Laley23;1716266 wrote:This makes me smile

Dr. KnOiTaLL;1716273 wrote:That looks good on my fantasy team...

Laley23;1716279 wrote:Good for you. lol.

But seriously, velocity is great to see. No walks is great to see. Hits and Ks are nice, but tough to judge without knowing competition. But, damn, the velocity and control is great.

HitsRus;1716260 wrote:I would agree with most of this, except the phrase "dime a dozen" doesn't really reflect the value of good relief pitching, although it does speak to the relative ease that good relievers can be obtained.

Pick6;1716241 wrote:I know because of common sense dick face.

Commander of Awesome;1716326 wrote:lol he mad

So you know based on nothing. Your posting has proven your complete lack of self awareness/common sense. (See gun thread). lolfail

Pick6;1716332 wrote:I'll keep you two in my prayers. I wish I could be half the internet tough guy you are.

lhslep134;1716334 wrote:Convenient for you to say, because in career-wise you can't come halfway close to sniffing my jock.

Laley23;1716324 wrote:Good relievers are a dime a dozen in the sense that there are a ton of them out there. Finding one in an "on" year is another thing lol. I would never want to trade for a reliever unless it's a multiple-year proven stud/someone in the middle
of a great year at the deadline. And I would never trade an everyday Ayer as good as Kipnis is under his contract for one unless I thought it was a major missing piece to a potential title.

The Setup

Once upon a time in baseball, it was easy to find a great pitcher to pitch the sixth and seventh inning. He was known as …
Tonight's starting pitcher.

But nowadays? Uh, it's not quite so easy. Is it?
Here in modern, 21st-century baseball, those innings are being pitched by the scariest, least reliable, least predictable members of any team -- the middle relievers. So in theory, those middle relievers can make a team's whole season.
Or they can get everyone fired except the grounds crew.
So if you're drawing up a formula for how to win, you obviously need to accumulate as many effective middle-relief kind of guys as possible, right? Right. Every GM knows that. But here's what they don't know:
How the heck they're supposed to do that.
Just this week, I asked a very sharp, very experienced general manager if, after exhaustive study on this exact subject, he now knew how to evaluate middle relievers.
"No," he replied succinctly, "because no one does."
And he's right. Middle relief is, by far, the most volatile position in baseball. And we're about to prove it.

The Proof

Everyone in baseball knows what a great slugger looks like. And everyone knows what a great starting pitcher looks like. But apparently, nobody knows what a great middle reliever looks like.
Why? Because middle relievers are like the weather. They might look great today. They might look great tomorrow. But that never, ever means they'll still be looking great the next day. Or week. Or month. Or year. And, of course, vice versa.
Example No. 1: Consider this list of names -- Miguel Batista … Danys Baez … Octavio Dotel … J.J. Putz … Scot Shields … Justin Speier … Scott Linebrink … J.C. Romero … Brandon Lyon … Kyle Farnsworth … and David Riske.
OK, so what do those 11 men have in common? Correct answer: They were the 11 highest-paid set-up relievers in baseball in 2009 -- i.e., the only 11 set-up men with salaries of $4.25 million or higher.
So of those 11, how many would you guess (A) had an ERA under 4.00 and (B) stayed off the disabled list all season?
Correct answer: exactly two of them -- Dotel and Lyon. So if their teams had it to do over again, think they'd pay that group more than $60 million again? Eh, probably not.
All right, ready for Example No. 2? I ranked all the set-up relievers in baseball in ERA for last season, then took a closer look at the top 25 (with at least 30 innings pitched). Ready for the breakdown of that group?
BEST IN THE MIDDLE

Top 10 middle relief ERAs in 2009:

Pitcher	Team	ERA
Mike Adams	S.D.	0.73 (Released in spring training '07)
Scott Eyre	Phi.	1.50 (In '08, designated for assignment)
Jeremy Affeldt	S.F.	1.73 (6.30 ERA in '06)
Claudio Vargas	LAD/Mil.	1.74 (Released in spring training '08)
Neftali Feliz	Tex.	1.74 (Rookie)
Darren O'Day	Tex.	1.84 (Claimed on waivers, April '09)
Kiko Calero	Fla.	1.95 (Signed as non-roster free agent)
Blake Hawksworth	St.L.	2.03 (Rookie)
Ronald Belisario	LAD	2.04 (Rookie, released by Pirates in '08)
Trever Miller	St.L.	2.06 (4.86 ERA in '07)

