Posted by MikeT23 on 3/12/2012 6:13:00 PM (view original):
36 minus plays is horrible. If you find it acceptable, good for you. It's not.
http://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?TopicID=431983&Page=6
Well that was a tad hostile and off-topic. I didn't say it was acceptable. I said it was average. Which it is. The mean is his world the past 2 seasons was 33 and 40. This year so far, it's 11. He's at 12, and he's above league average in plus plays. With a league average defense, in Burlington, that guy should easily be a top-15 ERA SP in the AL. But he's far outside that. I'm chalking it up to a small sample size.
If his defense is a 36-minus-play defense, and 20 is acceptable to you, that's a difference of 1 minus play per 10 games or 90 innings. Over 307 career innings, this guy has suffered 3.5 additional minus plays over your 20-minus-play acceptable defense. Is that the primary culprit for this guy's ERA? He has 3 other pitchers in the AL's top-10 in ERA at the moment, one of whom is way worse than the guy he asked about. Is his defense killing them?
Defense is important. The OP should strive to improve his. But I'll still stick with small sample size on this particular player. He's a 3.75 ERA pitcher easy in Burlington, even with that kind of defense.