Running MLB Thread, Part the Fourth, 2007

Bad habit you have, errantly attributing words and ideas to others.

It's not singular. It's the most important.

 

And here's what ERA/run support does not show:

Pitcher gives up four hits and three runs to the first five batters of the game... then pitches through the 8th inning and loses, 3-1.

Three runs over 8 inns, you say he pitched well enough to win but got no support.
I say he did a horseshit job by putting his team in a 3-0 hole before they even came to bat and deserved to lose.

Reverse scenario: Same pitcher... team is leading 2-1 in the 7th. With two outs, batter reaches on error. Next guy hits a two-run homer, pitcher loses 3-2. Runs are unearned.
You say lack of run support and defense cost him the game. I say the dumb fuck gave up a 2-run homer in the seventh and deserved to lose.

So in 2 starts the guy has pitched 15 innings and given up 4 earned runs (2.40 ERA) and is 0-2. You say his 2.40 ERA shows he pitched well. I say the way he lost the games shows he did not pitch well when he had to, and the 0-2 is more revealing than 2.40.

The totality of the performance is more than one statistic.

 

Bad habit you have, being completely wrong but never in doubt.

ERA is important. It is not, by itself, most important.

Neither is any other statistic, in and of itself.

 

I see your point, but to me in both cases he did his job well and he cannot control the fact that his team failed to provide him enough offensive and defensive support to win. In the case of the first game, if you are going to say he failed in his job, that's a matter of throwing the statistics completely out the window and talking about things like momentum. That's fine, but I don't think that is a good way to discount ERA as a statistical measure.

Unearned runs are counted that way for a reason. Now it gets ridiculous when there is one error with two outs and the pitcher proceeds to get pounded after that. That is why you don't use only ERA. But if I can only have one statistic to measure a starting pitcher on, I will use his ERA first.

I use starting because I think ERA is not quite as useful for relievers because with so many fewer innings, there are more fluky fluctuations in ERA for a guy with 80 innings instead of 200.

 

Great ERA and WHIP, but still a .500 pitcher.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/r/ryanno01.shtml

http://www.baseball-reference.com/b/blylebe01.shtml




Great ERA and WHIP but winning pitchers.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/c/clemero02.shtml

http://www.baseball-reference.com/s/seaveto01.shtml

http://www.baseball-reference.com/m/maddugr01.shtml

Wins are very important over the entire career. You can have one good season w/l wise, but the career it was speaks to their record.

 

Well, of course if you have two guys with comparable earned run averages, the one who earned more victories had the better year. You also have to figure in, particularly with Ryan, how many horseshit teams he played for.

 

Ooooh--"mealy-mouthed", is it? A nearly mortal wound, HeWho, but here's a response before lack of blood renders me unconcious.

ERA is the stat commonly used to rank pitchers with a sufficient number of innings pitched. In that sense, baseball agrees with you.

In individual cases, the argument breaks down. Career wins is a better measure of Jamie Moyer's ability than career ERA. Observing him pitch at 44 is an even better measure, if you can stomach the experience. I could offer other examples, but you get my drift. To make it official, I agree with buckweaver.

And if you don't agree with me...only an evening with the much-maligned Alyssa Milano would serve to revive me from my anguish.

 

Do we need a running ERA thread?

 

Seems like it.

 

Oh, I don't know, maybe the fact that Smoltz had 42 more strikeouts than anyone else in the league (including 117(!) more than Brown), had the second-best WHIP (just 0.057 behind Brown), allowed 7.06 hits per nine innings (better than Brown's 7.22), led the league in innings pitched with 253.2 (20 more than Brown), was second in complete games (6 to Brown's 5, although Brown had 3 SHOs to Smoltz's 2) ... and, yes, benefited from good run support to win 24 games, 7 more than Brown, and equaling the most in an NL season since Carlton won 27 in 1972.

Yeah, Brown was a real clear-cut winner there ... :

At best, it's a tie. At best. Unless, of course, you're only looking at ERA or ERA+.

 

Good run support?

Had no idea to what extent you would sellout to be a Braves fanboy apologist.

Brown is No. 1 in WHIP (no need to yap about hits per 9 at that point, right?), and absolute Secretariat runaway winner in ERA, and gets two full fewer runs of offensive support per game.

Of course, for you, pitching a third of an inning less per start is all of a sudden the important stat.

A tie.

Makes me wonder if you were even watching baseball 11 years ago.

I thought you were a little bit older.

 

Hey, that's my line.....