Ronald Martinez - Getty Images
Starting to remember baseball games
A week ago - seriously a full week ago - the Mariners agreed to send Michael Pineda and a guy to the Yankees for Jesus Montero and a guy. The trade still isn't official, in part because of the Seattle-area weather, and in part because Montero hasn't been able to take a physical, but Montero cleared up a visa issue and should take his physical soon, if he hasn't already. He should pass. You almost have to be a dog not to pass. Literally a dog.
So the Mariners are adding a bat. Hooray! Losing a pitcher (boo), but adding a bat (hooray!). And adding a cheap bat, to boot. A bat so cheap that the Mariners still have spending money, if they feel like spending money to spice up their offseason even more.
On whom might the Mariners spend that money? People have talked about the team adding a starting pitcher, since the rotation's been depleted. Michael Pineda's a pretty big loss, and he leaves a hole Hector Noesi probably can't fill. Hell, people have been talking about the rotation all offseason. But one name I haven't seen that often is Charlie Furbush. What's the deal with Charlie Furbush? This was all a really terrible way to lead into a blog post about Charlie Furbush but hopefully, as you're reading this sentence, you've forgotten about the other sentences that preceded it.
Last year, Furbush was a 25-year-old rookie. He appeared in 28 Major League games, but what I want to talk about are his starts. He made 12 Major League starts, including ten with Seattle. Here's what he did in those starts:
You look at that and you can't help but be impressed. Not bad for a rookie southpaw. Really quite good. Sure, Furbush didn't have his arm built up and he isn't a potential workhorse, but what this suggests is that he can deliver some quality innings.
Of course, that list above doesn't tell the whole story. Here's the rest of it:
Oh, right, Furbush wasn't good, because he allowed a ton of runs. And he allowed a ton of runs in large part because he allowed 12 homers in 12 starts. Charlie Morton allowed six homers in 29 starts. Matt Cain allowed nine homers in 33 starts. Roy Halladay allowed ten homers in 32 starts. And so on. Charlie Furbush allowed 12 in 12.
Not a big deal, right? I mean, it looks bad in hindsight, but these things regress going forward, don't they? Elevated HR/fly ball ratios. It's a sample of only 12 starts, and isn't a sample of 12 starts a small sample?
A sample of 12 starts is a small sample. We wouldn't think that Charlie Furbush might have a home run problem based only on 12 starts. But this goes beyond Furbush's 12 Major League starts. He's allowed 16 homers in 102.2 innings in triple-A, which is well worse than the league average. He allowed five homers in 33.1 innings in double-A, which is well worse than the league average. He allowed 17 homers in 188.1 innings in advanced-A, which is well worse than the league average. Charlie Furbush has been allowing home runs for three years.
We're still talking about a sample under 400 innings, which isn't that big. Small sample sizes can be bigger than you think. But this is evidence that Furbush's homer-proneness might not have been a fluke. This establishes a history.
And, as you could guess, if Charlie Furbush is unusually homer-prone, then that's bad. That would make him worse than his xFIP. That would make him worse than his K/BB ratio. I know it's strange to talk about someone being "unusually homer-prone" since a lot of writers tie themselves into knots trying to find exceptions to batted ball theory that mostly don't exist, but it isn't out of the question that Furbush could have a problem. Pitchers don't share the same level of ability to prevent fly balls from leaving. Maybe Furbush is below-average in that regard.
There are two main questions, I think, one coming from the other. The first is, has Charlie Furbush's true talent level involved allowing more home runs than you'd expect? We can't answer this conclusively. Furbush's track record suggests that his true talent has involved more homers, but it doesn't prove it. Sample size.
The second question is, if the answer to the first question is "yes", will that continue going forward? We can't answer this one either. I bet you're glad you read this post! Let's say Furbush had a legitimate home run problem in 2009 and 2010 and 2011. That doesn't necessarily mean he'd have a legitimate home run problem in 2012 and beyond. Pitchers can make adjustments, and Furbush is still developing. He could improve. He could do less of whatever he's been doing wrong to lead to the homers.
There are things we don't know about Charlie Furbush. I think the biggest problem, though, has been his home runs, and we've been trained to be skeptical of unusually high home run rates. More often than not, they come down. There's no guarantee that Furbush's would come down, or at least come down enough, given his history, but there exists that chance. And then, suddenly, Furbush would look kind of appealing.
