ESPN employs both well-known idiot analysts and not-so-well-known idiot analysts

everyone knows gene wojowhatever, scoop jackson, and skip bayless are complete idiots. but they might not know that this guy named jonah keri also writes for the world wide leader and is also a complete waste of space. take for example, his currently front-page-advertised article "you better start watching tim wakefield". (apparently his regular column is titled "keri the ten", which sounds pretty un-punny if you ask me. also that should say "you'd", but who's counting.)

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=keri/070514&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab1pos2

Lots to cover this week, and I'm still giddy from this weekend's Arcade Fire homecoming concert. Let's get right to it.

good, an arcade fire fan, thats who i really want writing my baseball analysis.

1. The American League's ERA leader is 40 years old and couldn't dent a slice of bread with his fastball. Betting against him could be a bad idea.

he introduces the concept normally enough. talks about wakefield's 1.79 ERA, and how it's better than guys like santana's, halladay's, haren's, and beckett's. well duh, when youre leading the league, youre going to be better than everyone else's by default. then he goes on to talk about what a great contract (for the red sox) wakefield has. pretty interesting, if untopical stuff. then the bottom starts to drop out right around here:

Second, anyone who claims he can predict what Wakefield will do for the rest of the season is lying. Sure, his past four seasons of above-4.00 ERAs suggest that his early-season performance won't last.

anyone who claims they can perfectly predict outcomes 100% of the time IS lying, because that's impossible. anyone who claims they can generally predict them based on past performance, current trends, and the concept of regression to the mean is not lying. they are using statistics to make inferences. i think this guy has been hanging out with joe morgan too much. look, he even starts to talk about wakefield's last couple of seasons (generally, a pretty ok way to start predicting how their next season will go) but then stops short...

But knuckleballers are the most unpredictable of all baseball creatures, not subject to typical statistical patterns. Studies that show how the vast majority of pitchers have very little control over the outcome of balls hit in play (a topic discussed in this space two weeks ago) are quick to note that the biggest glaring exception is the knuckleball pitcher. For that reason, it's presumptuous to assume that Wakefield's .213 batting-average-against this year, sixth-lowest in baseball and well below the league norm of around .300, will somehow correct itself over time.

wakefield is currently well above his 90th percentile PECOTA BABIP projection. his BABIPs the last 3 seasons were .280, .261, and .266. i don't have numbers for his whole career but based on his career BAs against and WHIPs, they can't be much different. and don't worry about that link- it doesnt justify his point about knuckleballers at all. i would say that its extremely presumptuous to assume wakefield's ridiculously low BABIP so far in 2007 will NOT correct itself over time. but whatever you say, keri. basically what he's getting at here is he thinks knuckleballers are cool because they throw a pitch called the coolball which is all crazy and wacky.

Even more remarkably, knuckleball pitchers often seem able to cheat the aging process, with spectacular results. Charlie Hough threw 252 innings with an ERA 23 percent better than the league average while pitching in Texas at age 40. Phil Niekro tossed 342 innings(!!!) at age 40, and had five above-average seasons after that before finally retiring at 48. Hoyt Wilhelm threw 136 1/3 innings at age 40 as the league's biggest relief workhorse; he had nine straight above-average seasons after 40, including a 1967 campaign in which he posted a 1.31 ERA at age 44.

yep. therrrrrre it is. knuckleballers really get this guy all hot and bothered. hough was sort of decent until he was 40, he sucked for 5 more seasons after that. niekro was indeed slightly above average throughout most of his 40s, which i admit is cool. wilhelm was also good for a long time, although that age 44 season was cherry picked by keri from several that were less stellar. so, yeah, knuckleballers are capable of having good careers through their 40s. but the problem with this analysis is that wakefield is not "good" right now. he is miles above good, flying in a knuckleball powered knucklejet that zips and darts in random directions through the stratosphere. his ERA+ is 244. pedro martinez's in 1999, one of the all time great pitching seasons EVER, was 245. martinez was 27 that year. he struck out 313 batters and walked 37. wakefield has already walked more than half that through 6 weeks of the season and has never struck out more than 169 batters. hmmmm. yeah, im going to go ahead and say wakefield wont be sustaining that number.

It could be that after all these years, Wakefield simply has found the perfect grip for his trademark pitch, and -- combined with a few lucky gusts of wind -- is on pace for another knuckleballer season for the ages.

the odds of a guy who's thrown a knuckleball since he was 15 discovering "the perfect grip" for it at age 40 are pretty low. probably about the same as the odds of a 12 year old cubs fan breaking his arm and having it magically heal in such a way that he can throw 105 mph, then leading them to a world series title.

Or he could get rocked in his next start, miss a bunch of starts to injuries like he did last year, and go back to being good ol' back-of-the-rotation Tim Wakefield.

thats a little too far in the opposite direction, keri, but its definitely more likely.

It's as fun a story as there is in baseball right now.

wrong, unless youre tim wakefield's parents or wife or something.



(disclaimer: i hate the red sox. really i do. i will try to write as few posts about them as possible. but since the national media writes about them so frequently its going to be hard to stay away 100% the time. much as i wish this were possible, i can't force these people to write dumb articles about the rockies.)