SB Nation User Blog: Skirra

Of Brett Tomko and #5 Starters

Skirra — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:33:52 -0000

Here is a list of #5 starters and their stats sorted by FIP defined here. I tried to set 5 GS as my baseline for choosing a #5 starter. The point was to see what a #5 looked like using FIP and where Tomko fit in. If you have any complaints just list your choice for the #5 starter that you have in mind for a team along with their Team, W, L, ERA, and FIP. I will edit the post to fit them in I don't know if I included guys that are injured or have been demoted so help in that regard would be great.

I considered the order in which fangraphs had them sorted (they used win probablity added, WPA, as their criteria I did not.) In some cases I chose the guy that seemed most like a #5 to me and in the case of the Athletics I just chose one because they have a really good staff so far. In the case of the Tigers they mostly suck so I just chose they guy the Royals will face next. The Oioles didn't have 5 guys who met my 5IP criteria so I chose Trachsel because he seems like a fifth starter to me. For the Red Sox I didn't chose Wakefield even though they probably view him as their fifth starter because knuckleballers just don't compare to other pitchers very easily.

Player	Team	W	L	ERA	FIP
Clay Buchholz	Red Sox	2	2	4.5	3.17
Brett Tomko	Royals	1	4	5.67	3.37
Dustin McGowan	Blue Jays	2	3	4.47	3.64
Ghad Gaudin	Athletics	3	2	3.55	3.85
Mark Buehrle	White Sox	1	4	5.31	3.89
Miguel Batista	Mariners	3	4	5.58	4.15
Nate Robinson	Tigers	1	4	6.64	4.36
Boof Bonser	Twins	2	4	5.09	4.61
Mike Mussina	Yankees	5	3	4.36	4.81
Dustin Moseley	Angels	1	3	7.85	5.18
Matt Garza	(Devil) Rays	1	1	4.91	5.19
Paul Byrd	Indians	1	3	4.28	6.04
Steve Trachsel	Orioles	2	4	6.75	6.89
Jason Jennings	Rangers	0	5	8.56	8.02

DICE v2.01

Skirra — Sat, 10 May 2008 12:18:37 -0000

I haven't yet figured out how this feature will be set up. This time I will post the numbers followed by some statistic that jumped out at me as a reason for the players success or lack thereof. This time the starters will be covered, maybe next time I will cover the relievers. All data from Royals.com and fangraphs.com.

Player	ERA	DICE
Z Greinke	1.80	3.58
G Meche	6.31	5.15
B Bannister	4.46	4.19
B Tomko	4.98	3.50
L Hochevar	4.94	3.91
R Mahay	2.65	3.24
Y Yabuta	7.31	6.44
R Ramirez	1.15	1.09
J Bale	7.63	3.40
L Nunez	2.03	2.47
J Soria	0.00	1.40
J Peralta	6.97	5.28
J Gobble	5.40	1.71
H Nomo	18.69	13.98

Zack Greinke has lowered his line drive percentage to 5% better than any earlier point in his career. It currently sits at 15.8% and as roughly 74% of line drives fall in for hits this is probably a big factor in his success. Bonus stat(s):1.12 GB/FB Ratio 1.12 second highest of his career.

Gil Meche's fastball has dropped over 1 mph from last year and is the slowest of his career. This could explain his high HR/9 Ratio of 1.58 ( the highest of his career). Bonus stat(s): 5.72 K/9 3.35 BB/9 both worse than last year.

Brian Bannister has thrown his fastball about 5% less than last year but fangraphs is showing a cutter at 85mph as the source of that change. This could be a sign of Banny's problems as he has said that he junked his cutter a few years ago (which fangraphs seems to back up showing none over the last few years) and Posnanski has noted in his Banny Logs that this cutter that seems to have hurt him this year. Bonus stat(s): How could I give a bonus stat on Banny and not have it be BABIP: 2.85 which is still below league average and his K/9 is the highest of his career at 5.10.

