Rookie Turns Three

The Rockies finished up their short three game homestand against the Braves today. I was scoring for MLB.com and in the top of 7th I saw something I and not many others had personally witnessed before. After Kelly Johnson singled to center to open the inning and Edgar Renteria grounded a single to left against Zach McClellan the count had run to three and two against Chipper Jones. The runners were moving on the pitch and Jones hit a line drive to Troy Tulowitzki at shortstop. He caught the ball as he was moving towards second and then attempted to step on second before tagging Renteria coming down from first. Triple play. I say attempted since it appeared he missed the bag the first time and then went back to touch it after tagging Renteria. The play was scored 6/LTP.2X2(6);1X1(6) in Retrosheet lingo. Either way it was just the 12th unassisted triple play in Major League history during the regular season and the first since Rafael Furcal turned the trick on August 10th 2003 against the Cardinals. Since 1968 it's only the fifth.

Interestingly, there were two of them turned in 1923 one by the Red Sox on September 14th and the other by the (Boston) Braves on October 6th. There were also two turned in 1927 on consecutive days by the Cubs Jim Cooney on May 30th and the Tigers Johnny Neun on May 31st. There was one unassisted triple play in the post season belonging to Bill Wambsganss in the 1920 World Series for the Indians. This is also the 8th instance of a shortstop turning one. There were three by second baseman and two by first baseman.

The game was notable for a couple other reasons as well as Todd Helton set the Rockies single game record for walks with five. He singled in the first and then walked in the 2nd, 5th, 7th, 9th, and 11th. That last walk came right before Matt Holliday ended it on a walk-off two-run homer to center field against Steve Coyler. Up until that point Holliday had had a rough day going one for five with only an infield single in the 9th inning rally where the Rockies tied the game at 7 against Braves closer Bob Wickman. Prior to that Holliday had struck out and grounded into two double plays in addition to flying out to right. For Helton that gives him 32 hits and 24 walks on the season good for a .523 on base percentage. He still just has the one homerun and so you begin to wonder whether the power is permanately gone or not. Holliday now has 41 hits and continues to lead the league in hitting at .394 and extended his hitting streak to 12 games. Brad Hawpe also homered in the game (his first of the year) accounting for the Rox sixth and seventh homeruns of the season here at Coors and their first multi-homerun game all season. Their home record stands at 6-7 as they head out on the road to face the Giants. In another quirk of the current schedule, as the Rockies make their 9 day road trip they'll land in all four time zones.

Chat Today!

Just a reminder that I'm chatting today on Baseball Prospectus - 1pm Eastern. You can also submit questions early.

Update: The transcript has been posted. Thanks again to everyone who participated.

Wednesday Links

A few interesting links that I was perusing today...

Move Over, Moneyball: Stat nerds are out! Biomechanics nerds are in! Interesting article on Slate.com that talks about the increasing availability of information, in this case video, that is creating a new avenue for fans and analysts alike. Two examples include the articles by Chris Gomez on The Hardball Times and of course Will Carroll's work as found on MLB.com on Dice-K. While there is subjective evaluation here, this is a good example of the power of the "wisdom of crowds" enabled by the forces described in the book Wikinomics - a convergence of the general trends of increasing information technology and an ever-widening communications infrastructure.

No Excuse: Why did NBC air so much evil now? An excellent short argument for why NBC's actions in airing the videos of a madman were without excuse. It seems to me that their obligation was to hand over the material to the authorities, period. But beyond that, as powerful shapers of the public environment in which we all are immersed, they are obligated to take into consideration the effect of airing such material. One would hope their ethics would lead them to decide that the material does not serve the public good and in fact is likely to have deleterious effects by glorifying the act. Sorry so heavy but the post referred to hit a nerve.

Lies, Damned Lies: The Cruelest Month. A great look at the effect of the early season weather on run scoring by Nate Silver. April is indicative but this season there are special considerations.

Going the Other Way. John Walsh at THT wrote one of those articles that leads me to say "why haven't I done this?" Anyway, some mixed results but interesting nonetheless.

Taking a Bat to Prejudice. Great tribute to Jackie Robinson by George Will. Amidst the 60th anniversary celebration there was much made of the fact that the percentage of blacks in the major leagues has fallen steadily to where it is now 8.5% (it was 30% in the mid 1970s). While I agree that this is a problem from the perspective of baseball which should be competing for the best athletes with basketball and football it doesn't seem to be the larger societal problem that some make it out to be. Yes there are issues with economic disparity that may help to bar entry related to the breakdown of the African American family, but the rise of Latin and Asian players and the lure of other sports is probably the more effective cause. As a side note the fact that players from outside the country are not exposed to a shared draft also provides incentives for teams to devote increasing resources to international scouting and player development.

