Week in Review: 11/16 - 11/22

I love how you say the Royals were wrong to break up their bullpen, and how much flexibility it gives the Red Sox, but then say that you like the trade for the Royals...

That rumor about the Astros trimming payroll is hogwash and I doubt it will happen, but never underestimate McClane and his idiotic moves to keep the team "competitive" but never a championship contender like they could be if they signed some pitching. Open your pocket book Drayton

I'm not sure how much of an OBP boost adding one career .331 guy gives a .320 team, but it is a nice pickup nonetheless.

Crisp is a lifetime .350 OBP...not stellar, but pretty good for a Royal these days. If Jacobs had been a Royal in '08 and put the same numbers up we would have been over .500.

As far as prying Butler loose - I'm sure it's being discussed. At this point I'm not sure how bent I'd be if they moved him as long as the value in return was decent.

Who is this Steve Adams guy and why is he so good at contradicting himself?

"I honestly thought Dempster would sign for much more than this wherever he wound up, as it's only $4MM more than Carlos Silva received in 2007."

"I wasn't a Dempster believer, so it'll take a strong repeat in 2009 to convince me that this is a good signing."

I for one was a 'Dempster believer' before the '07-'08 season because I was actually paying attention to what Demp was doing to improve as a pitcher during the '07-'08 off-season.

And you don't let a guy who just put up a sub-three ERA who wants to give you a discount just walk away, Steve. Buy a clue.

maynardgilmour

Dempster pitched well as a reliever before this year. before this year he was not ever a decent starter. so he will def. have to repeat this year, or at least post stats within an appropriate range, before he can prove this was a good signing.

that was actually a typo on my part, it was supposed to be "even", not "ever". but regardless, he had one good year as a starter before this year, and that was back when was 23. before then his numbers resembled nothing above a #4, and since then, his numbers resembled a #5 at best (with this year being the exception). and he has more to prove this year because he has never really pitched all that well as a starter (sans 2000), which makes the $13mil a year all the more risky. I am more inclined to think of this year as a fluke in a contract year than anything else. but i guess we'll see.

First, the average OBP generally hovers just over .330, so Crisp has shown that he is capable of beating that and the Royals need all the OBP they can get. That he has pop, speed and defense doesn't hurt either. Further, the outs he does make don't tend to be with K's, which are even worse than a regular out. Crisp allows the Royals to move DeJesus to LF where he belongs.

What's more logical:

Using stats from 6+ years ago?

Using stats from 1 year ago?

I do not expect Dempster in 2009 to be the ace that he was in 2008 and his contract wasn't "ace" pay either. I do, however, expect Dempster to work just as hard this offseason as he did the last offseason to prepare himself for it, so I won't be surprised if he is stellar again.

"Kenan, not only are SABR stats like BABip and FIP not indicative of a pitcher's luck,"

Are you kidding? I suppose your definition of luck might be important, since you refuse to admit a fluke season is even a possibility.

If a pitcher's BABIP is routinely around 300, as most pitchers are. And he goes on to enjoy an immensely successful season where other peripherals, K/9, k/bb etc are relatively the same, there's gotta be an explanation.

Dempster gets lucky for a few reasons. 76% LOB rate is high, sure it doesn't drastically skew his stats but it aids that luck inflated era. A sub 50% GB rate is once again not a good sign. This is less luck oriented though. I'm not saying a 276 BABIP is solely responsible for his success but it contributes to it.

You can discount FIP and call me arrogant for using it, which is ridiculous particularly because your longwinded responses are dripping with more arrogance than my penis, but it's a decent indicator of expected performance.

Dempsters FIP indicates that he was expected to perform about a half run worse than he did. When I take a look at other stats, BABIP, LOB etc, it leads me to believe luck played a role in his success.

If you truly believe an over 30 pitcher who hadn't started in 6 years did not get lucky at all then that's fine. I mean you're an idiot, but that's fine.

p.s.

"But if it's your desire to make meteorology appear to be an exact science"

What exact science have you employed? You've sat on your ass and bitched about stats other people use. Haven't supported your argument at all, except to say that maybe a glove shake or weight loss helped.

Here is the definition of fluke

fluke 3 (flk)
n.
1. A stroke of good luck.
2. A chance occurrence; an accident.
3. Games An accidentally good or successful stroke in billiards or pool.
[Origin unknown.]

Dempster's 08 was exactly that, a stroke of good luck.

You do realize that I never said, not once, that Dempster was going to have a season like 2008.

