2009 Relief Pitching Projection

by drabidea on Jan 20, 2009 8:45 PM EST Comment 24 comments

Part 2 of our community projection project is Relief Pitching. Again the Innings pitched are the average of Bill James, CHONE, and Marcel's 2009 projections. The ERA is the same average of Bill James, CHONE and Marcel's 2009 projection of each pitchers FIP. The innings for each pitcher was modified in slight amounts so the total of all pitchers was 505.

Another number on the graph is the Leverage Index. Many of you who visit Fangraphs site for the win probability charts or read Tom Tango's articles already know what LI is.

Leverage Index is a measure of how important a particular situation is in a baseball game depending on the inning, score, outs, and number of players on base. LI was created by Tom Tango. These LI's can also be modified for our project. Closer's are set at 1.8 and setup men are set at 1.3. The average of all our relief pitchers need to be 1, this means many of the pitchers are well below 1.

I am pretty sure most, if not all of you, would put Papelbon as our closer. However, I know there will be debate in who our setup man, our 8th inning guy, or Mop up guy will be. I would love to get feedback from everyone on who you feel WILL be (not what you think SHOULD be) Terry Francona's pitcher of choice. You should do this by putting the relief pitchers in order of "go to" guy. The best way to think of it is, if Papelbon is not able to close the game in a close game, who would Tito have pitch? As an example, I put my list in a comment below.

Jon Papelbon	R	68	2.78
Ramon Ramirez	R	65	3.68
Hideki Okajima	R	61	3.67
Justin Masterson	R	65	4.10
Manny Delcarmen	R	74	3.52
Javier Lopez	R	58	4.22
Takashi Saito	R	51	3.07
John Smoltz	R	30	3.73
Wes Littleton	R	33	4.29

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My Order of what Tito will use for relief pitching

Jon Papelbon
Takashi Saito
Justin Masterson
Hideki Okajima
Manny Delcarmen
Ramon Ramirez
Javier Lopez
John Smoltz
Wes Littleton

by drabidea on Jan 20, 2009 8:51 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Agreed

Smoltz would be more for starting, right? And I didn’t know Saito was that good. It turned out to be a very productive offseason for the Sox.

Well, I'll appreciate for you to keep my zingers outta your mouth!

by BoSox415 on Jan 20, 2009 9:01 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Instead of Wes Littleton

I would put Miguel Gonzalez

The rhythm is the bass and the bass is the treble

by DirtySouthSox on Jan 20, 2009 9:03 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

order

I agree with one exception. I would swap Ramirez with Delcarmen. Also (I realize this is a second trade), I think if Smoltz was to knowingly be in the bullpen (i.e. planned to be in the bullpen), then I think he would be up somewhere between 2nd and 4th place.

by rmarx01 on Jan 20, 2009 11:57 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Absolutely.

Ramirez is nails.

"no1 has time to read your long comments, are you writing a book?"

by britsoxfan on Jan 21, 2009 3:16 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

More Instructions

I would also like to know what you think the innings and ERA will be for each pitcher.

by drabidea on Jan 20, 2009 8:52 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

The Bullpen

Paps (60 IP, 2.1 ERA)
Saito (45, 3.2)
Okajima (65, 3.35)
Masterson (50, 3.55)
Delcarmen (63, 3.9)
Ramirez (45, 4.2)
Lopez (50, 3.15)
Littleton (25, 4.35)
Wakefield (55, 4.2)

I don’t see Smoltz in the pen, so I substituted Wake (who I believe will be pushed back). Sox relievers compiled 479.2 IP last year, and my projections put them at 458. With additions in the back of the rotation, an extra 20 innings from starters is completely reachable.

-Zach Sanders
http://www.mlbnotebook.com

by mlbnotebook on Jan 20, 2009 9:12 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Hey, you're the middle ground between NG and I!

About Wake anyways. I think he’d win the bet if you’re right.

For those children who claimed they’ve been a fan of their favorite team all their life, or even since they were about four or five years old: bullshit. There’s always that certain event or certain player that draws to the sport and draws you to a team. For me, Nomar Garciaparra was that reason. - Nick Coviello: I Try To See Rocco, But All I Think Is Nomar; 1/9/09

by bs.uf15bosox9bears23 on Jan 20, 2009 9:43 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Sox traded Aardsma

for Fabian Williamson, a twenty year-old lefty from the Mariners. Here.

Manny ain't the only bad man.

by tommy.otm on Jan 20, 2009 10:12 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

At least two of those pitchers won't be in the pen or on the team

The Sox have stockpiled relievers. They have too many right now. I believe Masterson is the only one with options (and I don’t see him being sent down).

I gotta go 'cause I'm probably definitely gonna nod out again.

by Drugs Delaney on Jan 21, 2009 9:08 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

"The Sox have stockpiled relievers. They have too many right now."

