anyone else not sold on Sherrill as closer?

[Palmer Esque]

While his home run rate may go up, I do not place too much on fly ball rates etc. Some pitchers do have the skill to produce the "good" kind of fly ball. While this may not be relevant to the Sherril discussion, it is similar in nature thus I will bring this bone of contention up of mine. BABIP (batting average on balls in play ) is a misleading statistic. They act as if really high or really low BABIP are red flags, and with some pitchers they are (i.e with Trachsel) but this statistic implies or hints at that pitchers have relatively no control on whether a ball in play results in an out, sabermatricians treat balls in play against a pitcher as simply a matter of luck or bad luck. This is absurb in my opinion. Pitchers DO have control to a certain degree whether or not a ball in play results in an out or a hit. This can depend on any number of things including positioning of the defense, pitch location, and overall stuff of a pitcher. This ties in with Sherril in that people think his high fly ball rate will result in more home runs. And this is not as cut and dry as it seems. Sherril's career with Seattle will attest to this. He gave up more home runs in Safeco than he did on the road. This to me obviously belies that while he is a flyball pitcher he does seem to have a certain skill and knack to get the "good" kind of flyball more often than not.

[Boy Howdy]

I don't sit there and chart every flyball hit off of Sherrill.

However, I can read stats and I have common sense...Common sense tells you that high FB rate + good homer park = good probability of a lot of homers hit.

Do you not agree with that?

My point is that all your possibilities about flyballs don't really change the point I was making about Sherrill.

And with his higher walk rate, increased workload and him facing more righties, it is extremely reasonable to think these homers won't just be solo homers and some will cause us to lose games.

And all of your hypotheticals (that I read in the same 2007 edition of Baseball Prospectus BTW) aren't supported by the facts (i.e. Sherrill's actual statistics), so what's up with that?

vatech1994 (and elsid before him) made valid points about not all airouts being created equal, and yes, you should watch the games and chart each one if you want to draw conclusions about a specific player.

[Boy Howdy]

You can call them excuses, i will call them legit concerns.

Keep that head buried in the sand!

Right back at you, big fella!

[Baltimoron]

I haven't read much of this thread, so I'm not really taking sides here...

...but I don't see how somebody's inclination to wager or not is supposed to validate or invalidate their point, or lend any more credence to your position.

Just my two cents.

Sure it can lend credence. Obviously there are people who are opposed to "gambling" or "wagering." And obviously there can be strawmen issues. And just because something happens doesn't necessarily mean someone was right or wrong.

It also doesn't have to be for money. You could bet on an avatar the other has to use, or a silly signature line, or a beer or diet coke, on picking up lunch the next time or simply pride.

But an idea that has some degree of meaning is that its easy to say/do/think things without being held to account for them, and sometimes lots of good things can come from a degree of accountability. And in some respects and in situations, a friendly wager adds just that.

And even not betting, but simply going through the process of negotiating the price (i.e. odds, not money) can be illuminating and insightful.

The idea is accountability can often provide a more thoughtful, sober and less cavalier assessment of situations, and its possible that amongst certain people in certain situations, a "wager" can largely do just that.

Its also kinda fun. Its basically what fantasy sports are all about. Instead of guys just arguing about who can better assess what is going to happen in their favorite sports, they set up a league, draft players and manage teams, and then are held to account for what happens (i.e a league champion, etc.)

[Sports Guy]

And all of your hypotheticals (that I read in the same 2007 edition of Baseball Prospectus BTW) aren't supported by the facts (i.e. Sherrill's actual statistics), so what's up with that?

vatech1994 (and elsid before him) made valid points about not all airouts being created equal, and yes, you should watch the games and chart each one if you want to draw conclusions about a specific player.

I don't need to do that...Sherrill has already given up homers than he did in 2006...He is only 1 away what he did each of his first 2 years in the league and 2 away from his career high.

And this year is a totally new role for him....You can't judge him too much on what he did in the past because you have to project him out long term as he faces more righties(712 OPS vs 479 OPS for lefties the last 3 years) and a workload of at least 15 more innings.

And even moreso than the increased innings will be the increase in innings per outing.

This is almost certain to tire him some, expose a weakness more and the end result will be more homers and runs allowed.

There is no possible way you can logically argue against that. Now, that isn't to say he won't overcome it or all of a sudden start throwing more groundballs or something like that.

[Sports Guy]

I do agree with all these points. I agreed with them when you originally wrote them. As I wrote before, my intent wasn't to discredit what you wrote earlier. I guess I should have made that more clear in my first post. Clearly, all other things being equal and w/o more info, a rising FB:GB rate isn't a good thing and the same can be said of a rising walk rate.

