Joe Morgan's Head Explodes

[Guest Edgy DC]

metirish wrote: The Rays won all six of Price�s starts in September and secured the best record in the league. The Mariners lost all six of Hernandez�s starts in May, when they still had Cliff Lee and a glimmer of hope at contending. Hernandez was 0-3 with a 4.79 E.R.A. in May.

Steve Carlton 1972 was 2-5, 3.81 in May, losing his last five starts in a row.

But let's not work too hard at isolating data, lest we get all "geeky."

[metirish]

What really grinds my gears in this "debate" is saying that Hernandez didn't pitch in any meaningful games after May, what an insult to the player , and the game no?

[Ceetar]

metirish wrote: What really grinds my gears in this "debate" is saying that Hernandez didn't pitch in any meaningful games after May, what an insult to the player , and the game no?

It's also an implication that Sabathia's not very clutch and pitches worse under pressure, so why should we give him the award anyway?

and I'd argue that Sabathia was pitching with a safety net anyway, not exactly do or die games.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Well, if you cover the Yankees, meaningful games are those that impact the Yankees and their quest to win the championship. That's your story.

[Frayed Knot]

Ceetar wrote: metirish wrote: What really grinds my gears in this "debate" is saying that Hernandez didn't pitch in any meaningful games after May, what an insult to the player , and the game no? It's also an implication that Sabathia's not very clutch and pitches worse under pressure, so why should we give him the award anyway? and I'd argue that Sabathia was pitching with a safety net anyway, not exactly do or die games.

Especially since the Yanx via Girardi all but flat out stated down the stretch that they weren't playing to win the division - that as long as they finished ahead of Boston and whatever other Central & West teams were next closest things were just fine and dandy.

[Guest Edgy DC]

"The Yankees don't play to win divisions. The Yankees play to win championships."

[metsmarathon]

what burns my toast is all the bullshit that "the award is for the best pitcher not the most valuable pitcher, so i gave it to hernandez and nor price or cc."

how, again, is being the best not being the most valuable?

i'm getting ahead of myself for when i bitch about the upcoming mvp award, but really, would they just cut the bullshit and start calling that thing "the award for the best player who is surrounded by other good players, but not too many great players," or the afbpwisbogpbntmgp for short.

[HahnSolo]

Two things I would like to add:

�It�s tough,� Halladay said. �Felix�s numbers are very, very impressive, but ultimately they look at how guys are able to win games.

Who is "they" Roy? Actually, and thankfully, they don't, if the last two years' voting is an indication.


Also, to the "didn't pitch in important games" crowd: how many really, really high leverage starts did Sabathia make this year? And I mean games where you say "if my team loses, we could be in trouble" starts? Was there any date on the calendar where anyone thought the Yanks would not make the postseason? So I don't buy that Sabathia was pitching in such pressurized situations.

[Ceetar]

Also, if wins are that important, than by virtue of trying to get one every single game, FELIX was under more pressure, knowing he'd have to be practically perfect to have a shot at one, whereas Sabathia could chill and relax knowing his team was more likely to score 11 than it was to score 1.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Or...

Edgy DC wrote: You know, there's pressure in trying to keep your team from falling off a precipice also. And there's pressure in always pitching with no room for error. It's got to be at least part of the picture with all the granniees the Mets yielding this year.

[Ceetar]

Edgy DC wrote: Or... Edgy DC wrote: You know, there's pressure in trying to keep your team from falling off a precipice also. And there's pressure in always pitching with no room for error. It's got to be at least part of the picture with all the granniees the Mets yielding this year.

and to tie it all together, Felix hit a grannie off the Mets.

[batmagadanleadoff]

HahnSolo wrote: Two things I would like to add: �It�s tough,� Halladay said. �Felix�s numbers are very, very impressive, but ultimately they look at how guys are able to win games. Who is "they" Roy? Actually, and thankfully, they don't, if the last two years' voting is an indication.

"Who is 'they' Roy?" is right. Who? Because Hernandez won the award in a landslide. Yesterday was a great day for baseball.

