Welcome to the Baseball Quote Blog

Unlike a lot of the researchers, analysts and fans who frequent this site I have little interest in what impact a pitcher has on a batted ball that is in play. While I recognize these researchers and analysts contributions are valuable in understanding the games past, present and future it isn’t something that I personally want to spend my time researching. I don’t have the training or the skills necessary to make any kind of useful contribution in terms of numbers crunching. Instead I spend my research time searching through archives for lost anecdotes, forgotten quotes and misremembered insights, which can then be used when forming opinions and making judgments about players and events of the past.

Baseball is a game rich in quotes and richer in quotable people from Babe Ruth to Rogers Hornsby to George Brett. Heck let me share some of one of my favorites* from each of them just so my first entry isn’t quote less:

“I have only one superstition. I make sure I touch all the bases when I hit a homerun.” -BR

“Guys who can field you can shake out of any old tree. Find me guys who can hit.” - RH

“If a…

The Pompous Windbag

Baseball Prospectus Unfiltered had this posted today:

Open Letter
by Will Carroll

Dear White Sox,

We’re sorry that we were right.  Better luck battling through next year.

Your pal,

PECOTA

P.S. Phil Nevin says hi.

I’m completely enraged due to this complete and utter insult to the intelligence of anyone who happened to question the accuracy of Pecota on specific prediction.  Can PWB give an open letter to Twins fans for Pecota’s whiff on that projection? 

I sent this to BP’s complaint department:
Subject: Unprofessional Windbag
This is the most unprofessional thing I have ever seen.  Ironic that it comes from a guy whose big claim to fame is being wrong about the Rose story on national TV.  I’m not even a WhiteSox fan and find it ridiculously pompous and short sited. 

I’m seriously considering not renewing. 

Playing around with the Boston Batting Order

Since Manny’s return earlier this week Tito has busted out some new lineups.  Perhaps one of you who actually reads the Boston papers can provide some color, but the general theme is to lump the best hitters at the top. 

Dustin
Manny
Papi
Lowell
Drew
Youk or Tek
Tek or Chief
Chief or Hinske I assume it will be Crisp
Lugo

It seems like a “sabrmetric lineup”, at least as much as a lineup can be sabrmetric.  My own gut tells me that Lowell should be hitting 3rd, as his profile is a better fit (high ISO, low onbase) is a better fit for the slot relative to David, while Papi’s plus OBP is better off in the forth slot.  Though again with the drop off between 4 and 5 being so steep it’s not all that clear.

Luckily for us the great baseballmusings.com has a great lineup analysis tool on line which can be found here: Batting order

The only inputs you need for the tool is a player’s On-Base Percentage and Slugging Percentage.  I estimated those statistics for the players in question, Using a method I used previously on the BBQB.  Below are the resulting estimates:

When you input…

Rays: Boras on Pena

“I think they got more than a $10-million benefit this year by getting a player who had probably a $15-million season for about $1.2-million,”

“And I’m sure their fans are waiting to see that, too, knowing also that Tampa Bay is one of the most successful economic franchises in the sense that their payroll is so low (about $25-million) and they’re generating probably $140-million worth of gross revenues. When you count revenue sharing, the national TV package and licensing you’re almost talking about $80-million before they even sell a ticket.”

Full article on my favorite Rays Blog: DRays Bay

Scott Boras shares his opinion on what Carlos Pena’s breakthrough season should be worth to the Rays.  To me it looks like Pena has been roughly a $15mm player this year, of course what is really important is what will he be worth next year?  Since he isn’t a free agent, market rates need not apply.  One way I do a quick projection on a player using EQA is to find a weighted average:

So the real question is what is a .298 EQA 1b worth in arbitration with 4+ years of service time?  Well in coming into the season ‘07 Teixeira…

Poor Man’s Super Linear Weights (PM-SLWTS)

Introduction

A few years back Mitchel Lichtman one of the co-authors of “The Book” first published a metric of his design called Super Linear Weights (SLTWs).  The metric used play by play data purchased from Stats Inc. to calculate the value of a player’s batting, defensive, and base running contributions to a team.  Since then, Mitchel went to work for a ball club and was no longer able to publish SLWTS, which left us without a really good measure of a player’s contribution.  The stats that are available are flawed and not all encompassing.  Win Shares designed by Bill James and available at the Hardball Times website uses a useless defensive system, and no base running system.  VORP and WARP published by Baseball Prospectus are each flawed in different ways – VORP uses a ridiculous fictional baseline, has no base running system and only uses a positional adjustment for defense.  WARP, also uses a ridiculous fictional baseline, has no base running system and uses a useless defensive system. 

