Picking on Pierre

I just couldn't let this article on the Dodger's Juan Pierre pass by. It starts off like so:

What is it about the on-base percentage that a player like Juan Pierre -- who leads the Dodgers in at-bats, runs scored, hits, stolen bases, triples and games played -- gets knocked for not having his higher than .350?

Pierre has been one of the most consistent players in the Dodgers lineup this season. He plays every day (395 consecutive games, which is the longest active streak in the Majors), makes diving catches in center field on a regular basis and steals second just about every time he gets on base, yet his OBP evidently isn't cutting it.

Essentially, the author is arguing that acquiring playing time, and thus the opportunity to rack up those counting stats, automatically means you're a good hitter. Omar Moreno, playing in all 162 games for the Pirates in 1980 also led his team in all those categories including walks. In the end though he was 9 runs below average offensively because in addition to accumulating 87 runs scored, 13 triples, and 96 stolen bases, he made 551 outs. Yes, 551. Last year for the Cubs Pierre was also 9 runs below average while playing in all 162 games and made 526 outs. This season he's 8 runs below average and has made almost 400 outs.

While there is certainly a strong link between playing time and offensive performance and being able to stay on the field is in itself valuable, in Pierre's case the perception of performance is apparently what counts.

This season, Pierre leads the Dodgers with 147 hits. He is fifth in the NL with 45 multi-hit games, he leads the Majors with 14 sacrifice bunts and he's second in the Majors only to Jose Reyes with 50 stolen bases, and yet his OBP supposedly isn't cutting it.

Well. Multi-hit games are heavily dependant on playing time, sacrifice bunts are nothing to brag about, and while his 50 stolen bases against only 9 caught stealing is very good, historically he's a break even base stealer at best.

In 2003 and 2004 with the Marlins Pierre was an above average offensive player to the tune of 10 and 14 runs respectively. In those seasons his OBP was a healthy .361 and .374 (he also had a .378 OBP for the Rockies in 2001 but was still 3 runs below average in the pre-humidor era). The reason of course is that as Pierre himself explains:

When I'm hitting good, my on-base percentage is high and that's just the way it is. The Dodgers knew that before I came here. It is what it is. I just go out there and play the game, and I don't get caught up in all of this.

Indeed, in those three season his batting averages were .305, .326, and .327. The problem is that what the Dodgers should have paid attention to is that Pierre hadn't cracked .300 since 2004 and going into his age 29 season it wasn't exactly likely he would revert to his form as a 23 through 26 year-old.

In order to justify his low OBP the author makes much of his ability to disrupt the pitcher and comes up with this quote from Grady Little.

He's a disruptive force when he's on base. The other team has to be concerned with him regularly and it disrupts the pitcher.

Unfortunately for the Dodgers there is little evidence and in fact there is some evidence to the contrary as documented in The Book that "disruptive" baserunners tend to disrupt the batter more than the defense.

Where the author should have focused perhaps was on Pierre's other contributions on the bases. Since 2000 in my four baserunning metrics he's a positive 27.9 runs making his biggest contribution in advancing on hits to the tune of 18.6 runs. When you add those 27 runs to his total runs above average he comes out 1 run to the good. In other words, offensively over the past almost eight seasons he's been average. Unfortunately, his ledger was heavily stacked in 2003 and 2004 and so in the other six seasons he's been below average.

On the other side of the coin he's also been a below average defender since 2004 and his lack of arm strength is well known. Contrasted with Omar Moreno, who had a monster year with the glove to the tune of saving 17 run over average in 1980 and who was an above average defender until his latter days with the Yankees, Pierre doesn't stack up very well.

Don't get me wrong. When Pierre was with the Cubs I enjoyed watching him play and was a little sad to see him go (but not enough to wish the Cubs had signed him at that price tag of course).

Finally, the author sums up his point by saying...

Whether his OBP is at .324 or .350, Pierre will continue to do the small things for the Dodgers. He bunts, he steals bases, he legs out triples and robs balls in the outfield, yet he'll constantly be scrutinized because he doesn't get on base enough -- that's just the way it's going to be.

And that's just the problem. The things he can do are indeed small things and when he doesn't get on base those small things simply aren't enough to compensate for the big things like power which he does not posses.

He's an exciting player to watch no doubt about it. Just don't pretend that he's a plus offensively when at this point in his career he's clearly not.

Stealing Pays?

Carl Bialik at the Wall Street Journal who authors a column titled "The Numbers Guy" ran an interesting piece on his blog today related to the trend in stolen bases success rates.

Until he called my attention to it I hadn't realized that the success rate in 2007 was over 74% marking the highest it has ever been. In looking into the historical trend I found that three of the four previous highs occurred in 2004-2006 and I produced the graph he shows in the post. Because of its steady increase since the second World War I then ventured that it recorded a systemic change in the game perhaps related to increasing athleticism by baserunners coupled to a smaller degree with refinements in technique and strategy.

For those familiar with the strategic analysis of baserunning you'll notice that the current rate is dangerously close to the oft-repeated claim that 75% is the break even success rate for stolen bases in the big picture (it varies by base, out, and score of course). As a result, using the tenets of game theory, we would expect that as the actual success rate catches up with the break even rate, defenses would be a little more vigilant in protecting against the running game in order to keep the rate close to the break even. Whether they'll be able to do so, however, is dependant to a large degree on the constraints that are inherent in the game. For example, pitching out more often may indeed keep the rate down but at the cost of increasing the productivity of the current batter perhaps making it a wash. Balk rules also constrain attempts by the pitcher to keep the runner close. As a result, if the increase is primarily a result of increasing athleticism on the part of runners outstripping the combined throwing velocity of pitchers and catchers (and their technique), then we might indeed see the rate continue to climb.

Einstein: His Life and Universe

"I think physicists are the Peter Pans of the human race. They never grow up and they keep their curiosity." - Nobel Prize winner Isidor Isaac Rabi

Throughout my entire elementary, middle school, high school and college educations I never had occasion to read a real biography of, write a paper on, or let alone actually study the technical work of Albert Einstein. Thinking about it now it sounds hard to believe but my only exposure to the famous equation E=mc² came from a book on science we had in our home (related to our antiquated encyclopedia set I think but can't recall anymore) that I picked up around the time I was twelve years old or so. I do recall thinking how simple and elegant that formulation is and, once I learned how fast the speed of light really was, trying to wrap my around the idea that such a small amount of matter could contain such a large amount of energy (a kilogram of mass if converted completely into energy would yield 25 billion kilowatt hours of electricity).


For Einstein the construction of the formula that equated mass and energy was merely a coda to his "miracle year" of 1905 which he published in a three-page paper in September titled "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend on it's Energy Content?" That was last of his papers from that year which also saw him devise the quantum theory of light, help prove the existence of atoms, explain Brownian motion, and of course produce the special theory of relativity in addition to what proved to be the most famous equation in science. As with much of Einstein's work, Walter Isaacson does a masterful job of taking the general reader through not only the chronology but the big ideas behind these discoveries and their historical context in his new biography Einstein: His Life and Universe. I had the pleasure of making Einstein and his world a more or less constant companion over the last two months and can say I thoroughly enjoyed the company.