I was just attempting to open discussion about parsing this data to a lower level to determine how much to be concerned. I do think Sherrill has a lot of unintentional intentional walks and I agree with this premise of "live to fight another day" in theory, but I can't foresee how it will work out for him cumulatively over the course of the year.

And I don't chart hit locations either so I can't be of much help. I was just throwing my opinion out there re: FB/GB. I really don't know what we'll find.

I think fangraphs can be used to do this work though.

Is it fair to say that if you allow a lot of flyballs, that you are normally up in the strike zone??

[Sports Guy]

Sure it can lend credence. Obviously there are people who are opposed to "gambling" or "wagering." And obviously there can be strawmen issues. And just because something happens doesn't necessarily mean someone was right or wrong.

It also doesn't have to be for money. You could bet on an avatar the other has to use, or a silly signature line, or a beer or diet coke, on picking up lunch the next time or simply pride.

But an idea that has some degree of meaning is that its easy to say/do/think things without being held to account for them, and sometimes lots of good things can come from a degree of accountability. And in some respects and in situations, a friendly wager adds just that.

And even not betting, but simply going through the process of negotiating the price (i.e. odds, not money) can be illuminating and insightful.

The idea is accountability can often provide a more thoughtful, sober and less cavalier assessment of situations, and its possible that amongst certain people in certain situations, a "wager" can largely do just that.

Its also kinda fun. Its basically what fantasy sports are all about. Instead of guys just arguing about who can better assess what is going to happen in their favorite sports, they set up a league, draft players and manage teams, and then are held to account for what happens (i.e a league champion, etc.)

I think you have a gambling problem!

[Palmer Esque]

Is it fair to say that if you allow a lot of flyballs, that you are normally up in the strike zone??

To a certain degree, and for most pitchers yes, and I am not disagreeing with you, but with Sherill, it seems like for his brief career he has beaten this statistic to a certain degree, which means either is incredibly lucky(I do not believe this is the case) or maybe he has a knack and know how to produce a "good" fly ball out.

[Sports Guy]

To a certain degree, and for most pitchers yes, and I am not disagreeing with you, but with Sherill, it seems like for his brief career he has beaten this statistic to a certain degree, which means either is incredibly lucky(I do not believe this is the case) or maybe he has a knack and know how to produce a "good" fly ball out.

Well, aside from his 2005 season, Sherrill has had FB rates that would normally be considered lucky. However, his park, his incredible dominance over lefties and light workload(thus shouldn't get tired) probably means that he wasn't "lucky".

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=6291&position=P

And although he gave up homers at Safeco than anywhere else, that doesn't mean he wouldn't have given up a whole hell of a lot more had he been in OPACY or another good HR hitters park.

[Palmer Esque]

Well, aside from his 2005 season, Sherrill has had FB rates that would normally be considered lucky. However, his park, his incredible dominance over lefties and light workload(thus shouldn't get tired) probably means that he wasn't "lucky".

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=6291&position=P

And although he gave up homers at Safeco than anywhere else, that doesn't mean he wouldn't have given up a whole hell of a lot more had he been in OPACY or another good HR hitters park.

Agree with you, fact of the matter is, I just take everything for what it is worth and what I see with my own eyes. I place some value in some sabermetric stats moreso than others. BABIP is not one of them. Baseball is a thinking mans game in between the lines for nine innings, and a strategic battleground between two managers. I just think people who have never played the game and are math geeks get to much credit in developing statistics that do not tell the whole story in my opinion. There is no one set way for interpreting statistics because statistics as a whole can me mistrued and misinterpreted for the benefit of simply trying to get your point across and for other people to agree with you. They just do not tell the whole story and should not be the sole determining factor in evalutating a player. Based on statistics, David Eckstein should never have even gotten a chance to play in the majors, but his style of play and leadership goes beyond the numbers. While I would not consider myself anti- sabermetric, I also place a high value on simply just being able to get the job done most of the time whether it is pretty or nervewracking.

[Boy Howdy]

Well, aside from his 2005 season, Sherrill has had FB rates that would normally be considered lucky. However, his park, his incredible dominance over lefties and light workload(thus shouldn't get tired) probably means that he wasn't "lucky".

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=6291&position=P

And although he gave up homers at Safeco than anywhere else, that doesn't mean he wouldn't have given up a whole hell of a lot more had he been in OPACY or another good HR hitters park.

And it doesn't mean he would've either.

