Jake Northrop

real life bb/9:  0.68

bb/9#:  0.78

bb/9+:  367

avg over 387 OL seasons:  3.31

what's going on here?

when a pitcher who walks 2% faces a batter who walks 20% the results are somewhere in between. the formula has changed and pitchers like Northrop do worse than they once did. having said that, the results still do seem out of balance but not by a huge amount.

statistical snapshot shows 3.17 bb/9, so Northrop's actually performing worse than average, which is just plain wrong.

he's walking 4-5 times more than in real life... i've checked my other low-bb pitchers; they all walk more, but not 4-5 times more...his bb/9 should be low 2.00s, tops.

here's an example:
Art Nehf
1.68 bb/9
1.98 bb/9#
139 bb/9+
average over 209 OL seasons:  2.65

How does he compare to other low-IP starters who are typically used in relief (Niggeling, Adams, Milacki, etc)?  I know there are several owners who believe such pitchers are slightly downgraded when used in that role.

Posted by contrarian23 on 7/31/2010 4:28:00 PM (view original):
How does he compare to other low-IP starters who are typically used in relief (Niggeling, Adams, Milacki, etc)?  I know there are several owners who believe such pitchers are slightly downgraded when used in that role.

Exactly what Iwas going to write...  SPs used in relief roles seem to take a hit in performance and BB is one of the first places you will see this drop.

Babe Adams '24 gives up a ton of walks. Hal Something or Other that other people use does too.

There was a thread last year on the same topic.   I think the creeper started it.   I thought people thought a couple  years were out of whack.

Posted by nonenone00 on 7/31/2010 3:09:00 AM (view original):
Jake Northrop

real life bb/9:  0.68

bb/9#:  0.78

bb/9+:  367

avg over 387 OL seasons:  3.31

what's going on here?

Well, here's a pitcher from the same season as Northrop (1918) who's used in a similar way (RL starter vs. Sim reliever):

Jack Quinn

real life bb/9: 1.24
bb/9#: 1.26
bb/9+: 254
avg over 221 OL/CL seasons: 1.91

That's pretty much what you'd expect, given the fact that most owners draft hitters who walk more than the norm.

With Northrop, who knows what's going on.  Could be that his gaudy numbers attract rookie owners who don't know what they're doing (pitching him tired, giving him too high a pitch count, etc.).  The problem with performance history is we can't see how the players were used.  Or maybe there's some sort of a glitch in his stats, some wrong info that was entered somewhere. 

based upon his overall historical performance numbers, seems like his usage is fine....

Average

387

49

0

0

2

2

12

51

16

44

0

6

18

1

0

1.07

3.31

1.23

.230

2.85

0

0

0

0

0

His worst season was clearly abused. he has the right # of IP, but based on his other stats I'd say he was burned early in the season or during a stretch run and pitched all his IP back to back, or relatively close. I find performance history to be relatively useless for low IP pitchers (less than 180 IP/162) with more than 3 uses as you don't have enough info to determine how they were used and you have too much info on how they performed. I'm still on the fence for performance histories for hitters. It's just really, really, easy to have the data skewed by a handful of poor seasons, and the worst seasons may not show up due to the worst being rated by ERA. I's quite likely you had several uses of Northrup that were much worse than the one listed that had ERAs below 7.

I abuse the low IP starters all of the time. Take the 1932 Wilcy Moore. RL BB/9 2.16, BB/9# 2.04, BB/9 of 167. Performance history average of 3.98. He only has 10 uses (at least 6 of those by me) and his worst season BB/9 is a 12.55 (that was also me - I started him in 4 straight games to open the season. And then, during the stretch run to rest the rest of my staff,  had the 200k Bill Bishop as my only starter with Moore set up as my only useable RP so that once Bishop got injured in the 2nd inning Moore would throw the rest of the game. I got 12 or 13 consecutive games out of him that way where he threw 250+ pitches but never more than 8 IP. He was WELL OVERUSED (especially since fatigue is based on pitches, not IP). So, while he exceeded his RL IP by only 11 IP (41%), he exceeded his PC by probably close to 800%. There is no wayto know how many such uses of Northrup exist that skew the data majorly. I know I've used Northrup and Cisco Carlos that way several times each with fatigue teams that were on the cusp or that I under-calculated IP on. Or whenver I've felt that a pitcher was my best abuseable option to rest the rest of my staff for the playoffs or to recover from fatigue management issues.

