Posted by oriolemagic on 2/21/2012 12:07:00 PM (view original):
Posted by kcden on 2/21/2012 12:03:00 PM (view original):
I think the combination of ERA/WHIP in a given year is a pretty good indication of how good they were THAT YEAR. For predicting future performance, it is all over the charts, just like FIP appears to be (probably more-so, but I haven't studied large groups of players for FIP vs. ERA, and don't plan to do so... maybe I'll look at it a bit more before my fantasy auction this season and see where it gets me).
So back the original question, how do you value the extra 81 innings when ERA/WHIP do not take them into account?
I do take the extra 81 innings into account. If Ducey had ~2.75 ERA & ~1.05 WHIP, I probably would sway towards him... 81 extra innings vs. 0.68 Runs and 0.14 WHIP doesn't add up to "he was more outstanding" to me, and the Cy Young, in my book, is "Who was the most outstanding pitcher?"
We've already calculated (based on Pitcher Runs that you brought up) that we could have a league average pitcher (4.51 ERA... actually, slightly worse than that) throw those other 81 innings and come out to: Ducey (286 innings)= Sheldon (205 innings) + Slightly Worse Than League Average Guy (81 innings)
I might be closer to voting for Ducey for MVP (if we could), as I think there is a much better argument that he was the MVP, vs. the most outstanding pitcher.
This isn't an exact science, and I'm not going to crunch some numbers to have one player come out at 1.98 and the other 1.89 so I vote for Mr. 1.98 because Baseball is not an exact science, as much as Sabermatricians would like it to be.