An incredible amount? No. Not all of them.

Go back and look at Buehrle's and Humber's perfectos. The Wise play is the only play where you could argue there was luck. The other 55 outs were very routine.

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Nice way to change the conversation. And Russell may not be as great as advertised anyway.

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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

Some no-nos are unlucky.

Take chas for example.

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Sex isn't dirty, sex isn't a crime. It's a loving act between two or more consenting adults.

-Hank Kingsley

The article actually makes some good points if you are willing to read it objectively.

No, it's not. Every defensive play made behind a pitcher is infused with some amount of luck. Some more than others, but it takes a huge standing wave of luck to convert every defensive opportunity without there being an error or a hit.

The Lore of Buehrle has caused people to think insane thoughts.

The guy with insane thoughts here is you.

https://youtu.be/BCqryvXZ9YA

https://youtu.be/W4lL9_0oRMo

53 out of 54 routine outs. There is a liner to Rios in the Humber that you could maybe say had a small bit of luck. Other than the already mentioned Wise catch, thats it.

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Any stats that tell me this guy is a good pitcher are flawed. This isn't some guy who pitched in Seattle or Anaheim that you saw highlights of on SC. Both sides of town got to see him pitch on the regular. He's a reliable innings eater. Valuable to have as a 4 or 5 but he's not good.

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Whatever you think about the "new" way of looking at, thinking, writing, and speaking about baseball, there HAS to be some range of probabilities that any given pitcher is going to convert any given plate appearance into an out. This probability will be cumulative of pitching skill, game situation, batter skill, umpire skill, defense skill, mental skill, hangover skill, everything. I don't know what it is, and it changes from plate appearance to plate appearance, game to game, pitch-to-pitch, all the time. One thing I do know with a high degree of confidence, though, is that this probability, X, is very likely not 1, and very likely not 0.

And so, given those two things we know to be true (neither 0 nor 1 at any given time), there HAS to be luck involved. There can't NOT be luck involved in converting one plate appearance into an out, a group of them into outs, and especially consecutive appearances running the length of the entire game. Even if Buehrle's total skill culminated in a .95 chance that ANY hitter at ANY given time would be turned into an out when facing him, the likelihood of converting 27 appearances straight is 25%, and doing it three times brings the likelihood to under 2%.

Calling that anything other than an incredible amount of luck is insufferably dunderheaded and wrong.

You're the one saying there is no luck in a ball in play being converted into an out, and no luck in a string of balls in play converted into outs. Both of which we know to be true. That's insane.

I guess it's time to ask this question: What do you think "luck" is?

On routine pop ups, grounders, and flyballs-- of which we saw at least 53 times in the 2 links I posted-- there is no luck involved in those plays being made 99 times out of 100.

40 years ago, nobody talked about luck. Now because there is some made up stat that attempts to explain luck, some people take that as Bible.

I'm not a guy that only uses Advance or old-school metrics. I think using all of them helps tell the full story.

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How do you define luck?

That is not going to matter to you. It's not going to matter to you what anybody says about luck. You are going to say "oh fangraphs says X about luck, so Y and Z must be true." You won't have it any other way. You can't.

That is insanity.

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That's pretty much a pervasive board problem.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

Well, I was able to prove the existence of luck in a perfect game in an earlier post without quoting FanGraphs, so I don't know why you're bringing that up.

But let me ask you this: if there is no luck involved in throwing a perfect game, at least for Buehrle, why didn't he do it more often? Nearly 500 career starts and only faced the minimum 3 times? That's not very often for doing something that he can accomplish without the assistance of random chance.

Buehrle is the only player in MLB history to face the minimum 3 times. He also held the record for consecutive hitters retired. Excuse the fuck out of me if I happen to think that there was skills involved in that.

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You argued there was no luck involved in those 3 games of Buehrle. I want to know why, if there wasn't any or only minimal luck involved, didn't he do it more often? If he had such incredible skill to face the minimum without the assistance of luck, why did he do it less than 1% of the time he took the mound?

In the 100+ years and over tens of thousands of MLB starts, Mark Buerhle is the only man to have accomplished a certain feat 3 times, and you expect me to believe that its all due to luck.


Look, you clearly have your heels dug in to the wrong side of this. So you can think I have insane thoughts, and I'll know you have insane thoughts, and I'll leave it at that.

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Javy Vazquez could've done it 14 times.

Just never had luck on his side.

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Why won't you answer my question? If Buehrle had the skill to pitch a perfect game or no hitter without the assistance of luck, why didn't he do it more often? You're actually arguing the inverse, that Buehrle was unlucky on days he DIDN'T throw a perfect game, such was his skill. Does that better highlight how pants-on-head insane you sound?

Nope.

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Here:



You're insane.

This is such a dumb argument. There is obviously both skill and luck involved in where balls in play land.

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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

When in doubt always turn to Bull Durham:

Know what the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is? It's 25 hits. 25 hits in 500 at bats is 50 points, okay? There's 6 months in a season, that's about 25 weeks. That means if you get just one extra flare a week - just one - a gorp... you get a groundball, you get a groundball with eyes... you get a dying quail, just one more dying quail a week... and you're in Yankee Stadium.
-- Crash Davis

It may be time to stop judging teams by wins and losses.

There has to be a more accurate way.

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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!

I gotta ask, why would only 69 pitchers qualify for that stat? 30 teams times 5 starters is 150 pitchers... Let's take 10% out for injury and lack of innings.. That still leaves 135 pitchers with plenty of innings pitched, what strange qualifiers are you using to get that number to 69?

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It's the default minimum on FanGraphs' searchable database, I believe it has to do with MLB's rules on qualifying for awards. For pitchers, I believe you have to average one inning for every team game played.

With how many bottom of rotation guys are in and out of starts or skipped over for someone new in a spot start, you're likely to get fewer than 3 starters per team meeting that requirement.

Yup.

W-L doesn't really tell the whole story of how the team played.

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We should only judge them based on if they showed up to play the games on their schedule. It's the only thing they are in complete control of.

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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

With the minimum set to 75 IP at this point in the season, our Mystery Pitcher is 102nd out of 117 starters in RS/Start. Coefficient of determination falls below 50%, too, but not by much.

Quality zinger cannot be lost amongst the noise...
Well done

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014