Given that, we were taken aback when Federal Express delivered a letter…
The revolution is over. Well, that one, anyway. The new ideas earned a place at the table on merit, by being good ideas that contribute to winning baseball games. While I’m no capital-S stathead, I was fortunate enough to work at Baseball Prospectus for a dozen years alongside some of the best in the field, from Clay Davenport and Gary Huckabay, through Rany Jazayerli and Keith Woolner, through Dan Fox and Nate Silver.
...All of this probably happens without Prospectus. The ideas were too important and there was too much money to be made for them not to become the way in which baseball teams were run. Nevertheless, Prospectus happened, and became the way in which many people within the industry were introduced to these ideas. Prospectus was, for a time, the center of the stathead world, publishing research that would set the discussion for years to come, that would change the way players were evaluated. Fielding Independent Pitching ERA shows up on the MLB Network. Felix Hernandez is honored with a Cy Young Award with 13 wins. Every team has a Peter Brand or three, collecting, parsing and presenting data, gaining credibility every time a defensive shift or pitch sequence or lineup change puts a W on the board.
Moneyball captures the tipping point in that revolution, when a team embraced something new because it had to, and won a lot of games because of it. I’m proud to have been a part of the history. The smoke has cleared and the guns have been laid down, and I’m excited to see what will come now that so much less energy is being spent drawing lines between two sides that both want the same thing: great baseball.
Personally, I’d rather watch The Town That Dreaded Sundown with Bill…but there is some choice biz here.
Bill James stands in the atrium at the Paramount Theatre in downtown Oakland, surveying the crush of people who have arrived for the world premiere of Moneyball. He looks pleased and a little overwhelmed. His wife, Susan, is on his arm. A Hollywood movie premiere is a first for both. “We usually get our movies from Redbox,” he says as he maneuvers his broad, 6-foot-4-inch frame by the bar to snag an apple-vodka martini. “Getting through crowds like this,” he jokes, “I always want to say, ‘Excuse me, I’m a minor celebrity.’”
...An audience member updates James on that day’s Boston Red Sox game. James has been a senior adviser to the Red Sox since 2002. The Sox, stumbling badly in September, lead the Baltimore Orioles 11-5 in the third inning. “That’s 92 percent of the runs [John] Lackey needs to win,” he says of Boston’s starting pitcher.
...James, for his part, gets four mentions on screen. At each, his wife clutches his hand or pats him on the knee. In the first, the camera pans over a page from an early Abstract as a voiceover tells the audience that “Bill James and math cut straight through” misperceptions about baseball. “Seeing those pages was the strangest part,” says James. In the second, an Oakland scout incredulously asks Beane whether he’s “buying into this Bill James ########.” (James: “That was my favorite.”)
...James watches the revelers stream into the after-party and says that the thing people need to understand is that he’s not as big a deal as Moneyball makes him out to be. “It’s somewhat exaggerated, but my contributions to the game have been a bit exaggerated for quite a while now.”
Not that he’s complaining. “I thought it was a terrific movie. Among all the baseball movies of the last generation, this was the baseballest.”
The A’s quietly stepped away from the mantras of “Moneyball.” By 2006, they used their top pick on high school pitcher Trevor Cahill, a refutation of the principles that dictated that premium picks should not be squandered on prep pitchers. Fuson returned to the organization before the 2010 season as a special adviser.
The draft strategy that Lewis touted simply did not work. The A’s elevated on-base ability to the level of the most coveted tool, and the organization found itself with one-dimensional players who could not find positions or excel in the majors, leaving the A’s short on talent and struggling at the big league level. For a small-market team, drafting and development is critical, and the draft had failed the Athletics.
So as “Moneyball,” the movie, hits theaters, Moneyball, the philosophy, collapses into rubble, and “Moneyball,” the book, begins to look like a literary antiquity.
Old hands will call this the wages of hubris and mutter about the Baseball Gods. In retrospect, it was preposterous to boast about the genius of a plan that had never been tested. Viewing the book now, eight years after publication, is like walking through a museum of the obsolete. Not only does Lewis gloat about the inevitable success of the A’s new approach, but he extols the virtues of derivatives and Wall Street brilliance. That does not carry the same luster in 2011.
