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I wrote a blog post on Thursday for ESPN Insider's saber-slanted blog, TMI. It's behind the pay wall, but I think I can share the Excel file that's part of the post. If you're looking for a handy way to judge the value of a reliever, just plug in some ERA, innings pitched, and leverage index estimates for a whole bullpen, first including a reliever and then without.

My article addressed the Twins loss of Joe Nathan, and the calculations estimate his loss in the 2.5 win range.

You can download the spreadsheet here.

almost 2 years ago Limes_125_tiny Sky Kalkman 25 comments 0 recs  | 

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Did BP actually predict that Nathan would cost them six wins?

I mean, I think that Nathan is just as valuable as any other reliever in the game pretty much.. but six wins? Did Span go down too?

I like baseball.
I write for Beyond the Box Score and The Hardball Times Fantasy

by Satchel Price on Mar 13, 2010 3:39 PM EST reply actions  

Over the past few years, Nathan has consistently posted WARP3 scores around 6.0 (meaning he was six wins better than the average guy in Triple-A or on the waiver wire), and there’s no reason to believe that this year would have been any different. Those six wins last year would have completely rewritten the story of the AL Central, from a neck-and-neck race to the end to the Tigers clinching in the last week and resting up before meeting the Yankees in the ALDS. Nathan makes that much of a difference.

If you use a 1.75 ERA, 70 IP, and a leverage of 2 (all aggressive), you need a replacement level ERA of 5.60 to get 60 RAR using RAR = (repERA – playerERA) * IP/9 * LI.

If you chain the Twins bullpen using the default settings for the rest, you get Nathan worth 3.8 wins.

by Sky Kalkman on Mar 13, 2010 4:15 PM EST up reply actions  

A couple guys I really respect have questioned the accuracy of using the leverage model to address questions like this.

So maybe there are angles I’m completely missing. But one, I don’t currently think so. And two, I really don’t see any changes creating that much of a value swing.

Heck, MLB teams seem to love closers, but they still don’t pay them like 6 WAR guys.

  • Francisco Rodriguez: $12M a year. At $4M/win, that’s paying for 3 WAR, 3.5 WAR if you take off half a WAR for each year into the future.
  • Mariano Rivera: $15M a year. At $4M/win, that’s paying for 3.5 WAR. 4 WAR if you take take off half a WAR for each year into the future.

by Sky Kalkman on Mar 13, 2010 4:21 PM EST reply actions  

Your Before innings are a lot more than your After innings.

Simply keeping everyone’s innings the same in the After setup as the Before setup and giving all 66 of Franklin’s innings to Joe Scrub, I get that losing Franklin costs the team 8 runs.

Now, 438 IP is a really low number for a bullpen. I realize the Cardinals bullpen threw the least number of innings in the majors last year, but still, I don’t think you can project that few.

This is a really interesting situation, as your projections don’t show Franklin as a very dominant closer, and the rest of the bullpen is relatively strong with lots of small downgrades as you move down the line. This type of bullpen will handle the loss of the closer very well.

Finally, in general, everyone should keep in mind that this type of analysis does not answer the general questions of “how valuable is this reliever?” It answers the question, “how valuable is this reliever to this team?”

by Sky Kalkman on Mar 13, 2010 5:32 PM EST up reply actions  

yeah somehow in transfer from Excel to google sheets the math didn't add up

Also, the 2009 Cardinals gmLI were much lower than yours. Franklin the closers was only 1.58, with the next only being 1.14, than the rest being in the general range of 1.1 to .9

It was kind of just a first rough draft.

by FlimtotheFlam on Mar 13, 2010 5:43 PM EST up reply actions  

I usually look at pLI, although I'm not sure that's better than gmLI.

If you go the gmLI route, I’d probably say innLI is better, though.

by Sky Kalkman on Mar 13, 2010 5:45 PM EST up reply actions  

General rule is subtract 1.00 in ERA.

