Thread: Murphy: Inteview with Terry Ryan

Originally Posted by old nurse

Nice. Average in the year Pelfrey was injured.

Yeah, why bother factoring in the injury that made the guy miss a year when talking about durability?

Originally Posted by old nurse

Nice. Average in the year Pelfrey was injured.

Well since his point was that innings pitched was the best way to judge pitchers I guess I thought it was best to use well .... you know....Innings pitched. My bad!

Originally Posted by Oxtung

Well since his point was that innings pitched was the best way to judge pitchers I guess I thought it was best to use well .... you know....Innings pitched. My bad!

My bad, I thought people here were not supposed to count time injured against performance, see any Marcum thread

Originally Posted by FrodaddyG

Yeah, why bother factoring in the injury that made the guy miss a year when talking about durability?

I thought he innings pitched idea was about quality of work of the pitcher. Sort of veered of the durability topic. My bad for misreading what was posted

Originally Posted by thrylos98

here are 4 mediocre pitchers on the leaderboards for IP for 2012

Justin Masterson: 206.1 IP, 4.93 ERA, 1.454 WHIP, 6.9 K/9, 1.81 K/BB
Jon Lester: 205.1 IP, 4.82 ERA, 1.383 WHIP, 7.3 K/9, 2.44 K/BB
Ian Kennedy: 208.1 IP, 4.02 ERA, 1.301 WHIP, 8.1 K/9, 3.40 K/BB
Clayton Richard: 218.2 IP, 3.99 ERA, 1.235 WHIP, 4.4 K/9, 2.55 K/BB

and this blast from the near past, closer to home

2011 Carl Pavano: 222 IP, 4.30 ERA, 1.360 WHIP, 4.1 K/9, 2.55 K/BB

Do those exceptional IPs made them good pitchers?
No.

Compare those numbers with those of the kid from Washington they "shut down" per club's choice.
Who is the better pitcher?

So your implying those guys don't have value? Almost any team would take them in their rotation.

And I also applaud you on your brilliant use of the four worst big inning guys and the one brilliant low inning guy from last year.

Originally Posted by Oxtung

So perhaps you can tell me how these statements mesh because they seem to be contradictory.





The average innings pitched per year over the last 3 years:

Joe Saunders 197IP
Kevin Correia 157IP
Mike Pelfrey 139IP

A good example of why no one stat is perfect. And also that I am probably too high on Pelfrey right now.

Originally Posted by twinsnorth49

Pitcher A, 200 IP, 7.2 K/9, 3.50 ERA. Pitcher B, 200 IP, 5.6 K/9, 5.25 ERA

How is IP the most important stat here?

This is a ridiculous game to play.

How about:
Pitcher A: 3.00 ERA 3 innings
Pitcher B: 3.20 ERA, 230 innings

or

Pitcher A: 5.30 ERA, 120 innings, 110 Ks, 80 BBs
Pitcher B: 3.25 ERA, 125 innings, 96 Ks, 21 BBs

You can prove a whole lot of nothing throwing out random stats.

Originally Posted by drjim

This is a ridiculous game to play.

How about:
Pitcher A: 3.00 ERA 3 innings
Pitcher B: 3.20 ERA, 230 innings

or

Pitcher A: 5.30 ERA, 120 innings, 110 Ks, 80 BBs
Pitcher B: 3.25 ERA, 125 innings, 96 Ks, 21 BBs

You can prove a whole lot of nothing throwing out random stats.

They don't have to be random. These two guys are sitting immediately next to one another when you align the 2012 season by IP:

Pitcher A: 191.2 IP, 5.07 ERA, 47/147 BB/SO
Pitcher B: 191.1 IP, 3.90 ERA, 89/221 BB/SO

What does IP tell you there? And what is the defining stat that makes you like pitcher B compared to pitcher A?

