It's amusing that more Giants fans have seen that clip than Indians fans, since they show it every year on the anniversary.

Read that paragraph again.

Also, I'm pretty sure that 9/16 and 17/30 is within my definition of middling.

The Giants definitely benefited from the fact that the Rangers were designed to beat the Rays and Yankees and they were a much better matchup for the Giants than either of the East teams would have been. The real problem is with the people who thought the Rangers were the better team.

I read the excerpt about missing out on Pujols and while maybe the one scout was indeed more on him than any other, all 30 teams made the same mistake as even the Cards didn't select him til the 5th round. So it seems rather dubious to use as a negative example of the old regime. Beckham over Posey seems a far worse mistake as even though it was a defensible selection at the time, it did come done to those two players for them and it's not terribly difficult to think that that selection could have been the difference that pushed them over the top in 2010. Nailing your first round picks is critical, especially for the smaller market teams and from 2006-2008, the Rays only hit on 2 of 3, while the Giants nailed all 3, allowing them to overcome other roster deficiencies.

Actually, far and away the most important tidbit from this article was the use of HITf/X data. This kind of analysis is merely the whetting of the appetite til a thorough perusal of the data can begin whenever it becomes actually available.

Yeah, it adds to to 100% both before and after. You should be subtracting not dividing. 37.9 - 51.1 = -13.2% 32.6 - 27.0 = 5.6 18.7 - 13.2 = 5.5 10.1 - 8.1 = 2.0 0.7 - 0.5 = 0.2 0.1 - 0.1 = 0.0 So STL's loss basically benefits CIN and MIL equally, with a smaller benefit to CHI.

I think we're still waiting for Colin's detailed post regarding the all of the ins and outs of PECOTA's comp process.

1988 Donruss cards were my first real exposure to baseball.

Plotting these exact plots with each dot colored by BABIP, FB%, IFFB%, and HR/FB would be quite interesting.

The trend line is extremely warped by the Yankees' signings.

I'm pretty sure that a huge part is that nearly 100% of the players believe the maxim that the final three outs of the game are the hardest.

The new ballparks are much more distinct than the cookie cutter multipurpose ones from the 60s and 70s. There's a higher variance in the field dimensions. Now, maybe it takes a few years for teams to adapt their roster to fit the ballpark, so you don't see the effect immediately after a park change.

Some states have laws that explicitly tax out-of-state players for games played there, but not all.

This issue will become more of a problem if HITf/x and FIELDf/x remain unavailable to the public. It's ok if teams are using their own algorithms to evaluate the public data, I think most people would expect that. But when teams have the only access to data sets that are orders of magnitude larger than the public ones, the smartest blogger in the world can't compete with that in terms of creating some with similar evaluation value to propietary stuff.

Two things: Expecting the voters of a small sample all being consistently exposed to the same discussion to behave independently is wrong. If the "conventional wisdom" is that one player is say 52-48 better than another, the 52% guy will have a much larger share of the votes. Also, Howard's votes do indeed stand out as peculiar. He was named on only 8 ballots, but an average position of 4.75. If you order the players by number of ballots and plot the average position (or score), you get a nice fairly linear relationship with two exceptions: Howard, and Ubaldo's lone 4th place vote.

Ideal world would have Belt at 1B, good Panda at 3B, and DeRosa being the super sub everywhere on the field.

You also left out ditching Rowand at any cost. He did the good veteran routine this year, but he will not be content with the same role next year.

Crawford would obviously be a good fit, but not Dunn. The Giants only prospect that's close to ready is Belt at 1B. As far as drafting you should always take the best player in baseball. (Certainly positional adjustment is a key component of that.)

A's didn't move to KC until 1955.

Average player is just as hypothetical as replacement player. Using replacement player as your baseline allows you to try to account for the fact that playing time is not uniformly distributed between above average players and below average players. And how is an average player accumulating WARP any different from an average player accumulating hits or RBIs or Wins or whatever? Anybody using counting stats solely with no discussion of rate stats/peak performance is not having a very useful HoF discussion.

It's important to remember that a lot of lives were saved because of World Series that year. Candlestick by itself had held together and not collapsed and the start time meant a lot of people had either gone home early or were someplace safer than driving around on collapsing freeways.

Not starting Vlad was at least one correct decision that Washington made. Both Torres's and Huff's drives would have been easy RBI triples with him in RF instead of Cruz.

