baseball playoffs

[rats60]

Originally Posted by bravos4evr

I tend to think SSS is largely at play here with a bit of bad luck on BABIP and perhaps a little more aggressive approach by batter's faced in the playoffs.

career (regular season)

K/9: 9.81 BB/9: 2.44 HR/FB: 7.0% BABIP: .271 ERA: 2.37 FIP:2.55


career (playoffs)

K/9: 11.20 BB/9: 3.07 HR/FB: 10.7% BABIP: .311 ERA: 4.83 FIP: 3.04




this tells me that he's getting a little bit unlucky on balls in play(either by placement or bad defensive range behind him) and plays a little more to league avg in HR/FB as his K's go up as do walks, but not so much as to be a problem really.

If he were to have say 60 more playoff games I would expect to see his era and fip closer toward his regular season avg.

Originally Posted by bravos4evr

Argument from incredulity.....

any given performance can be good or bad, to claim that said performance is a reflection on a person't ability as an entire is fallacious. (ie: "Kershaw is a bad playoff pitcher") Those players you mentioned had great playoff numbers, but not in any sample size great enough that we can start making honest attributions of "clutch" or "big game pitcher" to them. The sample size isn't large enough.

Clutch is a myth as a skill, the numbers bare this out, good pitchers pitch good, bad hitters hit bad, in any given start a bad/good player can do lots of different things with lots of different results, but the data says that when the sample size reaches a certain threshold they will perform at or around their career averages.

OPS against is a flawed stat as it overvalues slugging and undervalues OBP (and ignores BABIP)


Baseball is a results game, it has statistics that tell us how people performed. If you ignore the facts in favor of whim or emotion you are guilty of confirmation bias and an argument based on this isn't worth the paper it's written on. btw, your poly-sci comparison is also a fallacy as predicting the likelihood of a war is not the same as studying the results of a baseball game. you use stats, you just don't use the new ones, but it's the same thing just more refined.


ETA: after his last start Kershaw's FIP in the playoffs is 2.92 (vs 2.55 for his career) his xFIP (park and league adjusted) is now 3.09 (vs 2.92 for his career) he is striking out 1 more per 9 in the playoffs, walking only .5 more per 9 he has been hurt by BABIP and HR/FB which shows he has been unlucky.

I would suggest that you watch Kershaw's games instead of just looking at stats. Kershaw's ERA is high because he has been shelled. When you give up a series of hard hit balls, your BABIP is going to be higher. He is not giving up 4, 5, 6 runs in innings because other teams have been lucky. It has been because Kershaw has pitched poorly and the other team has pounded him.

I'm not sure how you come up with luck involving giving up more HRs. Again, it is Kershaw making mistakes and getting pounded. What HR that he allowed was bad luck?

It is funny that you claim someone else's post is "myth" because your claims about Kershaw are myth. BABIP is influenced by defense and how hard balls are hit much more than luck. The highest BABIP for a season: Babe Ruth. The highest BABIP for a career: Ty Cobb. I guess you think those guys weren't very good, they were just the luckiest players of all time. However, if you watch the innings where Kershaw has given up runs, it is not because of weak seeing eye singles or bloop hits, it is because of a series of hard hit balls. There is no bad luck involved, in fact it would be Kershaw who would have had to have been incredibly lucky to have not given up big innings.

This article might explain it a little better in the context of false claims this season that the Cubs staff has been good because of luck and defense.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/...heir-own-luck/

That leads to a larger takeaway from our models: Leaguewide, the impact of pitchers’ contact management is more than twice that of defense, which seems to contradict the traditional defense-independent pitching theory that most pitchers have little ability to prevent hits on balls in play.

Still, we can conclude that the Cubs’ historically low BABIP through their first 69 games isn’t merely luck. One way or another, the Cubs have earned a lot of those outs.