Click to enlarge. 2009 Mariners SP tRA for June 2009. Source StatCorner.com
After a rough May, the rotation rebounded a touch to post an almost exactly average month. The rotation's 4.87 collective tRA was worth -0.1 runs against average.
ERIK BEDARD: We only got two starts out of Bedard in June and he has been on the shelf since. GRADE: C-
FELIX HERNANDEZ: Felix is the reason the rotation came out looking average. He flat out dominated for the month of June. Felix did not maintain his crazy good May in terms of missing nearly 14% of bats, but his not quite 11% rate is still superb. The strikeout rate did rise a bit, up from 21.8% in May to 23% in June. Another couple points were added to his ground ball rate and allowing just a single home run all month really helps out the tRA. GRADE: A
BRANDON MORROW: Yeah, why not have him re-convert into a starter at the Major League level? The good news is that starting Morrow can still miss bats. The control is shaky, but that is hardly a surprise and it was not crippling. What was a surprise was the ground balls. It is almost like Morrow decided to try and become Felix this time around. His .391 BABIP has him looking a lot worse to most people than he has actually pitched. Make no mistake, Morrow still has the stuff to be a high ceiling pitcher. The question is going to be his health. In a sense, Morrow is like a four years ago Erik Bedard, except less awesome at all the non-baseball things. And while I still think he would be better off spending a couple month in Tacoma refining his regimen and command, with each start we might have to concede that Brandon Morrow might not need it. GRADE: B
GARRETT OLSON: Olson might be a useful back end starter after a little more work, but right now his batted ball profile is a real liability out of the rotation. Everything else is decent enough. He is not great at missing bats, but he threw enough strikes to not get himself into too many jams. If he can either miss bats more like he did out of the pen or at least return to an even split of ground and fly balls then he can pitch like a legit 4. Until then he is hopefully just place holding for Erik Bedard. GRADE: D
JASON VARGAS: Behold Jason Vargas's changeup. A pitch that generate a swinging strike rate of 8.7% for the month of June. Vargas got lucky avoiding issuing walks based on his strike profile, but he also got a bit unlucky on the long ball given a decent batted ball profile. Nothing spectacular here, but who is looking for spectacular with Jason Vargas? He pitched like an average American League starter! That is fantastic. GRADE: C
JARROD WASHBURN: I told you to trade him, morons. Thank god he had a .245 BABIP in June to mask how poorly he actually pitched. Move him, move him as soon as you get anything of value, including salary relief, in return. It is not all grim news in Washburn land. His swinging strike rate rose again, up another half a point in June so he might get a few more strikeouts back in July. GRADE: D+
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2009 Mariners RP tRA for June 2009. Source StatCorner.com
The bullpen shook off the horrible May to return to being slightly above average in June, logging 1.1 runs over average. The issue, again is that they did it by limiting the home run (one per 60 batters faced this month) and May showed what happens when that non-skill regresses.
The story of June clearly was David Aardsma taking it to another level. Sure, he still has shaky command, but the man has a beast of a fastball and a slider that he bust off when Rob Johnson gets a little ache in his pointer finger. David Aardsma faced 40 batters in June and struck out 20 of them, against just four walks and no home runs, or runs of any kind.
The bullpen benefited from a .244 BABIP in June, further reinforcing to everyone who looks solely at ERA that the bullpen is a strength. That is not true, but at least they stopped being a huge weakness and a solid 43% ground ball rate offered some hope for further home run not seeing them in the coming months.
1 recs | 30 comments
Why do Aardsma and Olson have negative tRAs?
Vatinius - July 4, 2009
Certain events (strikeout, infield fly) have negative run values
if a guy were to be outstanding enough, he could theoretically have a negative tRA – obviously, it would need to be in a tiny sample size, but as you can see, Olson only threw 2 1/3 innings out of the pen and Aardsma struck out almost two men per inning pitched
seattlebruin - July 4, 2009
The actual reason is that in certain environements the run values of events change
tRA is not a dynamic model and therefore doesn’t account for the fact that if you strikeout 100% of the batters you face each K is worth less
Graham MacAree - July 5, 2009
Like a chipmunk storing nuts for the winter.
Aardsma’s storing runs. God his cheeks must be huge.
The Typical Idiot Fan - July 4, 2009
The Cardinals will take Washburn
vivaelpujols - July 4, 2009
For DeRosa and a PTBNL?
Poochie - July 4, 2009
No for Pujols jackass
vivaelpujols - July 4, 2009
Puzzling
I admit I’m not a stats geek, so don’t kill me for asking—but if our starting pitchers are so incredibly average as your stats show and our bullpen which everyone seems to think is a strength but your stats show otherwise how in the world are doing as well as we are? It surely isn’t our offense! Defense??? We have three excellent defenders…now down to two…Is it literally smoke and mirrors in your opinion, Just wondering
realityrick - July 4, 2009
I would say we still have 3 pretty damn good outfielders, we really don't lose all that much with Langerhans
gregrabble - July 4, 2009
Defense and luck
and saying “I’m not a stats geek” kind of implies that those of us who follow advanced analysis are. Some might resent that.
seattlebruin - July 4, 2009
Really? I've always enjoyed being a stat geek.
Sec 108 - July 5, 2009
You're underrating the impact of defense and the defensive abilities of some of our players.
