If the Phillies Lose Game 3, Should Halladay Start Game 4?
by BrandonB on Oct 3, 2011 10:27 AM EDT
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PrintWell the Cardinals have managed to steal one in Philly against 1 of the Phillies 2 best pitchers after the close one last night. This has quickly become a series now and with a loss in game 3 the Phils would be facing elimination (already?!). I'm a WAR guy so I'll use the 2011 regular season WARs as a point of comparison. I'll even give Oswalt the benefit of doubt and show his last year's WAR in addition to his injury-plagued 2011. A quick google search gives me about a 7% dropoff in production for pitchers on short rest so I'll go with that.
Game 4 - Oswalt (2011 extended to 32 starts / 2010): 3.5 WAR / 4.7 WAR
Game 5 - Halladay: 8.2 WAR
Total: 11.7 WAR / 12.9 WAR
Game 4 - Halladay (Short Rest): 7.6 WAR
Game 5 - Lee: 6.7 WAR
Total: 14.3 WAR
If we assume Oswalt is completely recovered from injury and back to mid season form, it's close but still Halladay has the edge. If we can't make that assumption, the argument for Halladay becomes even stronger.
Personally, I would feel much more comfortable knowing that the Cardinals MUST go through Halladay again to win the series. I know Charlie likes to think of them as the 4 Aces and that any one of them is interchangeable, but I'd rather go down with the ball in the hand of the guy who got me there then the guy who really hasn't.
What do you think?
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Didn’t we have a similar discussion after La Russa’s decision to start Carp on 3-days rest? How’d that work out for him?
I’ve noticed that you keep pointing to CC Sabathia as an example that pitching a starter on short rest is a fine idea, but unfortunately, CC is an exception to the rule rather than the rule itself. Way more frequently than not, a pitcher pitching on short rest ends up more like Chris Carpenter did last night than CC Sabathia on most occasions of 3-days rest (when he got traded to Milwaukee in 2008, didn’t he have a streak of many starts on 3-days rest?). Now while it is true the Cardinals won last night, it is very safe to say the Cardinals won in spite of Chris Carpenter, not because of Chris Carpenter.
Also, if you want to compare pitchers, you are better off using FIP, xFIP, and SIERA before WAR.
Writer at SB Nation's Philadelphia Union blog, The Brotherly Game. Follow me on Twitter.
As for why it is that pitchers are almost uniformly worse on three days rest than four, I have no single explanation, but if you look at results outside of CC Sabathia, you will see this is true almost across the board. Now there may be some instances where it may be beneficial to start a non-CC Sabathia pitcher on three days rest during the playoffs, but this, however, is not one of them.
Writer at SB Nation's Philadelphia Union blog, The Brotherly Game. Follow me on Twitter.
You have no numbers backing up your statement pitchers end up more like Carp. That was his first time pitching on short rest EVER. Halladay has done it before. How do you know he’s not the exception to the rule just like CC is? He’s a horse and has some of the best mechanics in the game. Here are the facts (if the internets are correct):
All Major League Pitchers – 60,074 IP, 4.42 FIP
Short Rest – 8,159 IP, 4.71 FIP
Pitching WAR is derived from FIP.
This isn’t a good statistical comparison. You would need to compare the “Short Rest” FIP to the standard rest FIP of the same pitchers who pitched on short rest. Guys like Kyle Kendrick or Adam Eaton are in the larger pool, but are not in the smaller pool, so you have a biased comp.
In other words, managers tend not to send out their sh*ttiest pitchers to pitch on short rest. The only guys who are asked to pitch on short rest are top guys, generally only top guys on good teams. What you just showed is that a pool of pitchers comprised mainly of the elite pitchers in the game has posted an FIP of 4.71 when pitching on short rest. Obviously you’re going to have to provide us with the proper control statistic, but the logical initial reaction to that 4.71 is that it sure looks like an enormous dropoff.
The only thing I can find at the moment is this:
http://www.pinstripealley.com/2010/10/12/1746880/lets-debunk-myths-about-short-rest
His argument is quite the opposite. Top notch pitchers are LESS likely to pitch on short rest because managers are trying to protect their arms. It’s actually the average pitchers who are more likely to pitched on short rest.
Btw, Halladay career on short rest: 4-2, 2.79 ERA on 6 starts
He hasn’t adequately supported his argument. What he says there is that “since 60 pitchers pitched on short rest in Year X, that shows that most pitchers who pitch on short rest are not aces.” But shouldn’t the proper metric be the number of starts made by aces on short rest, not the number of pitchers overall? What if 20 of those 60 pitchers made 90% of the short-rest starts? I don’t know what the answer to that question is, but his argument on that question is junk. (Which frankly doesn’t surprise me given the source.)