The perfect problem to have.

The rhythm is the bass and the bass is the treble

by DirtySouthSox on Jan 21, 2009 2:41 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Agreed

But, it makes any projection kind of hard.

I gotta go 'cause I'm probably definitely gonna nod out again.

by Drugs Delaney on Jan 21, 2009 3:56 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Saito

I doubt he’ll throw 50 innings; that’s almost a full season. There’s a good chance Saito is out for the whole season, and throws 0 innings—or he might be completely ineffective.

by redsox9322 on Jan 22, 2009 2:42 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Agreed

He could throw 70 innings too though. I guess it depends on what you think the chances are of him not getting injured. I happen to agree with you, but the Sox could also use him sparingly that he lasts the whole season.

I would propose that we drop his predicted innings down to 40. I just don’t feel like he will pitch more innings then he did last year.

by drabidea on Jan 22, 2009 3:32 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

40 IP sounds good

by redsox9322 on Jan 22, 2009 4:24 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Leverage Index ordering

probably the BEST way to do this would be to give all of the potential set-up men an average LI, if we think they all have an equal chance of becoming the set-up man. The way I would do this is:

Saito 0.94
Okajima 0.94
Ramirez 0.94
Delcarmen 0.94
Masterson 0.94

This way it adds up to 4.7 which equals 1.3+1.0+0.9+0.8+0.7 (these values are from Sky’s updated spreadsheet).
We could then tweak the LI’s a little depending on who we think is more likely to be the set-up man.

i don’t think Smoltz will pitch very much in the bullpen. In fact, if he makes 11 starts as you have him projected, he can’t throw 30 IP in the bullpen (I posted a longer explanation on the SP thread)

by redsox9322 on Jan 22, 2009 2:52 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Interesting

I like your idea. He could have a poll and modify the LI’s accordingly. Do you think this would/could work?

by drabidea on Jan 22, 2009 3:34 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

we could have a poll and modify the LI's accordingly

Sounds like a great idea…could you give me an example of what the poll would look like?

by redsox9322 on Jan 22, 2009 4:29 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I'm not sure

Well I think the easiest way to do it would be to ask the question “Who do you think Tito will use in as a Setup man for Papelbon in tight game situations?”

We could then take the voting percentages for each player and use them as weights (100%=4.7). However this method will only work if there is a high variance. If for example no one thinks Ramirez will trump the rest of the rest of the competition and no one votes for him he would get a leverage of 0.

If this occured we would obviously have to change our weighting criteria. Let’s say only 5 percent voted for Masterson for some reason we would have to exclude him from the weighting process. He would recieve a 0.7 and then we would change the weighting to 100%=4.

However, once we do this, that 5 percent of people who voted for Masterson would lose their vote. Those 5 percent could all have the same person as a 2nd choice.

Basically, I am up for suggestions, but I don’t know of a way to do it in 1 poll.

by drabidea on Jan 22, 2009 5:04 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Is there a way for the voters to rank them 1-5?

by Schulz on Jan 22, 2009 7:26 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I thought about it some more

The reason for giving all the relievers the same LI is not because we don’t know who will be the setup man. Rather, it is because Tito will probably mix-and-match the relievers—Okajima to pitch to LHB, Masterson to get the double play, Ramirez to get the strikeout. This means that in the end all of them will end up with similar LIs. So I think the best poll would be to ask readers which group of 3 guys get to pitch the 7th and 8th. In each group, we would have a lefty specialist (Oki), a flamethrower (Delcarmen, Ramirez), general set-up guy (Saito), and maybe some would have Masterson. It would look something like this:

Choice 1: Saito, Okajima, Ramirez
Choice 2: Saito, Okajima, Delcarmen
Choice 3: Masterson, Okajima, Ramirez
Choice 4: Masterson, Okajima, Delcarmen
Choice 5: Saito, Okajima, Masterson

I’m not sure how well this would work—for instance, I dont really have a reason to go with 3 guys in each group rather than 4. But I think that using groups of pitchers is probably the way to go, at least with a poll.

by redsox9322 on Jan 22, 2009 10:22 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Actually I think 4 guys per group is better

with 3 there are just too many choices.

Choice 1: Saito, Okajima, Ramirez, Delcarmen
Choice 2: Saito, Okajima, Ramirez, Masterson
Choice 3: Saito, Okajima, Delcarmen, Masterson
Choice 4: Ramirez, Okajima, Delcarmen, Masterson

Then the four pitchers in the winning group each get 1 LI, and the other guy gets 0.7.

Maybe it would be better to frame the question as “Which guy is NOT part of the set-up man mix?” Again, I’m just thinking out loud. I have no idea if this would work or not.

by redsox9322 on Jan 22, 2009 10:30 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs