|
|
Post by oilcansman on Dec 17, 2013 14:37:45 GMT -5
The Great Charlie Finley once said what concerned him about free agency was not the price of good players but the price of mediocrity.
Mike Pelfrey last season had a win loss of 5-13 with a 5.19 ERA and 1.55 WHIP over 152 innings. His last decent season was with the Mets in 2010. He signed a 2 year $11 million contract with the Twins. I find this much more incredible than Cano. Pelphrey is a lousy pitcher.
|
|
|
|
Post by patrmac04 on Dec 19, 2013 1:30:40 GMT -5
And people complain about Dempster... yes he is over paid but he will give consistent innings.
Sent from my SGH-T999 using proboards
|
|
|
|
Post by larrycook on Dec 19, 2013 7:32:44 GMT -5
The Great Charlie Finley once said what concerned him about free agency was not the price of good players but the price of mediocrity. Mike Pelfrey last season had a win loss of 5-13 with a 5.19 ERA and 1.55 WHIP over 152 innings. His last decent season was with the Mets in 2010. He signed a 2 year $11 million contract with the Twins. I find this much more incredible than Cano. Pelphrey is a lousy pitcher. What this really is - is the price for the chance to catch lightening in a bottle. They are gambling Pelfrey has a bounce back year. Some people think Victorino was lightening in a bottle for the Sox last year. Others say his bounce back year was the result of batting after Ellsbury and seeing a lot of phat pitches. In my mind, we should have tried to sign Kazmir to a two year deal, because I thought he really started to throw the ball well at the end of last season and he will continue to improve next season, which would make him a better #4 starter than Doubront, Peavey or Dempster. With two extra starters, the trade options expand. |
|
|
|
Post by rjp313jr on Dec 19, 2013 8:33:39 GMT -5
Doubront is too valuable longterm to bump him out of the rotation for Kasmir. Doubront threw the ball well last year and costs a lot less has an extra year of control and no concerning injury history. Kasmir would've been an awful choice for this team. You don't pay good $$ and bump reliable options out of the way, plus block young prospects for a guy like Kazmir. Kazmir would've been a good add if our situation was that of a couple years ago when Aaron Cook was around.
|
|
|
|
Post by moonstone2 on Dec 19, 2013 10:27:44 GMT -5
The Great Charlie Finley once said what concerned him about free agency was not the price of good players but the price of mediocrity. Mike Pelfrey last season had a win loss of 5-13 with a 5.19 ERA and 1.55 WHIP over 152 innings. His last decent season was with the Mets in 2010. He signed a 2 year $11 million contract with the Twins. I find this much more incredible than Cano. Pelphrey is a lousy pitcher. MLB projects to make $8.5-$9B in revenue in 2014, that's up 265% since 1995. That doesn't include monies from teams that own extremely lucrative RSNs. Most of that revenue is to see the major league players, they are the product. When you see those numbers it's hard to cry foul over a guy with any major league track record making $5.5M. Compared to the overall cash flow coming in, this is a very small amount of money. Besides, would you really rather see the money lining owners pockets instead? |
|
|
|
Post by oilcansman on Dec 19, 2013 12:50:58 GMT -5
Moonstone2:
You didn't understand my point. I have no problem with Pelfrey being paid or accepting the money. The price of mediocrity is stunning. From a management perspective, when looking at Pelfrey's numbers, why not just reach into your AAA or make a minor league deal to find somebody who can duplicate those numbers for the league minimum? Why pay 5.5 million for lousy when you can pay $500K for lousy? I understand the lightning in a bottle theory, but its almost as likely they can catch it from a minor leaguer, too.
Contracts like this cry out for management creativity.
|
|
|
|
Post by jmei on Dec 19, 2013 13:59:28 GMT -5
Mike Pelfrey had a 3.99 FIP last year and a 4.16 FIP in his last three. That's not great (it's slightly below average; starting pitchers collectively put up a 3.95 FIP last year), but if you think every organization can just pull a league-average arm out of AAA, you're dead wrong. It's comparable to Felix Doubront's 4.12 FIP over his last three years, for instance (and Pelfrey has even pitched more innings than Doubront over that stretch).
Yeah, Pelfrey's ERA (4.80) is a lot higher than his FIP over that stretch, but the difference is mostly LOB% and an elevated BABIP, which even in a sample of 366 innings is probably more chance than anything else. FIP is far more predictive of his 2014+ performance than his ERA, and the Twins are betting he'll be closer to league-average (as his FIP would indicate) than replacement-level (as his ERA would indicate) going forward.
