Friday, May 17, 2013
Powerball odds? Juan Pierre’s homers are long shots, too
(www.al.com)
Odds of being attacked by a shark marlin: 1 in 11.5 million.
Read More...Pierre’s clout came leading off the bottom of the first for the Miami Marlins against the Cincinnati Reds.
Pierre’s homer was his first since June 23. He whooped when the ball went over the fence down the right-field line.
“I don’t know how to react to those things, so it’s just a spur-of-the-moment deal,” Pierre told reporters of his homer reaction. “That’s about the only time you’ll see me smiling on the baseball field.”
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1. AROM posted on March 21, 2013 at 07:50 AM # hit 0 | hit 0Yes, you'd have to Strasburg Chapman just like Johan Santana, Pedro J. Martinez, and every Earl Weaver starter.
Does Chapman have three pitches?
It seems like a lot of these people think the goal of baseball is to throw as fast as possible, or for Chapman to have the lowest possible ERA (regardless of IP).
You'd think the fact that great SPs get $150M contracts, and great closers get $30M contracts would sink in more. If Chapman becomes a #1/#2 SP, he's worth $20M p.a., if he becomes a great closer, he's worth $10M. That makes it pretty obvious to me he should start.
I don't think it's obvious he becomes a great starter, or even a good one. At the absolute height of his relieving powers, Goose was a back of the rotation SP.
Couple arsenal questions with Chapman's health concerns, plus his own preference, and I don't think it's the no-brainer some suggest.
If Chapman can be converted to a good SP, it's obviously the right call. But I don't think it's certain that would be the outcome.
It's also not obvious that he will be a great closer if he remains in that role.
I like his chances of continuing to be a great closer more than I like them of becoming something he's never been.
But in general, I think people are too quick too assume that these small samples of reliever brilliance are automatically going to be repeated.
That's true.
Well, we know great closers are very unstable. Only a small handful have done it for even 10 years. Relievers flame out all the time.
Chapman may be more reliable as a RP for the next 3 years, but over a 5-10 year window, I like his chances as an SP much better.
He also had a 3.60 ERA and 41 BB in 50 innings while relieving in 2011. Control might be a concern for him no matter the role.
Now, obviously every player doesn't, and can't, get to do whatever they want. But Chapman has already established himself as a star, so he has leverage. And this is not like batting 2nd rather than 1st or something -- it's a hugely big deal that requires him to almost become an entirely different player, in terms of his responsibilities and how he prepares for them. It's the type of thing that requires full buy-in from the athlete.
As the Reds, I'd be disappointed that Chapman doesn't want to start, and I'd try to make him see the value in it. But ultimately, if he wants to make less money and be in a less important role, I think it's better for him to be fully committed to that than to be half-committed to a more important role.
And you base this on...what exactly?
Given his low hit rate, doesn't the high walk rate play better as a starting pitcher?
I mean, if a SP has a bad inning where they walk 3 guys and let in 1-2 runs, no big deal. But for a closer, that's deadly.
What he prefers is closing, for all the obvious reasons. If he had been pitching in the 7th/8th innings last year I'm guessing he wouldn't be quite as eager to return to that role in 2013. Never make your young stud into a closer, he'll never want to leave.
Not really. Ks and BBs mean lots of pitches. If he's only going five innings a game, you are putting more stress on the pen.
I still think they should at least try him as a starter, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that he wouldn't make a good one.
Presumably, this is a matter of priors, right? If your prior is that not everyone can return to roles they were previously successful in when they start doing something different, you might need a fair bit of evidence to change your mind about this. Right now, I think we probably don't have much evidence at all that guys can be excellent in relief, fail at starting, then go back to being excellent in relief. I might be misinformed, there might be quite a few more examples of this than I'm aware of, but I don't think it's wildly unreasonable for the Reds to think that an experiment with him as a starting pitcher decreases their chances of having him as an excellent reliever.
What examples do we have? Off the top of my head:
1) Gossage was an excellent closer for one year (141.2 IP, 212 ERA+), became an avg. SP for one year (224 IP, 91 ERA+), and went right back to being an excellent closer (133 IP, 244 ERA+).
2) Wilhelm the same. 7 seasons as mostly a RP (797.2 IP, 10 GS, 134 ERA+), excellent SP in '59 (226 IP, 173 ERA+, bst ERA in lg), returned to being an excellent RP (12 years, 1205.1 IP, 156 ERA+).
Anyone else?
Daniel Bard
Smoltz did the opposite, and I suspect that there's every good reason to believe he could have gone back into relief pitching if he'd wanted to. Then again, he didn't fail at anything, he was just plain good. Still, I'd regard him as an example of transitioning back and forth seamlessly.
I think the better question than what the examples of this succeeding are is what the frequency of success is. I don't know how to address that usefully. I'd guess that the answer is that there's just not a lot of precedent for it, simply because guys who were in a position to be potentially very good starters usually don't get moved to the pen; there's usually something quintessentially wrong with someone as a starter that gets them turned into a relief pitcher in the first place.
Which, again, leads me to the not very interesting position of deferring to the judgment of the Reds and Chapman.
Daniel Bard
Except we haven't seen yet what he does in a return to the pen.
