SB Nation - Tim Lincecum

Beyond the Game Score: Park-Adjusted Game WAR

SFiercex4 — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:56:46 -0000

San Francisco Giants' Jonathan Sanchez, right, is embraced by catcher Eli Whiteside at the end of a baseball game after hearing that his no-hitter against the San Diego Padres Friday, July 10, 2009, in San Francisco, had the highest WAR total of the season among individual starts. Hug it out, gentlemen, what a great accomplishment! I'm getting a little teary-eyed just talking about it myself. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

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Recently, Crashburn Alley's Bill Baer did a piece on Game Score and consistency which found its way onto resident chief Tommy Bennett's No Pepper links. Apparently, Tommy's not a fan of Game Score, and neither am I.

I had been recently trying to come up with a way to adjust Game Score for defense and park, maybe attempt a shot at a new Game Score formula for batted balls. This seemed like an interesting side project to tackle until VEP posted this one-line gem:

I just use Game WAR.

I was floored. What an simple yet elegant concept. I decided to have some fun with the data and throw out some Game WAR numbers for the BtB readership. Here's what I did.

Methodology

I took all non-Interleague starts this season with a Game Score over 80. I decided to exclude Interleague games to eliminate the need to determine average run support in an Interleague game (in retrospect, I suppose I could have used NL/AL average runs/game in Interleague play, but I already did the work, so take that). For what it's worth, I had to remove seven games from the sample of total starts with a Game Score above 80. This left me with 121 starts, ranging from Jonathan Sanchez's no-hitter (Game Score of 98) to Randy Johnson's April 19th start against the Arizona Diamondbacks (Game Score of 80). Of the 9276 starts made outside of Interleague play this season, this supposedly represents the best 1.3% of starts this season.

For my methodology for pitcher WAR, I used FIP as the run-determining metric to separate defense from pitching, mostly because of ease. I took all the relevant FIP statistcs (strikeouts, walks, hit-by-pitches, intentional walks, and home runs) and calculated FIP, using 3.19 as the scalar to ERA (the NL should have been 3.18 and the AL should have been 3.20, but these points shouldn't matter all that much). I park-adjusted the pitcher's FIP according to Patriot's five-year regressed park factors and stuck the inputs into Pythagenpat. Since all of Patriot's factors are already adjusted to account for players playing half their games at their home park, I reversed the adjustments for this exercise by doing the following:

PFGmWAR = [(PF-1)*2] + 1

This was done to get pure run inflation/deflation values for each park.

I used NL and AL non-Interleague average runs scored as the run support component. I used a .380 win% pitcher as replacement level.

Just for fun, I also decided to look at an old question brought up by Jeff of Lookout Landing, regarding A.J. Burnett and the myth of inconsistency. I grabbed game logs for three Yankees, Burnett, Andy Pettitte, and C.C. Sabathia, during the 2009 season and calculated Game WAR. I also took a look at [Game +1 WAR - Game WAR] (difference between consecutive starts).

The Numbers

I have all of the 121 starts listed in this Google spreadsheet for your perusal, but here I'll list the top 10 Game Scores of the season with relevant data and game WAR. I'll also then list the top 10 Game WAR games with data and Game Scores.

Ranked by Game Score

Gscr Rk	GmWAR Rk	Player	Date	Opp	IP	K	BB	FIP/0.92	GmWAR	Gscr
1	1	Jonathan Sanchez	7/10	SDP	9	11	0	0.81	0.56	98
T-2	T-33	Chris Carpenter	9/7	MIL	9	10	2	1.78	0.44	93
T-2	T-28	Mark Buehrle	7/23	TBR	9	6	0	2.02	0.45	93
T-4	T-5	Cliff Lee	8/19	ARI	9	11	0	1.17	0.53	92
T-4	T-16	Justin Verlander	5/8	CLE	9	11	2	1.54	0.49	92
T-6	T-44	Roy Halladay	9/4	NYY	9	9	3	2.38	0.40	91
T-6	T-22	Cole Hamels	9/1	SFG	9	9	1	1.66	0.47	91
T-6	T-24	Tim Lincecum	6/29	STL	9	8	0	1.54	0.46	91
T-6	T-19	Jeff Niemann	6/3	KCR	9	9	1	1.66	0.48	91
T-10	T-37	Carlos Zambrano	9/25	SFG	9	8	1	1.90	0.43	90

Note: There were three other games listed at Game Score of 90, I just listed the first one on the list for convenience.

