Replacement Level Yankees Weblog Comments
Colon looked like crap, that was nice.
Unfortunately, I'm not so sure. Early for command, but they were reading his velocity at 93 or so. A big change from the 89 he apparently couldn't exceed through all his previous try-outs. It would be quite annoying if they did get an old-time Colon for nothing.
Colon was only throwing 93 if we believe Bruney was throwing 100, right?
also, no one has anything to say about the ridiculous snark in the posted article about Pettitte? Pettitte faked an elbow injury so that he wouldn't be involved in what must have been a premeditated brawl?
and this is based on what? are there ANY ethics any more when it comes to reporting?
wow, clicking the link i am surprised that was Abraham.
"i am surprised that was Abraham."
Not surprising to me. He's great on access, awful on everything else.
In re "Pettitte looked good", I'm feeling a little leery looking at the lines the starters are putting up. Isn't the CW for the point usually that the hitters are having to catch up to the pitchers?
I'm feeling a little leery looking at the lines the starters are putting up.
I'm not particularly worried. I think spring training is a time for experimenting with new pitches and building up arm strength. I'd guess there is very little correlation between spring stats and regular season performance, althought it'd made for an interesting study.
I do like to see good performances out of the guys on the bubble, like Traber and Patterson. From what I've seen of Traber, he does seem like he has the stuff to be a solid LOOGY, and there is a statistical case for him to be made as well although I'll go into that later.
i thought 2 of the runs Pettitte gave up were a result of a double that Damon lost in the sun.
I really don't think that's what Abraham meant at all. How could Pettitte fake an injury to avoid being in a brawl that might not have occurred? Does Abraham think he's going to "conveniently" miss every NYY-TBDR game this season? Surely not. It seemed like a too-little-thought-out attempt at passing humor, not a geniune insinuation.
Also, Colon was apparently reaching 97 on the YES gun that put Bruney at 100. Colon was 93 on the NYY gun in the crowd. (I think that was all according to Abraham, too, incidentally.)
i didn't watch the game, i took it from this:
http://riveraveblues.com/2008/03...-velocity-2345/
Even if Colon's velocity is back now, I'm not concerned. His command was crap and his team plays games that matter in a week. There's also no guarantee that he's able to maintain his velocity over the course of a season (I'd argue it's unlikely). It's also extremely unlikely that even if Colon returns to recent form that he will ever be a useful major league starter. His ERA+ has been above 90 once in the last 4 years. I just don't see him being an asset for Boston.
So I made my first trip to vegas this weekend and to my surprise they were taking action on exhibition games. So of course I bet (legally) on the yanks in that sox game.
On another note, I stayed in caesars palace and happened to run into Pete Rose.
I was wearing a Joba jersey so we started talking about the yanks. He says to me "why is your manager bitching about the kid taking out the catcher, people are paying a lot to see those games"....what could I say besides "I dunno, Pete Rose."
Then I told him how much respect I have for him and told him if ANYONE deserves to be in the HoF its him and he proceeded to give me the dirtiest look a man in white snakeskin cowboy boots can give.
"Then I told him how much respect I have for him and told him if ANYONE deserves to be in the HoF its him and he proceeded to give me the dirtiest look a man in white snakeskin cowboy boots can give."
I can't stop laughing. My co-workers think I'm crazy.
because you dont think he belongs in the hall or the boots?
by the way his hair was the same color as the mother in requiem for a dream
Because of the fact that he resented being reminded even though it came out of the mouth of a (seeming, at least) well-wisher.
haha. awesome story.
saw Big Wil Nieves make a nice play against the tigers today.
when the only two out you got where whiffs in deep counts on hanging breakers up in the zone. I think your pretty screwed no matter how fast your throwing.
brett gardner's pretty cool
His ERA+ has been above 90 once in the last 4 years. I just don't see him being an asset for Boston.
Colon won 18 games for LAA in 2004 with that ERA+ of 90. A guy who can eat innings and post an ERA around five is definitely an asset for a team that can score runs. Colon will always be able to eat, but it remains to be seen if he can still eat innings.
According to Angels' fans, Colon started out last year throwing in the 90s as well but just couldn't physically keep it up. He didn't have surgery so I don't see why this year would be any different. I'm hardly worried about him.
"Colon won 18 games for LAA in 2004 with that ERA+ of 90. A guy who can eat innings and post an ERA around five is definitely an asset for a team that can score runs. Colon will always be able to eat, but it remains to be seen if he can still eat innings."
That's an ERA of 5.50 in Fenway. And just eating innings is not an asset if they're terrible innings. Boston's offense is good, but it's not superlative, it's at best 3rd in the league, maybe as low as 5th. Even if Colon manages to throw 200 innings (unlikely) of crappy baseball, it's still not an asset. It means that everytime he steps on the mound, the other team has a great chance to win and the Sox bullpen has a great chance to get worn out.
I think you just have a different definition of "asset" than most people. I'm not suggesting that Colon will be a star, or a steal, for Boston. And I'm not worried about him being some kind of difference maker for them. But somebody is going to have to pitch the innings that Schilling isn't going to, and a guy who can go out there every fifth day to either take one for the team or give you five or six semi-decent innings is an asset in the current game. It's not outside of the realm of possibility that the guy earns his salary for a third or half a season.
"But somebody is going to have to pitch the innings that Schilling isn't going to, and a guy who can go out there every fifth day to either take one for the team or give you five or six semi-decent innings is an asset in the current game. It's not outside of the realm of possibility that the guy earns his salary for a third or half a season."
