05/02/2004 - Pittsburgh (Vogelsong) at Milwaukee (Davis)

[clancyphile]

Shame to see a good star by Doug Davis put to waste.

 

Seriously, he's going to be fine this year.

[danzig6767]

Davis reminds me of Scott Karl.Extremely hittable,but just enough command of his pitches to not implode on a regular basis.Would be a solid No.5 starter on a good team,sadly is our second best starter.

[clancyphile]

danzig6767

 

But eventually, I see him as sort of a left-handed Dave Burba.

[DuWayne Steurer]

Davis got lucky as hell today. He's not going to be able to walk the line of putting 12 runners on in 7 innings too very often before he gets totally hammered in a game like today's. Call him savvy for being able to pitch out of jams, and that's fine, I'd just as soon not see him putting an average of 2 runners per inning on base.

[clancyphile]

RoCoBrewfan

 

It's an imperfect world.

 

Doug Davis might get into jams, but he pitches out of them more often than not.

[DuWayne Steurer]

Funny how you always justify the crappy Doug Davis somehow.

 

I don't consider a guy with a 5.14 ERA someone who "usually pitches out of his jams".

[Member]

I don't consider a guy with a 5.14 ERA someone who "usually pitches out of his jams".

 

If a guy pitches five innings, and allows two baserunners and inning, and allows runners to score in only two innings, having given up five runs, he's gotten out of the majority of those jams. So what if his ERA is 9 for that game, he's battled and his name isn't Kinney.

 

You just don't understand the power of such logic, and it dooms you to a lifetime of answering such posts. God speed, man. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

 

Or maybe I've spent too many years reading clancy's post and they don't faze me anymore?

[xisxisxis]

Or maybe I've spent too many years reading clancy's post and they don't faze me anymore?

 

I thought that was only possible after surgery. If you've found a non-invasive method you should share it with all of us. I just treat him like the troll he is.

[clancyphile]

BlazinWings The Kiss of Death

 

What exactly is Matt Kinneys' ERA?

 

Let's comapre that to the ERAs this year of Doug Davis and Wayne Franklin.

 

Ideally, a pitcher does NOT get into jams. But if I'm stuck with having pitchers who get into jams, I'd prefer to have ones who can pitch their way out of jams more often than not (see Doug Davis) than folks who let the jams snowball into big innings more often than not (see Matt Kinney).

 

With the exception of his April 11 start (6 runs allowed in 4.1 IP), Doug Davis has a 4.10 ERA. That would place him third behind Sheets and Capuano. He's gone 24.1 innings without allowing a home run. Three of his last four starts are quality starts. The 5.14 ERA Doug Davis currently has is due to one (1) start that has all the appearances of being a single BLIP on the radar screen. Other than that start, he's been just behind the performances of Ben Sheets and Chris Capuano.

 

Yeah, let's run Doug Davis out of Milwaukee... he's no good. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/eyes.gif

[Getpaddled]

i was at this game. Ya they did hit the ball off him quite a bit, but ill take that over walks anyday.

[DuWayne Steurer]

With the exception of his April 11 start .......

 

Oh, so now we get to remove whichever games or starts don't support the case for whatever player we're pimping?!?!

 

Jeez, with that criteria firmly in place, I'll bet I can make just about any major league player look like an all star.

[gregmag]

Huh, Clancy -- I could have sworn ERAs didn't matter, back when you were arguing for the merits of Wayne Franklin. But now that Davis has a better ERA than Kinney, it's a really important stat. Also, it's interesting how Obermuller doesn't figure into your discussion at the moment. Obie's ERA, after all, is nearly identical to Kinney's (8.48 to 8.63) -- and, as long as we're playing this game, if you take out his start in San Francisco, Obie's ERA stands at a handsome 11.88.

 

That said, you're certainly right that Davis has pitched the best of the three. Davis has done very little, however, to make me confident that he would remain on top of that sorry pyramid over the course of the season. There's no such thing as a consistent "ability" to pitch out of jams. Primarily it's dumb luck, and Davis has used up a few lifetimes' supplies. What he has shown is the consistent ability to pitch into jams, which you really don't like to see. The sample size, of course, is too small to draw any confident conclusions about which of these pitchers is least awful.

 

Greg.

[clancyphile]

RoCoBrewfan

 

Look, you might want to talk stuff and strikeouts per nine innings. Fine, that's your perogative. But that doesn't mean a pitcher is going to win.

 

I prefer to look at the big picture (or as much as I can, being in the DC area). That means not just looking at the season line, but ALSO looking at the game logs and the box scores - trying to see what the deal is.

 

In the case of Doug Davis, there is one bad outing - an outing that is atypical when compared to the rest. The sample is going to get bigger.

 

In the Franklin-Kinney debate, I saw two guys who got themselves into trouble. Niether would be an ideal candidate for the rotation, but those two are what the Brewers have to work with until pitchers like Hendrickson were ready for the big leagues. I felt that if the Brewers had to choose one of them, I'd take Franklin, citing the team's performance in the games he pitched, and the fact while he walked a lot of hitters and gave up a bunch of home runs, he seemed to have the resilience to bounce back and NOT let trouble snowball into a big inning.

 

The series at San Francisco is an example of that contrast. I got called a troll for that. But it bore out my points. Kinney let trouble snowball into a big inning in a game the Brewers ultimately lost. Wayne Franklin gave up a hit and a walk, but got OUT of the trouble he got himself into without allowing a single run to score.

 

So he gives up home runs, walks a lot of hitters, and has a high ERA. The "secondary numbers" don't look good. But the team wins. And wins are what cound in the standings, not WHIP, not K/9IP, not the K/BB ratio.

 

gregmag

 

Part of your point is addressed above. Allow me to elaborate a little on something else. Ideally, pitchers should not get themselves into jams. That said, HOW a pitcher handles a jam is as important as his stuff. A pitcher who strikes out 12 batters per nine innings but folds up if a couple of runners get on base is less valuable to a team than a pitcher who strikes out 6 batters per nine innings, but who gets out of jams.

 

The statistics do not tell me whether a pitcher can do that. What will tell me that is looking over the inning-by-inning reports of each game.

 

The full-year stats do not tell me how valuable a pitcher is. The pitcher who has a 4.60 ERA over a full season might be the type who might be dominating in one start, mediocre the next time out, okay in the third, gets hammered int he fourth, then mediorce, you get the idea. He's either VERY good, or VERY bad. The one with the 5.00 ERA might usually churn out a lot of quality starts with a lot less variation (6-7 IP, 2-3 runs). Or he might usually just miss a quality start (say, 7 IP, 4 earned runs). But there are three or four starts where he gets clobbered as compared to one or two where he is lights-out, and that inflates his ERA. How do I find that out? I look at the game logs, which give a summary of how a pitcher did in each outing, and I can take that into account as well.

 

I want to look at the complete picture of a pitcher. That means looking BEYOND the stats, and seeing what the deal is.

 

I don't know if this is going to change anybody's mind. I really don't care. But I'm going to lay out what I'm thinking - and let some folks decide whether or not I might have a point.

 

Based on how things have gone so far, I think I might have a decent approach. Just look who's got a 3.27 ERA and has allowed only ONE home run in 11 innings of work (admittedly as a reliever)...

 

Yep, it's Wayne Franklin.

[DuWayne Steurer]

Clancy, read the other thread on pitchers for my thoughts on Franklin. He's making a fine lefty reliever for the Giants. RH batters are hitting him to the tune of a .976 OPS, lefties, only .566 OPS. He can get lefties out. That's what he should stick to. There are worse things a guy can do for a career.

 

You can spout all you want about teams records in pitchers starts. And anyone with common sense will tell you that run support is NOTHING MORE than a measure of LUCK. You can call it Wayne Franklin's inspiring presence if you wish, but, and I apologize if this sounds rude, that's just plain silly, and it's wrong.

 

I don't even LIKE Matt Kinney. I'm glad he's out of the rotation. I HOPE however, that MAYBE he can find a niche in the bullpen.

 

I don't care HOW much trouble Franklin supposedly "got out of". His ERA last year was a terrible 5.50. He obviously wasn't getting out of trouble as often as you believe he was. Kinney's ERA was an almost as bad 5.19. He sucks this year, and accordingly, he's out of the rotation.

 

If you want to CONTINUE to turn every thread that is about pitching into your personal Wayne Franklin/Matt Kinney debate, go right ahead, I was commenting on Doug Davis in this thread, and yet again, you bring up Franklin/Kinney. Quite frankly, I'm a bit mad at myself for letting myself get drawn into this rediculous debate once again. You hate Kinney. You love Franklin. We know. We get it.

[RobertR]

Franklin and Kinney both stink as starters. So does Obermueller for that matter. Even when they win, they only manage to go 5 or 6 innings and wear out the bullpen. Doug Davis is guilty of that too, but he's better than those other three, which isn't much of a compliment. And we'll see about Capuano after other teams have seen him for more than a start or two.

 

The Brewers will be a good team when they're not trotting out the likes of Kinney, Obermueller and Franklin in 2 to 4 of their starting rotation slots. Until then, they'll be an inconsistent team that may win some games through " battlin' " TM, but ultimately is going to wear out the bullpen and have a tough time going on sustained positive runs.

 

Robert

[clancyphile]

RoCoBrewfan

 

The points I'm making with Doug Davis are the same ones I've made in that other debate: The season statistics do not tell the whole story.

 

The stats don't tell me if a pitcher can get out of a jam (and that IS going to happen to pitchers on occaison). I think that someone looking over each game's inning-by-inning summary to determine that.

 

The career stats (or stats over a season) don't give me an idea about how consistent a pitcher is. Examining the game logs (looking at the pitcher's line in each game) does that.

 

The problem is that you STOPPED at season/career stats. I broke things down further. I looked at each of the lines posted by both pitchers. I looked at the coverage of the games, and used that to put the stats into perspective.

 

Maybe I should have explained my views on selecting starting pitchers (and pitchers in general) more clearly at first. But my opinion is that the 2003 statsistic did not tell the whole tale about either Wayne Franklin OR Matt Kinney. I similarly believe that the season statistics have not told the full tale about Doug Davis.

[DuWayne Steurer]

Ok, that's fine, and I agree that a lump sum of stats don't tell the whole story. However, over the course of a 162 game season, OPS, ERA, K/9 etc, etc, etc, WILL tell you how many wins you should expect based on those numbers. I don't give a rip how you slice it, a 5.19 ERA is bad. A 5.50 ERA is bad. It doesn't matter how you divide it up.

 

In the case of Doug Davis, putting 12 runners on base in 7 innings is bad. As another poster put it, that's akin to whistling while you walk past a graveyard. It's nice that he got out of jams all day long, but that's just as much a matter of luck as anything else. Luck inevitably runs out, and balances out. You can't have a WHIP of almost 2 and keep expecting to give up 3 runs in 7 innings. Logic defies it.

[clancyphile]

RobertR

 

I would agree.

 

As I just posted, I might not have been clearer in earlier posts. I don't think that statistics tell the whole story about pitchers.

 

Ideally, a pitcher doesn't get into jams. But this is NOT an ideal world. Pitchers DO get into jams. And the stats at baseball-reference.com don't tell me anything about how a pitcher dealt with jams. Nor do they tell me how consistent a pitcher has been. Which stats tell me that?

 

Inning summaries (or even pitch-by-pitch reports) and logs that give the line for each start (or appearance) can give me an idea of that.

[RobertR]

No, you only looked at won-loss by start, without figuring in run support. Baseball Prospectus's Support Neutral Won-Loss statistic actually looked at every start last year and concluded that Kinney and Franklin were equally bad last year, adjusting for run support, bullpen support, etc. Considering that Kinney is younger, it was hardly insupportable to give him one last chance as a starter before cutting ties.

