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Braves Ongoing Season Comments Thread..
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Comments
Now for some actual tangible points about tonight's game.
We play Washington on the road in a really important series. We need to win the series and we sure can't afford to get swept, that would leave us just 1 game up in the all important loss column. Tonight we face tough left hander Patrick Corbin. He's been good all season and even better recently.
On the plus side we've been as good against lefties as righties. We have a slightly lower batting average and slightly higher OBP and OPS against lefties, which some of you know are measures I look at.
We fair a bit worse on the road with a .323 OBP and .752 OPS.
We start Keuchel who has been pretty good since we traded for him, but not quite as good statistically as Corbin.
I'll be back with Corbin's home stats and Keuchel's road stats.
Corbin's home ERA is 1.68 vs Keuchel's road ERA of 4.24...…..YIKES !
Slightly yes, but more so with unearned runs than ERA. Range is a bit of a factor but limited range sometimes leads to fewer errors, so it's a tricky equation.
Over the long run defenses rarely stay real low or real high year after year. Like most external factors they tend to even out over time.
You don’t think playing with the leagues worst defense behind you is a special case
It doesn't help for sure but the effect of a bad defense on a pitchers numbers is a bit overstated. Especially these days with all the shifting.
Plus its not like Citi field is a hitters paradise. They have brought the fences in a bit but that park in general should benefit a pitcher. That offsets some of the defense liability the Mets have IMO
The Mets currently have the 24th ranked defense as measured by ESPN. Over Syndergaard's 4 plus seasons with The Mets they've been 24th, 15th, 14th, 13th and 12th. So basically it's average.
Where it gets interesting is rating defense behind a specific pitcher. Greg Maddux aided his defense in 2 important ways. 1. he had such control he could almost dictate where the ball would be hit, The shifts when he pitched were remarkably accurate. 2. He was the best fielding pitcher in history. Since more balls were hit poorly against him he had more chances than most pitchers as well.
So if a pitcher consistently has worse defense when he's pitching, you can just about be sure it's his fault.
He was the best fielding pitcher in history.
Boy you arent kidding. He got lots of weak contact comebackers but it wasn't just that. His motion put him in an excellent fielding position and he made all the tough plays as well.
That 4 year run he had for the Braves was just incredible.
Maddux not as great in the playoffs though. I’d take Smoltz first
Kasey. During the time The Yankees were winning titles and keeping The Braves from doing so Maddux and Glavine were concurrently tied for the longest streak of consecutive postseason starts of going at least 7 innings and giving up 2 or fewer runs in MLB history.
I know it's hard to reconcile, but it's fact. I still can't grasp how the team won just a single World Series during that 15 year run.
Totally reject the premise a bad defense affects unearned runs more than earned runs. Based on what you looked at it makes sense, because you used team errors as a defensive stat. This however ignores range, arm strength, etc.
They are 24th in terms of errors like you said, but dead last in terms of runs saved. They’ve given up 40 more runs than an average defensive team already this year. This stat takes in shifts. This stat accounts for errors, range, arm strength and all the other things you could think of. It isn’t perfect but it is the best we have.
You are right that maybe this stuff will even out over time. That makes sense to me, I checked and you are right that they actually have had good defenses in the past. But in the current year it has probably adversely affected him more than you are giving credit for. Especially since he is such a ground ball pitcher.
Long story short, Thor has way underperformed his peripherals this year, which say you’d expect his ERA to be about a 0.7 points lower than it actually is (FIP of 3.65 vs ERA of 4.35). This means he has been “unlucky”, meaning he has had bad ball in play luck and bad sequencing. Some of this is normal bad luck (low strand rate) and some of this is his defense.
I also recognize this is my way of looking at stats and trying to separate out the variance, which isn’t your way of doing it. I just want to advocate that he is still a really good pitcher even if he isn’t 2016 Thor now and I would be happy if he magically appeared on our roster.
Also just to triple post, there are some guys that consistently out perform or underperform their FIP numbers for whatever reason. For example Julio Teheran always performs better than his peripherals would suggest for whatever reason. Literally if you guys know why please tell the Braves so they can figure it out haha.
Thor has always underperformed them, so it may be more likely he is a true 3.9-4 ERA guy this year than he is a 4.3 or 3.6 guy. Somewhere in the middle is probably a smart bet.
just wanted to add that in to give you all the info I pulled up and saw.
GD I hate not being able to delete when I have a mess like that last post. I went ahead and posted just to get the crap out of my way.
Ok. I hate when our pitchers can't throw a f...ing strike. I turned off the game when Sobotka walked a hitter and loaded the bases with an MVP candidate in the batters' box. It is hard to understand why it is so hard for professionals to throw strikes. As a fan it is absolutely torment to watch.
Get out of the bullpen if you can’t throw strikes. No business being in there
The next batter hit a grand slam, it's ridiculous.
Another ridiculous thing. Our 22 year old 5'8'' 165lb 2nd baseman has 4 grand slams. Our 29 year old 6'5'' power hitting 1st baseman has 0......nada ! That seems almost impossible. You'd think Freddie would have at least 5 just by sticking his bat out.
Freddie is frustrating sometimes. Sometimes I wish he would sell out for more homers. He’s got plenty of power but never seems to try to elevate and pull it. He just doesn’t try to hit dingers in a way that someone like Donaldson does.
still take Freddie all day every day, but I’m just saying.