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Seen on the internet ...
Dr. D: Wow, Nick Franklin has 3 hits and 5 total bases in only 10 PA's so far. A .500 AVG, that's a nice start.
SABRMATT: HOO HAW HAW HAAAWWWWWWW! Doc, would you PLEASE do your homework or else just stop using stats on this blog. Anybody with half a brain can see that Franklin's batting average is .182.
Nobody hits .500 in baseball. In fact, fangraphs publishes the leaders and in 2012, the leader was Buster Posey -- he's a catcher for the Giants -- and he batted only .336. In fact the best batting average since WWII was .401, so for you to say that Franklin is batting .500 in his first two weeks ... well, your naivete is breathtaking.
Dr. D. Matt, sometimes I forget why we have such a beautiful relationship. Also, thank you for all the incognito M's personnel that you've chased off my blog over the years.
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John Dewan Total Runs
In this article on WBC-san, we commented offhand on Iwakuma's Total Runs standing. We compared Total Runs to WAR, which is not a good comparison.
Matt rejected the comparison for the reason that Dewan's totals "have to be prorated." They are not. Iwakuma had +51 runs saved, per Dewan's metric, as of May 30, 2013. But in the future, Matt, we'll thank you to understand a stat before commenting on it. Drive home safely.
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Total Runs, however, is a stat that does not compare players to REPLACEMENT LEVEL; it compares them to zero.
Replacement level is, per Fangraphs' assumption, worth about +20 runs per year -- or about +7 runs so far this season. So, in theory, you would subtract 7 runs from those original totals to get WAR. Which would still leave Iwakuma at over 4 WAR already this year.
..........
That doesn't really work either. Dewan says that the annual leaders in Total Runs are annually around 160-180 runs ... if you subtract 20 runs (for replacement level) you're still way too high; nobody gets 14-16 WAR per year. Except Honus Wagner, I guess...
Obviously, Dewan's metric was going to be on a different scale than Fangraphs' WAR -- no pitcher is going to achieve 5 Fangraphs WAR in 33% of a season. We explicitly clarified this in the original article, which didn't deter Matt from jumping on an opportunity to be as self-superior as possible. But it does present us with a chance to wallow in Iwakuma's season even more.
..........
Could some players be worth 4-5 WAR, in the first 1/3 of a season? Sure. Mike Trout was worth 10 WAR last year. A hot 1/3 of a season is going to result in more than 1/3 of the leader's final total.
But still: I've got no idea how Dewan's Total Runs scale to WAR. The comparison was ill-advised. My bad.
Yes, Virginia, if you make an attempt to change the tone of my blog, we will throw hands. Keep it friendly, check the arrogance at the door, talk baseball and not each other. That's free advice.
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Iwakuma's Actual Contribution
The salient point is: Hisashi Iwakuma has contributed more to his ballclub than any other AL or NL pitcher in 2013, per Dewan's measure.
Let's put that into scale. Here are the recent WAR leaders, per Fangraphs...
| Year | Pitcher | WAR |
| 2012 | Verlander | 7.0 |
| 2011 | Halladay | 8.0 |
| 2010 | Lee | 7.0 |
| 2009 | Greinke | 9.1 |
| 2009b | Verlander | 8.1 |
| 2009c | Lincecum | 7.5 |
| 2008 | Sabathia | 7.2 |
In 2008, for example, there were four guys over 7.0 ... Sabathia, Lee, Lincecum, Halladay.
About 7 wins "above replacement" is standard, and it's been ranging up to 8-9 wins "above replacement" for a pitcher. Baseball-reference.com gives 8+ WAR as an "MVP-worthy" season, which sounds about right to me.
Fangraphs' WAR for pitchers is calculated based not on actual runs saved, but on theoretical runs saved, such as by normalizing team defense. If the Mariners' team defense has been above average, Iwakuma's theoretical WAR will be cut back down towards zero. Still, we like their pitching WAR formula.
Still, Fangraphs' WAR can be radically different from other places' estimates... Clay Buchholz is worth 3.8 WAR so far per b-ref.com, but only 2.7 per Fangraphs.
.............
Dewan had Iwakuma at -51 runs prevented, before his start against the Twins ... not -51 compared to a Rainier, but -51 compared to zero.
More stunning than "theoretical" WAR is the fact that the Mariners actually HAVE gained +6 or +7 wins, on the field, because of Iwakuma -- already.
A few numbers for WBC-san:
9-3 - Mariners' record in Iwakuma starts (thanks Mo')
6-6 - Mariners' record in Felix starts
9-24 - Mariners record in everybody else's starts
+6 or +7 - Wins that Iwakuma has added to Mariner totals per above context
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1.82 - runs better than average, per 100 ... fastballs
2.92 - runs better than average per 100 shuuto's
37% - swings outside zone (29% being AL average)
63% - swings at strikes (65% being AL average)
11.3% - swinging strike % (9.2 being average; 10.5 being Clayton Kershaw)
.........
