Extra, extra – read ALLLLLL about it! The O’s dropped two out of three to the Rockies this past weekend. What’s worse than blowing late inning leads? Outplaying the competition and STILL getting smoked. See Sunday’s 6 – 1 loss at the hands of one Ryan Spilborghs for more details. Luckily for us, the Nationals make the short commute up north. Not to say that the Nats aren’t playing well right now – because they are – but more like: I like our chances better against them. More on this later. For now…
From the WTF File: Check this out:
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2897967
ESPN, when not sweating the Red Sox and finding new ways to intimidate the rest of the league with Red Sox propaganda is also in the stat business. Why do one thing well when you can be mediocre at EVERYTHING? So there’s the link. This new “stat” tries to quantify overall performance into one number that you can use to rank players. I can’t argue with the results but I do argue with the methodology. For one, I don’t believe that team wins and losses should count towards how effective a player is. Yes, wins and losses are important but under this methodology a great player on a lousy team is not granted his due as a great player. This system makes them look lousy too.
Secondly, pitcher wins and losses are complete BS, throw those out.
Third, and last, relievers being judged on saves is kind of dumb. A reliever should be judged by numbers such as K’s, BB, inherited runners scored, strand rate, opposing BA, stuff like that. If you check out the site you’ll see that many of these elements are included – however, they are weighted lower than saves/blown saves. If I’m a GM or just a fan, I want to see who’s performing regardless of their status as a closer or not. As Billy Beane said, there is no such thing as a closer. Closers can be created. These pitchers shouldn’t necessarily be more valuable than other relievers who do their jobs better but just not in the 9th inning.
