Chapman

[RedEye]

Are we going to have a thread like this every time Chapman appears in a game this season? I sure hope not.

[CySeymour]

The way I look at it, there's a reason that the top starting pitchers make more money that the top closers on the market, and SP are always much fmore sought after at the trade deadline. They are simply way more valuable to a team than a closer. I think it's foolish not to explore the possibility that Chapman could be an ace in waiting.

Besides, I don't see the risk. If it fails you move him back to the pen and you've got a bullpen arm you can trade.

I agree. I woudl think a solid #3 starter would be valuable then a closer.

[wlf WV]

and yet his FIP places him in between such names as Freddy Garcia and Randy Wells (two guys signed to minor league deals simply hoping to make a major league team).

xFIP is a terrible stat for home run prone pitchers, and Leake is certainly that. It corrects for home runs to reduce the instability factor, but it also eliminates the negative effects that home run prone pitchers have. It also poorly predicts pitchers that keep the ball in the ball park like Cain and Cueto (especially Cueto since he pitches in a HR prone ballpark).

FIP and xFIP have their place, but both have their failings. While the overall correlation is good, there are often outliers. For xFIP, as mentioned, it has poor correlation for home run prone pitchers since it eliminates actual home runs given up and replaces it with the league average. For pitchers that have historically average home run per fly ball rates it is a good predictor. Yet in 3 years, Leake has shown that his home run per fly ball rate has been consistently high and therefore xFIP is a poor predictor for him. He would certainly benefit from moving to a ballpark that is much bigger than GABP, but as far as the Reds are concerned, he is still not a good fit for the rotation.

For the record, I find stats that attempt to normalize stats by using league averages as laughable. Of course they correlate better. They predict pitchers will continually return to the norm, which, over a long enough time will happen for the majority of pitchers. It's prediction correlation will be strong because most pitchers will be around the norm and return there for most of their career. It's a self fulfilling prophecy, and I find it funny. You can make all kinds of predictors that correlate as long as you know the norm and use that in your calculation. In my eyes that is a simple predictor that any fool can come up with. It's actually statistics voodoo. You create a stat based on existing stats to predict future stats which will often be very similar year to year. When you normalize everything to land in the high percentage of the bell curve you will have a strong correlation. Yet it fails horribly with the outliers, and those are often the things people really need a prediction for. It doesn't take a genius to look at HR/FB rate of a pitcher, see a spike one year, and realize it's an outlier for that pitcher. xFIP, IMO, is a simple stat used by people wanting a quick and easy number without actually wading through all the numbers to find the true outliers.

This is a small sample of what makes enemies for the complexity of saber . Without understanding the weaknesses of each metric,they are not as effective.

[kaldaniels]

I'm a reasonable guy. There is no way Leake should hold up a spot that should belong to Chapman. Leake had an awful year last year. But as for his career and projecting forward I don't believe him to be "broke" in terms of a #5 starter.

The Cain/Cueto comp was just one of those things I found that had to be mentioned...it's just interesting.

I was really down on Leake last year but I believe it was Rick who made a good case for Leake projecting forward (I think it was in a Leake vs Homer discussion) and I took that info to heart.

[WrongVerb]

Are we going to have a thread like this every time Chapman appears in a game this season? I sure hope not.

This being Redszone, I think you already know the answer to that question.

[Grouse]

The only thing that scares me about making him a starter is, It gives him 4 or 5 days off at a time too get in trouble. It wouldn't shock me if there was at least one "incident" this summer. That being said a starter is much more valuble than a closer.

[bucksfan2]

The only thing that scares me about making him a starter is, It gives him 4 or 5 days off at a time too get in trouble. It wouldn't shock me if there was at least one "incident" this summer. That being said a starter is much more valuble than a closer.

Over the course of the season I think you get more value out of a starter than a closer. However when you get into a short series I think the Reds are better off with Cueto, Latos, and Bailey with Chapman at closer than Chapman as a starter or shut down completely.

[scott91575]

Over the course of the season I think you get more value out of a starter than a closer. However when you get into a short series I think the Reds are better off with Cueto, Latos, and Bailey with Chapman at closer than Chapman as a starter or shut down completely.

If he is not being used as a starter then he will be used in the bullpen in the playoffs. As for being shut down, I thought they were going to use him sparingly to start the season so he doesn't need to be shut down at the end of the year. I am not sure if that has changed or not.

[Superdude]

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/20...tart-or-close/

So we overpaid for a closer, the bullpen's set, everyone's healthy, all the lights are green and we're still hearing the same equivocal mush two weeks before the season? For as great as this organization is, the three years of Chapman have been like watching my niece spend thirty minutes trying to pick between gummy bears and milk duds at the movie theatre. Just pick something!

[mth123]

The way I look at it, there's a reason that the top starting pitchers make more money that the top closers on the market, and SP are always much fmore sought after at the trade deadline. They are simply way more valuable to a team than a closer. I think it's foolish not to explore the possibility that Chapman could be an ace in waiting.

Besides, I don't see the risk. If it fails you move him back to the pen and you've got a bullpen arm you can trade.

The risk is that if he sucks as a starter for several months before the Reds decide to call it quits and put him back in the pen, it may send the 2013 season down the tubes. IMO, that's a considerable risk. People act like that's nothing.

[dougdirt]

The risk is that if he sucks as a starter for several months before the Reds decide to call it quits and put him back in the pen, it may send the 2013 season down the tubes. IMO, that's a considerable risk. People act like that's nothing.

Do you mean because he is going to truly suck as the #5 starter and that will kill us, or that our bullpen will suck so much without him that it will kill us?

[traderumor]

The risk is that if he sucks as a starter for several months before the Reds decide to call it quits and put him back in the pen, it may send the 2013 season down the tubes. IMO, that's a considerable risk. People act like that's nothing.

I don't think the season hinges on Chapman's performance alone.

[mth123]

Do you mean because he is going to truly suck as the #5 starter and that will kill us, or that our bullpen will suck so much without him that it will kill us?

I mean because he could truly suck as the 5th starter.

I'm not a big Mike Leake guy, but I think the downside of him as the 5th starter is a lot less bad than a failed Chapman. I could really see Chapman proving to be a guy who just can't successfully make it through a line-up more than once with any regularity and frequently needing to be pulled before the 5th inning. A guy like that tires the pen and starts to impact the rest of the rotation as they are left in too long to compensate. By August, the entire staff could be feeling the effects.

OTOH, I could also see Chapman becoming a true Cy Young caliber number 1 and taking the team to another level which is why I'd make the move, but I'm not naive enough to believe that there is no risk. To me, the stance that there is no risk and the bashing of Dusty and others who are given pause by this risky decision just proves a lack of understanding. There is plenty of risk here and I'd be more concerned with a Manager who doesn't recognize it than I am with one who is showing concern about how this decision may impact his team.

[mth123]

I don't think the season hinges on Chapman's performance alone.

Then why all the gnashing of teeth here if his performance matters so little?

[edabbs44]

The downside is that he pulls a Bard.