Yes somebody has to, and Colon might be able to do that, but he's not anymore likely to do better than any other replacement level starter. We're talking about a guy whose best case scenario is Mike Mussina from last year. That's not valuable, that's replacement level and anyone can find it. That is not an asset.
Hi guys -- been a while. This Colon discussion is an interesting one. I don't see any consideration given to his likely role... possibly because it's pretty hard to predict what that would be. I'd guess spot starter or swingman, depending on whether Beckett has to go slowly on his back thingy (unlikely) or whether they want to hold back Buchholz (somewhat likely). I don't see more than 100 innings being available, and I don't see them putting Colon in Schilling's regular turn unless he completely reverts to his 2004 form.
So the question is, what is his value as a swingman? There's a chance he's worth a couple extra wins above replacement, but I'm not holding my breath.
P.s. When is the regular site going back up? I don't know if I can keep commenting with that logo by my name.
I think you have a different definition of replacement level than most people, too, Will. If replacement level for starting pitchers is 2007 Mussina, then why were so many 2007 major league games started by guys who performed significantly worse than he did?
The 2007 Yankees had 30 starts made by sub-Mussina pitchers. Having another Mussina to take the starts that went to Igawa, Clippard, DeSalvo, Karstens and Wright would have saved about 30 runs. That probably would have meant winning the division instead of the wild card. And that's not an asset?
Were Wright et. al. collectively even replacement level? I can imagine the Yankees having hoped for more than rl and having accepted higher risk in return.
Were Wright et. al. collectively even replacement level?
But my whole point is about defining replacement level. The Yankees gave those guys 150+ innings. More than half the teams in MLB did pretty much the same thing. Are we really supposed to believe that a couple of thousand major league innings were thrown by guys who are significantly worse than other guys who were freely available? Or should we perhaps question the assumptions that go into those definitions of replacement level talent instead?
My attempted point was that the Yankees might have picked up sure-fire RL pitcher P with zero upside but tried turned-out-to-be-sub-RL pitchers A, B, C, D with some relative-to-rl-upside (or greater flexibility, or whatever). That upside was worth some amount of risk - maybe the bets didn't work out, but from a strategy POV they could have been good. If A-D were collectively RL then never mind.
To put it another way, one expects a third of true RL pitchers to perform worse than one sigma below that. Same problem for choosing middle relievers.
one expects a third of true RL pitchers to perform worse than one sigma below that
And of course, a third of them will perform better than one sigma above that. So everybody has some "upside," if only through the wonders of random variation.
Crusty old baseball men who wouldn't know a sigma from an epsilon cal it catching lightning in a bottle. You may know this phenomenon better as "Aaron Small."
Some have true upside though - not that one often hears enthusiasm about a guy who might make a relatively good 5th starter.
I don't remember - how were Small's peripherals? Maybe something did click for him for a while.
MC,
you're misreading my post. Colon's upside is Mussina's 2007. There are dozens of players capable of that. A much more likely scenario is that Colon is toast and reaches the Igawa suck levels. That is a replacement level pitcher, a pitcher who has little to no upside and an absolutely awful outlook if he performs as he should be expected to.
I'll add that if you think Colon is going to make anything close to 25 starts to reach that 150 IP mark, you're nuts.
"because you dont think he belongs in the hall or the boots?"
Oh, he belongs in the boots, all right!
you're misreading my post
And you're misreading mine. You're also misreading the level of Mussina's performance in 2007. As overpaid as he was for what he did, it simply isn't the case that there are dozens of freely available pitchers capable of giving you that. Again, if that were the case, guys worse than Mussina was last year would almost never pitch in the majors. The reality is that guys who are much worse than what you are calling replacement level pitch almost 10% of all major league innings year after year.
There most definately are a ton of pitchers "capable" of producing Mussina's production last year. You see how SG has those best case and worst case scenarios in his projections. You could lineup any number of guys who are in AAA and their optimistic projections would put them right in range of what Mussina did. The reason Mussina has a job and a lot of worse players have those jobs is that not everyone reaches their upside. Moose still has a job because he projects to be significantly better than last year and I bet a guy like Igawa has a 150 IP, 87 ERA+ in his 80 or 90 percentile projection. Does that have value if it comes to pass? Yes, it is most certainly better than replacement level (11 runs in fact). Is having a player whose upside is 11 runs above replacement an asset? Not really. Colon is no more likely to pitch as well as Mussina did last year than Jorge Sosa or Dave Williams or any other freely available former Major League starting pitcher. That's why he was freely available for the Sox at the beginning of March and that's why 29 teams never sent him an NRI or offered him a minor league contract. The only reason anyone is paying attention to this burnt, fork in the back shadow of a pitcher is because of his name and what he accomplished in, what is for all intents and purposes, a different life.
...he was freely available for the Sox...
That's it in a nutshell, though. He didn't cost them players or prospects, and he isn't going to cost them a ton of money. I suspect that they picked him up because they see themselves as having a short-term need for a fifth starter, and they see him as having short-term upside that is a bit above replacement level. If you guys scroll back up and read what I said about him, you'll note that my optimistic projection is that he "earns his salary for a third or half a season." I'd be shocked if he was still with them by the all-star break.
Is having a player whose upside is 11 runs above replacement an asset?
Again, if Mussina's 2007 performance was only worth 11 runs above replacement, then I'd say there's something wrong with the way replacement is being calculated. All those lousy innings being pitched for all those major league teams by all those freely available pitchers add up to something a lot worse than Mussina plus 11 runs. It's one thing to say that this or that aging veteran pitcher shouldn't have a job any more, but most of the starts I'm talking about are being made by guys brought up from the minors or rescued off the scrap heap. They are the real world definition of replacement level, and that real-world definition is more meaningful to me than an abstract one.
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