SG, you're often an intelligent poster, and you certainly add a lot to the board, but sometimes your slavish (apparent) belief in what you're able to conclude from raw data makes you look a lot more like Juan Epstein than Theo Epstein.

It's like the people who get all bent out of shape when a guy strokes a single after somebody got picked off second --saying 'that cost us a run'. Well, you don't know that the guy still would've singled. Sequence of pitches are different, etc...

The O's obviously saw something in Sherrill that convinced them he could succeed with OPACY as his home park, and so far the only results that matter are proving them correct.

[Lucky Jim]

Sure it can lend credence. Obviously there are people who are opposed to "gambling" or "wagering." And obviously there can be strawmen issues. And just because something happens doesn't necessarily mean someone was right or wrong.

It also doesn't have to be for money. You could bet on an avatar the other has to use, or a silly signature line, or a beer or diet coke, on picking up lunch the next time or simply pride.

But an idea that has some degree of meaning is that its easy to say/do/think things without being held to account for them, and sometimes lots of good things can come from a degree of accountability. And in some respects and in situations, a friendly wager adds just that.

And even not betting, but simply going through the process of negotiating the price (i.e. odds, not money) can be illuminating and insightful.

The idea is accountability can often provide a more thoughtful, sober and less cavalier assessment of situations, and its possible that amongst certain people in certain situations, a "wager" can largely do just that.

Its also kinda fun. Its basically what fantasy sports are all about. Instead of guys just arguing about who can better assess what is going to happen in their favorite sports, they set up a league, draft players and manage teams, and then are held to account for what happens (i.e a league champion, etc.)

Sure. If the bet is an accurate representation of the disagreement. However, when the bet is "I bet X does not happen" when the discussion isn't whether X will happen or not, but rather whether or not an actor in the equation is open to X happening...it offers no value. None. Zilch. Squat. Nada. Nunca. Nyet.

[Sports Guy]

Again, all things being equal, I would agree. However, I think a pitcher's choice of fastball type (2 seamer/4 seamer), release point, and the relative sink & run of that fastball are more important than location for predicting and evaluating flyballs. I think Olson and Sherrill will throw a lot of pop ups because of the nature of their fastballs. As a couple of smarter guys than I discussed the other day, Olson's fastball appears to "ride or rise" due to his motion and release. That will surely create more fly balls, but isn't a bad thing IMO.

I have the same opinion of Guthrie's four seamer. That thing explodes in the zone, rather than sinks, so guys are going to hit a lot of routine fly balls and pop ups on that pitch IMO.

On the other hand, I think fly ball % going up is an extreme indicator of pitching higher than desired for guys like Wang, Westbrook, Carmona, Jim Johnson, and Daniel Cabrera. These guys are all trying to throw heavy balls with sink. Batters will have trouble hitting it in the air unless the pitches are up.

Is a sinker better or a riding fastball better? I think this is a lot like the draw/fade debate in golf. All other things equal, I'd rather a guy throw a sinker (or draw the ball), but some guys aren't designed to work that way so they should go with their strength. I believe this is true for Guts, Olson (though I think he could do both), and Sherrill. BTW, I tried to become a "draw" guy in golf for years, but I'm just not built that way. It is power fade for me all the way as my flightpath of choice.

And yes, the riding fastball guys will give up more homers than the sinker guys, but they should also give up less base hits.

Yes but they may also walk more guys.

And I do think Sherrill's hit rate will go up as he faces more righties...Righties have a 370 OBP versus him the last 3 years.

To me, everything points to 1 of 2 things:

1) Hope his value gets built up and you can trade him.

2) Make him a LOOGY again once Ray is back and has his stuff back.

[Baltimoron]

I think you have a gambling problem!

Betcha I don't!

[Lucky Jim]

And it doesn't mean he would've either.

SG, you're often an intelligent poster, and you certainly add a lot to the board, but sometimes your slavish (apparent) belief in what you're able to conclude from raw data makes you look a lot more like Juan Epstein than Theo Epstein.

It's like the people who get all bent out of shape when a guy strokes a single after somebody got picked off second --saying 'that cost us a run'. Well, you don't know that the guy still would've singled. Sequence of pitches are different, etc...

The O's obviously saw something in Sherrill that convinced them he could succeed with OPACY as his home park, and so far the only results that matter are proving them correct.

Everyone should be able to appreciate a Kotter reference.

I agree that we shouldn't over-emphasize the trend. It is what it is. I think SG is right that it's a warning side. But the volume of the alarm that he's hearing may be a bit exaggerated. Still, guys with BB rates of over 4 with high FB tendencies aren't ideal for Camden Yards. That's a simple, but accurate, truth.