What is the percentage chance Rogers outperforms Hader through the rest of the season?

[Brock Beauchamp]

Driving to and from Costco, I started thinking about this. Rogers has been blooped to death this season but that has happened before. In 2020, he had a .400 BABIP. This season it's .333 but over .400 over the past month or so. His walk and strikeout rate remain stable (aka. very good).

On the other hand, Hader has stumbled in a similar fashion over the same period. While driving, I started asking myself "what chance is there that Rogers outperforms Hader?" I put the number at 25%, then bumped it down to 20%.

Humorously enough, just minutes later I turned on the latest MKE Tailgate podcast and unsurprisingly (I tend to think similarly to those hosts a lot of the time), one of them commented that Rogers had a chance to outpitch Hader and put the number at 30-40%.

Personally, I think that's too optimistic because of Rogers' history of getting BABIPed. It's starting to become less data noise and weirdly more of an attribute he has. I'm not sure I've seen a good pitcher have a BABIP well over .300 three years running, even if all three were partial seasons.

So what odds do you put at Rogers outpitching Hader?

[monty57]

For a reliever, Hader has been pretty consistent, but relievers have such a small sample size (especially for a trade deadline acquisition) that I think the chance of one of them outperforming the other is closer to 50/50 than 80/20. Even if he pitches well, all it sometimes takes is a misplayed ball or a short outfield fence to make the numbers look bad.

Plus, this isn't Hader vs "random replacement level guy," this is Hader vs a good, proven reliever. Even if Hader outperforms him in FIP, he could still have worse "real world" results.

Put it this way, how accurate do you think a prediction would be over how a hitter will perform in his next 30 PAs? Which Brewer will be the next one to go on a hot streak (or a cold streak) for a week? Will the stock market go up or down on a random day?

Small sample sets make predicting nearly impossible, and we're looking at trying to make a prediction over 20 or so innings pitched. I'd say it's pretty much a "crapshoot," giving a small advantage to Hader.

Which one will perform better over the next six seasons? I'd put my money on Hader with a good degree of confidence.

[SRB]

The entire premise of BABIP (and really much of sabermetrics writ large) is that pitchers do not have control over their BABIP. It's very rare to maintain an elevated BABIP like that (say >.330) over an extended period of time.

So I'm not at all concerned about Rogers having high BABIPs the last couple years. The fact remains that over his career (356.0 IP) his BABIP is only .317 and it should be expected to trend toward .300 going forward.

I'd say the chances of Rogers outperforming Hader are probably relatively low (20%?), but the chance of him being a similarly elite pitcher in the same tier of great relievers such that we don't experience much of a loss is much higher (75%-80%?)

[YelichPosse]

I would say 20-25% would be accurate.

However, as stated in the Hader thread, I believe the sum of the parts is greater than Hader. The bullpen will be better as a whole than it has been of late, because of the trades. As from the 5th/6th on we have more stability - and less "HOLD ON FOR DEAR LIFE AND HOPE" pieces.

[Brock Beauchamp]

3 minutes ago, SRB said:

The entire premise of BABIP (and really much of sabermetrics writ large) is that pitchers do not have control over their BABIP. It's very rare to maintain an elevated BABIP like that (say >.330) over an extended period of time.

So I'm not at all concerned about Rogers having high BABIPs the last couple years. The fact remains that over his career (356.0 IP) his BABIP is only .317 and it should be expected to trend toward .300 going forward.

I'd say the chances of Rogers outperforming Hader are probably relatively low (20%?), but the chance of him being a similarly elite pitcher in the same tier of great relievers such that we don't experience much of a loss is much higher (75%-80%?)

I agree that BABIP is *supposed* to be around .300 but Rogers keeps getting killed by it in discrete seasons, three of them in a row.

I'm not saying I entirely believe he's suddenly going to be a .350 BABIP pitcher but after watching him pitch for a long time and seeing this happen over and over again, I'm not ruling out the possibility, as flukish as it sounds given what we know about baseball.

[Brock Beauchamp]

4 minutes ago, YelichPosse said:

I would say 20-25% would be accurate.

