cpu putting too much emphasis on pitcher wins?

[soxnut1018]

Re: cpu putting too much emphasis on pitcher wins?

I have that mindset. Wins and saves are the only important pitching statistic with wins being the most important of the two. A team doesn't make the playoffs because they led the league in ERA or runs scored. There have been a lot of good pitchers who weren't great pitchers because they weren't great pitching with a lead.

Wins are an important TEAM statistic. By your logic, the MVP should be decided by which position player has the most wins too. A team doesn't make the playoffs because they led the league in home runs or OBP.

Wins and saves are probably my two most hated statistics and I cannot wait until they die out.

[G3no_11]

Re: cpu putting too much emphasis on pitcher wins?

I have that mindset. Wins and saves are the only important pitching statistic with wins being the most important of the two.

[cardinalbird5]

Re: cpu putting too much emphasis on pitcher wins?

I have that mindset. Wins and saves are the only important pitching statistic with wins being the most important of the two. A team doesn't make the playoffs because they led the league in ERA or runs scored. There have been a lot of good pitchers who weren't great pitchers because they weren't great pitching with a lead.

Guys like Greinke and Hernandez won it because the teams they played on were terrible, which is a valid consideration. Hernandez went 13-12 on a team that lost 101 games in a season where there wasn't a dominant pitcher in the AL. He may have also won it because he was outstanding the year before when it Greinke won it. That year Greinke was dominant on a pretty bad team. The only other pitcher that was more dominant for a lousy team that I can remember was Steve Carlton in 1972 when he went 27-10 on a team that only won 59 games.

Do you have some sort of actual evidence to back this theory up or do you just post information that sounds like a "winning" argument?

Win/Loss is such a terrible stat in so many ways. First...it should go by wins and losses on the starts you make and they should get rid of the actual wins and loss stats. If your closer has a lot of wins that is generally bad....

The other reasons are common sense.

Sure I believe certain pitchers know how to pitch with a lead better than others, but not very often do pitchers with a great ERA all of a sudden get a 5-0 lead and then blow it.

Rather than give 1 example in MLB history...give some actual data to try and convince me. Otherwise......I completely disagree with you. A pitcher is relying on his defense, luck, offensive run support, manager's decision making, defensive alignments, quality of opponent, quality of his bullpen, stadium dimensions, etc. The only thing they can control is making quality pitches that result in K's, fewer BB's and HR's that ultimately lead in fewer runs scored.

LOB%, BABIP, and some other notable stats are very inconsistent and random that lead us to believe they are more reliant on luck than skill.

[cardinalbird5]

Re: cpu putting too much emphasis on pitcher wins?

Yes. And nope. WHIP is better than ERA, W, K, ... But FIP, xFIP and SIERA beat WHIP by a large margin. Or do you wanna tell me that Iwakuma with a WHIP of 0.94 is a better pitcher than Adam Wainwright with a WHIP of 1.01?
Iwakuma gives up a ton of HR/9 (1.44), Wainwright way less (0.37). Iwakuma 3.02 FIP, 3.31 xFIP, 3.28 SIERA. Wainwright 2.23 FIP, 2.75 xFIP, 2.93 SIERA. Could go on with a ton of other examples.
Most traditional stats (W/L, ERA, WHIP, ...) do affect a very misleading direction of interpreting a pitcher's performance.

Out of all of the traditional stats...I prefer opponent's OPS, if you even call that traditional.

[G3no_11]

Re: cpu putting too much emphasis on pitcher wins?

I have that mindset. Wins and saves are the only important pitching statistic with wins being the most important of the two. A team doesn't make the playoffs because they led the league in ERA or runs scored.

You lost all credibility with what you said in bold. You didn't say wins and saves were the most important, which I could at least understand why you could think that.... but you said they are the only important pitching statistics lol. Wow.

[jmaj315]

Re: cpu putting too much emphasis on pitcher wins?

Yes. And nope. WHIP is better than ERA, W, K, ... But FIP, xFIP and SIERA beat WHIP by a large margin. Or do you wanna tell me that Iwakuma with a WHIP of 0.94 is a better pitcher than Adam Wainwright with a WHIP of 1.01?
Iwakuma gives up a ton of HR/9 (1.44), Wainwright way less (0.37). Iwakuma 3.02 FIP, 3.31 xFIP, 3.28 SIERA. Wainwright 2.23 FIP, 2.75 xFIP, 2.93 SIERA. Could go on with a ton of other examples.
Most traditional stats (W/L, ERA, WHIP, ...) do affect a very misleading direction of interpreting a pitcher's performance.

What on EARTH does this stand for?

[cardinalbird5]

Re: cpu putting too much emphasis on pitcher wins?

What on EARTH does this stand for?

