|
|
|
|
Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Saberunctuousness at its finest! Bravo!
BBWAA has graduated from Sabre High! Congratulations guys, it was a one hundred year journey, but you made it, and have now accepted everything we’ve learned through 1985. It was a tough journey especially at the end, when you took your first baby steps, voting for Greinke and Lincecum. And you passed with flying colors with Felix. Pitcher wins have been officially repudiated. Email me for your diploma.
We’ll give you the Fall recess period to recover, and then it’s time to enroll in Sabre College. We’ve got 25 years of education ready to roll out for you. We’re planning an aggressive seven-year program. I know it seems tough, and most people prefer the six-year law and medical programs instead for their relative ease. But we have faith that you will put in the hard work and learn.
Tangtotiger
Dean of new-fangled stats
|
Bookmarks
You must be logged in to view your Bookmarks.
Hot Topics
Newsblog: BPP: An interview with Sean Forman (1 - 7:06am, Jun 20)Last: Weekly Journalist_Newsblog: [OTP-June] Economic Times: Hope politics, sports don’t get mixed up: Manmohan Singh (2291 - 7:05am, Jun 20)Last: David Nieporent (now, with children)Newsblog: Murphy: Ruben Amaro Jr. doesn't "do" five-year plans, but the Phillies need a good one (37 - 6:56am, Jun 20)Last: bfanNewsblog: Sports on Earth: Super-Royal (50 - 6:36am, Jun 20)Last: FancyPantsHandle glistening with foreign substanceNewsblog: Mark Appel signs under slot deal with Astros (105 - 6:24am, Jun 20)Last: Swedish ChefNewsblog: Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 6-20-2013 (2 - 6:01am, Jun 20)Last: Matt Chico's Bail Bonds (Dan Lee)Newsblog: OT: NBA Finals and June thread (1029 - 5:47am, Jun 20)Last: RollingWaveNewsblog: Matt Harvey challenged Jon Rauch to a fight (83 - 5:10am, Jun 20)Last: Swedish ChefNewsblog: OT: The Soccer Thread June, 2013 (645 - 4:36am, Jun 20)Last: Swedish ChefNewsblog: ESPN.com: Yankees Acquire Fartinez (28 - 4:09am, Jun 20)Last: Jack Carter, calling Beleaguered CastleNewsblog: Former New Orleans baseball player Gene Freese dies at age 79 (5 - 3:55am, Jun 20)Last: esseffNewsblog: Neyer: Computing Manny Machado's shot at the record (48 - 3:02am, Jun 20)Last: OCFNewsblog: Perry: Josh Hamilton and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad night (52 - 3:01am, Jun 20)Last: Walt DavisNewsblog: OT: NHL is finally back thread (1131 - 2:45am, Jun 20)Last: zackNewsblog: LATimes: Microsoft unveils new Xbox One console (237 - 2:11am, Jun 20)Last: CrosbyBird
|
|
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
But, sadly, non-Dean of new-fangled typing machines.
(Sorry, Tom. Couldn't resist.)
Here are the top 15 in WAR from the AL from Fangraphs
Cliff Lee 7.1
Justin Verlander 6.3
Felix Hernandez 6.2
Francisco Liriano 6
Jered Weaver 5.9
Jon Lester 5.6
Zack Greinke 5.2
CC Sabathia 5.1
C.J. Wilson 4.4
Colby Lewis 4.4
John Danks 4.3
Gavin Floyd 4.3
David Price 4.3
Ricky Romero 4
Now the top 10 from Baseball Reference
1. Hernandez (SEA) 6.0
2. Buchholz (BOS) 5.4
Weaver (LAA) 5.4
Sabathia (NYY) 5.4
5. Price (TBR) 5.3
6. Lester (BOS) 5.0
7. Danks (CHW) 4.9
8. Pavano (MIN) 4.6
Wilson (TEX) 4.6
Liriano (MIN) 4.6
Stick to being an academic, Thomas. Stick to your sycophant-laden fora and your above-it-all mien. Stop jumping in here and cheap-shotting a business that you’ve never comprehended on your best day.
