Comments on: Today from Bernie

By: azruavatar

azruavatar — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 15:55:48 +0000

As an addendum, the Cardinals ERA+ is currently 86 – worst in the National league this year. Here is a list of equivalent or worse ERA+ from the last 10 years:

2007:DRays 77
2006:Orioles 84, Royals 85
2005:Reds 86, DRays 80, Royals 78
2004:Royals 86, Reds 77
2003:Tigers 81, Reds 84
2002:DRays 84, Brewers 84, Padres 82
2001:Pirates 86, Rangers 78
2000:Cubs 81
1999:(None)
1998:Marlins 79
1997:Athletics 83

Now, this isn’t a list of individuals I’d want to be associated with if I were the Cardinals. It consists of a lot of perennial bottom feeders. It’s worth noting though that in the last 10 years there are 18 teams that have been as bad or worse as the Cardinals are this year relative to league norms.

Now given that the Cardinals posted an ERA+ of 97 last year and have experienced a lot of turnover in the rotation, it’s a worthy cautionary tale that the pitchers we have now may not be very good.

This “42nd-highest ERA” is at best ignorance and at worst intentional statistical misrepresentation.

By: whiteyball

whiteyball — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 15:03:19 +0000

Agreed. Bernie likes to do this to stir a little controversy.
But I think it is a grand disservice to Cardinal fans, who pay out lots and lots of bucks to support this team, to trot out the rotation that it does. The standard excuses, “we pay what we feel the players are worth..or we are not going to overpay..” are getting really old, really quick. If you feel $40 million to Jeff Suppan is going way overboard, fine. But, you better start developing your own pitching. That is something that this organization has neglected and has no one to blame but itself because this regime has been in charge for 12 years now. So it needs to make up its mind, pay the money for quality veterans or develop its won. You can’t have it both ways.

By: azruavatar

azruavatar — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 14:13:39 +0000

But it goes beyond that. In the history of baseball, this would be the 42nd-highest ERA by a rotation in a single season, and we’re talking about thousands of rotations.

This is such a horrible misleading quote. He’s comparing eras that have significant differences in average ERAs. The effing mound was lowered to increase scoring. Players are taking steroids. Of course ERAs will be higher. Bernie needs to use some kind of ERA+ or normalized statistic to account for historical differences.

The fielding percentage of .980 would be the worst by a Tony La Russa-managed team since the 1998 and 1999 squads came in at .978.

Fielding percentage might be one of the mosr useless statistics available today.

I know Rick Ankiel strikes out a bunch and doesn’t walk much. But Chris Duncan largely did the same in the minors, and he’s done well in the bigs.

It’s a disservice to Bernie’s point at large that he just throws this out there without validating at all how the two players are similar. We are instead supposed to expect Ankiel to improve in the same fashion Duncan did, which is probably unwise.

———————

Bernie’s got the right idea but he cites all the wrong reasons. I understand that part of this is pandering to the general populace that doesn’t know about advanced sabermetric statistics but the ERA thing really pisses me off because it’s intentionally misleading. I wonder how many of those 41 ERAs that are worse have happened since 1990 — I’d wager at least 10-15.