Tom Glavine and the Hall

[jalbright]

Glavine threads merged

[Cowtipper]

These can be combined:

http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?13610-Tom-Glavine-and-the-Hall&highlight=glavine

http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?41564-Tom-Glavine&highlight=glavine

[ChrisLDuncan]

Okay people say Glavine's WHIP means his defense helped him out too much let's look at some stats and compare his to Maddux's


DERA (defense adjusted ERA 4.5 is average)

Tom Glavine: 3.86
Greg Maddux: 3.59

Defense-adjusted ERA. Not to be confused with Voros McCracken's Defense-Neutral ERA. Based on the PRAA, DERA is intended to be a defense-independent version of the NRA. As with that statistic, 4.50 is average. Note that if DERA is higher than NRA, you can safely assume he pitched in front of an above-average defense.



NRA (Normalized Runs Allowed, if lower than DERA means the pitcher pitched infront of an above average defense again 4.5 is average)

BP's Def:
Normalized Runs Allowed. "Normalized runs" have the same win value, against a league average of 4.5 and a pythagorean exponent of 2, as the player's actual runs allowed did when measured against his league average.


Tom Glavine: 3.83
Greg Maddux: 3.51


So those are pretty similar (Maddux is clearly better, but it's similar) so if Maddux is a top ten pitcher of all time, why wouldn't Glavine belong in the hall?

[Los Bravos]

There is also the simple, salient point that WHIP measures overwhelming stuff, not the ability to prevent runs. Pitching, in the end, is about the team concept, and keeping the other team off the board, not facing the minimum number of batters. If that's what turns you on, argue for Nolan Ryan or Sid Fernandez.

STLCards2 has repeatedly demonstrated this, illustrating that Tom's the kind of guy who bends but doesn't break. While that doesn't light up the eyes of some people, it's still, when push comes to shove, his job, which he does with skill and intelligence.

[Bothrops Atrox]

It's things like that that leads to the argument that Glavine was great just as much because of the defense behind him as him. I think he's a HOFer, but he did get a little more help from defense than most other pitchers.

Glavine has allowed about 150 hits fewer than league average during his career. If SaberMatt is correct in his analysis that Glavine prevented around 100 of those hits himself (in an adjusted non-Maddux/Smolts environment) than his defense was only responsible for about 25 runs prevented (50 hits) over his whole career. Remember how awful the 87-90 teams were defensively? The 2003-05 teams were almost as bad. I estimate that his defense also prevented around 15 runs via extrabase hit prevention, etc (A. Jones at your service). That is a total of about 40 runs over his career. That changes his ERA+ from 120 to 117. Oh yeah, Glavine has created about 30 runs above position as a batter. Add it up, and Glavine's 120 ERA+ is very close to his actual run saving/run scoring value. This doesn't even include a fair amount of postseason success or any intangiables.

If you (in general, not Chris) believe that a pitcher has zero control over BABIP at all (if you do, you are dying breed), than Glavine's ERA+ is around 114. Throw in 30 runs created offensively, and 15 runs prevented defensively (which are not factored in the above paragraph if you believe his defensive success can be attributed to getting easy groundouts) you have a pitcher with 4,200 innings and a career 117 ERA+ (with offense remember). Remember, this is only if you believe hit prevention is 100% luck and defense. Any credit at all to Glavine preventing hits on balls in play brings that ERA+ up.

If you don't buy into adjusting for Maddux and Smoltz being on the same team, Glavine's ERA+ is about 118 adjusted with his own offense.

Also, look at the top 100 pitchers of all time, a huge chunk of them have prevented many hits above league and team average. If they all balance out to a league average BABIP (due to it all being luck and/or defense), almost all of their ERA+ go down and all of the poor pitchers ERA+ go up. All of a sudden, a 115 ERA+ is what a 120 ERA+ is now. If Glavine is penalized for "luck" than we have to penalize all of the guys who got "lucky and have a better than average BABIP)

Yes he gave up hits and some walks, but remember: a huge chunk of those hits were singles. His groundball tendencies (high to very high-never "extreme) took away a huge chunk of those singles with double plays. Glavine controled the running game, so most of those singles hitters were left on base (check out Glavine consistantly high LOB%- super high for a non-k pitcher). His HR rate is outstanding, and his X-base rate is very good too. Because of this, each single was worth less than the average Joe's single. Heck, if Glavine could have mustered an extra K per 9, he would probably be a top 15 all-time guy.

Also, as I mentioned months ago, the only "HOF" caliber pitcher in major league history to give up a larger chunk of his walks than Glavine with 1st open or with men on (when in is often benefitial not to pitch to guys) is Robin Roberts. Glavine has allowed 25% more walks with men on than without. His walk rate is very misleading. In fact, his BB/K ration with nobody on/man on first only is close to 2.5:1. His overall BB/K rate is 1.8 to 1.

Somebody said it best when they mentined people had a presupposition that included some truth (Glavine's defense was above average for a lot of his career), then ran with it until it started to look like Glavine's defense was the reason for Glavine's success. After a whole lot more analysis and common sense, most have come back to the original perception of Glavine: a great pitcher who's stats are slightly skewed because he playeb with an above average defense more than a lot of guys.

[538280]

Is anyone surprised that not only has Glavine never led his league in WHIP or strikeouts/walks (and Maddux didn't prevent him every year), he's only even been in the top TEN in WHIP three times, and only ONCE in the top ten in K/BB?

It's things like that that leads to the argument that Glavine was great just as much because of the defense behind him as him. I think he's a HOFer, but he did get a little more help from defense than most other pitchers.

