Quote:
Originally Posted by captaincoop17
Cole Hamels is left, Jon Lester is right
Hamels has better ERA, OAVG, WHIP, ERA+, BB/9, K/9, K/BB and WAR, so yes Hamels is the better pitcher, easily.
PECOTA may be a very good system, but it has Hamels wrong.
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If you want to debate which pitcher has had the better career, I'll agree with you and pick Hamels. But that's not what the ratings in the roster set are meant to reflect.
If instead we're discussing who will have a better season next year, I think it's probably a coinflip. Lester was better last year, Hamels was better before then. PECOTA will have looked at all pitchers with similar career trajectories to Hamels and to Lester, and will have used that as a basis for projecting each into the future. On that basis, the system must think they'll be comparable next year.
What I was objecting to most was your phrasing - you said Hamels was "vastly underrated", and as evidence compared his ratings to Lester's, which are similar. You can argue that Hamels will be better next year, and you may turn out to be right; I won't participate in that argument any more than I have already. But I don't think, when you look at 2014 numbers, it's tenable to argue that Hamels is clearly immensely superior to Lester. If you think the recent past is the best predictor of the future, they're really not very different.