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Baseball Therapy |
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September 24, 2012 5:00 am
Baseball Therapy: Reading Lolita in Teheran, Part 3: Smoking, Hitting, and the Search for an 80 Brain |
Is changing a player's approach at the plate like getting someone to quit smoking? And how does learning ability affect development?
Once again, let's talk about player development from a scientific perspective. For the past couple weeks, I've been looking at the "What Can Go Wrong" Series that BP's own Jason Parks wrote last winter the way that a trained developmental specialist would and discussing how certain problems that Jason identified can be measured, even if those data aren't publicly available.
September 21, 2012 5:00 am
Baseball Therapy: Wild-Card Game Theory |
Is there a scenario where it might make sense for a team not to try to win a playoff game?
Let's play poker. With wild cards.
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September 18, 2012 5:00 am
Baseball Therapy: Reading Lolita in Teheran, Part 2: Reading and Fear of Failure |
How reading a pitcher is like reading a book, and why being self-conscious can make you bad at baseball.
Last week, I began a series on player development and what a stathead like me can say about how to assess a player's progress. One of the most maddening things about baseball fandom (and, um, on the inside of the game too) is when prospects who are supposed to take the team into a brave new era don't pan out. Every team has "the name that shall not be uttered" in polite company. He was a can't-miss blue-chipper whom everyone figured would be the next Willie Mays. Except that he turned into the next Willie Bloomquist.
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September 10, 2012 5:00 am
Baseball Therapy: Reading Lolita in Teheran, Part 1: Intro and Losing Focus |
What can the staff psychologist/stathead learn from the way our prospect expert describes players' problems?
I want to do something experimental.
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September 5, 2012 5:00 am
Baseball Therapy: Is There Really Racism in the Broadcast Booth? |
Russell puts the conclusions of last week's attention-getting article in The Atlantic to the test.
Last week, in Atlantic magazine, two researchers published the results of a study with a very unsettling conclusion: there is subtle racism at work in the broadcast booth in Major League Baseball. The idea that Caucasian players are more often praised for being "gritty" and "scrappy," while African-American, Hispanic, and Asian players aren't similarly lauded, isn’t a new one. For the first time, someone decided to put the hypothesis to an empirical test.
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August 27, 2012 5:00 am
Baseball Therapy: One-Run Winners: Good or Lucky? |
Do teams like the Orioles that excel in one-run games do so out of skill, or have they just gotten lucky?
A few weeks ago, the topic for the BP Lineup Card was "Unanswered questions for the second half." I noted that at the time, the Cardinals were several games behind both the Pirates and the Reds in the NL Central standings, despite the fact that they had a better Pythagorean record than either. In theory, the Cardinals should have been atop the NL Central.
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August 20, 2012 5:00 am
Baseball Therapy: Are Closers Worse When They're Surprised? |
Closers are unusually erratic when they're faced with an unexpected save situation, but are they any less effective?
A couple of weeks ago, we looked at what happens when a closer enters the game in a save situation after his team has handed him a lead with little warning. What we saw was that when a pitcher had only a short time between his team giving him the lead and his first pitch, his velocity and break tended to be a bit more erratic. The effect seemed biggest when the transition from lead to closing situation was near instant, but it quickly fell away and then died out completely around 15 minutes of warning time.
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August 6, 2012 5:00 am
Baseball Therapy: So You Wanna Be a Manager |
You think you have what it takes to be a major-league manager? In that case, Russell has several assignments for you.
We know. You could totally do it better than the pros. You'd have brought in a reliever for Pedro. You prove it most nights on your PlayStation. I bet you once played a whole season in MLB: The Show and went 102-60...or at least 35-15 in a shortened season.
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July 30, 2012 5:00 am
Baseball Therapy: Seven Minutes of Terror |
What happens to closers when they don't know a save situation is coming?
There are two types of days in my world, both marked by how they begin. One day involves my waking up, going downstairs, having a leisurely glass of orange juice, and packing my lunch. Soon enough, my daughters will wake up, so I get breakfast ready for them and mentally prepare for the demands that come with having a three-year-old and an almost-one-year-old. That's a good day.
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July 24, 2012 5:00 am
Baseball Therapy: It Happens Every May |
When we say that certain stats "stabilize" after a certain point, we don't mean that they'll stay stable.
It happens every May. Someone on your favorite team is having an uncharacteristically good (or bad) year. This year, David Wright got his groove back, while his former teammate Jose Reyes lost his way. Edwin Encarnacion and Carlos Ruiz started hitting home runs for no apparent reason. For a while, Albert Pujols (!) was stuck in a very public home run drought. Early in the season, analysts and fans have learned to (properly) dismiss these runs as small sample size flukes. They’re something to keep an eye on, but... he'll be back to normal soon.
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July 16, 2012 5:00 am
Baseball Therapy: It's a Small Sample Size After All |
Russell reruns the numbers to determine when hitter stats stabilize.
Who said sabermetrics hasn't gone mainstream? We've now reached the point where even mainstream analysts are yelling "small sample size!" at one another. There's always been some understanding that a player who goes 4-for-5 in a game is not really an .800 hitter, but now, people are being more explicit in talking about sample size. I consider that a victory. Hooray for sabermetrics!
July 9, 2012 5:00 am
Baseball Therapy: Hire Joe Morgan |
A former BP author returns from his adventures in baseball consulting with a slightly different perspective on sabermetrics.
Russell A. Carleton wrote for Baseball Prospectus from 2009 to 2010, and prior to that (2007-2009) wrote at Statistically Speaking. He served as a consultant to a team in Major League Baseball for two years. Beginning today, his work will once again be appearing at BP on a regular basis.
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