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Closer for the rest of 2013 (and 2014?)
ericmvan
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Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,933
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Post by ericmvan on Aug 15, 2013 6:53:37 GMT -5
Kind of unfair to argue against a point made nearly two months ago, isn't it? Just explained my point in the edit ... it's not about whether making Dempster the closer then was a good idea, but that that assessment of Dempster never made any sense. I was reading back in the thread and was kind of boggled that anyone ever thought that (let alone a moderator), and that reminded me that I wanted to do that SP ranking anyway ... Edit: checked some game logs and confirmed that Lackey and Doubront were pitching brilliantly at that point, so it was both an indefensible assertion and a terrible prediction. It just struck me as a very bizarre claim to make about a guy who has been more or less average all season. Further edit: my biggest pet peeve, and I know I can come across as a dick when I act on it, is people who post what seems to them to be the truth, when they can check the facts in literally a minute and see whether their inevitably biased subjective impression is in fact concordant with reality. Nobody knows what's going on until you check the numbers. Someone at ESPN Boston just made the claim, for instance, that Carp recently has been even worse than Napoli, which of course turned out to be nonsense. (And yes, about a third of the time when I see a claim that I think is crazy, and I check the numbers, it turns out to be reasonable. But I always check before responding. Sometimes I start typing a sarcastic reply that I end up deleting. It builds character.) It's really fun to look up numbers and see what guys have actually done. It's often surprising. I try to do so whenever I say anything about a player and his performance, and discussion boards like these would be better places, IMHO, if everyone had that habit.
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Post by jmei on Aug 15, 2013 10:12:49 GMT -5
So at worst, I was one off and he was the third-best starter at the time? Workman had yet to be called up (and was frankly not even on the radar), Lester had just had a few awful starts (5 R in 5.2 IP, 5 R in 5 IP, 7 R in 4.2 IP) and his peripherals in May and June were worse than Dempster's, Peavy was not in the organization, and Webster/Aceves/etc. had been terrible. You're right that I probably wasn't giving Doubront enough credit at the time, but he was just starting his run of brilliance that lasted through July and early August. But look at a comparison of their stats as of June 12th (the closest date I would find to my post; this is what happens when you want to start an argument about something two months later): Felix Doubront (4.84 ERA, 3.64 FIP, 3.64 xFIP, 3.89 SIERA) Ryan Dempster (4.40 ERA, 4.75 FIP, 3.84 xFIP, 3.76 SIERA) It may have been a somewhat bold claim, but I didn't make it up out of thin air. Dempster's stats were fairly competitive with Doubront's in June, and it was only after that that they started to move in opposite directions. Sure, it might have been a bad prediction, but it was not indefensible.
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Post by chavopepe2 on Aug 15, 2013 10:50:49 GMT -5
Eric - I appreciate the statistics you bring to the table here and find them to be quite interesting in understanding the current state of the pitching staff and the performance to-date. However, you're attempt to link those statistics to a post made two months ago and your subsequent comments defending that connection (while asserting some level of outrage that those comments were made by a moderator) only make you look like a prick and fail to justify this over-the-top ex post facto outrage on a one sentence post from 2 months ago.
As jmei notes, it is really just a matter of Doubront vs. Dempster. Not really worth rehashing - especially in the relatively douchie way you chose to.
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Post by onbase on Aug 15, 2013 12:00:11 GMT -5
Dempster is maybe the second best starter in the rotation right now, and will probably continue to be until Buchholz gets healthy. <snipped numbers to save space> I don't recall him ever ranking any better, so I'm not sure whether this was an awful assessment or an awful prediction; he had a 4.15 ERA and 4.80 FIP on that date. But I wanted to produce that ranking anyway ... Since you didn't specify a time frame for your ranks, I'll say that I do recall him being both better and our second best pitcher by some other measures. MLB ranks 2008 - 2012: IP: 15 Jon Lester 18 Ryan Dempster Of those with as many innings: FIP: 9 Jon Lester 16 Ryan Dempster K/9: 5 Jon Lester 10 Ryan Dempster I looked those up last March out of curiosity as folks were fussing over rotation spots. No other Sox pitchers ranked above those two. I'll close by saying that I'm in fan love with Koji, whose 2013 numbers don't need to be repeated, and hope his arm lasts through 2014.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 15, 2013 12:54:43 GMT -5
To the point. I know that egalitarianism is good in theory but certain posters deserve more leeway than others. To use a non-baseball example if Kirk Hammett wants to tell me I messed up a riff and be a compete dick about it, I'll welcome it whereas I might not from someone else. Eric's background can be found here. www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2005/06/23/his_numbers_are_in_the_ballpark/?page=fullTo summarize the article no less than John W. Henry was impressed enough by his statistical analysis to hire him. So if he wants to slap us around a bit over claims made two months ago, let him do it. You might just learn something. There is no need to call him out, or question his integrity. You can save that for an idiot like me!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 15, 2013 13:12:25 GMT -5
An off topic post deserves an on-topic post.
I love what Koji has done this year. But given the way he gets people out, I believe that the end of his career could be a steep cliff. The Sox did an excellent job this year building depth in the closer role and have had to use Plan C.
