Tim Lincecum in 2010
After Tim Lincecum got off to a rough start, I wrote that perhaps 2008 would be his peak season. No shame in that. Only 20 individual pitching seasons had accumulated at least 7 WAR, one of those was Lincecum’s 2008. Naturally, he responded by pitching even better in 2009, and finished with a WAR above 8. So, with the odds on my side, I feel comfortable taking a shot at this again. What are the odds that Lincecum makes me look like a moron again? Well, here’s a list of every pitcher season to post at least 7 WAR during a single season in our database that data available for the season afterwards:
Curt Schilling 2002
Randy Johnson 2002
Pedro Martinez 2002
Roy Halladay 2002
Roy Halladay 2003
Pedro Martinez 2003
Mark Prior 2003
Esteban Loaiza 2003
Randy Johnson 2004
Ben Sheets 2004
Johan Santana 2004
Curt Schilling 2004
Johan Santana 2005
Johan Santana 2006
Brandon Webb 2006
CC Sabathia 2007
CC Sabathia 2008
Tim Lincecum 2008
Roy Halladay 2008
Cliff Lee 2008
That list is full of some all-time great pitchers pitching some all-time great seasons. The average WAR of those spectacular seasons is 7.8, with a spread of 2.9 wins (9.7 being the max, 7 the min). In the year after, the average fell to 5.5 wins with a spread of 6.8 wins (8.2 by Lincecum being the highest, and 1.4 by Esteban Loiza being the lowest). Roughly two-thirds of those pitchers failed to post 7+ WAR in consecutive seasons, which shows just how rare Lincecum’s feat was, and only one pitcher (Johan Santana) pulled the feat in three straight years.
Assuming my SQL database skills are still in the best shape of their life (meaning replacement level as a ceiling) there were 660 individual seasons of 25+ starts between 2002 and 2008. We had 20 seasons with 7+ WAR, 6 with 8+ WAR, and 4 with 8.3+ WAR. By those numbers, and completely ignoring that Lincecum is clearly better than most, if not nearly all of those pitchers, he has something like a half of a percent’s shot at reaching 8.3 WAR next year. That’s without figuring in that he just had an 8 win season, and that nobody who recorded at least 8 WAR in a single season has replicated that success (although Pedro Martinez did reach 7.9, which is basically the same thing).
Some encountered more bad luck, others injuries, and yes, Lincecum is a fantastic arm and talent, but so were most of those guys. So yeah, I feel comfortable betting against Lincecum being even better this season. And hey, if he does make me look bad once more, then we’re all winners by witnessing The Freak at his best.
For extra credit I’d suggest reading this Book Blog thread. It’s about that Stephen Strasburg cat and projecting his ERA. Even if you don’t understand most of the comments at first read, and heavens I sure didn’t, you should still absorb something worthwhile.
I understand the uniqueness of Lincecum’s WAR values, but to use 2002-present as a marker for this evaluation uses an extreme SSS.
With recent history as a comparison, Pedro Martinez’s 1998-2002 years are empirically equal to or greater than any modern era pitcher (including Lincecum), WAR not withstanding.
Someone should try to calcuate what Maddux’s WAR would be from 92-98 when his highest FIP was 2.85 in those years.
http://www.baseballprojection.com
He used a different metric than FIP (something like ERA with an adjustment for defense), but it should give you a good picture.
92 – 98
8.4
6.2
7.8
8.8
6.3
7.3
6.1
And the most amazing thing about those numbers is that the 7.8 and 8.8 came in strike shortened seasons. He was on pace for over 10 WAR in each of those seasons (based on a 162 game schedule).
“And the most amazing thing about those numbers is that the 7.8 and 8.8 came in strike shortened seasons. He was on pace for over 10 WAR in each of those seasons (based on a 162 game schedule).”
Not sure how those are calculated, but wouldn’t “replacement level” have to be set lower for shortened seasons, too, meaning that kind of calculation wouldn’t be correct?
My understanding is that those WAR calculations are done by comparing a run rate (I believe its era at that site) to a replacement level and then using innings pitched to determine WAR. Since maddux would have pitched significantly more innings (he only started 25 games in 94 and pitched over 200 innings), his WAR would have been significantly higher.
Honestly I’m not quite sure why you would think there would need to be an adjustment to replacement level in a strike shortened season. Its not like the level of replacement players changes significantly. There are just fewer games, and therefore fewer wins above replacement to be had.
“Honestly I’m not quite sure why you would think there would need to be an adjustment to replacement level in a strike shortened season. Its not like the level of replacement players changes significantly. There are just fewer games, and therefore fewer wins above replacement to be had.”