[/joe sheehan]
Well, BR's uses actual runs allowed, while Fangraphs uses component stats allowed (primarily the TTO stats). So the voters have moved from wins to runs, but not yet to peripherals. Hence, the "welcome to 1985" message, I guess.
I dunno. I'd be pretty happy if the voters stayed here (while being aware of things like xFIP). I'm not so sure I'm comfortable with awards being handed out based on just strikeouts, walks and homeruns.
It was a joke.
It was intended as a joke, though it was also expressing opinions that Tango generally believes. Which is why, in my opinion, it kind of didn't work.
Cool. Now maybe The Book team can enroll at Public Communication Primary School next semester.
Thanks. That makes sense.
Cy
As I recall, BR adjusts Runs Allowed for team defense above or below average, so that it is a different method for arriving at the same objective (fielding independent pitching).
we can only hope... actually, I'd thought Tom was above this sort of nonsense.
No kidding. This fellow is a walking example of why saber-minded people sometimes have a hard time getting accepted.
It might have been intended as a joke, but it wasn't written in a way that enabled a casual reader to take it as a joke, which made it easy to misinterpret.
-- MWE
Exactly. I believe Tango's comments in the Book Blog thread that he didn't intend it to be taken serious. I just don't think he succeeded in getting that across, and the downside is to a lot of readers he'll come off badly.
I think the joke is 'people accuse us of being really self-righteous prigs about stuff that ultimately isn't that important - and here's what it would look like if we were really as self-important as they think. We would be gloating about how our team is finally winning.'
Which, I guess, makes sense. Except the general reaction to the Felix thing is, in fact, basically...gloating about how our team is winning.
Or maybe we could keep *game* wins and losses, which are the ultimate point of baseball, and let *pitcher* wins and losses fade into the background (or drive off a cliff)...
What does 1985 have to do with anything? Is this a veiled Denkinger reference? (Because if it is I'll say that it's totally on Jack Clark and not the ump.) The haughtiness of this article, intended to be taken seriously or not, is, as other commentators have noted, not a good way at all to try to spread the message that sorting on the Win column isn't analysis.
Ever since RP's started to be used, people understood pitcher Wins didn't tell the whole story. This is why ERA was developed in the first place. Wins weren't simply replaced, however, because connection to history is part of the fan experience of following the sport. Even though changing playing environments skew the value of direct numeric comparisons, discussing 300-win pitchers or 100 RBI seasons across history is a rewarding part of making baseball part of one's life. I don't see that Wins are "repudiated" at all, officially or not. They retain an important place within the context of baseball fandom, even if their correlation with solid pitching work gets weaker with each passing year.
Would relievers have a W-L record?
Or.... is it?
for those that didn't RTFC after RTFA
::shaking head::
I picture Tom doing the Church Lady dance while spouting "I was once in 1985"
What does this mean?
And what does this mean? Sabermetrics is something that you can do in your spare time using mostly high-school level math. I would hope that training to be an actual doctor is harder than that (I didn't go to medical school; I went to graduate school in economics, so what the hell do I know?).
What does this mean?
I thought he was being tongue-in-cheek here as well. Of course, I could be totally wrong considering how ambiguous his words are.
And what does this mean? Sabermetrics is something that you can do in your spare time using mostly high-school level math. I would hope that training to be an actual doctor is harder than that (I didn't go to medical school; I went to graduate school in economics, so what the hell do I know?).
Reading the initial post again, I think Tango meant to say "Sabre college being harder than medical school or getting a law degree", since that's what he seems to be implying (jokingly) in the 2nd paragraph.
Au contraire:
-Dave Cameron
-Dave Cameron
To be fair, you are just a candidate, so don't feel bad.
You know, the nice thing about Bill James back in the 1980s is that he could make this sort of joke work. Then again, James' degree was in English, or literature or something like that, wasn't it?
