I see your point, to a point… a good ERA does say a lot about a pitcher. But a bad ERA may say as much about the defense as the pitcher. Or the exact opposite. Pitchers can have a bad ERA and a winning record, like Sidney Ponson this year. 5-1, 5+ ERA. He’s had a couple brilliant starts, but for the most part been quite mediocre. (I focus on the O’s… cuz they’re my team 
) Last night we faced Mark Buehrle. He has a low ERA and for good reason. He’s nasty. My point is, a low ERA definitely tells you something, a high ERA may or may not. But direct stats, pitcher vs. hitter, like WHIP, BAA and OPSA tell a lot more. And like you said, K/BB ratios are very important too. I’m on a mostly baseball board, and there are guys there, guys who worship at the Bill James alter, who live and die for K/BB ratios.
I don’t know about that. I think RickJay’s earlier observations about the quality of fielding in the Majors Leagues suggests that defense is a relatively minor factor.
My team too.
The reason Ponson has won games despite his bad ERA is that the Birds have been averaging about 6 runs a game for most of the season. When you’re pitching behind one of the strongest offenses in baseball, you don’t need to pitch shutouts to win. Which is why, as you suggest, wins aren’t the best indicator of performance.
(It would be nice if the Orioles could win at least one game in Chicago.)
ExACTly. Our offense makes every starter better. Or seem better…
We will. Probably 2.
I disagree. I think a high ERA definitely tells you something, provided it’s calculated over a large enough number of innings – namely, it tells you that the pitcher is making a terrible mess of his only job, which is to keep the other team from scoring runs. Maybe ERA might fail you in describing how a pitcher did in one game, if his defense let him down, but over the course of 200 or so innings, if your ERA is above five, say, you can’t really blame the defense. Most outs are pretty easy outs, and all major league fielders will make the vast majority of easy outs (except Bobby Abreu, for whom easy outs are the toughest to make, but I digress). If you had Johan Santana on the mound, and the University of Nebraska’s defense in the field, don’t you think Santana would still manage to keep the score down? Maybe his ERA would be 3.5 instead of 3.25, or something, but it’s still a good ERA. By the same token, you could have the greatest defense of all time, and if the guy on the hill is walking every third batter and giving up gappers, the ERA will tell the story. I really can’t think of any real exceptions to the rule; any pitcher with a horrible ERA over an entire season has had a poor season, and vice versa. At the very least, there are much less valuable statistics in sports than ERA.
I figured out how to avoid WGN announcers! I’ll put the TV on the channel, mute it, and log on to Orioles radio through the MLB website. I don’t know why I never thought of it before. Just slow, I guess.
One thing Angelos could do to make me happy would be to buy a superstation.
Which usually leads to someone 
hijacking the pitching stat argument to point out On Base Percentage is a far better indicator than Batting Avgerage ever was or will be.
I’d like to thank ElvisL1ves for his OP, which has led to a very interesting discussion, and apologize to him for what seems to be my unintentional hijack. Elvis L1ves, Loopus, and RickJay, (and everybody else) have all been most polite and accomodating, as a bonus to their being well-informed and articulate. But I’d like to push my overextended welcome to ask for a general vote on the proposal to eliminate ERA altogether, and/or ElvisL1ves’ idea about limiting two-out, unearned runs. I’ve said my piece and I’ll be quiet now, but I’d like to hear from the better-informed (that is, everybody else) on these two issues.
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I’ll vote to replace ERA with RA. Do I have that option on the ballot?
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I’ve never really understood why all runs after 2 outs with an error in the inning are unearned. I think the only unearned runs should be runs scored by baserunners who reached on errors and runs scored that advanced a base on an error and wouldn’t have scored if they hadn’t. So I agree with that too. But you’d fix that problem with my idea in #1.
While I agree than, in practice, the distinction between earned and unearned runs isn’t very big, I think that it is useful at least in theory. In theory, anyway, it protects a good pitcher from getting lousy numbers beause he’s on a team whose members couldn’t catch a cold, much less a baseball. Of course, as you said above, we don’t adjust pitchers’ numbers based on other things that affect them, such as peculiarities of the ballpark (which the Rockies pitchers would probably appreciate), strength of opposition, or poor run support, so why adjust for earned versus unearned runs?
First, it’s easy to do. Other adjustments would get complicated. Could anybody come up with a generally-agreed-upon formula to adjust for the pitchers’ disadvantage in Coors Field?
Second, the difference isn’t really big enough to care about. RickJay said he thinks ERA is about “90% as good” as RA, which I suppose I could get behind. I think such a small difference isn’t worth changing the whole way baseball keeps stats, not to mention going back and recalculating all the great pitchers’ stats for RA instead of ERA.
Third, it’s always been done this way. And in baseball, that’s usually good enough. As Cecil once said, “Such reverence for the past is what has made baseball great.”
Well, you were right. They won the last two games to split the four-game series. A great effort on their part, and i’m impressed that they did so well against the form team in baseball.
I am, how ever, a little pissed off that coverage here on WB hit a technical snag in the top of the ninth and never returned. Bastards. :mad:
Good idea. Radio commentary is usually better than TV commentary anyway, because the announcers actually have to know how to decribe the game.
It’s not directly about pitching, but I would like to see the “indifference” rule regarding stolen bases to be dropped.
A steal is a steal (and could affect a game’s outcome), regardless of a scorer’s subjective decision that no one was trying to stop it, therefore it didn’t happen.
I believe that the defensive indifference rule is probably the most misunderstood and poorly applied rule in the game.
The rule reads:
It doesn’t say “don’t award a steal if the defense doesn’t try to throw him out.” It says they must be INDIFFERENT to the act. The wording is very specific.
Today my team, Toronto, was beating Cleveland 5-1 in the eighth. With two out in the eighth, a Cleveland runner stole second. Toronto made no attempt to stop him. It was ruled defensive indifference.
It is obvious to me that that ruling was simply wrong, and the Cleveland runner (Travis Hafner) was scammed. Toronto clearly cannot be said to be indifferent to the steal; it put the runner in scoring position with two out in the eighth. If the batter singles it’s now 5-2, not 5-1, and if the subsequent batters score no more runs in the eighth, Cleveland is down 3 runs, not 4, going into the ninth inning. The steal DID give Cleveland a potential benefit. Toronto’s catcher may have decided that given the circumstances it was not worth risking a throw, but that’s not the same as “indifference.” (If an outfielder opts to get the ball to second base, rather than going for a runner at home, is he “indifferent” to the run scoring? Of course not.)
Now, if this had been the NINTH inning, it clearly would have been defensive indifference. In that situation the fate of the baserunner would be essentially irrelevant; practically speaking Toronto does not care if they win 5-1 or 5-2. That runner isn’t the issue; it’s the on deck batter who has to score to keep Cleveland alive. So Toronto, in that circumstance, is indifferent to the runner; they only have to get one of the next two men out to end the game.
I would guess that 90% of all defensive indifference calls are wrong.
I don’t know about that, RickJay. The official scorer isn’t supposed to be judging the play by what the defense must be thinking, he’s supposed to judge the play by what they actually do. If nobody covers second, or if the pitcher doesn’t look at the runner and he gets a ten-step running lead, even if the run theoretically should matter, it’s got to be defensive indifference because they didn’t actually do anything to stop the runner. Right? Otherwise, there’s no such thing as defensive indifference, because you’d always prefer the guy be on first than second. It’s like, uh, applied indifference, and not indifference in theory. I didn’t see the Hafner steal, so I don’t know about that one, but the 90% thing is, I think, a large overstatement.
Well, this being the Pit, sod off then.
No, really, this little talk has been fun. It has emphasized once again that baseball is a team game and nothing really matters but the team’s W.
Which is why we’d probably be better off if the rule was either clarified or eliminated.
Well, no, for three reasons;
- That is not what the rule says,
- That was not the purpose of the rule when it was created, and
- You’re now going to be taking away genuine steals from the truly great basestealers.
With respect to #3, when guys like Rickey Henderson, Tim Raines, or Vince Coleman took off, there were many occasions when the other team would be caught so flatfooted the catcher would just give up without throwing. This might happen in the first inning. You can’t possibly say they were INDIFFERENT to that - being unable to stop Henderson isn’t “indifference” - and it just seems ridiculous to say Henderson doesn’t get a stolen base because he’s too good at stealing bases. Especially if it’s leading off the game.
Defensive indifference can still exist, but it’s defined by the situation, not the reaction of the defense. 3-0, two out, ninth inning, runner on second steals third. That’s defensive indifference. It does not matter if that runner is on first or third because his run doesn’t have to be prevented. There ARE circumstances where it really does not matter if the runner advances.
1-0, two out, ninth inning, runner steals third. That can’t possibly be defensive indifference.
I think if you actually read what I said, I wouldn’t be taking any genuine steals away from anybody. All I said was if the defense doesn’t pay any attention to the runner, that is, if they show indifference, that’s indifference. It doesn’t matter if it’s Vince Coleman or Cool Papa Kruk on the basepaths, you can’t steal a base if the defense isn’t trying to stop you from getting it. I didn’t say anything about there needing to be a throw, or it needing to be a close play. I just said that the defense has to show some kind of inclination to keep you off the next bag. I just don’t understand why you’d think that because the rule is really supposed to apply to a certain situation, it can’t apply to other situations where, for whatever reason, the defense behaves the exact same way.
Is having Mike Piazza catching tantamount to defensive indifference?
They called a pitchout on the Cards Sunday and Piazza’s throw to second was still nowhere close.
I was sitting in the Shea Mezz on Sunday, almost directly behind home plate, and my jaw dropped. Worst. Throw. Ever.
It bounced on the far side of the mound, then bounced at least twice more, arriving at second base as the runner was dusting his trousers off. 50,000 fans silently asking each other: “Did I just see what I thought I saw?”
Wow.
Im’ still realtively new to baseball, and i don’t watch the NL all that much. I’ve always been under the impression that Piazza was a great catcher, but maybe that’s just because he’s so we known as a hitter too.
Is he a poor catcher in general? Or is it just his throwing ability that sucks?
Piazza has never been more than an adequate catcher; his hitting has kept him around. (Deservedly so.) He should have been moved to first a couple of years ago, unless, I suppose, it’s possible he can’t play first either.