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1. bobm Posted: February 09, 2012 at 07:27 AM (#4056994)Maybe I'm wrong - maybe the extra bullpen work would fall on the better pitchers. It's clearly possible for good relief pitchers to consistently throw 90-100 innings a year, but that's so foreign to current conventional wisdom that the manager who takes the pinch hitting advice would either end up putting his neck on the line by extending his bullpen more than anyone else, or dealing with an additional 60-70 innings from Danys Baez or Jeff Fulchino.
How early you can pinch hit depends on how rested your bullpen is. I don't think you can pull it off for the whole regular season without either running out of fresh relievers, or running out of pinch hitters, depending on your roster construction. Makes a lot of sense in the playoffs though.
But if you're the Blue Jays? You should be trying stuff like this, because it might swing a few games in your favor. And suddenly you're a managerial genius.
The 25-man roster makes this tough.
It's certainly possible, as Dan suggests, for good relief pitchers to throw more innings - but the issue has always been finding the right guys for that role. One reason we have the roster construction that we do is that it's a heck of a lot easier to find pitchers who can give you consistent quality in small chunks than it is to find pitchers who can give you consistent quality across multiple innings at a time. Guys with one or two quality pitches can get three outs at a time reasonably often enough to be valuable commodities; it becomes more difficult for them when they have to get six or nine.
-- MWE
#3, mgl's argument as stated on the show, at least as I understand it, was that in innings 5-7 you be aggressive about pinch hitting for your pitcher (1) if it's a close game and (2) if it's a high leverage situation at the plate. His argument was predicated on the notion that as starters go two, three, four times through a lineup, they get increasingly worse. So in that sense, by that time the starter isn't much better than the reliever you'll replace him with, and so you might as well go for the increased offense.
I think he also - though I wasn't paying full attention I admit - argued that managers should be bringing in other _starters_ as the "relievers" in these situations (I guess on their throw days).
---
One thing I've always wondered: do pitchers really "have it" on certain days and "not have it" on certain days, or is this mostly random? If a pitcher gives up hits to 5 of 6 batters in the first, is this information useful in predicting what the next 6 hitters will do? If a pitcher pitches a scoreless 1st and 2nd, is that predictive that he'll pitch a scoreless 3rd or 4th? If he gets hammered in the 1st does that mean he'll more likely get hammered in the 2nd or 3rd? It seems random sometimes in that pitchers will get hit hard in one inning and then be fine the rest of the game, etc.
I don't understand why the number of quality pitches matter here? In two innings, you're not facing the same guy twice.
I could believe it might be a stamina thing, although I'm skeptical, b/c they don't leave guys in even after a 10-pitch inning. But pitch arsenal shouldn't matter much, if at all, for one IP vs. two.
I don't know if this has been debunked or backed down from, but Tango and MGL ran a study that said it's mostly random. That if your pitcher got hit hard for 4 innings that the best prediction of his performance in the 5th was his current projection (that you probably had before the day started), not the previous 4 innings.
In fact, if your rotation goes deep enough to extend down to AAA (not that your 4-7 SPs are any good -- just that there's not much separation between them), might tack on a shuttle service. It would take some significant coordination between the AAA rotation and the big league one -- you'd want to make sure to keep the order timed so that your AAA options are rested at the right time -- but why not just plan on only having say... your #1 through #4 work on regular rest, use your #5 as more of a spot starter/reliever than true rotation member, start him only when the season plays out that way.
If you have a #5 who is clearly and undoubtedly better than whatever you have in AAA, I suppose that's one thing... but I gotta believe there are fewer teams who could say that was the case than not.
For a bad team, it probably doesn't matter... but for a fringe wildcard team? Maybe it buys you an extra win.
I certainly don't intend to sound overly critical here. I just want to understand the argument and I think the easiest way for me to get from here to there is to play devil's advocate.
In fact, if your rotation goes deep enough to extend down to AAA (not that your 4-7 SPs are any good -- just that there's not much separation between them), might tack on a shuttle service. It would take some significant coordination between the AAA rotation and the big league one -- you'd want to make sure to keep the order timed so that your AAA options are rested at the right time -- but why not just plan on only having say... your #1 through #4 work on regular rest, use your #5 as more of a spot starter/reliever than true rotation member, start him only when the season plays out that way.
