People of MLB…I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own team, but if you threaten to extend your ignorance, this league of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: join us and live in enlightenment, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you.
Some general manager is about to make a critical mistake.
Last season Jon Garland had a tRA of 5.74, or 0.01 runs better than a replacement level starter’s ERA (0.36 better tRA), over 196.7 innings pitched. That works out to about eight runs (non-leveraged), making Garland a 0.8 WAR pitcher, worth less than 4.4 million last season, and nearing 30 years old. Since 2003, Garland hasn’t posted a single tRA* under 4.75, and only one tRA under 4.75, that came in 2006. Despite this, he finished sixth in the 2005 Cy Young voting, largely due to 18 wins.
It appears Garland is a 5 run pitcher at absolute best, and that’s barely over replacement level. Anything more than 4.4 annually is overpaying for him, but the odds are he’ll get double that this off-season, and possibly a deal similar to Kyle Lohse’s 4/41. That’s simply unacceptable for any team, even the Red Sox (who are smart enough to not even call) or the Yankees (who probably won’t consider him.)
...So, which team steps on this landmine?
Repoz
Posted: November 27, 2008 at 02:58 PM |
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1. Silencio Posted: November 27, 2008 at 03:40 PM (#3016814)But, Garland isn't replacement level. His ERA+ and xFIP are better than replacement level by a good margin. And, ERA+ includes relievers, who have better ERAs than starters. All of a sudden Garlands 104 ERA+ over his career looks more like 10% better than the average starter.
I wouldn't consider him a bad gamble with a 3 year contract through his age 32 season. I wouldn't ever go 4 years or more with a pitcher unless it's to buy our his arbitration years or unless he is one of the top pitchers in the league and relatively young- see Johan Santana or CC Sabathia.
People claim John Garland is replacement level, and Javier Vasquez is a 4th starter, who'll be dumped to the Mets for flotsam and jetsam, it's pretty unbelievable.
Sidney Ponson is a replacement level starter. Even with last year's craptastic performance Garland is probably still a very solid #4.
Litsch is a different animal altogether. He's much younger, and his K rate was OK (5.2 last year) having increased significantly in his second year.
I doubly frustrated when people post something like this statement. What is the reference?
The spoken word intro to the MC5's "Ramblin' Rose"... I think?
Garland has now gone eight straight years with an ERA under 5.
It's also a slight variation from a speech in "The Day the Earth Stood Still".
Yeah, that line tripped me out too.
"It appears look at the stats that Jon Garland is actually a rubber suit filled with dogs..."
In 2005 and 2006 he was an above average starter, so I suppose at age 29 maybe he can rebound, although given his declining strike-out rates I wouldn't bet the ranch on it. I suppose for a large market team who needs pitching you can pay him $ 10 million /year and keep your fingers crossed that he can rebound, small to mid market teams should probably shop elsewhere.
"Also tRA is on a runs/9 scale and FIP is on earned runs/9*. So tRA is naturally going to be about 0.40 higher than FIP and ERA.
*I've never quite figured out why. Runs/9 makes so much more sense than forcing an earned/unearned split."
As per Graham MacAree its originator....
tRA certainly isn't perfect and it will certainly miss the boat on some players. And maybe John Garland is one of those guys. But the methodology seems sounds. Instead of just using K-BB-HR rates and assumes the same BABIP for everyone, tRA divides up batted balls in GB-LD-FB and some sub-categories and uses league-average rates for each of those. To me, that seems at least as productive as FIP, by definition.
I think the only real reason we have to believe that Garland is a better pitcher than the 5.35 ERA his tRA suggests is that he's repeatedly beaten that number. Same goes for Javy Vazquez in the other direction. In other words, we have reason to believe that their batted balls aren't league-average in value. Either that, or they have a (lack) of ability to adjust their approach depending on the situation.
That's a pretty doggoned good reason.
-- MWE
But my point was that just because Jon Garland's past ERAs are closer to his FIPs than his tRAs doesn't mean tRA is worse than FIP.
Well no.
But I do want to caution people that there has not been, to my knowledge, a large-scale validity test of tRA versus FIP/xFIP/ERA/etc. in predicting future performance. We know how well FIP/DIPS 1.0/ERC/etc. track future ERA because that has been studied, and to be quite frank they're not a massive improvement on ERA.
More accurately you could say he has 8 seasons in the majors and has beat that number by at least 0.45 every single season. His career ERA is 0.88 better.
Since 2003, Garland hasn't posted a single tRA* under 4.75, and only one tRA under 4.75, that came in 2006. Despite this, he finished sixth in the 2005 Cy Young voting, largely due to 18 wins.
Since 2003, his ERA has been under 4.75 four of six times. He finished sixth in the 2005 Cy Young voting, largely due to his 18 wins being 3rd in the league, 3.50 ERA being 9th, WHIP of 1.17 in 4th, 8th in the league in IP, led the league in shutouts with 3, 7th in the league in ERA+.
Articles like this give statheads a bad name.
Remember, tRA is scaled to RA, not ERA. So his ERA being under 4.75 isn't a comment on tRA per se - a 4.75 tRA is roughly equivelent to a 4.35 ERA, so about league average. His career RA is 4.90, so it's not outlandish to think that his career RA numbers are in that vicinity. (I'll be honest - I'm trained to think on the ERA scale, just like everyone else. Off the top of my head I can't say whether a 4.90 RA is particularly good or bad.) He had a 5.31 RA last season - again, I think the disconnect a lot of people are having here is the fact that they're expecting tRA to track ERA, not RA.
*** ***
For reference on Garland... His RA beats tRA* in 2005 and 2007. Both FIP^ and xFIP^ (bumped up .40 runs to go on the RA scale) missed in 2005, too. FIP is the only one not to miss in 2007, probably because Garland's HR/FB was 7.4%. Also, Garland gave up .70 unearned runs per nine innings, making his ERA look lower than he deserved.
<pre>
Season IP ERA RA tRA tRA* xFIP^ FIP^
2000 69.2 6.50 7.15
2001 117.0 3.69 4.54
2002 192.2 4.59 5.10
2003 191.2 4.52 4.85 5.04 5.03
2004 217.0 4.89 5.18 5.27 5.31 5.55 5.63
2005 221.0 3.50 3.79 4.78 4.76 4.71 4.62
2006 211.1 4.52 4.77 4.58 5.00 5.22 4.81
2007 208.1 4.24 4.93 5.50 5.65 5.42 4.86
2008 196.2 4.91 5.32 5.74 5.22 5.05 5.20
On the ERA scale, his tERA*'s have been:
2003 4.63
2004 4.91
2005 4.36
2006 4.60
2007 5.25
2008 4.82
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