Daniel Raymond Quisenberry "Quiz"

[Crash Course]

He pitched in the major leagues from 1979 to 1990.

[crazydiamond]

Lee will vote no, only 148 RSAA, but let me explain why I voted yes
1st, 148 RSAA is tied for 4th best all time amongst pitchers with no more than 10 starts
2nd, his BR/9 is a fantastic 10.64, 70th best amongst pitchers with at least 1000 IP
3rd, his ERA is a superb 2.76, 87th best using the same criteria
finally, his BB/9 is an incredible 1.40, 4th best since 1900 using the same criteria

[nyy26wc]

Extremely easy no

[KCBOOMER]

As the game has been played the last 30 years Quiz is an easy "Yes". In the last 30 years amongst pitchers with 10 or fewer starts He ranks 4th in RSAA. As a "closer" he had 5 seasons with over 125 IP's.

[nyy26wc]

Originally Posted by KCBOOMER

In the last 30 years amongst pitchers with 10 or fewer starts He ranks 4th in RSAA.

And among pitchers with 10 or fewer balks, he doesn't even crack the top 100.

And saying he had 10 or fewer starts is just a way of saying that, for most of his career, he wasn't even a pitcher. He pitched less than 7% of his teams innings. For 93% of his career, his butt was on the bullpen bench.

Now, if you can prove that he had a good butt and his butt took a bunch of runs off the scoreboard, then his credentials would be different.

[crazydiamond]

he did the job he was hired for, and he did it better than most of the other guys hired for the same position
Lee, if you won 95% of the cases you were hired for but only were hired for 20, and Attorney X won only 12% of his 100, would you say he was a better lawyer because you spent most of your time reading law books?

[nyy26wc]

Originally Posted by crazydiamond

he did the job he was hired for, and he did it better than most of the other guys hired for the same position
Lee, if you won 95% of the cases you were hired for but only were hired for 20, and Attorney X won only 12% of his 100, would you say he was a better lawyer because you spent most of your time reading law books?

I can't answer that based simply on those numbers.

The job of a lawyer is not to win cases, it's to make money.

If attorney X brings in more money for his firm than I do, then he has more value to them and therefore has done his job better.

At least that's the case for plaintiffs' attorneys. If we are talking about defense attorneys, they bring in money not by winning cases, but by billing hours. So, in their word, someone like Mickey Lolich, an inningseater, is inherently better than a Dan Quisenberry, regardless of the quality of the output. Of course, that is a little bit of an oversimplication, as an attorney will get fired if his output is of such low quality so such a bad attorney will never be able to accumulate the hours. But, as long as the caveat is in there, it's pretty much the state of things.

Just like the job of a lawyer is to bring in money, the job of a baseball player is to add or save runs. A pitcher of Quisenberry's profile just doesn't save enough runs and therefore does not have the same kind of value as someone who, while he doesn't produce as much on a per IP basis, still accumulates more runs saved.

[nyy26wc]

I also have to add that an inning is an inning. A pitcher has to do the same thing to get an IP in every instance--get 3 outs.

But, every case is not equal to every other case. I might be limited to 20 cases because of their complexity and those 20 cases could take as much, or very easily more, time and effort than the 100 cases that attorney X handles. But, there's no baseball equivalent where some pitchers handle 5 out innings, other handle 2 out innings and the complex thousand plaintiff class action suit equivalent pitchers handle the baseball equivalent of what would could be 25 out innings.

My point remains the same. While I can't jump to a conclusion based on the information you are trying to provide, the bottom line is still the same. Lawyers are judged based on the bottom line, just like baseball players are. All that matters is the amount of money brought in by the lawyer, not how it breaks down, just like all that matters for a baseball player is the bottom line of how many runs he adds/saves.

[KCBOOMER]

You can argue your position with any sort of non sequiturs, but the world has moved on. The Saber community pretty much accepts the argument of the later innings having a higher leverage value than earlier innings.

The point of ten or fewer starts was to create a class of "pure relievers". The number ten was precisely chosen to insure Mariano Rivera would be in this group.

[nyy26wc]

Originally Posted by KCBOOMER

You can argue your position with any sort of non sequiturs, but the world has moved on. The Saber community pretty much accepts the argument of the later innings having a higher leverage value than earlier innings.

And, on that issue, the critics are correct that sabermetricians are just people with their heads stuck in books. In the real world, runs in every inning count the exact same as runs in any other inning.

Where was the protest when, in games 4 and 5 of the 2001 World Series, the games were allowed to go into extra innings? In both cases, the Yankees trailed going into the bottom of the 9th.

In both cases, the Yankees trailed by 2 going to the bottom of the 9th and scored 2 to tie the game.

If there really was a higher value to 9th inning runs, the game should have ended. The 2 runs the Yankees scored in those innings would have been worth more than the 2 run deficit accumulated in the allegedly less valuableable innings.

You can't have it both ways. You can't claim that the 9th inning is worth more and then not actually count it for more.

[crazydiamond]

no one ever said there's a HIGHER VALUE for the runs
we simply said that an out in the bottom of the 1st inning doesn't have as much impact on the outcome of the game as an out in the bottom of the ninth
the percent likelihood that a team will win the game after a guy makes the first out of a game where they're down by 2 is MUCH higher than after a guy makes the 26th out in a game where they're down by 2

[nyy26wc]

Originally Posted by crazydiamond

we simply said that an out in the bottom of the 1st inning doesn't have as much impact on the outcome of the game as an out in the bottom of the ninth

Yes, it does have the same impact.

the percent likelihood that a team will win the game after a guy makes the first out of a game where they're down by 2 is MUCH higher than after a guy makes the 26th out in a game where they're down by 2

Let's say that a team losing by 2 with 2 outs in the 9th has a 99.9% chance of losing the game. Making the final out raises it to 100%, thus the out had a .2% impact.

That's no different than a team down by 2 with 0 outs in the first having a 60% chance of losing, the out raising it to 60.2%, thus the out having a .2% impact on the game.

Now, these are almost certainly not the exact odds, but the exact numbers would confirm this.

[RascalJones]

Numbers sure can take the FUN out of something quick.

[Crash Course]

I love the numbers - love, love, love them.

But, I have to say, this is one of those cases where I yield to the human element and buy into that emotional claim that the last three outs are the hardest to get.

Why are they? Because some pitchers allow that to be true in their head, I suppose.

[nyy26wc]

Originally Posted by Crash Course

I love the numbers - love, love, love them.

But, I have to say, this is one of those cases where I yield to the human element and buy into that emotional claim that the last three outs are the hardest to get.

Why are they? Because some pitchers allow that to be true in their head, I suppose.

But, that can be proven or disproven.

If it was the case that the last 3 outs are the hardest to get, then OBA would skyrocket in the 9th inning.

But, that's not the case, therefore those 3 outs aren't harder to get.

There's also the fact that the 9th inning produces a "save." The name of the stat implies that the pitcher saved something, which makes us want to put some value on it.

If you took the same exact definition, but gave it a different name, like "done", then much of the myth goes away.

"40 saves" sounds like someone who is really saving wins for the team. "40 dones" says who cares, it's just done. They would both be the same exact thing, but would have far different effects on the observer.