Please Pardon Our Noise, It Is the Sound of Freedom!
I started this Mariners Blog last season as a way to express and share my love for the game of Baseball. Sadly the Mariners have had two terrible seasons despite employing sabermetrics types in the front office,which has made this team tough to follow but my passion for the game seems to drive me on. I guess there is no known advanced metrics formula to measure committment to this game but I suppose I have a high WAR in that area and I have a feeling I will out sit a lot of the Stat-Geeks who seem so cold and unattached to the beauty of this game.
I realize that most of the attention in the Mariners Blogosphere goes to the more established Blogs like USS Mariner, Lookout Landing and Sojo Mojo. And I even read these guys, but my perspective is more old-school in case you haven’t noticed. Perhaps I am part of a dying breed of Baseball Fans like Jason Whitlock from Fox who are trying to hold on to a more colorful and fun era of baseball where everything was not reduced to mathematical calculations. Well so be it, but I am too old to change now and I am not going anywhere for awhile so if any of you Stat-Geeks happen to be offended by my post or the one by Whitlock you may need to go read one of the Blogs that delights in always proving how superior they are with their new calculations and formulas. I love this game too much to reduce it to a mere science.
We can’t find socks that shape to our feet, we’re sick of it. SICK OF IT!
The Baseball Geeks Become Insufferable
...“I’m O.K. until someone starts explaining to me why Bobby Abreu is better than Roberto Clemente,” says the longtime broadcaster and MLB Network host Bob Costas, an early Bill James disciple. “Then I’ve had it.”
Former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent hates speaking out against statistical analysis because it makes him sound like a Luddite, which he swears he isn’t, but he says numbers are often taken out of context.
“I remember sitting at Joe DiMaggio’s funeral and listening to [former Yankee teammate and American League president] Dr. Bobby Brown explain how there were no statistics kept on how many times Joe had stretched a single into a double in the eighth inning or later and then come around to score the winning run, or made a spectacular catch or throw to save a game.
“He said he saw those things and rated Joe at the top because of it. The only numbers he cared about were how many pennants and championships the Yankees won when Joe was in center field. It was brilliant because Bobby was a man of science, a cardiologist who had played with Joe and he was arguing that you can only take the numbers so far.”
Gee, I might have to find ESPN on my remote again.
The regular anchor started talking about the National League Cy Young race and said that a baseball expert was going to break down the race and the favorites. Then this “expert” came on and said that no matter what, a Philadelphia Phillies pitcher – either Cliff Lee or Roy Halladay – is most deserving of the Cy Young award. ESPN then flashed Lee, Halladay and Kershaw on the screen. Kershaw has more wins than Halladay or Lee. Kershaw has fewer losses than either pitcher. Kershaw has a lower ERA than either pitcher (are you sensing a theme here?). Kershaw has more strikeouts than either pitcher.
But hold on, despite this dominance, one of the Phillies deserves the Cy Young more than Kershaw? I thought ESPN had a drug-testing program. Maybe that’s only for the athletes the network covers.
This baseball bozo went on to explain his stance about Kershaw not deserving the Cy Young by throwing out IPBB, IPXYZ and some other alphabetical garbage that actually showed Halladay and Lee ahead of Kershaw on an “official” chart.
If you take a homely girl and ask enough guys, you can also find someone who thinks she’s pretty enough to rank on some kind of list. You mean to tell me that we’re supposed to throw out wins, losses, ERA and strikeouts and delve into inane stats that only Billy Beane would appreciate in order to determine the best Cy Young candidate?
James Jamerson…Shake him, wake him (when it’s over)!
With the Reds idle today, Stubbs essentially will have two days off before play resumes Friday in Pittsburgh. He was in the original lineup Wednesday, then Baker thought better of it.
...“Obviously I’ve been in a pretty big funk lately,” Stubbs said. “This gives me a chance to kind of regroup.”
Yes, the strikeouts bother Stubbs.
“That’s a big part of it,” he said. “At the same time, it’s not like I’ve been striking out a couple times and getting a few hits mixed in there lately. I think that just kind of adds to some of the anguish. It’s definitely something that’s not any fun.”