However, as stated in the Hader thread, I believe the sum of the parts is greater than Hader. The bullpen will be better as a whole than it has been of late, because of the trades. As from the 5th/6th on we have more stability - and less "HOLD ON FOR DEAR LIFE AND HOPE" pieces.

I agree that the biggest pitching weakness heading into the stretch has been the middle inning relief, which should be much better today than it was three days ago.

[SRB]

9 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

I agree that BABIP is *supposed* to be around .300 but Rogers keeps getting killed by it in discrete seasons, three of them in a row.

I'm not saying I entirely believe he's suddenly going to be a .350 BABIP pitcher but after watching him pitch for a long time and seeing this happen over and over again, I'm not ruling out the possibility, as flukish as it sounds given what we know about baseball.

I just don't think it's possible that the BABIP is due to something Rogers is doing. Over a long enough period of time it will always trend back toward .300. In the entire history of baseball, there have only been five pitchers who maintained a >.340 BABIP over 400+ innings, and they were all old timers with career K/9 between 0.31 and 2.39 who gave up contact on almost every PA.

A strikeout reliever like Rogers maintaining an elevated BABIP like that would be unprecedented and would defy all sabermetric understanding of how baseball works.

I think this is just the normal flukiness of small sample sizes for relievers. The previous two seasons when Rogers had a high BABIP comprised a grand total of 60.1 innings. (And Minnesota's infield defense might have had a lot to do with it.)

It also seems anomalous that his high BABIP would be due to something he is doing when he is simultaneously not giving up HR. So it's not just that he's leaving meatballs that are getting hit extremely hard.

[Jim French Stepstool]

I think Hader is more likely to outperform Rogers in the next two months. But maybe the more pertinent question would be how will Devin Williams performance measure up to what you would get from Hader if he was still here, and how will Rogers, Bush, &/or Boxberger measure up compared to Williams' former role (this is assuming Devin takes over as closer).

At the end of the day they have more pen depth, and we all know how much the Brewers value that. But to answer the question I'd go about 20%.

[dlk9s]

I'd say it's a low chance Rogers is better than Hader, but without regard to how the other relievers pitch, I don't really care if he's better, as long as a) he does well enough in the regular season to where it makes no difference in the Brewers' playoff run compared to if Hader were still here, and b) he does well in the playoffs.

[torts]

100%.  haders going to blow up in San Diego, and we will come out of this looking all the wiser

[monty57]

I'll add that usually when a team is adding someone like Hader, they are replacing the worst guy in their bullpen, the former closer becomes the set-up guy, and so forth on down the line. That gives them a good chance of "winning," or having a better bullpen in the immediate months following the trade.

That makes this trade somewhat odd for the Padres. They are obviously "going all in" for this year and next year with the Hader and (potential) Soto trades, so they probably understand that the upgrade for this season isn't a "sure win," but their bullpen will no doubt be better next year as they wouldn't have Rogers, whose contract is up. They needed Hader in 2023.

The Brewers have to be looking at next year as well, and from their perspective the prospects plus the money saved has more value to them than one more year of Hader. They'll need that $15M or so to get some upgrades elsewhere on the field, with Williams closing and the newly-acquired Bush adding to the talent pool for the setup role. They didn't need Hader in 2023, their bullpen should be fine without him.

So I'm still on the "roughly 50/50" on who does better this year, but the teams have completely different outlooks on what's best for their team for next year.

[markedman5]

30-40 chance sounds reasonable to me.

in other words I wouldn’t bet on it but it wouldn’t shock me……it’s only 2 months…….lots of strange stuff happens with relievers.

[JCREW]

Hader got bit by the home run bug in SF. Rogers has given up far fewer home runs. They're switching stadium profiles in terms of homer-friendliness. 

I think Rogers will be somewhere in the 90%-as-good-as-Hader-range, with a 30% chance of being better than Hader.

I think there's a strong liklihood (>90%) that the new bullpen outperforms the old bullpen. 

[AKCheesehead]

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