Dan Agonistes

One Worth Remembering

2009-11-15T19:59:00.013-07:00

Still, for all the tumult, it was a hell of a life, being a baseball player and a hell of a time to be a baseball player, and for the rest of their lives, they understood what a privilege it had been.

- Mike Vaccaro from The First Fall Classic

Baseball’s 2009 postseason was certainly one to remember. Over the course of 28 days and through 30 games fans were treated to some excellent baseball (the Angels dominating the Red Sox), thrilling finishes (the two extra inning games of the Yankees/Angels series), heroic efforts (Alex Rodriguez, Chase Utley), and more than a little controversy (a handful of miscues by the men in blue). And in the increasingly crowded and competitive entertainment market, baseball did as well as it has in any recent season with television ratings higher than any since 2004, in no small part due to the presence of two teams from Los Angeles and one from New York among the final four left standing.

But as good as this most recent version was, Mike Vaccaro in his new book, The First Fall Classic: The Red Sox, The Giants, and the Cast of Players, Pugs, and Politicos Who Reinvented the World Series in 1912, reminds us of two central facts of baseball history while providing an antidote to a still too common, but preciously incorrect, sentiment regarding baseball’s past.

Regarding the former, Vaccaro’s tome aptly reminds us that thrilling finishes and controversy in October (and now November) are more than a century old, and through much of the 20th century baseball held the preeminent place in the nation’s professional sporting life.

As for the remedy, for those who still hang on to the picture of baseball’s early history as simple and even innocent as compared to dim view of modern “baseball as a business” in a world of free agency, arbitration, PEDs, and the intense media spotlight, Vaccaro provides an education in how thoroughly professionalized the game was in every sense of the word. From the intense controversy over the size and source of the player’s share of the gate, to the newspaper columns that players (some of whom were involved in the series such as Christy Mathewson) penned to monetize their position, to the large sums of money that exchanged hands in bets both outside and inside the ballpark by fans, managers including John McGraw who wagered $500 on his team (to win of course), and players alike, and even extending to the interference of an owner in an attempt to extend the series thereby increasing his profits, there is very little innocence and simplicity to be found. Perhaps Fred Snodgrass, Giants center fielder in the series and the man who would be bludgeoned with the business end of the sport for the rest of his life, would say fifty years later, “We were professionals. And professionals get paid”.

For those who aren’t familiar with the details of the series I’ll leave you to discover just how the elements of civic pride and rivalry, religion and the rift it caused in one of the clubhouses, and yes, the monetary interests of everyone involved all coalesce to make those nine days (that’s right, nine days in which eight games were played with a mostly alternating schedule – and you think modern travel is tough?) in October 1912 so interesting in Vaccaro’s retelling. One mark of the greatness of the series, as Vaccaro points out in the introduction is simply this: prior to 1912 baseball's postseason was known as the "world series" while after it was the "World Series".

While the book focuses on the series itself, similar to Cait Murphy’s excellent Crazy ’08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnets Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History, the author does a good job of setting the scene of the times by primarily following two concurrent events; the attempted assassination of “Bull Moose” presidential candidate Theodore Roosevelt in Milwaukee on the day of game six, and the murder trial of New York City police officer Charles Becker in which Becker stood accused of ordering the murder of the gambler Herman Rosenthal. Suffice it to say the story ends well for one and not the other. Although Murphy’s book is a little broader in its social and historical context (not to mention its main subject matter as it deals with the entire season and not just the World Series) Vaccaro adds enough of the back stories of the players and coaches (particularly Mathewson, McGraw, Tris Speaker, Snodgrass, and “Smokey” Joe Wood), as well as the owners and “politicos” (Boston Mayor John “Honey Fritz” Fitzgerald, grandfather of JFK) to paint a picture of what it was like to live in that time. In addition, he focuses on the crowds gathered at the many sites, particularly throughout New York, where the rabid throngs could assemble and “watch” the progress of the game with as little as a six second delay through a mechanical version of MLBAM’s GameDay - a recreation sometimes complete with high tech lights and buzzers and moving figures. During the series baseball crazy fans in the tens of thousands without tickets to the Polo Grounds or the gleaming new Fenway Park would make their way to sites hosted by ten daily newspapers in New York and four in Boston to take in the action. Short vignettes of a few of those regular folks serve to complete the picture.

The book is structured chronologically leading off with a recap of 1912 regular season where the Red Sox, led by Wood’s 34-5 record and 344 IP, dominated the American League with a record of 102-50 and outpacing the Senators by 14 games. The “Speed Boys” as they were known despite stealing “only” 185 bases (the Senators led with 274) and leading the league in homeruns with 29, led the league in runs scored and fewest runs allowed. In the National League the Giants, while not as dominant, won 103 games and finally shook off both the Pirates and Cubs in the final months of the season. For the Giants it was their second consecutive appearance in the series having lost to Connie Mack’s Athletics in six games in 1911 while the Red Sox were returning for the first time since the inaugural series played in 1903. From there the book offers a chapter for each of the eight games and an extra for the final day of the series along with a well done epilogue that wraps up the few loose ends that remain and provides a platform for a poignant commentary on how we remember our heroes. Perhaps the only nitpick with the presentation is the lack of an index, a feature most readers with baseball libraries would I’m sure find useful.

If The First Fall Classic isn’t quite as comprehensive in its historical context as Murphy’s or certainly Josh Prager’s The Echoing Green, in terms of the style Vaccaro hits a homerun in his descriptions of the action on the field. He notes in the introduction that the bulk of his research was in reading contemporary news accounts and so given the colorful language and detailed play by play that newspapers of that time produced, perhaps some of that rubbed off as I found that the sense of drama and reality he portrayed was simply first rate. While prior to reading I had a summary knowledge of the series, although not all the particulars to be sure, several chapters had that “page-turner” quality that are inherent in well written books. If for no other reason than its readability and drama I'd recommend this book. Of course when coupled with the other reasons noted at the beginning of this review, picking up this book is simply a no-brainer for anyone with an interest in a truer picture of the game's past.

As a quick aside, as always books like this interest me because of their ability to contrast, knowingly or unknowingly, how the game was played in the past with its modern version. And of course those that describe play in the dead ball era, when the art of playing for one run was king and defenses weren't particularly efficient in turning batted balls into outs, are even more appealing. To that end, a crucial baserunning gaffe, or should I say base coaching gaffe, by one of the teams in game three grabbed my attention since it came at an interesting time in the evolution of the practice of employing full-time coaches. While the first fill time coach, Arlie Latham, was hired by the Reds in 1900, it would be 20 years before the practice was widely accepted. Not surprisingly it was McGraw who hired both Latham and Duke Farrell as full-time coaches in 1909 while other teams used either their manager or a rotating set of players. Although the gaffe from game three might have occurred if there were a full-time coach there or not, it illustrates how far specialization in the game has come and with it a higher overall level of play.

As Time Goes By

2008-09-20T05:19:00.004-06:00

Today we'll run another tidbit from the errata of It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over: The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book...

During which decade did baseball fans enjoy the best pennant races? Bill James, in The New Bill James Historical Abstract says unequivocally that the 1940s was "The Best Decade Ever for Pennant Races". Our compilation of Race Score by decade agrees.


Decade Aggregate   Races     Avg
1900s      375.5      12    31.3
1910s      234.9       9    26.1
1920s      423.6      12    35.3
1930s      226.1      13    17.4
1940s      390.9      11    35.5
1950s      371.5      12    31.0
1960s      385.1      12    32.1
1970s      310.0      17    18.2
1980s      354.1      20    17.7
1990s      247.0      16    15.4
2000s      431.5      27    16.0

The 1940s pulled out the highest average Race Score although the 1920s came in a close second and actually included one more race. Interestingly, the 1930s included 13 races, the highest percentage at 65% of any decade, and nine of those were in the NL with only 1931 excluded. However, many of the races were only marginal with the 1934 NL race won by the Cardinals on the strength of a 33-12 record down the stretch taking the highest score at 29.9 and ranking 43rd.

James ranks the races of the 1940s and so here is his list alongside our ranking.


James   Year    Lg      Score   Rank    Teams   Winner
1       1940    AL        46.0   16        3    Detroit Tigers (90-64)
2       1944    AL        21.0   80        2    St. Louis Browns (89-65)
3       1948    AL        72.0    3        3    Cleveland Indians (97-58)
4       1946    NL        32.9   35        2    St. Louis Cardinals (98-58)
5       1949    NL        37.0   30        2    Brooklyn Dodgers (97-57)
6       1949    AL        37.0   29        2    New York Yankees (97-57)
7       1942    NL        50.9   15        2    St. Louis Cardinals (106-48)
8       1941    NL        36.5   31        2    Brooklyn Dodgers (100-54)
9       1945    AL        18.0   86        2    Detroit Tigers (88-65)
10      1945    NL        29.9   43        2    Chicago Cubs (98-56)
        1947    NL        9.8              2    Brooklyn Dodgers (94-60)

The only race from the 1940s that James doesn't include is the 1947 NL race which ranks 121st on our list in which the Dodgers overcame the Braves at midseason and held off the Cardinals, winning by a margin of five games. As James notes, the NL races of the 1940s were dominated by the Dodgers and Cardinals while in the AL the races were more diverse.

This compilation by decade also reinforces the notion that modern races garner lower race scores overall as not only the average Race Score has declined but also the number of races that have positive scores has fallen from around 57% before divisional play to 44% after.

But since our Race Score gives extra weight to races with multiple teams with good records, this trend can also be attributed to an increasing competitive balance over time. As shown in the graph below for the AL from 1901-2005, the standard deviation in winning percentage has noticeably declined over time (albeit with a number of bumps along the way and a small upturn in the past five years) as the dotted linear trend line indicates. As more teams are bunched closer together, it is statistically less likely that two or more teams will break away from the pack and therefore score very highly in the Race Score metric.

Just why competitive balance has generally increased with time is another story. The most accepted notion, popularized by the late paleontologist and baseball fan Stephen Jay Gould in the context of the disappearance of the .400 hitter , wrests upon two pillars. First, as knowledge about how to play the game has improved and become standardized it has become more difficult for players and hence teams to take advantage of their less skilled competitors. Second, the general level of play has increased due to better athletes produced through a larger population from which the best players are chosen, better diet and training, and better technology, all of which moves the game closer to the limits of human ability providing less space for variation. In the end that leaves great players and great teams, in Gould's words*, less "space for taking advantage of the suboptimality of others".

* The 1996 book Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin by Stephen Jay Gould contains an extended discussion of Gould's argument. Also see my column "Schrodinger's Bat: The Myth of the Golden Age".

The Wheel of Change

2008-09-16T04:22:00.002-06:00

With the firing of Ned Yost yesterday with less than two weeks to go in the regular season, I thought it would be interesting to continue the errata from It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over: The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book with this tidbit on managerial changes and pennant winners.

After dropping a 4-2 contest to Brooklyn at Ebbets Field on Tuesday August 2nd 1932, the Cubs under manager Rogers Hornsby were sitting at 53-46 in second place staring up at the Pirates who held a 5-game lead. As in his three previous managerial jobs Hornsby rubbed the powers that be the wrong way and William Veeck (father of the more famous Bill Veeck) ousted him and his $8,000 per month salary "for the best interests of the club" as the Cubs traveled on to Philadelphia. In his place he ensconced first baseman Charlie Grimm. After an off-day the team beat the Phillies 12-1 with the Pirates dropping a doubleheader to the Dodgers to shrink the lead to three and a half games. Under Grimm the Cubs went a sizzling 37-18 the rest of the way including a 14-game winning streak from the 20th of August through the 3rd of September. The Pirates meanwhile struggled to a 27-26 finish thereby propelling the Cubs to the pennant by a comfortable 4-game margin and coming in 132nd in our rankings.

The distinction of the 1932 season was that it was the first time in the modern era that a team changed managers in mid season and went on to win the pennant. Perhaps inspired by the move owner P.K. Wrigley in 1938, with his team in third place with a record of 45-36 5.5 games out, fired Grimm at the end of July and replaced him with catcher Gaby Hartnett. In no small part the hiring of Grimm as the needed sparkplug was based on the results of a study performed by a University of Illinois professor Wrigley hired to psychoanalyze the team. While team chemistry is often derided, perhaps the professor was onto something. Down the stretch the Cubs posted a 44-27 record including a 10-game winning streak from September 22-28. And of course famously it was manager Hartnett who homered in the bottom of the ninth on September 28th with darkness threatening to give the Cubs a 6-5 win over the Pirates and the league lead which they would not relinquish. That 1938 race ranked 70th in our list and so in the span of six years the Cubs had twice replaced their manager well into the season and both times it paid dividends.

Although these first two occurrences were wildly successful, it would take another 40 years and the advent of divisional play before the fateful summer of 1978 would see a similar occurrence. With the Yankees sitting at 52-43 in fourth place and behind the Red Sox by 10.5 games on the morning of July 25th, Bob Lemon would replace Billy Martin (Dick Howser managed one game in the interim) who resigned after disparaging comments referencing star Reggie Jackson and owner George Steinbrenner. Lemon is credited with calming the stormy sea and the team went on a 47-20 tear to tie for the AL East title and then…well, the rest as they say is history.

It wasn't long after, that three teams in the fateful summer of 1981 would make the post season after having made a managerial change.

The Kansas City Royals slumped badly in the first half after their 1980 World Series appearance posting a 20-30 record under manager Jim Frey. After opening the second half 10-10 Frey was dismissed in favor of Dick Howser and the Royals went 20-13 the rest of the way winning the second half Western Division title.

The Montreal Expos were in a similar situation posting a 30-25 record in the first half under Dick Williams. A 14-12 record to begin the second half led to his ouster and replacement by Jim Fanning who guided the team to a 16-11 finish and the Expos only post season appearance.

The Yankees led by Gene Michael won the AL East first half title with a record of 34-22. However, a 14-12 start to the second half led to Michael's replacement by the miracle worker of 1978, Bob Lemon. This time though, the Yanks did not respond and went 11-14 the rest of the way before picking themselves back up and beating the Brewers and the A's enroute to the World Series. This was the only time in history that a post season team's replacement manager had a worse record than the manager being replaced.

But none of these were, statistically speaking anyway, the biggest turnarounds correlated with managerial changes by post season teams. That honor goes to the 1989 Toronto Blue Jays. After enduring a 12-24 (.333) start under Jimmy Williams, General Manager Pat Gillick hired Cito Gaston on May 31st as the interim manager. That interim title was quickly forgotten as the Jays reeled off a 77-49 (.611) record with the help of acquisitions Lee Mazzilli and Mookie Wilson from the Mets leading to a 20-9 August that saw them pull into a first place tie with the surprising Orioles as the month closed. After holding a slim lead most of the month of September, the Jays hooked up with the Orioles in a three game series at the new Sky Dome (opened in June and host to a new Major League attendance record of almost 3.4 million fans) on the season's final weekend with the Orioles one game back. The Blue Jays took the first two games of the series 2-1 and 4-3 to seal the deal and come in 129th in our rankings. The difference in winning percentage after the managerial change of .278 was the largest in history by a wide margin.

All of the races already mentioned and a few more where post season teams have made managerial moves are shown in the table below and sorted by change in winning percentage.


Year    Team        Lg  Manager          W    L    Pct   Replaced By     W    L    Pct   Change
1989    Toronto     AL  Jimmy Williams  12   24  0.333   Cito Gaston    77   49  0.611   0.278
2003    Florida     NL  Jeff Torborg    16   22  0.421   Jack McKeon    75   49  0.605   0.184
1981    Kansas City AL  Jim Frey        30   40  0.429   Dick Howser    20   13  0.606   0.177
1978    New  York   AL  Billy Martin    52   43  0.547   Bob Lemon      48   20  0.706   0.159
2004    Houston     NL  Jimmy Williams  44   44  0.500   Phil Garner    48   26  0.649   0.149
1932    Chicago     NL  Rogers Hornsby  53   46  0.535   Charlie Grimm  37   18  0.673   0.137
1982    Milwaukee   AL  Buck Rodgers    23   24  0.489   Harvey Kuenn   72   43  0.626   0.137
1983    PhiladelphiaNL  Pat Corrales    43   42  0.506   Paul Owens     47   30  0.610   0.105
1988    Boston      AL  John McNamara   43   42  0.506   Joe Morgan     46   31  0.597   0.092
1938    Chicago     NL  Charlie Grimm   45   36  0.556   Gabby Hartnett 44   27  0.620   0.064
1981    Montreal    NL  Dick Williams   44   37  0.543   Jim Fanning    16   11  0.593   0.049
1996    Los Angeles NL  Tommy Lasorda   41   35  0.539   Bill Russell   49   37  0.570   0.030
1981    New  York   AL  Gene Michael    48   34  0.585   Bob Lemon      11   14  0.440  -0.145

A few notes:

Fifteen years after his replacement by Gaston, Jimmy Williams was once again shoved aside in favor of Phil Garner who led the Astros to a playoff appearance in 2004 making Williams the only manager to capture such a "distinction".

"Trader Jack" McKeon captures the second biggest turnaround with the Marlins 75-49 finish on the way to their second World Championship. McKeon was no stranger to big turnarounds. On May 23, 1978 the A's were leading the AL West by two games with a record of 24-15 when manager Bobby Winkles, deciding he'd had enough of Charlie Finley, stepped down. McKeon replaced Winkles, who ironically had replaced him the previous season, and the A's went on to post a 45-78 record good for the largest drop in winning percentage after a managerial change at -.250.

The replacement in 1982 of Buck Rodgers by Harvey Kuenn was told in colorful detail by Daniel Okrent in his classic 9 Innings. Mike Caldwell, Ted Simmons, and Rollie Fingers were among the most vocal of Rodgers critics. In fact, a public tirade by Fingers after he wasn't brought in against a lefty in the ninth inning of a May 31st loss sealed the coffin.

From an analysts perspective the thing to note is that except in the cases of the first three teams listed in the table, all the rest were respectable to good teams who simply played better once their new managers were in place. The aggregate winning percentage of these thirteen before the change was .512 while after it skyrocketed to .616. In other words, these teams were already in a position to succeed.

Aside from these teams there have been 276 others since 1900 (not counting the 1961-62 Cubs whose famous "college of coaches" experiment failed) that have employed multiple managers (with the 1937 Tigers and 1968 White Sox employing five managers each). Obviously the vast majority of managerial changes engender no such turnaround. Even so, considering only the 52 teams who already had a .500 record or greater when their first manager was replaced, we find that roughly 20% (13 of the now 65) of the teams equipped to win, went on to post season play after changing managers. Most front offices would take those odds. Knowing when to pull the trigger, on the other hand, is the tough part.

The More and the Less the Merrier

2008-08-08T17:44:00.002-06:00

This is a continuation of the serialization of "The Great Pennant Race Abstract" from the book It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over: The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book.

One of the three components of our methodology in ranking the races is to consider the number of teams involved. Obviously more teams typically leads both to more fan interest across the country as well as heightened drama.

But what about the greatest two team race? That distinction belongs to the 1942 NL race won by the St. Louis Cardinals. The reason that race scores so highly is because it was so close, being decided by just two games, and both teams easily topped 100 wins with the Cards winning 106 and the Dodgers 104. There was also plenty of drama for good measure. On the morning of August 16th it was the Dodgers, featuring a pair of 23 year olds in Pee Wee Reese and Pete Resier, who held a nine and half game lead over the Cardinals. But the Branch Rickey built Cards, and second youngest team in the league with contributions from rookies Stan Musial in left field and Johnny Beazley on the mound, would go on to win 35 of 41 games and 12 of their final 13 while the Dodgers finished 25-17 to take the pennant and eventually the World Series over the Yankees in five games.

That great Cardinal team, then nicknamed the "St. Louis Swifties", was also interesting in that they led the league in runs scored (4.84 per game, a fact that is often forgotten), batting average, on base percentage, and even slugging percentage despite hitting just 60 homeruns finishing sixth in the eight team league. To make up for their lack of homerun power which saw their infielders hit just 9, the team slugged 69 triples and 282 doubles both of which led the league. Enos Slaughter racked up 17 triples and 31 doubles while 6'2" second sacker Marty Marion hit 38 doubles. Sportsman's Park certainly played as a hitter's park but they also led the league in fewest runs allowed (3.09 per game) by a wide margin led by MVP Mort Cooper who twirled 10 shutouts on his way to 22 wins.

On the other side of the coin the only five team race among the 165 that had positive Race Scores was the 1988 AL East race which ranked 23rd and was won by the Red Sox with a record of 89-73 with the five teams finishing within 3.5 games. This race scored highly despite the victor only garnering 89 wins in part because of the 30% bonus awarded to a five team race.


Team Name            G  W   L    PCT    GB     RS   RA
Boston Red Sox     162  89  73  0.549     -    813   689
Detroit Tigers     162  88  74  0.543     1    703   658
Milwaukee Brewers  162  87  75  0.537     2    682   616
Toronto Blue Jays  162  87  75  0.537     2    763   680
New York Yankees   161  85  76  0.528   3.5    772   748
Cleveland Indians  162  78  84  0.481    11    666   731
Baltimore Orioles  161  54 107  0.335  34.5    550   789

The Orioles were out of the race early as losers of their first 21 games shattering the previous record of 13 and the Indians, while briefly in first place in April, soon turned mediocre. It was the Yankees and Tigers who then got hot and occupied the top two spots, 6 games in front of the rest of the pack as July dawned. Over the All-Star break the Red Sox, with a record of 43-42, fired manager John McNamara and promoted coach Joe Morgan (more on managerial changes below). The Sox then started the second half with a 12-game winning streak, picked up Mike Boddicker at the trading deadline to fill out the rotation, and pulled into a tie with the Tigers on September 3rd. From there they built a five game lead by September 23st but then promptly lost seven of their last nine and just barely holding on.

The Tigers were by then the oldest team in the league (more on old teams below) and their offense faded down the stretch as did the Yankees pitching, which was second worst in the league only to Baltimore. The Yankees had a managerial change of their own when Billy Martin, returning to the job for the fifth and final time, was fired in late June when the Yankees slipped from first.

What Have You Done For Me Lately

2008-08-08T17:30:00.005-06:00

This is a continuation of the serialization of "The Great Pennant Race Abstract" from the book It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over: The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book.

Many readers will be interested in which pennant races in the last few years rank the highest and so here are the top 10 races since the dawn of the new millennium.


Rank    Year    Lg      Div     Score Teams     Winner
1       2007    NL      West    32.7    3       Arizona Diamondbacks (90-72)
2       2004    AL      West    31.8    3       Anaheim Angels (92-70)
3       2002    NL      West    30.0    3       Arizona Diamondbacks (98-64)
4       2005    AL      East    28.0    2       New York Yankees (95-67)
5       2004    AL      East    27.9    2       New York Yankees (101-61)
6       2006    AL      Central 27.0    2       Minnesota Twins (96-66)
7       2002    AL      West    26.2    2       Oakland Athletics (103-59)
8       2000    NL      East    25.0    2       Atlanta Braves (95-67)
9       2001    NL      Central 24.0    2       Houston Astros/St. Louis Cardinals (93-69)
10      2007    AL      East    22.9    2       Boston Red Sox (96-66)

The most recent race to make the list is of course the excellent 2007 NL West race between the Diamondbacks, Padres, and Rockies thanks to the improbable heroics of the Rox. But just two years ago, the 2006 AL Central race was very tight as the Tigers, after leading the division for almost the entire season, were passed by the Twins on the season's final day as the Tigers fell in twelve innings to the lowly Royals as the Twins beat the White Sox.

The 2004 AL West race takes the second spot and the 38th overall as the Anaheim Angels finished one game in front of the A's and three games ahead of the Rangers. The Angels took matters into their own hands by beating the Rangers three out of four and the A's four out of six to close the season. Although the Diamondbacks in the 2002 NL West race were in sole possession of first place after July 15th, the race scores well since it tightened in the final week before Arizona swept a 4-game series with the Rockies to end the season and win by just 2.5 games over the Giants.

The unbalanced schedule since the introduction of divisional play coupled with the fewer number of teams per division - especially since 1995 and the addition of two more divisions - makes it a bit more difficult for modern races to rack up really high Race Scores. When you consider that 176 of the 312 races occurred since the inception of divisional play in 1969, and yet only 12 of the top 50 races but 28 of the next 50 are from this period, you can see how the calculation of the Race Score favors the past. Traditionalists will no doubt agree that this is the way it ought to be.

Rookie Reporter Showdown

2008-07-12T07:25:00.002-06:00

Given that I think all of us have at one time or another thought that we could call a game better than this or that announcer, I thought this contest was interesting. Gillette is offering fans the chance to join the MLB.com broadcasting team during the 2008 World Series.

To enter you have to go to the site linked above and upload a video that proves you're better than they are. Gillette will then choose 48 finalists from across the country to compete in a series of "reporter" challenges hosted by ESPN baseball reporter Erin Andrews that will air during live local MLB telecasts. Viewers are then asked to vote for their favorite to decide who will be the Rookie Reporter. Good Luck!

Dr. Stat Attacks!

2008-07-07T13:08:00.002-06:00

Very funny stuff from Joe Posnanski. When I was at Tropicana last year they had no such cartoon but given the atmosphere they're trying to create there and the ginormous video screen that dominates the venue, it doesn't surprise me.

Summit!

2008-07-05T18:48:00.008-06:00

In an ongoing effort to wear oursevles out completely before we move to Pittsburgh, my 12-year old daughter Laura and I ascended (and descended) Pike's Peak today.

We were up at 4:30 armed with breakfast courtesy of my lovely wife and our backpacks loaded with great snacks and headed out to a place called The Crags campground which is on the back of the mountain at an elevation of around 10,000 feet. We disembarked and were on the trail at 5:50AM.

After hiking a couple miles through the forest you come out just below the tree line and then after a series of switchbacks have to ascend almost straight up the bluff to reach the saddle at just below 13,000 feet. That stretch was particularly trying for us and we had to stop frequently and used up a good portion of our water.

Once we got to the saddle the hiking was easier and our spirits were better as evidenced by this photo where Laura shows the way to the summit:

However, after crossing the road used by a gazillion tourists on this day and paralleling the road for a long ways, we came to the final boulder field to ascend the last 500 feet to the summit. We got off the trail a little and although our route was shorter it was not easy and by the time we reached the summit just before 11AM we were both spent. But still, we had to stand in line for about 10 minutes to get the obligatory picture taken (the walking stick isn't just for show, I needed it to hold myself up :)

After the photo we had our lunch in the gift shop and hung around for about an hour drinking as much water as we could and digesting. We headed back at noon (kind of hoping someone in a truck or SUV would ask if we wanted a ride part way down to where the trail intersected the road) and although it was easier and faster going down, our calves and ankles got very sore from navigating the rocks and trying to avoid slipping (it rained starting about 3/4 of the way down). Anyway, we were back at the car at 4:30 and are now immovable in front of the TV and computer for the remainder of the evening. All told it was about a 12 mile hike and although we had gone on a few hikes in the preceding weeks, they were nowhere close to as long.

It was harder than we both thought and I was so proud of Laura for sticking it out when early on she was having some trouble. She was quite a trooper and of course just spending the time with her was a treat.

Like Peas in a Pod

2008-07-04T07:03:00.003-06:00

More outtakes from The Great Pennant Race Abstract...

The 1950 NL race (ranked 54th) is certainly the more famous of the two races in 1950. That season the Phillies jumped out to a big lead and still held leads of 9 game lead over the Dodgers and 7.5 games over the Boston Braves as late as the morning of September 19th. The Dodgers roared back winning 13 of 16 while the Phiilies won just 3 of 12 to put the Dodgers one game back with one to play on October 1st. Tied at one into the tenth, Dick Sisler hit a three-run homer off of a tiring Don Newcombe (Sisler hit Newcombe's 127th pitch of the afternoon) to defeat Brooklyn 4-1 and finally secure the pennant for the Phillies.

As great as that race was, the AL race of 1950 takes the second spot in our rankings. This is the case since the Yankees, Tigers, Red Sox, and Indians were all very good teams and all in the race at the beginning of September. All four teams would win 92 or more games and finish within six games of each other. The Yankees were helped by bringing up rookie southpaw Whitey Ford in late June (9-1, 2.81 ERA in 112 IP) with Joe DiMaggio making a late season comeback. By contrast the Tigers were hurt by the injury to Virgil Trucks and the Red Sox by the fractured elbow of Ted Williams sustained in the All-Star game while the Indians were swept in a September series by the lowly St. Louis Browns to knock them out of the race.

As with 1950, the 1964 NL race (Race #5 ranked 7th) is the more famous of the two races for that season but the 1964 AL race ranks just above it at number six. That race featured three teams with 97 or more wins including the Yankees (their last pennant until 1977), White Sox, and Orioles all of whom finished within two games of one another.

1964 was Yogi Berra's lone season as Yankee skipper in the 1960s (he would also manage the team in 1984 and the beginning of 1985) and the Bronx Bombers found themselves un-customarily struggling, four and half games out on August 29th and trailing both the Sox and Orioles. Then they caught fire. Most attribute the turnaround of the Yanks to the famous "harmonica incident" where utility infielder Phil Linz, "assisted" by Mickey Mantle, was reprimanded and fined by Berra for playing the harmonica on the team bus following a four game sweep at the hands of the White Sox on August 20th. While that makes for a good story, it should be noted that following the incident the Yanks immediately dropped two games to the Red Sox and won just 7 of their next 13 before reeling off 23 wins in their final 30 games (and an 11-game winning streak from September 16-26) to finish a game ahead of the White Sox and take the pennant*. No, the turnaround can more likely be attributed to the recall of Mel Stottlemeyre in August who would go on to win 9 games, and the purchase of Pedro Ramos from the Indians to shore up the bullpen on September 5th who would pitch 21.7 innings giving up 13 hits while striking out 21 and walking not a batter down the stretch.

The natural corollary to the stories of 1950 and 1964 is to rank the years with the greatest total Race Scores and so here are the top 20 seasons where it could be argued that baseball fans enjoyed the best pennant races.


Rank        Year   Races   Score
1           1908       2   142.7
2           1964       2   132.7
3           1950       2   104.8
4           1928       2    90.2
5           1915       2    84.0
6           1980       3    79.8
7           1916       2    78.8
8           1977       2    78.4
9           1924       2    76.7
10          2004       3    76.5
11          1962       2    76.3
12          1985       4    75.1
13          1949       2    74.0
14          1948       1    72.0
15          1920       1    71.2
16          1978       3    71.2
17          1982       4    70.8
18          2007       4    69.4
19          1993       2    62.9
20          1909       2    62.2

Special mention should be made here of 1981 whose eight "races" totaled a score of 71.2 which would have tied for 17th place. The first half races scored a 41.5 while the second half was at 29.7. The best of those was the first half AL West which placed 101st overall and which saw the A's finish 1.5 games ahead of the Rangers and two and half over the White Sox. Of course, neither the fans nor the players understood that the games completed before the strike would have such consequences on the postseason and so it is difficult to construe these as true races.

