ROY- Means or Alvarez?

[Il BuonO]

8 minutes ago, atomic said:

Look how Fanagraphs calculates WAR for pitchers.  It is a pretty meaningless stat. 

Important Notes

*FG main WAR for pitchers is based on FIP with INF flies counted as SO....

Also,

https://library.fangraphs.com/war/limitations-war/

 

 

 

 

[DrungoHazewood]

17 minutes ago, atomic said:

Look how Fanagraphs calculates WAR for pitchers.  It is a pretty meaningless stat. 

Only if you don't understand what it is designed to do.  ERA and bb-ref WAR give almost all the credit for balls in play to the pitcher, which we know isn't true.  Fangraphs WAR just credits the pitcher with things they control: BB, K, HR.  Neither tells the whole story, but both help inform.  

If you want to give full credit to Means for the 0.8 runs/game gap between his FIP and ERA and the 2.00 run/game gap with his xFIP that's fine.  But I don't, and I almost guarantee that his ERA will regress towards those other metrics.   

[HowAboutThat]

1 hour ago, Redskins Rick said:

ask away

If you posted an

 

20 minutes ago, Il BuonO said:

Alvarez has been consistently productive for a good team. If he wasn’t they’d likely have other options. 

Means had a stretch of forgettable games after the break and the defense or the bullpen had little to do with it. 

But, I’m I believer in WAR. Oh, btw Fangraphs has it 4 to 3.1 for Alvarez.

I guarantee you if we went back and looks at Means’ game logs, wed find multiple times where the defense or BP let him down.

And for a pitcher to accrue 3.1 WAR is pretty good. Wade Miley has only 1.9 WAR in 163 innings and he’s 14-6. Greinke has 5.0 WAR, which shows a pretty wide range. Means would be welcome on the Astros, and he’s done much more than expected.

its not all one-sided.

[atomic]

12 minutes ago, Il BuonO said:

Important Notes

*FG main WAR for pitchers is based on FIP with INF flies counted as SO....

Also,

https://library.fangraphs.com/war/limitations-war/

 

 

 

 

I understand what it is based on.  I will tell you why it is a bad stat to use for WAR.

If you add up all the players WAR on a team and add to 48 you should have the total number of wins on a team.  If you use things that aren't related to actual runs scored and runs defended you aren't counting what you are supposed to count.  You can say it is a predictive stat for future seasons but it isn't measuring actual performance.  

Also everyone talks about analytics on here about positioning players and how it is used to pitch to players. If you have a guy with good control who is pitching based on how the team wants to pitch he should get more outs based on balls in play.  

[Frobby]

There’s a lot of exciting young talent in MLB these days.    As much as I’d love to see an Oriole win ROY, I think Alvarez deserves the nod.   He’s only played a bit more than half the year, but his numbers are too outstanding to be ignored.  

[atomic]

12 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Only if you don't understand what it is designed to do.  ERA and bb-ref WAR give almost all the credit for balls in play to the pitcher, which we know isn't true.  Fangraphs WAR just credits the pitcher with things they control: BB, K, HR.  Neither tells the whole story, but both help inform.  

If you want to give full credit to Means for the 0.8 runs/game gap between his FIP and ERA and the 2.00 run/game gap with his xFIP that's fine.  But I don't, and I almost guarantee that his ERA will regress towards those other metrics.   

Like I said WAR isn't a predictive stat. It is based on actual performance that season.  True ERA is more predictive than FIP.  Because it includes  ground balls and fly balls vs line drives. 

You take a simple stat and it has some correlation to ERA.  For example FIP has .46 correlation.   It doesn't tell you the whole story. It shouldn't be used to judge how a player does by itself.

[HowAboutThat]

13 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Analytics tells you that per team game or per plate appearance Alvarez is almost twice as valuable as John Means. 

Wouldn’t that be true of any position player compared with any pitcher just because the pitcher only works once every five days?

[HowAboutThat]

BTW, at BBR, Where they calculate WAR differently, Means has 4.6 bWAR, and Alvarez has only 3.9.

Woo-hoo!

[Redskins Rick]

4 minutes ago, Philip said:

Wouldn’t that be true of any position player compared with any pitcher just because the pitcher only works once every five days?

Good Point, but arent most of the high dollar contracts in MLB, belonging to pitchers?

[esmd]

Since ROY is decided by the writers, many of whom are older and probably don't buy into sabermetrics like WAR, it'll be Alvarez.  Also since he's on a winning team.  If it went solely by younger generation voters who value WAR, Means might have a good shot at getting it.

[atomic]

19 minutes ago, esmd said:

Since ROY is decided by the writers, many of whom are older and probably don't buy into sabermetrics like WAR, it'll be Alvarez.  Also since he's on a winning team.  If it went solely by younger generation voters who value WAR, Means might have a good shot at getting it.

Yeah I think Alvarez will win going away.  I do think a guy who has played all season as a pitcher would get my vote over a DH who played half the season.  

[Frobby]

2 hours ago, Philip said:

With even reasonable defense and/or relievers behind him, he might have 5 additional wins, and a much lower ERA.

I wouldn’t say so.   The bullpen has blown 2 saves for him.  One of those was a game where he only pitched 5 innings and allowed 3 runs.    He got three wins where he only pitched 5 innings.   Over the season, he bequeathed 13 baserunners to the bullpen, and only one of them scored.   Overall, I’d say he got pretty good bullpen support.   

