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Wednesday, May 02, 2012
Dazz could let it whip. Regarding Triple Crowns in low-offense environments, I’m wondering whether it is easier for one batter to separate from the others in all three categories when overall offense is down, conversely, in high-offense eras, there are more potential competitors in each category. Or is it just coincendence/small sample size that the last two Triple Crowns came in 1966 and 1967?
... There were also several triple crowns about 1930-1933, a very high-scoring era, and I don’t see any reason to believe that the level of scoring offense predicts the likelihood of a triple crown… The number of players leading their own TEAM in home runs, RBI and batting average nose-dived about 1970, for reasons that I don’t really understand. So. ..if you don’t have players leading their own team in the triple crown categories, obviously you’re not going to get players leading the league in all three.
So let’s say that by 2022 the strikeout rate is 9.0 strikeouts/game. What, exactly, would be wrong with that? How will this all of a sudden not make any of us like baseball anymore?
What’s wrong with it is that strikeouts are boring. Seriously. Strikeouts reduce the number of baserunner/fielder contests, which are a central part of the game’s appeal. It’s like saying “suppose that in the NBA the game became a 3-point shooting contest, with no more dribble/drive penetration. What’s wrong with that?” What’s wrong with it is that something exciting has been taken out of the game.
going back in time is there an argument to be made that Pujols would struggle in 2012?
No—and he won’t. By the end of the year he’ll be hitting .312 with 34 homers.
Thanks for the strikeout study. Since K rates vary over time and taking that into effect, who is the greatest pure strikeout pitcher of all time?
Dazzy Vance.
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1. SandyRiver Posted: May 02, 2012 at 09:53 AM (#4121505)...oh, and I'll take the under on Pujols finishing at .312 with 34 HRs. His season is 15% done and he ain't getting a do over on his first 101 PAs (.208/.255/.292 with 0 HRs) -- he may be Pujols of old from here on out starting today, but even if posts his career averages (and mind you, it's really been about 4 years since he's done that), he still comes up noticeably short of those numbers by the back of my napkin. I'm betting he finishes around .280/.350/.500 with 25-30 HRs.
That was my thinking, in part because if there are fewer runs to spread around, then the self-driven runs on homers should carry more heft in the RBI race.
What’s wrong with it is that strikeouts are boring. Seriously.
They are indeed, but the problem isn't that they can't be exciting in certain contexts, it's that there are just so goddam many of them, especially from players who have little or no real power. It's positively offensive to see someone who averages 8 home runs a year strike out time after time and never make an attempt to adjust his swing.
Yeah, I always thought the reason no one was able to do it in the sillyball era was simply cuz there were SO many great hitters competing against each other every season.
That said, in the last two decades, there have been 6 players who've led the league in all 3 categories at one time or another in their careers. Five are guys you'd likely guess right away - Bonds, Pujols, Manny, A-Rod, and as of last year, Miggy Cabrera. The other is the immortal Andres Galarraga, who milked Coors Field for all it was worth.
Bonds likely would have won the Triple Crown in both 2002 and 2004 if he wasn't walked 200 times a year.
Plus what everyone else said.
Coincidentally, the five-tool superstars of the 60s all got old about that time (e.g. Mays, F. Robinson, Aaron) and they weren't replaced by a new set of 5-toolers.
I love watching strikeouts, and find them much more exciting than a popup to the infield or a grounder to second.
Most fielding plays are routine and boring. But all strikeouts - except for strikeouts of pitchers, which are retarded, as are the people who enjoy watching pitchers hit - are exciting.
Not surprisingly, I'd love an NBA with only jumpers and 3-point shots. I find those exciting, and I find the dribble/drive penetrations to be completely boring, along with the people who enjoy them.
So, yes, more strikeouts.
NBA with only anything is boring. You have to have a mix.
That said, you're nutso, everyone knows the most boring basketball shot is a jumper.
I agree, except when the strikeouts are more attributable to hitter incompetence rather than pitcher awesomeness, which I think is the case being made by James and others in regards to them being boring.