1908 takes the top spot as the less famous AL race takes 13th in our rankings. Detroit, Cleveland, and Chicago battled it out and finished within a game and half of each other. The Naps (as the franchise was then known in honor of their player-manager Nap LaJoie) won 16 of 18 to edge in front of Detroit in late September punctuated by Addie Joss's perfect game on October 2nd against the White Sox whose hurler Ed Walsh himself struck out 15. The Tigers, however, would take the pennant by a half game on the final day with a win over Chicago. A controversy ensued because the Tigers were not required to make up a rainout causing the powers that be to establish a new rule requiring all ties and rainouts affecting a pennant race to be replayed.

Well, sort of.

The 1938 season was interrupted for several days in the wake of the strongest hurricane to hit New England in recorded history and that took an estimated 600 lives. Perhaps coincidentally or perhaps not, after play resumed on September 22nd the Cubs went on to win ten in a row on their way to the NL pennant (discussed below). What is not coincidental, however, is that on September 18th the approaching hurricane caused both the Cubs and Pirates to play tie games. Due to the hurricane the games were not able to be replayed and under the rules of the time the games were not allowed to be played after the last scheduled game of the season. The rule was changed in 1951 in the AL and 1955 in the NL making 1938 the last season in which un-played games affected the outcome of a race.

Of interest here as well is the 1915 season in which the Federal League race (ranked 21st) edges out the AL race (ranked 22nd) 42.5 to 41.5 but that together rate the season as the 5th best. In the AL the Red Sox won 101 games by the pitching prowess of Babe Ruth and Smokey Joe Wood and edged out the Tigers by 2.5 games who themselves won 100 times. But in the Federal League something happened that had never happened before and didn't happen again until 2001 – the two teams at the top finished in a tie by the traditional method of measuring games behind.


Team Name             G    W    L    T     PCT   GB   RS   RA
Chicago Whales      155   86   66    3  0.5658   -   640  538
St. Louis Terriers  159   87   67    5  0.5649   -   633  527
Pittsburgh Rebels   156   86   67    3  0.5621  0.5  592  524

The Whales, led by player-manager by Joe Tinker, edged out the St. Louis Terriers and aging star pitcher Eddie Plank by .0009 as the winner was decided on percentage points since the league did not have a rule for the playing of tie breakers. 1915 was the second and final season of the Federal League as a settlement ensued whereby the Federal League owners of the Chicago and St. Louis franchises purchased the Cubs and Browns with the happy result that what would become Wrigley Field was brought into the NL.

In 2001 the NL Central (ranked 67th) duplicated the feat of the Federal League when the Astros and Cardinals finished with identical 93-69 records. Of course, the addition of the Wild Card in 1995 has typically made the playing of tie breakers unnecessary although of course the tie-breaker between the Rockies and Padres last season for the Wild Card was a great end to a season which saw that 2007 NL West battle rank 36th (32.7). That unhappy result was duplicated in both the 2005 AL East (ranked 51st) and the 2006 NL West (ranked 107th).

Since divisional play began in 1969 the best overall set of races can be said to be 1985 where all four races earned Race Scores greater than zero. In particular the AL East (ranked 45th) and the NL East (ranked 53rd) were excellent. In the AL East the Blue Jays, led by their outfield of Jesse Barfield, Lloyd Moseby, and George Bell, captured their first flag winning 99 games and edging out the Yankees by beating them on the season's penultimate day 5-1. The AL West race was no slouch either as the Royals slipped past the Angels by winning three of four head-to-head matchups in the season's final weekend. In the NL East, the Cardinals edged the Mets by three games on the strength of a running attack that featured 314 stolen bases. In a 2005 article yours truly calculated that the version of "Whitey Ball" employed in 1985 contributed just over 30 runs to the Cardinals offense, a total that translates to about three wins and exactly their margin over the Mets.

* The White Sox eventually finished second on the strength of their pitching and the Orioles third on the performance of MVP Brooks Robinson but both teams were hurt by losses to poor teams down the stretch. The Sox dropped five of seven in one stretch to Washington, Cleveland, and Minnesota and the Orioles split a four game set with Kansas City and two of three to Minnesota in the final weeks.

Ranking the Races

2008-06-29T20:13:00.007-06:00

This post continues The Great Pennant Race Abstract series started several weeks back and references the races discussed in the book It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over: The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book.

Using the definition in the introduction there have been 312 races (counting the four 1981 races twice because of the split season's two halves as well as the Federal League's two races) beginning with the 1901 season. Not all of them, or for that matter a majority of them, have resulted in the kind of drama and excitement discussed in many of the chapters of this book. And it's difficult if not impossible to quantify what makes up a great race but of course that's exactly our task here. I'll kick off this abstract by ranking the top 100 pennant races of all time.

Analyst Jim Albright, who over the years has been the most prolific analyst of Japanese baseball and writes for BaseballGuru.com, once developed a system for ranking the greatest Japanese pennant races. With a few tweaks, that's the system employed here.

Simply put and following Albright's lead, a great pennant race can be defined as one that contains three components; 1) it is close, 2) it is between good teams, and 3) the more teams involved the greater the excitement.

The first component speaks for itself but the second is a bit more controversial. While some may argue that the 2006 NL Central race was a great race, the limping Cardinals losing seven in a row from September 20-26, almost blowing a 7 game lead with 13 to play, and especially winning the division with just 83 wins, starts to take on a more comical look than it does one characterized by great baseball. The Cardinals did go on take the distinction of the team with the fewest wins and winning percentage (.516) to ever win the World Series (the 1987 Twins at 85 wins and a .525 winning percentage were next) but their regular season race just doesn't rise to aesthetic level of a "Great Pennant Race". The same can be said for the 1973 National League East race as discussed in Race #8 where three teams finished within three and half games and another at give game behind the Mets but where none of those teams finished above .500. The 1984 AL West race detailed in Race #9 is yet another that falls into this category and the list goes on.

The third component should also not engender much controversy as it's obvious that a five team scramble as in the 1964 NL race or the four team jostle in the AL in 1950 does much to add to the drama as the number of what if scenarios and outcomes multiplies.

The methodology therefore comprises three simple steps to calculate a "Race Score" where the higher the score the greater the pennant race.

First, subtract the number of losses from the number of wins for each team in the race (excluding the winning team). Teams with better records will record higher numbers consistent with our first component mentioned above. Although this technique does not capture the dynamic nature of the race it turns out that the position at which teams end is arguably the best determiner of the "closeness" of the race. Using a more dynamic approach ranks races where teams hung around within striking distance but never really challenged the front-runner more highly but don't do as well with races where a furious August or September comeback brings a team back into contention.

Second, raise the number of games behind each team finished to the power of 1.65 and subtract it from the result of the first step. This has the effect of combining our first and second components since teams with better records who finish fewer games behind will receive higher scores. A team like the 2006 Astros who finished 1.5 games behind with a record of 82-80 receives a score of 0.048 while the 1927 Cardinals finishing an equal distance behind but with 92 wins receives a score of 29.05 (Albright originally squared the number of games behind but I found that raising it to slightly lower power allows us to consider more races and be a little more forgiving with regard to the second component).

Next, the teams with negative scores are eliminated and the totals summed up for each race.

Finally, add a bonus for the number of teams (excluding the winning team) in the race. For one team simply multiply the Race Score by 1, for two teams give a 10% bonus and multiply by 1.1, for three teams its 20% at 1.2, four teams 30%, and so on (Originally Albright gave bonuses in increments of 20%, 40%, 60% etc. but this pushed multi-team races too far to the top for my taste since good races like the 1942 NL race between the Dodgers and Cardinals and the 1993 NL West race between the Dodgers and Giants would otherwise fall precipitously in the rankings).

What that leaves us with are 161 of the 312 races or just over 50% that garner a positive Race Score. Without further ado then, here are the top 100 pennant races of all time with those discussed in detail in this book both bolded and italicized.


Rank    Year    Lg      Div        Score Teams  Winner
1       1908    NL                  90.2   3    Chicago Cubs (99-55)
2       1950    AL                  77.8   4    New York Yankees (98-56)
3       1948    AL                  72.0   3    Cleveland Indians (97-58)
4       1920    AL                  71.2   3    Cleveland Indians (98-56)
5       1962    NL                  70.5   3    San Francisco Giants (103-62)
6       1964    AL                  68.0   3    New York Yankees (99-63)
7       1964    NL                  64.6   4    St. Louis Cardinals (93-69)
8       1977    AL      East        62.6   3    New York Yankees (100-62)
9       1927    NL                  61.5   3    Pittsburgh Pirates (94-60)
10      1956    NL                  59.2   3    Brooklyn Dodgers (93-61)
11      1967    AL                  57.4   4    Boston Red Sox (92-70)
12      1924    NL                  53.8   3    New York Giants (93-60)
13      1908    AL                  52.5   3    Detroit Tigers (90-63)
14      1928    NL                  51.7   3    St. Louis Cardinals (95-59)
15      1942    NL                  50.9   2    St. Louis Cardinals (106-48)
16      1940    AL                  46.0   3    Detroit Tigers (90-64)
17      1916    NL                  44.7   3    Brooklyn Robins (94-60)
18      1955    AL                  43.6   3    New York Yankees (96-58)
19      1993    NL      West        43.0   2    Atlanta Braves (104-58)
20      1966    NL                  42.8   3    Los Angeles Dodgers (95-67)
21      1915    FL                  42.5   3    Chicago Whales (86-66)
22      1915    AL                  41.5   2    Boston Red Sox (101-50)
23      1988    AL      East        41.4   5    Boston Red Sox (89-73)
24      1978    AL      East        39.7   3    New York Yankees (100-63)
25      1904    AL                  39.4   3    Boston Americans (95-59)
26      1907    AL                  38.9   3    Detroit Tigers (92-58)
27      1928    AL                  38.5   2    New York Yankees (101-53)
28      1906    AL                  37.0   3    Chicago White Sox (93-58)
29      1949    AL                  37.0   2    New York Yankees (97-57)
30      1949    NL                  37.0   2    Brooklyn Dodgers (97-57)
31      1941    NL                  36.5   2    Brooklyn Dodgers (100-54)
32      1951    NL                  36.0   2    New York Giants (98-59)
33      1916    AL                  34.1   3    Boston Red Sox (91-63)
34      1909    NL                  33.1   2    Pittsburgh Pirates (110-42)
35      1946    NL                  32.9   2    St. Louis Cardinals (98-58)
36      2007    NL      West        32.7   3    Arizona Diamondbacks (90-72)
37      1980    AL      East        31.9   2    New York Yankees (103-59)
38      2004    AL      West        31.8   3    Anaheim Angels (92-70)
39      1930    NL                  31.5   3    St. Louis Cardinals (92-62)
40      1922    AL                  31.0   2    New York Yankees (94-60)
41      1980    NL      West        30.9   3    Houston Astros (93-70)
42      2002    NL      West        30.0   3    Arizona Diamondbacks (98-64)
43      1945    NL                  29.9   2    Chicago Cubs (98-56)
44      1934    NL                  29.9   2    St. Louis Cardinals (95-58)
45      1985    AL      East        29.9   2    Toronto Blue Jays (99-62)
46      1909    AL                  29.1   2    Detroit Tigers (98-54)
47      1905    AL                  28.9   2    Philadelphia Athletics (92-56)
48      1952    AL                  28.9   2    New York Yankees (95-59)
49      1987    NL      East        28.6   3    St. Louis Cardinals (95-67)
50      1935    NL                  28.2   2    Chicago Cubs (100-54)
51      2005    AL      East        28.0   2    New York Yankees (95-67)
52      2004    AL      East        27.9   2    New York Yankees (101-61)
53      1985    NL      East        27.9   2    St. Louis Cardinals (101-61)
54      1950    NL                  27.1   3    Philadelphia Phillies (91-63)
55      1999    NL      Central     27.0   2    Houston Astros (97-65)
56      2006    AL      Central     27.0   2    Minnesota Twins (96-66)
57      1997    AL      East        26.9   2    Baltimore Orioles (98-64)
58      1987    AL      East        26.9   2    Detroit Tigers (98-64)
59      1979    NL      East        26.9   2    Pittsburgh Pirates (98-64)
60      2002    AL      West        26.2   2    Oakland Athletics (103-59)
61      1937    NL                  25.9   2    New York Giants (95-57)
62      2000    NL      East        25.0   2    Atlanta Braves (95-67)
63      1982    AL      East        25.0   2    Milwaukee Brewers (95-67)
64      1965    NL                  24.9   2    Los Angeles Dodgers (97-65)
65      1974    NL      West        24.2   2    Los Angeles Dodgers (102-60)
66      1982    NL      West        24.0   3    Atlanta Braves (89-73)
67      2001    NL      Central     24.0   2    Houston Astros (93-69)
68      1991    NL      West        23.0   2    Atlanta Braves (94-68)
69      1935    AL                  22.9   2    Detroit Tigers (93-58)
70      1924    AL                  22.9   2    Washington Senators (92-62)
71      2007    AL      East        22.9   2    Boston Red Sox (96-66)
72      1938    NL                  22.7   3    Chicago Cubs (89-63)
73      1918    AL                  22.7   3    Boston Red Sox (75-51)
74      1914    FL                  22.1   3    Indianapolis Hoosiers (88-65)
75      1921    AL                  22.0   2    New York Yankees (98-55)
76      1926    NL                  21.9   3    St. Louis Cardinals (89-65)
77      1919    AL                  21.1   2    Chicago White Sox (88-52)
78      1973    NL      West        21.1   2    Cincinnati Reds (99-63)
79      1954    AL                  21.1   2    Cleveland Indians (111-43)
80      1944    AL                  21.0   2    St. Louis Browns (89-65)
81      1993    NL      East        19.9   2    Philadelphia Phillies (97-65)
82      1969    NL      West        19.8   3    Atlanta Braves (93-69)
83      2000    AL      West        19.7   2    Oakland Athletics (91-70)
84      1939    NL                  19.0   2    Cincinnati Reds (97-57)
85      1978    NL      West        18.5   2    Los Angeles Dodgers (95-67)
86      1945    AL                  18.0   2    Detroit Tigers (88-65)
87      1952    NL                  18.0   2    Brooklyn Dodgers (96-57)
88      2003    AL      West        17.9   2    Oakland Athletics (96-66)
89      1951    AL                  17.8   2    New York Yankees (98-56)
90      1921    NL                  17.2   2    New York Giants (94-59)
91      1980    NL      East        17.0   2    Philadelphia Phillies (91-71)
92      1985    AL      West        17.0   2    Kansas City Royals (91-71)
93      1996    NL      West        17.0   2    San Diego Padres (91-71)
94      2004    NL      West        16.9   2    Los Angeles Dodgers (93-69)
95      1959    NL                  16.5   3    Los Angeles Dodgers (88-68)
96      1999    AL      East        16.2   2    New York Yankees (98-64)
97      1923    NL                  16.0   2    New York Giants (95-58)
98      1926    AL                  15.9   2    New York Yankees (91-63)
99      1954    NL                  15.8   2    New York Giants (97-57)
100     1977    NL      East        15.8   2    Philadelphia Phillies (101-61)

Nine of the thirteen races discussed in this book make the top 100 with the 1908 race (Race #4) taking the top spot by a fairly wide margin and three others finishing in the top eleven. The 1972 AL East (Race #7) finished 103rd, the 2003 NL Central (Race #6) placed 104th. That leaves only the 1973 NL East and 1984 AL West completely out of the 157 races that finished with positive Race Scores. In case you're wondering, the 2006 NL Central captured the 161st and final spot with a Race Score that rounds to 0.0.

Some of you will no doubt quibble with this list and indeed some may detect a chronological bias which will be discussed later. Regardless of the methodology no list would be perfect and this list is offered more as a secondary look than as a definitive ranking. Arguing passionately about the minutiae of the game is one of the many aspects of baseball that we love as fans. Let the debate begin.

Steals and More Steals

2008-06-19T08:14:00.002-06:00

Caleb Peiffer of Baseball Prospectus has a nice article at the New York Sun on stolen bases titled "Steals Have Become More Precise and More Effective" to which I contributed a very small part. Especially interesting are his stats on the Padres recent woeful record of catching opposing baserunners. Good stuff and similar to this piece by The Numbers Guy at the Wall Street Journal online.

The Great Pennant Race Abstract

2008-06-18T20:33:00.007-06:00

Yes, it's a little early to get all excited about the coming pennant races but this is a topic I've meaning to visit ever since the Baseball Prospectus book, It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over: The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book, came out in paperback a few months ago. In any case, I contributed to that book in the appendix titled "The Great Pennant Race Abstract" by creating a series of graphs that highlighted each of the thirteen pennant races that were discussed in the chapters of the book.

The original vision for the abstract was a little more grand and included a series of mini-essays highlighting aspects of other pennant races not discussed in detail in the book. While I did in fact pen that longer version of the abstract that stretched to over 12,000 words, it couldn't be acccomdated in the book. So for the next few days I'll publish those mini-essays here beginning today with the introduction to the abstract. These are as they were originally written with the exception of updating them to include the 2007 season. Hopefully, you'll find them entertaining and it will spur you to check out the book if you haven't already. As is the case with the other books published by BP, this one combines good baseball writing with the kind of analysis you typically read in the work of Nate Silver, Joe Sheehan, Christina Kahrl et. al. over on the web site.

As for myself, I'm a little biased to his turn of mind I suppose but Silver's chapter on the 1944 American League race featuring the St. Louis Browns ("The Home Front") is probably my favorite as it combines the narrative of the Brown's first and only AL pennant with the effect of the war on baseball and ending with a counterfactural 1944 race based on an estimate of how much talent each team lost and how it was replaced (hint: the Brown got off relatively scot-free enabling them to take the crown).

So without further ado, here's the introduction of the Great Pennant Race Abstract...

Historian Jules Tygiel has argued that the men who shaped baseball in the 1850s and 1860s fashioned it in their own image through the embrace of the "modern, rational, scientific, worldview that had grown prevalent in mid-nineteenth century America."* Consistent with that world view the chaos of various versions of "town ball" were replaced by the fixed boundaries of field, team size, and game length as baseball exploded in popularity immediately before and after the Civil War.

Embedded in that desire for rationalization was the felt need to faithfully record the events of the game, hence the first box score, then termed an "abstract", appearing in the New York Morning News on October 22, 1845. From those humble beginnings quantification took root and with the pioneering Henry Chadwick leading the way, baseball and numbers were forever intertwined.

Such is our legacy as baseball fans.

That legacy has been exercised, some would say with a vengeance, again and again throughout this book. Our authors have taken you on a journey through the ins and outs of thirteen of the greatest pennant races in the history of baseball. These were selected using Clay Davenport's methodology described in the introduction. But the mind of the baseball fan, obsessed as it is with quantification, probably won't rest there. Is there an alternate way to rank the races? What about all the races that didn't make the list of thirteen? How do they stack up? What do the distribution of great races look like over time? What are their numeric oddities and highlights?

Look no further for in this abstract I'll present a series of topics brimming with analysis and information nuggets to satiate you the reader and fan. Each mini-essay touches on a theme embedded in one or more pennant races, which for our purposes here are defined as the American, National, and Federal League regular season races (including tie-breakers) beginning in 1901 and extending through the divisional races (thereby also termed pennant races) of 2007 and excluding 1994 where no post season teams were named and hence where there could be said to have been no race. Enjoy.

* Past Time: Baseball As History by Jules Tygiel. Oxford University Press, New York Date Published: 2000 ISBN: 0195089588

Testing an Old Adage...Again

2008-06-13T15:23:00.004-06:00

Mike Fast has a great piece up over on The Hardball Times researching the correlation between working quickly and effectiveness. While I study I did on Baseball Prospectus last May used average game time and was more historical in that it went back to 1970, Mike uses the time stamps that MLBAM is providing in its Pitchf/x data for 2008.

What Mike found largely corresponds to what I concluded, namely that there doesn't appear to be any relationship between defensive support as measured by defensive efficiency (DER) and BABIP and time between pitches for team or individual pitchers measured relative to their teams (although I was using unearned runs instead of DER as I should have).

He does find, however, that when looking at BABIP in terms of the number of seconds that elapsed since the previous pitch, the BABIP is lower for pitches thrown within 10 seconds and higher for pitches thrown in excess of 50 seconds since the previous pitch (he does throw out pitches that came in a minute or more after the previous pitch). As Mike notes, there are other factors to control for, not the least of which are hit type (line drive, fly ball, ground ball, popup) and pitcher quality and hitter quality. Still, it's pretty interesting stuff and just one of the many applications of Pitchf/x data.

Crazy for Crazy '08

2008-06-08T10:13:00.005-06:00

”So grandly contested were both [pennant races], so great the excitement, so tense the interest, that in the last month of the season the entire nation became absorbed in the thrilling and nerve racking struggle, and even the Presidential campaign was almost completely overshadowed.”– Sporting Life, October 17, 1908

Before my attention and allegiance shifted due to recent and happy events, I was very pleased to receive Cait Murphy’s Crazy ’08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnets Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History as a Christmas present. Of course as a lifelong Cubs fan my main interest was in reliving and hopefully foreshadowing a time when, in the words of one Washington sportswriter of the time, they “were grizzlies these Cubs, Ursine Colossi who towered high and frowningly and refused to reckon on anything but victory.” And for Cubs fans perhaps there is something special in the symmetry of the centennial of the Cubs last World Series victory as this year’s edition took the league’s best record into June – a feat that more than one source reminds us was last accomplished by the franchise in yes, you guessed it, 1908. It remains to be seen however, whether Lou Pinella’s Cubs will be able to say as 1908’s manager Frank Chance (known at the time as the “Peerless Leader” or simply “P.L.” for short) did, with that air of arrogance and without sounding ridiculous, “Who ever heard of the Cubs losing a game they had to have?”

But even with my attention somewhat diverted, I shouldn’t have been surprised that in this book Murphy, an assistant managing editor at Fortune magazine, goes so far beyond the Cubs, the Merkle game and its aftermath, that any baseball fan or even history buff, will find it entertaining and a joy to read. Although the book focuses on the National League race it should not be forgotten that the American League race was almost its equal and Murphy devotes a chapter (“That Other Race”) to it as well.

The book follows a mostly chronological course beginning with the events of the 1907-1908 offseason. From the now all-too-familiar inaction in the face of the growing problem of gambling to moves like the St. Louis Browns signing the enigmatic southpaw Rube Waddell to rules changes including the sabermetrically questionable adoption of the modern sacrifice fly rule, and a rule prohibiting pitchers from soiling one of the half dozen or so new balls that enter play each game, Murphy does a fine job of providing context to the season and the times by periodically recalling events from the recent past.

From a baseball perspective her description of the playing conditions in the chapter “The Hot Stove League” is excellent by recapping the evolution of the game on the field in all three primary dimensions and generating one of my favorite lines in the discussion on defense where Murphy quite correctly notes that baseball “is Darwinian in its results but Newtonian in its processes.” Those Darwinian processes, already well established in 1908 and applying their mode of selection, led to the development of relief pitchers, pinch hitters and runners, base coaches, platooning, defensive positioning and strategies, and much more. What accompanied them was a march towards standardization that worked together to contribute to a gradual perfecting of the craft of baseball that we modern fans are the happy beneficiaries of. In the end, she concludes that while there are many things the modern fan (“crank” or “bug” as they were called then) would find strange including whiskey in the stands and the occasional player smoking on the field, the game in 1908 would be entirely recognizable (hot dogs and “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” which made its debut in 1908 to name a couple) in a way that other major sports with shorter pedigrees would not be. At the same time she argues that although in 1908 baseball is already big business and commands an air of respectability that it lacked just a few years before, the 1908 season – with the Merkle game and its aftermath including riots, legal wrangling and at least one death, acting as a catalyst – is when “baseball itself makes its turn into the modern era.” One sign of this new era is that 1908 was the final season for Pittsburgh’s Exposition Park (the site of which sits just east of present PNC Park on the banks of the Allegheny) and Philadelphia’s Baker Bowl, the former being replaced by Forbes Field and the latter by Shibe Park, the first fireproof park made of steel and concrete and built in French Renaissance style for a cool $457,000. Other owners were quick to follow with both Charles Comiskey and Charlie Ebbets buying up land that would eventually host their namesakes.

Along the way the baseball that follows is also nicely setup through opening chapters on the Giants (“Land of the Giants”) and the Cubs (“Origins of a Dynasty”) Murphy takes a look back at how each of the primary combatants in the ’08 race were built (the Giants not so fairly it turns out in a seedy story of destroying the Orioles and using the Reds concocted by John Brush, Andrew Freedman, and John McGraw) interspersed with fascinating profiles of McGraw, Frank Chance, and Johnny Evers. By the time the fourth chapter, titled “Opening Days”, rolls around the reader is well positioned to enjoy the drama that follows.

Off the field the mood of the country and the times is set by the inclusion of six “Time-Outs” or sidebars that periodically appear at the ends of chapters. For example, “Chicago on the Make” closes out the chapter on the building of the Cubs and details the evolution of the city and its leaders in dealing with corruption at various levels that had become rampant by the turn of the century. In other time-outs Murphy recounts the grizzly affair of one of America’s first female serial killers, Belle Gunness, the Doubleday myth, the position and prospects of African-American ballplayers, the scare of early twentieth century anarchism, and finally an entertaining list of the things that some players did in 1908 to “court good luck and drive away hoodoos” (“hoodoos” being the term then in vogue and denoting curses and bad luck). Each is fascinating and provides just enough additional context to give the reader a feel for the place of the game in the first decade of the twentieth century.

But of course the main thrust of the book is the narrative of the 1908 National League season and here Murphy does a fine job by breaking the season down into six chapters with two other chapters devoted specifically to Merkle games one and two with the latter chapter complete with a timeline beginning at dawn and running until game time that serves to build anticipation of the events that follow. But in the earlier chapters recounting the ups and downs of baseball’s long season, rather than focus only on the Giants and Cubs these chapters also take the time to highlight key moments and performers of other teams including Pirates shortstop Honus Wagner who in 1908 had his finest season (.354/.415/.542) while his team fell just short in what became a three-way race after a furious run that saw the Bucs win (13 of 14) before losing to the Cubs at the Westside Grounds 5-2 on October 4th admidst a little controversy. We also here find vignettes featuring Ty Cobb, Nap Lajoie, Hal Chase, Rube Waddell, and Cy Young among others not to mention other actors in the season’s ultimate drama such as Mordecai “Three Fingers” Brown, Roger Bresnahan, Joe Tinker, “Turkey” Mike Donlin, Jimmy Sheckard, Merkle of course, and “Giant Killer” Jack Pfiester who is handed the ball in both Merkel games. And even though the story of the Merkle games and to a lesser extent the season itself, has been told countless times, I’d rather not spoil any more of it since every fresh reading brings a new perspective and Murphy adds plenty of detail that I had either forgotten or had never known. As a final treat and one that fittingly puts a bookend not only on the season but on the personalities that defined the era, Murphy includes an epilogue that tracks the destinies of the major players, managers, and magnates after that special season.

For me, one of the supreme pleasures of being a baseball fan is the way the game connects the past with the present, not only through its numbers, but through its places, stories, and the way that its seminal events are embedded in our culture. Baseball fans, and not just those rooting for the denizens of Wrigley Field, would be well served to remind themselves of how those connections were built and in a sense to maintain them by reading about one special season on its 100th anniversary.

The Curious Case of Mark Teahen

2008-06-06T19:45:00.008-06:00

With Craig Brown's excellent review of Mark Teahen published a couple weeks ago, I thought it would be appropriate to re-publish my take on Baseball Prospectus regarding Teahen published around the same time as Brown's first piece back in August of 2006. Obviously, things haven't turned out so well for Teahen and so far in 2008 the prognosis isn't really any better. Still, it's always instructive to look at what we got wrong and not just what we got right and so without further ado...

August 31, 2006
Schrodinger's Bat
The Curious Case of Mark Teahen

"I think it's well-documented how I feel about [Teahen], and how I feel about him as a ballplayer. I don’t need to add anything to that discussion." --Former Royals General Manager Allard Baird, perhaps with an "I told you so" when asked about the third baseman's breakthrough season.

On August 22^nd of this season, Mark Teahen, Royals third baseman and former centerpiece of the deal that sent Carlos Beltran to Houston at the trading deadline in 2004, stepped in against the Indians' Cliff Lee in the first inning. Teahen would blast a two-run home run, his 16^th of the year. Rather than call it a day, Teahen would add two doubles and a single, steal two bases (one of third base), and score the go-ahead run in a 5-2 Royals victory.

My, how times have changed.

At this time last year, eight total bases in one game would have seemed like a pipe dream for a player many were starting to consider a bust, and nothing more than a product of overblown Moneyball hype. No longer: going into Tuesday's action, Teahen was hitting .296/.368/.535 overall, and had hit an especially robust .337/.421/.633 with ten home runs since the All-Star break. That adds up to a WARP1 of 5.3 and an Equivalent Average of .305, two numbers that suggest that Teahen, at least, might heal one of the many wounds of Royals fans, and in a small way redeem the reputation of former GM Allard Baird.

Beyond the raw performance, what we really want to know is what's behind his turnaround, and whether or not we can expect this kind of performance to continue. This week, we'll address both by revisiting the themes of an article I wrote last season.

Where He's Been
The primary question about Teahen, even before he was drafted, was when or if the 6'3" 210-pounder would develop power. Teahen had always hit the ball the other way with a swing he mastered in innumerable childhood wiffle-ball games played against his brothers. In Moneyball, Michael Lewis used Teahen as an example of the new thinking in player development by relating a conversation between then-scouting director Eric Kubota, a scout, and GM Billy Beane. In Lewis' version, Beane ends the speculation about Teahen by noting that "power is something that can be acquired. Good hitters develop power. Power hitters don't become good hitters."

The A's drafted Teahen in the first round with the 39^th pick of the 2002 draft, even though he had hit just ten homeruns in over 600 plate appearances during his three seasons at St. Mary's College of California. The A's attempted to help him develop power by getting him to pull the ball, according to Lewis:

To teach him how to pull the ball, the Oakland staff took Teahen into a room and showed him tapes of Jason Giambi. Giambi once had been just like him, they said: a third baseman who hit well but not powerfully. At the end of his first season, Oakland sent Teahen to a training center in Florida with instructions to gain 15 pounds and drop his body fat from 15 percent to 10 percent. He made a halfhearted stab at it—and put on fat. ("I'm not sure how you do that, gain 15 pounds and lose all that body fat," he says. "It'd be a lot easier if they didn't include the body-fat part of it.") The extra weight made him feel clunky. And the attempt to pull the ball felt wrong. He dropped the weight, and kept on hitting the ball the other way. He didn't want to be Jason Giambi. He wanted to be Mark Teahen.

After that experiment failed and he was traded to the Royals in the Beltran deal, his new team also attempted to get him to pull the ball, sitting him down with no less an authority on hitting than Hall of Famer George Brett. Brett introduced Teahen to the Charley Lau approach to hitting for a couple of days. At the time, that didn't seem to quite have the intended results either:

For two days, with Brett looking on, Teahen went into the Triple-A batter's box and cantilevered backward, bat lowered and tucked tightly against his back shoulder. Just like George Brett! Then Brett left--and Teahen went right back to hitting a baseball the way he always had. "Two days!" Brett said, six months later, not knowing whether to laugh or scream. "That kid, he did what I showed him for two days…Then the moment I left he went back to doing it his way."