Gutierrez, Endy and Beltre are as good at their respective positions as anyone, Ichiro is well above average and Branyan and Lopez are both average-ish. Yuni is bad but he actually had a fairly good month defensively before the injury, and Cedeno has played at a league average level at SS.
Aaron Campeau - July 4, 2009
BABIP and the percentage of flyballs that have stayed in the park
Those are both things that pitchers don’t really have control over and they tend to regress towards the league average as time goes on.
OlSalty - July 4, 2009
Unless those pitchers are playing behind a great defense or in a huge home ballpark
In which case the Mariners currently 4th in UZR/150 and have allowed a .289 BABIP. Mariners pitchers have also allowed a 9.0 HR/FB ratio, which doesn’t deviate too much from previous seasons (9.8 last year, 8.4 the year before). Maybe I’m wrong, but those numbers seem pretty sustainable.
vivaelpujols - July 4, 2009
Well
Matthew was looking at it more from an individual pitcher standpoint and for last month specifically, but (Not to put words in his mouth, just going off the C+ grades) he was pretty much saying we’ve had a pretty much average rotation even without Bedard doing anything to help us and having to run Olson out there every 5 days. So, that’s good. I don’t know where the OP got the idea that average pitching + quite a bit above average defense does not equal above average run prevention and therefore Wins. I was referring more specifically to the reasons why Washburn has been worse than he’s looked, since that was the analysis I felt like he was taking issue with.
Although keep in mind that we still have a -14 run differential despite being 42-38. There has been some luck going on; we’ve won more 1-run games than we probably should have and that’s not really sustainable going forward. Then again, nobody can take that luck away from us now, the offense has underperformed for a lot of the year, and this division isn’t very good.so contention is a real possibility.
OlSalty - July 5, 2009
I agree
I was just pointing out that BABIP and HR/FB can be influenced by things other than luck.
A reasonable projection would have the Mariners at about a .500 team going forward, making them about a 82 win team, which is probably not enough to get into the playoffs, even in a crappy division. Still, a team with a true talent level of 82 wins has a great chance of lucking into the playoffs.
vivaelpujols - July 5, 2009
Keep in mind the stats shown are all from the month of June only.
But adding up the offense, defense and pitching, the expected W/L for the month looks about 13-12. They went 15-10, so yeah, a little lucky.
Matthew - July 5, 2009
I love that Denny fucking Stark has a LOB% of 0.
seattlebruin - July 4, 2009
That middle name is reserved for one player and one player only.
Vive El Willie Fucking Bloomquist! True grit never dies!
And Felix is a fucking badass.
JLProck - July 5, 2009
Cartelua, please.
abender20 - July 6, 2009
This seems as good a place as any to ask
Someone posted a link to This a little while ago and I was wondering how much of it is still relevant? I’m trying to become a bit more statistically knowledgeable and I see things in there like VORP, GPA and FIP that I don’t see quoted on the site much, so if some kind soul could point me in the direction of the most important/necessary links I’d be very thankful.
Eyeball Kid - July 5, 2009
WAR, wOBA and tRA are all better versions (respectively) of VORP, GPA and FIP.
All of the links in that post are still worth a read. The Open Statistical Questions thread is still an excellent read and the tRA post is great if you want to understand what it’s trying to quantify. All of the USSM stuff is must-read.
The Fangraphs glossary could use an update, but it’s an excellent resource. And I’ve found that once I had a handle on the basics of metric analysis that the Inside the Book Blog was an excellent way to expand my knowledge bits at a time.
Aaron Campeau - July 5, 2009
Is there any particular reason why FanGraphs doesn't carry tRA in its stat boards? I see tRA referenced fairly frequently by a number of FanGraphs writers.
Decatur - July 5, 2009
I believe that it is proprietary.
Aaron Campeau - July 5, 2009
That makes sense.
Decatur - July 5, 2009
On Fangraphs, Dave Cameron wrote:
Teej - July 5, 2009
Well Colin Wyers' recent article shows that tRA is slight better at predicting future ERA than FIP
Here is the link:
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/how-well-can-we-predict-era/
xFIP comes out on top, but I would guess that the regressed version of tRA would beat that. Of course an ability test isn’t the only way to judge a metric, but it is revealing.
If tRA is in fact “better” that FIP, there are probably a couple of reasons why FanGraphs doesn’t want it (or maybe they do and Graham won’t let them have it):
1) Their is a lot of subjectivity in batted ball codes which are obviously an integral part of tRA
2) tRA is a static model so it won’t be as accurate at the more extreme levels of performance.
I’m sure Graham could clarify some of those things
vivaelpujols - July 5, 2009
I will be quite happy the day people realize that you do not test metrics like FIP or tRA
based on how well they predict y+1 ERA.
Matthew - July 6, 2009
Thanks, Fangraphs was more or less the first place I went.
I’m already reasonably familiar with those three (WAR, wOBA and tRA) but could definitely use a little more knowledge and that Inside the Book blog has already been pretty helpful, leading me to some good – they seem good anyway – entry-level posts on Purple Row explaining various metrics (LL is awesome and all but it does seem a little in-depth for a beginner sometimes).
Eyeball Kid - July 5, 2009
We should really take into account
the star power Morrow draws from national media.
http://forecast.diabetes.org/magazine/features/brandon-morrow-closing-deal
SeattExPat - July 6, 2009
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