Diehardfan
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Pretty strong reason for the weakening of starting pitching.
"Baseball's baseball. It's been played for however long, 120 years or whatever, and it's always going to be the same. You rely on your defense as a pitcher, and somehow we get punished for that."
Greg Maddux, in particular, always said he didn't want to strike anyone out. That took too many pitches and he wanted to go 9 innings, but that game doesn't exist anymore.
It's all about max effort early now and hope to get through 5 innings.
"Obviously, strikeouts are great," Lester said. "But at the end of the day, it's about winning the baseball game. And if you're winning the baseball game, that's all that matters.
"I think when guys pitch well, there needs to be a justification for it."
Implement a pitch clock of a duration such that guys can't throw max effort every pitch without burning themselves out in three innings. Faster game, fewer strikeouts, more balls in play, less TTO baseball.
I think the concept of getting easy outs should be brought back at the lower levels vs valuing SO rates.
A strike out honestly is a situational out. Any contact produces a run. So the desired result is a strike out. But sabermetrics and FIP had made the strike out the holy grail and now pitchers are judged by strike outs and limiting walks.
I believe there is a place for it but as a goto it turns starters into 5 inning pitchers. Let’s face it there are only a handful of guys that can pitch 7 innings while striking out every one. You end up with far more Karry Wood types struggling to get 5 in.
You also end up with baseball games being dominated by walks, strikeouts, and home runs. No one moving. No speed, no baserunning, no balls in play. An awful viewing product that drives fans and advertisers away. Lots of action is fun. Latin American baseball is a blast.
I think it's important, too, that even Bill James has (somewhat hesitantly) chimed in against reading too much into specific metrics, like OPS. If the King of SABRE Metrics can be heard cautioning people not to read *everything* into specific metrics, it's the beginning of yet another re-assessment of how to judge and predict player performance.
It has seemed to me for some time that the various metrics are all looked at in a particular vacuum. Not necessarily between numbers and flesh, though there is that, but in a vacuum of not taking into account that a batter, over the course of a season, is facing a range of pitchers, all with varying abilities, strong and weak pitches, rates at which they tire, number of pitches their respective managers will allow them to throw in a game, etc. At the same time, pitchers face a wide variety of batters, each with different strengths and weaknesses, who may be in self-generated slumps or may be swinging the bat better than God right then. And the pitcher you are rating just happens to run across a bunch of guys playing over their heads in one stretch.
The general line is that such variations all even themselves out over the course of a season. But they often don't, and sometimes can't. There are strong and weak divisions, which really strongly impact the individual numbers of players on last-place teams in historically strong divisions. There are park adjustments to some individual metrics, but no divisional adjustments.
In terms of how we judge players, it just seems to me that the numbers all seem to assume that every batter faces the same quality and talent of pitching as every other batter, each at-bat, and each pitcher faces the same quality and talent of hitting, every at-bat. For a game that often boils down to epic battles between two determined men, one on the mound and one with a bat, this statistical rounding out of any differences from one match-up to the next, and judging performance as if there are no significant variations, or winners/losers of these face-to-face competitions, is what hurts the game to me.
YMMV.
I will never understand the highlighted line above. Why are these baseball extremists so preoccupied in predicting the future. The average fan reads this crap then gets disappointed when it doesn't happen. The fact is, that unless someone has a Delorean, it's never gonna happen. I always liked Lester but like him even more when he states that while this might be old school, that maybe people should just watch the games. Baseball stats, no matter how you want to label them are nothing more than numbers and numerical equations.....good luck tying that into the human factor.[/QUOTE
I get what you’re saying but predicting anything with mathematics is fun. I don’t go grocery shopping without trying to predict how long it will take based on the variables of the day. I literally have spreadsheets for everything I do (drives my wife nutty). That said I think you can try to predict with math but also understand that you have to watch the game to put everything in context. Both the eye test and statistics tell you something and putting those things together make the game more fun.
I will never understand the highlighted line above. Why are these baseball extremists so preoccupied in predicting the future. The average fan reads this crap then gets disappointed when it doesn't happen. The fact is, that unless someone has a Delorean, it's never gonna happen. I always liked Lester but like him even more when he states that while this might be old school, that maybe people should just watch the games. Baseball stats, no matter how you want to label them are nothing more than numbers and numerical equations.....good luck tying that into the human factor.[/QUOTE
I get what you’re saying but predicting anything with mathematics is fun. I don’t go grocery shopping without trying to predict how long it will take based on the variables of the day. I literally have spreadsheets for everything I do (drives my wife nutty). That said I think you can try to predict with math but also understand that you have to watch the game to put everything in context. Both the eye test and statistics tell you something and putting those things together make the game more fun.
Funny you should say that. I've always had this thing for numbers which also drives my wife nuts as well....but I don't do spreadsheets, I do it in my head. She actually has stopped using a calculator when I'm around as she's convinced God has embedded one in my head. Not sure why all these baseball numbers annoy me so much....it's probably that I use baseball as an escape where I don't have to calculate....just watch.
ANAL itics told Joe to bat LaStella 5th yesterday over a rookie with the biggest hit of his career, and everyone expected Q to pitch well again.
This is why ANAL itics will never truly take over.