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1. bibigon Posted: April 12, 2007 at 03:08 PM (#2333305)9.2 innings. No one should even bother to look at stats for another few weeks, at least.
You seem to miss the point of early season games - overreaction.
:-)
My brain is getting old.
Well, it was my piece.
Notice the phrase "best-case scenario." I think he needs a consolidation season before we talk about Koufax. But if he does take that step forward (a big but), with the 3.5-3.7 ERA this season, then it's worth discussing.
It's like Reyes, who is talked up as an MVP candidate now- but first we needed to see his 2006.
What makes you think Perez will have control problems???
Seriously, what is impressive to me is that when Perez is on, his control isn't manageable- it's superb. Beyond my optimism, I'm just curious as can be to see if he can do it even 80% of the time- his numbers will be ridiculous. At 65-70%, he'll still get to about where I projected. If he's a half-and-half guy, he's still valuable, though closer to the league-average predictions.
I understand Mets fans optimism here; when he's on, he's very good. But when he's off, he's really off. There doesn't seem to be any gray there.
Enjoyed that piece, Howard.
I understand Mets fans optimism here; when he's on, he's very good. But when he's off, he's really off. There doesn't seem to be any gray there.
The NLCS, where he posted a 4.63 ERA in 11 2/3 innings over two starts, with 7 Ks and 3 BBs, looked pretty gray area to me. He wasn't overpowering, but he was good enough.
One start took place after a two-week layoff- the second on three days rest.
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Sure, but my point was simply that Perez is capable of pitching "all right". He doesn't necessarily blow up and walk 7 people whenever he doesn't have his Sandy Koufax stuff.
Fair enough- but I think this will be relevant if the Mets go to a 4- or 15-man rotation.
Fair enough- but I think this will be relevant if the Mets go to a 4- or 15-man rotation.
He'll probably gain some consistency as he matures, but it'll likely be as a league-average pitcher with an above league-average K rate. Not a bad thing, but I don't see greatness in his cards.
A horrible thing to witness the other night -- I don't think I'd easily get over it.
FWIW, neither had Koufax by this age. Koufax never even had a season that approached Perez's 2004.
There's nothing Perez has shown me so far to argue that he can become consistent. (to be more precise, consistently great.) His inconsistency is as much a part of his makeup as his fastball.
Oh, no question. My point isn't "Sandy Koufax was inconsistent until age 25, so since Perez is also inconsistent at age 25, he's going to be Sandy Koufax." It's that just because Perez hasn't become consistent by April of his age-25 season, that doesn't exclude him from becoming a far more consistent pitcher.
And it's pretty universal that should he become remotely consistent, he'd be well above league average, no?
Just for fun- let's say he had an outing like his first one in 60% of his starts, and an outing like his second one in 40% of his starts. Neither is likely, but they are far beyond the pale on both sides of the ledger that they probably even out (probably actually to his disadvantage, as in his best starts, he gets more than a K per inning, not slightly less).
His 60/40 line would be (assuming 35 starts):
184.3 IP, 119 H, 63 ER, 98 BB, 154 K 3.07 ERA
Now there are problems with this-for one, I assume his DIPS ERA would be higher. But for another, I just don't think he's going to have many outings where he walks 7 in 2 2/3 innings.
My point is that when he's good, he's so good that even a little consistency will allow him to put up numbers well above league average.
The problem with your assumption is that his track record says he'll put up more starts like the one against the Phillies than the one against the Braves.
His only two great starts in the past year came against the Braves. In his last 26 starts, he's gone over six inning only nine times.
Does he have potential to do better? Yes. Can he rack up QS in half his appearances this season? Probably.
It's the other half you have to worry about. I question his ability to keep pitching well when the tide goes against him. When he blows up, he blows up big.
When he demonstates the ability to pitch well when he's losing or doesn't have great stuff/command, I'll buy that he can be more than a league-average pitcher.
Is there some reason why you picked 26?
