MLB

I Love New Metrics!

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Except when I don’t.

This story is about O-Swing %, which measures the number of times a batter swings at pitches out of the strike zone. The writer says that O-Swing % is really interesting, and then goes on to prove (unless his numbers are wrong) that it is pretty much meaningless.

What is actually interesting is that the writer does a decent job of demonstrating why the apparently broad swing in O-Swing % numbers is meaningless. It boils down to the fact that some batters swing more, and so they hit the ball more. While some batters swing less, and hit the ball less. Consider 0-Swing % exhausted, at least for now.

When there is reliable pitch location information there will doubtless be information derived from these numbers that will be of interest, but it certainly won’t be simple or absolute. The game isn’t simply a matter of cause and effect, but a complex system of adjustments and readjustments that change how everything happens. It seems to me the miracle is that the game is played on the same sized field now as it was 100+ years ago. In that context, the variation in results should lead us to explore what changes have been made.

But that has nothing to do with O-Swing %.

Major League Baseballs outdated, misleading offset camera angle.

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By Greg Hanlon – Slate Magazine

I’ve written about this in the past. What this story adds, however, is a better view of what happens when the camera is right behind the pitcher. In order to see the hitter the camera has to be higher. This, it turns out, is just fine for inside-outside calls, but fails miserably to yield better calls on the high and low stuff. The examples are illuminating, in any case.

Streaming games on the iPod Touch (and iPhone, too)

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That’s an ad, because this is an endorsement. It is an ad for Apple iPod touch 16 GB (2nd Generation) LATEST MODEL

I own an iPod Touch 2nd generation model, and yesterday new operating software came out. I downloaded it right away. There was a $10 charge for adding the software to your old machine, which irks some but is fine by me if I get more, and this upgrade promised some cool stuff. I won’t get into that other than to say that the voice recorder alone was worth the fee.

And, last night, I stopped by mlb.com and there was an announcement that the new MLB AT Bat software would allow the streaming of games to the iPhone and the iPod Touch. I upgraded that software, which cost $10 in March, and offers up to the minute Scores, Box Scores, Game Casts and video highlight, and now offers two games a day in live stream.

I didn’t get to try the streaming until today, but it was terrific. The wifi streaming to the phone was superior to the wired ethernet streaming to my desktop machine. The picture isn’t huge but it is viewable, doesn’t go all pixilated or freeze all too regularly. In fact, it acted TV.

The app is offering two games a day, and of course we’d like them all. You can’t get games in your local market, which obviously limits the appeal for homers. But for a fantasy player who wants to check out his out of town guys, the computer package offers more games, the iPod/iPhone app lets you watch them in more places.

MLB At Bat also offers streaming radio for both teams for all games, which also comes in handy a lot more often than you’d think.

I didn’t buy an iPhone because I really couldn’t justify the cost of the data plan, since I work from my home. I travel, but then I usually have my laptop. Plus, I already have a phone. But the iPod Touch does nearly everything that the iPhone does, if you ignore the phone and camera parts, with no recurring charges. I can pick up my mail when I’m out of the house without carrying my computer, and it is a source of all sorts of information via YouTube, Google Earth, and the regular web browser, plus widgets for the weather and stocks and… well, I hope you get the idea. It’s like the internet, only in a sliver of metal and glass that feel great in the hand.

I was happy with the gadget in December, but the addition of streaming major league games with excellent (if small) video, is stepping forward into the future.

A utopia, by the way.

Apple iPod touch 16 GB (2nd Generation) LATEST MODEL

Crawford v. Papelbon

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I don’t have ESPN and the Sunday late games are blacked out on mlb.tv, so I listened to the end of the Jays-Sox tilt tonight.

Well, I didn’t only listen. I also watched the data flow on mlb’s Gameday app, which shows location and speed and percentage of break and in what direction. I’m not a total believer in ths technology, though the potential is obviously huge. The problem is that the margin of error is great.