|
|
|
|
Post by fenwaythehardway on Dec 19, 2013 16:34:18 GMT -5
Moonstone2: You didn't understand my point. I have no problem with Pelfrey being paid or accepting the money. The price of mediocrity is stunning. From a management perspective, when looking at Pelfrey's numbers, why not just reach into your AAA or make a minor league deal to find somebody who can duplicate those numbers for the league minimum? Why pay 5.5 million for lousy when you can pay $500K for lousy? I understand the lightning in a bottle theory, but its almost as likely they can catch it from a minor leaguer, too. Contracts like this cry out for management creativity. Probably because you don't have enough starter depth in your org to begin with. It's easy to say that they should just go get someone cheap, but there's a finite supply of pitchers in the world. |
|
|
|
Post by rjp313jr on Dec 19, 2013 18:11:27 GMT -5
I get that FIP is supposed to be a better predictive value then ERA, but at some point if a players ERA is always worse then his FIP then maybe something with that player is counter to the norm. Maybe Pelfrey truly gets worse with runners on base so perhaps adjusting that towards the mean is not predictive of his future. In fact it could be the opposite.
|
|
|
|
Post by jmei on Dec 19, 2013 19:02:48 GMT -5
I get that FIP is supposed to be a better predictive value then ERA, but at some point if a players ERA is always worse then his FIP then maybe something with that player is counter to the norm. Maybe Pelfrey truly gets worse with runners on base so perhaps adjusting that towards the mean is not predictive of his future. In fact it could be the opposite. Good point-- Pelfrey's career ERA (4.48) is significantly worse than his career FIP (4.17) in a large enough sample that we can start to say that his above-average BABIP is maybe a skill and not chance. He's definitely worse than Doubront, for instance, and I don't want it to appear as if I was seriously making that comparison. |
|
|
|
Post by charliezink16 on Dec 20, 2013 3:20:54 GMT -5
Why would it be so hard to believe that a certain pitcher is consistently worse w/ runners on base? Pitching from the windup and the stretch are two completely different things.
|
|
|
|
Post by moonstone2 on Dec 20, 2013 7:23:45 GMT -5
Last year was Pelfrey's first off of TJ surgery so you would expect him to be a little better this year. Pelfrey hasn't been outstanding but he does have a long history of providing innings. That's very important to a rebuilding team like the Twins and not something you can get from just some guy in AAA.
|
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Dec 24, 2013 10:22:30 GMT -5
Why would it be so hard to believe that a certain pitcher is consistently worse w/ runners on base? Pitching from the windup and the stretch are two completely different things. The bigger question to me is whether it's correctable. Greinke really struggled from the stretch for a couple years, and at one point he was working from the windup in many situations with men on. He didn't seem to have the same problem this year with the Dodgers, though. What I'm trying to say is that if Pelfrey's LOB% is higher than expected every year, that's not back luck, that's something he's doing wrong - but it doesn't mean he'll necessarily continue to if there is something that can be identified to fix it. Instead of "the price of mediocrity" though, maybe the title here should be "the scarcity of usefulness." The 2011 Red Sox go to the playoffs with Mike Pelfry on their roster. The idea of replacement level has entered the consciousness of every baseball fan in the last ten to twelve years or so, but it can be quite misleading. There are probably a dozen or two first baseman that are at or close to replacement level and are either freely available or can easily be acquired. Starting pitchers, though? Teams need more of them, and they are much less evenly distributed. So, while the Red Sox may have something around nine starters this year who project to be replacement level or better, how many do the Twins have? And it's not like they can get one of those from the Red Sox cheaply. So it makes more sense for the Twins to give Pelfrey the money than to trade for Ryan Dempster's contract, or to weaken another part of their team for Felix Doubront or Jake Peavy. |
|
|
|
Post by fenwaythehardway on Dec 24, 2013 10:27:02 GMT -5
Replacement level is imaginary. Just because a pitcher like Pelfry happens to be "replacement level" doesn't mean there's a dozen Mike Pelfry's floating around for anyone to pick up at the league minimum. If anything, Pelfry's contract shows that we've defined replacement level incorrectly for starters.
|
|
|
|
Post by jmei on Dec 24, 2013 10:40:57 GMT -5
Replacement level is imaginary. Just because a pitcher like Pelfry happens to be "replacement level" doesn't mean there's a dozen Mike Pelfry's floating around for anyone to pick up at the league minimum. If anything, Pelfry's contract shows that we've defined replacement level incorrectly for starters. Have we? Even by B-R's RA9-based WAR, Pelfrey has averaged 1.1 bWAR per 200 IP over his career. He was pretty bad last year, has injury issues, and almost certainly will fall short of 200 IP next year, so the deal is still somewhat inexplicable, but it's not like he's consistently been below replacement level or anything, especially if you think FIP is still slightly more predictive than ERA going forward (he's never had a below-replacement level season by FIP-based WAR). PS: Pelfrey's problem is not really pitching worse from the stretch-- his career LOB% is around league-average. His problem is giving up hits on balls in play-- his career .310 BABIP is the highest of any pitcher since 2007 with 1000 IP. ADD: For what it's worth, Steamer projects 144 IP of 4.67 ERA, 4.36 FIP ball, which comes to 1.4 fWAR and slightly less than 1 bWAR, which pretty much justifies his salary. |
|
|
|
Post by fenwaythehardway on Dec 24, 2013 11:44:05 GMT -5
Fair enough. My point is that if a bunch of "replacement level" pitchers start getting significant contracts, it's not a sign that the market is broken, it's a sign that replacement level is set incorrectly. I don't know if that's actually happening though (sounds like it isn't).
|
|
