THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Rob Neyer on Brad Lidge and the COL/PHI series

From his blog yesterday:

Yes, Lidge converted 18 of his last 23 save opportunities. His other statistics in that space: 32 innings, 18 walks, 33 strikeouts, four home runs, 6.68 ERA. Granted, he’s not pitched quite as poorly as his ERA (but then, how could he have?). But if Brad Lidge were instead a kid pitcher named Fred Bridge, he wouldn’t be anywhere near the Division Series roster right now, let alone asked to throw late-inning playoff pitches with the game on the line.

On paper, I like the Phillies in this series, mostly because they’ve got Cliff Lee and because they’re the home team. But the Rockies are just about as good as the Phillies, so if they really do get to face Brad Lidge once or twice with the game on the line, they’re going to win. Which is why I’m picking them in five games. Or maybe four.

Let me say a few things:

I don’t think that the Rockies are “just about as good as the Phillies” as baseball matchups go.  The Phillies are a 61% favorite to win the series in Vegas and I think that is a little generous to the Rockies who, in my opinion, have vastly over-performed this year.

As far as Lidge goes, again, Mr. Neyer inundates us with 32 IP of performance with nary a word about Lidge’s other 497 IP.  He could just as easily have re-written the above first two sentences as:

Yes, Lidge converted only 18 of his last 23 save opportunities. However, his career statistics: 529 IP, 3.56 ERA, 239 BB, 714 K, and only 51 HR.

And if he really wanted to make the exact opposite point (how great Lidge is going to be in the post-season), he easily could have said this:

Yes, Lidge converted only 18 of his last 23 save opportunities during the regular season. However, his career in the post-seasons is this: 34 IP, 2.10 ERA, 12 BB, 51 K, and only 2 HR.

Heck, that’s more innings than he has pitched this year!

The reason that he is on the post-season roster and may pitch in high leverage situations - maybe even close a game or two - is NOT because his name is Brad Lidge as opposed to Fred Bridge.  It is because he has been an outstanding reliever over the course of his career and the Phillies brass are smart enough to realize that those career stats are more predictive of how he is likely to do in the post-season than his 32 IP in 2009.

Now, I’ll fully admit that Lidge is likely not nearly as good as he used to be if for no other reason than his velocity is severely down the last 2 years.  But all the Lidge bashing by Neyer and others reminds me of the Lidge bashing after 2007 (and the 2006 post-season).  Somehow he comes back in 2008 with the best season of his career.

And I honestly have no idea what this means:

“...so if they really do get to face Brad Lidge once or twice with the game on the line, they’re going to win.”