Stubbs has 38 steals and 92 runs, and he is trying to become only the fifth Red since 1900 with 40 steals and 100 runs in one year. However, Stubbs has hit just .179, with 22 strikeouts in 56 at-bats in September.
“You see the look on people’s faces sometimes,” Baker said. “I know he’s disappointed and hurting.”
Da, dun…dun, dun, dun, dun. You walk into the post-movie party room. And you go watch the numbers geek
The movie did not suck, not at all; that’s the wrong word, and that’s a story for tomorrow. The story for today is how we even got here. It is a story about a man who is not really in the movie. No actor plays him. He’s mentioned in the movie here and there, but only for a few seconds. Still, without him, there is no Moneyball. There is no sabermetrics, at least not under that name. Certainly people would still be looking for objective knowledge in baseball — people were looking long before Bill James and they will be looking long after.
But without the life’s work of Bill James, they sure as heck would not have made a movie out of it.
* * *
What would a formula about Bill James’ career look like? I’ve thought quite a lot about this and finally came up with one:
(Cu * D) / (CoW) = Bill James.
What does that mean? Well, first: What do you think it could mean? See, Bill James believes that baseball statistics and baseball formulas should tell stories on their own. Sometimes he will be at a ballgame, and they will flash some pitiful statistic up there, something like “John Johnson has hit in six of his last nine games,” or, “Lefties hit .268 off Will Wilson in July.” And it will drive him mad. Who cares? Tells you nothing. Fills the imagination with blackness.
A freebie from Prospectus: a study on catchers and ranking them by their pitch-framing and ump-gulling ability, replete with animated GIFs and heat maps.
To calculate the catcher performance, I first established a baseline for each pitcher over the period 2007-2011. I used the strike zone definition described here and counted the number of extra strikes and subtracted the number of extra balls tallied by each pitcher. I also applied a small correction to the pitch location data as described here. I divided the net number of extra strikes by the total number of called pitches for that pitcher to arrive at an expected net extra strike rate for each pitcher. (The term “extra strikes” will be used in this article to refer to the net of extra strikes minus extra balls.)
Next, I applied the same procedure for each pitcher-catcher pair and subtracted the pitcher baseline from the result. Then, I summed the results by catcher. I also calculated an approximate run value for the extra strikes saved or lost by each catcher using Dan Turkenkopf’s finding that switching the call from a ball to a strike on a close pitch was worth about 0.13 runs on average.
Here is how catchers have done over the past five seasons, according to this method, at saving runs for their team by getting extra strike calls at the edge of the zone: ...
During the top of the third inning of the Mets’ series-opener in St. Louis last night, Sandy Alderson joined Gary Cohen and Ron Darling in the SNY booth to talk about the organization’s prospects, offseason plans, and potential changes to Citi Field.
GC: Let’s parlay that question about team speed into the next question about the configuration of the ballpark. Do you see it changing appreciably next year?
SA: How do those relate, Gary? [laughter]
We’re certainly talking about it, and I think it’s conceivable that, yes, we will see some changes at Citi Field, but no final decisions have been made. We’re still looking at different possibilities. I think if we do something, it’s not likely to be subtle. I think it’s probably a decision that we’ll make sometime in October, as well. There’s no reason not to.
We’ve looked at a lot of possibilities, we’ve done at lot of analysis, none of which is all that precise. We haven’t done wind analyses, but those are a complete crapshoot. We’ve tried to do as much analysis as we possibly can, and I think we’ll have some recommendation in October.
Now seriously, shouldn’t Alex win a Gold Glove by a country mile here?
Let’s see, why not start with those 20 assists, which lead all major league outfielders?
Or the fact that Alex has committed only three errors and has a fielding percentage of .991?
How about all the diving catches, the wall-scrapers, the leaps for balls headed into the left-center gap?
The fact is that Alex Gordon has had a magnificent season – from Opening Day through the twilight of September – and there’s no way managers and coaches throughout the league can ignore it.
Try this: Name another contender for the Gold Glove in left field.
