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 >140 innings at 0.70 ERA.
Somewhat true, but part of the reason some of those series were cakewalks was because he didn't allow any runs. And you are kind of eliminating any "clutch points" from years in which the Yankees didn't win the world series. With this you are missing the '95 LDS, the '01 LDS, the '03 LCS etc.
Or the 2012 Nationals.
Exactly true.
Those innings don't matter because they just don't.
As GregD suggests, the point about Rivera is that he did it for 15 years in a row.
To some extent, Ray, it's like you're saying "I don't see what's so great about all those times Hank Aaron hit 44 home runs. Davey Johnson hit 43 one year." :)
Interestingly, rWAR and fWAR tell very different stories.
rWAR: Rivera 53, Pettitte 55
fWAR: Rivera 39, Pettitte 69
Great
In his defense (not that he needs it from me), Ray (and Snapper) are responding to questions posed early in the thread about his HOF candidacy. It's not like they just jumped in to crap on Rivera for kicks.
fWAR ignores the fact that Rivera has suppressed opponent BABIP consistently despite playing with horrific defenses behind him throughout his career. Not really that interesting, or useful IMO.
I think he is HoF worthy, and I refuse to give the BBWA more power, so I don't care first ballot/unanymous/what have you. For what it is worth I don't think a reliver can be "Inner Circle", but if one could it is obviously him.
This is a fair point. At the same time, it is extraordinarily easier to find a reliever who will post a 200 ERA+ than it is to find an OF who will hit 44 home runs or post a 155 OPS+.
Good closers are replaceable, great closers (even if temporarily great) are extremely valuable pieces to a baseball team.
Given the relative inconsistency of relievers, I'd say you have a better chance of guessing which batters will post those lines than relievers this year. Of course the batter's more valuable than the reliever, there's absolutely no one here arguing that. A consistently dominant reliever is likely more rare than a consistently excellent batter.
I was discounting that as a different beast entirely, but your point stands.
To claim "his fair share," you have to include 2004 ALCS game 4. But if he converts, it gets put into the "cakewalk" category. You're kind of trying to have it both ways. E.G. This way of thinking would give him more postseason credit if he blew some of the close games in the 2000 world series but saved game 7 even though he would have had a worse postseason than what actually happened.
I assume so. Personally, I think fWAR is wrong on DIPS, but right on leverage (assuming I'm right in remembering that they use Tango's chained replacement level approach for relievers). Not sure where that nets out, but probably somewhere in the 45-48 WAR range.
No one said not to care. What I (and Ray) are saying is that the otherwordly pitching didn't actually contribute very much to the Yankees winning Championships. The years they won, they typically blew everyone away, and the years they lost close series are the years Rivera allowed his handful of runs.
If the Yankees had the normal procession of above closers you'd expect the highest payroll team to have, over the last 15 years instead of Rivera, they would most likely have exactly the same number of Championships. That's all I'm saying.
He blew it the next night too.
The point was not how well you could predict each of the two but was the scarcity of the two.
Great comparison.
If you're drafting players with 100% foresight, and 20 y.o. Rivera and Pettitte are available, who do you take?
I take Pettitte every time. Hell, I take 5 of him to fill my rotation before I draft Rivera. It's just not that hard to find very good relievers.
For me - and perhaps this qualifies for you as "not understanding"? - closers are valuable, but that value is limited relative to guys who play more innings. To be a worthy Hall of Famer as a closer, you have to be the best closer of the last three decades. To be a worthy Hall of Famer as a starter or a third baseman, you can be worse than dozens of guys from the last few decades.
The point still stands because it would have been a 4-1 series win and thus a "cake-walk".
This line of thinking implies that excellence only has value if it can be explicitly shown that it decided individual games.
I don't get the point here. Is this supposed to diminish appreciation of him? Isn't the same thing basically true for nearly every player that's ever played?
This is incorrect. Off the top of my head I remember Rivera pitching well in the '01 LDS, which the Yankees were behind in 2-0, the '03 ALCS, and throughout the '96 playoffs, when the Yankees were not heavy favorites.
2001 ALDS, Rivera closes a 1-0 lead, with his team down two games to none in the series, on the road. Along the way he retires Johnny Damon, Miguel Tejada, Jason Giambi, and Eric Chavez. Cakewalk! No pressure! In game five he has another two inning save, protecting a two run lead. Sounds like a breeze. 2003 ALCS, game three, protected a one run lead over the last two innings on the road. Walk in the park. La de da. I probably could name about ten more of these, but whatever. It's not hard to puncture a narrative that suggests Rivera resting in a hammock, being fanned, and lazily closing out low pressure playoff games.
74. You're right, I edited out 'Red Sox fans' from that post. I get a little emotional when defending Mo.
Emphatically no.
If the Yankees didn't have Jeter, or Bernie Williams, it would have been very difficult or very expensive to replace that production at SS or CF. At closer, you just move your next best RP in.
Again, look at last year. They lost Rivera, and it didn't matter a bit.
Closer is different than every other position b/c you are trying to assemble 6 or 7 good RP, and they are wildly unpredictable. Losing one of them isn't a big deal, b/c you can just move one of the over performing guys up from lower leverage roles.
There's no equivalence at other positions. The best RP in a given season often turn out to have been available very cheaply (see Rodney, Fernando). That just doesn't happen at SS or CF.
