bigwords, I still think you're looking at the wrong win shares stat. Maybe you are looking at expected win shares? I'm not sure, but there's no way the best pitchers in baseball only get 6 wins for their respective teams. It should be higher than their actual win total because of the leads their bullpen blow. I think you're looking at the wrong stat.
Yoda wrote:If Wang and Joba stayed healthy in the rotation pitching like they should then they would be in the playoffs.
The Jays had considerably more injuries than the Yankees did this year and have a far superior run differential to them anyway, but you don't see me saying things like that.
In the article, it talks about many causes to their bad season. The first major cause is defense. How costly was this year's defense to their playoff hopes? "Well, (it) translate(s) into about six wins, which is most of the lead the Red Sox hold over the Yankees for the Wild Card."
The article's conclusion:
"One last time, who's to blame for the Yankees' 2008 season? The front office failed the team in two big ways. One, the organization does not value fielding nearly enough, accumulating too many DHs and suffering through too many poor fielding performances year after year. Heeding the cliche that defense wins championships would serve the team well. Two, the organization does not adequately anticipate the need to fill holes. When injuries invariably happen, the team either overpays via trade or hands a starting position to roster filler. Anyone can spend $200MM on big names with big bats who are usually past their prime. But the refusal to spend any of that money on players who can both hit and field or on team depth will continue to unnecessarily hurt the Yankees' quest for their 27th World Series Championship."
jfg wrote:bigwords, I still think you're looking at the wrong win shares stat. Maybe you are looking at expected win shares? I'm not sure, but there's no way the best pitchers in baseball only get 6 wins for their respective teams. It should be higher than their actual win total because of the leads their bullpen blow. I think you're looking at the wrong stat.
Bruney was great this year but was horrendous last year (and is a free agent), Sanchez is a free agent, Coke and Rameriz are rookies so who knows with them, etc. etc. etc.. It's so tough to tell which middle relievers will be good and which will suck from year to year. Plus, I'm not sure any of them are sure-fire setup guys
First of all, Bruney and Sanchez aren't free agents. The former has about 3 years of service time the the latter has like 3 days of service time.
Fair enough on them not being free agents - I only did a very quick scan on those guys and I admittedly am not an expert on service time and all that (Bruney was signed to a minor league free agent contract in 2006 - how many years do the Yanks own him for? Sanchez was drafted in 2001 - how many years do the Yanks own him for?)
And besides, using that logic, pretty much every team needs bullpen help.
Yes - that's pretty much what I was getting at. I agree that the best way to build a bullpen is to sign a lot of good cheap guys and hope a few stick, but its not completely random. I still don't see any guy in their bullpen who can be a sure-fire 8th inning guy and backup closer, unless they do the Joba thing again next year, which I think was a complete distraction this year.
"The government cannot give to anyone anything that it does not first take from someone else"
In the POS tab, click "SP" to sort by starting pitchers.
It will then give you a list of starting pitchers sorted by Total WS, or "Total Win Shares."
Right now, Cliff Lee is #1 at 24. Tim Lincecum is #2 at 23.
Win Shares is the number of wins contributed by that player multiplied by three. So you divide the numbers you see by three. So, for example, Lee would be 24/3=8 contributed wins.
jfg wrote:bigwords, I still think you're looking at the wrong win shares stat. Maybe you are looking at expected win shares? I'm not sure, but there's no way the best pitchers in baseball only get 6 wins for their respective teams. It should be higher than their actual win total because of the leads their bullpen blow. I think you're looking at the wrong stat.
I think bigwords is exactly right. If you go to his link and then go to the glossary, you'll see that WinShares is the number of wins that player contributed times 3 (which they explain is to "provide enough meaningful distinction between players").
There's no way it could be higher than the number of wins that pitcher has, because all 25 guys on a roster contribute some portion of that team's wins. If a pitcher wins 20 games, at most he could have 20 win shares - but it will obviously be less than that since the hitters, relievers, and fielders all contributed to those wins too. On average, hitters get about 50% of the win shares and pitchers+defense get the other 50% - so with that, you'd expect that a pitcher who won 20 games would get about 8-9 win shares.
"The government cannot give to anyone anything that it does not first take from someone else"
Bloody Sox wrote:If a pitcher wins 20 games, at most he could have 20 win shares -
What if the team wins and the pitcher gets a no decision? What if a pitcher throws 8 innings of shutout ball, and leaves with the score 0-0...and then his team scores after he's left the game? Surely he would have contributed heavily to that win, no?
Bloody Sox wrote:Fair enough on them not being free agents - I only did a very quick scan on those guys and I admittedly am not an expert on service time and all that (Bruney was signed to a minor league free agent contract in 2006 - how many years do the Yanks own him for? Sanchez was drafted in 2001 - how many years do the Yanks own him for?)
A player is under team control until he has six years of major league service time. I don't know exactly how much service time they have, but Bruney should be in the neighborhood of 3 years. Sanchez should barely have any service time. They aren't going anywhere for a while.
Yes - that's pretty much what I was getting at. I agree that the best way to build a bullpen is to sign a lot of good cheap guys and hope a few stick, but its not completely random. I still don't see any guy in their bullpen who can be a sure-fire 8th inning guy and backup closer, unless they do the Joba thing again next year, which I think was a complete distraction this year.
The Yankees have a bunch of live arms in the bullpen this year and a few more in the high level of the minors who haven't debuted yet. One of them is bound to settle in as the 8th inning guy. After Joba went into the rotation this year, Kyle freaking Farnsworth was the 8th inning guy and the bullpen managed not to implode. It's the least of the Yankees' concerns.
There has been quite a few pitchers with little to no MLB experience who stepped into the closer role and were immediately successful (Papelbon, Soria, Jenks and Street jump to mind and that's just the AL). So I don't know why you're making such a fuss about the 8th inning.
jfg wrote:bigwords, I still think you're looking at the wrong win shares stat. Maybe you are looking at expected win shares? I'm not sure, but there's no way the best pitchers in baseball only get 6 wins for their respective teams. It should be higher than their actual win total because of the leads their bullpen blow. I think you're looking at the wrong stat.
Even when a pitcher gets a win, it wasn't all thanks to him. The offense scored runs and the defense made plays. If you have a high strikeout pitcher who goes 9 innings, he'll earn much more in win shares than a soft tosser who goes 5 because the soft tosser depended on defense. If the pitcher gives up very few runs, he gets more in win shares because the offense didn't need to score as much.
But no matter what game it is, even when a pitcher pitches a perfect game, other members of the team contributed. So you never get the full credit for a win. Getting 1/3 of a win is a lot for one player no matter what.
If you replace Joba with a crappy pitcher, the Yankees will still win games when that crappy pitcher pitches. In fact, they'll probably win at least 40% of the time. And even when Joba pitches lights out, sometimes the Yankees will lose. So let's say they win 70% of Joba's games, and he makes 32 starts. That's 22.4 wins. Replace him with someone crappy for the whole season and they get 12.8 wins. So being very generous, over an entire season, a stud pitcher won't get you more than ten wins. And that's being extremely generous in my view. That crappy pitcher will have his start skipped plenty of times. Even so, 10/162 is a ton. Even 1 extra win is very significant.
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by jfg » Tue Sep 23, 2008 4:08 am 