As a result, up until this year Kubota's skepticism about Teahen seemed to be well-justified. In 1,468 minor league plate appearances, Teahen hit a grand total of 18 home runs, one more than he has this season in a quarter of the plate appearances, although 14 of those came in 2004 while he split time between Double- and Triple-A. All told, he put up a career minor league slugging percentage of just .409. Annointed as the Royals' third baseman in spring training last season, he continued his light-hitting ways by hitting a meager .246/.309/.376 in 491 plate appearances.

All of this led our PECOTA system to list his top five comparables coming into 2006 a squad of non-stars:

Jim Mason

Mike Darr

Bobby Smith

Lee Stevens

Travis Lee

That's not an impressive group, to say the least, although Jim Edmonds comes in as Teahen's seventh comparable, and Larry Walker shows up at 11. In addition, the five-year forecast never had him above 12 home runs or a .448 slugging percentage, and he was given a dangerously high attrition rate of 23%. At best, that forecast made him a serviceable player, worth around two to three wins per year, but certainly unspectacular. It was a projection of a player vulnerable to, in an evolutionary sense, being selected out of the majors as a third basemen or corner outfielder.

Given this scenario and the similar low-wattage disappointments trailing another hyped third base prospect, Sean Burroughs (who has since been released by the Devil Rays after hitting just .214 in 37 games at Durham), I wrote a piece last July that took a look at both of their performances up to that time, and tried to find comparable players using Isolated Power (ISO) to get a historical sense of just what they were up against. Basically, the idea was to use ISO (slugging percentage minus batting average, providing a measure of the number of extra bases a player generates) to see how frequently players that matched their profile (defined as 1,000 or more at bats plus walks before the age of 24) went on to develop greater than average power. I also normalized ISO to both park and league by creating Normalized ISO (NISO) for the comparisons.

What I found was that there did appear to be some precedent for players like Teahen increasing their power, notably infielders Roy Smalley, Lou Whitaker, Toby Harrah, and George Brett, and outfielders Kirby Puckett and Roberto Clemente. I also found that players who made the largest gains in ISO after their Age-24 season typically make great gains between 24 and 27, and reach their peak performance by 28 before beginning a slow, gradual descent.

What He's Doing
As Royals fans well know, the change in Teahen correlates with his demotion to Omaha on May 6^th. When sent down, he was hitting just .195 (15 for 77) with two home runs. Down in Omaha, he worked with hitting instructor Terry Bradshaw, providing strong support that in this case correlation is indeed causation:

Omaha hitting instructor Terry Bradshaw made a video of Teahen’s good at-bats from last year. What better way to teach a stubborn student than to let him learn from himself? The mechanical changes were subtle. They shortened Teahen’s swing, kept his hands back, and made a minor adjustment with his hips that allowed him to hit inside pitches better.

Once he did that, the Royals had no choice but to call him back up. He was 28 for 56 with a 1.107 slugging percentage and .606 on-base percentage in his last 17 games in Omaha.

In addition, Teahen revealed in an online chat last month that Bradshaw emphasized that he start using his legs more. As Teahen himself says, "That has resulted in harder contact and ultimately pulling the ball more often."

Although Brett may have thought that his advice had no effect, it now appears that Teahen absorbed what the Hall of Famer was teaching, and has been working on incorporating it into his approach:

I took what he told me and tried to find out mechanically what I could do to get that same effect. I wasn’t going to look like George Brett at the plate, but I was going to try to use some of his ideas to get me in that same position.

The results are fascinating. Using data from the excellent FanGraphs site we can see that the combination of subtle mechanical changes, more emphasis on using his legs to generate torque, and confidence has led to a sea change in how Teahen puts the ball in play.


Year      GB/FB    LD%    GB%    FB%  HR/FB
-------------------------------------------
2005       2.22  23.5%  52.8%  23.8%   8.6%
2006       1.39  14.6%  49.7%  35.8%  16.5%

The result is that his line drives are turning into fly balls (up over 50%), and those fly balls are being driven out of the park or deep into the gaps. His profile has turned from one common to a contact hitter to one that looks more like the Phillies' Ryan Howard, albeit with a few more ground balls. In the meantime, Teahen's batting average on balls in play is at .336, somewhat higher than the league average (around .300). Coupled with his relatively low line-drive percentage, it remains to be seen whether his refinements will allow him to maintain a BABIP that high, or whether he'll regress somewhat. Keep in mind that we're still talking only about a few hundred plate appearances since he was recalled from Omaha.

It's also clear that despite Teahen's self-proclaimed increased propensity for pulling the ball, he's still being true to his natural hitting style for the most part, and is not simply looking to yank the ball down the line at every opportunity. The following chart from MLB.com tracking his home runs and doubles at Kauffman Stadium this season indicates that his power is to all fields, especially to left-center:

The following chart tracking 15 of his 17 home runs (two couldn't be located using the interface) provides a similar picture:

Where He's Going?
So given the apparent turnaround, can history provide any guide to what we might expect from Teahen from here on out?

To help answer that question, I did what any good performance analyst might do: I looked for comparable players. I was particularly interested in whether Teahen's newfound power was a good bet to last. To try and get a feel for this, I created a list of players who'd had between 400 and 600 at-bats plus walks before their Age-24 season, who had debuted after the 1945 season, and who had in those opportunities recorded a Normalized ISO between 65% and 100% of league average. In other words, these were players who didn't show much power before their 24^th birthday, but who had nevertheless accumulated a fairly significant number of at bats by that time. This produced a list of 90 players, ranging from Preston Ward (who debuted in April 1948) to Teahen and J.J. Hardy (who both debuted last season). This is a more targeted study than the one done in the previous article. I used these particular criteria because Teahen sits squarely in the middle, with 487 at-bats plus walks and a NISO of .828 before his Age-24 season, figures that ranked him 36^th on the list.

Of the 88 players who debuted before 2005, 77 of them are no longer active but went on to play past their Age-23 season, and as a group they lasted an average of another 8.3 years and recorded an NISO of .869. As a group, here's a chart reflecting their aging pattern with regards to NISO; the yellow line is the three-year moving average:

Keep in mind that this graph includes a heavy dose of selection bias, as more players are included in the Age 24-31 categories, after which many of the players are out of the majors, finally leaving a core group of pretty decent players who continue to play into their late 30s. Beyond the pretty common observation that these types of players don't tend to last past their early 30s, the chart shows that these players as a group tend to increase their power a bit more slowly than is typical, and don't peak until around their 30^the birthday, whereas the total population normally reaches their peak at ages 27-29. Unfortunately, it also indicates that as a group these guys never reach a league-average NISO.

That grim observation aside, all is not lost. The good news is that in terms of increasing isolated power, Teahen's good enough to rank near the very top of the list. The following are the ten players among these Teahen comparables who ended with the highest NISOs through 2005:


Name                Bats   Seasons   AB+BB   AVG    SLUG   ISO    NISO
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Todd Hundley          B         11    3706   .239   .464   .225   1.477
Tony Batista          R          9    4090   .251   .466   .215   1.341
Dave Duncan           R          7    2560   .223   .373   .150   1.290
Daryl Boston          L          9    2313   .253   .425   .172   1.284
Davey Johnson         R         12    4772   .262   .412   .150   1.269
Mike Sweeney          R          8    4182   .309   .513   .204   1.259
Torii Hunter          R          6    3140   .269   .470   .201   1.242
Dmitri Young          B          8    3900   .294   .491   .197   1.232
Dave Nilsson          L          6    2585   .291   .480   .188   1.188
Nick Johnson          L          3    1218   .278   .457   .179   1.136

As you can see, there are some encouraging signs here, particularly in the cases of guys like Davey Johnson, Mike Sweeney, Dmitri Young, and Nick Johnson making the list. At this point, Teahen would rank second, with a NISO past his Age-23 season of 1.37. This is much better company to be in than the preseason PECOTA comparables we listed previously, or even most of the rest of the 88 comparables found by this method.

There is certainly no magic that will tell us the future, but from a historical perspective, what we can say is that there is some precedent for the kind of transformation we seem to be witnessing, although the magnitude of Teahen's big step forward is not exactly typical. Combined with the anecdotal and statistical evidence of his changed approach, Teahen's improvement is therefore not likely a mirage predicated on small sample size. If he continues performing even close to the level of his last three months, he'll finally fulfill the expectations of Billy Beane and Allard Baird.

I think Royals fans can be cautiously optimistic, with the hope that in the years to come the controversy surrounding Teahen will not be whether he'll develop power, but how the team will accommodate two good young hitters at the hot corner once Alex Gordon is ready for the big leagues. That's the kind of problem everyone would like to have.

Colorado Springs Home for Sale

2008-06-02T09:50:00.003-06:00

As you can imagine, with the impending move to Pittsburgh one of the things that's been keeping my wife and I busy is the process of listing our home. Well, after waiting for contractors to finish projects and finishing a few of our own, the house is now on the market. You can see more photos of the various rooms by clicking on the picture or on the link above. It's located in the Briargate area of Colorado Springs in the Windjammer subdivision and really has been a great house in a nice neighborhood and we'll be sorry to leave it. Between the previous owners and ourselves there have been a lot of improvements, some of which are...

New Garage Doors, Spring 2008

New Kitchen Appliances, Spring 2008

Entire House Repainted, Spring 2008

New Stucco and Stone Work, Spring 2008

New Pella Storm Door, Spring 2008

Upstairs Bathroom updated and repainted, Spring 2008

Downstairs Bathroom updated and repainted, Spring 2008

New Tile Flooring Downstairs, 2007

Windows, Renewal by Anderson, 2004

New Carpet Downstairs, Den and Bedroom, 2004

New Back Door, 2004

Kitchen and Front Hall Flooring, 2003

Kitchen Counter Tops, 2003

Three Zone Underground Sprinker System, 2002

PNC

2008-05-22T18:51:00.003-06:00

As you can imagine I've been spending some time in Pittsburgh over the last few weeks and so just a couple of photos today. The first looks back at PNC park from the Roberto Clemente bridge and the second is of the Willie Stargell statue that was unveiled in 2001 and sits on the Federal street (left field) side of the ballpark.

Denver Bears - New York Yankees Reunion

2008-04-22T18:18:00.019-06:00

All baseball fans in the Denver area and beyond will want to check out the Denver Bears - New York Yankees Reunion being held May 3 at the Denver Athletic Club in downtown Denver sponsored by the Rocky Mountain chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research.

Former Bears/Yankees who will be on hand include Don Larsen, Ryne Duren, Herb Plews, Johnny Blanchard, Ralph Terry and Woodie Held.

The event will run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and will kick off at 10 a.m. with a player panel moderated by Denver radio host Irv Brown. The panel will be followed by a gourmet lunch with the players and after lunch the players will be available to sign autographs and continue the discussion. Participants will also have an opportunity to buy discounted tickets to that night's 6:05 p.m. game with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

You can reserve your spot at the event online ($75 for SABR members and $85 for non-members) or download and print the registration form from RM SABR's web site.

Here are a few notes provided by RM SABR on those who will be in attendance:

Woodie Held – Infielder – 14-year major league career. He played with the New York Yankees in 1954 and 1957. Before the era of home run hitting shortstops Woodie hit 20 home runs in his 1957 rookie year. He averaged 21 homers per year from 1959 – 1964.

In addition to his hitting skills, Woodie was a dominating defensive infielder with the Indians, averaging 136 games per season, between 1959 and 1962.

Don Larsen – Pitcher – 14-year major league career. He compiled an 81-91 major league pitching record with a 3.78 ERA and was a Yankee from 1955 to 1959. Larsen had a 9-1 record with the Denver Bears in 1955.

He is best known for pitching the only perfect game in World Series history in Game Five of the 1956 series. Using a no-windup delivery, Larsen used only 97 pitches to dispatch the mighty Brooklyn Dodgers in one of the most famous games in baseball history.In 1956 and 1957 Larsen won a total of 21 games while losing only 9 and finished his career with a 4-2 record in World Series play.

While pitching for the San Francisco Giants in the 1962 World Series, he defeated his former Yankee teammates on October 8 – which ironically was the sixth anniversary of his perfect game.

Ryne Duren – Pitcher – 10-year major league career. He pitched for the New York Yankees from 1958 to 1961. He pitched first no hitter in Denver Bears history.

As the most feared relief pitcher in baseball in the late 1950s, Duren led AL in saves – 20 in 44 appearances – in his first full rookie year in 1958. He was the hero of Game Six of the 1958 World Series, stopping a rally by the World Champion Milwaukee Braves in the late innings.As a bullpen specialist in 1959 he went 36 consecutive innings without allowing a run. From 1958 through 1959 he fanned 183 AL batters in 151 innings.

Pitching for the Los Angeles Angels in 1961, Duren set a major league record by striking out seven consecutive batters on June 7.

Johnny Blanchard – Catcher/outfielder – 8-year major league career. Johnny was on the New York Yankees roster in 1955 and 1959-1965.

While sharing catching duties with All-Stars Yogi Berra and Elston Howard, Johnny took full advantage of his opportunities. Between 1961 and 1963 he hit 50 home runs in only 707 at bats.In 1961 only one major league catcher (Yogi Berra, 22) hit more home runs than Johnny’s 21. Berra came to the plate 395 times while Johnny had 243 at bats.

At one time Blanchard held the record for most World Series pinch-hitting appearances (9) and pinch hits (3).

Ralph Terry – Pitcher – 12-year major league career. Ralph pitched for the Yankees 1956-1957 and 1959-1964.

Ralph was a workhorse for New York between 1960 and 1963, winning 66 games and logging nearly 921 innings.He led the American League in 1962 in wins (23), games started (39), and innings pitched (298). In 1963 he started the most games in the AL (37) and tied for most complete games (18).Ralph finished his career with 107 wins and a lifetime ERA of 3.62.

In the 1960 World Series, Ralph gave up the home run to Bill Mazeroski that gave the Pittsburgh Pirates the championship. In the 1962 World Series he led the Yankees to the title by beating the Giants twice (including a Game Seven, four-hit shutout) and posting a 1.80 ERA.

Herb Plews – Infielder – 4-year major league career with the Washington Senators and Boston Red Sox.

A sure-handed defensive player, Plews tied an existing Major League record when he participated in five double plays while manning second base for the Senators on September 26, 1958. Plews, who would now be labeled a super-utility infielder, hit well in his first two major league seasons, averaging .270, while playing second, third and shortstop.

Norm Siebern – Outfield - Had a twelve-year major league career with six teams. He played with the Yankees in 1956, 1958 and 1959. In his major league career, Norm hit .272 with 132 home runs. He was a three-time All Star and also won a Gold Glove.

Norm signed with the New York Yankees in 1951, and made it to the majors before he was 23 years old. In 1956, Norm suffered a knee injury that caused him to miss much of the season. The next year, he starred in the minor leagues at Denver and was chosen by the Sporting News as their Minor League Player of the Year. He was a regular in the majors from 1958 to 1966. In his first full season with the Yankees, in 1958, he hit .300 with a .388 on-base percentage.

After the 1959 season, Norm was traded to the Kansas City Athletics along with Hank Bauer, Don Larsen, and Marv Throneberry in the trade that brought Roger Maris to the Yankees. Norm spent four seasons with the A’s, hitting a peak in 1962 with numbers of .308/.412/.495 and 117 RBI.

After the 1963 season, he was traded to the Baltimore Orioles for Jim Gentile. In 1964, his average dipped to .245, but he had 106 walks and thus still was able to score 92 runs. In 1966, he was on the California Angels, and although he hit .247, he drew enough walks that he was close to leading the team in OBP. He finished out his career in 1967 and 1968 with the San Francisco Giants and the Boston Red Sox.

Infinite Pitcher Abuse Points

2008-04-21T18:33:00.003-06:00

I'm sure many of you have seen this article related to Japanese high schoolbaseball but several folks sent it my way today and I hadn't...

School team hit for 66 runs in two innings

I especially like this quote:

The hapless hurler had already sent down over 250 pitches, allowing 26 runs in the first inning and 40 in the second before Kawamoto asked for mercy.

"At that pace the pitcher would have thrown around 500 pitches in four innings," Kawamoto's coach was quoted as saying. "There was a danger he could get injured."

Heading to Steel Town

2008-04-17T23:56:00.004-06:00

Today my column on Baseball Prospectus did not feature any new analysis or the usually endless tables overflowing with numbers and headed with three-letter acronyms. No, today marked the 100th and (at least for now) final Schrodinger's Bat column, marked with the title "Opus 100".

The column does not require a subscription and so you can read it for yourself but in the final section I briefly discuss the reason that this centennial edition is the last in the series.

To borrow from that bit...I'm leaving BP to join the front office of the Pittsburgh Pirates to become their Director of Baseball Systems Development. In that capacity I'll be assisting the excellent staff--including Kyle Stark, Bryan Minniti, Greg Smith, and Joe Delli Carri, under the direction of General Manager Neal Huntington--in building systems to support and inform the decision-making process of the baseball operations staff. All of those individuals mentioned, and many others, have made me feel more than welcome, and I'm thrilled to start the process of integrating the array of quantitative and qualitative information in a way that makes both even more instructive.

While I'm very excited at the new challenges and opportunities, I'm also a little sad as I say goodbye to Compassion International, where I've worked as a software architect for the last three years. Beyond the successes of the team in building a service oriented infrastructure that I've been blessed to be a part of, working at Compassion has truly been a wonderful experience. The dedication, intelligence, and vision of the organization and its employees to release children from poverty in Jesus' name is truly inspiring. It really is a great place to work and hey, I hear they might be looking for someone :)

Get Your SFR Data!

2008-04-16T17:10:00.002-06:00

So I realized that I hadn't mentioned that in my column last week (no subscription required) I extended SFR for infielders to include 1986-1987 and 2000-2002. So now I have results for infielders for:

1957-1983
1986-1998
2000-2007

All told I've posted several spreadsheets on BP, the links to which follow:

All Major League Infielders in the time frame above

All Major League Outfielders 2003-2007. Note that I haven't yet modified the algorithm for outfielders to extend beyond the full datasets available for 2003-2007.

All Major League Infielders 2005-2007 and Minor Leaguers 2007 (note that the numbers in this spreadsheet are not based on the latest version of the algorithm that includes pitcher handedness in the context. That said, last week I talked about that and it turns out that adding it didn't really improve the accurracy very much).

All Minor League Outfielders 2005-2007

Santana and the Changeup

2008-04-09T08:33:00.003-06:00

After a little exchange Ken Davidoff at Newsday wrote a little about Johan Santana and his reliance on his changeup in his column on April 6th. The relevant section reads like this:

According to Fox, MLB.com charted 11 of Santana's outings last year, including his relief effort in the All-Star Game. Of 1,033 pitches, Santana threw 61 percent fastballs, 27 percent changeups and 12 percent sliders, which comes close to Bill James' full-season tally (58-29-11). Not surprisingly, Santana used the changeup far more against righty hitters (he threw it 33 percent of the time) than lefties (7 percent).

Just as Morris suggested, Santana does love using the pitch for strikeouts. Of 269 situations that Fox charted in which Santana had a hitter at 0-and-2, 1-and-2 or 2-and-2, he threw the changeup 123 times. Of the 86 strikeouts Fox witnessed, the changeup produced 53 of them.

Interestingly, of the 11 home runs Santana surrendered on non-full, two-strike counts on Fox's watch, just two came on the changeup, with eight from fastballs and one off a slider.

It turns out that Mike Fast did a nice analysis of Santana back in January and as you would imagine found essentially the same thing albeit in much more detail. From a start by start basis the mix of Santana pitches in 10 of his starts and his All-Star appearance last season can be seen below.

From this it is not apparent that he increasingly used his changeup as the season wore on and in fact it shows a trend where he used his fastball a bit more as the season progressed.

Filling in the Gaps

2008-04-03T11:23:00.000-06:00

This week on Baseball Prospectus I make a few changes to the algorithm for Simple Fielding Runs in order to run it on the Retrosheet data set encompassing 1957 through 1983 (there are issues with 1984-1987, especially 1984 and 1985 where the identification of the fielder is more frequently absent). One of those changes involves the addition of pitcher handedness as a variable and the other, like the scientists at Jurassic Park who filled in the missing dinosaur genetic code with that of a frog, uses probabalities to estimate the missing pieces.

Overall, the SFR system is analagous to the work that Sean Smith has been doing on TotalZone and our results are fairly similar. For example in SFR Brooks Robinson (shown right) comes out at +293 runs during his career (easily the career leader) while TotalZone has him at +269. Likewise Mark Belanger SFR is +198 while TotalZone is +232 runs. There are certainly places where it differs, however, as SFR doesn't rate Frank White or Keith Hernandez nearly as highly as TotalZone seems to. In the column I also show detailed data for Lou Whitaker, Pete Rose, Mark Belanger, Brooks Robinson, Ozzie Smith, and Bill Mazeroski.

One of the iron gloves discussed a little in the piece is Dick Allen, who managed to show up in the bottom 10 in our rate statistic at both third and first base. His career line is shown below.


Dick Allen
Year      Pos    Balls Runners    Diff     SFR    Rate
------------------------------------------------------
1964    Third      575     137     -23   -17.6    0.83
1965    Third      515     123     -34   -26.3    0.72
        Short        1       1       0    -0.3    0.24
1966    Third      329      86     -23   -17.8    0.73
1967    Third      437     122     -35   -26.9    0.71
1968    Third       37      17      -9    -6.7    0.48
1969    First      234      52     -19   -16.6    0.64
1970    First      177      26      -2    -2.5    0.91
        Third      121      38     -12    -8.9    0.70
1971    First       56       6       1     1.0    1.22
        Third      230      64     -16   -12.7    0.74
1972    First      261      28       6     4.6    1.21
        Third        7       3      -2    -1.3    0.47
1973    First      132      18      -2    -1.5    0.89
        Second       6       1       0     0.1    1.11
1974    First      212      29      -4    -2.8    0.87
        Second       1       1      -1    -0.5    0.27
1975    First      227      40     -13   -10.5    0.66
1976    First      158      25      -6    -4.4    0.78
1977    First       93      13       1     0.9    1.09

                  3809     830    -192    -151

Enjoy. And no, I don't yet have a spreadsheet with the full results but expect to do so in the near future.

An 8-Letter Word for the Ultimate Sport

2008-04-03T09:11:00.001-06:00

Amen.

I particularly love this part:

For you who wasted the winter by not studying such stuff, the answers are below. The rest of you probably are SABRmetricians. Tim Kurkjian of ESPN (do you know that more than 10 American children have been named Espn?) recalls a convention of the Society for American Baseball Research:

"'Who from SABR might know where I can find the all-time list of pinch-hit, extra-inning grand slams?' I asked the very first man I saw at the convention. The man smiled and -- I am not making this up -- pulled the list from his breast pocket. 'I have it right here,' he said."

Historical SFR

2008-03-29T12:11:00.004-06:00

A couple days late in my summary of this week's effort on Baseball Prospectus but this week I ran the Simple Fielding Runs (SFR) system against Retrosheet data from 1988-1998. This was possible without modifying the system since the relevant hit type and fielder data is present for those eleven seasons (in the same ratios as available for 2003 through 2007 for the major leagues and 2005-2007 for the minor leagues).

Although you'll need to read the piece to get all the details, suffice it to say that Ozzie Smith, Cal Ripken, Mark Lemke, Ryne Sandberg, Matt Williams, John Olerud, and Mark Grace all come out looking pretty good as you might expect.

A reader asks, however, how Roberto Alomar and Omar Vizquel look and so here's a look at their complete data calculated for SFR thus far.


Roberto Alomar, 1988-2004 at Second Base
Year    Team       Age   Balls Runners    Diff     SFR    Rate
1988    SDN         20     624     126       8     5.9    1.06
1989    SDN         21     672     153      -4    -2.8    0.98
1990    SDN         22     593     138      -9    -7.2    0.93
1991    TOR         23     744     192      10     7.2    1.05
1992    TOR         24     619     167      -4    -3.3    0.97
1993    TOR         25     650     161      -6    -4.8    0.96
1994    TOR         26     395     101      -3    -1.9    0.97
1995    TOR         27     564     127       2     1.7    1.02
1996    BAL         28     605     130      15    11.1    1.11
1997    BAL         29     383      76      19    14.0    1.25
1998    BAL         30     587     144      15    10.9    1.10
2003    CHA/NYN     35     523     148     -22   -16.7    0.85
2004    ARI/CHA     36     125      37      -6    -4.4    0.84

                          7083    1699      13     9.6    1.01

Interestingly, while SFR didn't like Alomar much in San Diego and Toronto, it did in his three years in Baltimore. Keep in mind that for infielders SFR does not take into account park effects and that both the shortstop and first baseman have an impact on the second baseman since the system parcels out balls assigned to each via overall distributions. Both of these may play a factor here although I haven't researched Baltimore particularly although I did note that Sean Smith's system incldues a similar disparity. Overall Alomar rates out at +9.6 runs and a rate (computed as the ratio of expected runners reached to actual runners) just above average at 1.01.


Omar Vizquel, 1989-2007 at Shortstop
Year    Team       Age   Balls Runners    Diff     SFR    Rate
1989    SEA         22     557     130       9     6.6    1.07
1990    SEA         23     356      90       0     0.1    1.00
1991    SEA         24     609     152      13     9.5    1.08
1992    SEA         25     656     189       1     1.0    1.01
1993    SEA         26     719     188       3     2.6    1.02
1994    CLE         27     293      70      10     7.3    1.14
1995    CLE         28     570     133      18    13.4    1.13
1996    CLE         29     655     168       5     4.2    1.03
1997    CLE         30     633     142      15    11.2    1.10
1998    CLE         31     656     185      14    10.5    1.08
2003    CLE         36     295      59      14    10.4    1.24
2004    CLE         37     597     159      -3    -2.6    0.98
2005    SFN         38     654     153      13     9.4    1.08
2006    SFN         39     590     147       9     7.0    1.06
2007    SFN         40     639     134      38    28.5    1.29

                          8478    2097     159     119    1.08

Vizquel is predictably excellent for most seasons and rated highest last year although once again, his third baseman certainy had some influence.

Those interested in this topic should definitely check out Sean Smith's work at The Hardball Times where he expands his TotalZone system and provides lots of interesting results.

A Common Theme

2008-03-20T17:11:00.006-06:00

Coincidentally, the John Dewan stat of the week this week happens to correspond quite nicely with my Schrodinger's Bat column titled "Clearing the Decks" posted today on Baseball Prospectus. John talks about the best bunters of 2007 and in my column I do a little of that in relation to the Tattered Cover book signing that I pariticpated in several weeks ago before moving on to the minor leagues best bunters from 2005 through 2007.

In additon I take a look at the concept of "free bases" recently discussed by Rangers' staff as well as the recent 2008 Scout's Honor Results posted on MLB.com. It's in that section that I revisit the topic of bunting a little and have this to say on the scout's choices in that category.

Best Bunter: Juan Pierre, with Ichiro Suzuki runner-up. Near and dear to the first topic discussed this week. While Pierre is the most prolific bunter over the past six years (320 attempts), his success rate ranks 16th out of the 18 players with 75 or more attempts during that span, with a success rate of 41 percent. Suzuki doesn't bunt nearly as often, but does succeed more frequently at 59 percent in 59 attempts. No, Willy Taveras would clearly be the better choice with Luis Castillo (54 percent in 84 attempts) and Corey Patterson (51 percent in 128 attempts) undoubtedly better as well.

Of course I critique a few of the other choices as well...

Baseball's Trifecta

2008-03-17T07:16:00.009-06:00

This article originally appeared on Baseball Prospectus on September 28, 2006.

September 28, 2006

Schrodinger's Bat: Baseball's Trifecta
by Dan Fox

"I think if you come to the ballpark and you see Carl hit a triple, you've had a pretty good day. It's pretty much a signature play for him, because when he hits the ball down the line, or in the gap, he's thinking three. He never thinks two. He breaks triple. He wants triple, he takes triple."

--Devil Rays manager Joe Maddon after Carl Crawford's triple on September 24.

"Hey, big mouth, how do you spell triple?"

--Shoeless Joe Jackson, to a heckling Cleveland fan who taunted him by asking if he could spell "illiterate." This was his response after hitting a triple.

In the bottom of the sixth inning of last Sunday's Yankees/Devil Rays game, Carl Crawford pulled Mike Myers' 1-0 slider into the gap in right-center. The ball skidded past Bobby Abreu, and by the time he retrieved it and hit the cutoff man, both runners had scored and Crawford had coasted into third. It was his 15th triple of the season.

As much as I disdain more or less arbitrary statistical milestones, the hit did draw some attention, since it made Crawford the first player in 76 years to hit at least 15 triples in three straight seasons. In that year, 1930, no fewer than three players were finishing a run of three or more years with 15 triples or more:


                 1930  1929  1928  1927  1926
---------------------------------------------
Earle Combs        22    15    21    23
Paul Waner         18    15    19    18    22
Charlie Gehringer  15    19    16

By comparison, Crawford hit 19 triples in 2004, 15 last year, and now 15 this season. When asked after the game why he thought it had been so long since a player accomplished the feat, Crawford replied, "There are fast guys in the game who can hit, so I have no clue why guys haven't done it. That's not a stat that you go out and try to do every year. That's a stat that just happens."

Crawford's achievement and his comment provide a springboard for this week's column, where we'll discuss triples and their accompanying historical trends.

Historically Speaking

The simple and somewhat tautological answer to Crawford's consternation regarding the lack of triples is that the triple has become increasingly rare over time. And just as a rising tide lifts all boats, a low tide grounds them. The following graph shows the number of triples per 500 at-bats plus walks for each year from 1901 through 2005:

Notice that, as it did for offense in general, the robust environment of 1930 marked the high point for triples, with 6.8 triples hit per 500 AB+BB. The rate dropped immiediatly thereafter, to 5.7 in 1931 and 1932, and it never again reached as high as 5.3. It now seems to have stabilized at around 2.5.

If there are fewer triples being hit, then it becomes less likely that an individual player will be able to hit 15 in three consecutive seasons. For example, a player who hits 15 triples would have a rate of 12.5 per 500 AB+BB. In 1930, a player who hit triples at 1.8 times the rate of the average player would end up with 15 triples, and eleven of the 73 players with 500 or more AB+BB hit 15 or more triples in 1930. In 2005, however, a 15-triple player would have to hit triples at a rate more than five times that of the average player, and just two players (Crawford and Jose Reyes, who hit 17) out of 140 with 500 or more AB+BB could do that. It should be noted that 2005 was a comparatively good year for three-baggers: since 1992, there have been ten seasons in which no player has hit 15 triples. In contrast, when 10-15% of the players hit 15 or more triples every year, there is a very good chance that one or more of those players will repeat for three consecutive years.

As an aside, the general reduction in triples makes the performance of Cory Sullivan on April 9 even more of a fluke. In the top of the fifth inning, Sullivan hit two triples in a seven-run outburst that helped the Rockies beat Jake Peavy and the Padres 10-4. Those two triples tied a record held by ten others, although most recently accomplished by the Senators' Gil Coan in 1951.

The graph also shows the spike in triples that occurred between the years 1974 and 1980. As you can see, triples had been declining steadily since 1930, reaching a low of 2.72 in 1973. From there they began to climb again, reaching a high point of 3.71 in 1977 before gradually declining to settle back down at the 1973 level by 1986. Note that 1977, like 1930, was a relatively big offensive year, with teams scoring 4.47 runs per game. Offensive levels continued to rise throughout the period, and so it can't simply be chalked up to more hits resulting in more triples. But since there weren't new parks being introduced, and expansion occurred in the middle of the spike and not at its start, it's not obvious what might have caused it the outburst.

