Unrelated, but if Vazquez had the year he had in 2007 in 2006, the Sox may have gone to the playoffs again. Still eats away at me...

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Ok, I'll buy that. And I should mention that I agree that, barring some super advancement in computing power and data collection, current stats are a far cry from truly being context-neutral. I, however, am of the mind that attempting to "know" and discuss every single bit of context across every moment of every game is too burdensome a prospect when attempting to discuss players across teams, parks, leagues, years, and/or eras, and shaving off some extra context, while not ideal, is worthwhile because the end result allows for plainer discussions an comparisons.

The problem is that you still are concentrating on a very small set of data, and using the made up construct of WAR(baseball reference has a major difference in WAR between the two players and fangraphs does not).

Yeah, it's good for a player to get strikeouts, and it is good for a player to let up less walks. It however is meaningless if the player can't perform the job as good as the other one and Buerhle clearly had the better career and better results. I'm not even talking about wins/losses or championships won. Buerhle was clearly the better player. The statistics can be massaged in ways that don't say that.

If you use the same logic you are, Javy Vazquez may have been a better pitcher than Greg Maddux. Greg Maddux was incredibly "lucky" too.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Of course. Small Game Javy. The 2007 team was terrible and had no chance of going to the playoffs from about mid-May on. 2006 the Sox were in the race until the last week or 2 of the season. Javy sucked down the stretch in 2008 too, and pissed away a 3 run lead in game one of the ALDS. He was terrible in pressure situations.

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Sox fans generally hate Javy. Frank is pretty typical in that regard. I appreciate what Vazquez did. He was a pretty good pitcher. He's only disappointing in that the numbers that JLN points out suggest he should have been far better than he actually was.

But some of the issues with Vazquez and the Sox were all Guillen's fault. Ozzie gets credit for developing Garland by letting him work out of trouble in the mid to late innings when Manuel never trusted him and always gave him a quick hook. Ozzie should also get the blame for what he did to Javy. He's the guy that put that "Small Game" shit on him. And then, when he had him going good in '08, Guillen himself said that he figured out that routine and full rest was everything to Vazquez. So what did he do when shit got tight at the end of the season? Yeah, he shortened his rest and Vazquez came apart. Ozzie should take the blame for that.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Yet Ozzie really had no choice did he? You had kids (at the time) Floyd and Danks going out there on short rest and pitching their asses off. All Javy had to do was put up a quality start against Cleveland at home, and the Sox never even have to play game 163. Instead, he gives up a lead in that Cleveland start, and again at Tampa...after backup outfielder D'Wayne Wise of all people hits a 3 run bomb. If you want to get on Guillen for something, it should be for starting Wise in the leadoff spot of a playoff game.

Javy was terrible in late August and September on regular rest as well. He is perhaps the most overrated pitcher in Sox history.

I don't blame him for 2006. Garland, Buehrle, and the bullpen all just ran out of gas the 2nd half of that year.

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The real difference here is Vazquez was being paid #1-2 starter money. in 2006 his contract was $11.5M. They Yankees dealt him because he was underwhelming and while he was good for the Sox, he wasn't pitching to his contract. He was a #3 starter. the sox depending on him to be more than that and paying him more than that is on the GM, not Ozzie.

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Idk if anyone has said this yet, but wasn't the knock on Vasquez that he was great through 5 innings, but routinely got his shit pushed in after that?

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The Sox did not pay all of his deal. A majority of that contract, especially for the first couple of years, was paid by the DBacks.

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correct...but they did bill him as the stud savior starting pitcher...and he was good, but not a #1 or #2.

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The careers of Javy Vazquez and Mark Buehrle?



Well, yeah. Any construct that isn't "watching every single game pitched by both and remember the finest minutiae in great detail" is going to be "made up".



Don't know the reason for that. It's been a hot topic for years.



Well, I can't argue with that bootstrapping, you win sir! I'm not going to get into the same inane argument with you, but what does this even mean, do you even know?

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Why do you keep bringing this up? No, the same argument cannot be made, even using the same metrics by which I judge Vazquez as just edging out Buehrle. That's not even a good reductio ad absurdum, it's just plain stupid.

Maddux had a poor strikeout ratio too. Maddux was better with walks than both of them though.

If you value strikeouts as the ultimate measure of a pitcher then you have to severly downgrade Greg Maddux.

But, if you can't do it, then please make an argument as to why Maddux is better than Javy whereas Buerhle is not better than Javy.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

The more JLN posts, the more I side with JORR. In a couple more pages he is going to turn me into Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds and I'm just going to start rageposting NERDS!!!!!! NERDS!!!! over and over again.

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You threw this out there when we were being chippy with each other last night. I've had some time to think about it. The things you're using to conclude that Vazquez was better than Buehrle are components of performance rather than performance itself. Isolating the pitcher's performance can be useful for making reasonable prediction of better performance in the future, although it's certainly no guarantee.

As far as FIP or DIPS or whatever you want to call it is concerned, the problem is that I don't believe a guy who gives up seven straight gap doubles and then strikes out the side is better than a guy who gets three grounders to the shortstop but he just got unlucky while the other guy was lucky. And yeah, I know there have been attempts to refine the stats taking into consideration types of batted balls.

I think the major issue is the importance of location and the inability to measure a man's efficiency at throwing to a certain spot. First, we don't know where he is trying to throw the ball. And second, even if we did, he may have made a bad choice. We can see from their results that guys like Buerhle and Maddux who lacked overwhelming "stuff" must have had good game plans and executed those gameplans well. When we look at the ability to strike guys out at an extremely high rate, that's something that's difficult to do without that big pitch. A guy like Javy Vazquez doesn't need perfect location to strike guys out. And he doesn't have the ability to locate that Buehrle does, let alone Greg Maddux. And so, he has certain numbers that look good, but they ultimately don't translate into great performances. And that isn't because he's unlucky.

We could look at two young guys pitching in Chicago right now. I'm sure if I looked I could set up a better example, a closer parallel to Buehrle/Vazquez, but I know these guys off the top of my head. I'm talking about Hendricks and Rodon. It isn't a perfect comp because some of those isolated "controllable" numbers of Hendricks are better than Rodon's, largely because of Rodon's inability to locate. But we can break the game down as far as we want. We can look at contact on their fastballs. Contact on their best breaking pitch, etc. Undoubtedly Rodon wins those categories. But he just isn't a better pitcher. Not now. Maybe he will be. He certainly has a toolbox that suggests he should be. And Hendricks has to be precise in his location or he'll get killed. But he's shown he can be precise enough often. Of course, anyone would take Rodon, but if each man keeps doing what he is doing until their careers are as longs as Buehrle's and Vazquez's, it would be silly to say Rodon was better.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Said another way, Vazquez had better stuff...he had #1 opening day stuff, but he was NEVER a #1 pitcher. Buehrle was the better pitcher who had a better career. There's no debate.

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It's a very modern view of baseball and widely accepted. It's illustrated very clearly in bernstein's "column" wherein he criticized the 9-1 Chris Sale and longed for the days when Sale was "good" with a 4-5 record and lots of strikeouts.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Those 5 runs of support definitely help. Sale is still a great pitcher but we both know that he has looked a little different.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

Seems like people confuse stats meant to predict future sucess vs stats used to show who excelled in the past.



A dominant young starter who hangs his breaking ball too often might have a great K/BB ratio or even WHIP. But if he gives up homers in big moments he hasnt pitched well (losing record). He's got a good chance of figuring it out going forward though.

Obviously the answer is in the middle. The Pitching Win matters but it cant be viewed as the sole judgment of a starter without context.

This. I see this all time.

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