Crack of the Bat, Y'all: A Thread for Baseball

[RavingLunatic]

The Venters-Kimbrel connection is unstoppable. I think they ought to give those guys more rest though. They're overthrowing both of them, particularly Venters, and you never want to do that with young arms that throw upper-90's like that. Dudes throwing 85-88 MPH might be able to get away with it, but when you're bringing the kind of gas those guys are, the muscles and tendons and ligaments are under a lot of strain.

I love these little dudes being called up who can fly and look like they should still be in middle school. I'm talking Tony Campana and Dee Gordon here:

[Thermofusion]

Zach Duke vs. Paul Maholm. Battle of aces. Man I love you midweek baseball.

Should probably be watching Wakefield vs. Yankees

[Thermofusion]

Nebraska alum Tony Watson just struck out the first two batters he's ever faced in the majors, making his debut in a really fucking tense relief situation and earning a roaring ovation from the PNC crowd.

[El_Josharino]

The Venters-Kimbrel connection is unstoppable. I think they ought to give those guys more rest though. They're overthrowing both of them, particularly Venters, and you never want to do that with young arms that throw upper-90's like that. Dudes throwing 85-88 MPH might be able to get away with it, but when you're bringing the kind of gas those guys are, the muscles and tendons and ligaments are under a lot of strain.

In my head I know that you're right, but in my heart I just want them to take turns pitching every inning of baseball all year and maybe forever.

[El_Josharino]

Nebraska alum Tony Watson just struck out the first two batters he's ever faced in the majors, making his debut in a really fucking tense relief situation and earning a roaring ovation from the PNC crowd.

Nice. I don't really follow college baseball, so I don't know this guy, but hopefully he'll establish himself faster than did Alex Gordon.

[El_Josharino]

The Venters-Kimbrel connection is unstoppable. I think they ought to give those guys more rest though. They're overthrowing both of them, particularly Venters, and you never want to do that with young arms that throw upper-90's like that. Dudes throwing 85-88 MPH might be able to get away with it, but when you're bringing the kind of gas those guys are, the muscles and tendons and ligaments are under a lot of strain.

In my head I know that you're right, but in my heart I just want them to take turns pitching every inning of baseball all year and maybe forever.

No sooner do I say this than Kimbrel blows a save... Okay Craig, you can have a night off.

[davy]

Nebraska alum Tony Watson just struck out the first two batters he's ever faced in the majors, making his debut in a really fucking tense relief situation and earning a roaring ovation from the PNC crowd.

Nice. I don't really follow college baseball, so I don't know this guy, but hopefully he'll establish himself faster than did Alex Gordon.

Ohhhh, that Alex Gordon let me down. I put that bitch on my first-ever fantasy team as a highly-touted rookie and he did fuck-all for my point total.

[RavingLunatic]

The Venters-Kimbrel connection is unstoppable. I think they ought to give those guys more rest though. They're overthrowing both of them, particularly Venters, and you never want to do that with young arms that throw upper-90's like that. Dudes throwing 85-88 MPH might be able to get away with it, but when you're bringing the kind of gas those guys are, the muscles and tendons and ligaments are under a lot of strain.

In my head I know that you're right, but in my heart I just want them to take turns pitching every inning of baseball all year and maybe forever.

No sooner do I say this than Kimbrel blows a save... Okay Craig, you can have a night off.

Ha, yeah, I know. I think Kimbrel's getting really unlucky this year actually. He strikes out so many batters, and yet he's given up quite a lot of hits. I don't know how closely you guys follow the Sabermetric stuff, but BABIP (batting average on balls in play) is essentially constant across pitchers and across time, varying around something like .300 (ground-ball pitchers being a slight exception). Last night Kimbrel struck out three hitters in one inning and allowed two hits. That's a BABIP of 1.000 and almost certainly a result of bad luck. If you've got dudes swinging and missing that often, it's pure bad luck that the only two balls actually put in play went for hits. It really wasn't a bad outing at all. Venters is such a freaking beast though, that I almost expect them to start sharing closing duties at some point.

Re: Alex Gordon, it always confuses me when guys are so good for several years in college and then can't do much in the majors. It seems like such a sure bet that they'll continue to mash in the bigs, but it doesn't always happen. I don't know how much of it has to do with adjusting to using wood bats. I mean, all the best college players have spent significant time playing in wood-bat summer leagues. I think more likely it's that they have trouble hitting pitches with a lot of movement. That's the biggest difference between division I college ball and minor league pitching on the one hand and MLB pitching on the other. You see 90+ MPH fastballs at all those levels, even sometimes in high school, but in the majors, you rarely see a straight fastball. Everything is moving ridiculous amounts, left, right, up, and down, and in unpredictable ways. It's still amazing to me that those guys are able to hit much of anything. I mean, if you've ever batted against a dude 60'6" away throwing gas, you know they are freaking close to you. When I've been to MLB games, I sometimes find myself watching a pitcher throw in the bullpen and thinking, "How in the hell could anybody hit that?"

