Your model is idiotic because it would penalize a pitcher who pitched in the Baker Bowl and reward a pitcher whose home park was Oakland Coliseum. And do we really have to, once again, go over the fact that in the vast majority of games the average difference in run-scoring between any two teams is less than a full run and that's vs. ALL pitchers, not the "very best" as you constantly claim Quintana is?

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
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With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Who the fuck is the pitcher's team scoring the runs off?????

_________________
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

As a neutral observer to this argument, I think it says a lot that you have to come up with examples this extreme to make your argument.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Right. Inventing guys and situations that never have and never will exist. I want him to make the argument that Joel Horlen was better than Catfish Hunter. He has it in him, I know.

_________________
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

No, my point is that it is better to valuate pitchers on the aspects of the game over which they have direct and/or substantial control. Strikeouts, Walks, HBP's, swing-and-miss rate, fly-ball rate are some of these facets. While a pitcher can certainly induce certain kinds of hits (ground balls over fly balls or line drives), their influence in whether those things help or hurt their purpose (limiting run scoring by getting people out) is nebulous at best. 44% of a deviation from the mean in "luck-based" stats like BABIP are indistinguishable from random noise, while a mere 28% can be explained by a pitcher's skill, the remaining 28% can be explained by things also out of a pitcher's control, like defense and park effects. That's a whopping 72% in any deviation that relies on things outside of the pitcher's control or skill, at best...so why place so much value on those things with statistics that punish or praise a player basen on things so far removed from their direct control? W-L is the worst offender, ERA is a good bit better, but still lacks context, WHIP is a good eyeball-test, but relies heavily on hits, ERA+ gives context to ERA, and things like FIP, xFIP sidestep those noise-infused aspects altogether.

There are undoubtedly pitchers that derived much of their value from throwing ground balls and pitching to hard contact areas of the zone. We can currently track the latter, but as for the former, the line between skill and the "uncontrollable" (inclusive of luck) is drawn much closer to things a pitcher cannot influence.

This argument has hopped around threads, but it has been demonstrated that JORR's model places Mat Lattos and Wade Miley above Jose Quintana so far this season. Now, this is the point when JORR starts whining about sample sizes, despite his entire argument being "pitch to the single trial in front of you". Reducing to the absurd usually snaps most rational people back to reality, but here we are, without gravity.

So then why was Buehrle so much better in terms of production than Vazquez?

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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!

As has been explained to you many times, the White Sox offense scores fewer runs when Quintana is pitching. Fewer than their average this year, and far-fewer than league-average throughout his career. These numbers are not made up.

What do you mean "production"? Vasquez and Buehrle limited scoring and outs at similar clips throughout their respective careers. Javvy did it one way, Buehrle another. Buehrle's longevity certainly helps, as he was that good for about 400 more innings than Javvy.

Someone else the pitcher has no control over?

Wins/Losses is General Relativity, and other stats are Quantum Theory.

The former works better to explain the "big picture", and the latter is better at explaining pitching at a micro level... and yet they still seem to contradict one another.

You are both right and both wrong, simultaneously.

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Are you really so desperate you have to completely mischaracterize anything I've ever said on the subject?

_________________
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

So the guy who is allowing more runs is better? Who the fuck are you, the Mad Hatter?

_________________
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

I'd say W-L is more like Newtonian Mechanics: it "works" at a glance, but falls apart trying to explain anything really big, small, or fast.

Right, and as has been explained to you countless times, that's because there is a guy in the game pitching better than Quintana.

_________________
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 players both have better records than Jose Quintana, don't they? They must be better pitchers, because they've "won" more. I'm not mischaracterizing, I'm using your model using real-world events to show how absolutely absurd it is without a fictional pitcher. I know you don't like the result, so maybe consider altering the model?

My argument has never been that there is nobody better than Jose Quintana, so I fail to see how this is relevant? Also, where does the White Sox being bad at scoring because of their bad talent acquisitions end and them just happening to stare down Sandy Koufax every time Quintana is on the bump begin?

