White Sox pitching #1 in fWar from 2005 to 2013

[southsider2k5]

If you look at all the guys in the Top 10-15 in terms of innings pitched, how many of them would you consider overachieved with the Sox?

 

Thornton? Jenks (based on where he was career-wise when the Angels dumped him for personal issues)? Contreras? Santos?

 

Mark Buehrle, clearly would be one. Clayton Richard, in his time here.

 

Floyd, but then he leveled off.

 

Quintana and Santiago, to a lesser extent, are the recent successful case examples. And maybe Nate Jones. Edwin Jackson as well.

 

 

On the other side of the ledger, you have the inability of Cooper to get anywhere with Javy (no surprise) and Francisco Liriano.

 

You have the team impatiently trading Brandon McCarthy (that worked out) and Daniel Hudson...which can be partly blamed on Cooper, especially in Hudson's case.

 

Some pretty terrible evaluation in the case of Zach Stewart and Molina, although that's mostly on KW.

 

Cooper did a great job with the bullpen in 2012, and didn't have much to work with last year.

 

 

 

All in all, I think he's done a very good job, but I'm not buying the guru/greatest pitching coach in the world stuff. He's also had a ton of talent to work with, in all fairness, a lot of former 1st round draft picks and players signed to huge bonuses. Still, he's gotten the most out of the majority of them, in many cases after their former teams already gave up on them.

 

And, if nothing else, it just proves that every coach can struggle with guys like Masset, Sisco and MacDougal, to name a few, as well as Linebrink and Dotel, who went on to be come a better pitcher elsewhere. Jason Grilli's yet another guy whose career Cooper kind of saved, bounced around and then ended up an "elite" closer for most of 2013, almost a decade after he pitched with the White Sox.

 

 

Just waiting for Dick Allen to put his two cents in here.

 

And I'd like to thank him for his best job of all-time, Esteban Loaiza, because it ended up netting us Jose Contreras, who was the single biggest factor in the White Sox winning it all in 2005 in my humble opinion.

 

Judging Cooper on failed minor leaguers and reclamation projects is dumb.

 

[caulfield12]

Judging Cooper on failed minor leaguers and reclamation projects is dumb.

 

 

And yet that's 80% of the pitching that KW brought in, essentially.

 

Should we judge him on Broadway and McCulloch? That's the scouts' fault, right?

 

 

 

So then who has he "failed" or not succeeded with that it's fair to judge him on?

 

Certainly, most Sox fans would admit to being disappointed with the level of progress from Danks and Floyd after 2008. Neither made it to the next level, All-Star or elite status.

 

You will say that Floyd was a reclamation project despite being a high first round draft pick.

[southsider2k5]

And yet that's 80% of the pitching that KW brought in, essentially.

 

Should we judge him on Broadway and McCulloch? That's the scouts' fault, right?

 

 

 

So then who has he "failed" or not succeeded with that it's fair to judge him on?

 

Certainly, most Sox fans would admit to being disappointed with the level of progress from Danks and Floyd after 2008. Neither made it to the next level, All-Star or elite status.

 

You will say that Floyd was a reclamation project despite being a high first round draft pick.

 

If that is your standard, every single pitching coach in every single level is failure.

[TaylorStSox]

And yet that's 80% of the pitching that KW brought in, essentially.

 

Should we judge him on Broadway and McCulloch? That's the scouts' fault, right?

 

 

 

So then who has he "failed" or not succeeded with that it's fair to judge him on?

 

Certainly, most Sox fans would admit to being disappointed with the level of progress from Danks and Floyd after 2008. Neither made it to the next level, All-Star or elite status.

 

You will say that Floyd was a reclamation project despite being a high first round draft pick.

 

Are you bored? You seem to be going out of your way to create an argument. I'll go with SS2K5's succinct rebuttal.

[JoshPR]

Can't blame coop if the pitcher is hard headed. I think I heard Grilli saying he was sorry he didn't take good advice from different people earlier in his career. I think the only guy coop wasn't successful with was Masset. Even the great Leo mazzone couldn't do much in Baltimore. Hey we could have flava-flav back...

Edited November 4, 2013 by JoshPR

[ChiliIrishHammock24]

Can't blame coop if the pitcher is hard headed. I think I heard Grilli saying he was sorry he didn't take good advice from different people earlier in his career. I think the only guy coop wasn't successful with was Masset. Even the great Leo mazzone couldn't do much in Baltimore. Hey we could have flava-flav back...

