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Daft
Wally, luck plays far too much of a factor into a players ERA for ERA to be a beneficial handicapping tool.
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This sounds like pure bullshit. I hope it is due to that lack of sleep causing your brain to not function.

A pitcher has an off day, the opponents are seeing the ball particularly well on a given day, shear will and determination on either the pitcher or the batter, a particular team just having a guys number are all factors that go into supporting or countering an ERA and none of those things are based on luck.

Granted, you can't or shouldn't base a play solely on ERA's because you'll never know all the surrounding factors on any given outing but ERA's are helpful and when they are supported with others elements can help.

Get some sleep Daft.
 
I have no problem with your advice Daft but that was an opinion and one I have a differing opinion on. If you expect that your opinion will ever be received as gospel then yeah keep it. If you can actually support your opinion then it's worth a debate. You just say something and leave it hanging either because you have noway to support it, you don't know how to support it or you're just talking out your ass.

I like a good discussion Daft and while I am opinionated in my take on things if you prove me wrong or show me the error of my thinking I can accept it and even be man enough to admit to being wrong or not seeing the light.

How is an ERA too much of a luck factor to not be of any benefit in the handicapping process?
 
wal66
This sounds like pure bullshit. I hope it is due to that lack of sleep causing your brain to not function.
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Daft is correct. ERA is determined by luck in so many different ways. The quality of defense is one factor, the amount of fly balls that turn into home runs is another. And this is totally leaving any park factors out.

wal66
A pitcher has an off day, the opponents are seeing the ball particularly well on a given day, shear will and determination on either the pitcher or the batter, a particular team just having a guys number are all factors that go into supporting or countering an ERA and none of those things are based on luck.
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Do opponents see the ball particularly well on a given day or does the pitcher give up more hits on a given day due to either a low quality defense or just random variation? Generally, unless the pitcher is throwing a hitable ball every five pitches or he's continually tipping them then anything that happens on a "given day" is down to luck (either positive or negative).

wal66
Granted, you can't or shouldn't base a play solely on ERA's because you'll never know all the surrounding factors on any given outing but ERA's are helpful and when they are supported with others elements can help.
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ERA isn't helpful since it is decided by so many factors for which the pitcher has no control. Any hits allowed are a function of the quality of defense, home runs are a function of the number of fly balls. There are more things to include but luck plays a big part. Sabermetric measures, in terms of quantifying a proper measure of ERA, deal with things which a pitcher can control which is people reaching or failing to reach base through something the pitcher did. A walk is a free pass to 1B, a strikeout prevents them from reaching at all.
 
I'll also mention that Zack Greinke has an ERA of 5.66 this season but is striking out much more than he has done in any year and his K/BB is blowing away anything he has done in previous years (and he has been really good since 2008). Ironically he has a 7-3 record from 12 starts. Do you see how ERA (as well as the W/L record) is pretty irrelevant in this case? It's also pretty irrelevant in other cases.
 
Thanks for bailing Daft out P-Roid, he would have never have been able to do it on his own.

I wasn't prepared to debate with the likes of you but ok.

The rationale you used in the examples given would lead someone to believe that in just about every aspect of every stat of any team event is too much luck to be of any use. Now I will grant you that an ERA with an unestablished pitcher is not something you would want to take into consideration when capping a total on a game but an established pitcher settled into the season with a good sample of innings under his belt is something that is an asset. I'm not saying it should be the deciding stat but it is certainly something to take into consideration.

Sure luck plays a role as it does to an extent with practically anything but there are far more physical reasons good or bad than lucky ones to establishing it. You don't see a lot of 9.76 ERA's sticking around, it's not because those guys are just really unlucky it's because they aren't MLB good.
 
Wally, I look at ERAs too but Polo helped me recently in looking at the FIPs and the like also! If you haven't already check out fangraphs.com! Wally, don't mind Dafty! Not all of us are as fortunate to be able to look in the mirror and get our plays!
 
wal66
Thanks for bailing Daft out P-Roid, he would have never have been able to do it on his own.