At first blush, one might posit that there was a general trend towards valuing speed that began in the early to mid-1970s, as young players like Ron LeFlore, Tim Raines, Willie Wilson, and Omar Moreno began to establish themselves. The increase in stolen bases, however, is more gradual than that for triples, and actually began around 1959 (with the "Go-Go Sox" and Maury Wills playing a large part) with a steeper increase in the mid-1970s that peaked in another year that was good for offense, 1987, as shown in the following graph:

While all of this is interesting, it kind of tiptoes around the answer that Crawford is looking for (he probably doesn't really care, but play along). Although there doesn't appear to be consensus among the analytical community, the following are the theories most often discussed as to why the triple has become relatively rare:

Better Fielders. One of the more interesting questions is to consider how the game has changed as the players have become more athletic. Clearly the speed, strength, size and athletic ability of the average professional baseball player in 2005 exceed that of one in 1920. The question is, how does this affect the game and the evaluation of performance? This was recently touched on by Phil Birnbaum on his Sabermetric Research blog, and was the subject of a thought-provoking chapter by Nate Silver in Baseball Between the Numbers.

As an example of such an effect, the late Stephen Jay Gould argued that a rising level of play inching closer to the "right-wall" of human ability coupled with stabilization of the game itself have conspired to decrease the variability in seasonal batting averages, making it far more difficult to hit .400 now than in years past. The epitome of Gould's argument is that Tony Gwynn had less opportunity than Ty Cobb to exploit the inferiority of others.

Something like this may be happening with triples as well. The theory is that as fielders have become bigger, faster, and boast better throwing arms, would-be triple hitters have had a more difficult time exploiting their opponents, and thus rack up fewer three-baggers. In addition, the standardization of positioning (including the idea that outfielders played shallower in the past) and cutoffs have added to the difficulty. Although baserunners have also become faster, this theory would argue that the improvement in fielding ability and techniques has outstripped the increase in baserunner speed.
Park Configuration. This is a corollary to the first theory. Early in the century, ballpark dimensions were far less standardized than today. For example, the Huntington Avenue Grounds where the Red Sox played from 1901-1911 featured a left-center field fence 440 feet away, and a centerfield wall 530 feet from home plate from 1901-1907, and then at 635 feet starting in 1908. Similarly, the center field fence at Forbes Field was 462 feet away in 1909, and at the Polo Grounds, center field ranged from 430 feet in 1931 to 505 feet in 1949. Don't forget that while these and other ballparks in the two eight-team leagues had one or more long distances, they also had lots of corners and edges that made for unpredictable caroms. All of this adds up to situations which surely allowed hitters more opportunity to leg out triples.

Over time, standard dimensions (335/375/400/375/335) made their way into the game, diminishing the opportunity for strange bounces and balls rolling towards distant fences with outfielders in hot pursuit. For my money, the combination of this and the first cause probably explain the lion's share of the overall historical trend.
Risk Aversion. As mentioned previously, as offensive levels rise, the relative importance of stolen bases decrease. The same reason causes triples to decline in value; the marginal benefit of stretching a double into a triple is lessened as the probability of scoring from second base increases. A quick look at Run Expectancy Matrices from various years would bear this out as well as the graph presented in my column on Win Expectancy. The argument, then, is that as offensive levels have risen over time, triples have decreased as a result of their lessening strategic importance.

While the premise of this theory is certainly true, one doubts whether calculations like this are taken into account either consciously or subconsciously. More problematic, however, is the fact that runs per game have not increased over time, therefore cutting the legs out from under this theory. Contrary to the steadily downward-sloping line in the first graph, run scoring was actually higher throughout the 1920s and into the early 1930s than at any other time, and after diminishing to reach its low point in 1968 (3.42 runs per game per team), it has steadily increased since then:
Player Aging. No discussion of triples would be complete without at least a brief look at the effect of age. As Clay Davenport noted in his essay "Graying the Game" in Baseball Prospectus 2002, and subsequently reinforced by Nate Silver last season, the player population is aging, and has been for quite some time. This has an impact on triples, since older players lose foot speed and don't hit as many as younger ones do. The graph below shows triples per 500 AB+BB for all players since 1901, player-seasons from 1901-1935 and seasons from 1936-2005:

Even at a time when triples were much more common (the orange line), triples peaked at age 22 and steadily declined through age 40. You'll also notice that the slope of the line for players in the first part of the 20th century is not quite so steep as it is for those since. I also find it very interesting that the slope of the line from ages 22 through 35 for all players is very nearly straight, indicating an extremely uniform decrease with age.

Clearly, players don't hit as many triples as they get older, but the general aging of the player population cannot account for the overall decrease in triples. Just considering players 25 years old or younger, those who played since 1936 hit triples at a rate of 3.72 per 500 AB+BB, while those who played before 1936 hit them at a rate of 6.73. Keep in mind that it's also very likely that the average speed of players 25 years old and younger in the major leagues today is greater than that in the Deadball Era, meaning that other factors such as fielding prowess and changing park configurations are much more important to the overall trend.

"How do you spell triple?"

The triple is often called the most exciting play in baseball, and for good reason. There is no play that involves as many players, lasts as long, and concludes so often with a bang-bang crescendo. As we've seen, there are a variety of reasons that have conspired to make it a much rarer event today than it was in days past. These include increased standardization and ability on defense, less variability in park dimensions, risk aversion, and perhaps an aging player population. Whatever the combination and relative importance of these different causes, rather than wring our hands at its disappearance, let's instead appreciate the feat for its increased difficulty and marvel at those, like Carl Crawford, who can do it with regularity.

Back from the Desert

2008-03-12T21:42:00.006-06:00

I returned yesterday from my annual trip to spring training in Arizona and so thought I would post a couple of pictures today. Had a great time hanging out with Ron Hostetter, his brother, and their friend watching baseball of course in addition to taking in a Suns game. Unfortunately for them the Royals lost all three games we saw them play and looked very bad in doing so. Poor defense, poor pitching, and not much hitting to speak of.

Update (3/13): My column this week on Baseball Prospectus titled "Spring Fling" is full of news and notes from four of the camps I visited. From Jason Kendall batting ninth to John Bale's release point to Brian Bannister's quest to beat DIPs, take a look.

This is the first year I visited the Angels camp in Tempe and took in the A's and Angels game on Monday afternoon. It's a beautiful setting and a nice little ballpark.

I believe this is a shot of Daric Barton who homered in the game.

We saw the Cubs play in Surprise on Sunday afternoon and pummel the Royals 13-1. Kerry Wood worked a perfect inning and looked very good touching 98 and showing a nice slider.

I also spent some time at the Rangers camp and in addition to taking in a B-game played against their complex partners the Royals, watched some BP. Here Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Hank Blalock discuss some of the finer points of hiting.

While in the desert I was also able to catch dinner with Christina Kahrl and Kevin Goldstein who were in town for a book signing and several media events. It was great to meet Kevin for the first time.

Once again it was a very successful trip and it's hard to disagree with Ron when he says Surprise is his favorite place on planet earth.

Facing Clemens

2008-03-06T17:14:00.004-07:00

My column this week on Baseball Prospectus is an interview with the author of the new book Facing Clemens: Hitters on Confronting Baseball's Most Intimidating Pitcher, Jonathan Mayo. Some readers I'm sure will recognize the name since Mayo is also a senior writer for MLB.com who typically writes about the minor leagues and can be found all over the place as the draft approaches.

In epitome, Mayo's book is a look at what it's like to compete against Clemens from the perspective of thirteen hitters who faced him at various points in his and their careers. Beginning with Dave Magadan, whose University of Alabama Crimson Tide faced off against Clemens' University of Texas squad in the 1983 College World Series, Mayo takes us all the way through the 2007 season with Torii Hunter's final three--ultimately unproductive--plate appearances that capped his unbroken string of futility. Along the way we hear from Hall of Famers like Cal Ripken Jr. and future member Ken Griffey Jr., star players including Gary Carter, Chipper Jones, and Luis Gonzales, to lesser-known hitters like Daryl Hamilton and Phil Bradley (Clemens' 20th strikeout victim in his 1986 record-setting performance), and finally culminating with the story of minor leaguer Johnny Drennan who homered off of Clemens during the pitcher's minor league stint in 2006 as well as Clemens' son Koby. In all, thirteen players are interviewed and the book includes plenty of interesting anecdotes not only about Clemens but on other topics from the hitters perspective.

Although readers will no doubt read the book in a different light than Mayo had intended, it is an interesting compilation and it was nice of Jonathan to "sit down" with me for the interview.

The Phone Books Are In! The Phone Books Are In!

2008-03-04T23:54:00.003-07:00

Ok, so it's not quite a Steve Martin moment but I was excited to see this at my local Borders bookstore today. Good stuff.

Oh, and tomorrow night I'll be joining Christina Kahrl and Nate Silver at The Tattered Cover in LoDo to talk about the book and the Rockies. Hope to see you there.

A Rite of Spring

2008-03-04T23:50:00.000-07:00

Yes, it is that time of year again and in just a little over 36 hours I'll be touching down in Phoenix to enjoy five glorious days basking in the Arizona sun and thinking, talking, and writing about all things Cactus League.

The photo above was taken at the Rockies training facility in Tucson last spring but alas this spring we won't be venturing that far south. Our path this time around takes us to Peoria (home of the Padres) on Thursday to watch the Rockies take on the Padres, to Surprise to see the Rockies play the Royals on Friday (and a Suns game in the evening), to Maryvale to take in the Royals and Brewers on their home turf on Saturday, back to Surprise for the Cubs and Royals on Sunday, a swing over to Tempe for the Angels and A's on Monday, and finally a quick stop in Mesa to take in some workouts on Tuesday before heading home. Shoot me an email if you're going to be around at any of those venues, it's always great to kibitz with like-minded fans while taking in the games.

My column next week on Baseball Prospectus will likely detail the happenings in the various camps so stay tuned.

VORPies and Scrappers

2008-03-03T06:31:00.004-07:00

Here are a couple of by now dated but still interesting articles...

Cubs' Theriot measures success in different ways. Bruce Miles talks about Ryan Theriot and how he's never been a numbers guy and how numbers don't tell the entire story etc. Personally, I like this article and couldn't agree more with the author. Miles mentions that Baseball Prospectus PECOTA has Theriot projected for an OBP of .330 and quotes Theriot as saying:

I'm going to give everything I've got. And I'm not afraid to fail. I think I'll do what it takes to do something great and help the team win. I take pride in my defense. Either you've got to drive them in or you've got to save a run.

I think it's easier for me to save them than drive them in. I'm realistic about my game. I think I know what I can and can't do. I know my limitations.

Offensively Theriot played very well until a September slump which could be attributed both to a little fatigue in his first full season or an indication that the league has caught up with him. It'll be interesting to see if either of those play out in 2008. Defensively SFR had Theriot at +4.8 at short in 2007 (399 balls assigned) and +2.3 at second base (100 balls). At third he was -0.8 in a really small sample (15 balls). SFR also had him at +0.7 in 2006 at second base (101 balls) and so overall defensively, and although Theriot's not a number's guy, I'd have to say that the numbers agree that he can help the team win with his glove. Incidentally, SFR had Brian Roberts at +7.6 in 2007, +1.2 in 2006, and -1.2 in 2005 at second base.

VORPies?. I'm still trying to figure out just what a "VORPy" is but Jon Heyman tweaks them a little in discussing Jimmy Rollins and his MVP award in 2007. But again, this article to me makes some good points including the ideas that Rollins should get a little boost over David Wright because of his defense (and playing a more difficult position) and baserunning but of course all of these things can be quantified. Wright's VORP was 81.1, Rollins was 66.1 and these numbers as Heyman rightly points out are park adjusted. So was Rollins 15 runs better on defense and baserunning? SFR has Rollins at +5.0 and Wright at +3.2 and so Rollins makes up a little there. On the bases Rollins was at +7.2 and Wright at +2.5 and so there's another few runs which when combined with his defense essentially allows Rollins to make up about half the difference. But the MVP is not all about numbers either and winning and leadership, I think, should definitely matter. In the end, when you factor these things in it seems to me like these guys are in the same vicinity and so it's not as if Rollins was a really poor choice. Matt Holliday, with his 75.0 VORP and pretty decent defense in 2007 should no doubt also have been considered. And by the way, Heyman talks about Hanley Ramirez a little whose 89.5 VORP led all National Leaguers. I had him at +1.8 in baserunning but at -17.5 runs with the glove in SFR. By all accounts his defense really is poor and so it comes off as kind of disingenuous for Heyman not to mention that. But on the topics of the Gold Glove and Rookie of the Year...well, don't get me started.

Chat Transcript 2/29

2008-02-29T12:32:00.002-07:00

Thanks to everyone who spent a few minutes chatting this morning. Some really great questions (if a little Yankee heavy) and believe me, if other things weren't pressing I would have preferred to go on for most of the afternoon.

Chat 2/29

2008-02-27T15:54:00.004-07:00

Just a quick note that I'll be chatting at Baseball Prospectus.com on Friday February 29th at 11 AM Mountain time. I've never chatted on "leap day" before so this should be fun :)

Seriously, if you have questions around my essays in Baseball Prospectus 2008 on baserunning and throwing arms or anything else that interests you, please submit them early as that always provides you with better answers.

WWBD?

2008-02-25T13:49:00.004-07:00

In a new column on Baseball Prospectus I ask the question on every one's mind, "What Would Bacon Do?" (WWBD?).

No, not Kevin Bacon but Sir Francis Bacon the English philosopher and statesman. The question of course is what would Bacon think of Derek Jeter's defensive ability and the recent hub-ub surrounding it. Using Bacon's new-fangled inductive method of reasoning and his "idols" construct for categorizing the frailties of human reasoning, we come to a conclusion regarding The Captain. Enjoy.

Baserunning for the Ages

2008-02-24T19:41:00.006-07:00

I've been writing mostly about defense over at Baseball Prospectus and here in the past couple of months and so I thought I'd revisit the topic of baserunning today.

Although in my column I talked about the greatest baserunners of the Retrosheet era and here have extolled the virtues of Tim Raines, Robin Yount and others, I noticed that I've failed in either venue to list the top and bottom single seasons of that era.

So today here are the top and bottom 50 baserunning seasons in terms of total Equivalent Baserunning Runs (EqBRR). And don't forget that an essay describing the system and its metrics titled "The Tortoise, the Hare, and Juan Pierre" appears in Baseball Prospectus 2008, which I'm told, is shipping now. Also, I'll be talking about the book with Christina Kahrl and Nate Silver Wednesday, March 5th at 7:30 pm at the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Historic LoDo in Denver.

First, the top 50 seasons.


Name                Year    EqGAR  EqSBR  EqAAR  EqHAR  EqOAR TotOpps   EqBRR EqBRRate
Maury Wills         1962      0.8   13.8    2.3    3.6    0.1    848     20.6     1.26
Willie Wilson       1980      0.5   10.0    4.2    3.9    0.5    741     19.1     1.35
Rickey Henderson    1985      2.6    9.8    1.0    3.1    2.3    663     18.8     1.43
Vince Coleman       1986      0.0   11.0    0.3    0.9    4.2    627     16.4     1.26
Willie Wilson       1979      2.1    9.2    0.7    2.8    0.9    563     15.7     1.33
Eric Davis          1986     -0.3   10.2    0.5    1.7    3.2    403     15.3     1.55
Rickey Henderson    1988      2.3    9.0    1.3   -2.0    3.8    650     14.4     1.27
Vince Coleman       1987      2.5    7.1    1.2    2.4    0.8    723     14.1     1.28
Tim Raines Sr       1983      0.9    7.6    1.8    2.7    0.6    762     13.6     1.22
Bobby Bonds         1972      2.0    6.0    1.6    3.6    0.5    517     13.6     1.42
Kenny Lofton        1993      1.5    8.1   -0.1    4.3   -0.5    717     13.3     1.17
Lonnie Smith        1985      2.8    1.4    2.5    2.9    3.1    460     12.8     1.85
Willie Wilson       1987      0.4    7.1    0.6    3.9    0.7    581     12.6     1.24
Juan Pierre         2007      0.3    4.2    1.9    5.0    0.6    666     12.0     1.40
Davey Lopes         1978      0.6    5.8    1.9    1.4    2.1    580     11.8     1.24
Vince Coleman       1985      1.2   10.7    0.7    0.6   -1.4    665     11.8     1.06
Rickey Henderson    1983      0.9    7.8    1.3    0.1    1.6    609     11.7     1.17
Gary Pettis         1985      2.1    7.4    0.7    0.2    1.3    470     11.7     1.31
Johnny Damon        2000      3.1    2.7   -0.7    4.2    2.2    743     11.5     1.33
Ron LeFlore         1979      2.3    5.6    1.3    1.9    0.4    602     11.5     1.30
Davey Lopes         1975      0.4    8.6   -1.3    2.2    1.4    685     11.4     1.14
Barry Larkin        1995      1.3    5.5    1.2    1.3    1.9    526     11.2     1.31
Tim Raines Sr       1985      1.6    9.4    0.8   -0.6    0.0    726     11.2     1.08
Willie Wilson       1983      1.9    7.0   -0.6    1.4    1.5    532     11.2     1.24
Ivan DeJesus        1978      1.0    2.2    1.7    4.5    1.7    625     11.1     1.38
Hanley Ramirez      2006      3.1    1.7    1.3    3.5    1.5    576     11.0     1.50
Joe Morgan          1975      0.8    6.3    0.9    2.0    0.9    618     10.8     1.27
Ron LeFlore         1980      0.1   11.0    0.3   -0.1   -0.5    611     10.7     0.99
Tim Raines Sr       1987     -0.5    7.2    0.3    2.5    0.9    567     10.4     1.17
Ray Durham          1998      1.2    2.0    1.8    3.6    1.8    611     10.4     1.37
Juan Pierre         2005      3.6    1.7   -0.3    2.5    2.9    665     10.4     1.43
Chone Figgins       2005      4.4    0.7    1.9    2.5    0.8    619     10.3     1.43
Marquis Grissom     1992     -0.3    6.5    2.1    0.1    1.8    567     10.2     1.19
Rickey Henderson    1984      0.9    2.4    2.1    3.9    0.9    599     10.2     1.31
Tim Raines Sr       1982      3.3    5.7   -0.2    1.2    0.1    626     10.1     1.25
Tim Raines Sr       1992      0.3    5.3    1.5    3.0    0.1    669     10.1     1.24
Al Wiggins          1983      0.3    4.1    0.9    0.4    4.4    582     10.0     1.29
Bert Campaneris     1969      1.3    5.8   -0.5    2.5    0.8    565      9.9     1.29
Kenny Lofton        1994      1.7    4.5   -1.1    3.4    1.4    574      9.9     1.23
Ron LeFlore         1978      2.3    5.2    0.6    2.3   -0.6    720      9.9     1.20
Chone Figgins       2006      2.1    0.8    1.6    4.9    0.4    577      9.9     1.48
Omar Moreno         1979      1.5    3.8    0.7    3.0    0.8    619      9.8     1.29
Scott Podsednik     2003      1.8    4.6    1.0    3.2   -0.6    542      9.8     1.34
Joe Morgan          1976      0.1    5.5    0.4    2.7    1.0    504      9.7     1.28
Tom Goodwin         2000      1.0    3.9    1.3    2.9    0.5    445      9.7     1.37
Milt Cuyler         1991      0.9    3.1    2.0    0.8    2.8    438      9.7     1.47
Davey Lopes         1976      0.6    7.3    0.5    1.7   -0.5    508      9.7     1.12
Willie Wilson       1984      1.7    5.1    2.1    0.8   -0.1    530      9.7     1.24
Tony Gwynn          1987      0.3    2.0    1.4    3.5    2.3    682      9.6     1.36
Luis Castillo       2007      1.0    0.6    1.1    3.1    3.8    528      9.6     1.51

As you can probably tell most of these top 50 are driven by high EqSBR scores with Maury Wills 1962 season at the top of the heap. There were a few players though, like Lonnie Smith in 1985 who excelled despite pedestrian work stealing bases. Related to that point you'll also notice that the final column we have a rate statistic titled EqBRRate. I explained the idea behind it in the column cited above.

...it turns out that when many folks talk about baserunning, they're not really thinking about discretionary stolen base attempts, but instead that combination of speed, risk taking, and judgment that goes into evaluating situations, and that when aggregated leads us to assert that a particular player is a good baserunner. Since EqSBR is primarily comprised of stolen base attempts (with a few pickoffs thrown in) our new rate statistic, which we'll christen Equivalent Baserunning Rate (EqBRRate), will omit this aspect.

So...we'll define EqBRRate as the ratio of actual or total runs to expected runs contributed across the four remaining metrics. Since both values for individual opportunities consider the context and are weighted appropriately (an EqOAR opportunity has both a lower expected and usually actual run value associated with it than an opportunity of EqHAR) and since we're eliminating EqSBR, both weaknesses discussed above addressed. To illustrate how this works, let's consider Chone Figgins' 2007 season:
Metric    Opps  TotRuns ExpRuns
EqOAR      314      0.1     1.2
EqGAR       31      3.2     2.6
EqAAR       44      5.7     4.7
EqHAR       53     10.1     5.6
           442     19.0    14.2
Taking the context of the opportunities into account, we would have expected Figgins to net +14.2 runs across the four metrics, but he actually contributed +19.0 runs. When we divide the total by the expected we get a ratio of 1.34, indicating that he contributed, or manufactured if you will, 34 percent more runs than expected.

So as you can see Smith's 1985 season actually comes out on top with a EqBRRate of 1.85 easily topping the 1986 season of Eric Davis at 1.55. The lowest rate out of the top 50 is Ron LeFlore's 1980 season where he was actually below 1.00 at 0.99 but made the top 50 by virtue of his 11.0 EqSBR.

And now the bottom 50...


Name                Year    EqGAR  EqSBR  EqAAR  EqHAR  EqOAR TotOpps   EqBRR EqBRRate
Carlos Delgado      2007     -0.4   -0.2   -2.9   -3.6   -0.4    394     -7.5     0.41
Jose Offerman       1992      0.5   -4.9   -1.3   -1.1   -0.7    505     -7.5     0.86
Eddie Murray        1990     -1.2   -4.2    0.2   -3.5    1.1    521     -7.5     0.82
Scott Cooper        1994      0.1   -2.3   -0.4   -5.2    0.3    306     -7.5     0.45
Rick Wilkins        1996     -0.4   -1.7   -1.3   -4.3    0.2    264     -7.6     0.41
Pat Burrell         2005     -0.5   -0.2   -0.7   -5.6   -0.7    368     -7.6     0.42
Randy Milligan      1991     -0.5   -3.7   -0.5   -2.1   -0.8    414     -7.6     0.67
Manny Trillo        1982     -0.1   -4.1   -1.9   -1.9    0.3    430     -7.6     0.72
Larry Sheets        1988     -0.7   -4.3   -0.8   -1.8   -0.2    286     -7.7     0.58
Bill Freehan        1971     -1.1   -3.1   -1.8   -1.7   -0.1    331     -7.8     0.43
Dave Parker         1977     -0.4   -6.4   -0.9    0.7   -0.8    531     -7.8     0.93
Jorge Posada        2007     -1.3   -0.1   -0.7   -4.2   -1.6    507     -7.8     0.59
Ted Simmons         1975     -1.5   -1.7    0.3   -4.8   -0.2    573     -7.9     0.72
Ed Bailey           1963      0.0   -3.9   -0.4   -3.3   -0.4    231     -7.9     0.35
Gene Richards       1982     -1.3   -4.8    0.0   -2.0    0.1    455     -8.0     0.81
Jim Thome           2004     -0.5   -1.4   -3.2   -3.2    0.3    436     -8.0     0.59
David Justice       1997     -0.7   -3.3   -0.3   -3.0   -0.7    398     -8.0     0.61
Dan Meyer           1977     -0.9   -2.0   -1.3   -4.6    0.7    409     -8.1     0.60
Jim Norris          1977     -0.1   -3.8    0.2   -2.9   -1.5    447     -8.1     0.73
Felix Jose          1991     -1.8   -3.5   -2.5    0.7   -1.0    482     -8.1     0.62
Lance Parrish       1979      0.0   -3.7   -2.6   -1.5   -0.4    361     -8.1     0.62
Steve Garvey        1980     -0.4   -5.5   -0.9   -0.8   -0.6    467     -8.1     0.78
Steve Henderson     1983      0.2   -7.5    0.6   -0.7   -0.8    362     -8.2     0.93
Carlos Delgado      2000     -0.6   -1.4   -1.4   -3.6   -1.1    618     -8.2     0.58
Al Oliver           1977     -0.1   -7.0   -0.2   -0.1   -0.8    474     -8.2     0.88
Tom Foley           1988     -0.1   -4.4   -0.4   -1.6   -1.7    279     -8.3     0.53
Dale Berra          1984      1.2   -2.8   -0.9   -5.2   -0.7    297     -8.4     0.57
Tommy McCraw        1972     -0.5   -5.9   -1.5   -0.5    0.0    299     -8.4     0.76
Joe Cunningham      1959     -0.8   -2.3    0.4   -5.3   -0.4    504     -8.5     0.60
Pete O'Brien        1984     -0.4   -3.1   -1.4   -2.9   -0.6    428     -8.5     0.52
Kenny Lofton        1997      0.4   -9.4   -0.1    0.6    0.0    539     -8.5     1.06
Frank Thomas        2000     -1.0   -1.6   -1.6   -3.4   -1.0    535     -8.6     0.47
Harold Reynolds     1988     -0.7   -7.8    1.0   -1.2    0.0    535     -8.7     0.95
Eddie Yost          1957      0.3   -5.4   -0.9   -2.8    0.0    394     -8.7     0.62
Joe Morgan          1980     -0.2   -2.0   -0.3   -6.5    0.3    434     -8.8     0.55
Clete Boyer         1970      0.6   -1.6   -0.2   -6.9   -0.8    307     -8.8     0.21
Ed Kranepool        1967     -0.8   -1.9   -0.1   -5.7   -0.4    323     -8.8     0.39
Mike Hargrove       1979     -1.8   -2.3   -0.2   -4.2   -0.5    522     -8.8     0.69
Jose Cruz           1977     -0.1   -8.3    0.5   -1.3    0.3    483     -8.9     0.95
Ernie Whitt         1989     -1.4   -1.0   -1.7   -4.0   -0.9    313     -9.0     0.34
Harmon Killebrew    1970     -0.8   -2.1   -0.7   -4.6   -1.0    435     -9.0     0.56
Tom Pagnozzi        1991     -1.5   -4.8   -0.7   -1.5   -0.8    391     -9.3     0.61
Bob Kearney         1984     -0.1   -2.6   -2.0   -3.8   -0.9    290     -9.4     0.29
Ryan Garko          2007     -1.0   -0.4    0.2   -7.7   -0.5    403     -9.4     0.32
Rod Carew           1982      0.1   -5.5   -0.2   -3.2   -0.7    558     -9.5     0.71
Tom Brunansky       1992     -0.6   -3.1   -1.8   -3.4   -0.7    373     -9.6     0.43
Todd Zeile          1997     -0.5   -4.8    0.0   -4.5   -0.4    484    -10.2     0.64
Mike Epstein        1971     -0.2   -2.5   -2.4   -4.4   -1.1    311    -10.6     0.38
Todd Zeile          1992     -0.7   -4.0   -1.1   -5.4    0.0    425    -11.2     0.52
Tony Bernazard      1984     -0.1   -6.9   -0.3   -3.4   -0.6    364    -11.2     0.62

There are some real "ice wagons" here (in the parlance of the dead ball era referring to poor baserunners) of course although many of these as well are here because they did so poorly in EqSBR (Tony Bernazard, Jose Cruz, and Kenny Lofton are three notable examples). The Indians Ryan Garko makes the list with his 2007 campaign primarily because he was thrown out trying to advance on hits five times - all at the plate - on his way to an historic -7.7 runs on EqHAR.

From a pure baserunning perspective Clete Boyer with his 1970 campaign ranks dead last at 0.21 with Bob Kearney in 1984 at 0.29 and Garko close behind. Lofton's 1997 season is the only one with a rate of 1.00 or higher at 1.06 but his EqSBR of -9.4 sinks him.

Maybe He is but Maybin He Isn't?

2008-02-21T10:06:00.000-07:00

Today in my column on Baseball Prospectus I take a look at minor league outfielders using the SFR system. As I've done previously I take a look at the leaders and trailers at all levels before aggregating across all positions and leagues to list the best and worst defenders in the outfield among minor leaguers in 2007.

In addition, I examine Baseball America's top outfield and infield defenders published in their Baseball America Prospect Handbook for 2008 and compare them to what SFR thinks. From an overall perspective the subjective and objective systems largely agree although Marlins top prospect Cameron Maybin is one of the few players on which the two approaches seem to disagree violently. Maybin fared poorly across all hit types in his 70 games in centerfield while at Lakeland and overall including his time in the Eastern League ended up at -15.4 runs on 421 balls fielded. It certainly is the case that the smaller sample sizes in the minor league seasons tend to make the results less reliable than for major leaguers but still, I was somewhat surprised given the glowing assessments by so many. If there are any fans out there who've watched him play in person I'd be interested in hearing what you think.

And as always a spreadsheet is now available with all 4000+ player, position, and league combinations.

Baseball Research Journal vol 36

2008-02-19T08:54:00.004-07:00

As talked about in a previous post the Baseball Research Journal volume 36 containing the article by Neal Williams and myself on quantifying third base coaches is now available.

One of the articles you may want to check out is "An Analysis of the Gyroball" by Alan Nathan and David Baldwin wherein they do an analysis similar to the one I did back in July in my Schrodinger's Bat column (no subscription required).

For those who are not SABR members copies of the Baseball Research Journal 2007 can be ordered from the University of Nebraska Press, 1-800-755-1105 (U.S. Orders), or http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu.

The Captain

2008-02-18T08:22:00.005-07:00

What everyone knew already but that is now gaining a little mainstream press.

Derek Jeter is not a good defensive shortstop.

The above revelation is a part of the presentation that Shane Jensen and colleagues gave in discussing his Spatial Aggregate Fielding Evaluation system or SAFE at a recent AAAS meeting in Boston.

Of course, as is typical, the popular press (the Popular Science article) gets the details wrong and attributes Defensive Efficiency Ratio (DER) to David Pinto instead of his system called Probabilstic Model of Range (PMR).

Defending in the Wide Open Spaces

2008-02-14T07:21:00.006-07:00

Today in my column on Baseball Prospectus I officially roll out version 1.0 of Simple Fielding Runs (a defensive system based only on Retrosheet-style play by play codes) for the outfield after doing the same for infielders back in January.

For those who read the column a couple weeks ago where I re-did the methodology to follow a more WOWY (with-or-without-you-approach), nothing has really changed with the algorithm but this time around I break outfield SFR into its underlying components by hit type, develop a rate statistic, take a look at how SFR compares to the Plus/Minus system at the level of teams, incorporate the throwing metric that is discussed in an essay in Baseball Prospectus 2008, and finally create some plots for 2007 outfielders that juxtaposes their general defense as rated by SFR and their throwing ability both using rate statistics.