It's pretty unlikely that Guillen is even in the state of California at this point, so I wouldn't worry about him showing up. It's pretty certain that Pablo will be DH vs the RH pitchers, but I'm not really sure what they'll do vs the lefties.

Yes, in a 1-0 or 2-1 game, the little random breaks (bad hop, missed call, etc.) can contribute to a huge fraction of the runs scored.

They did this frequently earlier in the year whenever Rowand played defense, apparently they are of the opinion that he has no idea how to play LF. However, with the addition of Ross, they can run the Ross/Torres/Schierholtz defensive outfield without Rowand and he has seen almost no play in the field in Sept and Oct. I wouldn't be suprised if Rowand is removed for a faster player, Velez or Ford, for the LCS.

In regards to pinch-running for Burrell, Bochy stated that if Ross didn't give them the lead right there, he was going to leave Burrell in so he could hit again.

Matt Cain is one who lowers his slugging pct with runners on. (Most pitchers have both OBP and SLG increase with baserunners.) Glavine SLG bases empty - .384 runners on - .369 RISP - .356 Cain SLG bases empty - .373 runners on - .368 RISP - .346

Yeah, that's immediately what I said when watching the replay. I still have no idea what he thought the ball was going to do, the bounce seemed pretty normal.

Actually I'd expect the Giants to fare worse vs Lowe than Hanson. It's pretty simple to distinguish the games where they score 4+ runs from from the ones they only get 2 or less. In the former they're pounding fly balls for HR and the latter they are grounding into 6-4-3. So unless Hanson's HR/FB rate is as sustainable as Cain's is, I imagine most Giants fans feel more sanguine about the offense tonight than last night.

Actually, Game 2 is going to be Hanson and Hudson will start Game 3.

And that's basically the way that every game has gone for the Giants defensively. If they have the lead, Burrell and Guillen are nearly always gone after their third AB.

The numbers shown were for the season after stats. i.e. the stats based on the season that was hampered by the injury.

Given that Giants fans got to watch a lot more of Ross than Rowand during Torres appendectomy, it was an eminently worthwhile move.

Affeldt will not be an FA at end of season, so the Angels won't be pursuing him in that regard.

The other number the article needs to show is what is the average split for all Rockies.

Have to know the spin on the fastball before you can untangle the speed effect. From 2008-2009 he lost 2.4 MPH, but gained .1 vertical inches, while from 2009-2010 lost 0.7 MPH and lost 1.2 vertical inches.

Well, Cinci will obviously have the worst postseason rotation no matter who makes the playoffs. (Unless the Rockies are able to get in.)

If Zito doesn't improve from his current spot, he's 5th in the rotation as Sanchez and Bumgarner have been much better. Now it's unlikely that Bumgarner would get any postseason starts due to being in his first season, but Zito won't be getting anything more than the 4th spot in the postseason rotation.

Well, with the Giants the only fail move (for the in-season moves) is Guillen. Fontenot was acquired because at the time the plan for SS in the event that Uribe hurt himself was Sandoval with Huff at 3B and Ross is simply a better version of Rowand that they got for money only. After Guillen's 4K fail today in the midst of an unbelievable win, the hope is that he will not be in the lineup for future games.

And the calendar flips and Timmy stomps on the Rockies.

Er, make that the bunting effect. :) Also visible in 12_ 0 out state.

Random bit of noticing: You can clearly see the "hit a ground ball to right side" effect with a runner at second and nobody out. That state has the highest GB% as well as the lowest H% and lowest OF%.

How do the out outcomes have a positive run expectancy change for the two outs and bases empty state?

And he's absolutely correct that a huge factor is his success this year is better plate discipline. He's got his highest walk rate of his career at 12.4% with previous best being 9.7%. Also got his best strikeout rate since 2004. It really does seem like he figured something new out this year. And it's been awesome reading quotes and watching his dugout reactions. Also there's a great article by Andy Baggerly at San Jose Mercury today about how Burrell had a huge influence on Huff at Miami.

Pretty sure that Denver has thin air, not thick. :)

It's probably fine if ball-hogging is part of a pitcher's defense stat. The pitcher fielding a ground ball is almost always the best outcome as he can prevent everything the offense can do (excepting the baserunner already on the move).

Missing the Matt Cain vs Tim Hudson matchup in game 3 of the Giants/Braves series.

