skyking162

Like I wrote in the first awards post, comparing starters to starters is relatively easy because their roles are all the same. When you consider relievers, however, you’ve just introduced another factor — leverage. Obviously, Mariano Rivera’s 75 IP are more valuable than 75 of Johan Santana’s innings, because you can pick which games and situations to use them. Not surprisingly, Joe Torre uses Mo at the end of close games, thus maximizing Yankee wins. The reason Torre doesn’t lead off every other game with one inning from Rivera should be obvious.

The question becomes, then, do relievers deserve credit for the situations in which they pitch? I believe the answer is a qualified yes, although it’s taken me a while to come around to that position. My biggest hesitation stems from years of arguing against the idiocy of saves and managers (mis)using their best reliever. Thankfully, reliever leverage is a quality concept, whereas the save was, and unfortunately still is, ridiculous.

Yes, mediocre pitchers can still rack up more credit than they deserve by pitching in high-leverage situations. And yes, some stud pitchers are still underutilized. But good pitchers do deserve to pitch higher-leverage innings, and those innings do make them more valuable. The object is to win games, and if the numbers say that moving a starter to a certain role in the bullpen will help the team win more games, I can’t argue with that. (I’m not saying they necessarily do, but it’s a lot closer than the drop in innings pitched would lead you to believe.)

In order to control for CMS (Crazy Manager Syndrome), I’m not going to use each reliever’s actual Leverage Index. Instead, I’m going to assign them a leverage value based on the situations in which they deserve to pitch. The better the reliever, the more important the situations he should be assigned. Reliever ERAs are just under one run better than starters, on average, so I’m using a replacement ERA of 5.00. The worst relievers see situations with a leverage of about .50. League-average ERA for relievers is about 4.00, and league-average leverage is 1.00. Continuing the pattern (I have no argument to do so, but the numbers seem to fit rather well), each one run decrease in ERA will result in a leverage increase of .50. A chart should help. (Remember, a higher leverage corresponds to a more important situation):

ERA   LEV
5.00   .50
4.00  1.00
3.00  1.50
2.00  2.00
1.00  2.50

I’m going to run the same charts as I did for the starters, using runs prevented based on four metrics: ERA, RA, FIP, xFIP. However, I’m multiplying a reliever’s runs prevented by his leverage, thus amplifying these more important innings.

ERA Runs Prevented
79 Papelbon
59 Ryan
51 Reyes
50 Rivera
48 Zumaya
45 Rodriguez
44 Nathan
41 Putz
36 Otsuka

First off, I like it. These guys have definitely been the best relievers this season. The stud closers are included, but also the stud setup men. Papelbon has a huge lead thanks to his sub-1.00 ERA, and even comes over the top of Johan Santana’s 72 ERA runs prevented. Ryan finishes third behind Halladay, and Reyes falls in Lackey/Liriano territory. Of course, Liriano probably deserves some extra credit for the leverage of his relief innings.

RA Runs Prevented
74 Papelbon
59 Ryan
47 Rivera
44 Zumaya
44 Nathan
42 Reyes
41 Putz
38 Rodriguez
34 Soriano

Ryan and Nathan haven’t given up any unearned runs and therefore gain ground in this list. Rodriguez and Reyes take the biggest hits, while Soriano sneaks on as the second Mariner reliever in the top 10. Papelbon’s still just above Santana’s 69 number, Ryan’s now neck and neck with Halladay, and the bottom of the reliever list starts to fall away from the bottom of the starter list.

FIP Runs Prevented
49 Nathan
49 Putz
44 Papelbon
39 Ryan
29 Rincon
28 Rivera
26 Street
25 Rodriguez
23 Jenks
22 Otsuka

Here’s where things get all bizarro-world with the relievers. Papelbon’s peripherals don’t support his obscenely low ERA, dropping him below Nathan and Putz. Huston Street and Bobby Jenks are two guys with skills that are better than their ERAs have shown in 2006. As a whole, the top relievers take a huge hit when considering FIP. Top starters do, too, but it’s much more extreme with the relievers? Why? FIP removes luck (among other things). Given a dozen great relievers, a few are bound to have ERAs much better than they deserve, which are brought back under control by FIP. Starters’ ERAs are less prone to extreme variation because they throw 2-3 times as many innings.

