Gallardo is Better Than Bush/Vargas.

[iluvlamp]

My thread PWNS. I didn't envision this, but it is highly entertaining and informative.

[TheCrew07]

Quote:

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My high horse? You're the one who comes in and declares who fields of science not science by your definition. Then you say that if a model can't take into account all variables its worthless or if it doesn't predict things with certainty it has no purpose

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Nice way to completely innaccurately paraphrase my positions on the matters at hand. There isn't one true statement in that post.

 

I stand by my opinion that Sabermetrics isn't science, that's complex mathematical analysis, and the 2 things are not the same. Plugging numbers into equations (that there is no mathematical proof for, only hypothesis) doesn't constitute science in my opinion.

 

I said that I find Sabermetrics useful.

 

I said I've taken the time to be well read on Sabermetrics, I've found some of it very interesting.

 

I said that I utilize Sabermetrics as part of my view of a player, it's just not my entire view.

 

I said that my problem with Sabermetrics is the presentation, that a certain metric is a fact. Player A has a higher VORP than player B so it's a fact he's a better player... that doesn't work for me personally, I think there's more to it than that.

 

I said if a certain metric defines someone's view of a player, then I think they have a narrow view of sports and baseball. A player's value to his team is not defined by his stats alone.

 

I said Sabermetrics are projections based on historical fact, but are not facts in themselves.

 

I said Sabermetrics cannot accurately predict the outcome of a given AB in today's game, nor the outcome of the game itself.

 

I said if Sabermetrics helps draw someone to baseball I'm all for it. Anything that helps keep people interested in baseball is a good thing.

 

I said Bush may regress to his statistical mean, or he may not. I used TBow as an example.

 

In no way did I intend to get drawn into another circular debate about Sabermetrics where you have no real interest in what I say. In fact, I was giving my opinion about the proper time to pull a plug on player, and that we the fan's generally are not armed with all of the information available.

 

You've been blasting away from the start, "blinkered view", "your biggest problem", "welcome to sabermetrics"... I let the first one go as in the past I had respected your opinion. However your recent comments have made your air of superiority pretty clear to me. Like I said, If you're going to paraphrase me, at least make your accounts accurate.

[xisxisxis]

Nice way to completely innaccurately paraphrase my positions on the matters at hand.

 

I'm shocked! That never happens at Brewerfan.net.

 

 

I stand by my opinion that Sabermetrics isn't science, that's complex mathematical analysis, and the 2 things are not the same. Plugging numbers into equations (that there is no mathematical proof for, only hypothesis) doesn't constitute science in my opinion.

 

Applied math/statistics wants to create an equation to explain everything. Unfortunately there isn't a good understanding of the number of variables and what orders they interact. We're told that they know the important variables so that it doesn't matter if we only have an equation that accounts for a small fraction of the variables. Of course it's those pesky minor variables that lead to dead patients due to drug side effects or the teams that score more runs than they allow in a year, but have a losing record. I'd rather be a fan of the baseball team with "unlucky" variance than the patient who's coin landed on the wrong side.

 

 

I said that I utilize Sabermetrics as part of my view of a player, it's just not my entire view.

 

There's a good book you should read by Jonathan Kirsch (inbox me for reference).

 

 

 

I said Sabermetrics cannot accurately predict the outcome of a given AB in today's game, nor the outcome of the game itself.

 

Thankfully nothing can predict the outcome of a given AB, nor the outcome of a game. That's why we play them and they're so enjoyable.

 

 

In fact, I was giving my opinion about the proper time to pull a plug on player, and that we the fan's generally are not armed with all of the information available.

 

As fans we tend to second guess (or billionth guess) the manager/management for every move. Other than a few apologists to the manager/management most people would agree that fans have the right to second guess what goes on. Where we as fans get into trouble is when we minimize the information that we don't have access to as trivial or unimportant in the decision making paradigm. I'm as guilty as anyone for this, but until all of the information is known we don't really know whether that "missing" information was critical.

 

 

Its like taking in account my mass when determining how hard gravity pulls me down. Sure technically I'm pulling the earth towards me but in practice it can be safely ignored.

 

Can you point me to the data that shows that any hypothesis in sabermetrics equats to the Theory of Gravity. Some of the early theories on gravity didn't take into account mass. So under that situation it was entirely reasonable to ignore weight. This is where sabermetrics gets into trouble - when it's touted as being as accurate as an extensively tested and proven theory. While I understand you are just making an analogy, the implication is clear - those who don't believe in sabermetrics are simple minded individuals who don't understand the difference in mass between the earth and a person. Where this whole issue breaks down is the assertion that any of the sabermetric theories/hypothesis are correct. I'll be a believer when I see the proof.

