Baseball people that don't understand baseball (pitchers, ball, MVP, pitcher)

[filihok]

Filihok: Baseball people that don't understand baseball

Came across this article on MLB.com

Ken Gurnick, writer for MLB.com: The Dodgers will suffer through the 0-for017 and .220 batting average young shortstop Dee Gordon had after Friday night because there will also be games like Saturday's.

Don Mattingly, LA Dodgers manager: Dee really got us a couple all by himself. All the time we talk about what Dee doesn't do. Today he gets hits, steals a bag, scores twice. He was exciting today.

Really?

Gordon scores 2 runs today and that is supposed to off set a .270 On Base Percentage and an overall offense that is about half what an average major league hitter produces

NUMBERS AND STUFF

Yeah, Gordon is an exciting player who makes a lot of plays with his legs and his fun to watch, but his overall performance is sub par. The Dodgers should not put up with hit current level of performance because he'll have the rare game where his legs change the game.

[Lancet71]

Don Mattingly, LA Dodgers manager: Dee really got us a couple all by himself. All the time we talk about what Dee doesn't do. "Today" he gets hits, steals a bag, scores twice. He was exciting "today".

The key words are today. Most of the time the managers don't get to totally choose their roster, they have to play the players that they have been given and they tell the GM and owners that they want certain guys added or called up and then they wait and see. Honestly it sounds more like Donny Baseball downplaying the guys lack of production and stating that he had a good day TODAY. Over the years he hasn't been the most outspoken guy. The fact that the dodgers are leading their division mostly without Kemp also says something.

[jtur88]

Can I nominate Bud Selig?

[Lancet71]

Originally Posted by jtur88

Can I nominate Bud Selig?

Priceless!!! You nailed it!!!

[jtur88]

As long as this thread is open, let's use it. Rules of scoring seem like they were made up by people who don't know anythng about baseball.

Distinguishing Hits from Errors is just plain silly, and serves no useful satistical purpose.

First of all, as a Fielding Average, it is laughable. Nobody cares if an outfielders FA is .999 or .998. Besides, every time an outfielder fields a hit, he is exposed to an error with virtually no compenating opportunity to have a positive fielding chance. It's a lose-lose statistic for an outfielder.

In terms of Batting Average, there is (as far as I know) no statistical tabulation of how many times batters are safe on error, but it seems highly likely to me that they would even out, with every batter getting an equal ratio of hits and SOE from total BIP. So the rankings of all hitters would remain unaffected by counting all SOE as Hits.

We do know the ratio of Total Runs to Earned Runs for pitchers. They are as follows for ten pitchers chosen at ramdom from 1988:

.920 Gubicza
.912 Glavine
.910 Stewart
.908 Langston
.905 Clemens
.904 DeLeon
.901 Viola
.892 Darling
.891 Browning
.884 Reuschel

The same pitchers would remain in the same spots on the leader board, regardless if they were charged with Total Runs, or Earned Runs.

So we go through all this wrangling and hair pulling and castigation of official scorers, over what amounts to a 4% margin of error in pitching stats.

So what do we have? We have a ball in play, a runner gets on first, and the official scorer needs to determine whether that runner is to be charged against a pitcher if he scores. That would be the equivalent of charging a pitcher for an extra run, if a fielder makes a web gem just before a home run, but as far as I know, that is not taken into account in calculating a pitchers ERA. Yet it is just as valid and just as significant and just as justifiable, in terms of calculating the effectiveness of a pitcher. If a pitcher entices a double play ball and it "cannot be assumed", you have in fact codified a penalty agains the pitcher. The whole thing is frought with travesty, and there is supposed be a rule against making a travesty of the game.

Just charge pitchers with runs allowed per inning and stop the foolishmess. It will all come out the same.

Also, make a simple formula for who a run is charged to in a pitching change. There is a liability difference between leaving a game with a runner on third, none out, and a runner on first, two out. My proposal: If a runner is in scoring position, less than 2 out, charge him to the pitcher who put him there. If not, charge him to the pitcher who lets him score. How simple.

While I'm on a rant, last night Zambrano had two outs and runners on base by error, and Molina's homer clears the bases. All runs unearned, even Molina's homer. If the next 100 batters had hit 100 consecutive homers, all runs would have been unearned. The reasoning is that if they didn't hit the homers in this inning, none of them would ever have hit any at all. Of course you can't anticipate everything would be the same, but Molina DID hit the homer off Zambrano. Charge him for it.

[filihok]

Tigers' GM Dave Dombrowski came up with this gem while discussing Miguel Cabrera

Tigers GM disparages WAR, thinks Cabrera’s MVP case should be judged by … WAR | HardballTalk

Originally Posted by Tigers GM David Dombrowski

You can use WAR stats and all of that, but when people used to talk about most valuable player, it used to be, ‘Take that player away from the club and see where that club would be.’ You take Miguel Cabrera out of our lineup right now, and you see where we would be.

What WAR does

WAR basically looks at a player and asks the question, “If this player got injured and their team had to replace them with a minor leaguer or someone from their bench, how much value would the team be losing?