Fantasy Baseball: Is LIMA A False Prophet?

by faketeams on May 9, 2009 12:41 PM EDT in Baseball

Is the LIMA plan a false prophet?

In his "Hit Rate Observer" column at The Hardball Times, John Burnson provides data that suggests it is.

This is ground-breaking information because LIMA has become the default thinking on how to evaluate pitchers. At draft time, there are very few players who have the high Ks, low walks and low HR rates of the ideal LIMA pitcher who go undrafted.

The issue Mr. Burnson looked at was how those who qualify for LIMA perform in the future. It is not how the did in the past, and the past is what fantasy baseball players use to determine who to draft!

How about this: After these 131 pitchers put up their first LIMA-caliber season, what fraction of subsequent seasons were LIMA-caliber (and in at least 100 IP)?
A: So far, these pitchers have produced 481 subsequent seasons (of any length). Of those seasons, only 35% were LIMA-caliber in 100 IP. Nineteen pitchers were responsible for half of those seasons; collectively, they had a repeat rate of 73%. If you banked on one of the other 112 pitchers, though, your hit rate was just 23%.

Poll

Is the argument against LIMA going to change how you draft pitchers?

Yes

9 votes

No

14 votes

23 votes | Poll has closed

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Comments

Does it change how we draft pitchers?

Okay, assume for a minute that it does. What do we do instead? Are we lost in the wilderness without LIMA?

by Xavier. on May 9, 2009 1:37 PM EDT reply actions

Change

If it is not predictive for an individual player, change has to occur. To what seems the challenge.

BHQ uses BPV in most of their public commentary. It is made-up of groundball , K/9 and BB/9. Whether it is predictive, I don’t know, but GB and HR/9 seem to be closely related and may not offer much.

While the variables of BPV/LIMA stay the same, one can weight them differently until an acceptably high predicitve value is found.

That is a bunch of words that doesn’t answer you question but I hope it is enough smoke to get me elected.

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by faketeams on May 9, 2009 9:29 PM EDT reply actions

LIMA

What needs to be incorporated, and maybe for most already is, is that bullpens and offenses make a lot of diffrences. A strong bullpen can wipe a whole digit away from an ERA. A strong offense can add a half dozen wins.

Besides all that it helps to actually watch the guy pitch. Does his pitches have movement around the plate? How many swings/misses does he throw? Are his bb’sand HR’s allowed a result of falling behind in the count?

by acr on May 10, 2009 2:53 AM EDT reply actions