Games Eight and Nine

by Ryan on Apr 10, 2008 11:51 PM EDT in Game Recaps

Game Eight: Indians 4, Angels 3

Highest WPA		Lowest WPA
Pronk	.537	Jamey Carroll	-.174
Jake Westbrook	.173	Victor Martinez	-.136
Asdrubal Cabrera	.110	Franklin Gutierrez	-.125

Jake Westbrook again pitched extremely well, and this time, he got the victory. Jake gave up three runs on seven hits, but threw nine innings on only 95 pitches. Only in the sixth inning did he face more than four hitters.

He was able to pitch the ninth thanks to Pronk's ninth inning two-run homer. Both Francisco Rodriguez and Scot Shields were unable to pitch, leaving Justin Speier to attempt the save. Speier got the first two hitters easily enough, but Asdrubal Cabrera coaxed a two-out walk, bringing up Hafner, who crushed one out to right field. If you're interested, that home run was worth .712 in WPA.

Game Nine: Angels 9, Indians 5

Highest WPA		Lowest WPA
Kelly Shoppach	.082	Paul Byrd	-.306
Grady Sizemore	.023	Asdrubal Cabrera	-.082
David Dellucci	.014	Travis Hafner	-.082

Compared to Jake Westbrook's performance the night before, Paul Byrd looked like an emergency callup. Byrd again couldn't spot his pitches, and was thrashed by the Angels. Byrd was brutally honest after his three-inning outing:

"I haven't had my command at all," Byrd said. "I haven't had very good stuff, either. To pitch up here, you have to have one of the two, for sure. I have neither right now."

Of course, Byrd's stuff isn't really that good, at least good enough to for him to get away with it being in the wrong location. Fausto Carmona can miss his spot and still get an out or a swinging strike. If Byrd misses his location and the pitch usually gets hit hard.

The offense was much better, and actually brought the Indians back into the game for a time. The Tribe had 12 hits, which for early 2008 was an outburst. Kelly Shoppach and Jhonny Peralta both homered, and four Indians had multi-hit games. Travis Hafner followed up his heroics the night before with an 0-4 with two strikeouts.

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Byrd sounds like he's ready to put himself on the DL, just so he can go on a rehab assignment. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part.

by Jay on Apr 10, 2008 11:56 PM EDT 0 recs

Would be nice if Laffey had his stuff together at the present moment.

by supermarioelia on Apr 11, 2008 10:38 AM EDT up 0 recs

Or if Sean Smith was on the 40-man.

Sowers had a nice start over the weekend, we'll see how he does today.

by Jay on Apr 11, 2008 11:53 AM EDT up 0 recs

Am I the only one who thinks he can regain what he had in 06? Or am I just dreaming here?

by mjschaefer on Apr 11, 2008 1:38 PM EDT up 0 recs

I think he could, too. He's plenty young.

by Voltaire on Apr 11, 2008 1:41 PM EDT up 0 recs

What he had in 2006 was exceptional and possibly just a fluke. But I think he is likely to be an effective major league starter for several years, which was the original projection. I think his ceiling is Westbrook, and his median projection is not quite as good as that.

by Jay on Apr 11, 2008 4:23 PM EDT up 0 recs

I don't have much hope for there being baseball on tonight. Looks like it's going to be a long, rainy day.

by Toxicadam on Apr 11, 2008 8:29 AM EDT 0 recs

I live about 40 minutes south of the Jake and the rain seems to have passed through here.

Proud supporter of the Cleveland.

by fwembt on Apr 11, 2008 1:13 PM EDT up 0 recs

Byrd

According to fangraphs his fastball is 3 mph lower than last year. Although before his last start it was 3.7 mph lower (85.6 vs. 81.9). Is he trying to compensate for poor command by throwing slower, or did he lose even more speed on his pitches?

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=594&position=P

by ultxmxpx on Apr 11, 2008 11:36 AM EDT 0 recs

-

crap, this was already mentioned on the side.

by ultxmxpx on Apr 11, 2008 11:39 AM EDT up 0 recs

Along these same lines, if a pitcher's fastball is declining in speed due to age or anything physical, would that not cause a decrease in all of his pitches right across the board too? Or does his slower stuff have to maintain their velocity to give the batters the same look at the plate?

by supermarioelia on Apr 11, 2008 1:19 PM EDT up 0 recs

I would expect a pitcher's fastballs to decline in speed a little more than his curveballs and much more than his changeups, but I can't explain why I would expect that.

by Jay on Apr 11, 2008 4:25 PM EDT up 0 recs

I have a stupid question: does fangraph use numbers for the actual players involved. I see that after Hafner's HR, the WE was about .80. A 20% chance that Joe blows a one-run lead in the bottom of the 9th agains the Angels? How does that compare to the average?

by dgcambridge on Apr 11, 2008 12:21 PM EDT 0 recs

I'm almost certain that the win expectancy is not specific to the teams or players involved. It is not that the Angels that night had a 20% chance to beat the Indians (or Borowski) after the Hafner HR, it is that home teams down a run entering the bottom of the 9th managed to win the game, either in the 9th inning or later, 20% of the time. I think that figure is reached by looking at every instance of that occurrence over all games in the years covered by the program that Fan Graphs uses.

It is not that Borowski has a one-in-five chance of blowing the save, it is that on average, the home team wins that often. The home team will tie the game (and the closer blow a save) more often than that 20%, bc there is necessarily a significant number of games where the home team ties the game in the 9th but loses in extras.

There is also the fact that some of the games included in reaching that figure are games (like on Wed.) where the starter pitches the 9th inning, or where the closer has already blown a save (e.g. comes on in the 8th and lets the other team tie/take the lead, then the road team goes ahead in the 9th). So for the purpose of answering your question about the average rate of blown saves and comparing it to JoBo, the Fan Graph doesn't help much.

I would guess, but surely do not know for sure, that the best way to determine the average would be either to look at all one-run 9th inning leads and see how many of them stand up. Then you could compare that to how often Borowski makes the lead stand up. The problem is that the number of such save opportunities he has might not be statistically significant, so one might be better off using some of his rate stats and tendencies to figure out the % of times he allows a run.

The WE graph doesn't strike me as all that valuable a prospective tool. During the game it gives a quick and dirty estimation of a team's chances to win. But it operates from the assumption that each team has an equal chance to win at the outset (which I don't know I believe is true) and because it does not as far as i know account for the players on each team. For those reasons it strikes me as more of a curiosity.
The graphs definitely have a lot of retrospective value, as they show the critical points of the game, and make for fun discussion as we see here on LGT all the time.

Sorry for the length. I hope this was instructive and that I wasn't too wrong about anything.

by mpstable on Apr 11, 2008 2:43 PM EDT up 0 recs