At the AS Break, O's pitching tied for 4th in AL Team ERA

[Rene88]

According to ESPN. Tied with the Red Sox at 3.83. Only Oakland, KC, and Seattle ahead of us.

So, maybe the pitching really is better this year?

I am not going to lie...I am shocked. I poo-pooed C Joseph being up over Clevenger but hard to not notice the improvement after he got here.

You gotta admit when you are wrong and CJ must have had some impact IMO and I underestimated his game calling abilities evidently.

Good stuff, thanks for posting.

[CA-ORIOLE]

I don't understand. You basically just choose to believe this, even if you know it isn't true?

I believe it to be true.

Yeah, have to agree with wildcard on this one. Is it even debatable that teams with a couple TOR type starters have a significant advantage over a team with a more balanced staff in a playoff series where those 2 guys could go 4-5 games of a 7 game series?

[DrungoHazewood]

Yeah, have to agree with wildcard on this one. Is it even debatable that teams with a couple TOR type starters have a significant advantage over a team with a more balanced staff in a playoff series where those 2 guys could go 4-5 games of a 7 game series?

I think that better teams have an advantage over lesser teams. I think that there have been many, many cases of teams with excellent pitching having poor playoff records.

Back about 2005 or 2006 Baseball Prospectus introduced a thing called "The Secret Sauce" which was a metric to predict playoff success, based mainly on power pitching staffs, good bullpens, and good defense. Basically quantifying that big strikeout pitchers and defense comes to the front in the postseason. In 2010 they retired it, publically declaring that it didn't work. From Colin Weyers:

But what we have is a model based on historical data that has thus far been ineffective at predicting results out-of-sample, which doesn’t give us a lot of reason to be confident in it going forward. So for now, we’re retiring the Secret Sauce.

So until I see reason to believe otherwise (i.e. evidence) I'll continue to beleive that a 95-win team with a balanced pitching staff isn't much/any less likely to win in October than a 95-win team with an unbalanced staff of aces and relative scrubs.

[wildcard]

I think that better teams have an advantage over lesser teams. I think that there have been many, many cases of teams with excellent pitching having poor playoff records.

Back about 2005 or 2006 Baseball Prospectus introduced a thing called "The Secret Sauce" which was a metric to predict playoff success, based mainly on power pitching staffs, good bullpens, and good defense. Basically quantifying that big strikeout pitchers and defense comes to the front in the postseason. In 2010 they retired it, publically declaring that it didn't work. From Colin Weyers:

So until I see reason to believe otherwise (i.e. evidence) I'll continue to beleive that a 95-win team with a balanced pitching staff isn't much/any less likely to win in October than a 95-win team with an unbalanced staff of aces and relative scrubs.

Its doesn't need to be strikeout pitchers. Just effective pitchers.

[DrungoHazewood]

Its doesn't need to be strikeout pitchers. Just effective pitchers.

The Venn diagram of the two sets overlaps, a lot.

[DrungoHazewood]

I will take Sale, Gausman and Tillman in the playoffs. I think that is a strong position.

Yep, it gives you about a 1-in-4 chance of making the World Series once you've locked up a playoff birth.

[wildcard]

Yep, it gives you about a 1-in-4 chance of making the World Series once you've locked up a playoff birth.

So 10 teams make the playoffs. That is a 10% change if all in equal, which its not.

25% at the start of the playoffs sounds pretty good. Probably no one else would have a better chance.

[Can_of_corn]

So 10 teams make the playoffs. That is a 10% change if all in equal, which its not.

25% at the start of the playoffs sounds pretty good. Probably no one else would have a better chance.

To start with the chances of the four WC teams will be significantly lower.

[DrungoHazewood]

Yeah, have to agree with wildcard on this one. Is it even debatable that teams with a couple TOR type starters have a significant advantage over a team with a more balanced staff in a playoff series where those 2 guys could go 4-5 games of a 7 game series?

Just look at the last few World Series champs. The 2013 Red Sox had no ace-type pitchers. The 2012 Giants #2 and #3 starters both had ERA+s of 105, and their best starter was only at 126. The 2011 Cards had no starter with an ERA+ of 110. The 2010 Giants had Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, Bumgarner... maybe that kind of fits the mold, but none of them were in the top 10 in the NL in pitching rWAR. In 2009 the Yanks had one starter (Sabathia) with an ERA under 4.00. The '08 Phillies had Cole Hamels... and 45 year old Jamie Moyer. The '07 Sox had Beckett, then 40-year-old Curt Schilling and his 3.87 ERA, then Dice-K and rookie Jon Lester. The 2006 Cards had no one on their starting staff save Chris Carpenter with and ERA+ over 110.

