Vegas Watch: What Are The Odds: Chipper’s Quest For .400

Well, since Newsboy Moriarty is no longer with us...VW has the answers. (BTW...Chipper 3-3 hoy, hoy, hoy!)

Ideally, he’d like to get exactly 502 PAs, which is the minimum required to qualify for the batting title. If he did that, his odds would be 1 in 225. As those PAs go up, it gets very unlikely, very quickly. Weighting the 618 PA scenario as 40%, and the other three as 10%, 30%, and 20%, respectively, we come to odds of 1 in 546.

If he keeps this up (unlikely), some enterprising gambling site will probably offer odds on whether he’ll hit .400. I’ll be interested to see what they are, although I’m sure they’ll be absolutely terrible. If they were listed now, I think they’d probably be along the lines of 50:1, maybe even 25:1.

I think this is because it’s a rate stat, rather than a counting stat. What I mean is that he’s hitting .400 now, so at first glance it seems at least somewhat likely that he’ll keep it up. Contrast this with a guy who gets off to a hot start (20 HRs) hitting 70 HRs- he’s still got a long way to go. For a guy hitting .400 with 20 HRs at this point in the season, even if it’s more likely that he hits 70 HRs, it’ll seem more likely, to the average person, that he’ll hit .400, since he “just” has to keep up his pace, rather than more than triple his HR total.

The ideal candidate would walk a ridiculous amount. In 2004, Bonds had 617 PAs, so he easily qualified for the batting title, but only 373 ABs. He probably had a better chance of hitting .400 that year than anyone else in recent memory- he ended up at .362.

N.Y. Times: Silver: For Griffey, the Roads Not Taken (RR)

The latest Keeping Score...as Nate Silver Pecotarates Griffey.

¶His career could have ended like Dawson’s, with a long and somewhat graceful decline, his skills diminishing by a tiny fraction each year, but with a big season or two along the way. Our system estimates that had Griffey followed the Dawson path (but adjusting for the friendly conditions of Griffey’s home ballpark), he would have finished with 725 homers.

¶It could have ended like Maris’s — not just slowed, but completely undermined by injury. Maris, a far better-rounded player at his peak than is remembered today, hit just 35 home runs after turning 30. Had Griffey followed the Maris path, he would have finished with 448 home runs.

¶Or it could have ended like Aaron’s, with Griffey indeed maintaining a 40- or 50-homer pace into his late 30s, and shattering all records along the way. Our system estimates that, had he followed the Aaron path, Griffey would have ended his career with 904 home runs.

Instead, Griffey has staked out his own path, somewhere between the Dawson and Maris trajectories. Aaron he will not be, but precisely what made Aaron such a special player is that he sustained his core abilities past a point when nearly every other players’ decline.

When we ask Pecota to project what is left of Griffey’s career based on his current level of ability, we have him finishing with 660 homers — the same total as Mays.

That outcome could be regarded as a disappointment only by someone with no sense for baseball’s history.

USA Today: Shandler: Chipper Jones’ .400 tear unlikely to last

Out on a limb with Ron Shandler…

It’s May 7, and Chipper Jones is batting better than .400.

This is not an entirely unusual occurrence. Hitters often top .400 for short periods of time. We take notice when it happens at the beginning of the season, but there are many in-season .400 stretches that pass without a second thought. Did you know that Pat Burrell batted .435 last July?

...If we break down batting average into its component parts, perhaps we can uncover the truth.

A hit is constructed of two general events — a batter making contact with a pitch and the ball falling fair. A batter’s contact rate (at-bats minus strikeouts, divided by at-bats) is a skill we can track over time. An average batter will have a rate of about 80%; in other words, he will hit a ball into fair territory in 80% of his at-bats. The best contact hitters will have rates well in excess of 90% and are typically among baseball’s batting average leaders.

In 2007, Placido Polanco led the majors with a contact rate of 95% and batted .341. This year, Mike Sweeney leads the majors with a 99% contact rate (he has struck out once in 77 at-bats) and is batting .311.

Jones’ contact rate is 91%.

THE PROTRADE JOURNAL: An Earnings Projection Method for Hitters

And here’s Part 1 of Bosox Bob’s work...using Dan’s ZiPS projections.

In my first pass using this approach, I pro-rated the ZiPS earnings projections for the remaining May-September ABs. The result? The average error dropped to 23.2% - less than either data set’s projections taken separately. This approach is flawed however, as it would overweight the ZiPS projection and underweight any performance level changes as the season progressed.