As a preview of this latter point consider the following plot for 2007 center fielders where SFR rate (per 650 balls fielded) is shown on the y-axis and throwing rate (per 550 opportunities) is shown on the x-axis. Each outfielder is then placed in one of four quadrants. Those in the upper right quadrant are both good fielders and throwers (Alfredo Amezaga), moving clockwise we see good throwers but poor fielders (Bill Hall, Elijah Dukes), poor throwers and poor fielders (Juan Pierre), and finally ending with good fielders but poor throwers in the upper left (Johnny Damon, Nook Logan).

The full article contains the plots for all positions.

Oh, and all the major league data from 2003 through 2007 is available in spreadsheet form (and that includes the throwing data).

Tigers on the Run

2008-02-10T23:54:00.000-07:00

A kind soul points out to me that Lee Panas over at Tiger Tales takes a look at the 2007 Tigers in terms of their baserunning. To augment his post I thought I'd offer the entire Tigers team in terms of the five baserunning metrics I created.

                     Opps  EqGAR   Opps  EqSBR   Opps  EqAAR   Opps  EqHAR   Opps  EqOAR   Opps  EqBRR
Curtis Granderson      43    0.6     28    4.1     60   -0.1     74    2.2    426   -0.6    631    6.2
Gary Sheffield         16   -0.2     28    0.7     41    0.6     44    2.3    249    1.5    378    4.9
Ryan Raburn             6    0.1      2    0.3      4    0.4     17    0.6     79    0.7    108    2.1
Omar Infante           11    0.2      5    0.3     13   -0.2     14    0.1    107    0.6    150    1.0
Cameron Maybin          2   -0.2      5    0.8      1    0.0      3    0.4     26   -0.1     37    1.0
Marcus Thames           5    0.0      3   -0.2     11    0.1     15    1.2     97   -0.4    131    0.7
Placido Polanco        25   -0.3     10    0.4     49   -1.9     67    1.3    423    1.3    574    0.6
Timoniel Perez          9    0.1      2   -0.1      5    0.1     10    0.2     58    0.1     84    0.3
Brandon Inge           24    0.7     11    0.4     35    0.1     37   -1.1    257    0.1    364    0.2
Ramon Santiago          4    0.4      4    0.3      5    0.1      8   -0.6     47   -0.2     68    0.0
Mike Maroth             0    0.0      0    0.0      0    0.0      0    0.0      3    0.0      3    0.0
Jeremy Bonderman        0    0.0      0    0.0      0    0.0      0    0.0      6    0.0      6    0.0
Brent Clevlen           0    0.0      0    0.0      0    0.0      0    0.0      7    0.0      7    0.0
Mike Hessman            2    0.0      0    0.0      1    0.0      4   -0.1     20   -0.1     27   -0.2
Neifi Perez             1    0.0      0    0.0      5    0.0      3   -0.1     30   -0.1     39   -0.2
Carlos Guillen         31   -0.5     22   -1.5     42    0.4     40    1.6    285   -0.4    420   -0.5
Craig Monroe           15   -0.6      3   -1.1     11    0.0     30    0.4    115   -0.4    174   -1.6
Magglio Ordonez        39    0.5      4    0.0     49   -1.1     58   -0.8    409   -0.8    559   -2.2
Sean Casey             19   -0.2      4   -0.7     34    0.2     24   -1.5    240   -0.1    321   -2.2
Ivan Rodriguez         23    0.1      4   -1.0     33    0.1     38   -0.9    245   -0.6    343   -2.3
Mike Rabelo            10   -0.5      1   -0.4      9   -0.1      9   -1.0     92   -0.3    121   -2.3

                      285    0.1    136    2.1    408   -1.2    495    4.1   3221    0.3   4545    5.4

Keep in mind that the data Lee shows is really a subset of the EqHAR (Equivalent Hit Advancement Runs) shown here but as Lee points out Gary Sheffield did well in 2007 as did Guillen, Palanco, and Monroe.

Statistical Profiling?

2008-02-10T13:51:00.000-07:00

As always Alan Schwarz has an interesting piece in the New York Times, this time around on the topic of using statistics as a benchmark for increased testing for performance enhancing substances. The idea, floated by Representative Mark Souder, an Indiana Republican, is that by comparing actual statistical performance to the player's history and performance projected on the basis of an "average" or typical career path, major league baseball would flag certain players as more likely to be users of performance enhancing drugs. Those players would be tested more frequently or more closely I assume until they passed some criteria where their new performance level is accepted as legitimate.

Schwarz then goes through the litany of reasons why such "statistical profiling" would likely be futile ranging from the inherent variability in career path for any particular player, to the problem of what one would measure to try and catch such anomalies, to the fact that the current evidence stemming from the Mitchell report is inconclusive at best.

In the piece, however, he points to the similarities in the careers of Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds as evidence for why the first point above makes it unrealistic to use career paths as a measure.

Using my unsophisticated projection system for projecting Normalized OPS (a park adjusted and league adjusted OPS taking into account a three year weighted average regressed to the mean, age and league adjusted), here are the two career mentioned above.

To me, what's interesting about these two is that in the case of Aaron it certainly is true that he had his most productive season at age 37 and his fourth most productive at age 39 with a nice year thrown in at age 35. However, these were interspersed with seasons at ages 36, 38 and 40 that were pretty much what a projection system would indicate. Essentially Aaron had a very slight decline phase with some excellent seasons interspersed.

Bonds, however, had his four best seasons by a large margin at the consecutive ages of 36, 37, 38, and 39. Clearly this indicates that he established a new performance level that was around 25% higher than his established level from ages 29 through 34. I'm certainly not saying that I would agree with Souder that this kind of profiling should be the sole criteria used to trigger a more stringent testing regime for specific players. However, it certainly seems reasonable that statistics could be included in the set of criteria used to determine whether enhanced testing is warranted (assuming that the general concept of this second level is even accepted). In the case of Bonds, his associations and suspicions of club officials, physical appearance, and performance on the field should have combined to tip the balance in favor of increased scrutiny.

Of course it's also true as Schwarz indicates that just what statistics would be used would be problematic. Here we're looking at overall productivity but intertwined in OPS is both a measure of power (which is usually argued as the tell tale sign of steroid use but is more problematic when looking at other substances like human growth hormone) and patience. For Bonds, both components increased greatly as his power scared the daylights out of opposing teams to the extent that they would walk or pitch around him any time a runner was on base. There's no reason to believe that would necessarily be the case as a general rule.

For Aaron there were (ostensibly) no other circumstances that raised red flags and so on the strength of his career path alone that kind of scrutiny wouldn't be warranted. The reason, as Schwarz articulates, is that career paths do indeed vary significantly. For example, consider the case of Carlton Fisk.

Fisk showed a steady decline from his age 26 season through age 34 and then had a resurgent age 35 season in 1983 with the White Sox. After continuing the decline through age 39 he suddenly enjoyed three consecutive seasons at productivity levels he hadn't seen since his mid-20s albeit doing so in fewer plate appearances.

And then of course there are those players about whom there are whispers but no actual evidence coupled with a career path that could be interpreted in both ways. A case in point is Sammy Sosa.

Sosa's rise is a little earlier starting at age 29 and maxing out at age 32 and there is also other evidence including a changed approach at the plate under the tutelage of Jeff Pentland and certainly enhanced weight training (with the use of creatine); all of the above making it more than a little dicey to base enhanced testing on the statistical record alone.

With that said, the case is a little more convincing when looking at Mark McGwire.

Like Bonds, his established level of performance jumped at a rather late age (31) and was sustained through age 36 (at age 29 he had just 112 plate appearances and .333/.427/.726). If this kind of increase were coupled with allegations by former teammates and the use of the steroid precursor androstenedione (although legal at the time), then it just may rise to the level that Souder is talking about. It should be noted, though, that Jose Canseco did not (as far as I know) finger McGwire or anyone else while McGwire was still active although from the Mitchell report it is clear that both Tony LaRussa and Dave McKay (and possibly Sandy Alderson although he denies it) knew that Canseco was using steroids and did not report it. Had they done so, it should have cast suspiscion on McGwire's 1996 and 1997 performances while still with the A's.

In the final analysis while I believe that statistics could by one data point in a much more complex evaluation system, they should not be used blindly like Souder seems to be indicating. Baseball, like other human activities, is simply too dynamic and there are too many interacting variables in play to warrant that kind of simplistic system.

Baseball's Toughest Division

2008-02-07T22:14:00.001-07:00

Which division is baseball's toughest?

Well, if you listen to the media you'll no doubt respond that the AL Central is clearly the toughest division in baseball. Having heard that so often in the past couple months in the wake of the Tigers deal for Dontrelle Willi and Miguel Cabrera and the Johan Santana trade last week, I decided to take a look based on the actual performance of the divisions in intradivisional play as well interleague results stretching back to 1997. The end result is discussed this week in my column at Baseball Prospectus.

In the second half of the column I take a look at the simple projection system I created and wrote about several months ago. This time around I have it project into the future and show the top 2008 projections in terms of Normalized and Park Adjusted OPS. From there I take a look at the where the projections differ the most as well as the track record in graphical form of the projections for Magglio Ordonez, Alex Rodriguez, Andruw Jones, Torii Hunter, Gary Sheffield, and Ken Griffey Jr. Enjoy.

The Traffic Directors Addendum

2008-02-07T11:23:00.000-07:00

By now SABR members should have received their copies of volume 36 of The Baseball Research Journal. For me receiving the journal in large part pays for the cost of the SABR membership as there are always more than a few interesting articles to peruse. Although I haven't read the entire journal yet the articles on strategy in Japanese baseball (titled "The Evolution of Japanese Baseball Strategy") by Robert K. Fitch and "A Manifesto for Defensive Baseball Statistics" by Dr. Jon Bruschke certainly caught my eye.

This year, however, I have another reason to be interested with the inclusion of an article by Neal Williams and me titled "The Traffic Directors". Some readers will be familiar with this topic since an online version of the article appeared in two parts last spring over on Rich Lederer's Baseball Analysts site. And so if you don't get the journal you can read about the methodology there.

In presenting the article to a group of SABRites here in Colorado a few weeks ago I went back and took a look 2007 data and at the rest of the data set that Neal had collected in response to a few questions by those assembled.

First, let's take a look at the 2007 third base coaches ordered by ratio.


                          Coach                      Non-Coach
Year Team Coach           Opps  OA EqHAR ExHAR Rate  Opps  OA EqHAR ExHAR  Rate Ratio
2007 BOS  DeMarlo Hale     240   6   0.4  47.0 1.01   450   9 -10.8  45.0  0.76  1.33
2007 COL  Mike Gallego     266   4   8.5  62.2 1.14   429  12  -3.4  44.3  0.92  1.23
2007 HOU  Doug Mansolin    230   8  -5.0  50.9 0.90   349   4  -8.1  32.5  0.75  1.20
2007 DET  Gene Lamont      299   6   5.5  53.4 1.10   412   7  -2.7  43.0  0.94  1.18
2007 ATL  Brian Snitker    245   5   1.8  50.3 1.04   400   4  -4.1  37.3  0.89  1.16
2007 TBA  Tom Foley        229   2   4.0  45.1 1.09   386   6  -0.5  39.7  0.99  1.10
2007 SEA  Carlos Garcia    246   3   2.5  55.0 1.05   476   9  -2.4  49.9  0.95  1.10
2007 SFN  Gene Glynn       221   3   1.3  40.1 1.03   365  10  -2.1  40.2  0.95  1.09
2007 SDN  Tim Flannery     197   5   3.3  44.0 1.07   347   6  -0.2  34.5  1.00  1.08
2007 MIL  Nick Leyva       182   4   0.0  40.5 1.00   301   5  -1.7  33.1  0.95  1.06
2007 NYN  Sandy Alomar     217   3  -0.2  49.6 1.00   359  11  -1.7  36.6  0.95  1.04
2007 PHI  Steve Smith      263   8  -1.3  52.7 0.98   359   8  -2.0  38.2  0.95  1.03
2007 CLE  Joel Skinner     235   6   0.1  55.0 1.00   391   6  -0.7  40.8  0.98  1.02
2007 ANA  Dino Ebel        291   6   4.8  49.5 1.10   397  11   3.9  40.5  1.10  1.00
2007 KCA  Brian Poldber    219   4   4.6  47.7 1.10   357   8   3.0  30.8  1.10  1.00
2007 OAK  Rene Lacheman    242   4  -2.7  50.8 0.95   370   7  -1.9  39.5  0.95  0.99
2007 SLN  Jose Oquendo     271   8  -1.0  48.5 0.98   387   7  -0.5  35.5  0.98  0.99
2007 NYA  Larry Bowa       309   3   2.3  62.2 1.04   413   8   3.4  46.3  1.07  0.97
2007 LAN  Rich Donnelly    258   5   3.4  49.9 1.07   419   5   4.7  42.0  1.11  0.96
2007 FLO  Bo Porter        209   4  -4.2  39.4 0.89   361   7  -1.5  35.1  0.96  0.94
2007 PIT  Jeff Cox         227   4  -1.7  45.5 0.96   375   6   1.8  44.5  1.04  0.92
2007 ARI  Chip Hale        172   6  -2.9  42.5 0.93   336   8   1.7  31.7  1.05  0.89
2007 BAL  Juan Samuel      231   4  -5.6  48.4 0.88   397   8   0.3  40.1  1.01  0.88
2007 CHA  Razor Shines     194   5  -1.2  39.9 0.97   304   5   3.0  28.2  1.11  0.88
2007 TOR  Brian Butterf    208   7  -6.6  38.7 0.83   374   9  -1.7  38.0  0.96  0.87
2007 CHN  Mike Quade       241   6  -1.6  49.5 0.97   386   8   5.3  41.6  1.13  0.86
2007 MIN  Scott Ullger     236   9   0.2  50.7 1.00   388   6   5.9  33.8  1.17  0.86
2007 CIN  Mark Berry       209   8  -8.9  49.3 0.82   363   8  -1.3  38.1  0.96  0.85
2007 WAS  Tim Tolman       203   7  -4.7  41.4 0.89   347   4   2.2  35.6  1.06  0.84
2007 TEX  Don Wakamatsu    216   4   5.0  44.9 1.11   362   3  12.2  34.0  1.36  0.82

Both league champions bubble to the top of the list but those who've read the articles will know that this doesn't reflect much in terms of skill. This point was validated by looking at the careers of third base coaches and splitting the even and odd years in order to see if there was any persistence in ratio (defined as the ratio of the "coach-influenced" and "non-coach-influenced" opportunities). The plot below shows the career halves for the 35 coaches with the most experience from 1993 through 2007.

So again with a coefficient of determination of .03 there is no correlation for ratio indicating that there is precious little skill (or rather skill difference) between coaches at the major league level - assuming of course that the metric would capture the influence of a coach if it were present.

Finally then, here is the complete data set of the 125 coaches from 1993 through 2007 and how they did in terms of ratio.


                           Coach                  Non-Coach
Name              Season   Opps     OA   EqHAR    Opps     OA   EqHAR   Ratio
Greg Riddoch          1      77      3    -1.1     200      9    -7.4    1.51
Billy Hatcher         2     387      6     5.5     573     21   -11.4    1.33
Eddie Rodriguez       1     165      4    -1.7     340     10    -9.7    1.32
Bill Dancy            2     528     15     4.3     736     17   -13.1    1.26
Christopher Bando     3     570     15    -3.1     926     23   -19.0    1.24
Lance Parish          1     189      5     0.9     243      8    -4.2    1.24
Michael Cubbage       2     494     12     3.6     706     15   -11.6    1.23
Gary Allenson         3     517     22   -15.2     786     27   -20.2    1.18
Terry Bevington       2     439     12    -3.5     544     11    -8.7    1.17
DeMarlo Hale          2     489     11    -6.8     874     17   -18.4    1.17
Brian Snitker         1     245      5     1.8     400      4    -4.1    1.16
Terry Francona        1     200      4     0.2     349      9    -5.2    1.16
Al Pedrique           1     223      2     5.7     308      4    -0.8    1.16
Bobby Floyd           1     173      5    -2.7     316      8    -5.9    1.15
Dave  Myers           4     986     16     8.1    1463     35   -12.8    1.14
Tom Foley             6    1285     22    17.8    1995     49    -9.5    1.14
Ray Knight            2     341      5     7.0     562     15    -1.8    1.13
Rick Burleson         3     706     13     7.5    1081     33    -3.6    1.12
John Russell          3     672     19    -1.1    1096     24   -10.7    1.11
Jack Lind             3     556     12     3.3    1037     30    -8.6    1.11
Joe Amalfitano        6    1067     28     4.7    2097     56   -12.0    1.11
Eddie Rodriquez       2     475     11    -5.5     614     16    -7.8    1.10
David Oliver          2     507      6     4.2     786     14    -3.8    1.09
Nick Leyva            5     857     15     5.1    1524     30    -8.3    1.09
Jeff Datz             1     274      5    -0.4     400      7    -3.3    1.09
Willie Randolph       8    2001     40    18.4    2930     70    -6.1    1.09
Mike Gallego          3     753     12    10.8    1157     31    -2.6    1.09
Gene Lamont           7    1622     37    13.4    2496     61    -7.2    1.08
Gary Pettis           3     530     18    -3.4     741     17    -7.2    1.08
Ron Wotus             1     191      3     2.2     416      7    -0.9    1.07
Rene Lachemann        4     789     21   -12.7    1465     39   -14.9    1.06
Tom Trebelhorn        6    1323     32     4.4    2101     51    -4.8    1.06
Cookie Rojas          7    1392     38   -16.6    2374     56   -21.8    1.06
Jim Riggleamn         1     270      7    -1.5     308     11    -2.8    1.06
Juan Samuel           4     857     15     2.2    1373     31    -3.9    1.06
Ron Oester            2     407     11     0.4     571     20    -2.4    1.05
Sam Perlozzo          7    1564     31     5.0    2249     47    -3.6    1.05
Joel Skinner          6    1322     33    16.3    2041     47     2.6    1.05
Gene Glynn            8    1815     43   -16.4    2563     50   -17.3    1.05
Manny Acta            5    1032     17    15.7    1495     37     6.0    1.05
Ozzie Guillen         2     345     10     1.2     632     19    -1.9    1.04
Don Zimmer            1     147      4     0.3     262      6    -0.9    1.04
Joey Cora             1     234      9    -7.5     404      9    -6.9    1.04
Duffy Dyer            5    1039     26     7.8    1830     42     1.8    1.04
Carlos Garcia         2     472      9     1.3     853     22    -2.5    1.04
Ron Washington        8    1973     51     5.0    2590     45    -2.0    1.04
Tony Beasley          1     241      6     1.2     312      9    -0.4    1.04
Dino Ebel             2     529      9    15.8     770     20     8.8    1.04
Joel Youngblood       1     189      2     7.5     294      8     4.4    1.03
Steve Boros           3     570     14     1.6     901     28     0.5    1.03
Chuck Cottier         1     237      7     1.2     362      7    -0.2    1.03
Dale Sveum            3     789     18   -20.7    1201     26   -19.1    1.03
Cletis Boyer          2     478     13    -6.2     776     18    -6.8    1.03
Dave Bristol          1     194      9    -6.7     408      9    -6.3    1.02
Ron Jackson           2     515      8     1.6     778     20     0.2    1.02
Ron Hassey            1     186      3     0.1     342      8    -0.7    1.02
John Vukovich         7    1505     40    -7.3    2235     62    -5.3    1.02
Tim Foli              3     618     26    -0.8     844     27    -1.1    1.02
Sonny Jackson         4     843     25   -15.7    1241     31   -13.0    1.02
Al Newman             4     889     24     1.9    1384     28     1.5    1.01
Bobby Dews            2     397     17    -2.1     745     22    -3.6    1.01
John McLaren          2     507      7    -6.2     740     18    -5.8    1.01
Carlos Tosca          3     713     13     0.9     968     17    -0.6    1.01
Doug Mansolino        8    1769     40     4.9    2580     38     4.8    1.01
Jerry Narron          8    1788     35    23.1    2960     60    15.4    1.01
Luis Silverio         2     449      9     6.1     787     19     4.4    1.01
Rich Hacker           1     234      5     3.3     391      7     2.5    1.00
Matt Galante          6    1179     33    -3.2    1929     54     0.2    1.00
Bryan Little          2     411      4    11.0     700     16     8.8    1.00
Ken Macha             2     382     12     3.2     638     17     2.4    1.00
Brian Butterfield     7    1463     35    -5.6    2365     56     0.5    1.00
Brian Poldberg        1     219      4     4.6     357      8     3.0    1.00
Ned Yost              3     590     21    -7.6     797     24    -0.7    1.00
Mike Cubbage          7    1397     45     8.7    2383     65    13.0    1.00
Rob Picciolo          3     704     11     3.9    1163     24     7.3    0.99
Sandy Alomar          3     704     14    11.4    1042     26    10.7    0.99
Harry Dunlop          1     192      9    -5.5     398      8    -5.5    0.99
Perry Hill            2     401     10     0.3     684     21     1.5    0.98
Wendell Kim           9    1864     58   -27.1    3095     65    -6.5    0.98
Jose Oquendo          8    1887     41    23.8    2654     56    23.8    0.98
Dave Huppert          1     240      4    -1.3     318      7    -0.1    0.98
Steve Smith           7    1493     34    -5.8    2449     51     1.1    0.98
Jerry Royster         1     200      5    -2.3     366     11    -1.0    0.98
Bruce Bochy           2     381      9   -13.2     589     14    -7.9    0.97
Rich Donnelly        13    2868     84    -3.9    4287     92     8.1    0.97
Tommie Reynolds       4     719     14     6.4    1255     26     9.0    0.97
Tim Flannery          7    1526     39     4.2    2181     49    14.4    0.97
Jimmy Williams        4     841     26   -10.7    1208     30    -2.0    0.97
Glenn Hoffman         7    1541     42   -12.9    2019     47    -3.2    0.97
Larry Bowa            9    1870     37    -6.7    2866     55     5.8    0.97
Tim Raines            1     204      9     2.9     335      7     3.3    0.97
Jeff Newman           6    1313     32    -6.7    2143     43     6.2    0.97
Jerry Manuel          4     752     25   -18.4    1307     39    -8.1    0.96
Marc Bombard          1     170      1     6.8     301      5     6.8    0.96
Ron Gardenhire        5    1155     31    -2.4    1482     36     6.3    0.95
Bucky Dent            1     245      7    -0.5     401      9     2.0    0.94
Fredi Gonzalez        6    1249     25     0.6    2005     32    16.2    0.94
Rafael Santana        2     408      8     0.4     717     12     5.9    0.94
Jeff Cox              6    1246     32    -8.9    2057     36     5.0    0.94
Ron Roenicke          6    1538     40     4.0    1977     34    17.3    0.94
Bo Porter             1     209      4    -4.2     361      7    -1.5    0.94
Tom Gamboa            1     206      4     0.4     354      9     3.1    0.93
Dan Radison           1     227      4     2.1     331      8     4.1    0.93
Dave Oliver           2     406      4     8.0     621     11    11.3    0.92
John Mizerock         2     478     10    -0.5     790     13     6.7    0.91
Pete MacKanin         3     521     17    -4.6     846     20     5.1    0.91
Scott Ullger          5    1212     29     9.1    2058     40    26.4    0.91
Graig Nettles         1     236      8    -4.2     346     10     0.2    0.91
Gene Glenn            3     655     20   -10.9    1245     31     2.7    0.91
Tony Muser            3     557     16    -0.6     903     22     9.7    0.91
Luis Sojo             2     558     16    -5.6     718     12     5.3    0.91
Tony Harrah           1     272     11    -7.1     431      7    -0.9    0.91
Rich Dauer            5    1085     29    -1.3    1665     29    15.6    0.90
Tom Spencer           1     220      5     0.2     355      7     5.0    0.90
Chip Hale             1     172      6    -2.9     336      8     1.7    0.89
Mark Berry            4     893     26   -19.8    1274     25     2.0    0.88
Razor Shines          1     194      5    -1.2     304      5     3.0    0.88
Trent Jewett          2     354     10     1.4     454     10     7.1    0.87
Mike Quade            1     241      6    -1.6     386      8     5.3    0.86
Bobby Meacham         1     199      4     2.4     359      5     8.4    0.84
Tim Tolman            1     203      7    -4.7     347      4     2.2    0.84
John Sterns           1     206     10    -8.2     253     10    -0.1    0.83
Don Wakamatsu         1     216      4     5.0     362      3    12.2    0.82
Richard Tracewski     3     609     12    -3.1    1052     14    24.8    0.79
Chris Speier          4     865     22    -6.9    1160     15    25.1    0.78

For those scoring at home yes, Waving Wendall Kim did have the lowest overall EqHAR value at -27.1 runs with 58 runners caught on the bases in 9 seasons. However, when you consider non-coach-influenced opportunities he comes in just below an even ratio at 0.98 and 79th on our list.

Yin and Yang

2008-01-31T20:10:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd finish off January with a couple of links...

Lovin' on Bannister. MLB Trade Rumors did a great interview with Royals pitcher Brian Bannister in three parts. Part 3 is where it gets really good as Brian reveals that he does his own statistical analysis (we already knew he was a BP reader) and gives us his take on DIPs theory. Several well-renowned analysts have already started the discussion into his insights and I'm sure we'll be seeing more in the future. What really encourages me about this is recognizing the value that thoughtful players like Bannister of Jeff Francis can provide and it makes me wonder how teams are utilizing those resources in parterning with the analytical resources they have.

Not so Much Insight. Kind of the anti-Bannister kind of observations were offerred by MLB.com reporter Marty Noble back in early January. In a previous article Noble used RBIs per 100 at bats to make a comparison between newly acquired catcher Brian Schneider and departed backstop Paul Lo Duca. In the response I've linked he tries to explain himself and although his main point that Schneider and Lo Duca are no longer as different offensively as some people claim is valid, there's simply no way he can get out of the hole he's dug. He has the right idea, namely that opportunities are important and rate statistics rather than counting stats are key, but of course he fails to select the right kind of opportunities to make the kinds of comparisons he's going for.

That said, he dropped two little gems that I couldn't pass up:

Computers have contributed to a current glut of statistics that, to a degree, distort the picture. We have so many now that we lose focus on what is most important. The objective of the game is to win, and to win a team must outscore its opponent. Nothing, therefore, is more important than runs -- both producing and preventing them.

To what degree and to which statistics is he referring? Actually, I would argue that by translating traditional statistics into the currency of runs assuming an accurrate weighting, the vast majority of the supposed "glut" of statistics (VORP, BaseRuns, Linear Weights, defensive metrics, base running, etc.) have served to paint a more accurrate picture of "what is most important" - creating run differential that leads to winning games.

That Lo Duca might have had a higher on-base percentage or slugging percentage means less to me than the number of runs he produced. The next time a team wins a game because it produced a higher on-base mark and scored fewer runs than its opponent, please alert me.

Here I think there are two points of confusion.

First, it turns out that the very combination of metrics he mentions, on-base percentage and slugging percentage (OPS), is a very strong predictor of runs produced since it accounts for the key ingredients (getting on base, moving runners, and avoiding outs) that are so problematic in looking at things like RBIs per 100 at bats which only measure one part of the equation. Additionally, by not accounting for context nor understanding how other metrics predict offensive output Noble ends up inverting the relationship between offensive production between the statistics he discusses.

Second, in his last sentence he stumbles across the problem of scale. It is tautological to say that run differential is a perfect predictor of wins and losses at the level of an individual game. Therefore RBIs and run scored (at least for the offense) take on primary significance in that context and at that scale while OBP and SLUG are less predictive. However, once you raise the aggregation level, those counting stats take on less significance in player evaluation because a particular player's role in generating offense is about more than the tallying of the end result (an RBI or run scored) to the point where it quickly becomes the case (and well before the level of seasons) that OBP+SLUG and other derivative metrics are more indicative of offensive contribution and therefore wins and losses.

This confusion of effects at various scales reminds me (not coincidentally because I'm now reading this book) of one of the primary themes in the writing of the late Stephen Jay Gould. He often railed against the position of ultra selectionists or adaptationists who insisted that natural selection was the exclusive driver and shaper of the pattern of life on earth. Gould contended that evolution operated differently at different levels through various mechanisms and that what worked at one level did not necessarily have power at another. For example, he argues that while natural selection works through differential reproductive success to build adaptations at the level of individual organisms (coloring, wings, claws, size, etc.) those adaptations may have little or nothing to do with survival at the higher level of species. In one of his favorite examples he liked to point out that the small size and adaptability of mammals during the age of the dinosaurs was likely the result of the domination by dinosaurs in the niches available to larger animals. However, when the meteor struck it was those "negative" traits that allowed the mammals to survive but doomed the dinosaurs.

Outfield Defense Redux

2008-01-31T11:26:00.001-07:00

I've made some changes to the SFR system for outfielders based on excellent feedback from readers and others that I discuss in today's column appropriately titled "Back to the Drawing Board". One of the things you'll notice is that my correlations for right fielders (primarily because of Brian Giles and Juan Encarnacion) with UZR for the 2003 through 2006 period are very poor. Not sure why but I noticed that Sean Smith apparently has similar issues. Overall, I like the system better and it seems to handle Manny Ramirez better and correlates pretty well with UZR overall.

As a bonus you can now download a spreadsheet with version 1.0 of SFR for the infielders that includes 2007 minor league data.

Baseball Prospectus Top 100

2008-01-31T10:39:00.000-07:00

At Baseball Prospectus today we published our top 100 prospects list as compiled by Keving Goldstein. Jay Bruce leads the field and below is the list ordered by team so you can count and debate your favorites. In terms of sheer numbers the A's, Rangers, and Red Sox each have seven prospects in the list while the White Sox, Blue Jays, Indians, Mets, Tigers, and Astros have one a piece.


