Nice job, Ben. You definitely paid better attention than I did.

Hey, this isn't a slideshow! I thought it would be a slideshow!

Very interesting information here. Thanks. I particularly like the small bit about the public vs. front office.

Something to consider is that when the front office succeeds or fails, it’s out there for everyone to see. This isn’t often true in reverse. The public (whether a casual fan or an analyst) is often more than willing to celebrate their successes, but the record of their numerous busts isn’t kept—and many discussion forums are filled with people ignoring their failures and still trying to prove that they’re smarter than every GM.

Another factor is that both sides care about different things. Teams value clubhouse guys even if they bat .220, worry about player control, project budgets years in advance, and are likely happy if the #22 pick turns into a #4 starter, because a decently effective starting pitcher is great.

Meanwhile, the public wants everyone to hit and field superbly, usually doesn’t understand the ins and outs of team control, thinks their team should pay whatever it takes to get X favorite player, and want every first round pick to turn into an ace.

Yes, there's some generalizing here, but it's a fascinating topic.

I would love to see more of the list of batters like Ichiro who use various parts of the zone for contact. Are these batters better are recognizing pitches, or are they adjusting pitch to pitch, or something else? What a great example of data telling an intriguing story.

I'm a little confused about the explanation of James' statement about lefties in the bullpen. It sounds like he's not advocating that the platoon advantage isn't as beneficial as people think, but that teams would be better off with smaller bullpens in general, replacing those guys with more bench players. That's a totally different argument, and blaming it on the lefties is simply incorrect if the point is keep a smaller bullpe. In that case you should simply keep the best pitchers regardless of handedness, and blaming it on the lefties is baseless.

The knuckleball question might be addressable by looking at how batters perform against knuckleballs (relative to their own baseline) as a function of how often they see them.

My pet hypothesis is that the knuckleball's value stems from its novelty. If there were ever 10 or 15 knuckleball starters in a league, hitters would take BP against it.

Right now, there's little to no incentive to take BP against the knuckleball. Let's charitably say Dickey makes 35 starts, and goes 7 IP per start. That's 245 IP, enough to lead the league these days. The average AL team pitched 1449 innings in 2012, so Dickey's covering ~16.9% of the Jays' innings.

You play even a division rival 19/162 (~11.7%) of the time. So even if Dickey is healthy and successful enough for 245 IP, you'd expect to face him for 1.98% of your PA. Maybe 12 times for an AL East starter. It drops to ~4 PA if you're in another division.

How much BP are you going to take against a pitch you'll only see for 12 PA out of 600 under the worst of circumstances?

is it possible that Johnny Gomes and Brandon Inge are angels, and as soon as they've done what they set to accomplish must leave with everyone having learned a valuable lesson?

The point about pampering (and hedonistic equilibrium) is interesting. But I think the real advantage is in nutrition and training / video methods.

Analogous to the 1970s, when players didn't lift weights as much, and not encouraged by the team. Nolan Ryan has said he was chased out of the weight room with the Angels b/c they didn't want him to get bulky.

The fact remains these players aren't always up to date on cutting edge research. Teams have the resources to follow and implement these plans.

I have to think that ideal nutrition, training, and "perfect practice" approaches yield benefits to players as compared to just letting these young men wing it on their own.

1. What are pitch clusters?

2. Brandon McCarthy's point is really just common sense, deniers aside. I'll bet we've all been in work places where t he entire tenor of things is transformed by one or two personnel changes. I don't for a minute doubt that good teammates make for good teams.

Unfortunately, I too missed Graham's presentation. My primary complaint about the conference was the organization of the research talks into parallel sessions. So I could only hear half of them. That is very unfortunate, since hearing the research talks is my primary reason for going to the conference (and paying a rather stiff registration fee). I would be curious to hear the opinion of others on this particular subject.

James' comment on minor structure is interesting. I'm in middle of "Veeck...as in Wreck", and he clearly preferred the system of buying players up and down the minors to Branch Rickey's farm system. The main problem becomes one of properly incentivizing the development of players while they're at the lower levels. Certainly the player has an incentive to get better, but what of his manager and coaches? Team success will be rewarded to some degree, but I think you'll also need to pass money down as players come up. At the point where the MLB teams actually get their hands on players, they'll need to pay (or something) the minor league teams for them (by some sort of schedule, rather than free-for-all bidding), who will then buy their players for next year from the level below. Develop more players and move them along, make more money (or something)... Currently, the incentives are there -- since the big club already has control of the players, it's in their best interest to do the best job training them.

Excellent meaty article! Thanks, Ben.

Another one of Bill James's current theories, if I recall correctly, is that four man and three man rotations might work better than rotations we have today. They just don't need to go as deep into the game.

I'm not sure exactly what he has in mind, but we know pitchers do better in shorter outings. Perhaps, the future is a staff of 3 four inning men, 7 two inning men, and 2 alternating one inning closers. A typical game would be a 4-2-2-1 affair with the 7th 2 inning guy on standby for emergencies or extra innings. (Perhaps, he ought to be a versatile any situation guy.) Sadly, that still doesn't leave room for an old fashioned bench - just the bare bones ones of today.

Another reason I don't see multiple platoons, pinch hitters, pinch runners, and defensive subs making a comeback is that teams pull guys back and forth from the minors much more often than they used to. Although, those rules can be more easily changed than limiting the number of relief appearances in an inning or whatever. (That is a rule I could get behind, however, as those pitching changes are tedious - especially when you get another commercial break with them.)

What Bill James said re lefty relievers makes me wonder for the nth time why teams, if facing a lineup with alternating handed batters, don't alternate pitchers by sticking one at 1B or RF. I'm pretty sure LaSorda did this a few times in the 80s, don't know that I've seen it since. I suppose someone could determine whether what you give up in defense outweighs the platoon advantage you could gain plus the fact that you could be avoiding going deeper into your bullpen.