Fire Rob Neyer

Not for the largely opinionated nature of his blogs while trying to assume the air of a smarmy, objective observer. Not because his predictions are wrong so much either. But because of him making broad conclusions based on some stat his readers haven't seen (which obviously must make him right).

Rob on Maddux's Gold Glove:
"For example, the voters love to vote for the guy who won last year. Greg Maddux has now won his 17th, despite giving up an immense number of stolen bases. Granted, that was a team-wide issue; Chris Young gave up 44 steals without a single runner being caught. But Maddux has always given up a lot of steals, because he doesn't want to bother with holding runners close. I'm sure that's a defensible tactic, but I'm also sure that should disqualify a pitcher from being considered the best fielder."

I'm now going to attempt the impossible and argue that Maddux deserved to win the gold glove despite not having any individual pitcher attempted steal/caught stealing stats at my disposal. First of all, I don't consider controlling the running game to be part of fielding your position. The very fact that you can't quantify how much a pitcher himself determines the steals against makes it a useless argument. But really, even if Maddux was horrible at controlling the running game, that's only about 1 single turned double by the opponent per start, hardly a big problem for run prevention.

Having watched Maddux for years I already know he is awesome at fielding, but here's the math to prove it for 2007:

Total fielding chances as a pitcher MLB leaders:
Webb: 75
Maddux: 71
Hudson: 70
Carmona: 64

Pitching leaders in this stat tend to be sinkerballers since pitchers have more of an opportunity to field grounders. So here are their G/B ratios:

Webb: 3.34
Maddux: 2.15
Hudson: 2.76
Carmona: 3.28

The only guy with more total chances than Maddux is a sick groundball machine while Maddux gets the least grounders of the group.

Now take into account how many total balls were hit in play against them (rudimentary estimate here using total batters faced - strikeouts - walks)
Webb: 709
Maddux: 701
Hudson: 740
Carmona: 681

Now take into account how many errors they made:
Webb: 5!!!
Maddux: 1 (His first since 2003)
Hudson: 0
Carmona: 2

In summary, Maddux allows less balls in play than the competition, and less grounders of the balls in play, and he still almost leads all of baseball in how many balls he got to, and of the balls he got to he made only 1 error while Webb made 5.

I don't know how this gold glove selection could be any more of a given. He's the Dominic Hasek of pitching. He is 1st or 2nd in the NL in range factor for pitchers every year since 2001 (ESPN doesn't go back any further), and he should probably keep getting the gold glove every year until he's in a wheel chair.

As good as he is now though, his stats are really something to see from earlier in his career. First consider that since 2001 the most total chances for any pitcher was 84 by Livan Hernandez in 2004, a fluky year. In his prime maddux had 95 chances in 2000, 91 in 1999, 99 in 1998, 109 in 1996, and 93 in 1990, all of those years having pitched less innings than Hernandez did in 2004. Maddux's career high was 109 in 1996 (1 error that year). he could win the award on reputation alone but he actually still clearly deserves it.

Now I may never write about gold gloves again. Of all the poorly voted on baseball awards, gold gloves are by far the worst. I've found that the best fielders at each position are only chosen for the award about 10% of the time, which is only slightly better than picking AL and NL regulars out of a hat.

Rob and Me

I don't know why I email columnists, they never respond with anything worthwhile. Ok so he stopped reading at the word vendetta. Good, that means he read all my data-oriented arguments and the vast majority of my email, right? No response to that whatsoever aside from accusing me of a (data) bias, thanks Rob? And what does the sentence "I was just doing my job, however poorly" mean? So I can totally fuck up at work and then say "nah it's ok guys, I was doing my job, just poorly." I understand that most ESPN baseball analysts do their jobs extremely poorly, but I didn't know it was so outwardly accepted over there.

Me:
Rob I didn't understand this piece when you wrote it, but I figured I would wait until the end of the season and be just as opportunistic when Beckett both reached 200 innings and pitched effectively: http://insider.espn.go.com/espn/print?id=2869659

The thing is you don't have to be a doctor, or know anything about blister problems to look at this situation more correctly. All you had to do was look at Beckett's career innings to see that he increased them every year from 2002 to 2006. Is that the mark of someone who is an injury risk? Clearly you can get better at dealing with blisters as a pitcher, since Beckett has. And to say Beckett wasn't effective last year seems pretty shortsighted to me, for someone who I would assume shouldn't be head over heals in love with era. We both know giving up a lot of homers doesn't make you a bad pitcher (Santana this year). And we both know that stats like k/9 and BAA are more important than era. Or they are at least a better indication of "stuff", which you were getting at with Beckett, implying that he has to "preserve" his finger by not throwing curve balls as well. Well in his ineffective 2006 Beckett allowed a BAA of .245 (ahead of lackey, sabathia, smoltz, halladay), and a k/9 better than oswalt or verlander. His stuff was definitely good last year, as it has always been. And he sure as heck didn't look like he was trying to prevent himself from getting blisters, judging by the high 90s fastball and wicked curve he featured in nearly every one of his starts last year. I think a much more sane and objective look at his 2006 season would conclude that his pitch selection was too predictable, his changeup was poor for most of the year, and his uninspiring superficial stats like era could have largely been because of sample size.

I can't begin to imagine what personal vendetta you have against Josh Beckett, but at least in this piece it made you look quite foolish. Not only does Beckett and the Red Sox staff have his blister problems under control, but we should look at Beckett as a one of a kind mid 20s fireballer, as he hasn't thrown nearly the innings that similarly gifted pitchers have in the past by his age. The Red Sox should be very happy that his shoulder and arm have been artificially under-stressed to this point, and there's no reason that I can see (either in his career peripheral stats or arbitrary belief that him getting a cut is related to his past blister problems) for him not to remain a top MLB pitcher for many years to come.

Rob:
When you accuse me of having a "personal vendetta" you make me stop reading, because that's just silly. And your attribution of bias suggests that you're the one with the agenda. I was just doing my job, however poorly.



Cheers,

rob