rjortiz

His walk rate in 2013 is 5.34. His career walk rate is 4.51. That's about 4-5 batter a year to add to WHIP. His BABIP is .309, which is .16 points higher than the league average of .293. He's a power pitcher, and there's evidence to suggest that he controls his BABIP to a small extent. If you lower his BABIP for the year to .285 (career BABIP), that saves about 3-4 hits. The new totals based on a career BB/9 and a career BABIP calculate to a 1.28 WHIP, which takes him from below average to slightly above. I agree with you on your last point. My point was that Rodney isn't an awful pitcher, and that it isn't unreasonable to suggest an improvement.

There's no evidence to support your argument, so I decided to find some. By your logic, we would assume that there would be a positive correlation between BB/9 and BABIP. I looked at the statistics for all qualified pitchers over the last decade. I narrowed those results to look at the 30 worst BB/9 rates. The worst was Carlos Marmol at 6.09 BB/9, and the "best" was Scott Proctor at 4.38 BB/9. I entered the information the leaderboard (via fangraphs) gave me to find the correlation coefficient. The result was a negative correlation of -0.4256189362082224. This number actually suggests the opposite of what you say. Not a strong correlation, but not a weak one. That being said, I tend to agree with the idea that BABIP is mostly driven by luck. There's some evidence to suggest that pitchers with higher strikeout numbers can suppress BABIP, because they are tougher to square up, but it's mostly luck. It was interesting to see in the data that 20/30 of those pitchers were above the average K/9 rate for the time period. http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=pit&lg=all&qual=y&type=c,37,43,36&season=2013&month=0&season1=2003&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=3,d I guess if you only looked at his ERA you could draw that conclusion. His FIP is his second lowest by a good 1/2 run. His walks are also way up. His control his bad, but I don't think it is Carlos Marmol bad. The BABIP is also distorting his ERA. League average BABIP is .293, and he's at .309. Again, I'm not saying he's awesome. I just think calling him awful is unjustified.

I think a nice ribbon would be more appropriate.

He can still throw 10-15 innings next month.

Cherrington deserves some credit for turning around the team this quickly.

Didn't see your post three pages ago until after I hit submit. Sorry.

What evidence is this based on? Early humans were groups of band societies that certainly worked together.

Are you suggesting that human beings have the same mating process as other species? I've heard people do it as a joke, but it looks like you are actually serious here. It also doesn't look good when you point to animal behavior as some sign of virtue.

Early humans almost certainly embraced cooperative efforts as a means to survive. Competition between each and all would have been a death sentence. That's for another day, I suppose.

There's a lot of fans that think the league is being "wussified" because of the NFL's curtailing of the rules to reduce concussions. You're sarcasm made me think you were one of them. As for the players knowing what they signed up for, there's substantial evidence that the NFL engaged in hiding information about long-term brain injuries from players in the past. I'm also fairly certain that NFL players are not neurology experts.

Why would you make light of concussions? They are a pretty big problem in the NFL.

I'm expecting his walks to come down along the lines of his career numbers. His BABIP and LD% are both above his career levels, and he's still throwing 98-100 mph, so I expect them to come down.

Average ERA for an AL reliever is 3.69, so he's slightly below average. As for his improvement, his FIP, and xFIP are in the low 3.00's. His control has never been this terrible, and his LD% is off his career average. Expecting those numbers to normalize isn't unreasonable.

I wouldn't call a 3.75 ERA bad. Not good, but not bad. I think he has also been unlucky this year. His BABIP is .40 higher than his career average, and he's walking an extra batter per nine. Despite this, he has a league average ERA. I think he'll be better the rest of the season.

You're assigning 100% of the blame to Rodney. The Jennings error definitely alleviates some of it. Rodney hasn't been good this year, but he hasn't been awful either. He misses a ton of bats, doesn't give up the longball, and his control can't be this bad. He only looks this bad, because he was so dominant in 2012. He's more like an average closer right now.

Summon the monster? Are Peavy and Zito Wiccans?

This is a pretty good point, and I didn't consider the platoon splits.

The evidence is his career -20 wRAA against lefties, and Chen's .648 OPS against lefites. There's enough there to suggest that Drew is completely useless against lefties, and Chen is good at suppressing them.

I was trying to point out that it isn't a good idea to ignore evidence because something good might happen.

Baseball is a bizarre sport. Who would have thought that Marlon Byrd would be an upgrade for a contending team this year?

I think we should start Aaron Cook tonight. Just because he's fared a certain way against MLB lineups in the past, doesn't mean that it will happen here. Either one could be great, awful, or somewhere in between. Cook is the vet, let him play.

I think his career .100 point OPS split, and his current season .200 OPS split beg to differ.

Any book that operated like that would get murdered. In order to entice 50/50 betting, books would have to drastically move the spread, which would open them up to sharp gamblers taking advantage of inefficient lines. I wish this were the case. I could make a lot of middle bets when the public goes beserk on the Patriots or Packers. Here's an interview with Stardust Sportsbook manager Bob Scucci:

Can't say I'm too surprised. Managers seem to overvalue veterans.

More often that not, he's missing the zone. He's 3rd in MLB in BB/9 among qualified starters over the last two years. His FIP this year is 3.69, which is closer to Jon Lester than it is to David Price. His xFIP over the last two years have both been over 4.19. I know he was the best pitching prospect in the game not too long ago, but he's lost three mph off his fastball since 2011. I wouldn't be surprised if he peaked in his rookie year.