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The Hall Feels The Need For Speed

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Baseball Crank

A nice trend chart from the Baseball Crank shows that the longer you stay on the ballot the more writers support you for the Hall, though I can’t think of a good reason why that should be. I don’t take the Hall seriously enough to worry about the borderline cases. They make it or they don’t, and that’s fine.

I do find it hard to see why Tim Raines or Mark McGwire look like they should be in, if only there wasn’t the cocaine and the steroids. Based on the numbers both were very good ballplayers who were at best borderline when it comes to induction numbers. Given their questionable pasts the voters’ reluctance to enshrine them doesn’t seem that crazy.

Web based PITCHf/x tool

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The Hardball Times

Josh Kalk has taken the first big step toward taming the PITCHf/x data that MLB collects and allows researchers access to. MLB’s freeness with the data promises to be a boon for sabermetrics and Kalk’s database front end, which allows you to compare how pitchers throw to different hitters and vice versa, with results displayed graphically is an inspiring beginning.

Kalk is talking about having splits ready by Christmas, and non-graphical data sometime soon, too.

I don’t have time right now to sift through all of this, but it’s potential importance makes me give thanks.

Thanks, Josh. Keep up the good work.

Young Hitters

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Baseball Musings

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.

Bacsik in Play

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Baseball Musings

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.)

Translated Home Run Numbers Good Til the Last Drop

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Baseball Prospectus

Clay Davenport and Will Carroll put together translated season-by-season home run stats for all of modern baseball history and demonstrate that Babe Ruth really was the greatest. There is a nice twist, however, one that seems very satisfying at first, but the explanation about how it came about makes me want to learn more about the project before throwing all my support behind it.

But even if you shouldn’t say this stands as decisive evidence, it sure feels right.

Scoresheet Baseball Bests and Worsts

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I met Jeff Barton, who invented and runs Scoresheet Baseball with his brother, out in Arizona last November at Ron Shandler’s shindig at the AFL. Jeff invited some of us to play in a Scoresheet league this year. Over the years the most vocal proponents of a fantasy game that is not Rotisserie have certainly been Scoresheet players, who love the game for the way it reflects the shape of real baseball games and the shape of the real baseball season.  So I said yes.

I’m a newbie, my team isn’t so hot and, to be honest, I don’t have the time to soak up all the information I need to help me play this game better. But I can see the appeal. Each week you get actual box scores from simulated games based on the preceding week’s actual stats. It’s a deft mixture of roto and sim baseball played nearly in real time, and it only hurts when your Johan Santana is edged by Brian Bannister. But such things do happen.

I bring all this up because in this week’s Scoresheet newsletter Jeff lists the players who turn up most on winning and losing teams. This is a great way to measure a player’s actual impact on the standings. As you can see, the differences aren’t huge. Jermaine Dye is a disappointment, but he can’t single-handedly wreck teams. Perhaps you’ll find some names here that will help explain your season thus far:

(And don’t forget to check out Scoresheet Baseball.)

This week we’ve printed a short list of ‘Scoresheet All-Stars’
and ‘Scoresheet All-Worsts’. We took all of the players in the
majors, and totaled the won-loss records for all of the teams that
they are on in Scoresheet, then divided by the number of teams they
play on to come up with their ‘average Scoresheet won-loss record.’
Most pennant races are decided by just a couple of games, so if a
single player makes the difference in 3 or 4 games that is a big deal.

This list is not just an order of the players who are having the
best (and worst) seasons, but more shows players who are playing
much better or worse than what they ‘cost’ (how high the draft pick
used to get them, or what they cost in trade).
*Note A guy like Matt Albers (who probably was not even picked
in many pre-season drafts) may show on a league’s ‘Worst’ list
because he was not picked until the mid-season supplemental draft
in many leagues. Those drafts go in the reverse order of won-loss
records, and since Buchholz was a top supplemental pick in many
leagues, Buchholz did end up getting picked by a lot of teams that
already had a losing record when they got him.