If you have a #5 who is clearly and undoubtedly better than whatever you have in AAA, I suppose that's one thing... but I gotta believe there are fewer teams who could say that was the case than not.
For a bad team, it probably doesn't matter... but for a fringe wildcard team? Maybe it buys you an extra win.
The way to do this is to have your #6 and #7 SP in the bullpen as long men.
This was pretty common in the '70s and early '80s. The staff would consist of 3-4 true SP, 2-3 "swing-men" (long RP/spot starters), and 3 short RPs.
The 3 or 4 true SP stay on regular rest. When you have off days you skip the 5th spot, and you fill the 4th/5th starter spots with a rotation of your swing-men, based on matchups, or the "hot-hand".
In today's world, it would probably be 4 SPs who stay on regular rotation, 5 short RPs, and 3 swing-men.
It's one of those things that makes sense on paper, but just seems much more difficult to actually do.
I certainly don't intend to sound overly critical here. I just want to understand the argument and I think the easiest way for me to get from here to there is to play devil's advocate.
My guess is he's proposing the 4.5 man rotation. Starters 1-3 go every 5th day, they don't get extra rest when there are off days. The 5th spot is skipped whenever possible.
So you'd have your 4th-7th SP as swing-men, or in AAA, filling those 1.5 rotation spots as needed.
Based on a 180-day baseball season, your #1-3 SPs would start 36 times, and if they averaged 6.5 IP/GS, pitch ~235 innings.
I suppose he could be advocating a system where you go No. 1, No. 4/5, No. 2, No. 3, No. 5/4, No. 1 (but even then, you can't use this system with equal number rest days between semi-starts.
For the numerous (and often justifiable) complaints about MGL's tone, he acquitted himself quite nicely here. Well done MGL.
How about #1, #2, #3, #4/6, #5/7, #1? Skipping #5/7 when there's an off day.
It is confusing, isn't it. Literally any other show would probably be more suited to the name.
Kind of like how ESPN let the person who writes about sports less than anyone else call himself "The Sports Guy".
If you're willing to swap these very similar pitchers in order to get a good hitter to the plate in the right situation, I bet that's a big advantage. And although they aren't going to be a David Ortiz level DH, they're going to be miles better than most pitchers.
"Clubhouse Confidential" is a dumb name for a show about sabe stuff.
"Notes from Mom's Basement" would be truth in advertising, but less salable.
One specific suggestion is very much on topic
The idea of starting the short guy is for platoon busting purposes. Cook did understand that you just couldn't pinch-hit every time.
It's a strategy that would have worked pretty well with some teams of that general time frame. I've tried it in sims with some of the Reds and Pirates teams of the day and it worked fine. Works less well when you have a team with an elite starter or two and a lot of dreck at the tail end of the staff. Like it or not these guys will have to pull important innings from time to time.
Plenty of real world issues with the players though.
EDIT: (hopefully) for clarity
Agreed.
OTOH, your starters would be in line for more wins than they are now.
The Blue Jays can also take advantage of an obscure rule in their league which allows them to send a real hitter to the plate in place of the pitcher, without requiring a substitution.
You can definitely do things like this once rosters expand in September. One thing I like to do in APBA is, when I have a particularly weak hitter at 2b, ss, or catcher, to pinch hit for that spot with my extra 1B/DH types.
That's maybe a bit much, but I admired the guy's willingness to try new things.
Option 2 is not disastrous in APBA, since SS have a fielding rating of 6 to 10, and anyone not rated specifically gets a 6 rating. That includes Frank Thomas and Manny Ramirez.
I guess it would be a lot easier in APBA if you were playing with a different era where you can go with an 8 man pitching staff.
Not to threadjack, but I haven't seen any discussion yet of "Baseball IQ". What do people think of it? The matchup format I thought was spot-on to have front office people from MLB teams face each other. Even if you don't know the answers, a viewer has a team rooting interest for or against. That's better than just random BTF or SABR people, even though some of those folks are even more knowledgeable. I think the list format gets boring after a while. I would have preferred a traditional buzzer format that could bring in the more obscure interesting facts of baseball history that don't lend themselves well to lists.
I understand why people don't use a bullpen rotation, but it seems that it would help roster planning significantly (and would justify spending a lot more on your bullpen, as you would definitely need to have four very dependable guys to pull this off).
