But Mom Always Made A Great Ham, Dept.
Story goes about the bride who prepared a nice dinner for her new husband. She set down the ham and scalloped potatoes, and laid aside a bowl of minced ham for the morning’s omelettes.

“Looks great, poofster,” says the groom. “But why did you cut the ends off the ham?”

“That’s the way you cook a ham, pouska,” says she.

“Why’s that?,” says he.

“Don’t ask questions about things you don’t understand, pouska,” replies she, sweetly but with a certain sandpapery tone.

Next morning, Mr. goes off to work, and honeybunny races to the phone. “Mom! Why did you always cut the ends off the ham when you cooked it?”

Mom stops, and doesn’t really know why … “You know, your Grandma taught me that,” says Muds, “but I never really asked why.”

So Mudsy hangs up, and calls Gramma. “Mom, why did you always cut the ends off the ham?”

Grams laughs. “I used to, sweetheart,” says she. “But now they are making the pans larger.”

In The Land Of Blog Dept.
… we use a lot of fancy formulas to evaluate pitching: xERA, DIPS, FIP, xFIP, PERA, BPV, STP, CIA … the fancier they get the more we like them.

Have you ever actually looked up the formulas behind those acronyms though? They all do the same thing: they take a pitcher’s K’s, BB’s, and HR’s … and then they start threshing them like wheat in a combine tractor.

One guy wants to normalize the HR’s by flyball rate. Another guy wants to normalize for defense. Some other guy wants to give bonus points for Sunday-only starting. You can get any kind of light or dark bread you care to order.

But they all start with the same rice, corn and wheat: they all start by assuming K, BB, and HR define a pitcher’s skill.

And in doing so, they make too much stew out of one oyster.

PERA and FIP create impressively precise ERA’s. But have you ever noticed this? …

Lotta NOISE In Those HR Rates, Dept.

Consider that Carl Pavano’s (translated) HR rate was 1.4 last season, and 0.6 the year before. Do you know of any pitchers who struck out 7.0 batters per game in 2005, but only 3.0 the year before? No, because strikeout rate and walk rates persist well, but HR rates generally don’t!

Jamie Moyer’s HR rates the last four years: 1.0, 1.5, 0.7, 1.0. Do you know of any pitchers whose K rates the last four years were 5.0, 7.3, 3.5, and 5.0?

Derek Lowe’s HR rates last year: 1.1. The year before: half that, 0.6. Know any pitchers who stayed healthy, but whose K rates doubled, or were cut by 50%, last year?

Qwibbles & Bits, Dept.
Now, for some guys, HR rate is more consistent than that. But the fact remains! HR rate swings by 25% either way, based merely on a few balls blown foul or not.

And then we take the luck-based HR rate, and try to build a PERA formula that shows great precision.

Yes, we know some formulas try to extrapolate HR rate from simple flyball rate. That’s assuming too much also.

If you use a duller meat cleaver, yes there ARE four kinds of pitchers, in terms of mistake avoidance:

1) Low-HR pitchers (AJ Burnett)
2) Normal-HR pitchers (most of them, such as Jarrod Washburn)
3) Gopheritis guys (Ryan Franklin)
4) Guys who are very erratic (Jamie Moyer fighting age; unhealthy pitchers)

Cut Out The Middleman Dept.
So if xERA is a filet knife that is based on such sloppy, tinfoil material (HR rate), why not just cut out the middleman?

What if you used K/BB ratio directly, and skipped all the xERA formulas? How well would that work?

Bill James “The Heart Of Baseball Is The Strike Zone” Dept.
Here are the top AL starters, 60 or more IP, with a 2.5 or better control ratio, except for HOF’ers Schilling and Kevin Brown.

ERA is in the left column, for your viewing pleasure:

ERA CTL SP
3.44 7.89 C. Silva (Min - SP)
2.41 5.40 R. Halladay (Tor - SP)
2.87 5.29 Jo. Santana (Min - SP)
4.45 5.10 D. Wells (Bos - SP)
4.04 5.09 B. Radke (Min - SP)
3.79 4.49 R. Johnson (NYY)
3.71 3.86 J. Towers (Tor)
3.12 3.73 M. Buehrle (CWS)
3.48 3.65 B. Colón (LAA)
3.74 3.64 P. Byrd (LAA - SP)
2.67 3.35 F. Hernández (Sea - SP)
4.77 3.11 C. Pavano (NYY - SP)
3.73 3.08 D. Haren (Oak - SP,RP)
4.26 3.04 C. Young (Tex - SP)
4.41 3.02 M. Mussina (NYY - SP)
3.02 3.00 K. Escobar (LAA - SP,RP)
4.03 2.82 B. McCarthy (CWS - SP)
2.86 2.81 K. Millwood (Cle - SP)
2.53 2.81 R. Harden (Oak - SP)
3.44 2.80 J. Lackey (LAA - SP)
3.79 2.75 C. Lee (Cle - SP)
4.03 2.60 C. Sabathia (Cle - SP)
4.49 2.59 D. Bush (Tor - SP)
4.57 2.54 J. Bonderman (Det - SP)

The average ERA is 3.65 for these 23 pitchers, who were sorted by nothing other than simple K/BB ratio. This 3.65 would make you the #12 pitcher in the league, 12 points out of the top 10.

Practically everybody in the top 23 is under 3.99 on the ERA. The fliers are three excellent pitchers who were in bad circumstances: the two Yankee pitchers, the lefty in Fenway. Plus there was a young pitcher in Texas’ Ballpark who bears close watching. The other 19 guys *all* have outstanding ERA’s. (We left off Brown and Schilling, but it is worth noting that Mussina, Brown, Randy Johnson and Carl Pavano ALL had inflated ERA’s.)

(David Bush had gopheritis — 20HR in 130IP — which negates good CMD: the next two guys on the list would have been Jon Garland and Freddy Garcia.)

As you can clearly see, this is a list of terrific pitchers. …The SIMPLEST way to quickly sort for excellent pitchers, is to sort by K:BB ratio.

BaseballHQ Chimes In
Ron Shandler opens BASEBALL FORECASTER with a discussion of K:BB and points out the following MLB-wide correlation:

CMD … ERA
0.0 - 1.0 … 6.24
1.0 - 1.5 … 5.16
1.6 - 2.0 … 4.63
2.0 - 2.5 … 4.30
2.6 - 3.0 … 3.80
3.0 - 9.9 … 3.30

K:BB is really just xERA (and DERA, and FIP, etc.) simplified. It works as well or better, provided only that you fish out pitchers with gopheritis first.

On The Field, Dept.
Why does K:BB work so well?

Never mind why. The fact is that it just does. If we didn’t have an answer to “why,” pitchers with 3:1 control ratios would still lead the league in ERA.

But consider that a pitcher with low BB’s is constantly attacking the strike zone, constantly pitching ahead in the count … and yet getting the ball by hitters.

Ryan Franklin has low BB’s, but can’t get the ball past anybody (2.9 K’s). ANY pitcher with low walks and high K’s is pounding the strike zone — and making hitters miss.

That’s good. Get pitchers who attack the strike zone and make hitters miss. You automatically get that with K:BB pitchers.

And Take the DL With You, Dept.
Billy Beane gets low minor-league injuries.

Guess why? His high-KBB pitchers know how to pitch. Their ratios automatically filter them for good pitching mechanics (correlated with consistent control).

I’ll bet you a dollar that any decent study would show MUCH higher injury rates with wild pitchers, than with pitchers who have great command.

Gopheritis? All Bets Are Off Dept.
(Bad) Corollary 1: If a John Burkett type has a sky-high HR rate, that negates a good K/BB ratio. He’s just laying it in there on 3-1. Anybody can avoid walks by teeing it up for tape-measure shots.

David Bush and Brad Radke were guilty of this in 2005.

You can go by K/BB ratio IF AND ONLY IF you weed out “gopheritis” pitchers at the beginning.
.
.

Hot Stuff Too? Then Biggie-Size My Order, Dept.
(Good) Corollary 2: If a pitcher with great command ALSO has a strikeout rate approaching 6, he is almost certainly an excellent pitcher.

Ron Shandler states it this way: “soft-tossers (with good CMD) can take huge leaps in their game by getting their DOM over 5.6.”

So, three sets of pitchers who have nice K/BB’s:

1) AVERAGE-SOLID pitchers: high K:BB, but high HR
2) GOOD pitchers: high K:BB, but low K
3) OUTSTANDING pitchers: high K:BB, but high K

The D-O-V Way, Dept.
Ol’ Dr. D likes all the xERA stuff … but you know what? Many times it is actually more coherent — you get less wrapped around the axle — just looking at good old K:BB.

Dr. D, and Bill James by the way, use mostly the following process when evaluating pitchers:

1) K:BB
2) Look for something *out of alignment* in the stats, something weird and defining for him
3) Gather all factors and use previous baselines, templates, “families” of pitchers to UNDERSTAND the pitcher

You knew all that? Why don’t you use it, then? Why do you think that Carl Pavano and Matt Morris and Paul Byrd are far overrated, and that Jarrod Washburn and Kenny Rogers might be good pitchers?

The DRAFT BOARD
Now that we have explained why K:BB is so simplifying and cleansing, leaving you with peaches-and-cream staff complexions, here is the current crop. They’re listed in the order they appear on Dr. D’s draft board.

The CMD ratios are almost all good — which is why they are the acceptable targets of the offseason.

Control ratio is first — and if the HR rate is low or high, we give that. Remember, high HR negates good command ratio.

If the K is below 5.6, we give that (that tells you that the pitcher in question will be only “solid,” not excellent).

2.5* - AJ Burnett - (low HR … 2.9 control in 2004 … very high K)
4.5* - Matsuzaka - (super low HR)
2.8 - Millwood
4.0* - Nishiguchi - (low HR)

3.2 - Morris - (low K)
3.6 - Byrd - (low K)
1.6 - Kim - (used to be 3.0+)
2.6 - Kevin Brown - (gopheritis in 2005, though not usually)

3.6 - Weaver - (but horrific gopheritis in 2005 and in NY)
2.6 - Helling - (and high K’s, and super low HR’s in 2005)
1.9 - Moyer - (low K’s and onsetting gopheritis)
1.8 - Washburn - (low K’s and bad gopheritis)
1.6 - Rogers - (with very low K’s)

Pitchers who missed Dr. D’s draft board tend to look like this:

1.3 - B. Anderson (with super low K’s and horrible gopheritis)
2.1 - Elarton (with mediocre K’s and tragic gopheritis)
1.1 - Armas (gopheritis, low K’s)
1.9 - R. Ortiz (with tragic 1.8 gopheritis)
1.9 - J. Johnson (with teeny tiny K rates)

POTD Prereq 101, Dept.
And since this post is Prereq Math 158 to the Carl Pavano POTD:

3.1 - Pavano - (with good K’s and normal HR’s every year but 2005)

Enjoy,
Dr Detecto