The book is the first of what will likely be several new biographies of Einstein that draw on a set of letters newly published in 2006 by the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech. Most of these are personal letters and provide additional insight to Einstein's relationship with family and friends and Isaacson seems to quote from them liberally as he provides a straightforward chronology. That chronology is much more detailed from the time of his birth in 1879 through the completion of the general theory of relativity in 1915 and picks up speed considerably after that and especially from the time of his immigration to the United States in the early 1930s to where only scattered events from his final decade of life are mentioned.

But even if the book doesn't detail all the chronology, Isaacson does a wonderful job as he did with Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, in chronicling the key intellectual development, struggles, and triumphs of his subject. This is particularly evident in the chapters on the miracle year and the march leading up to the paper on general relativity. In the latter case what we learn in the book and what I found especially fascinating was that Einstein simultaneously pursued parallel physical and mathematical strategies in his quest to generalize relativity. The physical approach had to comport with Newton's laws and Einstein's own intuition about the physical world (on which he heavily relied in his earlier work) while the mathematical strategy was based on work previously done by Bernahrd Reimann among others. As the story is told in the book the mathematical approach, much to Einstein's surprise since his physical intuition served him so well in his earlier successes while he sometimes derided a reliance on pure mathematics, was the winner while the physical approach ultimately cost him several years as he attempted to refine what is known as his Entwurf theory (German for "outline"). This interesting detail has an appeal since it highlights the effectiveness of taking multiple approaches to solving a problem. The trick of course is in being able to work both sides simultaneously and this episode shows how even a genius had some difficulty in doing so.

As a side note to this narrative, Isaacson chronicles what turned out to be a race with mathematician David Hilbert in the fall of 1915 to publish the final equations after the two had corresponded earlier in the summer. In fact Hilbert published a version of the final equations on November 20 while Einstein didn't deliver the fourth in a series of lectures where he finalized his equations on November 25th. Although there has been some controversy over the priority of general relativity as a result, it was discovered about a decade ago that Hilbert changed his paper in December based on Einstein's version. In any case Hilbert always gave priority to Einstein.

In addition to the key episodes and papers, the book paints a portrait of Einstein's beliefs about the physical world and how those subtly changed over time. From his early career Einstein was heavily influenced by his reading of Ernst Mach who insisted that concepts only had meaning if one could create an operational definition of them and who derided Newton's views of "absolute space" and "absolute time" as a "monstrosity". This skepticism of received wisdom and adherence to what is observable helped Einstein break through the earlier framework when his contemporaries, who had all the same data, simply could not. But while Einstein would later abandon Mach after his general theory and instead rely more on his intuition about reality, Baruch Spinoza was also a huge influence and his belief in a deterministic universe would stay with Einstein until the end. When confronted with the implications of the revolution he started in quantum physics and its reliance on chance, Einstein famously couldn't believe that at the heart of all things determinism didn't rein despite the growing evidence that he was wrong. As a result he spent the remaining 30 years of his life in a quest to find a unified field theory that would marry electricity and magnetism with gravity and quantum mechanics that culminated with twelve pages of equations he scribbled in his last days in the hospital.

While Isaacson does a nice job of describing Einstein's sparring with the "young turks" of quantum physics including Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, a second book titled Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science by David Lindley documents that struggle in more detail. In particular Lindley includes in-depth portraits of Heisenberg, Bohr, and Erwin Schrodinger among others as well as the debates that raged in the famous Solvay conferences that occurred primarily between the first and second world wars.

As the years went on, of course, Einstein became known almost as much for his political views as for his scientific accomplishments which were increasingly seen as ancient history. His revulsion at the strict militaristic school he briefly attended as a youth instilled in him a deep disdain both for conformity and the military. It wasn't surprising that he embraced both socialism and pacifism through a refusal of individuals to bear arms, although the latter was markedly softened in the face of German militarism and anti-Semitism in the 1930s. Later he would advocate a world government with its own military which was enforced by his personal lack of nationalistic feeling. He never felt at home in the country of his birth, although he lived in Berlin for many years primarily because his second wife Elsa was from there, as he preferred first Switzerland and later America where he became a citizen in June of 1940. At the same time events in Europe increased his awareness of and solidarity with his Jewish heritage and throughout the book his support of and sometimes entanglement with the Zionist movement (including his dealings with Hebrew University and being offered the presidency of Israel much to David Ben-Gurion's displeasure) are discussed.

Isaacson also spends a good deal of the last few chapters in recounting Einstein's peripheral role in the development of the atomic bomb after having help draft the letter to President Roosevelt outlining the possibility. More entertainingly he describes the somewhat slapstick efforts by the FBI to obtain information and build a dossier on him while completely missing the one true Soviet spy he consorted with and whom he had an affair after the death of his second wife Elsa. Finally, he also talks a good bit about Einstein's firm resistance to McCarthyism. For Isaacson, Einstein valued political systems that cultivated personal freedom and especially freedom of thought. In America he saw as primary the first amendment and continued to speak out on a variety of issues despite the strictures that the Red Scare induced.

In the end Isaacson concludes that curiosity was the primary driver for Einstein. And when combined with his imagination and ability to visualize the physical reality behind his equations, it created a genius. Although I haven't commented much on the personal portrait the book paints, as with Franklin Isaacson seems to fairly show multiple sides of his personality. Both his warmth towards acquaintances and strangers as well as his self-induced emotional distance accompanying his often uncaring attitude towards his wives (Isaacson touches on but doesn't dwell on several of Einstein's mistresses through the years) and children, are on display. In that regard, which incidentally is a weakness of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, the book humanizes a figure that for me, as for many others I'm sure, had always been little more than the caricature of the absent-minded professor.

Umpires and QuesTec

Several readers have been asking about the recent study that was reported to show umpire bias by race known as the Hamermesh study. Phil Birnbaum and Mitchel Lichtman have been doing great work in that regard already so I have little to add other than providing a few links for those interested:

The original study

The Time Magazine piece

Phil's first take - he questions the author's findings of statistical significance by examining the core table (table 2) from the original study

Phil's follow-up - where he uses to conclude that perhaps and at most 1 in 700 pitches is biased

And even more by Phil - here he uses several different tests of significance and it appears there is no racial bias

MGL's own study - here he uses a much simpler approach and comes to the tentative conclusion that there are not racial differences that are statistically significant. Update on 8/19: MGL posted some updates to his study here and here and comes to the opposite conclusion. He also notes there is a good discussion of the study at The Sports Economist.

One of the side topics that have arisen here is the affect of QuesTec on called strikes. The authors of the Hamermesh study found that for both white and minority pitchers, in non-QuesTec parks pitchers received a higher percentage of strikes when the race of the pitcher and umpire matched than they did in QuesTec parks. White pitchers did not experience this difference when the umpire was non-white although minority pitchers still did.