[Brian the Automator]

[ You should read Jonathan Kirsch's book "God Against The Gods". Consider Sabermetrics as early 2nd century christianity and all other methods of baseball analysis as pagan religions. ]

 

Sorry David, gotta cry foul here for the religious reference. I understand that the purpose of your post was that Sabermetrics may not be the panacea of baseball analysis, but the book you mentioned would be offensive to those of the Christian faith.

[Fatter than Joey]

Where this whole issue breaks down is the assertion that any of the sabermetric theories/hypothesis are correct. I'll be a believer when I see the proof.

 

This is a good point...

 

I like Dave Bush -- I think though he is going to have a 5.00+ ERA for awhile... here are my observations.

 

1.) I think that there are some Booshapologists on this site -- which is AOK -- the funny thing is, is that while 2007 gets discounted as a small sample, -- I am puzzled on how definitive his "career history" is considered, when in all reality it is a small sample as well (IMO). He has started for 2 seasons, one in the AL, one in the NL, it's not as if Dave Bush has a log like Sheets or Suppan. Therefore I tend to weigh 07 a lot heavier than others do.

 

2.) "Bush is unlucky" -- which of course is entirely nothing more than handwaving at his bad results this year. Bloop singles and bad plays by Bill Hall are often brought up -- and to take a page out of the sabredudes book "you aren't remembering the good plays" that our D makes, or the times when a batter misses a ball by a quarter inch and drives it to the warning track, instead of the bleachers. If someone wants to claim Bush is unlucky I thing a more robust charting would need to happen.

 

I think Russ says "Bush is no more than a solid back of the rotation pitcher" -- If I quoted Russ's thoughts correctly -- I would agree 100%. I agree that Bush is a MLB quality starter, and I would also concede, that perhaps he has a higher ceiling -- but I think Bush is going to have to change/improve rather waiting for the universe to regress.

 

I've been contending all along that Bush is leaving a lot of off-speed/90mph pitches high in the zone -- he makes me cringe a lot -- even in his last outing -- there were a lot of high pitches that got taken to OF gaps. It really is not a mystery to me why Bush's results have been poor this year, and why he is not one of our best starting option -- MLB hitters crush pitches high in the zone.

 

As a side note -- I think K/BB and related metrics are often used inappropriately as well. K's are not always the best, and BBs are not always the sign of a struggling pitcher. I am just as happy when a pitcher retires a batter on one pitch than striking him out on 3. Pitchers can be dominating w/o striking out a lot of batters. I think Bush's K/BB stats are misleading some, -- in my opinion of course.

 

I think Gallardo/Villy could likely provide better results than Bush/Vargas.

[homer]

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I think Gallardo/Villy could likely provide better results than Bush/Vargas.

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I don't think anyone is really aruging that too much, the issue is Gallardo's innings and how best to use them since they are limited. Also, I really wouldn't mind seeing Vargas traded near the deadline, move Villy to the starting role and putting Gallardo in the pen.

 

Quote:

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"Bush is unlucky" -- which of course is entirely nothing more than handwaving at his bad results this year. Bloop singles and bad plays by Bill Hall are often brought up -- and to take a page out of the sabredudes book "you aren't remembering the good plays" that our D makes, or the times when a batter misses a ball by a quarter inch and drives it to the warning track, instead of the bleachers. If someone wants to claim Bush is unlucky I thing a more robust charting would need to happen.

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Not trying to speak for him, but I think Ennder just used those examples because it seemed no one was grasping other stats showing 'unluckiness' like LOB% which he points out many times early on in this thread.

[xisxisxis]

Not trying to speak for him, but I think Ennder just used those examples because it seemed no one was grasping other stats showing 'unluckiness' like LOB% which he points out many times early on in this thread.

 

I don't understand why it has to simply be a case of "unluckiness". What if there is an actual non-random cause for his performance. I think where the divide on this issue lies is that those who believe his current performance is mostly due to random variation and those who believe that it's mostly due to non-random issues that might not be fixed simply by more innings and regression to the mean.

[rluzinski]

Where this whole issue breaks down is the assertion that any of the sabermetric theories/hypothesis are correct. I'll be a believer when I see the proof.