OH…WADDA PLAY BY GARDNER! (re-seals Sona Hot Mustard packet for later use)
That was DePodesta when he took over the Dodgers in February 2004, a 31-year-old prodigy occupying a seat once held by Branch Rickey and Al Campanis. That light made him blink, and he wasn’t the only one.
He clearly wasn’t ready for the job, which lasted only two years before he was fired for essentially tearing the place apart. But I clearly wasn’t ready for him, and never really gave him time to implement the baseball sabermetrics that I have since come to accept and understand.
“The Dodgers have a new face, and it is dabbed in Clearasil,” I wrote when he was hired. “The Dodgers have a new voice, and it speaks in megabytes.”
Yeah, I never really gave him much of a chance, I saw him as some robot enemy brought here to destroy our blue heaven. Watching him in the movie reminded me that he was, instead, nothing more sinister than a numbers cruncher who just couldn’t equate with people.
...To completely understand that sentiment, we’ll just have to wait for the movie about Ned Colletti.
Unfortunato, Jerry Colonna is dead. Farewell, Gates.
HA! He should have pitched during the .303 1930 National League seasohhhhh…
“I couldn’t care less how many home runs I give up in a season,” Arroyo said. “Having a five ERA (5.34) is going to bother me 30 times more than how those runs scored. If I gave up 100 homers this year and they were all solo shots and my ERA was 2.7, I’d be completely content.”
Arroyo is 8-12 with the aforementioned 5.34 ERA, his worst year since joining the Reds in 2006. Arroyo last season was 17-10 with a 3.88 ERA, setting a career high for wins.
Arroyo knows he is one of the main reasons the Reds failed to repeat as National League Central champions.
“This season was probably the first one in seven or eight years where I’m walking away from the game not satisfied with what I’ve done,” Arroyo said.
...Reds manager Dusty Baker said Arroyo will not be shut down, no matter how many homers he allows.
“You’re getting paid handsomely to work, not to not work,” Baker said.
The Achievement of RA Dickey: A Comprehensive Selection of His Knucklers.
But would it surprise you to know he’s been the second-most valuable pitcher of any who signed last winter, regardless of salary?
Dickey’s been worth 4.6 wins above replacement (WAR) in 2011, good for 16th in all of baseball among starting pitchers. Those pitchers ahead of him: Justin Verlander, Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee (the only signing of the offseason with more value than Dickey in 2011, but who will make more in 2011 than Dickey will make over the life of his contract, even if the Mets pick up the 2013 option), Jered Weaver, CC Sabathia, Clayton Kershaw, Josh Beckett, Ricky Romero, James Shields, Ian Kennedy, Cole Hamels, Felix Hernandez, Doug Fister, Jon Lester and C.J. Wilson. That’s pretty good company. And pitchers Dickey bested include Tim Lincecum, David Price, Dan Haren, Matt Cain… and everyone else not on the first list. Roy Oswalt. Zach Greinke. Tim Hudson. Shrimp gumbo, shrimp scampi…
But to reiterate, among pitchers available last winter, only Lee finished ahead of Dickey. Consider that Carl Pavano made $8 million this year (and is signed for $8.5 million next year) for 1.5 WAR, a third of Dickey’s value. Jon Garland made more than twice what Dickey made in 2011-$5 million- and finished with a -0.1 WAR. Javier Vazquez made three times what Dickey made ($7 million), and more in 2011 than Dickey will make in 2011 and 2012 combined. His 1.7 WAR was about a third of Dickey’s as well.
Szymborski: The genesis of it was there’s a [person] who contributes to Baseball Think Factory named Chris Dial, and in the late ’90s, they were talking about how someone could make a projection system that’s very basic and get most of the way there, in a way kind of a primordial version of Marcel which is a tabulator.
Before 2002, I was thinking maybe I should try my hand at a projection system. At that time, Voros McCracken’s FIPS research was fairly new, so I wanted to [align my idea.] That’s why I made it rhyme with FIPS, and the Z stands for Szymborski, the second letter of my name. I mean, it’s just a little side thing that started. Then I decided to do hitter projections, because it seemed kind of stupid to do because there were not hitter projections. And then over time, as computers got faster, I could do more things. Over time, it became a pretty complex system… I’m pretty happy with how it’s worked out.