This provides an opportunity to look at the PITCHf/x data from this season in QuesTec and non-QuesTec parks to get a more granular feel for what the overall difference might be. While we have data for only 9 of the 11 parks where QuesTec is installed, we still end up with almost 35,000 pitches in QuesTec parks and 63,000 in non-QuesTec parks to analyze. When we do so by comparing the location of the pitch to the strike zone (defined by the PITCHf/x operator for each plate appearance) and give the umpires a 1 inch buffer zone to correspond with the limits of the system, we find the following:

Park      Pitches   CS%   CB%  Agree%
QuesTec     34427 .8252 .9433   .8790
Non-QuesTec 62862 .8052 .9488   .8772

By way of explanation CS% is the called strike percentage defined as the percentage of actual pitches in the strike zone that were actually called strikes. CB% is the called ball percentage defined as the percentage of pitches that were actually out of the strike zone that were called balls and Agree% is the overall percentage of pitches on which PITCHf/x (given the buffer zone) and the umpire agreed.

By simply examining the confidence intervals it appears that umpires do indeed call more pitches in the zone strikes at QuesTec parks than at non-QuesTec parks. The difference is statistically significant at .05 at amounts to 1 pitch in 50. However, at QuesTec parks umpires don't do as well at identifying balls and end up calling more of them strikes to the tune of 1 in 180 pitches. This result too is statistically significant at .05 indicating that perhaps the biggest effect of QuesTec is simpy to call more strikes.

Because the factors are working in opposite directions when we add them up the Agree% fails to meet the .05 test. Overall then, if we attribute the entire difference to whether the umpire is in a QuesTec park or not we're talking about a difference of 1 pitch in 550. Of course there may be other factors at work here including the calibration of the system at particular parks that may play a role which I haven't examined.

756

I wasn't old enough nor interested enough to appreciate Hank Aaron's blast in April of 1974 - a fact for which I have a partial excuse intruding as it did on my sixth birthday (although I do faintly remember the television on and comments made). Later, however, I had always imagined that when 755 was finally reached and breached by someone it would be among the highlights of my baseball fandom.

As for many others that simply wasn't the case and the event passed with little joy and more than a tinge of disappointment. This was not unlike, I suppose, the feelings experienced by many who had waited a lifetime for the 1986 approach of Halley's comet only to be disappointed. There were no external or internal cheers from my desk as I watched the replays of 755 and 756 on my laptop.

In understanding why the disappointment lingers, it comes down to a preponderance of the evidence suggesting that Bonds didn't accomplish the feat legitimately in the spirit of fair competition. Who can say what would have happened if he had chosen an alternate path? Perhaps he would have broken the record anyway since he certainly is the greatest offensive player of his generation with or without help. But therein lies the problem. He didn't let us find out and so now the game's greatest number, at least for awhile, (whatever that turns out to be) and hence it' greatest story will forever be accompanied by a shadow.

The litany of popular defenses including no positive PED test (until recently when Bonds tested positive for amphetamines), the actions of Major League Baseball and the player's union during the entire era, the lack of rock solid performance data quantifying the impact of PEDs, and the fact that many of his peers engaged in the same behavior, are indeed mitigating factors but ones that don't remove the ultimate responsibility of all competitors to play the game "the right way".

Believe me, I would rather have cheered.

A Sabermetric Cambrian Explosion

Several folks have alerted me to this article by Nate DiMeo on Slate.com that talks a bit about PITCHf/x and it's promise. What I like about it is that it does a nice job of showing the range of analysis that has already been done (and I like the quote he used as well from this column) and linking to some of those articles.

I've written 10 articles on the subject with a couple more already in the works which include:

Schrodinger's Bat: Putting the Pedal to the Metal - August 16

Schrodinger's Bat: Calling the Balls and Strikes - July 26

Schrodinger's Bat: Searching for the Gyroball - July 5

Schrodinger's Bat: Playing Favorites - June 28

Schrodinger's Bat: Gameday Meets the Knuckleball - June 21

Schrodinger's Bat: The Science and Art of Building a Better Pitcher Profile - June 14

Schrodinger's Bat: Gameday Triple Play - June 7

Schrodinger's Bat: Physics on Display - May 31

Schrodinger's Bat: Batter Versus Pitcher, Gameday Style - May 4

Schrodinger's Bat: Phil Hughes, Pitch by Pitch - May 10

Schrodinger's Bat: The Information Revolution - October 26, 2006

In addition Dr. Nathan has created a wonderful page that not only has the most complete data dictionary for the PITCHf/x data but also includes a paper he wrote detailing his own analysis of pitch classification using derived parameters of axis of rotation and spin using a sophisticated model.

Although it may be difficult to detect, one of my goals in researching and writing about the PITCHf/x data this season has been to explore as many avenues of analysis as possible in this early stage when the system is still being tweaked and the data is incomplete. By doing so we can begin to see which of those ideas for analysis are useful and should be developed further as well as to help spur new ideas by other researchers. This is analogous to one of my favorite intellectual ideas, that of the inverted cone of diversity that I also used to help illuminate the evolving way in which players have been used throughout baseball history, and that Stephen Jay Gould was also fond of. From that earlier column the idea is briefly this:

In 1909 Charles Doolittle Walcott discovered a treasure trove of wonderfully unique fossils preserved in a layer of shale near the town of Field in British Columbia, specimens that would become known simply as the Burgess Shale. While Walcott placed his specimens in familiar phyla that were known to exist during the period (Middle Cambrian, 505 million years ago), it was a reinvestigation by Harry Blackmore Whittington, Derek Briggs, and Simon Conway Morris of the University of Cambridge in the 1980s that upended that traditional interpretation of the fossils' place in the evolution of life. By inverting the familiar iconography of the cone of increasing diversity in life forms, Whittington, Briggs, and Morris reinterpreted the Burgess Shale as replete with creatures in phyla that are now extinct. In other words, rather than life becoming increasingly more diverse in terms of its basic body plans over successive geologic periods, the Burgess Shale records an initial flowering of experimentation in structures just after the dawn of life before a later decimation or winnowing into the few surviving phyla we see today. Stephen Jay Gould devoted an entire book to this theme as an illustration akin to his theory of punctuated equilibrium in his 1989 book Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History.

So with the introduction of PITCHf/x we're in our own kind of sabermetric Cambrian explosion where ideas are flowering and we're looking for those that survive the selection pressures that prevail.

Where the analogy breaks down however, is that unlike body plans that are almost fully constrained by what went before, ideas never are and so while many of the paths that we'll subsequently travel will come out in the near future, there will always be a decreasing number that are novel and could therefore fundamentally change the way we look at this data.


Updated 8/16/2007: Added new article on pitch speeds with runners on base.

Ankiel and Bressler

Back in September of 2005 I wrote a column titled "Rube Bressler Redux?" for The Hardball Times that chronicled the first season of Rick Ankiel's transition from pitcher to hitter. At that time Ankiel had completed a 2005 season that I summarized this way:

This was the second [his demotion to low-A Quad Cities in late May] stop for Ankiel as he started the year at Double-A Springfield, but did not fare well in his first 60 at-bats, getting off to a 1-for-20 start and hitting around .160 before getting sent down. With the Swing he continued to improve and wound up hitting .270/.368/.514 with 10 doubles and 11 homeruns in 212 plate appearances. His strikeouts were a bit high (37), though he showed a little patience at the plate, collecting 27 walks.

That good showing in the Midwest League earned him a trip back to Springfield on August 3, and this time it appears he took advantage of it. In the remainder of the season he would hit .300 with 10 homeruns and drive in 28 runs in the 28 games he played, including a 3-for-4 performance with two homeruns and three RBI on the final day of the season. His late season surge even prompted some talk of a September call-up.