Rank/Name              Pos     Team
27. Nick Adenhart      rhp     Angels
38. Brandon Wood       3b/ss   Angels
59. Jordan Walden      rhp     Angels
89. Hank Conger        c       Angels
54. J.R. Towles        c       Astros
22. Daric Barton       1b      Athletics
26. Carlos Gonzalez    of      Athletics
46. Fautino de los San rhp     Athletics
50. Brett Anderson     lhp     Athletics
56. Gio Gonzalez       lhp     Athletics
98. Trevor Cahill      rhp     Athletics
99. Chris Carter       1b      Athletics
7.  Travis Snider       of     Blue Jays
17. Jordan Schafer     of      Braves
36. Jason Heyward      of      Braves
63. Brent Lillibridge  ss      Braves
70. Brandon Jones      of      Braves
83. Gorkys Hernandez   of      Braves
86. Jair Jurrjens      rhp     Braves
31. Matt LaPorta       of      Brewers
42. Manny Parra        lhp     Brewers
76. Jeremy Jeffress    rhp     Brewers
8.  Colby Rasmus        of     Cardinals
69. Chris Perez        rhp     Cardinals
71. Bryan Anderson     c       Cardinals
37. Geovany Soto       c       Cubs
45. Josh Vitters       3b      Cubs
40. Jacob McGee        lhp     Devil Rays
20. Jarrod Parker      rhp     Diamondbacks
64. Gerardo Parra      of      Diamondbacks
90. Max Scherzer       rhp     Diamondbacks
5.  Clayton Kershaw     lhp    Dodgers
14. Andy LaRoche       3b      Dodgers
32. Chin-Lung Hu       ss      Dodgers
66. Scott Elbert       lhp     Dodgers
78. Wes Hodges         3b      Georgia Tech
29. Angel Villalona    3b      Giants
84. Henry Sosa         rhp     Giants
52. Adam Miller        rhp     Indians
33. Jeff Clement       c       Mariners
44. Chris Tillman      rhp     Mariners
55. Carlos Triunfel    ss      Mariners
93. Wladimir Balentien of      Mariners
10. Cameron Maybin     of      Marlins
88. Chris Volstad      rhp     Marlins
51. Fernando Martinez  of      Mets
28. Chris Marrero      of/1b   Nationals
35. Ross Detwiler      rhp     Nationals
81. Michael Burgess    of      Nationals
12. Matt Wieters       c       Orioles
75. Chorye Spoone      rhp     Orioles
85. Radhames Liz       rhp     Orioles
23. Chase Headley      3b      Padres
39. Matt Antonelli     2b      Padres
61. Matt Latos         rhp     Padres
68. Carlos Carrasco    rhp     Phillies
96. Joe Savery         lhp     Phillies
24. Andrew McCutchen   of      Pirates
43. Steven Pearce      1b      Pirates
94. Neil Walker        3b      Pirates
30. Neftali Feliz      rhp     Rangers
49. Eric Hurley        rhp     Rangers
58. Elvis Andrus       ss      Rangers
62. Engel Beltre       of      Rangers
73. Michael Main       rhp     Rangers
74. Chris Davis        3b      Rangers
77. Taylor Teagarden   c       Rangers
3.  Evan Longoria       3b     Rays
6.  David Price         lhp    Rays
15. Wade Davis         rhp     Rays
18. Desmond Jennings   of      Rays
25. Reid Brignac       ss      Rays
2.  Clay Buchholz       rhp    Red Sox
16. Jacoby Ellsbury    of      Red Sox
53. Justin Masterson   rhp     Red Sox
57. Jed Lowrie         ss      Red Sox
60. Ryan Kalish        of      Red Sox
95. Michael Bowden     rhp     Red Sox
100.Lars Anderson     1b       Red Sox
1.  Jay Bruce           of     Reds
9.  Homer Bailey        rhp    Reds
21. Joey Votto         1b      Reds
41. Johnny Cueto       rhp     Reds
13. Franklin Morales   lhp     Rockies
80. Chris Nelson       ss      Rockies
82. Greg Reynolds      rhp     Rockies
91. Casey Weathers     rhp     Rockies
92. Dexter Fowler      of      Rockies
19. Mike Moustakas     ss      Royals
72. Luke Hochevar      rhp     Royals
11. Rick Porcello      rhp     Tigers
65. Carlos Gomez       of      Twins
79. Deolis Guerra      rhp     Twins
97. Ben Revere         of      Twins
87. Aaron Poreda       lhp     White Sox
4.  Joba Chamberlain    rhp    Yankees
34. Ian Kennedy        rhp     Yankees
47. Austin Jackson     of      Yankees
48. Jose Tabata        of      Yankees
67. Alan Horne         rhp     Yankees

Profiling a Ray

2008-01-30T15:52:00.000-07:00

The always fascingating Marc Normandin allowed me to horn in on his regular gig this week and contribute a little PITCHf/x analysis to his player profile of the Rays (not Devil) James Shields. Unfortunately Shields had just eight of his 31 starts recorded by PITCHf/x but still the 712 pitches does allow us to see some definite patterns. The article does not require a subscription.

The Hot Stove at Altitude

2008-01-28T12:32:00.000-07:00

The Rocky Mountain Chapter of SABR held its annual “Hot Stove” meeting on January 26^th at Jackson’s All-American Grill located across the street from Coors Field in Denver. Being the Secretary of the chapter, yours truly took some notes and what follows is the synopsis.

President Paul Parker called the meeting to order a little past 10AM and after a few brief remarks introduced trivia-master Dave Wallack. Dave lead-off the festivities by distributing a quiz loaded with Rockies and other trivia to the 32 assembled members and guests. After 10 minutes of contemplation and confused looks the quizzes were scored with the top three finishers receiving their choice of copies of Baseball Between The Numbers or a wall poster of vintage baseball cards from the 1920s. It happened that three members tied for second place and so what turned out to be a not-so-fast “lightening round” moderated by Parker and Wallack (whose questions were a little tough to say the least) was held to determine the two who would take home the remaining door prizes.

Parker then continued the meeting by reminding members of the upcoming Denver Bears/New York Yankees Reunion fundraiser event now scheduled for May 3^rd at the Denver Athletic Club. As of now the event will feature Ralph Terry, Johnny Blanchard, Ryne Duran, and Woody Held and consist of research presentations, a panel discussion, and autograph session. Later in the meeting member Matt Repplinger discussed the availability of Rockies/Dodgers tickets for that evening’s game, which will be sold at the event with a part of the proceeds benefiting the chapter. The face value of the ticket will be $38 for an Outfield Box seat down the right field line in section 116. The chapter will be selling the $38 ticket for $28, ten dollars off the face value. The group’s planned summer trips to Albuquerque, Colorado Springs, and Casper, Wyoming were also discussed.

The meeting then continued with a research presentation by myself and Neal Williams where we presented our article “The Traffic Directors”, which will appear in the upcoming volume 36 of The Baseball Research Journal. The study focused on the attempt to quantify the contributions of third base coaches and to determine if there is a detectable skill component that can be measured. We used a subset of the base running metrics I developed for Baseball Prospectus but are augmented with the additional context of the personnel the coach had to work with. You can read the details in the BRJ or the two-part version online, but we conclude that if there is a skill component (or rather a skill difference between coaches if you prefer), it is too subtle to measure given the combination of play by play data and other influences. Attendees engaged in a short question and answer period before taking a brief break.

After the break Parker introduced the keynote speaker, Jeff Bridich, the Rockies Director of Baseball Operations. After giving a brief rundown of his career in baseball and his opportunity to join the Rockies in 2004 as the Director of Minor League Operations, Jeff began by asking the crowd how they would grade the Rockies off-season moves thus far which included the signings of Matt Holliday, Willy Taveras, and the record-breaking contract of Troy Tulowitzki. With that opening the attendees grabbed the bull by the horns and peppered Bridich with questions ranging from the arbitration cases of Brian Fuentes, Brad Hawpe, and Garrett Atkins to this spring’s competition at second base involving Jayson Nix and Marcus Giles among others, to the health of pitcher Jason Hirsch and the prospects of catcher Chris Iannetta. As you might imagine, much time was spent dissecting the options at second base for the upcoming season and Bridich provided some interesting background on the development of Nix as he went from an offensive prospect after being drafted in 2001 to the player most likely to hurt the team defensively at second. He also indicated that the loss of Carney Lansford as a minor league hitting coach was a big blow to their organization.

Being closely involved with the arbitration process, Bridich was able to provide excellent insight into the dynamics of the interaction between the two sides and with the three-member panel in what he characterized as often “not a friendly exchange of information”. Further, he discussed approaches to preparing arbitration cases from the club perspective including their use of some advanced metrics such as Zone Rating for measuring defense. Interestingly, he indicated that while the use of advanced metrics was certainly a part of their strategy, those metrics needed to be published and proven in the industry to the extent that they can show the panel that the metrics have some legs.

I found particularly interesting his comments on the baserunning of Willy Taveras where he noted that the Rockies are encouraging Taveras to be more liberal in his stolen base attempts, especially of third. Bridich related that when asked how many times he could have stolen third in 2007, Taveras indicated that he could have swiped third 30 or so times. While that's certainly an optimistic assessment even for a competitve player, it's certainly true that Taveras seems to have a fear of stealing third. Overall, in my baserunning framework I have him for 138 events at second base and just 3 at third over the course of his career and one of those three was actually a pickoff at second base and one came as his only stolen base attempt of 2004 (perhaps that's what instilled the fear?). Now if they could just teach him to bunt towards first base...

If Bridich had prepared remarks, the steady stream of questions from the attendees and his thoughtful and articulate answers prevented him from getting to them. After over an hour of discussion many in the group, including Bridich, enjoyed lunch at the restaurant while the discussion continued.

Thanks to all members and guests who participated in this stimulating morning of baseball discussion.

The Moral Hazards of the Hit Batsmen

2008-01-26T06:58:00.000-07:00

This the final in a series of three columns I wrote for BP on the topic of hit batsmen. You can find the other two on this blog as well. It appeared on May 18, 2006

Schrodinger's Bat:The Moral Hazards of the Hit Batsmen
by Dan Fox

"The designated hitter rule is like letting someone else take Wilt Chamberlain's free throws."

--Rick Wise (1974)

In the previous two weeks, we’ve been looking at historical hit by pitch rates and their trends, and investigating a variety of theories that have tried to explain the fluctuation of those rates. We’ve looked at a wide variety of theories that account for factors such as aluminum bats at the amateur level, changes in the strike zone, the increase in body armor, intimidation, retaliation, and even the win expectancy of the hit batsmen. While individual theories may lack explanatory power for a specific period of time, taken together they do provide insight into the sometimes opposing forces that underlie trends in baseball's complex competitive environment.

There is one trend, however, that we failed to discuss. So this week we’ll take a look at the difference in league rates of hit batsmen since the introduction of the designated hitter in 1973. This topic has been taken up before, so we’ll start by covering some of the old ground, and then hopefully add something new to the discussion.

Setting a Baseline
Before we discuss what the impact of the DH on HBP rates might be, let’s lay out the raw facts that have inspired so much conjecture. The following graph shows the percentage of AL hit batsmen per 1,000 plate appearances as opposed to the NL since the DH was adopted in the American League in 1973. The shaded line is a three-year moving average.

What this shows is that from 1973 until the mid 1990s the rate of hit batsmen in the AL was anywhere between 3% and 30% higher than in the NL. While that’s a wide range, more typical values are between 10% and 20%, with the average during the period being 17%:


1973    9.3%    1990   19.0%
1974   14.0%    1991   18.6%
1975    7.8%    1992   20.0%
1976   17.3%    1993    9.4%
1977   17.2%    1994   -7.6%
1978   12.5%    1995   -6.7%
1979    8.4%    1996    2.5%
1980   24.2%    1997  -15.9%
1981   22.8%    1998    4.4%
1982    3.2%    1999   10.2%
1983   19.1%    2000  -17.6%
1984   29.7%    2001    7.0%
1985   21.5%    2002    7.4%
1986   26.5%    2003    3.4%
1987   16.7%    2004    7.7%
1988   20.9%    2005   -5.6%
1989   22.9%

Around 1994, things began to change and in the following dozen years HBP rates in the NL actually surpassed those in the AL five times, including in 2005 where 9.52 batters were hit per 1,000 PA in the AL, against 10.05 in the NL.

So in fact, there are actually two questions that we can ask about this trend. First, what accounts for the difference in rates of hit batsmen during the twenty-year period following the introduction of the DH (1973-1993), and secondly, what caused those differences to shrink in the period after 1993?

A Moral Hazard or More Opportunity?
As mentioned in the introduction, the topic of league differences in HBP rate have been researched in the past. Most recently, Lee A. Freeman wrote an excellent article titled "The Effect of the Designated Hitter Rule on Hit Batsmen" in Volume 33 of The Baseball Research Journal. In it, Freeman provided a short synopsis of the previous work, citing articles in the journal Economic Inquiry in 1997 and 1998, as well as a follow-up in a 2004 issue of the Journal of Sports Economics.

Prior to Freeman’s paper the two theories that had been bandied about to explain the difference (at least from 1973 until the mid 1990s) were the "moral hazard theory" and the "lineup composition theory." The former theory argues that because American League pitchers needn’t fear retaliation with the presence of the DH, they are more apt to hit opposing batters since they don’t bear the costs of their actions directly. The latter theory also argues from a cost-benefit basis, although differently--AL pitchers hit more batters because the cost in terms of run scoring when hitting a DH is so much less than hitting a pitcher. This follows from the fact that the designated hitter is much more likely to be an offensive producer than your typical weak-hitting full-time hurler.

As a variation of the lineup composition theory, Freeman contended that more hit batsmen in the AL can be explained largely (but not totally, as he rightly cautions against single-theory explanations) simply by more "true" hitters coming to bat in the AL. In his words:

American League pitchers are not given the opportunity during a game to 'ease up' their delivery to the opposing pitcher. As a result, AL pitchers are likely to 'want' or 'need' to pitch inside to more batters during the course of a game, thereby increasing the chances of these batters being hit by a pitch.

Through an analysis of average HBP per season and per team, both before and after the introduction of the DH, Freeman concludes that there is no statistical significance (at the .001 or .005 levels) to the differences in hit batsmen across the two leagues once you adjust the averages for the fact that in the AL approximately 12.5% more true hitters come to the plate in the DH era.

What this analysis lacks, as admitted by Freeman himself, is a more granular accounting for the differences in the number of "true" hitters, and instead relies on a quick and dirty approximation. Using Retrosheet data, we can address that weakness in the study.

The following table shows the percentage of plate appearances consumed by each fielding position, along with the HBP per 1,000 plate appearances for both the AL and NL in the period 1973-1993.


        <----AL---->   <----NL----->
               HBP /           HBP /
POS     PAPct   1000   PAPct    1000
------------------------------------
 P       0.0%    0.0    6.8%     2.2
 C      10.1%    6.3   10.4%     4.9
1B      11.1%    4.9   11.3%     4.8
2B      10.9%    5.0   11.2%     4.7
3B      10.8%    5.3   11.1%     5.7
SS      10.3%    4.8   10.8%     3.7
LF      11.2%    6.2   11.4%     5.0
CF      11.4%    5.2   11.5%     4.7
RF      11.0%    5.6   11.3%     4.3
DH      11.2%    6.1     -        -
PH       2.0%    4.9    4.2%     3.7

TOTAL            5.5             4.5

In total, AL hitters were hit at a rate 20.8% higher than NL hitters.

As you can see, in the AL designated hitters consumed 11.2% of the plate appearances, and were hit at a rate of 6.1 times per 1,000 PA. Both totals are among the highest for AL hitters. So, while the DH might be the equivalent of someone else taking Wilt's free throws, the price the DH pays is some additional pain.

On the other side of the fence, NL pitchers consumed just 6.8% of the plate appearances, and were hit just 2.2 times per 1,000 PA. Interestingly, although the percentage of plate appearances for AL pitchers is rounded to 0%, they actually came to the plate 79 times, mostly as the result of games where the AL team lost their DH as a result of the DH assuming a defensive position per rule 6.10.

So, rather than seeing Freeman's 12.5% more "true" hitters in the AL, in actuality AL pitchers see around 7% more true hitters when you subtract the pitchers from the NL totals. However, Freeman also noted that pinch-hitters are often used for pitchers in the NL, and this is borne out by the fact that pinch-hitters came to the plate more than twice as often in the NL (4.2%) than in the AL (2.0%). Freeman also speculated that pinch-hitters are not as likely to get hit since they are often weaker hitters than players in the regular lineup (it should be noted that as reported in The Book, there is also a "pinch-hitting penalty" that drags down performance). The lesser rate of hit batsmen for pinch hitters is verified by the data. So, assuming that the NL rate of pinch-hitting was the same as the AL rate, and throwing the remainder of the NL pinch-hitters into the bucket of poor hitters with the pitchers, we can estimate that the AL pitchers see approximately 9% more true hitters than pitchers.

The difference between Freeman's estimate and the actual numbers lies in the fact that the vast majority of pitchers hit ninth, Dontrelle Willis being the most recent occasional exception. Hitting from the last slot in the order, pitchers therefore come to the plate less frequently than position players.

To adjust for that, given the data in the above table, we can now make an estimate for the true differences in hit batsmen by controlling for pitcher plate appearances. One simple way to do this is to estimate what would happen if all pitcher and pinch-hitter plate appearances in the NL were consumed by a true hitter whose rate of getting hit was relatively as high as a designated hitter's in the AL. This means that 11% of the NL plate appearances (6.8% + 4.2%) will be assigned a new HBP rate based on the difference between a DH and the rest of the positions in the AL. To do so we'll first calculate the ratio of the DH rate (6.1) to the non-DH rate (5.4) as 1.13. If we assume that true hitters in the NL consuming those plate appearances would have produced 13% more hit by pitches than the non-pitchers and pinch-hitters (which turns out to be 5.4 HBP/1000 PA), then the average for the NL would jump 30% from 4.5 hit batsmen per 1,000 PA to 4.8. As a result, instead of a 20.8% advantage for the AL during the period, the true advantage is around 13.6%.

So while accounting for a different lineup composition in the AL helps level the playing field, it obviously doesn't account for the entire difference, as Freeman concluded. We're still left with around two-thirds of our original difference between the leagues. Does that mean we're left with the moral hazard theory to explain the remaining difference?

Readers familiar with this subject will note that this cursory analysis lines up nicely with the fine work done by J.C. Bradbury and Douglas Drinen in a paper titled "Identifying Moral Hazard: A Natural Experiment in Major League Baseball" (warning: .pdf). In that paper, using data from 1989-1992 compared against 1969 plus 1972-1974, the authors conclude that:

"Controlling for variables that proxy batter quality, pitcher quality, retaliation, and game situation we find that the DH rule increases the likelihood that any batter will be hit during a plate appearance between 11 and 17 percent. This explains approximately 60 to 80 percent of the differential in the hit batsmen rate between leagues."

But there are also two additional theories to consider.

If you look back at the previous articles in this series you'll notice that the rate of hit batsmen in the AL actually surpasses that of the NL prior to the introduction of the DH. In fact, beginning in 1967, the rate of AL hit batsmen to NL went as follows:


1967  11.5%
1968  18.1%
1969  -1.5%
1970  10.1%
1971   8.3%
1972  11.0%

During this six-year period the differences in the AL rate with the pitcher hitting were not much different than those immediately after the introduction of the DH. What this indicates is that hit batsmen were already more frequent in the junior circuit. Perhaps some of this remaining difference lies elsewhere.

As mentioned last week, one of the factors that may influence hit batsmen is the definition (both written and as interpreted) of the strike zone. There is of course anecdotal evidence that the strike zone varied in the two leagues primarily as the result of AL umpires using the old-style "balloon" chest protector that forced them to stand more upright and therefore call more high strikes. And although by around 1983 AL umpires were also using the inside chest protector popularized by Bill Klem, they may have retained their traditional strike zone for some years. But still, outside of concocting what Stephen Jay Gould would call a "just-so story," there is no clear connection between high strikes and hit batsmen. A related hypothesis might be that the AL, being known as more of a curveball league, induced more hit batsmen since curveballs are inherently more difficult to control than fastballs. But both of these theories are difficult to quantify.

A more straightforward idea is that one or two individuals skewed the numbers for this time period, accounting for the remaining difference between the leagues. This follows the dictum that when what you're measuring has inherently low frequencies, you should always be aware of a small number of samples having a large influence on the data.

As most readers have already guessed, when you're talking about hitters and HBPs during this period, Don Baylor and Chet Lemon are two players who immediately spring to mind. Both played their entire careers in the AL, with Baylor suiting up for the Orioles, A's, Angels, Yankees, Red Sox, and Twins from 1970-88, and Lemon for the White Sox and Tigers from 1975-90. Baylor was hit 257 times in 8,888 plate appearances (defined simply as hits plus walks plus HBP for this analysis) from 1973 through 1988, for an astounding rate of 28.9 per 1,000 PA--tops during the period and ranking him 15th for players since 1901. Lemon was hit 151 times in 7,768 PA for a rate of 19.4. If these two players' rates are adjusted down to the average for the period, the overall rate for the AL drops from 5.5 to 5.3 and therefore accounts for about 4% of the remaining difference.

In summary then, from an initial difference of nearly 21% in the rate of hit batsmen between the two leagues in the 1973-1993 period, just over 7% can be accounted for by the presence of more true hitters in the lineup and another 4% by two hitters who were exceptionally "gifted" at getting plunked. This still leaves ample room for the moral hazard theory, a theory that incorporates differences in the two leagues relating to strike zone or styles of play, or a combination of all of the above to operate.

Evening the Score
The second question introduced above is related to the disappearance of the difference in rate of hit batsmen between the two leagues, beginning in 1994. Since that time, the National League has actually topped the American League in five of the twelve years, as shown in the previous table.

What can account for this dramatic shrinking of differences between the two leagues?

First, let's take a look at the same table for the years 1994-2005 as we did for the preceding years.


        <----AL---->   <----NL----->
               HBP /           HBP /
POS     PAPct   1000   PAPct    1000
------------------------------------
P        0.4%    1.4    5.9%     3.3
C       10.1%   11.1   10.5%    12.8
1B      11.1%   10.7   11.2%    10.5
2B      11.0%   10.6   11.5%    13.1
3B      10.8%    9.3   11.1%     9.8
SS      10.9%   10.3   11.1%     8.5
LF      11.2%    8.9   11.3%    10.5
CF      11.3%    8.5   11.5%    10.0
RF      11.0%    9.8   11.3%    10.7
DH      10.4%   10.2    0.5%    12.2
PH       1.6%    8.4    4.2%    10.0

TOTAL            9.9            10.3

What you'll notice is that the NL has outpaced the AL since 1994 despite leading in a minority of those seasons. This data set now includes interleague games, so a DH is listed in the NL column, and pitchers in the AL with the rate of hit batsmen for NL DHs even higher than that for the NL, and the rate for AL pitchers lower than in the NL. Of course, both leagues saw massive increases in their rates reflected as well.

In a follow-up paper (another .pdf) also published in 2004 Bradbury and Drinen conclude that during the entire history of the DH, batters were about 8% more likely to be hit in games where the DH was played accounting for around half of the difference between the leagues. However, when looking only at 1994-2005 data and breaking down the data into games played with the DH and those without we find the following:


        <----DH---->   <---NO DH---->
               HBP /           HBP /
POS     PAPct   1000   PAPct    1000
-------------------------------------
P        0.0%    0.0    6.2%     2.8
C       10.1%   10.0   10.5%    11.0
1B      11.1%    9.6   11.2%     9.0
2B      11.0%    9.6   11.5%    11.2
3B      10.8%    8.4   11.1%     8.4
SS      10.8%    9.1   11.1%     7.5
LF      11.2%    8.1   11.3%     9.0
CF      11.3%    7.8   11.6%     8.5
RF      11.0%    8.8   11.3%     9.2
DH      11.2%    9.0     -        -
PH       1.4%    7.9    4.3%     8.6

TOTAL            8.9             8.8

Here there is only a 1% overall difference. If one were to "correct" the data to account for lineup composition, as we did with the 1973-1993 data, you would find that games in which the DH was not in force produced 8.1% more hit batsmen per 1000 plate appearances than games without the DH. Truly, this is a large shift, for which we can offer three possible explanations.

First, as with the 1973-1993 data, we may be seeing the influence of one or several extreme players. It just so happens that during this period the NL has been blessed with a trio of the most-frequently hit batters in the history of baseball in Jason Kendall (except 2005), Craig Biggio, and Fernando Vina (except 1995-1997 and 2004). A clue to their contribution can be seen in the previous table, where the rates for second baseman and catchers are conspicuously high in the NL. Overall, their rates during that time…


          PA  HBP  HBP/1000
---------------------------
Kendall 5908  197    33.3
Vina    4633  154    33.2
Biggio  7930  245    30.9

Don Baylor has nothing on these guys.
If we adjust these three players' rates down to the league average for the period it drops the overall NL rate 4.3%, down to 9.8, just under the AL rate. Even so, this doesn't fully account for the fact that, given the lineup composition theory, we should see even fewer hit batsmen in the NL.

A second theory, and one proposed by Bradbury and Drinen in their follow-up paper, targeted the expansions of 1993 and 1998 as possible factors. Although discussed in the first article in this series, this theory does accurately predict a larger increase in HBP in the NL than in the AL in 1993-1994 because of the asymmetrical nature of the expansion draft. In 1993, the HBP rate rose 7.3% in the AL and 21.6% in the NL, and for 1994 it was -6.0% and 11.6%. In the years following 1994 the rate increases evened out. But even so, one wouldn't think that NL pitchers would go on hitting more batters even after the affects of expansion were absorbed as they did in 1997 and 2000.

The final theory, and one also proposed by Bradbury and Drinen, is that the implementation of the "double-warning rule" (8.02(d)) in the winter of 1993 had an immediate impact. Essentially, this rule raised the costs for teams hitting opposing batters, and placed that cost squarely on the pitcher and manager, both of whom can be immediately ejected from the game. One result is that AL pitchers now have a greater fear of hitting batters in retaliation lest they be ejected, thereby lowering their rate of hit batsmen. At the same time, it could be argued (as Brady and Drinen do) that NL pitchers have less fear of retaliation under the double-warning rule, since they know that the opposing team dare not hit them or their teammates or suffer the cost. The combination of more fear by AL pitchers and less fear by NL pitchers could together be responsible for essentially erasing the gap between the leagues.

Take Your Base
One of the reasons so many of us love baseball is that while it is seemingly simple, it is also a very human activity with naturally endless complexity. In this series of articles, I hope that we've highlighted some of that complexity in a statistically small but interesting part of the game. But while I for one love big-picture analysis, there's nothing more exciting than getting caught up in the one-on-one confrontations between pitcher and batter that are really the source of our ruminations.

Chat Transcript 1/25

2008-01-25T14:12:00.001-07:00

Thanks to everyone who showed up at the chat today. Lots of questions on SFR and defense in general that were very interesting. You can find the transcript here and as always you can use this post for follow-ups.

Rocky Mountain SABR 2008 Hot Stove Meeting

2008-01-25T03:06:00.000-07:00

For anyone in the Denver and surrounding area you'll be interested to learn that the next meeting of the Rocky Mountain chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research will be held Saturday January 26, 2008. The public is welcome and if you want to know what to expect you can take a look at last year's minutes.

We'll kick off at 10:00 AM at Jackson's All-American Grill directly across the street from Coors Field at 20th and Blake in downtown Denver.

Our featured speaker will be Jeff Bridich, the Rockies' Director of Baseball Operations. Jeff is Harvard alumnus and was a catcher and outfielder on the Harvard baseball team serving as a tri-captain in his 2000 senior year. He formerly worked in the Office of the Commissioner for Major League Baseball where he worked closely with teams facilitating, reviewing and approving minor league contracts and transactions. Jeff became the Rockies Director of Minor League Operations in 2004 before being promoted to his current position in October of 2005.

In addition RMSABR member Dave Wallack will lead-off with some trivia and members Dan Fox and Neal Williams will present their article on third base coaches titled "The Traffic Directors" that will appear in the next edition of SABR's Baseball Research Journal due to be published this month.

Please join us for what will certainly be a stimulating morning of baseball discussion.

Chat Tomorrow 1/25

2008-01-24T22:30:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note that I'll be chatting at Baseball Prospectus tomorrow at 1:30PM Eastern time for 90 minutes or so. You can submit questions beforehand here. See you then.

SFR v1.0

2008-01-24T12:19:00.000-07:00

As promised in yesterday's post about Peter Gammons, today's Schrodinger's Bat on BP walks through the official release of version 1.0 of Simple Fielding Runs (for infielders anyway) and its similarities to UZR and the Plus/Minus system. As a bonus you can now download the 2005 through 2007 data in Excel to play with the numbers to your heart's content. Oh, and the 2007 minor league leaders and trailers are also discussed.

Gammons and Cyberspace

2008-01-23T23:21:00.000-07:00

A nice column yesterday by Peter Gammons on the impact of the Internet on the sports as well as the political culture (similar to another column he wrote back in 2006). Two quotes in the column in particular caught my eye (other than the mention of this blog, Baseball Prospectus, and The Hardball Times albeit sadly not in that order) that deserve a few comments.

First, Gammons says:

I make no bones about my strong feelings about the human element. Pure numbers cannot do justice to character and drive and energy. They cannot measure the impact Robin Yount had on teammates when he ran down the first-base line at the same breakneck speed (one scout had nearly 90 Yount games in a six- or seven-year period and claimed he never got Yount faster than 3.9 seconds, or slower than 4.0).

What a wonderful anecdote and one that relates to what I found when looking at the baserunning exploits of Yount in last week's column. To summarize, Yount was the only player who was a career leader (from 1956-2007 anyway) in multiple of the five baserunning metrics. Overall Yount contributed +54 theoretical runs ranking him 13th in total number of runs. However, he was first in advancing on hits (EqHAR) at +39 runs and first in advancing on fly balls (EqAAR) at +17 runs. He did this despite costing his team 7 runs in stolen bases (EqSBR) and a half run in advancing on passed balls, balks, and wild pitches (EqOAR).

Below you'll find Yount's career baserunning statistics.


Year   Opps EqGAR  Opps EqSBR  Opps EqAAR  Opps EqHAR  Opps EqOAR  Opps EqRuns
1974     24   0.8    15  -3.0    19   1.0    38   2.1   203   1.2   299   2.1
1975     42  -0.9    17   0.1    37  -0.2    42   1.1   317   0.1   455   0.3
1976     33   0.6    31  -3.9    49  -0.7    42   2.2   311  -0.6   466  -2.2
1977     39   0.0    24  -0.5    49   0.5    63   0.4   397  -0.1   572   0.4
1978     27  -0.4    21   0.5    32   0.4    41   0.9   278  -0.7   399   0.7
1979     30   0.9    23  -1.1    47   2.5    43   2.6   311   2.0   454   6.9
1980     39   1.2    27   0.7    46   1.7    46   2.5   353   0.0   511   6.0
1981     26  -0.2     5   0.1    30   0.8    29   1.5   199   0.0   289   2.2
1982     46   0.9    17   0.9    60   2.5    47   3.5   399   0.3   569   8.0
1983     29  -0.8    15  -0.4    53   0.9    47   3.3   343  -0.8   487   2.3
1984     43  -0.7    18   1.1    56   0.9    64   2.6   386  -0.1   567   3.8
1985     20  -0.2    15  -0.7    24   0.1    51   3.5   252  -0.8   362   1.9
1986     40   0.7    20   0.6    42   1.8    47   1.8   367  -0.4   516   4.6
1987     39   0.0    26  -2.2    50   1.0    32   1.3   406   0.9   553   1.1
1988     25   0.2    24   2.4    49  -0.6    45   1.1   397   0.1   540   3.2
1989     29   1.5    21   1.6    53   0.5    61   0.4   402  -0.9   566   3.1
1990     23   0.7    21  -1.6    46   2.1    52   2.6   360   0.6   502   4.4
1991     16   0.5     9  -1.2    43   0.5    39   2.1   277  -1.2   384   0.7
1992     32   0.0    20  -0.7    47   0.9    44   2.3   311  -0.6   454   1.9
1993     16   0.3    11   0.4    30   0.2    48   1.5   258   0.4   363   2.7
        618   5.3   380  -6.8   862  16.7   921  39.4  6527  -0.5  9308  54.1

Yount managed to turn in a positive run value in EqHAR in each of his 20 seasons - a rare feat to say the least.

I was also interested by this comment in Gammons' piece.

