My favorite stat, still, is he has given up 1ER to the national league (the league in which he regularly pitches to) all season and we're in the middle of August. It's u-n-b-e-l-i-e-v-a-b-l-e.
My favorite stat, still, is he has given up 1ER to the national league (the league in which he regularly pitches to) all season and we're in the middle of August. It's u-n-b-e-l-i-e-v-a-b-l-e.
That is indeed amazing.Originally Posted by fearofpopvol1
Here are his numbers against the NL only:
51.2 IP
17 H
2 R
1 ER (0.18 ERA)
12 BB (2.1 per 9)
99 K (17.2 per 9)
8.3:1 K-BB
0.06 FIP
0.06 FIP against the NL. Are you kidding?
"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 don't agree with this premise. Mariano had 10 major league starts and netted a 5.94 ERA. That is bad, but it's only 10 starts. That ERA is roughly equivalent to Greg Maddux's ERA through his first 27 starts, and Maddux didn't have to face the DH.
I'm not questioning the decision to make Rivera a reliever as it's kinda worked out, but who's to say he wouldn't have added a third pitch and become a hall-of-fame starter? If he were on any team other than the Yankees - who had ample starting pitching but needed a reliable bullpen in the mid 90s - they would have tried to convert him to a starter and grabbed a closer in free agency after Wetteleand left.
Same thing with Papelbon. By no means did he fail as a starter. He was simply inserted into the closer role at a time of need and did so well at it that the organization didn't dare move him back to the rotation.
I'm always of the opinion that it's easier to find dominant bullpen arms than very good starting pitchers, but Chapman is so far to the extreme end of dominant that I'd be afraid to mess with that next spring. I've done a 180 on this issue because this is such a historic season, like Eckersley and/or Dibble in 1990. Gagne in 2003. I'd think twice before putting him back into the rotation, especially if he's going to pitch more than 1 inning here and there, like he did in Chicago on Friday.
Stick to your guns.
I really see no point in Chapman being anything but a closer for the rest of his career, he is one of the few who makes that sometimes overrated role what it is - like Dibble or Rivera as mentioned. His % is amazing and he's the best at it in baseball right now, no reason to change that, ever.
I don't understand why anyone would still want him to be a starter, when he can close out and win games 3-4 times a week, instead of one every 5 days.
I'd call him MVP of the Reds or at least best story.
Dickey is the NL Cy Young unless he implodes, but I think Chapman is on track to be #2. Dude is tied for 32nd in strikeouts in the league despite throwing less than half the innings of almost every pitcher ahead of him. He doesn't walk that many guys, he doesn't give up homers, and everyone he faces craps his pants.
Stick to your guns.
Look at the 2010 playoffs and maybe you will understand why. The Reds closer never pitched in the series.
Ever since the summersault fiasco, he's been darn near untouchable and he doesn't really show much emotion after a save. I don't have the pitch-by-pitch stats but it appears that he's mixing in more sliders ... for strikes, and seems very focused on the mound.
"The players make the manager, it's never the other way." - Sparky Anderson
I could have swore the first pitch he threw last night was an 89 mph change up.
I understand why people want him as a starter. But I see teams like StL and MIL have problems with the back end of their bullpens and you have to believe it's nice to have a sledgehammer in the back end of the bullpen like Chapman.
He's a spectacle to behold. So much fun to watch him work now. The crowd reaction is amazing and electric, everyone knows they're seeing something special.
That's delivering big for your entertainment dollar. I think the Reds will sell a lot more tickets with him as the hammer-closer who gets on sportscenter night after night. People will come to the park to see this guy throw one inning several nights a week instead of just once every five days.
Aside from the purely baseball reasons in the closer vs. starter debate, the marketing potential is pretty obvious.
We'll go down in history as the first society that wouldn't save itself because it wasn't cost effective ~ Kurt Vonnegut
By the way, I was looking at the WAR leaderboard for relievers in a single-season, and I see that Chapman is actually on pace for tying or breaking Eric Gagne's 4.5 WAR set in 2003.
Amazingly, he's already at 3.1 WAR which is 0.8 ahead of Craig Kimbrel. Technically speaking, Mark Eichorn had 5.3 WAR in 1986, although he had to pitch 157 innings to do it.
"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
Because if he's the next Randy Johnson, no amount of awesomeness at closer could come close to the value he'd provide in the rotation. That is a very good reason to change it -- especially when you consider he can go back to closing if starting doesn't work out. The argument against trying him as a starter is either that you think he has no chance being an ace or that you think it significantly risks his health or ability to pitch moving forward.
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.
What about the impact on the team if it doesn't work out? Right now, I know he's a lights out closer and the team has reasonably good starters in place and a good chance to win. The only way to find out is to weaken the pen, jettison one of those starters and see what happens for at least half a season. If he crashes and burns, you probably kill the team's chances for that season and won't have the starter to put back in the rotation when you move him back to the pen. In effect you'd be punting a season to find out and be left with a rotation hole to fill to boot.
Sure, from Chapman's point of view, he could move back to the pen, but the team would much worse off by trying it and it failing than they would by not trying it at all. Lets not pretend there aren't consequences. These moves are a lot easier with a 75 win team.
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!
Just out of curiosity, can you think of any other dominant relievers who have tried starting, struggled with it, and then returned to a high level of performance as a reliever? Off the top of my head, the only reliever-failed starter-reliever conversions I can think of are Danny Graves (-.1 WAR as a reliever in the season after his attempt at starting) and Daniel Bard (currently with a 7.16ERA in triple A as he tries to convert back to a reliever), neither of which are encouraging. I'm sure there are other examples out there, though, and I'm not really opposed to trying Chapman as a starter-- it would just be nice to know that struggling as a starter doesn't always spell doom for the reliever's career.
Chapman is a unique situation in that he has not been used as a reliever because he failed as a starter. Most relievers are so because they flamed out as starters at some point at some level. Chapman has been used as a reliever, in two different circumstances, out of necessity moreso than design.
John Smoltz would be a good answer to your question though. He was an elite starter, got hurt, became a very good closer, then started again and had some success back in the rotation. Elite relievers are valuable enough that the experiment doesn't make sense in the first place. The Reds were so clueless back then in the pitching department that anything they did has to be considered assinine, as a givenAnd understand I'm not saying Graves was an elite reliever. He was a barely average pitcher in an era of chuckers for the Reds.
"Rounding 3rd and heading for home, good night everybody"
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