Jamie Moyer going deep into games
Posted by Andy on June 22, 2010
Tonight Jamie Moyer pitched 8 innings and picked up the win. He joins this elite group of pitchers with at least 4 such games this year.
| Rk | Player | Year | #Matching | W | L | GS | CG | SHO | SV | IP | H | ER | HR | BB | SO | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ubaldo Jimenez | 2010 | 5 | Ind. Games | 5 | 0 | 1.000 | 0.64 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 25 | 3 | 1 | 12 | 28 | 0.88 | |
| 2 | Roy Halladay | 2010 | 5 | Ind. Games | 5 | 0 | 1.000 | 0.41 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 44.0 | 23 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 36 | 0.57 |
| 3 | Adam Wainwright | 2010 | 4 | Ind. Games | 4 | 0 | 1.000 | 0.53 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 34.0 | 17 | 2 | 0 | 5 | 28 | 0.65 |
| 4 | Felix Hernandez | 2010 | 4 | Ind. Games | 4 | 0 | 1.000 | 1.04 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 34.2 | 23 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 33 | 0.75 |
| 5 | Dan Haren | 2010 | 4 | Ind. Games | 4 | 0 | 1.000 | 2.73 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 33.0 | 27 | 10 | 6 | 3 | 36 | 0.91 |
| 6 | Matt Garza | 2010 | 4 | Ind. Games | 4 | 0 | 1.000 | 1.12 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 32.0 | 19 | 4 | 2 | 8 | 24 | 0.84 |
| 7 | Matt Cain | 2010 | 4 | Ind. Games | 4 | 0 | 1.000 | 0.26 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 34.0 | 13 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 27 | 0.62 |
June 22nd, 2010 at 9:16 pm
who (if anyone) was the last person his age or older to have that many types of games with ~70 games into the season?
June 22nd, 2010 at 9:16 pm
Can you post this list again, but without the modifier of wins? Just to see who the leaders are in games pitched 8 innings plus....
June 22nd, 2010 at 9:22 pm
Put Moyer & Strasburg on All-Star Team?
June 22nd, 2010 at 9:36 pm
Cubbies - The only player his age or older to make more than 1 start in a season was Phil Niekro in '86 and '87. Niekro had 2 such games in the first 70 games of '86 (plus 2 more which of 8+ which he didn't win) and no such games in the first 70 '87 (He lost two 8+ games)
June 22nd, 2010 at 9:39 pm
@2 Thomas -Here are the leaders heading into today:
Generated 6/22/2010.
June 22nd, 2010 at 9:54 pm
So, I'll admit it... I had never heard of a Doug Fister. Let alone the fact that he was leading the AL in ERA.....
June 22nd, 2010 at 11:04 pm
[...] Andy's post earlier this evening made reference to the fact that Doug Fister has pitched at least 8 innings in 4 of his starts this seasons. [...]
June 22nd, 2010 at 11:24 pm
The Phillies with Moyer is an odd situation. How is he a productive pitcher anymore? He has a 4.76 era, a 88era+. But his productivity seems more than it is because baseball still puts too much emphasis on W/L.
June 23rd, 2010 at 12:08 am
Man, I'm confused as to what you think a productive start is? He's had 6 games this season where he's given up 3 or less earned runs. He's not a great pitcher, but what about a guy that has 13 starts and 6 have 3 or less earned runs and another 3 have 4 earned runs allowed,... what about that isn't productive?
W/L mean nothing (in for a pitcher), but the goal, I would think, would be to every game, give your team a chance to win... and if 9 out of 13 starts under 4 earned runs isn't giving your team a chance to win, I don't really know what is....
Again, he's not great, but I'd say he'd be a pretty damn good 5th started for almost every team in the league.
June 23rd, 2010 at 12:08 am
Over the last few posts I keep hearing "Wins are overrated" like a mantra.
While I do agree that baseball has a flawed system of assigning wins (Harvey Haddix pitches 12+ innings of perfection and gets the loss, while Brad Lidge gives up a three run lead in the top of the ninth, only to get the W when Howard hits a walk-off) I don't think Wins are irrelevant.
