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Earlier this week, I moved into a new apartment. It's much better than my old one: It has a couch, a better kitchen with a dishwasher and a roommate who's not a slob. I also bought a new TV and a PlayStation 4. I learned that having nice things is better than not having nice things! So, party at my place, and you're all invited. We'll watch MLB.tv and debate the existence and merits of lineup protection and talk about what else we did or could have learned.

Weekend/Monday
Baseball's new pace of play initiatives are indeed working, and one can notice the greatest difference in games with lots of batters: Speeding up play, by Kevin Whitaker, Diamond Graphs

Thanks to the new pace-of-play initiatives, the average length of nine-inning games is down eight minutes in 2015 versus the comparable time period in 2014. The effect has been slightly stronger for games with more batters…

Despite baseball's recent lackluster postseason TV ratings, the sport can still be a very strong draw in some regional markets, even in relation to other sports' playoffs: Baseball Is Beating The NBA And NHL Playoffs In Local TV Ratings, by Maury Brown, Forbes

Wednesday was a playoff bevy for sports fans with playoffs in both the NBA and NHL, and a great baseball game nationally, but in 14 of 24 markets, it was not hockey or basketball or even that Mets-Cubs that people were watching, but Major League Baseball on their local regional sports networks.

In a sign that baseball continues to be a regional phenomenon, from Cincinnati to Seattle, Boston to Tampa Bay, Baltimore to St. Louis, and more, it was regular season baseball games that crushed all comers in their respective markets over the NBA and NHL playoffs, as well as the nationally televised MLB game on ESPN.

Leading the way was FOX Sports Kansas City who drew a blistering 13.0 rating for the Kansas City Royals game against the Texas Rangers. That FOX Sports KC rating compared to a 1.6 rating for the two NBA playoff games in the market, a 0.5 rating for the Mets-Cubs game, and a 0.1 rating in KC for the dramatic Game 7 in the NHL on NBC Sports Network.

Even in Pittsburgh, where hockey has a long, passionate history with the Penguins, the Pittsburgh Pirates game against the Philadelphia Phillies pulled an 8.4 rating on ROOT Sports compared to a 2.5 for the Caps-Rangers Game 7 a 0.7 for the early NBA playoff game, a 0.9 for the NBA playoff game nightcap, and a 0.4 rating for ESPN’s airing of the Mets-Cubs game.

Pinch-hitters become better at pinch-hitting when the do more of it. (Pinch-hitting, in case you couldn't tell.) Which leaves them in a bit of stick situation, because pinch-hitting is becoming less common: Coming in Cold 2: Lifting the Pinch-Hitter's Penalty, by Shane Tourtellotte, The Hardball Times

We need to be cautious in drawing conclusions here. The obvious, reflexive one is that players do better at pinch-hitting the more they pinch-hit. One could suggest that managers pick out the players who do well in this role and give them increased opportunities, thus producing the effect by selection rather than practice. It’s hard to see them managing this by the necessarily small sample sizes, so if it happens it may be instead due to seeing good processes at the plate during these chances.

The numbers, though, aren’t quite saying that players improve at pinch-hitting with practice. They say they improve, relative to their overall batting. Part of the narrowing of the PH penalty may well come from being less effective in standard batting situations. Perhaps this is due to fewer regular batting chances, by the same mechanism that makes them more often eligible to pinch-hit. Perhaps it’s less generally effective batters getting put frequently in a PH role because they aren’t starting.

Successful collusion cases in the past contained more than circumstantial evidence, which is a knock against Barry Bonds' case: Assessing Barry Bonds' Collusion Case, by Eugene Freedman, Baseball Prospectus

Unlike the circumstances of 1985-1987, there is no smoking gun in the Bonds case. Nobody has come forward to expose a conspiracy. There are no rumors of a meeting in which the Commissioner told club officials not to sign Bonds. No club official has made statements to the press about wanting to sign Bonds but being prohibited or restricted in some way.

Bonds was a player with a lot of baggage. He had been suspected of steroid use for some time. He was investigated by the Department of Justice. He was indicted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. While he was still a very good hitter, perhaps still a great hitter, he was older and declining. Fans outside of San Francisco did not like him. Unless there is a former general manager who is willing to provide testimony of a conspiracy, it is much more likely that each team made an independent decision that signing Bonds was worth less in public relations than the benefits he provided on the field.

Tuesday
For all the hooplah made about innovative bullpen usage and whatnot, things really aren't that different, especially considering closers: The Closer Role Is Alive and Well, by Jeff Sullivan, FanGraphs

Consider the landscape now. There’s not that much closer uncertainty. David Robertson just got a big free-agent contract. Andrew Miller was paid well and installed as a closer. Same with Luke Gregerson. Francisco Rodriguez got significant money. Huston Street just signed an extension. The Dodgers went against the grain only while Kenley Jansen was sidelined. The A’s talked about jumbled roles only with Sean Doolittle hurt. The Rays talked about how they didn’t consider Brad Boxberger the closer, but he’s been used like a closer, and only while Jake McGee has been out. Blue Jay uncertainty came out of Brett Cecil uncertainty. Marlins uncertainty came out of Steve Cishek struggling. Rangers uncertainty came out of Neftali Feliz being bad. Addison Reed was closing for the Diamondbacks until he was too ineffective. The teams that’ve been without set closers planned on having closers. It’s just that plans have gone awry.

