Posted by tecwrg on 2/27/2012 4:48:00 PM (view original):

Posted by jrd_x on 2/27/2012 3:56:00 PM (view original):
I never said all baseball writers are hacks. Many are great writers and really know baseball.

In your hypothetical, pitcher A pitched exceptionally well for 8 years then stopped. Pitcher B had the exact same stats for those 8 years and then pitched 5 more very good years.

And you said pitcher A was the better pitcher.

For pitchers, more is a component of better.

In my hypothetical, there is no way to determine that B had the exact same stats as A for eight seasons.  How did you deduce that before I told you who A and B were?

You can't apply facts that you learned after I gave you A and B as part of your rationale for your decision making before that point.  Unless you're Mr. Peabody and have a Wayback machine, or you drive a DeLorean that goes 88 MPH.

But your example illustrated perfectly the fact that a pitcher can have lesser rate stats over more innings and still be the better pitcher.

More is a component of better.

Not if it's not actually better.

jtpops' steak analogy. 

Posted by MikeT23 on 2/27/2012 5:27:00 PM (view original):
Not if it's not actually better.

jtpops' steak analogy. 

Absolutely.  Like tec's Koufax/Moyer example.

Moyer pitcher longer but Koufax was so much better over his career that he was still the better pitcher.

Posted by MikeT23 on 2/27/2012 5:27:00 PM (view original):
Not if it's not actually better.

jtpops' steak analogy. 

Actually, it was my dinner analogy, which jrd never responded to:

An analogy: you and your wife/girlfriend/whoever go out to dinner one night. You both order the same item from the menu. You get the full entree, but she only orders the half-portion. Which one tastes better?

That's a terrible analogy because taste better isn't the same as better pitcher, as evidenced by your ClemensvClemens example.

Clemens B was the better pitcher because he pitched more innings.

The Mike/tec/jtpsops camp seems to think that the number of innings a pitcher throws is his choice, or something.  They don't recognize that having the durability to pitch 5000+ innings takes a whole a lot of skill.

jm, the question at hand is who was the better pitcher during the timeframe up until Hunter retired after the 79 season.  The additional innings beyond that are outside the scope of the discussion.

jrd is unable to undersatand that.

I think it's more about durability/health/previous performance.   Because no one in their right mind wants 84-88 Carlton.

Posted by jrd_x on 2/27/2012 5:39:00 PM (view original):
That's a terrible analogy because taste better isn't the same as better pitcher, as evidenced by your ClemensvClemens example.

Clemens B was the better pitcher because he pitched more innings.

If two pitchers are virtually identical (i.e. Hunter '65 thru '79 vs. Carlton '65 thru '79), then it's the perfect analogy.

You keep on going back to the 1700+ IPs that Carlton pitched from 1980 and later as somehow affecting the quality of what he did thru the 1979 season.

So using your same logic, the full entree tastes better than the half entree by virtue that it's "more".  Would you agree?

Posted by jm1618 on 2/25/2012 3:20:00 PM (view original):
"The discussion at hand is Hunter's career vs. Carlton's career through 1979"

OK, I'll compare them again, but this time exclude Carlton's seasons after 1979.

Carlton:  12.2  7.2  5.8  4.6  4.5  4.3  3.7  2.9  2.8  2.6  2.5  2.3  0.6  0.5
Hunter:   7.6    6.4  5.7  4.0  2.8  2.2  1.7  1.2  1.1  0.8  0.6  0.0 -0.3 -0.6 -0.7

Carlton STILL beats Hunter in WAR, every single year.

Carlton vs. Hunter through 1979.

I know you have some issues with WAR, but I don't know of a pitching stat that does a better job of capturing overall value.

And it seems strange, since you keep on talking about more vs. better, that the "more" part of Carlton's career is beyond the scope of the discussion.

Posted by tecwrg on 2/27/2012 5:56:00 PM (view original):
jm, the question at hand is who was the better pitcher during the timeframe up until Hunter retired after the 79 season.  The additional innings beyond that are outside the scope of the discussion.

jrd is unable to undersatand that.

But they absolutely aren't out of the discussion.  Part of the reason that Cartlon was the better pitcher was because he was able to throw those innings and Hunter wasn't.

You used the WifS data to determine the value of players earlier.    Is WAR better than that?

If a whole steak fills me up and a half steak doesn't, then I'd say the whole steak is the better meal.

Posted by MikeT23 on 2/27/2012 6:09:00 PM (view original):
You used the WifS data to determine the value of players earlier.    Is WAR better than that?

No, I'm pretty sure that was Jtpsops, actually (which you didn't have a problem with, by the way).  I referred to how WIS calculates results to show that a number of people would say that the hitter affects the result of a PA more than the pitcher.

Posted by jm1618 on 2/27/2012 6:13:00 PM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 2/27/2012 6:09:00 PM (view original):
You used the WifS data to determine the value of players earlier.    Is WAR better than that?

No, I'm pretty sure that was Jtpsops, actually (which you didn't have a problem with, by the way).  I referred to how WIS calculates results to show that a number of people would say that the hitter affects the result of a PA more than the pitcher.

OK, I knew you used WifS database for something.   Yeah, that was dumb.

I don't read a whole lot of jtpops posts.