baseball playoffs

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by packs

I just don't think that's true at all. In 2006 Randy Johnson went 17-11 for the Yankees, just two less wins than Johan Santana, who won Cy Young that year. But Randy had a 5.00 ERA. It didn't matter if the Yankees won his games. He was bad.

By Jake's illogic, a guy could pitch for a team that scored 10 runs a game, give up 9 a game himself and go 20-0 with a 9.00 ERA and he would be a phenomenal pitcher.

[1952boyntoncollector]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

By Jake's illogic, a guy could pitch for a team that scored 10 runs a game, give up 9 a game himself and go 20-0 with a 9.00 ERA and he would be a phenomenal pitcher.

thats not my logic....when you see a guy give up 10 runs a game and his team win 9 out of 10 starts let me know. My argument is you have to pitch 'winning' baseball to have your team win 9 out of 10 starts. I will make a wild guess that if you give up 9 runs in 10 straight games in the PLAYOFFS, you arent going to win 9 out of 10 games.... Its also hard to give up 9 runs when you have 11ks in a game.

by your logic if a guy gives up 3 runs a game and his team loses all of his starts, he is great. You are going to need to win some games 3-1 as well to win 9 out of 10 games. Kershaw pitched a better game in the playoffs last year then he did yesterday. He has a bunch of great starts mixed in.

So basically if a guy wins 90 out of 100 games with your logic, that guy sucks if his era is 4+ Eventually the wins matter and the starting pitcher is only giving up non meaningful runs in the 'bad' games that he still winning....and on the few losses he is giving up the majority of the runs..

Lots of pitchers pitch great and find ways to lose.....Kershaw wins... 8 out of the last 9 playoff games his team has won.....not sure what you arguing about..

[Peter_Spaeth]

Whether a team wins is a function of two, independent things -- how well they hit and how well they pitch. A pitcher is judged by how well he pitches, not by how well his team happens to hit, or not hit, that day. I am not sure what YOU are arguing about. And to be clear if (let's just assume a complete game for a hypothetical) if Clayton wins 7-5 and another dude loses 3-2 then yeah the other dude pitched much better assuming no weird stuff like many unearned runs.

[1952boyntoncollector]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Whether a team wins is a function of two, independent things -- how well they hit and how well they pitch. A pitcher is judged by how well he pitches, not by how well his team happens to hit, or not hit, that day. I am not sure what YOU are arguing about. And to be clear if (let's just assume a complete game for a hypothetical) if Clayton wins 7-5 and another dude loses 3-2 then yeah the other dude pitched much better assuming no weird stuff like many unearned runs.

Thats a short sample size. If the dude loses 19 out of 20 games and has an era of 3.5 and Clayton's teams wins 19 out of 20 games and has an era of 4.00. There is more to just what your teams scores. Clayton has to be winning many low scoring games as well as some games with some better scoring. Clayton could of given up 3 runs in 7 innings yesterday which would of been better than his current playoff era and his team could of lost 4-3. The games he needs to hold the runs down he does obviously. You cant win 8 of 9 games in the playoffs without that happening.

Plus the guy with the 3.5 era, maybe gives up more runs if his team would have scored more runs for him. You cant punish Clayton for giving up 4 runs when his team has a 7 run lead in the late innings. Plus he has so many other wins as well. Giving up some runs in exchange for no big innings has value for W's. Its not like the dodgers were down 4-0.

Just silly, i not sure what you are arguing about.

[packs]

But ERA would tell you the guy with a 3.50 ERA pitched better than the guy with a 4.00 ERA independent of any other information.

[1952boyntoncollector]

Originally Posted by packs

But ERA would tell you the guy with a 3.50 ERA pitched better than the guy with a 4.00 ERA independent of any other information.

Disagree completely. Depends on your defense. Lots of defenders dont make 'error's but they are still plays they should of made. Or errors are wiped away but add to the pitch count. Yesterday Kershaw had a sure double play booted by Seager resulting in more pitches and maybe could of led to scoring that should of never happend.

Plus if your team is up 7 runs you tend to give up more runs than you would if you are up 1 run. Many more other factors as well (ie. ballpark parameters/al/nl.etc.)

If era is 9.00 versus 2.00..then i agree assuming same amount of innings etc. But when era is in the 2.5-4.5 in sample size of only 15-20 games...a few earned runs changes your era a ton.

[frankbmd]

Not going to mention Kershaw in this post. Promise.

And pardon me for probably preaching to the choir.

Premise: Deadball pitchers were really good, or were they?

With all the talk about pitcher's ERAs as a measure of greatness, consider first

in 1905 when 4.1 runs were scored per team/game in the National League and
in 1905 NL teams made average of 294 errors/team for the season,and
in 1905 about 29% of runs scored were unearned, and so
in 1905 the league average ERA was 2.99

in 1955 when 4.5 runs were scored per team/game in the National League and
in 1955 NL teams made average of 142 errors/team for the season, and
in 1955 about 11% of runs scored were unearned, and so
in 1955 the league average ERA was 4.04

in 2015 when 4.2 runs were scored per team/game in the National League and
in 2015 NL teams made average of 95 errors/team for the season, and
in 2015 less than 8% of runs scored were unearned, and so
in 2015 the league average ERA was 3.90

The NL and the years chosen were done so randomly, but seem representative of the eras they represent.

Have the advances in equipment, primarily gloves, made pitchers worse due to their higher ERAs in the modern game? NO

Why then hasn't run production decreased parallel to the improvement in fielding?

Is a deadball pitcher with an ERA of 3.00 equivalent to a modern pitcher with an ERA of 3.00? NO

ERA as a stat is limited. One error early in an inning can lead to 7 or 8 unearned runs largely due to the ineffectiveness of the pitcher rather than the single error in many cases.

Using the stat to compare pitchers from different eras ain't going to work either.

Using the stat to compare a pitcher to his contemporary peers makes a little more sense, but still has its limits.

WaJo was one of the greats in his era, but who knows what his ERA would be in 2015????

I'm sure this post opens the door to a discussion of WHIPs, BLIPs and FLIPs, but I'm old-fashioned and not going there.

[bravos4evr]

Originally Posted by 1952boyntoncollector

thats not my logic....when you see a guy give up 10 runs a game and his team win 9 out of 10 starts let me know. My argument is you have to pitch 'winning' baseball to have your team win 9 out of 10 starts. I will make a wild guess that if you give up 9 runs in 10 straight games in the PLAYOFFS, you arent going to win 9 out of 10 games.... Its also hard to give up 9 runs when you have 11ks in a game.

by your logic if a guy gives up 3 runs a game and his team loses all of his starts, he is great. You are going to need to win some games 3-1 as well to win 9 out of 10 games. Kershaw pitched a better game in the playoffs last year then he did yesterday. He has a bunch of great starts mixed in.

So basically if a guy wins 90 out of 100 games with your logic, that guy sucks if his era is 4+ Eventually the wins matter and the starting pitcher is only giving up non meaningful runs in the 'bad' games that he still winning....and on the few losses he is giving up the majority of the runs..

Lots of pitchers pitch great and find ways to lose.....Kershaw wins... 8 out of the last 9 playoff games his team has won.....not sure what you arguing about..

yes, if a guy gives up a bunch of runs but the offense scores more, he still sucks as a pitcher. PITCHER WINS ARE NOT INDICATORS OF QUALITY PITCHING. it isn't 1935 any more, time to evolve with the times