Also, I don't understand why the "that wasn't a joke" comments stopped referring to post #5 and started referring to TFA. #16 clearly refers to #5, but #18 seems to refer to TFA instead. I'm kind of confused.
#7 responds to #5, #8 clarifies #5 as a joke, #9 misreads it as referring to TFA, and responses here then generally follow a similar pattern to the comments on the Book Blog, with Tango giving a mea culpa over there for his intended humor falling a little flat.
Agreed. Tango has always seemed, in print/on-line at least, to be a nice guy, so I don't think he was trying to be a jerk here. But I do think he came off like one. If I were a BBWAA guy, I think my reaction to this would be more or less "f you" or something similar to the throwaway crack I posted in #11.
I actually used to read Cameron et al some back in the day (IIRC this was something he said on USSM). But I was actually around the day Cameron originally posted this, and have not read the site since. Just another reason I am in favor of the "6ORG" meme getting overused, beaten to death, etc.
This is embarrassing for Tango. What he's saying is that sabermetrics has divined the one true measure of pitching quality, and that's Fangraphs WAR. And that anyone who doesn't believe in Fangraphs WAR is hopelessly lost.
If you believe in bb-ref's WAR, Lee, Verlander and Liriano would have been nowhere near your ballot. But then, I guess if you like the bb-ref stats, you're not a true sabermetrician.
You can submit them, you know. Repoz can't read EVERYTHING (I don't think, anyway).
-- MWE
Murray Chass is a fraud who poops his pants.
Oh, please. "Hated" is a wild exaggeration and the mocking has nothing to do with who knows more. We're talking here about people who get haughty in humorless self-regard because they've concluded that they know more about baseball statistics than other people. It's tougher to find hay in a haystack than to find the material for satire in such a thing.
-Dave Cameron
Then why isn't Cameron a better person yet?
This is embarrassing for Tango. What he's saying is that sabermetrics has divined the one true measure of pitching quality, and that's Fangraphs WAR. And that anyone who doesn't believe in Fangraphs WAR is hopelessly lost.
If you believe in bb-ref's WAR, Lee, Verlander and Liriano would have been nowhere near your ballot. But then, I guess if you like the bb-ref stats, you're not a true sabermetrician.
Concur.
Tom seems to be all over the map in this thread. Frankly, the "he started it defense" never worked with my mother and I'm not sure why it should work here, particularly since those mean ol' writers who have so mocked Tom and mgl are probably an entirely different set than the guy who just voted Felix the Cy Young. Ah, but what SABR type worth his salt is interested in accuracy?
Similar to when someone makes a mean comment (like, making fun of someone's weight) and then when called out on it they say "What?! It was just a joke." Where the thesis of the joke is "isn't it funny that you're overweight?"
Which, to continue the analogy, is not to say that you can't have an opinion on the matter. If you think a person ought to exercise more, you may well be right. But putting into the passive aggressive framing doesn't really accomplish much, other than irritating people.
Does Tango HAVE casual readers?
I don't think that's it though. It's not "he started it." It's "he has been pounding on me for years, and even when I make clear, cogent, and cordial (not to mention alliterative) arguments, he ignores them and resorts to name-calling. So when he finally comes around to my rational argument, I'm not going to pretend the other stuff never happened."
It's a very similar dynamic to what happened with the rush to the Iraq War. People who were for it called anyone who was against it a paintywaist terrorist lover. Now that the anti-Iraq War crowd has been proven right beyond any shadow of a doubt, the other side (with a few notable exceptions) wants to pretend the argument never happened. And they've been allowed to. They are still treated with great respect and remain in positions of influence where they can advocate for the next war of choice. And those who were right are still the wacky loons.
Exactly. The standard for many here seems to be this: if Tango or MGL (or Cameron) writes a post, and a casual fan were to drop by and read it without any context or prior knowledge of Tango's/MGL's actual views on the issue at hand, AND we can plausibly project that this hyothetical fan would be turned off by the post, then Tango/MGL have committed an unpardonable sin of arrogance that has set back the sabermetric revolution.