Clutch...Again

An interesting article by Dejan Kovacevic of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on clutch hitting that basically hits on the variety of viewpoints on the subject. Your truly is quoted on the sabermetric perspective - a view that I've expounded on elsewhere. For a list of studies on this topic take a look at Cyril Morong's site.

Rays Win!

Last night I had my first opportunity to take in a game at Tropicana Field and so what follows are a few impressions.

The park is easily accessible from the I-275/175 split in St. Petersburg and despite a little traffic arrived at the park from near downtown Tampa is less than an hour.

More importantly, though, the parking was free to the first 7,000 cars. I think this was policy that started last season. Since the crowd was just over 20,000 last night I easily made it in and was able to park just a 100 yards or so from the entrance.

As you walk up to the facility you're greeted by Rays cheerleaders or whatever they're called and you begin to get the feeling that the experience will be more like a football game than a baseball game.

I understand there have been fairly significant changes to the facility in the last couple of years and where I entered behind right field you get the feel that they're working hard to make the park fan-friendly. Large murals on the history of baseball in the St. Petersburg area cover the walls and along with a wide variety of food you find booths for kids activities include a science and baseball activity and a number of video boards. Apparently the park also include a Ted Williams museum and a rays "touch tank" (I assume full of rays) neither of which I found on my brief foray in the 6th inning to survey other parts of the park. The new video board in right center and the strip along the upper deck in left center are both large and crystal clear. In fact, the one in right-center is so large and dominating that I scolded myself a couple times for failing to watch the field instead of the board.

On this night the staff were giving out cow bells to the Rays faithful and upon seeing my Colorado Rockies hat refused to give me a bell (for which I'm glad since my eight-year old would have had no end of fun clunking all throughout the house). But they also give out free programs that while smaller than an 8 1/2 by 11 style magazine that most teams have, is packed with information including a nice article on Rays prospects by Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus. And when I approached a vendor to ask about a scorecard it turns out they're small and free as well (the scorecard not the vendors). I found myself writing incredibly small and still not able to fit in the notations I usually use.

After I finally found my seat in the third deck behind home plate (passing a very nice mural of the back side of an old baseball grandstand visible as you ride the escalators) I was surprised at the number of pregame activities underway. Several giveaways, a pregame song or two from a couple of female singers I didn't recognize, and a bunch of announcements all emceed by a good looking youngish man with a big voice and an overabundance of energy. I've seen this sort of activity level at minor league games and the Colorado Springs Sky Sox do something very similar with a "host" of sorts who entertains before the game and between innings but never at the major league level. At each half-inning break the emcee would run some contest or game and all eyes were glued to the video board and accompanying some of the contests were musical selections with the "cheer squad" merrily dancing on top of the dugouts. And of course inside the dome all of it was pretty loud and I'll have to admit the purist in me was a bit taken aback although I did enjoy the Imperial March background music as the Yankees were being introduced. The introduction of the Rays starting lineup was akin to an NBA introduction with the announcer at the top of his voice and the video board doing its part. One wonders whether the perceived need to turn baseball games into spectacles like football games will ultimately be good for the sport. Be that as it may there is no denying that younger fans find the gaudiness of those sports attractive.

The game was of course interesting as well as the Devil Rays jumped all over Kei Igawa who simply didn't look sharp. His fastball topped out at 90mph and he was throwing his changeup alot which comes in around 80 as well as a slider in the low 80s. In any case his location wasn't good as he walked three and gave up eight hits and seven runs in four and third innings going 97 pitches. Roco Baldelli and B.J. Upton both homered off of Igawa. Baldelli's was a long blast to left center in the first and Upton was a line drive that actually hit the left field foul pole just a couple feet above the low fence line at the 315 foot mark. Since the ball ricocheted to the foul side it wasn't immediately obvious it was a homerun. Casey Fossum wasn't much better giving up 10 hits and six runs in five and two-thirds. He gave up the first of the two Alex Rodriguez homeruns although it was entertaining to watch him throw the "Fossum Flip" to several hitters getting Bobby Abreu in the third to fly out and Derek Jeter in the fifth to ground out. The pitch to Abreu was clocked at 52 mph.

