Does Strat value Mark Buehrle as much as real baseball does?

Just thought of this after reading this good piece on Buehrle in Grantland.
http://grantland.com/features/mark-buehrle-surprising-success/

Buehrle has a really high OPS allowed for someone with a career ERA under 4. He shouldn't be doing this well by any pitching metric.

So how does he do it. Two things only:

1. He fields his position really well.
2. He holds runners really well.

"Coincidentally or not, his Defensive Runs Saved over his career closely corresponds with the magnitude of the difference between his FIP and his ERA."

So it got me wondering if his holding and defense in Strat are worth what they are apparently worth in real life.

I think there are many pitchers who consistently have the pitches and poise to get out of jams. A leadoff double against many pitchers is going to score. But the better pitchers are able to focus and do what is needed to strand that runner.

I see that a lot with Darvish. He gets a runner on and he starts working the edges of the strike zone to get the ground ball or strikeout. Before Martin Perez elbow gave out he would start sinking the ball more with runners on and induce ground balls to get the double play. So the end result would be better than simply the raw stats of whip and so called advanced stats would say he should get.

Plus I find it interesting that so many today are measuring pitchers on FIP and other such contrived stats and forget that preventing runs is what is really important. Small sample sizes contrived stats my provide some insight in to whether a pitcher will continue giving up runs at current rate. But after the sample size gets to a certain point and a pitcher builds a track record of either giving up runs or not giving them up then that should be used more to measure how good he is.

In the case of a veteran pitcher like Buerhrle I think you consider his ERA as the better indicator of his ability and value than FIP or OPS. Unfortunately the strat model is not able to simulate that ability of a pitcher to adjust to the situation.

I think there are many pitchers who consistently have the pitches and poise to get out of jams. A leadoff double against many pitchers is going to score. But the better pitchers are able to focus and do what is needed to strand that runner.

The problem with this theory is that Jazayerli--in his Grantland article--specifically points out that Buehrle is not a more effective pitcher with runners on base:

"If anything, Buehrle’s performance appears to get worse with runners on base. While that’s not really the case — those numbers are skewed by the fact that sacrifice flies don’t count against a hitter’s batting average, and by definition a sacrifice fly can occur only when there’s a runner on third base — Buehrle doesn’t pitch significantly better with ducks on the pond, which would have explained why he’s so much stingier with runs than with baserunners."

Jazayerli does stress Buehrle's excellent defense and sublime ability to hold runners as keys to his success, and SOM online can't adequately simulate this. Buehrle's Gold Glove abilities to field his position and contribute to defensive plays cannot be adequately simulated by the 6-2 and 6-12 rolls on his card. Also, his -6 hold becomes affected and contextualized by the other (3 or 4) starters' holding abilities in SOM. This is not the case when Buehrle actually pitches in MLB.

Strat is not kind to the "Tommy John" family of pitchers, which Buehrle is clearly a member.

Nice article; well worth the read. Thanks for sharing!

Strat is not kind to the "Tommy John" family of pitchers, which Buehrle is clearly a member.

While it's true that Buehrle may not be a "clutch" pitcher of renown, I still wish SOM had a clutch rating for pitchers, like they do for hitters. Maybe, then, this family of pitchers would be more in demand in the SOM world.

...I still wish SOM had a clutch rating for pitchers, like they do for hitters.

The SOM Windows version offers Starting Pitcher Clutch. It's a maximum rule that can be turned on or off. While the online version of the game does use several maximum rules, it doesn't use this one.

http://somonline.wikia.com/wiki/Maximum_Rules