CSS Button No Image Css3Menu.com

Baseball Prospectus home
  
  
Click here to log in Click here for forgotten password Click here to subscribe

Sam Miller 

Search Articles by Sam Miller

All Blogs

Active Columns

Authors

Article Types

Archives

06-18

comment icon

29

Pebble Hunting: Blind BABIP Test, Part 2
by
Sam Miller

06-18

comment icon

0

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 226: Predictions About Zack Wheeler/The Story of Signing Puig
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

06-17

comment icon

0

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 225: Missing Out on Mariano Rivera/Scouting Scouts
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

06-14

comment icon

3

Pebble Hunting: A Week of Watching Yoenis Cespedes
by
Sam Miller

06-14

comment icon

0

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 224: The Evolution of On-Field Celebrations/The Home Run Derby Draft
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

06-13

comment icon

3

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 223: Should College Pitchers Shut it Down After Being Drafted?/The Red Sox and Advance Scouting
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

06-12

comment icon

46

Pebble Hunting: How Beanballs and Brawls Could Be Avoided
by
Sam Miller

06-12

comment icon

3

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 222: Bloodlines and the Draft/Giving Up in Extras/Managers Telling the Truth/Moore, Molina, and Calling Pitches
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

06-11

comment icon

7

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 221: Astros Pro Scouting Coordinator Kevin Goldstein on the Amateur Draft
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

06-10

comment icon

17

Pebble Hunting: The Worst a Team Ever Did in the Draft
by
Sam Miller

06-10

comment icon

0

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 220: Sick Starters, The Value of Hitting Coaches, and The Most Disappointing Team of 2013
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

06-07

comment icon

2

Pebble Hunting: Baseball's Best Comp
by
Sam Miller

06-07

comment icon

12

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 219: The Mock Draft Mystery/Joey Votto's Future/Scouts and Espionage/The New-Look Royals Lineup
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

06-06

comment icon

0

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 218: Paralysis by Biogenesis
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

06-05

comment icon

10

Pebble Hunting: The Batting Order Evolution
by
Sam Miller

06-05

comment icon

1

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 217: Umpires, Catchers, and Home Field Advantage/Forming a Wall/The Anti-DH Movement/Lengthening Games
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

06-04

comment icon

0

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 216: Whither the White Sox?/Dissecting Yasiel Puig's Debut
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

06-03

comment icon

1

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 215: Does Money Still Make Teams Better?/Taking our Temperatures on Tim Lincecum and Chris Davis
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

06-03

comment icon

20

Pebble Hunting: A Riddle in a Minor-League Baseball Game
by
Sam Miller

06-02

comment icon

5

BP Unfiltered: Stats vs. The Will To Win on the Family Feud
by
Sam Miller

05-31

comment icon

6

Daily Hit List: Friday, May 31
by
Sam Miller

05-31

comment icon

13

Pebble Hunting: Every Manager's Face, Part 1
by
Sam Miller

05-31

comment icon

0

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 214: B.J. Upton and Fixing Mechanical Flaws/Scouting and the International Draft
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

05-30

comment icon

2

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 213: The Royals and Not Hitting Homers/The Physical Signs of Scouting
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

05-29

comment icon

23

Pebble Hunting: A Week of Watching Eric Hosmer
by
Sam Miller

05-29

comment icon

2

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 212: Doing Away with Errors/Rotating Positions/What Would Retired Players Hit?/Aesthetically Pleasing Players/3-0 Red Lights
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

05-28

comment icon

2

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 211: The Phillies, the Blue Jays, and Selling/The Scary Side of Jose Canseco
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

05-24

comment icon

0

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 210: Revisiting the Montero-Pineda Trade/Your Ticket Refund/Giveaway Ideas
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

05-24

comment icon

4

Pebble Hunting: How Pitchers Age at the Plate
by
Sam Miller

05-23

comment icon

0

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 209: Veterans vs. Young Players/The Dodgers and Grit
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

05-22

comment icon

0

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 208: Refunds for Losses/More Catching Questions/DHs and Defensive Positioning/Most Pitchers in an Inning
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

05-21

comment icon

5

BP Unfiltered: The Worst Thing The Dodgers Have Done This Year
by
Sam Miller

05-21

comment icon

0

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 207: Reevaluating Patrick Corbin/Baseball and Redheads
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

05-20

comment icon

1

BP Unfiltered: The Week In Albert Pujols Playing Through Pain, May 13-May 19
by
Sam Miller

05-20

comment icon

1

Pebble Hunting: Extreme Strikeout Matchups
by
Sam Miller

05-20

comment icon

0

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 206: When Does it Make Sense to Fire Managers?/What We Think about Hot Streaks
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

05-17

comment icon

0

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 205: Catcher Framing Questions/A Hypothetical Pitching Problem/Post-Start MRIs
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

05-16

comment icon

1

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 204: The Yankees and Luck/How We Watch Baseball/Consuming Scouting Reports
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