 

Franklin is a bad pitcher. Kinney is a bad pitcher. Obermueller is a bad pitcher. As long as the Brewers are trotting out bad pitchers like Franklin, Kinney and Obermueller on a consistent basis, they're going to struggle to win games and are going to have to "battle" constantly to stay in games. As long as the choice is presented as a simplistic Kinney vs. Franklin, it doesn't matter. The real goal is to find good pitchers not to decide which is the lesser of two evils.

 

Robert

[gregmag]

I think I understand now. What you're saying, essentially, is that stats are valuable when they back up your prejudices and worthless when they don't; that whatever information you select at any given time is more valuable than the information you reject, simply because you've selected it; and that you can't, by definition, be wrong.

 

That's called intellectual dishonesty, although in your case I'm willing to drop the "intellectual." I used to think your resolve in the face of contrary facts was kind of endearing, but I think I've gone through a brewerfan rite of passage, because I just can't take any more. Maybe you have a first grader at home who laps up your version of reasoning. That's great for you, although I pity the kid.

 

Greg.

[Member]

I don't suppose we call all agree that Milwaukee would be a WS contender with 5 Doug Davis' in the rotation and just let this thread die a natural death?

[clancyphile]

gregmag

 

No, I want to keep things in perspective. If you have some magic stat that can tell me whether a pitcher can get out of a jam or how consistent he is, please post the thing.

 

As it stands, I have cited some of the factors that led me to favor Franklin over Kinney. One of the key factors had been the club's performance. Another was the type of home runs each gave up.

 

I note, with some regret, that Kinney's collapse is just what I predicted. Maybe TWO good starts out of his five. He's already gotten a hook from the rotation. How much longer until he blows leads from the bullpen?

 

You want to flame at me, go ahead. But stats alone WILL NOT tell the tale. I admit to prejudice - in favor of the Brewers winning games. I'm willing to say what I think ought to be done, and if some stathead takes it the wrong way because I don't think sabremetrics and other stuff are the end-all and be-all of baseball, I'm not going to consider it my problem any longer - and when statheads keep suggesting a pitcher who seems like he'll fall apart, I'll say so.

[DuWayne Steurer]

Posted by Clancyphile at 1:13 PM this afternoon.......

 

What exactly is Matt Kinneys' ERA?

 

HERES the problem with this discussion. NO ONE had mentioned Kinney in this thread. Some people groused about Davis. NO ONE, and let me repeat NO ONE had compared Davis to Kinney or anyone else, yet, Clancy, you felt ONCE AGAIN that it was necessary to bring up the Franklin/Kinney debate. I know, you're going to go on and on and on and on and on about how you "like winning" and you're going to "point things out that you feel strongly about"

 

You wonder why people are so vehement about this issue, it's most likely because it's hijacking threads that have NOTHING TO DO WITH KINNEY OR FRANKLIN!

 

I find myself guilty as charged, for continuing to argue, but now, I'm asking for the betterment of this entire board, if this argument is going to continue to go on and on and on and on can it at LEAST stay in a RELEVANT thread?

 

Please?!?!?!?!?

[Member]

NO ONE had mentioned Kinney in this thread.

 

Right you are Kenny... or is that Kinney?

[whizkid]

Franklin is a bad pitcher. Kinney is a bad pitcher. Obermueller is a bad pitcher.

 

I'd amend that to Franklin is a bad starter, Kinney is a bad starter, Obermueller has been pitching badly as a starter. Early returns indicate Franklin may be a passable reliever especially against lefties in a park with a cavernous RF. We're about to find out about Matt as a reliever though as a fly ball pitcher and with his record with big innings and not being able to get out of jams I have serious doubts.

 

As for Wes, with an option remaining, I'd like to see him sent to Indy when Capuano returns for some regular work. As a decent GB pitcher he still could be salvageable as a 4-5. I really don't care if they have to use Santos or Wise or Ben Ford or Phelps or Hernandez in the rotation this year. I think one last chance to salvage Wes for 2005 and on needs to be tried.