[metsmarathon]

well, i dunno. is roy really talking about how the award should be awarded, or more about, historically, how the award has been awarded?

if i'm asked who do i think is going to win the MVP, i'll probably have a different answer than to the question of who do i think should win the MVP.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I think he's somewhere in between and hedging his bets.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

HahnSolo wrote: Two things I would like to add: �It�s tough,� Halladay said. �Felix�s numbers are very, very impressive, but ultimately they look at how guys are able to win games. Who is "they" Roy? Actually, and thankfully, they don't, if the last two years' voting is an indication.

Jews. He means Jews, the anti-Semite.

I'll spot the pitching-meaningful-games crowd an opportunity to prove their "argument" if they'll allow my "Sabathia/Price/Buchholz pitches in an easier league that doesn't include the MFYs/Rays/Sawx as an opponent" statistics into evidence.

[Vic Sage]

Sometimes the run support isn�t there, but you sometimes just find ways to win games.

yes, because some pitchers are "winners"; they have a metaphysical ability that supercedes others, rendering them morally superior. That a winning pitcher would say this, of course, does not surprise me, as it constitutes self-aggrandizement of nearly megomaniacal proportions. But when sportswriters and fans repeat this tripe, romanticizing "winners" with superhuman qualities.... it makes me wanna hurl, and has poisoned the way we look at athletes for far too long. If quantitative analysis has done anything to combat this, i'm as happy as a fly on a turd.

[Fman99]

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Two things I would like to add: �It�s tough,� Halladay said. �Felix�s numbers are very, very impressive, but ultimately they look at how guys are able to win games. Who is "they" Roy? Actually, and thankfully, they don't, if the last two years' voting is an indication. Jews. He means Jews, the anti-Semite.

I knew it! Never trust a guy with a big fluffy red neckbeard, the Malachai-from-Children-of-the-Corn-looking-muthafucka.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Two things I would like to add: �It�s tough,� Halladay said. �Felix�s numbers are very, very impressive, but ultimately they look at how guys are able to win games. Who is "they" Roy? Actually, and thankfully, they don't, if the last two years' voting is an indication. Jews. He means Jews, the anti-Semite. I knew it! Never trust a guy with a big fluffy red neckbeard, the Malachai-from-Children-of-the-Corn-looking-muthafucka.

I would have written to ask him about this view/congratulate him on his Cy win, but I couldn't remember under whose stairs he lived.

[metsmarathon]

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: I'll spot the pitching-meaningful-games crowd an opportunity to prove their "argument" if they'll allow my "Sabathia/Price/Buchholz pitches in an easier league that doesn't include the MFYs/Rays/Sawx as an opponent" statistics into evidence.

using baseballprospectus, i looked at all those pitchers who tossed 170 innings or more. there were 81 such pitchers in the majors last year. they have a stat on there called Opponent's Quality, OPS -- the aggregate OPS of all batters faced by a pitcher, or OPP_QUAL_OPS.

brian matusz of the orioles faced the toughest opposition, with an OPP_QUAL_OPS of 0.744. in third place is clay buchholz at 0.741. david price 6th at 0.739. felix hernandez 28th, 0.728. johan santana 39th 0.720, cc sabathia 40th 0.719. halladay 58th 0.711.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Yeah, really. It seems pretty intuitive (and apparently somewhat demonstrable) that pitchers on last-place teams tend to face tougher competittion than pitchers on first-place teams.

So, being a Yankee means CC

[*:37twg87u]Always has the league's top offense supporting him.[/*:m:37twg87u]
[*:37twg87u]NEVER has the league's top offense opposing him.[/*:m:37twg87u][/list:o:37twg87u]

Such pressure this poor man works under. Won't you please help?

