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Strasburg
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
This is an update from last year, comparing Kershaw since July 26, 2011, to Strasburg’s career:
IP: 140, 140
K: 172, 128 <--
BB: 31, 28
HR: 8, 10
H: 108, 100
R: 43, 31 <--
Strangely enough, all those extra Ks are being counteracted by outs on ball in play for Kershaw. They are matching on walks, hits, and HR. Strasburg’s career BABIP is close to league average, which must mean that Kershaw’s BABIP since July 26 is among the league lows. (Now that I think about it, I should have used Pinto’s Day-by-Daytabase to do this.)
On top of which, with the much lower runs scored, despite matching component numbers, means that Kershaw has favorable splits with men on base and/or Strasburg has unfavorable ones (relatively speaking to their own greatnesses).
It’ll be interesting to see how long Kershaw can continue to keep pace, since Kershaw is winning in the two things that sabermetrics would argue is filled with random variation (BABIP and performance with men on base).
And since we can presume that Strasburg’s “raw stuff” is superior to Kershaw’s, that must mean Kershaw beats him on location and/or sequencing and/or having more good luck go his way in order for him to match him overall. Compared to Strasburg, Kershaw is the “crafty lefty”!
Thursday, May 10, 2012
The most accurate I heard is something along the lines of “maybe something like Zimm last year”. The least accurate are saying “160 innings” without actually quoting anyone from the Nats.
Zimm threw 161 innings last year, but, not every inning is the same is it? He faced 660 batters excluding IBB, but not every batter is the same is it? He threw 2458 pitches (excluding IBB), but… well, you get the idea. Zimm is a fastball-slider-curve pitcher, and, I dunno, it would seem that would be more taxing than if he were fastball-changeup. But, what do I know.
Anyway, Strasburg in his career has thrown 1955 pitches in 23 starts (still no IBB by the way… what’s the record for most pitches thrown, where none led to an IBB?), or 85 pitches per start. This year, he’s at 92 pitches per start. If we give him 2458 pitches (minus 554 he’s already thrown) and 90 pitches per start, that’s 21 starts remaining. He’s a fastball-curve-changeup pitcher… maybe that’s less taxing on the arm? What do I know. So, maybe he has 22 or 23 starts remaining? The Nationals have 132 games remaining. Divide by 5, and that’s 26-27 starts for each starter. It looks like he’ll have to miss about 4 starts?
Star talent like Stras are throwing 105-110 pitches per start. So, he’s already pitching 15-20% less than his peers. And, “reportedly”, he’ll be getting 15-20% fewer starts than his peers.
Is this really the plan?
Thursday, February 24, 2011
By , 03:11 AM
Three veteran umpires are retiring this year - Chuck Meriweather, Mike Reilly, and Jerry Crawford. So how is this going to impact the game, you may ask? Good question!
Crawford has one of the smallest strike zones among all umpires - not THE smallest, but among the top 3 (or so).
How much does his small strike zone affect run scoring. About .3 runs per game that he umps (behind the plate of course).
A full time ump is behind the plate for about 35 games a year (although last year, he only did 25 for some reason), or 1.44% of all games. So assuming that Crawford’s games are replaced by umpires with an average zone (actually ever-so-slightly larger, now that he is gone), run scoring overall will decrease by around .004 rpg, not an insignificant amount.
Do you think that that is more or less than the impact of baseball losing Adam Wainwright? Assuming that he is replaced by a replacement pitcher, and he would have thrown 200 innings, the NL gains around 44 runs or .034 rpg, or a .018 rpg for both leagues combined, which is almost 5 times the value of losing Crawford, in the other direction of course.
Adding the loss of Strasburg (and replacing him with a replacement pitcher), the NL gains another 50 runs or so, or .038 rpg in the NL and .021 rpg overall in MLB.
Of course, I am cherry-picking Strasburg and Wainwright (but not Crawford, really). Each year, MLB loses and gains good and bad pitchers and batters and in the long-run, it is a net zero (actually, both pitchers and batters probably get slightly better each year, offsetting one another so that run scoring stays about the same, barring other changes in one direction or another).