His combined line at Springfield was .243/.295/.515 while overall for the season he hit .259 with 17 doubles, 21 homeruns, and 75 RBIs in 321 at-bats and 85 games. Although he still has a long way to go, I'm sure he and probably the Cardinals viewed this season as a success.

Late in June Ankiel was asked about making the transition from pitching to the outfield.

"Not very many people have been successful at it," he replied. "To conquer that quest would be very self-fulfilling."

Well, after a 2006 season in which he was shelved all year with patellar tendonitis, it appeared that perhaps his window was slipping away. This season, however, he came back at the AAA level and belted 32 homeruns in just over 400 plate appearances before being called up on Thursday and hitting a three-run homer in last night's 5-0 Cardinals victory.

When I wrote the original article I was interested in how many players had successfully made the transition from full-time pitcher to full-time position player in the history of baseball. It turns out that only five others have ever totaled more than 50 games pitched and 50 games played at other positions in the major leagues. Click on the link above to read about their stories, including that of Rube Bressler for whom the article is titled, but suffice it to say that Ankiel appears as if he'll become the sixth. Whether he goes on to be as successful as any of the others remains to be seen and given his age and plate discipline still seems somewhat remote.

The interesting thing is that all five of the other players completed their transition before 1940. The final section of the Bressler article details an explanation of just why it is more difficult today to make such transitions than it was in the days of Rube Bressler. Simply put, the argument, first detailed by Stephen J. Gould in an essay discussing the disappearance of the .400 hitter, is that these transitions essentially ended after the war because of the increasing level of play that comes closer to the "right wall" of human ability, coupled with the stabilization of the game itself. In other words, over time baseball players, like other athletes, including sprinters and swimmers, have become better and as the level of play has increased, it has had the side effect of decreasing the variation among players. For players like Bressler and company there was therefore more opportunity to make the transition because good athletes of their ilk could more easily excel beyond the more numerous lesser athletes that populated baseball in the early part of the century.

The evidence for an increasing level of play was the topic of a column I wrote earlier this year on Baseball Prospectus titled "The Myth of the Golden Age" and in particular one line of evidence fits nicely with Ankiel and Bressler. As described in that column:

Pitchers are increasingly selected from the amateur ranks based on their extreme right-hand-tail-of-the-distribution excellence in pitching. While there is certainly some athletic and experiential crossover that allows them to hit better than the general population (as evidenced by the best players at early ages being both the best hitters and pitchers), their hitting skill is not selected for in the evolutionary sense and so should remain relatively constant over time. In other words, pitchers simply don't hit as well in the modern game, not because they are not just as skilled (or slightly more so) with the bat as their predecessors, but because the selected skills of all players have increased over time.

What this all boils down to is that by measuring the relative success of pitchers at the plate we can at the same time, at least indirectly, measure the increasing level of play. The following graph documents that relation using OPS normalized by park and breaks it up by league.



What I find fascinating about this graph is that it not only shows the increasing difficulty that pitchers have when competing against their peers from the batter's box, it simultaneously gives some information on the relative level of play amongst competing leagues. You'll notice that the American Association and the Union Association of the 1880s and 1890s record higher relative values ostensibly because the leagues were not as difficult. The same applies to the Federal League (1914-1915) and American League relative to the National League from from 1901-1920 and again after integration through the early 1970s. Obviously, after the introduction of the designated hitter in 1973 the league differences can't be measured and so the graph doesn't reflect the subsequent time period. However, if one were to plot those just in the NL, the decline would continue to the point where today the relative production is well under .500.

All of this has conspired to make Rick Ankiel's story even more compelling and so I for one am going to enjoy it while it lasts.

End of the Week

A busy week after being on vacation and so just a couple links:

Chat Transcript - here's the chat transcript from today. Thanks to all those who asked questions and sorry for cutting things a little short.

A Physicist Speaks - my column this week was an interview with Dr. Alan Nathan on the intersection of baseball and physics. I followed it up with an addendum on BP's Unfiltered blog.

Rocky Mountain SABR - our local SABR chapter has a new website and I made a small contribution following up on the bunting exploits of Willy Taveras. Hopefully it will become a community site for baseball fans on the Front Range and beyond.

More PITCHf/x - a wonderful summary of all the articles written on the system by Mike Fast.

The Young and the Motionless

Just wanted to make a quick comment on Joe Sheehan's column on Sunday regarding the Nationals and their signing of Dmitri Young to a two-year $10M contract extension. Joe's analysis is spot-on and this marks the second consecutive year where the Nationals chose to hold on to a veteran having a career year instead of turning him over for prospects - even middling ones - or mediocre major leaguers. This time, however, they made the mistake of continuing to pay the veteran who also happens to play a position that will be occuppied with the return of Nick Johnson.

In any case Joe mentioned Young's negative contributions in areas outside of his direct offense and so I thought I'd quickly document his baserunning "contributions" over the years.

Year      Opp  EqGAR   Opp  EqSBR    Opp   EqAAR     Opp   EqHAR   Total
2007       18  -1.11     0   0.00     20    1.28      30   -0.45   -0.29
2006       11   0.76     9  -0.54      2   -0.37       8   -1.15   -1.30
2005       20  -0.89     1   0.09     15    0.18      25    0.22   -0.40
2004       18  -0.64     1  -0.44     20    0.67      36   -2.94   -3.34
2003       24  -1.09     2  -0.58     31    0.97      38   -2.39   -3.08
2002       11  -0.26     1   0.15      8    0.47      17    0.07    0.43
2001       37  -0.25    13  -2.07     26    0.58      34   -2.75   -4.49
2000       22  -0.10     4  -2.10     19   -0.29      31   -3.26   -5.76

          161  -3.58    51  -4.21    121    2.22     219  -12.66  -18.23

Overall, he's at a little more than -18 runs contributed since 2000 which puts him towards the bottom and among the "leaders" in 2000, 2001, 2003, and 2004.

Chat This Friday

I'll be chatting on the Baseball Prospectus site on Friday at 12:30 PM eastern, 10:30 AM mountain time. You can submit your questions ahead of time. Your thoughts on bunting, baserunning, PITCHf/x, the trade deadline and anything else you want to talk about are always welcome.

Playing Catch Up

After a week communing with family and nature up in Estes Park Colorado we're back and struggling to catch up. Here are a few new things...

Baserunning Metrics - as promised the leaders and trailers in baserunning are now up on Baseball Prospectus.

Stringing - The Rocky Mountain News wrote a little article on Gameday and a little about being a stringer with a few quotes from yours truly. The printed version had a nice picture of Mike Hageman who is the veteran among our crew at Coors Field.

Enhanced Gameday Links - Nice summary on a Reds blog of some of the analysis done using the PITCHf/x data.

Umpires - Speaking of which, my column last week was on umpire accurracy and named names. It's interesting that in that analysis I identified Doug Eddings as the second most pitcher-friendly umpire (albeit based only on 603 called pitches) behind Jeff Nelson as he gave the pitcher 38 more calls than hitters accounting for 6.3% of called balls and strikes. On Saturday night I took eleven family members to the Rockies/Dodgers game where Eddings was behind the plate and it certainly appeared that Eddings was calling a very low strike zone much to the pitcher's advantage.