Wait, you mean the same people who want baseball to return to the shittyball days of the 70's and 80's with a bunch of speedsters who can't hit for ####?
Maybe wait a few more weeks. Last year Pujols entered June with OPS .755 (albeit with 9 hr) then had 1.006 the rest of the year. He was at almost 1.200 for June when he had the wrist injury.
Seemed like he was pounding the ball in ST; odd that the regular season has been so different, given his experience. Perhaps he's gone into the "Big Papi wretched April syndrome."
Free throws, hands down. Games where each team shoots 40 free throws are just excruciating.
Yeah, but even .755 is an awful long way from .547...
Isn't this a bit of a strawman? Among the top 50 last year in K%, only 3 had single digit homers. Yes, there's some guys who fit your description, but not "so goddam many"
One more: The park effects in the 30's were more extreme. Check out Chuck Klein's home/road splits, or Gehrig 1934. In recent times, the best chance was when a top hitter -- Larry Walker -- landed in Colorado. Coors field pre-humidor was a Triple Crown waiting to happen. If Frank Thomas or Manny Ramirez had ended up there in about 1995 we'd have gotten a couple.
in all seriousness ... last year he turned into ALBERT after a pretty cr@ppy start and still finished under .300 and under 100 rbi. iirc, if he had got one more hit in his last game he probably would have done both. i think he was batting with RISP in the last game of the year and his BA was .299 and a fraction ...
its too much to make up, though i guess we should not assume he's going to be out for two weeks with an injury like last year, so i suppose it could be done. but he needs to start the comeback TODAY.
Yeah, I was always waiting for this to happen too. The flip side though is that Coors made it that much harder for any of the non Rockies sluggers to lead the NL in any of those categories, especially RBI. Starting from 1995, it was basically a 50/50 chance that someone hitting in the middle of the Rockies lineup was going to be the RBI champ every year for the next decade or so.
On triple crowns: Expansion obviously but that does leave the mystery of why players aren't leading their individual teams as often as possible since, if anything, they're competing against fewer hitters there now than they used to. #20 likely gets at part of it -- over the last 40 years or so, HRs and Ks have correlated highly -- or they probably always have but in the past there was so much onus on Ks nobody was wlling to make that tradeoff unless they had to. Ks lead to lower BAs so I would guess that the correlation between BA and HRs is lower than it used to be. But, as #20 also noted, recently we have seen high BA sluggers (Thomas, Manny, Bonds, even Mac and Sosa at their peaks). Has there been a spike in IBB (and semi-IBB) of HR hitters? Bonds led the league in RBI only once! Here are some BA and OBP for Bonds with first base open career:
-2 293/597
--3 331/554
-23 288/675
Those are just staggering. Bonds didn't get RBI because nobody pitched to him with guys on base if they didn't have to.
Truly amazing. In -23, he had 30 hits and 153 walks. I would bet most of those hits were early in his career too.