Brett Tomko has suddenly turned into a groundball pitcher with a GB/FB Ratio of 1.84. This is by far the best of his career, but otherwise his numbers seem to be well within his career averages. Bonus stat(s): He is slightly more than doubling his career curveball percentage throwing that pitch 13.4% of the time. This is at teh expense of all of his other pitches suggesting that he isn't junking something else to throw the curve.

Luke Hochevar 4.18 BB/9 is my only complaint as it is too high but I suspect as he gets more time it will go down. Bonus stat(s): This is not a stat at all really but I was at the last game where he pitched and I was truly impressed. He looked done a couple of times and got himself through it. I was surprised to see him back out there in the 7th but he pitched well in that frame. The walk before the homerun was the killer to me because he should have been out of the inning by then.

Bonus Player: Joakim Soria has a K/BB Ratio of 15. Bonus stat(s): 10.13 K/9 there is no point in talking about any of the hitting stats against Soria because virtually no one has even come close. Forget about walking too as his BB/9 is .68. I will leave the starter v reliever debate to others but he has to pitch more than the 60 or so innings that he is on pace for. Bonus Bonus stat(s): .38 WHIP.

Poll

Who should be covered next time?

Starters again

13 votes

Relievers

8 votes

Just give me the numbers and shut up.

14 votes

35 votes | Poll has closed

A brighter future after failure dynasty?

Skirra — Fri, 02 May 2008 18:20:03 -0000

A brighter future after failure dynasty?

ESPN has this article up about teams who have suffered through failure of dynastic performance. The most notable point though is their brief prognosis for the future of the team. It is always encouraging to see a national media member recognizing that this is a franchise on the rise.

Defense Independent Component ERA (DICE)

Skirra — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 17:20:00 -0000

This offseason there was some discussion of Defense Independent Component ERA (DICE) as a way to rate a pitchers performance. I apologize to whomever brought it up for not giving proper credit but let me know and I will give proper attribution. For those of you who are not familiar with DICE here is a explanation.

The basic idea is to evaluate a pitchers performance in a readable way independent of defense. I have been thinking of providing the DICE for the Royals on a regular basis but when I ran the numbers earlier in the year they were all over the place (some pitchers had negative DICE numbers) due to small sample size issues. I hope now that there is some more data I will be able to do this at 2-3 week intervals.

As an observation the focus on defense has apparently not helped out the pitchers as almost all of them do better when defense is removed from the equation, although Nomo is still terrible.

Player	ERA	DICE
Z Greinke	1.25	3.50
B Bannister	2.48	2.94
G Meche	8.00	5.48
B Tomko	5.25	3.92
J Bale	7.63	3.40
R Ramirez	0.87	0.92
R Mahay	2.70	2.90
L Nunez	2.70	2.20
Y Yabuta	9.00	6.70
J Soria	0.00	0.56
L Hochevar	11.57	2.76
J Gobble	6.23	1.78
H Nomo	18.69	13.98
J Peralta	4.15	1.29

Poll

Would you like to see this continue as a regularly updated (every 2-3 weeks) feature?

Yes

25 votes

No

1 votes

26 votes | Poll has closed

The DICE for the best in MLB

Skirra — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 16:35:22 -0000

I got bored and computed the DICE for the top 100 in wins last year. (Looking back I wish that I had done IP or ERA instead.)If anyone can tell me how to post an excel spreadsheet I can put it up; if you are interested. The results were somehat predictable at the top but there were some interesting things that jumped out at me.

Some quick observations:
Boston and NY must have terrible defense because their pitchers gained the most when removing defense from the equation. I think parks may have hurt them too with the big outfield in NY allowing more hits to fall in and the monster turning long fly balls into hits.

Predictably the three guys from SD that qualified (Maddux, Young and Peavy) were in the top 15. Peavy and young were just really good though so I don't know how much Petco helped them.

Surprisingly even though 20 guys had actual ERAs over 5 (and a few over 6) only 8 had a DICE over five.