And there’s the debate — do these fortunate relievers deserve credit for being fortunate? The added performance results in an actual benefit to their teams, but it’s not an ability, per se. And remember, I’m basing each pitcher’s leverage number on their ERA (or whatever), so a hit to ERA also hurts their leverage — a double whammy to runs prevented. I initially thought that was unfair, but what was probably more unfair was allowing Papelbon’s sub-1.00 ERA to earn him a leverage above 2.5 in the first list. Organizations tend to overrate relievers based on one flukily good year and using FIP to avoid that pitfall is a good idea in my book.

Anyways, compared to the starters, relievers now appear to be much less valuable. The tenth best starter is 23 runs better than his reliever counterpart. Putz and Nathan would fall in near Schilling, Sabathia, and Mussina in a master list. Frankly, that makes my right brain quite pleased.

xFIP Runs Prevented
33 Putz
31 Nathan
24 Jenks
20 Shields
19 Papelbon
19 Ryan
17 Crain
16 Rodriguez
16 Reyes
14 Rincon

Normalizing their homerun rates per flyball, relievers take another step back relative to the starters. Putz wouldn’t even make the starters’ top 10 list. But honestly, the last two lists probably do a disservice to relievers in assuming starters and relievers are subject to the same assumptions. Transitioning to the bullpen tends to help a pitcher’s ERA by almost a full run — pitchers can throw harder and throw their best two pitches exclusively, resulting in better peripherals. We’ve already accounted for that with the better replacement level. But it might also be unfair to assume the expected batting average on balls-in-play should be the same as the starters’. And looking at the xFIP numbers, it might be very unfair to assume that relievers don’t have an advantage over starters in keeping the ball in the park.

Again, your Cy Young winner depends on how you define “Cy Young winner”. In sticking with what I wrote in the starters’ article, I like to define the best pitcher as the one who displayed the best ability to prevent runs during the season — who would I pick for my team ahead of time if I were omniscient? While I chose to look at xFIP for starters, I would definitely choose FIP instead for relievers. In fact, I probably now lie somewhere between the two for starters.

For fun (remember, most of the assumed numbers in this article are estimates), here’s my ballot for 2006 Cy Young, going 40 deep. For starters, I’m using xFIP, and for relievers I’m using FIP. That’s probably not perfectly fair, but the error bars on these calculations are at least 10 runs, anyways.

Sky’s Crackhead 2006 Cy Young Ballot (as of September 7)
62 Santana
58 Halladay
53 Bonderman
49 Putz
49 Nathan
49 Schilling
47+ Liriano
45 Hernandez
44 Papelbon
44 Haren
42 Mussina
41 Sabathia
39 Ryan
39 Kazmir
39 Millwood
39 Westbrook
37 Wang
36 Bedard
35 Escobar
34 Lackey
32 Robertson
32 Johnson
30 Verlander
29 Rincon
29 Padilla
28 Rivera
28 Lopez
27 Vazquez
26 Street
26 Contreras
26 Beckett
25 Rodriguez
25 Shields
25 Garcia
24 Burnett
24 Rogers
23 Jenks
23 Shields
23 Meche
23 Garland
22 Otsuka

One last note — if you’re a fan of actual value added (i.e. you prefer the ERA Runs Prevented list), I’d go even further in that direction that just using ERA. I’d use Win Probability Added, found over at FanGraphs. Although, pitchers are getting credit for the work their fielders are doing with David’s current methodology.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, September 9th, 2006 at 5:09 pm and is filed under Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.