We've been over this ground before- he was a different pitcher with Pittsburgh in 05-06 than after coming to the Mets, and his velocity/command improved as his 06 tenure went on, got better in the spring, etc. I think it is easy to think "Same old Oliver" on the basis of one start here in '07, but I think such an assumption is a mistake. If we're having this same conversation after 6 good and 12 bad '07 starts, that is a different matter. (18 isn't a magic number- it's a stand-in for "larger body of post-trade work.")
"When he blows up, he blows up big."
This is only true in retrospect. For instance, in the Braves game, he fell behind Francoeur, allowed a home run, then fell behind the next batter. But he didn't blow up. He came back, settled down, and dominated the rest of the night. He got off-target, but recovered. How often he can do that will go a long way towards determining how good he will be this season. But it's not as if he can't recover from adversity.
No, not necessarily. If he becomes more consistent by turning bad starts into good starts, sure. But if he becomes more consistent by turning good starts into bad starts, not so much.
This line is consistent with an ERA of like 4.65 (a little better actually, since he's a lefty), which actually is pretty damn close to where his xFIP ERA is at now anyways.
How is Perez different in this regard from most high variance pitchers? That was really the issue that most people had with your projections for him. It's not that your characterization of his potential was different than other people's, it was that you seemed to think it was far more likely for Perez to "figure it out"/"develop consistency" than other did.
I stand corrected.
What stood out to me was that should he figure out a way to harness his stuff even a bit more than half the time, he'd put up numbers like the ones I predicted (3.5-3.7, K per inning, etc.) A lot of people who thought the overall numbers I projected were way off still believed he was capable of that level of consistency.
Perez walked 7 guys- he's reached that total once a year since 2004. I don't expect to see it again.
Harnessing his stuff a bit more than half time, in a 60/40 fashion as you suggested here, does not lead to a 3.5-3.7 ERA - it leads to an ERA in the mid 4s. Maybe the low 4s with the Mets' defense.
He's also had games with zero walks once a year since 2004. His 2006 zero-walk game involved him getting pulled after 3IP. I don't think either one should be the expectation.
And I'm looking at a bigger picture that one at-bat, or one inning. Wednesday night's game was extreme but not atypical. His recent history suggests he can't pitch late into games. He lets his emotions affect his performance, and he's mechanically unstable.
He has multiple hurdles to overcome. He's certainly a good risk for the Mets and league-average pitcher is nothing to sneeze at.
Well, I covered this already, but this undersells his K rate, since the bad start is as bad as one could expect him to pitch, while the good start fails to capture his K-ceiling (in other words, I'll eat my hat if 7 IP 6K is his high-water mark this season, assuming he stays healthy).
Wednesday night's game was not atypical of his struggles, but was atypical of his time with the Mets- he hasn't walked more than three batters in any of his starts since his first one with the Mets, nine starts in a row, more if you include the spring, when he walked 7 in 25 2/3 innings.
Yes, but mixing the samples of before he came to the Mets, when he was being coached into a completely different kind of pitcher, and after coming to the Mets makes any resulting statistical output irrelevant.
So which pitcher was it who walked seven batters? The one from before he met Rick Peterson?
It's not magic Howard; this game doesn't work that way. You don't meet Rick Peterson and overnight become a different pitcher. Of course what he did in Pittsburgh has predictive value - it's an indication of who he is, and the difficulties he's had in the past finding his release point/maintaining his mechanics, and whatnot. Could he improve? Absolutely. Do I think Peterson has already had a sizable impact? Yes. There's a difference between that and ignoring the rest of the data on him however.
Using that standard would wipe out most statistical analysis entirely. And if you take out all non-Met stats and sprinkle in his spring ones this season, you've hardly got a statistical sample at all, let alone a reliable one.
You do have a point, though -- heard a little bit of Wednesday's game, and one of the announcers -- Howie Rose, I think - pointed out that after Perez's breakout year, the Pirates made him use a circle-change instead of the grip he'd used the previous season.
I do expect Perez to improve a lot over the past two seasons with the Pirates, going from a bad pitcher to an average one, with a few flashes of brilliance.