Because there are fewer games for replacement players to play, too. If you had a team of all replacement players, they would win fewer than the ~46 or so games a replacement team wins in 162 games, because they would play less games (the ’94 Braves played 114 games, which turns ~46 replacement wins into ~32 replacement wins, for instance). WAR is created relative to a baseline set by other players, and if the entire population of players loses PT….well, both the nominator and denominator are affected by that change. I don’t know the specifics, but I would suggest we need to know whether that’s accounted for or not before we know if it’s appropriate to make that claim about Maddux.
My understanding has always been that replacement level is a rate, not a counting number. Thus, WAR is simply going to be a function of the difference between a particular player’s rate and the replacement rate multiplied for the amount of playing time said player had.
Look at your 1994 example. You assume that a replacement level team would win ~46 games, so in 1994 they would win ~32 because of fewer games. All you did there was take the original winning percentage and multiply it by the new number of games. Same thing with WAR. The season being shortened doesn’t fundamentally change the replacement player, so he performs at the same rate. The same is true of the player we are looking at. Therefore the only difference is playing time, so we just take the difference in the two rates and multiply out for the proper playing time.
BTW, what fraction are you talking about when you bring up the numerator (not nominator as you said) and denominator changing?
He will repeat or better his 09 performance. He is the same rare talent as Santana and Martinez. Think sub-2 ERA. Think a lower BB rate. Think no-hitters (plural).
I am thinking no-hitters (plural.) Now what?
You just went full retard.
Maybe it’s just me, but I got the impression that the one-and-done variety of 7 WAR pitchers is the exception. Sure, there are lots of possible pitfalls for any pitcher, but for the great pitchers (of which Lincecum undoubtedly is one), the repeat would seem to be expected. I mean, isn’t that list made up mostly of guys who repeated at a high level? Even more so when you consider that Johnson and Martinez obviously had incredible years in the time before this sample was taken.
Yeah, he definitely projects to repeat at a high level.
It’s just that 8.3 WAR is a ridiculously high level. Even when Maddux was ridiculous from 92-98 (see my comment above) he never posted back to back 8 WAR seasons.
Aside from the sample size issue, I don’t think any of the above pitchers really compares to Lincecum in terms of immediate impact except for Santana and maybe Prior. Santana was great but used in the bullpen initially, and Prior was hurt too quickly. Lincecum has dominated in his first two full seasons, which is more Clemens/Seaver territory.
Or Doc Gooden territory.
“In the year after, the average fell to 5.5 wins.”
CHONE projection for Tim Lincecum: 58 runs above replacement. Sooooooooo. . . I think we have our ballpark!
I wrote an article for my application here about Tim Lincecum’s velocity drop. People are writing it off, but they are being lazy doing that. I haven’t seen a single other article that has bothered to look at the pattern of his velocity decline (which is pretty concerning). At the beginning of the year, he was hitting 97, and barely touched 90 in his last start.
I am with you on this one, RJ. I think he may have to be shut down during the season at some point simply due to the fatigue of pitching 450 innings over the past 2 seasons so early in his MLB career.
Bumgarner and Lincecum? What are SF coaches doing to these guys 😉
I seem to remember worries about a drop in his velocity during ST last year, too.
At the beginning of last year he was not actually throwing 97, that was 2 years ago. Last year Tim hovered in the low 90s range, just look at his velocity charts, he maybe hit 97 10 times last years total. His velocity was consistent last year.
Believe me, I have looked at the numbers.
April 7: FB AVG 92.5 MAX 95
April 12: 92.8/96
April 18: 91.9/94
April 24: 92.6/94.8
April 29: 92.4/95.1
May 5: 91.7/94
May 10: 92.2/94.8
May 15: 91.5/94.7
May 21: 93.7/96
May 26: 93/95
June 2: 92.6/94.6
June 7: 91.9/94.9
June 12: 92.5/94.4
June 17: 92.2/94.5
June 23: 94/96.7
June 29: 94/96.8
July 4: 92.8/95.3
July 9: 91.6/93.9
July 17: 92.8/94.5
July 22: 92.5/94.9
July 27: 93/95.9
August 1: 91.9/94.1
August 7: 93/96
August 12: 92.9/95.3
August 18: 91.5/94.7
August 23: 92.7/95.6
August 28: 92.2/95.9
September 3: 92.1/95.2
September 14: 91.9/94.3
September 20: 92.7/96.1
September 25: 90.8/93.5
October 1: 89.7/92.2
Sure, these numbers don’t say anything definitive. On the contrary, they are quite ambiguous. However, I am not just going to take these last 2 starts and say they didn’t happen. Why would a guy who was throwing 99 MPH fastballs a couple years ago be down to 90-92?