Baserunning Metrics So Far

I've been asked by a number of people what the baserunning numbers look like for 2007. I recently ran the numbers (thanks to Bill Burke at BP) using the same methodology as last year (and using the same park factors and run expectancies) and so look for the leaders and trailers in all four metrics (EqHAR, EqGAR, EqAAR, and EqSBR) later this week on Baseball Prospectus.

Before those come out I will let the cat out of the bag a little and reveal that on an individual basis Grady Sizemore leads the majors with 6.92 runs on the strength of 2.48 runs gained on advancing on hits (EqHAR) and 2.24 runs on stolen bases. Chone Figgins comes in a close second at 6.30 runs (he leads in EqHAR at 3.02) after leading the league in 2006 at 9.19 runs and 2005 at 8.29 runs and solidifies his hold on the status of best overall baserunner in the game at the present time. On the flip side Carlos Delgado is dead last at -4.92 runs and Miguel Cabrera is second from the bottom at -4.67. Those two have a fairly commanding "lead" over the rest of the pack.

From a team perspective the Padres are first at 8.18 followed by the Rangers at 6.90 while the Astros (-13.64) and Mets (-9.42) are way out in front of other teams. At the level of leagues, the AL holds the overall advantage at +11 runs while the NL is at -19 despite having two additional teams. Interestingly, when EqSBR is excluded the AL holds the advantage at +20 versus +13 which is a departure from last year when the NL held a 27 run advantage.

Finally, the BP piece will not include the following table that shows how many times each team has made outs on the bases (the lead runner getting thrown out) in the various situations where OA H are out advancing on hits, OA A are out advancing on fly outs, and OA G are out advancing on ground outs.

Team        OA H    OA A    OA G      OA
NYA            6       6       5      17
MIN            6       4       6      16
NYN            9       3       2      14
PIT            2       4       8      14
CLE            4       7       2      13
COL            7       3       3      13
HOU            6       3       4      13
MIL            4       4       5      13
SEA            3       4       6      13
BOS            4       4       4      12
CIN            4       4       4      12
KCA            2       6       4      12
OAK            3       5       4      12
PHI            7       3       2      12
FLO            2       6       3      11
SLN            5       5       1      11
TEX            3       7       1      11
CHA            4       4       2      10
DET            4       2       4      10
TOR            1       7       2      10
ANA            5       3       1       9
ARI            5       1       3       9
CHN            2       4       3       9
TBA            3       3       2       8
BAL            3       2       2       7
ATL            3       2       1       6
SFN            4       1       1       6
LAN            3       0       2       5
SDN            2       1       2       5
WAS            1       1       3       5

Bunting and Izturis

My column this week extends last week's discussion of bunting for a hit by examining the strategy behind it using run expectancy. I didn't cover all the nuances I'm sure but wanted to make the article a basic introduction to using the break even formula and how that can apply to a strategy. I also answer a few reader questions along the way.

By the way, hate to say I told you so but in my August 10th column of last year I noted:

In picking up Izturis and his $3.2 million contract for this year, $4.25 million for next year [note: the Cubs sent $1.4m to the Pirates in the deal] and club but out for $300,000 in 2008 (that they'll likely be exercising), the Cubs have elevated the mistake they've been making with reserves to not one but two starting positions.

The core problem is that in Izturis they now have a player who, at his best in 2004, recorded a WARP1 of 3.5. This was when his batting line exceeded his career marks by +.28/+.36/+.43 and he won a Gold Glove. His more typical seasons in 2003 and 2005 were at 2.6 and 2.0, respectively, with his offensive performances actually below the level of a replacement player. In 2005 he ranked 30th of 31 shortstops with 300 or more plate appearances in VORP at -4.2 (Cristian Guzman was 31st with a whopping -14.9)--a trend he has continued thus far in 2006.

Much of the recent hype surrounding Izturis has been built on the strength of a great April and May of 2005 when he hit .342 and earned an All-Star selection. In other words, the likely outcome of the deal is to extend the search for the next Ricky Gutierrez a year and half while enduring Neifi-like production at shortstop to go with above average defense (The Fielding Bible had Izturis at +10, +19, and +4 in 2003-2005 ranking him 7th, 2nd, and 15th respectively and 6th overall during the time period). Of course that's perhaps even optimistic since Hendry and company may also have repeated their Garciaparra move ("fool me once, shame on me…") by obtaining a player fresh off an injury (degenerative arthritis in his right elbow that required Tommy John last September).

And of course what it also did was relegate Ronny Cedeno first to second base and then to the minor leagues where he is now hitting .369 and showing some power (.562). I'm not convinced Ryan Theriot is the real deal and would like to see Cedeno get another shot this year.

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.

Ichiro!

After being out of contact for two days camping with the family I watched the All-Star game this afternoon. Another disappointing loss for the National Leaguers to which I am very sympathetic as a life long NL fan. But still, give Ichiro Suzuki his due. During the game 238 of the 292 pitches were captured by PITCH f/x and here are Suzuki's three plate appearances.

Pena Jr. Sets a Record

Was alerted to this by my brother. This is my favorite part:

This is pure wonder. It is hard to play virtually every day for two months and not draw a single walk. How does he do it? Well, Peña Jr.’s secret is simple (pay attention, kids): He swings early and often. He has come to the plate more than 300 times this year, and he has only let a pitcher get three balls on him 25 times. Do you realize how amazing that is? If they changed the rules so Peña only needed three balls to walk, he would still be fifth on the team in walks.

And as far as Posnanski's comments about not "walking off the island", I did a little research into this general question back in December of 2005. You can read the results here:

Take a Walk on the Patient Side

Sinister Motives?

Patience and Position

Taveras On a Roll

This week on Baseball Prospectus my column focuses on bunting for hits and the remarkable 27 bunt hits by the Rockies' Willy Taveras. At the All-Star break the leaders in bunt hits were:

Name                Bunts    Hits   Pct
Willy Taveras         36      27   .750
Juan Pierre           28       8   .286
Corey Patterson       14       6   .429
Gerald Laird          14       7   .500
Coco Crisp            12       4   .333
Jose Reyes            12       7   .583
Joey Gathright        11       6   .545
Carlos Gomez          11       6   .545
Alfredo Amezaga       10       6   .600
Tony Gwynn            10       4   .400
Reggie Willits        10       4   .400

What's remarkable is not really how often he's tried to lay one down but how often he's been successful at 75%. I also take a look at how this fits into the historical as well as the strategic and situational contexts. But unlike other weeks, this time the article is free as a part of BP's free preview running from July 9th to the 15th.

Rain Delay Musings

I'm scoring the Rockies/Phillies game at Coors Field tonight and in the very first inning the rains came causing the game to be delayed. So more to entertain myself than you here are a few random thoughts on the passing scene (to borrow a phrase).

Angering the Gods? - Before the rain delay Jimmy Rollins homered to right field on the 3rd pitch of the game from Rodrigo Lopez. After a Chase Utley double off the right field wall with one out Ryan Howard lofted a fly ball down the left field line and it just made its way over the wall for a two-run homer. Before the homer lightning had been evident out beyond left field and I think when Howard hit that ball there was an accompanying roar of thunder. Very strange and more than a little distracting to say the least. Rollins homerun was the 100th of his career and on 6/27 Howard hit his 100th and in the process becoming the fastest player to do so (325 games).