You'd think if having a few dominant aces was a huge advantage that once every decade or so a team with a couple or three great pitchers would win the Series.

[DrungoHazewood]

So 10 teams make the playoffs. That is a 10% change if all in equal, which its not.

25% at the start of the playoffs sounds pretty good. Probably no one else would have a better chance.

That's after the play-in game. If you're starting the play-in game with Chris Sale you probably have about a 55%, 60%, maybe even 65% chance of winning, depending on opponent and home field advantage. So cut your odds by that much.

[HobCreek]

So? ERA assumes a line drive off the Green Monster is the same as swinging bunt. It assumes a run in Colorado is equal to a run in PETCO. ERA decides that four consecutive homers after a two-out error didn't happen. ERA says the Orioles' defense is the same as the Astros'. Batting average says that a 450-foot homer and a slow grounder past a diving Jeter are the same thing. Slugging average believes walks and HBP don't exist. Fielding percentage says Brian Downing was better than Paul Blair.

You have to use the tools for their purpose in the right context. You can always find flaws if you expect everything to do everything.

ERA doesn't make any assumptions at all, nor does batting average. Both are used to report past performance, not make any predictions about future performance. If a pitcher's ERA is 3.24, it says he has given up an average of 3.24 runs per 9 innings to that point in the season. If a player's AVG is 0.307, it means that he has gotten a base hit 30.7% of his at bats up to that point in the season.

The problem (not really problem, because it has to be that way) with advanced statistics is that because they are attempting to predict something, they must make assumptions. ERA, AVG, SLG, all are just reporting what already has happened.

BABIP makes the assumption that neither the hitter or batter have any control over whether a ball put into play will result in a base hit. This is obviously not 100% true, but without this assumption the stat couldn't exist. Batter's with good bat control can hit the ball where fielder's are not playing intentionally, and pitcher's with good movement and location can induce weak contact, resulting in a ball less likely to result in a hit.

When using statistics you have to be able to use analytical/critical thinking to really use them properly, whether they are the newer statistics or the older statistics. Saying "expect a regression in ERA in the second half of the season because the FIP is 0.5 runs higher than the ERA" is no more correct than saying "Pitcher A is better than Pitcher B because his ERA is 0.5 runs lower. As you said, context is everything. But it is no secret that ALL of the advanced stats make assumptions that are not 100% true. There is a margin of error in the advanced statistics....I'd be interested in seeing how wide it is once the thinking goes in that direction.

[SilentJames]

Well, according to the same stats sight, we have the 9th best defense in the majors (we were thirst last season). So yes, we will outperform our FIP just as we did last year. But expecting our D to cut off half a run seems overly optimistic.

How are we judging D though, remember for the first month of the season we had kinda shoddy 3B play from Schoop and Flaherty, plus Manny took some time to get his form back as well.

How much could that have affected those numbers? I keep hearing the Orioles' run prevention is among the best in baseball especially through May and June. Defense doen't seem to be one of those things that just goes away. It is very good, and has been, for the last three years.

[CA-ORIOLE]

Just look at the last few World Series champs. The 2013 Red Sox had no ace-type pitchers. The 2012 Giants #2 and #3 starters both had ERA+s of 105, and their best starter was only at 126. The 2011 Cards had no starter with an ERA+ of 110. The 2010 Giants had Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, Bumgarner... maybe that kind of fits the mold, but none of them were in the top 10 in the NL in pitching rWAR. In 2009 the Yanks had one starter (Sabathia) with an ERA under 4.00. The '08 Phillies had Cole Hamels... and 45 year old Jamie Moyer. The '07 Sox had Beckett, then 40-year-old Curt Schilling and his 3.87 ERA, then Dice-K and rookie Jon Lester. The 2006 Cards had no one on their starting staff save Chris Carpenter with and ERA+ over 110.

You'd think if having a few dominant aces was a huge advantage that once every decade or so a team with a couple or three great pitchers would win the Series.

I wouldn't think of you as a guy to be cherry picking stats to make a case. Other things being equal (even relatively equal), the team with the frontline pitchers has to have a significant advantage. Are there examples where this advantage can be overcome? Yeah sure, but this pretty much common sense.