Let’s make this clear, Lincecum hasn’t made the change intentionally:
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ti-lincecum022210&prov=yhoo&type=lgns
Also, people say he did fine with the diminished velocity last year. Well, he did and he didn’t. His fastball was much less effective in 09 than it was in 08. He maintained his success through the vast improvement of his changeup.
Good points, RM, though I have to disagree with one conclusion:
“His fastball was much less effective in 09 than it was in 08. He maintained his success through the vast improvement of his changeup.”
We should at least acknowledge it’s not clear how “effective” it was since we still don’t know much about quantifying pitch sequence effects. There is evidence that there’s an ideal velocity gap between changeups and fastballs, maybe his slower velocity fastball actually works better with the changeup, making his changeup way more effective, than his previous fastball. I don’t know, and I don’t think any of us really know. I’m not trying to make the case that the velocity decrease is a “good thing”, it might just be much “less bad” than simple pitch run values make it look.
“That’s without figuring in that he just had an 8 win season, and that nobody who recorded at least 8 WAR in a single season has replicated that success”
The fact that he just had an 8 win season makes him far more likely than the average pitcher in your sample to hit 8 wins again. It means his true talent is a LOT higher than most in those 660 seasons.
I’m a huge fan and really like your work, but this article seems like a pretty big miss. Sounds a lot like when commentators talk about how hard it is to come back from a 3-0 deficit because nobody’s ever done it before. Having an 8 win season is just hard, and you could bet against any pitcher in the league doing it and be making a good bet.
Why do you keep on betting against Sea Biscuit?
You are going to come out looking silly again.
He started extremely slow last season due to a stomach virus and looked very rocky at the start of the year after losing a lot of weight in the spring. He rebounded quite well. Hopefully this year he enters the season completely healthy.
He is just entering his prime and truly learning how to pitch and that changeup last season was the best pitch in baseball. You really want to bet that we have seen the best of him? Kind of defeats the logic of maturity and progression that we see out of pretty much every other major league athlete. Most pitchers are just learning how not to get the snot knocked out of them by the end of their third season (second full) and are not usually polishing their two Cy Young Awards. My money is on Lincecum for this bet.
Ben Sheets got exactly 1 Cy Young vote in 2004.
Don’t let this fool you into thinking that Lincy isn’t your number 1 choice for Starting pitchers. Having said that, nice article RJ. It would have been nice to include each pitcher’s WAR as a third column to your list.
@ R M. Where did you get this data? Also, is it just Lincy that lost velocity towards the end of the season or is that a similar trend seen across mlb?
Brooks Baseball has game-by-game velocity.
I haven’t looked at other pitchers, but I don’t think such a big dropoff is commonplace. I’ve never heard anything about pitchers losing velocity as the season goes on…
Thanks. Found this too.
http://www.fangraphs.com/pitchfxo.aspx?playerid=5705&position=P&pitch=FA
Just looking at 2009, I only see his last two games of the season having significant drops in fastball velocity, in which he had 14k’s in 14 IP, with 21 GBs and only 3 LDs. Now is this decrease Lincy changing his approach for the last two games of the season,or is this wear and tear from the season, or both? Who knows. Even with his velocity down he was able to throw two great games.
@Verd: my response is above.
“but I don’t think such a big dropoff is commonplace. I’ve never heard anything about pitchers losing velocity as the season goes on…”
I don’t have anything conclusive on the matter, but I’ve definitely heard people at least talk about this. It wouldn’t surprise me if it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary to lose some velocity towards the end of the season.
I figured that looking at the hardest throwing starter in all of baseball would give a good idea as to what’s going on. All of Ubaldo Jimenez’s pitches were thrown faster in ’09 than in ’08 with the exception of his two seam fastball which averaged .4 MPH slower. However, his four seam and slider being thrown slightly softer (.7 and .4 MPH slower respectively) than he threw in ’07. This could of course, be due to a lack of command at the higher velocities, change in mechanics or just realizing that he doesn’t need to reach back every time to get the out. Who knows?
But I also find it interesting that he’s the hardest throwing SP in baseball despite that his four seam and slider dropped in speed slightly from last year while he relied on them 2.5% and 4% more often this year (though from his ’08 numbers he’s relying more on his two seam and off speed stuff more heavily).
So just comparing these two I can’t say that there’s a league wide dip in speed from ’08 to ’09 and I couldn’t even formulate and argument for something that could cause such a drop across the board. My personal theory is that Timmy has been over worked and / or may be near injury this season OR that he was just token it up a little too much during the pre-game warm ups which caused him to have decreased lung capacity and thus not enough oxygen was getting to his muscles for him to hit 97 MPH again.
