Jonah Keri Trade Value Column

[Feeky Magee]

Please explain to me why Hamels is so much better than Q and you can't use stats cause those aren't your own words.

[cabiness42]

Put them both on the open market and Hamel's is going to get the better contract and be more in demand. Part of Q's value is tied to his team friendly contract.

 

The difference between what Hamels and Q would get on the open market is much, much smaller than the difference between what Hamels and Q are actually under contract for, which by definition makes Q's trade value higher.

[Eminor3rd]

Please explain to me why Hamels is so much better than Q and you can't use stats cause those aren't your own words.

 

lol

[shysocks]

Put them both on the open market and Hamel's is going to get the better contract and be more in demand. Part of Q's value is tied to his team friendly contract.

That's the point of the discussion. If a team is trading for a starting pitcher, would they rather pay 31-year-old Hamels at least $90 million for the next four years, or 26-year-old Jose Quintana $19.6 million for the same years with two very cheap team options tacked on the end? If a team could just draft either one to have for a year they'd probably pick Hamels due to his consistently excellent track record, but in a discussion about trade value, the contracts are soooo far apart that you'd probably have to pay a lot more to pry Quintana away from the Sox.

 

To whoever asked why Quintana is pegged for regression, it's definitely because of his low HR/FB rate last year.

[witesoxfan]

People like you are why I hate that sabermetrics have become so household. You just regurgitate some number you vaguely understand and it's concrete fact in your mind. Please explain to me, in your own words, how Q was better than Hamels last year.

 

Wow, this is a really hot take. REALLY HOT TAKE.

 

Put them both on the open market and Hamel's is going to get the better contract and be more in demand. Part of Q's value is tied to his team friendly contract.

 

This is not true in the least. I think Quintana would easily get $20+ million. He's just not a household name and we underrate our own.

 

Jose Quintana is like really, really good you guys.

[Eminor3rd]

Age is also a factor. Quintana is SO good.

[Eminor3rd]

Put them both on the open market and Hamel's is going to get the better contract and be more in demand. Part of Q's value is tied to his team friendly contract.

 

There's just no way that is true. Quintana is going into his age 26 season, Hamels is going into his age 31 season.

[Lemon_44]

.

This is not true in the least. I think Quintana would easily get $20+ million. He's just not a household name and we underrate our own.

 

Jose Quintana is like really, really good you guys.

I think it's absolutely true that Hamel would be in more demand and don't think it's all that close. People like to use WAR as a standard and Hamels almost doubled Quintana's, 6.6 to 3.5, last year, and has been a 4+ WAR 6 of the past 7 years. Plus, Hamels is just a better pitcher. Q is good. He's just not at Hamels past or present level, yet. There's nothing wrong with that. Not too many pitchers are at that level.

[witesoxfan]

I think it's absolutely true that Hamel would be in more demand and don't think it's all that close. People like to use WAR as a standard and Hamels almost doubled Quintana's, 6.6 to 3.5, last year, and has been a 4+ WAR 6 of the past 7 years. Plus, Hamels is just a better pitcher. Q is good. He's just not at Hamels past or present level, yet. There's nothing wrong with that. Not too many pitchers are at that level.

 

We're going to disagree on this one entirely. You are citing his bWAR which uses his ERA. That's not a bad thing, but fWAR, which uses FIP as opposed to ERA (which is what bWAR uses), is generally considered to be a better and more consistent statistic providing better context of a pitcher's true talent. Some pitchers will ultimately pitch better or worse than their FIP on average (think Javy Vazquez and Mark Buehrle on the extreme ends in this one), but I do not believe that is the case in this situation. Using fWAR, Hamels has never been a 5 WAR pitcher, but rounding up, I think you can safely say he is. Jose Quintana just came off a 5.3 WAR season and I think it's safe to say that he is a 4-5 WAR pitcher on a consistent basis as well. Given their ages and their ability levels, I think it'd be perfectly reasonable for Jose Quintana to get a contract with an AAV exceeding $20 million and anything less than that would be a coup for the signing team.

[Eminor3rd]

I think it's absolutely true that Hamel would be in more demand and don't think it's all that close. People like to use WAR as a standard and Hamels almost doubled Quintana's, 6.6 to 3.5, last year, and has been a 4+ WAR 6 of the past 7 years. Plus, Hamels is just a better pitcher. Q is good. He's just not at Hamels past or present level, yet. There's nothing wrong with that. Not too many pitchers are at that level.

 

Industry consensus is pretty strong that fWAR is a better model for pitchers than is bWAR (which is what you're referencing). Quintana had 5.3 fWAR last year to Hamels' 3.8. The truth is in the middle, but most people believe it's much closer to fWAR.

