Max wrote:

People get so hung up about a pitcher's won-loss record as an indicator of effectiveness, that we will hear more and more about the McClellan 'phenomenon', which, nice as his presence has been in the roation, is nowhere near as important or impressive as what Lohse and Garcia are doing this year , or for that matter, what Garcia was doing this time last year.

Cards' McClellan first in NL to 6 wins

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/recap;_ylt=Alw7VxhaVC_B4Djai1qlt5YRvLYF?gid=310519124

All three have been awesome.  The Cardinals have lost one ace to injury and another to ineffectiveness.  Thanks to Loshe, Garcia and McCellan there is still a reason to watch.

"All three are pitching above expectations, but with all due respect to McClellan, and the boost he's given us as the nominal #5 starter, his performance is a distant third to Lohse and Garcia, except to the boners who slavishly attach all honors to a win-loss record."

Remind me again, how many rounds of the playoffs did Felix Hernandez's effectiveness earn the Mariners?

I'm not a win slave, but I do believe that a win total is going to lead to automatic inclusion into the Cy Young candidacy.

If you win 15+ with less than 10 losses, you'll be discussed. If you win 20+ regardless, you'll be discussed.

I don't think it's the end all, because sometimes Grienke pitches for the fucking Royals, but if coupled with a nice Strikeout Total, good WHIP, and a low Opponent BA. Those are all much more telling for how dominant you are as a pitcher, which to me is what the Cy Young really is. Who's the most nasty pitcher in the league?

Right now? That pitcher is Jaime Garcia, with Johnson a distant #2. They both have the ERA, Johnson with slight nods on Ks, BAA, and WHIP, but the record difference (Garcia 5-0, Johnson 3-1) and the fact that Garcia has thrown 2 complete game shutouts vs 0 by Johnson would make me vote for Jaime.

Most notably, the thing about Jaime that makes me want to vote for him is watching him. I don't think he has any idea how to throw a straight pitch. Everything moves, and he can move it in either direction.

Last edited by alz (5/20/2011 9:40 am)

APRTW wrote:

The Cardinals rotaion have 3 CG so far.  That is pretty good.  Garcai has 2 and Loshe 1.  Overall I think the staff is doing a good job in going deep into games.  I think that is a huge factor in the CY race or in my mind it should be.  Even if the ERA is higher, if that pitcher lead his team deep into games almost ever time it means more.   A pitcher that does that is taking losing out of someone elses hands.

I would agree with this.  One of the things I think a lot of the stat heads miss is that sometimes the reason a pitcher ends up with a great ERA/WHIP, low win total is become they come out of the game after 6 innings, whereas other pitchers stick around into the 7th and 8th innings when they are a little more vulnerable.  Garcia was like that last season. 

Personally, I hate the "Quality Start" statistic.  6 innings and 3 earned runs equals a 4.50 ERA.  What's so quality about that?  Also, if you only last 6 innings, you're requiring at least 3 innings (and probably at least 3 pitchers) from your bullpen.  That's not all that exceptional.

alz wrote:

Right now? That pitcher is Jaime Garcia, with Johnson a distant #2.

I think it is debatable as to who has been more dominating: Lohse or Garcia.  Garcia is ahead in most stats except for small differences in WHIP and BAA.  Not many starts back, however, the differences in WHIP were larger I recall.  So with ERA and W-L, it's kind of hard to say how those will translate into effectiveness over the course of the season, because giving up an earned run typically requires a multiple failures as a pitcher (unless the guy is giving up taters, of course), and Wins can be almost totally independent of a pitcher's effectiveness.  WHIP is a tally of most of the failures by which a pitcher puts a guy on base, so it might be a better estimator for what to expect in terms of ERA over the course of the season.  Of course, both stats are moving targets (witnessed by Lohse's recent increase in WHIP) and some pitchers are comfortable letting batters reach base in the expectation that they'll get three outs before the runner crosses the plate.  Don't mean to start a debate that we know well.

Bottom line: obviously Garcia's stats look a bit better than Lohse's at the moment, but I'm saying it's hard to say at this point if Lohse's nominal superiority in WHIP and BAA will have him in the lead a few months down the road.

forsberg_us wrote:

APRTW wrote:

The Cardinals rotaion have 3 CG so far.  That is pretty good.  Garcai has 2 and Loshe 1.  Overall I think the staff is doing a good job in going deep into games.  I think that is a huge factor in the CY race or in my mind it should be.  Even if the ERA is higher, if that pitcher lead his team deep into games almost ever time it means more.   A pitcher that does that is taking losing out of someone elses hands.

I would agree with this.  One of the things I think a lot of the stat heads miss is that sometimes the reason a pitcher ends up with a great ERA/WHIP, low win total is become they come out of the game after 6 innings, whereas other pitchers stick around into the 7th and 8th innings when they are a little more vulnerable.  Garcia was like that last season.

Garcia was thoroughly hosed by that last year.  His stats were phenomenal through about his first 8 starts, and yet his W-L record was nowhere.

forsberg_us wrote:

Personally, I hate the "Quality Start" statistic.  6 innings and 3 earned runs equals a 4.50 ERA.  What's so quality about that?  Also, if you only last 6 innings, you're requiring at least 3 innings (and probably at least 3 pitchers) from your bullpen.  That's not all that exceptional.

I think it's a useful stat, though it might be poorly named, as you imply.  The way I look at it, the 6 and 3 are the nearest whole numbers to average, and if the pitchers turns in a performance that is average or better, he has given his team a chance to win.  Thus, if the stat--whatever we call it, "average starts" if you choose--were 6 and 2, that would be an ERA of 3, which is way better than league average.  Currently the league average ERA is 3.8, a tiny bit closer to 4.5 than to 3.0.  Likewise, average IP/GS is probably closer to 6 than 7.  So maybe the stat could be called, "slightly less than average start", but the point is that it is tabulating the number of times that the starting pitcher gave his team a fair chance to win, assuming that the offense, defense, and bullpen also did average or better.