Chris Sale

[shysocks]

This is stunning to me if true?

No mention of those adjustments in the Fangraphs Library.

 

http://www.fangraphs.com/library/pitching/fip/

[lasttriptotulsa]

This is stunning to me if true?

 

FIP = ((13*HR)+(3*(BB+HBP))-(2*K))/IP + constant

 

The constant is derived by taking league average FIP and subtracting the league average ERA.

 

 

xFIP = ((13*(Flyballs * League-average HR/FB rate))+(3*(BB+HBP))-(2*K))/IP + constant

 

Basically the same thing but it uses a league average HR/FB rate instead of a pitcher's actual HR/FB.

[Feeky Magee]

FIP and xFIP are not park and league adjusted. FIP- is and Kershaw just edges Sale out 49 to 58. Now if you want to look at what really happened on the field versus what some stats think should have happened, Sale beats Kershaw in both ERA- (47 to 50) and ERA+ (210 to 201). While I feel Kershaw is slightly better at the moment, it is because Sale has yet to peak. To say that Kershaw blows Sale out of the water is just blatantly false.

Damn, I thought they were. However, looking at the park and league-adjusted stats tells us similar stories really.

 

FIP-:

Kershaw: 49

Sale: 58

 

xFIP-:

Kershaw: 51

Sale: 72

 

SIERA (definitely park-adjusted, not sure if league-adjusted):

Kershaw: 1.89

Sale: 2.58

 

"Blows out of the water" is obviously hyperbole, but he's been comfortably better. That's absolutely not to take anything away from Sale, who is amazing.

[Goober]

"FIP does a better job of predicting the future than measuring the present..."

[Goober]

I find TIP to be a better measure of pitchers. That's Tmar Independent Pitching, the formula is TIP = ((11.3510*HR)+(2.9263*(BB+(.7503*HBP)))-(2.82537936384*K))/IP + 3.01863892037

[The Sir]

I find TIP to be a better measure of pitchers. That's Tmar Independent Pitching, the formula is TIP = ((11.3510*HR)+(2.9263*(BB+(.7503*HBP)))-(2.82537936384*K))/IP + 3.01863892037

 

So Chris Sale's TIP is 1.13. Screw off if you want me to find Kershaw's, or anyone else's.

[Y2Jimmy0]

When is Chris Sale pitching again?

[Jose Abreu]

When is Chris Sale pitching again?

Friday

[Jose Abreu]

Frank Thomas: "Kershaw is the best pitcher in baseball. Scherzer is definitely second."

[southsider2k5]

Mark Simon ‏@msimonespn 1h

 

Lowest hard-hit rate among MLB starters Chris Sale 8.8% Garrett Richards 9.5% Cole Hamels 9.6% Doug Fister 10.2% Cobb & Wacha 10.3%

[witesoxfan]

Mark Simon ‏@msimonespn 1h

 

Lowest hard-hit rate among MLB starters Chris Sale 8.8% Garrett Richards 9.5% Cole Hamels 9.6% Doug Fister 10.2% Cobb & Wacha 10.3%

 

Well he's all arms and legs, his fastball averages 93 and can touch 96, his slider averages 80 (a 13 MPH difference!), and his changeup comes in at 84. He's also using his changeup a lot more this year too - the fastball usage has remained the same from last year at 51.4%, but the slider and changeup have swapped places - slider usage last year was 29.6% with the changeup at 19%, while the slider is at 18.1% this year and the change at 30.6%. The result? K/9 has increased, BB/9 has decreased, he's generating more infield flies, the line drive rate is down, and as a result, the decrease in home runs allowed, despite allowing more fly balls, seems like organic growth and not an outlier.

[caulfield12]

Well he's all arms and legs, his fastball averages 93 and can touch 96, his slider averages 80 (a 13 MPH difference!), and his changeup comes in at 84. He's also using his changeup a lot more this year too - the fastball usage has remained the same from last year at 51.4%, but the slider and changeup have swapped places - slider usage last year was 29.6% with the changeup at 19%, while the slider is at 18.1% this year and the change at 30.6%. The result? K/9 has increased, BB/9 has decreased, he's generating more infield flies, the line drive rate is down, and as a result, the decrease in home runs allowed, despite allowing more fly balls, seems like organic growth and not an outlier.