It's ERA. If you're going to glom onto one pitching stat (not including advanced metrics), ERA is the obvious choice. Innings Pitches tells you nothing about quality of pitcher unless you get to the far end of the spectrum (if a guy throws 230+ IP, you know he was at least an effective pitcher, if not a great one). Hanging on to this notion that IP is the most important pitching stat is ridiculous. Just give it up.

Besides, declaring one statistic the best is a silly notion in the first place. Why would anyone in their right mind choose one statistic when you have hundreds available to you?

Originally Posted by drjim

You can prove a whole lot of nothing throwing out random stats.

You realize why people think you're being a bit silly, though, don't you? IP is a purely quantitative stat. It tells you nothing about what transpired during the time frame that the pitcher was on the mound, just that he was out there. It's like someone using ABs as the primary measure of a hitter.

Originally Posted by FrodaddyG

You realize why people think you're being a bit silly, though, don't you? IP is a purely quantitative stat. It tells you nothing about what transpired during the time frame that the pitcher was on the mound, just that he was out there. It's like someone using ABs as the primary measure of a hitter.

You mean PAs. We don't want to confuse the situation by subtracting walks, sacrifices, and HBP from a player's effectiveness.

Originally Posted by drjim

This is a ridiculous game to play.

How about:
Pitcher A: 3.00 ERA 3 innings
Pitcher B: 3.20 ERA, 230 innings

or

Pitcher A: 5.30 ERA, 120 innings, 110 Ks, 80 BBs
Pitcher B: 3.25 ERA, 125 innings, 96 Ks, 21 BBs

You can prove a whole lot of nothing throwing out random stats.

Just oversimplifying your oversimplification.

I think what this all comes down to is what you expect from your starting pitchers.

Do we expect our pitchers to be dominant and able to shut teams down and virtually win games on their own? Or do we want pitchers who can just keep the game close, who can eat up innings, and give the offense a chance to win the game by scoring runs?

Obviously, it depends on what the rest of the team looks like. If you have confidence in your offensive capabilities, you are more willing to accept a rotation of #3 & #4 starters. If you don't have confidence in your ability to produce runs, you are more likely to demand/need better starting pitching to compensate. My guess is that Twins feel good enough about their offense that a rotation of dependable if unspectacular starters is OK for them. Time will tell if we got that (or if their analysis of offensive capability is accurate).

Obviously, you'd like to have both good pitching and good hitting. Doesn't happen that often in real life, though. When it does, it usually means World Series.

Originally Posted by Twins Twerp

Sounds better than I hope he has an above average obp+ with a solid iso power rating. The article wasn't for twins daily but a newspaper and since only gpas read newspapers with there morning viagra and oj, using saber stats would have been a bad idea.

Hey, Twerp! I resemble that!

Originally Posted by sbknudson

IDo we expect our pitchers to be dominant and able to shut teams down and virtually win games on their own? Or do we want pitchers who can just keep the game close, who can eat up innings, and give the offense a chance to win the game by scoring runs.

You know what good teams do? A little of both. I think the Twins have conditioned us in some very strange ways about how a team can be assembled. Even then, innings eaters still have to minimize the runs they give up or you won't want them out there eating innings since they aren't "keeping you in the game".

Originally Posted by Alex

Ok, serious question. Is pitching a lot of innings is a predictor of being durable and pitching a lot of innings in the future?

It's a better predictor than not pitching a lot of innings.

But I think you're getting at an important point that I've preached often. A pitcher is only injury-prone until he's not, and vice versa. Carl Pavano's a fine example -- he's gone back and forth about four times in his career. Pitchers with a relatively clean bill of health suffer major injuries all the time, it's the name of the game.

Originally Posted by twinsnorth49

Just oversimplifying your oversimplification.

So saying IP is the most important stat is an oversimplification? I would disagree with that interpretation.

Originally Posted by Brock Beauchamp

They don't have to be random. These two guys are sitting immediately next to one another when you align the 2012 season by IP:

Pitcher A: 191.2 IP, 5.07 ERA, 47/147 BB/SO
Pitcher B: 191.1 IP, 3.90 ERA, 89/221 BB/SO

What does IP tell you there? And what is the defining stat that makes you like pitcher B compared to pitcher A?