Furbush has a good fastball. He has decent enough stuff, overall, and he's demonstrated the ability to throw strikes and miss bats. He doesn't have particularly smooth mechanics, but not everybody does. It seems like people are forgetting about Furbush. Either forgetting about him, or writing him off as a reliever. I think he could still be an effective starter, though. He's not a starter I want to see begin the year in the Mariners' rotation, which makes the intro to this post all the more stupid, but he's a starter in whose development I have quite a bit of interest. Don't look past Charlie Furbush just yet.
0 recs | 109 comments
I'm sure his HR rate was better than Anthony Vasquez', though....
Aly Edge - January 20, 2012
A tee has a better home run rate than Anthony Vasquez.
Ride the Apocalypse - January 20, 2012
I really hope he turns into a decent back end of the rotation starter.
Otherwise, the Doug Fister trade isn’t looking good.
Ride the Apocalypse - January 20, 2012
Even if Furbush doesn't turn out...
Casper should be fine, and there’s still Ruffin and 21-year-old Francisco Martinez. Still way too soon to write those guys off.
Bret Boone's Farm - January 20, 2012
Waaaay too soon
cwel87 - January 20, 2012
The mariners have had to trade pitchers to make room for new pitchers
So the decision to trade Fister was still a good one, and we can really only be dissapointed if there was a better offer but Z chose this one.
Felix + pineda + bedard + vargas + fister = full rotation.
No room for iwakuma, hultzen, paxton if we didnt trade away some SP.
I liked fister but the Ms didnt really give up much and it gave us more options at other positions
briwas101 - January 21, 2012 via mobile
You don't trade players just to make room. Giving away talent is a pretty good way to be bad.
Doug Fister is good and cost-controlled. The players received in return have been underwhelming thus far and people have every right to be disappointed at this point in time. It’s too early to be definitive, though.
With Fister, Beavan or Furbush wouldn’t have to be starting now and it would have helped fill the hole left by Pineda. As of now, the rotation is Felix, Vargas, Iwakuma, Noesi, Beavan/Furbush or something of that nature. Slotting Fister in there makes the rotation a lot better.
abender20 - January 21, 2012
You're attempting to argue reason with a person who wrote that the Mariners will never win anything with Felix.
If you’d like a less pointless activity to do, I have some holes that need to be dug and then filled in.
Matthew - January 21, 2012
That would be really good exercise.
By the time he was done, Mr. Bender would have greatly improved his cardiovascular health.
Thinking of a more pointless exercise than arguing with that crowd is actually tough. Starting a troupe of mimes at a school for the blind, perhaps?
davidcameron - January 21, 2012
I love your analysis
LeftArrow2 - January 21, 2012
When the Mariners acquire enough talent to win with Felix
Then you can act like i said something stupid.
So far the Ms have accomished absolutely nothing with Felix and there is no question that we would get some very good players in return.
briwas101 - January 21, 2012 via mobile
Good plan acting like a dick towards Matthew.
And your original comment was that we will never win anything with Felix. I’m in the market for a crystal ball, where’d you get yours?
wazzu93 - January 21, 2012
Trying....to....not....take...the...bait
So hard. It’s best to let it go I think. Not directed at you wazzu, you’re just here struggling like the rest of us.
Craptastic-J - January 21, 2012
I know. I made one comment then flagged it.
wazzu93 - January 21, 2012
Shovels are over by the shed. Get digging.
Matthew - January 21, 2012
Ah man now it's raining. Better keep filling these holes in.
abender20 - January 21, 2012
I was actually more polite than Mathew
So direct your comment at him
briwas101 - January 21, 2012 via mobile
I'm usually more polite than steel workers. Does that mean that I should attempt to build a major structure?
ToddK - January 21, 2012
"Felix is ours and you can't have him" is the kind of phrase
That only a pathetic franchise would repeatedly utter.
Guess what, we may have felix but we also have zero playoff appearances with him and it looks like his current contract will expire before we make the playoffs.
So be as proud as you want that the Ms have felix, theres plenty of other teams that are happy playing in October with pitchers not named felix.
