BREAKING: Red Sox Sign Walker Buehler To One-Year Contract

12 minutes ago, dgalehouse said:

I know how to compute ERA. And wins and losses. The only thing I know about fWAR is that it is an acronym for Wins above Replacement. So that gets us back to wins, whether real or imaginary.  I still have no idea how they rate one pitcher slightly higher than another. And I don't think very many fans do. But they go along with it because it seems like the thing to do. 

How do you know the reasons we "go along with it?"

I don't know a single person who goes totally by fWAR to determine who did better over whatever sample size is chosen. Not one. So, "going along with it" means just using it as one more fact to use to choose who you think is best.

W-L tells mostly what team is best and what pitchers happened to meet a weird criteria for giving the win to one guy over the other. Why does it help to know what 21 wins means over 19, when we know the way of choosing the "win" is highly flawed?

No, I don't know exactly how fWAR is determined, but I know it's not based on warped rules about 5 IP and if your team happened to have scored more at that point in the game- not to mention run support and great vs poor defenses behind the pitchers in question.

When I look at teh lists of fWAR and ERA, or ERA+/ERA- leaders vs Wins leaders, I fell very confident the fWAR and ERA measures are not only better, but way better at telling me who the better pitchers are.

I'm not saying you go by just wins, but you seem to count it more than fWAR.

I've tried to answer your Qs as best and fully as I can. Why not answer mine?

Of the 3 groups of pitchers I listed from 2022-2024, which group did you think was better?

Both looked flawed to me.

I tried not to cherry pick a sample size, so I searched the pitchers by GS since 2020 until I found a group 5 or 6 pitchers within 10-12 GS of each other. Here what I found (411-423 GS)

W-L list

198-127 Wainwright

169-135 Felix

165-142 Zito

163-122 Hamels

160-154 AJ Burnett

146-142 Lohse

fWAR List

54.1 Felix

51.7 Hamels

46.5 Wainwright

41.6 AJ Burnett

30.6 Zito

24.1 Lohse

ERA

3.42 Felix & Hamels

3.54 Wainwright

3.98 Burnett

4.02 Zito

4.41 Lohse

Just my opinion, but fWAR and ERA are ordered almost the exact same, and both look way better than the Wins list or even win% list. Do you disagree?

20 minutes ago, dgalehouse said:

Maybe ERA is one of the things they factor into fWAR. I have no idea. As far as I know fWAR is just something that a guy with a website invented. As for which of your groups is best, it's all a matter of opinion.  As a rule, I would say that the guys with the best ERAs are usually the best pitchers. But there is something to be said for the guys who consistently win games. And there are pitchers who seem to have good stuff and good metrics, etc, but never really become big winners. In the end, winning is what matters most. 

Well, I was asking for your opinion on what group you felt was best. I guess we'll never know.

Of course, it's all opinion, even to those who value fWAR more than wins.

I don't know all the algorithms and calculations fWAR makes, but I do know it takes into account batting, fielding and running based on  analyzing years of data to determine what events on the field is more likely to lead to a run being scored. Then, they break it down to runs created or lost, for batters.

For pitchers, they look at events that relate to run prevention and scsale to how much a pitcher has pitched, and this is why pitchers who pitch way more innings might have a higher WAR than a better pitcher with less IP. fWAR is a quality and cumulative number, which makes it difficult to compare to other traditional stats. BA does not account for more PAs. HRs and RBI can and often do. fWAR uses FIP as it's main value determinator, and I think that is flawed. (FIP is Fielding Independent Pitching, which basically counts HRs, Ks and BBs and does not look kindly at good pitchers who induce many weakly hit balls but do not K many batters.) fWAR does make some adjustments, like a pitcher's defense behind them.

I don't need to know all mechanisms to trust that their numbers are useful. I trust they know the math and have refined it over the years. I don't use WAR very often. I prefer the flawed combo stat OPS and OPS+ for batters and OPS Against for pitchers, as well as ERA-, which factors in parks and defense over just ERA and Wins or winning %. But that's just me and my opinion.

The way I see it, if Wins was a major factor in determining the best pitchers, I'd like the wins leader board about as much as ERA and WAR leader boards. I don't, and that sort of confirms my bias.

