Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
February 11, 2008
Rounding up the Bedard Trade

The Hardball Times staff and guests hold a round table over the Erik Bedard trade. The most interesting thing to come out of the discussion is how much of the Mariners Pythagorean luck was caused by losing blowouts. If Bedard replaces the pitchers who allowed those blowouts to happen, maybe the Mariners do have a chance to be better in 2008.


Posted by David Pinto at 08:19 AM | Trades | TrackBack (0)
Comments

One thing I noticed after submitting that first comment on how badly the M's back-of-the-rotation stunk: the numbers of the non-Big 3 pitchers are virtually identitical to the combined 2005 performances of Jose Lima & Eric Milton. In both cases it's 66 starts, nearly as many innings, and an ERA+ of about 64. The Ms won 88 games with the equivilent of '05 Lima & '05 Milton pitching for them. Unreal.

Posted by: Chris J. at February 11, 2008 09:07 AM

Well, isn't an inconsistent defense one way to beat Pythagoras? Remove that and you've lost the edge? Of course, removing crappy pitching performances in exchange for Bedard's performances isn't a bad thing, either. This highlight the importance of having competent fourth and fifth starters. Upgrading 6.00 ERAs to 5.00 ERAs is like upgrading 4.00 ERAs to 3.00 ERAs. People make a much bigger deal out of the second one.

Posted by: Sky at February 11, 2008 12:21 PM

Skyking, going from 4.00 to 3.00 is a much bigger deal than going from 6.00 to 5.00. You get a bigger bang for your buck at the lower numbers. That the nature of quadratics.

Posted by: David Pinto at February 11, 2008 12:38 PM

I agree that's true on the team level -- cutting down from 900 runs allowed to 800 runs allowed isn't as helpful as cutting down from 700 to 600. But is it true one the player level? If a team is going to cut from 800 runs to 700 runs, is there an advantage to upgrading your 4.00 ERA pitcher to a 3.00 ERA pitcher versus upgrading your 6.00 ERA pitching to a 5.00 ERA pitcher? Maybe there is, but you're going to allow the same number of runs either way -- which one of those results in a more advantageous distribution of runs?

Posted by: Sky at February 12, 2008 11:15 AM
Post a comment









Remember personal info?