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Post by vega51 on Jul 14, 2007 19:37:10 GMT -5
King Felix, 3.66 ERA and 1.40 whip Oswalt, 3.91 ERA and 1.41 King Felix pitches in the AL and Oswalt in NL. I remember i said last year that Peavy was better than Oswalt, that i would make that trade in a heartbeat, look at both pitchers this year. I would also make the King Felix trade for Oswalt. What about King Felix and Adam Jones for Oswalt?  ?? |
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Post by jamesa46 on Jul 14, 2007 19:53:22 GMT -5
Oswalt began declining as a starting pitcher last year.
He showed signs of being a legitimate ace in 2005 but never really reached that level as a skilled and constant overpowering starting pitcher. He showed flashes of it but has never done it day in and day out.
Mark this on your calendar. Roy Oswalt's better days are behind him.
He is in a slow decline that is common with most power pitchers, even the great ones and I don't put Oswalt in the same class of "great" pitchers.
Oswalt has been good but has never been great....and truly great pitchers are consistently over-powering and Oswalt never reached that level of dominance.
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Post by vega51 on Jul 14, 2007 19:56:31 GMT -5
I think is time to trade him NOW.
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Post by chandler44 on Jul 14, 2007 20:09:54 GMT -5
Oswalt began declining as a starting pitcher last year. He showed signs of being a legitimate ace in 2005 but never really reached that level as a skilled and constant overpowering starting pitcher. He showed flashes of it but has never done it day in and day out. I disagree. He reached that level in 2002 and has done it every year since. Oswalt is an ace and is one of the top pitchers in all of baseball, even if he is struggling right now. What do you define as great? He's been nothing but great since coming up in 2001. 5 of his 7 seasons so far he's had an ERA+ of 141 or higher. That's very, very good. In the other 2 seasons, his ERA+ was still in the 120ish range. Oswalt has utterly dominated baseball since coming up to Houston. I wouldn't be surprised if he's hiding some sort of injury. His k rates have been dropping, but most alarming is that his walk rate has almost doubled since last year. His HR allowed is the same and batters are only hitting slightly higher off him. The walks and the decreased strikeouts are the key problems. |
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Post by chandler44 on Jul 14, 2007 20:10:47 GMT -5
I think is time to trade him NOW. No way. Even with his numbers on a decline, with his contract he's still a bargain when you look at those contracts signed last offseason. |
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Post by jamesa46 on Jul 14, 2007 20:34:53 GMT -5
Chandler-
Go back and look at his career innings pitched compared to his career total hits and walks allowed. That is the tale of the tape.
Oswalt has always been the type of pitcher that could go out and have such great stuff for one game, two games that he's almost virtually unhittable than put together a string of 2 or 3 games where he struggles to get past the 5th inning with a 100 plus pitches thrown and 5-6 runs allowed.
What do I consider "great" in terms of Astros pitchers? There have been very few great ones - J.R. Richard, Mike Scott. I don't care about career numbers either. "Greatness" is defined by what you do in your best season and Oswalt's best seasons have always shown that he gives up many more hits/walks than innings pitched.
When I use the word "great" to define a pitcher, Tom Seaver or Steve Carlton come to mind or Roger Clemens in his hey-days with the Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays, Bob Gibson. The type of pitcher that dominated the hitters consistently and were what you would call your "stopper"or "ace". He's the guy that you knew would keep your team out of a long losing streak because even when your team was going bad he would go out there on the mound and put the skids to the opposition.
Oswalt has never attained that level of dominance or "greatness".
The term "great" has been watered down like the term "super-star" to include almost any pitcher that puts together a few good or very good seasons like Larry Dierker for instance when looking at a former Astros pitcher. Dierker never attained greatness even though when he came into the league, he had all the tools.
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Post by vega51 on Jul 14, 2007 21:13:26 GMT -5
Oswalt gives way too many hits to be a great pitcher, now, he is a VERY GOOD PITCHER.
I think Peavy and King Felix have the stuff to be GREAT PITCHERS.
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Post by chandler44 on Jul 14, 2007 21:39:27 GMT -5
Oswalt has always been the type of pitcher that could go out and have such great stuff for one game, two games that he's almost virtually unhittable than put together a string of 2 or 3 games where he struggles to get past the 5th inning with a 100 plus pitches thrown and 5-6 runs allowed. Only ONCE in his career, back in May of 2004, has Oswalt allowed 5 er or more in consecutive starts. When it's all said and done, at the end of the season, Oswalt's seasons have been great. He gets roughed up occasionally, as ANY pitcher EVER have, but over the course of the whole season he has continued to rise to top of the league. You don't put up the numbers he has by having several bad outings in a row on a regular basis. James, you said in the first sentence of this post that I should "Go back and look at his career innings pitched compared to his career total hits and walks allowed". Now you're saying that you don't care about career numbers. In EVERY full season that JR Richard pitched, he gave up more hits/walks than innings pitched. In every season except 86 & 88 Mike Scott gave up more hits/walks than innings pitched. Besides his 86-89 stint, Scott was pretty much an average pitcher or worse. Seaver had a very good career, but only twice did he allow fewer hits/walks than innings pitched. Steve Carlton? He did it once. Clemens? Once. Gibson? Once. If we're going to use your measure for greatness, then you can't really say any of those pitchers were great. Oswalt's teams have won the vast majority of the games he has started. When he goes out there, he allows fewer runs than the vast majority of the pitchers in the league. Since 2001, a very small number of pitchers in the league have the numbers he's had. IMO it takes more than one season to define greatness, and seeing as how he's been in the highest echelon of MLB pitchers since his debut, I consider him great. |
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Post by chandler44 on Jul 14, 2007 21:55:29 GMT -5
But, I've been wrong before!  |
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Post by hembo36 on Jul 15, 2007 3:50:45 GMT -5
true....
