Mephistopheles

why the hell arent they making it up tomorrow? [expletive]. Doesnt Houston have an offday too?

the question is will barry bonds be there when adam dunn breaks his record?

Ah-ha! Mr. Optimism has arrived :D realism. the offense will be fine. changing the order is useless. its much more important getting the right people in than where they bat. protection, leading off i really dont give a darn about

playing with the lineup isn't going to change anything.

Nick Swisher is hotter, sexier, and has possibly a brighter future than Adam Dunn. And I'm a heterosexual male. 8-) EDIT: I still would like to have someone show me where I specifically dissed Nick Swisher. This is all very confusing to me. The hitting for the A's in general is awful Ellis, Crosby, Shannon Stewart, 38 year old Jason Kendall with no power? oh you crossed the line. YOUVE DISSED NICK SWISHER AND ADAM DUNN IN THE SAME THREAD! You need to be banned for that. Period.

Nick Swisher is like the mini-me version of Adam Dunn. Hes so cute!!!! You cant diss him

He's hitting well enough for 2 right now. i meant sexson im up 7-2 thus far. SIZEMORE with three steals. St Lunatics already has 15 runs. I did have 12 rbi today though.

So using that data, lets answer the first question: Are they good pitchers because their LD% is low or is their LD% low because theyre good pitchers? It appears that they are good pitchers because their LD% is low.

Wow-that surprises me. His strikeout numbers are high, but his 2.11 WHIP and 1.90 HR/9 percentage have me definitely wondering how an ERA under 5.50 could be reasonably expected last year. the walks were the problem. its something hes never done before. all through the minors he had shown good walk rates so eventually its more than likely going to go down. the main thing last year was a spiffy .381 BABIP. umm that just screams fluke. LD% was ridiculously high, though. He needs to control his pitches better within the strike zone too. um LD% is another VERY inconsistent statistics with little to no year to year correlation yeah i guess it's just a coincidence that good pitchers usually have low LD% and bad pitchers usually have high LD%. Guzman threw way to many pitchers in the middle of the plate last year. I don't think I was imagining that. First, are they good pitchers because there LD% is low or is their LD% low because theyre good pitchers? Obviously having a low LD% means youre not giving up a lot of hits, but it doesnt mean its a repeatable skill. Now, lets look at the top 15% last season in LD percentage with ERA 1. Derek Lowe 2. Randy Johnson 3. Jose Contreras 4. Barry Zito 5. Clay Hensley 6. Matt Cain 7. Chien Ming Wang 8. Jason Marquis 9. Carlos Zambrano 10. Jake Westbrook 11. Brandon Webb 12. Josh Beckett Now let's look at the bottom 15% 1. Paul Byrd 2. Joel Piniero 3. Tom Glavine 4. Justin Verlander 5. Jeff Suppan 6. Carlos Silva 7. Rodrigo Lopez 8. Aaron Harang 9. Andy Pettitte 10. Jon Lieber 11. Vicente Padilla 12. Bronson Arroyo The ones with the lower LD% performed about .5 better in ERA, but Verlander, Harang, Arroyo, Glavine and Pettitte aren't chopped beef. Last year there were 76 guys who pitched 162 innings. So let's break them into groups of 11. here is the collective ERA+ of those guys. 1. 113.82 2. 105.09 3. 110.09 4. 112.64 5. 108.82 6. 110.36 7. 98.82 Here's the r^2 correlation for the RA and LD% (the highest in the spreadsheet i had) a whopping 0.061. That's SO HUGE! Ironically enough if you do the data again in 2005, the bottom group actually has a lower RA than the top group. Okay from 2004-06 there were 110 sets of back to back seasons by pitchers with more than 162 innings pitched. Of those 76 guys in the last set, only 54 of them reached that amount in the previous year. Lets divide them by 14, 13, 13, 14. In 2005, the first set of 14, the guys with lowest LD% in 2006 had a ERA+ of 114.9. In 2005 the guys with the highest LD% in 2006 had an ERA+ of 113.4. That's pretty much no difference whatsoever. Especially when the 2006 difference was 111.2 to 98.9 Now using the 110 seasons I had before, the year to year correlation of LD% is an r of .1852 and an r^2 of an amazing .0343. Yay there's almost nothing from it! So useful(ess). Now, one thing I did notice when I split up those groups is that every group but the top level had essentially the same GB%. The top was about five percent higher because Derrek Lowe and Chien Ming Wang. So if you are UBER elite (we're talking 60%+ GB% which is three or four pitchers in all of baseball) you can keep your LDs down BUT the effect is probably canceled out because GBs are hits more often than flyballs. Regardless like I said LD% is pretty much worthless for pitchers from year to year.

and he struck out the side the last inning, with a walk thrown in

Yeah well he gave up a couple of hits including a homer in the second. Castillo homered for the Chiefs though. 5-2 Chiefs. Ceda did strike two out though...

Wow-that surprises me. His strikeout numbers are high, but his 2.11 WHIP and 1.90 HR/9 percentage have me definitely wondering how an ERA under 5.50 could be reasonably expected last year. the walks were the problem. its something hes never done before. all through the minors he had shown good walk rates so eventually its more than likely going to go down. the main thing last year was a spiffy .381 BABIP. umm that just screams fluke. LD% was ridiculously high, though. He needs to control his pitches better within the strike zone too. um LD% is another VERY inconsistent statistics with little to no year to year correlation

Lansford homered. 2-0 Chiefs. Ceda sucks he only struck out one in a perfect first inning

Wow-that surprises me. His strikeout numbers are high, but his 2.11 WHIP and 1.90 HR/9 percentage have me definitely wondering how an ERA under 5.50 could be reasonably expected last year. the walks were the problem. its something hes never done before. all through the minors he had shown good walk rates so eventually its more than likely going to go down. the main thing last year was a spiffy .381 BABIP. umm that just screams fluke.

Pitcher IP PC H ER BB K Keisler 3.0 47 2 0 1 2

low fives with FIP and or xFIP

That's not true. Guzman was very good last year at Iowa for 15 starts. I'm not that impressed with an ERA over 4 in AAA. Decent, sure. Very good? Hardly. Don't really care about ERA compared to a 1.27 WHIP, 9.16 K/9, 2.85 BB/9, 3.21 K/BB and 0.59 HR/9. That's very good. to supplement. it's in iowa (hitters park) and he had not pitched much in over two years.

oh, NOW i see what no ones saying he did well. he just didnt do as bad as his ERA indicated. His ERA should have been around five or so. Is Miller any better than that? probably not. guzman probably is.

you dont get it. guzmans ERA last year was a fluke. its common sense. it can be thrown out the door.

no i realize youre dusty baker. guzman was unlucky as hell last season era wise. this is pretty obvious. at worst guzman and miller are interchangeable with minimal differences. this isnt a radical suggestion, run the data yourself. miller didnt deserve the first start he got this season. he should never have made the team okay, say Lou sticks Guzman out there instead of Miller, and in his first start, he goes 2 1/3, gives up 9 hits, 8 ER and walks 5. Then what? you give him the ball and say youre in the rotation. deal with it. millers just as likely to do that as guzman.

miller doesnt deserve another start for the fork. the fork was stuck in him several seasons ago. guzman can develop in the rotation. right now the difference between him and miller is insignificant. nobody wants miller. only jim hendry is stupid enough

its one week.

and millers tangibles havent produced much either. theres no upside. hes trash. at least go with trash that could be useful if you invest in his development.

what a useful contribution to this forum. youre off to an excellent start!

Is that opinion or is there something tangible that you can point to? im pretty sure three above average to plus pitches are pretty tangible.