There are some good options for that. They could go for Balfour, Mujica or Rodney who would be more expensive but might still be reasonable for a big market club. Or they could go with a current middle reliever with good stuff who might close, (Frasor from the right side Perez from the Left) or they could go with a reclamation/injury project Crain/Devine?
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Post by chavopepe2 on Aug 15, 2013 13:20:04 GMT -5
To the point. I know that egalitarianism is good in theory but certain posters deserve more leeway than others. To use a non-baseball example if Kirk Hammett wants to tell me I messed up a riff and be a compete dick about it, I'll welcome it whereas I might not from someone else. Eric's background can be found here. www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2005/06/23/his_numbers_are_in_the_ballpark/?page=fullTo summarize the article no less than John W. Henry was impressed enough by his statistical analysis to hire him. So if he wants to slap us around a bit over claims made two months ago, let him do it. You might just learn something. There is no need to call him out, or question his integrity. You can save that for an idiot like me! I know who Eric is . Well he's relatively new to SP, he has certainly developed a reputation across other boards. We welcome the unique statistical analysis. Frankly, we want to see more of it from all posters. I love seeing the quantitative comparisons rather than the subjective opinions tossed around as fact. In this case, it doesn't matter who the poster is. This was a relatively minor statement made 2 months ago that, well not a good prediction, was a reasonable opinion. Whether you are someone we've never heard of or a Bill James, bringing a point up like this and following it up with comments such as, "I was reading back in the thread and was kind of boggled that anyone ever thought that (let alone a moderator)" and saying it was "bizarre" and then out-right implying jmei was being statistically dishonest - will be and should be called out.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 15, 2013 13:28:00 GMT -5
I see your point.
However if Bill James wants to call me out on something that I wrote two months ago, he's welcome. He can even call me names while he does it.
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Post by gregblossersbelly on Aug 15, 2013 13:37:12 GMT -5
Koji's kind of under paid if he's going to be our closer in 2014. To keep him happy. Doubt if necessary. But, would be a sign of good faith and reward for a great season. Extend him a year for 10m? That gives him a 2yr/14m contract. Which is still good value if he pitches like he has the last few years.
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Post by bluechip on Aug 15, 2013 13:38:30 GMT -5
Koji's kind of under paid if he's going to be our closer in 2014. To keep him happy. Doubt if necessary. But, would be a sign of good faith and reward for a great season. Extend him a year for 10m? That gives him a 2yr/14m contract. Which is still good value if he pitches like he has the last few years. If he has the games finished clause in his contract that would be more like 2 years 18 million.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 15, 2013 13:48:07 GMT -5
I want GGB deciding on my paycheck, you're hired!
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Post by gregblossersbelly on Aug 15, 2013 13:54:44 GMT -5
Koji's kind of under paid if he's going to be our closer in 2014. To keep him happy. Doubt if necessary. But, would be a sign of good faith and reward for a great season. Extend him a year for 10m? That gives him a 2yr/14m contract. Which is still good value if he pitches like he has the last few years. If he has the games finished clause in his contract that would be more like 2 years 18 million. And, that would still be a good deal.
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ericmvan
Veteran
Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,933
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Post by ericmvan on Aug 16, 2013 15:24:39 GMT -5
Hey, look, I apologize for being a douche. You want the unspoken context? I was already wondering WTF was up with jmei (I'm new here) when he posted a link to the "small sample size song" in the 1B thread, in response to my argument that Carp had been hugely better when he was playing after playing the game or day before. I thought about explaining how that had nothing to do with SSS (100 PA vs. 84, interlaced over the season with little rhyme or reason, is almost an experimental design). I did wonder whether he was misunderstanding the point of citing the small sample of Carp's performance after pinch-hitting, which was obviously a counter-argument to the suggestion that Farrell was playing the "hot hand," since no manager ever decides to start a guy because he pinch-hit well the day before, and those PA (by a sheer fluke) constitute a good chunk of Carp's great performance when not rusty. (And yes, the thought did occur to me that you don't have to tell me about SSS when I've been testing them with chi-square and t-tests for fifteen years, and done so enough times that my intuitions about whether a performance is significant given its sample size have become quite good. And this is probably a good time to remind everyone of Bill James' inisght that tiny samples can be significant when the performance is extreme enough, e.g. Clemens' 15 K, 0 BB game as a rookie.)
I decided not to bother with that response ... and instead unconsciously put my radar up for anyplace else where it seemed to me that jmei might have been missing the point.
I also didn't notice that his post was two months old until I was nearly finished with my rundown ... and then decided to post it (without commentary) anyway, since I'd put so much work into it!
I've thought of Dempster as the 5th starter all year (which I think is hard to argue against), even when Lester was struggling, and that assessment informed my aha! moment when I thought I caught jmei saying something silly. But yeah, at that moment, he was the third best starter, and to the best of my knowledge, three remains a very close number to two; I think there's a decent argument that there's no closer integer.
Obviously, bringing my irritation with him from another thread into this one was not smart. But I did feel I'd been dissed. I'm cool if he is, though (we are certainly both working hard out of nothing but passion for the game and love of the Sox). OK?
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