Peterson's going to have to do a lot of rubbing before he turns Perez into a diamond.
Not magic, no- but when the Pirates deconstruct his motion, have him throwing pitches differently, and different pitches, any predictive value of that data goes out the window. Hell, when a guy adds a pitch you can pretty much throw his previous results out the window in terms of what he is likely to do, particularly if it becomes his primary pitch (see Scott, Mike).
My point isn't that the data points to him being very successful. It's that there isn't data I think points in any particular direction that's worth a damn, and I do like the chances of a pitcher who throws that well, in the company of a pitching coach who hammers home consistency of mechanics, to get to the point when well over half of his starts allow him to do it. And as we've discussed, that makes him low-end league average, with the potential to be much more.
Agreed.
But the fact is, 99% of pitchers don't fundamentally change their approach, or add a new pitch, or completely deconstruct their motion. It's not that statistical analysis is irrelevant- it's that I don't believe it works with any predictive value in this case. When I pedicted 3.5-3.7 and 16 wins, it wasn't based on careful evaluation of any sample- it was my belief that with his stuff, and the way he was coming on, that he'd be an above average starter in 2007 with the support team, the defense behind him, and the offense scoring runs for him, the pitchers' park... etc.
The problem is that we don't know the degree to which his problems were caused by the Pirates tinkering, and to what degree he struggled and independently of that, the Pirates tinkered with his delivery.
I'm hesitant to adopt the "it was all the Pirates' fault" approach. Unless we know definitively that the Pirates caused it, or that they didn't, our best estimate is probably going to be to hedge on both sides, and arrive somewhere in the middle. We don't treat him like we would any other pitcher, but we don't throw out all his 2005-2006 Pirates data either.
Well, here's what we do know- their change in his approach caused him to pitch at far slower speeds, with far less break on both his fastball and off-speed stuff.
Using any of that data is just bad science. If a scientist produced a study with data even remotely compromised like this, he'd be laughed out of the room.
Put another way- with that much of a change between approaches and pitches used, along with a clear change AGAIN upon being traded to the Mets, why do you have any belief in his 05-06 as a predictor of future success?
The Pirates brass are stupid, but they're not dumb enough to change a pitcher's approach after he puts up a 139 ERA+ in 198 innings. In 2005 his velocity was down significantly as soon as he came back from Mexico, to the point where we Pirates fans were pretty confident he was hiding an arm injury. Then he kicked a laundry cart in June. In 2006, his velocity was a little better (about where he is now, sitting 89-92 and touching 94-95) but his control was still gone for the most part.
I think it's ludicrous to throw out all his starts with the Pirates. He didn't change instantly as soon as Rick Peterson got a hold of him.
No, we don't know that. We simply don't. Those things may have happened, but we don't know that they can be ascribed to the Pirates management. From watching him Wednesday, at least some of the time since the post-Peterson transformation, his velocity has been pretty similar to where it was with the Pirates (unless Colborn messed with his delivery against sometime before Wednesday). Perhaps his velocity is high when he's good, and low when he's bad. Either way though, we do not know that their change in his approach caused any of these things.
If it was accompanied with appropriate caveats regarding the contextual changes, then this is incorrect. It is not bad science to look at more data.
Because his 2005 and 2006 happened, we don't know that the Pirates management was responsible for it, and we don't know that whatever happened during those years isn't going to happen again.
Note: In 2004, Perez only had 1 game with 0 walks. It's not a particularly reasonable standard in even a great season.
Fortunately for Perez, a guy who has a tendency to give up a few more walks than the average bear, he's got one of the better SS-2B combos to turn double plays for him. That could be a real difference by the end of the season.
What I've never seen mentioned is how incredibly difficult it is to steal on Oliver Perez. In 638 innings, he has allowed only 14 stolen bases, and 3 of them were in this game where Freel stole 2nd and 3rd in the same inning. It's probably not incredibly important, but I'm sure it makes a little difference over a full season.
Wow- I don't know how important that is, either, but it's really interesting. Thank you, seriously.
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