Should the Orioles retire Mussina’s number?

[Sports Guy]

3 minutes ago, dystopia said:

Palmer wasn't stupid, he knew the type of defense he had behind him and played to that. Who's to say he wouldn't have been more strikeout-focused if that wasn't the case? Sure, missing bats is always the best way to get outs but don't pretend it's a fair comparison. 

Anyway, back to WAR. RA9-WAR is basically a superior bWAR, and fWAR for pitching is problematic because it's FIP-based which means it's largely based on hypetheticals vs. actual results. FIP is mainly used as a predictive stat so it doesn't make much sense to go back to so-and-so's 1987 season and point to their FIP as if it means anything. 

 

FIP concentrates on what pitchers can control, which is why it’s good.

And what if Moose played in Palmers era with that defense and missed bats and K’ed guys at the same rate?  We can do the what if games all day. But what we have is actual real performance and it’s very much of a toss up who was better.

[dystopia]

1 minute ago, Sports Guy said:

FIP concentrates on what pitchers can control, which is why it’s good.

And what if Moose played in Palmers era with that defense and missed bats and K’ed guys at the same rate?  We can do the what if games all day. But what we have is actual real performance and it’s very much of a toss up who was better.

If Palmer and Moose switch eras I'd bet their K rates get swapped too. 

FIP has its value but it's incomplete when evaluating a pitcher and is most useful for trying to gauge how a pitcher might perform in the future. 

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, dystopia said:

If Palmer and Moose switch eras I'd bet their K rates get swapped too. 

FIP has its value but it's incomplete when evaluating a pitcher and is most useful for trying to gauge how a pitcher might perform in the future. 

Similarly I bet the BAA changes as well.

[Sports Guy]

1 minute ago, dystopia said:

If Palmer and Moose switch eras I'd bet their K rates get swapped too. 

FIP has its value but it's incomplete when evaluating a pitcher and is most useful for trying to gauge how a pitcher might perform in the future. 

Yea it’s most useful for that because it talks  about what a pitch we can control and takes luck out of things and when you do that for each pitcher, you get about the same guy.

And I love how when it’s swapping things, everything is positive for Palmer but not for Mussina. 
 

Look, your stance is silly. It’s extremely close who was better. Even if you foolishly want to throw out WAR, all of the other stats are very close. You can make all the excuses you want and paint the pretty Palmer pictures you want but there is a real argument for who is better.

[dystopia]

1 minute ago, Sports Guy said:

Yea it’s most useful for that because it talks  about what a pitch we can control and takes luck out of things and when you do that for each pitcher, you get about the same guy.

And I love how when it’s swapping things, everything is positive for Palmer but not for Mussina. 
 

Look, your stance is silly. It’s extremely close who was better. Even if you foolishly want to throw out WAR, all of the other stats are very close. You can make all the excuses you want and paint the pretty Palmer pictures you want but there is a real argument for who is better.

If you trust pitching WAR then why do you think there's an argument? Clearly Mussina is better. He has 30 more WAR than Palmer. No contest.

Or maybe it's because you know the idea that Mussina was 30 WAR better than Palmer is completely asinine and is more of a strike against WAR than anything.

[Hallas]

4 hours ago, dystopia said:

Well, yeah... the question is how much higher. 

Mussina was maybe the 6th or 7th best pitcher of the '90s. How many pitchers were better than Palmer in the '70s? It's a very short list, if there is even a list at all.

There's an argument for Palmer down around the same level, though I think most would have him no worse than 5th.  Seaver, Carlton, Blyleven, Fergie Jenkins, Nolan Ryan are the guys I think with the strongest arguments over Palmer in the 70s.   I think if you're strictly looking at stats you can include Niekro and Perry, but I hesitate to include them seriously because Perry was a known spitballer and Niekro was a knuckleballer.

 

If it were me I'd probably put Palmer around 3rd behind Seaver and Carlton in the 70s perhaps tied with Jenkins there. But that's still better than Mussina, who had a decent chunk of good pitchers ahead of him in the 90s.

Edited August 3, 2023 by Hallas

[Sports Guy]

14 minutes ago, dystopia said:

If you trust pitching WAR then why do you think there's an argument? Clearly Mussina is better. He has 30 more WAR than Palmer. No contest.

Or maybe it's because you know the idea that Mussina was 30 WAR better than Palmer is completely asinine and is more of a strike against WAR than anything.

I actually would give the edge to Moose.

But I actually agree that the disparity isn’t as big as WAR says.  That doesn’t mean I’m dismissing it. Just means I’m saying I don’t think Moose was 3 10 win seasons better as I look at all the stats.

However, what that WAR is telling you is that Palmer relied on his teammates more and advanced stats try to take that out of the equation, which isn’t wrong imo.

But I also don’t buy ERA+ as much either. That gives weight to eras and ballparks but it doesn’t mean that if you place the players in different situations that the results would be the same. Mussina would better on those Os teams than Palmer was and Palmer would be worse than Moose in 90s and 2000s based on what we know they did on the field.

[Can_of_corn]

4 minutes ago, Hallas said:

There's an argument for Palmer down around the same level, though I think most would have him no worse than 5th.  Seaver, Carlton, Blyleven, Fergie Jenkins, Nolan Ryan are the guys I think with the strongest arguments over Palmer in the 70s.   I think if you're strictly looking at stats you can include Niekro and Perry, but I hesitate to include them seriously because Perry was a known spitballer and Niekro was a knuckleballer.

 

If it were me I'd probably put Palmer around 3rd behind Seaver and Carlton in the 70s perhaps tied with Jenkins there. But that's still better than Mussina, who had a decent chunk of good pitchers ahead of him in the 90s.

