Pitches per Run Vs ERA

I should add that you will likely miss out on the true superstar hitters this way, the Bonds' of the world who combine substantial power with low K rates relative to their power, but you will still end up better off in the long run.

Bum, thanks for relaying Bum Jr.'s experiences.  Same to all the other "vets" out there that post.

 

Was Bum jr. in college before the bbcor bat change?  Do you think the bat change has "reset" college closer to wood bat leagues? 

 

Anyone have a feel for how it is effecting high school?

 

tks all

 

Yes he was/is a GB sinker pitcher, and also was drafted because of his 90's FB, potential and pitches he threw for strikes, 4 seam, 2 seam sinker, CU, slider. And trust me he has no issue getting the girls (what a stupid comment).

 

He did not have a stellar college career either. I could use metal as an excuse but college ball is what it is. He did super in wood bat league as well, he pitches inside and not afraid to do so, therefore less balls leave the park with wood. 

 

And yes the college pitchers these days are very lucky with the new bats.

 

I assumed that this discussion was geared more for HS players. Most HS players do not go on to play in college and most if any ever get drafted.  My opinion is and always will be to use as less pitches as you can to get the job done. 

 

BTW, my son grew up watching Greg Maddux pitch and most likely where he picked up his ground ball tendencies. I won't argue that ground ball guys are NOT the best pitchers, but there is nothing wrong with being one either.  You guys make it seem like someone will never get ahead being one of "those" but the truth is there are lots and lots of guys in pro ball that get hitters out with a GO or a FO, and most have less HR rates as well.

Anyway you guyus carry on about what type of pitcher is best, but don't forget that most pitchers have to get hitters out, and that can be accomplished in more than just one way.  To get to the higher levels in college or professional ball you have to know when to throw the best pitch for the best situation I think that we can all agree upon that.

 

JMO

 

 

As I have said I think that college pitchers today are very lucky compared to when son pitched against metal.

My opinion is that summer college wood bats leagues are not proball.  A very good thing about it is facing the better competition on a more even playing ground, but the truth of the matter is that having success in these leagues does not guarantee a draft pick.

 

Go44 dad, Bum, Jr. pitched against both types of bats as they made the change 1/2 way through his college career.  The lack of a college slider and sinker did hurt in college.  The new bats are better as the exit velocity is lower but the sweet spot is still way larger than with wood.

 

TPM's son is a true power/sinker pitcher.  Those types are VERY successful against wood.  Bum, Jr. doesn't have a sinker but has the advantage of being a LHP, an average MLB fastball, a good to plus curve, plus movement, average change and is working in a cutter now.  He does get good fade and sink on the change, however.

 

These are the pitches he misses bats with.  Setting hitters up.  Not overwhelming velocity.

 

I agree with TPM that summer wood bat leagues are not equivalent to pro ball.  The hitters are just too disciplined to swing at poor pitches.

My comment was TOTALLY tongue in cheek TPM.  A reference to "chicks dig the long ball".

bballma:

This is what I was referring to, not your comment.

Gotcha.

I've never understood the concept of "pitching to contact." If my goal is to get the batter out, why would I want him to hit the ball? It makes no sense.

 

…because I know people will try to debate me on that, here's a quote about the pitcher that's probably best known for "pitching to contact", from an NY Times article...

 

He did not pitch to contact and hates the term, which he finds illogical. (Greg) Maddux said he never wanted the batters to hit the ball, but always knew they might.

I won't debate you on that, JH.  That's what I've been saying this entire thread.  "Pitching to contact" is an anachronism.  Strike out EVERYONE if you can.

 

Without anymore debate, this seems to be the best way to describe pitch to contact.

 

http://www.startribune.com/spo...twins/150112305.html

 

 

 

 

And this is what happens when you build your team and system around the idea that pitching to contact, "a pitcher who is trying to get hitters to put the ball in play, preferably on the ground, within three pitches."

 

http://www.baseball-reference....teams/MIN/2012.shtml

 

League-worst K rate by a margin almost as large as the difference between the 5th and 13th best teams in the league (2012, so 14 teams total).  Thanks to the Astros joining the AL, when the Twins finished 15th last year, the gap between them and 14 was only as big as the gap between 14 (the Astros) and 9, without the similarly terrible 'Stros in the league, it would've been even worse than in 2012.