[Thermofusion]

The Venters-Kimbrel connection is unstoppable. I think they ought to give those guys more rest though. They're overthrowing both of them, particularly Venters, and you never want to do that with young arms that throw upper-90's like that. Dudes throwing 85-88 MPH might be able to get away with it, but when you're bringing the kind of gas those guys are, the muscles and tendons and ligaments are under a lot of strain.

In my head I know that you're right, but in my heart I just want them to take turns pitching every inning of baseball all year and maybe forever.

No sooner do I say this than Kimbrel blows a save... Okay Craig, you can have a night off.

Ha, yeah, I know. I think Kimbrel's getting really unlucky this year actually. He strikes out so many batters, and yet he's given up quite a lot of hits. I don't know how closely you guys follow the Sabermetric stuff, but BABIP (batting average on balls in play) is essentially constant across pitchers and across time, varying around something like .300 (ground-ball pitchers being a slight exception). Last night Kimbrel struck out three hitters in one inning and allowed two hits. That's a BABIP of 1.000 and almost certainly a result of bad luck. If you've got dudes swinging and missing that often, it's pure bad luck that the only two balls actually put in play went for hits. It really wasn't a bad outing at all. Venters is such a freaking beast though, that I almost expect them to start sharing closing duties at some point.

Man Sabermetrics is so greek to me. Or, I just can't ever remember the formula for a given sabermetric statistic so I kinda stare at the numbers blankly with no context beyond their relationship to other numbers in the same column. In other words, like, I see Andrew McCutchen has the fourth highest WAR in the majors right now, and I'm sure that's "good." What that actually means though, I ain't got a damn clue.

[Ignatius]

Sometimes I think about how my WARP would look at work (substituting, like, Solid Days for wins or something) and I don't feel bad anymore about how little I get paid.

[El_Josharino]

The Venters-Kimbrel connection is unstoppable. I think they ought to give those guys more rest though. They're overthrowing both of them, particularly Venters, and you never want to do that with young arms that throw upper-90's like that. Dudes throwing 85-88 MPH might be able to get away with it, but when you're bringing the kind of gas those guys are, the muscles and tendons and ligaments are under a lot of strain.

In my head I know that you're right, but in my heart I just want them to take turns pitching every inning of baseball all year and maybe forever.

No sooner do I say this than Kimbrel blows a save... Okay Craig, you can have a night off.

Ha, yeah, I know. I think Kimbrel's getting really unlucky this year actually. He strikes out so many batters, and yet he's given up quite a lot of hits. I don't know how closely you guys follow the Sabermetric stuff, but BABIP (batting average on balls in play) is essentially constant across pitchers and across time, varying around something like .300 (ground-ball pitchers being a slight exception). Last night Kimbrel struck out three hitters in one inning and allowed two hits. That's a BABIP of 1.000 and almost certainly a result of bad luck. If you've got dudes swinging and missing that often, it's pure bad luck that the only two balls actually put in play went for hits. It really wasn't a bad outing at all. Venters is such a freaking beast though, that I almost expect them to start sharing closing duties at some point.

Man Sabermetrics is so greek to me. Or, I just can't ever remember the formula for a given sabermetric statistic so I kinda stare at the numbers blankly with no context beyond their relationship to other numbers in the same column. In other words, like, I see Andrew McCutchen has the fourth highest WAR in the majors right now, and I'm sure that's "good." What that actually means though, I ain't got a damn clue.

Oh man, are we gonna get all saber up ins? I spend as much of my time at work reading Fangraphs as I do performing my actual job duties, so I've been getting pretty into sabermetrics.

Thermo, trying to memorizing the formulas is going to be futile. You kinda just have to remember what each thing represents, and a lot of stats are relative to league average rather than just strictly counting stats (for example, RBI is kind of a dumb stat. Is it measuring a given player's talent in any way, or is it measure the ability of the people who bat before him to get on base?). WAR, for example, stands for Wins Above Replacement. What dudes have done is taken the entire history of baseball statistics, and looked at the total runs scored by player/team/etc, and then looked at how those runs were scored (singles/doubles/triples/homers/walks/intentional walks/reached on error/stolen base/etc). They developed weights for each type of event to come up with some huge elaborate formula on how much each single/double/etc is worth toward scoring a run. It was built so that using the historical data, the formula would predict the runs scored based on each event to within a certain margin where it would be accurate for as much of the data as possible. Then you can apply that formula to current day events in a predictive manner.

Where WAR comes in, is that you take those weights and apply them to everyone and then there are also weights based on league averages, and then there's a positional adjustment (shortstops play a more important position than say, right fielders), and then in the end it determines what their net run contribution is and by extension how much they've contributed to team wins.