Did they correct for selection bias? I mean, if a pitcher sometimes doesn't 'have it', and a manager is able to detect that some of the time, then those pitchers will preferentially be taken out before the 5th inning, so wouldn't be counted.
Problem is that off days don't always cooperate. Let's say that you never want to skip your top 4, but you want to skip 5 as often as possible. When you have 4 games in a row then an off day (PPPPOPPPP), fine, skip him. But what about 5 in a row? (PPPPPOPPPPP) You have to pitch 5, then 1-4 all on extra rest and then pitch 5 again.
PPPPPPOPPPP - You still had to pitch 5 and 1 on regular rest and now what do you do for game 7? You don't skip 2 or 3 so they just go on extra rest. You could choose to skip 4 and pitch 1 on regular rest, but then 5 has to pitch anyway.
You can certainly skip the 5th starter when needed, but you'd actually have to look and see how many chances there are. Having a set 1-3 and skipping either 4 or 5 when the chance happens is probably a better idea. If you have the personnel to do that.
I once tested the impact of fielding in the computer game by taking two exact teams, rating the fielders at the maximum for one and the minimum for the other. The good fielding team usually went 92-70 or about.
Sure. That's why it ends up being a 4.5 man rotation.
The only situation where it doesn't buy you an extra start from a good pitcher is PPPPPO ... or a couple of variations thereof. For this one ...
123451O2341
And you've got an extra start from your #1. You don't "skip" to keep everybody on 4 days rest ... when an off-day pops up that allows you to give your 1-4 an extra days rest you use it.
The Braves did this flawlessly in the early 90s. The 93 Braves got 142 starts from Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz and Avery, leaving just 20 for Smith and Mercker.
Yup. As an occasionally voice/public-speaking coach I'd encourage him to work on trimming the "um's" as those distract from his meaning, and aim to put more changes in pitch into his voice; pitch changes go a long way to highlighting a speaker's meaning. As is, he changes volume more than he does pitch, which is like leaving irons 5 through 9 in the clubhouse.
Yeah, this is always the problem with something unorthodox. If batting the pitcher 8th gains you an extra win, then on balance it's a good thing. But the first time that the pitcher comes up with the bases loaded and grounds into an inning-ending double play, you'll be crucified by the press and the fans.
Of course. They're human beings, not robots. Hitters have bad days, pitchers do too. Everyone does. And at such a high level of competition you only need to "not have it" by a little to matter a lot.
In other words, something that you can objectively point to as being connected to the experiment would not be required.
Brief Google search doesn't turn it up, but Walter Johnson had a great line about this. Something like, "Some days I had the good fastball, some days I didn't. I don't know why, and I don't know if anyone can ever really know for sure." Big Train would know, I reckon.
I have no doubt that pitchers can have it/not have it on certain days. I have considerable doubt we can identify the former from the results of the previous inning(s).
All of the evidence I've seen suggests this is largely or completely wrong. A pitcher's early-game performance has almost no predictive value in terms of projecting what he will do for the rest of the game. Beyond the analysis in The Book, MGL has looked at this a number of other times, and always finds the same thing. And managers seem to understand that somewhat better today (though not completely), as they are much less likely to take a starter out very early in the game.
And I wouldn't expect a pitcher (even the Big Train) to know the right answer here.
Exactly. Like I said, they're humans. Sometimes we have bad days.
As said in #34, if a guy doesn't have it in the first few innings, many times he's not sticking around for the later innings to show up in such a study.
As an extreme example, it's pretty obvious that Rick Ankiel didn't have it the day he threw 42 wild pitches and wasn't going to get it if he kept pitching. (The next game he pitched, granted it was the next season, he struck out 8 in 5 innings and didn't throw a wild pitch.) Or conversely, Kerry Wood struck out 20 guys in one game. Obviously he was really on that day. There is no reason to believe that he can't also be really off another day. (Cue jokes about him being off for the rest of his career.)
I do believe that a pitcher can have it or not have it on any given day. But another problem in the analysis is that a pitcher can lose it or get it in the middle of a game. "It" doesn't just reset to a different level every morning.
Absolutely. We see it in other sports all the time, a guy has a lousy game for three quarters but has one quarter of really good play. Sometimes it's at the end of the game so we call it clutch, sometimes it's not.
And for one day, he got to experience the life of Mariano Rivera.
