How Good Is (Was) Rich Hill?

Shows how impressive greinkes season was and ariettas 20ish game stretch. Unfortunately neither of them could keep it going through the playoffs.

I said it in another thread, but will say it again. If you're on board for Clay B's salary, you should be on board for Hill. One guy is high risk that will cost 13 mil. One guy is high risk that will be much cheaper and has always pitched well when healthy. Both are likely to be on the DL next year.

Gonna guess he gets about 2/10 plus incentives for IP or some other metric....not sure it will be the sox but I'm rooting for his return.

Well, I'll take a five man rotation of guys who looked as decrepit as he did.

I understand that he has had a history of injuries but no idea if he is over them or they linger in some capacity. He sure did not appear hampered in any way and there was no other Sox pitcher that I had more fun watching.

As I've pointed out, if you have both Kelly and Wright in the bullpen, stretching him out mid-season in MLB would be painless. And why wouldn't you want to do it that way? Why waste three/four and then five/six great innings in the minors, when he could be throwing those innings where they count? A piggyback with Hill and Wright or Kelly is an upgrade to having Wright or Kelly take the whole start, or calling up Owens, while Hill is in AAA.

If he's been regularly going 2-3 innings in relief, it's probably just one start where he is being piggybacked, thus leaving you a man short in the bullpen for a few days. If you have to piggyback for two starts, you can option Shaw for 10 days and add a reliever, if that seems necessary because of how many innings you're getting out of the rest of the rotation.

Question I don't know the answer to.  These days, how many good relievers are "regularly going 2-3 innings in relief"?  If someone's getting people out, isn't he going one inning in the 7th or 8th?

The ten average #2 starters were Michael Pineda, Jon Lester, Jose Quintana, John Lackey, Lance McCullers, Tyson Ross, Francisco Liriano, Jake Odorizzi, Raisel Iglesias, and Patrick Corbin.

They combined for 242 stretches of 4 starts. And two of those stretches actually beat Hill on all four metrics. 

Pineda put up a 1.27 ERA, 1.41 FIP, 2.09 xFIP, and 2.07 SIERA from April 24 to May 10.

Liriano put up a 1.24 ERA, 1.58 FIP, 1.80 xFIP, and 1.64 SIIERA from May 29 to June 15.

Using our broad criterion of an xFIP below 2.75 and an ERA below 3.00, we have 25 comparable stretches.

-- That Liriano stretch was part of a 6-start run, yielding three 4-start stretches, plus he had two other such stretches.
-- Lester had an 8-start run at that level, yielding 5 stretches, plus another later in the year.
-- Lackey had a 6-start run, yielding 3 stretches.
-- Ross had a 5-start run and a later 4-start one, for three total stretches.
-- Pineda had a 5-start run, for two stretches.
-- Quintana had a 6-start run that yielding two overlapping 4-start stretches (the fifth start was a bit rough, the first very good but the sixth dominant, so starts 1 to 4 qualify and 3 to 6 do, but not 2 to 5).
-- McCullers had one 4-start run.
-- Iglesias, the Cuban 25 y/o rookie, had a 5.13 ERA, 3.79 FIP, and 4.07 xFIP in his first 10 starts, then 3.19, 3.32, and 2.50 in his last 8. That looks to me like a guy who figured out how to use his stuff, and became a different pitcher. His first 6 starts after his breakthrough are a run at this level yielding three stretches (he got hammered in his next-to-last start and then bounced back). I think he's not a good comp, like Happ wasn't in the last group, so I'm going to extract him from the analysis, although leaving him in would not, I think, change the conclusion.

Let's set a slightly higher bar to see where Hill's stretch ranks among the 224 remaining ones. Let's find stretches with an xFIP of 2.50 or better, matching or besting Hill, along with an ERA of 2.50 or better. That seems fair given that Hill's ERA (1.55) was much better than his xFIP, and given that in a short stretch, ERA - xFIP can be meaningful in that, as previously noted, the two can have an inverse correlation if you attack hitters too aggressively.

There were 7 stretches that fit this criterion, and you'd say that at least four and probably six of them were better (the two Lackey stretches had a higher FIP, but I tend to discount that if both xFIP and the results are lower, and in synch): 

Who Starts ERA4 FIP4 xFIP4
Hill 1-4 1.55 2.27 2.50

Liriano 10-13 1.24 1.58 1.80
Pineda 4-7 1.27 1.41 2.09
Liriano 9-12 1.67 1.58 1.75
Lester 18-21 2.45 1.60 2.16
Lackey 30-33 1.80 3.09 2.36
Lackey 29-32 1.29 2.99 2.50
Liriano 27-30 2.35 2.22 2.49


Note that I'm being conservative here by not using league- and park-adjusted metrics.

