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DERA 2006
Publication Date: January 4, 2007
Trying Not to Pull Something
That break lasted longer than I intended, and I apologize for not communicating on the front end. Partly, I needed a break more than I realized; partly, I've been going through negotiations with a couple of pro teams on some exclusive services for this season, and I needed to see where the lines fell out on what I could and couldn't talk about around here. There will be a few changes to the site this year; I'll talk about that at the end of the piece. As a way of easing back into things, I'm going to do one of my annual pieces; the DERA review to see who might be worth watching for in 2007.
As a way of establishing my bona fides, I always like to look back at last year's list of candidates for improvement (which is one of the reasons why DERA is so interesting) and see how they did. Here's last year's list, with 2006 ERA added in, for anyone who pitched again in 2006:
Team Pitcher DERA ERA 2006 Fairfield Steve Tyburski 5.92 10.67 7.58 Lafayette Brian Cope 7.27 11.54 9.17 Canisius Jordan Neufeld 9.10 12.91 5.40 New Mexico Darren Coltrinari 4.96 8.50 9.96 Coppin State Matt Bellon 5.24 8.71 5.71 Air Force Paul Pratt 6.26 9.62 8.39 Cal State Northridge Craig Baker 4.82 7.88 3.97 Davidson Matt Meade 3.69 6.52 8.39
One of these days (somebody write this down) I need to look at which is a better predictor of ERA, the previous year's DERA or ERA. The problem with using DERA as a predictor for the next year is that, in a lot of cases, you're still pitching in front of the same bad defense that killed you last year. Anyway, Baker is the type of case you do these analyses for, Bellon probably counts as a small win (Neufeld didn't really pitch enough in 2006 to count), and the rest are mixed or bad. Most of the guys on last year's list actually had such bad results in 2005 that they didn't get to pitch in 2006, unfortunately.
Leader Board
The full reports for starters and relievers are online now; here are the top 25 for each group:
Team Pitcher DERA ERA Navy Mitch Harris 1.99 1.74 Hawaii Steven Wright 2.07 2.30 South Alabama P. J Walters 2.34 3.20 Notre Dame Wade Korpi 2.46 2.00 Army Ben Mayhew 2.51 4.45 Central Florida Tim Bascom 2.55 2.47 Mount St. Mary's Dustin Pease 2.57 3.42 Rhode Island Steve Holmes 2.60 1.30 Cal State Fullerton Wes Roemer 2.60 2.38 St. John's Rob Delaney 2.61 4.01 Monmouth Brad Brach 2.66 2.44 LaSalle Dan Waters 2.67 2.79 Arkansas Shaun Seibert 2.67 2.77 Virginia Sean Doolittle 2.68 2.38 Old Dominion Jason Godin 2.72 4.06 Manhattan Chris Cody 2.75 1.42 Rice Eddie Degerman 2.76 2.00 Binghamton Zach Groh 2.76 1.85 Northeastern Adam Ottavino 2.76 2.98 Sacred Heart Jay Monti 2.79 3.30 Pittsburgh Billy Muldowney 2.80 3.16 Northern Colorado Roy Allen 2.83 4.64 Yale Alec Smith 2.84 4.33 Houston Brad Lincoln 2.87 1.69 Army Cole White 2.88 2.48 Team Pitcher DERA ERA Central Florida Tyler Bunnell 0.50 2.31 South Carolina Chase Tucker 1.27 7.13 Army Milan Dinga 1.38 0.48 Virginia Alex Smith 1.63 2.79 Georgia Joshua Fields 1.99 1.80 Stony Brook Kurt Jung 2.01 1.08 Notre Dame Sam Elam 2.03 2.19 Purdue Chris Toneguzzi 2.04 2.10 Florida State Luke Tucker 2.06 1.06 Yale Matt Fealey 2.11 3.20 Arizona Mark Melancon 2.15 2.97 Brigham Young Joshua Barrett 2.20 2.87 Wright State Joe Smith 2.22 0.98 Texas-Pan American Tim Haines 2.28 2.06 South Florida Chase Lirette 2.28 2.90 Connecticut Ted Garry 2.34 2.10 Rice Cole St. Clair 2.36 1.82 Ball State Kyle Heyne 2.37 2.11 St. Francis Lussier 2.40 4.82 Toledo Steve Wenning 2.43 0.71 Army Dan Pluff 2.44 2.81 Wake Forest Ben Hunter 2.51 1.47 Wichita State Noah Krol 2.52 2.95 Cal State Fullerton Vinnie Pestano 2.54 0.97 Long Beach State Bryan Shaw 2.54 2.25
Again, none of this is competition- or park-adjusted, so make your own mental adjustments there.
Guys to Watch
Here are the guys with the biggest gaps between their ERA and their DERA who should be returning this year -- this is the top ten plus anybody in the top 25 who had a DERA under 5.00:
Team Pitcher DERA ERA Coppin State Alex Hangland 5.76 11.60 Iona Shane Sveda 4.73 9.16 Chicago State C Marshall 5.66 9.95 Albany Nick Murphy 4.07 8.17 New Mexico Jesse Perez 6.66 10.69 Iona Justin Karn 6.96 10.88 Delaware State Dan Perkins 6.72 10.51 Oakland Aaron Hines 5.47 9.14 Pennsylvania Bret Wallace 4.53 7.99 Maryland-Eastern Shore Kevin Hillenburg 6.90 10.09 St. Joseph's Chris Prescott 3.16 6.35 Mount St. Mary's Steve Stone 3.47 6.29 George Mason J. J Pannell 4.81 7.61 Oral Roberts Taylor McIntyre 4.63 7.42 Davidson Brant West 4.99 7.76 Coppin State Dennis Lane 4.83 7.51 Nicholls State Chris Greer 4.10 6.78 Arizona State Ike Davis 4.85 7.42 Memphis P. Utley 3.81 6.30
Now, bear in mind that I'm not predicting that any of these guys are going to go under 2.00 in ERA this year. What I'm saying is that, if you're coaching them and trying to figure out their place this year in your plans, you might want to factor in a bit of bad luck or bad defense that they had last year into your thinking. If that still only gets you to an ERA of 7, you can pull the plug, but 4.50 is worth quite a bit these days. There seem to be a lot more of those "DERA of 4, ERA of 7" guys this year.
A Few Concessions
As I mentioned, I've been negotiating to provide some exclusive data services to a couple of MLB teams this season rather than the patchwork sales I've done the past couple of years. One contract is signed; the other is close, so I'm comfortable telling you about the impact on the site. For the most part, things will remain the same, but I will need to pull a couple of things to protect the rights that I've sold to these teams. The biggest thing will be that the full CSV files for the hitters' and pitchers' databases will not be updated until after the signing date in August. It will be possible to pull stats for individual players, and the raw leaderboards will be updated, but the full stats file won't be available until then. I also won't be doing the smart stats leaderboard this year, although that didn't get much traffic last year anyway. Finally, I can't talk in here about projections of future professional development for players. I don't think I've ever done that on this site, anyway, though, so you're not losing much there. All told, the impact should be minimal, and I appreciate your understanding.
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