I wonder how much longer this team will continue being unable to hit with RISP. The team as a whole is batting .190/.281/.256 with RISP.

The team as a whole is batting .190/.281/.256 with RISP.

Good for lowest in the majors!!

I wonder how much longer this team will continue being unable to hit with RISP. The team as a whole is batting .190/.281/.256 with RISP.

Great to pull out a win tonight, but they somehow managed to drag these numbers down even further by going 2-13 with RISP. What gives?

It's not like they're tearing it up in general. .237/.335/.375 overall is not the stuff of legend. I think it's mostly fluke. One thing that doesn't help is that Carl Crawford is currently leading the team in AB with RISP (he was 2 for 20 coming into the game). They'll start getting their hits.

Dick Young solution:

The whole team, exccept the starters and Papelbon need to go out together and get hammered. That'll fix it.

The studies that I have read and seen referenced have concluded that Pitch F/X location at the plate is accurate to within half an inch. This is a link to a study I was able to find about the subject.

Physics isn't my strong suit, but looking over that study, it looks like the measure of trajectory is probably pretty accurate, so it's fairly precise on an intra-pitch basis, as far as judging the path of the ball while it's in the air. However, I'm not sure that study really addresses how accurate pitch f/x with balls and strikes. For that, you'd want some kind of sensitivity/specificity measure, measuring what % pitches that are strikes are really called strikes, and what % of pitches that aren't really strikes are called strikes. And there you'd need some kind of gold standard measure which everyone agrees measures strikes perfectly (or better) - maybe like a camera looking down at the plate from above and a camera looking at the player from the side.

Absent that, it seems like there could be some uncertainty on pitch f/x given that (I think) there are actually humans setting the system up from batter to batter. It seems like they don't have a ton of time to adjust the zones, and I could see some error entering the system that way. Some humans may have systematic biases when setting up the zones, some may be just better than others, some may be drunk, etc.

According to the Globe Scutaro is on the DL and Jose Iglesias is "likely" to be promoted as the backup shortstop. Lowrie still in the lineup for today's game though.

Jed Lowrie's MLB career line is almost the same as that AAA line for Turner. That is a silly comparison.

That's a pre-season ZiPS you've got there for Lowrie. It's now projecting him to go .269/.348/.444 the rest of the season. Not quite Pedroia, but a lot closer to him than Turner.

May 16, 2011
OPS+

Lowrie: 124
Turner: 120

:-)


yeah yeah yeah, short sample size and all that, just having fun.

I've seen a fair number of games this year, but I seem to very rarely see Lowrie get chances on defense. Chone's fielding has him at -28r/135 g; rdrs has him at -20r/135 g; UZR has him at -18/150 at SS for 2011. They all still have him as a pretty average SS for his career. My question is, has he looked THAT bad this year?

I don't think Lowrie is a guy who really "looks" bad defensively. He has decent hands and a good arm so he is not going to embarrass himself, but he (to my eye) simply lacks the range to be an effective defensive shortstop.

If you look at Lowrie's UZR, you'll see that most of the negative value has been from uncharacteristic errors. His UZR this season is -1.5 runs, -1.4 of which are from errors. His range is -0.5 runs so far. He's normally sure-handed and makes accurate throws, so I expect the errors won't continue, which means he'll end up around -5 runs or so if he plays out the season starting at SS. His range is really not bad. It's certainly not amazing, but it's within spitting distance of average.

He has 4 errors at SS this year, coming into the year he only had 2 errors there in his career over 700+ innings.

Jed Lowrie's MLB career line is almost the same as that AAA line for Turner. That is a silly comparison.

That's a pre-season ZiPS you've got there for Lowrie. It's now projecting him to go .269/.348/.444 the rest of the season. Not quite Pedroia, but a lot closer to him than Turner.

May 31, 2011
Jed Lowrie: .306/.354/.450 (119)
Justin Turner: .323/.369/.448 (129)

Regression to the Mean

Seems so - especially for Wake and Aceves this week. Why do they lose in bunches?!!

Jed Lowrie's MLB career line is almost the same as that AAA line for Turner. That is a silly comparison.

That's a pre-season ZiPS you've got there for Lowrie. It's now projecting him to go .269/.348/.444 the rest of the season. Not quite Pedroia, but a lot closer to him than Turner.

9/18/11
Jed Lowrie career OPS+ 90
Justin Turner 87

Phil was rather Nostradamus-esque back on June 1st, wasn't he?