I Still Like Ike April 27, 2015
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Buster Posey, Ike Davis, position players pitching
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No, not because of his .345 batting average or .405 OBP, but because of his 0.00 ERA.
The whole time Ike Davis was a Met, I would shout at the TV every time Terry Collins put in a tired reliever in a laugher that Ike needed to pitch. Ike was, after all, a starter in his freshman year at Arizona State, cobbling together 47.2 innings in 12 starts and 2 relief appearances for a 7.42 ERA. He got better, though – he spent most of his sophomore year in the outfield but still managed to make one start and six relief appearances, totalling 6.2 innings and a 1.34 ERA. In his junior year, Ike pitched in 16 games and 24 innings, going 4-1 with 4 saves and a 2.25 ERA. Ike was not a bad hurler. Buster Posey, of course, showed him up – while playing 68 games at catcher in 2007-08, Buster also made 9 relief appearances and collected 6 saves with a 1.17 ERA.
It was only natural that the A’s turned to Ike to pitch the ninth inning of a 14-1 blowout on April 21, but Ike pitched a perfect inning on 9 pitches. No runs, no hits, no errors, no walks. (No strikeouts, either….) It’s a shame I waited through all those games and Ike finally pitched on the other side of the country.
Cueto sits on bench, sobs April 6, 2014
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Baseball, bullpen, game score, Ike Davis, Johnny Cueto, Juan Lagares, Mets, Tough Losses
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Johnny Cueto is having a tough year so far. In yesterday’s game against the Mets, he pitched to a game score of 65, allowing two earned runs in seven innings; he left with a lead, followed quickly with a hold by Sam LeCure and a blown save by J.J. Hoover, who surrendered a pinch-hit grand slam to professional pinch hitter Ike Davis1. 65 is a solid game score; the sabermetric definition of a quality start is a pitcher who adds value to his team by pitching to a game score above 50. In his first start of the year, Cueto threw seven innings of three-hit ball and struck out eight, pitching to a 74 game score and surrendering only one run. Unfortunately, that day, Adam Wainwright threw seven innings of three-hit ball and struck out nine, pitching to a 76 game score and surrendering no runs. Neither bullpen surrendered much, and so Wainwright took the win and dealt Cueto one of the toughest losses we’re likely to see this year.
Let’s give the devil their due – although it’s been easy to criticize the Mets’ bullpen, Scott Rice and Carlos Torres combined for a perfect inning and two thirds yesterday, keeping the score close enough that Ike was able to knock in the winning home run.
Meanwhile, Juan Lagares‘ slugging percentage is still up at .765, and with 13 total bases on 21 plate appearances he’s averaging about .62 bases every time he steps to the plate. Lagares’ slide into second yesterday was important for Ike’s hit to be a grand slam; if he’d been out, Ruben Tejada could easily have grounded into a double play and kept Ike out of the batter’s box. Still, Tejada’s OBP is at .389, and if he can keep that up, a shortstop who gets on base almost eight out of every 20 plate appearances is a valuable person to have on your roster.
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1Davis’s first pinch-hit home run, and, according to Greg Prince via Twitter, the first come-from-behind walk-off grand slam in the history of the Mets.
Ike Davis and his 12% raise January 21, 2014
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Economics.Tags: Ike Davis, Mets, Pythagorean expectation
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So, Ike Davis was pretty lousy last year. He batted .205/.326/.334 in an injury-shortened season with 106 total bases on 377 plate appearances, meaning he expected to make it to first a bit over a quarter of the time. Throw in his paltry home run figures and a handful of doubles, and you’re not looking at a major-league first baseman; his 0.2 wins above replacement put him in the company of Lyle Overbay and Garrett Jones.
Now that that’s out of the way, I’d like to point out that Overbay played 142 games and Jones played 144; Davis definitely presented more bang for your buck than those two, especially since he was earning $3.125 million. He’ll be getting a 12% raise this year, having re-signed for $3.5 million. Again, his numbers were pretty lousy.
But if you add up all of Davis’s appearances as a starter, you’ll see that the Mets scored 354 runs in those games, and allowed 376, meaning that the Pythagorean expectation for those games is 0.46989 – that corresponds to an expectation of about 76 wins over a 162-game season (or 41 wins over Davis’ tenure). The Mets’ overall winning percentage was .457 (74 wins), and their Pythagorean expectation was about .45, corresponding to around 73 wins; but without Davis, the team scored 265 runs and allowed 308, leading to an expectation of .425 and around 69 wins on the season. Additionally, the team actually won only 39 of the 87 games Davis started, for about a .45 winning percentage – right on with their season-long expectation, and two wins below expectation.
Now, there are some caveats. When Davis was active, the team was still doing its best to win, and players like John Buck and Marlon Byrd were still active. Toward the end of the season, the Mets moved more toward development and away from trying to win every game. It’s therefore entirely possible that the effect of having Davis start the game are wrapped up in the team’s changing fortunes. Still, the team would have been expected to perform better with Davis in the lineup, at least according to the Pythagorean expectation formula, and actually underperformed.
The Spectrum Club December 28, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Aaron Miles, Andy Marte, designated hitter, Felipe Lopez, Ike Davis, Jeff Kunkel, Joe Mather, Mark Loretta, Nick Swisher, position players pitching, Spectrum Club, Wade Boggs
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This year, I get to induct two more players into the prestigious* Spectrum Club.
*not a guarantee
The Spectrum Club is the elite group of players who play, in one season, at both ends of the Defensive Spectrum. At the end of a season, a player is inducted if he pitches in at least one game and appears as designated hitter in at least one game. As it stands, that leaves about ten pitchers who only served as placeholder DHs but never made a plate appearance on the rolls, but that’s okay.
Three players have joined the Spectrum Club twice – Jeff Kunkel in 1988 and 1989 for Texas, Mark Loretta in 2001 for the Brewers and 2009 for the Dodgers, and Wade Boggs in 1997 for the Yankees and 1999 for Tampa Bay. Baltimore leads the club in inductees with six.
This year’s first inductee is Aaron Miles of the Cardinals, who actually pitched twice (August 3 in a loss to Houston and September 28 in a loss to Pittsburgh). Making it more impressive, Miles DHed only once, in an interleague win over Kansas City on June 26. Miles is an experienced pitcher, having tossed twice in 2007 and once in 2008. Tony Larussa has quite the commodity there, and I bet he wishes he’d had Miles on hand for that crazy 20-inning game against the Mets on April 17.
The second player to join the club is Andy Marte of Cleveland. Marte DHed twice, once on July 10 in a loss to the Rays and once on September 7. His single inning pitched came as part of the Best Game Ever, a July 29 loss to the Yankees in which the Yankees lost their DH and Marte struck out Nick Swisher.
Who’s the smart money on for Spectrum Club inductions in 2011? Joe Mather and Felipe Lopez are both reasonable hitters and both pitched for Tony Larussa in the Mets-Cardinals game. If Lopez stays with the Red Sox, he might be called on to DH an odd late game, and Terry Francona has been known to use position players in emergencies. Ike Davis may well be asked to DH interleague games for the Mets, and he was a closer in college, so he’d be a solid emergency reliever. If I had to guess, though, I’d figure that the next Spectrum Club inductee will be Nick Swisher getting his second induction for the Yankees.
Three Interesting Events Last Night June 9, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Alex Cora, Baseball, Dodgers, Elmer Dessens, Ike Davis, Jose Reyes, Matt Kemp, Mets, Mike Pelfrey
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Last night, the Mets hosted San Diego and three interesting things happened. First, Jose Reyes hit a home run that was initially ruled a double, leading to a review and the Mets coming up to 4 for 5 all-time for instant replays.
Second, Mike Pelfrey threw what would otherwise have been a complete game, and a respectable one at that – 9.0 IP, 5 H, 1 R (earned), 0 BB, 6 K, and 103 pitches for a Game Score of 79. Mike, however, was criminally unsupported and the game ended up going into extra innings. Elmer Dessens ended up taking the win for the Mets with 1/3 of an inning pitched because he happened to be the pitcher of record when the third interesting thing happened. (Pelf went 0-3 at the plate and Jerry Manuel double-switched Alex Cora in after the 9th.)
In the bottom of the 11th, Ike Davis (who was 0-4 at the time) hit a solo walk-off homer. It was only the third walk-off home run for the Mets this year, and the first that wasn’t hit by a catcher. Interestingly, Matt Kemp of the Dodgers did the same thing last week – 1 for 5, with the only hit being a walk-off extra-innings home run.
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