Comparing the 2005 team

[qwerty]

Someone else besides me should read this.

[Gene Honda Civic]

Someone else besides me should read this.

IF you read it you would have quoted some of it with a

[YASNY]

I love it. Burns vs. Garland. He didn't agree with the results, so he just tossed those aside. :rolly

[Gene Honda Civic]

I love it.  Burns vs. Garland.  He didn't agree with the results, so he just tossed those aside. :rolly

Yas, I just did it for fun. I like Garland as much as the next guy. But the fact remains that over the the last three years he is exactly a league average pitcher(not that there's anything wrong with that) -- Burns was solidly above League average in '83, and for most of his career. Part of Garland's superiority in WARP3 was that he pitched 30 more innings than Burns and WARP is a counting stat. He also batted a few times, and probably fielded an abnormal amout of balls in play, which all factor in WARP.

 

I didn't just slough of those nubers that I found on Burns and Garland. I went into this with only one preconcieved notion. -- Mark Buehrle was better than Lamar Hoyt -- I would have been fine if I had proved myself wrong there. I would have still posted everything for everyone else's benefit.

 

I decided to do the WARP comparison because as I thought about it, OPS isn't the best measure to compare the team as a whole, because it only accounts for Offensive output, and not defense or SB's, or playing time. So I took guys with alike PT and positions, as WARP is position specific, and compared them. Just to add them to the OPS+ and ERA+ comparisons from the day before, just to get another perspective for myself.

 

Nobody should see 3.4 and 3.0 and automatically assume that the 3.4 guy must be .4 better than 3.0 guy. These metrics are tools. Soft guidlines that help us better understand.

 

Here's a couple of examples.

 

Rowand's 04 -- .310/.361/.544

Kittle's 83 -- .254/.314/.504

 

Now Rowand is alot better in all categories there, but that doesn't account for him playing in a hitters park, in the most productive offensive era of all time. OPS+ and WARP3 helped us see that while rowand's numbers were substantially better than Kittle, he's expected to contribute about as much as Kittle did in 83 to the team in the upcoming season.

 

Buehrle's 04 -- 3.89 ERA, 245.3IP

Hoyts 83 -- 3.66ERA, 260.7IP

 

obviosly Hoyt had the better ERA and more IP, but when you take into acount park factors and eras(the word not the abbr.), Buehrle had the much more impressive season, despite Hoyt's 24 wins.

 

There are no hard and fast rules for comparing players across eras, but I can assure you that the wrong way is to just look at there stats at face value.

[YASNY]

Bye the way .... Damn good work and analysis here.

[Yossarian]

I was trying to get a feel for this team by comparing them to another of the Sox teams that I have seen.  I came to the conclusion that this team really resembles the 1983 team in a lot of ways.  They have speed at the top of the order, thump in the middle of the order, great range on defense, and an entirely solid pitching staff.

 

Opinions?  Any other better teams to compare these guys too?  The early 80's is about as far back as I remember well.

I'm not so sold on the starting rotation. MB and Garcia should be solid. El Duque will be fine if he's healthy but is he? Contreras has been "inconsistent" to put it mildly and we've all been over the enigma of Jon Garland a million times. I like the bullpen. I'm not convinced about the rotation, but give KW credit for going out and getting El Duque.

[southsider2k5]

I'm not so sold on the starting rotation.  MB and Garcia should be solid. El Duque will be fine if he's healthy but is he? Contreras has been "inconsistent" to put it mildly and we've all been over the enigma of Jon Garland a million times. I like the bullpen. I'm not convinced about the rotation, but give KW credit for going out and getting El Duque.

 

Actually looking back on the 1983 rotation was kind of interesting. I looked at their careers and 1982's and it was kind of interesting.

 

Hoyt pretty much carried the same numbers from 82-83 and obviously got a big bounce from the offense.

 

Bannister was pretty steady from year to year.

 

Burns had a big improvement from 82 to 83. And when you look at some of his other years, he was wildly inconsistant, going from eras of 2 1/2 to 4 to 3 1/2 to 5.

 

Dotson had a huge improvement from 82 to 83.

 

Koosman actually had a bad 1983.

 

So what I am saying is that their pitching staff looked to have some questions going into the season as well. They even had one of their starters ERA go up by a run over the prior season. Two of the guys were pretty much steady. Then they had two big improvements. I think the similarities are more apt looking at the starters now.