I remember an interview circa '94 with former Cy Young winner "Black" Jack McDowell. In it, he said if his team was up by eight runs, he wasn't going to waste pitches trying to get guys to chase a bad pitch. He would simply throw fastball after fastball, fully knowing he would give up a few long balls, inflate his ERA, etc. But he believed given a big lead, it was more important to his team to pitch deep into a game by economizing pitches, eating innings, not taxing his arm and saving his bullpen.
My point is this question; Is a starter more valuable because his era is lower or if he went the distance in a blow out?
Pitchers with more SOs tend to have lower ERAs but higher pitch counts, leading to fewer innings.
Ismael Valdez was notorious and hated by teammates for caring more about his personal stats, than pitching to the circumstances of the game.
Sid 'el Sid' Fernandez is third all time in H/9IP and 13th all time in SO/9IP, but ended up winning only 114 games and nearly 1/3 of his games were NDs. But his contemporary, Jack Morris couldn't touch Sid in SO/9IP or H/9IP, but hung in their when he didn't have his best stuff, took a loss, went deep into games, and most importantly ate innings. He has 254 wins with none of the periphery stats of Sid, but I'd take him in a game 7 everytime.
June 23rd, 2010 at 12:24 am
moyer ended tonight with a whip of 1.06 but an era of 4.43 through 14 starts!?!?! that is difference of 3.37! has there ever been a starting pitcher with a difference in era and whip as wide as moyer's with at least as many starts? seems pretty amazing to me.
June 23rd, 2010 at 3:11 am
Well Kingcrab, two Fridays ago Moyer had one of the worst starts of his career... 1.0 IP and 9 ER against the Red Sox (which, as you Moyer doubters should note, he followed up with 8IP/2ER and a win against the Yankees). Take that game away, and his ERA goes down to 3.57. Also, a homer prone pitcher will usually have a lower WHIP proportional to ERA, since it takes fewer hits/walk for him to give up runs. Add to that the fact that Moyer pitches to contact and rarely walks anyone, and that might explain his low WHIP a little bit.
June 23rd, 2010 at 6:48 am
I miss Complete Games.
June 23rd, 2010 at 6:55 am
"Pitchers with more SOs tend to have lower ERAs but higher pitch counts, leading to fewer innings."
Duke, this is only really true for high-strikeout pitchers who also walk a lot of batters (e.g. Kershaw, Gallardo, Jonathan Sanchez, Dice K). For high-strikeout pitchers in general, though, it's really not true at all. Last year, for example, Tim Lincecum led the NL in both K/9 and IP per start. Justin Verlander led the AL in K/9 and the majors in IP. The top five in the AL in IP (Verlander, Halladay, Felix, Sabathia, and Greinke) were also all in the top ten in K/9. If you look at the MLB leaders in IP per start, it was mostly guys whose K rates were high, or at least above average. The exceptions (guys with average K rates like Cliff Lee and Chris Carpenter, or low K rates like Joel Pineiro and Zach Duke) had extraordinarily low BB rates (and as a result, good K/BB ratios). It's walks, not strikeouts, that lead to high pitch counts and early exits. In general it's high-K, low-BB pitchers who end up pitching the most innings.
June 23rd, 2010 at 7:10 am
[...] 1: Jamie Moyer(notes) went eight innings for the win for the fourth time this season, joining an exclusive club. But don’t celebrate too loudly. Moyer is a little sensitive about beating the Indians [...]
June 23rd, 2010 at 7:32 am
I should also add that the point I made in my previous comment applies to Jack Morris as well. With the exception of 1981 (when his K and BB rates were both about league average), the years in which Morris had his career bests in IP per start ('83, '86, and '87) were also the years in which he had his career bests in K/9 and K/BB (in '83, the year he led the AL in IP, he was second in K/9). So Morris doesn't really work as an example of a guy who threw more innings by striking out fewer batters.
