Bored hypothetical: How would '00's Reds pitching fare in front of '10s Reds defense?

[Wonderful Monds]

Thinking just kind of in general. We've had several pitchers here over the current decade that have had all their success attributed to the great Reds defense they've put out there since 2010 or so.

So if our defense had been that good in the Lost Decade, would they be good enough to create an artificially shiny ERA for the staff? Just think of any of our best defensive teams from this decade, throw them out there, and your pitching staff is say, just to get a good sampling of that time period, something like this:

SPs:
Harang
Arroyo
Kyle Lohse
Paul Wilson
Matt Belisle

Elizardo Ramirez
Todd Van Poppel
Todd Coffey
David Weathers
Danny Graves
Jared Burton
Kent Mercker

I think that's a pretty good representation of notable names from the Decade of hell, so let's go with that.

Does the Gold Glove 2010's Reds D salvage that into say, an average team, at least?

[hebroncougar]

I'm not sure what the answer to your question is, but I was thinking today how all of a sudden with all these rookies and bad bullpen pitchers, GABP is small again.

[Wonderful Monds]

I'm not sure what the answer to your question is, but I was thinking today how all of a sudden with all these rookies and bad bullpen pitchers, GABP is small again.

Ha! Yeah, I was kind of wondering, if our defense is that magical, then what the hell with the bullpen?

Walks are a big problem though, can't pick a web gem out of those.

[cincrazy]

Your point is a good one. Maybe a few of those lost decade pitchers are better in front of this defense. But this defense is still good, and this pitching staff sucks something awful. Maybe some guys (like Bronson Arroyo in particular) deserved a little more credit than they received when they were here. It's easy to take good pitching for granted when you're getting it nearly every day.

[KronoRed]

Harang and Arroyo, sure...but just look at the rest of those guys...
ugh.

[thatcoolguy_22]

Isn't defensive contribution roughly found by difference between ERA and fip?

[RedsManRick]

Isn't defensive contribution roughly found by difference between ERA and fip?

Sort of. The different between ERA and FIP is a few different things including the timing/sequencing of events (e.g. walk + homer = 2 runs, homer + walk = 1 run), the performance of the pitcher in limiting hits contact, and the performance of the defense in limiting hits on contact. So defense is part of the ifference between ERA and FIP, but not all it.

Even timing is a mix of some pitcher and some fielder performance, which might be luck or might be skill. For example, Tom Glavine was famously good at stranding runners because he was willing to pitch around guys -- a better pitcher would have gotten the guy out in the first place, but the walk wasn't as bad as you might otherwise think because it wasn't simply poor control. On the other hand, in the situation above, the pitcher was just fortunate that he missed out over the plate before missing off the plate. Or you also have those times where a guy makes a great defensive play with the bases loaded - the timing of the play resulted in major run prevention, but nothing about the timing was a function of the situation, it just was a lucky coincidence.

Fangraphs breaks these out in the Value section at the bottom of the player pages: http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx...893&position=P

Here are two Reds pitchers who were the aces of those respective eras: Harang and Cueto. Interestingly, they've thrown almost the exact same number of innings. Keep in mind that RA9-Wins includes unearned runs but is also scaled to run environment.

- By Runs Allowed per 9 innings, they're basically identical.
- However, batted ball outcomes cost Harang nearly 5 wins, while helping Cueto to nearly 7 wins. (remember, that's both defense and pitcher)
- On top of that, sequencing cost Harang another win while helping Cueto another win.
- So, if you back those things out, you're left with a FIP-based WAR for Harang of 33 compared to just 20 for Cueto.

Season	IP	RA9-W	BIP-W	LOB-W	WAR (FIP Based)
2004	161.0	 1.4	-0.4	 0.0	 1.8
2005	211.7	 4.0	-0.7	 0.1	 4.6
2006	234.3	 4.7	-1.0	 0.0	 5.7
2007	231.7	 5.4	 0.6	-0.5	 5.4
2008	184.3	 1.6	-0.5	 0.1	 1.9
2009	162.3	 2.0	-1.4	 0.8	 2.6
2010	111.7	-0.2	-1.2	 0.2	 0.8
Total  1297.0	27.3	-4.8	-0.7	32.7
					
Season	IP	RA9-W	BIP-W	LOB-W	WAR (FIP Based)
2008	174.0	 1.1	-0.1	-0.4	 1.5
2009	171.3	 1.7	 0.2	 0.0	 1.6
2010	185.7	 3.5	 0.2	 0.7	 2.6
2011	156.0	 4.3	 1.8	-0.3	 2.9
2012	217.0	 6.2	-0.1	 1.6	 4.7
2013	 60.7	 1.6	 0.8	 0.0	 0.7
2014	243.7	 7.7	 3.1	 0.1	 4.6
2015	 71.3	 1.8	 0.9	-0.5	 1.4
Total  1279.7	27.9	 6.7	 1.2	20.0

The question is, how much of that 13 WAR defense is attributable to the pitcher, how much to the defense, and how much to "luck" (if you're so inclined as to leave some runs unattributed). Sabermetricians still don't have a perfect way to do this, but the easiest way, and one which tends to map reasonably well to reality when it's studied more closely, is to just split the difference. Cueto gets half of his lost wins back, taking him to 24 WAR. and Harang gives half of his gained wins back, taking him to 30.

Harang is probably going to go down as one of the most under-appreciated players in Reds history. With the 2010's defense behind him, the 2006/2007 Harang might very well have won a Cy Young. He would have at least made the 2007 race (Peavy won unanimously, Harang was 4th) a lot more interesting.

It's certainly not perfect. You can choose to look at other ERA-like measures instead of FIP, like SIERA, that attempt to control for pitcher batted ball influence. But the above gives you a reasonable idea.

[Wonderful Monds]

Your point is a good one. Maybe a few of those lost decade pitchers are better in front of this defense. But this defense is still good, and this pitching staff sucks something awful. Maybe some guys (like Bronson Arroyo in particular) deserved a little more credit than they received when they were here. It's easy to take good pitching for granted when you're getting it nearly every day.

Yeah that's what I meant as well.

I'm also just really curious to see if any of those guys had pitching tendencies that would have benefitted. I'm trying to think of someone with higher K rates or GB tendencies.

Kirk Saarloos? lol