Complete Game in a Non-Quality Start May 26, 2011
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Cheap Wins, complete games, Cubs, Dillon Gee, Edwin Jackson, Freddy Garcia, Mets, Pete Harnisch, quality starts
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Dillon Gee of the Mets was credited with a complete game in last night’s win over the Cubs. His line: 6 IP, 4 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 2 BB, 4 K, 0 HR, and 1 HBP, for a game score of 50. He qualified for a quality start under the Game Score definition, but not under the six-inning, three-run criterion. That makes it a form of Cheap Win, where a pitcher is credited with a win even though he didn’t pitch as effectively as expected.
Since the game was shortened by rain, Gee got a complete game, even though that usually involves 8 innings for the visiting pitcher on a losing team or 9 inning for a winning pitcher regardless. That made me wonder how many pitchers from the modern era, when complete games are less common than in previous years, have pitched complete games in non-quality starts.
A quality start, under the Game Score definition, is a start with less than 50 points. That represents that a pitcher had negative value for his team. It can’t be especially common, can it?
According to this list I queried from Baseball Reference, a non-quality start complete game hasnt been pitched since 2006 when Freddy Garcia pitched a rain-shortened 5-inning complete game for the White Sox to defeat the Blue Jays 6-4, with a game score of 42. The last nine-inning complete game non-quality start was Pete Harnisch with the Reds, who won a 10-6 slugfest in August of 2000 on 124 pitches with only one walk and three strikeouts. Aside from the six earned runs (all scored in the first three innings) it wasn’t a bad performance, somewhat reminiscent of Edwin Jackson‘s ugly but effective no-hitter last year.
Spitballing: Blanton in the Phillies’ Rotation February 25, 2011
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Adam Eaton, Chan Ho Park, Clif Lee, Cole Hamels, Joe Blanton, Kyle Kendrick, Mets, Mike Pelfrey, Phillies, R.A. Dickey, Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt, Spitballing, Year of the Pitcher
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The Phillies have one of the best rotations, on paper, in baseball today. Although some people are measured in their optimism, including Jayson Stark, I think the important thing to remember is that we’re arguing over whether they’re “the best ever,” not if they’re going to be competitive. Rotations that bring this kind of excitement at the beginning of the year are few and far between. The Mets, for example, aren’t drawing this kind of expectation – guys like R.A. Dickey and Mike Pelfrey are solid, but they don’t have the deserved reputations of Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels, and Joe Blanton.
I’m hardly the first to say it, but Joe Blanton seems to be the odd man out. He’ll be making about $8.5 million next year. Blanton faced 765 batters last year, fourth behind Halladay, Hamels, and Kyle Kendrick. Immediately behind Blanton was Jamie Moyer with 460 batters faced. For the record, the fifth-most-active pitcher faced 362 batters in 2009 (Chan Ho Park) and 478 in 2008 (Adam Eaton). Let’s take that number and adjust it to about 550 batters faced, since Blanton will get more starts than most fifth starters and he’ll stay in longer since he’s a proven quantity. In a normal year, the Phils face about 6200 batters, so that means Blanton’s 550 will be about 9% of the team’s total. (That figure is robust even in last year’s Year of the Pitcher with depressed numbers of batters faced.)
According to J.C. Bradbury’s Hot Stove Economics, this yields an average marginal revenue product of 3.15 million. This figure is based on the average rate that pitchers prevent runs and the average revenue of an MLB team. Obviously, Blanton is a better than the average pitcher (ignoring his negative Wins Above Replacement last year) and the Phillies make more money than most teams, but this is a pretty damning figure.
The other thing to take into account is that Blanton’s marginal wins aren’t worth as much to the Phillies now that they have a four-ace rotation. He won’t get every start and he won’t be a 20-game winner. Even if he were, he’ll be providing insurance wins – he might have an extra ten wins over a AAA-level replacement, but chances are that those wins won’t make the difference between making the playoffs and missing them when you figure in the Phillies’ solid bullpen and run production.