05-15

comment icon

5

Pebble Hunting: The Starts That Defied FIP
by
Sam Miller

05-15

comment icon

0

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 203: Strikeouts and Defense/Shortest Pitching Careers/Novelty All-Star Games/World Series of Worst/Rooting Against No-Hitters
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

05-14

comment icon

2

BP Unfiltered: A Broken Bat That Did Not Seriously Injure Any Catchers
by
Sam Miller

05-14

comment icon

2

BP Unfiltered: Mark Reynolds Gets Close To A Pop-Up
by
Sam Miller

05-14

comment icon

3

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 202: Bryce Harper Hits the Wall/Albert Pujols' Pain
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

05-13

comment icon

1

BP Unfiltered: The Week In Albert Pujols Playing Through Pain, May 6-May 12
by
Sam Miller

05-13

comment icon

16

Pebble Hunting: The Strike Zone Solution
by
Sam Miller

05-13

comment icon

7

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 201: Drafting Age-25-and-Under Starters/Still No No-Hitters
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

05-11

comment icon

4

BP Unfiltered: Mark Reynolds and a Very Suspicious Break
by
Sam Miller

05-10

comment icon

11

Pebble Hunting: A Week of Watching Manny Machado
by
Sam Miller

05-10

comment icon

0

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 200: Will Leitch on Media, Fans, and Media and Fans
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

05-09

comment icon

0

BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 199: Pitchers Putting on Sunscreen/The Astros and Clubhouse Chemistry
by
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

Go to Archives...

<< Previous Author Entries No More Author Entries

Can you tell Jose Iglesias' hits from his outs?

Jose Iglesias has a .507 BABIP this year. This article is not about that BABIP, exactly, but we are starting there. Iglesias entered the season with a .164 career BABIP in the majors, and a .300 BABIP in the minors, and a reputation as the best defensive shortstop in baseball, with a bat that might be just weak enough to support that glove. Finding out Jose Iglesias has a .507 BABIP is like finding out that Chin-lung Hu quietly signed with the Pirates and hit 14 home runs in May. Anyway, like I said, this article isn't about that BABIP.

A year ago, we did a blind BABIP test for a Jake Peavy start; 20 balls put in play, 10 were hits, and you tried to guess which were which based on all the information you could collect up to the point of contact. Gosh, did you ever do terribly. Given a 50 percent chance of guessing the correct answers blindly, you collectively got 52 percent of the answers correct. But maybe that wasn't fair; maybe focusing on the pitcher (who, as we know, controls his BABIP only a little bit) is a doomed exercise. Hitters control their BABIP some bit more than that. So maybe we should be focusing on the batter, looking to see if he's balanced and putting a good swing on the ball or flailing, jammed, late, or on top of the ball. So what happens if we do this from the batter's perspective? Will we be any better? I suspect... well, honestly, I don't know.

Read the full article...

Ben and Sam discuss their expectations for Zack Wheeler and other young pitchers, then talk about the true story behind the Dodgers signing Yasiel Puig.

Read the full article...

Ben and Sam discuss what Mariano Rivera's retirement might cost us, then talk about whether it's possible to evaluate scouts statistically.

Read the full article...

This is a BP Premium article. To read it, sign up for Premium today!

June 14, 2013 5:00 am

Pebble Hunting: A Week of Watching Yoenis Cespedes

3

Sam Miller

In which last year's Rookie of the Year runner-up adjusts to his opponents' adjustment in his sophomore season.

Was going to watch Yoenis Cespedes for a week because he was hitting so poorly. Was going to start watching on Tuesday, June 4. He entered the day hitting .229/.302/.447. Yes, you can spot the hole where a better BABIP would provide a convenient fill, but there were plenty of signs that Cespedes was stalled: two steals in seven tries, for instance, after swiping 16 in 20 attempts last year; a .203/.241/.414 line against right-handers, whom he had handled well in 2012.

So that’s where Cespedes was when I sat down to watch a week of him. That was in the past. Now we’re in the future! Isn’t it marvelous? Look at my cellular phone, it has a camera! Also, Yoenis Cespedes is having a good year. Just like that, Cespedes went from having a bad sophomore season for me to write about to having a pretty good season (118 OPS+) for me to write about. What happened in those seven days, you might wonder. Mostly:

The rest of this article is restricted to Baseball Prospectus Subscribers.

Not a subscriber?

Click here for more information on Baseball Prospectus subscriptions or use the buttons to the right to subscribe and get access to the best baseball content on the web.


Cancel anytime.


That's a 33% savings over the monthly price!


That's a 33% savings over the monthly price!

Already a subscriber? Click here and use the blue login bar to log in.

Ben and Sam discuss the evolution and future of on-field celebrations, then pick the players they'd most want to appear in the Home Run Derby.

Read the full article...

Ben and Sam discuss whether college pitchers should stop pitching for their college teams after being drafted, then talk about the Red Sox and advance scouting.

Read the full article...