 

Proof or evidence? I'm sure you've seen plenty of evidence for many of the theories thrown around here. Whether you are personally swayed by the evidence is a matter of opinion. Obviously, some theories have more compelling evidence than others.

 

Labeling a theory "correct" isn't really how the scientific method works, anyway, is it? Well established theories have been discarded in every field, after all. I appreciate that as a less developed/structured field, you are more skeptical of sabermetric findings, as you should be. A theory advanced in the sabermetric field couldn't have possibly been held up to the same rigorous scrutiny as some other theories in other fields have been.

 

Still, to suggest the possibility that none of the sabermetric theories advanced are "correct" seems somewhat ignorant to me. There are some very straight forward, common sense theories that have been critically reviewed by many smart individuals and withstood the scrutiny. Heck, much of the work done is simply applying well known statistical tools from other fields of science.

 

Knowing you come from a scientific background, I am somewhat puzzled by how you view this stuff. Science is simply the "best guess" on how our surroundings work. Most likely no theory is completely correct nor any model perfectly accurate. Is your criticism that scientists don't typically recognize the limitations of their models and/or overstate their findings? If that's the case, we are in agreement.

[homer]

Quote:

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I don't understand why it has to simply be a case of "unluckiness". What if there is an actual non-random cause for his performance. I think where the divide on this issue lies is that those who believe his current performance is mostly due to random variation and those who believe that it's mostly due to non-random issues that might not be fixed simply by more innings and regression to the mean.

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Agreed. I think what Ennder has tried to show is that Bush is not really pitching that badly based on a few peripheral metrics and others are saying he is pitching badly at inopportune times (i.e. runners on base) and this is due to a non random issue (i.e. mechanics, mental, etc.) I would like to see Russ' evaluation of Bush out of the stretch to see what those numbers tell us.

[Fatter than Joey]

I don't think anyone is really aruging that too much, the issue is Gallardo's innings and how best to use them since they are limited. Also, I really wouldn't mind seeing Vargas traded near the deadline, move Villy to the starting role and putting Gallardo in the pen.

 

Agreed -- I suspect either Villy or Gallardo are going to have limited pitch counts -- they would probably see relief opportunities in their respective starts.

[rluzinski]

I don't understand why it has to simply be a case of "unluckiness". What if there is an actual non-random cause for his performance.

 

Of course that's a possibility. As I said in a previous post, Yost and his staff are in a position to best analysis whether another factor might be playing a part. If they don't find anything, the mostly likely cause is that the sample does not reflect Bush's true talent level. Whether it's because of bad luck, a temporary breakdown in mechanics, ext..., I don't really care. Provided that the bad stats that he's accumulated have a tendency to regress over time is what's most important to me. Of course, as the sample increases, the "will regress" conclusion becomes less and less likely and the possibility of another cause becomes more likely.

 

If you take enough small samples, you'd expect to eventually find one that looks just like Bush's. I showed in a different thread that extreme BABIP and LOB% in one year for a pitcher almost always regresses back to something more reasonable the following year. There are no guarantees, though.

 

I would like to see Russ' evaluation of Bush out of the stretch to see what those numbers tell us.

 

I provided his no on/runner on splits earlier in the post but as I mentioned, I'm not really sure how to interpret them or even if the difference is statistically significant. If he has less accuracy, he compensates by pitching less fine (not at the corners) , since his walk rate goes down. If he was simply more wild but didn't change his approach, you'd expect more mistake pitches AND more walks, wouldn't you?

 

What I need is pitch location data, which isn't publically available.

[1992casey]

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K's are not always the best, and BBs are not always the sign of a struggling pitcher.

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Well, a couple of Bush starts ago, Ned did say that he could tell when Dave struck out the first batter, he knew there'd be trouble. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

 

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"you aren't remembering the good plays" that our D makes

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Defensive Efficiency Rating is a good stat to address that. Milwaukee's right in the middle. As far as I can tell, it's main limitation is that it doesn't account for multiple-base errors.

 

I think that if the Brewers put Villanueva into the rotation right now, they wouldn't have to worry about pitch counts or innings after the first couple of starts.

[Ennder]

Quote:

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I don't understand why it has to simply be a case of "unluckiness". What if there is an actual non-random cause for his performance. I think where the divide on this issue lies is that those who believe his current performance is mostly due to random variation

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There are stats that show a correlation from year to year and stats that do not, the ones that do not I tend to think of as luck.

