Strasburg and the
October 2, 2012
For five months the sports media was obsessed over the
Nationals’ decision to limit Stephen Strasburg’s innings this
season. The opinions mostly ran from the
simple “it was foolish” to the patrician “it has no basis in
science”. And when thoughts of the
post-season began to become more realistic, the echo chamber became even more
intense. Nevermind
that they had no scientific basis for this prevailing opinion; it just
wasn’t the way things were done.
One has to maximize one’s chances this year and let the future
take care of itself. Almost unbelievably
so, that noise grew even louder when the Nationals actually did shut Strasburg
down, although I suspect a great deal of the caterwauling was due to
sportswriters who were depending on Strasburg to carry their fantasy teams
through September and were just finding an outlet for their bitter grapes that
the Nationals actually did what they said they would.
All the knee-biting about the number of innings aside, in his last few starts
Strasburg showed signs of fatigue and some sloppiness in his mechanics in an
effort to maintain his velocity. There
was a legitimate concern, since he was doing some things mechanically that he
doesn't normally do, not that he would reinjure his elbow, but that he could
possibly injure his shoulder, an injury that is much more difficult to repair
and from which to recover. That was the
concern expressed by Dr. Lewis Yocum who performed
the Tommy John surgery on Strasburg last year.
Given the fact that Strasburg had
never thrown more than 100 pitches in any outing in his entire pitching career
dating back to high school yet still suffered an injury requiring
reconstructive surgery, it seems logical that the Nats
elicited the opinion of his doctor. I
don't have his pitch counts for his games in high school but for every game he
pitched at
What the Nationals absolutely didn’t want is for this once-in-a-generation
arm to end up like Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, Dwight Gooden, Alex Fernandez, Steve
Avery etc. who all suffered tragic compromises to what might have been
brilliant careers because some people thought it was better to ride them hard
for a year in an effort to win it all. Following the doctors’
advice as opposed to some statisticians’ guess seems like the more
reasonable path. Was it exact
science? No, but it was state of the
art.
It seem obvious that Rizzo was likely thinking about the imminent shutdown when
he signed Chen Ming Wang and John Lannan to those
ridiculous one-year contracts for a combined $9 million this past spring.
At least that is what they were called at the time by many of these same
analysts. Neither pitcher had to be great over the long haul; just for
maybe a month or two and maybe not even that. If they were really good
for one or two starts that would be enough as long as the rest of the rotation
continued to pitch well. The Nats already had a
playoff-quality rotation with Gonzalez, Zimmerman, Jackson and Detwiler, which as Tom Boswell noted earlier this season,
was one of the hardest throwing and most effective in baseball even without
Strasburg. Maybe Rizzo knew then, just as he knew Bryce Harper was going
to be a significant contributor to this year's team, just as he knew that Kurt
Suzuki was the right catcher to trade for, just as he knew that Tyler Clippard would be a good enough regular season closer until
Drew Storen was healthy again...
But maybe Rizzo and company had
something else in mind when they offered the range of potential innings between
160 and 180 yet shut him down just short of 160. Obviously Gio Gonzalez will start Game 1 of the playoffs wherever
they may be. But who to start in Game 2, on the road with the game being
a possible must win? Does one go with the veteran, Edwin Jackson?