Other than A-Rod I think I was most impressed with the throwing arm of Elijah Dukes. He made three throws on fly balls that were strong and accurate and although he didn't catch any of the three runners, it's clear that his three outfield assists thus far (to lead all rookies) is no fluke.

There's not much else to say about A-Rod. His two homeruns give him 14 for the month and so with six games left to play he should break the pre-May homerun and RBI records which stand at 14 and 36. He also made a sparkling defensive play in the first inning on a sharp grounder by Ty Wiggington.

In the end the Ray won the game 10-8 with A-Rod's second homerun plating the final two runs in the top of the ninth off of Rays closer Al Reyes. Each team used six pitchers and with names like Bean, Meyers, Bruney, Vizcaino, Glover, Camp, Salas, and Stokes all making appearances it's not surprising that there were 28 hits and 11 walks in the game. The fans used their cow bells effectively in the bottom of the ninth although there were plenty of Yankees fans and there was plenty of celebrating on the way to the parking lot.

All in all a nice evening.

Quick Workers and Human Rain Delays

After watching and reading about Mark Buehrle's no-hitter the other night I wondered which pitchers have been known as quick workers (meaning pitchers whose tempo is accelerated and not pitchers who pitch to contact) and which are, shall we say, a little more deliberate. With the help of some BP staffers I've come up with the following lists of quick and slow workers by reputation. I'd appreciate any other contributions to the list from any era.

Quick Workers (no particular order)
Mark Buehrle
Zane Smith
Bob Gibson
Jim Kaat
Bronson Arroyo
John Lieber
Catfish Hunter
Roy Halladay
Greg Maddux
Tim Wakefield
Mark Mulder

Slow Workers
Vicente Padilla
Joey Hamilton
Jeff Gray
Steve Trachsel

Others..and why do you suppose the first list includes pitchers of higher quality? Do we simply remember when good pitchers work quickly or is that a part of their success?

Friars and Rox

Getting set for a nice weekend of baseball and so a few notes...

Tonight the Padres come to town to take on the Rockies with Chris Young facing Josh Fogg. I'll have to admit that mentioned in the BP2K7 all things considered Fogg turned in a better 2006 season than most would have predicted. Once again though he was still hit hard by lefties to the tune of .309/.388/.512 and fell apart in August and September. Some of that can no doubt be attributed to bone chips that he had to have removed from his elbow after the season. Of course he does get groundballs with his sinker (I happened to attend his masterpiece against the Mariners at SafeCo Field last season that lasted all of 1 hour and 52 minutes) and yet he still struggled mightily at Coors Field. The Rockies management really like his approach and attitude and since Byung-Hyun Kim has struggled, it appears the fifth spot is Fogg's to lose. This will be his third start of the season although he did appear in relief last Monday against the Giants.

Interestingly there have been only 6 homeruns hit at Coors Field this season ahead of only Camden Yards for fewest per game this season. Unfortunately most of that poor showing can be attributed to the Rockies hitters who also have only hit 39 extra basse hits all season ahead of only St. Louis, Washington, and Cincinnati and have been shutout in extra base hits 4 times this season. And not surprisingly the Wrigley Field has seen only 6 homeruns in 495 at bats as well.

As far as the Padres are concerned they come into tonight's game with Heath Bell and Cla Meredith each having thrown 10.3 scoreless innings out of the bullpen. They also have rookie Kevin Cameron who has thrown 9.0 innings of scoreless relief to start his career (most for a San Diego pitcher to begin a career since Clay Condrey worked 14.3 innings in August and Septemebr of 2002 - aren't you glad you know that?). Trevor Hoffman has also thrown six scoreless innings and overall Padres relievers rank second in the NL with a 2.15 ERA (15 ER in 62.7 IP) behind only the Mets (1.51, 7ER/41.7 IP). They've held opposing hitters to a .181 average and have 47 Ks to boot.

Tomorrow there will be an interesting SABR meeting before the 6:05 game. Should be a fun weekend.

Thrown Out in the End

My column today on Baseball Prospectus focused on the unhappy circumstance of Erick Aybar being caught stealing to end two different games this season. It turns out that getting thrown out to end a game has happened 84 times since 1970 (excluding 1999) and so it's not as rare as at least I first thought. I then discuss the strategic calculation in these events from the general and specific Aybar cases.