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Five pitchers on that list were rookies. But of the other 20 …
Two had gotten released. … Three had either been designated for assignment or flat-out dumped by their previous team. … One was claimed on waivers. … One had been non-tendered. … Two had either failed a physical or had major surgery. … Two were signed as non-roster free agents.
And every one of the other 10 had had an ERA in the vicinity of 5.00 or higher sometime, some place, between 2006 and 2008.
But by last season, their light bulbs had flicked back on, and bam -- they all had tremendous years. Great. Now anybody want to bet on how many will do it again?
Not the men who have to trudge out into the market and decide which of these fellows is worth paying 3 or 4 million bucks to. Those people scare all GMs to death.
"Without a doubt," said an NL general manager, "these are the toughest guys in baseball to evaluate, because of all the players out there and all the situations out there, they're the toughest to read from afar. Think about it. You know what a starting pitcher is supposed to do. You know what a closer is supposed to do. But you can't read a middle reliever. You don't know who he faced, what the game situation was, what the game dynamic was. It's hard to know any of that from afar."
"The first thing you've got to remember," said another GM, "is they're relievers for a reason. The reason they become relievers in the first place is because they have some flaws. They don't have a third pitch. They can't repeat their delivery. They've got an unorthodox arm angle. So we made them relievers -- because if we had a choice, we'd make them starters. Just the fact that we made them relievers means you're looking at an imperfect crop to begin with."
Nevertheless, somebody has to pitch those innings. But even after all these years, it's hard to find anyone in baseball who has figured out a dependable formula for picking the right guys to do that. Which leads us to …

[h=2]The Conclusion[/h]Draw straws. Throw darts. Spin a wheel. Ask a psychic. What the heck. You have as good a chance of picking out the next great middle reliever that way as you do by asking your scouts, or Bill James.
"Let me tell you something," said one of the GMs quoted above. "If you ever hear of a guy being touted as a great relief-pitching prospect, you have got to be kidding me. There's probably less than a 50-50 chance he'll even be a useful pitcher in the big leagues."
Yep. The record shows it. Not only are middle relievers the most volatile position in baseball, there's nothing else even close. Nothing.
Starting pitching would be a distant No. 2, said one GM, "just because there's so much attrition, so many injuries." But there is such a phenomenon as a starter who's actually good every year.CC Sabathia … Roy Halladay … Greg Maddux … etc.
But try to find a non-closing relief pitcher who's healthy and effective every year, especially in the post-PED era. Good luck.
Now there's one more logical reason for all that hotness and coldness. And it might just explain everything:
There's no player in baseball more likely to get seriously abused and overused than a middle relief pitcher who, by some miracle, is having a big year.
"You're using these guys to connect two really important parts of the game -- from the starter's part of the game to the guy who's closing the game," said another GM. "So these guys are getting used a lot. They get up [to warm up] 100 times a year. And they get in the game 75 times a year. So if you have to burn a guy out, who are you going to burn out? The guy who isn't making as much money as the other guys.
"It's true. Think about it. You'll hear a lot: 'We can't get the closer up another day.' Or: 'We can't have our starters pitch on short rest.' But you rarely hear that the 12th guy on your staff, who's pitched the sixth inning the last six games, isn't available today."
Yessir, those middle men are always available -- until the manager breaks out in hives at the thought of bringing them in there. So what we have here is practically a self-fulfilling cycle: Pitch well, pitch a lot, get tired, break down, pitch lousy, pitch less, recharge, get healthy, get hot, pitch well, pass go, collect $2 million, start this over.
So factor all that in and tell us: How do you find a good middle reliever?
"It's almost reverse psychology," laughed one NL executive. "If a guy just had a good year, you don't trade for him or sign him. But if a guy had a bad year, you do."
Hey, makes as much sense as any theory we've heard -- when you're dealing with the most volatile position in baseball. It's either that or get out those darts.

BRF;1716421 wrote:

Also funny: you don't know who Shemp is!

lhslep134;1716376 wrote:The rest

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BRF;1716421 wrote:What a great quote!


"Once upon a time in baseball, it was easy to find a great pitcher to pitch the sixth and seventh inning. He was known as …Tonight's starting pitcher."

Also funny: you don't know who Shemp is!
The way it used to be...no 7th, 8th, or ninth inning specialists. The starter went deep...completed a boatload of games. If needed