BTW Fausto Carmona DICE 3.7 (ERA 3.07) combine that with the huge IP numbers last year and I expect a big regression.
Joe Blanton 3.26 (3.95) was better than Haren 3.46 (3.07) and Santana 3.58 (3.33)
Dontrelle Willis 91st 4.89 (5.17) The AL is going to rock this guy.
DICE ERA
J Peavy 2.60 2.54
J Beckett 2.84 3.27
C Sabathia 2.90 3.21
E Bedard 2.95 3.16
J Smoltz 2.97 3.11 (is he ever going to get old)
B Webb 3.00 3.01
K Escobar 3.15 3.4
Y Gallardo 3.17 3.67
C Young 3.19 3.12
S Kazmir 3.21 3.48

Line-up and Starters Reults

Skirra — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:10:04 -0000

Here are the results for Royals Review line-up and starters survey after 28 responses (if it gets to 40+ by Friday I will update it this weekend). I will give the results followed by some observations and comment on each sections. Overall I am not terribly surprised but the line-up is different than what Hillman seems to have planned. The starting five and the 6 in the bullpen had a pretty clear drop-off after the spots were filled. The formatting got a little messed up in the transfer from word, sorry.

                Position votes    Overall votes
1.    David DeJesus         (21)        (28)
2.    Mark Grudzielanek     (12)         (25)
3.    Billy Butler         (9)         (28)
4.    Jose Guilen         (14)         (26)
5.    Alex Gordon         (8)         (28)
6.    Mark Teahan         (8)        (28)
7.    Ryan Shealy         (11)        (16)
8.    John Buck         (15)        (27)
9.    Tony Pena JR        (21)        (22)
Mark Teahan Had 8 votes in three different spots (2, 3, and 6) which probably reflects what people's views on his power potential is for the year and how they view his speed. One person went with 4 outfielders and no catcher. To me the most surprising was Shealy who had more votes for the 7 spot (11) than Gload the Exploder did overall (10). Joey Gathright received 3 votes (all for the leadoff spot) we should also try him at catcher because he was the apparent replacement for Buck on the one ballot that didn't have a catcher. Olivo received no votes which is a little surprising to me since he is essentially the same player as Buck. Gordon was in the most spots (7 of 9 , 1,2,3,4,5,6,9) with no other player being in more than 6.
On to the starters    (same format as above)
1.    Gil Meche        (25)        (28)
2.    Zack Greinke        (13)        (28)
3.    Brian Bannister        (14)        (28)
4.    Brett Tomko        (9)        (14)
5.    Luck Hocheaver    (11)        (16)
I considered doing the starting five by total votes after the top three but decided against it because 6th place (De La Rosa) only had 8 total votes. I was surprised that both Tomko and Hocheaver made it because the overall view seemed to be that they would be in direct competition for that 5th spot. The Soria for starter campaign was also weaker than I thought it would be (1 vote). John Bale and Kyle Davies were also not as popular as I thought 3 and 5 votes respectively). Also Hideo Nomo and Roman Colon each got a vote.
The relievers
1.    Joakim Soria         (24)        (26)    (Closer)
2.    Yasuhiko Yabuta    (17)        (24)    (Set-up)
3.    Jimmy Gobble        (16)        (27)    (LOOGY)
4.    Leo Nunez        (7)        (12)     (Long Relief)
5.    Joel Peralta        (6)        (19)
6.    John Bale        (5)        (12)
The only real surprise reliever wise to me is that Mahay didn't make the 6 person bullpen, perhaps a reason to justify a 7 man pen? I was shocked that one person didn't vote for Soria in any capacity. No one latched onto the Tomko as closer idea floated by MLBTR.
Overall it was interesting to see how some guys had definite spots and others were all over the map. I would be ok with the roles that the voters put them in. On the line-up it would be great if Shealy could earn that 7 spot and to have Gordon hit well enough to justify the 5 hole rather than Hillman's view that he should be in the 7.
If anyone wants to see the full results email me and I will sent them to you. (Please make sure you can open exel files before you email me)

Another Survey

Skirra — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 16:41:42 -0000

This one is to get what the consensus line-up would be 1-9. It also asks who should start and be in the bullpen along with their respective positions in each. It should only take a few minutes even though the questions may look long. I took the choices from the 40 man roster and the non-roster Spring training invitees. Click Here to take survey

Royals Nation Questionaire

Skirra — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 07:00:13 -0000

I loved the idea of Royals Nation's questionnaire. I felt bad when I thought of how much time it would take him to calculate the results so I found a website that does it automatically. But it will only give a broad answer to how members of the site think and can't be used as Royals Nation's can for comparing two people's answers. I just want a quick overview of how people are responding. on each question.