The second half of the article deals with another demonstration of baseball's version of natural selection in how starting jobs are kept or lost piggy-backing on an article from two weeks ago chronicling the demise of Angel Berroa.

A Different Look at Post Season Odds

Just getting set to score the Rockies/Dodgers game tonight at Coors Field with Derek Lowe up against Rodrigo Lopez. Lopez has pitched surprisingly well this season giving up 2 runs and 6 hits in 7 innings against Arizona on April 4th and one run on 5 hits in 6 innings against the Dodgers on April 10th. We'll see what he has tonight.

Since we're early in the season and the discussion at this time of year always turns to small sample sizes I thought I'd take a different look at post season odds than the one we use on Baseball Prospectus where the system uses our adjusted standings and runs simulations of 1,000,000 seasons to determine the probability of each team winning their division, taking the wild card, and making it to the postseason. There are also ELO and PECOTA adjusted versions and overall that approach is similar to the kinds of simulations I've run in the past for looking at postseason odds.

What I did here was different and is instead rooted in sort of the inverse of the uniformitarian philosophy embodied by the phrase "the present is the key to the past". In other words, it's a view from the historical record.

The first table below compares each 2007 team's record as of this afternoon to all other teams who have ever had that record and then includes two pieces of information - the average final winning percentage of all of those teams and the percentage of the time those teams reached the post season.

 W  L Teams FinalPct PSPct  Teams
10  4   149   0.560  0.302  Dodgers
 8  4   266   0.545  0.282  Mets
 9  4   198   0.559  0.278  Braves
 8  5   327   0.529  0.248  Blue Jays, Twins
 8  6   368   0.528  0.209  Reds, Padres
 6  4   416   0.526  0.207  Indians
 7  5   393   0.521  0.201  Red Sox
 9  6   312   0.529  0.196  Tigers, Diamondbacks
 5  4   493   0.520  0.185  Mariners
 7  6   403   0.514  0.154  Brewers
 7  7   359   0.504  0.131  Orioles, A's
 6  6   425   0.503  0.118  Yankees, Astros,Pirates
 6  7   362   0.490  0.099  Rangers,Marlins, Cardinals
 5  7   371   0.475  0.078  White Sox
 6  8   349   0.475  0.074  Devil Rays, Angels, Rockies
 5  8   335   0.463  0.060  Cubs
 3  9   143   0.438  0.049  Phillies
 4  8   241   0.450  0.046  Giants
 4 10   149   0.438  0.040  Nationals
 4 11   110   0.428  0.027  Royals

So here we see the Dodgers at 10-4 have the highest probability of reaching the post season at 30.2% (our basic report on BP has them at 41.2%) and teams in their position have gone on to play .560 baseball over the course of the season equivalent to 91 wins. On the opposite side the Royals have a 2.7% chance of reaching the post season (BP has them at 7.8% which seems extraordinarily high to me) and teams have come in at 69 wins (.428).

But of course this technique doesn't take into consideration the fact that more teams reach the playoffs given the current format. The following table takes this into account by looking only at seasons since 1995 when the three division format and wild card were introduced.

 W L Teams Final PctPSPct Teams
 9 4   25  0.555   0.480  Braves
10 4   23  0.545   0.435  Dodgers
 8 4   49  0.544   0.429  Mets
 8 5   66  0.530   0.394  Blue Jays, Twins
 9 6   58  0.529   0.379  Tigers, Diamondbacks
 8 6   66  0.523   0.364  Reds, Padres
 7 5   70  0.515   0.357  Red Sox
 5 4   84  0.519   0.345  Mariners
 6 4   68  0.520   0.338  Indians
 7 7   65  0.500   0.292  Orioles, A's
 7 6   65  0.501   0.262  Brewers
 6 7   70  0.496   0.243  Rangers,Marlins, Cardinals
 6 6   75  0.503   0.227  Yankees, Astros,Pirates
 5 7   56  0.476   0.179  White Sox
 5 8   54  0.480   0.167  Cubs
 6 8   64  0.481   0.156  Devil Rays, Angels, Rockies
 4 8   44  0.465   0.136  Giants
 4 11  20  0.446   0.100  Royals
 4 10  24  0.447   0.083  Nationals
 3 9   20  0.448   0.050  Phillies

The smaller sample here illogically puts the Braves at 9-4 ahead of the Dodgers at 10-4, but as you can see the odds of those teams reaching the post season goes up quite a bit since approximately 28% of all teams have made the playoffs since 1995.

