moonslav59

Having 2 of the top 38 season's out of 4,900+ is still pretty amazing!

True. His 1.203 WHIP was nearly .200 over his 2013 season, but he still excelled at not letting up many runs although pitching in a pitcher's park vs tougher offensive teams than most.

In the last 25 seasons, there are about 5,000 season sample sizes of SP'ers getting 80+ IP in a season. Here's how Buch's ERA- seasons rank. 3) Pedro 35 (2000) 6) Buch 42 (2013) 7) Pedro 42 (1999) 19) Clemens 47 (1990) 22) Pedro 48 (2003) 24) Pedro 50 (2002) 32) Wake 52 (2002) 38) Buch 54 (2010)

2008: Buch sucked all year. 2009: Buch only pitched the second half and was okay. 2010: Buch pitched very well all season long (2.20 first half vs 2.45 ERA second half- one of MLB's best ERA- seasons of all time) 2011: Buch only pitched the first half and did good. 2012: Buch went 8-2 in the first half but had a 5.53 ERA/ 2nd half 3-6 3.76 2013: Buch had one of the best ERA- seasons of all time, 1.71 in 12 starts/1.88 in 4 starts (He missed the mid season) 2014: Buch sucked all year: 5.42/5.26 2015: Buch was very good until he got hurt (3.26 then DNP) 2016: Buch sucked first half (5.91) but has done well this half (2.95) I guess you could say 2012 was a split season, but the 8-2 record kind of smoothed over the bad ERA. I see only 2016 as a Jekyl and Hide season.

Buch is the one that rarely mixes good with bad in the same season. He might do great then get hurt, but this is the first season I know of where he started out one way and ended the other (and he hasn't ended this one well, yet.).

1) Price 2) Porcello 3) Pomeranz 4) ERod (4-5 innings)/Buch 4-5 innings If a 1-3 starter needs to be yanked early, and we use Buch in relief, he may not be available for game 4.

Good point, but my guess is these guys went to some sort of calibration training whereby they were all scoring the same observation and then compared notes and adjusted accordingly until they were all pretty similar by the end of the training.

True, but we outscored the opps many times and split 4 times. We were outscored by the opps many times and split just once.

Well, UZR/150 counts the zone, not where the player is stationed.

However, as good as this team looks to be in the future I can't help but think how much better they could be if they didn't have those two contracts in Pawtucket hanging around their necks. If they had that kind of money to spend on pitching they'd be SCARY good. It might soon be three with Pablo lobbying for the Pawtucket Country Club membership. (Luxury Tax dollars) $19.5M Pablo (actually $19.3M x 3 counting $5M option buyout) $10.4M Castillo (actually $11.5M x 4 left) $6.2M Craig (actually $12M x 1 left counting buying out 2018's option) That's over $40M that would have counted on the luxury tax budget and about $43M per year for 1 year, $30M for the next 2 years and then $13.5M for Castillo's last year-- 2020.)

It's a shame. He was our best 1st half starter. When you think about all the question marks this rotation had going into the season, and the fact that Buch and Kelly sucked royally out of the gate and then we lose our best starter, yet still our rotation now looks solid top to bottom. WOW!

Gotcha. I actually thought Moncada was going to be called up just to PR, PH and maybe play 3b or 2B very "sparingly".

JBJ is not the fastest CF'er in MLB. He gets exceptional breaks on balls, and takes the straightest route, as far as I know. Lorenzo Cain is a phenom. The others, I don't know much about. Without seeing other CF'ers as much as JBJ, I can't say nwho is best, but by seeing the aggregate CF'er, I think JBJ is about top 2-3. 6th is not that far off from 2-3. WAR is seriously flawed, but so is standing around the water cooler and trying to compare defensive, base running and batting value mixed together and at the same time. WAR attempts to put a single number to all values. It is flawed, and I can see why you and others don't like it, but you probably don't agree with "that other guy" at the water cooler either.

I'm not saying mental or emotional issues aren't affecting Buch's production, but there really is no way to know that for sure. He's been hurt a lot, and it seems like his poor performance periods are always immediately before or after an injury with missed time. He's either hurt or recovering from an injury. When he's not, he does great almost all of those (few) times.