It is the same questions in the same format as Royals Nation set it up. I am not trying to take his idea or credit for it in any way, shape, or form. If you have already taken Royals Nation's survey this should only take a few minutes. If you haven't then please take the time to do so because R N will be able to provide more in depth comparisons between individuals. I will publish the results this weekend if I get enough responses. Click Here to take survey

OT Fox Sports Poll

Skirra — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 16:36:47 -0000

With Fox having the BCS, World Series, and the SuperBowl this year I was wondering which coverage was or will be worst. Thank god Fox doesn't cover March Madness. Some thoughts about each:

The BCS featured more shots of the band than of the games. Added bonus Fox decided to ditch instant replay in favor of shots of the DLP skycam.

The World Series featured the smug Joe Buck, and the incoherent Tim McCarver. Added bonus crowd shots of the cast of every Fox series.

The SuperBowl will bring us Joe Buck again, along with the concussed ramblings of Troy Aikman. Added bonus Fox is planning on covering the elections as part of the pre-game ceremonies.

Poll

Which major championship has/will Fox Sports screw up worst?

The BCS

8 votes

The World Series

8 votes

The SuperBowl

2 votes

Fox Sports is evil and has ruined all three and I couldn't possibly choose which is worse.

18 votes

36 votes | Poll has closed

BCS Chaos

Skirra — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 17:43:10 -0000

I am here to go on the record that there will again be a split National title. There are several ways that this could happen but the one relevant one is that KU can be the AP national champion.

Beware this turned out to be a longer post than I planned. Back to studying for finals.

If the polls hold then it will be Georgia v OSU, and if all the "experts" are right then it will be LSU v OSU. Georgia has a bad loss to a South Carolina team that fell apart at the end of the year, and they were soundly beaten by Tennessee. LSU lost to two unranked teams (overtime loses still count, the better team should prevail the longer the game goes because of talent, depth, size, strength, speed, etc.)

On to the rest of the contenders.Oklahoma beat the (formerly) number one team in the country twice. But they also lost to two unranked teams. The national media is discounting Kansas because of these two games, but Kansas beat both teams the Sooners lost to. Virginia Tech shouldn't be in because of the blowout loss to LSU and a loss to BC who was a good but not great team this year. USC, the only reason they are in teh discussion is because ESPN treats them like the Duke of college football. A loss to a 41 point underdog (Stanford) and a one man team (Oregon). West Virginia and Missouri are out, you just can't get your second loss in the last week of the season and hope to stay relevant.

The problem is not the teams that will play Ohio State it's the Buckeyes that will cause the final bit of havoc as the final straw in what has been a crazy season. The Big Ten was down this year. Two of their conference wins came against teams that lost to 1AA (FCS) opponents. If they lose and Kansas or even one of the other contenders wins big over a quality opponent then that team will have a legit claim to the title

Brief side note about Hawaii. They have no chance for so many reasons but if they beat a BCS school they will have a claim, even if it is too late by then.

If KU wins and Hawaii loses their BCS game as many expect then KU will have a quality win to go with the only quality loss among all of the contenders. (Illinois even in a resurgent year is not a quality loss considering they were soundly beaten by Missouri) Thus KU should be the AP national champion. Thank You BCS.

If anyone noticed I was half right on my theory for how KU could get into the BCS game (didn't get the VT loss and LSU won by too much to get us in the front door) My prediction is in the Fiesta Bowl post.

Poll

Who Should play for the BCS Title (Pick Two please)

Oklahoma

2 votes

Georgia

0 votes

USC

0 votes

LSU

1 votes

Hawaii

0 votes

Ohio State

2 votes

Virginia Tech

0 votes

Kansas

3 votes

8 votes | Poll has closed