You didn't mention the other  teams that do and are successful.
And you only read part of the article it seems. You need a good defense to make it work.

In 2013, 6 teams in the AL won 90+ games.  They were 1-5 in K/9, and 12th (and the gap between 12th and 3rd is smaller than between 12th and 15th).  The 12th team was the A's, who led the league in DEff, two SD better than the average, and one better than the 4th place Royals. The r-squared for the correlation between wins and K/9 was .36, without the outlier A's it would have been .46.

 

Oh, and the league GB rate in 2013 was 43.3%, while the A's was 39.3%.  Their best defensive player was RF Josh Reddick, and their 3rd best was CF Coco Crisp (3B Josh Donaldson was 2nd).  Their worst defender was IF Alberto Callaspo, though the worst that played a substantial amount was IF Jed Lowrie, and 2nd worst substantial "contributor" was 1B Brandon Moss.  The As actually got away with a lowish K team that gave up a lot of non-grounders because they had plus OF defense and a park built for it (lots of foul ground, suppresses HR).  It's been suggested in a number of places that building their team to this specific model has been their latest "moneyball" approach.

 

 

And for good measure, the Rangers were 4th in the AL in K/9 and the Cards 5th in the NL last year.  The Rangers were also 4th in 2012, though the Cards were 12th (of 16) in 2012.  That 12th place finish was closer 4th than it was to 16th, though.  The NL outliers aren't as outrageous as the Twins, no doubt in part due to the number of Ks added by pitchers batting in the NL and being spread relatively evenly across all the teams.

jacjacatk- I'm not on the computer right now, but I'd be really interested in an r-squared using K% (K/TBF) rather than K/9. K% has been advocated for to prove Maddux's dominance of late (see Dave Cameron's piece on Wednesday), and I'd like to see if it actually correlates to success more consistently than K/9, like the theory claims.

 

 

2013 AL data only, because that's what I'd already copied into Excel, someone else can do more as all this is just from BBREF.

 

The W to K/TBF r2 is .55

 

Also, since I'd already done it, there's a tiny negative correlation between W and GB/FB ratio.  That correlation completely disappears if you drop the As from the sample, due to them being an enormous outlier.  The As had the lowest GB/FB ration in the league by a margin that's fully half the size of the gap between the #1 and #14 teams.

Beautiful, thanks. I'll look into it more on my own… I expect it to be similar.

 

Love the A's tidbits, as well.

 

PM me if you'd like to discuss further. As I mentioned previously, I'd prefer not to take up bandwidth here discussing matters that don't discuss high school baseball. You and I are on the same page, though.

Nice article TPM. Thanx.

 

J H,

 

Would you mind defining “success”. I’d like to run the numbers for our HS team just out of curiosity, but I don’t know what you see as success. I don’t know if I have the data points necessary to produce a good number, but I’d like to try.

 

Stats, I'd love to help but I'm not really sure what you're asking for. In what realm of the game do you want to define "success"? I don't really know if I can help with the HS level, either. Context is very important.

It's a joke about the chicks TPM any baseball fan should know that.  See how many scouts follow a 86MPH ground ball pitcher.  Pitching to contact in HS doesn't get you drafted.  If the player in question was a 90 plus pitcher in HS I am sure he had a lot of strikeouts.  I believe pitching to contact is misinterpreted.  I know Maddox wants pitchers to not be afraid of contact but prefers a strikeout.  I think thats the difference.

Originally Posted by J H:

Stats, I'd love to help but I'm not really sure what you're asking for. In what realm of the game do you want to define "success"? I don't really know if I can help with the HS level, either. Context is very important.

 

You said you wanted to see if K/TBF correlated to “success” more than K/9 or in the case of HSs K/7. I have 7 years of data for Ks, batters, and IP so its not a problem to get those final numbers. But unless I know how you define “success”, I can’t put them into any kind of context.

 

Is success to you a low ERA, OBA, total runs, earned runs, runners allowed, ….

 

I threw together a simple report to try to illustrate what I’m talking about. It shows all the pitchers for our team since 2007 who have faced at least 138 batters, and its ordered by Ks per 7 innings. The only problem is, how does one go about determining what their “success” was?

 

http://www.infosports.com/scor...mages/kvssuccess.pdf

 

There’s a kid there who went in the 3^rd round out of HS, another still in the minors, one who is playing independent ball, one who’s in D1, a few in NAIA, several who threw in JUCOs, 2 who never threw in college, and 3 who are still playing(2 Srs and a Jr).