It's ERA. If you're going to glom onto one pitching stat (not including advanced metrics), ERA is the obvious choice. Innings Pitches tells you nothing about quality of pitcher unless you get to the far end of the spectrum (if a guy throws 230+ IP, you know he was at least an effective pitcher, if not a great one). Hanging on to this notion that IP is the most important pitching stat is ridiculous. Just give it up.

Besides, declaring one statistic the best is a silly notion in the first place. Why would anyone in their right mind choose one statistic when you have hundreds available to you?

I said IP was the most important. I stand by that. But I also thought I was pretty clear that it was far from the only stat or a be-all end-all stat. To look solely at IP would be silly, just like it would be silly to look at any one stat to determine effectiveness. I would assume this is self-evident. I would put ERA second.

Originally Posted by Nick Nelson

It's a better predictor than not pitching a lot of innings.

But I think you're getting at an important point that I've preached often. A pitcher is only injury-prone until he's not, and vice versa. Carl Pavano's a fine example -- he's gone back and forth about four times in his career. Pitchers with a relatively clean bill of health suffer major injuries all the time, it's the name of the game.

Heh, I suppose that's true, that not pitching a lot of innings probably means that, for whatever reason (injury or performance) a pitcher won't likely pitch "a lot" in the future (whatever that number means), but it does seem like a guy is durable until he isn't as you point out.

Originally Posted by drjim

I said IP was the most important. I stand by that. But I also thought I was pretty clear that it was far from the only stat or a be-all end-all stat. To look solely at IP would be silly, just like it would be silly to look at any one stat to determine effectiveness. I would assume this is self-evident. I would put ERA second.

I'd encourage you to go to Fangraphs here: Major League Leaderboards » 2012 » Pitchers » Dashboard | FanGraphs Baseball

You can play around with what stat you'd like to rank pitchers by, WAR, ERA, IP, xFIP, whatever.

It's interesting to note, and not surprising that IP will correlate with what most of us consider good pitchers and bad pitchers at the extreme ends of the spectrum. However, for a massive number of pitchers, it doesn't correlate at all. Jarrod Hudson had a 3.47 ERA but only threw 187 IP, putting him in the bottom 3rd of the majors of qualified pitchers in IP. There are a ton of pitchers like this: Samardzjja, Lynn, Hellickson, Moore, Hudson...

How can IP be the most important stat if there are pitchers like this in the bottom of the league in IP? Meanwhile Clayton Richard and Justin Masterson threw over 200 IP. I'd take any of the pitchers I named above over them for last season's performance. How can that be considered if IP is the most important stat?

Originally Posted by Brock Beauchamp

They don't have to be random. These two guys are sitting immediately next to one another when you align the 2012 season by IP:

Pitcher A: 191.2 IP, 5.07 ERA, 47/147 BB/SO
Pitcher B: 191.1 IP, 3.90 ERA, 89/221 BB/SO

What does IP tell you there? And what is the defining stat that makes you like pitcher B compared to pitcher A?

It's ERA. If you're going to glom onto one pitching stat (not including advanced metrics), ERA is the obvious choice. Innings Pitches tells you nothing about quality of pitcher unless you get to the far end of the spectrum (if a guy throws 230+ IP, you know he was at least an effective pitcher, if not a great one). Hanging on to this notion that IP is the most important pitching stat is ridiculous. Just give it up.

Besides, declaring one statistic the best is a silly notion in the first place. Why would anyone in their right mind choose one statistic when you have hundreds available to you?

This is a great post. I mirrored your thoughts about ERA here last fall. I agree that we should not be closed-minded and focus on one stat for any player. But, for pitchers, ERA would be the one to separate those with equal IP

"I think about baseball a lot, and ERA is the MOST important stat for a pitcher in my opinion. Your starter's ERA is what you're facing, on average, as an offense (until or if the starter exits, obviously)." - me.