What’s The Difference Between Chad Billingsley And Cole Hamels?

After Chad Billingsley’s mediocre outing a couple days ago, I suppose it was to be expected that the local media would continue to press for a trade, especially if it netted Roy Halladay.

The Blue Jays also said they would take fewer players if Clayton Kershaw or Chad Billingsley were one of them. The Dodgers said no to that too.

No to Kershaw? Of course.

No to Billingsley? There has been discussion within the organization about whether to reconsider that stance, although the Dodgers are not expected to do so.

So the same people who wanted to trade Clayton Kershaw last year have now deemed him untouchable. They are a fickle bunch.

But putting the media’s revised opinion of Kershaw’s value aside, all the trade talk got me thinking about a certain lefty who seems to share a very similar resume with Billingsley: Cole Hamels.

Don’t think their value is equal? Why not?

Dodger fans and media alike have been willing to throw Billingsley’s name into trade discussions as if he were some expendable piece, but you never hear Hamels’ name being mentioned in trade talks, and both the Dodgers and the Phillies were pursuing the same players.

So despite the obvious disparity in their perceived value, the similarities between the two pitchers are plentiful. They both came up in 2006, they were both highly touted prospects, and both of them have experienced a great deal of success early in their major league careers. Both Hamels and Billingsley have also had a declining ERA and FIP from the time of their debut until this year, where they’ve both hit a bit of a rough patch.

Chad Billingsley

ERA/FIP

2006=3.80/4.88
2007=3.31/4.02
2008=3.14/3.35
2009=3.96/3.57

Cole Hamels

ERA/FIP

2006=4.08/3.98
2007=3.39/3.83
2008=3.09/3.72
2009=4.42/3.81

Billingsley’s career ERA is 3.48 and his career FIP is 3.81. He has thrown 576 1/3 innings in 90 starts and 28 relief appearances.

Hamels’ career ERA is 3.61 and his career FIP is 3.82. He has thrown 661 innings in 104 starts and zero relief appearances.

Again, the commonalities between the two pitchers is obvious, yet one of them is thought of as expendable, and the other isn’t even asked about in negotiations because everybody knows he’s untouchable.

I still don’t quite understand why though.

I suppose the main reason for the disparity in perception between the two pitchers lies in their respective postseason performance in 2008.

Hamels went 4-0 with a 1.80 ERA in 5 starts for the Phillies, and his team ended up winning the World Series. Billingsley went 1-2 with a 8.49 ERA in three starts for the Dodgers, and his team lost in the NLCS.

It’s obvious that Hamels was better than Billingsley in the postseason last year, but are we really so foolish as to presume that one pitcher is better than the other based on a combined 11 career playoff appearances? I would hope not, but that’s the only reasonable explanation for the difference in value and status between the two players.

Unfortunately for Billingsley, he seems to be the only pitcher who gets so severely punished for a poor playoff showing. After all, if all it took was a few crappy postseason starts to unravel the value of a great starter, then why is somebody like C.C. Sabathia getting a gargantuan contract? Sabathia is the proud owner of a 7.92 ERA in five postseason starts, but where’s the criticism and devaluation of him? I guess people forgot, right?

Furthermore, if the logic is that postseason performances creates a player’s value, then why are pitchers like Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay so sought after in the first place? They have a grand total of 0 postseason starts between them, yet they have already been crowned by the media as pitchers who will lead their team to the promised land. If they get shelled in their first shot at the playoffs, will they be punished like Billingsley? Somehow I doubt it.

So what’s the difference between Billingsley and Hamels?

For all the reasons i’ve listed above, there really isn’t any difference at all. Yet, they are thought of very differently, and that continues to puzzle me.

If two players have similar regular season performances, scouts have similar projected ceilings for them, and the only factor that separates the two is some foolishness stemming from a small sample size and faulty logic, then what’s really at fault for the disparity in value?

In my opinion, the answer’s really simple: stupidity.

Defending Joe Torre

Whether people want to admit it or not, winning at baseball is always about playing the odds. Statistics and numbers have always had a huge place in baseball, and even people back in the day recognized that it was a game based highly on probability and chance.

The ignorant can whine all they want about nerdy sabermetricians, but those nerds are just doing the same things people did a century ago, except now we have more information to work with.

This leads me into some points about today’s game, and two of Joe Torre’s decisions in particular: Pinch hitting Rafael Furcal for Juan Castro and not bunting with Russell Martin.

With Juan Castro, you have a player who has been a terrible hitter in his career, but he also has a .831 OPS this year and he was 2-for-3 in the game already. On the flip side, Rafael Furcal has been scuffling all year long. He has an OPS of .600, and with a .534 OPS in the last seven days, it’s not like he has been showing any signs of life. If that’s the case, why do you throw in the struggling player in the bottom of the ninth inning to face Brad Lidge?

Torre’s move worked out great, but it made very little sense at the time. Remember, it’s not always about second guessing things that didn’t work, it’s also about questioning the logic behind events that did work.

Why? Because in the long run, constantly doing illogical things that use the wrong process will prove costly.

What would Castro have done in that situation? Nobody knows—probably grounded out or something, but the point is that he stood a better chance at the plate in that moment than Furcal did.

Now, in a shocking turn of events, I’m actually going to defend Torre’s decision making for once, as I believe that fans should not be asking questions about why Torre didn’t force Martin into bunting with nobody out in the bottom of the 10th inning with runners on first and second base.

When we look at the big picture (statistical probability), if there ever were a situation to bunt, this was it. Expected runs with nobody out and runners on first and second is about 1.548. Expected runs with one out and runners on second and third is about 1.542. If you’re just trying to get a singular run though, you’d take the latter scenario over the former, so it seems like bunting is the correct move here, right?

Well, the problem is that those numbers assume there is a 100 percent probability that Martin can actually lay down the bunt. This is something that is frequently lost on television announcers when they rant and rave about how awesome bunting is. Remember, Martin has only one sacrifice bunt in his major league career, and he didn’t look so great on that attempt he made.

Even given those considerations, let’s say Martin does get the bunt down. Now, the announcers calling the game mentioned that Loney’s fly ball would have brought home a run. Well, that would be true, except it wouldn’t have happened that way because the Phillies would have walked the bases loaded to bring the double play and force out into effect.

Then Matt Kemp would have gotten jobbed on bad calls again by that terrible umpire, and it would be all up to Mark Loretta to get a hit or walk to win the game. Sorry, but I’ll pass on bunting, because I’d rather take my chances with Martin, Loney, and Kemp getting a base hit with a speedy Hudson on second base. I’m sure Torre didn’t think about the situation in such a logical manner as I just described (since he hates numbers), but the decision itself was completely fine by me.

The two situations represented opposite real life outcomes for the Dodgers. One worked gloriously, and the other left fans wondering what could have been. However, in actuality, the decision that ended up working out positively used an incorrect process, and the decision that failed used a correct process.

So remember, decisions shouldn’t be made in simple black and white, because when you’re looking at the big picture, the process is far more important than the conclusion.