Looper Deal is Official

One year, $4.75 million

I like it, because depth...is good. Seriously, though, while we don't have superstars, I think the rotation is pretty solid now. It's easy to feel down on the team because we lost Sabathia and Sheets and haven't really replaced them, but I think an important thing to keep in mind is that we wouldn't have needed Sabathia so much last year if the team's offense hadn't completely fallen off the face of the Earth in September. Here's a chart of the runs/game each month that I think illustrates that well:



As you can see, I also added in a line for the Simple Runs Created (SRC) per game, which is the runs we should have scored based on the team OBP, SLG, and at-bats. (It's calculated as OBPxSLGxAB. As an aside, looking at that formula is a useful way to see why OBP is more important than SLG; while an increase in SLG only increases its own variable, an increase in OBP increases both itself and AB, because a team with a higher OBP isn't getting itself out as easily, and so is stepping up to the plate more). While it's already obvious that September was just terrible offensively for the Crew, the SRC/G line emphasizes the fact that, while the team did not score many more runs per game in May than they did in September, this was more a consequence of bad luck; based on how they were hitting, they should've scored something more like 4.6 runs per game, instead of 3.9. However, September was not a case of bad luck; clearly, the team just totally stopped hitting.

There are some explanations for this: Ryan Braun, while he was still in the lineup, was battling a back injury that clearly hampered his effectiveness, and Corey Hart, for some reason, just ceased to exist as offensive force. Also, Gabe Kapler was unable to play because of a shoulder injury; while Gabe wasn't a regular player, I do feel that if he had been available to sub for Hart a few times, that may have helped Hart break out of his slump (but that's just conjecture on my part). Anyway, clearly this was a freak occurrence, and it's unlikely that next year the team will suffer another September slump.

My point, then, is that if the team had continued to score runs at the same rate they had beforehand (4.8 runs/game), they would've scored an additional 31 runs, which is 31 runs that the pitching staff could've allowed. Spread out over 162 games, that's 0.2 runs. So, if the offense can avoid another bizarre teamwide slump, the pitching stuff can have an ERA 0.2 runs worse and still get the same results, which doesn't sound too bad.

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Notes: Just some random stuff I noticed when I was doing up the numbers that I wanted to share:

-September was the only month in which the Crew scored fewer than 100 runs, scoring 94. However, August was the only month in which they allowed fewer than 100 runs, allowing only 72. That's 2.67 runs per game. We all remember how dominant Sabathia and Sheets were, but damn, that's just incredible to see it in cold print like that.

-August was also the Brewers' best run-scoring month, as they scored 151 runs. Again, just to reflect on this, they scored more than twice as many runs as they allowed. However, based on Simple Runs Created, July was actually their best offensive month; they should've scored 150 runs instead of the 138 that they did, and in August they should've scored 145 runs. The better number for July was fueled entirely by a .032 point increase in SLG, as they actually had a slightly lower OBP and 9 fewer at-bats.