JSngry

I think the advent of "advanced statistics" is changing the way we consider "performance". Of course, winning games is still the ultimate reward, obviously.&nbsp; But a better-played game can still be lost. That luck/randomness/whatever thing just won't go away. <br><br>Seeing all the details gives new insight into tendencies, which in turn allows for teams to better fit players to situations, and to indicate specifics in a player's game that could be tweaked better than just the old "eye test". (and yes, I've seen Moneyball, but all this stat-talk came to the fore for me last year when I started reading a local blog about the Rangers. A very mind-expanding experience, it was, among other things...) . The thing that hangs me up, though is this - stats are, as par as I can see, trailing indicators. You don't get a statistical read on declining performance until after it's happened over a large enough sample size to be meaningful. And by then, it's too late.<br><br>I'm still not convinced that head is always going to be better than gut, "by the book" managing drives me nuts. but a smart gut is the best of both worlds!

Did King Felix deserve the Cy Young last year? There were those who said he didn't. 13-12 is not a particularly good W-L record. But his peripherals were outstanding. He pitched a helluva lot beter than his W-L record could suggest. There's an argument to be made both ways.

Don't usually quote myself, but I've been mulling this over...if the object of the game is win (and of course it is), the obvious question is, how to you win? The obvious answer (with infinite ways to do it) is to score more runs than the other guy, and its pitching corollary, to give up fewer runs than you score. Now, these career numbers of runs allowed (not earned runs, mind you, runs, period) are so close, yet the W-L % of the two men are not so close. There's got to be a reason. The only ones I can think of are: Ryan gave up goobajillions of runs early in his career, and actually allowed negative runs for the rest of itRyan gave up goobajillions of runs in some games throughout his career and actually allowed negative runs in some of the othersRyan & Carlton both pitched well enough to win a fair number of games that they didn't, but Carlton ended up losing fewer of those games than did Ryan, for various reasonsCarlton pitched badly enough to lose in a lot of games that he won and Ryan pitched badly enough to lose in a lot of games that he lost because Steve Carlton had The Mojo and Nolan Ryan didn'tLooking at the numbers, I think # 3 is the most likely explanation (4 is a possibility, but longevity, strikeouts and no-hitters suggest some kind of mojo, at least as much as "mojo" actually exists...), and that's where the questions get asked - how many of Ryan's losses did he lose entirely because of his mis-pitching? How many of those games did he just not get adequate run support? How many times was he let down by bad defense? How many times did he himself make a mistake or two that his team didn't completely pick him up on? How many games did he have won only to have his team blow it after he left? In truth, the answer is no doubt some combination of the above, and some other happenings as well, I'm sure. But my big "baseball education" this year has been that if you want to look at one stat, you might as well look at them all. If they paint a constant picture, then good. If they don't, then look further. Something's going on!

Bring back flywheels. Please.

A fair question. Yes, I would. You don't get the longevity, the strikeouts, and the no-hitters without having some kind of extraordinary skills. The game has seen any number of strikeout specials that either burn out or get figured out, just as it has seen any number of players with ordinary skills still have long but not really distinguished careers. The W-L record is the only stat of Ryan's that even slightly raises an eyebrow. Everything else looks pretty damn good, career-wise, especially so once start at 1980 or so. If Ryan had retired in the early 1980s, you'd have to say, well, he finally figured it out, and let it go at that. But he didn't retire in 1980. He pitched really really well for some pretty lame teams. The numbers bear that out. So yeah, I do think he's a HOF-er, albeit not one whose presence is not worthy of some initial scrutiny. But in my mind, yes, the scrutiny is rewarded. I doubt that either one of us would have seen his fastball!