More Pitchf/x - A couple more articles on using the Gameday data for analysis were written by Joe P. Sheehan and John Beamer. In Joe's article I love the idea of looking at this data from a consistency standpoint and am not surprised that Joe doesn't see much of a difference between starts. While it's probably the case that there are some pitchers whose success hinges on good stuff on a particular night, those are likely the more marginal pitchers. And my assumption is that location and pitch selection in specific situations would vary more than a measurement of "stuff". Better pitchers like Halladay simply have good stuff and differences between good and bad starts also have a lot to do with simply luck in which balls are hit at fielders and which aren't. This would be a topic to revisit after we have a few thousand pitches for starters in good and bad starts. John, on the other hand does a profile of Tim Hudson much like I've done for King Felix, Tim Wakefield, and Daisuke Matsuzaka. What he adds, and what I'm just getting around to, is sorting out pitch types using a clustering algorithm. I've recently gotten ahold of an implementation of one such algorithm in my programming language of choice so I'm excited to see how it can be modified or customized for this type of data.

And a Clarification - Related to PITCHf/x one of the questions I get most frequently and haven't explained very well is just what the measurements of vertical and horizontal movement are relative to. In short, they are measured relative to a theoretical "reference pitch" defined as a pitch thrown at the minimu with the same release velocity and release point but with no spin. Therefore a pitch that has a vertical movement of 11 inches like many four-seam fastballs doesn't actually rise four inches but rather drops 11 inches less than the reference pitch. As a result the way to get a more intuitive measurements of the movement of a pitch, especially vertically, one needs to have a feel for the trajectory of the reference pitch. While this can be inferred from looking at the data I don't possess the parameters for calculating exactly the trajectory of the reference pitch.

MLB2K7 Gets a Thumbs Up - I bought this game for XBox 360 a month or two ago and have great fun playing it. Compared to MLB2K6 this is head and shoulders a better game. They've adjusted the way fielding works by allowing you to have your fielders sprint and their reaction times to your movements are much snappier. The graphics are better and there seem to be more signature stances and windups for various players. I've had no issues with the game seeming to go crazy in terms of offense or pitching when playing in franchise mode like I did last year and the various game levels seem to incrementally make the game harder in an appropriate way. I'm playing the Cubs in franchise mode and am hovering at .500 by playing some of the games and managing others. Unfortunately the manager interface has not changed and so it still lacks all of the strategic options of the real-time game play and most annoyingly does not let you warm up pitchers when at bat. One cool thing is that through XBox Live I was able to download Olympic Stadium and they say there will be other retro parks added in the future including the Polo Grounds and Fores Field among others.

Ted and Ted - I didn't realize that Cubs pitcher Ted Lilly was named after Teddy Roosevelt who once employed Lilly's grandfather. Very cool.

Rox Surge? - The Rockies are now 25-16 since May 22nd (second only to Seattle at 28-15) after last night's walk-off win in extras after a Brad Hawpe two-out, homer to dead center in the bottom of the ninth tied the game. The Rox are now 25-18 at home and 18-25 on the road following that miserable 1-9 road trip where they lost in walk-off fashion four times and that saw Brian Fuentes blow four saves. The offense seems to be firing on all cylinders and it's clear that the addition of Ryan Spilborghs after the John Mabry/Steve Finley experiments failed miserably. Spilborghs has 24 RBI with his 26 hits and is 4 for 5 in his most recent pinch-hitting chances and 7 for 17 overall. One of the things that has most impressed me this season in watching the Rockies is how Willy Taveras bunts. He now has 27 bunt hits on the season with the next closest player having 8. He also has 40 infield hits which leads the majors. I haven't looked it up but my guess is that he's successful around 80% of the time when attempting to bunt for a hit which seems pretty remarkable.

The tarp is coming off the field and so we'll be resuming here at some point. Right now, however, the grounds crew is wrestling with the tarp as it catches 20 mph gusts of wind and drags them to and fro.

The One About the Gyroball

In an ongoing series on digging into the PITCHf/x data provided by MLBAM's Gameday sysem, this week in my Schrodinger's Bat column I take a look at Daisuke Matsuzaka. The system has captured 586 of his pitches over six starts and so that gives us a pretty good sample to work with as shown in the following table:

Start              Pitches   IP  H  SO  BB ER
4/17 at Toronto        105  6.0  3  10   3  2
5/9 at Toronto         102  7.0  5   8   3  1
5/25 at Texas           85  5.0  7   6   3  5
6/5 at Oakland          55  7.0  7   8   2  2
6/22 at San Diego      126  6.0  5   9   5  1
6/27 at Seattle        113  8.0  3   8   1  1

Interpreting the data to identify his varied repetoire is somewhat more difficult than it is with pitchers who throw "only" three or four pitches but I was encouraged that it could still be done with some degree of accuracy (as checked against the Inside Edge data made available on ESPN Insider). In the article I identify his fastball, slider, cutter, curve, changeup, and forkball/splitter. His hard sinker, or shuuto, apparently behaves much like the forkball and so some of these may be included in the forkball category.

So what about the gyroball? Well, you'll have to read the article to see if the pitch remains a mystery.

Third Base Focus

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to take in two Sky Sox games here in Colorado Springs. On Friday night the Sox took on the AAA affiliate of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, the Salt Lake Bees. The game gave me a chance to take a look at two of the better third base prospects in baseball in Ian Stewart for the Sox and Brandon Wood for the Beavers. Both players were promoted to AAA from AA at the start of the season and both have struggled a bit. Last season Wood put up .276/.552/.355 line on his way to being named a AA All-Star at Arkansas. This after hitting 43 homeruns and racking up 101 extra base hits in the California League in 2005. For the Bees he's sitting at .257/.479/.338. On Friday night he struggled making two errors behind starter Kasey Olenberger leading to 4 unearned runs. He also looked a little uncomfortable at the plate and was able to manage only a sacrifice fly. The Bees still won, however, 7-5 behind Curtis Pride who stroked a go-ahead two-run double during a six-run fifth inning. Sox outfielder Alexis Gomez homered for Colorado Springs earlier in the game but in the 8th inning and down 7-5 with two outs he hit a gapper to left-center. However, rather than settle for the double he tried to stretch it into a triple and was thrown out - an absolutely terrible play.

Stewart was a bit of a disappointment last season hitting .268/.452/.351 at Tulsa with just 10 homeruns (but racking up 41 doubles). This season he's at .296/.472/.376 albeit at a higher altitue and has 10 homeruns at this point. Stewart's defense improved last season and on Saturday night against the Portland Beavers (affiliate of the Padres) he made a diving stop and threw out a runner from his knees.