June 23rd, 2010 at 10:24 am
Duke,
There are just way too many variable and flaws in a pitcher's W/l for them to matter much. But the idea of a Pitcher's win is so ingrained in the baseball that's it's very difficult to look at that aspect of the game objectively.
McDowell 1993 Cy Young season is a good example of this point. He wasn't even one of the top 10 pitchers in the A.L. that year and he won the Cy Young because he had the most wins. Appier should have won the Cy Young that year. Mcdowell wasn't even the best pitcher on his team!! He was third! Fernandez and Alverez were better.
Take David Cone in 1993. It's one of his best seasons, 138era+, 6.3WAR, yet the Royals only gave him 2.9 runs/per game that season, (worst in the league) and he went 11-14. So when baseball writers look at this season they rank at as a bad season because of his w/l record.
McDowell's logic doesn't really make much sense. How often does a starting pitcher actually have the luxury of having an 8 run lead? And if he has an 8 run lead why would you just "feed" them fastballs? It's not football where you can just run out the clock.
Take last night's Met game. The Mets had a 10-0 lead. Jon Niese hadn't pitched in 90 minutes but Jerry Manuel put him out there to try and qualify for a win. He fed the Tigers fastballs and they scored 6 runs and were back in the game just like that. The irony is Manuel had to take Niese out of the game before he could qualify for a win because the Mets were in jeopardy of letting the Tigers back in the game because they were chasing a pitcher's win.
As far as Jack Morris goes, he's one of the most overrated pitchers of the last 40 years. Not only was Morris on good hitting teams, the Tigers also had excellent defense up the middle, Lemmon, Trammel, Whitaker and Parish.
El Sid is really kind of an underrated pitcher. His main problem was stamina so he maybe he should have been made a closer instead of a starter. But El Sid pitched for some brutal defensive teams for the Mets from 1989-1993. He won 14 games for the 1992 (Worst team money could buy) Mets. Think about it he had an outfield of Vince Coleman/Darly Boston, Howard Johnson, and Bobby Bonilla. An infield of Chris Donnels/Dave Magadan, Bill Pecota/Jeff Mcnight, a 37 year old Willie Randolph at second and a 36 year old Eddie Murray at first, Todd Hundley/Mackey Sasser behind the plate. That has to be one of the all-time worst defensive teams. The only guy that could play defense was SS Dick Schofield and back up catcher Charlie O'brien.
June 23rd, 2010 at 10:45 am
malcolm, yes i do understand that when you subtract a players worst statistical game from his overall stats, the players number will be improved. but, believe it or not, moyer did pitch in that game against boston and it does count in his stats. we can't just pick and choose which games to include in player's stat just because it looks better.
moyer is 6th in the league in whip yet 37th in the league in era, which leads me to believe that if you get on base, you have a pretty good chance of scoring on moyer.
also noticed that his home era is 3.00 and his away era is a whopping 5.89, the way people talk about cbp, you would have thought that it would have been the other way around.
June 23rd, 2010 at 11:43 am
Kingcrab,
That's a good point, I've never really understood the logic in taking out 1 or 2 Bad starts from a player and then saying, "if you take those away, he's really done this". Couldn't you do the same thing in reverse by taking out his two BEST starts and saying, "He's really much worse without his two best starts". No one ever seems to do the latter.
After Halladay and Hamels the Phillies rotation is pretty mediocre/terrible. Moyer is at 94era+, Kendrick is at 93+, and Blanton is at 60+. Which still makes me scratch my head as to why they traded Cliff Lee?
June 23rd, 2010 at 12:16 pm
I just looked quickly through McDowell's 22 wins in 1993. In 12 of them his team had to come from behind. In 7 of them, he had a lead and gave it up (sometimes more than once in a game), later to be bailed out by his offense. I'm not sure how those compare to other starters. But they don't seem like the numbers of a guy who is great at protecting leads, no matter what size, because he just "knows how to win."
I didn't notice any games in which he had a big lead and gave up lots of meaningless runs late (though I wasn't focused on that).
