Those other statistics are better for what though? We're not GMs or player agents. And the "best" pitcher should have meaningful results. He's not pitching in a vacuum. He's pitching in a baseball game. And if the other starter in most of the games he pitches actually does better than he does, I have a hard time calling that guy the "best".

It seems like some of you would prefer to not have any voting for the awards and just hand them out based on WAR. But that defeats one of the main objectives of the awards which is to create interest and discussion. Finally, it is the Cy Young Award. What is Cy Young known for? It's not the Ed Walsh Award or the Randy Johnson Award or the Tommy Bond Award.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
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I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
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Russ Ortiz was a good pitcher from 1999 to 2004. If you really think he "got lucky" over six consecutive seasons, well, I'll take the lucky guy and you can have Cursed Quintana.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
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With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Are you sure Bob Walk is better than .500 as a starting pitcher?

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
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With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

So jln who had the more successful career?

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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!

But that's the thing. These arguments are never made about anyone but a guy who someone is trying to suggest is "elite" in spite of evidence to the contrary in the form of more than half the starters they face pitching better than they do. These arguments are never made about marginal swingmen like Curt Young or Bob Walk. That's why it's disingenuous to bring them into the conversation. People are arguing that Jose Quintana is elite.

As far as divorcing the numbers from their game context, I know that at least philosophically you understand. You're the guy who brought up the phantom penalty stroke on Dustin Johnson. JLN would seem to support the idea that, why would it matter? Johnson can't control it. He just has to keep playing his best golf. He can't control the judges. But of course, you understood that it could have an effect on Johnson's psyche as he finished his round. Maybe he does ignore it. Maybe it makes him play better. Maybe he falls apart. That depends on the individual. Pitchers are human beings just like golfers.

_________________
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

Hmm, six seasons out of a 14-year career, huh? Wasn't there somebody earlier in the thread talking about "stretches" and not picking out good stretches to ignore an overall lackluster career, something like that? Oh yeah, that was you, here it is:



So because you think Ortiz cobbled together six seasons in which he was decent (he wasn't), we should ignore the other 30% of his career that was awful? He was a pitcher who on his best day could only hope to be average, and he finished with a winning record. Guys like him are a dime a dozen, because assigning wins and losses to a pitcher is an inherently flawed practice, both in its predictive and descriptive abilities.

Still though, I got you to say you'd take Russ Ortiz over Jose Quintana

I had forgotten about Russ Ortiz, a longtime bad money floating around guy: http://espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?id ... =law_keith

This conversation reminds me of Jack McDowell. He was a gamer with worse secondary stats, but he "knew" how to win. Other than the playoffs of course, where he was a train wreck.

Pitchers probably get too much credit/blame for wins, loses and ERA. So much depends on the guys behind them and who they are throwing to. For Quintana, he has had no favors at all in that department.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

He should not have started Game 1 in 1993. If Lamont had gone with the hot hand(s) for his rotation in that playoff series, it might have been Frank Thomas or Bo Jackson taking Mitch Williams deep to win the WS.

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You're describing most starting pitchers who stick around the big leagues for awhile. Ortiz most certainly was a more than decent pitcher in the middle of his career and had several better seasons than Quintana ever has. You may be confused since Quintana is pitching in the modern deadball era and Ortiz had to fight his way through the heart of the steroid era.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
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With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Do you think Jose DeLeon was better than Jack McDowell? They pitched on the same team in their primes and one guy was an ace who won a Cy Young while the other was a fucking mop-up man, but I guess guys who subscribe to Baseball Prospectus have it all figured out.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
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He wasn't sharp going into the playoffs, but it would have been difficult not to give the guy who was your horse- and who you were counting on to be that guy going forward- that first game.

_________________
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

ERA+, FIP and WAR are all adjusted for park and league effects and Quintana already has doubled Ortiz's career WAR, and Ortiz walked almost 5 batters per 9 innings in that "good stretch" you keep clinging to, despite not wanting to talk about Ben Sheets and Matt Cain because they were only good for...wait for it...stretches at a time

What does Jose DeLeon have to do with anything? McDowell was a great innings-eater. He was destroyed in the playoffs. Him shitting the bed, and the failure to get to Dave Stewart cost that team a World Series shot. McDowell was also on the mound for the Yankees when they lost in 95.

McDowell is an example of a "knows how to win guy". Except when it really mattered.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

Actually, that would be Javy Vazquez

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Dude...what the hell are you talking about?

Why is everyone "SABRmetric" except when real statistical analysis doesn't fit some crazy point they're trying to make? Do you really think there's a large enough sample of McDowell in the playoffs? And I'm asking if you or anyone else believes DeLeon was better than McDowell.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
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With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

No, the "secondary" metrics paint McDowell as clearly the better pitcher, by a wide margin. DeLeon struck batters out at a higher clip, but not by much, and his adjusted FIP is far behind McDowell's in any case.

Didn't he allow less baserunners? Or is "preventing baserunners" only the pitcher's job when it suits your argument?

_________________
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

Strawman much? I said a pitcher's job is to get outs and limit scoring. A pitcher can't do much to "prevent baserunners" once the ball is put into play. Anyway...

Jack McDowell: 2508 Runners (H+BB+HBP)

Jose DeLeon: 2459 Runners (H+BB+HBP)

Less than a 2% difference in careers spanning 1800+ innings is well within the margin of error for walks alone.

Rate metrics, as well as league-adjusted counting metrics like WAR, paint one pitcher much better than the other. But if you want to make a case for DeLeon being better than McDowell, go for it.

If you're allowing baserunners, you're not getting outs, are you? And the pitcher does something to limit baserunners with his location before the ball is put in play. That's how Buerhle managed to face the minimum three times without double digit strikeouts in any of the games.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
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So JLN, did Buehrle have a more successful career 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!

How do you define "success"? I mean, they both made it to the majors, that's pretty successful. They're both millionaires, that's pretty successful. They both might still be millionaires, that's pretty successful.

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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!

JLN, would you cancel the MLB playoffs and instead just give the title to the team with the highest WAR?

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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!

Nah, I'd just have a computer simulate the entire season. Charge people to come see it computing baseball simulations.

All I've done is ask you to define the terms you want to use, you have yet to do that. Define the terms and I'll be able to answer your question. I can't not object when you phrase questions so poorly.

How do you define "terms"? I know it is a word that pretty much everyone knows but do you have some sort of alternate definition or should I use the one that everyone does?

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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!

There are many forms of success in baseball. Phillip Humber had "success" that few who ever step onto a professional field will ever get to witness, much less execute. We can also define success in terms of decorations achieved by a player (wins, All-Star votes, Cy Young votes, MVP votes, Gold Glove, etc.), as well as by "on-field success", incorporating how good that player was at their portion of the game of baseball.

Buehrle is unquestionably the more decorated pitcher, and if that's how you want to define success, then Buehrle was unquestionably more successful. Clearly, I go a different route.

Didn't he just get lucky on 18 balls in play?

_________________
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