Offense, not pitching is going to be the key to 2011

[square634]

Is there any evidence that bad pitching will contribute to a bad defensive efficiency? I know that would contradict batted ball and BABIP theory, but I am just curious.

[Sports Guy]

Our defensive efficiency is .682, the second worst in the AL only topped by Minnesota who has the 2nd worst ERA in the AL.

The two certainly go hand in hand. Better defense will improve the pitching.

Our defense sucks.

But the defense has nothing to do with walks, K's, inability to miss bats and giving up homers.

The pitching is the biggest issue for the ML team and nothing is remotely close.

[Sports Guy]

Pitching is a problem, but not the problem.

Correct...THE problem would be Peter Angelos.

[Sports Guy]

Is there any evidence that bad pitching will contribute to a bad defensive efficiency? I know that would contradict batted ball and BABIP theory, but I am just curious.

I am not sure but as I pointed out, if you don't miss bats and increase the amount of balls put in play, your chances of making errors increases.

[square634]

I am not sure but as I pointed out, if you don't miss bats and increase the amount of balls put in play, your chances of making errors increases.

If I weren't currently struggling to do well in med school, I would run a regression on team strikeout percentage and team defensive efficiency. Alas, a fascinating lecture on the GI tract awaits me...

[OrangeJerseys]

Trea, without considering contracts, who would you rather have; Halladay or Fielder?

[LookinUp]

If I weren't currently struggling to do well in med school, I would run a regression on team strikeout percentage and team defensive efficiency. Alas, a fascinating lecture on the GI tract awaits me...

It stands to reason that worse pitchers would have higher LD%'s against, and thus more balls would go for hits and balls that can be fielded would be hit harder.

[square634]

It stands to reason that worse pitchers would have higher LD%'s against, and thus more balls would go for hits and balls that can be fielded would be hit harder.

Is this true, though? Doesn't BABIP theory suggest that pitchers can really only control K rate, BB rate, GB rate, and HR rate? I assume the defensive efficiency ratings are only taking GB/FB ratio into account.

[El Gordo]

Trea, without considering contracts, who would you rather have; Halladay or Fielder?

King Felix would be better, he's younger than Fielder so he can't cite age.

[square634]

You're referring to the original DIPS theory, not BABIP theory. In reality there's no such thing as BABIP theory. Actually the simplest form of DE is 1 minus BABIP.

Well that simple form of defensive efficiency is obviously wrong because it would reward teams with flyball prone staffs, right?

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[El Gordo]

Well that simple form office defensive efficiency is obviously wrong bedside other would reward teams with flyball prone staffs, right?

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Office defensive efficiency? Is that the rating for the office line backer, when he gets out of the wrong side of the bed? :rofl:

[square634]

No offense, but this makes no sense whatsoever. Whether you agree with it or not, here's BP's version (and pretty much the standard version) of Defensive Efficiency:

1 - ((H + ROE - HR) / (PA - BB - SO - HBP - HR))

Sorry for the typos, serves me right for typing something from my phone while I was away from the computer. Autocorrect for the loss.

I guess my point is that fly balls are less likely to be hits than groundballs (this is IIRC, I could be wrong). Therefore a high flyball staff should produce a higher defensive efficiency. In that case, at least part of the defensive efficiency measurement is influenced by an aspect of pitching. (I'm not saying defense and pitching are easy things to isolate into independent factors, and I guess a flyball staff should have a higher ERA due to more home runs, regardless of the defensive efficiency).

I kind of hoped that there was a defensive efficiency that was normalized based on the percentage of outs made on each batted ball type (FB, LD, GB), in order to try to isolate the effects of the pitching staff. And of course even if you used that hypothetical stat, it would still ignore the possibility that Orioles pitchers give up batted balls at higher velocities, but that data will start to be used soon enough with the advent of Hit F/X and whatnot.

EDIT: And now I see that you already said that batted ball distribution matters and I missed it. Sorry about that. I guess I just don't like the idea of using that non-contextualized stat to say that the Orioles have the worst defense in the league.

[alaniee]

Anybody who believes that offense will win the games for us, not the pitching hasn't been watching enough O's games this year. It's obvious, pitching is the key to winning games. We need pitching. We have a good offense, our pitching is another story.

[DrungoHazewood]

Of course bad pitching will contribute to bad defensive efficiency - and that is not a contradiction to BABIP "theory."

Here's another thing that will contribute to good or bad defensive efficiency (DE) - batted ball distribution. Obviously a team that gives up a lot of line drives will have a lower DE than a team that doesn't. The same thing with a ground ball centric staff as compared to a fly ball centric staff.

You're referring to the original DIPS theory, not BABIP theory. In reality there's no such thing as BABIP theory. Actually the simplest form of DE is 1 minus BABIP.

I think we need to consider that the Orioles, annually, give a larger percentage of innings to non-MLB quality pitchers than other teams. DIPS theory says there is little difference between Major League Pitchers in BABIP. The O's give several hundred innings a year to pitchers who probably don't qualify. This year the O's gave about 100 MLB innings to pitchers with 5+ ERAs in the pitcher's paradise in Norfolk.

[JTrea81]

Trea, without considering contracts, who would you rather have; Halladay or Fielder?

Obviously Halladay because he's more valuable.