Comments on: Ugly Numbers

By: Joe R

Joe R — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:28:59 +0000

This comment is hilarious in hindsight.

By: Hydrolyze

Hydrolyze — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:13:42 +0000

Thank you for the useful thoughts.. Still yet another useful piece of content, surely why my partner and I arrive to the blog page generally..

By: dvdaughtry

dvdaughtry — Sat, 09 May 2009 05:28:35 +0000

2006? Dude, live in the now. What has NYM done the past two seasons?

2007 2nd to PHL
2008 2nd to PHL

And I can still see that hammer that Wainwright threw Beltran to win the Pennant…

By: don

don — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:20:32 +0000

The staff as a whole has a first pitch strike rate, a K/BB rate, and a swinging strike rate that aren’t great but are in the middle third of the NL. The home runs are really what’s killing them. The HR/FB rate is 16.6%, second highest team in the NL is 11.6%. I’d expect them to be towards the top in that category, since there’s a lot of power bats in the NL East, they’ve got a small-ish home park, and two of the biggest innings guys in Hamels and Myers seem to elevate mistakes pretty frequently. Still, that seems really high. If that comes down a bit they should be okay.

By: Hailmatty

Hailmatty — Fri, 08 May 2009 16:28:30 +0000

This is exactly why they won’t be in first for long. Give it a week or two and the Mets will have a 2-3 game lead which will not soon be relinquished.

In ’06, the Mets ran away with the NL East by 12 games. Not hard to foresee a repeat.

By: joser

joser — Fri, 08 May 2009 15:46:39 +0000

Of course the complete — and the only universally correct — version of that axiom is
“Good pitching beats good hitting…except when it doesn’t.”

By: Eric Seidman

Eric Seidman — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:46:30 +0000

The only issue with those Rangers, and I’ll discuss it a bit more tonight (Friday night) is that the league ERA for the AL in 1999 was 4.87, meaning Helling, Sele, and Loaiza were actually above average.

In 2000, the AL ERA was 4.92, meaning Sirotka, Parque, Baldwin and Eldred were all above average.

Tonight we’ll look at poor playoff rotations from 1969-2008, whose ERAs were worse than average.

By: Kincaid

Kincaid — Fri, 08 May 2009 08:36:11 +0000

Hard to believe they could be holding up with pitching like that, even in a hitters’ park. It’s still early, and eventually one thing or the other will probably change (either the pitching or the spot in the standings), but so far they look a bit like the all-offense no-pitching Rangers teams that had decent success last decade. The 1999 Rangers in particular fit the bill pretty well. They finished in first place with the following rotation:

Rick Helling (35 GS): 4.84 ERA/1.54 K:BB/5.68 FIP
Aaron Sele (33 GS): 4.79/2.66/3.94
John Burkett (25 GS): 5.62/2.09/4.53
Mike Morgan (25 GS): 6.24/1.27/5.85
Mark Clark (15 GS): 8.60/1.29/6.43
Estoban Loaiza (15 GS): 4.56/1.93/4.02

That’s not as bad as what the Phillies’ starters are putting up now, but that was over a whole season for a division winner. And you would think at least Cole Hamels should be a better ace than Aaron Sele.

Another team that had bad pitching across the rotation and still finished in first was the 2000 White Sox team. They didn’t have a lot of extraordinarily bad starters, but the whole group was consistently not good:

Mike Sirotka (32 GS): 3.79/1.86/4.56
Jim Parque (32 GS): 4.28/1.56/4.87
James Baldwin (28 GS): 4.65/1.97/5.55
Cal Eldred (20 GS): 4.58/1.64/4.67
Kip Wells (20 GS): 6.02/1.22/5.53
John Garland (13 GS): 6.46/1.05/5.72

The whole staff, through the 6th starter, had FIPs over 4.5 and K:BB ratios under 2, and it’s hard to imagine a more lackluster list of names in a playoff rotation.

Just a quick note, the FIPs don’t match the FanGraphs listings. I calculated them straight from the formula, so if FanGraphs’ are park-adjusted or have any other sort of adjustment, that would be where they’re off. They do match with THT’s FIP, though.

By: Ron

Ron — Fri, 08 May 2009 00:19:35 +0000

Make that a 7.26 ERA for Moyer as I type…and he’s still on the hook for those runners on second and third.