Well, mainly, I'm a White Sox fan and he's done a lot for the team. But I would also like him as a pitcher no matter what team he played for. Now I'm not saying Buehrle's one of the best pitchers out there and I'm not even saying he's a legit ace on any staff. There are a shit ton of pitchers that are better than Buehrle. But after I just saw him pitch today and realize how The Bright One and David MVP Eckstein have shit on him in the past, I thought I'd explain myself.
Mark Buehrle is the quintessential groundball pitcher. Here's a guy who's sole purpose on the mound is to get batters to hit balls to his infield. And Buehrle is fairly successful at this. Now he's obviously not the greatest, but with a career 4.15 FIP in nine seasons, you most certainly can do worse. A LOT WORSE. (At least he's better than Jason Marquis!). The reason inducing groundballs are nice is for two reasons. The first is that it limits home runs. Buehrle plays in an extremely homer friendly park so the more balls hit on the ground and the less hit in the air, means a lower ERA for Buehrle and helps out his team. Secondly, inducing ground balls means less pitches Buehrle throws. Batters Buehrle faces sees pitches that they think they can hit early in ABs which really gets turned into an out by the infield defense.
One criticism Buehrle gets is that he can't really strike anyone out. In fact, in his no hitter, he only struck out like four or five guys- even though he retired 27. This can be advantageous though- as related to this last point. Strikeouts take a lot of pitches. More pitches means more strain on a pitchers arm. But because Buehrle takes guys out with usually fewer pitches, he can stay in the game longer and thus help out the bullpen. And no matter how good the Sox bullpen is (and right now it's pretty damn good), as Moneyball stated "There's a reason guys are in the bullpen and not starters". Plus, as "Bull Durham" so nicely put it: "Strikeouts are facist"
Now, as I stated in my opener, Buehrle is nowhere near perfect. Relying heavily on your defense can be a huge problem, especially during his 2009 campaign. Right now, the White Sox infield is pretty bad, especially with Alexei Rameriz at SS. By inducing ground balls into a defense that can't field ground balls an not striking out guys will translate into less innings for Buehrle with more runs that the White Sox offense has to make up for. However, this is not entirely Buehrle's fault. Kenny Williams has had Buerhle for his entire tenure as GM and should have prepared for this (and a GM should plan on having a good defense every season no matter what anyway). Not only that, but Buehrle isn't the greatest guy at NOT walking people. If you're going to not strike people out, you have to at least NOT walk people- something Buehrle has not done so well throughout his career.
But despite Buehrle's disadvantages, he still has a lot of value to any team. He adds depth to any rotation and out on a team with an above average to great defense, Buerhle will be spectacular. I think his "traditional stats" this year will be pretty bad and not worth owning in fantasy baseball, but I'm still glad he is in my team's rotation.
Couple of things
ReplyDelete1) Strike outs are not fascist. They have one of the most direct impacts on run prevention and a strikeout has a large WPA in every situation
2) Mark Buerhle is not a bad pitcher. As a #3/#4 guy, he's pretty quality. However, as you pointed out, the ENTIRE Sox infield is below average. With cabrera and crede out of the picture, if the sox defense were to be equally as good as last year, the infield defense alone would cost the team -3.5 wins. Now that Ramirez, as you noted, is at SS, there is an expectation by me of the Sox being -4 or more wins below average. So while it's not Buehrle's fault that the White Sox make him a less-than-valuable pitcher in my mind, he simply is due to high groundball tendencies, low K rates and a shitty defense behind him.
The White Sox are the kind of team who need high K/low BB (2.0 ratio or greater) guys who give up pop ups rather than groundballs. Reasoning is as follows. If you were to only hit LD's, your expected BA would be .720. If you hit all GBs, you're expected batting average would be .290. With all FBs, you're xBA would be in the .140's (if i'm not mistaken -- correct me if i'm wrong bright one). The data for this info is buried somewhere on the hardball times, but what they found is that FBs are the easiest to field, LD the hardest and GB%s yield Juan Pierre like numbers.
Basically, what i'm trying to get at here is that the white sox defense is not very conducive to groundballs. The infield is awful and since GB already produce more hits than FBs, the poor defense exacerbates offensive rallies.
there does need some reconciliation of this assertion against the fact that the cell is a HR friendly park, making a FB pitcher more susceptible to HRs. A better claim may have been that US Cellular requires GB pitchers and an above average INF to compensate for the small dimensions...
oh well...
still, I'm not hating on what buehrle can do. It's what the Sox limit him from doing.
Also, you know who pitches for the Durham Bulls (of Bull Durham)? David Price, aka Meat.
ReplyDeleteagreed
ReplyDeleteI truely like mark buehrle as a pitcher. My favorite quality about his is that he never gets rattled. Like he;s very confident on the mound and is able to pitch out of jams.
ReplyDeleteHe is usually very consistent going about his business winning games. I start to rage on him when he has stretches where he gives up like 3 hits an inning for 5 straight starts. He's one of those guys you dont think about when he's going good, and completely bury when he starts to suck