by Outta Leftfield » Fri Apr 21, 2006 6:43 pm
[quote:884cd300e0="the icemen"]
I would normally spend around 30-35 million on pitching in a non-theme league. This team I think is an anomally for not scoring more and allowing less runs based on the cards i drew.
Ice[/quote:884cd300e0]
Sorry--didn't realize it was a theme league. Seems like you had an especially nasty poison pill. It's hard to hit enough to overcome that pitching liability.
[quote:884cd300e0]ERA is a useless stat. [/quote:884cd300e0]
I'm not sure ERA is truly useless. Sometimes it's misleading--an ERA might be higher or lower than it should be based on the pitcher's HR and WHIP. But ultimately Runs Allowed on a team level is vital and ERA is one indicator of that success. Still, I tend to look at Runs Allowed for an overall evaluation of a team's defense.
Interestingly, this team did succeed in hitting a lot more HR than it allowed--hit 291 HR and allowed 212. That's an edge of 79--almost half a HR per game.... a big edge. It also had a smaller edge in walks, 634 received to 621 allowed. Not much difference, there, but still advantage to the home team. The real downfall is in BA--.259 for the offense, while the pitchers allowed .285. Put in terms of raw hits, the team gave up 171 more hits than it got.
In my own experience it takes a major advantage in two or more of the big categories (HR, BB, BA, and--in my opinion--errors) to make a team a contender. The error number looks pretty good. If the hitters had managed to hit .285, to keep pace with what their pitchers gave up, then the big edge in HR probably would have swung the margin in the home team's favor. To get the team to .285, I guess that would mean that Gorman, Rickey, Parker, Horner, Kruk and Murray would all have had to hit for much higher BA than they did. To reach the balance point of 171 extra hits, they would have to average almost thirty hits more per season than they actually got. Not impossible, but that's a lot of hits.