Anyway, I thought this was a fun thought.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
With parents chasing the almighty dollar on the backs of their pitching breeding, perhaps we ought to ban human beings pitching until their bodies are more developed?
Great article by Gregg Doyel:
http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/story/13824602
Reminded me of the iron curtain countries and how they developed Olympic athletes…
Friday, August 27, 2010
When we do comps, we try to find as many matching characteristics as we can. And that pretty much precludes a reliever being compared to a starter. But, what if we use some baseball senses? Let’s say that Strasburg as a starter pitches as effectively as a top pitcher does in relief. And then, rather than the focus being on the quantity stats, we focus solely on the rate stats. And so, how Dibble progresses as a reliever might be an indicator for what Strasburg might have been expected as a starter.
Just a thought I had. Dibble from 1989-1992 had 511 K on 1387 PA (excluding IBB), or a rate of 37% K per PA. He had 8% BB per PA, which somewhat worse than Strasburg. Only 1.1% HR per PA, which is very very low.
So, could we say Dibble is a decent enough comp? Could we say that if we looked at each of the comparable Dibble years (89, 90, 91, 92) and see how he did in the year after (90, 91, 92, 93), that we get a good prognosis 75% of the time and 25% of the time a bad one? Could we expand our pool to find say 50 relief seasons of high K/PA and look to see how they did the year after?
Interested to hear your thoughts…
The wire:
Rookie right-hander Stephen Strasburg has a significant tear on the ulnar collateral ligament that probably will require reconstructive Tommy John elbow surgery, the Washington Nationals announced Friday.
The star rookie pitcher has had two MRIs since he was removed from Saturday’s game at Philadelphia. The initial diagnosis was a strained tendon in his right forearm. But the first MRI raised enough questions for the team to order a more enhanced MRI that was performed Thursday.
Strasburg is scheduled to see Dr. Lewis Yocum.
Strasburg was placed on the 15-day disabled list Monday, the second time he’s been on the DL in less than a month. He was previously shelved with inflammation in his right shoulder.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Presumably, they are not going to pitch him any more this season. So, let’s see how he did against the forecasts. Most fans preferred Cliff Lee to Strasburg this year. That was an easy call.
Unders on wins and K and no hitters, and overs on ERA.
BABIP being Rivera-esque? Nope.
Still think giving him a 4/100MM deal from June 2010 to May 2014 is smarter for Strasburg than Verlander and Josh Johnson? Heck, after less than 3 months, that whole list would look radically different.
His ERA+ is 141, and if we had RA+, it would probably be 134, or he gave up runs at 74% of league average. I said:
Isn’t it better to say that Strasburg’s runs allowed talent is a 65% - 100% pitcher of league average, with a mean forecast of close to 80%? Basically, you give me the best college or Japanese performance ever, and I say that the UPSIDE forecast (two standard deviations from his mean forecast) for that pitching line cannot be better than Tom Seaver.
...
If you want to give Strasburg a 50% index as his upside, you probably give him 100% as his downside. The uncertainty range has to be great. That puts him at 75% as his mean. That’s roughly 1 run better than league average.
That’s as far as you can go.
Now, Brian did forecast a 2.86 ERA, compared to his actual 2.91. The park/league context for Strasburg, according to B-R.com is 4.10. In addition, he had 25 runs allowed and 22 earned runs. As you know, ER blows, and RA rules. In order to convert all ERA numbers to RA numbers, you need to multiply by 1.08. So, Brian’s 2.86 forecast is 3.09 (based on a ?? run environment… probably 4.70?), his actual RA is 3.31, compared to a park-league of 4.43.
Good for Brian for being really out there on the forecast, and coming in pretty well overall (with some luck do to a depressed run environment). PECOTA though, forecast only a 10% chance of being better than 3.94. Big ouch on that one.
Anyway, if what we’ve experienced here is not enough to dial back forecasts to something reasonable, then nothing will ever prove it to some people.
Don’t forecast a rookie to have a runs allowed rate at anything better than 75% and I’ll shut my mouth.
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
For the rest of the season (meaning his 2 ER, 7 IP debut won’t count in his ERA), the chance that Strasbug will post an ERA BELOW 2.50 = the chance he will post an ERA ABOVE:
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