To counter this, I computed a combined earnings rates from the April and ZiPS data, weighting by ABs to date and projected ABs respectively (aprox. ? April data to ? ZiPS data). This rate was used to project the remaining earnings for the year. With this method, the average error went down to 21.5%. As a check of this projection method, I repeated the process using stats through the end of May, which yielded an average error of 19.2% - more accurate than a month prior.

2008 Hitter Projections

Now that we’ve established a projection method, let’s see what players it currently identifies as good buys. Using 2008 ZiPS and player stats to date for the season, I generated projections for all hitters (note: expected ABs were based on player’s average ABs per team games played, minus games missed on DL). The following table contains all hitters whose pace and projection are at least 25% greater than their current price:

WSJ: Bialik: Can the Red Sox Sweep Again? Furniture Buyers Want to Know

What do you get when Carl Bialik, Jim Albert, Phil Birnbaum and Jim Lackritz put their heads together on the furniture puzzle? Uhh...a leg up on the competition?

So I turned to several sports statisticians, whose answers for the probability of a Red Sox sweep are higher than you might think: Somewhere between 2% and 5%. They all pointed to sports books that had the Sox as among the favorites to win the American League pennant, at about one in four or five. (See, for instance, TradeSports or BetFair.) That reflects their dominant championship last year and their high level of talent. Then the probability that the Red Sox sweep the Series is equal to about 0.2 — the chance they make the World Series — multiplied by their probability of sweeping the Series. If each game is a toss-up, that’s one in 16: 1/2 multiplied four times, for the four wins needed for a sweep. That translates to one out of 80 that Boston will sweep the Series. But sports-book odds suggest that the Red Sox are likely to be better than their World Series opponent, because the odds they’ll win it all are greater than half their pennant odds. That can nudge the probability of a Sox sweep up to one in 50.

In reality, individual games aren’t identical; even at the simplest level, the home team should get an advantage. (I went into more detail about winning probabilities in baseball in this 2005 column.) That doesn’t significantly change the likelihood of the sweep, at least not within the fuzziness of making such a calculation in late April. One statistician also suggested that sweeps are more likely than statistics would suggest because a team down 2-0 and 3-0 is likely to feel demoralized and have a lower chance of winning subsequent games.

Mets Geek: Peterson: Interview: Tom Tango

New findings from the Tango Investigation Group…

Do you think it’s important that baseball researchers share findings and discuss process? Or can interesting and worthwhile things happen when someone like Bill James does his own thing and isn’t really aware of what others are doing?

Sure, interesting things can get done, but also a whole lot of redundant and terrible things too. Bill James has a few pieces that are simply things that I have already done. Why he would waste his time doing that, I don’t know. But that’s the way he is, by his own admission. Sometimes, you get a pearl out of it. So be it. Researchers at The Hardball Times is the model, as far as the web is concerned. I get immense satisfaction of reading sabermetric works. You’d think all researchers would think like that.

You always seem to be working on the next great statistical project. Tell us what you’re working on right now.

I’ve got a list I posted on my site somewhere called Tango On Demand. Next up for me is creating a Fielding Database. Normally, I would be tacking the PITCHf/x data, but (a) there’s a lot of bright people already there, so I’m happy to be an interested observer at the moment, and (b) the data is still in flux, and I’d rather work on stable datasets.

THT: Studeman: Ten things I didn’t know last week

Studes with his latest TTDKLW (which I believe was Bill Mlkvy’s original name).

A couple of weeks ago, I talked about the essential place wins and losses have in the sabermetric universe. There are a lot of stats that track a player’s contribution to his team’s wins (you can probably come up with a good one yourself), but Bill James’ Win Shares is perhaps the best known. It’s not necessarily the best, but it does things that few other win stats do.

Well, guess what. Bill James has changed the system. In a couple of articles on Bill James Online, he has started to roll out a new system of Win Shares and Loss Shares. Here are the career Win Shares and Loss Shares (where each figure is three times wins and losses) for a couple of players:

- Ozzie Smith: 325-231
- Alan Trammell: 282-176

Trammell’s original Win Shares total was 318, so you can see that James not only added Loss Shares to the system, he changed the overall system. Curiously, Ozzie’s original Win Share total was exactly 325 before; I have no clue why it didn’t change in the new system. Anyway, Smith and Trammell are very close in James’ new system. Smith is 94 Win Shares above average (Win Shares minus Loss Shares) while Trammell is 106 Win Shares above average.

