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Mota at bottom

User 362 Oct 05 2007 08:49 AM

The statistic Left On Base Percent is a good indicator of a pitcher's ability. LOB% refers to the percentage of runners that got on base but didn’t score. Good pitchers have a high LOB%. Fangraphs.com contains the LOB% rates for 299 relievers who pitched this past season in the National League. Near the bottom of the list was Guillermo Mota. However, the Mets reliever with the highest LOB% was Joe Smith. Willie Randolph attributed Mota's poor performance to "Buzzard Luck." I think it was more than that. [url=http://metbaseball.blogspot.com/]View the LOB% for all Mets relievers[/url].

seawolf17 Oct 05 2007 08:56 AM

I'm pretty sure Willie meant to say "Because he sucks."

Vic Sage Oct 05 2007 08:56 AM

Hey, MB, how come your website doesn't link to the Cranepool Forum?

Frayed Knot Oct 05 2007 01:39 PM

]The statistic Left On Base Percent is a good indicator of a pitcher's ability I'm not sure this stat tells us a lot other than which pitchers put a lot of guys on base in the first place. Fewer runners-on-base leads to fewer "bunched" hits and therefore fewer runs (ie, a higher pct of them left on). There can be pitchers who put on a lot of runners but somehow dance between the raindrops and keep them from scoring (think B. Bannister in his brief 2006 trial) but there's going to be an element of regression to the mean with those sort of things as the pitcher acquires more innings. Smith, for example, may have prevented his own runners from scoring (although he had a horrible year in letting those he inherited score) but that was most likely due to that initial 17+ inning scoreless streak he started this year with and I bet his 2nd half LOB% was, like his pitching, Ugh-Lee. The definition from 'The Hardball Times': LOB% is the percentage of baserunners allowed that did not score a run. LOB% is used to track pitcher's luck or effectiveness (depending on your point of view). The exact formula is (H+BB+HBP-R)/(H+BB+HBP-(1.4*HR)).