OK, I was trying to stay on the sidelines here but can't pass up an opportunity for some insight.

The article TPM attached reflects what I believe to be the prevailing views on pitching to contact at the MLB level but I am certainly not well connected at that level.  And the article does state that the two Series teams subscribe to a pitch-to-contact approach, so, Jac, I don't think we can dismiss it as "yeah but the Twins sucked".  Yet, JH and Bum, who are much more connected to that level, seem to have an opposite view. 

JH -(and another congrats BTW!) can you explain why you think your views are so different than what the article states?

 

I know you made mention of wanting to keep things on track here with HS ball.  I'll provide a connection.  Our HS program philosophy has many of the same principals that the article states and that is part of my reason for looking for more insight.

The thing is, though, the Twins do suck and a lot of has to do with a flawed organizational approach to this topic.  Fwiw, K/BB correlates with team wins even better than K/9 or K/TBF, and the last time the Twins were good they're K/9 numbers were better but still below average, but they were lapping the field in K/BB.  It's not about pitching to contact, it's about throwing strikes, and as a subtext to that missing as many bats as you can within the confines of your pitchers' abilities. GB tendencies of a staff have effectively no correlation with winning, you figure out how to maximize your advantages on that front after you solve strike throwing.

And there's the fact that whether they say they do or not, the last 4 WS participants don't actually pitch to contact, statistically.

Originally Posted by cabbagedad:

…I know you made mention of wanting to keep things on track here with HS ball.  I'll provide a connection.  Our HS program philosophy has many of the same principals that the article states and that is part of my reason for looking for more insight.

 

Ours does as well, and its definitely part of the baseball language and thinking out here in the land of fruits and nuts. Like you, many times through the years I’ve tried to find the insight that allowed me to prove that pitching to contact was the way to go. Unlike most though, I try to do that using real numbers to prove or disprove what people who are supposed to know are trying to say.

 

Here’s a few  examples.

http://www.infosports.com/scor...r/images/contact.pdf

http://www.infosports.com/scor...ages/pitchkinds1.pdf

http://www.infosports.com/scor...ges/pitall2hista.pdf

 

The problem though isn’t showing what happened, as in the batter made contact, but rather how to put those results into some kind of context. Like so many other things in baseball, there are just so many factors to try to take into account, it becomes nearly impossible to prove one way or the other.

 

In the end, our HC sets the pitchers’ goal at getting rid of batters in 4 pitches or less. As you can see, our pitchers managed to do that last season, as did most other pitchers. But what’s “funny” is, the better teams tended to have the higher pitches per batter! There’s a good reason for that, but my point is, its really difficult to do these kinds of things in such a way as to come up with an answer that’s generally sound.

That first file contains a metric "cost of result", that implies that Ks are worse than BBs, and hits allowed are better than both.  I'm not sure what you're trying to measure there, but if that implication is correct, you're doing something horribly wrong or pointless, or both.

 

The last file has some useful data in it, including a list of pitchers whose RA are inversely correlated with their K/BF with an r2 .51. That is, they give up fewer runs the more guys they strike out.  Their pitches/BF are also inversely correlated with RA, though the r2 is only .13.  That is, the more pitches they throw, the fewer runs they give up.

 

So, yes, striking out guys takes more pitches (though none over the target 4/BF mentioned above), but it also makes for better results. Would be interested to see the BF/inning, since at the rates listed here, it's not necessarily the case that the better pitchers by RA are actually throwing more pitches/game (if pitches/game is in there somewhere and I missed it, I apologize).

Also, just for fun, on the 2013 Twins ERA is negatively correlated with K/PA with an r2 of .43.  That is, even for the pitch to contact Twins, the better you are at striking guys out the lower your ERA is.

Stats- In the example jacjacatk provided, I defined success by team wins. There was a direct correlation between K% and winning percentage. For individual pitchers, I would say some sort of combination of ERA and FIP would be a solid measure of success in this particular scenario. There are proprietary metrics that I am aware of but unfortunately, those can't be applied here.