 

Mike MacDougal too. There is a probably a decent list of failed Coop projects, but the value we gained from his successes FAR FAR FAR outweighs the lack of value we got from a handful of other guys, consider almost all his projects are scrap heap guys. Very rarely does a pitcher come to the Sox and do WORSE.

[Jake]

I tried to allude to this earlier, but check out this article from this past February: The White Sox and Beating Projections

 

Don Cooper and the White Sox training staff is probably a large chunk of that. Last year, Jeff Zimmerman had a really great post on 10 year DL trends, and I’m going to steal two images from that post and put them here:

 

 

 

The overall health of the White Sox during the last decade has been pretty staggering. Look specifically at the blue pitcher injury bars. From 2002 to 2011, the White Sox pitchers lost fewer than 2,000 days to the DL, while most teams were over 3,000, a lot of teams were over 4,000, and the Rangers were up over 6,000. The White Sox had a remarkable run of pitcher health, and as new GM Rick Hahn told a group of FG readers and authors in Phoenix a few years ago, the organization views Cooper and the training staff as one of the main reasons the team has been competitive during this stretch.

 

Team forecasts are essentially a collection of individual forecasts realigned to account for expected playing time levels. Because specific pitcher injuries are hard to predict, forecasting systems rely on a player’s own personal track record and normal regression to the mean, which accounts for the fact that there is a chance each player will get injured and miss a chunk of time during the season.

 

The White Sox pitchers have continually spent a fraction of the time on the DL that any forecasting system would have projected, and so the team’s innings have been reallocated from replacement level scrubs to the team’s highest quality arms. As a result, the White Sox have had the best pitching staff in baseball since 2005, coming in with both an ERA- and FIP- of 93 during that time. They may often get overlooked because of the hitter’s haven they play in, but Chicago has consistently put together results that were better than many high profile staffs, even if they did it with depth and endurance rather than splashy aces.

 

Chicago has only had 14 pitchers throw at least 100 innings as a starter for them over the last eight years, and of those 14, only three — Orlando Hernandez, Clayton Richard, and Philip Humber — could be described as below average Major League starters during their time in Chicago. That’s remarkable. Even other teams that have focused heavily on pitching during this run have ended up giving long runs to lousy pitchers, simply due to the fact that pitchers break down, and teams either live through terrible performances trying to get them fixed or have terrible replacements come up from the minors.

 

 

More info at link, though some of it is about projections and not injuries

Edited November 4, 2013 by Jake

[caulfield12]

Of course, the last couple years have not been so kind.

 

You have Danks, Floyd, Peavy, Septimo, Bruney...not that Brian was a major contributor, Omogrosso also, that article was kind of a jinx...with the overall health of the team suffering, including Konerko, Dunn, Viciedo, Beckham, Flowers, etc.

Edited November 4, 2013 by caulfield12

[witesoxfan]

Those are only the worst offenders. The Sox have top-15 production in only one position, and bottom 3 in 5 or 6 positions.

 

The numbers make you appreciate KW's unique approach. Its sort of a miracle they even had any winning seasons.

 

#23 in C WAR - 13.1

#22 in 1B WAR - 13.8

#29 in 2B WAR - 6.4

#14 in SS WAR - 21.3

#30 in 3B WAR - 1.5

#28 in LF WAR - 8.6

#30 in CF WAR - 17.7

#28 in RF WAR - 16.9

 

 

[Dick Allen]

When is the pitching fwar title parade?

Edited November 4, 2013 by Dick Allen

[witesoxfan]

When is the pitching fwar title parade?

 

Next week I believe

[Eminor3rd]

Next week I believe

 

They postponed it until the week of Thanksgiving. Some stupid alderman s***.

[Eminor3rd]

When is the pitching fwar title parade?

 

Another really awesome contribution to a discussion, brought to you by Dick Allen™

[Dick Allen]

Another really awesome contribution to a discussion, brought to you by Dick Allen™

Interesting.

[southsider2k5]

When is the pitching fwar title parade?

 

Right after the hitting coach of the year awards.

[Rowand44]

And yet that's 80% of the pitching that KW brought in, essentially.

 

Should we judge him on Broadway and McCulloch? That's the scouts' fault, right?

 

 

 

So then who has he "failed" or not succeeded with that it's fair to judge him on?

 

Certainly, most Sox fans would admit to being disappointed with the level of progress from Danks and Floyd after 2008. Neither made it to the next level, All-Star or elite status.

 

You will say that Floyd was a reclamation project despite being a high first round draft pick.