Ranked by Game WAR

GmWAR Rk	Gscr Rk	Player	Date	Opp	IP	K	BB	FIP/0.92	GmWAR	Gscr
1	1	Jonathan Sanchez	7/10	SDP	9	11	0	0.81	0.56	98
T-2	T-36	Zack Greinke	5/4	CHW	9	10	0	1.05	0.55	85
T-2	T-36	Tim Lincecum	4/18	ARI	8	13	0	0.00*	0.55	85
T-2	T-57	Zack Greinke	4/18	TEX	9	10	0	1.05	0.55	83
T-2	T-23	Tim Lincecum	7/27	PIT	9	15	3	0.93	0.55	87
T-6	T-91	Ricky Nolasco	9/30	ATL	7.67	16	2	0.00*	0.53	81
T-6	T-4	Cliff Lee	8/19	ARI	9	11	0	1.17	0.53	92
T-8	T-75	Roy Halladay	9/25	SEA	9	9	0	1.29	0.52	82
T-8	T-19	Zack Greinke	4/24	DET	9	10	1	1.41	0.52	88
T-8	T-14	Wandy Rodriguez	7/8	PIT	9	11	1	1.17	0.52	87

*These games actually recorded negative FIP, but that of course broke the Pythagorean equation (at least on Excel). For those games I used a FIP of 0.

What do we see in these two lists? Well first off, none of these games are actually bad. There were a few games in the overall list in which pitchers had mediocre Three True Outcomes performances but allowed few hits and runs, resulting in good Game Scores but mediocre WAR totals. But in the top 10 performances, there were no poor performances to be shown, unsurprisingly. Also, the top 10 Game WAR list is comforting because it contains a lot of names from whom we would expect to see great starts, particularly Cy Young winners Zack Greinke and Tim Lincecum. As a whole, these 121 games totaled 45.5 WAR if added up (which I know isn't really the correct method for calculating the WAR as a whole, but it likely comes close) in 1027 innings, a rate of 0.40 WAR/ 9 innings. Only Roy Halladay's start versus the Yankees came out as "average" for the sample.

That being said, there is not a whole lot of agreement between the two lists. Only two games appear in both lists, Cliff Lee's Philadelphia start versus Arizona and the overall leader, Sanchez's no-hitter against the Padres. In the 121-start sample, the R-squared of between Game Score and Game WAR was 0.26, and this should come as no surprise. Pitchers receive the full credit for all aspects of the game under Game Score, while FIP attempts to separate out defensive contributions. The strikeouts, walks/HBP, and home runs are there, but the remainder of the hits and outs are not credited to the pitcher in FIP.

When looking at the Game Score formula, I found that it weights innings pitched very heavily, as it gives bonus points for innings pitched/outs made after the fourth inning. When looking at the top 50 performances by Game Score, only 10 starts were of less than nine innings, and only one lasted less than eight. In the entire sample, 51 starts lasted fewer than nine innings. When ranked by Game WAR, 18 performances of less than nine innings made the top 50. I do think that shows some bias towards complete games that isn't reflected in the Game WAR ranking.

The home run, on the other hand, was punished more severely in the Game WAR system than the Game Score system. The first start to contain a home run when ranking by Game Score was Javier Vazquez's 6/11 start against Pittsburgh, ranked 32nd on the list. He struck out 12 and walked none in eight innings, picking up a 2-1 loss (and people think he pitched poorly!). However, when ranked by Game WAR, the first appearance of a home run comes from Gavin Floyd's 9/5 start against Boston, in which he gives up one homer, while striking out 11 and walking none in eight innings. That start is ranked 58th. Vazquez's start is ranked 63rd. While Game Score weights your average home run at maybe -2 to -3 points on a scale beginning at 50, home runs have a much more staggering weight on performance in WAR, especially at such low inning totals. Allowing one homer in nine innings of play already starts your FIP at 4.63, well below the league average of around 4.3-4.4. As a comparison, when tallying all the statistics of these games as a unit, the average game FIP was 2.02 in these 121 games.