As to the defense, I can’t really break down how it’s done with Means on the mound, but Fangraphs rates our defense 33.6 runs below average and Means has pitched 10.8% of our innings, so that suggests our defense has cost him 3-4 runs more than average.    Not really a major factor.    

[SteveA]

35 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Only if you don't understand what it is designed to do.  ERA and bb-ref WAR give almost all the credit for balls in play to the pitcher, which we know isn't true.  Fangraphs WAR just credits the pitcher with things they control: BB, K, HR.  Neither tells the whole story, but both help inform.  

If you want to give full credit to Means for the 0.8 runs/game gap between his FIP and ERA and the 2.00 run/game gap with his xFIP that's fine.  But I don't, and I almost guarantee that his ERA will regress towards those other metrics.   

But when talking about an award for achievement, rather than trying to evaluate the player's talent moving forward, this is where I start to part ways with those who kneel at the alter of advanced stats like FIP.

Getting an out IS better than not getting an out.   I fully understand that it is beyond a pitcher's control at times.   And that when you are deciding to trade for someone or not, or evaluate their talent, you better be paying attention to a stat that filters out external factors.   You'd be stupid if you traded for a guy with a 3.00 ERA and 5.00 FIP and gave up the value expecting him to have a 3.00 ERA again.

But to me awards are totally different animals.   You are trying to measure ACHIEVEMENT.   And getting an out is better than not getting an out.   Period.   Is it fair?   Maybe not.   But I'll bet every QB who has ever won NFL MVP has benefited from a good offensive line, and good receivers, and a running game, and even a defense that helped give him good field position.   If they decided to give the MVP to a QB whose team went 7-9 and who threw more INTs than TDs becuase the quality  of his receivers and o-line were SO bad that he is actually better than Drew Brees... that would be BS, IMO.

[atomic]

13 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I wouldn’t say so.   The bullpen has blown 2 saves for him.  One of those was a game where he only pitched 5 innings and allowed 3 runs.    He got three wins where he only pitched 5 innings.   Over the season, he bequeathed 13 baserunners to the bullpen, and only one of them scored.   Overall, I’d say he got pretty good bullpen support.   

As to the defense, I can’t really break down how it’s done with

13 minutes ago, SteveA said:

But when talking about an award for achievement, rather than trying to evaluate the player's talent moving forward, this is where I start to part ways with those who kneel at the alter of advanced stats like FIP.

Getting an out IS better than not getting an out.   I fully understand that it is beyond a pitcher's control at times.   And that when you are deciding to trade for someone or not, or evaluate their talent, you better be paying attention to a stat that filters out external factors.   You'd be stupid if you traded for a guy with a 3.00 ERA and 5.00 FIP and gave up the value expecting him to have a 3.00 ERA again.

But to me awards are totally different animals.   You are trying to measure ACHIEVEMENT.   And getting an out is better than not getting an out.   Period.   Is it fair?   Maybe not.   But I'll bet every QB who has ever won NFL MVP has benefited from a good offensive line, and good receivers, and a running game, and even a defense that helped give him good field position.   If they decided to give the MVP to a QB whose team went 7-9 and who threw more INTs than TDs becuase the quality  of his receivers and o-line were SO bad that he is actually better than Drew Brees... that would be BS, IMO.

Means on the mound, but Fangraphs rates our defense 33.6 runs below average and Means has pitched 10.8% of our innings, so that suggests our defense has cost him 3-4 runs more than average.    Not really a major factor.    

Also even if you believed in FIP totally it doesn't tell you things like sequencing.  Jim Palmer has a large variation in FIP and ERA and between BWAR and FWAR.  It seems like every  year Palmer had a significantly lower ERA than FIP.  And this wasn't true of other players on the team the same time as him like Flanagan and McNally. 

Palmer always talked about not walking the lead-off hitter.  FIP says a walk is a walk.  Palmer would walk a good hitter with two outs but wouldn't with no outs.  Also Palmer fielded his position very well. Doesn't say anything about him holding on runners or if he induced a lot of week fly balls.  He tended to pitch up out of  the zone once he got ahead in the count.

Doesn't tell you that he never gave up a grand slam in his career.  Home runs with the bases empty are a lot less effective than with 2 or 3 guys on base.  

 

[HowAboutThat]

50 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I wouldn’t say so.   The bullpen has blown 2 saves for him.  One of those was a game where he only pitched 5 innings and allowed 3 runs.    He got three wins where he only pitched 5 innings.   Over the season, he bequeathed 13 baserunners to the bullpen, and only one of them scored.   Overall, I’d say he got pretty good bullpen support.   

As to the defense, I can’t really break down how it’s done with Means on the mound, but Fangraphs rates our defense 33.6 runs below average and Means has pitched 10.8% of our innings, so that suggests our defense has cost him 3-4 runs more than average.    Not really a major factor.    

 I took a brief look at his game logs, and he’s only given up 6 unearned runs this year. But that only counts for runs that score on “errors“ and ignores the generally sloppy play that we’ve been watching all season. Even guys like Jim Hunter complain about Terrible fundamental baseball,  and the slop that is not called an error has haunted all of our pitchers.

I did not find how many inherited runners were allowed to score by the reliever Who replaced him, but it’s not a stretch to suggested it might be close to double digits.