Mostly what this tells us is that it is a long season and unless your team is 4-11, 4-10, or 3-9, based on history they still have a chance to make some noise.

Hitless (almost) Winning

Yesterday the Cleveland Indians beat the Chicago White Sox 2-1 as the Indians managed only a single hit. Both of the Indians runs were unearned as the result of three Sox errors and a bases loaded walk by Jose Contreras.

Be that as it may that prompted me to take a look at how many games have been won by a team who managed just one hit. The complete list going back to 1957 (and excluding 1999) sorted in descending order by date is as follows...

2006-09-03 NYN at HOU W (2-1)
2006-06-22 SLN at CHA W (1-0)
2005-08-23 CHA at MIN W (1-0)
2002-04-27 NYA at SEA W (1-0)
2000-05-21 CHA W (2-1) at TOR
1997-09-03 BOS at MON W (1-0)
1996-04-13 KCA W (3-2) at MIL
1995-08-02 TOR at BAL W (1-0)
1993-07-27 TEX W (1-0) at KCA
1992-07-25 PIT at ATL W (1-0)
1992-04-14 OAK at KCA W (3-1)
1991-09-14 NYN at SLN W (2-1)
1989-08-15 TEX at SEA W (2-0)
1986-09-07 SFN W (1-0) at MON
1986-06-16 TEX at CAL W (2-1)
1984-08-24 CIN W (2-0) at PIT
1983-05-18 CHA at BAL W (1-0)
1982-09-05 ATL at MON W (2-1)
1975-07-19 CHN at SDN W (2-1)
1974-09-08 CHA W (1-0) at CAL
1974-09-04 CIN W (2-1) at HOU
1971-09-02 KCA at MIL W (1-0)
1971-07-30 KCA at BAL W (1-0)
1969-09-05 ATL at CIN W (2-11)
1969-06-08 CAL W (3-2) at CLE
1965-09-09 CHN at LAN W (1-0)
1965-05-15 CHN at LAN W (3-1)
1964-09-12 KC1 at BAL W (1-0)
1964-09-06 BOS at MIN W (2-1)
1959-05-26 PIT at MLN W (1-0)
1957-06-16 MLN at PHI W (1-0)

Assignment Discovery: Sabermetrics

I was alerted by a fellow Cubs fan that the program "Statistics and Data Analysis in Sports" will be airing on the Discovery Channel on April 17th. The description of the show on their web site says:

Using only a calculator, a stat book, and some custom equations, a new generation of baseball statisticians believes that it's possible to predict a player's true value to his team. The results will surprise you.

It'll be interesting to see if they're really talking about "prediction" or simply quantification after the fact. The former has its limits while the latter is very well understood. I'm also interested in these types of presentations since they often misrepresent and distort subjects that are somewhat technical. I wrote about two depictions of sabermetrics back in November in a column titled "The Numb3rs Game" on BP.

Selection Pressure

In my column tomorrow on Baseball Prospectus I chronicle the decline of Angel Berroa in an article titled "In the Arms of an Angel". After summarizing Berroa's tenure since coming into the Royals system in the Johnny Damon trade, I do a little analysis to document players who, like Berroa, had three straight years of decreasing productivity while in their prime and retaining their regular jobs. I did this by looking at OPS park adjusted and normalized by league for players between the ages of 24 and 30 while garnering 400 or more plate appearances.

It turns out that has happened 96 times in baseball history for 85 different players. Those 96 instances are shown in the table below sorted by primary position of the player in their first year (the second year would be the first year of the decline) and NOPS/PF in that first year. You'll then see their NOPS/PF for each subsequent season and the average decline per year calculated using the geometric mean. The list is sorted by position since a shortstop has a greater probability of keeping his job even in an offensive decline given that his defense is more important and therefore a good defender will see less selection pressure applied to his offense.