Players with 100+ SO, where SO>20*HR, 1997-2011
Rk Player SO HR OPS+ BAbip PA Year Age Tm Lg SB BA OBP SLG Pos1 Michael Bourn 140 2 104 .369 722 2011 28 TOT NL 61 .294 .349 .386 *8
2 Dexter Fowler 130 5 105 .354 563 2011 25 COL NL 12 .266 .363 .432 *8
3 Emilio Bonifacio 129 5 107 .372 641 2011 26 FLA NL 40 .296 .360 .393 65789/4
4 Austin Jackson 170 4 102 .396 675 2010 23 DET AL 27 .293 .345 .400 *8
5 Chone Figgins 114 1 84 .314 702 2010 32 SEA AL 42 .259 .340 .306 *4
6 Michael Bourn 109 2 89 .329 605 2010 27 HOU NL 52 .265 .341 .346 *8
7 Brett Gardner 101 5 105 .340 569 2010 26 NYY AL 47 .277 .383 .379 *78/D
8 Michael Bourn 140 3 97 .366 678 2009 26 HOU NL 61 .285 .354 .384 *8
9 Dexter Fowler 116 4 94 .351 518 2009 23 COL NL 27 .266 .363 .406 *8
10 Chone Figgins 114 5 110 .356 729 2009 31 LAA AL 42 .298 .395 .393 *5/4D7
11 Carlos Gomez 142 7 77 .330 614 2008 22 MIN AL 33 .258 .296 .360 *8/D
12 Akinori Iwamura 131 6 93 .337 707 2008 29 TBR AL 8 .274 .349 .380 *4
13 Michael Bourn 111 5 57 .290 514 2008 25 HOU NL 41 .229 .288 .300 *8
14 Cory Sullivan 100 2 78 .349 443 2006 26 COL NL 10 .267 .321 .402 *8
15 Royce Clayton 105 2 74 .333 573 2005 35 ARI NL 13 .270 .320 .351 *6
16 Willy Taveras 103 3 75 .345 635 2005 23 HOU NL 34 .291 .325 .341 *8
17 Carl Crawford 102 5 81 .327 661 2003 21 TBD AL 55 .281 .309 .362 *78/D
18 Damian Jackson 128 4 78 .328 495 2001 27 SDP NL 23 .241 .316 .343 *4/68
19 Roger Cedeno 100 4 106 .393 525 1999 24 NYM NL 66 .313 .396 .408 *987/4
20 Todd Dunwoody 113 5 80 .329 462 1998 23 FLA NL 5 .251 .292 .380 *8
21 Ryan Christenson 106 5 82 .342 421 1998 24 OAK AL 5 .257 .321 .368 *8/97
22 David Dellucci 103 5 88 .333 453 1998 24 ARI NL 3 .260 .318 .399 *789
23 Brian Hunter 121 4 81 .322 738 1997 26 DET AL 74 .269 .334 .353 *8
24 Chris Gomez 114 5 77 .313 589 1997 26 SDP NL 5 .253 .326 .326 *6
25 Edgar Renteria 108 4 80 .327 691 1997 20 FLA NL 32 .277 .327 .340 *6
It's obviously much more common in the past four years (13 times) than in the previous nine years (six times).
Who claimed that?
A portion of what you're seeing is selection bias. If a guy strikes out a bunch and doesn't hit for power, well then he better have a high BABIP or else he won't be on the above list because of lack of opportunity.
But I think there's at least some small relationship between higher strikeout rates and higher BABIP beyond that bias, and there's certainly a relationship between speed and higher BABIP, which is one reason why you see so many center fielders on the list above.
I think we should probably pass a moratorium on the hand-wringing over the increase in strikeouts until we get automated balls and strikes, which in my opinion is an immediate priority. When that change happens, we won't know how that's going to affect things.
Bourn and Fowler, at the top of that list, both hit bunches of doubles and triples last year, and drew a fair number of walks, such that they both had an OPS+ over 100. Given that they're considered good defensive centerfielders, this makes them pretty valuable players. (I don't know anything about Bonifacio's defense, but a supersub with an OPS+ of 107 sounds pretty OK to me, too.)
And you want them to adjust their swings for something that is essentially esthetics?
There's a clear relationship between strikeouts and lower BABIP for pitchers, whether that's the strikeouts themselves (probably not) or some other third variable like velocity (more likely) that affects both.
As for basketball and three pointers, I'd be much more happy to see more three pointers than more "up and under moves" (traveling) and more "crossover dribbles" (carrying) and more "hop steps" (traveling again). Basketball set the rule book ablaze in order to make the game more "exciting," and in my opinion made it less so. So maybe folks shouldn't assume that what they think would be more or less exciting in a sport is the same for everybody else.
From 40 or so years ago: Lou Brock didn't hit a lot of home runs, and he struck out at a rate which (at the time) was considered quite high for someone who didn't hit a lot of home runs. (His strikeouts wouldn't look so high in today's terms.) He did hit enough home runs that he mostly wouldn't have been on those lists. Anyway, his BABIP was pretty high, and pretty steady year-to-year in the .350-.360 range. (Except for the flukish split in the two parts of his 1964 season.)
What I meant was that the notion that BABIP clusters around a single point or tight range was only ever an issue with pitchers, not offensive players. There we'd look for deviations from personal norms more than from league averages.
Also, beyond K's/velocity, we could throw in pitch type (more than just knuckleball), arm slot, role, gb v. fb tendencies, etc... right?
True but I'm not sure that's the way to put it. Strikeouts are bad for hitters. Even power hitters who strike out a lot are generally not particularly valuable if they don't also walk a good bit. So it's more that "take and rake" is a good hitter strategy or "guys who see a lot of pitches are more effective" or something.
this year, in a 66 game season, 1213 3p shots were attempted by the average team (1507 pro-rated). 10 years ago, in an 82 game season, 1209 3pers were attempted on average. 10 years before that, in Jordan's heyday, just 602 3pers were attempted on average. Take it back 10 years more to the pre-Jordan era, and just 187 3pers were attempted by an average team.
This is a nice way to talk about Bill's point:
No one would notice if strikeouts kept climbing. Bill James didn't even notice that the NBA became a 3-point shooting contest.
Only because they let Craig Hodges play only 10 minutes a game. :-)
To the extent there's a problem with drive and penetrate, it's the number of fouls that result (and the number of fouls that aren't even called). The problem with the 3-pt analogy is that one of the outcomes of a good drive is a wide-open 3-pt shooter.
But I agree with your general point which I've made here several times. People here claim to miss the wild running of the 80s and would like fewer HRs. But even in the heyday of the running 80s, it was 2 SB a game vs. about 1 HR; at the height of sillyball, it was about 1 SB a game vs. 2 HR. I refuse to believe such small changes ruin the "aesthetics" of the game one way or the other. Ks have been the biggest change though so I'm willing to entertain that shift has made a difference.
Really? I mean these are pretty vast differences.
I'll be old, so I probabaly won't like it, but I expect the average 30 year old will like it just as much as they do today.
There's enough overlap that you might not notice it overmuch, depending on what teams you were watching. In the 1975-85 decade I followed the Phillies, who stole a bit more than they homered, in some years homering slightly more than they stole: IOW, they were somewhat like the Angels or Mariners I was watching as visiting teams in the 2000s.
But if you compare the 1980s Cardinals to the early-00s Cardinals, though, the difference would be highly noticeable, more like 1:3 vs. 3:1. Coleman vs. McGwire is noticeable.
I'm not writing his obit, but in his crappy 2011 start -- he hit .245/.305/.453 and even his May was .288/.365/.387. Those were decidedly non-Pujols months, but relative to the league - his OPS+ was still around 110.
But all those punk a$$ 30 year olds will be wrong. And as senior citizens, it'll be our responsibility to remind them of that at every opportunity. Everyone knows sports peaked in (insert decade of your youth). It's a scientific fact.
I decided to check this statement, because James has been saying this for quite some time now--turns out, it's absolutely NOT true. The number of team triple crown winners was trending downwards through the late 50's early 60's, saw an upsurge in the middle 60s, then stayed pretty constant until the years 1974-1976 when it went to 1,3,0. But then it picked up and by 1979, there were 10 team triple crown winners, the most since 1950.
Some notable team triple crown winners include Don Demeter, Roman Mejias (who??), and Ed Charles, who put up a scintillating 9/62/.286 for the 1966 KC A's
this is a good point, i remember his start as being substandard, and not the crater that he's experiencing this year. i'd definitely take the under at this point if i was a gambling type.
And after going 2 for 5 with a home run last night, Derek Jeter is now at .404 with a 178 OPS+.
I'm not sure what planet this refers to, but it can't be Earth.
Very cute, Albert and Derek... and my compliments to the plastic surgeon... now... will you kindly undo the whole face/off thing? It wasn't that great of a movie to begin with.
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