In tonight’s climactic Crawford versus Papelbon at bat, two out, men on second on third, the Rays down a run, according to Gameday, Papelbon didn’t throw a strike, but Crawford swung through three  high balls out of the zone.

I’m not saying this didn’t happen, I’m sure it has, but Crawford’s aggressiveness up and out of the zone shown makes me think the zone shown isn’t kosher. I have had the same problem with similar technologies on Fox and ESPN.

The point is, if you show this display but the game doesn’t follow it, all you’ve done is undermine the game. Umpires are far from perfect, but we have to assume they’re doing their best. Data presented as “objective” that doesn’t hew to the common perception is a problem.

Maybe Carl Crawford swung at all those high strikes, I’ll have to go back to the archive to see. If they let me. But until we can have a high standard of confidence in the recent hi-tech tools MLB is selling us, be a little skeptical. It’s what the umpire says, after all, that matters.

The Cutter: Magic Pitch

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Fantasy Bullpen

I liked Kyle Davies going into this year because of his age, his pedigree, his good spring, and I knew he had added a cutter. What I didn’t know was how big a weapon the cutter seems to be. 

If Alex Gershwind is right, it’s a big weapon, though there are some open questions about his study. Most pertinent is what the sample actually is. Did he only include players who threw fewer than X number of cutters in Year 1 and more than X number of cutters in Year 2? This would tend to eliminate failures from the pool, but he doesn’t say.

He also doesn’t give a demographic profile to the guys in his study. If they were mostly not Jamie Moyer, or if they were, like Jamie Moyer, all guys on the threshhold of dropping out of the league, their typical regression to their mean career stats might show a dramatic swing.

But I have Davies in one league and I need him to do well. So I’m not looking too closely.

Baseball Writers Brace for the End

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 WSJ.com

How much do you rely on the daily paper for your baseball coverage? The answer is more complicated than whether you read ESPN or your local paper. Many of the best baseball stories are written by newspaper writers. But if the newspapers stop sending reporters out of town with their local teams, will the coverage stop? No one knows, of course, but this story does a nice job limning the possibilities.

Just 25, Greinke has traveled a long, winding road and is on cusp of stardom – Kansas City Star

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Joe Posnanski – Kansas City Star

I bought Zack Greinke in the American Dream League draft, part of a $50 pitching staff (Freezes Gavin Floyd $1 and Edwin Jackson $3, joined by Greinke, Duchscherer $4, the brilliant Kevin Millwood (today anyway) $2, breakout candidate Brandon McCarthy $1 and a relief crew of Balfour $5, Brandon Lyon $5, and George Sherrill $10.

Posnanski tells a good story or three, and teaches me an important thing or two about Greinke.

(The rest of the team: Victor Martinez $21, Zaun $2, Billy Butler $18, Figgins $23, Adrian Beltre $16, Iwamura $13, Jeter $20, Betemit $3, Josh Hamilton $26 freeze, Ryan Sweeney $3 freeze, Granderson $28, Delmon Young $19, Mark Teahen $10, and Travis Hafner $3. Yes, $3. He would have been a loser last year, but at least the risk isn’t great.)

Position Battles: White Sox 2B

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FanGraphs Fantasy Baseball

It is rather amazing how much writing about fantasy baseball there is out there. When I see something wrong or awful I try to note it here, but much of it is informative and pedestrian, like this story. It features useful and well-reasoned summaries of the careers of Chris Getz, Jayson Nix and Brent Lillibridge, and comes to the conclusion that Gordon Beckham is best qualified for the job and probably won’t play there this year. It is also dry as toast, which is certainly better than witless humor, but it also reminds me there are only so many hours in the day…

Jon Williams on Alex Rodriguez

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Advanced Fantasy Baseball: Surgery to Cost at Least 10 weeks

I get a feed of fantasy baseball stories, and this is one that just came over. I knew A-Rod was thinking about having surgery tomorrow, but this was the first I’d heard he’d decided to go ahead. It does seem he’s come up with a compromise, which might get him back on the field sooner this year, at the cost of further surgery next winter. All of which, as Jon Williams suggests, you need to know.