FIP is fielding independent ERA and XFIP is fielding independent ERA plus it takes into account the parks you play at. Well...kinda I think. It accounts how many HR's the pitcher should allowed by taking your flyball/hr rate and comparing it to the league average then recalculating how many you shoud have allowed based on the number of flyballs a pitcher allows.

FIP just includes homeruns allowed, so XFIP will usually be a bit higher and more accurate. Unless the pitcher plays in a small park that allows cheap homeruns such as Yankee Stadium. CC Sabathia actually has a lower XFIP than he does FIP due to this reason.

Both are pretty basic, but they tell a little more than your basic ERA. ERA relies more on your defense, BABIP, etc.

SIERA doesn't ignore BABIP and is a lot more complicated. It basically looks to see why certain pitchers are better to pitch to contact than others.

For example a high GB rate pitcher will have a higher BABIP but a less opponent SLG and HR/9 allowed. While a FB pitcher will have a lower FB/HR ratio than most, but they don't get bailed out as often with DP balls and don't rely on a good defense as much as GB pitchers do.

Also certain parks heavily favor FB pitchers like Oakland, SD, SF, Seattle, etc. while some are the complete opposite like Yankee stadium, Fenway, Coors, Arizona, Houston, etc. That is why you see so many finesse FB pitchers for Oakland do so well, but they tend to fall off once they leave Oakland (Mulder, Zito, Cahill, Haren, Blanton,Harden, Foulke, Gio Gonzalez, McCarthy, Hudson). While most of them are still quality pitchers, almost all of them did much better in Oakland. Groundball pitchers travel pretty well, while Flyball ones are more reliant on the park you play at.

I am sure someone can explain this better, but I was giving the rundown version.

http://www.fangraphs.com/library/pitching/xfip/

http://www.fangraphs.com/library/pitching/fip/

[wudl83]

Re: cpu putting too much emphasis on pitcher wins?

What on EARTH does this stand for?

Since an ERA simply states the earned run average which is not independent of how much help a pitcher gets from his defense (in fact the defense behind a pitcher affects ERA heavily in either a good or a bad way), some guy came up with FIP. FIP stands for "Fielding independent pitching" and measures only the three stats HRs, BBs and Ks (weighed differently, then divided by IP, plus a constant to put it on the same scale as ERA) which are all indepentend from the defense behind the pitcher. Hits, doubles, triples are all depending on the defense, too, so those stats are left out since pitcher's do not have much control over balls in play.
Right now Matt Harvey (2.17 FIP, 2.35 ERA), Adam Wainwright (2.23 FIP, 2.45 ERA) and Clayton Kershaw (2.52 FIP, 1.98 ERA) league the lead in FIP. Dylan Axelrod (5.33 ERA, 5.40 FIP), Jeremy Guthrie (4.25 ERA, 5.69 FIP) and Jason Marquis (3.77 ERA, 5.70 FIP) are in the bottom.
Normally you would expect a pitcher having a quite similar FIP and ERA. But when a pitcher's FIP is way higher than his ERA, you can bet on that he a) had a ton of luck and b) most likely profits from good defense behind him. When a pitcher's FIP is way lower than his ERA, you can bet on that a) he could have pitched strong most of the time but sufferied from some hits at a stretch and b) that his defense may have made him look bad. Examples for pitcher's with greatly different ERA and FIP, suggesting that the ERA doesn't tell the whole truth are e.g. Lance Lynn (4.00 ERA, 3.13 FIP), Tim Lincecum (4.26 ERA, 3.34 FIP) for guys whose ERA is way above their FIP or Jason Marquis (3.77 ERA, 5.70 FIP) and Jeremy Guthrie (4.25 ERA, 5.69 FIP) for guys whose ERA is way below their FIP. Lynn's and Lincecum's ERA are quite similar to those of Marquis and Guthrie, ALTHOUGH Lynn and Lincecum strike out way more batter than the first two and walk less batters than Marquis, and although Marquis leads all SPs with a BB/9 of 5.21 and although Lynn's (0.54) and Lincecums (0.77) HR/9 are way below Marquis' (1.44) and Guthrie's (1.64) HR/9, the ERAs are quite similar, suggesting that there may be something "wrong".
Here you see the guys who may do better than their ERA regarding to ERA/FIP: http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.asp...rs=0&sort=18,d
And here those whose ERA is better than they do according to FIP:
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.asp...rs=0&sort=18,a

