From the torture chamber that is HoraceClarke66's 2021 season
The morning after a game in which
your New York Yankees became the first major-league team, ever, to suffer four
blow saves and still win seems the perfect time to pass along these
amazing stats from the Mets broadcast team last week.
(In the alternate universe that Mets TV broadcasts exist in, highly knowledgeable color men and play-by-play guys alike not only call a good game but pass on many pieces of true baseball wisdom—as opposed to telling you what color the teams’ uniforms are and how much they hate long games. Too bad their team sucks heheheheheheheheheheh.)
But I digress. Take a look at this:
Percentage of innings pitched by relief pitchers, and those relief pitchers’ collective ERAs:
IP% ERA
1970s:
27.6 3.58
1980s:
30.4 3.60
1990s:
32.5 4.10
2000s:
34.1 4.18
2010s:
35.9 3.88
2019:
42.1 4.46
2020:
44.5 4.44
2021:
41.8 4.16
There are some blips, and some other factors that must play into the data here. But the overall, half-century trend is clear:
The more relief pitchers are used, the less effective they are.
This should not be a surprise. The decreased use of starters means that, generally, your very best pitchers with the greatest variety of pitches are used…less.
The fascinating conclusion to all this is that…it doesn’t work. The entire system that the Great Baseball Minds (GBMs) have told us is unavoidable—in fact is ineffectual.
And MLB’s great idea for getting around its proven failure in logic is a new rule where you get to start extra innings with a guy on second.
Makes perfect sense.
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47 comments:
Don’t forget all those fun “bullpen games” we’re now subjected to, where all the low end scrap heap relievers team up to try and form Voltron...um, form something that resembles an actual starting pitcher
"Hey think the time is right for a palace revolution
But where I live the game to play is compromise solution"
~ Jagger/Richard
Remember when the Yankees had a place for the street fighting man?
Hoss, you complete almost as much as bitty.
From an earlier post today:
"TheWinWarblist said...
So we take the starting pitchers out early because they get hit "third time through the lineup." And because of that we have to carry 47 bullpen lug nuts. Which means we have no bench of hitters or position players. But the bullpen torches every lead. All the time. We have dozens of middle innings guys who can't get anyone out the first time through the lineup. I mean if the bullpen guys were any good, they'd be starters, right?
So why are we pulling the starters early??
Having a basket full of statistics does not help you if you are an INNUMERATE FUCKFACE.
August 10, 2021 at 10:30 AM "
I'm shocked. Absolutely shocked.
All this time I thought GBMs could see the future. Men and women with vision.
What's the old adage about there being lies, damned lies and then there's statistics?
I wonder: what statistics are these people looking at? Or is simply true that GBMs have all risen to their own level of mediocrity?
BTW, Horace, I think you should look into trademark protection for GBM. It has legs.
You complete ME almost as much as bitty ...
Oh my poor typing skills, sheesh ...
Oh, Winnie, you could be the worst typist in the world and still I would love you!
Glad to provide you some statistical proof for what you managed to discern on your own. But then...you were actually watching the game, and figuring things out for yourself.
Thinking! What a new concept!
Thanks, Dick Allen. And I think that, as so often happens—see Vietnam—the GBM have locked themselves into their own logic.
"Oh, we can train everybody to throw 100 mph, all the time!"
Which of course means that they walk or strikeout everybody. Which raises their pitch count and forces them out after five innings. And forces them on to the DL after a year or two.
"Oh, our starters all get hurt! We need more relief pitchers!"
Who are not as good as the starters, slow down the game, shrink the bench, and generally destroy more of what everybody loves about the game.
In the 1930s, there were actually elected politicians who advocated "solving" the Dust Bowl by paving it over.
They had nothing on the GBM.
From Fangraphs - there's a chart of recent appearances by NYY pitchers. I'm summing the sitch up here numerically . . . numbers for the past 7 days
[I apologize to our masters if FG is a dirty word on this site.]
