Answers to fantasy baseball questions (and much more) since 1996
Baseball Prospectus | Unfiltered
I link here to mock, though I don’t know (and this post doesn’t help me) how meaningful it is to get a better or worse count at 1-1. It sure seems like it helped the Red Sox against the Angels to go 2-1 (vs 1-2), but we’re talking skimpy samples. Even if this is an amazing discovery, this post does not satisfy. And I suspect it isn’t really an amazing discovery at all.
David Pinto puts together a chart showing the average age for each team’s offense in 2007 based on plate appearances. Interesting to note the Diamondbacks’ youth, since they didn’t exactly overwhelm anyone this year, but even more interesting to see a difference of more than five years from top to bottom. I would have guessed it would have been less, aside from obvious outliers like the Giants.
It would be interesting to see these numbers calculated for a run of years and then compared to a team’s success over those years. Do teams get better as they get older and then crash? Do young teams inevitably get better? Are successful teams getting younger, as this year’s data seem to suggest? Just wondering.
I spent some time yesterday reading accounts of the final play in the Padres-Rockies playoff and talking to friends, trying to reconcile the various strands. For instance, mightn’t Brian Giles’ looping throw been an indication that he didn’t think Holliday would run with no outs? Certainly Holliday shouldn’t have.
David Pinto seems to have done the same thing and his explanation is similar to what I’d worked out.
I believe this story, which is why I’m linking to it. I’m not sure how much it matters, but I feel it does.
My experience with ballplayers is that they feel very privileged, which major league players are, and protected, which they usually are, that all the inhumanity that falls on them erupts in surprising ways.
Surprising because you can’t predict who is going to blow.
Assuming the facts are right, Ethier was an asshole. I know from watching queues of autograph seekers that ballplayers have good reason to be suspicious of every aspect of them.
I’m don’t have a solution. I guess players who can figure out when they’re being exploited and resist it will do better than those who mindlessly conform. But the player who does best of all is the one who presents a solid facade, gives what’s asked, but can recognize a scheme.
In any case, as fans we’d like ballplayers to be real people. My advice, if you want that, is to go watch Cape Cod League games.
Once they get on treadmill, only the most extraordinary are going to show human characteristics. At last admirable ones.
On August 2 I linked to a baseballmusings.com chart showing the Mike Bacsik was the pitcher who threw to contact most this year, and noted the odd spell he seemed to have over Barry Bonds (who was 1-15 against Bacsik in his career at that point–that one hit a homer).
Since then Bacsik threw the pitch which Bonds hit to break the record. What are the odds of that?
 bpr_070807_1.mp3 (audio/mpeg Object)
Mark Silva makes Barry Bonds’ elbow brace, which I guess a writer earlier today claimed gave Bonds a huge advantage when it comes to standing close to the plate (which makes some sense to me) and other physical advantages that Silva emphatically refutes.
That’s interesting, but the reason to listen to this mp3 is because Silva perhaps best knows about the size and definition of the muscles in Bonds’ arm, since he measures them every year. If steroids and other performance enhancing drugs are meant to build muscle mass, where’s the beef?
Excellent work, Will.
I took note of this little chart in part because Mike Bacsik was noted the other day as a guy who had held Barry Bonds to 1-15 in his career (the 1 was a dinger). Looking at the chart I got to thinking about the difference between the two extremes of balls put into play. 27 percent seems like a lot, but when hitters can be expected to hit about .300 on balls in play, it amounts to nine extra hits per 100 batters faced (or roughly about two and a half per game).
That could be a lot. The difference between a 1.2 WHIP and a 1.4 WHIP reflects those 2.5 hits. The issue here, as we so often see, is really baserunners allowed. If you don’t walk many the extra hits you allow pitching to contact aren’t a problem, just as the hits you don’t allow by not pitching to contact don’t help much if you give up a lot of walks.
The other issue is the type of ball put in play. Some pitchers do better than others controlling line drives (which almost always result in a hit). As we accumulate data about all these things we may well get a better idea of what works best, but I suspect that pitchers like Mike Bacsik, who simply get things done, will still find work.
Nothing succeeds like success. (In Bacsik’s case, recently.)
I may well have recommended this site at some point, maybe even recently, but while reading it this morning I was reminded again what a great idea it was to collect all the trade rumors in one place. In part the idea works because Tim is a witty writer who does a nice job laying out the various discussions, chattering and possibilities. As we approach the July 31 trading deadline teams hoping not to be hurt by ML deals, and teams in the first waiver position hoping to be helped can stoke the fires all day (and night) long at this site.
Excellent if rambling post about Chris Carpenter—who I suggest might be back this year in this week’s column, filed mere hours before the bad news surfaced—and Tony La Russa, who has been a bit grumpy.