THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Oh how we chirp when we are winning!

By , 06:41 AM

After the Padres beat the Giants last night in a pitcher’s duel (the Giants only allowed 2 hits in the loss), here’s what the Padres starter, Chris Young, said after the game:

“We’ve got great character in here and I don’t think we’re going to panic or worry, especially in close games,” Young said. “The way our bullpen is, we feel like if we can keep it close, our bullpen is going to hold it for us, then we’ll push across a few runs and win it.”

Reminds me of some other team chirping just a few days ago…

After the Orioles beat the Yankees on Friday night, 6-4, here are some quotes from various Orioles personnel:

“They come from winners,” Perlozzo said of his imported relievers, who cost more than $40 million on the open market. “They come from teams that had been in playoffs and been on good teams. I didn’t expect them to fold.”

“That’s what we paid for,” Gibbons said of the bullpen. “We got our starter to give us some strong innings, and we got our bullpen to lock it down.”

“If our starter comes out with a lead it’s going to be tough to beat us,” Ray said.

That last part really cracked me up as less than 24 hours later the Orioles pen blew a 4-run lead going into the bottom of the 8th inning (with Ray allowing the walk-off GS to A-Rod)!

• Blogging

#1 Rally (see all posts) 2007/04/10 (Tue) @ 10:15

To Ray’s credit, he didn’t go Brad Lidge on us. He came back the next day and pitched a scoreless inning for a save against the Yankees.

#2 MGL (see all posts) 2007/04/10 (Tue) @ 18:03

I would think that the difference between the best and worst pens is close to maybe 1/2 a run, maybe a little more when you consider leverage.

I don’t think that the expected number of games “blown” by the pen is all that related to the true talent of the pen.

This is another gigantic myth in baseball - that when a team blows lots of games in the late innings that they have a “bad” (true talent-wise) pen and vice versa.

It would be interesting to see what the expected number of “blown” games (whatever definition you want to use) is for good and bad bullpens after first determining around what the spread of bullpen true talent really is. I would guess that the difference is not going to be all that great and that most of the extremes we see in blown or protected leads is due to bad or good luck.

#3 tangotiger (see all posts) 2007/04/10 (Tue) @ 19:05

Fangraphs has the WPA for every team, broken down by starter/relief.

#4 David Smyth (see all posts) 2007/04/10 (Tue) @ 19:39

Ballplayers/managers like to tailor their approach to the luck of the game. Having played ball since they were 10, they have to be very aware of the role luck plays.

But we get comments like these here, where they try to make it seem like every close game is determined by intestinal fortitude. It makes the games more interesting to themselves and to the public. I don’t care for games in which chance is a big factor, like some dice games. But give me a good chess game and I’m in heaven.

But, they don’t hesitate to bring out the luck factor when it suits them. So, the batter says “yeah, I’m slumping, but I’ve been hitting the ball on the nose”, and the pitcher say “ain’t nuthin’ I can do about a check-swing, bloop hit to lose the game”.

#5 dcj (see all posts) 2007/04/12 (Thu) @ 01:38

FWIW, Papelbon blew 6 saves last year (35/41). However only one of them was a real disaster, 8/9/06 at KC. In the other 5 he only allowed the tying run to score, for a combined WPA of -0.14.

#6 Rally (see all posts) 2007/04/12 (Thu) @ 09:22

In Papelbon’s case a few of his blown saves occurred when the setup man lets a runner get to 3rd with less than 2 out in the 8th, then they bring Jon in for a long save.

They did that again last Sunday, but Papelbon was able to pitch out of it.

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THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Oh how we chirp when we are winning!

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