June 23rd, 2010 at 12:30 pm
McDowell had 9 "cheap wins" (GS < 50) in '93. I am looking at those again to see whether any turned into bad starts statistically only after the game was in hand.
Seven are clearly cheap wins. He pitched poorly, and did not pitch "to the score"
4/6: Blows an early lead, giving up 4 through 3
4/11: Gives up a run in 1st, down 3-1 after 5, gets a 2-run lead and gives one back before pulled
4/16: Loses a lead in the 2nd, gives up 4 through 3
4/27: Falls behind 3-0 in the 2nd
5/8: Has an early 5-0 lead, falls behind by the 3rd
6/26: Blows a lead, giving up 4 through 4
7/27: Falls behind 2-0 after 1, 4-1 after top 6
One could count as coasting with a lead, though I'd say his manager wasn't too comfortable:
6/21: Up 6-0 after 2, 7-2 after 5, gives up 4 before pulled mid-7th
Only in one did he give up runs which were pretty meaningless:
7/11: Up 11-2 in bottom 8, pulled mid-inning after allowing 3 runs
June 23rd, 2010 at 12:33 pm
I'd bet if you do that through Jack Morris's career, you're going to find a similar pattern. Probably a few games in which he gave up "meaningless" runs. Most of the wins in which he had a bad line were because he pitched badly -- putting his team in a hole, giving up leads.
June 23rd, 2010 at 12:36 pm
John, Kingcrab - I think the thing about Moyer's worst start is that it is an extreme outlier. He usually holds his opponents to less than four runs; the nine-spot in one inning counts overall, of course, but in the end it's just one game - he didn't give up five in a start and then four in a start, which would make his stats look a bit better but hurt his team in two games instead of one. This is the idea behind the "quality start" - 6 or more IP, 3 or fewer runs. (Though I think it should be 3 runs in 7 or more. How is a 4.50 ERA "quality"? And quality also means pitching deep into a game and saving your bullpen, keeping your worst arms on the bench.)
June 23rd, 2010 at 12:53 pm
Good stuff, JT. There's a pretty good critique/debunking of the "pitching to the score" theory here (which includes a look at McDowell's '93 season):
http://www.stathead.com/bbeng/spira/pitchtoscore.htm
And a detailed analysis of Morris here:
http://www.detroittigertales.com/2008/12/jack-morris-and-pitching-to-score.html
June 23rd, 2010 at 3:00 pm
Kingcrab, I wasn't implying that the bad start doesn't count. All I was saying was that that 4.43 ERA is not evenly distributed, and the more evenly distributed his earned runs are the more likely it will be that all his numbers will line up in a way that makes sense... and of course you have a good chance of scoring against Moyer if you get on. That's because he gives up homers. But his low WHIP means you aren't very likely to get on in the first place. See how it all works out?
June 23rd, 2010 at 3:05 pm
And John, I'll give you Kendrick, but I don't think Moyer's been a Major League starter for 25 years because he's "mediocre". I also think in the case of Blanton it's pretty clear that he's just had a bad year so far. Look at what he did last season... he didn't put up ace numbers, but you have to admit they're pretty good. Comparable to the overpaid A.J. Burnett, even...
June 23rd, 2010 at 3:33 pm
J Twisto,
Good research on McDowell. It's odd because if you don't look at Wins, he doesn't appear on hardly any top ten categories for pitchers. He's got to be one of the few starting pitchers to win a Cy Young and not appear in the top ten for ERA, K's, Whip, HR/9, or K/BB. He lead the league in shutouts with 4, which was kind of an irrelevant accomplishment by 1993 and he finished 7th for bb/9.
The thing that hurts Appier is that by and large the baseball writers have severely underrated him and most probably rate McDowell as the better pitcher. And being objective, Appier should be considered a borderline HOF.
Nightfly,
That's a valid point that you bring up with Moyer but I was playing Devil's advocate. Why doesn't anyone ever mention to throw out a pitcher's BEST start when it's an Outlier or throw out a batter's 3 HR game?