Slate: Spira: Why do so many pro baseball players have August birthdays?

New stuff from old Primer pal Greg Spira…

If you find all this data convincing, perhaps you’re already planning an August birth for your little slugger. Not so fast. In 2005, USA Baseball, the nation’s governing body for amateur baseball, announced it was shifting the “league age determination date” from July 31 to April 30. This change was made so the age-cutoff times more closely jibed with the baseball calendar: Under the previous rules, a player who turned 13 on July 30 would’ve been ineligible to play in that summer’s 12-and-under league despite the fact that he would’ve been 12 years old for the entire season.

At first, this change was fiercely debated by the various youth baseball organizations, many of whom couldn’t even agree on one date internally. It looked possible, then, that parents might be able to shop among different youth baseball organizations, blunting the impact of the relative age effect. However, this year, for the first time, all the major youth baseball organizations have fallen in line and will be using the April 30 cutoff date. Future Juan Pierres, take note: If you want to make it in the majors, forget about August. Make sure you’re born in May.

Comcast: Salfino: Phils Pitching by the Numbers

Live from the Bowl-O-Rama-Slamma-Lamma-Ding-Dong Lanes...the latest from Salfino!

Cole Hamels

ZiPS says, 14 wins, 192 innings, 185 K’s and 50 walks. He’s great. 4:1 K:BB ratio. Only 2:1 this year, but it’s early. At age 24, he should get better. The homer rate has been high, but there are park factors at play. Hamels threw more changeups (34 percent of all pitches) than any starter in the league last year other than Tom Glavine. A number of scouts I’ve spoken to this year consider the changeup to be the most effective complementary pitch, all things being equal. Hamels is clearly one of the top 10 pitches in the sport and reasonably can be grouped in the top half dozen.

Kyle Kendrick

ZiPS only gives him 60-something innings. So we’re going to have to fly solo here, too. I hate to keep beating the same horse here, but when you strike out less than 4.0 per nine innings like Kendrick in ‘07, you are swimming upstream against a swift current. He’ll survive that only if he continues to flash the great control he showed in 2007: (just 2.0 walks per 9 innings). But this year, he’s walked eight guys and K’ed one. Hitters are also crushing liners off him (well above average rates of 21.1 percent in ‘07 and 27.3 percent this year). Oh, and his K-rates were terrible in the minors, too.

S.I.: Donovan: Will Santana transfer his dominance from AL to NL?

No sure, but once we transfer Donovan’s brain...we should have an electrically charged saline solution in no time!

Yeah, it’s easy to see Santana with 20-plus wins and an ERA so small we’ll have to send out a search party of sabermetricians to find it.

But here are a couple of questions worth pondering before the Mets’ lefty makes his first home start of the season, scheduled for Saturday afternoon against the Brewers: Is it really going to be that easy for Santana? Can the poor NL put up any kind of a fight at all?

..."Can he better than he was in the American League? Sure,” Tim Hudson says of Santana. “But can I see him having a little bit of problem, moreso than you think? I can see that, too. In the American League, you can get some big innings put on you but also cruise through five or six innings with zeroes [because] there are bigger swings top to bottom but more swings and misses. A lot of people who come over [to the NL] think they’re just going to roll through the lineups. It’s a different kind of baseball.”

“It’s not like he’s a stranger,” Hudson says. “Everybody knows who he is. Everybody knows what he has. He’s not sneaking up on anybody. He comes with a big reputation.”

That big reputation may be the biggest hurdle Santana has to overcome, says Hudson. “Guys are really going to try to get him, just to say, ‘You know what, this league ain’t as easy as y’all think it is.’”

Player Spotlight: Mark Reynolds

A contact rate of 70 percent, a BABIP of .360, and an AB/HR of 19 (based on a 20 percent HR/FB and 38 percent outfield fly ball rate) would give Reynolds a .305 batting average. That is stunning even to me. I expected to see something closer to .270 or .280…

Given a 70 percent contact rate, a 20 percent HR/FB, a 38 percent outfield fly ball rate, and 500 at-bats, Reynolds would hit 27 home runs. A drop to a 65 percent contact rate would bring that down to 25 home runs. A relatively small increase in fly ball rate or an increase in at-bats could cause him to hit over 30 homers.