But I refer to this story here because Williams calls A-Rod a “renowned wuss” and talks about how he expected him to have a bad year this year because of all the attention focused on him following his PED admissions. Big Jon says, “I was leaning toward predicting a bad season for A-Rod because of the pressure on him to perform under the close eye of the media while enduring the boos of fans. He has responded poorly to this in the past and it will be increased by a factor of at least ten this season.”

Are these two things true?

The only reference I could find to A-Rod being a wuss was a story about how he fainted when his wife gave birth to their first child. This story came up last spring, as the couple hurtled toward divorce. A-Rod missed the birth of the second child, last May, when his plane got in just a little late, so we don’t know if he’s toughened up or not. In any case, I always thought wuss meant you were injury prone and didn’t play with little hurts. Rodriguez played with hip pain last season, apparently, and showed no signs of jaking. He’s had injuries over the years, but hasn’t lingered on the DL that I recall, and doesn’t have a reputation as injury prone. I wouldn’t make any decisions about A-Rod based on him not trying.

As for his clutchness, he really was horrible last year. But clutch performance is always measured through the filter of the small sample. Take a look at his Clutch Stats last year and you see that he was about the same Late and Close, 2 outs with runners in scoring position, and with the game within four runs, with about a .875 OPS. The one exception came Late and Close, where he was a weak .790. The issue here is that he had only 83 PA Late and Close. He also only had 74 PA with a greater than four run lead. In those at bats his OPS was 1.241! What a bum.

But everyone knows that 74 PA or 83 PA doesn’t tell you anything about a player. How has A-Rod performed throughout his career (I’m assuming that you don’t grow less clutch as you get older) in clutch and non clutch situations? His low OPS came in 2 Out with Runner in Scoring Position (.889). His high OPS came in one run games (.981). What I learn from this is that A-Rod is okay in the clutch, that he doesn’t so much fold under pressure as look a little less comfortable facing it, and so his effort looks like much less than his results. Would he have folded this year if he wasn’t hurt? 

I would suggest that A-Rod played under intense pressure last year, after the contract fiasco, the revelations about his private life, the breakup of his marriage, an apparent dalliance with an older woman who was also a celebrity, plus the pain in his hips. He’s never looked clutch, I have to admit, and was particularly unclutch last year, but it’s hard to draw a hard lesson from that experience. I’m happier saying that A-Rod is a great hitter who doesn’t always look like he enjoys being the man. That disconnect, it seems to me, is going to exaggerate his shortcomings. 

Oh, as for this year and next, what’s in store for A-Rod? If the doctors are right he’s going to miss about six weeks of the season to post-surgery rehab, and probably another few weeks to extended spring training getting game ready. A mid-June return seems reasonable, and as Jon Williams correctly says, this isn’t the whole fix, it’s a patch job, so he probably won’t be 100 percent if all goes well.

My advice on these sorts of things is to be conservative, if you’re in a good position, and take a chance if you’re in a weak one. In keeper leagues, it’s easy to figure this out, because you can judge everyone’s keeper lists. If you have a good keeper list you don’t want A-Rod unless his price drops below $20, and even then it might be a mistake. The cost to you if he fails isn’t worth the risk. In the software I’m going to cut his output nearly in half. 

As a startup draft/auction strategy it gets a little tougher. A rule of thumb might be, if you end up with Johan Santana in your mixed league draft, target A-Rod many rounds later. But it doesn’t have to be Santana. He’s just going to be the most expensive of the risky guys and the first one to go. Look for other cheap but big upside players and make a team of them. Emphasis on cheap. 

The flaws in A-Rod’s personality are obvious, and it’s hard not to pay attention to them. But the obvious evidence of his talent and work ethic seems way more important. He’s hurt and we have to deal with it, but we’ll do a better job of that if we don’t overamp A-Rod’s demons. He’s worth the risk for the right teams this year and next.