Oh, and Jim Rice is a moron.

Sabathia’s current W-L record (19-7) works out to a .730 winning percentage. That’s 89 points above team — which is impressive enough.

Greinke’s 16-8 record (.667) comes for a .410 team. That’s 257 points above team. Or about three times Sabathia’s margin.

“Greinke and the tyranny of the win column”
http://www.mankatofreepress.com/ethomabaseball

Thanks, Joe. Keep up the good work!

No, BAbip isnt pointless over 6 IP. You know it should be .300-ish, no matter what. Will it be .300-ish every single game? No, but it will end up that with something like a 95% certainty. So if you watch a game where a player allows 15 balls in play, you know with a 95% certainty that 4-5 of those balls generally should have been hits – the fact they werent just means that the odds of a higher BAbip the next time out goes through the roof.

Which is why you can watch one game where a player walks 3, strikes out 5 and only sees 2 of 15 balls in play land for hits and realize that it wasnt that great of a performance.

If you are simultaneously giving up a high Walk rate while putting so many balls into play, you truly are not dominating. You are putting yourself almost completely in the hands of luck, and you are raking up a higher pitch count which means you likely wont go deep – leaving you hoping for a low BAbip and your bullpen to pick up your slack.

This is why I said that Rice started out correct and has a perfect point – it was not a dominant performance at all. The results might have been there, but the way he got them was more luck then performance – his performance was merely average.

What Rice doesnt have a point on is trying to expand on that to the point he is comparing one performance to the greats of the game. That is the dumb thing he did. He should have said it was a fairly average performance and talked about how his ability to still succeed without his best stuff instead of trying to make the one poor performance into an argument that comes off as if it is against him. It makes it seem a personal attack in doing so, and then of course, you get the other side of that – the personal attacks here. He took a correct statement (wasnt dominant) and made it into an illogical debate with a fanbase where everything but the topic at hand (wasnt dominant that game) is the conversation.

BABIP, and everything else really, is pointless over 6IP too. That’s the whole point. Rice is making conclusions about Greinke, however qualified, based on a meaningless small sample. Its just dumb.

Case in point, had that day been one of those where Greinke surrendered a single HR, his FIP would go from 3.03 to 5.20. A single HBP or IBB has a pretty big effect itself, as one of either of them being added adds .50 to the FIP result. Watching Greinke make a start without surrendering a HR, HBP or IBB is more luck then skill on his part – he has averaged about one of those every other game. This makes FIP pointless over something as small as 6 innings.

BAbip is never pointless though, a pitcher putting a ball in play X amount of times should result in Y amount of hits (pretty much on a 3/10 scale), no matter what.

So, BAbip you know will be 3/10, FIP has no way of knowing though as a large sample size is needed to see the rate at which a pitcher will surrender HR or hit batters.