Kenan, work on your reading comprehension. That's not what any of this is about and you wrote the definition of the word fluke and then misinterpreted it the next sentence.

A fluke is a little incident, not a 30 start season against the best hitters on the face of the Earth.

Any intellectually honest person would immediately recognize the meaning of the word 'fluke', compare it to pitching in the major leagues over a long period of time, and understand that it isn't an applicable term.

"Any intellectually honest person would immediately recognize the meaning of the word 'fluke', compare it to pitching in the major leagues over a long period of time, and understand that it isn't an applicable term."

Ahh so I get it, your interpretation of a fluke is the correct one because it supports your argument.

It says right up there "a chance of occurrence" or "a stroke of luck." That is EXACTLY what I've been calling Dempsters 08. He got lucky and it ain't happening again. I'm not the first to integrate the word fluke into baseball, it's been used before and it'll be used again.

By the way, "long time" is relative. Dempster's successful 08 is a fluke when compared to the thousands of innings he's compiled over his career.

"Like I said before the fact that these stats can be consistantly and drastically different for pitchers indicates that there is a substantial flaw in the theory."

Yes they can differ, and some pitchers get by with less than impressive babip rates or what not.

Ryan Dempter is not Peavy, Johan or Zambrano. Those are elite pitchers who are generally regarded as exceptions to the rule. Ryan Dempter, as you finally pointed out, is an aging, lucky and overachieving pitcher.

If you look at his career stats, which are more important than the career stats of other pitchers, you would see why a low babip, low hr/fb etc matter. When those stats are lower than normal, Dempster puts up better numbers. When they are not he returns to the Dempster we all know. Furthermore, those peripherals are generally regarded as out of the control of the pitcher, whether a FB becomes a HR is a matter of chance.

"Ahh so I get it, your interpretation of a fluke is the correct one because it supports your argument."

That's been my interpretation from the very beginning. This was my first comment on this issue:

"A fluke is when an outfielder miffs a catch, bobbles the ball midair, and another outfielder makes the catch. A fluke is when a batter grounds a ball between the pitchers legs and just out of the reach of the both the middle infielder’s gloves."

Websters:

"1 : an accidentally successful stroke at billiards or pool
2 : a stroke of luck "

Pretty much the same thing.

My point all along has been that being one be one of the top five hardest pitchers in MLB for opposing hitters to make contact against (over the course of an entire season) is not something that lends itself to being done on accident.

"I'm not the first to integrate the word fluke into baseball, it's been used before and it'll be used again... I can't believe you think the word fluke isn't applicable to baseball."

I never once said that there weren't flukes in baseball. In fact, the initial thing I wrote on this issue was an example of a fluke in baseball and the fact that other people use the word, doesn't mean they're always using it correctly.

"Ryan Dempster, as you finally pointed out, is an aging, lucky and overachieving pitcher."

When did I write or even imply that he was 'lucky' or 'overachieving'? I wrote that he was getting older. I wrote that I don't expect him to pitch as well as he did last year in the future. I haven't written he overachieved or had a lucky season, and I also haven't once put words in your mouth so you shouldn't put words in mine.

Anyways, there really are honest, identifiable differences between pre-2008 Ryan Dempster and post 2008 Ryan Dempster:

1. He was a more athletic person in 2008 than previous years and I do believe there is a correlation between being athletic and performing well in athletic events. Just a hunch.

2. He altered his delivery.

(To be honest I don't know if the delivery helped him in 2008 in any way at all. There's no way to know if the delivery itself made the ball hard to pick up for opposing hitters and there's no way to know if Dempster really was tipping his pitches before 2008, and even if he was, there's no way to be sure that the 'glove shake' removed the ability to hide his grip. Nevertheless, changing his delivery was noteworthy. And who knows? Maybe just having the impression that he was once tipping his pitches and that he now wasn't just made him more confident when he threw the ball to the plate.)

3. His command got better (or at least he walked fewer hitters) and his strikeouts went way up. He posted the best K/BB ratio of his career.

4. Dempster's slider and changeup were better in 2007 than they were in 2008. The slider broke over an inch more and his changeup resembled the movement of his fastball in 2008 more than it did in 2007.

To top things off Ryan Dempster's 2008 FIP was the lowest he has ever had as a starting pitcher. So even that stat suggests that he was a better pitcher in 2008 than any other year as a starter.

So we have evidence of direct causation for Ryan Dempster's 2008 season being a better season than in 2008 and we have evidence that Ryan Dempster himself directly influenced that causation.