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…fresh off taking two out of three from the Phillies, the Mets take on the 
Brewers this weekend…with that in mind, i did a quick Q & A with Jeff Sackmann, who writes about the Brewers for Brew Crew Ball…
D.J. Short:
First, a question about Yovani Gallardo, who may return from the DL this weekend. I know he was recently rehabbing for a knee injury. Any long-term concerns there, or was he just not quite ready to start the season with the big club?
Jeff Sackmann:
Just not quite ready. He struck out more than a batter per inning in two rehab starts, so I think he’ll be fine.
D.J. Short:
How long do you expect Eric Gagne to hang on to the closer role? Will his contract give him a longer leash or does the team seem willing to give David Riske a shot?
Jeff Sackmann:
I think Gagne will have a very long leash. Riske seems to be the rally killer guy, which might well be the best use for him. It’s certainly possible that Riske is the best reliever in the bullpen right now, and if the bullpen shapes up like the Indians ‘pen last year–mediocre “closer” in the 9th, better relievers for higher leverage innings earlier in the game–I’d be thrilled.
D.J. Short:
How’s Ryan Braun looking in left field thus far?
Jeff Sackmann:
He’s not going to win any gold gloves. He’s passable, and he’s certainly got the arm, and the biggest benefit is simply getting him off of third base, where Bill Hall has brought big-league defense back to Milwaukee.
D.J. Short:
What are your thoughts about Prince Fielder’s comments this spring in regards to his contact? Are the Brewers prepared to lose him? What would that do to the franchise?
Jeff Sackmann:
As for his comments, I don’t take that sort of thing as a big deal. He let off steam one day when a reporter was listening. Not the smartest move, but it’s easy to forget we’re analyzing the every utterance of a 24-year-old. I think Brewers fans realize that Scott Boras represents Fielder, so while the effort will be made to sign him long-term, it’s far from a lock. Fielder has certainly emerged as a leader, so it would be great to keep him around, but he’s hardly the only young stud on this team.
D.J. Short:
Lastly, a question on Sabermetrics relating to the Mets. Last year when we chatted, you mentioned that you thought John Maine was pitching over his head. Has your opinion changed on that, or did his second half meet your expectations?
Jeff Sackmann:
The big difference in his first and second half is the BABIP — it jumped from .253 before the break to .318 after the break. The resulting 5.53 in the second half seems a little harsh, but it does suggest he might be more of a 4.50 guy than a 3.50 guy. That, I think, was a reasonable expectation back when the Mets traded for him, and it still gives him plenty of value, particularly if he gives you another 32 starts this year.
…thanks again, Jeff…be sure to check out his contributions to the Sabermetrics blog Beyond the Boxscore, as well…
…by the way, i did ask him about Claudio Vargas…he didn’t have much to say, however, he did point me to an answer he gave Joe Janish from MetsToday, which you can check out here…
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.318 is further from league average then .253.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe .280 is average. League average ERA is around 4.41.
I think 290 is league average. They were just saying how his BABIP went from below league average before the break to above afterwards.
I don’t care what anybody says, Maine is the man.
Considering the fact that last year was the most innings he’s ever thrown, I’d attribute his second half to fatigue, not lack of talent or stuff.
Lots of people outside of the Mets fan base seem to hate on Maine though.
Agreed. He’s pretty underrated. Although I know somebody over at ESPN predicted he’d get 20 wins this year.
NL average BABIP last year was .301.
Nothing about Claudio Vargas?
Yea, ’sup wit dat?
Just about to say…
I sensed a little tension between the bloggers.
Baseball is really heating up.
Pretty soon, before each series the nerdy bloggers will have to enter the UFC Octagon instead of interviewing each other.
LETS GO METS
LETS GO NELSON
nerdy bloggers? r u calling Matt a nerd?
No tension here…maybe I was just a little terse, since I think this is the 4th q&a I’ve done in the last 48 hours.
Hey Jeff, was Braun really that bad defensively at 3rd? I remember him making some incredible plays against the Mets last year.
26 errors say “Yes, he was really that bad”
oh yes, he was that bad. occasionally he did make some great plays–his problem wasn’t range, it was that when he had to rush a throw, you never quite knew which zip code it would end up in.
he might have developed into an ok third baseman, but it wouldn’t have been in time for this season.
Similar to the struggles with Wright, but on a much larger scale. David’s errors happened on the more routine throws, not on plays where he gets rushed.
4th Q&A in four hours? I guess that’s what happens when teams from the sticks come to play in civilization.
Might want to save the terseness for the secondary Mets blogs’ Q&A’s rather than for the godfather of Mets blogs.
Jeff does have a nice blog, though. It is nice to get opponents’ bloggers takes before a series.
charming.
I thought so…though somehow I typoed forty-eight hours into four hours. Odd.
Frankly, given that five most recent blog posts on your Brewers blog have elicted a total of zero, three, three, eight and twelve comments respectively….you should probably just be happy for the exposure.