 

The gist of the difference is that a much larger amount of Hamels' success came from the ball being fielded by his defenders (which is assumed to be a combination of good fielding and lucky batted ball placement) and a presumedly unsustainably high strand rate that was much higher than both his career rates and league average. If you wanted to argue that Hamels deserves more credit, you'd have to make the argument that he is able to control the type of contact he allows (making it weak and/or making it go where he wants it to go) to a degree that very few, if any, pitchers have shown a consistent ability to be able to do. Most people believe that there IS a factor of this "weak contact" that exists, but there's no evidence to suggest that it's a strong enough effect to warrant the type of WAR evaluation that Baseball Reference uses.

 

Basically, Hamels had a better year by the things that batters and fielders have the most control over, but Quintana had a better year by the things that pitchers have most control over (strikeouts, walks, homers). Most people believe that Quintana's brand of success is much closer to "true talent" success and, therefore, is more likely to continue going forward.

[Feeky Magee]

FIP probably overrated Quintana last year, his HR/FB rate screams fluke

[shysocks]

Mostly arguing with myself now, but another thought I had in relation to their current deals:

 

Let's say Hamels' 2019 option for $19M vests. That would have him being paid $109M over the next five years. Quintana's salary over that time would be $30M. Russell Martin, the top catcher on the market this offseason, got 5/$82.

 

If a team traded for Quintana instead of Hamels, they could then go out and essentially sign Russell Martin with the salary difference. That's why Q's trade value > Hamels'.

[Eminor3rd]

FIP probably overrated Quintana last year, his HR/FB rate screams fluke

 

Absolutely. That's going up this year. But if that means he was a flat 3 ERA, that's phenomenal.

[southsider2k5]

Wow, this is a really hot take. REALLY HOT TAKE.

 

 

 

This is not true in the least. I think Quintana would easily get $20+ million. He's just not a household name and we underrate our own.

 

Jose Quintana is like really, really good you guys.

 

And he would get a really LONG contract too because of his age.

[TheFutureIsNear]

Industry consensus is pretty strong that fWAR is a better model for pitchers than is bWAR (which is what you're referencing). Quintana had 5.3 fWAR last year to Hamels' 3.8. The truth is in the middle, but most people believe it's much closer to fWAR.

 

The gist of the difference is that a much larger amount of Hamels' success came from the ball being fielded by his defenders (which is assumed to be a combination of good fielding and lucky batted ball placement) and a presumedly unsustainably high strand rate that was much higher than both his career rates and league average. If you wanted to argue that Hamels deserves more credit, you'd have to make the argument that he is able to control the type of contact he allows (making it weak and/or making it go where he wants it to go) to a degree that very few, if any, pitchers have shown a consistent ability to be able to do. Most people believe that there IS a factor of this "weak contact" that exists, but there's no evidence to suggest that it's a strong enough effect to warrant the type of WAR evaluation that Baseball Reference uses.

 

Basically, Hamels had a better year by the things that batters and fielders have the most control over, but Quintana had a better year by the things that pitchers have most control over (strikeouts, walks, homers). Most people believe that Quintana's brand of success is much closer to "true talent" success and, therefore, is more likely to continue going forward.

 

So you're telling me that you honestly don't believe a pitcher has a lot of control over what kind of contact a batter makes?

[lasttriptotulsa]

So you're telling me that you honestly don't believe a pitcher has a lot of control over what kind of contact a batter makes?

 

Decades of data tell you that the vast majority pitchers do not have that much control over it.

[LDF]

I think it's absolutely true that Hamel would be in more demand and don't think it's all that close. People like to use WAR as a standard and Hamels almost doubled Quintana's, 6.6 to 3.5, last year, and has been a 4+ WAR 6 of the past 7 years. Plus, Hamels is just a better pitcher. Q is good. He's just not at Hamels past or present level, yet. There's nothing wrong with that. Not too many pitchers are at that level.

 

i have 2 statements but i am using yours to address both of them.

 

the main problem is perceptions. what are the org perception and how

they want to address them.

 

No for you, i will use an example of a couple days ago. 2 pitchers are

free agent 1 is Scherzer. the other for this discussion will be Edinson Volquez.

now advance stats aside, you have 2 #1 pitchers on their team. yet

most will take Scherzer, i would take Voquez. the production of each

may be close, but for me, that value of the contract is my deciding factors

if all things being equal. that production for me will be a wash and the greater

value is Edinson.

 

i am not going to use the type of pitcher like Scherzer vs Carroll.

[TheFutureIsNear]

Decades of data tell you that the vast majority pitchers do not have that much control over it.

 

What data is that? You're suggesting that a pitcher who excels in getting outs on balls in play by using deception of movement and varying speeds is simply "lucky" and therefore not as valuable as a pitcher who strikes out a ton of guys. In reality that's not even close to the truth. Just look at how wildly inconsistent FIP is for sinkerball pitchers and guys like Jamie Moyer who don't strike a lot of guys out.