Psycho spy from Coors
Tries to steal your mind’s elation

THT: Gassko: Testing my career projection system

Gassko’s latest toy…

Those numbers are still significantly higher than what Bill James’ Favorite Toy projects. So maybe we should run one more test: What if my system strongly over-projects young hitters with high odds of making it to 3,000 hits, like Young and Zimmerman?

Well then, let’s run the same test as above but restrict ourselves to only the players at each age who were in the top 10 in projected odds of gathering 3,000 hits. Among 20-year-olds, my system thought that 4.7 of the top 10 players would reach 3,000 hits; only two did. At age 21, the prediction was 3.7, and the actual number was three. At 22, 3.5 and four; at 23, 3.5 and four again.

In total, there was only a very slight over-prediction, and that was probably due just to random chance.

In other words, there is little evidence that our system highly overrates young hitters, and good reason to believe that one of Young or Zimmerman will eventually reach 3,000 hits.

Statistically Speaking: StatSpeak World Famous Roundtable

With John Beamer, Eric Seidman and Pizza Cutter…

Question #3: Time to play the fortune teller.  Which hitter who had a better-than-expected season last year will come back down to earth this year.

Pizza Cutter: The Washington Nationals, coming out of Spring Training made the funniest move of the year so far.  Cristian Guzman will be their starting shortstop.  Guzman, who bears a .302 career OBP(!) somehow put up a .380 OBP last year (.328/.380/.466), and then at the peak of his prowess got hurt.  How did he do it?  This 60% groundball hitter had a lot of seeing eye singles that found their way through the infield.  His BABIP spiked to .364 and people believed that he had “turned the corner.” I realize that the Nationals suffered through all those years of being the Expos and of being basically neglected, and it’s not nice to kick a man when he’s down, but… he’s hitting leadoff.  That dull thudding sound you hear from the direction of Chicago is my head hitting my desk.

BPro: Taibbi: The Silly Season: Prognostication Perils

From smells like dead A’s to spanking the big donkey...good stuff from Taibbi.

4 - PECOTA doesn’t apply to the Cubs. It just doesn’t. PECOTA accounts for many factors, but not the phenomenon of Cub-death, defined as the extremely painful slow wasting disease that eats nerve axons from the inside out once a player, particularly a highly-paid player, puts on a Cub uniform. A physician who treated Rich Hill after last year’s playoffs recently told the New England Journal of Medicine that the late stages of the disorder are “like something out of a science fiction novel--nothing in the world compares to it. The vital organs liquefy before your eyes. You can’t do an autopsy because you can’t dissect gumbo.” In a testament to the ragged poverty of the NL Central, the Cubbies made the playoffs last year, then rolled over in the playoffs like France in 1940. This is a team that has a lot of talent, a legit ace starter, lots of middle-of-the-order power, and a psychological albatross that makes the Isiah Thomas Knicks look like an “Up With People!” revival tour. With each loss and each thunderclap of hysterical Wrigley booing this team looks ready to self-immolate on the field. Hell, Ted Lilly on the mound the other day looked like a man who had just looked across a bar and spotted his wife standing next to Pierce Brosnan. In a word, it’s a team that’s tailor-made to be wiped out in the playoffs by a happy-to-be-there small-market club with positive karma. Despite all this, they’re once again a trendy pick to win it all--even Sports Illustrated got in the act again this year. No amount of statistical analysis can justify such a pick; until the Cubs catch the gods napping some year, they should always be picked to lose in the end. However, they should make the playoffs, thanks to the next rule…

THT: Tango: With the game on the line, I want …

You may hear a sound, a sort of a grinding whirrrr...Tango’s Great Clutch Project is now engaged.

The Reds Fans detest their best hitter (Adam Dunn) so much that they actually selected four different hitters ahead of him. Every time I would check the results, a new leader would emerge. Junior, Scott Hatteberg and Brandon Phillips each would have made a fine choice, but the task will be taken up by Edwin Encarnacion. (And Javy Valentin was just behind Dunn in fan appreciation.) Step right up, Edwin and Adam.

Sometimes, the fight is very close, like with the Phillies. Ryan Howard is a better hitter than Chase Utley, but only ever so slightly. And the Fans, quite forcefully, preferred Utley as their game-on-the-line pick. So, the Fans want Utley, and I want Howard, so that’s what we get. The tightest race was with the Brewers, where Braun is a slightly better hitter than Fielder, but Fielder was slightly more desired by the Fans.