Luckily for us, with the advent of the Bill James Baseball Handbook, and various other sources we have the components available to us to calculate a Poor Man’s Super Linear Weights (PM-SLWTs).  I…

The Hardball Times Annual 2007

The Hardball Times will be releasing their third off-season baseball annual.  The first, which covered the 2005 season left a lot to be desired - however, the 06 version was the best annual released last year, and I buy all of them.  It had informative stats, solid analysis and wonderful essays. It was chocked full of Sabrmetrics, with a minimal amount of back patting (well one author did more than a little, but that’s besides the point) and even less useless snark.  There were two essays specifically I wasn’t a fan of last year, but that is fantastic batting average if I’m only complaining about two.

While some might consider this post “spam” I think it would be a disservice to Primates if they weren’t aware of exactly how good the publication has become. 

2008 - SABR Convention in Cleveland

For those of you who were unable/unwilling to join us in South Alaska this year 2008 has been announced as a Cleveland event after 2007 in far west, also known as St Louis.

You’re all missing an awful good time.

Hey Sam M.  How about that NL…

Vic Power Stole home twice… in one game.

From the 1958 Baseball Guide:

Vic Power accomplished a geay never before performed in the American League when the Cleveland infielder stole home twice in a game.  August 14, 1958. Making the effort even more dramatic was the fact that the second theft, coming in the 10th inning, provided the winning run in the 10 to 9 victory over Detroit. Power’s first steal of home occurred in the eighth inning. Noticing pitcher Bill Fischer taking a slow, deliberate delivery windup, coach Eddie Stanky told Vic to go if he got a good jump, and he made it easily. The second time Power stole on his own. Two were out in the tenth inning with the bases loaded, scored tied 9-all and Rocky Colavito at bat.  Frank Lary was the Tigers’ pitcher. Colavito had all ready homered twice in the game.  After breaking for the plate, only to stop and turn back, on the first three pitches to Colavito, Power kept going on the forth delivery and slid safely under Catcher Charley Lau for the winning tally.  The only other players credited with stealing home twice in a game in the majors are Joe Tinker with the Chicago Cubs in 1910 and…

Warren Spahn Down the stretch in ‘56

Certainly timely based on this thread:

From the 1957, Baseball Guide -

“Factors behind Milwaukee’s September foldup included the decline of pitchers Bob Buhl and Lew Burdette and Sluggers Joe Adcock and Eddie Mathews.  Buhl won only two games after labor day, and Burdette one….

Spahn, who almost carried the Braves in the last futile weeks, reached the 20-victory mark for the seventh time and passed the 200 victory mark for his career.”

Despite the fact that he wasn’t pitching against the Dodgers, in Ebbets he certainly did more than his share down the stretch to keep the Braves in it.  By my count from August until the end of the season he made 13 starts, and was the winning pitcher in 9 of them. 

Power and Speed: A rare and valued combination!

I was thumbing through the August ‘83 issue of The Baseball Digest, when I stumbled over an article titled “Power and Speed: A rare and valued combination! It really wasn’t an exciting article, but it was all over the place.  It talked about the previous year’s world champion Cardinals team, and its speed.  It had a number of quote from Whitey Herzog, talking his theory of team building.  He talked about how he would love to have great hitters - “You don’t think I’d love to have an Andrew Dawson, Buddy Bell or George Brett?”.  It also had some quotes from Whitey that were ahead of his time “There are a lot of ingredients you can put together to win.  The most obvious and dominant thing you can have is the great relief pitcher.”

The article goes on to talk about building a team to your home park, as Herzog said if he managed the Red Sox he would be out looking for power hitters.  The article covered a lot ground, but I haven’t gotten to what I thought was interesting.  While now reading a mainstream article and seeing Bill James quotes and Bill James invented statistics isn’t that uncommon -…

Phone Survey: What baseball books do you return to most often

About 20 years ago, SABR started a new publication called The SABR Review of Books: A Forum of Baseball Literary Opinions, and was published in 1986.  I’m not sure how many of them in total were published, but I own the first five editions, though I’m still working my way through them.  Today I’ll be working from the Premiere Issue. 

The introduction is written by Paul Adomites, who was the editor of the publication.

“The SABR review is not particularly disciplined or formal.  There’s a lot of variety here: from heady opinion to well documented analysis, from academic style dissertations to casual appreciation.”

The mid 80’s in my opinion where the golden age of baseball books, and if you pick up this publication you might agree with me.  The Review contains 12 reviews, 4 of the books reviewed are in my opinion among the 10 best baseball books ever published.  The original Bill James Historical Abstract, Nine Innings by Dan Okrent, Dollar Sign on the Muscle by Kevin Kerrane, and The Arm Chair Book of Baseball edited by John Thorn.  If you don’t own all 4 of these, and your frequent this website your doing yourself a disservice. 

Besides book reviews…

MLB Players vote on the all-time greats

A few years ago I was able to pick up an obscure title called Players Choice on ebay. The dust jacket says that it was put together by a couple of SABR guys Eugene and Roger McCaffey, neither of which are still members according to the directory, and was published in 1987, with a celebrity forward no less. 

