Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Mitchell: Pedroia, Cano and Magical Thinking
(www.huffingtonpost.com)
Pedroiadolia: The psychological phenomenon of seeing wacko images on dirty uniforms.
Read More...The narratives around the two players, however, could not be different. Pedroia is almost the prototype of the over-achieving “scrappy” player. He is a 5’8” middle infielder who does the little things well. This ignores that he was also a second round draft choice who played baseball at a top baseball school. Cano, on the other hand is bigger, more athletic and does not project scrappiness at all. Throughout ...
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< 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 >1) Lack of similar opportunity for other players;
Also, lack of opportunity to get hurt. You may want to consider those playoff innings as being done in exhibitions and therefore irrelevant, but the various shoulders, elbows and backs that tend to go kablooey during the act of pitching don't know that.
Exhibit A, of course, is one Curt Schilling. Now this is the point where you jump in and say, "He's a Hall of Famer anyway, so that proves my point" or some such felony against logic. Not the point. Curt Schilling lost all of his 2005 campaign because of something that happened in the 2004 postseason. Under the Ray DiPerna School of Accounting, we're not allowed to consider that when assessing his career.
You think you're being fair by not including postseason numbers. You're actually being unfair (at least when it comes to pitchers, and I'd argue for all players, but this point obviously applies to pitchers far moreso than it does position players).
2) Lack of any evidence that performing in the postseason is a special skill.
So what? It's performance against the highest level of competition in games the performers value the most. Ignoring those results is moronic.
3) Small sample of games skewing a player's postseason results.
April games are a small sample. So are games played on Sundays. The postseason results merely build on the existing set of numbers to create a more complete picture of the individual's playing record (a larger sample).
And this is just one example of the folly of your whole argument. You're complaining about the small sample size nature of the postseason, except when the sample is too big in the case of Rivera. Pick a lane, buddy.
4) Exhibition games the stats of which by convention are not incorporated into a player's career stats.
Not blended together, but ignored only by you and some other simpletons.
The results in the actual exhibition games, those played in March, are nowhere to be found on a player's BBRef pages. These are true exhibition games in every sense of the word.
But the results in the postseason, those games that are defined as "exhibitions" only by people trying to salvage losing arguments, are very much a part of the performance record. They're not combined, for obvious reasons, but let's not pretend they've ever been considered meaningless.
This is the clear spot where you make a break from what most consider reality. It is generally considered that the regular season is more of an "exhibition" for the post season than the other way around(see basically any other major sport for proof of the point.) The stats are kept separate because they should be for a reasons you point out; not every player gets the same number of games and they are fundamentally different from regular season games, but in a way that makes them more important, not less, basically by definition, which you oddly don't seem to get.
See my item 1) -
1) Lack of similar opportunity for other players;
No. I suspect if you gave Wagner 140 innings of playoff innings, the numbers in the extra 130 innings would look more or less like his regular season numbers. Nothing in my post indicates that I think that Wagner's true ability is represented by a 12 inning sample.
Do you seriously believe that adding those 141 postseason innings of Rivera to his regular season numbers (regardless of whether you treat those postseason stats as different from regular season numbers) doesn't create a more accurate profile of Rivera's ability and value?
Could I see Exhibits B and C and D and E et seq?
When there are multiple problems with an issue, there are multiple complaints. This is utterly natural, and is why I listed four main problems 1) through 4). This is your logic failure, not mine; I'm just pointing out the multiple points at which your logic fails. To blame that on me is odd.
I'll give you Exhibit B when you pinpoint the exact pitch that messed up John Smoltz. Surely it must have happened in the regular season, so that should narrow your search.
The idea that Rivera's postseason performance should be ignored, rather than at the very least considered like any other 141 innings, simply because other people didn't get a chance to pitch 141 innings in the postseason, is, again, either idiocy or intentional dissembling or both. Lots of players don't get a chance to pitch 141 innings at any point. We don't ignore the careers of those who did get that chance. And the fact that others didn't get the chance does not alter the fact that Rivera did, and performed remarkably, in a significant sample size. Jesus Christ.
At this point, I am dangerously close to asking -- seriously -- if anyone likes you. So I'm just going to quit here.
And when one of your reasons contradicts one of your other reasons, it shows that you're desperately trying to extract things from your rectum that are best left untouched.
Do you seriously believe that adding those 141 postseason innings of Rivera to his regular season numbers (regardless of whether you treat those postseason stats as different from regular season numbers) doesn't create a more accurate profile of Rivera's ability and value?
No, but Ichiro would have. If he'd wanted to.
Relative to what? Relative to other players? No. Other players didn't have the same opportunity. It creates a less accurate profile compared to other players. It distorts his profile relative to theirs, and thus is simply an unfair and disparate approach.