In that Saturday game the headlines were stolen by Sox pitcher Kevin Walker who threw a five-hit complete game in a 6-2 Sox win. It was, he claimed his first start in 10 years and his first professional complete game (I've since learned he started games in 2002-2004 but hasn't been a starter since 1998 and it was his fourth complete game, having thrown three for Clinton in 1997), and the first complete game at Security Service Field since 2003. Offensively the Sox were led by former prospect Jayson Nix who went 2-for-4 and hit a grand slam off Beaver's starter Tim Stauffer, his fifth homer having hit one the night before, in the sixth inning. In addition Clint Barmes collected 4 hits in 5 trips including a bunt single and his usual collection of dink hits over the infield. Barmes is hitting .331 and was selected to the PCL All-Star squad but don't look for him in Denver anytime soon. Oh, in first two trips to the plate he was thrown out attempting to steal second after getting hits.

A Small Victory

George Will notes a small blow for freedom of speech in a recent Supreme Court ruling that puts a dent in the McCain-Feingold law. That purpose of that law, in the words of Will, "is to protect politicians from speech that annoys them". In this case a right to life group attempted to run an ad that the censors felt violated the

"ban on any 'electioneering communication' -- a radio or TV ad that 'refers to' a candidate for federal office -- within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. The blackout period silences speech when it matters most."

Hopefully, other challenges will ensue and the law will get repealed.

Friday Links on 6/29

These Friday links have gotten to be something of a habit but for some reason I don't catch up until Friday and there's always something interesting to pass along.

Racism? - This article over at MVN is titled "Believe it: Racism still in baseball". Unfortunately for the author he doesn't provide any evidence for his argument and instead talks about the fan reactions to Manny Ramirez and Barry Bonds - two players who provoke a lot of reactions not primarily related to their race. However, I did find it interesting that the author, quoting Jayson Stark, noted that "37 percent of black fans think Bonds used steroids, compared to 76 percent of white fans". The implication is that this somehow shows that white fans are racist. Of course it's just as plausible (and perhaps more so since the white population is larger and therefore probably more varied in their views) that black fans on the whole are seeing the issue through racial lenses.

In addition, it can be argued that his other major example of shrinking black participation in the sport is caused by a myriad of others factors (some of which he lists) and not implicit nor explicit racism. The issue of African Americans in leadership positions in baseball is perhaps the only one on which he has a leg to stand. Not having researched the issue I don't really have an opinion. That said, it seems to me that the idea that imposing a quota on interviewing minorities for specific positions is not really the answer.

The main problem with the article is that the title appears to claim something for which the author shows little evidence and so it smacks of an attempt to grab some attention. It worked (I'm sure lots of people read it) but it's not very honest.

Chad Gaudin - In case you missed it, Marc Normadin did his regular player profile feature on A's starter Chad Gaudin. This is a self-serving link since I contributed a sidebar to the piece using the PITCHf/x data but still Marc's attention to detail is always outstanding and you never fail to learn when you read his work.

DePodesta - Interesting article at THT on the status of Paul DePodesta.

The Imbalance of Interleague - Dave Studeman calls for the demise of interleague play..well, almost with a recommendation for paring it down similar to what I threw out last January. John Perrato at BP also runs down the stats division by division as the AL took the 137-115 advantage. A far cry better than last year but still it shows the AL is the stronger of the two leagues in the same way the NL was the stronger in the mid 1960s.

Sammy Sosa Hits 600 - There were several articles like this one in the last couple weeks being less than generous to Sosa. It seems reasonable to me, as with Mark McGwire, to take a bit of a wait and see approach regarding Hall of Fame credentials and celebrating the accomplishments. Clearly (although I have to admit I'm a Cubs fan) there is less, actually bordering on zero, circumstantial or other evidence linking Sosa to steroid use and so in my mind he gets the benefit of the doubt for now. Interestingly, I received a copy of the this great set of DVDs the other day and it has the game where Sosa hit his 61st adn 62nd homeruns in 1998. Haven't watched it yet but it should be interesting.

The Umpires Strike Back

My column today on Baseball Prospectus takes an initial look at the oft-said belief that hitters with better plate discipline and pitchers with better command end up getting the benefit of the doubt from the man behind the plate. I recall first hearing this idea in the late Ron Luciano's book The Umpire Strikes Back that I read back in 1983 or so. There he says the following regarding pitchers.

During a game an umpire gets into a groove with a pitcher. People like Catfish Hunter [pictured above] and Ron Guidry are always going to be around the plate, so an umpire gets into the habit of calling strikes. Even when they miss the plate, it's usually a situation pitch intended to setup the batter for the next pitch or entice him to swing at a pitch outside the strike zone that he can't hit solidly. The umpire becomes so used to calling strikes that it's difficult to call a ball. Strike one, strike two, foul ball, it's close to the plate, strike three.

Then there are pitchers like Ed Figueroa. He was all over the place. One pitch would be high, the next pitch would be in the dirt, the third pitch would be in the concession stand. He would throw three pitches outside the strike zone, then nip the corner of the plate by a quarter inch and expect the umpire to be ready to call a strike.

Within certain limits we can use the PITCHf/x data to try and get a read on this by measuring the number of called strikes and called balls for pitchers and hitters and how many of each went in favor and opposed to the player. By adding these up and we can then calculate a percentage of pitches for each player. Overall, what we find is that umpires, within the limits of the system, seem to get the calls correct 9 out of 10 times with pitchers getting the small upper-hand. It's also the case that left-handed hitters incur a 10% penalty on called strikes over their right-handed brethren.

You'll have to read the article to see all of the conclusions but suffice it to say that Luciano, if he was speaking for all umpires, may have overstated his case.

Sinkers

As many of you know I've been writing about the PITCHf/x data captured by the new Gameday system the last several weeks in my Schrodinger's Bat column over on Baseball Prospectus. In answering a question for a colleague I ran a query to take a look at which pitchers have the most sink on their sinking fastball and so I'll share the results here.

There is certainly some difficulty in separating sinking fastballs from four-seamers (in some research on Chad Gaudin I found I couldn't reasonably classify some 5% of his fastballs) since the data is continuous and doesn't come nicely labeled. So as a first approximation I thought I'd take a look at all pitches thrown between 87 and 93 miles per hour and that had the appropriate horizontal break for a fastball in order to weed out any sliders. This is similar to what John Walsh did in an excellent article at THT and builds on the work that Joe P. Sheehan did over at Baseball Analysts. The result is the following table of the top 30 pitchers (pitchers who throw from the side excepted since their vertical movement is actually negative in many cases as John discussed).