Some more interesting notes:

- Lincecum appears three times on the list, and Greinke appears four times. As you saw in the Game WAR top 10, two of each of their starts appear, in alternating order, tied for second on the list with 0.55 WAR. Amazing seasons.

- The most victimized team was, unsurprisingly, the Pittsburgh Pirates. The team appeared ten times as opponents, being victimized for 4.1 WAR.

- The worst start, after park adjustment, belongs to Chris Carpenter, who struck out three and allowed one homer among three hits in a complete game against Cincinnati.

- Dan Haren was the only pitcher to allow more than one home run, giving up two solo jacks among 10 strikeouts and no walks in nine innings in a 7-2 win against the Chicago Cubs.

- There were four starts made in San Diego, with an average Game Score of 82 but an average Game WAR of 0.26. Unsurprisingly, there were no starts in Colorado, though i suspect after park adjustment, a few Coors Field starts would do well in the Game WAR method.

Consistency Talk

As I mentioned, I collected the game logs for three Yankees starters for 2009, Burnett, Pettitte, and Sabathia. I uploaded them here for your viewing pleasure; the WAR and Game Score details are the end of the sheet for each player.

Here are the average and standard deviations for each player.

Player	Avg GmWAR	StdDev	Avg GmWARDiff	StdDev
A.J. Burnett	0.11	0.16	0.00	0.26
Andy Pettitte	0.12	0.15	-0.02	0.17
C.C. Sabathia	0.18	0.16	0.00	0.21

GmWARDiff refers to the difference in GmWAR between consecutive starts. I don't really think standard deviation is the way to go to measure something like this, and Jeff Zimmerman has said that doing something that breaks down performance into buckets with assigned percentage chances of the pitcher's team winning would be more appropriate. Perhaps using Game WAR would be more beneficial in this methodology, since Game WAR is technically representative of a fraction of an actual win during a game.

Still, if you take this at face value, you can see that, as Jeff pointed out, the standard deviations between actual start values aren't all that different between the three pitchers, only one of which has a reputation as an inconsistent pitcher. If you take the standard deviation of the pitcher's start-to-start differences, Burnett does seem to have a higher value, signifying that he is "more inconsistent," though I don't think it's all that worse than Sabathia.

I think this was an interesting look, and if I get a chance (i.e. time) a little bit later, I might pick up all of the game logs for 2009 and check out FIP-WAR for each of them. I certainly think that, if we wanted to compare individual game performances, this would be a better way to go than using Game Score.

Raygu's MDC Mock Draft Results

raygu — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:30:11 -0000

I participated in a mock draft over at Mock Draft Central today and here is how the first two rounds went:

Round 1

5. Matt Kemp

6. Ryan Braun

7. Chase Utley

8. Miguel Cabrera

9. Prince Fielder

10. Ryan Howard

11. Evan Longoria

12. David Wright

Round 2 after the jump:

Round 2

1. Joe Mauer

5. Ian Kinsler

10, Jason Bay

11. Victor Martinez

12. Zack Greinke

This draft definitely didn't go as I expected, and I don't think there were alot of "autopicks", but I could be wrong.

Poll

Which pick was more surprising?

Fantasy Baseball: Early Mock Draft-Round One Completed

raygu — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:00:21 -0000

Here's a look at the Fake Teams mixed league early mock draft results for Round 1. This early mock draft is a two round mock, and Ian posted the first pick in Round 2 last evening-Tim Lincecum.

1. Hanley Ramirez

2, Matt Kemp

3. Albert Pujols

4. Alex Rodriguez

5. Chase Utley

6. Ryan Braun

7. David Wright

8. Ryan Howard

9. Joe Mauer

10. Prince Fielder

Fantasy Baseball: Early Mock Draft- Round 2, Pick 1.