I'm having trouble finding words to describe how very weird and pathetic this particular BTF meme is. What motivates this? It seems like classic sectarian or cult behavior: people are frustrated that sabermetric thinking doesn't have more influence, so they are looking for someone to scapegoat for this state of affairs (excluding themselves, of course). If the public hasn't embraced our obviously brilliant ideas, then some villain must be standing in the way. Is that it?
No offense, but this is a terrible analogy. If anyone is making a fat joke, it's the media saying "dorks who live in their mothers' basements," etc. So the analogy would be:
Tango: Hey, let's eat these healthy foods. Scientists have determined that they will be best for our long-term health.
Media: Shut up, fatty. You're fat fatty. We're not listening to you.
Tango: Actually, I'm in pretty good shape if you care to notice.
Media: You're such a fatty. Pass the cupcakes.
10 years pass and the media has gained 200 pounds and finally gets the message about healthy eating.
Tango: Hey, who's the fatty now? Who was right about the cupcakes?
Chorus: You're so mean and uppity! Why are you being this way? You should be more civil!
The first two posters on Tango's site, who posted before it was linked here, had the same reaction many of us here did.
Nah.
Right. One of whom said this 3 comments later: "I apologize for overreacting." So we've got one offended fan. Quite a setback for sabermetrics. I wonder if it will ever recover.
I'm not sure where the word "finally" comes from here. What the Cy Young voters have accepted is that pitcher wins are horribly overrated, which is an infinitesimal piece of the work Tango does. There's nothing particularly sabermetric about it.
It's also not a new idea. As many people have pointed out, a pitcher with a lower ERA beat out a pitcher with more wins in the Cy Young voting just last year. In fact, it happened twice last year. It also happened the year before that. It happened twice in 2000. It happened in 1999. It happened in 1997. It happened in 1986. It happened in 1973. It happened in 1968. It happened in 1964. Somehow, all those voters "finally [came] around to [his] rational argument" without ever hearing the name Tangotiger.
Some of this, maybe most of this, is personal - it's not specifically that sabermetric "thinking" doesn't have more influence, it's that the sabermetric "thinkers" themselves don't have more influence.
-- MWE
I don't get this. Are you talking here about yourself?
Right, there have been a lot of 13-win CY winners in the past. And I've lost track of all the 2nd-place CY finishers who had EIGHT MORE WINS than the winner, as I'm sure you have. Nothing new here at all, let's move along.
As Joe Posnanski points out in his blog post yesterday, Mark Davis had a whopping 16 fewer wins in 1989 than the runner up, Mike Scott, who had the magical 20.
You have to know that this is not about Felix Hernandez "beat[ing] out a pitcher with more wins," right? You have to know that there's a world of difference between what happened in Hernandez and how 2 of the most dominant pitching seasons in history were rewarded the Cy Young in 2000 (over players with 2 more wins), right?
In case you don't, though, here's the very fine point that you've missed: Hernandez didn't be a guy who had a couple more wins and an ERA two and a half runs higher (Pedro 2000). He didn't rack up a mind-boggling 347 strikeouts (RJ 2000) and take home the Cy. He had an excellent but non-historic year and he trailed the other Cy Candidates by 6-8 wins with a winning percentage barely over .500.
An argument based on trying to pretend nothing new happened in the past 2 years is one that's very hard to take seriously.
(or you could look at 16-14 Randy Johnson from a year earlier, who clearly had a better year than Clemens but still lost the award by a large large margin, thanks to Clemens' 18-4 record.)
Have you read any Ray Ratto?