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Post by astrobuddy on Jul 15, 2007 9:46:39 GMT -5
Chandler.. you are wrong about as often as hembo is right.
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Post by jamesa46 on Jul 15, 2007 10:51:08 GMT -5
Chandler-
That is simply an indictment of the quality of pitching in the league over the last several years. Lay the blame where you will but the quality of pitching has declined due to several factors.
Many of those factors include the lack of scouts and farm clubs unwilling to develop starting pitchers to the high level of quality it once was meaning that most starting pitchers today are nothing more than middle reliever quality pitchers who just happen to be responsible with going out and starting the game.
Starting pitchers aren't expected to ever have the skill, knowledge nor the stamina to pitch 9 innings. Oswalt is a perfect example of this type of pitcher. He regularly has surpassed a pitch count of over 100 pitches by the 5th and 6th inning. Why? Because nobody has taught him to use skill and his brain to pitch - another words develop the skill to pace himself yet still be able to master the ability to stay in control of the batter.
The other factor is expansion has watered down the quality of baseball in general including pitching. Another is the pitcher has had one of his best tools of the trade taken away from him - intimidation. Hit a batter and the umpire tosses the pitcher even if the batter is leaning over the plate and popping outside pitches to the gap in the alleys in the outfield.
Another factor and this is important, is the body armor hitters wear. Look at Bonds for instance. he wears as much body armor as a goalie in the National Hockey League. Biggio was another who wore padding an body armor to protect ever inch of his body facing the pitcher. Hitters are no longer worried about getting knocked off the plate if they crowd the plate.
Also, Umpires have allowed hitters to turn into mealy mouth brats everytime they think the pitcher is throwing at them them because they know that if they can get the umpire to agree with them, they can get the pitcher thrown out of the game.
These are some of the key factors that has effected the quality of pitching in the last several years.
Not all pitchers have fallen into this category. Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens, Pedro Martinez, Curt Schilling just to name a few seem to have been able to rise above the pack but in general - and Oswalt falls into the category - in which the level of "greatness" does not apply to most of the so-called top echelon pitchers today..
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Post by vega51 on Jul 15, 2007 11:02:00 GMT -5
James, agree, today a pitcher has a ''quality"start going 6 inning giving up 3 runs.
That is a 4.50 ERA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Post by chandler44 on Jul 15, 2007 11:27:25 GMT -5
Chandler- That is simply an indictment of the quality of pitching in the league over the last several years. I disagree, it's proof of how good Oswalt has been. You may not want to give him credit for whatever reason, but, as they say, the proof is in the pudding. His record is out there and it's clear to see how great he's been. His numbers do compare with some of those pitchers you listed before. Teams today have MORE scouts and spend more time developing young players in hopes of finding gems than ever before. Finding these young players is a big deal, and they're scouting these guys at younger and younger ages. Pitchers still can and do pitch 9 innings. This is a different game these days. Like it or not, teams have specialized pitching staffs, and most of the time there is NO reason for a pitcher to go 9 innings. Why take the additional risk of injury? If you've got a good lead and you know you have a good pitcher waiting to come in, what valid reason is there to keep your starter out there for the whole game, except to add up another complete game stat or to prove his 'manliness'. I know that guys regularly pitching the whole game back in the 'old days' was the norm, but just because that's the way it used to be, that doesn't mean it's necessarily the better way. I'd rather my pitchers pitching fewer than 300 innings pitched if it means they last 3-4 years longer at the end, instead of retiring well before 40 as used to be the norm back in the 'good ol days'. Oswalt, or any other current starter, not pitching 30 complete games is NOT an indictment of their skill or pitching prowess, rather a reflection of the way the game has changed as far as pitcher usage. If a pitcher is pulled after 7, that doesn't mean they couldn't have lasted longer, that means the team didn't want them to. Using that as proof of the 'deterioration of pitching skill' is just a little off, IMO. So far in 2007, Oswalt has averaged 111 pitches per start and has averaged slightly over 7 innings per start, so it's pretty doubtful that he's regularly been over 100 pitches by the 5th inning. Over his whole career, he's average 15.0 pitches per inning, again, making it very doubtful that he's regularly been over 100 pitches by the 5th inning. He has also been near the top every year in innings pitched, except 2003 when he was hurt. He has consistently been one of the more durable pitchers in the league. He has also been one of the best. |
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