Do you think you have another ZiPS idea in you or do you think that’s going to be your big thing?
Szymborski: I dunno. I always kind of think of myself more as a writer than a statistics developer, but I have more ideas how to use it. I continually refine my aging models and long-term projections and the different things I can do with it. I certainly hope there are other ideas in me, but I don’t have those ideas yet. Hopefully they will develop over the next few years.
Or as Cowboy Jeff Brantley said the other day…“The reason that Braun fella is having such a big season is because of that big fella hitting behind him…and that’s it”...or something.
You’ve heard it a million times by now: Hunter Pence has given Ryan Howard some much-needed protection in the lineup, that’s why the slugger has posted a .955 OPS in September despite chronic foot problems. The concept of lineup protection has been studied rather extensively and none of the studies have shown “protection” to exist in any meaningful fashion. In fact, Baseball Between the Numbers (written by the Baseball Prospectus staff) did the most extensive study I’ve seen yet, concluding, “There’s no evidence that having a superior batter behind another batter provides the initial batter with better pitches to hit; if it does, those batters see no improvement in performance as a result.”
...Before Pence, Howard hit 20 home runs in 390 at-bats (one HR for every 20 AB) while he has hit 13 home runs in 149 at-bats after Pence joined the team (one HR for every 11 AB). On a per-fly ball basis, the rates are 22 percent and 38 percent, respectively. Howard’s overall career HR/FB rate is 29 percent, roughly halfway between the two totals, so it is reasonable to say Howard may have been a bit unlucky before Pence and a bit lucky after Pence. Additionally, it goes without saying that we are dealing with small samples. If Howard had 12 HR instead of 13, his HR/FB drops by a whopping three percent.
...All told, there is no reason to conclude that Pence has provided protection to Howard in the lineup. Howard’s numbers are slightly better as a result of small sample variance, the improvement of his lineup, and visiting ballpark “friendliness”.
With pride in our past and confidence in our baseball future, we hereby establish…that you have to scroll down for this.
I noticed over the span of the last five years that discourse about “Sabermetrics” in America almost perfectly mimics recent discourse about “Communism” in America. Due to particular ideological feelings about baseball, in which some “human element” is always upheld and tons of people still maintain “there are things that happen on a baseball diamond that cannot be quantified,” the “Sabermetrics” movement is boiled down to a couple of brief summary points that are not necessarily agreed to by any of the diverse points of view within that movement. The mistake is thinking that there is one “Sabermetrics.” There’s no more one “Sabermetrics” than there is one measure of what happens on the field or one baseball history (which is why “Sabermetrics” is more or less the search for objective and subjective truth in baseball). The same goes for Communism, as a particular aspect of America’s liberal political ideology seized upon the gains over their rival ideology in the last 20 years to completely summarize and dismiss the rival ideology as one concise, easily summarized movement with a particular set of views. Of course, there’s no more one “Communism” than there is one instantiation of one Communist Party or one agreed upon set of political principles among Communist thinkers.
The simple point is, “Sabermetrics” is no more a cohesive movement in the field of baseball than “Communism” is a cohesive movement in the field of politics. The result of classifying either as an easily summarized, concise viewpoint or cohesive movement is that rich, vastly differing historical outlooks and historical details are completely missed, glossed over by the urge to summarize and offer a compact version of the “movements.” I’m going to go so far as to suggest that these types of imprecise compartmentalizations harm our overall ability to search for knowledge as a society, and that we will not be able to recognize our own shortcomings as thoroughly if we cannot embrace critical investigation over general summarization (yes, I draw that from a development in baseball history and a development in politics).
Being fair to Guillen, his move was done “by the book” – you know, that imaginary baseball Bible which dictates that you set up a possible double play AND make a young left-handed hitter produce against Thornton.
Of course we know how it all turned out – Hosmer sent an 0-1 pitch screaming over the head of left-fielder Juan Pierre for a game-winning double.
Anyone who has watched the Royals this season might have predicted that outcome, in part because it was Hosmer’s 12th game-winning RBI.
He’s one of those guys who somehow can raise his game in clutch situations.
“You don’t learn that,” manager Ned Yost said. “You’re born with it.”
Providing he stays within walking distance of Skillman Wok of Arlington. Yes.
