Rookie Reporter Showdown

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!

VORPies and Scrappers

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.

Gammons and Cyberspace

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.

Tip of the Iceberg

A few more links related to research with the new Gameday data.

It’s a Pitch-by-Pitch Scouting Report, Minus the Scout. This article by Dan Rosenheck appeared in the Keeping Score column in the New York Times over the weekend. He references a few of the columns I've written at BP in the following comments:

Most studies have focused on classifying the characteristics of various pitches — Félix Hernández’s four-seam fastball is usually thrown between 94 and 97 miles an hour and breaks around 8 inches toward a right-handed batter — and using them to generate profiles of pitchers (he only throws his changeup 3 percent of the time versus right-handed hitters).

Some work has also been done on identifying batters’ tendencies: Iván Rodríguez swings at nearly 60 percent of pitches thrown to him out of the strike zone, and Juan Pierre makes contact with 92 percent of the balls out of the zone he swings at, for example.

And in talking with Dan as he prepared the piece we discussed the fact that this data provides quantification to concepts that are already well understood in terms of advanced scouting. As Dan says:

“Will chase curveballs low and away” will become “swung and missed at 73 percent of pitches thrown under 83 m.p.h. with a vertical break of at least 12 inches on two-strike counts on the outer third of the plate.”

“Slider lacks bite” could be replaced by “slider begins to break 30 feet from home plate.”

However, it should be noted that pitches aside from the knuckleball do not have early or late break as implied by his comments on sliders and instead break in a uniform way as they travel from the pitcher's hand to home plate.

Two of the aspects that we discussed that I think are particularly interesting he described this way.

The data could be used to evaluate prospects, by answering questions like, “Will he ever learn to lay off a breaking ball?” or to better understand park effects, by revealing just how much movement a particular pitcher could expect to lose from his slider at Coors Field.

By quantifying the characteristics of pitches and building up a historical record we'll be able to ask questions related to age and development across pitch profiles (velocity, trajectory, location, and spin). So for example, it may turn out that certain types of hitters have trouble with certain pitch profiles but that they tend to learn to recognize and lay off the pitch or put it into play with greater success as they age or gain experience. There may be other types of hitters for which this is not true and having the data will at least allow us to ask the question. Of course with historical data the mirror questions can be asked of pitchers as well.

In addition I think we're learning that there are discernible differences in how pitches behave under the different conditions in various parks. PETCO Park for example with its heavier sea air both causes pitches to decelerate more and allows for greater break on spinning pitches. Understanding just what those affects are may allow us to create "pitch profile park effects" that more accurately enable us to predict how a pitcher might fare in a different environment. I've written a bit on this subject already and have been working some with Alan Nathan, a physicist and head of SABR's Science of Baseball committee from the University of Illinois, on this very question and should have some things to share in the near future.

Finally, Dan goes on to say:

But the recent findings represent a tiny fraction of the research that the data will ultimately make possible. Eventually, a large portion of the tasks now done by major league scouts — visually evaluating strengths, weaknesses and trends — will be measured numerically.

While I agree that at the present time we're touching the tip of the proverbial iceberg, I would simply caution that the ability of researchers to ask these questions hinges on two very important conditions. First, as Dan says the data needs to continue to be made available in some form be it subscription based or free. And second, researchers need to understand the limitations of the system not only in terms of accuracy but also variance between ballparks and how the system is being tweaked to provide more accurate data. For example, the in ital point at which pitches are tracked was changed in early June from 55 feet and then experimented with for the rest of the month, settled at 50 feet in early July, and now fluctuating once again in an effort to increase accuracy.

And while I also agree that there are many aspects here that will be quantified and overlap with traditional scouting, it will always be the case that these tools compliment and do not in any sense replace what scouts do. Not only will systems like this not be available in the amateur and minor league circuits for quite some time (not to mention bullpens as Dan mentions), they will be used to augment understanding already gained from traditional methods. For example, in terms of its relationship with bio mechanics analysis like that done by Will Carroll, this system starts after the release point and therefore after everything from tempo to leg kick to balance to arm slot have already taken place.