Ian, yo — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:46:02 -0000

More photos » by Denis Poroy - AP

8 months ago: San Francisco Giants' Tim Lincecum delivers a pitch in the fourth inning of a baseball game against the San Diego Padres on Sunday, April 12, 2009, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Denis Poroy)

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Tim Lincecum. SP, SF.

Yeah, that's right. First pitcher off the board. If you're drafting hitters based on 5x5 categories, chances are you are in a league that counts 5x5 for pitching also. I think it's fairly clear that Lincecum is the best pitcher in the game right now and he should dominate at least three categories and put up a decent win total as well. I am among the few who don't draft a pitcher based on previous win totals and I don't put a ton of thought into supporting cast. Here are a few reasons....

-K/9: While his K/9 dropped off slightly, 10.42 led the major leagues for starters and is nothing to scoff at.

-GB% increase from 43.8 in 2008 to 47.5 in 2009.

-BB/9 drop from 3.33 in 2008 to 2.72 in 2009.

Since Lincecum has pitched in the Majors for two full years and a partial year in 2007, one can see improvement but I wouldn't get overly excited. If there is one pitcher in the major leagues right now that can strike out 300 batters in a season, it's Lincecum. For that, I will happily draft him in the beginning of the second round. If only the Giants would acquire a bat or six, Lincecum could win more than 15 games.

Sunday Morning Astros, etc. Round Up

DyingQuail — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 16:33:17 -0000

More photos » by Pat Sullivan - AP

C'est la vie.

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I swear, if Richard Justice keeps saying things that I agree with...

[Drayton McLane]'s probably making the kinds of decisions he should have made a year or two ago, but he kept convincing himself the Astros were one or two players from contending.

The rest of the article has Justice seemingly overly optimistic, and slightly off, rationalizations on how the Astros could be sneaky good in 2010.

An excellent evaluation of the free agent system, as it stands, from SI. It even features a picture of LaTroy Hawkins.
I truly wish a copy of this had landed on Tim Purpura's desk in late November, 2007. The would be such a better place.
RJ Anderson posts a calm, rational defense of Keith Law and the Javier Vasquez/Chris Carpenter fiasco.
BtB takes a look at what exactly happened to Tim Lincecum down the stretch.
Simmons hands in one of the better pieces I've read about the use of statistics in sports.

Tim Lincecum's Outstanding and Fatiguing Season

Harry Pavlidis — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:08:07 -0000

More photos » by Ben Margot - AP

Lincecum unleashes a four-seamer

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Tim Lincecum eeked out his second straight Cy Young on Thursday. While the voting was close and, to some, controversial, he's a deserving winner.

The Giants eeked everything out of Lincecum's campaign, with its 225 innings ranking 3rd in the NL and 8th overall. He didn't exceed his workload from 2008 (by two innings) but he did show some wear-and-tear, starting as early as a missed start in September. That extra rest was needed to recover from back spasms.

Following Lincecum's penultimate start of 2009 (against the Cubs on 9/25), I posted about a sudden drop in velocity, coming in his third start following the brief shutdown.

Should the Giants Back Off Tim Lincecum? - Beyond the Box Score
Zambrano peaked at 96.3, Zambrano was strong, just outside the top third of his peak range. His average fastball speed (93.8, with or without sinkers) was 7th out of 73 starts in average fastball speed (two- and four-seam combined). It was also he best average fastball velocity of 2009. So, there was probably nothing "in the air" that night pushing The Freak's speed numbers down. Lincecum topped out at 94.3 - that's his lowest peak on record. He averaged 91.4 mph. Throw out the two-seamers and he's at 91.6. Out of Lincecum's 77 PITCHf/x starts, that's dead last.

Lincecum's Cy Young campaign had one more stop on October 1. Hardly a stop, seeing how each of his final two starts were in AT&T Park. Another thing that didn't stop was that decline in velocity.

Despite warm weather (at game time), Lincecum's fastball velocity remained sub-par. He throws (at least) two fastballs, which I'm splitting them into "fastballs" and "sinkers". The so-called sinkers just tail more, and occasionally have some more downward movement (actually less backspin or "rise"). Call them what ever you like. Sometimes he sinks the ball a little more and sometimes he cuts it a little, but I'll stick with two groups.