Have a great week! – Jeff Barton

AL Bests
4468-3596, 35-28 Danny Haren
4347-3717, 34-29 John Lackey
4345-3718, 34-29 Alex Rodriguez
4340-3723, 34-29 Kelvim Escobar
4339-3724, 34-29 Carlos Guillen
4334-3730, 34-29 Grady Sizemore
4332-3730, 34-29 Victor Martinez
4312-3751, 34-29 J.J. Putz
4310-3753, 34-29 James Shields
4293-3769, 34-29 Johan Santana
4289-3775, 34-29 Pat Neshek
4287-3776, 33-30 Alexis Rios
4255-3746, 34-29 Magglio Ordonez
4190-3685, 34-29 Matt Guerrier
4266-3798, 33-30 Joe Nathan
4263-3800, 33-30 Justin Verlander
4230-3771, 33-30 Hideki Okajima
4252-3811, 33-30 C.C. Sabathia
3084-2649, 34-29 C.J. Wilson

AL Worsts
3687-4375, 29-34 Joe Crede
3798-4265, 30-33 Brandon McCarthy
3790-4211, 30-33 Jake Westbrook
3832-4231, 30-33 Jermaine Dye
3838-4226, 30-33 Vicente Padilla
3209-3595, 30-33 Doug Mientkiewicz
3842-4221, 30-33 Jorge Cantu
3593-3967, 30-33 Casey Fossum
3789-4147, 30-33 Sammy Sosa
3853-4210, 30-33 Chone Figgins
3821-4178, 30-33 Jason Kendall
3829-4171, 30-33 Mark Grudzielanek
3797-4139, 30-33 Mike Maroth
3861-4203, 30-33 Kevin Millwood
3737-4075, 30-33 Scott Podsednik
3867-4195, 30-33 Josh Barfield

NL Bests
5456-4622, 34-29 Jake Peavy
5403-4676, 34-29 Brad Penny
5374-4706, 34-29 John Smoltz
5372-4710, 34-29 Chase Utley
5299-4719, 33-30 Todd Helton
5312-4767, 33-30 Jose Reyes(NYN)
5281-4739, 33-30 Chris Young(SD)
5275-4744, 33-30 Derrek Lee
5253-4764, 33-30 Chipper Jones
5248-4769, 33-30 Edgar Renteria
5210-4742, 33-30 Tim Hudson
4722-4288, 33-30 Sergio Mitre
5191-4761, 33-30 John Maine
5247-4834, 33-30 Roy Oswalt
5245-4835, 33-30 David Wright
5212-4805, 33-30 Scott Linebrink
5239-4837, 33-30 Albert Pujols
5204-4812, 33-30 Matt Holliday
5225-4853, 33-30 Russell Martin
5190-4827, 33-30 Matt Morris
5217-4864, 33-30 Miguel Cabrera

NL Worsts
4781-5298, 30-33 Adam LaRoche
4862-5219, 30-33 Taylor Tankersley
4110-4458, 30-33 Jose Castillo
4867-5213, 30-33 Josh Johnson(Flo)
4808-5146, 30-33 Bronson Arroyo
4211-4546, 30-33 Matt Albers
4780-5111, 30-33 John Patterson
4816-5138, 30-33 Anthony Reyes
4849-5167, 30-32 Juan Pierre
4823-5132, 31-32 Clay Hensley
4634-4942, 30-33 Mark Mulder
4162-4469, 30-33 Jarrod Saltalamacchia
4866-5152, 31-32 Freddy Garcia
4867-5150, 31-32 Brian Giles
4841-5112, 31-32 Dan Wheeler


			


					
			





	

		
		

			
The Case Against K/9 and BB/9
			

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First Inning


The hed makes it sound radical, but this is really a quite useful and meaningful tweak. If you want to know how many batters a pitcher strikes out and walks (and you do), better measures are the percentages of each outcome compared to batters faced. The writer says the average pitcher strikes out 15 percent of batters faced and walks eight percent.


I’ve always tried to make this adjustment on the fly, when doing analysis, but this is a good argument for using the real numbers as a percentage rather than the per game ones.

			


					
			






	

		
		

			
Escaping the data panopticon
			

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Prof says computers must learn to “forget”


This is not the place for this comment, but this is my place.


I believe that forgetting is an important part of moving on, of being able to compromise in very construtive ways. So I’m pretty sure that this prof’s heart is in the right place.


But I think the issue is much less nuanced. If we have a good and verifiable record of everything all of us do, our public behavior will have to conform to that model. Our lack of information in the past offered countless opportunities for operators to game the system, but if we know who we all are and who everyone else is, all sorts of trusted (and fair) endeavors become possible.


I think much of what the past was built on was a duplicity, and that is going to be impossible going forward. How quickly that’s going to reshape the world is exciting possibiltity today.


Very exciting.