I wasn't prepared to debate with the likes of you but ok.
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I think that Daft made the initial point that I elaborated a little further on.

wal66
The rationale you used in the examples given would lead someone to believe that in just about every aspect of every stat of any team event is too much luck to be of any use. Now I will grant you that an ERA with an unestablished pitcher is not something you would want to take into consideration when capping a total on a game but an established pitcher settled into the season with a good sample of innings under his belt is something that is an asset. I'm not saying it should be the deciding stat but it is certainly something to take into consideration
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The key point is that current ERA is not a good predictor of future ERA since it is majorly down to luck. As I said before, the key to a pitcher being good is not letting people getting a free pass by a walk or striking out people so that they don't have the chance of reaching base by either luck or due to deficient fielding. You generally shouldn't be considering ERA at all in calculating the efficiency of a pitcher.

wal66
Sure luck plays a role as it does to an extent with practically anything but there are far more physical reasons good or bad than lucky ones to establishing it. You don't see a lot of 9.76 ERA's sticking around, it's not because those guys are just really unlucky it's because they aren't MLB good.
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Aside from his 7-3 record (which is pretty meaningless) this season, would you bench Zack Greinke for having an ERA of 5.66 (or even 9.76) when his peripherals are showing he's probably performing the best in his career?
 
I disagree that ERA is a worthless measure of a pitcher. If you want to say it is overvalued by some cappers, I might buy that, but to say it is purely luck - or even mostly luck - is taking the devil's advocate position too far.

There are always going to be anomalies like Greinke's current year - there are always going to be ups and downs - but in the big picture ERA is much more a result of how a pitcher pitches than luck.
 
Ok P-Roid, I'm convinced that you are convinced.

Calm down, I'm kidding.

I understand what you are saying but we will just have to agree that everyone gravitates to what they understand and are most comfortable with. You do this for a living or at the very least a very advance hobby and I am a novice at best. I'm comfortable with the utilization of incorporating ERA's into what I compile as data though and will continue to use it until I can better familiarize myself with different techniques.

I'm barely hanging around .500 (+/- a couple of games) with baseball and if I try something new at this point it could go down rapidly.
 
Mudcat
I disagree that ERA is a worthless measure of a pitcher. If you want to say it is overvalued by some cappers, I might buy that, but to say it is purely luck - or even mostly luck - is taking the devil's advocate position too far.
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The main point is that there is a significant part of luck in the actual ERA figure and there are much better ways of predicting future ERA than current ERA (and that is the point, you want to find an accurate measure of a future statistic based on current data). Isn't it better to use a proven measure of future performance (xFIP) rather than purely using a metric of past performance?

Mudcat
There are always going to be anomalies like Greinke's current year - there are always going to be ups and downs - but in the big picture ERA is much more a result of how a pitcher pitches than luck.
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That was purely an example about times when you should overlook ERA when a pitcher is actually performing better than his ERA suggests. It also works the other way around.
 
wal66
Ok P-Roid, I'm convinced that you are convinced.

Calm down, I'm kidding.
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I've calmed down now. Well, especially after the second line of that.

wal66
I understand what you are saying but we will just have to agree that everyone gravitates to what they understand and are most comfortable with. You do this for a living or at the very least a very advance hobby and I am a novice at best. I'm comfortable with the utilization of incorporating ERA's into what I compile as data though and will continue to use it until I can better familiarize myself with different techniques.

I'm barely hanging around .500 (+/- a couple of games) with baseball and if I try something new at this point it could go down rapidly.
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The key to analysis is using the metrics that can predict future performance. ERA gives a perfect account of past performance but it isn't very good at predicting future performance. Give me a few days and I'll figure out some hypothesis, grab some data and then try to make it make sense. As a caveat, the hypothesis will no doubt be based upon the data that I manage to grab.
 
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