Player (K/9, BB/9, HR/9, GB/FB, SIERA)
Wood (6.25, 3.00, 0.63, 0.83, 4.49)
Leake (6.46, 2.15, 0.86, 1.76, 3.85)
Leake is actually having a better season than Wood if you look at all the peripherals and remove the obvious signs of luck. The biggest (and possibly only) reason that Wood's ERA/WHIP is so good is his .214 BABIP (.314 for Leake). That's really it in a nutshell. Heck, even the "more hittable" narrative isn't true...
Swinging strike%
Wood (8.0%)
Leake (8.4%)
Last edited by Brutus; 05-31-2013 at 02:56 PM.
"No matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you're going to win one-third of your games. It's the other third that makes the difference." ~Tommy Lasorda
Always Red (06-02-2013),marcshoe (06-01-2013),mdccclxix (05-31-2013),Plus Plus (06-03-2013)
Wood was coming off a shakey year in 2011.Originally Posted by CySeymour
Sure, he was only 24. The potential was there, but the Reds were trying to win and had no room for him in the rotation.
I'm happy that Wood is playing well, he's an easy guy to root for.
IMO, it's a tossup whether Wood or Leake eventually has the better career.
Too close to call, IMO.
Marshall made a huge impact in 2012, IMO.
Hopefully the shoulder problem is not a long term problem.
[Phil ] Castellini celebrated the team's farm system and noted the team had promising prospects who would one day be great Reds -- and then joke then they'd be ex-Reds, saying "of course we're going to lose them". #SellTheTeamBob
Nov. 13, 2007: One of the greatest days in Reds history: John Allen gets the boot!
Wood has been able to beat BABIP for the most part in his career. Chalk it up to his cutter or something else, but here is his BABIP by season:
.261
.333 (the year it was publicly noted he lost feel of the cutter)
.249
.222
One of those years is clearly not like the others.
I certainly don't expect to see Wood continue with a .222 BABIP this year. But if he winds up at .260, it probably shouldn't shock anyone.
Not saying Wood is better than Leake or the other way around, but just pointing out that his BABIP has tended to be quite low for quite a while now and maybe it shouldn't be written off to being all luck.
wlf WV (06-01-2013)
True, there were quite a bit of doubts to whether Wood was going to be able to even stay in the big leagues as a starter. But just saying on the whole, a good starter is move valuable then a good reliever.
...the 2-2 to Woodsen and here it comes...and it is swung on and missed! And Tom Browning has pitched a perfect game! Twenty-seven outs in a row, and he is being mobbed by his teammates, just to the thirdbase side of the mound.
Perhaps he's just following his esteemed manager's ways.
Rem
"For Reds fans, by Reds fans" Learn it, love it, live it.
Yep, that's true in isolation. If you are building a team from the ground up in an expansion draft, you definitely want Wood over Marshall.
This was a near perfect trade for the Reds though, as Marshall fit their needs much better. Hopefully he gets better soon. It's hard to place a number on the impact that Marshall's injury has had, but if he was healthy all year, maybe we have another win or two. (Note, no numbers to prove it, just speculation).
[Phil ] Castellini celebrated the team's farm system and noted the team had promising prospects who would one day be great Reds -- and then joke then they'd be ex-Reds, saying "of course we're going to lose them". #SellTheTeamBob
Nov. 13, 2007: One of the greatest days in Reds history: John Allen gets the boot!
Only seven pitchers that have attained at least 1,000 IP in the last 30 years have had a BABIP that low. For Travis Wood to sustain it, he would be a historic outlier. Very doubtful. Regardless, you're still talking over 40 BA points between .260 ish and where he's at right now. So no matter how you slice it, he's in for a major dose of regression.
Last edited by Brutus; 05-31-2013 at 06:32 PM.
"No matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you're going to win one-third of your games. It's the other third that makes the difference." ~Tommy Lasorda
You don't recall correctly. I went over to fangraphs and since 1990 there are several players under .278 with 1000IP. Rivera, Hoffman, Cain are all in the low .260's. Quite a few others well under .278 as well.
But I looked at guys with at least 400IP. Two full seasons as a starter or a whole bunch of relief seasons. The top 50 guys since 1990 are all at .271 or lower. Certainly these guys are rare breeds, but they do exist. Travis Wood might be one of those guys.
