Quote:
|
Originally Posted by dylanmarsh
(I'm beginning to love the Yankees' front office. There has to be a Sox fan in there somewhere.)
|
Me too. 21M for Wright. What a joke. The first two rules for signing free agents:
1) Don't sign a hitter that sucked, went to Colorado for a year and kicked ass. They will regress (a lot).
2) Don't sign a pitcher that sucked, went to the Braves for a year or two and 'resurrected' his career. He will regress.
The guys at Sabernomics concluded that
Leo Mazzone has a 0.55-0.85 effect on a pitcher's ERA. That is one hell of an effect:
Quote:
|
So, what's the veridict? Leo Mazzone is a damn good coach! Working with Leo is shaves off between .55 and .85 points of a pitcher's ERA. And I promise you, the results are not some artifact of some manipulation of the numbers to prove a point. In fact, my bias when I started this project was that Leo was a bit overrated. To put this in perspective, the standard deviation of ERA for pitchers in the sample was 1.36. Leo's boys gain about half of a standard deviation on their ERA. I think Schuerholz ought to take this number into arbitration hearings with pitchers. Also interesting is the fact that the effect seems to go away when pitchers leave. This may be because Mazzone imparts useful everyday help, not just new knowledge to fix an old problem, or maybe the Braves know when to dump guys. In any event I think it's clear Rob Neyer was not exaggerating when he suggested Leo Mazzone ought be in the Hall of Fame.
|
Milton is bad for a #3 starter and good for a #4 starter. Somehow (*cough* run support *cough*) he won a bunch of games last year. Sadly, he'll get paid like a #2 starter.
I think Clement was the one of the best free agent pitchers on the market this year if you consider age, IP, 2004 ERA, career ERA, likeliness to sign with a new club, and expected competition from other clubs. I wish the DBakcs would have made him their #1 FA pitcher target. Instead, they are going after Russ Ortiz (see Mazzone rant above) and will probably give him more money than Clement will sign for.