Are you arguing that if Quintana's career ended today it was better than Latos'? Because it isn't. You'd have a better argument with Miley who I would say is similar to Quintana.

_________________
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

You fail to see how the guy on the other team pitching better than Quintana in most of his starts is relevant? Really? This is what easy access to stats has done to the way the game is viewed. If the Sox are facing Sandy Koufax or his equivalent every time Quintana takes the mound, we can have that discussion. I'm gonna say that hasn't and won't occur.

_________________
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

No, but I could. I'm saying that I'd take Quintana at the beginning of his career than the other two at the beginning of theirs, were I building a team and had the ultimate power of foresight to know how all three careers would shape up to this point.

2013 was an interesting year for Sale and Quintana. Some how while giving up more runs, more walks and striking out fewer batter, Jose was better than sale. Thankfully he was more effective at coxing his own offense in scoring runs.

Again, where does Quintana stop being punished for not being "better" than the other guy because the White Sox are batting replacement-level players? Seems wise to me to avoid that altogether.

Who is asking a pitcher to "coax" anyone into scoring runs? If a guy is so good, he should be able to allow less runs than the lesser guys he faces most of the time, shouldn't he? (I know JLN is fantasizing that the Sox face Koufax every time Quintana toes the rubber, but I assure you that is not the case.) At what point is he just the lesser guy?

_________________
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

So you ended 2013 thinking Q had a better year than Sale?

Chris Sale just wasn't better than the other pitchers he was facing, while Jose Quintana was. But this year, despite having similar statistics (Jose being even better, too), Sale is "being better" than the opposing pitchers he is "facing", while Quintana isn't.

That's weird, it seems as though judging a pitcher's value on something that can fluctuate as wildly as "happened to be 'better' than someone else that day despite not being able to influence their performance directly" is an absolutely awful and silly way to valuate baseball pitching performances. Who knew, besides everybody?

I won't acknowledge a "replacement level" player although I fully understand the concept. It's misused more than it's used properly. The Sox have a lineup that averages four runs and change a game and so do most opponents. I'm just asking why is it so much easier for those less than great pitchers to hold the Sox to less than that average than it is for a great like Quintana to hold down the other team?

_________________
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

I don't think either one had a really great year. But sure, luck and randomness can skew the results in a 30 game sample. It's not going to do that over 200 starts. Otherwise you could post the stats from a bunch of all-time greats with career losing records who got unlucky or lacked "run support". Those guys do not exist. And an 11-14 season is NEVER good. How could it be? If you're that good, you have to pitch better than the guys you're facing more often than not. I believe that was an absolutely terrible Sox offense that season though. In many of those games the average difference may have been approaching two runs and occasionally even more. That isn't going to be the case over any pitcher's career.

_________________
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

And yet, I believe you are the only person in the world who thinks Javy Vazquez was better than Buehrle.

_________________
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

Maybe because their total "Runs Per Game" is being propped up by the way the averaging works, and a different weighted average or pythagorean meaning, would show them to be inept at scoring runs more often than not?

With their logs this year, their arithmetic mean (ignoring shutouts, because the pythagorean means fall apart when you introduce zeroes) is 4.22 runs/game. However, the geometric mean produces a runs per game figure of 3.5, and a harmonic mean applied to the dataset produces at 2.72 runs per game number. For comparison's sake, the BoSox still have a harmonic runs/game mean of 3.56, while a team very similar to the White Sox in strict R/G (arithmetic mean), the Yankess, actually are far worse with a harmonic mean at 2.55 R/G.

I'd have to look at the whole league, but it could be that the Sox are, like the Yankees, being helped out by games in which they score a bunch of runs, but in reality are still likely to give you 3 runs or less in any given game.

if wins and loses are meaningless to a pitcher then it should mean nothing for teams.At the end of the year the team with the best Saber bullshit are World Champions

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I'm going to bounce from the spot for awhile but I will be back at some point to argue with you about this hoops stuff again. Playoffs have been great this season. See ya up the road.

I'm out.