 

Let's hope Rodon can follow this path as well to avoid undue wear and tear from the slider torque.

[ptatc]

Let's hope Rodon can follow this path as well to avoid undue wear and tear from the slider torque.

There is no inherent wear and tear from the slider. It's when they alter the pitch to increase it's movement that the trouble begins. It's just like the fastball. If you try to throw it as hard as you can every pitch, you will break down. If you throw as it's supposed to be thrown, there is no "extra" wear and tear. Only the unnatural motion of the over head throw.

[LittleHurt05]

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/pitchcra...side-scarecrow/

[ChiliIrishHammock24]

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2014/9/15...l-cy-young-2014

[chitownsportsfan]

CHRIS SALE IS f***ING AWESOME YEA ALL THE PROFILES FOR SALE.

[Dunt]

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2014/9/15...l-cy-young-2014

 

It's stuff like this and Abreu being a shoe-in for ROY that make me think the White Sox need a huge offseason to capitalize on these guys and these seasons

[The Ultimate Champion]

I thought the author's argument was pretty weak & I think he pretty much just made the case why Felix should get the award.

 

First, the innings disparity is huge, it isn't negligible at all. If Sale pitched for Seattle and Felix pitched for us we'd probably feel it would be pretty ridiculous to try to marginalize such a great disparity in IP.

 

Secondly you can't just "throw in" a bunch of extra IP (even at poor results) and declare that he'd still rank as one of the best pitchers in the league. That argument holds no water. SP are SP because they are supposed to be durable enough to start a lot of games and pitch deep into those games regularly. Sale missed time because he was shut down for elbow soreness. You can't just throw a guy out there when he's sore in pursuit of some meaningless award (from the team perspective anyway) and if you did you couldn't assume the result would be anything other than injury, meaning that the insane run he went on coming off the DL and all the sick numbers he put up during it wouldn't be there, and you wouldn't be making a case for him at all.

 

I think it is perfectly reasonable to think Sale is the best pitcher in the American League on any given day he makes a start. But stats won't really help you prove that, they could only show how much it is a matter of opinion. If you are a manager, and it is Game 7 of the World Series, and you have both Felix Hernandez and Chris Sale sitting there available to pitch, and both are perfectly healthy and well rested, and the lineup you are facing is equally dangerous from the RH side and the LH side, then I could see why that manager might choose Sale over Felix to start that game. Maybe he's just trickier, more of an mindf*** pitcher, whatever. It would be perfectly reasonable think that Sale is the best pitcher in the American League on any given day he starts, but that's not really how the Cy Young works. The Cy Young is a season long award that is given to the pitcher with the best full season, and the difference between Sale in innings is the difference between a full year of a busy reliever or 3 weeks worth of starts etc. it's just huge. And Felix's numbers are comparable enough to where the innings disparity can't be overlooked.

 

I think that if you are a voter and you're not operating under any really defined rules & are just trying to enact a common sense approach to determining who the Cy Young winner should be, there are basically one of a few ways you could do it:

1) Who is the best for the longest OR who is the best most often OR if you define what a great outing is arbitrarily via individual performance statistics, which pitcher hit those benchmarks most over the course of a season? This stuff all would affect IP & Felix probably wins out most often here due to that.

2) Who is the best inning for inning? Now you also have to factor in closers and other reliever or else it is not fair, because the whole point of starting is to pitch effectively enough to minimize high leverage situations as much as possible, and starters are given leeway that relievers generally aren't. Factor in all pitchers and someone is going to put Sale further back in the discussion.

3) Who is the best on a start-for-start basis only? You are choosing to ignore relievers and focus only on starters. Sale would have a better shot here, but it would unfair to Felix to take the cumulative numbers and divide them all by number of starts, because again you're ignoring a large body of work. Maybe a ratio would work where you defined what a great start is and compared that to quality starts, and had a second ratio of quality + great starts compared to s***ty starts. Or something like that.

