To our surprise, Eckstein's post on Dan Haren was read and responded to on the baseball fantasy focus podcast hosted by Nate Ravitz and "The Talented Mr. Roto" Matthew Berry. Matthew has been critical of Haren's regression in ERA in the 2nd half and does not value the pitcher as much as the rest of the fantasy world. Matthew continued to hold pat on his stance that Haren is a bad second half pitcher who is overvalued fantasy wise. Eckstein presented the facts and Berry was still reluctant to denote Haren as a top 5 pitcher.
I sent an email response to the fantasy focus, explaining what FIP is to the fantasy experts and showing them the terrible defenses Haren has had behind him.
You can listen to the fantasy focus podcast ; skip to the 16 minute mark for the relevant portions. Enjoy!
Local Blogs We're Reading
National Blogs We're Reading
Finding Stats
Faceball
That pitch accounted for 15% of Jimmy Rollin's OBP for 2006
Ump Bump
Is my .320 batting average giving you a boner?
Did You Know...
That Darren Erstad was a punter in college??
Little Known Fact
John Kruk struck out in this AB
The Great Runs Expectancy Chart
Statistically speaking, sacrifice bunts are counter-productive
Pete Rose Baseball
Best signature ever
The Most Ironic Book Ever Written
Written by none other than Joe Morgan
1 comments:
We're like a freakin army. Here is my email
Jeff is on vacation so he asked me to respond to Matthews' Dan Haren response.
Firstly, we find it shocking neither of you, especially Nate, dont know what FIP is. Fielding independent pitching stats, which measures a pitchers luck independent ERA based on his Ks, walks, and home runs seeing as how balls in play are too unpredictable to measure a pitchers true effectiveness. If a pitcher's ERA is much less than his FIP, then he is getting very lucky and one would expect him to regress closer to his FIP. It is a major statistic on fangraphs.com and you should check it out. It basically proves our beliefs that some pitchers are greatly outperforming due to defense/luck like Millwood, Myers, and Porcello among others
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=pit&lg=all&qual=y&type=1&season=2009&month=0
Secondly, it's important to realize that Haren has played behind notoriously bad defenses in his career, which most likely contributes to his 2nd half increases in ERA, while the FIP has remained the same. Here is a ranking of team UZR(defensive range stat you guys should really know) haren has had in recent years.
Oakland, 2005: 3.4 fielding runs, 9th best in baseball (9/30)
Oakland, 2006: -1.3 fielding runs, 16th worst in baseball (15/30)
Oakland, 2007: -3.8 fielding runs, 8th worst in baseball (23/30)
Arizona, 2008: -5.2 fielding runs, 8th worst in baseball (23/30)
In conclusion, he is a strike out pitcher (8K/9) with the best control in baseball. He limits homer runs and gives you 220 innings every year. Perennial top 5 pitcher whether Matthew wants to believe it or not.
Dmitry for the vacationing Jeff from Buffalo Grove, Illinois
http://gameofinches.blogspot.com/
Post a Comment