This is a BP Premium article. To read it, sign up for Premium today!

June 12, 2013 5:04 am

Pebble Hunting: How Beanballs and Brawls Could Be Avoided

46

Sam Miller

And why a few suspensions won't stop an ugly scene from occurring again.

I’m a scaredy-cat, and a pacifist, so I come to these sorts of discussions from a place that won’t appeal to everybody. When I see a pitch going toward Zack Greinke’s face, for instance, I think of it as the culmination of a violent series of events that could have easily killed a man; that it didn’t kill a man makes me only marginally less queasy about the whole thing. At the risk of going into unnecessarily macabre territory, I want to imagine that it did kill a man; the difference between that universe and ours is perhaps mere inches. Had it killed a man, there would be reckoning, soul-searching, panels to study the issue. There would be vigorous discussion about whether the criminal justice system should be brought in. There would be, mostly, an attempt to figure out how this happened, and what went wrong, and where we could have prevented it.

So how did the beanball that touched off a brawl between the Dodgers and Diamondbacks on Tuesday night happen? What went wrong? Where could somebody have prevented it?

The remainder of this post cannot be viewed at this subscription level. Please click here to subscribe.

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about baseball bloodlines, managers revealing too much, giving up in extras, calling games, and more.

Read the full article...

Ben and Sam talk to Kevin Goldstein about the amateur draft, his scouting assignments, the Astros' system, and more.

Read the full article...

This is a BP Premium article. To read it, sign up for Premium today!

June 10, 2013 5:00 am

Pebble Hunting: The Worst a Team Ever Did in the Draft

17

Sam Miller

The time a team had nothing to show for its selections.

If you were trying to find the worst draft ever, where would you start? “Bad” we could probably agree on, but “worst” would certainly lead to an argument. You might, for instance, argue that the 1968 Washington Senators (later Texas Rangers) had the worst draft ever. This is a sterling position to have. The Senators that year managed to draft -6.9 WARP, which is not only the worst draft class ever by cumulative career WARP, but it’s a) two wins worse than the second-worst class, a giant margin in an otherwise tightly packed trailerboard; and b) it came in 1968, the same year that the Los Angeles Dodgers managed a draft class that put together an incredible 192 career WARP, the most ever by any team in any single year (though it took both June and January drafts for the Dodgers to reach such peaks, just as it took Washington both June and January drafts to dig some deficits).

But those Senators were only two or six wins worse than a whole slew of other teams that were below replacement level. Why not make the case that the Giants had the worst draft ever in 1982, because their failure cost them dozens of WARP? That year, their first-round pick (11th overall) was a college first baseman who would manage to bat just .188 in 16 career at-bats. And their second-round pick (39th overall) was a high school outfielder, a local kid, who would go on to hit 762 home runs in the majors—but who, because of a failed post-draft negotiation, hit 176 of them with the Pirates, who drafted and signed him three years later. Plenty of great players get drafted, don’t sign, and end up on in another team’s history—but the Giants were sooooo close. According to columnist Glenn Dickey,

The remainder of this post cannot be viewed at this subscription level. Please click here to subscribe.

Ben and Sam discuss how impressive it is when players play sick, whether hitting coaches are more important than they'd previously thought, and the season's most disappointing teams.

Read the full article...

This is a BP Premium article. To read it, sign up for Premium today!

June 7, 2013 5:00 am

Pebble Hunting: Baseball's Best Comp

2

Sam Miller

Reggie Willits, J.B. Shuck, and how lightning might be striking again in Anaheim.

Jack Burdett Shuck III was named for his father, Jack Burdett Shuck II, but has always gone by the initials J.B.. Similarly, Reggie Gene Willits was named for his father, Gene Willits, but has always gone by the initials R.G. That’s how I pronounce it, at least. I assume that’s how everybody pronounces it: R.G. Willits, written out (for aesthetic reasons, but strictly by coincidence) as “Reggie.” Pretty sure I’m right about this.

R.G. (Reggie) and J.B. have a lot in common. Both were born in smallish, Midwestern cities—Chickasha, OK (pop: 16,000) for Willits, and Westerville, OH (pop: 36,000) for Shuck. Willits’ favorite player was Kenny Lofton—he wore no. 77 in the majors in honor of Lofton, who wore no. 7. Shuck’s favorite player was Kenny Lofton, and he says the dozens of Lofton cards he owns are his most prized. Both would grow up to be large by human standards but small by baseball standards, each standing 5’ 11”. Their birthdays are separated by just two and a half weeks on the calendar, so when they were going through Little League and high school sports, they would have both been about the same age at each level. Shuck hit .576 in his senior year of high school, playing outfield and pitching; Willits hit .598 his senior year of high school, playing outfield and catching. Each went to college, and each stayed in his home state to do so. Willits was drafted in the seventh round. Shuck was drafted in the sixth.

The remainder of this post cannot be viewed at this subscription level. Please click here to subscribe.

<< Previous Author Entries No More Author Entries