                                            NOPS/PF
Name               Yr1POS  Yr1Age   Year1   Year1   Year2   Year3   Year4    Avg
Jimmie Foxx        1B          24    1932     160     157     150     147   2.6%
Lou Gehrig         1B          27    1930     158     155     147     145   2.4%
Norm Cash          1B          26    1961     157     123     122     115   4.7%
Jimmie Foxx        1B          25    1933     157     150     147     133   4.4%
Jimmie Foxx        1B          26    1934     150     147     133     119   5.9%
Andres Galarraga   1B          27    1988     130     111     104      88  11.2%
Keith Hernandez    1B          25    1979     130     128     124     116   3.1%
Eddie Murray       1B          27    1983     129     128     126     118   2.0%
Gregg Jefferies    1B          25    1993     124     119     106     101   5.9%
Sean Casey         1B          24    1999     123     113     110      90   7.3%
Gregg Jefferies    1B          26    1994     119     106     101      98   5.3%
Willie Upshaw      1B          26    1983     118     110     106      95   6.3%
Steve Balboni      1B          27    1984     112     107      99      91   6.5%
Willie Upshaw      1B          27    1984     110     106      95      93   4.3%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eddie Collins      2B          27    1914     145     137     124     118   6.3%
Larry Doyle        2B          24    1911     133     121     111     110   4.1%
Jimmy Williams     2B          24    1901     125     122     109     107   3.6%
Jimmy Williams     2B          25    1902     122     109     107     102   4.5%
Frankie Frisch     2B          24    1923     121     120     114     107   2.9%
Bret Boone         2B          25    1994     116     104      86      85   5.9%
Carlos Baerga      2B          24    1993     113     110     105      88   5.8%
Tony Cuccinello    2B          27    1935     112     111     110     104   1.6%
Damion Easley      2B          27    1997     110     104      99      98   3.0%
Marty McManus      2B          24    1924     110     105     102     101   2.3%
Billy Goodman      2B          27    1953     108     101     100      98   2.3%
Dick Egan          2B          25    1909     107      94      92      89   4.4%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eddie Mathews      3B          27    1959     142     139     132     124   4.0%
Heinie Zimmerman   3B          25    1912     140     129     116     107   8.5%
Richie Hebner      3B          24    1972     132     120     119     103   4.7%
Tommy Leach        3B          24    1902     121     115     103     101   4.6%
Richie Hebner      3B          25    1973     120     119     103     101   2.8%
Max Alvis          3B          25    1963     115     110     103     101   3.8%
Kevin Seitzer      3B          25    1987     114     110     102     101   2.9%
Bill Mueller       3B          26    1997     109     107     104      97   3.3%
Bobby Byrne        3B          27    1912     109      98      96      84   6.4%
Eddie Foster       3B          27    1914     108     104     102      93   4.0%
Bill Coughlin      3B          26    1905     102      95      92      83   6.0%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Scioscia      C           26    1985     121     104      98      97   4.4%
Gus Triandos       C           27    1958     114     109     107     104   2.8%
Manny Sanguillen   C           27    1971     113     108     104     101   3.6%
Rick Ferrell       C           25    1931     109     107     106     101   2.0%
Sammy White        C           24    1953     102      99      96      82   5.1%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ken Griffey        CF          27    1997     135     127     121     118   4.1%
Raul Mondesi       CF          27    1998     114     108     107     101   3.0%
Brian Hunter       CF          25    1996      94      90      82      73   7.5%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bobby Higginson    LF          25    1996     125     118     108      94   8.5%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ty Cobb            OF          25    1912     156     154     152     147   1.8%
Ty Cobb            OF          26    1913     154     152     147     144   2.1%
Kevin Mitchell     OF          27    1989     153     131     126     108   9.2%
Tris Speaker       OF          24    1912     149     147     145     130   2.7%
Albert Belle       OF          27    1994     148     142     130     109   8.2%
Bobby Murcer       OF          25    1971     147     141     118     105   9.0%
Joe Medwick        OF          25    1937     147     125     119     118   3.9%
Tito Francona      OF          25    1959     142     118     116     103   6.8%
Duke Snider        OF          27    1954     142     140     133     126   3.3%
Edd Roush          OF          24    1917     136     131     128     125   2.7%
Tony Oliva         OF          25    1964     131     126     123     119   3.1%
Mike Greenwell     OF          24    1988     130     112     109     104   5.5%
Jim Rice           OF          25    1978     130     128     112     109   3.7%
Steve Kemp         OF          24    1979     125     116     115     111   2.8%
Kirk Gibson        OF          27    1984     123     122     117     116   1.4%
Tom Tresh          OF          27    1965     123     115     106      98   7.3%
Jim Russell        OF          25    1944     123     115     110      99   6.6%
Al Smith           OF          27    1955     121     110     104     103   3.6%
Greasy Neale       OF          25    1917     120     110     100      95   7.2%
Carl Furillo       OF          27    1949     119     110     107      94   6.3%
Amos Otis          OF          25    1972     118     115     110     101   4.5%
Tito Francona      OF          26    1960     118     116     103      93   5.7%
Phil Bradley       OF          26    1985     117     114     109     108   2.2%
Steve Kemp         OF          25    1980     116     115     111     101   3.0%
Paul Blair         OF          25    1969     116     111     104      96   5.9%
Gus Bell           OF          26    1955     116     115     101      93   4.4%
Jack Smith         OF          26    1921     115     113     106      97   4.5%
Jackie Brandt      OF          27    1961     114     111     103      97   4.8%
Luis Polonia       OF          26    1990     112     101      94      86   8.3%
Mule Haas          OF          27    1931     111     102     101      93   4.0%
Marty Cordova      OF          25    1995     110     106      96      92   5.2%
Marquis Grissom    OF          25    1992     110     107     103      93   4.6%
Don Mueller        OF          27    1954     108      98      86      83   7.3%
Joe Vosmik         OF          27    1937     107     105      96      94   3.2%
Devon White        OF          24    1987     101      97      93      90   3.7%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Raul Mondesi       RF          26    1997     127     114     108     107   3.7%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alex Rodriguez     SS          24    2000     136     134     127     125   2.3%
Robin Yount        SS          26    1982     135     127     113     107   7.0%
Alex Rodriguez     SS          25    2001     134     127     125     117   3.7%
Barry Larkin       SS          27    1991     126     120     116     107   5.0%
Ray Chapman        SS          26    1917     119     111     109     108   2.2%
Travis Fryman      SS          24    1993     117     103      98      97   3.9%
Freddy Parent      SS          27    1903     117     115      95      93   4.0%
Jeff Blauser       SS          26    1992     116     115      94      89   4.4%
Jay Bell           SS          27    1993     115     106      99      96   5.4%
Jody Reed          SS          26    1989     106     104      99      87   4.8%
Chick Galloway     SS          25    1922     106      94      87      79   9.2%
Rafael Ramirez     SS          24    1982      99      98      87      85   3.0%
Angel Berroa       SS          25    2003      98      92      90      73   6.3%
Bud Harrelson      SS          25    1969      93      92      91      86   1.9%