As an extreme example, it's pretty obvious that Rick Ankiel didn't have it the day he threw 42 wild pitches and wasn't going to get it if he kept pitching. (The next game he pitched, granted it was the next season, he struck out 8 in 5 innings and didn't throw a wild pitch.) Or conversely, Kerry Wood struck out 20 guys in one game. Obviously he was really on that day. There is no reason to believe that he can't also be really off another day. (Cue jokes about him being off for the rest of his career.)
Your response to someone bringing up a study and multiple followups is to bring up an opinion and two anecdotes? Not very convincing.
We have an incredible amount of extremely reliable raw data. It's hardly impossible to winnow out irrelevant factors. If we can't draw a conclusion, given the mountain of evidence available, my singular genius tells me we're approaching the issue incorrectly.
***
Btw, in general, when people write 'mgl has studied the issue and found x' that statement has no useful meaning.
Do you think athletes are robots that perform the same way every game?
But if you can't identify it based on previous innings, then pitchers don't in fact "have it."
This is an issue where, if you can't find it, then it's not there.
What does this mean?
Nope. They're inconsistent and have wide swings of performance. I certainly think it's possible that looking at weeks and months worth of data might be more predictive than looking at 3 innings. Even if those innings just happened.
I don't know for sure and I haven't even read the book. But if you're saying that a pitcher can have "it" for 3 innings and then lose "it", or not have "it" for 2 innings and then find "it", well the current state of having "it" or not doesn't really mean anything then.
Then I'm not sure what you are arguing, because I didn't say anything that disagrees with that. I'm saying that sometimes guys just have a bad day from the first pitch. And, along with at least one other on this thread, that when they do, they usually get pulled before they can get deep enough into a game for it to show up in a study that doesn't account for that.
Well, someone else brought up that point. I agree with it, because again these aren't robots we are talking about. And I'm not sure what "doesn't really mean anything then" unless that's just another way of saying "if you can't describe what "it" means then it doesn't exist."
Wait, didn't we have a huge thread about very good SPs pitching the 9th when they were "on"?
And didn't the data show that these very good SPs had like a 2.50 ERA in the 9th when they were "on"?
That seems contrary to your statement.
I don't know why you think it should, since good outcomes don't track all that closely with good efforts in baseball. But I find the idea preposterous that there aren't days when pitchers (hell, all athletes) are not perforing closest to their maximum ability (and others when they're not).
Let's look at it this way, for simplicity's sake (in reality, there'd be shades of it - and most days a pitcher is probably neither in a state of it or not it - and varying degrees of results).
You can have:
It/Good Results in Innings 1-2
Not It/Good Results in Innings 1-2
It/Bad Results in Innings 1-2
Not It/Bad Results in Innings 1-2
In innings 3-4, the guys in the first group may very well continue to produce at a higher level and the guys in Column 4 (the ones who don't get yanked first) may well continue to pitch poorly (with results to match). Meanwhile, the middle guys start to get results that more closely line up with their effort. But if you're trying to track that simply by examining the results, it looks like there's no correlation between pitching well one inning and continuing to do so the next inning.
So, to me, the research doesn't disprove that pitchers can't have "it." What it demonstrates is that we can't identify what "it" is simply by looking at the results.
It's more than just being hit hard. Not locating the plate, not hitting top speeds on pitches also factors in.
That seems to be what wee see in DMB, for instance.
Go look at the PitchFX data at Fangraphs. Pitchers' average fastball velocities swing multiple MPH from game to game. If that's not evidence to suggest that pitchers' sometimes "have it" and sometimes don't, I don't know what is. That early game results are not necessarily predictive of late game results doesn't change that fact. A pitcher might not even pitch worse with his B stuff. Given that Walter Johnson completed about 5/6 of his starts and had a career ERA around 2, I'm guessing he was able to to adjust when he didn't have his best stuff.
It's one thing to take Johnson's statement and say, "OK, but so what? It probably doesn't really affect the pitchers' effectiveness all that much whether they have their best stuff or not, and we can't really do anything with this knowledge anyway," and a totally different thing to say, "All of the evidence I've seen suggests this is largely or completely wrong." To react the latter way is to be the saber Murray Chass.
If anyone can link to the data, I'd appreciate it.
Re 60 and 64: if "having it" or "being on" doesn't actually mean a pitcher performs better, then I don't see how these concepts have any meaning. The claim becomes not only unfalsifiable, but also completely uninteresting. If Johnson pitched just as well when he didn't have the "good fastball," then who cares?