You judge him by major league success as a whole and as evident by this thread, it has been pretty damn good

[daggins]

#23 in C WAR - 13.1

#22 in 1B WAR - 13.8

#29 in 2B WAR - 6.4

#14 in SS WAR - 21.3

#30 in 3B WAR - 1.5

#28 in LF WAR - 8.6

#30 in CF WAR - 17.7

#28 in RF WAR - 16.9

 

Thank you. Its even worse when you see it all at once.

 

 

[Rowand44]

#23 in C WAR - 13.1

#22 in 1B WAR - 13.8

#29 in 2B WAR - 6.4

#14 in SS WAR - 21.3

#30 in 3B WAR - 1.5

#28 in LF WAR - 8.6

#30 in CF WAR - 17.7

#28 in RF WAR - 16.9

Well that hurt my eyes.

[caulfield12]

#23 in C WAR - 13.1

#22 in 1B WAR - 13.8

#29 in 2B WAR - 6.4

#14 in SS WAR - 21.3

#30 in 3B WAR - 1.5

#28 in LF WAR - 8.6

#30 in CF WAR - 17.7

#28 in RF WAR - 16.9

 

 

 

 

What would those rankings be if you screened it for 2004-2008?

 

The craziest thing of all is that we had more outfield prospects such as Rowand, Borchard, then Chris Young/Anderson/Reed/Webster, then in the last couple of years, we invested all that time and effort into signing developing Mitchell/Thompson/Walker/Hawkins and finally Jacobs with almost nothing to show for all our efforts after Rowand.

 

So it's a bit ironic that he failed in the two positions Kenny Williams himself failed at the most in his two positions at the major league level, CF and 3B (57 games in 1988).

 

 

One thing those numbers do is make me appreciate Juan Uribe even more.

 

And Jim Thome.

 

Then there's the disappointment with Gordon Beckham and the inability of Teahen or Viciedo to play 3B.

Edited November 4, 2013 by caulfield12

[caulfield12]

You judge him by major league success as a whole and as evident by this thread, it has been pretty damn good

 

 

Although if you simply lined up AL Runs Scored and ERA or WHIP during those years, it would be a lot closer than it appears.

 

 

 

The main point is that playing 81 home games at USCF, you have to get at least average offensive production...it won't matter how good your pitching staff is.

[Balta1701]

Although if you simply lined up AL Runs Scored and ERA or WHIP during those years, it would be a lot closer than it appears.

 

 

 

The main point is that playing 81 home games at USCF, you have to get at least average offensive production...it won't matter how good your pitching staff is.

The problem is that "average offensive production" at USCF will give you a below-average WAR if everything else is equal because of the park adjustment.

[caulfield12]

AL Ranks in runs scored and ERA from 2003-2011

 

 

2003 RS 8 ERA 4 =-4

2004 RS 3 ERA 12 =+9

2005 RS 9 ERA 3 =-6

2006 RS 3 ERA 10 =+7

2007 RS 14 ERA 10 =-4

2008 RS 5 ERA 6 =+1

2009 RS 12 ERA 2 =-10

2010 RS 7 ERA 8 =+1

2011 RS 11 ERA 6 =-5

 

AVG 8th/14 6.8/14 =minus 11

 

 

If you average WHIP and ERA, it brings the average down to about 6.3 out of 14 teams

 

 

So basically, the difference isn't nearly as large as those WAR numbers would indicate between the hitting and pitching.

Edited November 4, 2013 by caulfield12

[Balta1701]

Again, the ballpark effect is hitting you there. If the Sox were average on both pitching and hitting, they should be in the top 3-4 teams in the league in offense and bottom 3-4 teams in the league in pitching because they play 81 games in a ballpark that is a home run hitters haven. If the Sox are putting up slightly above average pitching numbers in the Cell...that's really good. If the Sox are putting up average hitting numbers in the Cell, that's pretty bad. If the Sox are the worst offense in the league playing in the Cell, that's historically bad.

[witesoxfan]

There has been one clear cut hole in the lineup over the past 8, 10, 15, whatever years. The Sox probably have gotten more production out of 3B if they'd run a player/manager the last 2 years compared to what they got in the years leading up to it.

[Jake]

#23 in C WAR - 13.1

#22 in 1B WAR - 13.8

#29 in 2B WAR - 6.4

#14 in SS WAR - 21.3

#30 in 3B WAR - 1.5

#28 in LF WAR - 8.6

#30 in CF WAR - 17.7

#28 in RF WAR - 16.9

 

Let's get rid of that POS shortstop!