Why people who get paid to write about baseball are morons.
Just so you guys know this is the single most boring post on this blog. Ever. Seriously. Just so you know.
Ladies and gentleman.......
2005 AL Cy Young: Bartolo Colon
2005 NL Cy Young: Chris Carpenter
These two one the award for two reasons:
1. They won 20 games.
2. Their teams won their division.
Let's have a little thought process on what makes a good pitcher. Let's start by seeing what a pitcher does and does not have direct control over. When a pitcher lets go of the ball there are 3 basic things that can happen;
1. the pitch is a ball
2. the pitch is a strike
3. the pitch is put into play.
Now, the pitcher has DIRECT control over numbers 1 and 2. He either threw a strike, or he didn't. When the batter makes contact however, the outcome is out of the pitcher's hand (no pun intended). Now granted there are generally better types of bat to ball contact, but we've all seen a ball absolutely smoked that gets caught by the third baseman. Conversely we've all seen a batter bloop one over the second baseman's head or Eckstein one through the hole between short and third. There is a stat called Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP) that measures how often batters get a hit off a certain pitcher when they make contact. Surprisingly the variation in BABIP between the best pitchers and the worst is fairly small. And a lot of pitcher's will see their BABIP fluctuate wildly from year to year. Why? Because it simply isn't a repeatable skill. BABIP is more than anything an indicator of how lucky that particular pitcher was during that particular season. So, if a pitcher can't control what happens what a batter does after he hits the ball, how do we seperate the good pitcher from the bad? For that we go back to outcomes 1 and 2 and their logical conclusions; walks and strikeouts. Strikeouts are the holy grail for pitching efficiancy. They don't have to rely on their defense. Walks are the bane of a pitcher's excistence. They result in men on base without allowing the defense an opportunity to record an out. So therefore the pitchers with the most consistent success are usually those that walk few and strikeout many. There is another stat that measures this, it's called Walks plus Hits per Innings Pitches (WHIP). A good WHIP is something around 1.2. Colon's 2005 WHIP was 1.159. Good for 3rd in the league. Pretty solid however it completely pales in comparison to Johan Santana's league leading and other worldly .971. If you take into account a pitcher's home park and adjust accordingly you can get a pretty good idea of how effective a random pitcher is by looking at simply his rate of walks, strikeouts and hits per innings pitched.
Now what everyone in the mainstream media talks about is Wins and ERA. I'm not going to get into the imperfections of ERA right now because its complicated and there isn't that great of an alternative to present. However, let's talk about how completely retarded it is to judge a pitcher by wins and losses.
A starting pitcher gets credit for a win if he pitches a minimum of 5 innings and leaves with his team ahead and the game ends with his team winning without ever giving up the lead. How complicated is that? Not only is the rule harder to understand than Stan but the sheer concept is ridiculous. A pitcher who goes 8 innings and strikes out 15 but whose team loses 2-1 can get credit for the loss while a pitcher who goes 5 innings, walks 6 and gives up 7 runs but who gets a ton of run and whose team wins 11-9 can get the win. Now one pitcher was dominant and the other craptastic but for whatever reason baseball credits the latter one with the superior achievemant. The idiocy of this for a measuring stick of performance is best seen through this example: If a pitcher was perfect, i.e. he struck out every single batter he faced and finished the season with an ERA of 0.00 and 675 strikeouts he would not be garaunteed a SINGLE WIN. Unless the pitcher's teams offense scored him some runs before he was taken out, which is something that is completely seperate from the pitcher's individual performance, then he will not get a win. Yet when you watch Baseball Tonight you see John Kruk saying at midseason that Jon Garland is the Cy Young winner because "the guy is flat out winning games for his team". Bullshit John, his team is winning games, he's just pitching well. Also you and Jeff Brantley are the two best examples of why people who played the game should undergo a strick "de-idioting" before they are allowed to spew their locker room macho ignorance to the masses. All this to say that Bartolo Colon was an absolutely disgraceful choice as Cy Young and Chris Carpenter, although a better choice, was still the third best pitcher in his league behind Dontrelle Willis and the absolutely incredible Roger Clemens. I won't get into how this translates to making RBI a completely useless stat but suffice to say that there are a lot of dumb people covering sports out there. Just because someone gets to put "columnist" or "beat writer" after their name does not make them intelligent. Keep fighting the fight. Thanks for the time.