Jackson
G GS
W L CG
SHO IP
H R ER
HR BB K ERA
WHIP BAA
Home
14 14 5 6
1 0
92.2 78 38
36 9 25
87 3.50 1.11
.230
Away
16 16 4 5
0 0 90.1
89 51 48
14 32 75
4.78 1.34 .255
vs. ATL 2012 2 2
0 1 0
0 12.1 9
5 4 3
3 16 2.92
0.97 .196
vs. ATL career 6 4
0 1 0
0 27.1 27
12 11 3
9 27 3.62
1.32 .252
Probably not as he is considerably better at home, although if
it's in Atlanta he's not a bad choice. But his numbers against the
Cardinals are not good: 7.71 ERA in two starts this year, 1-3 with a 4.58 ERA
career. To be fair, most of the damage this year was done in one
start. His first start against them, at home, was a brilliant 8-inning
outing in which he allowed no earned runs on four hits while striking out
10. But again, that was at home. The Nats
need to find someone for a potential road start in
Zimmermann
G GS
W L CG
SHO IP H
R ER HR
BB K ERA
WHIP BAA
Home
16 16 5
3 0 0
96.2 91 42
38 11 22
71 3.54 1.17
.247
Away 16
16 7 5
0 0 99.0
95 27 26 7
21 82 2.36
1.17 .255
vs. ATL 5 5
2 1
0 0 28.1
26 13 12 4
9 23 3.81
1.24 .243
vs. STL 5 5
0 2
0 0 25.2
38 26 26 6
6 21 9.12
1.71 .345
Zimmermann has been solid at home and the road, but again, not so
good against the Cardinals. How about Detwiler?
Detwiler
G GS W
L CG SHO
IP H R ER
HR BB K ERA
WHIP BAA
Home
17 14 8
2 0 0
90.1 83 34 26
7 26 56
2.59 1.21 .245
Away 16
13 2 6
0 0 74.0
66 41 36
8 26 49
4.38 1.24 .237
vs. ATL 5
5 1 1
0 0 29.1
31 12 11 1
8 18 3.38
1.33 .272
Well, no, he was tattooed in his only start against the Cards and
now possesses an ERA over 11 against them. But the team looks to be in
good shape versus
Let's assume for the sake of argument that Rizzo has another
pitcher in mind, one who will be well-rested, who has been long-tossing on the
side for three weeks now and has been practicing his bunting the last
week. Surely the Nats wouldn't put a designated
bunter on the postseason roster unless...
????????
G GS
W L CG
SHO IP H
R ER HR
BB K ERA
WHIP BAA
Home
14 14 6
3 0 0
77.1 72 33
30 11 19
88 3.49 1.18
.247
Away 14
14 9 3
0 0 82.0
64 29 26
4 29 109 2.85
1.13 .214
vs. ATL 5
5 3 1
0 0 26.1
24 12 12
2 12 34
4.10 1.37 .250
vs. STL 1
1 0 0
0 0 6.0
2 0 0 0
1 9 0.00
0.50 .095
unless he was capable of helping in other ways. How
many innings does a starting pitcher pitch in a post-season if he averages 5.2
innings a start and starts four times?
I learned long ago that getting all bent out of shape over who the writers
ultimately deemed MVP was an exercise in futility. Their claim is that
they are voting for the most valuable player, not the best player. Their
determination of who is most valuable is largely dependent on the antiquated
idea that the player has to be on a playoff-contending team. But I defy
anyone to find me a single player who was ever solely responsible for his
team's playoff contention. There's just no such thing as a 30-win player;
at best a single player might be responsible for 10-12 wins above replacement.
The rest of the wins have to come from other players on the team, frequently
several 3-5 win players. So this notion that a player having an
unbelievable season can't be MVP because the rest of his team stinks is just
ignorant. I'll grant the possibility that when splitting hairs, a player
on a playoff team could conceivably deserve an edge over an equal player on a
bad team, but both should be duly considered in the voting.
Unfortunately, it rarely works that way.
Which brings me to the topic of this year's AL MVP which is between Miguel
Cabrera, who could conceivably win the Triple Crown of hitting, something that
hasn't been done since 1967, or rookie phenom Mike
Trout, who is leading the league in steals and runs and is 3rd in on base and
has hit 30 homers for good measure. I won't go over the arguments that
have emanated from both the old-school and the number-crunching schools.
Suffice it to say that both sides are sufficiently condescending and
nauseating.
The old school side won't recognize the arbitrary nature of the Triple Crown as
an honor. Truly, it is an incredible feat to accomplish, something only a
handful in history have ever done and those who have are generally considered
some of the best hitters ever. But if you're gonna
go that route, then the fact that Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron and Stan Musial and
Willie Mays and Honus Wagner never did it means that,
while it is spectacular, it is not the most indicative achievement for
greatness. Plus it ingores a lot of other
things that are pretty important in baseball as well, like baserunning,
defense, drawing walks, etc.