Highest Average Game Score, 2010 AL
Rk Player GmScA IP1 Felix Hernandez 63 249.2
2 Cliff Lee 60 212.1
3 Jered Weaver 60 224.1
4 Jon Lester 59 208.0
5 David Price 59 208.2
6 Justin Verlander 58 224.1
7 Clay Buchholz 58 173.2
8 CC Sabathia 58 237.2
9 Trevor Cahill 57 196.2
Lowest OPS+ allowed, minimum 150 IP, 2010 AL
Rk Player OPS+ IP1 Clay Buchholz 64 173.2
2 Felix Hernandez 65 249.2
3 Cliff Lee 67 212.1
4 C.J. Wilson 68 204.0
5 Jon Lester 68 208.0
6 Trevor Cahill 69 196.2
7 Jered Weaver 70 224.1
8 Justin Verlander 71 224.1
9 CC Sabathia 75 237.2
10 John Danks 75 213.0
Highest Win Probability Added, Pitcher, 2010 AL
Rk Player WPA IP1 Felix Hernandez 5.805 249.2
2 Joakim Soria 5.061 65.2
3 Rafael Soriano 4.918 62.1
4 Daniel Bard 4.180 74.2
5 Neftali Feliz 3.902 69.1
6 Jered Weaver 3.820 224.1
7 CC Sabathia 3.771 237.2
8 Clay Buchholz 3.646 173.2
9 Gio Gonzalez 3.517 200.2
10 Jon Lester 3.458 208.0
Highest Quality Start %, minimum 20 GS, 2010 AL
Rk Player QS% GS IP1 Felix Hernandez 0.882% 34 249.2
2 David Price 0.806% 31 208.2
3 Jered Weaver 0.794% 34 224.1
4 CC Sabathia 0.765% 34 237.2
5 Joel Pineiro 0.739% 23 152.1
6 Trevor Cahill 0.700% 30 196.2
7 Gio Gonzalez 0.697% 33 200.2
8 Clay Buchholz 0.679% 28 173.2
9 Jason Vargas 0.677% 31 192.2
Most Quality Start in a season, 1996-2010
Rk Player QS GS IP Year Age Tm Lg W L1 Felix Hernandez 30 34 249.2 2010 24 SEA AL 13 12
2 Randy Johnson 30 35 260.0 2002 38 ARI NL 24 5
3 Felix Hernandez 29 34 238.2 2009 23 SEA AL 19 5
4 Randy Johnson 29 35 271.2 1999 35 ARI NL 17 9
5 Kevin Brown 29 35 257.0 1998 33 SDP NL 18 7
6 Johan Santana 28 34 234.1 2008 29 NYM NL 16 7
7 Dan Haren 28 34 222.2 2007 26 OAK AL 15 9
8 Jake Peavy 28 34 223.1 2007 26 SDP NL 19 6
Is there a world of difference between this and Tom Seaver beating out a pitcher with five more wins? Is there a world of difference between this and Dean Chance beating out a pitcher with four more wins? Both of those pitchers had excellent but non-historic years. The Hernandez victory is much more evolutionary than revolutionary in nature.
Yes, plenty of non-deserving pitchers have won Cy Young awards in the past based on their win totals. Plenty of deserving pitchers also won Cy Young awards based on factors other than their win totals.
Yes, there is. Those guys had great winning percentages and ~1.5 run advantages in ERA. So, yeah, these aren't as egregious as the other examples, but they're still a world of difference away.
Not for a long time. But when I did a search for Ray Ratto and stathead, I saw a pleasant interview he did for BPro and not a lot else. I'll have to take your word that he's a rabid antibasementite.
Obviously, there are still members of the BBWAA who are hostile to SABR thinking, a few even among the guys covering the game on a daily basis. But, by and large, Silverman and Poz and Stone and Mellinger and most of the others who voted on this award, the guys Tango was welcoming to 1985, are not among them. They're not Tango or mgl or AROM or Dial in their level of advanced stats understanding. Hell, they're probably not equal to many of the people who post here. But, generally speaking, they're not the ones promoting those tired stathead stereotypes either.
They're not the enemy. And lumping them in with the Chasses and Lupicas and Plaschkes, the guys who do deserve our enmity, is no more helpful or accurate than declaring all statheads are arrogant and condescending because you don't happen to like ______.
