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Friday, August 27, 2010
Could Rob Dibble have been a comp for Strasburg?
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…