Under Pressure. Joe P. Sheehan at Baseball Analysts looks at the relation of pitch types to Leverage - something that had not occurred to me. While it's certainly interesting and he shows, for example, that Jake Peavy relies more on his slider than his fastball in pressure situations, I think you'd also have to normalize the data for the base/out and handedness of the batter. It could be that Peavy relies more on his slider in pressure situations because he relies more on it with runners on base which also happen to have higher Leverage indexes.

Strike Zone: Fact vs. Fiction. John Walsh totally steals my thunder by examining the actual dimensions of the strike zone as it is called by major league umpires. What I find interesting is that he notes that right-handed hitters end up having to defend a strike zone that is slightly larger while I've found that left-handers are getting 10% more strikes called against them on pitches out of the strike zone. In looking at John's data I think the reason for this is that left-handers have to defend more territory on the outside part of the plate and pitchers concentrate on this area throwing a disproportionate number of their pitches in that region.

Another look at the sinker. Louis Chao at THT looks at contact rates by pitch types and finds, a little surprisingly, that sinkers have higher contact rates than fastballs. My take is that sinkers drop more in accordance with what the hitter is expecting and so they're able to put the bat on the ball albeit typically driving it into the ground. Four-seam fastballs, on the other hand, do not drop as much as would be expected and so batters swing under them. This is supported by the fact that a four-seamer typically drops 10-15 inches less than the theoretical reference pitch while a sinker drops only 2 to 7 inches less.

Friday Night Links

Well, the Rockies lost for the third straight night, this time to the Reds at Coors Field falling 4-2. Ken Griffey Jr. hit the 575th homerun of his career and Alex Gonzalez hit a three-run homer down the left field line. Those were the two big blows that Taylor Buchholz gave up - otherwise he pitched a pretty good game and was very efficient with his pitches.

A couple of interesting links:

Bad Interview - An interview with Buzz Bissinger regarding an article that will come out this weekend in the New York Times magazine (update: the link is now active and the article is excellent with the caveat mentioned below) on pitching featuring Kerry Wood. In the interview Bissinger says that pitchers have been coming to the big leagues younger and younger. Turns out that's not true although in Bissinger's defense his underlying point was really more about the number of minor league innings today's pitchers throw which as far I know has not been studied. The questioning of the "younger and younger" statement then takes the interview on a bad turn (hat tip to Will Carroll). While I certainly agree with the interviewer's primary point that we needn't take someone's word for what is in the end an objective question for which there is data to definitively answer, it could have and should have been handled better. Bissinger seemed to lose control himself a little which hastened the badness.

Singular - A really well done article by Steve Treder on Steve Dalkowski on THT and one that befits the fact that "His performance profile is beyond question the most singular in the sport's long and meticulously detailed accounting."

Assignment Discovery: Sabermetrics

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

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

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

Opening Day Hype

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

Lyons Speaks

BP's Maury Brown has a nice article this morning on the firing of Steve Lyons taken from a conversation that Lyons and Brown had in the last few days. For those without a subscriber account on BP you can view the transcript on Maury's The Biz of Baseball Web site and hear the interview on BP Radio from last Saturday.

I've made my position pretty clear and there's nothing in the interview or the media in the intervening days that have changed my mind. The firing was either an excuse to get rid of Lyons or a case of political correctness run amok.

Lyons Gone

Not long after my previous post about Steve Lyons and Moneyball Mr. Lyons was dismissed by Fox for "racially insensitive comments" following an exchange that he and Lou Pinella had in the booth. Having not seen the actual broadcast it's kind of difficult to make a judgement but from the transcripts that have been reported, one suspects that the entire incident was a bit overblown.

It seems as if Lyons was simply trying to be funny in tying Pinella's use of Spanish to his comment about Macro Scutaro's hitting being like finding "a wallet on Friday" and expecting to do the same again on Monday (which I thought was a great line). He probably had no idea that his comments came off sounding like they did (Spanish guys will steal your wallet or simply that Lou Pinella will steal your wallet, it's kind of hard to tell) or that they would be interpreted that way (by who I'm not sure) - the point being that the remarks were not thought out nor were they intended to offend.

If Fox wants to fire him for not being a good analyst that's one thing (and there are many that might agree with that sentiment) but it smacks of caving to the most hyper-sensitive among us to immediately drop the axe for unscripted bantering that unfortunately took a bad turn.