Not Ryan, the man was a freak but I don't think he was ever a top echelon pitcher in terms of season long excellence.

[Sports Guy]

5 minutes ago, Hallas said:

There's an argument for Palmer down around the same level, though I think most would have him no worse than 5th.  Seaver, Carlton, Blyleven, Fergie Jenkins, Nolan Ryan are the guys I think with the strongest arguments over Palmer in the 70s.   I think if you're strictly looking at stats you can include Niekro and Perry, but I hesitate to include them seriously because Perry was a known spitballer and Niekro was a knuckleballer.

 

If it were me I'd probably put Palmer around 3rd behind Seaver and Carlton in the 70s perhaps tied with Jenkins there. But that's still better than Mussina, who had a decent chunk of good pitchers ahead of him in the 90s.

Moose May be lower but the pitchers above him are probably better…Pedro, RJ, Maddux,  Clemens..those 4 are arguably top ever.

[drdelaware]

Impossible to swap players into different eras for comparison.  Today's players get paid so much more and have so much more information available at their disposal.    More was learned about exercise, pitch counts and that sort of thing.  

You can't even compare from Mussina's era to today where everyone seems to throw 90 mph plus.

Edited August 3, 2023 by drdelaware

[dystopia]

Let's compare some other pitchers using fWAR and RA9-WAR.

Randy Johnson

fWAR - 110.5

RA9-WAR - 105.0

Greg Maddux

fWAR - 116.7

RA9-WAR - 123.4

Pedro Martinez

fWAR - 84.4

RA9-WAR - 90.4

Nolan Ryan

fWAR - 106.7

RA9-WAR - 88.3

Tom Seaver

fWAR - 92.4

RA9-WAR - 116.7

Bob Gibson

fWAR - 82.3

RA9-WAR - 93.0

Walter Johnson

fWAR - 116.4

RA9-WAR - 155.9

Cy Young

fWAR - 131.5

RA9-WAR - 179.2

And then for Palmer we have a fWAR of 56.6 and a RA9-WAR of 91.6 while Mussina's fWAR and RA9-WAR are identical. Ryan's high WAR is obviously due to his longevity, but it's interesting that his RA9-WAR is so much lower. Does anyone really think Ryan is better than Palmer and Seaver? There's certain pitchers that fWAR just seems to hate, and Palmer is one of them, along with Cy Young and Walter Johnson, who are often considered to be the best pitchers in history. 

[dystopia]

31 minutes ago, Hallas said:

There's an argument for Palmer down around the same level, though I think most would have him no worse than 5th.  Seaver, Carlton, Blyleven, Fergie Jenkins, Nolan Ryan are the guys I think with the strongest arguments over Palmer in the 70s.   I think if you're strictly looking at stats you can include Niekro and Perry, but I hesitate to include them seriously because Perry was a known spitballer and Niekro was a knuckleballer.

 

If it were me I'd probably put Palmer around 3rd behind Seaver and Carlton in the 70s perhaps tied with Jenkins there. But that's still better than Mussina, who had a decent chunk of good pitchers ahead of him in the 90s.

That's fair.

[dystopia]

30 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

I actually would give the edge to Moose.

But I actually agree that the disparity isn’t as big as WAR says.  That doesn’t mean I’m dismissing it. Just means I’m saying I don’t think Moose was 3 10 win seasons better as I look at all the stats.

However, what that WAR is telling you is that Palmer relied on his teammates more and advanced stats try to take that out of the equation, which isn’t wrong imo.

But I also don’t buy ERA+ as much either. That gives weight to eras and ballparks but it doesn’t mean that if you place the players in different situations that the results would be the same. Mussina would better on those Os teams than Palmer was and Palmer would be worse than Moose in 90s and 2000s based on what we know they did on the field.

I mean, it's not a bad thing to rely on your teammates when your teammates are good. So yeah I'd say it is wrong to take it out of the equation entirely.

[Hallas]

36 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

I actually would give the edge to Moose.

But I actually agree that the disparity isn’t as big as WAR says.  That doesn’t mean I’m dismissing it. Just means I’m saying I don’t think Moose was 3 10 win seasons better as I look at all the stats.

However, what that WAR is telling you is that Palmer relied on his teammates more and advanced stats try to take that out of the equation, which isn’t wrong imo.

But I also don’t buy ERA+ as much either. That gives weight to eras and ballparks but it doesn’t mean that if you place the players in different situations that the results would be the same. Mussina would better on those Os teams than Palmer was and Palmer would be worse than Moose in 90s and 2000s based on what we know they did on the field.

 

I don't love using FIP here over career-length spans, because BABIP tends to regress to a pitcher's career average, not the league average.  This hurts Palmer quite a bit since fWAR uses FIP as the basis for their WAR.  Obviously Palmer was helped quite a bit by his defense, but he was also somewhat responsible for his own weak contact.

 

FIP is such a weird stat to me because it correlates better with pitcher performance than it seemingly should based on how how much influence pitchers have been shown to have over their quality of contact allowed.  There is almost certainly something missing there but AFAIK statcast stats like xERA haven't proven to be demonstrably better, so we're stuck picking and choosing the spots where we're going to use it.

[Hallas]

40 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Moose May be lower but the pitchers above him are probably better…Pedro, RJ, Maddux,  Clemens..those 4 are arguably top ever.

 

Yeah, I get that.  But it does cloud the picture a lot.  How do you rank those guys against guys of other eras?  It's pretty subjective and/or subject to a ton of hand waving no matter what conclusion you come to.