3.7 - Strikeout to Walk ratio, Hisashi Iwakuma, 2012-13 (as starter)
5.7 - Strikeout to Walk ratio, Hisashi Iwakuma, 2013
3.7 - Strikeout to Walk ratio, Cliff Lee, career (#6 alltime since 1900)
4.4 - Strikeout to Walk ratio, Curt Schilling, career (alltime leader since 1900)
4.1 - Strikeout to Walk ratio, Pedro Martinez, career (#2 alltime since 1900)
3.4 - Strikeout to Walk ratio, Greg Maddux, career
..........
12 - Starts by Hisashi Iwakuma, 2013
10 - "Lockdown" starts in which Iwakuma has allowed 0-2 earned runs
25 - Starts by Hisashi Iwakuma, 2012-13
3 - Occasions on which Iwakuma has allowed more than 3 earned runs
4, 4, and 5 - How many runs did Iwakuma allow during his "disaster" starts
3.03 - What is Roy Halladay's ERA, last 5 years
2.89 - What is Felix', last 5 years
2.86 - What is Cliff Lee's ERA , last 5 years
2.71 - What is Clayton Kershaw's, last 5 years
YES - Do pitchers bat in the National League (only league in world*)
A little under 3 - what is the lower bound* for ERA in the American League
2.41 - What is Iwakuma's lifetime ERA as a starter
..........
7ip, 5h, 2r, 2er, 1bb, 5k - Average Iwakuma start, rounded to integers
0.87 - WHIP, Iwakuma, 2013 (#1 in baseball)
.228 - BABIP, Iwakuma, 2013
Chris Sale, Clayton Kershaw, Matt Moore - the other pitchers with really low BABIP's right now
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Iwakuma's Command, Pitchability, and Deception
WBC-san jumped into the rotation last year, and started tossing out lockdown starts like a 112-lb. Seattle meter maid polishing her badge and tossing citations onto car windows at 14th and Pine. SSI cautioned from the very start that Iwakuma, though good, wasn't as good as that. It has never stopped cautioning this.
Could Hisashi Iwakuma be a Greg Maddux-type superstar, a perennial 89-MPH Cy Young contender in the Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels*, Greg Maddux, Dan Haren, Jered Weaver mold?
It's hard to believe. Cliff Lee has a murderous cut fastball and a wide array of strikeout pitches that sustain his performance. Haren's dominance was also sustained by his vicious cutter. Jered Weaver has a certain shape to his fastball, a certain arm angle, and other things, that sustain success. Iwakuma's stuff does not look to me as though it will sustain this kind of performance.
But! Greg Maddux being the main exception here, he did sustain dominance in spite of "stuff" that fell short of Lee's and Haren's. He had Moyer-type pitchability, command, and deception, DID manage to make "smoke and mirrors" work long-term.
Iwakuma is dominating based not on a signature cutter or changeup, but based on command, pitchability, and deception. Obviously he's off the charts on all of those factors. Will they continue to play up to this extent?
Dr. D hasn't fully bought in to Iwakuma's pitchability. For example, his last start against the Twins, they seemed to be guessing him right, much more than in other starts this year. It's easy to imagine Iwakuma having a stretch of 10 games like this. "What happened to my deception?," he'll be asking then.
But from 1997 to 2002 or so, I kept waiting and waiting for Jamie Moyer to show some chinks in the armor. If you think that Hisashi Iwakuma's intelligence game is 100.00% repeatable -- as Moyer's and Maddux' were -- then go ahead and pencil in his next five 2+ ERA seasons. That would make him a legit superstar.
Cheers,
Dr D
Great line, Doc: "WBC-san jumped into the rotation last year, and started tossing out lockdown starts like a 112-lb. Seattle meter maid polishing her badge and tossing citations onto car windows at 14th and Pine." Had me chuckling for 10 minutes.
Here's something Schilling wrote about Maddux a few years ago, the point being that with OK movement and extreme control, you can do damn near anything.:
I have watched and studied Greg Maddux for years. He is so far ahead of the field when it comes to the mental aspects of pitching that its scary. I watched a game about 10 years ago, Maddux was pitching in SF, bases loaded, Dave Martinez hitting. 2-2 count. Maddux throws ball three, way way outside, a fastball, then goes 3-2 and throws a picture perfect change up, not even close to the zone. Martinez swings, inning over. It stuck with me so much that the next year when I saw him I asked him about it. He remembered it, he told me on 2-2, the crowd was pumped in SF, he had great command of his changeup, he knew that 3-2 Martinez would sit FB and would be swinging and that the crowd would be even louder, the situation even more tense on the hitter as well as the runners would be going, always a nice distraction, something he wasn't sure of 2-2, so he intentionally threw ball 3 to ramp up the situation, lure Martinez into a false sense of security, then pulled the string on him.
Iwakuma has a terrific sense for which pitch is the right one in this situation. Maddux was the best I ever saw at that. If you didn't watch him in '94 and '95 it is almost impossible to get how good he was. He had 53 starts over those two years. One of them was a one inning deal in '95 with one ER. Over the other 52 starts he went between 5-5.2 innings three times (the 1st three starts of '95). Those were his only 3 starts below 6 innings. In those 52 starts he gaave up 0 ER's 16 times and 1 ER 14 times. In nearly 60% of his starts he gave up one run or less. He gave up 2 ER's 14 times, 3 ER's 5 times and 5 ER's 3 times. He had quality starts 49 of 52 times. He was a machine.