Boo hoo. This is Major League Baseball - every child doesn't get a trophy. The object of MLB is to get to the postseason and win the World Series. Postseason games are the most important games. You don't penalize a player for a limited postseason career if he otherwise HoF-worthy, but those who have performed spectacularly over a long period certainly enhance their status, and none more than Rivera.
Hmm... Ichiro is signed for two years... 2 x 162 x 9 = 2916
Under 3000 but things may get sticky at the end if you take extra and post season(not that they matter) innings into account so maybe they should still let Mo close things out this year, maybe give CC an occasional start next year to keep him sharp for 2016.
Your third reason is small samples skewing results. But when you are faced with a player with a large sample, then the problem is unequal opportunities. That's trying to have it both ways (or, to be the most charitable to you, which you clearly don't warrant, but I'm a nice guy, it's a single reason).
The absolute, undisputable fact is that looking at the postseason results gives us a fuller picture of a player's career. It's a larger sample, not an isolated smaller one.
It's not extra credit, which is an idea that you seem to be hung up on. No one advocates lumping the hits, wins, strikeouts, homers, etc. onto the overall numbers and treating it as some counting stat competition. It's looking at the postseason performance to give us a more informed picture of the individual. In most cases, it's a wash, or the sample is truly too small to move the meter. But not always. But it's more information, which is always a good thing.
Mariano Rivera has pitched 1340+ innings of meaningful, competitive major league baseball. When you deduct the 140 postseason innings, you are voluntarily choosing a smaller sample size on which to judge his playing career. That's simply foolish.
But if they have Ichiro pitch every inning of every game, how's he going to hit all those home runs that they need him to? Go without the DH?
No, he doesn't. And it's not just Wagner. Rivera is only at the top of the list because he's pitched so few innings (and probably boosted by the fact he gets to throw then one at a time). As Ray mentioned, from 1997-2003, Pedro threw over 1400 innings with a 213 ERA+. That was better than Rivera's career. From 1994 to 1998, Maddux threw 1140 innings of 202 ERA+. From 1912-15, Walter Johnson threw 1400 innings of 208 ERA+ and he added another 600 innings of 215 ERA+ in 1918-19. At the ages of 42-43, Clemens threw over 300 innings of 213 ERA+ and has two other full seasons over 200 in his career.
Now if you want to point out that Rivera is in damn fine company here then you've got something of a point (and where the debate about the "easiness" of relieving begins) but he has not been the best pitcher of all time at preventing runs on a rate basis and certainly not by a lot.
Ray,
It seems like the larger the number of people disagree with your logic, the more entrenched you become.
Being the 1 against 100 doesn't automatically make you wrong, of course. But it might be a good time to start afresh - truly afresh - and see if you wind up in the same place.
This is my favorite, and costs you all the credibility in the world:
4) Exhibition games the stats of which by convention are not incorporated into a player's career stats.
Equating stats that no one on earth cares about with the ones that people care about more than any others (the postseason) is bizarre beyond belief.
Mariano's numbers look a lot better if 1995 is carved out.
(2) Mariano was an unimpressive starter in 1995, but (as pointed out previously) he learned the pitch that turned him into a HoFer in 1997.
As of that point, Mariano regularly threw 3 pitches (depending on your definition of pitches): a cutter, a 2-seam fastball and a 4-seam fastball. And it stands to reason that he could have included an off-speed pitch if he had been pushed back to starting, but that was not a decision that the Yankees were willing (or chose) to make.
(3) Mariano is 7th all time in post-season IPs. That's not a fluke, people: those are pretty darn relevant stats.
Like I mentioned upthread, we've had relievers as a separate "position" for a good 50 years. Rivera is so far and away the best ever, I don't know why this is even an argument. Since becoming a reliever, he's never even had a merely "good" season - every single year he's been somewhere between excellent and superhuman.
Re: postseason generally: I do agree that, if the player essentially does the same thing in the postseason as he does in the regular season -- e.g. Derek Jeter (313/382/448 regular, 308/374/465 post) or Andy Pettitte (3.86 ERA/.633 W% regular, 3.81 ERA/.633 W% post) -- and you then choose to reward postseason quantity, then that is essentially just giving credit for having consistently great teammates¹. I suppose the player does deserve a little credit because they're doing "the same thing" against tougher competition. But not all that much. Some people (including Rob Neyer) think that Pettitte's 19 postseason wins are huge to his HOF case. I disagree with that.
However, if the player demonstrates a different level of quality in a decent sample size of postseason play, e.g. Rivera on one hand or Jorge Posada on the other, then I think that is fairly attribuble to the player and is significant.
¹ And also, given that the Hall of Fame requires us to compare players from very different eras, for playing post-1994.
What if the player consistently sucks in the postseason? Would someone on the fence not get in for playing terribly in the playoffs?
Was Ted Williams not the best of all time at getting on base because Barry Bonds OBP was higher than Williams' career mark over the last 7 years of his career?