Why the weather and the split of fastballs? I wondered about the effect of pitch selection on the range of speed on his combined set of fastballs, seeing how he threw a few more sinkers than fastballs during the final start. The aforementioned warm weather, meanwhile, can not be blamed for the apparent drop in speed. It doesn't look like the sinkers are to blame, either. They're not a likely culprit to begin with, as they're thrown as hard as the other fastballs.

Joe Jackson talks briefly to a newsboy about yesterday's news

DanUpBaby — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:52:16 -0000

File photo—Kansas City Royals pitcher Brad Thompson, center, sells newspapers outside a nickel theater in St. Louis, July 14, 2009. The Indians won 3-1 in fifteen reels.

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It's the most famous young face in the history of baseball—it's the symbol of purity corrupted, of the sport's loss of innocence in the face of organized crime and a gambling scandal that nearly ended baseball as young boys everywhere knew it.

Outside the courthouse there's a nervous crowd milling around, waiting for news. Suddenly there's a burst of activity and "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, surrounded by well-wishers, ex-fans, photographers, reporters, and baseball players, pushes through the double doors and takes the steps with his easy grace. The crowd is shocked into silence—the reporters' questions are so much rhubarb—but one brave, stoic newsboy, carrying his accusing newspapers guiltily, steps into the baseball great's path and begs, his voice quivering with the weight of posterity on its back: "Say it ain't so, Joe! Say it ain't so!"

Having gotten his lede, the lucky reporter stalks back to the newsroom. But after his famous silence the fallen hero gives the newsboy a measured look and says, "Well, it depends on what you mean. Certainly I was mixed up with bad people who were doing bad things. But in the end either the facts or the sheer gravitas of my story will vindicate me, and that's all I can really ask for."

The baby-faced newsboy sniffles a little. No more than ten or eleven, by the looks of it, he's already an old hand at the business. "I—I'm glad to hear that, Joe, I really am, but that's not what I'm askin' about. Didn't you see the paper? Haven't you been paying attention? I got signed by the Royals!"

"Oh, Lord, kid," Joe says. "The Royals? That's a harsh break. But I'm afraid it's so."

"I know! I'm WonderBrad! I pitched 57 scoreless innings in a row in the minor leagues—and forget this rag," he says, "I was in the New York Times!"

"The first break-up is always tough. But I say you oughtta look at it this way: now that you're gone, the Cardinals fans you impressed all through that great season, and in your first few years as a reliever—well, that's how they're going to remember you! Not as the pitcher of last resort, or the guy who could only come in after a certain percentage of the TV audience had gone to bed."

"What's a TV?"

"The timeline is hazy, kid. Don't ask questions. It's like this—a role player's best moment is when he catches fire for those first few months and he can't do anything wrong. But his second-best moment is right now, after he's gone. From now on you're WonderBrad. Ten years from now they won't even remember that your fastball and your changeup eventually met in the middle."

The newsboy's face clears a little—a boyish glow takes hold. "I guess you're right, Joe." The matter settled, the crowd having grown bored and a little confused, the newsboy resumes plying his wares.

"Extra, extra—read all about it! Lincecum Cy Young of the National League!"

"Wait, kid, what'd you say? Lincecum?"

"It's so, Joe. Some people say it's a sea-change in how awards will be won. Other people are just really, really mad about it."

So here's what I still don't get. How can you look at what Wainwright did from a won-loss standpoint and essentially dismiss it in favor of Lincecum? As gifted a pitcher as Lincecum clearly is, he faltered down the stretch when his team was in the playoff hunt. In his last 10 starts, the San Francisco ace was only 3-4 with a 3.15 ERA. I'm sorry, but that has to mean something, doesn't it? If won-loss records are suddenly obsolete, why do we bother to keep the stat?

"Don't read any more unless you're gonna buy that."

"Okay, okay. There's something kind of haunting about that last line, isn't it? Like he's just a little worried somebody's going to say, 'You're right, why do we bother?' 'If switchboards are suddenly obsolete, why do we have all these people sitting in front of them?'"

"Give him his wins, Joe. They're a narrative, for goodness' sake. You should know something about that."

"Oh, wins and losses are great; nobody's ever going to occasion a parade when he breaks the 6 WAR barrier. And Wainwright and Carpenter both had great years. But it's a shame that this is the debate he's having, or trying to have, when there's a neighboring one that's a lot more important, especially considering a lot of these guys probably picked Lincecum because of his innings and his strikeouts, anyway: Does the Cy Young measure value, or does it measure what that value should have been?"

"This is why I never strike anybody out. I cut off philosophizing at the pass."

"Say we could eventually have a stat that measures the expected value of each swing, from a grounder to the second baseman to a ball that should be a home run. Is that a tool for MVP debates?"

"Is this about Keith Law's ballot?"

"Javier Vazquez had better peripheral stats than Wainwright. He should have been better. But all those runs Wainwright stranded were valuable, even if there's no reason to think he'll do that again. Vazquez is a perfect test case for this, too, since his ERA has always lagged his peripherals. But instead we're talking about wins like nobody's ever lost the Cy Young to a player with fewer wins before."

"This is a slippery slope, though. Do you give the MVP to the clutchest player, too?"

"Look, I don't know, Brad. I'm just a baseball player. I can't even read, to be totally honest—I just figured Bryan Burwell would be really mad and I made it up the best I could."

"You did good, Joe. We all have secrets," the newsboy says. "I'm actually 27 years old."

Stats and the Cy Young

Grant — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:27:51 -0000

Stats are good. I’m not even referring just to the advanced statistical arguments that support Tim Lincecum’s Cy Young, either. It’s good that there is a record of events to which to refer while doing research. Old-timers can’t argue; wins, losses, and runs batted in are stats. They’re a record of events. The new school and old school might disagree with what stats are important – you say RBI, I say OBP, etc. – but there isn’t a baseball fan alive who claims that player evaluation is better without stats.

Stats are good because the human brain is a goofy little thing built to emphasize anecdotal information and subjective opinions because those are what helped our ancestors avoid tiger attacks and poisonous mushrooms long enough to have sex. Look it up. Since we don’t have to avoid tigers so much these days, we can afford to spend our time debating dippy trivialities like the Cy Young Award, and we aren’t limited by the anecdotal or the subjective.

So when someone writes that a player shouldn’t win the MVP or Cy Young, or get a Hall of Fame vote, because a player didn’t make the writer feel a certain way, it’s hard to take that opinion seriously. "He just didn’t scream ‘Hall of Fame’ to me." Don’t care. I don’t know what melody a true Hall of Fame career sings as it tap dances on your buttocks, and I daresay that shouldn’t be the final word on the subject. Give me evidence. Don’t give me feelings.

Otherwise, you get things like this:

One player hadn't faced Lincecum—"lucky break," he said—but he felt that Lincecum looked more hittable. "I'm still convinced that deception is a big part of what Lincecum does," another said, "and that unless there's a new wrinkle, people are starting to figure him out. He's still good, his [stuff] is still good, but comparing him to Wainwright? Wainwright was just a shutdown guy this year."

Looked more hittable. Lincecum looked more hittable. He wasn’t more hittable. He allowed fewer hits per nine innings than either Wainwright or Carpenter. But he looked more hittable. Right. Oh, and the hitters are starting to figure him out. You can tell because Lincecum allowed fewer baserunners than in 2008, a year in which he also won the Cy Young.

Also, Wainwright was just a shutdown guy this year. There’s no comparison. Other than the number of baserunners and runs allowed, that is. But those are just trivial details. Wainwright was just a shutdown guy this year. You can’t argue with that position because of the "just" that the unnamed player uses. It makes the statement unassailable. So when Lincecum had one of those complete game, 10+ strikeout outings, it wasn’t a shutdown performance because a player who didn’t hit against him says so.