Instead, let’s say Blanton goes to the White Sox, just to pick a team. Jake Peavy and Edwin Jackson combined for 765 batters faced, so plug Blanton in for Freddy Garcia with 671 batters faced – a worst-case scenario. That would be 10.85 % of the batters faced, bringing him up to about 3.8 million. In this case, though, you have a team who finished 6 games back and missed the playoffs. If you replace Garcia with Blanton, you stand a very good chance to make the playoffs. That’s another way of saying that the Phillies’ 6-game lead over Atlanta (the NL wild card team) was worth less than the Twins’ 6-game lead over the White Sox (when neither team had as many wins as the AL wild card).
Economists would refer to this as a diminishing marginal returns situation – when you have fewer wins, around the middle of the pack, each additional win is worth a little less. This captures the idea that taking a 110-win team and giving them 111 wins would cost a lot of money and not yield much extra benefit, but a 90-win team making 91 wins might let them overtake another team.
The upshot of all of this? Trade Blanton for prospects. Rely on the bullpen and develop a future starter. Roy Halladay won’t be competitive forever.
Adventures in the Mets Bullpen: One-Run No-Decisions and Vulture Wins July 19, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Francisco Rodriguez, Jason Stark, Johan Santana, Mets, one-run no-decisions, Phil Cuzzi, Phil Cuzzi's hissyfit, Randy Wels, Roy Halladay, Ted Lilly, Tyler Clippard, vulture wins, Yovani Gallardo
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A close cousin of the Tough Loss discussed earlier is what Jayson Stark of ESPN calls the Criminally Unsupported Start. Stark defines a CUS as a start in which the pitcher pitches 6 or more innings but the offense scores one run or less in support. Johan Santana didn’t fit that definition last night, but he was close: he left the game with a 2-1 lead after 8 innings pitched and ended up with a no-decision. (A friend of mine liked to call that “the ol’ Roy Halladay” back when Doc was pitching in Toronto.) Just as he was the centerpiece of Jayson Stark’s CUS standings back in 2007, Santana currently leads the league in starts with 6.0 or more innings pitched, at most one run allowed, and no decision. He has six such games, and no other pitcher has more than four. (Yovani Gallardo, however, has a respectable 3.)
In all of 2009, no one hit the six-game mark in one-run no-decisions. Surprisingly, this year the Mets aren’t leading the league in these one-run no-decisions – the Cubs are, led by Randy Wells and his impressive 4, along with Ted Lilly with 3.
Francisco Rodriguez also picked up his third Vulture Win of the year last night. A vulture win is the combination of a blown save and a win in the same game. Usually, that happens when a hometown closer blows the save in the top of the 9th and his teammates score in the bottom for the win. Frankie blew the save in the bottom of the 9th last night, but they left him in to pitch the bottom of the 10th and he held on (despite Phil Cuzzi’s hissyfit and some questionable umpiring going in both directions). Tyler Clippard leads the league in vulture wins this year with four.
Santana the Late-Blooming Hitter July 7, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Brewers, Dave Eiland, home runs, Jason Jennings, Johan Santana, Mets, Pitchers batting, Yovani Gallardo
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Last night, Johan Santana hit his first home run in his 87th career game as a batter. (Granted, he’s played far more than that many games because he played a few years in the American League.) Out of curiosity, I checked Baseball-Reference.com’s Play Index to see how many home runs have been hit by pitchers in their first 87 games as batters.
Since 1961, there have been 431 home runs (although the Play Index only lists games starting at 1970, so that may or may not be accurate). Four pitchers have hit home runs in their first games, including Yankee pitching coach Dave Eiland in 1992 and Rockies pitcher Jason Jennings. Like Johan, Jennings pitched a complete game shutout for the win that night.
The all-time leader in home runs by a pitcher in the first 87 games (how’s that for esoteric?) is Yovani Gallardo, who’s in his fourth season pitching for the Brewers. He’s hit seven of them, and as of July 4 he’s only hit in 71 games. He’s got a lot of time to pick up the pace and possibly hit the triple-digit mark when he gets back from the disabled list some time after July 20.
Leadoff Home Runs June 19, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: baseball-reference.com, Jose Reyes, leadoff home runs, Mets, Nate McLouth, Phil Hughes, Subway Series, Yankees
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Jose Reyes led off today’s Mets-Yankees game with a home run off Phil Hughes. That’s the eleventh leadoff home run of the year. That’s a little over half as many as there were last year on June 19, when Nate McLouth hit the 19th leadoff home run of 2009.
Last year, there were 51 leadoff home runs over roughly 6 months (early April through the first week of October), which puts uniformly distributed homers at 8.5 per month (so McLouth’s #19 on June 19 was about 2.25 behind pace). So far, with eleven over 2.5 months, that puts us on pace for 26.4, or, to be generous, about 30 leadoff home runs.
The change probably isn’t indicative of anything other than chance, but in 2008 #24 of 52 came on June 20, and in 2007 they were already up to 28 of 59 by June 19. Over the past few years there’s been a slowing of leadoff home runs which may be due to chance or may be due to some other factor. Who knows? It’s way too small a sample to say anything about.
Trends in DH use June 11, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Economics.Tags: Baseball, baseball-reference.com, designated hitter, economics, Interleague play, Mets, regression, sports economics, Stuff Keith Hernandez Says
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Last night, Keith Hernandez was talking about how the Mets are scheduled to play in American League parks starting, well, today. He pointed out that the Mets will be in a bit of a pickle because they aren’t built, as AL teams are, to carry one big hitter to be the full-time DH. Instead, an NL team will be forced to spread the wealth among lighter hitters who are carried for their defensive acumen as well as their offensive prowess. Keith then corrected himself and said that AL managers are using the DH differently – to rest individual players instead of having an everyday DH.
That pinged my “Stuff Keith Hernandez says” meter, and so I decided to crunch some numbers and see if that’s true. I interpreted Keith’s statement as implying that the number of designated hitters should be increasing, since managers are moving away from an everyday DH and toward spreading the DH assignments around a bit more. The crunching also needs to account for interleague play, which should obviously increase the number of DHes. So, after controlling for interleague play, does DH use show an increasing trend with time?
Early one-hitters June 11, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Baseball, baseball-reference.com, Jon Niese, Mat Latos, Mets, Padres
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Last night was an unusual confluence of events, in that the Mets lost the first game of a day-night doubleheader against the Padres and won the second game, with Jonathon Niese pitching a one-hit complete game in his 18th career appearance. That seems fairly unusual, so I generated a table with pitcher W, Complete game, 1 hit or less. It turns out that since 1920 there have only been 55 of them, and one of them belonged to the Padres’ game one starter, Mat Latos.
The complete table is here.
Win, 1 Batter Faced June 10, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Baseball, baseball-reference.com, Chris Narveson, Elmer Dessens, Eric O'Flaherty, George Kottaras, John Parrish, Jorge Sosa, Mets, Pedro Feliciano, Randy Flores, weird lines
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So far this year, 15 games have ended with the winning pitcher having faced only one batter. Using Baseball-Reference.com’s Play Index, I ran a search for those games to examine the trends. The most recent was Elmer Dessens, but the Mets’ Pedro Feliciano leads the league with two.
The most interesting fact to me was that only one third of the games were won by left-handed pitchers (Feliciano twice, Eric O’Flaherty, Randy Flores, and John Parrish). That doesn’t quite make sense because LHPs are more likely to come in for one batter than RHPs. (So far, 189 right-handers have games with one batter faced, compared with 198 lefties). That indicates that wins aren’t distributed uniformly across appearances.
Also interesting is the efficiency shown by Jorge Sosa in the Marlins’ May 31 game against the Brewers. He threw one pitch to pitcher Chris Narveson, who was doubled up along with catcher George Kottaras. Sosa ended up credited with 2/3 of an inning pitched and the win.
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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