Hill has not really provided what was expected. He was expected to be a capable platoon with Shaw and hit lefties close to what he had over his career (.761). I guess .716 isn't that far off, but it's less and he's in a hitter's park now. His UZR/150 at MIL was -1.0. It's -3.7 here.

I understand that and don't disagree... maybe not shouldn't be here, but more like shouldn't be handed the job outright on day two.

Yes, and the computer will be able to tell how long the ball was in the air, and how fast the player was able to get to the ball or not, and then compare that data to the norm. The one area that may be contentious is player positioning. Do you blame the player for being farther away from a hit ball to start with?

Shaw had that big game, just before being benched. I'm not one to over-react on a one game sample size, but I thought it was strange that Moncada was pretty much handed the FT job (or at least a platoon vs RHPs) right out of the box. I'm waiting for the "we're going to bruise his [Moncada's] fragile ego" arguments to begin.

I'm betting the 3 starters in Toronto will be Porcello, ERod, and Buchholz, which would explain the 87 pitches last night. Buch looked confident last night and minimized the walks (0) and the pauses between pitches. Pomeranz has been steady for 7 straight starts: 1 ER- two times 2 ER- four times 3 ER- one time 4+ ER- zero times I doubt they mess with his routine. Give everybody the one extra days rest and keep the rotation in the same order.

If he's off to a great start in 2017, we won't trade him, but I share your opinion. I'd actually sign him and trade him before the season starts, but I seriously doubt that happens.

Just saw the ending to the Yanks-Jays game- a snow cone catch against the wall to defeat Toronto. Let's hold this lead fellas!

Glad to see you expanding your horizons, oldtimer. It's not a perfect method, but it sure beats Fielding % which is also flawed by hometown scorers assigning errors with subjectivity.

Could be true, but pressure, in and of itself, does not necessarily bring a negative impact. Some players do better under pressure. Bogey sure did great in the post season of 2013.

So, with all this talk of UZR/150, where do our players stand? 2014-2016 & 2,000+ innings (to get a true sample size): CF (23 qualified): JBJ +11.9 (6th behind Kiermaier, Pillar, B Hamilton, Cain and Lagares) OF (71 qualified) 10) JBJ +13.5 14) Betts +7.1 41) Ellsbury -0.3 SS (25 qualified) 19.8 Lindor 19.2 Simmons 14.6 JJ Hardy 13.3 Cozart 11.0 Crawford #15 Bogey -2.3 2B (21 qualified) 13.5 Pedey 8.3 Kinsler 6.9 Panik 5.0 Phillips 4.1 Utley 3.1 LeMahieu 2.6 Gordon

There's a big difference between subjective and voodoo. By that definition an umpires strike zone is voodoo, I think all non cynical baseball fans would agree that while umpires can have a bad day and be a little off a strike zone is subjective. It might vary but it's pretty darn close, and like Moon said they have trained observers. Even though we know umpires are imperfect we trust them enough to never blame the umpire for a pitcher with bad control. No one would ever say that we can't trust Henry Owens WHIP, and BB/9 because umpires strike zones are voodoo....you just wouldn't. Defensive metrics are very similar in this sense, people just don't see it that way because it's new and what is new scares people. Yes, very well said. The payed and trained observers who analyze each play in person are trained and rotated, unlike hometown scorekeepers. Sure, there's some subjectivity and imperfections involved but the idea is rather simple. Most fans get to see their own player every game or nearly every game. They see other team's players on defense rarely, some very rarely. If we did get a chance to see every play made and not made by every player over a season, we'd have a better understanding of how our players are on defense- good or bad. (That's assuming we can stay objective.) The observers with UZR/150 are probably more objective than us, and you'd think with all the observations they make, they'd be better than we are at determining what play was makeable or not. . I don't totally trust their numbers, and even they say we should only look at large sample sizes (sometimes larger than a full season) to make any definitive judgments on a player's defensive ability. UZR/150 is not perfect, but it beats Flg% and RF/9. It beats the two combined. It takes into account how many balls are hit to a player, how many were easy, medium hard and in-between. It beats my own personal observations by themselves, because I don't know jack about how good the Colorado Rockies SS is defensively through observations and looking at Fldg% and RF/9 only. If I don't know how good he is, how can I rank Bogey comparatively?