[Frobby]

until I see reason to believe otherwise (i.e. evidence) I'll continue to beleive that a 95-win team with a balanced pitching staff isn't much/any less likely to win in October than a 95-win team with an unbalanced staff of aces and relative scrubs.

It seems logical to me that, if the playoffs are constructed so that you never need to use your fifth starter, there will be some bias in favor of teams who have a good top of the rotation but a weak back end. Also, the best pitchers wil get a much higher percentasge of the starts than during the regular season.

3 game series -- the no. 1 starter gets 33% of the starts, the nos. 1-2 get 67%.

4 games series -- the no. 1 starter gets 25%, nos. 1-2 get 50%

5 game series -- the no. 1 starter gets 40%, nos. 1-2 get 60%

6 game series -- the no. 1 starter gets 33%, nos. 1-2 get 67%.

7 game series -- the no. 2 starter gets 29%, nos. 1-2 get 57%.

In every case, the nos. 1 and 2 starters are getting a hgiher percentage than in the regular season, so that clearly favors the team with a strong top but a weaker bottom compared to the more balanced team. (Of course, this assumes the team is able to line up its rotation before the playoffs commence. It could backfire if the no. 3 starter has to pitch first.)

[DrungoHazewood]

ERA doesn't make any assumptions at all, nor does batting average. Both are used to report past performance, not make any predictions about future performance. If a pitcher's ERA is 3.24, it says he has given up an average of 3.24 runs per 9 innings to that point in the season. If a player's AVG is 0.307, it means that he has gotten a base hit 30.7% of his at bats up to that point in the season.

There are a ton of assumptions in there. Most importantly, the convoluted process that assigns hits and errors based on the subjective judgments of the official scorer. What is a base hit? It's a ball that is struck well enough to let someone safely reach first base. But that's subject to almost countless variables. Any hit would be an out if only it was against a different defense, or in another park, or with a different shift, or if only that pebble hadn't caused that bad hop. "Hits" or "Earned Runs" are objective measures of something only if you believe in the infallibility of decisions on how to perform scorekeeping 125 years ago.

FIP makes a lot more sense than ERA. It's "how often does a pitcher allow these handful of things that he's largely in control of?" As opposed to the morass you quickly sink into when you start talking about reconstructing innings to guess how things might have happened in an attempt to divvy up earned and unearned runs based on a subjective error call.

The problem (not really problem, because it has to be that way) with advanced statistics is that because they are attempting to predict something, they must make assumptions. ERA, AVG, SLG, all are just reporting what already has happened.

No, the start of this argument was FIP. Which doesn't try to predict anything. WAR is just cataloging what has already happened. People get in a lot of contortions and trouble by trying to say a guy has been a 3 WAR player, so we need to sign him for the next five years on that basis.

BABIP makes the assumption that neither the hitter or batter have any control over whether a ball put into play will result in a base hit. This is obviously not 100% true, but without this assumption the stat couldn't exist.

No, no it doesn't. It just records how often a ball that has been put into play ended up being called a hit. That's it. It's the observation that there is a small spread in talent among MLB pitchers in BABIP that sometimes gets misinterpreted as pitchers don't have any control over balls in play. And hitters most certainly have control over hits on balls in play, although there are obviously unsustainable outliers there, too.

Batter's with good bat control can hit the ball where fielder's are not playing intentionally, and pitcher's with good movement and location can induce weak contact, resulting in a ball less likely to result in a hit.

No argument here, except that you need to qualify that statement by saying that inducing weak contact is but a very small part of the observed differences between pitchers, and that place hitting is very difficult in modern baseball. Most batter's differences in BABIP don't come from placing the ball, but rather from hitting it very hard.

When using statistics you have to be able to use analytical/critical thinking to really use them properly, whether they are the newer statistics or the older statistics. Saying "expect a regression in ERA in the second half of the season because the FIP is 0.5 runs higher than the ERA" is no more correct than saying "Pitcher A is better than Pitcher B because his ERA is 0.5 runs lower. As you said, context is everything. But it is no secret that ALL of the advanced stats make assumptions that are not 100% true. There is a margin of error in the advanced statistics....I'd be interested in seeing how wide it is once the thinking goes in that direction.

Yes, context is everything. But I'm not sure where you're going when you say

"it is no secret that ALL of the advanced stats make assumptions that are not 100% true." I think you can probably say that about most anything. There are flawed assumptions in scouting, in baseball statistics that have been in common use since 1880...