4) You could do something like the scenario I mentioned above, just basically take a wild guess/go with a gut feeling, like if it's the msot important game of your life, and either Felix or Sale could start it, who would you choose? But then you're probably going to ask for numbers to back up your choice if it is Sale, since baseball is such a statistically dominated game.

 

In short I think it's Felix's award and you really have to stretch it to say Sale should get it over Felix. The only realistic way I could see Sale getting it is if he finishes by throwing more starts like his last one while Felix at the same time hits a rough patch as he's trying to guide his team into the playoffs. A late swoon by Felix with the spotlight on him coupled with more Sale dominance might do it. But as it stands it's Felix's award and there's really no way to marginalize the innings gap given how great Felix has been in the innings he has thrown. You can talk about park factors and stuff too, but on the flip side when has Sale had to pitch under pressure? Felix is pitching for the chance to play meaningful baseball for the first time in his career really. There's definitely a lot more pressure on him and that counts for something.

[Jose Abreu]

I think that if Felix drops his ERA below 2.20 and Sale stays under 2.00, we have a pretty legitimate chance. I think ERA is one of the main stats that the voters look at, as even the ESPN guys are drifting away from W/L. Sale leads in FIP, too, so that helps. Looking back, it's just a shame that missing a month likely cost him the Cy Young because Robin decided to leave him out there for 127 pitches.

[thxfrthmmrs]

I think that if Felix drops his ERA below 2.20 and Sale stays under 2.00, we have a pretty legitimate chance. I think ERA is one of the main stats that the voters look at, as even the ESPN guys are drifting away from W/L. Sale leads in FIP, too, so that helps. Looking back, it's just a shame that missing a month likely cost him the Cy Young because Robin decided to leave him out there for 127 pitches.

 

No way. So you are saying in their next starts, if Felix goes 7 innings and allows 3 runs, while Sale go 7 and allows 1 run, Sale would have a legitimate chance. I think that's far from true.

 

Their inning difference too much at this point. Unless Felix has two really bad starts in a row, and Sale keeps doing what he's been doing, I don't think it's going to be a close race.

[witesoxfan]

Assume that both Troy Tulowitzki and Jose Abreu were both in the AL and that every other player in the league sucked. Is there anyone here who would vote for Tulowitzki over Abreu for the MVP, given the disparity in playing time?

[Chisoxfn]

I will go on record as saying that while I think Sale is the best pitcher in the AL, he is not the Cy Young award winner (barring him throwing like 2 no hitters in a row and Felix having a bad ending). Bottom line, there is an incredible amount of value in throwing the innings and keeping your team in games. I realize the WAR differential on its own, isn't significant, but it is still a decent % change between the two.

[lasttriptotulsa]

Assume that both Troy Tulowitzki and Jose Abreu were both in the AL and that every other player in the league sucked. Is there anyone here who would vote for Tulowitzki over Abreu for the MVP, given the disparity in playing time?

 

No, but by the end of the season Abreu will have played 60% more games than Tulowitzki and Hernandez will have only started 25% more games than Sale so it's not really comparable. Now if Tulo had only missed a month like Sale and not nearly half a season, he probably would have won it (if we ignore Colorado's horrible season). With that being said, I still feel that Hernandez will and should win the Cy Young.

Edited September 16, 2014 by lasttriptotulsa

[ptatc]

I think that if Felix drops his ERA below 2.20 and Sale stays under 2.00, we have a pretty legitimate chance. I think ERA is one of the main stats that the voters look at, as even the ESPN guys are drifting away from W/L. Sale leads in FIP, too, so that helps. Looking back, it's just a shame that missing a month likely cost him the Cy Young because Robin decided to leave him out there for 127 pitches.

It's always the manager/coach's fault. Never the player's

[witesoxfan]

No, but by the end of the season Abreu will have played 60% more games than Tulowitzki and Hernandez will have only started 25% more games than Sale so it's not really comparable. Now if Tulo had only missed a month like Sale and not nearly half a season, he probably would have won it (if we ignore Colorado's horrible season). With that being said, I still feel that Hernandez will and should win the Cy Young.

 

Right, but you come to the same deduction for the same reason - playing time. Sale's playing time would account for 74.4% of Felix's playing time. Felix is more deserving of the Cy Young because he's been on the field for a much more significant amount of time.