Jeff Russell in the '80's: crappy SP for 3 seasons (312 84 ERA+), decent RP for 2 seasons (179.1 IP, 111 ERA+), decent as mostly a SP for one season (188.2 IP, 34 G, 24 GS, 106 ERA+), then became a top closer for 5 years (290.1 IP, 159 ERA+, 141 SVs).
Well he performed even worse when he got shuttled back there last year. At the very least, it resulted in a lost year.
Right, we know a lost year is a possibility with a transition, but if Bard is back to a 150 ERA+ RP this seasons, it's not that much of a loss, and was probably worth chancing.
Realistically, this is going to be a circumstance where if it fails a few times, it'll be awhile before anyone tries it again, since it probably goes against conventional wisdom to move a relief ace into a starting role, and if they're unable to adapt back to relief (even if it's only a couple pitchers and there's little evidence that the starting is what messed them up), it's hard to see teams being willing to take a PR risk in exchange for relatively marginal returns. On the other hand, if Bard is able to move back to the pen and have success, it should embolden teams, particularly if losing a year from a pitcher to ineffectiveness isn't likely to have a strong effect on their playoff chances.
I'd rather see Chapman start and I'd rather see him be good, I'm just unconvinced that this will occur.
I disagree. Lost seasons by valuable commodities in the team-controlled period are pretty significant.
Steve Bedrosian. 3 years as a very good RP (341.1 IP, 136 ERA+, 41 SVs), 1 season as an avg SP (206.2 IP, 100 ERA+), returned to being a closer for 4 good years (338.1 IP, 120 ERA+, 120 SVs).
What would he have been worth? 1.5-2.0 WAR? You usually can find RPs who can give you 1.0 WAR pretty easily. Even last year, they were able to did up Atchison, Tazawa, Mortenson, Miller and Albers when Bailey, Melancon and Aceves sucked.
It's maybe a $5M gamble. Very little for a team like Boston, and given the way the season went, it didn't cost them anything. They would have sucked with 1977 Goose Gossage as their closer.
At the break in 2000, the Reds moved Scott Williamson to the rotation, where he pitched well before a toe injury ended his season in mid-September. Then they switched him to the bullpen at some point in spring training, and he pitched only two games before having Tommy John surgery. I don't know which came first - the injury or the move to the bullpen.
That's the issue with the Joba example. He was pitching very well in the rotation when they made the switch in 2008 (11 GS, 60.2 IP, 2.23 ERA, 69 K, and 23 BB) and then he hurt his shoulder in Texas.
Did starting contribute to the injury? Who knows?
As a (not great) analogy, I recall Szym saying that research had shown substantial declines (on average) in defensive value after a position player had spent as little as one season away from his old position.
There's a lot to be said for "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." In this case there's obviously also a lot to be said for "fix it anyway." But then I'm a guy who probably never would have put him in the closer role to begin with. But then I'm a guy who probably wouldn't have a closer role. So I'm probably not the guy to ask.
As I said above, we was pitching great as a starter, hurt his shoulder, then was bad in relief, had 30 great innings in 2011, then broke his ankle in that trampoline thing, and was bad last year.
He's been hurt too much to really judge anything.
Didn't Derek Lowe go back n forth too? Crappy starter into decent closer then became a decent starter after
Yup, like Smoltz, the reverse of what we're looking at with Chapman.
Right, so if he's going to have bad control and high pitch counts, isn't that more tolerable in relief?
Randy Myers started 12 games in 1991 and threw 70 IP with a 3.45 ERA and 1.3 K/BB, compared to a 3.65 ERA and 1.4 K/BB that same year in the pen in 62 IP. When he went back to relief he had an off year in 1992 but was just fine in 1993. Neil Allen went back and forth with mediocre results in both roles.
The high pitch counts yes, but I'd think the walks are worse for a closer?
Depends how you look at. Chapman, like most relievers/closers with some recent exceptions, was of course a starting pitcher for most of his pre-majors career. He too would be going from starting to relieving back to starting just not at the ML level. That's probably true of almost all of the other examples offered so far. For example, Bedrosian did nothing but start in the minors. His first few years in the majors (ages 24-26) he kinda looks like your standard middle reliever break-in candidate getting multi-inning relief outings, the occasional start although he was getting a reasonable number of saves. His year in the rotation would suggest he might not have been cut out for starting as his K-rate dropped by about 3/9 ... maybe that would have been a 1-year adjustment but understandably 8+K/9 out of the bullpen in the 80s was a pretty nice thing to have.
Follow it through, though. If a SP has that bad inning only one inning out of seven innings, he's a hell of a starter. If a RP has that bad inning only one appearance out of seven one-inning appearances, he's a hell of a reliever.
If a starter only has that inning 1 out of 7, he wins the Cy Young award. 1.5 runs per 7 innings is a 1.92 ERA.
Let's say he has it 2 out of 7, As an SP, that's 3.86 ERA, and still useful. As a closer, he won't keep his job 2 months.
In Pittsburgh
Then again, I think TDA's point in post #17 is kind of a big deal. I'm too lazy to look for quotes, but I'm pretty sure Sale was pretty amenable to making the switch back to starter, despite the fact that he almost certainly would've been handed the closer role on a silver platter. Forcing Chapman into a role he's not crazy about doesn't seem like a good idea.
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