Bedard is a classic example of the need to pay more attention to the bullpen than you might normally. bedard has only retired batters in the 8th inning during 10 of his 141 career starts, and has only 1 career cg, meanwhile the hyphen (ryan rowland-smith) has pitched at least 7.0 ip in more than half of his 15 starts last season and has done it in 11 of 27 career starts.
in the case of the mariners, i usually have a good handle on bullpen availability, thus it becomes a bigger factor for me when judging their chances of success or failure on a given day whenever i have a starting pitcher that i am not projecting to go very deep in a game. a word of caution though . . . i can't quantify this, it's an insticnt thing . . . take the mariners doubleheader in chicago last season as an example . . . the mariners came into that day with a tired bullpen, and chris jakubauskas on the mound for game one . . . a seemingly perfect recipe for the mariners to fail based on their pitching performance . . . what happened ? the mariners used exactly 3 pitchers for the entire day. they still split the DH, but they lost game one for lack of offense and good sox pitching, not because jaku was left out there to suffer.
when a bullpen is short, i think good managers do an effective job of getting their teams through it, they can get starters to throw more strikes, etc etc. these teams may still lose games, but my instincts tell me not to read TOO much into short bullpens. certainly it's a factor, and one that may have me avoid backing a team at -130, but it might not be enough for me to avoid a play on if i'm getting +130.
i may look at average fastball speeds when i'm trying to find a plausible reason for a pitcher's struggles. it becomes a piece of the puzzle for me, the hyphen has been notorious for leaving spring training with a fastball that is 3-5 mph slower than it was the previous september, thus he is a guy i might look to fade come this april IF he is showing that slower fastball in spring games.
P/PA is a great stat for me, i like to use it to project a guy like Ian Snell into having a decent outing vs a free swinging group, or using it to project Snell into a bad outing vs a patient club. Again, I won't make a play soley based on this stat, but let's say Snell is coming off of back to back good outings vs the Blue Jays and Tigers (the least patient AL teams), his last 3 starts stats look good, he's at home, and he's facing an underachieving Tampa Bay team. based on several other factors, let's say Snell is a -150 favorite, P/PA for Tampa (best in AL) won't be enough for me to take a stab with the dog, but I may have found some other factors, maybe it's a short Mariners pen, maybe it's the TB starter, maybe it's an Ump with a historically small zone, P/PA may cause me to take an extra look at Tampa, thereby leading me to other factors that allow me to find value in backing the Rays.
i like strikes called %, and really like a consistent strike % over the past 3-5 seasons, but the best is when you can find a high/low strike% and a corellated over-under record.
for me, the further an ump gets from 62.8%, the better, last season in MLB, 37.2% of all pitches were called balls, everything else was a strike, including every ball out into play.
covers has ump strike % and total records, but i would caution anyone from reading much into an ump's total record, unless you also have a correspnding strike % rate. and i would add more caution when looking at a small sample size . . . let's say dale scott has been very middle of the road for 4 seasons, and now suddenly he's 8-2 to the under after 10 games behind the plate in 2010, the masses might think they have a sure thing by playing him under in that 11th game, with just 10 games behind the plate and a long track record of being a very middle of the road ump, i would blindly play scott to be over in the 11th game, long before i would play him under.
quest tech is long gone, pitch f/x is the new standard, and it's been in every ballpark for a few yuears now, i would not go back more than 5 seasons when looking at umpire stats, becasue i do believe that pitch f/x has impacted some of the umps.
Here's a great site put together by some Ray's fans (i think) . . . it's kind of a Sabermetrics 101 type of website. . . . one stop shopping for explanations.
Nice to see Yuniesky Betancourt with a -21.3 UZR 
.......oh well, he makes up for it by being such a patient hitter 
God the Royals suck 
This quote is fabulous as well in explaining the futility of Kansas City......WAR is wins against replacement.....which, overly simplified means what would happen if a team had to replace their player at this position with a random minor-leaguer
*Yes, you can have a negative WAR. In fact, according to FanGraphs, the worst WAR any player has had since 2002 is Neifi Perez from the 2002 Royals. His -3.1 WAR eclipses the second place finisher, Yuniesky Betancourt from the 2009 Royals (-2.2 WAR). Oh, those Royals…
How 'bout them Royals 
I don't know how anybody could be measurably worse in most statistical categories than Tony Pena Jr but Betancourt manages to do it......Arguably the two worst everyday Shortstops this decade and quite possibly over the last quarter century and I had the privilige of watching them both in KC.
Sorry to derail your thread 3825.......you can get back to the business at hand now 
I don't know how anybody could be measurably worse in most statistical categories than Tony Pena Jr but Betancourt manages to do it......Arguably the two worst everyday Shortstops this decade and quite possibly over the last quarter century and I had the privilige of watching them both in KC.
Sorry to derail your thread 3825.......you can get back to the business at hand now
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