Baseball - How important is the starting pitching?

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Wouldn't the value of bullpens go up tremendously if a pitcher was struggling to make 4 innings a game, and also become less useful as a pitcher was going deep consistently.

My first question was phrased horribly and for that I am sorry. The more direct question would have been:

given a very good pitcher who has a 2.00 era against the best offense who have a .280 avg and good power #'s; On an average night how much would his 2.00 era go up, that is, how much do top hitters affect top pitchers. Yes, the pitcher always has the edge against even some of the greatest, but they should still have some effectiveness.

If nobody wants to answer, thats fine, but just thought I'd throw that out there and see if I got any bites.

[whipsaw]

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Wouldn't the value of bullpens go up tremendously if a pitcher was struggling to make 4 innings a game, and also become less useful as a pitcher was going deep consistently.

My first question was phrased horribly and for that I am sorry. The more direct question would have been:

given a very good pitcher who has a 2.00 era against the best offense who have a .280 avg and good power #'s; On an average night how much would his 2.00 era go up, that is, how much do top hitters affect top pitchers. Yes, the pitcher always has the edge against even some of the greatest, but they should still have some effectiveness.

If nobody wants to answer, thats fine, but just thought I'd throw that out there and see if I got any bites.

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I think the answer, like anything else, is that "it depends." It depends on the which starting pitcher you're talking about, the lineup he's facing, how much R-L or L-R matchups he's going to see in that lineup, the ballpark, the weather, the home plate umpire, just to name a few obvious ones. This of course overlooks the fact that ERA is a pretty meaningless stat for starting pitching.

[tippy]

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Wouldn't the value of bullpens go up tremendously if a pitcher was struggling to make 4 innings a game, and also become less useful as a pitcher was going deep consistently.

My first question was phrased horribly and for that I am sorry. The more direct question would have been:

given a very good pitcher who has a 2.00 era against the best offense who have a .280 avg and good power #'s; On an average night how much would his 2.00 era go up, that is, how much do top hitters affect top pitchers. Yes, the pitcher always has the edge against even some of the greatest, but they should still have some effectiveness.

If nobody wants to answer, thats fine, but just thought I'd throw that out there and see if I got any bites.

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First, if you know your pitcher is probably only going to make it 4 innings, then I'd say you are betting solely based on starting pitching. If he only makes it 4, you are probably 3-5 runs down and it doesn't make much difference what the pen does at that point.

It helps if you break the game down into smaller pieces when asking your question. Each game is like a puzzle and you want to see how each piece fits together to get the whole picture. Instead of using an ERA stat, break it down to OBP, SLG, G/F, BABIP, K's, BB's. You want to develop a picture of exactly what kind of starting pitcher you are dealing with and compare him to the kind of offense he is facing. Find that particular pitchers weaknesses and see if the opposing offense is in a good position to capitalize. Throw in the teams DER to see if that will bring defense into play. Throw in the umps to see what effect that could have on your pitcher. Add Park factor and see how that affects your pitcher. The same pitcher could be a heavy favorite against one kind of offense, but an underdog to another kind of offense. Just saying he has an ERA of 2.00 or the opposing offense has a BAA of .280 just won't cut it. You have to get deeper.

I don't think you can set a definite percentage for starting pitching. Each game is an individual event. For some games starting pitching would be 80% of your decision, for other games it may be 40%.

[Moneyline]

I'll only address bullpens here b/c that topic alone has the potential of making me write a much longer post than I want to right now.

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Wouldn't the value of bullpens go up tremendously if a pitcher was struggling to make 4 innings a game

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Technically yes, but not in practice. Any pitcher so horrible that you don't expect him to go 4 innings will not be pitching in the majors. Some otherwise decent pitchers may seem to be this bad in the short term, but this is usually just a "smoke and mirrors" effect of sample size. If the pitcher is just experiencing short term negative variance akin to a cold run of cards at the poker table, then his slump has no predictive value. If he's pitching poorly because of an injury or mechanical problem you either A) you won't be able to tell because you're not a baseball scout, or B) it will be so obvious to everyone that the betting public is already correcting or perhaps even overcorrecting for his problem.

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Wouldn't the value of bullpens... become less useful as a pitcher was going deep consistently.

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I see this as more of an effect of starting pitching than bullpens, but the truth of the matter is that the value of bullpens is almost always low relative to other aspects of the team.

Here's some briefly stated points as to why bullpens don't matter that much in terms of both a team's success and in handicapping.

-It is rare that one team's bullpen is so superior to the their opponent's pen that it gives them a significant advantage in the game.

-Even if one team does have a superior pen, there's no guarantee that the pen will be used in a situation where the game is on the line.

-Even if one team does have a superior pen and it is used in situations crucial to the outcome of the game, there's no guarantee that the manager will even use his best relievers. As an aside, every manager in baseball horribly mismanages his bullpen.

-If the starter gets knocked out early and the bullpen sees a lot of action the team is typically so far behind that they are massive dogs to win the game regardless of who they put on the mound.

-In many cases there is little dropoff or improvement from starter to reliever. When a great starting pitcher goes deep in the game (as you expect that pitcher to) by the time the pitcher comes out the game will either be A) enough of a blowout that it really doesn't matter who pitches the last 4 or 5 outs, or B) so close that the pitcher will be replaced by the team's best relievers and therefore little dropoff/improvement in that team's pitching. On the other hand, when a generic league-average starter gets taken out in the middle innings, it's usually a generic league-average middle reliever who comes in and takes his place. When a scrub gets bounced in the 5th inning who comes in?... I think you get the point [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img].

There are a few instances where I think bullpens become important, but these are relatively rare. An example of this exception would be when a team's pen consists of one or two outstanding relievers and a bunch of inept scrubs. In this case, it's a fairly big deal if the one or two studs are too tired to pitch. Even in this case, though, I don't think this factor should account for 20% of your handicapping.

All this is, of course, just my opinion, but in my defense it took an incredible amount of research to come to this opinion, and it served me very well when I was capping full time.