This is a fact: in each of the past six seasons as a starter, Arroyo's worst two months of that particular season came in one half or the other. His best month came in the opposite half in each of those six years and his best two were in the opposite half in four of the six years.Originally Posted by Mario-Rijo
To say he has been a "half guy" takes not only no imagination to say whatsoever, but is absolutely supported by the numbers.
"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
This is solvable easily enough. Arroyo career ERA by month:
Mar/Apr 4.39
May 4.39
June 5.86
July 3.89
August 4.00
Sept/Oct 3.22
From Lance's blog:
In yesterday's 2-1 win vs the Cardinals, RHP Bronson Arroyo threw 8.0 innings and allowed just 1 run....since the beginning of last season Arroyo has made 8 starts of at least 8.0 innings without allowing more than 1 run, tying him with Zack Greinke and Tim Lincecum for second-most in the Major Leagues behind Cliff Lee, who has made 10 such starts...courtesy Elias Sports Bureau.
Don't try to change our perspective with silly stats. He's horrible.
Baseball is like church. Many attend, few understand
Walt tried to give Arroyo away.
MLB said no.
Who is right?
"This isn’t stats vs scouts - this is stats and scouts working together, building an organization that blends the best of both worlds. This is the blueprint for how a baseball organization should be run. And, whether the baseball men of the 20th century like it or not, this is where baseball is going."---Dave Cameron, U.S.S. Mariner
He did?
Games are won on run differential -- scoring more than your opponent. Runs are runs, scored or prevented they all count the same. Worry about scoring more and allowing fewer, not which positions contribute to which side of the equation or how "consistent" you are at your current level of performance.
6 seasons? I thought we were discussing the Arroyo of Cincinnati? But at any rate looking at his monthly splits it's pretty telling, he's mediocre early on, terrible in june (I say sometimes that leaks into may as well) and good the rest of the season. Now if you want to suggest that when you aren't good your bad well then go right ahead and i'll disagree with ya. Yeah you can argue he has been a half guy and when you compare era's from one half to the other it backs up that claim but it doesn't tell the whole story. And the whole story for Bronson is that he doesn't pitch a whole half a season poorly and then the other half great and no one does. The whole story is Bronson generally keeps his team in the game in most starts and will have a streak of starts usually all around the same time where he is pretty poor.
"You can't let praise or criticism get to you. It's a weakness to get caught up in either one."
--Woody Hayes
Don't read to much in the monthly splits guys. Random variation is going look like a pattern when you break it in to months. There's basically no predictive value in monthly splits. Even with a few years of data, the sample sizes are just to small.
Arroyo may very well be less consistent from start to start than the average pitcher. And if that's the case, random variation will occasionally group those good and bad starts together. If you want to establish his inconsistency, take a look at the distribution of the quality of his starts.
For example, look at the game scores he's put up over his last 60 starts and calculate the standard deviation -- and then compare that to league average, Harang, or whomever.
Last edited by RedsManRick; 04-10-2010 at 01:37 PM.
Games are won on run differential -- scoring more than your opponent. Runs are runs, scored or prevented they all count the same. Worry about scoring more and allowing fewer, not which positions contribute to which side of the equation or how "consistent" you are at your current level of performance.
No one is trying to make it a predictive measure but after six years, for whatever reason, it's clear he's been generally mediocre the first half of hte year and pretty good the second half of the year. There's really no explaining why, nor am I arguing there's predictive sense in the numbers, but it's clear that's what's happened almost his entire career.
I personally feel a lot of it is simply the FIP balancing out with the ERA, but he seems to be an exception to normal logic.
"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
Based on this, probably not you. What is your source for this nugget?
All my posts are my opinion - just like yours are. If I forget to state it and you're too dense to see the obvious, look here!
So, I decided to do the math myself. Using data from Baseball Reference, here's what I came up with. First the summary stats, then a chart.
Code:Harang Arroyo Starts 89 101 Min 12 -9 Avg 52.2 50.2 Median 55 53 Max 90 85 StDev 18.8 20.5
I wish I could get the GS data for all starts from starters with at least 60 starts from 2007-2009, but I'm not sure where I'd get that. In any event, it does not seem that Arroyo has been significantly more inconsistent than Aaron Harang over the past 3 years on a start to start basis.
As for the clustering of those starts, some analysis of streakiness, there simply isn't enough evidence to make a conclusion that Arroyo has experienced great clutstering of good and bad starts than we might expect somebody to have if the clustering was just due to random variation. That does not mean that we can conclude Arroyo isn't inconsistent, just that we can't conclude that he is.
Games are won on run differential -- scoring more than your opponent. Runs are runs, scored or prevented they all count the same. Worry about scoring more and allowing fewer, not which positions contribute to which side of the equation or how "consistent" you are at your current level of performance.
Thanks for the clarification. We can definitely observe all we want. I certainly can't and won't disagree with what actually happened.
We, all of us, should just be careful about making the inferential leap from observing what happened to concluding that it happened because of some intrinsic characteristic of the player (and is thus likely to happen in the future). Many people make this leap based on some gut feeling of appropriateness and then state their conclusion as fact. That's what gets me frustrated. We should all recognize the limitations of what we can reliably conclude.
Games are won on run differential -- scoring more than your opponent. Runs are runs, scored or prevented they all count the same. Worry about scoring more and allowing fewer, not which positions contribute to which side of the equation or how "consistent" you are at your current level of performance.
How long was the line of teams that claimed Arroyo from waivers? Or better yet, why didn't a single team risk claiming him?
The Yanks and Dodgers decided to nibble after waivers by saying, "alright, we'll entertain the notion if you take a bad contract...."
Walt couldn't unload Arroyo for the price of his remaining contract- to teams in the league's biggest markets...
Last edited by jojo; 04-10-2010 at 03:20 PM.
"This isn’t stats vs scouts - this is stats and scouts working together, building an organization that blends the best of both worlds. This is the blueprint for how a baseball organization should be run. And, whether the baseball men of the 20th century like it or not, this is where baseball is going."---Dave Cameron, U.S.S. Mariner
Just to nitpick, it wasn't that he couldn't unload him. It's that he chose not to given the return he was offered -- and we don't really know what he was offered, do we? Teams haven't exactly been throwing money around mid-season the last 2 years.
Games are won on run differential -- scoring more than your opponent. Runs are runs, scored or prevented they all count the same. Worry about scoring more and allowing fewer, not which positions contribute to which side of the equation or how "consistent" you are at your current level of performance.
It's safe to say there wasn't a single team that would've taken him for his remaining contract-i.e. would've accepted him outright.
"This isn’t stats vs scouts - this is stats and scouts working together, building an organization that blends the best of both worlds. This is the blueprint for how a baseball organization should be run. And, whether the baseball men of the 20th century like it or not, this is where baseball is going."---Dave Cameron, U.S.S. Mariner
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