Grand Marquis

[CUBZ99]

no one's looking at one year. im not beating a dead horse again. there's no reason to expect him to be anything useful. he's trash.

 

 

Well I guess that makes it official. With that type of analysis, its hard to imagine why everyone isn't just merely agreeing with you?

[Mizzou]

Three above average seasons and four below average seasons, combined with a career ERA of 4.55 is hardly one of the worst pitchers in the game, but you're certainly entitled to your opinion, no matter how off if may be.

[CubsInNC]

if you want to grade his level of sucking and the degree of "worst" be my guest. It's a waste of time. He sucks. Besides if your look at his PERA's or anything close to it you're going to find his career one near or above 5.00. that's enough to label him one of the worst pitchers in the game.

 

and dont bring up 2004. it's been slammed down more than enough times.

 

Not trying to argue the point, but have you done statistical analysis on that year with regard to the rest of his career to see, statistically, how far outside the trend it ranges? Its been too long since my stats class to remember the term I'm referring to, maybe T-test and/or chi-square testing (thanks Wikipedia), but basically, to see if the values are truly inconsistant, or within some % of validity?

[98navigator]

no one's looking at one year. im not beating a dead horse again. there's no reason to expect him to be anything useful. he's trash.

 

 

Well I guess that makes it official. With that type of analysis, its hard to imagine why everyone isn't just merely agreeing with you?

 

Ok, this actually made me L-O-L :lol:

[Mephistopheles]

Ironically enough the god, Shawn Estes is better than him in DERA. Granted, it's not end-all be-all but when we're comparing him to Estes, we're comparing him to guys who can't keep their jobs as a starter, so the logical conclusion is that he's among the worst pitchers.

[Mephistopheles]

if you want to grade his level of sucking and the degree of "worst" be my guest. It's a waste of time. He sucks. Besides if your look at his PERA's or anything close to it you're going to find his career one near or above 5.00. that's enough to label him one of the worst pitchers in the game.

 

and dont bring up 2004. it's been slammed down more than enough times.

 

Not trying to argue the point, but have you done statistical analysis on that year with regard to the rest of his career to see, statistically, how far outside the trend it ranges? Its been too long since my stats class to remember the term I'm referring to, maybe T-test and/or chi-square testing (thanks Wikipedia), but basically, to see if the values are truly inconsistant, or within some % of validity?

Eh, there's a HUGE problem with doing that: Third variable/confounding variable/lurking variable/etc. Those methods you used are probability based, not this. When you run the regressions I think you come out to that 25% of run prevention is controlled directly by the pitchers (Ks/BBs,GBs, etc) the rest is dumb luck, park and defense. So trying to do anything on it is tough. There are ways to try to isolate these, but let's just say it's a pain and it won't tell us anything we don't already know. Mainly because the sample size will suck.

 

One thing I can do is estimate the stdev for dERA or FIP minus the actual ERA. See how often he's on the extremes. Granted all that's going to tell us is that the cardinals defense is good, we already knew that.

Edited March 12, 2007 by Mephistopheles

[Mephistopheles]

no one's looking at one year. im not beating a dead horse again. there's no reason to expect him to be anything useful. he's trash.

 

 

Well I guess that makes it official. With that type of analysis, its hard to imagine why everyone isn't just merely agreeing with you?

its not like i havent posted it before in this thread....

[CubsInNC]

if you want to grade his level of sucking and the degree of "worst" be my guest. It's a waste of time. He sucks. Besides if your look at his PERA's or anything close to it you're going to find his career one near or above 5.00. that's enough to label him one of the worst pitchers in the game.

 

and dont bring up 2004. it's been slammed down more than enough times.

 

Not trying to argue the point, but have you done statistical analysis on that year with regard to the rest of his career to see, statistically, how far outside the trend it ranges? Its been too long since my stats class to remember the term I'm referring to, maybe T-test and/or chi-square testing (thanks Wikipedia), but basically, to see if the values are truly inconsistant, or within some % of validity?

Eh, there's a HUGE problem with doing that: Third variable/confounding variable/lurking variable/etc. Those methods you used are probability based, not this. When you run the regressions I think you come out to that 25% of run prevention is controlled directly by the pitchers (Ks/BBs,GBs, etc) the rest is dumb luck, park and defense. So trying to do anything on it is tough. There are ways to try to isolate these, but let's just say it's a pain and it won't tell us anything we don't already know. Mainly because the sample size will suck.

 

One thing I can do is estimate the stdev for dERA or FIP minus the actual ERA. See how often he's on the extremes. Granted all that's going to tell us is that the cardinals defense is good, we already knew that.

 

Maybe it's my lack of stats experience and ed-you-muh-kay-shun to see the difference here, but isn't using his past stats to determine his current/future performance probablity based? I don't understand how it's different. Yeah, there are a ton of variables from game to game, let alone year to year. But without probablity based "guessing" wouldn't PECOTA and the like just be as big of crap shoots as my preferred method of pulling numbers out of thin air? [/threadjack]

[Amazing_Grace]

The problem with Marquis isn't so much that he has gone from mediocre to crappy during his career, nor, in fact, is it that he's making 7 million dollars. The problem is that the Cubs signed him for 3 years, which was galactically stupid. It's a risky enough proposition to believe Marquis can turn it around for one season, but it's a bad bet altogether to tie up 21M over three seasons betting on Marquis being worth it all three years. If Hendry went to Vegas, he'd come back broke.

