Learning from past mistakes: who should move to the bullpen?

It makes sense to move Cashner and Jackson to the pen, if the focus is strictly on winning NOW. They’ll likely have to pitch from the pen at some point this season to prevent a tremendous increase in innings pitched on the year. Why not have those bullpen innings come now at the MLB level, when the games still matter?

I like the move of these guys to the pen… BUT it should only be temporary. As soon as the team can find a taker for Lilly and Silva, one or both should head to the rotation.

particularly because his high salary means he shouldn’t cost much in prospects.

I also have another, creative solution to the pen I hope to post this weekend (but may not get around to writing up).

You don’t want a 6-man rotation. That’s diluting your talent too much. So even if you trade for a guy who leaves the rotation?

Ideally, the Cubs would trade Silva for Wood, or something similar.

If you want to keep wearing the boxers that seem to correlate with success, fine. But you shouldn’t do things that have no reason for their correlation AND that reason and logic dictate are likely to fail going forward.

To put it another way, there is simply no reason for the team to hit better when Silva is pitching, nor for his good luck to continue. It’s just that – good luck. And that luck, unfortunately, will eventually run out.

All that said, Silva looks fantastic today.

;-)

There are political reasons to send someone other than Silva to the pen. But if you’re basing it on past performance and reasonable expectations for the future, Silva should be the one to go. Furthermore, what sort of message does it send to your team — and to potential free agents — when you sent not only your best pitcher but one of the best pitchers the team has ever had and it’s greatest home-grown talent this generation to the pen?

I’m fine with sending Wells to the pen. I think it’s not the best decision if you’re trying to win. But if you want to do that until Silva returns to Earth or you can deal someone… OK. It’s not nearly as silly as sending Z to the pen, which is what got me on this path in the first place.

Yes, most of the stats I post above are strictly based on MLB numbers. The lone exception to that are the projected numbers, which I believe have minor league numbers folded in. That’s why Wells’s projections are higher than his 2010 or career marks.

Sometimes charts and tables don’t tell the whole story. In this case, they don’t. As Josh says, ride this horse until he breaks down. And at the moment — 10 starts in — looks like we have a winner.

Silva was absolutely dominant today. But today was the first time he pitched a game like this. Before today (i.e. when I wrote this post) he was succeeding with luck more than skill. And that’s what I have an issue with. That sort of thing is bound to end at some point.

If he had been dominating hitters (like today) I’d be fine with leaving him in the rotation. But he wasn’t doing that. And I’ll tell you what… after today’s outing, I’m OK with leaving him in the rotation. Not based solely on that, but based on everything including today. Just as long as it isn’t at the cost of Z (a much, much, MUCH better pitcher) staying in the bullpen.

Thus I skimmed it and am going to quickly forget any of it lol.

It’s debateable to send him to the pen. He does have worse career numbers, and really Dempster or Wells (despite his two bad outings this month) should have much better win-loss records based on their performances…Silva has been very fortunate in getting run support. But with 8-0 lucky or not he’s in the rotation to stay until he has 2 or more bad outings.

Silva’s ERA is 3.12, not 3.41.

I’ll leave it to you to post his FIP, if it’s different from 3.86 based on that.

you saying “crunch all the numbers you want” and then you using numbers to back up Silva staying in the rotation.

Silva what had made the difference since coming here via the trade. Was very cool hearing him say he thought the difference was how welcome he felt here and got some pitching advice.

Big FU MB! Race card over used? try stresssss…good job!

I posted this before today’s outing, which I’ve admitted was a dominating performance.

It’s about analyzing based on more than just his W-L record. Is it wrong of us to look at a pitcher’s record and ask why it is perfect? To wonder if we can expect his success to continue or if we should expect severe regression? Of course not! You do these things all the time! You do them in your own comment! The difference is that we use different methods to do said analysis. The difference is one of us doesn’t trust our own opinions enough, and thus has the humility to apply methods developed and researched by others.

The Silva will turn into a pumpkin argument assumes nothing has changed with him. All these stats are helpful in making a somewhat educated guess as to what will happen, nothing more.

I don’t understand baseball. Neither do you. The difference is I am willing to throw my hands up and admit my ignorance, and then seek out new knowledge to diminish it.

Al, this is the sort of comment that makes the sabr-heads like myself real snarky. It’s anti-intellectual and ad hominem.

Give him 10 more starts and we’ll see.

The “what have you done for me lately” nature of the sports fan is mind boggling. It’s myopic hindsight in the highest form.

My question would be, where is the “scout” perspective? Fans like ourselves that observe games aren’t scouts nor do we possess the eye of a scout. Fans shouldn’t assume they have some deeper understanding of what’s going on just because they watch the game. Numbers do provide a way for the fan to look at performance of players from an unbiased perspective. Even scouts are sometimes “fooled” on guys because of certain biases in their analysis.

 I really like that someone like Shawn devotes his time and effort to try and show us what is going on with a player based on their numbers. It would be great if we could get a "scouts’ perspective of Silva’s performance but I don’t believe there are any scouts contributing here, are there? Shawn posted this right before Silva’s career best performance so it’s really easy for people to come out and bash him for it. I also notice that Shawn immediately said there is no way Silva will be moved based on what happened yesterday. It’s not like Shawn took a position and dug his heels in in spite of new information. I think Shawn’s voice is a really valuable one for you to have here and he’s someone that people could learn a lot from if they have an open mind and a desire to learn.

But your argument isn’t, “I’ve seen Silva before this year, and I’ve seen him this year – he’s a different pitcher.” Your argument is, “Maybe he’s gotten better,” which isn’t an argument so much as a hypothetical.

It’s not even that you couldn’t make an argument like that – you just aren’t. Here, let me do your homework for you. This is what you should be saying but aren’t:

Shawn, what your projection system isn’t taking into account is that Silva is a different pitcher this year. He’s throwing his fastball a lot less this year (56% vs 75% in his career) and his changeup (29% vs 13%) and slider (14% vs 9%) a lot more. That’s a radical change in approach and therefore we shouldn’t expect his past failures to be repeated this year.

See, that’s a fact-based argument for Silva that I can respect. But no one here is making that argument, it’s all “NEEEERRRRRDS!!!!!” and the like.

Carlos Marmol is a bit of an exception. He only has two pitches and not very good control of them, and that won’t cut it as a starting pitcher. And he has been absolutely dominant this year. But he’s definitely not one of the team’s top-5 starting pitchers. That’s more the point. I was trying to generalize the statement, which gave you a bit of room to argue against me.

But here’s the other thing… you agree with me! In your second paragraph you state “Zambrano was the weakest link of the 5 starters.” You’re using the same criteria I was suggesting! Where you and I differ is that I consider that assessment – Zambrano not being one of the team’s top 5 starters – to be overly reliant on in-season data and not dependent enough on performance in prior season’s. That’s really where we’re differing in 95% of this particular debate. How much should in-season production count over a past history of success?