Listen now (49 min) | In this emergency PosCast, Joe, Mike and former big-league pitcher Brandon McCarthy discuss the urgent issues of the day — should relievers’ ERAs go up when they give up inherited runs, how should we feel about the new Cleveland Guardians name and who is the worst hugger in Major League Baseball.
The irony of the Bullets/Wizards name change is, of course, that the infamous Gilbert Arenas/Javaris Crittenton almost locker room shoot out occurred after the name change.
I love the podcast, but you guys missed it on this one. There is only one way to allocate runs fairly between the pitchers that is consistent with the baseball tradition we love: Binding Arbitration. After the inning, both pitchers must submit the run allocation they think is fair to the official scorer, and the official scorer must pick one. If a pitcher submits an unfair allocation, he will have to live with the other pitcher's allocation.
I am sure this won't cause any problems in the clubhouse. Plus it will give the announcers something to talk about during the endless replay reviews. :-)
Funny. For decades, white liberals like Mike Schur (NOT Native Americans) have insisted that the name of Cleveland’s baseball team was a matter of immense importance. And now he’s telling us the name doesn’t matter???
One- Keith Woolner (I think) invented a stat to “fairly” attribute runs between relievers and starters for BaseballProspectus back in the early 2000s. Known as WXRL, it never really caught on, as evidenced by the fact that three of the more statistically literate podcasters seem to have no idea that it exists. This to me gets to Joe’s point that changing ERA in this way isn’t the best way of dealing with the issue - at some point it’s too complicated for fans to follow, there are other stats out there, and ERA has other flaws.
Two- The pinch hitter analogy is terrible, because the pinch hitter doesn’t usually start with any added difficulty due to the person he is pinch hitting for. The better analogy would be if a batter gets into an 0-2 count, gets thrown out of the game for arguing the second strike, and now a pinch hitter needs to come in. In that case, baseball handles it by attributing a strikeout to the first batter, but attributing any other event to the pinch hitter. That’s basically what happens with the ERA of a reliever too. Under Michael’s plan, they would be giving 1/3rd of a strikeout to the pinch hitter and 2/3rds to the original hitter, if we stick to the analogy.
Three- Shouldn’t Michael think that half of a run should be charged to a reliever who allows the ghost runner on second to score? I think the fact that MLB doesn’t charge that run to the reliever supports Joe’s point more than Michael’s.
The irony of the Bullets/Wizards name change is, of course, that the infamous Gilbert Arenas/Javaris Crittenton almost locker room shoot out occurred after the name change.
I love the podcast, but you guys missed it on this one. There is only one way to allocate runs fairly between the pitchers that is consistent with the baseball tradition we love: Binding Arbitration. After the inning, both pitchers must submit the run allocation they think is fair to the official scorer, and the official scorer must pick one. If a pitcher submits an unfair allocation, he will have to live with the other pitcher's allocation.
I am sure this won't cause any problems in the clubhouse. Plus it will give the announcers something to talk about during the endless replay reviews. :-)
Funny. For decades, white liberals like Mike Schur (NOT Native Americans) have insisted that the name of Cleveland’s baseball team was a matter of immense importance. And now he’s telling us the name doesn’t matter???
A few points:
One- Keith Woolner (I think) invented a stat to “fairly” attribute runs between relievers and starters for BaseballProspectus back in the early 2000s. Known as WXRL, it never really caught on, as evidenced by the fact that three of the more statistically literate podcasters seem to have no idea that it exists. This to me gets to Joe’s point that changing ERA in this way isn’t the best way of dealing with the issue - at some point it’s too complicated for fans to follow, there are other stats out there, and ERA has other flaws.
Two- The pinch hitter analogy is terrible, because the pinch hitter doesn’t usually start with any added difficulty due to the person he is pinch hitting for. The better analogy would be if a batter gets into an 0-2 count, gets thrown out of the game for arguing the second strike, and now a pinch hitter needs to come in. In that case, baseball handles it by attributing a strikeout to the first batter, but attributing any other event to the pinch hitter. That’s basically what happens with the ERA of a reliever too. Under Michael’s plan, they would be giving 1/3rd of a strikeout to the pinch hitter and 2/3rds to the original hitter, if we stick to the analogy.
Three- Shouldn’t Michael think that half of a run should be charged to a reliever who allows the ghost runner on second to score? I think the fact that MLB doesn’t charge that run to the reliever supports Joe’s point more than Michael’s.