 

I'm not going too far out on a limb to say that the Marquis contract is going to be the worst the Cubs have signed since Hundley at least.

 

Now, I'm not hating on Marquis. I'm criticizing Hendry for paying him too much. Marquis can't help that Hendry is a fool of a GM willing to try anything to save his job. All he can do is pitch. If he keeps his ERA under 5, he'll exceed my expectations, and I'll have no problem with him. If his ERA is over 5, I'll suggest we have better options and say he should be benched, contract be damned.

 

People do criticize players too much when they are overpaid, because 100% of the time, some GM had to offer the contract before the guy signed it.

 

I think there's a decent chance he would be worth 21 million over 3 years compared to the other pitching salaries that were given out this year-now, he may not be worth his contract each year, but he may be worth more than his contract in 1-2 of those years (for example, people were paying 10 million for 4.2-4.5 ERA's this year-so if Marquis can do that, he makes up 10 of the 21 right there). Now, you can certainly argue that all the pitchers were overpaid this offseason, but that's going to be a league problem-we'll see what happens with the market next year.

 

The question in my mind is not whether his numbers are worth 7M per compared with other pitchers pitching for different teams and with different salaries. The question is whether Marquis was the best way to spend that 7M per for the Cubs.. Considering the Cubs in-house options, Marshall, Guzman, and Veal/Gallagher in a year or so, plus the fact we needed money to resign Z and maybe upgrade SS, plus the fact we already had signed Lilly to an expensive deal, I can't see Marquis being a good way to spend 21M over three seasons. To win this year, he might be worth 10M for one season, but no way do I do a 3 year deal for a player of that caliber. He's just not worth the commitment.

[Mephistopheles]

Maybe it's my lack of stats experience and ed-you-muh-kay-shun to see the difference here, but isn't using his past stats to determine his current/future performance probablity based? I don't understand how it's different. Yeah, there are a ton of variables from game to game, let alone year to year. But without probablity based "guessing" wouldn't PECOTA and the like just be as big of crap shoots as my preferred method of pulling numbers out of thin air? [/threadjack]

 

fip or dera isn't probability based in itself. over the long run they should average out, but in the short run there's something there. i havent done those things in like five years. Maybe there's something I am forgetting. I always remember population stuff with those methods. Like I said the best way would to look at the standard score, but it's hard because there are a lot more things at work. I guess they should balance each other out, but it's a limited sample size, five seasons? With those sorts of data analysis i think the sample size has to be like 30. I could be mistaking. lets also mention that the cardinals defense is greater than average so we would expect something lower. fip factors that out. sure i guess we can factor that back in but yuck..

 

PECOTA is different. They DO have their percentile prediction system. And as far as I know they've shown that for hitters the 50 percentile, 25 percentile stuff is pretty accurate. The pitchers havent been so accurate, but i think they overhauled or are overhauling them.

[Mephistopheles]

edit: oops

[abuck1220]

as i've said before, i have to wonder if you guys would be so optimistic about marquis if he had signed with the cardinals. i kinda doubt you would be.

[98navigator]

as i've said before, i have to wonder if you guys would be so optimistic about marquis if he had signed with the cardinals. i kinda doubt you would be.

 

If he'd resigned with the Cardinals, I would have thought last year to be an aberration (and his 2007 to be more like the first two years he pitched for them).

[Mephistopheles]

eh take this all with a grain of salt. assuming FIP and ERA and FIP-ERA are normally distributed (they are) i went and looked at all pitchers since 2004 in the NL with similar innings as Marquis (sample size alert).

 

On average their FIP ERA was .05 less than their actual ERA (Note: league averages in the two are defined to be average in the formula). The standard deviation for the difference between their FIP and actual ERA was 0.45. This means that about 2/3rds of the pitchers had a difference of at most half a run.

 

Jason Marquis' first two seasons were about 0.75 away meaning each of them have about a 8% chance of happening, assuming a nuetral park and a nuetral defense.

 

First looking at Cardinals NOT including Marquis: We get on average their ERA was about a .29 better than their actual ERA. The standard deviation was .37. This would give about a 10% chance on probability of it happening. If we throw in Marquis we're looking at a 20% or so chance of it happening. It doesn't seem all that likely, especially considering he was spot on last year.

 

Secondly, I ran correlations between several stats and FIP-ERA. The only thing statistically significant was LOB%. This makes since given that if you're for whatever reason allowing less runners to score than you should you're ERA is going to be lower than it "should" be. So I know some of you are thinking DOUBLE PLAYS FROM GROUNDBALL PITCHERS. Next I ran some correlations to LOB%, only one was signficant. Drumroll please....strikeout rates! And of course it was positively correlated. More Ks is good for it. Ironically enough the GB to LOB correlation is essentially zero, but it is ever so slighly inversely correlated - meaning less GBs means a higher LOB%. Granted it's essentially no correlation, but the sign means...something.