I don’t get the significance of BABIP. It seems to imply that if a ball is put in play, whether or not it finds a hole is just random luck.
Strikeouts aside, if you have good stuff, you’ll get more popups and weak grounders and less line drives. Maine had a good ‘06 and first half of ‘07. Second half his velocity went down and less movement on his pitches which is why his ERA went up.
His numbers from ‘06 and first half of ‘07 seem like a good indicator of future performance, not the second half of last year when he was fatigued (as evidenced by decreased velocity) because he pitched 40-50 more innings than in any previous year.
When you think about it, it kind of is random luck. A few inches could be the difference between a double and a groundout, a double play ball or an RBI single.
As far as I understand it, BABIP determines how “lucky” a pitcher is (great defensive plays, seeing eye singles, etc.) But I’m over my head when it comes to sabermetrics, so don’t take my word for it.
that’s basically right. i don’t want to rehash the same old arguments, but whether it makes sense or not, the vast majority of pitchers end up with BABIPs close to league average. Even the pitchers who are consistently below average–mostly groundballers, or those in front of really good defenses–aren’t that far below average. Maybe Maine will settle in around 280 or 290, but 253 is a fluke, plain and simple.
This implies that a pitcher cannot dominate without being among the league best in K/IP.
not necessarily…its just saying that when a batter puts the ball in play, he’ll be out more than 66% of the time, on average.
However, I see where your inference comes in, and generally those who dominate tend to have great k/ip rates…Recently, we’ve had Pedro, Clemens, Unit, and Santana…all dominant pitchers, all big time strike out guys. Thats why there is a red flag with a pitcher like Wang, given the low k-rate. However, as he shows high ground ball tendencies given his sinker, his BABIP will be inherently lower, given a good defense behind him. The thing is that these types of pitchers have much less room for error.
The Sabrmetricians work under the assumption that there is not much variance in BABIP among all pitchers. So what’s left? Walks and strikeouts. This does imply that there is not much a pitcher can do to guarantee success except whiff many and walk few.
I don’t entirely agree with this very reductive view of pitching, but I am not prepared to go toe-to-toe with Bill James on the statistical battlefield.
Clearly, a pitcher with excellent command, one who walks very few batters, has a distinct advantage, and can get by without a repertoire of several “plus” pitches (a guy like Rick Reed). But we can all recall pitchers with high K rates that just couldn’t win consistently.
it works, but only partly, because yeah, some times it is just luck, but other times, it isn’t. Not every ground ball that is a hit or isn’t can be attributed simply to luck. So while the system definitely does show us something, it certainly does not show us everything about how well a pitcher is pitching.
Besides, wouldn’t a fly ball pitchers be lower than a ground ball pitchers? It’s much easier for a gb to luck its way through on a good pitch. A line drive is a line drive and a HR is usually a homerun.
no, that’s why pitchers who can sustain high GB rates (like Wang, Webb, Hudson) are so successful, despite their low K totals. But those guys are rare. You generally want pitches on the ground, because they’re more likely to be singles if they do indeed turn into hits, rather than doubles and homers.
I’m still trying to work out exactly how to interpret BABip
The guys you think of as great hitters do tend to have higher BABip - this is no big surprise, they hit the ball cleaner, and it’s pretty hard to get out on a ball you hit 450 feet.
It seems for pitchers, it’s pretty much luck. You might expect sinkerballers like Webb or Wang to have lower BABip than league average, since they live or die on generating groundouts. In fact over their careers, both of those two are very close to league average - although perhaps unsurprisingly both have a much lower BABip in games they win than in games they lose. On the other hand, someone with a high BABip is probably throwing a lot of meatballs that get hit hard.
What about a flyball pitcher? Does it show if they are higher or lower?
I dunno… Matt Cain’s probably an outlier so his .266 BAbip shouldn’t be taken as representative; OP’s of course been very inconsistent his whole career so again his .290 BAbip is probably not something you can read too much into. And we know John Maine’s numbers from last year - outliers either side of average for the two halves.
Maine’s BABIP in ‘06 was .225. I guess that’s a fluke too?
This is too counterintuitive, so I did a little research:
can’t post link, but it’s on insidethebook(dot)com
The standard deviation of the SD for all the 2828 pitchers is 1.35. We expected 1.00 if it was purely random (i.e., pitchers have no influence on outs per BIP). This is hardly the case. . .It’s on this basis that you will often hear that pitchers have little influence. What’s really true is that one-season’s worth of stats is hardly indicative of his skill.
What I don’t understand is why the stat of team wins per start isn’t more used. Isn’t that the object of the game? If a team wins a higher percentage of a pitcher’s starts than average, chances are the pitcher put his team in a good position to win. (I guess it could also be due to a great pen, good batting, etc.)
But, still, why NO significance to the stat?
and that’s one of the best ways of looking at it. It’s an indicator, something we can use to figure out the causes of a particular guy’s temporary performance, not a definition of a guy’s overall good-ness.