 

cabbagedad- My feeling towards "pitching to contact" really has nothing to do with scouting, to be honest with you (thanks!). To me, it's a pretty simple economic formula. The goal of the pitcher is to get the batter out. The best way to ensure the batter is out is by strikeout. The best way to reach a strikeout is by throwing quality strikes in areas that the batter has difficulty hitting the pitch. "Pitching to contact" implies an attempt to avoid making an optimum pitch and, as a result, maximizing the opportunity to induce the weakest possible offensive result. I understand the concept behind pitching to contact, I've just never understood why it would be considered the optimal way to go about achieving success. I indirectly touched upon this in my Master's thesis, which detailed the successes a pitcher has when facing a batter less times (Ie: less innings per outing). The single biggest jump in statistical results stemming from my study (which yielded data from 1992-2012) was K%, which, as noted above, correlates with a better pitching performance.

 

In the same light, there is absolutely no such thing as a waste pitch. Every pitch thrown has a purpose. And if executed properly, a pitcher's goal should be to minimize the batter's chances to hit the ball with authority. The best way to do that is to strike the batter out.

 

Thanks JH, well stated.

 

I agree that the goal of P is to get the batter out and the best way to ensure that is by K.  I don’t doubt that a higher K ratio would result in better pitching performance.  And I really like your statement “Every pitch thrown has a purpose. And if executed properly, a pitcher's goal should be to minimize the batter's chances to hit the ball with authority.”

 

Here is where I have a somewhat different take...

In most competitive environments, most athletes will be “competitive” with one another (roughly similar ability levels).  Certainly, you have a small percentage of outliers.  Those pitchers that are dominant or have exceptional stuff will likely be able to strike out a relatively high percentage of hitters.  And those pitchers should try to do so.  But most don't fall into that category.  Going on the assumption that both hitters and pitchers belong at the level they are playing, most hitters will be able to at least make contact with most pitchers for the majority of their AB’s. 

It is my observation that when typical competitive pitchers  strive for more K’s, they are more likely to miss spots and become less effective at “minimizing the batter’s chances to hit the ball with authority”.  This is not to say that P’s shouldn’t constantly try to improve their stuff so they can achieve higher K rate but remember, the hitters are making similar efforts to improve their abilities as well.

 

Certainly, there are game situations and matchups where a K is even more desirable or attainable and that should be the objective.   But I think strong consideration should be given in regards to how a specific pitcher may be most economically effective against a specific offense.  I don’t believe trying for K’s is always the best solution.

 

If our P’s can keep the ball down, mix pitches, work ahead and generally stay away from the hitters’ strengths, we get some K’s, lots of weakly hit balls in play and a high rate of success. 

cabbagedad- I think you're misinterpreting my definition of attempting to strike people out. I would never recommend to any pitcher that they attempt to change their pitching style/repertoire in an attempt to become a pitcher that they are not. I never threw hard for the level at which I was playing, and I never attempted to pitch outside the means of my own physical capabilities. However, my approach as a pitcher was broken down pitch-by-pitch. Every single pitch I threw was thrown with the intent to ensure that the batter had the least possible ability to make contact. Whether that was a fastball on the inside corner, a change up off the plate away, etc., depended on the scenario. I interpret "pitching to contact" as not making the best possible pitch in a particular situation. If a pitcher is overthrowing (or doing something else that is causing a mechanical inconsistency or an inconsistency in command), then I believe that is an entirely different scenario. When I say to strike to strike batters out, I do not think that there is a set formula by which to accomplish this. Each pitcher should be able to be successful within the means of his own capabilities and strive for optimizing each individual pitch he throws, at all times. Of course, we all know that is impossible because no one is perfect. But attempting to do so would certainly improve the chances of doing so, versus attempting to pitch in an area that allows the batter to potentially square up the ball in a greater percentage of the time.

 

I think you and I are closer to being on the same page than it seems. It's largely just semantics, after all.

 

Originally Posted by J H:

Stats- In the example jacjacatk provided, I defined success by team wins. There was a direct correlation between K% and winning percentage. For individual pitchers, I would say some sort of combination of ERA and FIP would be a solid measure of success in this particular scenario. There are proprietary metrics that I am aware of but unfortunately, those can't be applied here.

 

I’m sorry but you’ll have to point me to whatever example you’re talking about. From what you’re saying I get the impression your definition of success changes depending on what’s being looked at. I’m not taking a shot by saying that, but rather noting that that’s something I’ve said for many many years.