How was that a non-historic year for Seaver? His 9.5 rWAR was the best of his career, and it's only been topped 3 times since (Gooden '85, Clemens '97, Pedro '00). Chance's 8.9 rWAR was also pretty great.
The reality is that Chance and Seaver were far, far better than the guys who led the league in wins those years. Hernandez, on the other hand, was only slightly better than Sabathia. Here are those years with rWAR for the CYA winner and the Wins leader.
1964
Chance: 8.9
Jackson: 6.1
1974
Seaver: 9.5
Bryant: 3.5
2010
Hernandez: 6.0
Sabathia: 5.4
The guy with five more wins ranked 30th in ERA (3.53 when league average was 3.66) and 15th in Ks. Of course he was beaten by Seaver, league leader in ERA (2.06), Ks, and CG. And still Bryant finished 3rd in CYA voting, which would not happen today. I assume it's one of the best examples you could find, and the idea this is comparable to the last two years is just laughable. Doubling down on a ridiculous argument rarely turns out well....
There are some people in the World, who, now they are unperched, and reduced to an equality with other people, and under strong and very just apprehensions of being further treated as they deserve, begin, with ESOP’S [Rooster], to preach up Peace and Union and the Christian duty of Moderation; forgetting that, when they had the Power in their hands, those Graces were strangers in their gates!
Or, to put it another way, I agree with Darren in #48 and #50.
EDIT: nanny is an idiot.
You do know here that by using an "advanced" sabermetric here to show that Seaver's Cy year was even more historical than the oldfangled numbers make it look, that you're making Tom's point for him ... right? And making the writers who gave him the Cy look positively cutting edge, since they were able to discern Seaver's rWAR advantage in oldfangled numbers.
Wait, you're using bb-ref's version of WAR? I hope you realize that Tango thinks you're an embarrassment to sabermetrics.
Snark aside, I think there are obvious problems with using rWAR to assess historical Cy Young votes. Looking at what the voters were looking at, Felix Hernandez beat Sabathia in ERA by 0.91 while Seaver beat Bryant by 1.45 and Chance beat Jackson by 1.49. If the sabermetric revolution has brought us extra credit for that additional half a run, color me underwhelmed.
What has happened here is not that voters have started looking beyond wins; it's that they're now not willing to dismiss a candidate with a mediocre W-L record. As I said, that seems much more like the next logical step in the diminishing regard for pitcher wins, rather than anything revolutionary. On top of that, Felix Hernandez has long been recognized as one of the best pitchers in the league, and everybody knows that he pitched this year for a team with a historically bad offense. If a less-well-known pitcher, working for a middle-of-the-pack team, wins an ERA title with an 13-12 record, I suspect he's not going to win any Cy Young awards.
Oh, I think it would happen today, although I think the point differential between first and third would be larger. The voters aren't going to ignore any pitcher who wins five more games than *any* other pitcher in the league, no matter what his ERA; the main difference is that he's likely to get more down-ballot votes and fewer first-place votes because the voters can now vote for five instead of three.
The 1987 NL vote (the year in which Nolan Ryan won the ERA title with an 8-16 record) is pretty interesting. Steve Bedrosian won the award, and while Rick Sutcliffe (18-10 but a 3.68 ERA) finished second, only four voters picked him first overall, with 10 of the 24 going for either Rick Reuschel (13-9, 3.09) or Orel Hershiser (16-16, 3.06). Ryan still picked up enough second and third place votes to finished tied for 5th with Dwight Gooden. It would be interesting if we knew exactly who voted for whom in 1987, and redistributed the votes that went to Bedrosian to see who might have won the award, but there's some indication there that at least a solid minority of voters were willing to rate a guy with fewer wins but better overall stats higher. I think that evidence has been there throughout the history of the award, with the primary difference being the number of voters willing to expand their look beyond raw W/L.
-- MWE
Hernandez was a .500 pitcher. Show me the .500 pitchers with wins in the low teens who won in the past.