He lost velocity last year plus has noted that he can’t get it back this spring either. Still, he says he’s hearing the ball sizzle again when he throws and he’s happy.
While I understand that nobody has done this before, neither has anyone won the Cy Young in their first two full seasons either. While it is good to compare with history to show how rare it would be if he does it again, using history to say he would not do it again isn’t right either. You might be right most of the time, but then when a Babe Ruth shows up, you will stand on the wrong side of history.
So I understand the point of your article, but perhaps it would be better to just show how rare such a feat has been in history and note how rare it would be if Lincecum repeated it. I think that would convey your main point that it is so rare and unlikely without saying outright that you don’t think Lincecum will do it. Because how others did in history has no correlation or bearing on how Lincecum can do, other than frame how rare a certain achievement has been, because Lincecum isn’t any of those other players.
Not to say that I think Lincecum is going to do it, but I’m not at the point where I’m willing to say that he won’t either.
I think his conclusions is actually in agreement with your points:
“So yeah, I feel comfortable betting against Lincecum being even better this season. And hey, if he does make me look bad once more, then we’re all winners by witnessing The Freak at his best.”
-RJ
“You might be right most of the time, but then when a Babe Ruth shows up, you will stand on the wrong side of history.”
-OGC
Those sound like the exact same statement worded differently to me….
As an aside, I guess we’ll be intensely watching Greinke and Verlander this year to see how they bounce back from posting 9.4 and 8.2 WAR last year, yes? And even Hernandez, too, since he was at 6.9.
Of the four mentioned wouldn’t you expect King to improve the most in 2010? Better defense, improved supporting cast, etc?
Those things you mention don’t affect FIP, so they don’t affect WAR.
Also, do you really think the Mariners defense will be BETTER than last years?
“Also, do you really think the Mariners defense will be BETTER than last years?”
In short, “no.”
To expand on that a bit further, “H.E.double-L no.”
Replacing Beltre with J-Lo is like replacing steaks with hot dogs. (For the record, J-Lo does not discriminate against any meat. For example, he likes to garnish his steaks with sliced hot dogs provided a liberal amount of bacon is available for wrapping it all together. Thanks for the tip, Silva!)
The Mariners’ defense probably won’t be better in ’10 (even Gutierrez is due for a regression). But Felix might be. So his FIP might drop even as his ERA climbs.
I would expect Felix to improve the most, yes, I just meant that those guys are now in position to replicate (or come close) the feat we’re discussing, right? Consecutive seasons with 7+ WAR. I know almost nothing about effective projections in baseball, so I just wanted to see what people thought about these pitchers in the context of that discussion.
Verlander spent last year with like the second-fastest heater among starters and was ruining people; Greinke went for a long time without giving up a homer and of course all three of them were just filthy for the bulk of the year. It’ll be interesting to see how they follow up.
The “whip” delivery Lincecum employs to seamlessly transfer energy and generate 95-mph fastballs requires an extreme and very specific level of flexibility and elasticity, two traits that diminish rapidly in most people between puberty and the early 20’s. Lincecum will have opportunities to make adjustments as his career unfolds, but a gradual decline in velocity through his mid-20’s should be expected. Gymnasts peak in their teens and early 20’s for the same reason.
I hear lots of biomechanical jargon that attempts to explain and predict pitchers and their injuries. Almost none of it seems to be reliable.
I completely agree in 99% of cases, plus organizations are getting better at cleaning up mechanical issues, particularly those of the alphabet soup variety (Inverted W, Inverted V, Inverted L, or dreaded Extroverted Y), in the minors before piling on the innings.
In Lincy’s case, his mechanics don’t bother me. It’s the flexibility his delivery requires. Unless he’s Plastic Man, his range of flexibility will diminish over time. I’m not qualified to comment on any potential injury hazard it may or may not represent, just how it will impact his velocity and ball rotation over time.
There are pitches and pitching styles that have been generally associated with specific areas of stress. That much has been known for years. 100% accurate? Nope, but there are some general ideas that pretty much hold true.
Fortunately for Tim, he still has good deception on his change, good movement on the pitch (because it’s a 2-seamer) and a nasty curve. One wonders what his fastball increase might be if he adjusted the grip to throw a 4-seamer more regularly, since that would probably be a few mph faster than his 2-seamer, no? At least 1 or 2, anyway, which can often make the difference.
Baseball Projection’s Pedro WAR, 1997-2000:
1997: 8.2
1998: 6.6
1999: 8.4
2000: 10.1
In 2001, he posted a 4.6 WAR despite pitching just 116 innings due to injury. That means a half season Pedro in ’01 had the same value as a full season of Joel Pineiro, Gavin Floyd or Clayton Kershaw in 2010 (roughly speaking).
So far so good…