 and 4.01). The Brewers starters are at 4.25 including Estrada. Usually these numbers are fairly similar to FIP anyway but for the Brewer starters:

 

Greinke FIP 2.87 tERA 3.50

Gallardo FIP 3.83 tERA 4.06

Narveson FIP 3.50 tERA 4.34

Wolf FIP 4.41 tERA 5.21

Marcum FIP 3.65 tERA 3.87