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7/11/13

Shaun Marcum Was Better Than You Think

Tuesday on SNY, Ed Coleman announced Mets RHP Shaun Marcum will not pitch again this season due to Thoracic Outlet Syndrome which will require surgery.

While most Mets fans will either pay this little attention or will rejoice in replacing a pitcher with a 1-10 record with someone more talented, I write this to recap Marcum’s season and shed some light on how good he actually pitched this year…despite what some numbers suggest.

Before doing so, I must explain a couple sabermetric measurements. The first is a simple concept: How many base runners did Marcum leave on base? Another way to phrase this: What was his strand rate? The major league average is something like 72%. In other words, the average pitcher in the MLB allows a runner to score only 28% of the time. The rest of the time he gets stranded or is tagged/thrown out.

Marcum’s strand rate was 61.9%.

“Well he just needed to pitch better with runners on then, right”?

Well, yes and no. Marcum’s career LOB% (Left On Base %) is 74.9%, far above the 61.9% clip this year. This leads me to conclude that Marcum’s strand rate was more statistical anomaly than indictment of pitching ability.

This also means that it he was bound for a statistical correction as the season went on.

Which leads me to my next point: How ineffective was Marcum? Even the most saber-resistant fans understand the importance of defense for a pitcher’s success. The better fielders behind the pitcher, the more outs they make, and the better chance the pitcher has at winning the game.

Luckily for fans (not to mention General Managers), there is a way to quantify the result of batted balls and normalize it for pitchers across the league. In lieu of my rough comprehension of FIP explaining it to you, let Fangraphs (a resource every baseball fan should take advantage of:

“Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) measures what a player’s ERA should have looked like over a given time period, assuming that performance on balls in play and timing were league average. Back in the early 2000s, research by Voros McCracken revealed that the amount of balls that fall in for hits against pitchers do not correlate well across seasons. In other words, pitchers have little control over balls in play. McCracken outlined a better way to assess a pitcher’s talent level by looking at results a pitcher can control: strikeouts, walks, hit by pitches, and homeruns.

A walk is not as harmful as a homerun and a strikeout has less impact than both. FIP accounts for these kinds of differences, presenting the results on the same scale as ERA. It has been shown to be more effective than ERA in terms of predicting future performance.”


Marcum’s ERA was 5.29. His FIP was 3.66. In other words, one can interpret FIP and say, “Marcum’s ERA should be 3.66”. Those two numbers, over larger sample sizes, tend to veer towards one another. The explanation? Marcum’s starts can be characterized by simple bad luck. He easily could have had an ERA a run and a half lower than it was when he went on the DL this afternoon just from the luck of the draw of the way batted balls fall.

“Hmmm well 1-10 is all that matters to me. He should have pitched better to win. I don’t care about stats. Wins are wins and losses are losses”.

Right? Sure, we want to win games and a pitcher’s record is indicative of his effectiveness doing so…right?

This could not be further from the truth.

I think Mets fans are finally starting to come around to this notion having watched Harvey dominate the National League but have only 7 wins to show for it, while Jon Lester and R.A. Dickey both have more wins despite sporting ERAs above four and a half (and FIPs well above 4. I’m fair.)

Marcum had some poor starts. I am not denying his ineffectiveness in a handful of games this year but for every June 14th (5.2 innings, 6 runs) there was a June 8th (8 innings, 1 run). Want to hear something crazy? He lost both starts.

In fact, after May 10th up to that June 14th start, Marcum pitched these games:

6.2 innings, 2 runs
6 innings, 4 runs
7 innings, 2 runs
6 innings, 4 runs
8 innings, 1 run

That’s an ERA of 3.48.

His record for that month+ was 0-4.

For those of you who want to know (or want to learn what these metrics mean in order to better understand value), consider the following as an addendum to the above:

His BABIP: .322, well above league average.

His walk rate: 2.41/9

His W.A.R.: 1.3.

His W.A.R. ranking of Mets pitchers: 2nd. Only Harvey beats him.

Yes, he was a more valuable pitcher according to Wins Above Replacement than Gee, Niese, Hefner, Aardsma, Hawkins, Torres, and Wheeler. He was the second most valuable pitcher on the Mets this season. No, you did not misread that.

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Shaun, we wish you the best. If I were general manager and I need more time for some of my young arms, I would absolutely give you another contract to come pitch in Flushing. Take care.

Sincerely,

At least this Mets fan.

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