There is an article by Jay Jaffe over on Fangraphs I highly recommend everyone here read. It's entitled JAWS and the 2023 Hall of Fame Ballot: Matt Cain.
I would like to particularly call call attention to a quote in the article taken from another article by Eno Sarris, who used to write for Fangraphs, in The Athletic:
"Cain retires third in all time pop-ups since we started tracking the play, and recognizing that this was a skill of his was important to statistical models. It's not a stretch at all to say that his ability to elicit pop-ups is why pop-ups are now counted in pitching WAR on Fangraphs."
OK back in the day when you could write comments after articles in Fangraphs before you had to purchase a subscription I clearly remember pointing out Matt Cain's fairly unique ability to induce pop-ups as a key to his success and why they should not expect his numbers to regress based on BABIP and HR/FB alone and getting regularly flamed for saying that to the point where I got threatened with banning if I kept it up. So there, Fangraphs! I might not have had the ability to crunch the numbers like they did but I bet they would not have bothered if I had not posted those comments.
I remember those days on Fangraphs. I still remember before the 2012 season when the Giants FO was ranked 27th. That was also the last year they did franchise power rankings, I think because of dumb results like that.
ReplyDelete- Fan
Fangraphs aka Dave Cameron used to count Sabes as a huge negative in their power rankings which was an almost entirely subjective judgment. I remember good ol' Dave giving the Mariners the #6 overall ranking mostly because he seemed to think Jack Z@#$&*? was the greatest GM of all time except Jack Z turned out to be a complete fraud and was fired a couple seasons later.
DeleteI used to look out for your comments on Fangraphs back in the day Dr B.
Delete- Fan
I admire your persistence, doc, on your conviction, which, now it turns out to be an astute observation.
ReplyDeleteOne should never argue with his/her Doctor.
ReplyDeleteQuestions are recommended.
I have not paid the subscription to Fangraphs and am able to post comments. The only annoyance is you get an ad popup every time you open a new article. For statistical purposes in following the Giants and playing fantasy baseball, I visit Fangraphs often.
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