But go ahead and be satisfied with just having a pitcher. Thats really cool
briwas101 - January 21, 2012 via mobile
Your comments show that you have absolutely no knowledge about the M's organization.
Hell, even the most skeptical members of the fanbase can see that the plan is to build a team around Felix so that we can, I don’t know, actually make it to the playoffs with him on the team. We’ve been rebuilding around Felix for a while now, and it’s about to pay off. Why in the flying fuck would we trade the cornerstone of our team when we’re so close to reaching our goal?
Cascadian Man - January 21, 2012
Shovels are over by the shed. Get digging.
Matthew - January 21, 2012
The plan has been to build around felix for almost a decade
Back when we were still waiting for him to get called up the plan was to build around felix.
Am i the only one that understands that sometimes plans fail and you dont get what you want?
Im not saying they physically cannot win with felix, im saying they WONT win.
And for everyone who thinks im stupid, if ok had told you back in the late 90s that the Ms would be better once Randy, Griffey, and Arod were off the team, you guys would call me the biggest idiot on the planet…..and you guys would be 100% wrong and i would be 100% right.
The Mariners WILL have MORE success in the immediate 3 years after losing felix than they ever will with him on the team. That is my prediction and it has been my prediction for 5 years.
briwas101 - January 21, 2012 via mobile
Im talking 116 wins in 2001 for those who missed it
Best season in Ms history right after losing Randy, Arod, and Griffey.
We lost 3 HOFers and ended up being a better team than we ever were with them.
Most people dont understand that, but i do.
briwas101 - January 21, 2012 via mobile
So, going by the history of Baseball, teams achieve 116 wins by doing what?
Since it’s only been done twice in more than a hundred years you should come up with the answer rather quickly.
ToddK - January 21, 2012
Most people don't understand that correlation isn't causation, but I do.
JY - January 21, 2012
Jesus fucking christ
Aaron Campeau - January 21, 2012
This the use of the term "understanding"...
…I haven’t seen since I was a teaching assistant in charge of a classroom of undergraduates who couldn’t understand why they got a 0.0 for a term paper.
rtang - January 21, 2012
It's not a franchise mantra.
It’s LL rubbing salt in the wounds of other baseball blogging communities to everyone that we have the best young pitcher on the planet.
That is to say, shut the fuck up about trading Felix; he’s ours, bitches.
harkening - January 21, 2012
That last sentence is just pure beauty.
EthanN - January 21, 2012
Shovels are over by the shed. Get digging.
Matthew - January 21, 2012
Felix is a Cy Young winner. If the M's traded him, they would receive prospects.
Prospects are not a guarantee to become anything special. Even the best of prospects can end up never developing into anything more than an average player. We already know Felix is one of the best pitchers in all of baseball. You don’t trade that kind of talent.
EthanN - January 21, 2012
Shovels are over by the shed. Get digging.
Matthew - January 21, 2012
Jokes on you. I've seen the movie, 'Holes', and I bet I'll discover a giant treasure once I start digging.
EthanN - January 21, 2012
At the very least we'll probably find some sploosh.
Patrick Stites - January 21, 2012
I've seen this bit of reasoning a few other places so this response was as much for this commenter as it was a paperweight to keep the stack of awful comments from flying all over the place.
abender20 - January 21, 2012
You do realize though
That without getting rid of any of the 5 we had last year, there wouldnt be room to use any of the other pitchers we had.
Yes, you can argue that we couldve had a better rotation than we will end up with in 2012, but then we wouldnt get any value fron ALL the pitchers we would still have down in the minors.
If a player isnt going to play for you, then his value comes from being able to trade him. So either trade the guys in the majors, or trade the guys in the minors, but either way you have to trade some of them.
Unless of course you support a 10 man rotation or you feel our offense is currently good enough that we dont need to leverage any of our excess pitching.
Thank God that Z agrees with my approach of trading pitching for offense. Otherwise we would watch a bunch more 0-2 losses.
briwas101 - January 21, 2012 via mobile
If Z agreed with or followed your approach I would start watching quilting world instead of M's games.
ToddK - January 21, 2012
Since when was a 4.03 xFIP good?
You know, how Fister pitched for us last year before we traded him.