Talk about a guy flying under the radar: Ian Kinsler is about to become just the ninth second baseman to hit 30 home runs twice in his career. He’s second in the American League in runs scored. He plays terrific defense, has drawn 82 walks and is 25 for 27 stealing bases.
...Now, is Kinsler really having a better season than Cano? Even though Cano is hitting more than 50 points higher, Kinsler’s ability to draw walks brings him even in the all-important on-base percentage. Kinsler rates a 13-run advantage in the field according to UZR (seven runs better in Defensive Runs Saved). According to FanGraphs, Kinsler picks up another three-run advantage on the basepaths—plus-5 runs to Cano’s plus-2. (Kinsler rates as one of the baserunners in the majors.) Cano has created 104 runs, Kinsler 101 (as the Rangers’ leadoff hitter, Kinsler has received 46 more plate appearances than Cano, so he gets a boost from more “playing time.”)
While the advanced metrics factor in ballpark effects, I’m still bothered by this line from Kinsler:
The most daring escapade ever conceived…the Bob Ryan express has just pulled in!
Justin Verlander will win the American League Cy Young Award. If there is any justice, the vote will be unanimous.
But many people, and not just Tigers boosters, want more. They want the whole enchilada. They want Justin Verlander to become the first starting pitcher to win an MVP since Roger Clemens a quarter-century ago.
I hate this. It’s a conversation we should not be having. Pitchers should be content with the Cy Young. And I’ll take it a step further. Relievers should not be eligible for the Cy Young. They should be competing for what I would call the Hoyt Wilhelm Award, a special prize for the best reliever of the year. This, by the way, would be a totally subjective award that would not be based simply on someone’s save total.
...We are now hearing about how, well, Verlander pitches to X batters a game, which is the equivalent of a batter having X number of plate appearances over the course of the season.
Hey, nice try, but just please go away. Pitchers pitch to batters; that’s what they do. It doesn’t change the fact that their essential nature is not that of an everyday player, and there remains no valid way to evaluate properly their respective contributions, so why even try?
Amity Hall? Wuh…you guys too good for John’s Pizza? (chomp…I’ll probably be heading over…chomp)
On Sunday, September 25th, we’ll blow the horn for FanGraphs East and announce happy hour drinks and our own private space for our particular brand of nerdery. Come to Amity Hall any time after one PM eastern, and we’ll be hanging out, talking baseball and enjoying happy hour prices. And there will be a ton of togetherness because really how much can you hate a Mets fan right now. Oh! Also, come downstairs. We’ve got the downstairs bar.
And this is who will be hanging out:
David Appelman, FanGraphs Dark Overlord, so dark
Mike Podhorzer, Serious about (fantasy) baseball, RotoGraphs
Eno Sarris, Fan of Graphs, Fan, Not and Roto
Amanda Rykoff, espnW contributor, beer lover and Yankees fan
James Kannengeiser, professional curmudgeon and Amazin Avenue writer
Chris McShane, Amazin Avenue backbone, ready to dance
Eric Simon, Amazin Avenue head honcho guy, generally nice dude
Mike Axisa, aka “Mike from RAB, FanGraphs & Trade Rumors,” you know, just Mike
Joe Pawlikowski, music lover, FanGraphs escapee and River Avenue Blueser
Brad Pitt, the star of the upcoming movie Moneyball, doffs an Oakland A’s hat and graces the cover of this week’s September 26, 2011, issue of Sports Illustrated, on newsstands Wednesday. Pitt joins an exclusive group of non-athletes and non-coaches to be so honored — a list that includes Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale, Stephen Colbert, Bob Hope, Ed Sullivan, Steve McQueen and Arnold Schwarzenegger in addition to former presidents John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan (appearances on the 11/26/84 and 2/16/87 covers) and Bill Clinton.
...Pitt’s background (or lack thereof) in baseball: “It’s shameful how little I know about baseball…. I’m amazed they let me do this movie…. Baseball and I didn’t get along that well. I wrestled one year [in high school]. I dove one year. Everything but baseball.”