Bill James is trying to define clutch, what made George Brett so different, or sets David Ortiz, when healthy, apart in swagger and presence. You can present me with 4,765 pages of anti-Derek Jeter material; it won't work, I watch him too much.

Although he mentions in the column that he was reading The Hardball Times apparently he didn't let Tom Tango's excellent piece titled "With or Without Derek Jeter" sink in. In that article Tom uses Retrosheet data to demonstrate without a doubt (at least to me) that Jeter is among the worst fielding shortstops of his generation by showing that when Jeter is on the field, regardless of the other context which Tom does a great job of neutralizing, fewer batted balls are turned into outs. Period. And one would think that should be the bottom line when evaluating defense.

In tomorrow's Schrodinger's Bat at Baseball Prospectus I go one more round with the fielding system dubbed Simple Fielding Runs (SFR) that I developed for use with Retrosheet style play by play data. In the article I compare SFR to UZR (Ultimate Zone Rating) as well as John Dewan's Plus/Minus system. Not coincidentally both Plus/Minus and SFR rate Derek Jeter as the worst shortstop in baseball from 2005 through 2007 and of course UZR is no fan either. For my part, here are Jeter's SFR numbers since 2002 (ExR is expected runners, Rn is actual runners, and Balls are the number of balls allocated to Jeter's area of responsibility).


Year     Balls      ExR      Rn    Diff     SFR
2002       461       14      10       4       3
2003       479      119     139     -20     -15
2004       637      154     151       3       2
2005       721      183     195     -13      -9
2006       625      163     174     -11      -8
2007       615      168     194     -26     -20
          3538      800     863     -64     -47

So over the course of six seasons Jeter is worth -47 runs by handling 64 fewer balls than would have been expected.

What I find interesting about Gammons' comment (and his take on Jeter is of course not a rare one and so I'm not just picking on Gammons) is the almost absolute faith in observation over other evidence when the evidence from every analytical tool available concurs as to the quality of Jeter's defense. Perhaps people are simply wired differently with some inherently more skeptical of what they see (or think they see) and therefore more willing to let other kinds of input shape their opinions. I'll admit it's kind of a mystery to me.

The Catch

2008-01-22T09:47:00.000-07:00

Saw a link to this photo come across the SABR listserv with the author wondering whether this really does depict "The Catch" made by Willie Mays in game one of the 1954 World Series. I hadn't seen this photo before and if anyone has any comments on it I'll pass them along.

And for those interested in the background of "The Catch", here's a snippet from the Ken Burns documentary featuring George Will and Bob Costas.

Running and Tulo

2008-01-20T21:16:00.000-07:00

Just a head's up for those interested that I posted responses to a few reader questions on BP's Unfiltered blog in response to last week's Schrodinger's Bat column.

Also just read the six-year deal with a club option for 2014 that Troy Tulowitzki signed with the Rockies. At $30M the deal seems like a good one for the Rockies, especially the club option that would take him through his age 28 season and buy out his second year of free agency. Certainly investing in any young player involves risk (and perhaps more so for hitters in Colorado) but in Tulowitzki the upside for the club is substantial because of his contributions on both sides of the ball. As for his fielding I had him at +18.6 runs using my Simple Fielding Runs (SFR) system, ranking second behind only Omar Vizquel.

Willie, Mickey, and Hank

2008-01-17T11:00:00.000-07:00

My column this week on Baseball Prospectus titled "For the Sake of Completeness" ties up some loose ends with the baserunning framework by showing the results from more or less all Retrosheet years (1956-2007). To that end I not only look at the aggregate leaders and trailers and discuss the merits of Lou Brock and Dave Parker but also develop a new rate statistic that incorporates four of the five metrics. This new rate (Equivalent Base Running Rate or EqBRR) is a more "pure" measure of baserunning and using this I develop an aging curve for baserunning as a whole and by position and finally examine baserunning as a skill and its persistance across career halves.

You'll need to read the column to get the details but in researching the article I took a look at more than a few old-timers and so I thought I'd share the baserunning exploits of Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Mickey Mantle.

First, the Say Hey Kid.


 Year  Opps EqGAR  Opps EqSBR  Opps EqAAR  Opps EqHAR  Opps EqOAR  Opps EqBRR
 1956    22   0.3    36   1.3    30  -1.8    21   3.1   189  -1.0   298   2.0
 1957    24  -0.1    46  -1.1    43  -2.5    30   2.6   276   1.1   419   0.0
 1958    29   0.0    41   3.3    51   1.0    35   0.1   341   1.6   497   5.9
 1959    21  -0.3    37   1.1    27   1.0    54   3.3   308   1.1   447   6.2
 1960    20  -0.3    40  -0.7    35   1.9    45   1.6   308  -0.2   448   2.3
 1961    30   0.7    29  -2.2    38   0.4    37   2.5   308   0.4   442   1.7
 1962    26   0.4    25   1.0    44   2.2    53   0.5   313  -0.2   461   3.9
 1963    37   0.5    19  -2.1    34   2.0    50  -0.2   357   1.3   497   1.6
 1964    24   0.2    28   0.5    38   2.0    39   2.7   317   0.0   446   5.4
 1965    22   0.2    16   0.0    20   0.6    36  -0.7   284   1.5   378   1.5
 1966    23  -0.7     8   0.2    24  -0.9    34  -0.6   292  -0.5   381  -2.5
 1967    16  -0.6     7   1.2    19   0.7    38   2.5   235   0.9   315   4.7
 1968    17   0.8    18  -0.3    35   1.7    49  -0.4   269   0.4   388   2.3
 1969    15   0.0     8  -0.6    23   0.3    26   0.3   228  -1.0   300  -1.1
 1970    12   0.1     6   0.1    26   0.7    29   1.9   308   0.6   381   3.3
 1971    26   1.4    24   2.0    34  -0.1    33   0.8   308   0.5   425   4.6
 1972    22   0.3     9  -1.8    30  -0.8    21   0.9   144   0.4   226  -0.9
 1973    12   0.0     1   0.1    10   0.1    18  -1.4    80   0.1   121  -1.1
        398   2.9   398   2.0   561   8.5   648  19.4  4865   7.0  6870  39.9

Mays finished 23rd in aggregate EqBRR (and of course his 1951-1955 seasons are missing) and led the league in 1958 although doing better in 1959 and pretty well in 1964 and somewhat surprisingly 1971 thanks to some high percentage base stealing. In terms of pure baserunning Mays contributed 19% more runs than an average runner which is a little on the high side for centerfielders. He seemingly was pretty good at advancing on fly balls (EqAAR), fairly average on grounders (EqGAR) and held up his own both in advancing on hits (EqHAR) and balks, passed balls, and wild pitches (EqOAR).

Next, we have Hammerin' Hank.


 Year  Opps EqGAR  Opps EqSBR  Opps EqAAR  Opps EqHAR  Opps EqOAR  Opps EqBRR
 1956    32  -0.6     3  -1.7    30   0.5    32   0.6   234   0.6   331  -0.7
 1957    28   0.7     3  -1.5    37  -1.6    42   0.3   328   1.1   438  -1.0
 1958    44   1.1     4  -0.2    49  -0.5    48   1.7   321   0.3   466   2.4
 1959    25  -0.1     8   1.4    47   1.3    52   3.2   355  -0.6   487   5.2
 1960    24   1.3    23  -0.6    33  -0.6    31   1.8   228   0.2   339   2.2
 1961    23  -0.7    31  -0.4    32   1.4    37   1.2   274   1.7   397   3.2
 1962    34  -0.6    21  -1.2    34   0.6    39   0.8   296  -0.5   424  -0.9
 1963    21   0.5    39   2.7    51   0.2    45   3.7   359  -0.4   515   6.7
 1964    30   0.7    26   1.6    25   0.1    42   0.7   278   1.6   401   4.6
 1965    12  -0.2    29  -0.1    27   1.0    38   1.5   281   2.0   387   4.3
 1966    25  -0.3    24   1.5    39   1.8    53   1.6   323   0.3   464   4.8
 1967    28   1.6    24   0.1    38   1.6    45   1.3   297  -0.9   432   3.7
 1968    14   0.2    32   1.9    25  -2.7    36   1.6   226  -0.4   333   0.6
 1969    15  -0.5    21  -2.7    29   0.7    38   2.3   263   0.0   366  -0.2
 1970    21  -0.5    11   1.5    28   0.0    43  -0.5   277  -0.7   380  -0.2
 1971    15  -0.5     2   0.0    30   0.1    44  -0.7   262  -0.1   353  -1.2
 1972    18  -0.4     3   0.5    36   0.7    42  -0.1   265  -0.2   364   0.5
 1973     6   0.2     2  -0.4    19  -0.2    31  -0.7   174  -0.2   232  -1.2
 1974    12   0.3     1   0.1    17   0.1    20  -3.1   121  -0.5   171  -3.1
 1975    19  -1.0     1  -0.4    38   0.0    29   0.0   237  -0.5   324  -1.9
 1976     8  -0.1     1  -0.7    11  -0.6    11  -1.1    79  -0.4   110  -2.9
        454   1.1   309   1.4   675   4.1   798  16.1  5478   2.5  7714  25.2

Hank does pretty well overall and was well above average runner from 1958 through 1967. He apparently slowed considerably after that though which depressed his career total substantially. Had he simply treaded water those final few years he would have been at something like +35. He led the league in 1963 with his +6.7 runs and was consistently effective in advancing on hits (EqHAR).

Finally, The Mick.


 Year  Opps EqGAR  Opps EqSBR  Opps EqAAR  Opps EqHAR  Opps EqOAR  Opps EqBRR
 1956    24   0.1    13   0.7    44  -0.3    49   1.0   376   1.1   506   2.5
 1957    27  -0.4    20   1.4    49  -0.9    61   1.1   399   0.4   556   1.7
 1958    37  -0.1    23   1.9    49   0.2    57   2.9   375   0.1   541   5.0
 1959    22  -0.3    26   1.9    31   1.0    43   2.2   286  -0.9   408   4.0
 1960    26  -0.3    21  -0.3    46  -0.2    49   1.7   299   1.8   441   2.7
 1961    26   0.1    15   0.5    58   0.7    47   0.6   369   0.9   515   2.8
 1962    23  -0.7     8   1.5    39   0.1    44   0.6   290   0.6   404   2.0
 1963    13  -0.2     4  -0.9     9  -0.1    12   1.0    93  -0.4   131  -0.6
 1964    29  -0.2     9  -1.5    28   1.1    35   1.7   254  -0.9   355   0.1
 1965    12  -0.2     6  -0.2    22  -0.5    26  -0.2   173  -0.3   239  -1.4
 1966    11  -0.3     2  -0.4    20   0.3    20  -1.4   168   0.3   221  -1.4
 1967    20  -0.2     4  -1.3    33  -0.2    27  -1.0   237  -0.4   321  -3.0
 1968    23  -0.6     7   0.1    26   0.7    34   0.1   268  -0.3   358   0.0
        293  -3.3   158   3.5   454   1.9   504  10.3  3587   1.9  4996  14.4

After 1962 Mantle's knees didn't hold up and that is reflected in his running. Before that, though he was above average and inline with most centerfielders contributing plus runs from 1956 through 1962. Interestingly, he always did poorly on advancing on ground outs (EqGAR) but could seemingly take the extra base on hits (EqHAR).

Wednesday Links

2008-01-16T12:42:00.000-07:00

Just a couple of notes for a Wednesday...

Jayson Stark had a nice live blog post on the hearings yesterday for those of use who had to work. Some pretty good perspective I think and in answering questions he brings up a few other issues worth thinking about.

Former BP'er Keith Woolner has a nice bio on the Science Magazine site that goes through his background leading up to his current position as Manager of Baseball Research and Analysis for the Indians. Very cool.

Mike Fast writes a wonderful PITCHf/x primer on MVN that explains what you need to know about f/x in seven easy steps.

A Podsednik Nugget?

2008-01-14T06:19:00.000-07:00

As many of you know John Dewan publishes a "Stat of the Week" on the ACTA publishing site. These are often inciteful but I'm a little perplexed by the stat for last Friday January 11th which will appear in the upcoming book from ACTA Sports, The Bill James Gold Mine, available in February 2008..

In that nugget he notes that...

"Scott Podsednik has proven quite effective as a leadoff man. Until last year. Every year prior to 2007 Pods' teams have scored significantly more runs when he led off an inning than when others have led off."

This is accompanied by a table that illustrates how in 2007 the team scored -.01 runs fewer per inning when Podsednik led off than when his teammates did so.

While I haven't done exhaustive research on this I do know that Podsednik went from being a leadoff hitter in previous years to batting further down in the order in 2007. In fact, here are his plate appearances by lineup position since 2003.


Year/Pos    1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9
2003      279  291         2   27   11    2    1   15
2004      703    8    2
2005      564                   2              2
2006      574              2         1        11    3
2007       89   19    3    2        27   95

Clearly a large part of the difference is due to the fact that the two and three hitters in the order are guaraneteed to bat when Podsednik leads off an inning from the leadoff spot in the order as opposed to when he's in the 6th or 7th hole. A little follow-up would be to see whether on average when a leadoff hitter leads off an inning it typically raises scoring by at least +0.25 runs as in the case of Podsednik in previous seasons or whether his totals actually indicate that he was a hinderance in the leadoff spot (as might be guessed by his career .338 OBP). It's also the case that lineup balance will play a role since it could be the case that the two, three, and four hitters for the White Sox were relatviely more potent than the rest of the lineup when compared with other teams.

In any case this Stat of the Week, while interesting, doesn't really show what it purports.

Strike Zones, Trilobites, and a Vicious Cycle

2008-01-12T10:28:00.000-07:00

Last week I ran the first in a series of three columns I wrote on hit batsmen. Today it's time for the second in the series originally published In May of 2006. Enjoy.

May 11, 2006
Schrodinger's Bat: Strike Zones, Trilobites, and a Vicious Cycle
by Dan Fox

"If they knocked two of our guys down, I'd get four. You have to protect your hitters."
--Don Drysdale

"I hated to bat against Drysdale. After he hit you he'd come around, look at the bruise on your arm and say, 'Do you want me to sign it?'"
-- Mickey Mantle

In our last installment of Schrödinger’s Bat we began an investigation of hit batsmen by looking at the big-picture trends in the rate of hit batsmen since 1901. That exploration led to summarizing various theories that have been proposed over the years to explain the fluctuation of rates, including the physical hazard theory, the offensive context theory, the intimidation theory, the expansion theory, the new strike zone theory, and finally the aluminum theory. From among that group, we can say that the last one seemed to make sense for the recent upward trend that began circa 1985.

Although I promised that this week we’d scrutinize the differences in hit batsmen rates since the introduction of the designated hitter in 1973, and discuss the theories proposed to explain it, last week’s column generated such a large volume of email that I thought it would be worth spending one more column on the big picture before moving on to the DH era.

Big Picture Trends Redux
Let’s start off by addressing a few of the more prevalent reader questions regarding the bevy of big picture trends discussed last week. Indicative of the questions received was this one from reader Marc Stone, where Marc touches on two aspects of HBP trends that the article overlooked.

Nice job, Dan, but you left out one very useful comparison: how do changes in HBP compare to changes in BB rates and, to a lesser extent, K rates and pitches per PA.

Reader Ryan Tippetts echoed the second part of that question by noting:

My immediate thought, specifically regarding recent upward trends, was the modern trend of increased pitches per AB. Might it be as simple as because a batter sees more pitches he has more opportunities to be hit by a pitch?

Thanks to Ryan and Marc, and to all the other readers who had similar comments. I have to admit that neither looking at walk and strikeout rates nor at pitches per plate appearance in comparison with the rate of hit batsmen had occurred to me. But of course all three suggestions make a lot of sense:

If pitchers are walking more batters at the same time they’re hitting more of them, that may be indicative of worse control (the “wildness theory”).

If strikeouts are strongly correlated with hit batsmen, then perhaps a more aggressive hitting style (the “free swinger theory”), or the intimidation of the HBP, or even changes in the strike zone are playing a role.

If pitchers are throwing more pitches overall, it does indeed provide more opportunity for hitters to get plunked (the “opportunity theory”) which in the end may be all that is required.

To see whether the wildness or free swinger theories shed any light on the question of changes in HBP rates over time, we can add unintentional walks and strikeouts per 1,000 plate appearances for each league to the graph we showed last week:

What you’ll notice is that up until around 1970, there appears to be some correlation between walk rate and HBP rate. Unfortunately, the correlation is the inverse of that which the wildness theory would predict. As walk rates increased from around 1920 through the late 1940s the rate of hit batsmen fell. As walk rates declined, the frequency with which batters were hit increased.

In other words, one might be inclined to conclude that there is a more or less constant rate at which pitchers put batters on for free via the HBP or unintentional walk, at least based on the graph from 1901 through 1970. While that’s an attractive idea, and akin to the offensive context theory discussed last week, you can’t simply add the two rates, since hit batsmen are so much less frequent than walks--as evidenced by the fact that in order to get both on the graph, the scale of HBP is per 1,000 PA while that for walks is per 100 PA. As a result, the number of runners that pitchers put on for free is driven almost entirely by the number of walks.

In any case, there appears to be no correlation over the past 35 years, as walk rates have been fairly steady, while the number of hit batsmen has increased dramatically.

On the other hand, the free-swinger theory appears more promising. Strikeout rate does correlate pretty strongly with the HBP rate since around 1950, and in the 1910-1925 period as well. In fact, from 1950 through 2005 the correlation coefficients are a very healthy .72 and .69 for the American and National Leagues respectively, which can be interpreted to mean that strikeout rates explain around 50% (.702) of the variation in HBP rates (or vice versa).

But as every statistics professor drums into the heads of his students, correlation is not necessarily causation, and before 1950 the correlation is much weaker--in fact, for the preceding 25 years the two rates were moving in opposite directions. As a result, one might argue that the free-swinger theory holds since 1950 because the normative hitting style became more aggressive, resulting in hitters diving over the plate more frequently, which in turns results in more hit batsmen. Under this interpretation, during the 1970-1984 period, free swinging was less in vogue, and pitchers reacted with fewer brushback pitches, resulting in fewer HBP.

An alternative theory noted by reader JMHawkins that would fit the same set of facts holds that an expanding strike zone, especially on the outside corner, forces hitters to stand closer to the plate and dive over it more frequently, resulting in more batters being hit. The expanded zone also happens to induce more strikeouts, so strikeout rate and HBP rate aren’t causally related, but both are related to this third factor. There is undisputed evidence that the strike zone expanded in 1963, and anecdotal evidence that the low outside corner became an increasingly rewarding target for pitchers in the last 20 years or so. As umpires reigned in the zone after the redefinition in 1969 and the increased scrutiny around 2001, both strikeouts and hit batsmen fell. This “fluctuating strike zone theory” then explains why strikeout and HBP rate seem to mirror each other.

In either case, we’d still need a theory to account for the preceding 25 years, when strikeouts rose and hit batsmen fell, although under the above theory it appears that those 25 years from 1925 to around 1950 are the exception and not the rule.

To be honest, I was initially most hopeful about the opportunity theory. It's pretty well known that the number of pitches per plate appearance has been on the rise, so it makes intuitive sense, but when we try to look at this theory, we run into the problem that we don’t have complete play-by-play data--and hence pitch counts--for most of baseball's history. Despite the recent and very welcome additions to the work being done at Retrosheet we are still missing the vast majority of the data required to complete the picture from 1901 through 2005; the 49 seasons that Retrosheet provides are often missing pitch sequence data.

Some alert readers (aka, the real stat geeks) may also be thinking that perhaps we could use pitch count estimators in order to estimate the number of pitches, and hence the rate at which batters are hit per pitch. Unfortunately, the basic estimators that are in use rely on constant multipliers for strikeouts and walks to estimate the number of pitches, and we’ve already taken those into account in the graph above. More complex estimators rely on estimates of balls-in-play rate (the percentage of pitches on which balls are put into play, which varies by league and year), which we don’t have historically. There are other factors that could also influence the result which models have difficulty capturing.

However, we can look at data we do have, and that's as far back as 1988. You’ll recall that during the 1988-2005 period HBP rates have more than doubled. What we find, however, is that during that time the number of pitches per plate appearance has risen only around 5%. So it doesn’t look like the opportunity theory explains at least the most recent upward trend.


Year    P/PA
1988    3.60
1989    3.63
1990    3.64
1991    3.71
1992    3.68
1993    3.68
1994    3.75
1995    3.75
1996    3.75
1997    3.76
1998    3.70
2000    3.75
2001    3.72
2002    3.73
2003    3.74
2004    3.76
2005    3.73

What do Trilobites and Jason Kendall Have in Common?
Although the free-swinger and fluctuating strike zone theories (or some combination thereof) provides some insight, and the opportunity and wildness theories perhaps less so, the most often cited theory by readers not discussed in last week’s column is the “body armor theory.” A succinct explanation was provided by reader Jeff Bullington:

This would only affect the recent rise, but what about the increased use of body armor? Would this be the 'contra-intimidation theory'?

As Jeff noted, this is the polar opposite of the intimidation theory and holds that as hitters began to wear more and more protective gear, they’ve been less afraid of getting hit, allowing them to stand closer to the plate and be more aggressive about hanging in. It follows logically that pitchers would respond by upping the ante in an effort to move batters off the plate, and reclaim their rightful territory.

This idea is akin to the evolutionary arms race between predator and prey, whereby one species evolves stronger protection in response to selection pressure from predators as has been speculated for trilobites, which in turn leads to selection pressure on predators to evolve accordingly.

As arguments go, this is a particularly difficult one to measure quantitatively. What we can certainly see that the use of protective gear--such as hard elbow and shin pads--has increased in the past 20 years. One only has to look at the protection worn by Craig Biggio, or Jason Kendall and consider his recent run-in with John Lackey to understand how that protection might affect the game. It’s probably not a coincidence that coming into 2006, Biggio's 273 HBPs rank second all-time, and Kendall ranks 8th with 197.

That said, in 2002 Major League Baseball began enforcing rules that limited the use of protective gear to players with medical exemptions, such as the one employed by Barry Bonds, which allows him to wear his elbow armor. The rules also limited the size of the various pads and devices worn.

Whether coincidentally or not, the recent Kendall incident notwithstanding, the rate of hit batsmen has stabilized since that time. This was also immediately after the rate had reached its apogee in 2001, when the AL set its all-time record in hit batsmen per 1,000 plate appearances and the NL its highest total since 1901.


         AL     NL
2001  10.67   9.92
2002   9.90   9.17
2003  10.21   9.86
2004  10.40   9.60
2005   9.52  10.05

We can also note that although helmets have been mandatory for MLB players since 1956, ear flaps have only been enforced for players who reached the majors after 1983. Ear flaps do coincide with the recent upward trend, and although one can imagine there would be an attendant psychological boost for the hitter, it’s more difficult to believe that this relatively minor change would have had that large of an immediate impact. After all, players already in the league were allowed to use the old-style helmets, so the change was gradually phased in, and the head is the part of the body hit with the least frequency.

But this does provide the opportunity to sneak in a quick trivia question: Who was the last player to wear a helmet without an earflap in a game and in what year? (Wait for it, we'll get to the answer at the bottom of the column.)

So, whether or not body armor and the introduction of the ear flap is responsible for the twenty-year upward trend in HBP rates or not, an argument can be made that the crackdown on body armor has played a role in retarding the arms race.

A Vicious Circle?
Finally, reader Jake Slemp wrote to say that whatever the cause of an increasing or decreasing trend in hit batsmen, it would likely be self-sustaining and reinforcing. His reasoning:

After all, hit batsmen beget more hit batsmen within the same game, which often beget still more in subsequent games between the two teams…which beget more in those games, etc.

In other words, even a small increase in hit batsmen might form a feedback loop based on retaliation. This situation is often described in economic terms as a virtuous (if the results are favorable) or a vicious (if they are negative) circle, where each cycle continues the trend in the current direction until stopped by some outside force.

To look at this “vicious circle theory,” we can use play-by-play data for 2001 through 2005 to examine the distribution of games by the number of hit batsmen. We can then compare the actual distribution with what would be expected if the hit batsmen were distributed randomly (in a binomial distribution) given the overall rate of HBP and the average number of plate appearances per game. What we find when we do so is as follows:


 HBP   Games Expected
  7       1       0
  6       1       1
  5      10      10
  4     118      71
  3     455     394
  2    1626    1610
  1    3980    4325
  0    5953    5732
       6191    6412

As you can see, the number of games where zero through two batters are hit are all pretty much in line with what would be expected. However, we do see that the frequency of three and especially four batters hit in a game surpass the numbers you'd expect, and there are fewer games with a single batter hit than expected. And of course this list provides the opportunity for a second trivia question: What teams were involved in the lone seven hit batsmen game of the past five years? (Again, answer appears at the bottom.)

What this confirms is that retaliation is a likely factor in hit batsmen. Games where we would otherwise expect two batters to be hit can quickly turn into games where three or four are hit. We already knew that intuitively, but what we need to know is whether or not increased retaliation is responsible for the increasing number of hit batsmen.

To look at this, we can calculate the expected number of games with various numbers of hit batsmen over four successive periods, starting in 1985.


Actual vs   1985-1989  1990-1994  1995-2000* 2001-2005
Expected
5+             850%       246%       322%       104%
3 - 4          162%       125%       119%       123%
0 - 2          100%       100%        99%        99%

* Does not include 1997-1999.

As we saw with the 2001-2005 period, in all periods there are just about the expected number of games with zero, one, or two HBP. However, there are always more games than expected with three or four batters hit, and lots more with five or more hit.

While this confirms that retaliation within games is probably a persistent feature of hit batsmen, it doesn’t appear as if blatant retaliation has increased over the past twenty years. Keep in mind, the HBP rate has doubled during that time frame. If anything, it would appear there are slightly fewer beanball wars now than in the past, perhaps as a result of the double-warning rule put into effect in 1994. Note that this conclusion holds even if you assume that the increase in games with three or more hit batsmen is completely due to wildness (after all, it’s certainly true that when a pitcher hits one batter he’s more likely to hit another simply due to control problems).

What this doesn’t rule out is the idea that teams now employ a more subtle form of retaliation, whereby they will wait to take revenge in a subsequent series, and where the retaliation doesn’t escalate out of control. As a result, it would be possible that retaliation and escalation are to blame for the recent increase in hit batsmen, but it seems unlikely.

However, even if retaliation is not the cause of the increasing rate of hit batsmen, the body armor theory may provide the starting point for the vicious circle that was interrupted by the new rules, starting in 2002.

Error on the Side of Caution
If nothing else, I hope that we’ve highlighted that in an activity as complex as baseball, there are usually many factors that contribute to the big-picture trends that we see. That’s true for hit batsmen as well as the more visible trends, like the offensive upsurge of the last dozen years or so. If there is a lesson to be learned here, it’s probably that we should all be more cautious of simple explanations and easy answers.

Let’s wrap up with a couple of corrections from last week.

First, when discussing the expansion theory I noted that expansion would have a tendency to dilute talent in both leagues. While that’s true to some extent, I was reminded by our own Christina Kahrl that actually the 1992 expansion draft was the first time players from both leagues were available in an expansion draft. Prior to that, for example in 1977, the expansion teams could only choose unprotected players from their own league. And in that 1992 draft, AL teams were able to protect more players than NL teams; it was not until the 1997 draft that all teams were able to protect the same number of players.

Second, I noted last week that Ray Chapman was the only professional player ever fatally injured in a game. Reader Bill Johnson pointed out that Chapman was the only major-leaguer to be fatally injured by a beanball. Several minor leaguers were killed in the 1950s and 1960s including Otis Johnson in 1951.
---

Okay, so you waited, here are a couple of answers. For the first trivia question, Tim Raines never wore an earflap in a 23-year career that spanned from 1979 through 2002. As quoted in a MLB article documenting it, he did not wear one because, being a switch hitter, he didn’t want to carry two helmets.

The answer to the second question: June 7, 2001 the A’s visited Anaheim to take on the Angels. In that game Jason Giambi was hit by Scott Schoeneweis following a first-inning home run by Frank Menechino. In the third inning, Schoenweis then hit Menechino (one wonders if accidentally) and later in the inning also hit Olmedo Saenz. Barry Zito subsequently hit Tim Salmon in the 6th. Almost certainly not coincidentally, Schoeneweis again hit Menechino leading off the 8th. Later in that same inning, Mike Holtz entered the game and promptly plunked Eric Chavez for good measure. And just to round things out Scott Spiezio was hit by Mark Guthrie in the bottom of the 8th. Ouch.

Pulling for Teddy Ballgame

2008-01-10T22:43:00.000-07:00

My column today at BP deals with the history and of defensive shifts and delves into a little data on The Splendid Splinter's propensity to pull as well as an analysis of the most pull-happy modern players. I was inspired to take up the topic after spending several enjoyable hours digesting the essays in The 2008 Hardball Times Annual. As you might imagine I'm partial to the "Analysis" section and although I wasn't particularly impressed with one of the essays, for the thinking fan the material in the ten essays is well worth the cost of the book.

And while I appreciated Tom Tango's work on catcher defense and an exhaustive look at what can be learned about Derek Jeter's defense from Retrosheet, John Walsh's investigation of platoon splits, David Gassko's new take on the vexing subject of managerial contributions, and John Beamer's walk through a Markov Model for the 2007 season, it was a section of the essay "Of Home Runs and Free Agents" by Greg Rybarczyk of Hit Tracker fame that caught my eye. In that article Greg has a section titled "'Did Anyone Order a Center fielder?' Case Study: All Batted Balls by Torii Hunter and Andruw Jones," in which, as the title implies, he takes an in-depth look at the balls in play for these two players, and in doing so mentions the idea of employing an infield shift against Jones. For those interested Greg has posted data from that article at SOSH.

Great stuff and once again THT has put together a very fine collection of analytical and historical essays coupled with a look back at 2007.

Congrats to the Goose!

2008-01-09T18:55:00.000-07:00

When I was about 11 years old I found a list of addresses for current and former ball players in the back of a magazine. I proceeded to write very kind letters to each address and send away pictures I'd cut out of magazines, newspaper clippings, and yes, baseball cards when I had them. One of those addresses belonged to Goose Gossage and several weeks later the card was returned with his (presumably although I'm not holding my breath as to its authenticity) signature.

Since then I've always had a soft spot for the Goose (except during the 1984 playoffs of course) and considering that he's also a native of our adopted home in Colorado Springs not to mention arguably one of the top three relievers in the history of baseball (Hoyt Wilhelm and Mariano Rivera are at the top followed closely by Bruce Sutter, Rollie Fingers, and Dennis Eckersley), I was gratified to see him get elected with 85.8% of the vote.

It's too bad The Hawk couldn't have made it as well but he did eclipse his 2006 vote total and has risen to 65.9% making it likely he'll eventually make it. But I'd have to agree with Joe Sheehan (BTW, there are some nice moments on Hall of Fame debates with Joe, Steve Phillips, and Keith Law on ESPN that you can see here) that once Jim Rice is in (in my opinion not a Hall of Famer), there won't be any reasonable argument for keeping Dawson out.

