Interlude - Saves

Some thoughts as I am getting more concrete data on relievers. Prepare to have your mind blown!

-Do you know how many blown saves there were last year? That number would be 575. That is a staggering number. There are fewer stars in the galaxy than that! That is untrue, of course. Still staggering.

-Do you know that there are 8 teams that have 10 or more blown saves from pitchers who never even recorded a single save (Colt 45s, Klue Klays, Bravos, Brewers, Marlins, Natinals, Padres, and Rockies)! 3 guys blew 7 saves each without converting a single one. One of them was Aaron Crow! That guy was on my team for a short period last year! Why do they keep getting the ball in the 9th! 7 saves blown! Not a single one converted! What is this, the '06 Yankees season and we are talking about Kyle Farnsworth? Managers: these guys stink. Don't give them the ball. What are we talking about here!

-In the entire league last season, there were 1818 save opportunities. 31.6% of them were blown. Have I truly been so spoiled by a decade of Mariano Rivera and his delicious steaks outside of New Rock City that this number is almost certainly incorrect (of course it is correct)?

-How do you think the Colt 45's numbers of saves matches up with their number of blown saves. Those two numbers are approximately equivalent, or more precisely, exactly the same. They saved 25 and they blew 25. While Mark Melancon didn't exactly light the world on fire with 20 whole saves, without him, they would have blown 4 times the number of saves that they accrued (20 blown, 5 saved). Wilton Lopez blew 6 saves himself without ever successfully converting a chance. Brandon Lyon, a legit fantasy option the season before last, blew 3 himself. I drafted him in the 20th round. Do you know who else I could have gotten in that round? Albert Pujols, that's who. Well, actually, that's not who. I could have gotten some other trash like Jason Kubel, but the fact remains!

Pitchers: A New Look - HR Rate

So I have this big spreadsheet with all sorts of data from the 2011 campaign for pitchers that I was using for my previous post on the quality starts rule change, and I sit here looking at it and saying to myself, "Is 1 post all that I can really derive from such a wealth of data? So many columns were unused! So many metrics undiscovered and unreported on! There must be something more." Well, it turns out that there is more (yes, I know it is hard to believe that a huge spreadsheet could yield more than a pithy analysis of quality starts). Behold: Your More!


You know what is the worst? When you place a big take out order and you get home and, of the 10 people who are getting food, you are the only one whose order was forgotten. Or perhaps when you are going to sleep and you reach over to turn of the light, and you knock over your glass of water necessitating a lengthy clean up process. For the porpoises of this post, though, lets consider the case of when your pitcher is throwing a decent game, the bases get loaded up, and rather than hitting a sac fly or striking out, he gives up a ding-a-ling thus destroying his outing in one swing of the bat. Indeed, the dong is a complete force-multiplier for the both offense and the defense; one swing can boost up 5 hitting categories and very realistically destroy 3 defensive categories (even more now that quality starts are included in the scoring).
I looked at which pitchers had the highest ratio of HRs per Earned Runs thinking that the pitchers who had the highest HR/ER ratio would be the guys who would have most been hurt by the long ball. In essence, if these guys had the wind blowing in a little bit more or played with outfielders who timed their jumps a little better, their ERs would go down. The pitcher with the highest HR/ER ratio was the Reds' Bronson Arroyo (Bernie) who had a staggering 46 HRs to a still-pretty-high 112 earned runs. More interesting is the next guy on the list, the Tigers' Justin Verlander (Peachz) who gave up 24 HRs to only 67 earned runs. His last season was Ghengis Khan-ian in its murderous ferocity, and there was room for improvement. Oh, and he is a keeper. Thanks Justine! Another notable name at the top of the range are the Yankees newest acquisition, Hiroki Kuroda (Fooey) with 24 HRs to only 69 earned runs. Last week, you would have thought that his under-spoken-of 3.07 ERA could get even lower, but in the bandbox that A-Rod built, this number may go up. Others who got stung by the long ball are Josh Beckett (Dykstra), Jeremy Helleckson (Dykstra), Wandy (WooWoo), YoGa (WooWoo), and Theodore Roosevelt Lilly (Ackbar).
On the flip side, the Buccaneer Charlie Morton gave up a paltry 6 HR to 73 earned runs. The extreme ground-ballers will always limit their damage from loaded bases, but they will balance out this benefit with a lack of Ks. As our league favors power pitchers, guys like Morton or Wang will never find permanent homes on any teams. Matt Cain (Ackbar) only gave up 9 HR to 71 earned, followed by Derek Lowe (Bernie) with 14 HR to 105 earned, and Buzzsaw Billingsley (Allah) with 14 HR to 88 earned. These guys could see their ERAs rise this coming season, though they also could not. Who the hell knows.

Pitchers: A New Look - uERA

So I have this big spreadsheet with all sorts of data from the 2011 campaign for pitchers that I was using for my previous post on the quality starts rule change, and I sit here looking at it and saying to myself, "Is 1 post all that I can really derive from such a wealth of data? So many columns were unused! So many metrics undiscovered and unreported on! There must be something more." Well, it turns out that there is more (yes, I know it is hard to believe that a huge spreadsheet could yield more than a pithy analysis of quality starts). Behold: Your More!