Furbush had a xFIP of 4.14 for us…
Just goes to show you people still care about ERA
valencia - January 21, 2012
Fister had a 3.87 tRA as an SP for the Mariners (14% better than a league average pitcher, which is good) and a 3.05 tRA as an SP for the Tigers.
Furbush had a 5.27 tRA as an SP for the Mariners. xFIP regresses HR rate and, as Jeff talked about yesterday, there’s reason to believe that Furbush doesn’t deserve that. If we’re talking strictly about performance last year then you can’t use xFIP as you are.
But, you know, it’s cool to just imply that I’m an idiot and misuse xFIP.
Did you want some holes in the front yard as well, Matthew?
abender20 - January 21, 2012
We're not talking about results - we're talking about projection
xFIP is a projection system. tRA is a results system. When dealing with trades, we want to find out how good a player WILL BE, not how good a player WAS.
SIERA is a better projection system than tRA, and Fister had a 4.08 SIERA – Furbush had a 4.02 SIERA.
If you want to assume Furbush is missing some fundamental aspect SIERA or xFIP doesn’t take into account go ahead, but don’t tell me Fister was actually anything above average because he’s somehow fundamentally better than sabermetric projections. Fact is Fister was nothing special when we traded him, and we got a guy who’s sabermetrically very similar.
valencia - January 21, 2012
And you're the one using tRA, FIP/WAR to assume Fister is good
so yeah, I might assume certain things about you
valencia - January 21, 2012
tRA is not ERA, and there's a difference between using measures and using them correctly.
I’ll leave it there.
abender20 - January 21, 2012
On second thought, I won't leave it there.
For starters, your tone is inappropriate. It’s one thing to disagree, it’s another to be disrespectful. You appear to be new to advanced statistics and, as such, you should be more cautious in how you wield them. Belligerence won’t win you an argument.
Secondly, you say you care about projections going forward and not results (huh?) but then use your projection system of choice to look at last season’s data. Also, even if we were to do that, Fister had a 3.61 xFIP last season to Furbush’s 4.25 and did it over 216 innings to Furbush’s 85.
Thirdly, SIERA is not a better projection system no matter what Seidman says. Better at predicting ERA? Good for SIERA. Why the hell do we want to predict ERA anyway? Being good at predicting a measure we don’t care about is pointless. Go read what Wyers had to say. tRA and FIP are both much better measures of what happened and they both agree that Fister was better. The fact that you’re even arguing that Furbush is better than Fister is pretty remarkable.
Also fun is that you’re neatly ignoring Fister’s innings with Detroit, probably because it hurts your argument even further.
abender20 - January 21, 2012
Aw, a little butt hurt are we?
I was referencing your claim “Doug Fister was good.” I made the point that unless you’re using results, like tRA, FIP/WAR, or ERA, that’s just not true. Using any ERA estimator had him the same as he always was, a 4.00+ xFIP/SIERA pitcher.
And like I keep saying, when we’re trying to decide who’s a good pitcher going forward it’s more useful to use SIERA or xFIP than FIP/WAR or tRA. tRA has poor correlation with future performance, and that is a fact. It’s poorer than FIP at it actually, because it places too much weight on LD%.
Yes, Fister was a great pitcher while he was a M last year. Great job using tRA/FIP to decide who was a good pitcher. But going forward, he was nothing special, and that’s why we traded him. When we traded him his xFIP was 4.02. His SIERA was 4.08. We thought he was overvalued by Detroit, so we dealt him. His xFIP wasn’t 3.61 at the time we traded him it was 4.03 and if we somehow knew Fister would turn into a 2.75 xFIP pitcher the minute he left Seattle we wouldn’t have dealt him, obviously.
You keep using tRA and FIP like it means anything in this context but it doesn’t. It means as much as ERA. Which was my point. Was better is not the same as will be better, especially not in this context.
And SIERA has better correlation with year to year results than FIP/tRA, so yes SIERA is better than tRA/FIP at predicting ERA. Keep name dropping though if it makes you feel smarter.
valencia - January 21, 2012
What the fuck makes you think you know anything about anything?
Graham MacAree - January 21, 2012
It's nice to see shades of the old Graham shining through again.
ToddK - January 21, 2012
You cannot imagine how fucking stupid you look right now.
