I appreciate and respect your opinion and where you’re coming from. On Miller, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. Though with regards to FIP, there is definitely some strong research done on trying to determining the value of pitching independent of defense. Shoot me an email and I can send you the link to the seminal defense independent pitching article; it’s mostly theory, not a lot of numbers work.

The point you bring up about veterans being signed for millions vs. minor league, freely available talent is the EXACT premise behind the concept of replacement level. The basic idea is that certain players do not produce above the level of Quad-A talent, and thus do not provide any more value that freely available talent in a team’s minor league system. Paying for that sort of talent is not efficient. Replacement level should thus be the baseline for all production measurements. And that’s what I’m measuring above when I talk about WAR (Wins above Replacement) and other such things.

Two good examples. For a position player, Willie Bloomquist, and for a pitcher, our good friend Luis Ayala. They’re basically replacement level talent. Yet major league clubs still pay them, and they still play the same way. Something about veterans just makes teams giddy about “grittiness.”

As I told you in a note some weeks ago, what makes our discussions interesting is that we utilize two entirely different approaches. Frankly, I don’t even know what FIB even means. I’ve got all of Bill James books dating back to the early 80s and love his arguments and agree with most of them, but abhore his statistics when formulas are involved. However, after closely following (and loving) baseball since 1949 when I turned 14, I do trust most of my ability to make rational judgements. So it’s fun to disagree and please understand that as stated above, I do respect your opinions…whether right or wrong. There’s probably even some gray area in between our two points of view.

Hmm, I thought otherwise. Thanks for the correction Stan.

If we want to look at defense independent pitching stats, let’s use FIP as an example. Miller has a 4.22 FIP this season, which actually comes out as slightly above average (league average 4.33). I’m not sure if he can hold off the homers as well as he has so far, but you can’t argue with the results. He’s not been terrible, he’s been getting a bit unlucky on the order in which he’s giving up hits. He has a Left on base%, or strand% of 63%, when the league average is 75%, and pretty much all pitchers end up right around that normally.

Teams are chaining more hits against Miller than usual. I’d rather take my chances with Miller’s luck turning than with a Quad-A guy who is likely less talented. Miller can definitely improve, he certainly needs to drop the walks, but how much better do you think that guy would be in the short term? Plus, if Miller goes to the pen, he’s likely to improve about a run’s worth in terms of ERA, so he’d be even better in the short term. Like I said, I’d rather have what I’ve seen of Miller so far compared to a lesser talent doing well in AA or AAA his third year in a row, I think the odds are better with Miller.