...Michael Lewis, on not getting too involved with the film adaptation of his book: “Nobody really gives a s??? what I think. And I don’t either! … They shouldn’t care. I’m glad they don’t care. It suggests a certain level of initiative on their part. Having said all that, I’d say they got my book on the screen about as well as you can get my book on the screen.”
Or as Chris Welsh said during the Reds broadcast yesterday…“That’s just more Bill James hogwash…there’s no way Ben Zobrist is better than Brandon Phillips!”
So here we are. Friday, the movie drops its snapshot of perhaps the greatest single achievement of our beloved Athletics franchise. World Series come and go; the hotter team usually can beat the better team and there’s a champion every season unless it’s 1994 and you’re Bud Selig. So thank your lucky stars you aren’t him—or, despite his best efforts, the Montreal Expos—and instead revel in the idea that what happened in late August and early September of 2002 will in all likelihood never happen again. I say The Streak is the A’s single greatest accomplishment as a franchise chiefly due to its irreproducibility… too much can go wrong night to night for a team to be able to reel off 20 wins in a row in almost any sport. I’d not be at all surprised if no one does it again, ever. The only downside of it I can see is that the ‘02 club peaked too soon and lost steam before the overarching task of winning it all was achieved.
Releasing the Barry Bonds: Empowering Your Children to Think for Themselves!
My son and I love both love the sport of baseball but unfortunately we don’t love it in the same way.
And for me that’s a cause for real grief.
...The problem is my son understands the game, but not its soul. And this is clearly manifested in his approach to statistics.
To my mind, if you want to know if a hitter is any good there are only three stats that really matter: batting average, home runs and runs batted in. For a pitcher, it’s wins and losses, earned run average and strike outs. That’s the way it’s been since the days of Abner Doubleday.
But my son only talks about statistics you need a PhD in physics to understand. We will be watching a game and I will say something like “John Jones is a great hitter; he has a batting average of .290.”
In response my son will roll his eyes and say, “His ‘isolated power’ stats are weak, plus his ‘super linear weights’ and ‘wins above replacement’ numbers are a joke.”
...The sad fact is, for my son baseball isn’t a grand romantic narrative, it’s a cold, sterile mathematical equation.
In short, we love the same sport, but not the same game.
“The first thing — almost the only thing I heard when I walked into spring training were questions about defense. It never really stopped,” Theriot said. “You make an error in a spring game and then you hear it even louder. At some point, I stopped thinking about making a great play and became more concerned about making a mistake. That’s not how I play. I’ve never played timid — ever. If I messed up, I’d think about making the next play.”
Theriot has moved from shortstop to second base in each of the last two seasons. That does not mean he is prepared to consider himself a right-side defender.
“I don’t think at this point in my career I see myself as a second baseman,” he said. “That said, I have no problem going to play second base. It doesn’t bother me at all.”
The Cardinals led the division until July 27, four days before the Furcal acquisition. Speaking only about his own role, Theriot noted, “When I was playing shortstop we were in first place. I know that. It is what it is.”
The Extra 2%: First to Worst (90.3% and falling…..)
It could end with one of the worst collapses in baseball history. Or a World Series parade. But however the rest of their season plays out, one thing seems achingly clear: the Red Sox are headed for a hell of an offseason.
...Several other major question marks loom this off-season, including Jacoby Ellsbury’s contract (he’s going year-to-year in arbitration right now, but the Sox will obviously explore signing the man who might be this year’s MVP); right field (can Josh Reddick hit enough to handle a position that demands a big bat?); shortstop (pick up Scutaro’s option, trust Jed Lowrie to stay healthy for longer than 10 minutes, do something crizazlebeans like sign Jose Reyes?!?!); and left field (they’ll need to replace that waiver-wire claim they have starting right now … what’s that? That’s Carl Crawford, and he’s got six years and $122 million left on his contract? Oh dear).
Maybe you resist any major moves, with the possibility of a second wild card increasing the margin for error, and plenty of talent still on board. But the Rays aren’t going away, the Jays could be dangerous if they make a free-agent splash, and the Yankees are the Yankees. The smart money’s on at least one big move coming down the pike for 2012.