To me, if you want to be fair, if you want to "throw out" his worst start then you should also "throw out" his best start and then see where his numbers sit.
June 23rd, 2010 at 3:54 pm
Johnny Twisto,
I didn't say McDowell pitched that way, I paraphrased an interview I heard when I was 16. I didn't have the time to check to see if BlackJack backed up his mouth. I simply was trying to sight examples of why stats like WHIP, SO/9IP, SO/BB are in my opinion, as misleading as wins. I think you have to look at the entire portfolio of a pitcher to see his worth, and nothing compares to seeing that pitcher every day. I grew up in New York and watched Sid Fernandez every 5th day. I can tell you first hand, H/9IP does not justify the way he pitched.
I may have sighted poor examples, but you can't argue the logic of "pitching to the score." Maybe its not practiced, but it CAN be...
I've also have seen pitchers give up 4 runs in the first or second inning. Some of them buckle down, keep their team in it, and go 7-8 innings. I've also have seen guys totally give up, blame a sore shoulder and take an early shower.
Andy Pettitte always seems to be pitching with two guys on, but always seems to pitch out of it, keep his team in it and not worry about his WHIP, just the final score.
June 23rd, 2010 at 3:56 pm
Malcolm,
I didn't mean to imply that Moyer's been a "mediocre" pitcher for his entire career. From his years in Baltimore and into Seattle from 1993-2003 he was a good/very good pitcher. I meant that he's basically a league average/slightly below league average pitcher at this stage in his career. He has a 94era+ which ranks him, 37th out of 55 starting pitchers in the N.L. He ranks 87th/out of 284 pitchers in pitchers WAR in the N.L. this year.
My point was that his "Wins" makes him seem like he's having a much better season than he really is having. He's ranked 5th in the N.L. with his 8 wins. So a lot of baseball people will conclude that he's having a very good season. Johan Santana has a 5-4 record but has a 123era+, so some people feel that's hes having a rough season because of his record.
June 23rd, 2010 at 4:26 pm
JohnQ - valid point. I think that when a pitcher is generally good people tend to overlook a disastrous start; when he's generally BAD then anything where he was suddenly lights-out is and gets tossed. I know Joe Posnanski, in discussing Luke Hochevar, has written something like "take away that shutout and his ERA rises to X." If you want to talk about Pujols vs. Eckstein, for example, you'd talk about their representative games: you'd discount Pujols going 0-12 in a series; you'd likewise discount Eckstein suddenly hitting four homers.
The extreme outliers for pitchers are almost always bad starts - you can never go below zero runs allowed, but you can go as high as you like before the manager comes to get you. It's easy to give up double or even triple your ERA in a single start. It's also usually easier to pick out that one worst outing than to pick between a guy's six one-run games. Dropping one of those makes less difference overall than the one game he gave up ten runs; it's also less accurate, in the sense that those one-run games are more representative of his skill than the one horrible game.
I'm going to agree with you on one thing - man the Phils should have kept Cliff Lee.
June 23rd, 2010 at 4:30 pm
Duke, my post wasn't intended to attack you. I just wanted to look at the data and see what I found. I'm sure there ARE examples of pitchers who won 20 games with a 3.50-4.00 ERA, and in fact they did give up a lot of garbage runs, and did deserve to win most of those games. My theory is that is not a repeatable feat over years, but if someone has an example of a pitcher who did consistently win more games than his runs allowed/run support would suggest, based on when he allowed his runs, it would be interesting to see.
June 23rd, 2010 at 5:39 pm
moyer ended tonight with a whip of 1.06 but an era of 4.43 through 14 starts!?!?! that is a difference of 3.37! has there ever been a starting pitcher with a difference in era and whip as wide as moyer's with at least as many starts?
You'll love this. Highest (ERA minus WHIP) for any pitcher who made at least 10 starts: Roy Halladay, Blue Jays, 2000 — 10.64 ERA, 2.202 WHIP, difference of 8.438. Halladay pitched 67.2 innings that year.