 

So obviously, there's nothing in his GB magic that leads him to leaving guys on base, is there? I should note that the second highest correlation to FIP-ERA was pitches per PA. Where more pitches meant your FIP-ERA was better. Oooh strike another one against guys like Marquis.

 

Now you're wondering about 2004. You can't believe it. His LOB% is the reason his ERA was such an outlier. His LOB% was 79.3%. That's better than any of the three seasons since 04 by Carpenter or Zambrano. He got LUCKY. There's NO way around that. His LOB% has fallen to like 66% last season, which is more where it was expected. His LOB% in 04 should have been about 70%. When you calculate that 10% of the runners he allowed that didn't score who "should" have you'll find some interesting stuff.

 

So really it more or less appears that his previous "magic" was not getting grounders as much as it was getting purely lucky in the "clutch" - something that is NOT a repeatable skill.

 

If you really want to dig behind the numbers some more. In 2004 with RISP the BABIP he allowed was a shockingly low .231 over 236 PA leading to a OBAA under .200. In 2005 that same split was .295 and in 2006 it was .335. Once again it's pure luck.

 

That's all it is. Luck.

[Soriano12]

Well I'm sold. Foward this thread to Piniella/Hendry and have them release Marquis ASAP.

[sethuel1]

Well I'm sold. Foward this thread to Piniella/Hendry and have them release Marquis ASAP.

says the guy who obviously doesn't understand what's going on and, as such, decides to make fun of the argument he's not comprehending

[Soriano12]

Well I'm sold. Foward this thread to Piniella/Hendry and have them release Marquis ASAP.

says the guy who obviously doesn't understand what's going on and, as such, decides to make fun of the argument he's not comprehending

 

What argument, the ludacris statement that we should expect nothing more than a "trash" performance from Marquis? :roll:

 

I am going re-read this thread 10X's tonight, because I really want to buy such logic...I do.

[Mephistopheles]

Well I'm sold. Foward this thread to Piniella/Hendry and have them release Marquis ASAP.

says the guy who obviously doesn't understand what's going on and, as such, decides to make fun of the argument he's not comprehending

 

What argument, the ludacris statement that we should expect nothing more than a "trash" performance from Marquis? :roll:

 

I am going re-read this thread 10X's tonight, because I really want to buy such logic...I do.

this response is utterly insane unless you didnt read the post above yours.

[sethuel1]

Well I'm sold. Foward this thread to Piniella/Hendry and have them release Marquis ASAP.

says the guy who obviously doesn't understand what's going on and, as such, decides to make fun of the argument he's not comprehending

 

What argument, the ludacris statement that we should expect nothing more than a "trash" performance from Marquis? :roll:

 

I am going re-read this thread 10X's tonight, because I really want to buy such logic...I do.

 

how about the reasoned, statistically supported argument directly above your post that you were so obviously responding to without actually reading? Or are we all supposed to act dumb and figure you were responding to the earlier post instead?

[Soriano12]

Well I'm sold. Foward this thread to Piniella/Hendry and have them release Marquis ASAP.

says the guy who obviously doesn't understand what's going on and, as such, decides to make fun of the argument he's not comprehending

 

What argument, the ludacris statement that we should expect nothing more than a "trash" performance from Marquis? :roll:

 

I am going re-read this thread 10X's tonight, because I really want to buy such logic...I do.

 

how about the reasoned, statistically supported argument directly above your post that you were so obviously responding to without actually reading? Or are we all supposed to act dumb and figure you were responding to the earlier post instead?

 

I have no time to respond...I am on round 1 of re-reading the thread....

[sethuel1]

Well I'm sold. Foward this thread to Piniella/Hendry and have them release Marquis ASAP.

says the guy who obviously doesn't understand what's going on and, as such, decides to make fun of the argument he's not comprehending

 

What argument, the ludacris statement that we should expect nothing more than a "trash" performance from Marquis? :roll:

 

I am going re-read this thread 10X's tonight, because I really want to buy such logic...I do.

 

how about the reasoned, statistically supported argument directly above your post that you were so obviously responding to without actually reading? Or are we all supposed to act dumb and figure you were responding to the earlier post instead?

 

I have no time to respond...I am on round 1 of re-reading the thread....

says the guy that just responded

[Mephistopheles]

well, that was a mature response. (directed to the same post seth quoted above) Edited March 13, 2007 by Mephistopheles

[abuck1220]

Well I'm sold. Foward this thread to Piniella/Hendry and have them release Marquis ASAP.

 

just because the people you're disagreeing with have presented adequate support for their position and you haven't doesn't mean that you should just resort to acting like a baby.

[imb]

I have no time to respond...I am on round 1 of re-reading the thread....

 

taking a while?

[Fro]

If he can eat up innings, keep the pen fresh, and keep us in games, he'll be a good addition to the staff. As said, Wrigley and our infield will eat up a lot of those groundballs if he can keep the sinker going.