Comments on: Blogger Beat: Brew Crew Ball

By: metzelaar

metzelaar — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 22:23:18 +0000

Does anybody know if there is a stat for quality starts? ERA is so unreliable, given that a guy can go out, have three great starts, and then bomb in one of them, and have a 4.5 ERA. Anybody know?

By: jamie

jamie — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:33:54 +0000

it really is funny and strange, and why baseball’s so awesome: it’s measurable and generally projectable, but anything really can happen. greatest game in the world, if you ask me.

By: gipper91375

gipper91375 — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:15:07 +0000

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.

By: gameball

gameball — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:57:17 +0000

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.

By: casey s.

casey s. — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:40:54 +0000

given recent history, it won’t be until after game time.

By: casey s.

casey s. — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:37:47 +0000

It’s funny that you mention Trachsel, because that is exactly who I had in mind when I wrote the post. He was clearly the foil to my point. It was more of a curiosity, which is exactly what you said, that made me comment on it.

By: jamie

jamie — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:33:21 +0000

keep checking mets.com

good luck…it’s already misting in midtown east.

By: ksuth

ksuth — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:27:00 +0000

supposedly it’s going to start raining at 5 pm and not stop until tomorrow…any idea of when they will call the game and where i can check if they do via my phone (i have internet)

By: jamie

jamie — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:24:30 +0000

casey, the pitching form I read every day in the Post does include that, but it doesn’t really correlate to a pitcher’s individual performance overall…it’s more of a curiosity than a metric. For example, Trachsel in 06. He didn’t pitch well, but the team won a lot of his starts. There are too many other factors to consider for that weirdness to be meaningfully interpreted (or credited to the pitcher).

By: jamie

jamie — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:17:26 +0000

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.