Also, you can’t necessarily just look up “games on 3 days rest” on baseball-reference and leave it at that. I would hypothesize that a significant percentage of “short rest” starts involve unusual circumstances. For instance, let’s say there’s a long rain delay after the second inning of a game and the starter is unable to return in the third inning, despite having only thrown 30 pitches. That guy will probably make his next start on short rest, but that obviously isn’t the kind of “short rest” that we’re talking about.
WAR uses FIP, but you can’t just use full-season WAR in trying to decide about the differences for one game (8.2 is much greater than 2.3, but the difference for one game is much smaller). You’d have to pro-rate the WAR and then backfill what the means for runs per game, in which case you may as well use SIERA, etc, anyway.
You’ve misunderstood my point. I’m saying you can’t simply compare full season WAR (however complete that season was for the pitcher in question) and make a comparison relevant to one game. Unless you’re only trying to say that one pitcher is better than an another, but you’re not. You’re trying to say how much Halladay is better than Oswalt for one game , in which case your task is different.
I’m saying the answer to “Who is better for a season?” or “Who is better for 1 game?” is the same. Judging by Halladay’s and Oswalt’s performance this season, over serveral starts and a large sample size, its very reasonable to assume Halladay would perform significantly better than Oswalt in game 4 or any game for that matter in the future.
the question, for the purposes of making a decision like this, is not “who is better?” (we all already know that Halladay is better, in which case it’s not worth having the discussion at all), it’s “how much better is Halladay than Oswalt that the difference is significant enough to skip Oswalt for one game?”
I think the answer to that is quite complex. By skipping Oswalt, the Phillies rotation will be messed up (should they advance) and thus lower the chance for them to win the next series (and perhaps the world series as well). By how much does it decrease, I have no idea. Considering the alternative to losing game 4 if you are down 2-1 is elimination my gut tells me the gain by starting Halladay over Oswalt doesn’t need to be large to overcome the decrease in the next series, but I’m not sure.
The other faucet to consider is lost revenue by not advancing past the NLDS. If the Phillies don’t advance, not only are NLCS ticket sales lost, but will the fans be so discouraged that 2012 regular season ticket sales will be affected as well?
Given that Charlie pitched Joe Blanton last year instead of starting Halladay on short rest, I imagine he’ll let Roy Oswalt pitch.
by philsandthrills on Oct 3, 2011 7:04 PM EDT up reply actions
In a word, no
In two words, hell no.
Writer at SB Nation's Philadelphia Union blog, The Brotherly Game. Follow me on Twitter.
There's a saying
Gotta ride the horses that got you here. Oswalt helped get the Phils here. He deserves a start.
What kind of plane is it? Oh, it's a big pretty white plane with red stripes, curtains in the windows and wheels and it looks like a big ol' Tylenol.
I should have said:
With 2.5 WAR, I’m not exactly sure if Oswalt qualifies as one that got you there.
He was out 1/2 the year so that number is flawed just a bit. So full year 5.0 WAR add in that he was pitching hurt & coming back from injuries shaking off rust he could have ended up with something along 5.5 – 6.0. Still I understand the argument that Halladay on 4 days > Oswalt on full rest.
"Learning to eat soup with a knife"
If you read my post, a full year would have only been 3.5. Last year he was 4.7 healthy. Not a chance he would have been 5.5-6.0 if not getting hurt.
The reason not to do this is that if you’re down 2-1, that means you need to win both Game 4 and Game 5 in order to win the series. Halladay on three days’ rest may be better than a well rested Oswalt, but Halladay on three days’ rest is highly unlikely to be better than Halladay on five days’ rest and very likely to be worse. The question is, which is better: (rested Oswalt + rested Halladay) or (not rested Halladay + not rested Lee)? I think the difference between these two choices is negligible at best. Since the latter option is clearly worse for the next round, you shouldn’t use it unless it’s clearly better for this round, which it isn’t.
Personally, I would feel much more comfortable knowing that the Cardinals MUST go through Halladay again to win the series.
Why? This is dumb. If you make it so that the Cardinals MUST go through Halladay again to win the series, that necessarily means the Phillies MUST pitch someone other than Halladay in Game 5. The Phillies can’t win the series unless they win Game 5 in addition to Game 4.
HALLADAY SHATTERS NLDS RECORD!
3-1, 35 IP, ERA 1.15 60k’s
Unfortunately, his arm fell off in the ninth inning of game 5. He still struck out Pujols to end the game as his flying appendage bitch slapped him midswing.
Lee would be fully rested for game 5. If your down 2-1, you can’t win game 5 unless you win game 4. In that scenario, game 4 and 5 of are the same importance.
The whole “start your starter on short rest” debate comes up every year, but it only makes sense to jumble your rotation is you have to win 2 games in a row AND you’re trying to avoid one particularly lopsided matchup.
But in this case? Oswalt on normal rest >= Halladay on short rest. Nothing to be gained—it won’t help your chances of winning either game.
Math Problems? Call 1-800-[(10x)(13i)2]-[sin(xy)/2.362x].
by dees ees en drama on Oct 3, 2011 8:58 PM EDT reply actions
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