No one is saying Mussina should be in the hall because he won 20 games once, and because he has 270 wins. They say he is close because he was dominant for a while, his other stats show that, and on top of it all he had a prodcutive 20 win season at the tail end of his career.

I’m aware. That is why I spent the entire article assessing other facets of his performance.

Just looking at those 3, I would know that Beckett and Wakefield played on teams with a much greater offenses

WRONG!!!! You wouldn’t know that just by their win totals. Now you’re just lying. How do you know how good a team’s offense is based on a pitcher’s win total?

I would also know that Johnson played with a less than average offense so his 16 wins were much more difficult to achieve.

Lying again! How could you possibly know that Johnson played with a less than average offense based on his win total? Seriously, I would love to know. Because that’s what we’ve been arguing about this whole time. Our stats take all of that into account. Wins do not.

I love this shit.

OBP is just adding batting average with walks. Someone with a lower batting average but a higher OBP isn’t neccisarily better, depending on how much higher the OBP is, and how much lower the avg is. Walks will only get you one base, a person that puts the ball in play and gets hits more often can be more effecient with moving runners and scoring them. To look at any stat in a vaccum is ridiculous. No one is saying Mussina should be in the hall because he won 20 games once, and because he has 270 wins. They say he is close because he was dominant for a while, his other stats show that, and on top of it all he had a prodcutive 20 win season at the tail end of his career.

In 2004, Randy Johnson won 16 games with a freaking 177 OPS+ and a 0.900 WHIP

It tells you nothing about an individual’s performance. NOTHING. You can’t make determinations based on it. Just about every stat is better for that.

The issue is not whether someone who hits .300 is a good hitter. The issue is that someone who hits .310 with a .330 OBP is not nearly as valuable as someone who hits .290 with a .390 OBP.

As for Moose, he was a borderline hall of famer before the year. People can argue for and against him going in. That is why winning 20 games is even an issue. A 20 win season doesn’t hurt his chances. It shows his ability to dominate, and especially at his age and given his stuff. A no hitter isn’t neccisarily an indicator of a pitchers ability. Maybe they hit the ball to the right spot, or his players made some nice place, but it looks like dominance to me.

The computer v. typewriter analogy isn’t being used the correct way. A more accurate analogy is that if all I have to do is write a letter once in a blue moon, why would I pay a few thousand dollars for a computer when I can just type it up. I am not saying that people should choose typewriters over computers, but if you don’t read blogs, if you don’t need to use excel, then why would you need a computer. You can type a letter with a typewriter, and you can tell that someone can play if they can win 20 games. It is by no means a useless stat.

You can throw out all the stats you want, but someone that hits over .300 is a good hitter.

I’m by no means trying to pick on you, but I just want to dispel the notion that just because you hit .300 means you’re a good hitter.

I did a quick look at the all-time batting average leaders, and yes there are some fine hitters on there that hit over .300, but there were also the likes of Sean Casey (career BA of .302) and Rusty Greer (.305) who are pretty mediocre/average as well as the likes of Juan Pierre (.300) who is the king of making outs but being able to rely on his speed to mask his inability to reach base at an acceptable rate or hit for any semblance of power (84 OPS+).

Seriously what is ERA+

Since a question about it’s inputs was raised, I’ll do my best to explain ERA+ as thoroughly as I can.

ERA+ takes a basic pitcher’s ERA and normalizes it, against the league and against the parks the pitcher has pitched in. By doing this, it allows for a general comparison between eras (not ERAs). Take for example, Mel Stottlemyre who had a 3.22 ERA in 1972 and Pedro Martinez who posted a 3.70 ERA in ‘96. If you used just plain ERA, you would be tricked into thinking that Stottlemyre had a better performance than Pedro, when in fact, the converse is true. League average ERA in ‘72 was 2.95, meaning Mel was below average, while league average ERA in ‘96 was 4.31 which means Pedro was above average.

That’s the general reason why ERA+ is better for quick and dirty analysis than ERA, but not quite the mechanics behind computing it. So to compute it, you take a pitcher’s raw ERA and augment it based on the park factors of the parks that he pitched in. Park Factors are according to Baseball Prospectus

An adjustment made to account for the fact that some parks are easier to hit in than average, giving an advantage (in raw statistical terms) to hitters who play for that team. Park factors are always made relative to a league average of 1.00. The park adjustments in the BP are made only on the park factor for runs, averaged over five years

So basically it takes a 5-year average of the runs produced in that pakr (using both home and away data to discount the bias a dominant offensive home team would supply)and then normalizes that against a league average of 1.00. Then depending on the park factor, the ERA is adjusted. For example, in a completely useless example, say a pitcher pitched all of his starts at his home park, which had a park factor of 1.01. Say that pitcher posted a 3.00 ERA, since his park favored hitting, you would adjust his ERA to actually be 2.97 (3.00-[3.00*.01]).

Once a pitcher’s ERA is normalized to the park’s he’s pitched in, it is compared to the league average ERA (which is also normalized for park). So then you do pitcher’s ERA/lg avg ERA. If you then multiply by 100, you get that pitcher’s ERA+, with 100 being completely league average, >100 above average, and <100 below average.

If I misspoke or over simplified, anyone, please correct me

world: Why don’t you look at the fucking speedometer, man? It’s a lot more precise?

die_eagles: True, but if I just go a little slower than everyone else, I’m probably not speeding. It all evens out in the end.