What you'll notice of course is that all but four of these declines started with the hitter having an NOPS/PF greater than 100. As you might expect, players can retain their jobs through performance declines typically only if that decline starts from a fairly high plateau. Overall, the average of the first year is 123 and the fourth 104. You'll find Berroa second from the bottom as only Bud Harrelson began from a lower NOPS and retained his job through three years of decline. But you'll also notice that Berroa's decline averaged 6.3% while Harrelson was fairly steady at 1.9%.

The bottom line is that Berroa's ability to keep his job was pretty much unprecedented given his offensive performance and even more incredible given that under John Dewan's Plus/Minus system and the data shared by The Hardball Times he fielded 84 fewer balls than would have been expected.

Major League players are under a great deal of selection pressure akin to what organisms feel ala natural selection. Berroa didn't feel it nearly as acutely as he probably should have.

Five Games Per Pitcher?

I just had to pass this on after listening to the MLB.com Daily podcast earlier today. In an interview with Twins broadcaster Dan Gladden the topic turned to what the Twins might do regarding locking up some of their players like Johann Santana and Justin Morneau with long term contracts. When the discussion turned to Torii Hunter Gladden had this to say.

"If you don't replace your gold glover in centerfield what you're going to have is Johann Santana, now that twenty-game winner he's gonna be a 15-16 game winner. All your other guys that are going to win 12, 13 ballgames now are going to win 9 and maybe 10 games because you're losing something in your centerfield. Torii Hunter wins at least wins five games a year per pitcher - three to five games per pitcher just with his defense in centerfield."

Five games a year with his defense per pitcher? So Hunter's defense is worth 25 wins? I'm sorry but even a non-stathead who has no understanding of sabermetric defensive metrics must realize how absurd this statement, when taken literally, is from a simple common sense persepctive. If he is worth 25 wins on defense then he's saving something like 250 runs all by himself.

But most likely what Gladden was thinking was not that Hunter "wins" 25 games all by himself but rather impacts 25 games with good defensive plays and so Gladden mentally attributes the win to Hunter since without the play the team might have lost. Even so, what that formulation leaves out is the fact that any centerfielder will make some percentage of those difficult plays and so it's not as if another player would simply have failed to make all of those plays and therefore cost the team all of those games. And of course he probably selectively remembers all of the good plays and never the cost of over-aggressiveness that sometimes results in errors that let in runs.