There were a number of times last year when I would be playing one of you punks and I would check out the MLB score before bed and see that a team facing an opposing fantasy team's pitcher put up a monster number of runs. Cheered, I would drift off to a troubled sleep with dreams filled with zombies and awkward moments. It would only be in the morning that I checked the box scores and noticed that, despite giving up 7 runs, the offending pitcher was only charged with 1 as his defense failed him. I understand the rules of earned versus unearned runs (actually, I sort of don't, they seem to shift like the desert's sands), but really, when a pitcher loads them up and then gives an error clears the bases, how can he get so few earned! I feel like those pitchers had their ERAs artificially lowered and are, in fact, worse pitchers than their ERAs say. The pitcher (who played on a team in our league) who gave up the highest percentage of unearned runs was Jaime Garcia (Dykstra), who gave up 100 runs but was only charged with only 77 of them, hanging fully 23% on the defense. Had those runs been earned, he would have been saddled with with a 4.63 uERA (Unearned Run Average) rather than the 3.55 ERA that he posted. The Cardinals, in fact, were the worst defensive team in terms of supporting their starting pitchers with only 87.3% of the total runs given up by their starters being charged to them. Next was Johnny Cueto (Peachz), with 21% of runs on the defense (51 given up versus 40 charged) bringing his uERA to a still-pretty-good 2.94 rather than 2.30. Third was Matt Garza (Bernie) who had 18% of his runs caused by the defense (90 given up versus 73 charged) having a Mendoza-Linian 4.09 uERA versus his serviceable 3.31 ERA. On the flip side, the pitchers who were big earners were Esmil Rodgers (Bernie), Phil Hughes (Ackbar), and Travis Wood (Ackbar) who earned every single one of their runs. In the "actual decent pitchers" category, Cole Hamels' (Ackbar) defense only fudged 1 run for him and Ian Kennedy's (Peachz) only 2. Think about that for a second: those two guys were aces in every sense of the word except for the actual definition, but if 8% of their runs been charged to the defense (the league average), their ERAs would be 2.60 for Hamels (versus 2.79) and 2.71 for Kennedy (versus 2.87). For Hamels, this is to be expected as the Phillies defense was the most supportive of their starters with fully 95.1% of the runs that the starters gave up being earned. Kennedy was another story with the DBack pitchers having a middle-of-the-pack 92.1% of runs charged to their starters. Do you remember when Ian Kennedy came up from the minors? What a mess he was in New York. WTF Ian Kennedy?

Quality Starts, Schmality Schwartz!

Good ol' Schmality. He was my lab partner in Orgo sophomore year. That guy could rotovap like nothing I have ever seen previously or since.
These new changes to the league are horrible! I mean, adding Chandler? Who is this guy? A decorative hanging light with branches for several light bulbs or candles? A female comedianne who has a new NBC sitcom whose title replaced the word "Vodka" with her first name? A town in Upper Hominy, NC? What's that off-screen voice? Oh, you said Chandler. I misheard you. That I am cool with. Welcome Chandler! You literally only need have a pulse to be a more active participant in the league than Andrew. Will you ever read these words? I doubt it. Why would you be any different than the rest of the human population.
Of course, the above few lines are in jest, I have no life threatening problems with the rules changes. I mean, I am not a fan, but I have a feeling that is more because of Newtonian physics (inertia and whatnot) than any real problem with them. Switching from wins to quality starts will make some pitchers get better, some get worse, the very notion of fantasy sports will be further cemented as having nothing to do with real life baseball and will be more based on individual performances than actual baseball outcomes. I am less interested in how the changes will affect the league than which players will see their values modified.
I looked at last year's pitching statistics for the real life MLB league and was able to extrapolate a few key findings that may change how you perceive the very reality in which you have grown comfortable.
Not surprisingly, this rule change will most benefit starters and disfavour relievers. The pitchers who would have most profited from this rule change are Matt Cain (an Ackbar) and R.A. Dickey (Never pitched an inning for our league). Both of these "pitchers" "pitched" 14 more quality starts "than" they turned in wins. Think about that in this coming draft: Matt Cain had a 2.88 ERA and should have had a lot more wins than he did while striking out a respectable 7.26 guys per 9. Next, Brett Myers was next with 12 fewer wins than quality starts next, followed by 5 guys with 11 (notably Tim Stauffer who I picked up for 3 spot starts, all of which went horribly, and Anibal Sanchez, who still was quite the waver wire pick up for the Omars. Imagine him with an extra 11 wins and all those K's. Indeed.).
Conversely, the reliever who will most suffer from this rule change is something called a "Matt Belisle" that somehow managed to acrue 10 wins without a single quality start. After that thing, Eddie "The Mooch" Mujica had 9 wins in relief, followed by a bunch of guys with 8 wins, most notably Mark Melancon who was also able to put up 20 saves for the Dykstras. Interestingly, John Lackey and Esmil Rodgers both has 3 more wins than quality starts meaning that they got quite lackey, er, lucky. Both spent some time on teams in the league (The Peachz and the Bernies, respectively). They were both horrible, and just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, they were actually worse than their stats indicated.
Beyond individual pitchers, one of the real consequences of this rule change is that we can no longer say, "pick up all Yankees pitchers, with their offense, they will win games if their pitcher puts in a quality start." Looked at more statistically, the teams who could most be counted on for producing wins from quality starts were the Red Sox and the Yankees, producing 88.4% and 84.5% of the wins that they had quality starts. In other words, Yankee and Red Sox pitchers will be less valuable this coming season than they were last. Conversely, the Colt 45s and Marlins formerly of Florida, presently of Miami only produced 44.3% and 48.8% of the wins as they did of quality starts. Not surprisingly, these two had two of the worst bullpens in the majors producing 55 and 50 decisions (wins or losses) last season. Along with the Cardinals, Bravos, and Reds all had 50 or more decisions coming from the pen. Without all those bullpen disasters, the pitchers on these teams should see their stocks rise marginally. The Dbacks and the Dodgers had the fewest decisions coming from the pen, though the meaning of this is obscured from my too-close-together-eyes. Did you know that I can only use 2 of the 7 microscopes in my lab because these are the only two whose eye pieces come close enough together to accommodate my cyclopean mug? God, I am a hideous goblin.