My point, instead, is to note that Aaron should have given that more acknowledgement than just a few words in passing. Given his point — that the Twins need to change their pitching philosophy and find more pitchers who miss bats — is right on target, to the point that the TWINS CHANGED THEIR DRAFTING PHILOSOPHY ALREADY. He’s LATE. That’s my point.

It would be interesting to see a correllation of K/9 to next year’s ERA. Although, I would expect current year’s ERA to correllate much more with the following year’s ERA than this year’s K/9 with the following year’s ERA. An even better study would be to group single season’s into ERA buckets, say 2.5-2.75, 2.75-3, 3-3.25, etc. Then, further subdivide each ERA bucket into low, medium, and high K/9 groups. Then see if and how much the following year’s ERA was lower for the higher K/9 group within each ERA bucket.

I’m not going to take the time to do the study outlined above, but I’d be really interested in the results if anyone ever did!

I’m no fan of the team’s pitching performance, and its reliance on pitch-to-contact guys in recent years has been maddening. But you’ve completely blown off that 2012 draft, which was notable for the team’s heavy emphasis on hard throwers — something I haven’t seen from the Twins in a long time. You’re about six months too late on this one.

While the correlations are small, I did find some correlations with the following stats paired with strikeouts.

ERA vs. K/9: -.36 (More strikeouts = smaller ERA)
K/9 vs. IP: .36 (High K/9 = More innings pitched)
Pitches/Start vs. K/9: .51 (More strikeouts = more pitches per start)
IP/Start vs. K/9: .24 (More strikeouts = more innings pitched per start)
Pitches/IP vs. K/9: .24 (More strikeouts = more pitches per inning pitched)

Again, the correlations are pretty small, but strikeout pitchers have a slightly better chance at success than non-strikeout pitchers.

A small-sample size version is to compare the best pitchers in ERA versus the worst in ERA. You’ll see more pitch-to-contact guys in the 5s for ERA, while more strikeout pitchers appear in the low 3s and high 2s.

Please believe me when I say this: I’m not trying to be a wise-ass, but… From where does the assumption that strike-out pitchers are good pitchers come from? It seems to dominate sabrmetric thinking, yet I’ve never seen anybody (clearly) lay out that high strike-out rates = good pitcher. Do they correlate with WAR?

For that matter, I’d like to see someone lay out how OPS correlates with WAR.

Because you write so clearly, I feel like you could really help people understand this stuff.

I think Liriano could be had cheaply because he isn’t a very good pitcher. I thought Don Cooper was going to fix him in Chicago, and that hasn’t happened, at least not yet. It doesn’t do any good to have a pitcher who is sometimes brilliant if he is also sometimes awful. You have to measure the overall package, and in Lirano’s case, its not very good.