Orioles had over a full WAR more than the Reds..

[mikegallo]

I should say that we had over a full WAR of PITCHING better than the Reds...

Why were there Results so much Better?

Now I know that WAR is not the end all be all to actual pitching performance,

so I am not asking you all to show why WAR is a flawed way to look at pitching performance...

Rather I want to get a feel as to why they were able to get such a better performance out of their pitchers than we did ours.....

Why was our pitching so bad?

What factors led to our pitching to under perform our periphels by so much?

We got less out of our staff than any team in the league, how to we get more out of our pitchers like the Reds to or the Rays?

The White Sox are another example of our problem....they had the second best WAR from there pitchers only a Win less than the Phillys yet they performed so much better.....They almost doubled the Rays and Nats in WAR from pitching yet had worse results?

What does our team need to do to get more out of our pitchers? or the calvary that we all had so much hope for only two short years ago..

[Ven6]

I know this game.

Defense. What do I win?

[CA-ORIOLE]

I know this game.

Defense. What do I win?

Chicken Dinner.

[mikegallo]

Top ten teams according to UZR (fangraphs)

Dbacks- One of the biggest out of nowhere great seasons in baseball,,,turned average pitchers into great results

Rays- 91 wins in by far the toughest divison in baseball, a constant reminder of great resource usage and in spite of a medicore Offense made the playoffs

Reds- In spite of a pitching staff with a total 7 WAR had an team ERA almost a full run lower than ours

Red Sox- year in and year out contenders

Angels- another very good pitching staff who was aided by there D

Rangers- another team whose pitching had great success in spite of using alot of re tread guys who failed in other places

Padres- big park plus great d= great pitching

Yanks- wonder why guys like Garcia Nova Colon had so much success this year in spite of medicore stuff/past failure

Brewers- 96 wins

Giants- one of the best pitching staffs year in and year out

Hope thoses teams show the importance of team D

[mikegallo]

The Rays had the same wOBA as we did .320

There batters were worth 31.6 WAR

Our batters were worth 14.8 WAR

That is a 17 win swing just on D alone....Thats without accounting for how much D helped there pitching out perform there FIP

Add 17 wins and were a 87 win team and contenders.

I recently heard Andrew Friedman on XM MLB radio and he made a very informative statement which said "we are always looking for ways to improve our offense, WHILE MAINTAINING OUR DEFENSE"

So what he really said was Defense is our NUMBER 1 concern and while it would be great to add offense we will not sacrfice our team D for it.

Thats comming from what is everyone believes is the best front office guy in the game. When you look at what his team has done in the most unfair almost impossible situation in the game you have to take his word as gospel.....Those results don't lie.

[Can_of_corn]

The Rays had the same wOBA as we did .320

There batters were worth 31.6 WAR

Our batters were worth 14.8 WAR

That is a 17 win swing just on D alone....Thats without accounting for how much D helped there pitching out perform there FIP

Add 17 wins and were a 87 win team and contenders.

I recently heard Andrew Friedman on XM MLB radio and he made a very informative statement which said "we are always looking for ways to improve our offense, WHILE MAINTAINING OUR DEFENSE"

So what he really said was Defense is our NUMBER 1 concern and while it would be great to add offense we will not sacrfice our team D for it.

Thats comming from what is everyone believes is the best front office guy in the game. When you look at what his team has done in the most unfair almost impossible situation in the game you have to take his word as gospel.....Those results don't lie.

And yet they signed Manny last season which put Damon into left field. The Ray's defense didn't gel last season until Damon moved to DH.

[mikegallo]

Everyone makes mistakes and he clearly learned from that and had great success

[El Gordo]

The big question about our D is the OF defense IMO. If the home/away splits of Markakis and Jones are given credence, then they are supar defenders. If they are dismissed as park factors not being accounted for, then they both are well above average. Assuming the latter, then with Reimold's and Andino's tic above average performance at their respective positions, we have the best C in baseball, a GG RF, a GG caliber SS, an average to above 2B and LF, an above average CF, a terrible 3B and a questionable 1B. It seems to me a decent fielding 3B and either Davis or Reynolds at 1B would do wonders for the D, if the park factors aren't accurate. If they are, then our OF is killing us as much as 3B is.

[Ven6]

The big question about our D is the OF defense IMO. If the home/away splits of Markakis and Jones are given credence, then they are supar defenders. If they are dismissed as park factors not being accounted for, then they both are well above average. Assuming the latter, then with Reimold's and Andino's tic above average performance at their respective positions, we have the best C in baseball, a GG RF, a GG caliber SS, an average to above 2B and LF, an above average CF, a terrible 3B and a questionable 1B. It seems to me a decent fielding 3B and either Davis or Reynolds at 1B would do wonders for the D, if the park factors aren't accurate. If they are, then our OF is killing us as much as 3B is.

