Comments on: Stephen Strasburg, start by start

By: Stephen Strasburg: The Best College Pitcher Ever? | lukekohler.com

Stephen Strasburg: The Best College Pitcher Ever? | lukekohler.com — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 09:58:41 +0000

[...] the year with an 8-3 record, a 1.57 ERA and 133 strikeouts in 97 innings, and only got better in the second half of the year. In a game against Utah, he threw a complete game one-hitter and struck out [...]

By: Mike R

Mike R — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 06:02:20 +0000

Yikes. That format is bad.

By: Myron (MB)

Myron (MB) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:59:51 +0000

Good Strasburg/draft talk over at Hank’s Padre discussion.

Does anyone else hate the format over there? Maybe I am alone, but I can’t stand it. Love the discussion, though.

By: Myron (MB)

Myron (MB) — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:45:15 +0000

Tom, at Boyd’s World, a truly invaluable site.

Here’s the link to the park factors page: http://boydsworld.com/data/pf2008.html

At the top of that page, you’ll find a link that explains the methodology, if you’re interested in that.

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:32:14 +0000

Where did you find college baseball park factors?

By: Myron (MB)

Myron (MB) — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 02:05:26 +0000

Good Strasburg profile (h/t: Fire Jim Bowden).

By: Myron (MB)

Myron (MB) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:31:55 +0000

Awesome stuff, Mike.

I was confused for a second regarding ISR … I used the team’s rank for ISR, rather than the actual ISR. I probably should have specified that, though I didn’t really even think of it.

Anyway, I like the avg. conference ISR’s you compiled … was thinking about doing that myself.

By: Mike R

Mike R — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 07:26:14 +0000

For the MWC, I’ve got the average ISR of the teams was 105.73. That’s such a hitter’s friendly league (average PF is 114.43), and to put it into context, that avg ISR for the MWC is low. Pac-10 is 119.01, Big East is 98.52, Big 12 is 113.52, Big West is 114.19, CUSA is 107.92, ACC was 111.03, SEC was 110.36, and the Big 10 was 100.01.

So, while he was in an extreme hitter’s park for pretty much most of his starts, the quality of the competition pretty much cancels it out for the lack of a better way to explain it.

I’ve only got 8 conferences for 2008 season entered into my system thus far, and Strasburgh’s adjusted dERA came in 4th among starters with at least 190 batters faced:

Scott Bittle, Ole Miss; 0.24, 275 TBF
Jason Stoffel, Arizona State; 0.26, 195 TBF
Robbie Weinhardt, OK State; 0.49, 191 TBF
Stephen Strasburgh, SDSU; 0.60, 366 TBF.

The three ahead of him were their team’s primary shut-down relievers — weinhard and Stoffel were the primary closers for their teams and Bittle was the anytime-anywhere reliever for Ole Miss.

So, he was easily the best starting pitcher in the college game last year quantitatively.