Here at FanGraphs, our pitching WAR is built around Fielding Independent Pitching, which focuses solely on a pitcher’s walks, strikeouts, and home runs allowed. Because it ignores the results of balls in play and the order in which results occur, there are occasionally big differences between a pitcher’s FIP and his ERA. This divide often leads to some consternation when a pitcher with a high ERA posts a decent WAR, or in reverse, when our WAR doesn’t grade out a pitcher with a very low ERA that highly.

A significant number of people — including a good chunk of our own readers, and noted sabermetric evangelists like Brian Kenny — prefer to evaluate pitchers by runs allowed because, as I’ve heard repeatedly over the last few years, that measures “what actually happened”. And that’s one of the reasons we have RA9-WAR here on the site, as we know that a sizable amount of people prefer to evaluate pitchers in that way.

I believe there are valid points on both sides, and I see the argument using a FIP-based WAR and a RA9-based WAR when evaluating a pitcher’s past performance. However, I find it interesting that this debate has not carried over to position players, where there seems to be broad consensus* that context-neutral is the way to go.

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A month ago, I submitted an article with something I came up with that I thought was pretty cool.  It was a simulator similar to the Coolstandings sim, except that it would use Steamer and ZiPS rest-of-season (RoS) projections instead of year-to-date statistics as the measure of each team’s true talent.  Well, as you may have noticed, the boss, David Appelman, must have thought it was a pretty cool idea too, as unbeknownst to me, he had been working on the same sort of thing since long before the idea popped into my head.  But my duplication of effort will hopefully not go entirely to waste, as I’ll be sharing and explaining the simulator I created.  You’ll be able to use it to analyze your own “what if” scenarios, if that’s your sort of thing.  Think ZiPS and/or Steamer is overly optimistic or pessimistic about some teams?  You can fix that by running your own simulations with this.  Or you can apply it to past or completely hypothetical teams.  Go nuts.

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If you recall, last week, I talked about one approach that we can take for evaluating starting pitcher performance. Today, I’d like to continue on that vein, this time taking a look at relief pitching.

With regards to evaluating both player performance and player talent, relief pitching is one of the least understood aspects of baseball. There are a few factors that lead me to believe this, but the only one I’d like to talk about today is the problem of mid-inning pitching changes.

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This week started with some hullabaloo when a Forbes contributor published a column claiming that the Houston Astros were the most profitable team in MLB history. Contributor Dan Alexander did some pretty simple math in concluding that the Astros would clear $99 million in “operating revenue.” “They have become so profitable thanks to slashed payroll expenses and soaring television revenues,” Alexander wrote.

But another Forbes contributor —  Maury Brown, of the Biz of Baseball — refuted Alexander’s column. Brown explained the Astros “soaring television revenues” aren’t so soaring because CSN Houston — the new regional sports network the Astros and the NBA’s Houston Rockets own — isn’t carried on any cable or satellite service in the Houston area other than Comcast. Indeed, we reported last month that cable and satellite companies are using new technology to determine how many customers tune into local sporting events and for how long. AT&T U-verse used that information in deciding to forgo carrying CSN Houston. That’s left CSN Houston well short of projected viewership and revenue from carriage fees.

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I recently posed a question to 12 hitters. It was a question that doesn’t have an easy answer. Given the subjectivity involved, it doesn’t even have a right answer.

If you could lead the league in any offensive category, what would it be?

Their responses — some less serious than others — are listed below in alphabetical order. Read the rest of this entry »

Every so often, I get the sense people under-appreciate the importance of pitching ahead in the count. These phases are usually followed by other phases in which I conclude I’m simultaneously over-appreciating it, and then I return to baseball normalcy, but right now I’m in one of them first phases. And whenever I’m here, it’s weird. From a very impressionably young age, we’re told how important it is to throw strike one. We know, when we think about it, that it’s much better to be ahead than behind, as a pitcher. But it doesn’t come up that much in conversation or analysis. People talk about proxies, but then almost everything is a proxy for pitching ahead in the count. When you’re pitching ahead, you’re pitching in control.

Obviously, it makes a difference with regard to walks and strikeouts. More strikes mean more strikeouts, more balls mean more walks. But it also makes a difference with regard to quality of contact. Just looking at this year’s league-wide splits, pitchers have allowed a .303 BABIP when behind in the count, with a .198 isolated slugging. Meanwhile, they’ve allowed a .287 BABIP when ahead in the count, with a .092 isolated slugging. On contact, when behind in the count, pitchers have allowed 4.7% home runs. On contact, when ahead in the count, they’ve allowed 2.5% home runs. Yeah, there’s some selection bias — better pitchers pitch ahead in the count more often — but that doesn’t explain the gaps. Common sense explains the gaps, mostly.

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Last night, Paul Maholm started the 238th game of his career, twirling six one-run innings on the way to a 3-2 Braves victory. You may not realize it — perhaps because you didn’t realize that he’s from Mississippi, or don’t spend a great deal of time thinking about Paul Maholm — but Paul Maholm has the fourth-most starts of anyone ever born in Mississippi. (Roy Oswalt is first, of course.) After nine seasons as a more or less slightly-below-average starting pitcher, it’s safe to say that Paul Maholm is one of the greatest baseball players in the history of his home state.
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With the regular season winding down, half the teams in baseball are already beginning to shift their focus to the off-season. If you root for one of those teams, you may already be looking forward to the winter and the roster changes it may bring. To help kick start your speculation needs, the guys over at MLB Trade Rumors have created four free agent leaderboards using the custom leaderboard tools here at FanGraphs. Here’s what Steve Adams wrote when he introduced them last week:

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The preliminary rosters were recently announced for the impending Arizona Fall League. If you’re not familiar with the AFL, all you really need to know is that it’s an off-season league that offers addition innings/at-bats to prospects from around baseball. Some of the names you’ll know quite well. Others, well, you’ll probably never hear from again. And, frankly, a lot of players fall under that latter grouping.

Because there is such a wide range of talent in the league — as well as for a smattering of other reasons — any numbers produced in the league should be taken with a grain of salt. Oh, and each organization is responsible for providing a specific number of prospects to play in the league.

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We don’t really have full information on the shoulder injury that has been bothering Nick Swisher this season. We do know that it’s bothered him off and on, that he’s missed a handful of games, and that he’s had a cortisone shot recently. And from a results standpoint, we know that his power is down… and yet he’s showing the best line drive rate of his career. I set out to ask the Indians’ slugger about those two things in particular.

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