6 hours ago, dgalehouse said:

Of course there are flaws or quirks in any stat or any system. I think the correct pitcher gets credit for the win in most cases. In any case, winning the game is the objective . And a " save" is the reliever saving the win for another pitcher. When a pitcher consistently gets a lot of wins or a lot of saves, you probably have a good one. At least we know how this works. I have no idea how they figure fWAR or bWAR.  How do you measure the difference between a 2.6 WAR and a 2.8 ? 

The right pitcher getting the win being correct “most of the time” isn’t real useful considering most pitchers get less than 10 wins per year.

A century ago, when the starting pitcher threw all 9 innings, pitching wins were more useful.  But the advent and growing use of bullpens has made them a useless evaluation tool. Especially since they did nothing to tell you how good relief pitchers were, which is why ERA was devised in the first place.

fWAR and bWAR are good ones today, whether or not you know how to calculate them.  And someday, they’ll be replaced, just like VORP and WARP and Win Shares all were.  

24 minutes ago, dgalehouse said:

 

I just made a post about the relevance of winning. That's all.  I am not on the witness stand. It always becomes contentious with you. I am sorry I bothered. I should have known. 

I just asked for your opinion. You don't have to give it. It's not a witness stand, but normal conversations and debates usually see both sides answering each others' questions. I'm not sure why you see asking twice as being contentious.

You rebutted many of my points made. I did not view that as being contentious. You made a statement that that we "go along with it because it seems like the thing to do. "  I chose not to view that as contentious, but I guess it's all about perspective, but when someone disagrees with you- they are being "contentious." It's never you.

12 minutes ago, Randy Red Sox said:

it is tough to follow this..  i respect Moon but many of his replies are far too long for a simple minded guy like me to read and follow.  At the end of the day i think the Sox will be improved next year as neither Toronto, TB, or Baltimore have done much of anything so far so I see the Sox batting the O's for 2nd  in the AL East but not being a serious contender for a long playoff run.

We need a lot to go right to be "better," but that was said every year, since the obvious 2020 decline season.

We could simply look at Anthony, CamPbell and Mayer and think we will be better.

We could simply hope for better luck with injuries and nice returns to form from Story, Casas, Yoshida  and full seasons from Devers, Ref, Gio, Hendriks, Slaten and others and think we will be better.

We can hope Chapman, Wilson and Hendriks will do better than Jansen and Martin, but I think this is only a hope.

I do think our rotation looks better on paper: Crochet > Pivetta and the return of Gio gives us another choice. Maybe Sandoval returns in August. It looks fine to be optimistic here.

The defense will be better, if Story returns. If we play DHam more at 2B or try Campbell there, we should be better there. Unless we trade Abreu, our OF defense should improve with more OF time for Rafaela, Abreu and maybe Anthony than we saw O'Neill and Ref get in 2024. Our corner IF and C still suck on D.

On paper, we should be better.

It does look like TOR, TBR and BAL did not do much to improve, on paper. I'm not sure the loss of Soto, Torres, Holmes and Cortes was made up by the additions of Fried, Devon Williams and others.

Our additions range from very nice (Crochet with some durability concerns) to a risky Chapman to an eye on 2026 Sandoval. Others like Wilson and Narvaez are not spectacular, Our back up catcher declined, on paper.

I guess we look like an overall plus. but didn't we need a clear and significant plus?

1 hour ago, Hugh2 said:

Wins and losses mentality is the exact reason why guys like Kevin Appier got snubbed for a CY Young in 1993.  Today he would have beat out McDowell.

but 29 years ago KC scored the 4th fewest runs in all of baseball, Jack won a handful of games more and the rest is history.

of course elite pitchers will still find a way to win on s*** teams, but think about this.  Imagine King Felix win totals if that dude played for a perennial playoff team. 

Felix still ended up with 169 wins and just 136 losses in 15 seasons. (13 full seasons)

He probably could have gone 200-105 with a high scoring team.

3 minutes ago, Duran Is The Man said:

how many games would Steve Carlton won in 1972 with a decent team behind him? amazing that he took 27 of the teams 59 wins. 

I looked at the game logs. He certainly could have won more, but let's start with some of his wins:

5 ER in 5 IP

4 ER in 9 IP, 3 times

That's not a lot of "lucky wins."

Now the No Decisions: ER/IP, including a 10 IP 0 ER game

4/7, 0/10 WOW!, 5/5 and 4/5 (He could have gotten a couple losses here.)

