I think in your post #70, you also nailed the state of the FO’s thinking that there was enough young pitching in the farm system so the M’s wouldn’t miss Freddy. In fact, I remember Bavasi’s statement on the radio after they traded Freddy that the M’s were “a pitching rich organization” (his words, they stuck in my mind) and that they were going to bet the next few years of the franchise (my words, since I don’t have a transcript, but his tone) on that assessment.

Aside from Felix, that bet sure looks like it was a bad one.

I’m as far from an expert at evaluating minor league pitching as you can get. It seems to me to be a reasonable expectation that a GM should have a pretty good idea about that issue within his own organization, if not throughout professional baseball. An apologist for Bavasi might say, “Well, it was June 2003 and Bavasi was new to the M’s. You have to cut the guy some slack.” Aside from that, I don’t know how you’d defend him.

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/statnlpitch/
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/statalpitch/

Garcia’s 2004 FIP ERA: 3.91 (in a league where league-average is 4.64)
Millwood’s 2004 FIP: 3.82 (in a league where league-average is 4.31)

Note that their 2004 and 2005 FIP ERAs are pretty damn close to one another- Garcia goes from 3.91 to 4.09, Millwood goes from 3.82 to 3.77.

Note, however, that Millwood’s pitched 333 innings the last two years. Freddy’s pitched 438. I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out what effect that should have on judging their relative performance.

So, uh, yeah, not going to retract my assertion that Freddy’s in the same class as Millwood in favor of saying “he’s just not that good” based on what I’m seeing so far.

You pointed out yourself Millwood’s 2005 FIP ERA is 3.77 and Garcia’s is 4.09. That’s simply not a vast difference in performance out of a starting pitcher (it’s a grand total of SEVEN runs per 200 IP)- especially when you add in the replacement-level starter who gets to make up the handful of starts Millwood tends to miss, the difference is less than seven runs. If “as far as pitchers go, Millwood’s basically as little of an injury risk as you’re going to find. He’s an innings eater and has proven quite durable”, what the hell does that make Freddy? And why is 2005 a true gauge of Millwood’s value over Freddy, but 2004 doesn’t count, or 2001 (where you can’t reasonably assert that Millwood outperformed Freddy)?

I’m not trying to be rude, but I really don’t have time to put together the rebuttal you’re looking for. Basically, it comes down to this; you want to evaluate the pitchers using metrics that give Garcia credit for things that I give him no credit for. That causes you to overrate him, in my opinion.

Care to elucidate? Or is the argument “my statistical analysis tools are better than yours, nyah nyah nyah”?

Yeah, I know that according to VORP, Ryan Franklin was a very good pitcher in 2003, and we all know he wasn’t, really. If you used ERA, you’d get the same (incorrect) conclusion. But I’d argue it’s the same sort of conclusion if you thought Brady Anderson was a great home run hitter based on his 50 home run season- the sample size is too small and we got a fluke result. The difference is we’re not talking one fluke season here- we can objectively compare Garcia and Millwood’s over a period of time using various statistics and find, gee, there’s no huge, vast, immense gap between their overall performances in Millwood’s favor. Yeah, Millwood had a crappy year in 2004. You want to argue that’s a fluke of being in Philly. Fine. So, what was his excuse in 2001 (ERA: 4.31) and 2000 (ERA: 4.66) in Atlanta, where he basically had league-average ERA for two years (that is, when he wasn’t on the DL and not contributing to his team at all), much like Garcia did in 2002 and 2003?

Millwood: 210.1 VORP /7 years = 30 VORP/year

Garcia: 319.5 VORP/7 years = 46 VORP/year

This might surprise you: Garcia’s VORP this year 45.6) is pretty damned close to Millwood’s (52.3), higher xFIP and all. Why? Injuries- Garcia got several extra starts Millwood didn’t because of injuries. Good thing the Indians couldn’t have used an extra couple starts from their best pitcher to improve their chances of making the playoffs, huh? Oh, wait…

The argument that “X (Millwood, Schmidt, Brown, Ken Girffey) is a better player than Y (Garcia, Kenny Rogers, Mike Cameron) when healthy” has a rather serious caveat- which is that your contribution to a team as a player is directly affected by your ability to stay healthy. It’s the old “my aunt would be my uncle if she had testicles argument”- we’re not talking about what your contribution would be an an ideal world where no-one gets injured, we’re talking about real-world contributions, where you don’t help your team win if you’re on the DL. If you want a more rarified example of that argument, Mickey Mantle was, at his peak, clearly a better player than Willie Mays. It’s not really that close, even. Mays still contributed more to his teams overall, though, because he stayed in the lineup better during a couple of years where Mickey missed playing time, and was still playing pretty well everyday in CF at a time when Mickey was well below his peak at 1B or hitting the golf links in retirement. So I understand the difference between “someone who is better but gets injured more” (Millwood) and “someone who stays around at a somewhat lower peak” (Garcia). And my argument is, gimme the guy who’s netted 45 VORP the last 7 years over the guy who’s netted 30, and I’ll take my chances.

You don’t want to use WARP to compare Garcia and Millwood. Whoever would be pitching in Seattle, they wouldn’t be hitting. Over 2002-2004, though, Millwood’s WARP is negatively affected by his -17 batting runs over replacement. Their pitching runs above replacement over that period (which go into WARP) are 171 to 191, which is an edge to Garcia, but with the caveat that Millwood’s 2004 in Philadelphia was probably fluky.