But that’s going to really vary pitcher by pitcher.

Nate Silver found that low isolated power and a high walk rate were indicators a pitcher would see larger than average success converting to relief.

It’s also thought that pitchers with only one or two pitches succeed more in relief, because they can fool a hitter once in a game, and don’t have to figure out a different way to approach them a second or third time through.

by Sky Kalkman on Mar 13, 2010 6:03 PM EST up reply actions  

I am just going to do a fanpost about it on VEB

A lot of people want to add another bullpen arm. But lowering Boggs, Hawksworth, and Garcia ERA not even .5 ERA each boosts the teams bullpen RAR to 50. And I have those guys as the 3 lowest LI in the bullpen.

by FlimtotheFlam on Mar 13, 2010 6:23 PM EST up reply actions  

Based on the ERA projections you provided, I don't think the Cardinals would be helped by another 3.75ish ERA arm much at all.

What would help — a lot — would be a true bullpen ace. Someone with a 2.50ish ERA talent level. There’s a chance one of those young arms could turn in to that, I suppose.

This is worth taking a look at, although I didn’t use chaining: http://skyking162.com/2008/07/one-stud-closer-or-three-good-arms/

And share the link over here so we can check it out.

by Sky Kalkman on Mar 13, 2010 6:41 PM EST up reply actions  

I just ran 4 different scenarios

I did 463 IP instead of 438. One of our bullpen guys, McCellan is also up for 5th rotation spot.

With McCellan in the Pen: 51 RAR
Without: 48 RAR
With AND Russ Springer: 52 RAR
Without AND Russ Springer: 50 RAR

Update

The guys CHONE predicted as starters I shaved .5 ERA off. But someone like Boggs has a real plus fastball and Duncan thinks he could be a future closer.

by FlimtotheFlam on Mar 13, 2010 7:22 PM EST up reply actions  

Seems optimistic

I’m using ZiPS and I get 39 RAR w/Mac, 32 w/o

godfather of futureredbirds.net

by erik on Mar 14, 2010 12:00 AM EST up reply actions  

eh

we’re talking about maybe a win difference. i’m going by the feel test, and considering what happened last year, and just eyeballing fangraphs the entire bullpen was worth less than 2 WAR. That would be a big difference.

Franklin and McClellan are likely to slide back, Motte should be better. I don’t know, I think I’d rather err on the side of pessimism with a bullpen that doesn’t have a real true relief ace.

godfather of futureredbirds.net and occasional blogger at and

by erik on Mar 14, 2010 3:48 PM EDT up reply actions  

Rule of 17

Tango

Basically, use the "rule of 17": difference in BABIP is 17 points higher as starter. K/PA is 17% higher as reliever. And HR per contacted PA is 17% higher as starter. Walk rate is FLAT.

by PWHjort on Mar 13, 2010 8:02 PM EST up reply actions  

Here's my quick and dirty approach

Nathan is usually good for about 3.8 WPA (average of last 6 years)
Rauch is good for about .46 WPA/LI (Average of last 4 years)

You would expect Rauch to have about .83 WPA with a 1.8 LI.

That would make the difference about 3 wins. Now, with chaining, someone is going to take Rauch’s innings, but it will probably be someone of similar quality to him. I don’t think there would be more than half a win because of chaining in this case.

If Neshek is healthy, well, then you don’t lost much at all. Neshek would expect to have a WPA of 2.7 if he’s back in full form, or just a 1 win drop off. It would be silly to project someone who hasn’t pitched for almost 2 years to be back at full strength, but it’s interesting to note.

Guerrier and Crain project similarly to Rauch in terms of WPA/LI.

This was pretty rough, and if someone wants to do this better – break it down per inning instead of per season, show the chain of events through the whole bullpen, etc. it would be interesting to see.

"Pinch-bunters don't have a ton of value, even with the Twins"

by Steven Ellingson on Mar 17, 2010 2:06 AM EDT reply actions  

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