The Molina brothers are beloved by the Fans as well. With Pujols out of the competition, Yadier Molina had it easy with the Cardinals. But the Giants Fans also voted overwhelmingly for their own Molina (Bengie), even though none of their players were discarded. Randy Winn, Ray Durham and Aaron Rowand (a gamer if ever there was one) barely registered a blip with the Giants fans. Clearly, fans need to be emotionally tied to a player before they can grant him Clutch.

BBD: Voros: Predicting the Future

Cayce Chaos: The Price of Reality...with Voros McCracken sitting in.

The first week of the baseball season is “tea leaves week,” where folks watch a dozen or so games, read some box scores and try and figure out how the rest of the season will happen based on these observations. The games are interesting and the box scores do have some basic information contained within them about how the season will go, but when predicting the future, it’s always wise to understand the limitations of your abilities.

So you may ask, if predicting the future in baseball is so hard, why do so many people attempt it? The simple answer is because it is entertaining. It’s one reason why psychics continue to be popular despite a general consensus among people that they have little in the way of future knowledge. It’s a fun pasttime: predicting the future and seeing if you’re right. It’s why there’s fantasy baseball, and preseason predictions from every writer at ESPN and so on. When folks grant you a level of “expertise” in a field, this is one of the ways you demonstrate it: by trying to use that expertise to predict what will happen.

...So as you take in the first few games of this baseball season, remember that there’s probably good information about the future to be had in these games. However also know that small number of games and the difficulty in predicting the future in the first place severely limits your ability to know much about how 2008 will turn out. Besides, what fun would the season be if you already knew how it would turn out?

Vegas Watch: Somebody’s Gonna Be Wrong

I know, I know...it sounds like a lost title from the Penn-Oldham catalog, but it’s buggy good stuff from the VW boys.

Seattle Mariners
Average: 86.2
High: Steve Phillips (ESPN), 92
Low: PECOTA, 75

Do you think Phillips can spell “Pythagorean”? I don’t.

That being said, 75 is really low. The PECOTA projection does come with something of a disclaimer, since it has Ichiro hitting .303/.346/.384. In 4774 career ABs, Suzuki has hit .333/.379/.437; this is his age 34 season, but thats a huge drop, and Ichiro has outperformed his PECOTA pretty much every year.

Still, even if we bump PECOTA’s projection up to 77, that’s a 15 win difference. And this is far from an isolated incident. The four ESPN guys (Stark, Kurkjian, Olney, and Phillips) and the three Yahoo! guys (Henson, Brown, and Passan) have the winning an average of 90 games. Sheehan, Law, and various computer projections predict an average of 79 victories.

They won 88 games last year, while being outscored by 19 runs. The high predictions employ the “88 wins + Bedard” logic. The others are starting with a baseline of 79, and giving them a boost for Bedard but factoring in some regression for their aging lineup. I don’t think it’s particularly hard to figure out who to side with here.

ESPN: Keri: One hundred stories to watch

100 story lines...including the Jonah hex #1.

1. Can the Red Sox repeat? Not if Josh Beckett’s back problems linger. The rotation has multiple question marks, with Curt Schilling staring down possible retirement and Clay Buchholz a great talent who’s probably not ready to dominate just yet. The offense is loaded as usual, the bullpen’s set, and Dice-K should do well in his second year. But there are too many good teams in the AL for Boston to win it all again, let alone inspire thoughts of a possible dynasty, without its ace.

3. Roger Clemens: “Oh my goodness gracious! Roger Clemens is in the owner’s box and … he’s just announced he’s going to tend to his garden gnomes! What a moment!”

22. Team with most players you’ve never heard of: The Giants. Daniel Ortmeier! Rajai Davis! Eugenio Velez! Brian Bocock! In San Francisco, it’s Lincecum and Cain and pray for … the next five years to pass as quickly as possible.

28. Adam Dunn: 2007 line—632 PA, 101 BB, 165 K’s, 40 HR. In Cincinnati, 40-plus homers and 100-plus walks a season isn’t enough for the Brennamans, who think nothing’s sexier than a sacrifice fly.