Good point about the difference between our infield and OF D.

I really believe Reynolds isn't as bad as he was in 2011.

[Can_of_corn]

Everyone makes mistakes and he clearly learned from that and had great success

I was just providing a counterbalance since you sure were talking about him as if he was infallible.

[CA-ORIOLE]

The Rays had the same wOBA as we did .320

There batters were worth 31.6 WAR

Our batters were worth 14.8 WAR

That is a 17 win swing just on D alone....Thats without accounting for how much D helped there pitching out perform there FIP

Between DER and UZR the defensive differential is about 8-10 wins. Some of that is probably park factor related.

Some of the difference in runs is team speed (at least one win). woba on fangraphs is not park adjusted. When you say we're both a .320 woba, they're not the same. TB's WRC+ (park adjusted) is 103, ours was 97. WAR will consider park adjusted woba. They're a better offense.

[Sanfran327]

Don't we usually rank pretty high on the list of unearned runs surrendered?

[oriole]

Good point about the difference between our infield and OF D.

I really believe Reynolds isn't as bad as he was in 2011.

I keep hearing this but Reynolds was not good before that either. It is saying while he won't be the games absolute worsts without a question at third, he will just be among the worst. I'd rather get a better defensive 3B and DH Reynolds.

[mikegallo]

Between DER and UZR the defensive differential is about 8-10 wins. Some of that is probably park factor related.

Some of the difference in runs is team speed (at least one win). woba on fangraphs is not park adjusted. When you say we're both a .320 woba, they're not the same. TB's WRC+ (park adjusted) is 103, ours was 97. WAR will consider park adjusted woba. They're a better offense.

Very slight difference in offense....its just nitpicking.

And come on can of corn I never said he was god like just like the Beane thread when people got on me for sweating Beane....these guys aren't perfect and never will be but when posters keep on posting things like me saying there infallible it does not add to the discussion and really just a waste of your and everyone else time...

Seems like people get upset everytime I talk about a front office memeber of another teams and how they are just light years better than our own.

I am here to have good baseball discussion and the point of these threads is to point out how good teams construct there rosters versus our pathetic attempt at a winning roster structure.

I am pointing to flaws on our roster and people don't seem to like it and usually are not trying to engage me in a real discussion on why our team and pitching stinks....there are alot of good posters on this board that have stotle, Frobby, Drungo among others.

Our team sorely lacks on the D aspect of the team and in turn it severly hurts our pitching and is the main reason why our pitchers don't develop and have good results, which makes us losers year in and year out.

Our D impact on our team is also overlooked on this board and I keep coming up with different ways of how to show that and instead of people seeing the problem they (for the most part) are trying to explain away what has been slapping them in the face for years.....Good teams with good pitching know the importance of good D and our using it to whip our butt year in and year out...

The contempt for me on this board is almost laughable, not sure why but it is proably cuz I am looking at our team that we all love in a negative way and I am doing it in an unconventional fashion....This board and its posters are better than that.

No matter how obvious my main point is and always has been people nitpick and refuse to accept it and try to figure out how we can solve these problems to improve our team and how we analyze this team...Honestly it is starting to wear on me as a poster and is proably gonna end up with me going back to observing the board instead of interacting with it.

And I am not saying people can't disagree or they can't point at holes in my logic...I am all for that...In fact I am encouraging it, but come on people for me to point out such a blatant problem over and over so many different ways and have so few people engage me in a postive or even reasonable way one way or the other rather than dismissing me because of how I hype this guy versus that guy or nitpicking while ignoring my legit points....it's just getting old.

[mikegallo]

The big question about our D is the OF defense IMO. If the home/away splits of Markakis and Jones are given credence, then they are supar defenders. If they are dismissed as park factors not being accounted for, then they both are well above average. Assuming the latter, then with Reimold's and Andino's tic above average performance at their respective positions, we have the best C in baseball, a GG RF, a GG caliber SS, an average to above 2B and LF, an above average CF, a terrible 3B and a questionable 1B. It seems to me a decent fielding 3B and either Davis or Reynolds at 1B would do wonders for the D, if the park factors aren't accurate. If they are, then our OF is killing us as much as 3B is.

Yea I have always tried to explain away AJ and NM bad D with the OPACY park factors but what keeps hitting me in the face is the clear point that our overall team D stinks...and really if we have a plus CF RF C and SS plus 1st baseman last year (d lee) then there is know way that our D was the worst in the MLB...and all signs point to it was and that hurt our pitching so much.