Now, if we put Hill's performance as the invisible median of a bunch of similar stretches, you've got 10 to 12 stretches out of 224 that are of a truly comparable caliber. Which is essentially 5%, the traditional limit of statistical significance (although how meaningful it is here can be debated).

I think the conclusion is this: it's absolutely within the realm of possibility that Hill during his four starts was displaying the talent of a Lester / Lackey / Liriano sort of average #2 starter, pitching at the very top of his game. It is, however, considerably more likely that he was displaying the talent of someone better, pitching merely well.

It's safe to say that if he continues to pitch like that, and suffers the normal expected variation, his floor is an average #2 starter, a guy who ranks 26-35 among the 150 starters that MLB teams use. The italicized phrase is crucial of course, but what we're trying to figure out here is how talented you had to have been (as evidenced by sample sizes of 15 to 33 starts) to throw four starts that good. 

Next we'll look at the above-average #2s.

I'd be surprised and disappointed if it's not on DDo's agenda to move Farrell in a more analytically sound direction. That would likely be Hazen's day-to-day job, and he seems well-suited to it.

By the way, without realizing it, I meant "regularly" literally. It doesn't actually mean "often." "Regularly" in that he sometimes does it and it's not a surprise because it's part of his job description. The actual frequency would be a little north of "occasionally." The point being that he'd be already stretched out to 3 innings, because he'd done it once or twice, and gone 2 innings maybe a handful of times.

D. Murphy HR streak is extremely unlikely, especially considering it is during the playoffs and the caliber of pitchers he's done it against, see the 500 or so articles written about it. I'll boldly predict he'll never do it again. I think there is always some noise that has not been weeded out in explaining streaks. It was during expanded/weaker rosters and there was likely little video to advance scout him as well. I'm not dismissing the talent.
People noticed, see Cafardo's article today, he'll get a multi year deal from someone.

I notice you mentioned that he's a compliment to Buccholz but what happens when they are both injured at the same time, something that is not only possible but should be expected to. Roster spots are limited and spots are limited. How many high risk hi reward players do you want on a roster at one time?

Hitting is not like pitching. It's kind of the opposite, in fact. You can't compare extraordinary short-term results in one to the other.

If you're a hitter like Murphy, you can see 96 pitches over 6 games like he did (excluding his IBB), and be your ordinary self on 90 of them, and be thrillingly great on 6 of them, and do what he did.

What happens to a pitcher who's as good as Murphy is as a hitter, if he throws 96 pitches, 90 like he usually does, and six incredibly good ones? He's a bit better than average. You might not even notice.

(Yeah, in reality, Murphy's been so hot that he's probably had 8 or 10 great swings. The principle remains the same.)

And now consider the same pitcher who throws 90 ordinary pitches but 6 unimaginably bad ones.

Hill's streak consists of throwing 434 pitches, where it's possible to mess the results up big-time with a handful or two of bad pitches, but where the only way to be excellent is to throw a very high percentage of really good pitches, each of which can only add a relatively small value to the overall positive account.

To give an idea of this disparity, let's take Wade Miley, who was completely league-average, and take his average start. He has a 3.81 FIP. Add an extra perfect pitch. That's 1/3 of a strikeout, which reduces his FIP for that outing to 3.70. Now, instead, add an extra perfectly awful pitch. That's 1 HR, which raises his FIP for the outing to 5.95. It's 20 times the impact.

Bill James pointed out that the stat line from a single game by a rookie pitcher, like Roger Clemens' 15 SO, 0 BB game, can actually tell you something about him. But there is no single-game stat line by a hitter that could be as meaningful. Even a 4 HR game, because he might have gotten lucky and seen 4 cripples. But you can't fan 15 and walk 0 by being lucky. That happens when you execute over 100 pitches, incrementally.

I sincerely hope you are getting this data to the Sox FO.

Whoever decided to cut an analyst like Eric from the Sox made a boneheaded move, I think. Here's why. Although a team of unpaid interns with spreadsheets can in theory enter quantities of data, and algorithms can scan for results, fresh ideas like Eric's can obviously be worth millions of dollars to a team, if they are proven correct, and so the people doing the work ought to be properly incentivized, and even compensated in proportion to their measurable accuracy and freshness.

The danger for the Sox is that Eric goes to a competitor with his fresh million dollar ideas. Or even that competitors read this forum and act rationally by doing a similar analysis and then (if they find Eric is correct) bidding up Hill's services.

Meanwhile, I tune in here to read Eric, and enjoy everyone else's work while I'm here. I can't believe it's all free. Thank you everyone for some of the best entertainment value anywhere, for a Red Sox fan like me. Which brings up the question, why doesn't NESN buy this SP "channel"?

PS. I think SOSH's loss is our gain. I haven't tuned in there since Eric left.