[J W]

Hard to believe it wasn't that long ago that having asked this question, we at BBF got under 75% "yes" for Glavine. What in the past three seasons has made him that much of a better pitcher?

Well anyways, almost everyone said he'd lock his spot with win 300, and he's merely 5 wins away from that, so there we go. Now the discussion has moved on to John Smoltz, who just picked up win #200. Seeing three HOFers on the same pitching staff in Atlanta would sure be a highlight for me as a fan.

[RuthMayBond]

Is anyone surprised that not only has Glavine never led his league in WHIP or strikeouts/walks (and Maddux didn't prevent him every year), he's only even been in the top TEN in WHIP three times, and only ONCE in the top ten in K/BB?

[philipthegreat]

Glavine in the hall of fame?

He certainly does. His wins were brilliant and he is nearing the 300 club`whose members are all in the hall of fame. Glavine will be in the hall of fame five years after he retires.

[Los Bravos]

Those who took the suppositions and ran with them ran themselves off the road and only after complicated further analysis did they return to "where they started," that Tom Glavine is a HOF caliber pitcher who got a little more help from his defenses than most pitchers get.

And a little less during the first four years of his career, when the likes of Jim Presley and Andres Thomas were floundering around behind him, plus a couple in Flushing where Kaz Matsui was liable, on any given night, to toss a sure win of his past first base and into the Mets dugout.

[Yankee Legend]

Yes, I agree. And this comes back to something I've often said when being critical of many "advanced" metrics. Accuracy is more important than precision. Instead of making a long series of suppositions and adjustments to arrive at a precise and "true" measure of a player's performance, you are often better off not forsaking accuracy by making those assumptions.

It is inarguable to say that '87-'88 is not at all indicative of the type of pitcher Tom Glavine has been throughout his career.

You can say that Tom Glavine benefited from pitching in front of excellent defenses for most of his career.

These are truisms, and people are left to interpret them as they will.

Once you start attempting to quantify exactly how much he benefitted you begin the process of speculation. You are forsaking accuracy for an attempt at precision. In Tom Glavine's case, there was no need to be more precise, he has plenty of leeway. Those who took the suppositions and ran with them ran themselves off the road and only after complicated further analysis did they return to "where they started," that Tom Glavine is a HOF caliber pitcher who got a little more help from his defenses than most pitchers get.

Bravo. Twenty years from now when we will have this debate about Chien-Ming Wang, you should bring this up again.

[digglahhh]

The problem with jumping through all the hoops to get to some kind of "real" number or stat for a player is that you cannot stop at just him. You have to then do that for everybody in the game and by the end of it what you will find is that 99.9% of the players end up basically where they started.

The simplest example is the exclude the bad start scenario that many pundits and people like to do for pitchers. They say so and so would have a 2.3 ERA if we exclude that one bad outing of his and would lead the league. Well okay that is fine and dandy but what if we take out one bad outing for Pitcher X or Pitcher Y or for all pitchers? What would their ERA's look like?

Yes, I agree. And this comes back to something I've often said when being critical of many "advanced" metrics. Accuracy is more important than precision. Instead of making a long series of suppositions and adjustments to arrive at a precise and "true" measure of a player's performance, you are often better off not forsaking accuracy by making those assumptions.

It is inarguable to say that '87-'88 is not at all indicative of the type of pitcher Tom Glavine has been throughout his career.

You can say that Tom Glavine benefited from pitching in front of excellent defenses for most of his career.

These are truisms, and people are left to interpret them as they will.

Once you start attempting to quantify exactly how much he benefitted you begin the process of speculation. You are forsaking accuracy for an attempt at precision. In Tom Glavine's case, there was no need to be more precise, he has plenty of leeway. Those who took the suppositions and ran with them ran themselves off the road and only after complicated further analysis did they return to "where they started," that Tom Glavine is a HOF caliber pitcher who got a little more help from his defenses than most pitchers get.

[Yankee Legend]

Wow this isn't even a question. He'll get about 315 wins and 2700 srtikeouts by the time his career is over and a 3.50 ERA. That looks like a first-ballot hall of famer to me.

[Bothrops Atrox]

After re-reading your post, I see that you are speaking in generalities more than specificaly addressing my post.

good point, and I agree mostly. It is possible that removing one guy's outlier skews his overall data much more than taking out another guys similar outlier. It all depends on how "outlieryish" his outliers are, obviously. I am not saying that eliminating outliers can't be useful, but typicaly, you are right.

As far as not running the same methods on other players: I adressed that by claiming that most pithcers can be pegged down pretty well by their DIPS stats + defense. Glavine and a few others (Spahn, Ford, Palmer) are different becuase they do everything else possible very well. This is why they blow away their FIP every year. The way I ran Glavine's numbers will only work for the pitchers who can consistantly outperform their DIPS numbers. Most pitchers do not do this on a consistant basis. Their numbers would look similar to what they are in reality too. We both agree, whether you look at numbers or whatever, most guys are pretty close to the actual stats they produce. At least a lot closer that many want to credit. Palmer and Ford and Plank and Kaat and Spahn and Glavine were helped by their defenses,yes, but a huge majority of their success can be attributed to themselves. More exists than DIPS, defense and luck. That is my overall point. I assume you agree?

[Ubiquitous]

I didn't say you took out outliers the outliers were an example to the kind of thinking that I was referring to in the first paragraph. Where people do all kinds of statistical work on one player to come some sort of "true" number or numbers for a player and then use that "true" number to compare to other players. Yet they do not do the statistical work for all the other players.