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Lookout Landing

11-11, Chart

4_28wec_medium

Biggest Contribution: David Aardsma, +20.3%
Biggest Suckfest: RRS, -30.0%
Most Important AB: Wilson double, +13.4%
Most Important Pitch: Maier triple, -30.6%
Total Contribution by Pitcher(s): +19.6%
Total Contribution by Lineup: +30.4%
Total Contribution by Opposition: 0.0%
(What is this chart?)

0 recs  |  83 comments

Comments

Do RRS and Guti get any of the cake?
We're saving it for Torii Hunter's birthday.

The cake is made with Willie grit and served with a tall glass of cockpunch.

Guti gets to ruin his party.
If you squint you can almost see pitch/fx data in the graph.
It actually went into the SABRcake.
Tastes like regression.
Gross.
Still waiting for Sept 2009 Hyphen to show

But a win is a win. And we didn’t lose a series to KC!

Wonder whats up with him

More HR’s against him than he has strikeouts. Thats not good.

He's like the pitching version of Jose Lopez.
It's been talked about before but

again, didn’t he only face one left handed batter today? It’s like every team he faces has no lefties at all.

That's going to be the case all year.

If he can’t get righties out, he can’t be a good starter.

I don't think that's quite right

A lot of teams trot at least two lefties in the everyday lineup. Not everyone platoons every position. That’s, largely, why I think Washburn had such success against teams like the Yankees the last couple years, while often looking awful against worse teams with fewer lefties.

Excited to see this Jack Wilson .gif!
It's definitely worth waiting for.
FSN uses the Milton smile in their spots now!
That's not new
Well, it only happened 2 weeks ago.

Not everyone watches FSN, either

Worst part about this game?

Guti’s 4 K’s :(

Hyphen was worse.

I’m not sure how sad I’d be if Mitch Maier got leukemia.

Not?
A little.

He’s probably got a mother.

Yes, but her son is Mitch Maier

so it might be a relief.

He might own a black lab who'd miss his walks

and have a girlfriend he’s putting through med school, while his brother is in an assisted care facility (he’s a quadrilplegic after that car accident when some drunk sped through a red light and hit him while he was helping two blind little girls cross the street after their guide-dog was poisoned by some creep).

Anyone that nice deserves what happens to them.
4 Ks = Golden Sombrero + R. Kelly rolls by your suite after the game
It's nice that Guti can have an 0 for game like this

and the offence still produces with out him

Offense*
Great Britain thinks you're right.
What was up with Hillman having Gordon run for Callaspo and not hitting for Willie or Yuni?
Check out Royals Review for the answer.
Doesn't look like they know either, I don't think anyone will have the actual answer for it.
They had Hillman's response in the comments.

It was basically “Gordon is faster than Callaspo.”

Wow.

Brandon League is the poster child

for why Wins and ERA are outdated stats.

Yeah but some pitcher has to get these vulture Ws

and it seems good to me that it’s him. They probably make him feel good.

"It" has just hit me. CLIFF LEE ON FRIDAY!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO YEEEEEAAAAAHHHH
Gave up my free Six Flags ticket for this!
Jack Wilson is an absolutely fantastic shortstop.

His range is unbelievable, and he makes it looks so effortless.
Games like today make me perfectly content with his frightened baby-bat approach at the plate.

And his doubles are beautiful
He's starting to hit like he did in Pittsburgh when he wasn't that bad.
It's amazing looking at Rowland-Smith's numbers and think he's in a fairly competetive fight for a job.

I hope he doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt again when Bedard comes back. He has to start earning his spot, because it’s been mostly bad.

Question:

Why does one bad month against an extremely and unusually high number of RHB negate a year and a half of competent pitching?

Small. Sample. Size. Really man.
I don't think its a small sample size

You have to ask what does RRS do well. Is he doing it well now? Has he changed. If you think there is a reason that his talent level is not the same as it was before then you can’t simply use his previous performance and regress his last month. Instead you need to weight his last month of performance more heavily.

I doubt RRS is as bad as he has pitched but I don’t know if he will pitch as well as he had pitched in the past. Look at his skillset. If he loses his ability to control his pitches and his walk rate increases it will have a cascade effect basically making him a replacement level pitcher. I think he will turn it around but watching him this month has not inspired any confidence in him.

"I doubt RRS is as bad as he has pitched"

“I think he will turn it around”

So what you’re saying is that this sample size is too small to make anything close to a definitive judgment.

Yes the sample size is too small to make any definitive judgment

but when do you have a large enough sample with a pitcher to be able to tell his true talent has changed? How much information do you need to tell if a pitcher has gotten worse?

So you agree then.

Perhaps you should rehearse these sorts of things in front of a mirror before arguing for argument’s sake?

I was trying to say that he might have a point and we shouldn't just dismiss him.

I should be more clear of my intentions.

Continue to make this argument, all the while ignoring the real issue:

Ian Snell staying in the starting rotation.

Okay, I want to expand on this.

RRS has pitched a whopping 5 games. 5 games. Not only that, but you were preaching this early in this game, when he had a sample size of 4 games. 4 games is not enough time to make a judgment against the history of a player. if I were to judge players based on your criteria:

- Javier Vasquez is one of the worst pitchers in baseball.
- Barry Zito is one of the best pitchers in baseball
- Felix Hernandez is a worse pitcher than Carlos Silva

Don’t pick and choose your samples. Either you agree that the above list is correct, or you are basing your opinions on a sample that is too small. Take your pick.

Over the course of the year, RRS may suck. But if he sucks, that’s not saying “you were right.” You’re wrong. You’re basing your information off too small a sample – a sample that goes against what we already know about RRS. If RRS sucks this year, he sucks this year, but you have to wait until there is statistical evidence to prove he sucks, not just because you watched him for 4 or 5 games.

RRS may have visually pitched worse this year so far.

But he has a history of pitching adequately, and Ian Snell has also pitched terribly and has a history of pitching terribly. Ian Snell goes first, and we will wait much longer to make a judgment on the Aussie.

I don't really disagree with you.

But RRS was pretty bad in 2008 over 68 innings, He was around league average in ‘09 over 92 innings, and he’s been horrid over 25 so far in 2010. You could look at more than this five start sample and conclude that he doesn’t deserve much more benefit of the doubt than a normal 5th starter. It’s not like he’s 24 with great stuff.

He's a reliable back of the rotation guy with a ballpark and a defense that is made for him.

Great pitchers are generally going to do very well all the time. Adequate but not that that great pitchers like RRS are going to go through some considerable variance. We have pretty good evidence that suggests he’ll be a 90 or so tRA+ pitcher, give or take. We have better evidence that Ian Snell is going to be an 80 or less tRA+ pitcher, with a more recent history of sucking. There is clearly something wrong with RRS’s performance, but to make some sweeping judgments about his overall ability and skills based on four starts is poor analysis when history suggests he’s better than this.

No one is arguing that he's this bad.

But is he that reliable? He missed a month and a half due to arm problems (not counting his rehab assignment) last year, his first full year as a starter. And would you view his recent considerable variance to be of a reliable nature?

Ryan Rowland Smith is a worse Jarrod Washburn (but a swell guy!) under team control. That has value, of course – he’s not replacement level bad. How long a leash would you give him? If he’s still running a K/BB under one when Bedard comes back, do you still give him the nod over one of Vargas/Fisher?

The Vargas/Fister argument is one I have a problem deciding, because I agree with you if they continue to perform at this level

they should be rewarded with more playing time. But that’s not the argument here. The argument is whether he should be considered “awful” to the point that he is “fighting to earn his spot.” He’s pretty effectively adequate. He is a #4/5 starter, and a serviceable one at that, that also happens to be a lefty in a ballpark that is made for him. I wouldn’t even go so far as to say he is worse than Washburn. They seem like the exact same pitcher.

If you had a team with a starting rotation of Sabathia, Felix, Lincecum, Liriano and Washburn, and then you have Cliff Lee coming off the DL, you get rid of Washburn, obviously. So yes, if Vargas and Fister are getting Cliff Lee-esque results despite their generally middling stuff, keep giving them the opportunities. But this bad stretch should not imply that he is anything less than he is. He’s a 90ish tRA starter with not a lot of upside in a park that is made for him. That’s who he is, and while he has had some recent struggles, his 4 games of pitching this season do not suggest that he is necessarily going to be any worse than he has always been, and making judgments based on these 4 (now 5) games is poor analysis, especially with stats like FIP that are prone to wild fluctuations until the season moves on.

I see where you're coming from.

Going forward, the difference between Vargas, Fister, and RRS isn’t likely to amount to much, so spilling a lot of words over it all not really needed.

Yeah, I can see an argument about Fister and/or Vargas over RRS depending on how the next month or so goes.

I cannot see an argument that writes RRS off as a terrible pitcher that is far worse than those two’s true talent, especially because there is a pretty good chance that RRS is better than at minimum Fister, and likely Vargas depending on how valuable you think his good pitch is.

A bit of an aside, but slightly relevant to talent and decisions.

With Vargas and Fister, at some point in the season their innings might play a part. Might. Neither has pitched a full season as a starter. Something that might be an issue later in the season, maybe not.

That's when we sign Randy Johnson out of retirement.
I should also add that this argument is a continuation of a discussion in the game thread that the user convieniently ignored.

So if it seems like we’re taking this comment too strongly, it is because this is one of a series of comments about RRS’s ability based on a small sample.

Someone should tell Google that Bleacher Report stories are just fan fiction Word docs in html
So umm...

Weekend series against Texas is going to be Cliff Lee, Felix Hernandez, Doug Fister?

I like all our matchups except Fister vs Wilson.
Have faith in the Fist. Especially in Safeco.
Fister will not be throwing to Nelson Cruz.
Good God, I love this.

Feels a little dirty because Cruz is just plain a great baseball player. But hey thats how it goes.

The visual image of Matthew and Jeff making a cake has me all excited now

We seriously have to take this next series. I’m nervous about it but I’m also confident. Cliff Lee!

Tampa Bay after Texas will be fun

And by fun I mean fucking hell there goes the easy part of our schedule

Wouldn't it be awesome if we did something so anti-Mariners?

Like say, winning the next nine games? Of course, even if that happened the A’s would be sure to match us.

2002/2003 – Never forget!

The Mariners thing to do:

Go 6-3 on the road trip and then get swept by Baltimore.

Sounds bout right.
"Road Trip" = "Home Stand"
In august we have a road trip against the yankees and red sox with no off dayss
yeah, but then we'll have Bedard, too!
Does that change the fact that the soft part of our schedule is over?

I don’t follow.

I'm just saying if you think TB and Texas are fun...wait til you get Boston and New York

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