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

metsmarathon wrote: LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: I'll spot the pitching-meaningful-games crowd an opportunity to prove their "argument" if they'll allow my "Sabathia/Price/Buchholz pitches in an easier league that doesn't include the MFYs/Rays/Sawx as an opponent" statistics into evidence. using baseballprospectus, i looked at all those pitchers who tossed 170 innings or more. there were 81 such pitchers in the majors last year. they have a stat on there called Opponent's Quality, OPS -- the aggregate OPS of all batters faced by a pitcher, or OPP_QUAL_OPS. brian matusz of the orioles faced the toughest opposition, with an OPP_QUAL_OPS of 0.744. in third place is clay buchholz at 0.741. david price 6th at 0.739. felix hernandez 28th, 0.728. johan santana 39th 0.720, cc sabathia 40th 0.719. halladay 58th 0.711.

Yabbut, do each of those numbers exclude how they did against the particular pitcher?

[metsmarathon]

probably not.

[Guest Edgy DC]

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: I'll spot the pitching-meaningful-games crowd an opportunity to prove their "argument" if they'll allow my "Sabathia/Price/Buchholz pitches in an easier league that doesn't include the MFYs/Rays/Sawx as an opponent" statistics into evidence. using baseballprospectus, i looked at all those pitchers who tossed 170 innings or more. there were 81 such pitchers in the majors last year. they have a stat on there called Opponent's Quality, OPS -- the aggregate OPS of all batters faced by a pitcher, or OPP_QUAL_OPS. brian matusz of the orioles faced the toughest opposition, with an OPP_QUAL_OPS of 0.744. in third place is clay buchholz at 0.741. david price 6th at 0.739. felix hernandez 28th, 0.728. johan santana 39th 0.720, cc sabathia 40th 0.719. halladay 58th 0.711. Yabbut, do each of those numbers exclude how they did against the particular pitcher?

Should it matter?

If Chase Utley has a .900 OPS, but a .600 one against you (Pedro Feliciano), good on you. You should be judged as getting out a .900-OPS batter every time.

[metsmarathon]

but when he's not facing you, mr. feliciano, he's even better.

i see the argument. it sure complicates things, but it has some limited merit. i mean, how much of a change would it impart to a pitcher with 200+ IP?

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Not that much, to be sure. But where the difference between toughest opposition and 28th-toughest oppo is .016 in OPS... not-that-much can make a biggish difference ordinally.

[metsmarathon]

so, felix hernandez faced 1001 batters last year. in those 1000 plate appearances, his opponents had a 0.273 OBA. and they also had a 0.312 SLG in 914 plate appearances. his OPSallowed was 0.585. and remember, his opposition had a 0.728 OPS. broken into its components, 0.329 OBA and 0.399 SLG, with a 0.259 AVG.

so. lets get into some mental gymnastics.

lets say he faced 100 different batters, and faced each one 10 times. he surely faced more than 100 batters, but i'm looking for easy math and can't find the true data without paying for it. work with me here.

again. 100 batters, each faced 10 times. lets say, for the sake of argument, that these batters averaged 500 plate appearances, with 47.23 walks, 117.27 hits, and 180.65 total bases. against felix, they averaged 0.70 walks, 1.94 hits, and 2.85 total bases.

subtracting, we get an opposition that, in 490 plate appearances, had 46.53 walks, 115.33 hits, and 177.8 total bases. that's a 0.330 OBA, a 0.260 AVG, and a 0.401 SLG, with an OPS of 0.731

taking his opposition's performance against him out of the equation, in my simplified way, his opposition has a 0.003 increase in their OPS. cc's opposition would probably see an increase in their OPS of 0.002, maybe 0.001. it's very little and isn't terribly likely to change the macro-view of the rankings all that much, especially when you're looking at the better pitchers. it could turn a 0.016 gap into an 0.018 gap, maybe.

[MFS62]

1. Always has the league's top offense supporting him.
2. NEVER has the league's top offense opposing him.

Such pressure this poor man works under. Won't you please help?

Edgy DC wrote: So, being a Yankee means CC

Edgy, you convinced me.
I have just made a donation to the "Shut the fuck up, CC didn't win it" foundation.

Later