 

In fact now that I'm reading it seems like your idea of thinking is pretty outdated and new formulas are suggesting pitchers have plenty of control of how hard and where a ball is hit.

 

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article....articleid=15562

 

http://sabr.org/research/many-flavors-dips...ry-and-overview

Edited December 5, 2014 by TheFutureIsNear

[Donny Lucy's Avocado Farm]

Industry consensus is pretty strong that fWAR is a better model for pitchers than is bWAR (which is what you're referencing). Quintana had 5.3 fWAR last year to Hamels' 3.8. The truth is in the middle, but most people believe it's much closer to fWAR.

 

The gist of the difference is that a much larger amount of Hamels' success came from the ball being fielded by his defenders (which is assumed to be a combination of good fielding and lucky batted ball placement) and a presumedly unsustainably high strand rate that was much higher than both his career rates and league average. If you wanted to argue that Hamels deserves more credit, you'd have to make the argument that he is able to control the type of contact he allows (making it weak and/or making it go where he wants it to go) to a degree that very few, if any, pitchers have shown a consistent ability to be able to do. Most people believe that there IS a factor of this "weak contact" that exists, but there's no evidence to suggest that it's a strong enough effect to warrant the type of WAR evaluation that Baseball Reference uses.

 

Basically, Hamels had a better year by the things that batters and fielders have the most control over, but Quintana had a better year by the things that pitchers have most control over (strikeouts, walks, homers). Most people believe that Quintana's brand of success is much closer to "true talent" success and, therefore, is more likely to continue going forward.

 

This is a quality post. +1

[Eminor3rd]

So you're telling me that you honestly don't believe a pitcher has a lot of control over what kind of contact a batter makes?

 

Basically, studies have shown that if you document and classify all the "types of contact" a batter makes, in terms of how hard it is, where it falls, etc., there is little to correlation year over year. So if a guy has an awesome season where no one made "good contact," it isn't likely to carry over. It is concluded that if there is skill that plays into HR/FB rate, for example, then pitchers would either be consistently good or consistently bad at it. But they aren't. It goes all over the place, and so whether the cause is luck or focus or anything else, it isn't a reliable predictor of itself, and so it is treated as randomness. Again, that doesn't mean it IS random, but that it cannot be predicted and thus cannot be controlled, so for the purposes of evaluating a player's performance going forward, it isn't considered something that should be credited.

 

(I should clarify that GB and FB rates ARE fairly predictive and can be used to make inferences to BABIP and regressed HR/FB rate, which is where ERA predictors like xFIP come along, but that's a whole different discussion)

 

There are a few exceptions to this at any given time -- guys that have seemingly defied the DIPS model for several years, either positively or negatively -- but it almost always seems to come crashing down eventually. It's tough (impossible) sometimes to tell whether that's simply the "luck" regressing as we predicted or if it's related to the pitcher changing by either losing stuff or changing pitch mix or whatever.

 

I think that the newest technological tools that are coming out are going to shed a ton of light on the "black box" of good/bad contact for pitchers by giving us ball velocities/trajectories/spin rates that we can attach to different pitches and situations. I think that at some point, these measurements are going to lead us to being able to quantify a pitcher's ability to limit hard contact. But, any attempt we'd make now would simply be a wild, intuitive guess, and that's a silly way to make an argument and a sillier way to make a multi-million dollar investment. For now, the DIPS model is, objectively, the most accurate way we have to isolate a pitcher's performance from the other things that affect whether a guy is out or not. And it wasn't created based on someone's ideas of what should be important, it was created by performing studies to see which factors are actually stable/predictive.

 

So that is the lense through which you can look and see Quintana as better than (or at least as good as) Cole Hamels. When you factor age, Quintana clearly comes out as the more valuable asset going forward.

Edited December 5, 2014 by Eminor3rd

[shysocks]

Cameron updated the midseason rankings on Fangraphs, inspired by the Keri article. Sale moved up from 11 to 8 and is now, notably, the only pitcher in the top 10. Abreu moved from 10 to 6. Q fell from 37 to 44.

 

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/2014-trade-...fseason-update/

[lasttriptotulsa]

What data is that? You're suggesting that a pitcher who excels in getting outs on balls in play by using deception of movement and varying speeds is simply "lucky" and therefore not as valuable as a pitcher who strikes out a ton of guys. In reality that's not even close to the truth. Just look at how wildly inconsistent FIP is for sinkerball pitchers and guys like Jamie Moyer who don't strike a lot of guys out.

