He started playing well at the beginning of may when the team was still 100% in the race. He was not hitting homeruns in may but he was getting on the base. He was hitting 2nd and Springer was awful so he pretty much never had guys on base so his job was to get on base which he did in may.Stay hot, Vladdy. Video game numbers since the start of July
Career 4.1 era pitcher. Take away a few terribly bad seasons, and his career era still high 3s. How and why Jays want to pay a guy $20M/yr for that who knows.Should have traded Berrios.
Mediocre/bad pitchers getting paid a good sum of money is nothing new. Jordan Lyles made over 50 million dollars in his career to be the baseball version of a punching bag;Career 4.1 era pitcher. Take away a few terribly bad seasons, and his career era still high 3s. How and why Jays want to pay a guy $20M/yr for that who knows.
Even worse is Kikuchi. $36M over 3 years. Career era almost 5 and his best year ever was last year scraping by with an era just below 4. His era on Jays probably avg out to 4.5. And Jays paid him $12M/yr and Seattle paid him about $15M/yr.
Baseball Ref says in 6 years, he's made $79M with an MLB career era of 4.7.
Seattle smoking major drugs, and shipped some to Shapiro and Atkins.
Career 4.1 era pitcher. Take away a few terribly bad seasons, and his career era still high 3s. How and why Jays want to pay a guy $20M/yr for that who knows.
Even worse is Kikuchi. $36M over 3 years. Career era almost 5 and his best year ever was last year scraping by with an era just below 4. His era on Jays probably avg out to 4.5. And Jays paid him $12M/yr and Seattle paid him about $15M/yr.
Baseball Ref says in 6 years, he's made $79M with an MLB career era of 4.7.
Seattle smoking major drugs, and shipped some to Shapiro and Atkins.
Good challenge questions for this poster, but you piqued my curiosity. It made me look.So if an ERA of just below 4 is "just scraping by" I have to ask:
How many pitchers in baseball do you think had an ERA of less than 4 last season? Let's say that we're just talking starters and to only account for ones that got regular, season-long work that they had to reach at least 150 IP (which should equate to like 25-30 starts)
Good challenge questions for this poster, but you piqued my curiosity. It made me look.
So I’ll ask this poster, what’s your over under pick on starters last year who even hit the 150 innings pitched mark?
I’ll set the line at 75.5.
(32 teams, five starters per team)
Hint: Jays had four starters hit this threshold.
Those #1 starter numbers seem crazy now, finding performance AND durability is the unicorn.This won't answer my original question but there was a research piece done about 10 years ago on a Pirates blog that figured out what the average ERA was for each spot in the rotation by sorting each team into its best/most used 5 starters into hypothetical rotation spots and then averaging each spot's results.
I don't have the #s in front of me but it was something like as follows (with the AL generally being about 10-12 points higher than the average and the NL being the same amount below, likely owing to the fact that this was still before the universal DH)
#1: Low 3s (I want to say the league # was like 3.1X and the NL one just barely edged down to like 2.97 or 2.98)
#2: mid/high 3s
#3: low/mid 4s
#4: mid/high 4s
#5: mid/high 5s
And according to baseball-reference the league-wide ERA for all pitchers is in pretty much the same place as it was a decade ago, with a bit of a detour from like 2016-2020 where offense spiked.
2010: 4.38
2016: 4.48
2020: 4.65
2024: 4.42
So while that rotation research is quite old, the numbers of right now should not be terribly different from what they were then.
EDIT: And to answer your challenge question (even if it wasn't meant for me)
I think the number is less than you'd expect. 75 would mean an average of 2 starters per team hitting the mark. That seems reasonable at first blush but I'm going to take the under and say....
53.
So now I look and the answer: Fangraphs tells me it's 58. So I was close but a little too aggressive in marking them down.
In light of this, I looked at adjusting my IP numbers on the ERA question. I believe at 150 IP the number was something like 35 guys who were below 4.00.
So if I set the threshold to just 100 IP and SP only the answer is 53 starters below 4.00 ERA out of 117 starters in total that reached that IP count
Appreciate the effort.As for you guys replying to my post earlier today, baseball ref says the league ERA is 4.09 this year as I type. Relievers and and closers skew to a slightly better ERA as I did a MLB.com stats check. Starters are 4.17 ERA and relievers have 4.00 ERA. I had to export the data as some reason they dont have overall grand totals. lol
The Jays paying a ton of money for starter with ERAs over 4 is a waste of money. It doesn't matter how many innings they pitch because a bad ERA is a bad ERA. All that means is someone pitching tons of innings are giving up tons of runs, which also means the bats have to be driving in tons of runs to win.
Jays starters and relievers have been bad all season being one of the worst in the league. Team ERA is near the bottom.
Paying a lot of salary for any pitcher who cant pitch is dumb. The top 4 Jays starters all get $12M - $20M each. Kikuchi was cheapest at $12M, and I think Gausman, Bassitt and Berrios all get $20M each. Bassitt and Berrios are in the low 4s, and Gausman and YK are in the mid/high 4s.
So the Jays are basically paying $77M for 4 starters with a collective ERA at 4.37 (I did the math) where the league avg for starter is 4.17 ERA. And Berrios in the case, since I started off this discussion is at 4.11. So Jays are paying $20M for an avg league pitcher which is insane.
Quality starts at 3ER in 6 innings = 4.50 being a quality start is a lousy metric, since it means having a 4.50 is somehow good which it isnt. You can tell its bad because a 4.50 ERA in terms of team pitching is 25th in the league (Arizona), and the overall ERA in the league is 4.09.
As for you guys replying to my post earlier today, baseball ref says the league ERA is 4.09 this year as I type. Relievers and and closers skew to a slightly better ERA as I did a MLB.com stats check. Starters are 4.17 ERA and relievers have 4.00 ERA. I had to export the data as some reason they dont have overall grand totals. lol
The Jays paying a ton of money for starter with ERAs over 4 is a waste of money. It doesn't matter how many innings they pitch because a bad ERA is a bad ERA. All that means is someone pitching tons of innings are giving up tons of runs, which also means the bats have to be driving in tons of runs to win.
Jays starters and relievers have been bad all season being one of the worst in the league. Team ERA is near the bottom.
Paying a lot of salary for any pitcher who cant pitch is dumb. The top 4 Jays starters all get $12M - $20M each. Kikuchi was cheapest at $12M, and I think Gausman, Bassitt and Berrios all get $20M each. Bassitt and Berrios are in the low 4s, and Gausman and YK are in the mid/high 4s.
So the Jays are basically paying $77M for 4 starters with a collective ERA at 4.37 (I did the math) where the league avg for starter is 4.17 ERA. And Berrios in the case, since I started off this discussion is at 4.11. So Jays are paying $20M for an avg league pitcher which is insane.
Quality starts at 3ER in 6 innings = 4.50 being a quality start is a lousy metric, since it means having a 4.50 is somehow good which it isnt. You can tell its bad because a 4.50 ERA in terms of team pitching is 25th in the league (Arizona), and the overall ERA in the league is 4.09.
WRC+Too bad Vladdy didn’t perform when the games mattered.