Also, I don't think anyone's calling it a revolution but you. In fact, Tango notes the gradual progression in the intro.
You're really not going to acknowledge the massive differences between 1974 and 2010? That Seaver was obviously far better than Bryant by just looking at ERA and IP? That Seaver still got fewer than half of the 1st place votes?
You're not going to acknowledge that Chance had a an historically great 1.65 ERA? That he won 20 games and had a higher winning percentage than Jackson?
You aren't going to acknowledge that Seaver's 1974 season was historically great?
There really is a world of difference between those selections and this one.
Of course, you snipped the part of my post where I said that this was the only change we saw this year.
Tango says the sportswriters took their "first baby steps" just last year. Completely overhauling the voting mind-set in two years counts as a revolution in my book.
Starting pitchers get fewer decisions now than they did in the past, since they pitch fewer innings and fewer CGs.
In 1974, Seaver got 10 first place votes, Bryant got 3. Mike Marshall got 9 and finished second and complicated the vote totals a bit.
I don't know what you see in the 10-3 Seaver over Bryant advantage; I see the writers seeing clearly that Seaver was a better starter than Bryant and a clear expression of such.
What has happened here is not that voters have started looking beyond wins; it's that they're now not willing to dismiss a candidate with a mediocre W-L record.
This has been said a hundred tmes already, but that point was proven in 1987 -- 23 years ago -- when pre-legend Nolan Ryan earned a CY-5 for going 8-16.
You're really going to use this to a respond to a post where I say Seaver beat Bryant in ERA by a run and a half?
This is just an astonishing claim. As best I can tell, the worst winning percentage for a CYA winner (starting pitcher) was Mike Scott at .643. And he led the league in ERA, Ks, IP, and SHO. Felix was .520, totally unprecedented. The lowest prior win total was RJ's 17, when he led the lead in Ks, ERA, and everything else (364 Ks, 2nd place had 221). There is no precedent for this at all.
MWE: I don't think anyone is arguing that K and ERA weren't part of the picture. They always were, along with wins. Some writers clearly gave more weight to ERA than wins. But there was a clear minimum you had to pass in terms of W and Win% to win the award, and the bar was pretty high: 17-18 wins, .650 win%. That bar has been dramatically lowered.
It is less that a winlet -- in this case, it was twelve voting points.
Seaver was 19-10. If he was 16-13 with everything else the same, the vote would have been much different.
Ryan got 12 points. A far inferior pitcher who went 18-10 got 55, and came withing a hair of winning.
Well, one explanation is that Tango is NOT a PH.D candidate in English literature (that I'm aware of,) and in fact based on some of his writing seems to have grown up learning French.
Anyway, this is much ado about nothing. The media has been calling us stat-freak-zombies who are fat and live in our mother's basements for so many years that a little snarkasm as a reply from Tagno is a who the #### cares get over it.
Normally, one has to go to a Tea Bagger rally to find a persecution complex of this stature.
Seriously? 99 other people have made this silly argument? I find that hard to believe.
Ryan finished TIED for 5th, and received no first place votes, despite leading the league in two of the big 3 categories (ERA and Ks). He was a future Hall of Famer, putting up a great season at age 40, and set the record for most 200-K seasons that year. And him finishing tied for 5th is evidence that a pitcher with a mediocre W-L record was NOT dismissed by the writers? The mind reels...
I don't feel evem remotely persecuted. I basically agree with Darren in #36 and #50.
You, on the other hand, as the lone proponent of the Win-Points metric, well, I'll just go get that cross ready for you.
the Ryan year that people are pointing at has a lot of different stories to split the vote. The top pick hurt any meaningful analysis of what the voters were thinking. Nobody can claim it was about wins, as Rawley had a 17-11 record and received no votes. So it was one of those elections were the different factions had to make choices based upon what they thought was the best indicator.
I honestly think that if you took 20 people from this site to vote (3 vote deep) on the Cy Young that year, you will end up with pretty much a similar mess(with the exception of Bedrosian winning it. (My ballot would have been Hershisher, Reuschel, Ryan) I honestly think if you take the same 20 people and have an al ballot for this year(going three deep) that it would have less variance. Hernandez is a clearer choice than Ryan in my opinion.