posted by Nate B @ 5:34 PM
17 comments
17 Comments:
I agree. I thought my boy Blanton should have gotten some love. And Carpenter was decent, but c'mon, what about my boy Noah Lowry? next year, i am pretty sure the NL is going to know and fear the name of Matt Cain. You heard it hear first. Again.
And about the columnists, i think all writers should be fired except for Bill Simmons. He should just write all the articles.
I'm going to punch you in the gut in about 10 hours.
Bish, this post was not boring, in fact it was awesome, I get moist just reading about stats. (oh and a little note, I just got off the phone with dusty baker) I am not at all going to sit here and defend Colon either, I had to sit through his conference call and write down his quotes, not fun. I just have to say I completely agree with everything you said.
what, you dont like bill simmons?
G I am going to fondle you in about 9 hours.
hey man, can i get some Cy Young love for basically CARRYING drew's fantasy team to victory?
I hate you Zac
bishop why dont you go back and put carpenters #'s against willis' and clemens' #'s. I both fear and respect both clemens and willis but when we are talking about pitcher controlled stats then we should probably look at maybe ohhhh i dont know Stike Outs per Walks (Capenter wins with 4.18 v Willis' 2.93 and Clemens 2.76), Walks per 9 innings (Carpenter wins with 1.90 v Willis' 2.09 and Clemens 2.64), Or let's talk about stikeouts per 9 innings (Carpenter wins with 7.93 v Willis' 6.47 and Clemens 7.88) and hey it seems Carpenter didn't need near as much time on the mound as Clemens and Willis. Willis and Clemens averaged 15.06 and 15.16 pitches an inning respectively whereas Carpenter averaged 14.05 pitches per inning). As far as managers confidence goes I think it is interesting to note that Carpenter did not give up a single intentional walk all season. Now that is brass balls compared to Clemens' 5 Intentional walks. Let's also note that Carpenter had more strike outs and less walks than both Willis and Clemens.
Hey Bish do you like apples?
only a moron (bishop) would respond to that
Elbrecht,
First of all I hope that you're polishing Lance off as we speak for doing all that research for you. Second a lot of your numbers are good. Especially K/9 and W/K ratio. Like I said I don't have nearly as big a problem with Carpenter as I do with Colon. But anyway, while I do think it's flawed ERA is still a fairly useful state so let's take a look at that. Carpenter came in at a rock solid 2.85 ERA. Nothing wrong with that. Anything below three is really good. Willis came in at 2.63 ERA. Clemens came in at 1.87 ERA!!!!! That is regoddamdiculous!!! Not only is it the best ERA this year but the best ERA in the last 10 years!!!!!! Not only that Clemens pitches half of his games in a highly offense friendly park whereas Carpenter pitches in a home park that is fairly neutral to offense. With all that said you can and did make a fairly good case for Carpenter as Cy Young. Just like you can make a fairly good case for Fair Trade Coffee. Your still wrong of course. But it was a great try.
And I heard that Stan likes Martha's apples.
Oh man, I remember the days of ROA and professor olson.
jared you are nerdy. keep up the thinking.
i can't believe i missed this post somehow. i just read it and missed all of the fun.
Q: What is the goal of every team in the MLB?
A: To win (ultimately the World Series of course)
That being established, the only stat that really matters is wins.
Willis: 22
Carpenter: 21
Colon: 21
I guess the case can be made for Willis over Carpenter base on that but seeing as though the Marlins finished 7 games out in the NL East, I would say Carpenter was the better choice.
Justin,
While we haven't met I have to assume that you are one of Elbrecht's many Midwesternlings. Suffice to say that your arguement has stumpted me and I throw out my entire post.
heres to hoping midwesternlings understand sarcasm
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