I'm talking, of course, about the insane idea that Justin Verlander should be demoted to the bullpen for the playoffs, and that Rick Porcello -he of the 4.45 ERA and 2.7 WAR this year- should take his place.
Let's be clear: Justin Verlander is having a down year... by the damn-near-superhuman standards which we've come to expect of him. For almost any other pitcher in Major League Baseball, JV's 2013 campaign would still qualify as exceptional. His 3.66 ERA (before tonight's start) is 18th in the American League. His 3.44 FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) ranks 10th. His 4.7 WAR ranks 10th among all starters in baseball. And he's only allowed more than four runs in 6 of his starts this year.
"But he's 3-10 since the All-Star break," you say. Go play in traffic, I say. He also has a 3.65 ERA in that span of time, so if anything, his performance has been fairly consistent through most of this year, despite arguments about meaningless things like pitcher wins. He's also pitched 4 games this season in which the Tigers have been shut out; is this somehow his fault for not taking a bat into his own hands?
This absurd theory was promoted by same hack writer at Yahoo! Spare yourself the torture of the actual article and read Scott Rogowski's excellent FJM-style takedown of said piece here.
If it had just ended there, it would have been all well and good.
Then, Brian Kenny had to get involved. Kenny, for those of you who are unaware, is MLB Network's resident sabermetrician and the guy who mostly fuels the hatred of the anti-stats crowd by being a smug, arrogant prick. He's also the guy responsible for the #KillTheWin campaign on Twitter, which is his ongoing tirade that pitching wins are a completely useless stat. Which, indeed, they are, even if CBS' Jon Heyman half-heartedly disagrees. But the way he keeps relentlessly beating the drum about this almost does the impossible and makes one sympathize with White Sox announcer, and noted moron, Hawk "The Will To Win" Harrelson, whom Kenny took to task over his 19th-century views on statistics. And I'm sorry, anyone who refers to his followers as "The Intelligentsia" clearly has the kind of inflated ego that would make even Keith Olbermann jealous.
Kenny took to Twitter with the idea of Verlander being this season's Tim Lincecum. Only, y'know, without the 5.18 ERA, -2 WAR, and general ineffectiveness. So, pretty much nothing like last year's Tim Lincecum. There really is no comparison between the Giants' 2012 rotation and the Tigers' 2013 one; Barry Zito pitched his ass off in his last five starts, allowing a total of 8 runs. Porcello, by comparison, has let off 15 runs in that same time frame. (Verlander has given up 10 runs in his last 5 starts.)
Of course, all of this is probably a moot point anyway, as the Tigers have two potential Cy Young candidates in Max Scherzer and Anibal Sanchez who, along with Verlander and Doug Fister, can reasonably be expected to pitch 7, sometimes 8 innings deep into games, rendering this whole debate entirely pointless. And Porcello has filled the late-inning relief role capably in the playoffs over the last few years. Why mess with what works, simply because Verlander is merely having a good year, as opposed to an exceptional one? Besides, as much as many Tiger fans bitch about how Jim Leyland manages his bullpen, why throw a guy who's never pitched in relief into that clusterfuck?
Sometimes I think having as formidable a rotation as the Tigers do has spoiled us somewhat. Hell, there are 22 teams in Major League Baseball that don't have one starter who's performed as well as Justin Verlander this year, much less two guys who are pitching even better than him. I realize expectations are high when you possess the level of talent this team has. But when you're talking about taking the 10th most valuable starter in the game and putting him in the bullpen, then maybe it's time to temper our expectations a bit and appreciate just what an amazing thing we've got here.
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