 

BABIP, HR/FB, LOB% vary a lot from year to year for most pitchers. When one of those stats its way outside its career value I think of it as most likely luck. When a stat like K/9, BB/9, GB% is outside its norm I think something has changed with the pitcher because those stats are generally pretty steady year to year.

 

Dave Bush has 6.26 K/9 for his career, 6.64/9 this year. 1.85 BB/9 for his career, 1.79 BB/9 this year. 45.2% GB for his career, 44.9% GB for this year. All of his stats that tend to correlate from year to year are at or better than his career numbers.

 

BABIP is .331 compared to a .294 career line, LOB% is 61.1% compared to a 67.6% career line (this is low which indicates he does have a long term problem with it). 10.5% HR/FB vs 11.1% career line. If you adjust these stats to career norms his WHIP and ERA look a lot like his career values.

 

Basically Bush has given up a lot more hits than you'd expect because of his BABIP and he's let in a few more than you'd expect even for him. To me it just screams luck, pitchers that have stats like this almost always regress towards their career norms. If even one of his peripheral stats was off base I could see it being a mechanical issue etc but the only thing out of whack is a stat that pitchers seem to not have a lot of control over. He is missing as many bats as normal, he's hitting the strike zone as much as normal, he's not giving up more flyballs than normal, just more balls are finding holes this season.

 

Using a scouting based approach I've seen with my own eyes that he's given up a ton of little bloop hits, misplayed balls that didn't go as errors, etc and I think they easily explain most of the struggles. Hall doesn't muff the double opening day and Bush gives up 3-4 fewer ER's, Bard gets his check swing called a strike and he gives up 4 fewer in SD, the bullpen stops a couple runs in the two early season games he was pulled with 2-3 runners on instead of letting them all in its a little better. The texas game saw two bloop singles, a bunt for a hit force him out etc. These things happen to every pitcher but it seems to be an epidemic in Bush's games this season and I highly doubt it keeps up.

[Jacob008]

pitch location for Dave Bush June 10th, 2007 at Texas.

 

v. LH

http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/3903/db610vlhlz3.gif

 

v. RH

http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/8944/db610vrhwb3.gif

 

 

Bases Empty

http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/5575/db610emptyjw7.gif

 

Men On

http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/5370/db610menonwi7.gif

 

One game, only 70 pitches with location data is a pretty small sample, so separating men on vs. empty as opposed to windup vs. stretch is a more important distinction. There does look to be a significant difference in horizontal break on the ball in the men on/empty splits, but again... tiny sample.

 

graphs made by me using data from mlb.com's enhanced gameday

[danzig6767]

Using a scouting based approach I've seen with my own eyes that he's given up a ton of little bloop hits, misplayed balls that didn't go as errors, etc and I think they easily explain most of the struggles. Hall doesn't muff the double opening day and Bush gives up 3-4 fewer ER's, Bard gets his check swing called a strike and he gives up 4 fewer in SD, the bullpen stops a couple runs in the two early season games he was pulled with 2-3 runners on instead of letting them all in its a little better. The texas game saw two bloop singles, a bunt for a hit force him out etc. These things happen to every pitcher but it seems to be an epidemic in Bush's games this season and I highly doubt it keeps up.

 

The check swing not called on Bard,is that really any different than your typical bad call by a home plate umpire that doesn't give a strike when it obviously was during a critical at bat with men on base?Should we start going back and removing runs from a pitchers ERA everytime a home plate umpire wrongly squeezes the pitcher,thus turning a strikeout into something worse afterwards?Pitchers around baseball get jobbed all the time by a strike not be called a strike,but their job is to suck it up and make a quality pitch the next time.If that pitcher hangs a curveball the next pitch that gets crushed for a three run bomb,i never sit back and feel extra bad for him because blown strike calls are such a common occurance.

 

Only Bush is getting hurt much worse by defensive misplays?You seem to remember well when they did effect Bush,but unless you charted how misplays hurt each pitcher on the staff this year,nothing my eyes have seen has left me thinking man the defense is really killing Bush more than the other pitchers this season.

 

Over the last three years hitters BAA and SLG go way up when runners are on base vs when the bases are empty.Why he struggles with this so much i have no idea,but seeing many of those hard hit balls off him in those situations since he's been here,the poor Bush is just an unlucky guy isn't selling with me.

 

I like Bush as a pitcher and had high expectations for this year,but at some point in his career he needs to stop getting abused so often with runners on base.I'm not convinced a rabbits tail in his pants pocket or good luck dust is all he needs.

 

With all that said,i'd bump Vargas from the rotation before Bush.I still have some hope that Bush can figure out his runners on issues.

[logan82]

Alright I will put in my two cents. I think Yo is more than likley better than either Vargas or Bush. That doesn't mean that we should keep him in MIlwaukee. I think the long term benefits of keeping him in AAA outweigh keeping him in Milwaukee. I believe we can win the division without Yo in the rotation. Once we reach the post season I doubt we will need more than 3 starting pitchers so he wouldn't get a start in the post season. With days off our bullpen should stay rested enough to be effective for the entire post season. To me there isn't enough of a need for him right now to give up the starts he will be making for us 5-6 years down the road when Suppan, Sheets and Capuano have moved on.

 

EDIT: I think somebody already said it, but could a pitcher's stats with runners on be directly affected by the fact that since he put runners on he was not pitching that well in the first place?

[rluzinski]

I like Bush as a pitcher and had high expectations for this year,but at some point in his career he needs to stop getting abused so often with runners on base.I

 

Prior to this year year, he's shown he can have decent success even with that kind of a split. Hard for me to believe that the Brewers don't have room in their rotation for a 4.25 ERA starting pitcher.

[Fatter than Joey]

Why he struggles with this so much i have no idea,but seeing many of those hard hit balls off him in those situations since he's been here,the poor Bush is just an unlucky guy isn't selling with me.

 

Me either -- I am sure he has had his share of bad breaks, but I also think he has been lucky in a lot of games as well. For example his last start -- I thought a few of those warning track flyballs he gave up were probably lucky to stay in the park (some our OFs made nice plays on). Live on the warning track, die on the warning track.

 

With all that said,i'd bump Vargas from the rotation before Bush.

 

I'm not sure I would -- I think Vargas has been awesome in the #5 spot this year, we are 11-2 in his starts, and that in a large part is that he has given the Brewers a chance to win in almost all his starts -- of course the O has obliged Vargas and given him some run support -- but there are a lot of 6IP 2R appearances in Vargas's game log this year.

 

I guess the first thing to figure out before we start bumping Bush and Vargas, is how long Cappy is going to be out.

 

The way I look at it -- if you have Gallardo/Bush/Vargas in the rotation -- you aren't going to get a lot of 6IP+ starts from these guys so a guy like Villy is going to get a pretty good chance at regular long relief stints.

 

If Cappy is out for an extended period -- you almost need Villy to complement Gallardo, (or vice versa) because they are more than likely to top out at about 6IP

[Ayt]

Ender, you should have left out the subjective opinion aspect of your post. It was only going to get you attacked for having memory bias in favor of Bush, even though you were simply using that as an addendum to a very good post.

 

The BABIP and LOB% are the keys. That combined with his basic rate stats being completely in line with his career numbers proves as much as possible statistically for a pitcher that he's simply had some bad luck so far.

 

Greg Maddux made a great point about this type of thing a few years ago when he was really "struggling" early in the year. He basically told nervous reports that he wasn't doing anything particularly wrong as a pitcher, the balls were just finding holes more often than they probably should have been.

[Fatter than Joey]

It was only going to get you attacked for having memory bias in favor of Bush, even though you were simply using that as an addendum to a very good post.

 

Ennder certainly makes and presents his case in a very compelling way. If I were Dave Bush, I certainly would want Ennder to be working for my agent http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

 

proves as much as possible statistically

 

What does this mean? -- Does it indicate a ceiling/limitation of statistical analysis, or do you intend this clause to indicate that it has been proven that Bush is just unlucky. I am not trying to to be a smart-ass, rather get a better understanding.

[Ennder]

Quote:

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Only Bush is getting hurt much worse by defensive misplays?You seem to remember well when they did effect Bush,but unless you charted how misplays hurt each pitcher on the staff this year,nothing my eyes have seen has left me thinking man the defense is really killing Bush more than the other pitchers this season.

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Actually his BABIP shows it quite clearly but I know some people don't like a purely statistical approach, and like I said these things happen to all pitchers but Bush has gotten more than his fair share of them so far this season. You cannot honnstly believe that every single pitcher has exactly the same number of defensive miscues as every other pitcher every single year. Some pitchers are going to catch breaks, some are going to get bad luck and over a small sample there is no way its going to be even.

 

A pitcher can't choose when he makes a poor pitch, sometimes its with a runner on sometimes its with 2 outs and nobody on, he can't choose when a hitter is going to hit a good pitch, he can't control whether the ball is right at the SS or a half inch out of the SS's reach, there are a ton of events largely out of his control in this sport when you are only looking at a small sample of data.

 

As for Vargas vs Bush to me its a no brainer, Vargas struggles to go 5 IP and is a constant drain on the bullpen, I'll take my chances with Bush fixing his BABIP any day of the week.

[rluzinski]

The vast majority of major league players have a talent level within a certain, pretty well-defined range and it's quantified by whatever metric we use. No starting pitcher has ever had a 0 ERA for the year and no bater has batted .500. When that metric is outside the expected typical range, we can generally assume it's because it's not an accurately measure of the player's skill level. This is usually a result of the sample size not being sufficiently large enough to reduce the statistical uncertainty to an acceptable level.

 

To use a batting analogy for Bush's LOB% and BABIP.... if any established major league (even Chad Moeller) batted .100 for the first part of the season, no matter the cause (short of injury), you'd expect his BA to rise going forward. Really, any BA below .150 and above .400 suggests that the sample isn't large enough to show the player's true skill level.

 

Bush's BABIP isn't "batting .500" extreme but it's pretty up there. In 2006, only 4 qualified pitchers had a BABIP as high or higher than Bush's currently is. No pitcher had a LOB% as bad last year as Bush currently does. That doesn't automatically mean Bush will revert to average for both but it's certainly likely to improve.

 

Here's another example:

 

Helling's 2005 HR rate

[monty57]

Very good discussion everyone.

 

I just wanted to add that I was watching yesterday's game against the Giants with someone who used to work in the Cubs organization. The first thing he said when he saw Vargas pitching was "his arm angle's different when he throws his fastball." Later he said he wasn't doing it, so Vargas may occasionally "tip" his fastball.

 

I thought this was interesting, because it may be why he gets so many batters on. When he gets in the stretch, he may not tip his pitch. If he's getting hit because of tipping his pitch, and he stops tipping the pitch, he would likely get out of trouble at a higher rate than he statistically "should."

 

On the "when to pitch from the stretch" topic, in last night's Cubs game, Marquis started pitching exclusively from the stretch mid-game. The announcers figured it was because he was uncomfortable on the mound, leading to his early wildness. This would absolutely fall into the "can't be measured by statistics" camp.

 

As for Bush's "unluckiness" of which Ennder spoke, I too remember Bush's first start, where a badly misplayed third out by Bill Hall ended up costing Bush 4 extra earned runs. This may not seem like a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it is a big reason his ERA has been as high as it's been this season. When something like this happens early on in the season, you start with a large ERA, and it takes a lot of "average" innings to get it back to where it should be. Right now, if those runs hadn't scored in that one game, his ERA would drop by nearly half a point - or nearly 25%. I understand the arguement that the defense has saved him some runs, but to this point, it seems to have cost him more than it has saved.

 

To put this another way, if a hitter started the year 10-for-10, he could go 0 for his next 20 and still be a .333 hitter. However, if someone started the season 0-for-20, he'd probably be demoted to AAA. If he did stick around, he'd need to bat .310 the rest of the season to be a .300 hitter for the season (based on 600 AB), all because of a bad start.

 

I'm glad to see that Yost is looking at things from different angles. As has been stated, stats tell a lot, and they are very beneficial in helping to project what is likely to happen in the future... but there are other factors as well, and a manager needs to consider everything when making a decision.

[Ayt]

Quote:

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What does this mean? -- Does it indicate a ceiling/limitation of statistical analysis, or do you intend this clause to indicate that it has been proven that Bush is just unlucky. I am not trying to to be a smart-ass, rather get a better understanding.

---

 

As far as something can be proven statistically, the argument Ender made is one that is very compelling. What I typed was admittedly poor wording on my part, but I was tired at the time and just let it go.http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

 

Edit: rluzinski elaborated quite nicely above just how "unlucky" Bush has been so far.

[craigharmann]

Bush has had 2 pretty decent starts. My thought is that Bush stays in the rotation, with a VERY short leash, Yo has to stay in the rotation when Cappy comes off the DL and Vargas is either going to take over the long man role in the pen or be shipped out for minor league restocking. Vargas's value is pretty high right now and Yo has been very good. No real stats to go from here, just my gut.