Once we get past this little detour—which is much smaller than I’m sure I’ve made it out to be—“The Stat Story” actually levels off pretty well, attempting to shed a positive light on statistics and telling the story of how statistics have impacted the game of baseball. In fact, after it was all said and done, our Finley/Brock/Lasorda spectacle became much more of an afterthought, almost included to say, “OK, there are still people who don’t agree with all this, but it’s here, it’s undeniable, and here is the impact it’s having on front offices, Hall of Fame and awards voting, and the way fans view the game”. All in all, despite my wariness after the first few minutes, the documentary wound up being fair.
In fact, one of the first such things I noticed and really appreciated was that many of the interviewees were prominent internet writers. Of course there’s excellent work being done behind closed doors in front offices, but much of the modern day sabermetric movement is taking place on the internet at places like Baseball Prospectus, The Hardball Times, Beyond the Boxscore, etc. I wasn’t sure if this would be acknowledged in the documentary, and while specific mention was scarce, many of their authorities came from our little corner of the internet: former BPers Jonah Keri and Joe Sheehan, SBNation’s Rob Neyer, The Baseball Analysts’ Rich Lederer, FanGraphs’ David Appelman, and Retrosheet’s David Smith.
...One of the biggest things that casual observers of statistics—and, it seems to me, the makers of this documentary—fail to understand is the distinction between statistics and sabermetrics (words which the documentary used fairly interchangeably). Sabermetrics is the search for truth, which isn’t limited to numbers. I’ve long been a supporter of using qualitative information and was both honored and thrilled to have had the opportunity to attend MLB’s Scout School a couple years back. Scouting is a part of sabermetrics. On the quantitative side of the coin, sabermetrics isn’t just about using numbers; it’s about analyzing which numbers are useful and how to properly use them.
Statistics, on the other hand, are composed exclusively of numbers and, in the improper context, can be misconstrued. In this documentary, it mentions how Earl Weaver used batter/pitcher matchup data to set his lineups, with one of the interviewees chiming in, “And it worked!” But batter/pitcher matchup data is essentially useless. Yes, it’s statistics, it’s numbers, and it’s quantifiable… but it’s not sabermetrics.
Law Abiding Citizen: How do you stop a blogger who is already behind Insider?
I can identify with Law because I see some what he is going through in me. I have grown since I started covering baseball in March of 2007. Before that I was just another fan who watched the game as a fan and listened to talk radio. By no means do I have the front office experience or analytical background of Keith Law, but I think I know baseball pretty well and can hold my own with the big boys, sometimes.That’s not my point. The point is interacting with people from all different backgrounds, experiences, and writing styles has made me well-rounded. It’s made me a better writer, radio host, and analyst of the game. The best part is how the learning process is fluid. I hope to be better at this in 2012 than I am in 2011. I have made mistakes in the past, but does that mean I can’t learn and grow from it? Should I be punished forever due to something I said in 2009? Should Keith Law be punished because of what he thought at age 29 as a new baseball executive?
Law basically did his mea culpa with the scouting community on the ESPN podcast. Assuming it’s a sincere take – and I have no reason not to believe that is isn’t- he should be applauded. I don’t know the guy personally, but by reviewing his evolution it appears he is someone that many in this community- writers, scouts, executives, and coaches- could learn from; both traditional and advanced thinkers alike. I know I just did.
Of course not. Here’s my point: There’s a lot of talk about WAR going on. There’s a lot of talk about the pressure of being in contention. There’s a lot of talk about the MVP award and what it means. There’s a lot of talk about advanced stats and old stats and how people should watch and enjoy baseball. The Granderson for MVP supporters point out he’s having a great year (and he is), that he leads the league in runs scored AND RBIs, that he has been the Yankees most consistent force, that he plays an all-around game, that his hits have mattered more and that. The opposition party might say that Jose Bautista is having a better year or that Justin Verlander has been a force of nature or point to WAR or whatever.
But here’s the thing—as far as I know NOBODY has brought up Curtis Granderson’s relatively low batting average until now. Nobody cares.
And that’s a big win, I think. I’m going out to Oakland to see the movie “Moneyball,” and I think that it was really in that book that many baseball fans first came to realize the limitations of batting average. Now, the movie comes out and … hey, we just might beat batting average yet.
