5 steps to proving John Kruk is an absolute moron
Why is John Kruk giving his opinion on the AL Cy Young Race on BBTN? Seriously, what makes him more qualified than say you or I to espouse who should win the AL Cy Young award. To borrow a Simpsons quote from Martin Prince, I believe "A blindfolded chimp with a pencil in his teeth has a better chance" of predicting the deserving AL Cy Young winner.
1) Steve Phillips explains why Wins really aren't that important when it comes to evaluating a pitcher's performance: "The 16 wins to 18 wins, to me, that's a team differential, not a pitching differential"
2) John Kruk tries to explain why Chien-Ming Wang is the best pitcher and flat out lies:
"He's giving all these stats about Escobar, you have to remember he's pitching in a division that is weaker than the AL East....Chien Ming Wang has pitched against the Red Sox, against the Orioles, pitched against Toronto, three teams that can score some runs." (emphasis added).
AL EAST: Avg runs/team for non-NY Yankees = 725 or 4.86 runs/game
AL WEST: Avg runs/team for non-Anaheim Angels= 728 or 4.87 runs/game
And TEX, SEA, OAK are all better offensively than both Toronto and Baltimore.
3) John Kruk admits he not only doesn't understand advanced pitching metrics, he doesnt' even understand WHIP. Fucking WHIP. One of the five original fantasy baseball pitching stats. You add BB's and Hits and divide by IP. Is it really that difficult to understand? Could your average 6th grader understand WHIP and how to calculate it? YES. Could a 46 year old washed up former baseball player turned analyst? NO. Sadly, no.
4) Steve Phillips tries again valiantly to explain why Run Support matters for a pitcher's won-loss record. "He's won by 4 or more runs in 15 of those 18 wins. That is the offense supporting CMW, it's not his extraordinary pitching."
5) Kruk concludes that because CMW has won most of his games with large margins of victory (a possible sign that he gets large amounts of run support and therefore large #'s of wins which he doesn't necessarily deserve), he should therefore give up even more runs in order to bolster his Cy Young chances. In other words, he should pitch even worse than he presently has in order to get more consideration for the best pitcher award--since he would then have more closer games.
BONUS: Orel Hershiser explains that pitchers sometimes give up runs in order to win a game. And that they give up home runs to stay in games longer, because naturally giving up a HR is a great sign to your manager, "Hey, I'm still going strong, I just gave up that HR on purpose, keep me in here"
1) Steve Phillips explains why Wins really aren't that important when it comes to evaluating a pitcher's performance: "The 16 wins to 18 wins, to me, that's a team differential, not a pitching differential"
2) John Kruk tries to explain why Chien-Ming Wang is the best pitcher and flat out lies:
"He's giving all these stats about Escobar, you have to remember he's pitching in a division that is weaker than the AL East....Chien Ming Wang has pitched against the Red Sox, against the Orioles, pitched against Toronto, three teams that can score some runs." (emphasis added).
AL EAST: Avg runs/team for non-NY Yankees = 725 or 4.86 runs/game
AL WEST: Avg runs/team for non-Anaheim Angels= 728 or 4.87 runs/game
And TEX, SEA, OAK are all better offensively than both Toronto and Baltimore.
3) John Kruk admits he not only doesn't understand advanced pitching metrics, he doesnt' even understand WHIP. Fucking WHIP. One of the five original fantasy baseball pitching stats. You add BB's and Hits and divide by IP. Is it really that difficult to understand? Could your average 6th grader understand WHIP and how to calculate it? YES. Could a 46 year old washed up former baseball player turned analyst? NO. Sadly, no.
4) Steve Phillips tries again valiantly to explain why Run Support matters for a pitcher's won-loss record. "He's won by 4 or more runs in 15 of those 18 wins. That is the offense supporting CMW, it's not his extraordinary pitching."
5) Kruk concludes that because CMW has won most of his games with large margins of victory (a possible sign that he gets large amounts of run support and therefore large #'s of wins which he doesn't necessarily deserve), he should therefore give up even more runs in order to bolster his Cy Young chances. In other words, he should pitch even worse than he presently has in order to get more consideration for the best pitcher award--since he would then have more closer games.
BONUS: Orel Hershiser explains that pitchers sometimes give up runs in order to win a game. And that they give up home runs to stay in games longer, because naturally giving up a HR is a great sign to your manager, "Hey, I'm still going strong, I just gave up that HR on purpose, keep me in here"
Labels: AL Cy Young 2007, john kruk
posted by DWTHTB at 10:10 PM
6 Comments:
Wow, you actually made Kruk look like the smart one here. This article holds no weight!
What amazes me the most about this is that Steve Phillips sounds like he was actually making sense for a change.
"This article holds no weight!"
Curious to see your reasoning behind that statement considering that
1) John Kruk used the fact that Wang had 18 wins in only 27 starts as the basis for his CY Young pick when Josh Beckett had exact same # of wins and exact same # of starts. So how is Wang better than Beckett??
2) Kruk claims that the teams Wang faces are much better offensively than the teams Escobar faces on a regular basis. But this simply isn't true (at least according to Runs Scored which is a pretty good measure of offensive production). He also claims Toronto and Baltimore are 2 good offensive teams, which they clearly aren't
3) He doesn't understand what WHIP is.
4) He doesn't understand that a pitcher can only keep a game tied. A pitcher can't "WIN" a game. He needs offensive support for that.
5) He thinks CMW should give up more runs (to make his games closer) in order to improve his Cy Young chances, when in fact he should give up less runs (lower ERA) in order to improve his chances.
Did all that escape you or are you just as stupid as Kruk?
you may know stats but you know nothing about baseball
"you may know stats but you know nothing about baseball"
So enlighten me then??? Why does Chien-Ming Wang deserve to AL Cy Young Winner, when Josh Beckett has better stats than him in every category, every single pitching category AND plays on a better team??
Huh, love to hear your reasoning on that one?
Anonymous, I have to say I'm not sure what you're getting at. Wins are almost entirely out of a pitcher's control in today's game. All you can do is go out there and give up the fewest runs you can for as many innings as you can. Starters have no control over how many runs of support they get, or whether their bullpen/closer can hold the lead. So how can we base the award for the best pitcher on a statistic that relies so much on team performance? If Borowski hadn't blown 2 of Sabathia's wins this year, he would be the hands down favorite. But instead, he'll probably lose because the Indians don't have Papelbon or Rivera. Does that make sense to you?
Post a Comment
<< Home