ABREU - 3 appearances, 3 IP, 57 pitches
BRITTON -- 3 app 3 IP 46
LASAGNA -- 4 app, 4 IP 63
GREEN -- 3 app 4 IP 56
LUETGE -- 2 app, 2.1 IP 59
HOLMES -- 4 app, 4.2 IP 63
J ROD -- 2 app 2.1 IP 21
RIDINGS -- 3 app 3.1 IP 48
WANDY -- 3 app 3.2 IP 59
Chapman also appeared 1x, 1 IP, 30 pitches
Omitting Chapman, the total pitches = 472. Total appearances = 27.
In 7 days. Not counting whatever they did to warm in the bullpen + pickoff throws.
FOR REFERENCE: in 2006, Scott Proctor threw in 83 regular-season games, 102 innings.
Assuming (to simplify) 25 weeks in a season, that means he was in 3+ games per week (on average), throwing 4 innings per week avg.
I was unable to find the # of pitches Proctor threw in that year.
SO: This may be why we need to add Deivi, Sevvy, and a platoon of other arms to the major-league roster. One or more of the people now working in the bullpen is destined to (perhaps soon) be sent to the IL. Or have a complete melt-down-on-the-job inning.
When owners think starting pitching, they think "big contracts". Scared of Tj/injury (oddly starters seem to be getting hurt more while pitching less) Lugnuts, they come cheap. Runs scored? Well, mlb loves runs scored, and as long as the owners said team scores more runs, well, "Lugnuts, call up a couple more, the offense will overcome, and seats don't fill to watch 2 run games"
No one asked me but - do the people running this site ever update their "Yankee Matrix" blogroll? Like ever? Kinda stuck in the past, aren't we?
and no one is EVER going to ask you
Without history, there is no context—for anything, even baseball.
Go to the average fan site, and there's going to be ten guys in their thirties saying, 'Hey, isn't everyone being a little too hard on Brian Cashman?' What does that tell us?
Those of us who have been following this team for 50-60-70 years know a little something about it—and about the game.
We're always open to new perspectives, though!
We are?
Interesting point, C.
Joe FOB, Fangraphs is welcome here, too!
I remember poor Scott Proctor well. He was a victim of Joe Torre's late-Yankee neurosis. As Joe's bullpens got thinner and thinner (looking at you, Office boy!), he started pitching whoever had the hot hand to death. Proctor was never the same pitcher again.
Those stats, I think, are pretty telling. Almost every reliever is almost always having to throw 15-20 pitches an inning. I remember that in one of his last appearances, the late, unlamented Luis Cessa threw 5 pitches in an inning. (Boone immediately pulled him, apparently afraid he was using some sort of voodoo.)
Point is, today's relievers also have a lot of trouble getting a quick inning, which wears them down, too. And so the role of the hero of the ballfield, the pitcher, is further reduced.
If the GBM ran football, they would find a way to change quarterbacks on every set of downs.
I am imagining what Giancarlo the Magnificent is going to be like five years from now - he’s currently a $30MM singles hitter with warning track power.
Maybe his OBP will get better and he’ll become the quintessential lead off hitter.
WE WERE DOWN 2 ZIP BEFORE I COULD EVEN GET THE GAME ON!!?!!
FUCKERS!!!!
I read Fangraphs. I really enjoyed NotGraphs, but it was too fun so of course FanGraphs killed it.
The Blog Roll is there for important reasons. I have read Yankees for Justice many times.
Oh my! The bottom of the order did something other than suck it!?
Good for Higgy. But we're playing Davis again. Waste of roster space.
Win, this came as a surprise to you?!?!?
Did someone mention some sort of service time manipulation with Davis and Allen?
Which was why Allen was sent to SWB. He was a COVID replacement player and when he got demoted he didn’t have to clear waivers.
Huge surprise. Huge.
You have to think the players resent having Davis instead of Allen for such a bullshit reason. I'd be pissed if I was them.
Higgy giveth, and he taketh away. I guess it's his yin/yang.
It's déjà vu all over again. Yikes!