Quit while you’re ahead.
Aaron Campeau - January 21, 2012
Well, quit while you're only looking exceptionally bonkers.
abender20 - January 22, 2012
Hey guess where you should have left it
Captain Peppernuts - January 21, 2012
It's difficult to beat illogic with logic.
I should have just posted pictures of llamas.
abender20 - January 21, 2012
Llamapillars.
JY - January 21, 2012
Never try to reason someone out of a position they didn't reason him or herself into.
Or something to that paraphrase.
Matthew - January 21, 2012
Brilliant
abender20 - January 22, 2012
If only someone here knew something about tRA...
msb - January 21, 2012
If Furbush truly is homer prone as his past has suggested he might, you can't be using xFIP to judge him at all.
Patrick Stites - January 21, 2012
22% HR/HB rate Away in 38 IP
vs 9.8% HR/FB rate Home in 47 IP home.
Looks like SSS to me. He pitched 5 away games for us, TEX x 2, CLE, LAA, and TBR. 3 of the 6 HRs he gave up away for us were in Texas, 2 in Cleveland, 1 in Tampa.
If you go further into his Detroit stats, he gives up all his HRs away, in CHW, TEX, COL, LAA, and KCR.
The other 5 HRs were given up in Safeco.
I don’t think you can draw much conclusion one way or the other, other than holy crap don’t use Furbush in Texas.
valencia - January 21, 2012
Did you read everything Jeff wrote in this post?
Here you go, here’s the important part.
What’s the point? We don’t know yet if Furbush is homer prone, but his history is suggesting he might be.
Patrick Stites - January 21, 2012
Maybe's it's because I just woke up...
But I read that as “If Furbush is a homer pirate…”
It made me giggle.
Gaude - January 23, 2012
Dingers!
lemonverbena - January 20, 2012
Does he need to add the Felix Twist?
Something something hiding the ball better something hitters can’t square up on it something.
Chris_FB - January 20, 2012
Glue.
abender20 - January 20, 2012
Grit.
seattle_since_81 - January 20, 2012
Pearls
Kermit. - January 21, 2012
Unobtanium.
Ballard Erik - January 21, 2012
I really really like Furbush
Mostly because of the name, but the K/BB too.
Intersting stat: Furbush gave up 14 HRs in 60 IP against rightys; 2 HRs in 24 IP against leftys
Lefty FIP: 3.27, Righty FIP: 5.93. You think maybe the HRs are the problem but nope.
Lefty xFIP: 3.18, Righty xFIP: 4.69. He’s not great against rightys.
Looking through his PitchFx, it looks like he’s afraid of going inside on rightys, so he just tosses everything in the middle when he’s aiming inside. Or maybe he’s trying to hit the outside and failing hard. I can’t tell, that’s how “in the middle” his pitches are. That could be the reason there are sooooo many HRs against rightys.
valencia - January 20, 2012
Chuck Bush.
JY - January 20, 2012
Why not put him in competition with Beavan for the number 5 spot in Spring Training?
Is Beavan that much better on paper right now? Even with Furbush’s better K/9, GB%, and xFIP?
algorhythm - January 20, 2012
He probably is
And to be honest, beaven or furbush will probably be better than the average 5th starter so people are most likely complaining about the Ms having an above-average player at his spot.
The Ms dont have very many above average players so im not going to complain if Furbush makes the rotation
briwas101 - January 21, 2012 via mobile
Talking to a wall but I love how you logicked Furbush being an above average player from him being above average for a fifth starter.
Mariner John - January 21, 2012
Trade Montero for Fister!
SmoakyCokey - January 20, 2012
Want Fister Back! (pout)
kimalanus - January 20, 2012
You just want to hear "Fister then Furbush" from Rizzs.
ToddK - January 21, 2012
Hilarious!
cwel87 - January 20, 2012
Outside perspective
I like Furbush. Always have. I think he will always outpitch his ’talen’t and expectations. The Mariners will be pleased with him the next several years.
McCutchenIsTheTruth - January 20, 2012
Only one pitcher with 200+ innings from 2009-2011 has a HR/FB higher than 15 % and I think there is a strong case for that believing in that rate regressing
Which is what Furbush had last season. There is of course the usual disclaimer that these are arbitrary endpoints and you can also argue that excludes pitchers that have higher “true talent” HR/FB would not survive in the MLB that long(hypothetically assuming that the pitcher’s skill level has some control over the rate). Of course Furbush might be one of them. If you look at some of the pitchers though in this sample, the possible reasons why they would have such as high rate do not apply to Furbush.
The pitcher with the higher rate is Volquez with 16.7 % in 220+ innings, largely fueled by an awful rate of 20.7 % this year. It should be noted that Volquez played in a bandbox this year with HR park factors of 120+ for both sides and before that played in Texas. Moreover, he has not been 100 % healthy these past few years. Volquez is also hurt by having extremely bad command and control, which is definitely related to being homer prone.
After that, you have Sonnastine and Harden at 14.3 %. The latter has a mediocre fastball/cutter that sits in the mid-80s and his pure stuff is scarcely major league quality as seen in his increasing inability to get swinging strikes. Harden has been missing his best stuff for a while now and has been injured recently. Furthermore, as a two pitch right with a change as his second pitch, somewhat predictably he has suffered with a 22 % HR/FB against righties in 2011(SSS alert).
Right handed power hitters would be Furbush’s greatest bane as a fly ball prone lefty and Safeco appears to have greatly marginalised this fault. This is reflected in Furbush having a HR/FB rate of 22 % away from home versus only 9 % at home. Obviously very small sample size of course. This somewhat worrying of course but I think there is good reason to believe he will put up a lower rate than these pitchers.
Furbush has decent even if they are not plus pitches and non-batting practice fastball, as seen in his 8.6 % SwStrike rate. Furthermore, he as modicum of command with 59 % first pitch strike % and a 3.16 BB/9. Finally, he has multiple pitches and a change that he uses, which suggest he has the potential to not suffer from such an extreme platoon split.
Overall, I think Furbush has the scouting profile to suggest a slightly lower rate at the least, maybe 12-13 %. When comparing his scouting pro/cons and his statistical profile with other players that have such as high HR/FB over a reasonable number of innings, he does have any of the demonstrable shortcomings that they have that suggest he might likewise suffer.
If you look at pitchers in the 12-13 % range, you can still find pitchers with scouting/statistical flaws that suggest a high HR/FB again but I am not going to pick through that just to demonstrate a correlation with little causal connection. In that list though, one pitcher with no glaring flaw that does jump out is Chris Volstad and he might very well be a good case for a pitcher whose true talent HR/FB rate is above average. It might also be a reasonable level to set Furbush’s true talent HR/FB % floor at.
Wow this turned into more words than I wanted it to be.
tdot mariner fan - January 20, 2012
My apologies for any typos also, my firefox is not set in English making it really hard to edit with almost everything underlined
When it posts, I saw all the little errors and wished I had put this rant in word to edit it before I posted.
tdot mariner fan - January 20, 2012
Anyone looked into, how to put this, pitch-count based pitcher evaluation?
Not total pitch count, but like two-balls-and-one-strike. I know that hitter performance improves when in a favorable count, and I wonder if pitchers that show good “control” but bad “command” are prone to pitching themselves into bad counts and then must “take something off” to avoid a walk. Thus making themselves more hittable—more prone to home runs.
John Morgan - January 20, 2012
Bad command I believe is more related to HR/FB rate because of the inability to keep the pitch away from the HR friendly parts of the zone than due to taking off velocity/movement
Ex, accidentally having the pitch end up in the centre of the zone when it should be down and away. Someone please correct me if I am wrong though.
tdot mariner fan - January 20, 2012
You're calling Omar Vizquel
a dog?
Breadbaker - January 20, 2012
don't forget David Adams
seeing as how Pineda vs Smoak vs Montero will be the soup du jour of conversation topics this year
C Dubya - January 20, 2012
Command of the fastball will make the difference for him
I agree with tdot mariner fan. If Furbush can master painting the outside corner against right-handed hitters and keeping the ball down, there’s no reason he can’t be in the rotation. He’s real close as it is.
