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Seems to me Reed has the superior stats... Unless I'm missing something...
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IMO, yeah, a lot.
Most of those numbers are like looking at the horizon and assume the world is flat. They don't tell you much, if anything, regarding a RP (Plus you didn't even use the same numbers to make your declaration, seems an attempt at bias too). I personally hate the "decide I love the trade, work backwards to prove it was good" abuse of stats.
RP live and die in situations. A total ERA isn't going to distinguish that except at the extremes. The use of Saves, ignoring the level of variability in a Save condition, the case of inherited runners for a RP, and the effect an offense can have on those stats quoted seems completely ignored.
Bell had 9 appearances where the opposing team scored 1 run, 6 appearances where they scored two runs, a 3 appearances where the scored 3 runs. This leaves him with 51 appearances where the team did not score while he pitched.
Reed had 12 appearances where the team scored 1 run, 5 appearances where they scored 2 runs, 1 where they scored 4, and 1 where they scored 5. This leaves him with 49 appearances where the team did not score while he pitched.
I'd say Bell pitched better last year, if just slightly.
Looking at the more complex conditional stats like WinProbabilityAdded and LeverageIndex you see Reed actually hurt his team more than he helped them ( a negative total WPA) and performed worse in highly leveraged situations than others. Meanwhile, Bell's pitching contributed overall to helping the team more than hurting them(a positive total WPA) and he performed much better in highly leveraged situations than others.
Even using the stats you chose, Bell had a higher K/9 and a lower BB/9 than Reed. Bell also had a much higher percentage of inherited runners LOB than Reed last year keeping his teammates ERA lower.
Now, I'd say that the saving grace for Reed is that he's young and has a better opportunity to improve from his last year stats, but the fact that his FB dropped 2 MPH (a large drop) from the year before makes me wonder about that chance.
Again, Davidson might not have had a place on this team, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have value. Basically replacing Bell with Reed at the same performance, we've saved around $4M and gave up Davidson and Holmberg.
I don't see what is so great about those deals that makes people excited aside from "Hey! 40 saves!" and that seems myopic.
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