59. Player most needing a big season for a Hall of Fame push: Chipper Jones. Actually, Larry’s already done more than enough to deserve induction. But round-number-obsessed voters and a high-offense era might mean he’ll probably need to pad his résumé (currently at 387 home runs and a .307 average). He’ll miss his share of games (an average of 44 the past three seasons) but still crush the ball when he’s in the lineup.

Mathematician Foresees Romps For Major League Baseball’s American League In 2008

Exothermic reactions abound!  Bruce Bukiet is back and whatever than ever!

NJIT’s indefatigable math professor Bruce Bukiet is once again opining on outcomes for this season’s Major League Baseball teams. His picks are based on a mathematical model he developed in 2000. His goal is two-fold.

“I use my mathematical model to determine whether it is worthwhile to wager on games during the baseball season,” he said. “But I also use my system to combat math illiteracy. Baseball can be the world’s best math lesson.”

Bukiet, a professor whose mantra is “A day without math is like a day without sunshine,” has received countless teaching honors from NJIT. He admits that his picks are not always correct. “Hey, sometimes the players just don’t perform the way they should, every fan knows that,” he said.

..."The New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Detroit Tigers and Los Angeles Angels should make the playoffs in the American League (AL) in 2008 with the other teams lagging well behind,” he said.

“The National League (NL) should see much tighter races, with the New York Mets and Atlanta Braves winning the East and the wild card, respectively, while in the Central and West Divisions only the Pittsburgh Pirates and the San Francisco Giants have no real shot of making it to the post-season.” The Yankees and Red Sox should tie for baseball’s best record with 98 wins, with both teams making the post-season, one as AL East winner and the other as the AL wild card team. The next closest team in their division, the Toronto Blue Jays, should wind up 12 games back. In the AL Central Division, the Tigers should win, besting the Cleveland Indians by 9 games, while the Angels should win AL West by 14 games over the Seattle Mariners.

A Journey to Baseball’s Alternate Universe

Man, I’m ready… got my goatee grown and sash in my closet, ready to go ...

In a fit of scientific skepticism, we decided to calculate how unlikely Joltin’ Joe’s achievement really was. Using a comprehensive collection of baseball statistics from 1871 to 2005, we simulated the entire history of baseball 10,000 times in a computer. In essence, we programmed the computer to construct an enormous set of parallel baseball universes, all with the same players but subject to the vagaries of chance in each one.

...

More than half the time, or in 5,295 baseball universes, the record for the longest hitting streak exceeded 53 games. Two-thirds of the time, the best streak was between 50 and 64 games.

In other words, streaks of 56 games or longer are not at all an unusual occurrence. Forty-two percent of the simulated baseball histories have a streak of DiMaggio’s length or longer. You shouldn’t be too surprised that someone, at some time in the history of the game, accomplished what DiMaggio did.

Seattle Times: Mariners’ Ichiro wants to make the play, not look good doing it

Not only can he (allegedly) hit home runs at will, he can (really) dive for fly balls and crash into walls at will. Nate Silver and Prospectus pop up to postulate their perception of Ichiro’s perpetually pedestrian PECOTA—.304/.346/.437 for 2008.

“There’s not a lot of players with the same hitting approach as Ichiro in the post-World War II era,” Silver said in a phone interview. “You have to almost go back to Ty Cobb, literally. Maybe you can look at Tony Gwynn, but that’s one comparison out of many. It’s Cobb, Max Carey — guys you see in Cooperstown. We miss low on him almost every year.”

Silver’s assessment of Ichiro’s place in the baseball hierarchy is based on looking at his total game.

“I wouldn’t call him a superstar-level talent with the bat,” he said. “But when you consider defense and baserunning, plus the fact he plays 162 games — an underrated ability — the combined package makes him a very valuable player.

“With the bat alone, there’s probably 30 or 40 players in the majors with more production on a per-at-bat basis. But when everything is taken into account, he can legitimately be tabbed a superstar.”

Posnanski: Royals Bannister uses brain power and statistics to stay ahead of the hitters

I was just watching a nifty Mumyfied Hitch and the sponsor was the flick “21”.  And I swear it’s walk-on Brian Bannister that screams out...“I beat the system!”

Bannister has been talking baseball for a long time, and he suddenly realizes that it might all be coming out wrong. He realizes that someone might read his comments, his theories, his ideas and decide that he’s cocky or a know-it-all or someone who thinks he can outsmart the game of baseball.

