ervinsm84
07-27-2012, 12:38 PM
I've read a lot about the Verducci effect over the past years and it seems that each year that passes that proponents and critics just dig further and further into the sand for their side of the argument. Michael Salfino's recent article http://sports.yahoo.com/news/pitching-by-the-numbers--myth-busting.html led me to this post.
I'd like to make this thread into a general discussion about the Verducci effect, its merits or limitations, and how it applies to current Reds and other Major Leaguers.
Here is some general background for those who may be wondering "Verducci effect?" wth is that? One of the first on the topic in SI that I could find by Verducci was http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/tom_verducci/11/28/pitchers/index.html and a more recent one that was published back in Jan 2012 by Verducci http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/tom_verducci/01/18/year.after.effect/index.html
Here is an excerpt from the recent one explaining how he came to track the effect and how he defines the term
For more than a decade I've been tracking this price, which I call the Year After Effect, and which some places, including internal metrics used by at least one organization, referred to as the Verducci Effect. I began tracking it because Rick Peterson, when entrusted as the Oakland pitching coach with the golden arms of Barry Zito, Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder, believed in managing the innings for a pitcher from one year to the next. Too big a jump for too young a pitcher would put a pitcher at risk the next season for injury or regression.
From his philosophy I used a rule of thumb to track pitchers at risk: Any 25-and-under pitcher who increased his innings by 30 or more I considered to be at risk. (In some cases, to account for those coming off injuries or a change in roles, I used the previous innings high regardless of when it occurred.) I also considered only those pitchers who reached the major leagues. Mariners GM Jack Zduriencik, for instance, agrees that major league innings create more stress than minor league innings, so the effect is more profound.
The Effect has become easy to see over the years. In just the past six years, for instance, I flagged 55 pitchers at risk for an injury or regression based on their workload in the previous season. Forty-six of them, or 84 percent, did get hurt or post a worse ERA in the Year After.
Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/tom_verducci/01/18/year.after.effect/index.html#ixzz21q9eT3N1
Now, I'm sure plenty of that jumps out to some people as common sense. For one thing that massively increasing a pitchers workload from one year to the next could be a bad thing. However, there are also some pretty big questions about how and why those specific data end points and pieces were used as well as the general definition of "hurt OR a worse ERA"
As far back as 2006, David Gassko of the HBT wrote a pretty convincing counter to the Verducci effect http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-year-after-effect/
And in 09, Salfino went to task
us.lrd.yahoo.com/_ylt=AmL1YIleyOgCtNyicOt4dbwqtO1_;_ylu=X3oDMTFyMjF rMHJiBG1pdANBUlRJQ0xFIEFydGljbGUgQm9keQRwb3MDNQRzZ WMDTWVkaWFBcnRpY2xlQm9keUFzc2VtYmx5;_ylg=X3oDMTJuY TBsbWZyBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDY2Y4OTk 4OGUtZGM5My0zOTBmLWEzNzYtZTUxZWZjN2M1ZWFjBHBzdGNhd ANob21lBHB0A3N0b3J5cGFnZQ--;_ylv=0/SIG=13gircl7k/EXP=1344614816/**http%3A//web.sny.tv/news/article.jsp%3Fymd=20090804%26content_id=6236988%26 oid=36019%26vkey=10
The outline of his main points being
1. Why is 30 innings the magic # and instead is it not tracking # of pitches. Massive difference between a 35 pitch inning and a 12 pitch inning
2. Including increase ERA makes the target larger and many, many reasons account for an increase in ERA
3. Ignores not only regression to the mean, but entropy
4. VE proponents may be confusing the altering of probability caused by the alteration of the sample space with cause and effect
My own personal opinion falls somewhere in the middle. To me, intuitively it makes sense that there should be some point in a pitchers workload that an increase of too many pitches from 1 year to the next would make someone more injury prone than average. I do think its perfectly reasonable to think someone going from throwing 70 relief innings to 195 starting innings the next season is at an increased injury risk.
At the same time, it seems extremely arbitrary to be using 30 innings and awful convenient to making the Verducci effect #'s "look better" by tossing in an increase in ERA.