More realistically, in 2006 Hunter was slightly below average according to David Pinto's PMR and slightly above according to the Davenport Translations.

Geivo-Fest!

On Saturday April 21st the Rocky Mountain chapter of The Society for American Baseball Research will get together to discuss all things 2007 Rockies with Bill Geivett, Assistant General Manager and Vice President of Baseball Operations of the Rockies. We'll meet at 12:30 PM in The Caboose Room of The Chophouse at 1735 19th Street in Denver near Coors Field.

The event will last until 2:30pm and then all are invited to take in the Rockies/Padres game at 6:05. Tickets are available for $7 and requests and payment can be sent to Paul Parker. Deadline for the tickets is April 18th.

Back in the Saddle

Last night I began my fourth season as an MLB.com "stringer" for the now Enhanced Gameday system (note that a minority of the parks include the equipment necessary to do the enhanced pitch tracking called Pitch F/X but the idea is to add more parks throughout the year and be close to having full coverage by midseason). My first year I was in Kansas City and for the last two have worked here at Coors Field. Today the Rockies will take on the Diamondbacks in the final game of the opening series and I'm sitting in while a rookie takes his turn at the keyboard.

Last night the Rockies escaped with a 4-3 victory in 11 innings on the strength of some shoddy D'Backs defense in the bottom of the 11th inning. After Todd Helton and Matt Holliday started the inning with opposite field singles, Brad Hawpe grounded into a 6-3 double play to put Helton as the tying run on third with two outs. Troy Tulowitzki then hit a Jose Valverde pitch to right field that was poorly played by Eric Brynes and Tulowitzki was credited with a double. On an 0-1 count Chris Iannetta hit a grounder to third baseman Alberto Callaspo and it skipped under his glove for an error and a 4-3 Rockies win.

In the top of the 11th Byung-Hyun Kim got the first two outs before walking 8th place hitter Chris Snyder and hitting Callaspo. Stephen Drew singled to right to score Snyder to give the Diamondbacks the 3-2 lead they carried into the bottom of the frame. The Rockies, however, should never have been in that position. Some poor bullpen management by interim manager Jamie Quirk (Clint Hurdle was serving a one-game suspension stemming from a spring training incident that involved starter Jeff Francis) saw Manual Corpas, LaTroy Hawkins, Brian Fuentes, and Ramon Ramirez all pitch just one inning each which led to having to resort to Kim with the game on the line in the 11th. That said, Quirk did have the good sense or good fortune to bring Kim in when he would face three righthanders to start the inning. As mentioned in our BP2K7 player comment on Kim lefties tagged him to the tune of .325/.414/.534 in 2006 and interestingly, even though he's probably better suited to a relief role (a ROOGY?) given his splits, as he did last night he seems to have control issues out the pen and last season the Rockies brass complained that he works too fast with runners on base. Once runners got on last night Quirk had fewer options and so did not bring in his last lefty reliever in Jeremy Affeldt (with Tom Martin on the DL).

The game also saw a play that I don't think I've seen before. With one out in the top of the third and runners on first and second Snyder hit a fly ball to short right field where Hawpe promptly dropped the ball. The runner on second hesitated and Hawpe had time to relay the ball to Troy Tulowitzki who then threw on to Garrett Atkins to complete the force play. So the play was coded 965(1)/FO/F.1-2. Querying the Retrosheet logs I don't see a similar force play by a right fielder on a runner heading to third. Maybe it was unique.

By the way, here is an excellent article by Joe Sheehan (not the Baseball Prospectus one) on using some of the data generated by the new Gameday implementation. This is similar, although Joe did more work, to an article titled "The Information Revolution" I wrote during the World Series last year.

Opening Day Hype

In the spirit of BallBug there is a new site called BallHype that went live in the last day or so. Unlike BallBug it includes not only baseball but also other sports and allows users to vote and make comments on stories and thereby track those that have been "most hyped".

Predictions Time

The first pitch of the 2007 season is upon us and just in time the 2007 Baseball Prospectus staff predictions have been posted. You can find mine here. In addition to the regular predictions there are also a couple of fun questions one of which is Daisuke Matsuzaka's projected performance. In perusing the predictions posted by the rest of the staff it's clear that I'm on the lower end with my 17-12, 4.22 ERA, 179 K. Only Alex Carnevale had him with a higher ERA at 4.35 but with a better record and more strikeouts (by one).

Update: The National League predictions have now been posted.