 

In fact now that I'm reading it seems like your idea of thinking is pretty outdated and new formulas are suggesting pitchers have plenty of control of how hard and where a ball is hit.

 

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article....articleid=15562

 

http://sabr.org/research/many-flavors-dips...ry-and-overview

 

Uh, Jamie Moyer is a pretty good example of how ACCURATE FIP can be. At the end of his 25 year career, his FIP was 4.47 and his ERA 4.25. That is pretty damn close. He pitched 4074 innings and gave up 1926 earned runs. FIP says he should have given up 2026 runs. 1926/2026 is roughly 95%. So FIP essentially predicted his ERA within 5%. That is pretty good.

[TheFutureIsNear]

Uh, Jamie Moyer is a pretty good example of how ACCURATE FIP can be. At the end of his 25 year career, his FIP was 4.47 and his ERA 4.25. That is pretty damn close. He pitched 4074 innings and gave up 1926 earned runs. FIP says he should have given up 2026 runs. 1926/2026 is roughly 95%. So FIP essentially predicted his ERA within 5%. That is pretty good.

 

Jamie Moyer

1996- 3.98 ERA and a 4.95 FIP

2001- 3.43 ERA and a 4.17 FIP

2002- 3.32 ERA and a 4.03 FIP

2003- 3.27 ERA and a 4.01 FIP

2008- 3.71 ERA and a 4.32 FIP

 

Basically a huge part of Jamie Moyer's success is considered "lucky" according to FIP was my point.

 

Look at Garland's '05 season for a point of reference...4.24 FIP and a 3.5 ERA. Now was he lucky that year or maybe was he perhaps spotting his sinker well and inducing weak ground ball outs? Either way I can assure you that it wasn't Juan Uribe's fantastic defense at SS that made him good that year.

 

 

[witesoxfan]

Jamie Moyer

1996- 3.98 ERA and a 4.95 FIP

2001- 3.43 ERA and a 4.17 FIP

2002- 3.32 ERA and a 4.03 FIP

2003- 3.27 ERA and a 4.01 FIP

2008- 3.71 ERA and a 4.32 FIP

 

Basically a huge part of Jamie Moyer's success is considered "lucky" according to FIP was my point.

 

Look at Garland's '05 season for a point of reference...4.24 FIP and a 3.5 ERA. Now was he lucky that year or maybe was he perhaps spotting his sinker well and inducing weak ground ball outs? Either way I can assure you that it wasn't Juan Uribe's fantastic defense at SS that made him good that year.

 

It's not necessarily dumb luck. Some of it can be, some of it can be randomness, and some of it can be a pitcher pitching well and above his peripherals. Mark Buehrle's career ERA is 3.81 and his FIP is 4.10. He has obviously pitched better than his peripherals. Javier Vazquez's career ERA was 4.22 and his FIP was 3.91. That's the other extreme. You will see that, and these will show bias for power pitchers and against finesse pitchers, but it will never be that far off as indicated by those two extreme examples where the two numbers were stil within three tenths either way.

 

Compare Jon Garland's year in 2005 to the rest of his career. Do you believe he got lucky? There's no doubt he pitched well, but considering how well he pitched and how he never got that close again, I'd say he got lucky to some extent. It doesn't mean he was a bad pitcher or that he didn't have a great year.

 

[TheFutureIsNear]

It's not necessarily dumb luck. Some of it can be, some of it can be randomness, and some of it can be a pitcher pitching well and above his peripherals. Mark Buehrle's career ERA is 3.81 and his FIP is 4.10. He has obviously pitched better than his peripherals. Javier Vazquez's career ERA was 4.22 and his FIP was 3.91. That's the other extreme. You will see that, and these will show bias for power pitchers and against finesse pitchers, but it will never be that far off as indicated by those two extreme examples where the two numbers were stil within three tenths either way.

 

Compare Jon Garland's year in 2005 to the rest of his career. Do you believe he got lucky? There's no doubt he pitched well, but considering how well he pitched and how he never got that close again, I'd say he got lucky to some extent. It doesn't mean he was a bad pitcher or that he didn't have a great year.

 

I don't think any of it is dumb luck, that was sarcasm. Jamie Moyer was a magician who got guys to swing at pitches they couldn't hit hard. That's what made him good, same with Buehrle. There is an art to throwing pitches in spots guys can't square up and even more so to getting guys to swing out in front of the ball by changing speeds. You can't just dismiss these things as luck when there is an actual skill to it. Roy Halladay is another pitcher who has some crazy ERA/FIP years because he's a guy that often pitched to contact.

 

My overall point is that the stat is flawed and it, along with most sabermetric stats, should be used as part of the picture, not the entire thing. Such as Jose Quintana was not better than Cole Hamels last year just because his FIP was better.

Edited December 5, 2014 by TheFutureIsNear