That Walter Johnson could still dominate without having his fastball is more a testament to his greatness than a debunking that players have bad days.
Ah yes, I remember that. It stems from this discussion and all its cross-posting. It was an... interesting thread.
I hope this is facetious. If the argument here is that "Walter Johnson had his good days and his bad days, but he was so damn great he managed to pitch just as well on his bad days," well, then, I really don't even know what to say.....
I fully believe the pitcher does in fact get better results when he's on (and worse when he's off), but that is is not absolute due to the multiple other factors that influence a pitcher's results (luck, the play of his opponents, the performance of the umpire, etc.).
Take Ray's true talent ERA 3.50 pitcher. That can mean that on any given day, at his normal abilities (the level of performance at which he's most commonly found), his results can fluctuate between 2.50 and 4.50.
But when he's on, maybe his range of outcomes fluctuates between 2.00 and 4.00. When he's off, between 3.0 and 5.0.
So by looking at the results, we can't identify whether a pitcher was on/off/or somewhere in the middle (and one reason why one inning's performance is not predictive of next inning's). But our inability to identify a pitcher's performance level through the results doesn't mean it's not there, nor that it doesn't have an affect on those results.
Now, whether only that which can be proved about baseball is interesting to you, that's your call. But I find that perspective rather narrow for my tastes.
Sorry, but this is incorrect. If it can't be measured, it's not there. Sure, there will be a lot of noise, as you say. But if pitchers are sometimes "on," let's say 25% of the time (or whatever), then the days they pitch very well for 7 innings will consist of a disproportionate share of the "on" days -- perhaps 50-60% of the time. And because they are "on" much more than usual in these games, then they should perform better in inning 8 (not always, but on average). But, in fact, they do not. The only way what you're saying could be true is if the "on" effect is very tiny compared to other variations -- maybe a reduction in true ERA of 0.10 or something. And if so, I would ask again: "who cares?"
,
Well you could start by accurately quoting me. I didn't say "he managed to pitch just as well on his bad days," I said "without having his fastball" which is not the same thing. Not having your A pitch but still having your B and C pitch on a given day is not the same as not having any pitches at all on a given day.
Exactly. We can't predict it, and it's not easy if at all possible to differentiate from a game where a guy is just unlucky. But it's a reason. Sometimes when a guy says "I just didn't have it today" after a lousy performance, it's not just a line. If we can't see that this stuff happens in sports then we're trying to hard to live in a black and white world.
Whenever discussions of this type come up one always sees this type of statement repeated, and my question is always as follows: if your explanation is completely unfalsifiable and offers no predictive power, then why should be believe in it as opposed to magic pixies, angels in the outfield or whatever other crazy explanation we can come up with?
I'm not actually certain that this is a settled issue-just because we haven't found something yet, particularly when we haven't looked in all the right places yet, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. But the idea that regardless of what we find we're just going to keep believing in this, or that no amount of evidence would be sufficient to overturn this belief is troubling to me. Ultimately if explanations about guys "being on" or "having it" are correct that *has* to show up in the data somewhere or it's just magical thinking.
Or, if the actual on days are far fewer than 25 percent, which seems like an absurdly high percentage of the time to expect a pitcher to be at/near his optimal performance level.
I honestly don't care if this level of discussion doesn't interest you. But don't deign speak for the rest of us. Baseball interests me beyond that which can be precisely measured.*
*Or, that which can be measured at this particular moment. Perhaps someday an enterprising MGL-wannabe will figure out a way to isolate and measure this.
Oh please. There are many, many interesting things in baseball that can't be measured. Unfortunately, in this case you've selected a theory which, if it can't be measured, actually isn't true. And I plead guilty to not being interested in factors that do not actually exist. PBAF said it well:
This I agree with. Like I said, if it's possible, it's not easy.
Well, I think it's foolish to automatically waive away what we can't measure and say it's because it doesn't exist. We can't measure work ethic, but we know it exists.
There's a difference between a true 3.50 ERA pitcher giving up 3 runs in an inning because of randomness centered around his base talent level, and this same pitcher giving up 3 runs in an inning because he actually took the mound in that inning as a 5.50 ERA pitcher.
Flip a six-sided die 10 times and you might get 2261552224 -- but that doesn't mean the die is weight towards landing on 2.
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