xFIP is quite similar to FIP, but it replaces a pitcher's homerun numbers with the number of how many homeruns they should have allowed, which is based on the league average homerun/fly ball ratio and therefore counts in the park factor. This is justified with the case that one guy may have a 5% HR/FB ratio in the one year and 15% HR/FB ratio the next year because of playing for different teams at different parks. Again BBs, Ks and IP are included into the formula for the stat, too.
Right now Matt Harvey (2.35 ERA, 2.70 xFIP), Felix Hernandez (2.53 ERA, 2.71 xFIP) and Adam Wainwright (2.45 ERA, 2.75 xFIP) lead the league. Guthrie (4.25 ERA, 5.06 xFIP), Axelrod (5.33 ERA, 4.95 xFIP) and Lucas Harrell (5.07 ERA, 4.78 xFIP) rank in the bottom (with Marquis 4.77 xFIP and Zito 4.74 xFIP next to them).
Same way as FIP, xFIP tells you if a pitcher's ERA is too high or too low (good luck/bad luck, park factor, bla).

SIERA is very complicated to explain, but contrary to FIP and xFIP it measures the already used numbers differently and brings back balls in play as a relevant data for the formula. If you are interested in what SIERA tells us and how it is calculated, look here: http://www.fangraphs.com/library/pitching/siera/ and here: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/new-s...tching-skills/.
Matt Harvey (2.35 ERA, 2.71 SIERA), Yu Darvish (3.02 ERA, 2.73 SIERA) and Max Scherzer (3.19 ERA, 2.74 SIERA) lead the league, Jeremy Guthrie (4.25 ERA, 5.19 SIERA), Jason Marquis (3.77 ERA, 5.11 SIERA), Harrell (5.07 ERA, 4.97 SIERA), Axelrod (5.33 ERA, 4.93 SIERA and Zito (4.88 ERA, 4.87 SIERA) rank in the bottom.

Now please take a look at Marquis and especially Guthrie. Looking only at their ERAs, Guthrie's wouldn't be too bad for a AL starter and Marquis would be rated quite decent for a NL starter. But every other rating system tells you that those two are still suckers like they have been before and it will be only a question of time that their ERA numbers blow up.
Looking at Guthrie, it already states a clear trend: Mar/Apr 3.06 ERA, May 4.46 ERA, Jun 4.82 ERA, Jul 4.95 ERA. His ERA comes closer and closer to FIP, xFIP and SIERA as the season progresses.
Marquis's numbers don't, but that can be explained by a career high LOB% of 79.7% (career 70.8%) and a BABIP of .256 (career .286). He is simply a lucker and nothing else.

There are so many guys out there who have ERAs that suggest they don't pitch good but in fact they pitch really solid and only suffer from some bad outings or the park they play in. And vice versa. ERA is BS. As are W/L and some of the other traditional stats.

To give you another example:
Barry Zito has a career ERA of 3.87 at home (playing in the large parks of Oakland and San Fran) and of 4.27 on the road (having to play in smaller parks, too). Looking at FIP he has a career number of 4.44 at home and 4.44 on the road. He also has a xFIP of 4.69 at home and 4.78 on the road.
ERA-wise he simply profits from playing in larger parks at home, giving him better ERAs than you would expect, while playing on the road he shows his real potential.

[jmaj315]

Re: cpu putting too much emphasis on pitcher wins?

^ WOW thanks for that write up, those are some very interesting stats. Now that I know what the abbreviations mean, I don't have to skip over that in their player cards lol

[zrgjkfukfhu]

Re: cpu putting too much emphasis on pitcher wins?

whenever you look at the season awards at the end of the year

[zrgjkfukfhu]

Re: cpu putting too much emphasis on pitcher wins?

Also certain parks heavily favor FB pitchers like Oakland,

[Heroesandvillains]

Re: cpu putting too much emphasis on pitcher wins?

I posted my opinion on this briefly after CD, but just as a refresher - yes, I tend to agree with the OP on this, as the Cy Young formula has been rather 'wins-heavy' for a few years now.

I'd like to see ERA, followed by K's and WHIP (etc) supersede wins as stronger determinants for 14 The Show and beyond.

Ultimately the formula very solid. This is pretty evident over the course of the season, especially as players become tied in overall wins (I love seeing the back and fourth when this occurs). But yes, wins are still too strong otherwise.

I'd also like to see the voting list expanded beyond the top three. Personally, 5-10 players from each league would be awesome.

[1stpitchhacker]

Re: cpu putting too much emphasis on pitcher wins?

I agree with the OP. To add to this HR and RBI are too heavily weighted for the MVP compared to batting average. Even more OBP, runs scored, total bases, SB seem to have zero consideration. The same goes for playing a premium position. Too many times I've seen a first baseman beat out a second baseman/center fielder for the MVP with (very) slightly better offensive numbers in the "triple crown" categories. Unfortunately this has been the case since the beginning of the Show series .

It used to bother me but I've grown accustomed to it. My brother and I used to do our season mode together and at the end of the year pick the awards ourselves .