Ryan Howard

[scorekeeper]

Originally Posted by 2zwudz

Why do I think the pitching gets better.....because it does.

That’s a reasonable answer. Can you tell me by what measure you believe that to be true?

http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/team/_/stat/pitching

Thats a big reason why THAT team is there, because of their good pitching.

I sure agree, that it would be extremely difficult for a team with lousy pitching to even get in the PO’s, let alone go very far in them. I’ll also agree that the pitching in general is slightly better in the playoffs than the regular season too. But, there’s just no way I can see that the pitching in the PO’s is way above the norm.

There are other reasons but we don't see any team win a World Series that doesn't have good pitching.

And its pretty unusual to see a team win the WS without good hitting or good fielding.

The issue really isn’t whether they have good pitching or not. Heck, every team in the ML has “good” pitching. Its whether or not the pitching they have happens to execute. Don Larsen has to be the epitome of examples.

Good pitching means hitters struggle more than usual and Ryan Howard struggled with good pitching.

I’m confused. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I thought he’d had one of the most productive PO’s in history. Are you saying you believe that both the Dodgers and the Rockies pitchers aren’t any good compare to the Yankees?

My OPINION does differ from yours as far as comparing big league pitching to LLWS, CRWS or MLB AS games.

I’m confused again. In the LLWS, CRWS, and the MLBAS game, the players are theoretically the best the league has to offer. In the MLWS, MiLWS and the CWS, the pitchers are just the pitchers who happened to be on the teams that got there. How can you compare the best pitchers in the American League with the Yankees’ staff?

I feel at all levels its very similar...good pitching gives you a better chance to win ball games and better hitters will overcome good pitching.

I agree. Good pitching gives you a better chance to win ball games, but its not the pitching history that counts. It’s the execution. Some pretty good pitchers have failed miserably while some pretty mediocre ones have excelled. And that’s why they play the games.

[2zwudz]

Scorekeeper

I didn't say the pitching in the playoffs is WAY better than the regular season ..I said the pitching in the playoffs is better and that is in large why that team is there.

Yes every team in the bigs has good pitching compared to us or a college team but wouldn't we rather have the Yankees pitching staff rather than lets say the Cubs..because the Yankees staff is better?

I did not say the Dodgers or the Rockies pitching staff wasn't any good... and yes Ryan Howard had a good playoff series until he met the Yankees pitching staff which was better than the Dodgers or the Rockies pitching staff as a unit.

I disagree with your statement that the pitchers on the the teams that are in the World Series are pitchers who just happen to be on the team that got there. I believe that normally the better pitching staffs are a big part of why their team is there.

Yes some very good pitchers have failed miserably and some mediocre pitchers have excelled but that GIVES the coaches a history of their performance and to adjust accordingly. As a coach I go with the pitcher that has performed well in RECENT history not on what he did a year ago. A good example of history that I have on the team I coach now is .... I moved my family to another town two years ago and many of the players on our new baseball team are from the same town as we live in. Apparently two of the players that lived here were the top dogs when they were younger. We didn't live here at that time so I didn't see them play. I was asked to coach the team last year and and I agreed. Last season I evaluated the players and went on with the season. In my opinion as coach these two players were not as good as I was told and I played them accordingly. It ruffled feathers but their recent history did not live up to their past. So to me history makes you take a closer look at the player but it doesn't overcome who is getting the job done NOW.

Mark

[scorekeeper]

Originally Posted by 2zwudz

I didn't say the pitching in the playoffs is WAY better than the regular season ..I said the pitching in the playoffs is better and that is in large why that team is there.

Before I even read the rest of this post, I think its necessary that I try to explain how I look at many questions that look at the relative “value” of two different things. In this case it’s pitching, and the two different values are the “quality” of pitching during the regular season, and the quality of pitching in the post-season.

Much depends on how the person looking at it defines quality. I know there’s lots of factors determining quality, but let’s assume for a minute that quality is defined by ERA alone. The ERA for the entire NL was 4.20 for the NL. For the Rockies it was 4.24 and for the Dodgers it was 3.41.

Logic would dictate that a hitter would do better against the Rockies, but do considerably worse against the Dodgers. Now the Yankees on the other hand had an ERA of 4.28, so you’d think that same hitter would do better against them than either the Dodgers or the Rockies, but things just aren’t that simple.

Howard was 6-16 against the Rockies and 5-15 against the Dodgers for a BA of .355. But, he was only 4-24 for a BA of .167 against a Yankee staff that was theoretically worse than either of the other 2. You say its because the Yankees had superior pitching, but I think it was something much different.

I think it has much more to do with the Yankees having lefties on the mound for 28 of the 53 IP’s or 53%. The Rockies threw lefties 3.1 out of 35 IP’s or less than 10%, and the Dodgers 18.1 out of 42 IP’s or 44%. But I think it also has a lot to do with not only did they see more lefties, those lefties were very unfamiliar to them, and th combination was much harder on Howard than the other hitters.

Yes every team in the bigs has good pitching compared to us or a college team but wouldn't we rather have the Yankees pitching staff rather than lets say the Cubs..because the Yankees staff is better?

I honestly don’t know. Using ERA as the metric, the Yankees were 3rd in the AL and Cubs 5th. In WHIP the Cubs were 5th and the Yanks 3rd again. So all in all I’d say that while the Yankees had “better” numbers, there wasn’t much of a difference, and certainly not enough to make it overwhelming.

I did not say the Dodgers or the Rockies pitching staff wasn't any good... and yes Ryan Howard had a good playoff series until he met the Yankees pitching staff which was better than the Dodgers or the Rockies pitching staff as a unit.

Well, all I can say is, I don’t agree that the Yankees staff is all that superior.

I disagree with your statement that the pitchers on the the teams that are in the World Series are pitchers who just happen to be on the team that got there. I believe that normally the better pitching staffs are a big part of why their team is there.

Perhaps you misunderstood what I was saying. The pitchers on MLB PO teams are just pitchers their teams happen to have on their rosters. That’s entirely different than pitchers on those other teams, like the LLWS and CRWS.

For teams like those, the pitchers are theoretically the best in the league. FI, in our LLI league, there are 5 teams and about 25 pitchers, and they don’t all make the AS team. Only the 3 or so very best are chosen strictly because of their pitching and would be even if they couldn’t hit a lick. The way it works out is, if the average pitcher in a league is “X”, the average pitcher in the AS’s isn’t just a little better than average, he may be “2X” or at least “1.5X”.

Yes some very good pitchers have failed miserably and some mediocre pitchers have excelled but that GIVES the coaches a history of their performance and to adjust accordingly. As a coach I go with the pitcher that has performed well in RECENT history not on what he did a year ago.

You have to do that at lower levels because kids can vary so much in a short span. That doesn’t happen to nearly as great an extent when they get to be post-pubescent, and even less when they get to be fully physically and mentally mature.

I give our coach several game stats after each game for our hitters. The one on page 1 of the attached and simply reminds the coach which players are doing well at the moment.

The one on page 2 goes into a bit more depth, and all it considers is the last half of the games each player’s played. As the season progresses, it includes more games, but only the last half of them.

The reason for those particular things is the “Its not what you’ve done, its what you’ve done lately” thinking.