Was Bartolo Colon really the best pitcher in the American League in 2005?
Colon certainly had an excellent season in claiming his first Cy Young Award. He won a career-high 21 games, three more than anyone else in the AL. But handicappers know better. Wagering on Colon in each of his 35 starts would have produced a profit of only 3.25 units, less than such pitching pariahs as Jeff Weaver and Chan Ho Park. That doesn't necessarily make Colon a worse pitcher than those gentlemen, but it does make him overvalued for a Cy Young winner.
A look at the stats confirms Colon's 2005 profile was inflated. Minnesota Twins ace Johan Santana smoked Colon in nearly every category, including at the pay window, where he bagged nearly 7.9 units of earnings for Twins supporters. But he finished with a win-loss record of "only" 16-7. Ten of his starts were no-decisions. In a world where perception breeds reality, Colon's 21 wins trumped Santana's performance.
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Instead of rolling their eyes at this injustice, baseball handicappers are rolling in dough. They take advantage of the general betting public and its occasionally questionable grip on reality. It's all about having better information, and the "seamhead" community has done intrepid bettors a great service by coming up with statistics that more closely reflect - and predict - a pitcher's performance.
The most familiar of these new stats is WHIP, or Walks plus Hits per Inning Pitched. This stat has popped up in fantasy baseball and on ESPN.com, but has yet to be embraced by the larger baseball community. That's the kind of information gap handicappers love to exploit. Allowing fewer men on base is the most direct path to allowing fewer runs. Taking our Cy Young example, Santana had a WHIP of 0.97 last year; Colon was third in the AL at 1.16, while Randy Johnson of the New York Yankees was second at 1.13.
WHIP is the kind of stat that looks and cooks like familiar offerings such as ERA. "Win Shares" is a different animal. This evaluation tool wraps up all the relevant offensive and defensive numbers, adjusting for park factors and other criteria, and spits out a figure that approximates how many wins an individual player was worth to his team. According to The Hardball Times, Santana was tied last year with Mark Buehrle of the Chicago White Sox at 23 Win Shares to lead all AL starting pitchers. Colon was fourth with 19.
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When reaching into your pitching-specific analysis toolbox, make sure you've got plenty of DIPS: Defense-Independent Pitching Statistics. Research by noted seamhead Voros McCracken (currently employed by the Boston Red Sox) suggests that pitchers have minimal control over whether batted balls fall for hits or outs. His numbers are no longer available to the public, but FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) stats are available on the Web. FIP numbers can be read like ERA. Santana once again led the way last year at 2.80; Colon fell to seventh in the AL at 3.77, while teammate John Lackey rose to second at 3.08.
These accuracy-seeking stats are not just for evaluating past performance. One of the more eagerly anticipated days of the seamhead calendar comes when the Baseball Prospectus releases its PECOTA projections for the upcoming season - unfortunately, only to subscribers, but sharp handicappers may find the access to BP's treasure trove of information to be worth the price of admission. PECOTA is a forecasting system that takes a player's stats (both old world and new world) and tries to project how those stats will look over the next five years.
Santana's "average" (Weighted Mean) projection for 2006 had him once again stuck at 16 wins, but with a WHIP of 1.04. That means his eight wins and sparkling 0.98 WHIP thus far are within reasonable expectations. Colon, on the other hand, was projected at just 12 wins with a WHIP of 1.24. That should have raised some red flags for Angels supporters; indeed, Colon is even further off his 2005 form at 0-3 with a 5.74 ERA and a 1.76 WHIP. At the pay window, Santana is 7.5 units in the black and Colon is down 1.4 units. Coincidence? Hardly.
Some of the new stats may be more to your liking than others. Give them a try and see what works for you. The baseball purist in you may scoff, but your inner handicapper will be grateful.
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