Cortes sucked tonight. Left him in too long thanks to the stretched pen.
Ooooh the blessed release of stupid futility ...
Jesus. 7 runs to these mooks.
Mr. Heiney gets the start in his very own Field of Dreams on Thursday. There is no bottom to this barrel - it's a bottomless pit.
Not going to extras tonight..,
Yankees simply embarrassed in every aspect of the game tonight. 4 errors, 13 strikeouts—many of them looking.
They are being beaten like whipped dogs, by a very bad team that has the ineffable advantage of actually wanting to be out there, playing baseball. Not so much your New York Yankees.
Fuck this team.
I gather this puts us two behind Boston and one ahead of Toronto … except they are leading the Angels 2-0 in the 4th.
You know, I love Aaron Judge to death. But his deterioration as a ballplayer continues to just amaze me. Today, he was standing as close to the plate as, oh, about Omaha, and took a called third strike on a little, 82-mph lollipop curve. He was as mad as a wasp's nest about it, but c'mon! This is the fucking game! Guard the plate with two strikes!
Stanton, meanwhile, seems to have foiled our evil plan to break him by making him play left field...by simply not moving out of him.
On the overthrow at third by Higgy, he barely flinched, though an alert outfielder, backing up, might have kept that run from scoring. Later, on the double in the gap in left-center, I believe he was emailing in his response from a cellphone.
Past time for the Yanks to just admit that The Millstone has somehow injured himself again. This is just going to become inevitable in a few days anyway—at which time we will hear about what a gamer he was to play through his small hurts.
Put him on the DL already, and call up Florial and Allen from Scranton. Let's at least have some people in the field who want to play.
Oh, and Bosch? This Yankees team is not going to October. It's one hope is to drag itself over the line to 82 wins. And that's a hope that is shrinking everyday.
I've already made other plans for October, Hoss. I was just noting this team's inexorable downward spiral into fourth place ... which is where it belongs.
Ma Boone tonight, questioned directly by Meredith about the 4 errors, came up with this:
"I don't know why it happened. You know, Higgy's elite...Long night, hot night. It happens."
Really? Even a: "We can't keep playing this. This is not acceptable, we have to play tighter, better, more heads-up baseball if we're going to do anything this season."
Even that mild an admonishment is not acceptable?
This is not a team making the least effort right now, and its manager has no idea of how to motivate them.
"Long night, hot night". I just had a peek at tomorrow's KC game time weather forecast: 97° and no clouds. Think it'll be a long afternoon?
We are heading into a nationally televised Field of Dreams game with Seamus Heany, the famous Irish poet on the mound. Maybe Cashman will recall Moonlight Graham back for a last appearance. I believe he has several reassignments still available. Though his wife might think he's out with his girlfriend.
Maybe we can somehow get Cashman to fall off the bleachers and choke on a hot dog.
Ranger--So I get the service time issue. But you're trying to contend for a posteason spot. Service-time issues notwithstanding, why wouldn't you just go with the better player, Allen? Is there a rational explanation for this, or is Cashman just even dumber than everyone imagines, if that's even possible?
Babe Ruth used to play in an all-wool uniform. The only AC he had was a cabbage leaf he would wear under this cap, back in the dugout—an old wives' tale. If he could manage that, these clowns can concentrate for a few hours.
Sal Licata, with a rant after my own heart, blasting the players on the Mets and Yankees for all the injuries in recent years.
Licata was riffing off an appearance by the Mets' GM, in which he frankly called his team "mediocre" most of the year and "terrible" of late. I understand that just hearing it, Ma Boone had to be led to his fainting couch.
The GM, Frank Scott, and Licata, said the players had to take some responsibility for being able to stay on the field, both pre-civid and now.
Ab-so-fucking-lutely.
Sal Licata is an unlistenable boor. But I'm glad you found solace in something he said.
Sorry boys, Moonlight Graham is not on the 40-man so someone will have to lose their slot if we try to use him.
Any suggestions?
The Archangel
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