I like Rob Neyer.
Yes, there are times he’s irritating, and even more irritating there are times he jumps onto some slim calculation that reinforces his larger point, and I just want to shake him…
But he’s got the best soapbox in the world to talk about anything of interest to baseball fans at all, and he does a pretty good job of mixing things up. This story ESPN.com: MLB – Big trade could work for all three teams is a bit of analysis about the deal, and I don’t like Rob’s take because he sort of agrees with me.
I like it because this notion of Defense Neutral Pitching Stats is important, for the very reason that this story makes so clear. A pitcher who has a bad ERA and a bad ratio of hits per balls put into play, is probably the victim of bad luck.
Unlike Dave Mlicki, who dug his own hole.
I still believe that Rusch creates his own problems, he did walk more batters in the frist half than the second half. But that difference pales beside the decrease in hits allowed, which Rob correctly points out is a fairly random pattern.
In the light of this evidence I guess I’d say that maybe Dave Stewart won’t have to work as hard as I thought he would.