No. But if Bonds had put up 17 seasons with a higher average than Williams, but then brought his career mark down with another 5 seasons of lower OBP, that would surely be relevant to determining who was "best." At some point, quantity does matter. Jason Bay has a slightly higher SB% than Tim Raines (85.2% vs 84.7%). Do you really want to say Bay was a "better" base stealer on a per attempt basis?
Yes. Because "per attempt basis" means specifically and exactly SB%.
And if you dropped the innings bar low enough someone would have a better ERA+ than Rivera. Quantity does matter, and if Rivera hasn't thrown for enough innings to make it meaningful for whatever purpose at hand, than he should be excluded - but if we include him, his career rate stats shouldn't be compared against the rate stats cherry-picked from mid-career of some other guy, considering the Rivera is at the end of his career (or at least very unlikely to decrease his career ERA+ by much at all).
Which he hasn't, which I think was Walt's point. Plus, it's apples vs. oranges since Mariano only does it one inning at a time.
If 1200 innings isn't enough, why does he bring up 330 innings from a stretch within Clemens' career for comparison? If that is the method, just cut to Hershiser's streak and be done with it.
So, you think Jeter and Rivera should both be excluded. I don't want to live on your lonely island.
Do you actually agree with the statement Walt was responding to: "As for the debate at large Rivera has been the best pitcher of all time at preventing the other team from scoring on a rate basis vs average. By a LOT?" If not, I'm not sure what we're arguing about.
No!
Of course Jeter would be excluded. As best I can tell, he hasn't faced a single MLB batter -- certainly he's way below 1200 IP. Ruth is much more relevant: he pitched 1221 IP. But that's still below my standard for best all time pitchers.....
No, you wouldn't have to exclude him, you would just have to discount whatever meaning you ascribe to the accomplishment. ALL pitchers are trying to prevent the other team from scoring, so they can be compared on that although if a reliever bests a starter at it in terms of rate, it is reasonable to not be impressed much because the circumstances were easier for the reliever.
Yes I agree (if Rivera meets whatever innings threshold is chosen, and subject to the accuracy of ERA+ as a stat). If you are using "rate basis" then you use rate basis (or rate basis adjusted by park and era in this case, otherwise we'd be talking about dead ball era guys).
Can you explain how you are using the term rate basis here? I'm really not getting it.
What is tripping people up is that the 1,000 cutoff for b-r's listing of ERA+ is almost exactly the ideal scenario for Rivera, given that he is just above the line with 1200 innings. Below the 1,000 line, people like Wagner are cut out. Above that line, you've got pitchers who are _well_ above it, logging 2,000, 3000, 4000, 5000 innings, having stretches over their careers as good or better than Rivera's 1200 inning stretch, but finishing well below his ERA+ due to all the innings/starts they put in. People aren't seeing the problem here with citing RIVERA BEST ERA+ OF ALL TIME.
Nobody cites postseason stats when projecting or analyzing players. Nobody cares about them for those purposes. It's only when someone is trying to move a pet candidate's HOF case up that they resort to these numbers.
Probably because you made that up. Relief isn't a position; it's a role.
The position is pitcher.
Does your head get itchy from being buried in the sand?
How low below 1000 do we have to go to find someone else at #1?
This would be the logically consistent argument for the people who want to credit good postseason work like Rivera's or Pettitte's; but to date I have not seen a single one of them actually penalize a player for poor postseason play. It's intellectually dishonest.
160ip, apparently. Craig Kimbrel, 160.1IP, 269 ERA+. Mo falls all the way to #2
So, 1000 innings is not exactly the ideal cutoff for Rivera. Anything from 160 to 1200 would have him at the top.
Why can't you imagine that when setting it higher excludes an entire group of pitchers, as you then point out? Then you purposely NOT figuring out who was the best "pitcher" you are figuring out who was the best starter.
Yes, relievers are pitchers. You are essentially saying they are not. Yes there are differences in how they are used that are important when comparing their performance. Sure, apples vs oranges but that is always the case. We regularly adjust for position, era, park, etc, etc, etc. The matter has been studied and quantified the best we can with the data available, as folks in these parts are prone to, and the advantage relieving vs starting gives to ones performance typically doesn't come close to explaining the way Rivera towers over others in that regard. All you can do is say "not enough innings" and exclude relievers entirely but then you have changed the basic nature of the question.
Also I honestly do not care if Rivera could have been even a good starter. Someone like Pedro perhaps never could have remotely handled Rivera's usage pattern as a reliever, particularly when Torre would start leaning on him heavily in the post season and other times of need. Pedro needed his rest, did not respond to over usage of any sort well especially as he got older and this was made a big deal of in Boston. Pedro probably couldn't even have handled how starters themselves were used before modern reliever usage pattern were established. So there is even irony in that guys like Rivera likely are specifically what allowed Pedro to be used in a way HE was uniquely suited for.
That Ruth could have never cut as a catcher also irrelevant to him being the best hitter of all time on a rate basis vs average(when adjusted appropriately.)
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