Iwakuma is a junior Maddux, right now. He's pretty freaking good.
The story about Maddux intentionally wasting a 2-2 pitch to set up the K on the 32 changeup reminds me of something I read years ago about Richie Allen. Allen was GREAT great and remains incredibly underrated. He had 11 seasons in a row, at one point, where his OPS+ never dipped below 146. The last time the M's had a fulltime/full-season player get close to 146 was in 05. Sexson was at 144 (Morales is at 142 this season, Jaso--a parttime player--was 143 last year). Sexson was .263-.369-.541 in '05 with 36 doubles and 39 homers. Essentially, that was the worst season Allen had over an 11 year run. Holy smokes!
Anyway, I remember reading something by a teammate of his who said that he would purposefully strike out late in a game that was out of reach, just so he could deke the pitcher into throwing him that same pitch the next time they faced one another.
Oh, what a player.
If we had Noesi or Beavan pitching in Iwakuma's 12 starts, we might have 4 or 5 wins.....maybe. I don't know how you add it up....but he's been worth 4-5 wins already this season in the moe WAR book. He's that good right now.
It seemed like Maddux could induce double plays at will...
While Iwakuma's HR rate still nags at me, I am definitely coming around to the concept that he's tapping into some situational "magic" that limits his HR damage.
Statistically, he doesn't match up with Maddux very well, (Mad Dog couldn't break 8 Ks even in his insane 1995 19-1 1.63 campaign). He rarely broke 7 Ks. Both obviously have the insane control that keeps walk totals ridiculously small, but Maddux truly out-of-bounds skill was always in his HR totals. He never allowed 20 HRs in a season, until he was 35 years old. He had an 11 year run where his worst HR/9 was 0.6. He had 4 seasons with more than 200 IPs and single-digit HR totals.
But, the point I would most like to make on Maddux is not really related to Iawkuma. It's related to the bevy of pitching prospects the Ms have.
Maddux was (IMHO), the greatest RH pitcher of the past 50 years. (I know - there are some others that make the claim, but Maddux is certainly in the discussion).
But ... as a rookie and sophomore:
1986 -- 31-IP; 5.52 ERA (2-4) -- 12.8 / 0.9 / 3.2 / 5.8
1987 -- 155.2-IP; 5.61 ERA (6-14) -- 10.5 / 1.0 / 4.3 / 5.8
Okay, he was only 20 and 21 years of age those first two trips. But, the point here is that it is NOT a requirement to become a Hall of Fame pitcher to have immediate dominance on the mound. Guys like Felix and Pineda are not the norm. And plenty of rookie stars crash and burn never to return, (mostly due to injury, but not always.
This is not to say ANY of the current Ms prospects are going to go on to have Maddux-like careers. But, I think it is important to put a little context around recent performances ... because I think many fans dismiss players too quickly in terms of upward potential if they happen to struggle early. Compare these first two seasons to the ones from Maddux above.
2011 -- 56-IP; 4.47 ERA (2-2) -- 10.1 / 1.0 / 3.5 / 7.2
2012 -- 106.2-IP; 5.82 ERA (2-12) -- 9.0 / 1.8 / 3.3 / 5.7
Those or the results for Hector Noesi.
Maddux would go on to win 18 in his 2nd full season with a 3.18 ERA and the rest is history.
Glavine's first two years?
1987 - 50.1-IP; 5.54; 2-4 -- 9.8 / 0.9 / 5.9 / 3.6
1988 - 195-IP; 4.56; 7-17 -- 9.3 / 0.6 / 2.9 / 3.9
Glavine didn't crack FOUR (4) Ks per nine until his 3rd season.
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The intent here is to try and suggest that "reasonable expectations" for prospects (hitting or pitching) should include a HIGH likelihood that the results are going to be far bumpier than one would hope.
Today, as we speak, the Braves are 7 games up in the NL East.
Jason Heyward, THEIR version of Ackley ... .153/.288/.270 - .558
B.J. Upton ... a key FA signing ... .153 / .237 / .265 - .502
The Braves are winning behind a monster pitching staff with a 119 ERA+.
Tim Hudson is the worst (4-4; 4.80 ERA)
Then you have:
Paul Maholm - 7-4; 3.68 -- 31 year old journeyman pick-up with a 4.23 career ERA
Mike Minor - 7-2; 2.48 -- 4th season -- previous ERAs were 5.98; 4.14; 4.12
Kris Medlen - 2-6; 3.14 -- 5th season - 4.26 and 3.68 - (hurt) - then broke through with a 10-1; 1.57 season over 138 IP last year
Julio Teheran - 3-2; 3.71 -- 5.03 ERA in 19.2-IP in 2011; and 5.68 in 6.1 IP in 2012
Wasn't Maddux also a SS or something growing up? He sure fielded like one.