Cedric (06-01-2013)
Wood is a fly ball pitcher, so that will lower is BABIP. Doubtful to .260, but it will be lower than normal. In comparison, Leake is a GB pitcher and that will inflate BABIP.
A couple of other things, his LOB% is high this year, especially for him. His HR/FB rate is low. He did luck out a couple of games I watched this year where the wind was blowing in hard at Wrigley, and I am not sure he has had a game where the wind is blowing out rather hard yet (this absolutely destroys him, and it happened a few times last year). I could be wrong and I just missed the game. With that said, outside of last year he was pretty good at keeping the ball in the yard, especially for a fly ball pitcher.
Overall, I could easily see Wood as a sub 4 ERA pitcher with some years in the low 3's. Which overall is good, and good for him. Of course I can also see him get absolutely shelled with HR's some years and be awful in those years. Yet I don't think this year is an indication of what he will be in the future.
That's certainly true, but my intent was not to insinuate the two should have even averages of balls in play. I wasn't even insinuating that Wood should be right at .300. Rather, I only meant to suggest that while Leake was ever so slightly higher than where he probably will be going forward, Wood was extremely lucky no matter what realistic expectation a person has for his average BABIP. He's most definitely not going to stay at .220 and even .260 is outrageously suspect an expectation. More likely, he'll end up in the .270-.280 range, which is the optimistic end of the BABIP spectrum for most. So when you factor in a guaranteed eventual visit from Dr. Regression, Leake's peripherals make him just as -- if not more -- productive (in all likelihood).
"No matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you're going to win one-third of your games. It's the other third that makes the difference." ~Tommy Lasorda
I wasn't really saying you were wrong, just mentioning the fact Wood will have a naturally low BABIP while Leake's will be naturally inflated (I agree, Wood is still way too low). Although things are not so rosey for Leake either. His LOB% is pretty much unsustainable at 81.2%. Outside of that he has some nice stuff going on. His GB rate is up, his HR/FB is down (didn't really have anywhere else to go), and his velocity seems to be more consistent and on the high end of his usual velocity. So Leake seems to have improved, at least to this point in the season. Better than last year, yet I also don't think he will be a pitcher around a 3 ERA either.
Last edited by scott91575; 06-01-2013 at 01:57 AM.
I agree Leake is due for a slight adjustment as well. His FIP, xFIP and SIERA all are in the 3.75-3.86 range, so he'll probably come down another half run at least.
Wood, meanwhile, has a 3.62 FIP, though his xFIP and SIERA are not nearly as flattering (4.48 and 4.49 respectively).
I guess if the peripherals hold somewhat steady, my guess is that Leake finishes the year with a better ERA than Wood. That's not to say the K/BB rates will hold steady, but if they do, I'd bet on Leake.
"No matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you're going to win one-third of your games. It's the other third that makes the difference." ~Tommy Lasorda
Of course, FIP, xFIP and SIERRA are trying to equate Wood and his independent pitching to everyone else and through 400+ innings in his career, he has shown he isn't like everyone else (career .269 BABIP and three of the years have been below that).
I'd love to see Wood as a long-term outlier. Even though he's a Cub, he's a guy I've rooted for since he was in the minors, partly because of some mutual acquaintances. Even if that happens, and while it's possible I'm not sure how good a bet it is, I still believe that 1. Leake will have a better career, 2.Leake is a better fit for the Reds because of his ground ball tendencies, and 3. Marshall filled enough of a need last year to justify the
trade, even if the worst happens with his shoulder.
Oh, and 4. It's nice to be having discussions about these kinds of pitchers instead of deciding which Jimmy the Reds should go with near the top of their rotation.
It is on the whole probable that we continually dream, but that consciousness makes such a noise that we do not hear it. Carl Jung.
Your basis of proof is 436 innings... barely two full Major League seasons. That's hardly enough to suggest he's "shown" anything.
Nonetheless, in that time, his career BABIP is still nearly 50 points higher than it is currently. So he's in for major regression no matter how you slice it. Even if you are extremely generous and split the difference between his FIP and SIERA, you're still looking at a 4 ERA... about 30% higher than it is now. Point is, which has been stated repeatedly, in every single context, he's vastly outperforming expectations for any established baseline in the history of the game. And you've already admitted that, so it seems you're arguing for the sake of arguing.
Last edited by Brutus; 06-01-2013 at 05:50 PM.
"No matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you're going to win one-third of your games. It's the other third that makes the difference." ~Tommy Lasorda
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