The number-crunching side won't recognize that the statistics they generate
these formulas from are inherently flawed. Not everything in baseball
that determines the outcome of the game is tabulated, and frequently it is mis-assigned by the offical
scorer, not because of any incompetence (although that does happen) but because
the scoring rules have an enormous amount of ambiguity in them. Even
beyond that, and I'm speaking as someone who scored the games professionally
for five years and has hands-on experience with the scoring software from
STATS, MLB and BIS, that a lot of the scoring decisions are judgment calls and
in no way precise enough to draw conclusions on with certainty. Sure,
generalizations can be informatively made from the data, but the notion that
something as variable-dependent as defense can be precisely measured enough to
generate an accurate summation of a player's defensive overall ability is just
silly, especially given a single-season time-frame. Even the creators of
the defensive stats admit this. The defensive metrics we have to today are as accurate as batting average is a measure of a
hitter's overall value: it gives you a superficial idea of the quality but very
little in the way of depth.
With that out of the way, I thought I would look at a few back-of-the-envelope
figures that might add more grist for the mill. For example, Cabrera has
fewer than 100 strikeouts. Of the hitters who have 40 or more home runs
this season, only he and Edwin Encarnacion have fewer
than 125 strikeouts. Mike Trout has 136. In an age when pitching
specialization has increased the likelihood that a strikeout will be the result
of a plate appearance, it's pretty amazing to think that there are still guys
who have enough strength and coordination and discipline to hit 40 balls 400
feet and not whiff more than 100 times. Of course, there's a drawback to
making so much contact: Cabrera leads the majors in hitting into double plays
with 28.
One of the things that is consistent with Cabrera is
that in addition to the homers, he also hit a lot of doubles. He has 40
this year, which makes the fifth time he has topped that mark and he's never
hit fewer than 30 in a full season. His 375 total bases so far this
season is the 85th highest total ever and with two games remaining
it’s not far-fetched to imagine him finishing ranking in the high
60s. Mike Trout on the other hand, has
been a very prolific doubles hitter in the minors, hitting two and a half times
more than homers, yet in the majors has hit more homers than doubles. I
suspect that is something that will be pertinent in future projections.
Cabrera leads the
Tiger second basemen have an on
base of .276
Tiger shortstops have an on base of
.305
Tiger right fielders have an on
base of .285
Tiger left fielders have an on base
of .326
It's pretty remarkable that both he
and team mate Prince Fielder (probably) will end up with at least 110 RBI given
that sorry crew.
However, Mike Trout also has an interesting claim along those lines. The
Angels hitters behind him haven't been that stellar either. Of the
hitters who could have a chance of driving him in:
Angels #2 hitter has a .423
slugging percentage
Angels #3 slugged .508
Angels #4 slugged .455
Angels #5 slugged .460
Angels #6 slugged .416
Angels #7 slugged .411
After the #5 guy, that's a pretty huge drop-off. Trout is getting home a lot of the time on
his own efforts, either by driving himself in with a homer or stealing bases or
taking extra bases to get into easy scoring position. There’s little debate his is one of, if
not the most impressive rookie seasons ever.
I'll close with another off the beaten-path stat. Both sides argue
theoretically how much each player helped their respective teams, but what if
someone looked at what they did in the actual games. Or rather, what they
didn't do. I decided to see how the teams did when the candidates didn't
do anything to help the team. That is, when they were in the line-up but
did not accumulate any walks, steals, RBI, runs or hits. How did their
teams do without their help? Obviously, when players have such incredible years
there aren't going to be too many games where that is the case. But if
you are wondering, the Tigers went 10-14 when Cabrera went 0-for, the Angels
were 5-10 when Trout did nothing.
All that said, because Cabrera's team made the playoffs and Trout's did not,
Cabrera will likely win. Whether he should or not will likely be a point
of contention for a long time.