Name               Throws  Pitches   AvgVel    Vert   Horiz  MaxVel
Felix Hernandez    R             69    89.7     2.2    -3.5    92.9
Kameron Loe        R            529    89.6     3.7    -7.7    93.0
Derek Lowe         R            575    90.2     3.8   -10.7    93.0
Roy Halladay       R            481    90.7     3.8    -7.5    93.0
Brandon Webb       R            111    89.7     3.9    -9.4    92.9
Julian Tavarez     R            296    90.6     3.9   -10.2    92.9
Aaron Cook         R             82    91.0     4.2    -7.2    93.0
Tim Hudson         R            465    90.8     4.5    -6.8    93.0
Jamey Wright       R             72    89.5     4.7    -8.0    93.0
Jeff Weaver        R            202    89.1     5.5   -10.8    92.8
Scott Downs        L            128    89.3     5.6    11.0    92.2
Jose Contreras     R            321    90.2     6.0    -7.7    93.0
Sergio Mitre       R            107    90.0     6.0    -9.2    92.6
Chad Paronto       R            142    90.0     6.1    -5.8    92.8
Jimmy Speigner     R             61    89.5     6.3    -6.0    92.6
Brad Thompson      R             56    90.0     6.5   -10.2    92.0
Miguel Batista     R            319    91.1     6.5    -6.7    93.0
Paul Maholm        L             50    88.5     6.6     6.5    90.6
Zach Duke          L             55    88.9     6.7    10.0    91.4
Gil Meche          R             60    91.2     6.8    -4.9    93.0
J.J. Putz          R             53    89.7     7.0    -6.2    93.0
Oscar Villarreal   R             93    90.0     7.0    -6.8    92.9
Chad Gaudin        R            437    90.6     7.1    -6.8    93.0
Carlos Zambrano    R            113    90.6     7.1    -5.8    93.0
Sean White         R            175    91.1     7.2    -8.2    92.9
Eric O'Flaherty    L            120    90.2     7.2     6.3    92.8
Jesse Litsch       R             62    89.1     7.2    -5.1    92.8
Kip Wells          R             82    90.6     7.3    -7.1    93.0
Vicente Padilla    R            397    90.9     7.4    -6.9    93.0
Robert Janssen     R            102    90.8     7.4    -3.3    93.0

You'll notice that the vertical movement column is still positive for all these pitchers. That's the case because the value is calculated relative to the movement of a theoretical reference pitch that is spinless but thrown in the same way as the pitch in question.

So then to get a feel for what these vertical measurements mean, we can compare them to some pitchers who do not throw a sinking fastball but who do throw their fastballs in the same velocity range. For example, Brad Penny has thrown 230 pitches in this velocity range with an average vertical movement of 12.1 inches. Brandon McCarthy has thrown 264 with a value of 12.1, Randy Wolf has thrown 456 at 11.1, and John Garland has 585 at 10.7. What this indicates is that a four-seamer thrown in the same range drops 10 to 12 inches less than the theoretical reference pitch and so our sinkerballers throw pitches that sink 6 to 9 inches more than that. This seems realistic and of course the list of pitchers near the top (Hernandez, Lowe, Halladay, Webb, Cook) are all the usual suspects.

It's also interesting to note which pitchers have more tail on their sinkers (a negative horizontal movement indicates tailing into a right-handed hitter). Derek Lowe, with his combination of sink and movement, makes it very difficult on opposing hitters.

Friday Links

A few things from this week:

Datacaster - A little article on MLBAM datacaster on Chris Johnson who scores for the Dodgers and Angels.

State of the BABIP - A great overview and state of the research on batting average on balls in play by Derek Jacques.

Changing Course - Joe Sheehan takes a look at the practice of firing managers midseason. I wrote a little about this awhile back in wondering why midseason changes have declined in recent years.

Be that as it may, thirteen times beginning with the 1932 Cubs, teams have changed managers and gone on to post season play. The last time being the 2004 Astros who replaced Jimmy Williams as team stodd at 44-44. Under Phil Garner they went 48-26 the rest of the way. For Williams it was the second time he had been replaced as the skipper of an eventual postseason team. The first, and the largest difference in terms of winning percentage, was the 1989 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 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.

The Dance of the Knuckler

This week in my column on Baseball Prospectus after rehashing some history of the pitch thanks to Rob Neyer and Peter Morris, I take a look at the knuckleball of Tim Wakefield from the perspective of PITCHf/x and Gameday. The system has tracked his starts from April 6th at Texas, April 18th and May 10th at Toronto, May 26th back in Arlington, and June 6th at Oakland, a sample which includes 461 pitches.

As you might expect a plot of the horizontal and vertical breaks aren't very informative since the pitch is all over the place and therefore doesn't form the tighter clusters you can see with more traditional pitchers. Still, his three pitches (the fastball and curve) are able to be detected when you add velocity to the mix as his knuckers are very consistently thrown with a release velocity between 65 and 70 miles per hour. His fastballs are in the mid 70s and his curve in the low 60s. After discussing classification the article goes on to answer the questions when he throws his various pitches, where he throws them, and what the results are.

An Eye on the Game

In the fall of 2006 the Giants installed some new technology at the ballpark dealing with optimizing their data storage as necessitated by their adoption of digital video. A nice overview of the system was written up in eWeek in April. A case study from their vendor Data Domain is also available. The article mentions that the Giants use Sydex Sports Software, out of Grand Rapids Michigan, for their "baseball analysis software" and that "half of baseball" are now their clients.

Father's Day Links

Here's a few interesting things on a Father's Day.

Dialing Long Distance - In the Rockies/Devil Rays game here at Coors Field today Carlos Pena his a 452 foot homerun into the third deck in right field (only the right field section has a second or third deck of course). It was the 27th time a homerun had been hit into the 3rd deck and the first time since July 7, 2005 when Todd Helton performed the feat. Johnny Gomes hit two homeruns in the game, the first of which came in the second inning and was a 442 foot shot to left-center. His homerun in the sixth was 415 feet and was a line drive. For the Rockies Matt Holliday hit a 428 foot homerun to into the Rockies bullpen in right-center and Kaz Matsui lofted a 386 foot fly ball down the left field line as well but the longest hit of the afternoon belonged to Brad Hawpe. Hawpe, who hit a grand in last night's ballgame and now has 12 homeruns in his last 27 games putting him in the company of Prince Fielder, Alex Rodriguez, and Gary Sheffield, his a ball of the facing of the third deck in the 8th inning. The blast was 452 feet.

That makes 14 homeruns hit by the two teams in a three-game series that saw the Rockies go unbeaten in their 8th straight series (7-0-1). Does this mean Coors is back to being the homer haven it once was? Here is a graph of the runs scored and homeruns per out at Coors Field historically and up through yesterday's game.



Overall, run scoring is right at the 2005 level while homeruns are closer to 2004. Still, however, we're seeing levels of run scoring in the humidor era reduced from those prior to 2002.

Credentials - This is an interesting article from Tim Marchman in the New York Sun calling for internet writers to be granted credentials. This is certainly a trend that is likely not to be reversed. In the short term, however, it's ironic that overall anyway, blogs probably make it more difficult for baseball writers whose work is published on the internet to obtain the access because the sheer number of nodes make it difficult for teams to determine who is serious and who isn't. The fluid nature of the internet also means there is not a clear line of demarcation sometimes between serious and longer term sites and blogs. Right now teams use the fact that you can print a paper as a proxy for your seriousness and your promise not to abuse the access. Note that readership or quality of the content produced are not criteria, which in large part is what Marchman is arguing. I've always argued that the outsider's perspective is valuable and in one sense getting access would change that. But on balance there is no doubt that with access comes more information and more nuanced writing and that can never be a bad thing.

Defense - David Gassko at THT posts defensive metrics derived from Baseball Info Solution's Zone Rating data. Is it just me or do these numbers look really high (and low)? There's little doubt that the leaders and trailers he lists are the best and worst fielders but the magnitude of the numbers (+20 at first base for Albert Pujols and +24 at third base for David Wright particularly) seem a little excessive. Perhaps I'm not understanding what these are based on and someone can correct me :) Update: See David's comments to this post for an explanation.