Thoughts on this in general? The nationals have a tough call to make with Strasburg on this one right now. How closely should the Reds pay attention to this if/when they move Chapman to a starter next year?
I'd like to make this thread into a general discussion about the Verducci effect, its merits or limitations, and how it applies to current Reds and other Major Leaguers.
Here is some general background for those who may be wondering "Verducci effect?" wth is that? One of the first on the topic in SI that I could find by Verducci was http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/tom_verducci/11/28/pitchers/index.html and a more recent one that was published back in Jan 2012 by Verducci http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/tom_verducci/01/18/year.after.effect/index.html
Here is an excerpt from the recent one explaining how he came to track the effect and how he defines the term
For more than a decade I've been tracking this price, which I call the Year After Effect, and which some places, including internal metrics used by at least one organization, referred to as the Verducci Effect. I began tracking it because Rick Peterson, when entrusted as the Oakland pitching coach with the golden arms of Barry Zito, Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder, believed in managing the innings for a pitcher from one year to the next. Too big a jump for too young a pitcher would put a pitcher at risk the next season for injury or regression.
From his philosophy I used a rule of thumb to track pitchers at risk: Any 25-and-under pitcher who increased his innings by 30 or more I considered to be at risk. (In some cases, to account for those coming off injuries or a change in roles, I used the previous innings high regardless of when it occurred.) I also considered only those pitchers who reached the major leagues. Mariners GM Jack Zduriencik, for instance, agrees that major league innings create more stress than minor league innings, so the effect is more profound.
The Effect has become easy to see over the years. In just the past six years, for instance, I flagged 55 pitchers at risk for an injury or regression based on their workload in the previous season. Forty-six of them, or 84 percent, did get hurt or post a worse ERA in the Year After.
Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/tom_verducci/01/18/year.after.effect/index.html#ixzz21q9eT3N1
Now, I'm sure plenty of that jumps out to some people as common sense. For one thing that massively increasing a pitchers workload from one year to the next could be a bad thing. However, there are also some pretty big questions about how and why those specific data end points and pieces were used as well as the general definition of "hurt OR a worse ERA"
As far back as 2006, David Gassko of the HBT wrote a pretty convincing counter to the Verducci effect http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-year-after-effect/
And in 09, Salfino went to task
us.lrd.yahoo.com/_ylt=AmL1YIleyOgCtNyicOt4dbwqtO1_;_ylu=X3oDMTFyMjF rMHJiBG1pdANBUlRJQ0xFIEFydGljbGUgQm9keQRwb3MDNQRzZ WMDTWVkaWFBcnRpY2xlQm9keUFzc2VtYmx5;_ylg=X3oDMTJuY TBsbWZyBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDY2Y4OTk 4OGUtZGM5My0zOTBmLWEzNzYtZTUxZWZjN2M1ZWFjBHBzdGNhd ANob21lBHB0A3N0b3J5cGFnZQ--;_ylv=0/SIG=13gircl7k/EXP=1344614816/**http%3A//web.sny.tv/news/article.jsp%3Fymd=20090804%26content_id=6236988%26 oid=36019%26vkey=10
The outline of his main points being
1. Why is 30 innings the magic # and instead is it not tracking # of pitches. Massive difference between a 35 pitch inning and a 12 pitch inning
2. Including increase ERA makes the target larger and many, many reasons account for an increase in ERA
3. Ignores not only regression to the mean, but entropy
4. VE proponents may be confusing the altering of probability caused by the alteration of the sample space with cause and effect
My own personal opinion falls somewhere in the middle. To me, intuitively it makes sense that there should be some point in a pitchers workload that an increase of too many pitches from 1 year to the next would make someone more injury prone than average. I do think its perfectly reasonable to think someone going from throwing 70 relief innings to 195 starting innings the next season is at an increased injury risk.
At the same time, it seems extremely arbitrary to be using 30 innings and awful convenient to making the Verducci effect #'s "look better" by tossing in an increase in ERA.
Thoughts on this in general? The nationals have a tough call to make with Strasburg on this one right now. How closely should the Reds pay attention to this if/when they move Chapman to a starter next year?