So if McCutch has a WAR of 3.2, it's not necessarily saying that he had 3 game winning hits, it's saying that his contributions over the course of the season have resulted in the team winning 3-4 games more than they would have with a "replacement" player in center field every day (where a replacement player is defined as someone who does just enough to not hurt, but not help his team, ie generally any old schmuck on your AAA team.) Over the course of a season, league average WAR ends up being around 2, a 6 WAR season is generally very good. Barry Bonds' 73 homer season netted 12.9 WAR. A-Rod at his peak in 01-03 was hitting about 9 WAR a season, Chone Figgins so far this year is at -1.2 WAR, ie the Mariners could probably throw me at 3rd base without hurting themselves much, if that gives any frame of reference. In theory, a team with all "replacement" level players would win 45-50 games a year (as a result of sheer sample size. Nobody who plays everyday isn't going to luck into a few hits and runs somehow or other, even a team 9 Figginses will beat a team of 9 Pujolses a few times out of 162.)

[El_Josharino]

Oh man, that got long. And to think I almost started in with WPA and game states and such...

[Thermofusion]

Great, great post. I've been putting off getting into sabermetrics for so long now, but I guess the age of traditional/"baseball card" stats has passed. This gives me a jumping off point. Also, even though the formula for something like WAR is probably complicated to the point of being impenetrable, can anyone point me to a breakdown somewhere? I'm curious what all goes into it. Also, what's the single most obscure sabermetric stat? Like the effects of indoor humidity levels on pitch-to-contact frequency in enclosed stadiums during Ramadan, or something.

[davy]

Isn't this book mostly about sabermetrics and the dawn of "new statistics" and how they helped the A's succeed even though they had way less money than other teams? I haven't read it, but I want to say I read a review that made it sound like the book which broke it all open.

[El_Josharino]

Kind of... Moneyball is a great great read, it doesn't get super into sabermetrics, there are some mentions of certain stats but it's more about Billy Beane using not-so-traditional methods to scout and gauge the value of players (mainly, he looked at on base percentage rather than power/speed), and he was one of the first ones to look at getting walked as a skill of the batter rather than a defect of the pitcher. I guess Moneyball is more about how the A's were one of the first teams to employ someone in the office who was specifically dedicated to statistical analysis, and how that affected their scouting and team building and such without really going into the stats themselves. It's a great read for sure.

There's another book by Jonah Keri called The Extra 2% that is supposed to also be very good, and focuses on the Tampa Bay Rays teams of the last few years, as they've also had great success on a limited payroll while being somewhat saber-minded.

[El_Josharino]

For info on specific statistics, like WAR, there are a few websites out there with a lot of great info. Personally, I like Fangraphs a lot, and here's a link to their WAR rundown:

http://www.fangraphs.com/library/index.php/misc/war/

Their glossary has a lot of great info on how certain stats are calculated and how they're applied.
The Baseball Prospectus is also a solid source, they release an annual every spring, and you can get to a lot of it on their website (but I think they charge for full access).

There's also a series of Sabermetrics 101 posts over on a blog called lookoutlanding that you'll likely start reading through and then find that half of your day has disappeared:
http://www.lookoutlanding.com/section/sabermetrics-101

Another thing I haven't yet dug into is the writings of Bill James. Bill James is essentially the father of sabermetrics. He's a dude who just sort of started analyzing stats and coming up with new ways to compute them way back in the 70s, and just started putting out these little pamphlets to anyone who would read them. He's got a few books out there, but I'm not sure what is the best starting point.

[davy]

There's also a decent amount of info on Bill James and sabermetrics in Fantasyland by Sam Walker. It's one of the more enjoyable baseball books I've read:

[El_Josharino]

Nice, I'ma have to check that one out.

[davy]

You'll learn more about Coco Crisp than you ever wanted to know.

[Ignatius]

This book is highly recommended for HANNAH

[El_Josharino]

Oh man the Astros bullpen is so bad.

[dumbfish]

Tar Heels heading back to Omaha. Yeah, buddy.

[El_Josharino]

Oh man that's right, shit's gonna get crazy here next weekend...

[Thermofusion]

1. Go Tar Heels! If SC beats UConn tonight, the Gamecocks will be headed to Omaha as well. Oh, how I'd fancy a UNC-SC matchup. Bummer that Coastal Carolina failed yet again to make it past the Super Regionals.

2. Was at my buddy's house earlier (diehard Braves fan) and got to see Uggla's blast to left field at Minute Maid Park. Good for that guy.

3. Want to cause a shitstorm on the internet? Leak out that you're discussing realignment, moving Houston or Mil to the AL and dropping divisions altogether. The ESPN comment thread was especially fun. Thoughts?

4. Currently listening to some hard knock Carolina League ball on the radio: Myrtle Beach Pelicans vs. the Kinston Indians. Top of the 21st, so far the 3rd longest game in the 66-year history of the league. Having listened off and on since the 12th while doing housework, I can declare with confidence that the play-by-play guy is slowly losing his mind.

5. Damn, Red Sox. Way to make a case for the mercy rule.

[Augo]

14 K's for Tommy Hanson! Braves have been lights-out all week.