Answers to fantasy baseball questions (and much more) since 1996
Sean Forman has got a draft of minor league history up since 1992. As usual the pages are elegant and easy to digest, and fast. Kudos, even though this noble second step indicates just how much more work there is to be done.
(No knock intended to thebaseballcube.com, which was the first step.)
Rick Paulus has been writing about fantasy baseball writing for a few years now in McSweeney’s, and he’s pretty funny. Especially so in this Super Scouting Report of Excessive Keeper Leagues. I’ve already signed URF, so don’t bother.
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.)
The Official Site of Major League Baseball
If pressed should teams rely on pitching, or cling to hitting? I think the answer (pitching) is clear. Especially if you can sing for Santana, Dump Carpenter (this post comes after the story was written), and stand by Brad Penny. At least until he fades.
Good luck into the second half.
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.
A while back I posted about a Joe Sheehan story that delved into the pitch by pitch data that MLB is making available. Here’s another story, by HT’s John Walsh, looking behind the news using those numbers. I’m still not sure what to make of it, his discussion about potential errors is very important, but nonetheless the potential for all this data to open up vast new areas of understanding about the game is obvious.
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.
The Baseball Analysts: Joe Sheehan
What we’re going to do with all the data baseball is throwing off beggars my imagination, but I know that Joe Sheehan’s excellent survey of pitch location data in this study simply scratches the surface. So for now just let the data wash over you, figure out the perspective on these intriguing charts, and wallow in the possibilities.
I’m not contesting the idea that the Brewers are for real, I suspect they are, but I think the idea that you can tell this because their two recent blow outs have flipped their Pythagorean Ratio is a fallacy. Bill James’ Pythagorean Ratio held that a team’s winning percentage should be the same as its Runs Scored (squared) divided by its Runs Allowed (squared). When a team’s winning percentage deviates from the predicted outcome, it’s a good time to look for reasons. These are usually a disproportionate proportion of one-run outcomes one way or the other (in other words, better or worse than average relief pitching or clutch hitting).
The point is that it’s an evaluative tool that draws its power over the long term of the season. A reminder that it is easy to overuse any and all of the tools at our disposal.
Looking for batting order information for Matt Murton and Cliff Floyd earlier today I remembered that Heater Magazine has such stuff. I nipped over to www.heatermagazine.com, downloaded the giant weekly compendium of stats, charts, baseball writing, more charts, graphs, lists and more charts and found exactly what I was looking for. Plus the writing of this year’s Guide rookies, Craig Brown and Jeff Sackman, and the always excellent Dave Studeman and Deric McCamey.
There’s also a Saturday supplement. This is what Baseball Weekly might have done with their stat pages, but instead John Burnson put it together. It’s cheap. Just $19 samoleans for the whole season.
The only problem is that all the information really makes me want to have one of those 30″ Apple CinemaDisplays on my desk. But even without it, this is one useful bunch of baseball/fantasy information.
Ps. I don’t make any money on this. It’s just highly recommended.