 

I sure wish it were possible to use FIP at any level below the pros, but I’m not aware of any. What I’ve often done to take the fielding out of it is to use TRA instead of ERA. Its not as accurate perhaps, but it simple and anyone can do it. Here’s an example.

 

http://www.infosports.com/scor...r/images/gbofbo1.pdf

 

The reason I do things like that, i.e. not exactly the way Sabers do them, is 1) because I don’t have any way to generate the “league” items necessary for the computations, and 2) because the folks I deal with are very seldom comfortable with all the buzzwords, slang, and formulae. Most parents can understand ER vs TR though.

 

There’s something about ERA though at the lower levels such as HSV I just don’t trust to let it carry much weight as a metric that can be used to compare the quality of pitchers, even on the same team. I’ve found that the following metric, Pitcher Mistakes, is just about as good as anything for showing anyone who looks, who the “best” pitcher on the list is.

 

http://www.infosports.com/scor...images/whipplus1.pdf

 

As you can see, I sorted by Innings per Mistake, and that’s something most people can understand, even though it may not coincide with W/L record or ERA. What’s tough to do is come up with things the average “Joe” or “Jane” can look at and make sense out of. This is one of them.

 

…I understand the concept behind pitching to contact, I've just never understood why it would be considered the optimal way to go about achieving success.

 

I think it depends entirely on your perspective and definition of “success”. If you measure everything by the very best at striking out hitters, you’re not talking about very many pitchers out of the pool. If you’re looking at current success, sooner or later you have to deal with pitchers who aren’t gonna strike out 2+ batters per inning because they’re very rare.

 

Its fine if your perspective is trying to assess who might succeed at the next level, but for trying to figure out how to have a team succeed at the current level, slightly below, above and “average” pitchers have to also be considered. When looking at things that way, it is pretty much the “optimal” way to succeed because it happens much more often than other ways.

 

I indirectly touched upon this in my Master's thesis, which detailed the successes a pitcher has when facing a batter less times (Ie: less innings per outing). The single biggest jump in statistical results stemming from my study (which yielded data from 1992-2012) was K%, which, as noted above, correlates with a better pitching performance.

 

By “better pitching performance” I assume you mean winning the game. From the above, it looks as though you concentrate on starting pitchers.

 

In the same light, there is absolutely no such thing as a waste pitch. Every pitch thrown has a purpose. And if executed properly, a pitcher's goal should be to minimize the batter's chances to hit the ball with authority. The best way to do that is to strike the batter out.

 

I sure wish more people understood that. All a “waste” pitch really is, is a pitch that’s going to be called a ball if the batter doesn’t swing. The hope is to “trick” the batter into swinging at a pitch that has the lowest possible chance of being hit with authority. Unfortunately, many don’t understand that a “waste” pitch from one pitcher many not necessarily be one for another because of pitching styles, skills, and trends.

 

BTW, conrats on your new job. I know you're in limbo as far as what its gonna take as far as your time will go, but as of right now do you plan on trying to be a frequent poster either here or on some other site?

Let's keep this simple.

 

You do not get a K unless you already have gotten two strikes.  As article linked by TPM suggests, MLB hitters make contact 80% of the time.  This does not mean they will put the ball into play, just make contact. 

 

A "contact pitcher" who allows the ball to be put into play for the out will rarely get into a two-strike situation.  In fact, per the article, the idea for them is to get the out within three pitches.  Not too many two-strike situations.

 

The K pitcher attempts to get two strikes and to get ahead.  A pop up, a foul ball, and you've got two strikes. 

 

Now tell me.  It's 0-2 or 1-2.  The K pitcher does not have to throw a strike or even come close to allowing the ball to be put into play.  Will he throw a "contact" pitch?  Heck no, it will be fastball up, down, in, out, curve, slider, fork, split or cutter or whatever.  The batter is totally on the defensive so that "80% MLB contact rate" now plunges to well below 50% I'm guessing.

 

Got it?  The K pitcher puts himself into a two-strike situation.  This is not usually done by blowing it past someone, just pitching to where the ball is not put into play. 

 

I just don't get the logic some advance that says it's better to allow the ball to be put into play.  Bad things happen when the ball is put into play.  In fact, "contact pitches" down into the zone have a tendency to be line drives and line drives are far more likely to be base hits.

 

Look at the batting averages against for high K pitchers.  Far less than "contact" pitchers. 