I think it's a team's job to find a way to win games...and if you as a starting pitcher have a 27 season career ERA of 3.19, I'd say the odds are that you've done your part at least as often as not. Here's another career comparison between Ryan & Carlton - Carlton allowed 2130 runs (not earned runs, runs, period) over 5217 innings. That's 3.67 runs/9 innings.Ryan allowed 2178 over 5386. That's 3.71 runs/9 innings. Almost identical. Besides, the W-L record in and of itself is just as much reflective of things a starting pitcher can't control as it is of things they can. If you're lifted in a tie game, or with a lead that gets blown' that's no win for you. If you lose a 3-2 or 2-1 or 1-0 game, hey, not necessarily the pitcher's fault. If you come out late in a game with the tying and/or lead runs on base and the bullpen lets them in, that's your loss. There's a lot more ways for a starting pitcher to lose a perfectly well-pitched game than there are to win it. If a guy's got great stats and does not have win totals to match, you gotta look at why not, and if the stats are consistent, the argument that the pitcher is putting up great stats without pitching well gets more difficult to accept at face value. Something is going on besides general poor pitching. It might be bad run support, it might be bad defense, it might be poor situational pitching. But it's not as simple as just saying this guy can't pitch all that well.

Pretty interesting to compare Ryan's career stats: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/ryanno01.shtml to Steve Carlton's: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/c/carltst01.shtml Their career WHIP is identical, and their career ERA+ is only three points apart. Their SO/BB ratio is not hugely different either. The big difference is in BB/9 where Carlton is 1.5 better than Ryan, but if you look at the latter part of the career of each,, Ryan was significantly better in this area than Carlton. All of which suggests that the "Ryan never pitched for really good teams" & "Ryan didn't to learn to pitch until he was already an established player" memes do withstand some statistical scrutiny, and do provide some balancing out of the less than awesome W-L record.

Actually...the new school of stat-heads would strongly disagree that W-L counts are in themselves an accurate measurement of a starting pitcher's skills effectiveness. In fact, they tend to scoff at the idea. Not saying I agree, but that whole thing is really gaining traction (and probably has been for a while now), and some of their arguments are pretty interesting...

Appearing nightly, for discerning gentlemens: Dusty Destry Destiny

..can become a tornado!

Darvish is of interest to several teams... Oswalt's back worries me. He's at the age where stuff like that doesn't just go away. Buerhle...I could see that going either way. A change of scenery might do him good, or he might just be on the beginning of an inevitable downslide. Really not a lot of prime pitching out there right now. It's a good time to have a good farm system with kids that are ready to step up.

What goes around...

Yeeaaahhhhhh....that one is SWEET.

Only in trailer parks, which the tornadoes take care of.

Time for a tribute to the tribute!

"Conventional wisdom" is that he wants to stay, and will stay if he can get an offer reasonably close to what the free-agency marketplace throws his way. About whether that can happen or not, ther is no conventional wisdom. I definitely want him here, even though he's not a "true ace". He's still a damn good pitcher, and in only two years of starting has showed growth over the course of both seasons. The best may still be to come, but even if not, he's still an asset, not a liability. What's needed is a definitive #1, and they're not really growing on trees, these days...

Uh...ok?

Any "creative ardor" on this one came from Ralph Carmichael...all Kenton did was lend his name (well, lend is not quite accurate, this one was the final Capitol Punishment & is the straw that broke that camel's back) and a few block-chord readings of a ballad or two, Nevertheless, pretty fun album to listen to, mostly, which is more than I expect this concert to be..although I do enjoy Donny McCaslin well enough, or at least his possibilities...would have like to have heard him in a different time/place NYC "jazz scene" instead of the one he found/finds himself in...

Seriously? Chick Corea has no first-hand knowledge about fusion being served hot out of the kitchen and how people respond to it?

The thing I really miss these days is the lack of a middle/grey/whatever area between playing "to" people and playing "for" them. That middle ground created one big lake. Now that it's dried up, we got a bunch of ponds. Next step, dessert! I also miss working bands making records of working music, no matter where in that spectrum it fell, but that's a different matter altogether. Ah, but I think that Herbie Nichols definitely had an audience in mind for his music. He just couldn't find it, that's the tragedy. If he was just some guy who was all fuck it, I'ma play what I wanna and don't give a damn if anybody hears it or not, then that would not be a tragedy, that would be just another some guy with crazy music and a bad attitude. But Herbie Nichols definitely wanted people to hear and share his music.

Maybe it's not a proper pianist. Maybe it's a horn player sitting down at the piano hitting a few chords.

Album title in lavender font!