Beautiful Theories and Ugly Facts

2008-01-09T01:33:00.000-07:00

Another golden oldie from the Baseball Prospectus archives originally published on May 4, 2006

Schrodinger's Bat: Beautiful Theories and Ugly Facts
by Dan Fox
May 4, 2006

“The great tragedy of Science--the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”

--British biologist Thomas H. Huxley (1825-1895)

On April 22nd, Rockies setup man Jose Mesa drilled Giants shortstop Omar Vizquel in the back with his first pitch. The next day, Giants starter Matt Morris hit both Matt Holliday and Eli Marrero in the first eight pitches he threw and was tossed from the game, along with manager Felipe Alou and pitching coach Dave Righetti. That was followed by the customary warnings to both teams, in observance of the practice that Major League baseball adopted in 1994.

Later in the game, Jeff Francis hit Steve Finley and was not ejected, much to the consternation of what was left of the Giants coaching staff. Of course, under the double warning rule, the umpires still have discretion over whether to eject a pitcher after the warnings have been issued; a discretion that yours truly thinks is not exercised nearly as often as it should be. Finally, Ray King plunked Vizquel again in the 8th, and was ejected along with Rockies skipper Clint Hurdle.

The Mesa/Vizquel feud dates back to 1998, when the two were still teammates with the Indians and Vizquel celebrated a spring training home run off of Mesa by doing a cartwheel afterwards. Things went downhill after the 2002 publication of Vizquel’s book Omar! My Life On and Off the Field, wherein Vizquel said of Mesa’s performance in Game Seven of the 1997 World Series:

"The eyes of the world were focused on every move we made. Unfortunately, Jose's own eyes were vacant. Completely empty. Nobody home. You could almost see right through him. Not long after I looked into his vacant eyes, he blew the save and the Marlins tied the game.”

Well, at least no one can accuse Vizquel of being the model teammate.

Mesa then vowed to hit Vizquel every time he faced him, and he did exactly that on June 12, 2002, in the 9th inning of a 7-3 game when Mesa was pitching for the Phillies. And he hit him the next time the two faced each other, which was two Saturdays ago in Denver.

Mesa is now appealing a four-game suspension handed down by Bob Watson. I kid you not, Rockies GM Dan O’Dowd said on the Rockies radio pre-game show on April 29th that he was surprised Mesa was suspended, and that he didn’t think Mesa was throwing at Vizquel. I know GMs like to stand by their players, but really…

Putting the emotions and politics aside, of the more than 14,600 games that have been played since the beginning of the 2000 season, the April 23rd game marks the 138th time that four or more batters have been hit in the same game. Pondering that fact led me to take up the topic of hit batsmen in this week’s column.

A Pair of Trends
To lead off, it’s always good to have a historical perspective. In that vein, I offer the following graph that shows the number of hit batsmen per 1,000 plate appearances in both the American and National Leagues since 1901.

There are several interesting aspects to this graph that lead us to ask two primary questions.

First, you’ll notice that the number of hit batsmen has fluctuated fairly widely over time, with a high of 10.67 per 1,000 plate appearances in the American League in 2001 to a low of 2.82 in the American League in 1947. The rate at which batters were hit decreased steadily from the turn of last century through the late 1940s, and then increased for the next twenty years to a peak in 1968. It then decreased again until the early 1980s, but from 1985 it rose quickly through 2001, to a rate where it has since leveled off.

We humans love causal explanation for apparent trends like this, so the first question that comes to mind is: just what is it that can explain these changes over time?

Secondly, as you can see, batters have historically been hit at slightly different rates in the two leagues, with the American League seeing more hit batsmen from 1909 through 1928, and the National League then doing so until 1950. The leagues then traded the title back and forth until 1970 when the AL would lead for more than 20 years until the strike-shortened 1994 season. Since that time the back and forth has returned, with the AL leading seven times and the NL five. The second question then is: what are we to make of these differences between the leagues?

In the remainder of this week’s column we’ll tackle the first question related to the overall historical trends, and leave the second--which deals with league differences--for next week.

The Big Picture Trend
There have been a number of theories proposed attempting to explain the historical trends we see in the rate of hit batsmen. Let’s look at them.

On August 16, 1920 Carl Mays of the Yankees hit Ray Chapman of the Indians in the head with a pitch. The next day, Chapman died and became the only professional player ever fatally injured in a game. Although Mays was vilified in some quarters, dirty balls were also held responsible; as a result, umpires began to replace balls that had been dirtied much more often in-game.

At first reflection, any baseball fan might assume that this tragic event would have had an immediate impact on the way the game was played, with the result being that more pitchers were afraid to throw inside, which would reduce the number of hit batsmen. Additionally, fewer soiled balls in play would theoretically allow for their being spotted more easily by hitters, which might allow them to duck, dive, or dodge the inside pitch. In either case, we’ll call this the “physical hazard” theory to explain the reduction in hit batsmen.

While it’s a nice theory, you can see from the graph that the longer trend in the reduction of batters hit had been operative in the American League since 1911, and in the National League stretching all the way back to 1901. In fact, contrary to the theory that the Chapman beaning may have had a dampening effect, a closer examination of the period between 1919 and 1925 reveals that hit batsmen per 1,000 plate appearances actually briefly went up the year following the beaning (1921) through 1923, before resuming its downward trend.


          AL      NL
1919    6.80    6.28
1920    6.49    5.76
1921    6.76    5.12
1922    7.22    5.62
1923    7.35    5.62
1924    6.94    4.99
1925    5.67    4.90

So the physical hazard theory seems to have little validity. From this, one might then reason that if that monumental event didn’t signal a change then it’s unlikely that any other isolated incident or play would have, either.

So what about a broader theory that takes into account a cost/benefit valuation of hitting batters? For example, it could be the case that pitchers adjusted their frequency of hitting opposing batters based on their recognizing the costs of doing so. In times where runs are scarce, hitting a batter would cost relatively more than when runs are plentiful, since there is a greater probability that the batter would have been put out had they not been hit. The result is that there would be fewer hit batsmen in depressed offensive environments, and more in inflated environments. Sounds like a reasonable idea and we’ll dub it the “offensive context theory.”

We can test this theory by taking a look at the cost of hitting a batter in terms of the Win Expectancy Framework (WX) for both the American and National Leagues since 1901. The framework allows us to estimate how much a hit by pitch is worth in terms of wins and we can then graph the results for both leagues.

As you might have guessed, the increase in Win Expectancy for each hit batsman was high in the Deadball Era at over 3%, and then decreased from the early 1920s until the late 1930s as offensive levels rose, reaching a low point just over 2.6%. The values then began to climb again, reaching over 3% in the 1960s, and after a brief spike in 1989 fell as offensive levels rose again.

So, does the offensive context theory hold water? If you were to overlay these two graphs you would find little in common. For example, the rate of hit batsmen in the Deadball Era declined steadily, even though the cost remained fairly constant until the offensive explosion of 1920. Offensive levels then began to decline in the late 1930s, making the cost of hitting a batter rise, although we find that hit batsmen rates continued to decline into the late 1940s. And again, as the cost of hitting batters rose in the 1950s and from 1993 on, more batters were being hit. In fact, the WX value of a hit by pitch turns out to have almost zero correlation with the rate at which batters are hit. Another beautiful theory spoiled by some ugly facts.

Okay, offensive levels don’t seem to drive HBP rates, but what if an increased rate of hitting batters has the effect of depressing offense, and vice versa? We’ll label this the “intimidation theory.” After all, offensive levels rose as batters were being hit less often throughout the 1920s, and run-scoring dropped as batters were being hit more often in the 1960s. Many former players, especially those who had the “pleasure” of facing Don Drysdale and Bob Gibson, tend to favor this theory.

Unfortunately, the intimidation theory has the same underlying problem as the one that preceded it. While the examples cited in the previous paragraph seem to make sense, the theory fails to explain why hit batsmen declined throughout the Deadball Era, and why in the offensive eras of the 1950s and post-1993 the rate of hitting batters has actually increased.

Another theory that is popular, and one that we’ll tackle in next week’s column, is that since 1973 and the introduction of the designated hitter, hit batsman have been on the rise since the pitcher does not himself face the consequences of hitting opposing batters. This is the so called “moral hazard theory.” A quick glance at the first graph militates this idea, however, since the HBP rate actually began to decline in 1969, and continued to do so through the first eleven years of the DH. In addition, the rate rose and fell in both leagues, rather than affecting only the AL as you would expect.

A couple years ago, J.C. Bradbury of the excellent blog Sabernomics along with Doug Drinen studied the issue of HBP differences using play-by-play data. One of the conclusions they came to was that talent dilution as the result of the 1993 expansion draft contributed to the rise in hit batsmen post 1993. The theory is that a greater percentage of pitchers with less experience produce more accidental hit batsmen. At first glance this “expansion theory” makes a lot of sense. Take a look at the following table that lists each expansion event along with the rates the year prior to as well as the first year of the expansion.


Pre            Post             Diff
AL 1960  5.76  AL 1961  5.22   -0.54
NL 1961  5.48  NL 1962  6.11   +0.63
AL 1976  5.18  AL 1977  5.42   +0.24
NL 1992  5.48  NL 1993  6.66   +1.18
NL 1997  9.02  NL 1998  8.38   -0.64
AL 1997  7.78  AL 1998  8.77   +0.99

In all but two instances, the rate of hitting batters went up in the league to which baseball added teams. It should be noted that in the first four expansions the league that did not expand also saw their rate increase, which you might expect since expansion in one league also dilutes talent in the other.

What this table doesn’t show--though it's captured in the graph--is that the overall trends in each case were not really affected. When expansion came to the AL in 1961 and the NL in 1962 hit batsmen were already on the rise. When the AL expanded in 1977 the rates were declining and continued to do so after 1977. In both 1993 and 1998 the rates had already been increasing since 1985, and so while expansion may have egged on the increase, it clearly wasn’t the only factor. In other words, expansion did not signal a change in direction of trends that were already underway. As a result, it doesn’t appear that the expansion theory can be invoked as a general explanation and in any case can’t be invoked to shed any light on the trends prior to 1961 when both leagues had eight teams.

Finally, there have been articles in the popular press over the past few years that argue that a confluence of factors is responsible for the increasing rate at which batters are being brushed back. For example, a 2003 article from USA Today argued that a 2000 directive from Major League Baseball to change how umpires called strikes (in order to conform more closely to the rule-book definition) was the primary culprit. The “new strike zone theory” contends that adhering to the traditional definition has resulted in calling more strikes on the inside corner, and that pitchers are taking advantage of the fact, with hitters being plunked more often as they dive out over the plate in an attempt to hit what used to be strikes off the outside corner. Unfortunately for the new strike zone theory (at least as a single explanation), the increase in batters being plunked can be traced to almost 15 years before the “new” strike zone was implemented.

In addition, if you’re looking for single causes, one might imagine that the double-warning rule instituted in 1994 would have a dampening effect on hit batsmen. After a warning, pitchers might be wary of throwing at or near guys when they would almost certainly be ejected. However, although the rate went down slightly in 1994 in the AL, it did not in NL, and after that continued its upward trend.

Another factor mentioned in the article, however, appears to be more promising. First, the article speculates that a generation of pitchers accustomed to pitching to hitters with aluminum bats don’t go inside as often, since doing so is less effective when hitters can still fist a ball on their hands for a hit using a bat that doesn’t shatter. As a result of this “aluminum theory,” hitters have adjusted to looking for pitches over the outside corner, and therefore dive at the ball and stand closer to the plate. When this style of hitting is coupled with pitchers who, at the professional level, finally do try and pitch inside but do poorly at it, you end up with lots more batters being hit.

What is satisfying about this theory is that it accounts for the recent rise in HBP rates in both leagues and seems to have timing on its side. Although the first patent for a metal bat was granted in 1924, Worth didn’t introduce the first aluminum bat until 1970, and it wasn’t until the late 1970s that bats by Worth (and, especially, Easton) significantly increased the popularity of aluminum bats. Seeing the rates begin to climb five to ten years later would seem to therefore be in line.

Systemic Theories
In the end, theories like the aluminum bat theory are the kinds of systemic explanations that seem to be needed to explain shifts in the game such as those related to hit batsmen. Instead of looking for single incidents such as the physical hazard or strike zone theories, or very subtle causes like the offensive context or intimidation theories, what we should probably be looking for are systematic changes in how the game is played, changes that may even originate well before players reach the professional level. While I don’t have any immediate answers for the forty-year decline in the first part of last century, or the increase during the following twenty years, I think those lines of inquiry will prove to be more promising, and the theories they produce less likely to be the victim of a few inconvenient facts.

Will Raines Run into the Hall?

2008-01-06T07:37:00.000-07:00

Probably not but Dan Rosenheck of the New York Times makes a case today in his Keeping Score column titled "Raines Could Slide Safely Into the Hall on First Try" based in part on my baserunning metrics. From everything I've read and am hearing Raines will garner roughly 50-55% of the vote and will fall short of the 75% required for induction into the Hall of Fame announced next Tuesday.

From all accounts it appears Goose Gossage is in, Bert Blyleven is likely (on that score I heard an Sports Illustrated writer interviewed on MLB.com the other day crediting Rich Lederer and the internet for boosting Blyleven's candidacy in the past few years although he mistakenly associated Rich with Baseball Musings and not Baseball Analysts) and Jim Rice and Andre Dawson are very close. In my opinion Rice is not a Hall of Famer and I'll admit that I'm not unbiased on Dawson since I have a soft spot for "The Hawk" having watched him so much and rooted for him so often as a member of the Cubs in the 1980s.

But in getting back to Raines Rosencheck makes the point that Raines, primarily by virtue of his extremely high stolen base percentage in an era where stolen base percentages were lower, contributed over 100 runs or 10 additional wins with his legs when measured by Equivalent Baserunning Runs (EqBRR) which is a total of all five of the core baserunning metrics. Here are his numbers sans 1999.


Year  Team    Opps EqGAR  Opps EqSBR  Opps EqAAR  Opps EqHAR  Opps EqOAR  Opps EqBRR
1979  MON        3   0.1     2   0.4     1   0.0     0   0.0    11   0.2    17   0.6
1980  MON        1   0.0     6   0.1     7  -0.2     2   0.0    17  -0.1    33  -0.2
1981  MON       31   1.0    84   5.8    26   0.3    20  -0.8   224   0.9   385   7.3
1982  MON       55   3.3    97   5.7    50  -0.2    32   1.2   392   0.1   626  10.1
1983  MON       71   0.9   113   7.6    66   1.8    46   2.7   466   0.6   762  13.6
1984  MON       49  -0.8    86   9.2    56  -1.7    48   1.8   431  -1.1   670   7.3
1985  MON       41   1.6    82   9.4    72   0.8    55  -0.6   476   0.0   726  11.2
1986  MON       46  -1.4    81   9.2    52   0.7    38   0.4   416   0.1   633   9.0
1987  MON       31  -0.5    57   7.2    41   0.3    48   2.5   390   0.9   567  10.4
1988  MON       29   0.1    40   2.4    35   0.1    27   0.0   256   0.7   387   3.2
1989  MON       40   0.8    49   1.4    48   2.1    34   1.2   326  -1.6   497   3.9
1990  MON       20   0.6    63  -0.2    35   1.1    36   1.1   260   0.9   414   3.5
1991  CHA       45   0.6    66  -0.6    47  -0.4    55   1.5   403   0.6   616   1.7
1992  CHA       41   0.3    50   5.3    66   1.5    75   3.0   437   0.1   669  10.1
1993  CHA       47   1.2    29   0.6    36   1.4    30   0.7   303   1.1   445   5.0
1994  CHA       21  -0.2    13   2.1    35   0.0    38   1.7   268  -0.7   375   3.1
1995  CHA       23  -0.1    15   1.1    53  -0.6    48   0.4   388  -0.9   527  -0.1
1996  NYA       10  -0.4    11   0.7    22   0.2    29   0.4   153  -0.7   225   0.2
1997  NYA       23   0.2    13  -1.0    24   0.8    23   1.5   173   1.6   256   3.1
1998  NYA       14   0.2    11   0.0    21  -0.1    33  -0.8   192   0.5   271  -0.3
1999
2001  BAL        0   0.0     0   0.0     0   0.0     0   0.0     2   0.0     2   0.0
2001  MON       12   0.0     1   0.1     6  -0.2     8  -0.4    75  -0.1   102  -0.6
2002  FLO        5   0.1     0   0.0     3   0.1     8  -0.7    62   0.6    78   0.1
               658   7.6   969  66.5   802   7.7   733  16.8  6121   3.8  9283 102.5

The interesting thing about Raines is that he contributed with his legs so consistently for so long not turning in a sub-par season until 1995 at the age of 35. In fact, at the age of 33 he contributed 10.1 runs primarily by stealing 45 of 51 bags for the White Sox in 1992 and turning in his best season advancing on hits and contributing +3 runs. At his peak (1982-1987) Raines contributed +10.3 runs on average over a six year span and average +7.4 runs over a 15-year span from 1981-1993. He led the league in EqBRR in 1981, 1982, 1983 and 1992. Of course 1981 should be pro-rated and in a full season that +7.3 translates to more like +10. While his peak contribution and the overall run value of his baserunning in and of itself doesn't make him a Hall of Famer, when combined with his overall productivity and when noted in comparison to players like Wade Boggs it certainly casts him a better light.

There's no doubt Raines did well on the bases but how did he stack up against the other great runners of his era? Let's start with Rickey Henderson.


Year  Team    Opps EqGAR  Opps EqSBR  Opps EqAAR  Opps EqHAR  Opps EqOAR  Opps EqBRR
1979  OAK       34  -0.2    45   0.2    35  -0.4    26   0.0   222  -0.3   362  -0.8
1980  OAK       60   0.8   135  -0.6    51   2.1    72   2.7   477  -0.6   795   4.4
1981  OAK       31   2.4    87  -3.6    46   0.1    40   0.7   309   1.0   513   0.6
1982  OAK       47   4.1   176  -0.2    43   0.9    29   2.6   352   0.9   647   8.3
1983  OAK       35   0.9   132   7.8    56   1.3    41   0.1   345   1.6   609  11.7
1984  OAK       37   0.9    86   2.4    57   2.1    51   3.9   368   0.9   599  10.2
1985  NYA       44   2.6    97   9.8    70   1.0    48   3.1   404   2.3   663  18.8
1986  NYA       47   0.8   115   3.8    49   1.8    31   0.6   329   2.3   571   9.2
1987  NYA       34  -0.6    51   2.3    37  -1.1    26   1.8   236  -0.4   384   2.0
1988  NYA       51   2.3   114   9.0    50   1.3    51  -2.0   384   3.8   650  14.4
1989  NYA       25   0.0    41  -0.9    14  -0.2    28   0.1   141   1.2   249   0.1
1989  OAK       24   0.3    62   3.6    40   0.2    30   1.5   148   1.2   304   6.8
1990  OAK       44   0.7    82   4.9    45  -0.1    63   1.1   373  -0.2   607   6.5
1991  OAK       38  -0.1    79   1.6    43  -0.6    43   2.8   324  -1.0   527   2.6
1992  OAK       53   0.2    58   1.6    49  -1.0    34   2.9   312  -0.7   506   2.9
1993  TOR       14  -0.7    24   3.1    21   0.1    17   0.4   100   0.6   176   3.6
1993  OAK       32  -0.3    39   1.7    44   0.5    40  -0.8   226   0.3   381   1.5
1994  OAK       34  -0.8    31   0.3    38   0.9    43   2.6   259   0.4   405   3.4
1995  OAK       41  -0.3    46  -0.5    31  -0.4    34   0.5   256  -0.1   408  -0.9
1996  SDN       55  -0.6    55  -2.3    48  -1.1    61   2.5   402   0.8   621  -0.7
1997  SDN       19   0.0    35   1.0    40   0.2    39   1.7   192  -0.4   325   2.5
1997  ANA        4  -0.2    10  -0.5     4   0.2     8   0.5    16   0.2    42   0.2
1998  OAK       38  -0.5    74   1.9    41  -1.1    50   0.3   363   0.5   566   1.1
1999
2000  SEA       27   0.1    43  -2.3    32   1.3    26   0.3   212  -0.1   340  -0.7
2000  NYN       16   0.4     7  -0.6     8   0.2     8  -0.6    37   0.1    76  -0.5
2001  SDN       22  -0.3    33   0.3    36  -0.1    39   0.9   267   0.3   397   1.2
2002  BOS       20  -0.3    12  -1.0    19  -1.1    22   1.2   161   0.1   234  -1.1
2003  LAN        4   0.1     4   0.0     5  -0.4     5   0.0    45   0.0    63  -0.3
               930  11.7  1773  42.9  1052   6.7  1005  31.2  7260  14.6 12020 107.1

Overall Henderson contributed five additional runs while playing in about 500 more games. In his peak seasons (1982-1988) Henderson was at +10.6 runs and averaged +7.6 from 1982 through 1993. He led the league in EqBRR in 1984, 1985, and 1988. Interestingly both Raines and Henderson were productive runners through the 1994 season which for Raines was his age 34 season and for Henderson age 35.

As noted by Rosencheck Henderson, although the career leader in stolen bases, actually contributed more in other areas like advancing on hits and passed balls etc. than did Raines. The following table compares the four elite baserunners of the 1980s in terms of percentage of career totals in each of the five metrics.


Name         EqGAR  EqSBR  EqAAR  EqHAR  EqOAR
Raines        7.4%  64.9%   7.5%  16.4%   3.7%
Henderson    11.0%  40.0%   6.2%  29.1%  13.6%
Wilson        5.9%  52.3%  12.8%  23.8%   5.3%
Coleman      11.0%  55.9%   6.3%  15.3%  11.6%

Raines and Vince Coleman got the most out of their stolen bases while Henderson advanced on hits more frequently, Henderson and Coleman advanced on ground outs, and Willie Wilson did so on fly balls.

Moving on, let's look at Willie Wilson.


Year  Team    Opps EqGAR  Opps EqSBR  Opps EqAAR  Opps EqHAR  Opps EqOAR  Opps EqBRR
1976  KCA        0   0.0     0   0.0     0   0.0     0   0.0     8   0.0     8   0.0
1978  KCA       16   1.6    59   1.6    25  -0.1    19   1.9   169   0.3   288   5.3
1979  KCA       46   2.1    99   9.2    39   0.7    46   2.8   333   0.9   563  15.7
1980  KCA       49   0.5    93  10.0    75   4.2    61   3.9   463   0.5   741  19.1
1981  KCA       29  -0.3    42   3.6    56  -0.6    40   0.5   309   0.5   476   3.7
1982  KCA       46  -0.6    48   1.2    50   1.2    39   1.6   382   0.2   565   3.6
1983  KCA       42   1.9    69   7.0    42  -0.6    39   1.4   340   1.5   532  11.2
1984  KCA       38   1.7    55   5.1    49   2.1    48   0.8   340  -0.1   530   9.7
1985  KCA       39   1.2    58   4.3    50   1.7    31  -1.1   315  -0.5   493   5.6
1986  KCA       25   0.1    44   2.4    50   1.2    36   0.0   337  -1.0   492   2.7
1987  KCA       60   0.4    69   7.1    47   0.6    36   3.9   369   0.7   581  12.6
1988  KCA       35   0.2    42   2.2    43   0.8    48   3.8   309   1.8   477   8.8
1989  KCA       18  -0.7    33   1.3    36   1.9    35   1.9   230   0.6   352   5.0
1990  KCA       14  -0.7    30   1.3    30   0.5    28   1.7   175   0.0   277   2.8
1991  OAK       18  -0.3    25   0.9    24  -0.1    19   1.0   185  -0.5   271   1.0
1992  OAK       22   0.1    36  -0.6    33  -0.3    28   0.7   246   0.2   365   0.1
1993  CHN       25  -0.3     9   0.2    16   0.7    17   1.0   122   0.5   189   2.1
1994  CHN        3  -0.5     1   0.2     4   0.1     4   0.1    19  -0.1    31  -0.2
               525   6.4   812  56.9   669  13.9   574  25.8  4651   5.7  7231 108.7

Wilson recorded the highest single-season total in my database that goes back to 1970 with his +19.1 for the AL Champion Royals in 1980 and he average +9.1 runs from 1979 through 1988. His peak was spread out a little and he led the league in 1979 and 1980. Overall he has the highest career EqBRR value at +108.7 and so for an overall package just in terms of baserunning Wilson is probably the best of the bunch in the 1980s.

Finally, here are Vince Coleman's career totals.


Year  Team    Opps EqGAR  Opps EqSBR  Opps EqAAR  Opps EqHAR  Opps EqOAR  Opps EqBRR
1985  SLN       43   1.2   147  10.7    41   0.7    51   0.6   383  -1.4   665  11.8
1986  SLN       57   0.0   135  11.0    35   0.3    32   0.9   368   4.2   627  16.4
1987  SLN       59   2.5   142   7.1    60   1.2    56   2.4   406   0.8   723  14.1
1988  SLN       44   0.3   119   4.1    37   0.9    45   0.9   370  -0.2   615   6.0
1989  SLN       59   1.0    84   3.5    47  -0.3    49   1.2   373   0.2   612   5.6
1990  SLN       38   0.5   100   2.7    34  -0.2    39   0.6   306   1.3   517   4.9
1991  NYN       28   0.8    54  -2.5    28   0.9    22   0.7   181   1.2   313   1.1
1992  NYN       20   1.9    37  -0.5    21   1.1    19   1.2   172   0.4   269   4.1
1993  NYN       31   1.6    53  -0.8    33   0.1    27   1.0   216   0.2   360   2.1
1994  KCA       34  -0.6    64   3.2    24   0.5    31   1.3   244   0.4   397   4.8
1995  SEA       10  -0.5    26  -0.6    20  -0.6    11   0.4    91   0.3   158  -1.0
1995  KCA       28  -0.9    36   0.2    19  -0.3    25   0.1   133   0.5   241  -0.4
1996  CIN        5  -0.1    14   1.0    10   0.2     8  -0.7    59   0.1    96   0.5
1997  DET        0   0.0     0   0.0     0   0.0     0   0.0     1   0.0     1   0.0
               456   7.7  1011  39.1   409   4.4   415  10.7  3303   8.1  5594  70.0

Coleman obviously had a peak that was more brief than the others and average +14.1 runs from 1985 through 1987 and led the league in 1986 and 1987. By 1995 at age 33 he was no longer a productive runner as he finished his career bouncing around from Kansas City, to Seattle, Cincinnati, and Detroit. Overall he contributed 30 fewer runs than the others.

When you look at these guys in terms of EqBRR per 550 opportunities they stack up this way:


Wilson    8.3
Coleman   6.9
Raines    6.1
Henderson 4.2

SFR in the Infield - AL West

2008-01-03T06:01:00.000-07:00

Last but not least, the AL West infielders in SFR. Mark Ellis was the overall leader for 2007 at +27 runs


                                                    Ex
Name                   Team      POS      Balls Runners Runners     SFR
John Lackey            ANA        1          25       2       1     0.8
Kelvim Escobar         ANA        1          18       2       1     0.6
Jered Weaver           ANA        1          20       2       2     0.2
Jeff Mathis            ANA        2          21       1       0     1.1
Casey Kotchman         ANA        3         254      36      28     6.8
Kendry Morales         ANA        3          30       4       4     0.2
Robb Quinlan           ANA        3          59       8       9    -0.8
Erick Aybar            ANA        4         142      34      28     4.4
Howie Kendrick         ANA        4         364      91      88     2.0
Chone Figgins          ANA        4          26       7       8    -0.9
Maicer Izturis         ANA        4         134      35      37    -2.1
Maicer Izturis         ANA        5         127      28      25     2.4
Brandon Wood           ANA        5          31       5       6    -0.4
Robb Quinlan           ANA        5          15       3       4    -0.9
Chone Figgins          ANA        5         265      59      64    -4.6
Erick Aybar            ANA        6          45      12      14    -0.3
Orlando Cabrera        ANA        6         644     176     180    -3.2
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Joe Blanton            OAK        1          28       3       0     2.1
Dan Haren              OAK        1          19       2       1     0.8
Chad Gaudin            OAK        1          23       2       2     0.0
Joe Kennedy            OAK        1          23       3       4    -0.6
Jay Marshall           OAK        1          19       2       3    -0.9
Lenny DiNardo          OAK        1          21       2       6    -2.7
Jason Kendall          OAK        2          19       2       2    -0.1
Kurt Suzuki            OAK        2          16       1       2    -0.4
Nick Swisher           OAK        3         103      15      12     2.8
Daric Barton           OAK        3          35       6       4     1.6
Dan Johnson            OAK        3         193      27      27     0.1
Todd Walker            OAK        3          18       3       3    -0.1
Mark Ellis             OAK        4         695     170     134    27.0
Marco Scutaro          OAK        4          58      15      12     1.9
Eric Chavez            OAK        5         261      53      44     7.4
Jack Hannahan          OAK        5         119      27      25     1.3
Marco Scutaro          OAK        5         109      22      25    -2.3
Bobby Crosby           OAK        6         432     120     118    -1.0
Donnie Murphy          OAK        6         137      41      45    -1.2
Marco Scutaro          OAK        6         173      47      51    -2.2
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Horacio Ramirez        SEA        1          24       2       0     1.8
Miguel Batista         SEA        1          28       3       2     0.9
Jarrod Washburn        SEA        1          22       3       2     0.4
Sean Green             SEA        1          17       2       3    -0.6
Felix Hernandez        SEA        1          30       3       4    -0.7
Kenji Johjima          SEA        2          34       1       2    -0.4
Ben Broussard          SEA        3          87      13      15    -2.2
Richie Sexson          SEA        3         241      35      39    -3.2
Jose Lopez             SEA        4         640     159     151     5.8
Jose Vidro             SEA        4          30       7       9    -1.9
Willie Bloomquist      SEA        4          69      17      24    -5.7
Willie Bloomquist      SEA        5          45      11      11    -0.2
Adrian Beltre          SEA        5         482      98     103    -4.4
Willie Bloomquist      SEA        6          68      18      17     1.2
Yuniesky Betancourt    SEA        6         651     178     187    -4.8
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jamey Wright           TEX        1          16       1       1     0.3
Robinson Tejeda        TEX        1          17       2       2     0.0
Willie Eyre            TEX        1          16       2       2    -0.3
Kevin Millwood         TEX        1          18       1       2    -0.4
Kameron Loe            TEX        1          34       3       6    -2.3
Gerald Laird           TEX        2          40       3       3    -0.1
Mark Teixeira          TEX        3         150      23      18     3.3
Frank Catalanotto      TEX        3          22       3       2     1.0
Brad Wilkerson         TEX        3         101      16      16    -0.1
Jarrod Saltalamacchia  TEX        3          55       9      11    -1.6
Ian Kinsler            TEX        4         600     152     138    10.6
Jerry Hairston         TEX        4          56      14      12     1.9
Desi Relaford          TEX        4          38      10      12    -1.5
Ramon Vazquez          TEX        4          49      13      17    -3.0
Jerry Hairston         TEX        5          19       4       4     0.2
Hank Blalock           TEX        5         109      25      26    -0.7
Ramon Vazquez          TEX        5         196      42      44    -1.7
Travis Metcalf         TEX        5         149      32      35    -2.1
Matt Kata              TEX        5          20       4      10    -4.1
Ramon Vazquez          TEX        6          58      17      12     3.7
Michael Young          TEX        6         670     188     191    -4.7