nc_stats_nerd

Pretty sure I saw Eno say he's the top pitcher in Stuff+ right now (with a super small sample size). Unfortunately got picked apart by weak contact. Didn't go great with the guys he put on base via BB. The stuff is for real though, yikes.

At least he's got the hard part down. If the high K numbers convert to the majors I think we'll see the walks eventually go down too. Apparently the best way to limit walks isn't necessarily honing command (though that's part of it...), but getting hitters to chase the stuff outside the zone. https://twitter.com/Tieran711/status/1555641496128221184?s=20&t=5sH4GPeBT_NbYoHuqHFJGA

BOOOOOM! Let's go! Can't wait to see him against ML hitters.

The difference is you can't look at the future and build a strategy that has 9 bad years and 1 World Series year. It doesn't work that way. You want a World Series more than anything, and so does everyone on this board, but the approach I think you would like to take doesn't actually maximize the probability of winning more WS than being consistently good would. Let's say you can construct a team such that you know in one given year you're the best team in baseball, but for the other 9 you're not a playoff contender. The probability of winning the World Series in your good year: roughly 15%. Heck, let's be optimistic and say 20%. Total expected WS victories with this strategy? One every 50 years. Hello new Baltimore Orioles curse to go next to Chicago and Boston lol. Now if your gameplan is instead to at least deliver a playoff team consistently, top-12ish, each year your probability of winning the World Series is closer to 7-8%. Do that consistently and on average you'd win a World Series every 13-14 years. That's a blueprint that'll payoff for the Rays eventually, but due to natural variance in the game it just hasn't happened yet. All this to say, we all want a World Series, but if you ride or die for one glorious year you have a better chance of being the 1918-2004 White Sox than a WS every ten years. And for the record, I don't want to be the Rays either. We have more money than that. I'll take a Rays/Astros hybrid though in a heartbeat.

Agree. They've had in-house guys that earned the money and they didn't need to go crazy with long-term free agent deals. Love the Astros approach of high AAV, shorter-term contracts too. Gotta think they'd seen enough of LAA/TEX screwing that up lol. Keep the farm system rolling, keep the best (Adley, Gunnar, Rodriguez) and lock them up rather than trading them (like the Astros, not the Rays...).

I've been thinking about that quite a bit too. It's been hard to imagine us hitting the same stride Houston did considering the gap in payroll but I think I overestimated the edge Houston has on us there. If I look at average payrolls back before either of the franchises tanked payroll and scale those to the team salaries for 2022 I get: Houston - $142M / yr (14th) Baltimore -$125M / yr (17th) Granted, the city of Houston is growing like crazy, but if we can put together some winning seasons I think we'll generate enough revenue to put us closer to their model long-term vs. Tampa's. Tampa, for reference, even during their winning stretch since 2008: Tampa Bay - $77M / yr We're not NYY, but we're not remotely close to Tampa's kind of small market either.

For sure. Essentially I use a weighted combination of IP/G, xERA, FIP, xFIP, SIERA, and K-BB% over a pitchers MiLB/MLB history to forecast a pitcher's FIP and IP/G going forward. That produces a WAR/G metric, so there's your rate stat. The WAR metric and rankings I have assume 32 starts, which obviously won't be happening,

And for fun... Signing Bassitt/Rodon to 3/4 year deals would give us 5 projected top 100-ish starters for the next three years. 2023: Rodon (#15) Bassitt (#41) Rodriguez (#64) Means (#68) Hall (#80) 2024: Rodon (#26) Rodriguez (#50) Bassitt (#66) Hall (#79) Means (#85) 2024: Rodriguez (#40) Rodon (#43) Hall (#79) Bassitt (#94) Means (#106) Even after those guys, I have Bradish / Rom / Wells sitting in #4/#5 starter territory for the next few years, with Povich joining that group in 2026. The model is a bit lower on GrayRod then I am personally, but there are just so many pitching prospects that flame out. That's still the best projection I've seen for a SP with 0 MLB innings.

Seems like a good time to jump into the board. I'm a data scientist that has been dabbling in MLB analytics for a while. Here's a summary of these contracts and how they line up with model projections. Note: This is likely underselling the injury impacts for deGrom / Kershaw / Syndergaard. These projections assume 32 starts, so if you think a guys is good for less than that, adjust accordingly. Given these projections, I wouldn't mind at all taking the deals for Rodon / Bassitt / Kershaw, though if the latter happened I'd be absolutely shocked. Really don't like Perez: underlying numbers aren't great. Model also doesn't see Verlander holding up much longer against age, but he's beaten those curves before so... Justin Verlander [Term: 2 Years, Cost: $72 Million, Proj. Value: $54 million] 2023 Projections [SP15, 183 IP, 3.83 FIP, 4.1 WAR, $31.7 Million Value] 2024 Projections [SP37, 170 IP, 4.05 FIP, 3.0 WAR, $22.0 Million Value] Jacob deGrom [Term: 3 Years, Cost: $120 Million, Proj. Value: $119 million] 2023 Projections [SP1, 162 IP, 3.28 FIP, 6.1 WAR, $52.1 Million Value] 2024 Projections [SP8, 152 IP, 3.50 FIP, 4.8 WAR, $38.5 Million Value] 2025 Projections [SP20, 142 IP, 3.71 FIP, 3.7 WAR, $28.5 Million Value] Carlos Rodon [Term: 4 Years, Cost: $96 Million, Proj. Value: $94 million] 2023 Projections [SP15, 165 IP, 3.70 FIP, 4.1 WAR, $31.6 Million Value] 2024 Projections [SP27, 155 IP, 3.81 FIP, 3.4 WAR, $25.5 Million Value] 2025 Projections [SP44, 145 IP, 3.92 FIP, 2.8 WAR, $20.5 Million Value] 2026 Projections [SP65, 136 IP, 4.03 FIP, 2.3 WAR, $16.5 Million Value] Chris Bassitt [Term: 2 Years, Cost: $36 Million, Proj. Value: $37 million] 2023 Projections [SP42, 173 IP, 4.10 FIP, 2.9 WAR, $20.9 Million Value] 2024 Projections [SP67, 161 IP, 4.22 FIP, 2.3 WAR, $16.2 Million Value] Martin Perez [Term: 2 Years, Cost: $40 Million, Proj. Value: $19 million] 2023 Projections [SP108, 162 IP, 4.37 FIP, 1.6 WAR, $11.0 Million Value] 2024 Projections [SP129, 151 IP, 4.43 FIP, 1.4 WAR, $8.3 Million Value] Clayton Kershaw [Term: 1 Year, Cost: $18 Million, Proj. Value: $30 million] 2023 Projections [SP18, 161 IP, 3.71 FIP, 3.9 WAR, $29.8 Million Value] Noah Syndergaard [Term: 1 Year, Cost: $15 Million, Proj. Value: $15 million] 2023 Projections [SP73 154 IP, 3.99 FIP, 2.2 WAR, $15.1 Million Value] Tyler Anderson [Term: 1 Year, Cost: $18 Million, Proj. Value: $13 million] 2023 Projections [SP86 163 IP, 4.34 FIP, 1.9 WAR, $13.3 Million Value] Mike Clevinger [Term: 1 Year, Cost: $14 Million, Proj. Value: $13 million] 2023 Projections [SP87 136 IP, 4.18 FIP, 1.9 WAR, $13.2 Million Value]