The premise of the book is simple and somewhat brilliant, it’s a survey of players, coaches and managers both living and active.  They mailed over 5,000 surveys, and received replied from 645 people.  The surveys asked all types of questions, all time all star teams, best curveball (some one tell Lederer that Bert was ranked third behind Koufax and Bridges), best throwing arm on a position player, best defensive team, best hit and run guy, best clutch hitter ect…

Anyway it really is a fascinating book, I figure I’ll dip into it now and then, because one it has some really interesting stuff in it, but also because well its pretty tough to find (Amazon has only 1 used copy). 

One of the sections in the book is Players’ Choice The Greatest Players of All Time some interesting names from the list: Ken…

Wee Willie Keeler, the most “useful” player of all time?

Sorry for the long delay.  The holidays killed me, too much travel and them home computer imploded. Also keep in mind this blog is a function of how much research i’m activly doing, while I would love to spend 10 hours a day 4 days a week in the “stacks”, life doesn’t always allow it.  With that said, back to regularly scheduled quotes.  This is a great one from the December 26th 1919, Boston Globe:

Joe Kelley is quoted by “Skipper” Sinnott in the New York Mail as saying that Willie Keeler was the greatest ball player he ever saw, and Tom McCarthy agreed with him.  My own recollection is that I heard Joe once say that Honus Wagner was the most useful ball player on his club; but it may be that we that we were making a comparison between Ty Cobb and Honus.  However if we accept the most useful player as the greatest, it lies in my mind between Wagner and Keeler, and there is no question that “Wee Willlie” was far more scientific and calculating. 

Now here is where it really starts to get interesting:

With one out and a man on third and but one run…

Eck - Gibson and the man in the stands

Today I received in the mail my copy of the 2006 Bound Edition of the Newberg Report.  After less than 15 minutes of perusing I stumbled onto page 3, where Newberg is discussing the Adrian Gonzalez.  At the start of the 3rd paragraph he starts to talk about Mel Didier, a Rangers special assignment scout who was working for the Dodgers in 88.  Well Newberg tells us this story that I had never heard before. 

“If you were to create a list of advance scout stories that have stood the test of time, the list could be as short as you want and it would include Didier’s heads-up to Kirk Gibson before Game One of the 1988 World Series, when he told the decrepit slugger that Denis Eckersley tended to throw a back-door slider whenever he went to a full count on a left-handed hitter. (Didier likes to point out that if you watch a tape of the game, you can see Gibson smile as stepped out of the box when the count went to 3-2)”

“Gehrig Supplants Pipp, Shanks has Ward’s place and Bengough Does the Catching.”

“Radical shift by Huggins”

“Gehrig Supplants Pipp, Shanks has Ward’s place and Benough Does the Catching.”

The headlines from June 3rd, 1925 New York Times, which was the first start of Lou Gehrig’s consecutive game streak.  It is actually the second game of the streak as it started the day before with an unsuccessful pinch hit appearance for Short Stop Ernie Johnson. 

“The most radical shakeup of the Yankee line-up in many years left only three regulars of last season in the batting order – Dugan, Ruth and Meusel. Gehrig made two singles and a double in his first three trips to the front”.

This was the Yankees starting lineup that day:

Pee Wee Wanninger
Joe Dugan
Earl Combs
Babe Ruth
Bob Meusel
Lou Gehrig
Howie Shanks
Benny Bengough
Urban Shocker

The most interesting part of the lineup is that the man I think of as the greatest leadoff hitter in Yankee history is a rookie, and hitting third and not leadoff.  He actually started the season batting third, as he hit in that slot in a number of exhibition games.  I don’t believe he actually moved to the leadoff spot until July 19th of his rookie season. 

More Quotes Regarding the sale of the “Demon Slugger”

To follow up on my last entry in regard to the sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees, I have dug up a bunch of quotes this time from the Boston side that were printed in the Boston Globe between October 1, and January 10.

October 24th 1919, Boston Globe – Writer Albert Woodlock:
“When asked if he has any trades in mind (Frazee) he replied that none were in the air, although there was not a player on the club of whom he would not dispose providing he received either his price or satisfactory exchange of players and that includes the champion home run hitter “Babe” Ruth.”

It looks like the trade talk around the hot stove started awful early in regard to the Sultan of Swat.

December 3rd, 1919, Boston Globe – No Author Cited
“Kid” McCoy, an ex pugilist, and Al St. John, a motion picture actor, today entered into an agreement by which McCoy will train Ruth for 30 days and if his report is favorable, it is said St John will finance campaign of the outfielder to obtain a match with Jack Dempsey, heavy weight champion

“I have always wanted to be a professional boxer” said…