“I hope people understand,” he says. “I know who I am. I know I’m just a guy with average ability. I’m trying to pitch in the major leagues, against the best hitters in the world. I’m pitching against guys who are like 7 feet tall and can throw 98 mph and have sliders that explode. I mean, seriously, look at me. What am I doing here?”

At that moment, Bannister is wearing his glasses, and he’s eating a sandwich, and he looks like he just got off work at the accounting office down the street.

“I just need an edge,” he says. “We all need an edge.”

Baseball Crank: 2008 NL East EWSL Report

The metaphysical certitude of the latest McLaughlin grouping…

New York Mets

Analysis: EWSL rates David Wright as the best player in baseball. 40 Win Shares seems optimistic (EWSL has Wright and Reyes worth 24 wins all by themselves), but I can’t disagree with the assessment that Wright is the player most likely to be the best in the game this season, even ahead of Pujols (whose elbow could go at any time), A-Rod, Miguel Cabrera or Grady Sizemore. Of course, the team’s extreme dependence on four players (those two, Beltran and Santana) just underlines the risks that the Mets face if one of them gets injured (or, in Beltran’s case, has his skills degraded by nagging injuries).

The Mets don’t have a powerhouse offense (unless Delgado finds one last Delgado year in his bat), but the starting rotation could be tremendous (EWSL is properly cautious about guys who have not repeated success or are coming off large amounts of time missed to injury, plus it recognizes the extent to which Mets starters benefit from good defense and a favorable park, but I still expect a good deal more than 19 Win Shares from Pedro, Maine and Perez combined) and the defense should hopefully recover from last year’s late-season defensive meltdown; the Mets should score enough to win a lot of games if they prevent as many runs as I expect. Of course, the bullpen hasn’t really done much to address the horrors of 2007 other than shipping Guillermo Mota out of town, but Wise and Sanchez could take some pressure off the rest of the staff (I’ve been a Wise fan for years), and I’m hopeful that Smith can be more effective.

Bugs & Cranks: Valentine: The Pinto still isn’t worth a damn!

Crank it up!...It seems that Valentine has a problem with David Pinto’s latest findings.

Sporting News baseball writer David Pinto seems to be floating the idea that the best starting rotation in the American League East belongs to — get ready for the punchline here — the Tampa Bay Rays.

Pinto, whose name has apparently affected the size of his brain, goes so far as to say Tampa Bay “stands a good chance of becoming the class of the AL East.”

I’ll take a short break now until you are done laughing. Go ahead, get a tissue, dry those tears. I will wait until you are ready to keep reading.

OK, done now? Let’s proceed.

Pinto, the brainiac, uses the PECOTA projections to come to his brilliant conclusion. I know you stat heads will kill me for this, but all you need to know about the usefulness of the PECOTA projections is that they allow somebody to come to the conclusion that Tampa Bay has better starting pitching than Boston, New York or even Toronto.

Dugout Central: Pagliarulo: Pitcher Injury Risk Assessment: Pavano and More

There was this kid on our block that would continually run into the street and no matter how many times his parents warned him about the dangers...he would dart. It was a sad day when the fire department showed up and hosed his brainagookins down the sewer.

Carl Pavano is at a very high risk for injury he has problems in pitching stage 2 (balance position over the rubber) and stage 4 (his tendency to leak his front side). Pavano has trouble repeating his arm-slot, therefore adding more strain to his shoulder and elbow joints.

And what does “leak his front side” mean?  Good question.  It’s used to describe when a pitcher opens up too soon. As a right-handed pitcher strides to home plate, his chest should be facing third and his front shoulder pointed toward home plate. The key to this process is effective balance over the rubber. The optimum position is reached when the pitcher is able to stay balanced over the pitching rubber long enough to allow his throwing arm to get in the proper position to throw. Pavano has horrible balance and tends to fall toward home plate too early. Because his body motion is ahead of his throwing arm too early, he has to speed up his arm in order to throw the pitch in the strike zone. This results in additional shoulder stress and hanging breaking balls and elevated fastballs.

Vegas Watch: Tim Kurkjian and Buster Olney Are Optimistic

and why slick Steve Phillips is an optical illusionist...Bezold!

Standard Deviation
Phillips: 10.7
Olney: 10.4
Kurkjian: 10.1
Stark: 9.7
Law: 9.0

For reference, PECOTA’s standard deviation is 8.4.

