Thoughts on Pitching

You might have noticed that I have not done much with pitching stats on this blog.  And I really haven't.  Almost a year ago I attempted to make a stat called Total Runs for Pitchers which didn't really work at all.  I've had a few posts on Wins and Losses and the shortcomings of them.  But no stat that I believe can measure a pitcher accurately.  

 

When I startup my database on recording 2014 stats for players, as of now I only have these stats.  

-Total Runs

-Fielding Linear Weights

-Speed Runs

-Estimated Runs Created

-Maybe Total Wins (Based off of Total Runs)

And then a few other metrics that can relate to the ones I invented above.  But no pitching stat as of now.

 

There is a lot of work in looking at making a pitching metric and it has to adjust for a lot of things like...

-Defense behind pitcher

-Luck controlled variables

 

Those two are probably some of the hardest.  

 

 

Sticking with pitching here, last night in the World Series Jeremy Guthrie was doing ok.  I believe it was the MLB twitter feed who tweeted out that Guthrie was flying and doing very well around the 4^th inning or so.  I had two thoughts about this.

 

A)    Guthrie had not recorded a strikeout yet and was a mediocre pitcher throughout 2014. 

 

B)    With no strikeouts he was placing his fate in the hands of the Royals defense which luckily for him is historically excellent. 

 

  

He really wasn’t flying just getting pretty lucky.  In the top of the sixth inning Ned Yost turned some heads when he allowed Guthrie to bat for himself.  Many assumed he would pinch hit for him and go the bullpen.  Ned didn’t, and the Royals went to go get two more runs in the inning for a 3-0 lead. 

Measuring pitcher dominance is easy for me and that’s you measure dominance by strikeouts they get.  If a pitcher is not getting a lot of strikeouts then he is skating on thin ice and placing his fate in the often untrustworthy hands of BABIP. 

 

I might write more about pitchers soon on the blog.  I just wanted to get this post out to show you what I think on the topic of pitching.  Thanks for reading.