Commenter TC brings up some excellent points.
Is Loe overworked and should he be going back to back days all the time?? The numbers suggest pitching 2 days in a row doesn't have much of an effect. Actually he's better the 2nd day.
Here is Loe for the season:
| WHIP | ERA | K/9 | |
| season | 1.255 | 5.23 | 7.4 |
Now let's take a look at the numbers the day after he pitched
| WHIP | ERA | K/9 | |
| day after pitching | 1.267 | 4.80 | 6.6 |
Right around the same as the season so pitching back to back days doesn't seem to affect him.
Now what about pitching 3 days in a row?
| WHIP | ERA | K/9 | |
| 3rd day in a row | 2.571 | 19.29 | 3.86 |
Yikes. It's only happened 3 times and one of those was a scoreless inning so that's hardly a trend at this point but let's take those 3 appearances out of the 2nd day numbers and see what happens.
| WHIP | ERA | K/9 | |
| only 2nd day | 1.026 | 2.13 | 7.11 |
Well are we onto something here?? Is Roenicke right when he says Loe is better when he pitches more?? Answer: uh, kind of.
More numbers to consider (if you made it this far without falling asleep you don't have a problem with tables and stats).
Let's look at leverage. Leverage is how important a situation is in which a reliever enters a game. High leverage is the most critical. Let's look at batting averages for Loe and Hawkins in these situations.
| low leverage | medium leverage | high leverage | |
| Loe | .179 | .190 | .357 |
| Hawkins | .333 | .100 | .273 |
How about opponent batting averages with runners on base:
| bases empty | men on base | runner in scoring position | |
| Loe | .214 | .276 | .303 |
| Hawkins | .256 | .240 | .083 |
Interesting. Is Loe just not able to pitch under pressure?? His numbers from last year were a lot more even so I'm not going to say it's a between the ears issue just yet.
Also to consider Hawkins is old so he isn't going to be able to be the workhorse Loe can be. Also pointed out by TC in the previous post the more Hawkins pitches the less likely he's going to put up the numbers like he has so far.
Ultimate solution: you tell me. I'd like to see more Hawkins but Loe a couple days then a couple days off.
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Again thanks to Fangraphs and Baseball Reference for all the
Now I gotta go, Brewers game finally started.
Go Brewers!!
I'd agree that if Hawkins pitched more often, his stats are likely to regress. (Smaller sample size is more easily skewed by the extremes).
ReplyDeleteBut, he's had enough appearances and enough work now that it would appear he's more effective than Loe. Maybe he can't pitch back-to-back days. To me, using the stats you gave, the easy initial solution is stop pitching Loe on a 3rd day in a row. Maybe Hawkins is the "normal 7th inning guy", but on what would be Loe's 3rd day, Hawkins is the "8th inning guy".