As I was perusing the internets yesterday, I came across this poll:
The word "metric" caught my eye especially. If anyone is wondering if sabermetrics, or at least sabermetric-like-thought is creeping more into the mainstream, I would point to this poll as proof that, yes, it has. A lot of the media still hits us over the head with arguments like, "Player X can't be a Cy Young candidate! They've only won 14 games!" What the Talking Head fails to mention most of the time, is the player's low ERA, high strikeout totals and lack of run support. Is it ironic that it's the sports writers, those who have the most access, that are lagging behind the curve in terms of learning the ways of progressive baseball thought? I vote yes.
Here are the results of the poll:
ERA runs away with it. Win/Loss record beats out K/BB/HR per nine innings for a distant second. This is where the discussion can get interesting. W-L record is neater, more traditional and ultimately what "matters". A starting pitcher's job is put their team in position to win the games they start. How do they do that? By, um...pitching well. Pitching well usually equals winning, or at least coming pretty damn close to winning. Second question: how does one pitch well? By piling up the outs. By limiting hits (especially home runs) and walks. By striking people out with regularity. Sort of a putting the chicken before the egg before the whatever comes before the egg (zygotes? Do they apply for birds?) type problem.
That brings me to a Crawfish Boxes poll. What say y'all?
0 recs | 2 comments
In all honesty
I’ll see someone’s ERA and for some kind of evaluation. It takes a few seconds after that for the saber part of my brain to then go look at the rate stats so I can dissect it.
Stephen Higdon - May 16, 2009
Where does WHIP rank in this thing?
or maybe OBP or OBP+ given up. Then again, might as well go with OPS or OPS+ given up.
goingforthecorner - May 17, 2009
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