It’s 2015, and we’ve still got closers. Those closers, by and large, are used roughly as they have been used before. Sometimes, you’ll see a closer enter a tie game, or maybe a one-run game in the seventh or the eighth, but that isn’t real common. There are still closer roles, and there are still other roles built around them. Now, granted, there might be differences in how they’re paid. There might be less emphasis on experience. There have been some changes within the role itself, but the role is still present. The ideal might be a group of relievers ready to go at all times in all situations, and the Dodgers appear to be working on that, but in the majors, people like to know when they can expect to be used. And so we see that, generally, bullpens are used as they’ve been used. What trends there are will be gradual.

Wednesday
Instant replay reviews could be leading to more physical, aggressive play around the bases—for runners and fielders: How has instant replay changed baserunning?, by David Manel, Bucs Dugout

The combination of fielders staying down and holding tags longer is causing baserunners to adjust their sliding technique in response. Specifically, the hard, direct pop-up slide is growing in popularity and utility.

"It used to be if the ball beat you there, the ump called you out regardless of how you slid," Hatcher said. "So now it's not that. So you're going to replay everything, so I want my guys to slide in hard, because I want the middle infielders to do the little fake tag where they hit the ground and get out of the way. If you're coming in here slow, they're just going to keep it down there. You're coming in hard, they're getting out of there. And when they get out of there they're missing the tag, which is exactly why I teach my guys to go in hard and [pop up]."

Thursday
Batted-ball speed has hardly any predictive power when it comes to fielding errors. However, it can help sniff out home-field bias from official scorers: Do hard-hit balls produce more errors?, by Bryan Cole, Beyond the Box Score

We now have a model that suggests a real (if still slight) relationship between batted ball speed and the likelihood of committing an error. But that curve changes extremely slowly. The lower bound of the probability a 120-mph batted ball produces an error (1.8 percent) is smaller than the upper bound of the probability a 60-mph batted ball produces an error (2.5 percent). In other words, it's still possible that the relationship between batted ball speed and error likelihood is totally flat.

The two curves on this graph represent the likelihood of an error when the home (blue) and road (orange) team is batting. The shaded portions represent the 95% confidence interval based on the number of ground balls observed at that speed. Speeds were grouped in 10-mph buckets with a 5-mph overlap, so the first dot covers all grounders hit between 50 and 60 mph, the next covers between 55 and 65 mph, and so on. And whereas the home team's fielding percentage decreases on harder-hit balls, the road team stays oddly consistent — and relatively error-free! — over the meaty part of the curve.

These data suggest home teams get the benefit of the doubt on would-be errors: a ground ball hit at the same speed is more likely to be called an error if the home team is fielding than if it is batting. If the relationship were flipped, you could argue that some of it was due to the visitors' inexperience with the nuances of an individual ballpark. But it seems unreasonable to argue that visiting defenders get more reliable away from their home grounds. Besides, scorers are incentivized to turn close calls for home batters into hits (to boost batting averages), and close calls for visiting batters into errors (to help keep down ERAs).

Friday
Exceptions exist, but starting out hot (or at least competently) is generally a prerequisite for postseason success: The Meaning of a Team's Record in Mid-May, by Alex Remington, The Hardball Times

In other words, if a team is truly in the cellar right now, it probably doesn’t have a lot of hope. Nearly 60 percent of World Series winners — 61 of 107 — were above .600 on May 15, and 41 of them had a winning percentage over .650, which is a 105-win pace.

So, what about the teams that started out at a scorching pace? On the whole, they do pretty well: no matter what happens after May, they still get credit for all the wins they banked in the early weeks. For example, the 1984 Detroit Tigers were 28-5 in mid-May — that’s an .848 winning percentage, a 137-win pace. The Bless You Boys actually stretched their incredible start to 35-5, so even though they fell off quite a bit, going just 69-53 (a .566 winning percentage) the rest of the year, they still finished with 104 wins and won the World Series.

Lost gate revenues are the biggest stumbling block to reducing the MLB season, even though that's not an entirely convincing argument: MLB's biggest obstacle to a 154-game season: money, by Jayson Stark, ESPN

"You know what I find interesting?" mused one baseball official outside the commissioner's office. "That at the same time we're hearing talk of going to 154 games, we're also hearing talk that revenues could grow to $15 billion a year."

Hmmm, that is interesting, right? So should we assume, from that, that baseball thinks there is huge potential for revenue growth that has nothing to do with ticket sales?

"Apparently," the official replied, with quite the hearty chuckle.

We can't tell you exactly where MLB believes it can amass an extra $6 billion a year beyond the $9 billion it's generating now. But one thing is for sure: It isn't all coming from selling tickets.

But now that we're on that subject, let's remember something: Making up the money lost on a shortened season, even at the gate, wouldn't be as hard as teams would like us to believe.

DIPS is a LIE. (Not really, but there is a now-quantifiable amount of skill involved in how pitchers are able to reduce hard contact.): A Baseball's Exit Velocity Is Five Parts Hitter, One Part Pitcher, by Rob Arthur, FiveThirtyEight

That’s not to say pitchers hold the upper hand. In my models of batted ball velocity that incorporate the pitcher, batter and ballpark, the batter’s effect dominates the pitcher’s. A ball’s exit velocity after a bat strikes it is about five times more the batter’s doing than the pitcher’s. This fact seems to partially vindicate FIP — batters really are the ones in control.

At the same time, the pitcher’s effect is not negligible. While the best batters increase batted ball velocity by as much as 7-8 mph, the best pitchers suppress it by 1.5 mph compared with the average pitcher.

That has real significance: Such a decrease roughly equates to a 13-point decrease in batting average on balls in play (BABIP) for a given batted ball. Over the course of a game, the pitchers who can best decrease exit velocity save about a quarter of a run (on average). A quarter of a run doesn’t sound like much? Multiplied over a season, all those quarters of a run add up to about one win of value.

Thank you for reading

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