Stats- I think success can certainly be defined differently in the context of a situation. The scenario I mentioned with jacjacatk was the discussion we had about the correlation between K% and team wins. The ultimate measure of success, I think everyone would agree, is team wins. But when analyzing specific individual performances within the context of the variables involved, the definition changes.

 

FIP is quite easy to calculate, and the "league average" multiplier technically only serves the purpose of making the number easier to analyze because it's neutralized to mimic ERA. I realize you'd have difficulty finding that variable, but perhaps it could be tinkered with enough that you can find consistency. At the big league level, FIP is a more accurate predictive measure than ERA.

 

I'd urge you to re-read my explanation for "pitching to contact." It's quite the contrary to what you're alluding to. I'm also not entirely sure what you mean by assuming I mean winning the game. The study I did involved analyzing how to optimize a major league pitching rotation, and I found that relievers pitched overwhelmingly better than starters, and got hurt less, over the time period of 1992-2012. I wasn't aiming to isolate any subset of pitchers, but highlight the optimization in general. Mitchel Lichtman has since expanded upon my theory, isolating specific pitchers according to what role would fit them using a retrospective analysis on how a pitcher with a similar arsenal (according to PITCH F/x data, I presume, although I don't believe he ever defined that) performs.

 

I'll definitely stick around here and contribute where I can. I obviously will not be able to share any information from within the organization, but being a full-time scout doesn't completely make me a mime when I put the radar gun down. 

Bum,

I agree with you and I do believe I said somewhere that the pitch calls for the situation.  I do not expect if a p has 2 strikes to let the hitter hit the ball. 

 

Has Bum Jr ever thrown a ball that was hit and produced weak contact? Isn't that pitching to contact?

I haven't tried running the numbers on HS or pre-HS stats, but at the MLB and pro-level, pitchers don't really have that much control over the results of what happens on BIP (non-HR, fairly hit balls).

 

Pitchers do have GB/FB tendencies that reflect a level of skill/talent, and GB pitchers do tend to do better for the same rates of BIP because GB are less damaging than line drives or fly balls (the latter because that's where most HR come from).  The reason K pitchers do better on opponent average is that striking guys out reduces BIP and BABIP is fairly constant league-wide, so fewer BIP leads to a lower opponent batting line with all else equal (since the Ks will almost always be outs).

 

Stats probably has sufficient HS data to test whether this BIP/K relationship is similar at the HS level, though he probably won't be that interested in checking it since, to him, nothing at the MLB level is applicable at the HS level.  If I had to guess, I'd expect that the relationship is largely similar, but that the HS BABIP will be higher due to poorer defenses in general getting to fewer balls. There might also be (maybe even probably should be) pitchers whose stuff is enough better than the average hitter that they actually have consistently lower BABIP allowed than the league-wide averages.  I mean it's probably possible for an 18 year old version of Derek Lowe or Jamie Moyer to actually control results on contact in ways that they can't vs a team full of pros, though it certainly could also be the case that that would just manifest itself as a bunch more strike outs for those guys, and normal BABIP rates for the guys who actually make contact.

At least at the pro level, the result of what happens once contact has been made is driven by the batters' ability and the GB/FB tendencies of the pitcher.  Pitchers don't induce weak contact, weak contact occurs at a rate dependent on the hitter's skills and how often the pitcher allows contact at all (controlling for an individual pitcher's tendency to give up ground balls vs fly balls).

 

As an example, Greg Maddux's BABIP for his career was .286.  Paul Byrd, who was a teammate and whose career overlapped much of Maddux's, was .288.  Greg Maddux is a HOFer and Paul Byrd isn't, not because Maddux was better at inducing weak contact, but because Byrd allowed 1.3 HR/9 (because he was a non-power flyball pitcher), BB 2.1/9 and only K 4.9/9 while Maddux was at .6 HR/9 (largely on the basis of being a significant GB pitcher), 1.8 BB/9 and 6.1 K/9.

 

I guess if you want to count being a groundball pitcher as inherently producing weak contact since GB are far less likely to turn into XBH, you could define it that way, but I think that's a different way of defining weak contact than the pitching to contact philosophy we've been discussing really assumes.

Are you now the spokes person for Bum?  I think I directed my question to him.

 

Stats can be annoying, he often throws stats around making others feel inferior,  you have out done him, so IMO, I don't blame him for putting you on ignore. 

 

You even found a way to put down the article I posted.