They lost that Championship on a Rivera blown save.
I never said his performance didn't contribute to winning games or series. I specified Championships.
It does seem odd. If people talk about player X having a great series and helping the team win it is small sample size and never clutch or anythign like it. Now it is well he was only great when they didn't need him anyway and ignoring the sustained excellence.
The whole argument seems like folks determined to argue against conventional wisdom or something.
E.G. Greg Maddux: Considering that in 1995 they won the division by 20 games, and that in the only non-cakewalk postseason series they played he had one good start and one bad start, If the Braves had the normal procession of SP you'd expect them to have from 1993-2003 instead of Maddux, they would most likely have exactly the same number of Championships.
Rivera has a 206 ERA+ in 1219 2/3 IP. Pettitte is at 117 over 3130 2/3 IP. So a spread of 1911 IP allowing 1041 runs or a 4.90 ERA which is basically Jamey Wright (4.89 ERA over 1896 IP - although a big part was in Colorado so his ERA+ is better than it would be if he did that in NY). Is that worth 2 WAR or 30 WAR? Wright is worth 7.3 rWAR and 15.4 fWAR in his career so I'd say rWAR is closer to the true spread than fWAR.
Are there any metrics that capture how available and how predictable these performances are from the FA market or from a player development pipeline? What does a "replacement-level" closer season look like?
The difference is that Maddux's value is not based on leverage, and "clutch" and post-season stats.
If Rivera had put up the same 1200 IP and ERA+ over 10 injury plagued seasons as a SP, he'd have 30 WAR and wouldn't been in HoF discussions, except in a Doc Gooden, "what might have been" sort of way.
Also, as possibly Rivera's biggest fanboy here, this makes me very sad.
If only there were some option between He Made Holy The Mound Upon Which He Stood and Closers Are Just Glorified Pinch Runners.
Are you asserting that you're reasonably sure the Yankees would have won less titles if Williams had gone down with a career ender and they'd had to pay for a replacement? I'm not buying it as a claim, and I'm especially not buying the level of certainty that's being expressed that Rivera was meaningless for titles, while a 5-win CF on a team with a nearly limitless budget was essential.
This seems more or less true for starting pitchers and positions of low defensive value as well.
This is a weird argument. Positional uncertainty doesn't seem like a good reason to downgrade the value of a guy that gave absolute certainty. You can throw crap at the wall and hope it sticks with bullpens, but it's actually harder to just throw money at bullpen problems and expect them to be solved because of that uncertainty.
Again though, there's not a person (that I've seen) here arguing that Rivera was strictly more valuable than Jeter or Williams. It's just fairly hard to see how that's relevant to the conversation.
Me too.
True (I think the paragraph is silly for both Maddux and Rivera), but if you were limiting to championships, then the Braves had a "cake-walk" to win the division and the pennant that year.
Well, I think you mean 2014.
He's announcing that this is his last year.
I think there is, and I think most people outside of a certain ilk of sportswriter and fan has basically arrived there. Everyone that I know that follows baseball was immensely impressed by Kimbrel's 2012 performance, yet also shrugged at it when it comes to actual value. I think the same can be said with regard to Rivera's career; he's been utterly dominant, his postseason numbers are staggering, and yet he's not nearly as valuable as a dominant starting pitcher. The only hitch seems to be when people arrive at the conclusion that value is the beginning and end of a conversation on what makes a player interesting or even HoF worthy.
People are talking about Rivera as a first-ballot HoF, and Bernie didn't last one ballot.
So, clearly some people think Rivera was more valuable than Williams.
Are you asserting that you're reasonably sure the Yankees would have won less titles if Williams had gone down with a career ender and they'd had to pay for a replacement? I'm not buying it as a claim, and I'm especially not buying the level of certainty that's being expressed that Rivera was meaningless for titles, while a 5-win CF on a team with a nearly limitless budget was essential.
I'm saying it's quite likey they win fewer. How often are 5 WAR CFs even available?
He's announcing that this is his last year.
No, I saw a credible rumor tweet that Rivera will serve a 50-game suspension for steroids, and then a 100-game suspension for cyborg circuitry.
It really is a weird conversation to be having here, isn't it? Pretty much everyone here knows that clutchiness doesn't win titles, yet the argument seems to be that if an impressive performance isn't the difference maker for winning a title, it's not really that big of a deal. That sure makes various Cardinals more "valuable" than I ever would have thought.
Only if one is voting based solely on player value.
That would crush Rivera's case. The average closer is very, very good.
This eliminates Fisk, Francisco Cabrera, and Bobby Thompson from having big mythical clutch moments.
He would be compared to the average reliever (not closer), right? Otherwise you would compare the Schillings of the world to other "aces" only and the Palmeiros to other cleanup hitters.
One does not follow from the other. The HoF isn't a WAR contest, and not many people think it should be. Value's a starting point and tells most of the story for most players, but it'd be a real outlier of an argument to claim there's nothing at all that's different about Rivera.
This is asserted without strong evidence. You'd have a hell of a time demonstrating that Williams provided the extra oomph needed to win a title that wouldn't have come from whatever free agent they could have come by.
About an order of magnitude more frequently than 206 ERA+ relievers that perform at nearly the same level every year.
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