Now, some of the losses 

2/7, 3/9, 4/9 (part of 6 losses in a row, some bad starts) later... 2/11 and 1/8

I think there are about 3-4 games where a win was a near must, but maybe 2-3 where he could have gotten a loss in games he won or got a no decision.

How about 2010, when Felix won the ERA crown but went just 13-23 in 34 starts?

No decisions with these ERs allowed

0 NDs with 4 or more ERs allowed

2 w 3 ERs

2 w 2 ERs

2 w 1 ER

2 w  0 ER

Any poorly pitched wins? Nope!

2 wins with 2 ERS

6 with 1 ER

5 w 0 ERs

Now, look at all the "unfair" losses:

0 ERs in 6.2 IP once (6 unearned runs)

1 ER in 8 IP once

2 in 7 IP three times

3 in 8 once

Not really as bad as I expected.

26 minutes ago, Hugh2 said:

WITHOUT DOUBT! winning is everything. 

but if you have one pitcher who goes 8 innings and gives up 1 run and his team loses 2-1, and another pitcher who gives up 4 in 6 innings and his team wins 7-4 the vast majority of people can conceptualize that the first pitcher is better, and with run support and in a better environment he would win more. 

It's almost as if people think this is a zero sum game, that if you look at other metrics it means that nothing else other than those metrics are unimportant.  Of course ERA and W% matter, but if you have a guy on the worse team with the worse defense and the worse coaching behind him but he's striking guys out at an elite level, eliciting weak contact, throwing heat, piling up innings etc etc etc. there's value in looking past just a win loss record or era.  I think on some level we all know and agree on that.  

In a few months we will have better things to argue about. 

I hope it won't be Crochet's won-loss record. At least he's a strikeout pitcher, who may be less affected by below-average defense in the infield (and maybe behind the plate)... at least, less than a Max Fried pitch-to-contact guy.

Maybe getting outbid by the Yankees for Fried saved Henry a lot of dough, since a subsequent Bregman signing would've also been necessary to optimize Fried's forte... (so maybe the Red Sox' offer to Fried intentionally preserved their frugality).

Boston can also be thankful Teoscar re-upped with LA, since the outfield D hasn't regressed. Fans of whiffers will be disappointed, though, because only three batters in baseball had more Ks than Hernandez' 188 (quite a few more than Duran's team-leading 160).

Last year both Houck, and Bello made 30 starts. Houck went 9-10 with a 3.12. Bello on the other hand went 14-8 with a 4.49. Now I watched enough games to know that Houck was the better pitcher, so the good old eye test told me that. Now you can throw out there all the stats you want, and need, but do you think Houck would rather have been 9-10, or 14-8?

Who were the two best starters in Baseball last year? Skubal, and Sale. They had the most wins, the lowest ERA, and most K’s. ALL stats mean something. It depends on how many you want, and how far you want to delve into them. Sometimes like in this case you don’t have to go very deep at all, and sometimes you have to. ALL stats do mean something.

4 minutes ago, Bellhorn04 said:

Are you including all the "advanced metrics" in that last sentence?

All is all including the eye test. Some stats like the W-L you have to delve deeper like with Bello, and Houck this past year' but then again with Sale, and Skubal you don’t. Each case is different, but ALL stats matter to some agree IMO.

1 minute ago, Bellhorn04 said:

Very reasonable take.

And I do get why wins still mean something to starting pitchers.  It's one of those things that's just kind of wired into them.  It's what these guys do for a living, after all.  And you will see managers sometimes trying to get the pitcher the win by getting him through the 5th inning.  OTOH you see managers throw that right out the window sometimes too.  

I get that starting pitchers aren’t viewed like they used to be, because the game has changed. Starting pitchers used to be admired as much as the big sluggers, but even today I think a pitcher does care about his W-L record.

23 minutes ago, Bellhorn04 said:

Very reasonable take.

And I do get why wins still mean something to starting pitchers.  It's one of those things that's just kind of wired into them.  It's what these guys do for a living, after all.  And you will see managers sometimes trying to get the pitcher the win by getting him through the 5th inning.  OTOH you see managers throw that right out the window sometimes too.  

There were also a few times this century when it looked -- to my eyes -- like a Tito or Cora yanked a starter who they were irked with for some reason after 4 2/3s with a lead...  Only one out to go for a W? Take a seat and learn something, Meat.

But in this day of openers and two-times-through-the-order starters, win requirements should be adjusted to reward the most effective pitcher each day.