Phillips is so absurd. Here’s my favorite little stat from all of these: he has 14 teams winning 88 or more games. Think about that for a second- that’s one team away from half of baseball. Here is my prediction: Steve Phillips’ predictions will not fare well in this post at the end of the year.

Dewan: Who are this year’s possible breakout players based on spring training numbers?

And watch Bill James post possible breakout Nielsen numbers on 60 Minutes this Sunday night!

A few years ago we discovered that there is a way to use spring training stats to predict future performance. We took all spring training hitters and found that, as expected, about half of them do better than their career norms in the upcoming season, and about half of them do worse than their career norms. However, when we chose only those players doing exceptionally well in spring training, we found that about three-fourths of them performed better than their career average during the upcoming season.

Our definition of “exceptionally well” was slugging 100 points higher in spring training than their previous career slugging percentage. Here’s the list of players who are currently 200 points higher so far this spring training. These 24 players might be heading for above-average seasons.

Baseball Crank: 2008 NL West EWSL Report

McLaughlin: The Inner Rocky Mountain Flameout?

Subjective Adjustments: Troy Tulowitzki -5 (from 33 to 28). I’ve seen this repeatedly before (Khalil Greene and Bobby Crosby come to mind): EWSL over-projects the growth potential of a second-year shortstop whose rookie value consisted very heavily of his defense. Sorry, Tulowitzki just doesn’t have that kind of room to improve with the glove. 28 Win Shares is +4 from last season, when he was effectively the leader of a pennant-winning team; if he does that, Rockies fans will be thrilled. You will notice, however, that the subjective adjustment for Tulowitzki, small though it is, comes very close to tipping the microscopic balance of power between the Rockies and the Dodgers.

Analysis: My gut tells me that this team’s future may already be behind it - 2007 will be a tough act to follow. And the whole back end of the bullpen, so effective last season, is gone - Hawkins, Affeldt, Julio (not that any of those guys is likely to repeat 2007 anyway). That said, Helton, Fuentes and Herges are the only significant players past 30, and even in a rough division, Colorado should be a force to contend with for the next few years. But Helton was third in the majors in OBP last season; if he takes a nosedive, it will be a big gap in the offense. Moving Corpas to the closer role may end up being counterproductive to the extent that it takes him out of the setup role where he was so crucial last season - but there’s no money in being a setup man, and you have to keep your best players happy.

Like KC with Angel Berroa, the Rockies remain haunted by the Ghost of Shortstop Past in Clint Barmes, who may make the team as an older and wiser bench player.

Comcast: Salfino: A Look at the Phils by the Numbers

From the city that gave us Jim Murgie’s legendary 900 Series...Salfino checks out the hitting zone conditions in Philadelphia.

Chase Utley, 2B
James: .910 (26 homers, 10 steals); PECOTA: .900 (27, 10); ZiPS: .896 (26, 12).

You identify greatness by having such a high and narrow range of projection. I think he’ll steal at least 15 bags; last year’s total dipped only because of time missed due to injury. There is more concern about the dip in power as measured by percentage of fly balls that cleared the wall. His rate of 10.4 percent is now only average and down from about 13 or 14 percent – likely a random variance. Utley hit only eight bombs on the road, but still sported an .886 OPS in those games. The .332 overall average last year was largely a function of great luck on batted balls (not including homers). He converted 36 percent of them into hits last year, about 34 percent in 2006 and 31 percent in 2005. Average is 30 percent. Utley’s range represents a 40-point average swing. Expect him to trade batting average gains for more homers in 2008.

Ryan Howard, 1B
James: 1.068 (53 homers); PECOTA: .957 (44 bombs); ZiPS: 1.028 (50 jacks).

Howard’s homer range is connected directly to his ability to convert fly balls. 2006 likely was a career year because his rate soared to 38 percent. Last year’s 28 percent is still outstanding (almost three times average). I think PECOTA is significantly light here because Howard was the fifth most extreme fly ball hitter in the majors, improving his rate significantly from 2006. The next guy was third most fly ball extreme.

Pitching Efficiency: Pitches Toward Outs

There is a stereotype given to strikeout pitchers that says they use more pitches (which they do) and somehow aren’t as efficient as pitchers who pitch to contact. But, have you ever wondered which pitchers achieve their positive outcome (an out in play or a strikeout) in the most efficient manner? Example: A pitcher who struck out every batter he faced on three pitches and induced outs in play on the first pitch would be considered extremely efficient. Obviously that is an extreme example, but you see my point.