If you exclude pitchers who pitched fewer than 100 innings, your leader is Dewey McDougal of the 1895 St. Louis Browns — 114.2 IP, 8.32 ERA, 2.032 WHIP, difference of 6.288.
If you insist on a "modern-era" pitcher with more than 100 IP, the leader is Doug Drabek of the 1998 Orioles — 108.2 IP, 7.29 ERA, 1.537 WHIP, difference of 5.744.
I decided it might be more interesting to look at ERA divided by WHIP, then compare Moyer's current figure of 4.167 to the ERA/WHIP of other pitchers with WHIPs under, say, 1.200. Here's the list I got (10+ games started):
1. Ryan Rupe, 2002 Rays — 5-10 W-L, 90.0 IP, 5.60 ERA, 1.200 WHIP, 4.667 ERA/WHIP.
2. Bill Geiss, 1882 Orioles (AA) — 4-9 W-L, 95.2 IP, 4.80 ERA, 1.108 WHIP, 4.332 ERA/WHIP.
3. Eric Milton, 2002 Twins — 13-9 W-L, 171.0 IP, 4.84 ERA, 1.187 WHIP, 4.077 ERA/WHIP.
4. Pedro Martinez, 2006 Mets — 9-8 W-L, 132.2 IP, 4.48 ERA, 1.108 WHIP, 4.043 ERA/WHIP.
5. Joe Gibbon, 1965 Pirates — 4-9 W-L, 105.2 IP, 4.51 ERA, 1.126 WHIP, 4.005 ERA/WHIP.
6. Pete Richert, 1967 Senators — 2-6 W-L, 54.1 IP, 4.64 ERA, 1.178 WHIP, 3.939 ERA/WHIP.
7. David Bush, 2006 Brewers — 12-11 W-L, 210.0 IP, 4.41 ERA, 1.138 WHIP, 3.875 ERA/WHIP.
8. Vern Ruhle, 1979 Astros — 2-6 W-L, 66.1 IP, 4.07 ERA, 1.085 WHIP, 3.750 ERA/WHIP.
9. Al Atkinson, 1884 Athletics (AA) — 11-11 W-L, 184.0 IP, 4.21 ERA, 1.125 WHIP, 3.742 ERA/WHIP.
10. Kris Benson, 2004 Mets — 4-4 W-L, 68.0 IP, 4.50 ERA, 1.206 WHIP, 3.732 ERA/WHIP.
11. Warren Hacker, 1955 Cubs — 11-15 W-L, 213.0 IP, 4.27 ERA, 1.150 WHIP, 3.712 ERA/WHIP.
12. Brian Anderson, 1998 D'backs — 12-13 W-L, 208.0 IP, 4.33 ERA, 1.178 WHIP, 3.676 ERA/WHIP.
13. Phil Ortega, 1966 Senators — 12-12 W-L, 197.1 IP, 3.92 ERA, 1.069 WHIP, 3.666 ERA/WHIP.
14. Dick Donovan, 1963 Indians — 11-13 W-L, 206.0 IP, 4.24 ERA, 1.160 WHIP, 3.655 ERA/WHIP.
15. Dennis Eckersley, 1980 Red Sox — 12-14 W-L, 197.2 IP, 4.28 ERA, 1.174 WHIP, 3.647 ERA/WHIP.
Moyer's HR/9 rate of 1.4 is higher than what any of these pitchers allowed.
Since Moyer is on pace for roughly 200 IP, the most comparable pitcher seasons appear to be those of Milton, Bush, Hacker, Anderson, Ortega, Donovan, and Eckersley. Lefthander Anderson had a K/9 rate very close to Moyer's, at 4.1.
June 23rd, 2010 at 6:54 pm
ahhh...yes, eric milton, the ryan howard before ryan howard. i remember him going schmitty and taking the batter deep 4 times in one game in a well deserved victory.
June 24th, 2010 at 2:08 am
Throw out that one-inning, nine-run, aberration at Boston, and Moyer's yielded just six runs on 16 hits in his last four starts, covering 31 innings, for a 1.74 ERA.