Baseball Musings: When He's Good...

July 28, 2006

When He's Good...

The Cubs take a 6-3 lead on the Cardinals as they send eleven men to the plate in the bottom of the fourth. Marquis pitches another bad outing as he gives up eight hits in 3 2/3 innings. An error by Rolen led to three of the runs being unearned.

I don't usually go in for stats like this, but the discrepency appeared so high I had to check. In wins this year, Marquis has a 2.97 ERA. In losses, it's 12.57. Just to show how extreme that is, only three pitchers with as many as 30 innings in losses have an ERA over 10.00, and Taylor Buchholz is the only pitcher worse than Marquis at 12.69. (I tend not to like the stat because you suspect pitchers do better in wins than in losses. But this is huge.) You just don't know what you're going to get when Marquis takes the mound.

Update: Here are the worst:

Pitcher	Losses	ER	IP	ERA
Taylor Buchholz	9	55	39	12.69
Jason Marquis	7	54	38.667	12.57
Josh Towers	9	45	39.333	10.30
Carlos Silva	9	50	45.667	9.85
Oliver Perez	10	48	44	9.82

Posted by David Pinto at 03:49 PM | Games | TrackBack (0)

Comments

I remember reading in some blog that Marquis has 'taken some for the team' but I'm not sure if that's accurate.

On June 21 he gave up 13 earned runs in 5 innings and on July 18 he gave up 12 earned in 5, both losses. That can't be too helpful.

Since he was the starter in both of the games I don't have much empathy for him if the 'take one for the team' is used.

Posted by: Rich at July 28, 2006 04:32 PM

I was looking at the game on ESPN last night when the color guy (joe morgan?) said his ERA is skewed because of "a couple of starts". this info you have displayed looks like the team took one for him, not the other way around.

Posted by: the Gov'Nah at July 28, 2006 05:06 PM

The "took one for the team comment" refers to one start (maybe more, but definately one) where Marquis was asked to stay in after it became clear he had nothing, because the bullpen was worn out.

Basically, Larussa wrote the game off and Marquis was asked to eat the innings.

Posted by: Leo at July 28, 2006 06:25 PM

This is why we call Marquis "Bipolar Betty." Normally, he's all good or all bad. Today, we got Manic AND Depressive in the same outing.

Posted by: The 26th Man at July 28, 2006 06:58 PM

Yeah, both of those games, the 12-in-5 and 13-in-5 ones, came after they had been blown away and burned through the bullpen the day before, so they kept him in the game long after the "OK, that's enough" moment in a typical bad start. The first was the day after the 20-6 game vs. the White Sox, Mulder's last start before the DL.

Posted by: Nate811 at July 28, 2006 08:18 PM

Nate811 clarifies everything. Thanks.

Posted by: Rich at July 28, 2006 09:24 PM

Yes, one of the major flaws in modern baseball statistical analysis is the the implicit assumption that all PAs are independent events that have no effect on other nearby events. That is that a .300 hitter is presumed to have his 3 hits in 10 randomly distributed over his total at bats and that slumps and streaks are the product of random chance.

Of course that doesn't make sense to anybody who has played the game even at the LL level. Some days we don't feel good, other days everything seems to be working just fine. It seems unlikely that our physical makeup is just random chance.

And certainly bi-polar play such as Jasoan has displayed must be considered as counter examples ... unless of course random chance says SOMEBODY has to results like his!

Posted by: Murrel at July 28, 2006 11:51 PM

If you completely disregard those two "take one for the team" games, Jason's ERA is 4.39.

Today, counting all games, it stands at 5.67.

Posted by: Joe at July 29, 2006 04:03 PM