Posted by boogerlips on 7/31/2010 9:33:00 PM (view original):
Babe Adams '24 gives up a ton of walks. Hal Something or Other that other people use does too.

true

24 adams

0.68 bb/9
0.77 bb/9#
385 bb/9+
744 OL seasons:  3.39 bb/9

I remember looking at several other 1924 performance histories, and didn't see anything unusual from the other dudes. Just the Babe. (BTW, I wonder what Babe Adams career numbers are against Babe Ruth?)

booger, the two Babe's may never have faced each other unless it was in exhibition games...

Like crazystengel, I suspect there are data entry errors in certain players. When evidence like this turns up, WIS should review the player's stats and validate their accuracy.

If it's not data entry, then reporting the player's median season instead of the average would be more valuable. Or maybe go to a trimmed mean, which assigns less weight to those outlier seasons.

Posted by just4me on 8/1/2010 1:33:00 AM (view original):
His worst season was clearly abused. he has the right # of IP, but based on his other stats I'd say he was burned early in the season or during a stretch run and pitched all his IP back to back, or relatively close. I find performance history to be relatively useless for low IP pitchers (less than 180 IP/162) with more than 3 uses as you don't have enough info to determine how they were used and you have too much info on how they performed. I'm still on the fence for performance histories for hitters. It's just really, really, easy to have the data skewed by a handful of poor seasons, and the worst seasons may not show up due to the worst being rated by ERA. I's quite likely you had several uses of Northrup that were much worse than the one listed that had ERAs below 7.

I abuse the low IP starters all of the time. Take the 1932 Wilcy Moore. RL BB/9 2.16, BB/9# 2.04, BB/9 of 167. Performance history average of 3.98. He only has 10 uses (at least 6 of those by me) and his worst season BB/9 is a 12.55 (that was also me - I started him in 4 straight games to open the season. And then, during the stretch run to rest the rest of my staff,  had the 200k Bill Bishop as my only starter with Moore set up as my only useable RP so that once Bishop got injured in the 2nd inning Moore would throw the rest of the game. I got 12 or 13 consecutive games out of him that way where he threw 250+ pitches but never more than 8 IP. He was WELL OVERUSED (especially since fatigue is based on pitches, not IP). So, while he exceeded his RL IP by only 11 IP (41%), he exceeded his PC by probably close to 800%. There is no wayto know how many such uses of Northrup exist that skew the data majorly. I know I've used Northrup and Cisco Carlos that way several times each with fatigue teams that were on the cusp or that I under-calculated IP on. Or whenver I've felt that a pitcher was my best abuseable option to rest the rest of my staff for the playoffs or to recover from fatigue management issues.

With Northrop, we're talking about 387 OL seasons...that's a huge sample size, plenty large enough to cover for some misuse, which has obviously happend, as it has with almost everybody. 

In the Wilcy Moore example, your wacky seaon represents 10% of his total use, and if you misused him every time, that would actually be 60% of his seasons. For Northrop, it would equal 232 misused seasons, which I highly doubt is what has happened in his case.  Note that Northrop's era over those 387 seasons is 2.85, further evidence that the high bb/9 numbers are not the result of misuse.

(It would be good if the WIS showed both mean and median averages in the performance history.)

In addition, as this thread highlights, there are several pitchers performing similar to Northrop.  There's no way they are all being abuse in 60% of their seasons.