Re: Jason Varitek has Allowed 44 Runs in his Last 8 Pitching Starts!
posted at 6/7/2011 3:17 AM EDT
In Response to
Re: Jason Varitek has Allowed 44 Runs in his Last 8 Pitching Starts!:
It sounds all kinds of nice to say 2008 and before but Moon, Tek was a 130 game catcher that did not catch Wakefield. 130+30 starts for Wake equals 160. And 2009 the sample sets were very uneven and pretty much the same in 2010. And you failed to comment on the two catcher example I showed for Buch. Same pitcher. The fact remains even with same pitcher, you are looking at different days, different conditions, different opponents and the pitcher very well has different command. The difference was in part luck in my small sample set example. Anytime you allow 14 baserunners and only 4 runs it is luck. Meanwhile the sample set contains two games for Salty that Buch played with a bad back. Salty is going to carry those games along with him while TEk has two games that were poorly pitched but managed to contain runs scored. I can't believe you are sticking with the Lester CERA by the way. It so obviously an anomaly. He is an outstanding pitcher but Tek wasn't going to make him a under 2.00 ERA guy in 2010 if he caught him 32 times. Changing the stats over to OPS is just the same baloney in a different wrapper. Pitcher by pitcher still totals up to staff. And there have been references by the other CERA believer to the staff ERAs. Either when the results were tallied up, the reult was 1.5 runs a game and that number was batted around a lot by CERA proponents. The 1.5 runs a game applied to 162 say that RS would have given up 243 fewer runs with Varitek catching. That number is silly enough no other comment need be made. Nobody is going to convert those who think they have charted waters that even Bill James has not but then again don't be surprised when BDC does not buy into it in mass. As for nobody making an argument, plenty have and none are accepted because the calculator says X so it must be true. But I did just try and show you how the numbers can give a false positive with a small sample set, an injury report and a slightly deeper look at the starts the different catchers caught, on different days, against different teams in different conditions. I am not going to say a catcher
can't influence the results a pitcher
producesbut the metric is not commonly used in the industry for a reason and it isn't that the rest of the world hasn't seen the light IMO. Larger samples with deep background is just more work that is not what I do well, so I depart the field, another skeptic warn down for the moment any way.
Posted by fivekatz
You're beginning to see the light. If a catcher
can influence a pitcher's results, then it's a matter of
how much, not if.
Yes, pitcher by pitcher totals up the staff. Don't you think who was catching whom matters? Does the fact Buch/Lester had
49 starts with VMART - compared to
7 with Tek - have any relevance?
Buch had a 2.33 with VMART, a known squatting liability.
Why is it so outlandish that Lester can't have a 1.88 ERA with Tek? Is he that much inferior to Buch?
Tell me, how much influence did game conditions have when Scoiscia went with Mathis over Napoli? Was the weather the reason the staff was so much better with Mathis
every year,
year in and year out? Did the umpires rule in favor of Mathis, which allowed the Angels to play .61 points better with him behind the plate?
Same for VMART's counter-parts?
How about Tek's?
12 years the team plays .600 ball with him.
.505 without him.
Or Suzuki's?