Eddie Guardado had a nice career doing just that. Furbush has a better fastball than Guardado, but lacks Eddie’s pinpoint control.
ivan. - January 20, 2012
I thought MLB pitchers were pretty much 10% HR/FB
I recall an article early last season showing that some pitchers have shown ability to influence their HR/FB (Jered Weaver being the posterboy), but what’s the point of having an xFIP stat that normalizes HR/FB rate if pitchers actually vary somewhat significantly from 10% HR/FB?
Two Rs and Two Ls - January 20, 2012
Weaver pitched his entire career in a big pitcher park
so no one knows if it’s a “skill” Weaver has or if it’s just his park giving him free FBs
I still think there’s some validation to the theory that bad pitchers give up more HRs. No one here is going to predict Vasquez will have a 5.52 ERA next year because his HR/FB% was an unsustainable 27%. I think there’s a general level of mistakes you’re allowed to make at the MLB, and that’s around 10% HR/FB. If you don’t make the cut, you’re usually sent down to AAA never to be heard from again.
valencia - January 21, 2012
I'd be interested in knowing how many HRs were when pitching out of the stretch,
which then of course connects to were they solo shots or not.
ignacio - January 20, 2012
11 of his 16 HRs came from innings 1-3
1st, 3rd, and 5th innings were his worst OPS wise. 1st inning was the worst HR wise.
valencia - January 21, 2012
My brain hurts after reading this comment thread.
Goose - January 21, 2012
It's like the northwest cabin fever from this past week all hit at once
Chris_FB - January 21, 2012 via mobile
I miss LL being full of people that weren't fucking retarded
Aaron Campeau - January 21, 2012
The year has started out pretty poorly.
JY - January 21, 2012
That makes me a sad llama
abender20 - January 21, 2012
I don't know what projection system you are using to determine if llamas can even be sad, but you are wrong.
Just because llamas have “looked” sad in the past, doesn’t mean that they have the capacity for human emotion. The ANDES projection will serve you better for personifying these “llamas”, if they even exist. ANDES also projects donkeys to have the largest capacity for human-type emotions.
Craptastic-J - January 22, 2012
.
msb - January 22, 2012
.
Craptastic-J - January 22, 2012
That's definitely not a llama
Corco - January 22, 2012
Why do you think he's so sad?
If he was a llama he wouldn’t have to deal with these horrible emotions.
Craptastic-J - January 22, 2012
We're all fucking retarded
Dewey N - January 22, 2012
I think that's illegal
Matthew - January 22, 2012
Won't stop Robert from trying.
abender20 - January 22, 2012
Ridiculous! Who have two potato?
Matthew - January 22, 2012
That seems overly harsh. This website seems to have a more intelligent community than any other baseball website I’ve visited.
Comma - January 22, 2012
It used to have a whole lot more
Aaron Campeau - January 22, 2012
Matthew's ample supply of shovels seems somewhat sinister to me.
Why does he need all these holes dug?
I think I’ve said too much.
JAH - January 22, 2012
We're filling them back in after so really it's unlimited fun.
abender20 - January 22, 2012
Alright, I have an actual question about Furbush.
Let’s say his dinger rate regresses to the league average. Who would be a good pitcher to compare him to if that were to happen?
Cascadian Man - January 22, 2012
Well, our boy had an xFIP of 4.25 last year (about 2/3 of his IP were as a starter).
If he overcame his previous home run problem and posted a 4.25 FIP, the qualified starters right around that point include Josh Tomlin, Jake Westbrook, Brett Myers, and Jhoulys Chacin. Those guys were worth, on average, about 1.7 wins on the Fangraphs scale. So, definitely a serviceable starter under those circumstances.
I do think there’s a very real chance that Furbush’s true talent HR/FB rate is higher than league average, but the ability to miss bats and his excellent K-BB ratio as a starter make him a lot more interesting to me in the rotation than, say, Beavan.
VivaAyala - January 22, 2012
I hope he succeeds just because his wind up makes it look like he's doing half of the Electric Slide.
Cascadian Man - January 22, 2012
I have a shovel and nothing to do with it
does anyone have suggestions for projects that might interest me?
seattlebruin - January 22, 2012
Murder for hire.
VivaAyala - January 22, 2012
Pretty handy tool to bang yourself in the face with if you ever feel the desire to read a Geoff Baker story.
ToddK - January 22, 2012
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