Comments on: Tom Glavine: not a $13 million pitcher

By: Sarah Green

Sarah Green — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 18:14:53 +0000

You were an altar boy?? HOT. And you can tell your girlfriend I said so.

By: Ernie Mazza

Ernie Mazza — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 18:58:52 +0000

I am so glad he’s gone.He is not worth much money at all. He was only mediocre While in NY.Glavine may have been very good at one time, but the Mets saw very few good outings from him in 5 years. Now someone else can take over his spot and hopefully do better, and for less money.

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By: dteberle

dteberle — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 15:52:40 +0000

You may be right about Schilling being able to “dial it up” when he wants to. I haven’t seen the guy pitch enough this year to have earned the right to an opinion on that. So I’ll concede this at the moment. Let’s remember to review this conversation next year.

But I did recently read a study that claimed there was essentially no difference between a strikeout and contact pitcher in how deep he can go in a game. It has more to do with how many walks they give up. You can read it here.

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-kazmir-conundrum/contact.

Basically, the argument here is that yes, it takes more pitches to strike a guy out than to get him to put the ball in play. But this is all balanced out when you consider that each K is an out while each ball in play is not. And that going for Ks doesn’t necessarily mean your walks are going up too.

But I think I’ve gotten WAAAY off topic here. Sorry.

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By: Zvee Geffen

Zvee Geffen — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 15:13:43 +0000

No, I know he was forced to switch strategies by cruel Father Time, rather than any kind of preference. No power pitcher likes to admit he can’t blow it by hitters anymore. But instead of just pathetically hanging on to the past (which would have been disastrous), he decided to add a new pitch to his arsenal and find a way to make it work. He can still get a strikeout when he *needs* one, but most of the time these days, he has to let his defense do their jobs if he wants to keep his pitch count down.

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By: dteberle

dteberle — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 14:54:04 +0000

I don’t think any pitcher ever chooses to supplant strikeouts with contact outs. He’s forced to because he can’t strike anyone out any more.

And any counter-argument I can pose depends a lot on how you feel about “Batting-Average-on-Balls-in-Play”. If you’re like me and rely a good deal on BABiP to rationalize things, then I can say things like strikeouts are much more preferable to “pitching to contact”. If it’s true that, on average, batters get hits roughly 30% of the time they make contact (depending on how hard they hit the ball), then why wouldn’t you choose to let them hit it? Strikeouts help limit the damage caused by this 30% “rule”, which is why it’s an important ability to have.

As for the changeup thing, I honestly don’t know. My first inclination would be to see his Line Drive % and his Ground ball/ Fly ball ratio to see if hitters are making different kinds of contact against him.

So I looked at the numbers and it’s pretty inconclusive. His LD% in 2007 was at 19% (meaning that 19% of the time that hitters made contact against him, they hit the ball hard), which is pretty similar to his 2006 19.7% and 2004’s 19.8% (I’m not counting 2005 because that season was a career anomaly – he was a mess).

He is allowing flyballs a bit more than he used to, but not by much. He had a .91 GB/FB ratio this year, compared to .96 in 2006 and 1.04 in 2004. Which doesn’t necessarily mean much. It may be worth mentioning that there’s been a steady decline in the # of groundballs he allows since 1998. But this hasn’t hurt him that much yet.

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By: Zvee Geffen

Zvee Geffen — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 14:36:40 +0000

No, I have no idea where to find that stuff. I mean, you could try baseball-reference.com or maaaybe hardballtimes.com, but I still like ESPN.com’s stats the best because, even if they don’t have all the stats I would want (VORP, mainly) they are so well-organized and easy to sort. BP might have it but I find their interface very unintuitive.

Do you not think that Schilling’s adding a changeup to his repetoire this year might have had some impact? I mean, he made a conscious choice to supplant strikeouts with contact outs. That has to show up somewhere in his numbers.

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By: dteberle

dteberle — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 14:15:09 +0000

If that’s the case, Sarah, then Schilling wised up a lot between ‘06 and ‘07. There;s almost no difference between Schilling’s splits in 2006. Looking at his numbers from last year, opponents had 796 ABs against him. The .452 SLG% over that span would mean 360 total bases given up. The .462 SLG% over that same time would be 368 TBs. It’s really not a big difference and totally within the realm of random fluctuation.

And I’d be really curious to see Pedro’s pre 2002 splits to see if it really is a trend or just a coincidence. I have no idea where to find the info, though. Anyone know?

Either way, even in his better days, the splits were much closer together than Schilling’s in 2007.

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By: Zvee Geffen

Zvee Geffen — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 13:47:54 +0000

That’s interesting Paul—it actually looks like Pedro’s days of only giving up solo shots ended when he left Boston. (Thus far, everything that happens just validates Boston’s decision to let him go; plus they got Buchholz with the pick! Booya!) But I wonder, if looking at Schilling’s numbers, we could go so far as to call it a mild trend—to say he’s gotten better at getting out of jams as he gets older/wiser/a changeup. No?

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By: dteberle

dteberle — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 13:30:05 +0000

All right, here are those SLG% splits for Schilling and Pedro with runners on and bases clear. I can only do a quick check since 2002 because that’s all ESPN.com keeps track.

Schilling (ON/NONE):
2007: .363/.499
2006: .452/.462
2005: .509/.505
2004: .381/.391
2003: .367/.353
2002: .438/.326

Pedro (ON/NONE)
2007: .389/.387
2006: .465/.340
2005: .344/.329
2004: .370/.419
2003: .287/.330
2002: .302/.312

These splits are usually a lot closer together than Schilling’s 2007. The argument wasn’t that Schilling’s SLG% Against in 2008 will DEFINITELY be clsoer to the .499 than the .363. I’m just saying that I don’t think that the disparity is something that translates year after year. So I expect those splits to be closer together in 2008, which MAY mean that he’ll allow a higher SLG% with men on base than he did this year. It was kind of like “Can the real Curt Schilling please stand up”.

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By: Paul Moro

Paul Moro — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 01:57:32 +0000

As an added note, Schilling is well over the benchmark for an “average Hall of Famer” in Black Ink, Gray Ink, and Hall of Fame Monitor, and he is just a shade under in Hall of Fame Standards, but should soon be over…

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