Moving along from Carroll’s unnamed source, we shouldn’t forget, too, that Lincecum didn’t pitch well down the stretch. That's another popular mark against Lincecum. I mean, it isn’t as if he pitched well in a crucial divisional matchup late in the season against an opposing team’s ace. Wait, I remember that game. Hey, I guess that makes it an anecdote. And I remember thinking, hot damn, this guy is the best pitcher in the world right now. So I guess that's a feeling. Awesome. I can play this game too.

The difference between Lincecum, Carpenter, and Wainwright wasn’t that great. Reasonable arguments could have been made for all three. It wouldn’t have been a travesty if Carpenter or Wainwright had won – far from it. But I don’t want "Lincecum didn’t have the je ne sais quoi that I want from my ace" as the reasonable argument. I don’t want "Lincecum seemed like he wasn’t as good." I don’t want "Lincecum didn’t gut it out late in the season when the CHIPS WERE DOWN and the SEASON WAS ON THE LINE." Give me stats. Then we can debate what a pitcher’s win/loss total really means. But I can’t debate the mythology someone’s created about what’s important to the game of baseball. I can work with stats. Stats are good.

Zack Greinke and Tim Lincecum by LOWESS

Tommy Bennett — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:51:51 -0000

Today it was announced that Tim Lincecum would join Zack Greinke as this year's second Cy Young award winner. Both had excellent seasons. While Greinke likely has the edge due to Lincecum's more favorable league and park, both exhibited no real weakness. Both struck out more than a batter per inning, both walked fewer than three batters per nine innings, and both allowed fewer than a dozen home runs.

After Greinke's furious start, there was some concern that his superlative season might be lost as he bumped slightly in the middle of the season. Lincecum, by comparison, appeared to be more consistent: he had no string of dominance as convincing as Greinke's April, but neither did he have any periods in which he struggled.

I decided to calculate each pitcher's single-game FIP and xFIP (based on batted ball data from FanGraphs) and run it through the R CLI. I then applied a LOWESS regression to each pitcher's season to give an idea of how each pitcher's fortunes changed from month to month. Here they are, by FIP (click to enlarge):

xFIP comparison below the jump.

Interestingly enough, because of Greinke's higher FB percentage (40.5% to Lincecum's 33.3%), Lincecum's xFIP LOWESS regression is lower than Greinke's for most of the year.

It's worth noting that there is a great deal of noise in all of these plots. What LOWESS does is apply a local polynomial regression; you can think of it as an improved moving average. For those who are curious, I used a smoothing factor of 2/3.

Is this a helpful way to visualize a pitcher's season? I'm curious what you think!

Tim Lincecum Wins Second Consecutive NL Cy Young

GameFish — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:41:05 -0000

Tim Lincecum had fewer first-place votes than Adam Wainwright, fewer second-place votes than Chris Carpenter, and fewer victories than any pitcher to win the award in a non-strike season. But none of that stopped him from being awarded the Cy Young by the Baseball Writers Association of America for the second consecutive year:

Lincecum repeated as the National League Cy Young Award winner, besting St. Louis right-handers Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright despite getting fewer first-place selections than Wainwright in the vote conducted by the Baseball Writers' Association of America and announced on Thursday.
Lincecum (15-7, 2.48 ERA, 261 strikeouts) received 11 first-place votes and 100 points. Carpenter (17-4, 2.24 ERA, 144 strikeouts) finished second with nine first-place votes and 94 points, followed by Wainwright (19-8, 2.63 ERA, 212 strikeouts), who had 12 first-place votes and 90 points.

Carpenter also had more second-place votes -- 14 to 12 -- than Lincecum, who became the pitcher with the lowest victory total to win a Cy Young in either league. The previous low win total for a Cy Young winner was 16, by Zack Greinke of the Royals earlier this week and Brandon Webb of the D-backs in 2006. Both of those pitchers went 16-8.

Whatever the opposite of a landslide is, that's the margin with which Lincecum won the award, in what was one of the closest races in Cy Young history. But regardless, just two full seasons into his Major League career, Tim Lincecum has two Cy Youngs under his belt. He's got to be feeling pretty high (in the perfectly legal sense of the word, of course).