I agree, in retrospect Ryan's not an obvious slam-dunk, should-have-been-unanimous winner.
To me, the more relevant example is much more recent: Randy Johnson in 2004. He led the NL in GS, K, ERA+, WHIP, and BB-Ref WAR. He went 16-14 but lost to Roger Clemens, who had an ERA about one-third of a run higher but who went 18-4. Johnson did get 8 of 32 first-place votes and finish 2nd; I think the difference between that and how Hernandez finished this year is a fair measure of how much progress sabermetrics has made.
To me, the more relevant example is much more recent: Randy Johnson in 2004. He led the NL in GS, K, ERA+, WHIP, and BB-Ref WAR. He went 16-14 but lost to Roger Clemens, who had an ERA about one-third of a run higher but who went 18-4. Johnson did get 8 of 32 first-place votes and finish 2nd; I think the difference between that and how Hernandez finished this year is a fair measure of how much progress sabermetrics has made.
Clemens had a better WPA than Unit in 2004, suggesting that his pitching in context was better. My mode of analysis would conclude that Clemens's WPA advantage "confirmed" his W-L advantage. King Felix led the AL in WPA in 2010, rendering his W-L disadvantage illusory.
Johnson also killed him in innings. It's pretty close to what happened this year, with different results.
What "mode" is that -- "I found a random stat that confirms my opinion?" WPA is a useless stat for starting pitchers. I think it can sometimes tell you something important for hitters and relievers, but for starting pitchers it has virtually no value. Winning a 4-0 shutout is much more valuable when your team scores 4 runs in the eighth than if they score 4 runs in the first? Please. Even analysts who like WPA concede it doesn't work for starting pitchers.
Well, didn't Chass predict it?
That said, at first glance it certainly seems to me to be something out of the ordinary: a near-complete dismissal of wins and W-L record as a guidepost. The low win total (13) and the record barely above .500 (13-12), it seems to me, are unprecedented for a Cy winner. Would he still have won with 12-13? I think so. (Fewer than 10 wins? Probably not. I did say a "near"-complete dismissal.)
And while I can't see this happening three years ago, I'm also not sure this was an unexpected result a week ago. Everyone seemed to understand, even in the dinosaur media, who the top candidates were. It wasn't clear that Hernandez was going to win, but it doesn't seem surprising that he did, coming from where we were a week ago.
I also don't know that the dinosaur media has been hanging on Tango's every word, as he seems to flatter himself with. I follow statgeekism fairly closely; and, yet, I don't read Tango, and wouldn't have known about him but for this site (er, and Joe Sheehan's incredibly humorous rant - also posted here). Because B happened after A doesn't mean that A had anything whatsoever to do with B. You can arrive at this result without using any "newflangled" stats - just by using ERA and IP, perhaps with having some sense about park effects and run support/team quality sprinkled in.
Value is your word, but those are obviously different outings; one's filled with higher leverage situations than the other.
I'm not sure how that point's even debatable.
Many things that are demonstrably false.
S.B. 1977, MIT, Course XIV
Talk about setting the bar low. It's like saying someone isn't anywhere near as dishonest as Bernie Madoff, nor anywhere near as homicidal as Ted Bundy.
Psh. Sabermetrics is plenty influential for me: every club in the league uses some version of it, and that's way more power than any yahoo on the radio will ever have in this game. I'm just tired of people acting like ######## for no reason. It's a vestigial part of baseball's numbers culture, left over from a time when Billy Beane was our hero because he was the only GM in the game who would publicly own up to employing a stats department. It's time to grow out of the embattled ########. We've won. It makes us look silly to let ourselves be antagonized by dimwits of the Murray Chass variety anymore.
Tango, to be fair, is very rarely one of the offenders on this front. But this article? Cheap, and worse, not funny.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main