Well, as I understood, they only tell the players when these things are finalized. Granted, nearly all the time, that's as soon as they fax the paperwork to MLB, but this was unusual case. Especially with the amount of money, it wasn't an absolute that it would be approved. In one of the articles about it, Bochy was stated as saying he couldn't say anything until it was finalized. Simply happened that it was leaked before that. (Now maybe Sabean or someone else on the Giants leaked the info, it which case you'd have a valid complaint.)

Actually, you can't blame Sabean for failing to inform Molina about the trade. Because of the Rangers current situation, the commissioner's office has to approve everything and at the time of the initial news reports of the trade, the Giants and Rangers were still waiting for approval of the trade.

Belt just promoted to AA today.

It is indeed one of the great sports nicknames - certainly when you consider the great dearth that has existed for the last twenty years. And even more so that it fits so perfectly, he is very roly-poly from a visual standpoint but he actually possesses fairly astonishing athleticism for his body type. Zito gave him the nickname after the play where he performed this sideways hurdle maneuver over the catcher to score a run.

Um, why is the antitrust exemption being ignored? That's the sole reason why Al Davis can move his team hither and yon at will and the A's can't. It's also why Mark Cuban owns the Mavericks and not the Cubs. Now, if Congress wants to revoke the exemption, they can do that whenever they want, but until the do, MLB is not subject to antitrust laws. Remember, antitrust laws are not bits of the Constitution, they are rules set up by Congress and they can freely determine who falls under them.

Need to get Bengie back on track for a few weeks so they can trade him to one of the AL teams fielding dead meat at catcher.

Schierholtz to bench, although Rowand should get some time off too. At least as long as Torres is hitting.

And Huff is also managing to provide above replacement defense this season for only the second time in his career.

Actually, what seems most puzzling to me is the discrepancy in GB rate. Are really 1/70 GBs accidentally classified as LDs? But, yeah, I agree with the above about HitFX. Once that's available, it can be directly compared to both systems to see which one is more accurate for historical data. Is there any time frame for when it will be all publicly available?

Yeah, I was wondering about the lack of reference to errors in the outcomes of groundballs hit to the right side.

I imagine a lot of it is determined by his inability to get out of the way (either intentionally or unintentionally).

Well, "hope" in the title implies an emotional sensation experience by fans, and the new do ballparks do enhance the fan experience, drastically in some cases, so that seems to be likely than the article contents. Also don't White Sox fans have to hate that their team came late to the party and got the last crappy new stadium? I imagine winning the WS more than compensates for that, but still that's really bad timing.

Yes, but % of sports DVR'd <<< % of scripted TV DVR'd, so that has little effect on the base point of the article.

Definitely agree with this. I'm certain that the Winter Olympics benefited from HD hugely this year as its's the first one where HD is so dominant. Snow + HD = Mega-Win. I could sit and just watch replays of the ski jumpers hitting the ground and see the snow fly up in the air. Oh, yeah, and HD+projector on 100" screen = awesomeness for everything. :)

That was pretty much my thought upon reading the question. There are 14331 player seasons with > 100 PA over 1974-2009. So the naive assumption would be 14 such seasons. 21 is certainly in the ballpark for that, and you could even speculate that final day efforts to reach/maintain BA thresholds like .300 would be a influence increasing their share.

Another possible check would be line drive rate. Usually when a player is "hot" you see him smoking the ball, not hitting Texas Leaguers. Find all the samples of 10,25,and 100 consecutive PAs with the highest LD rates and see what the LD rate is following that.

McCovey has attended many many games since AT&T because he lives in the area (got a restaurant and all that). Mays is less so because he's got things going on in other places, but he shows up in the clubhouse to talk to players more often than he does to sit and watch the games.

While I'm sure that response is the best for you in regards to getting players to represent, it is a categorical fact that some players have had their careers shortened due to being rushed to the bigs. Perhaps another way to phrase the question: As an agent, do you always rank the desire of the player over what's best for him, in the event those don't match up? (This could be for anything, not just the example of getting to the majors.)

Well, more important that is that unless Renteria demonstrates very rapidly that last season was due to his moronically playing with three ginormous bone chips in his elbow, he needs to be benched for Uribe. Then, given Sanchez's injury and propensity towards more of them, there shouldn't be too much problem finding at bats for most people.

For a lot of baseball people, something along these lines is the thought process. A lot of stat people worship the "Three True Outcomes", perhaps in part because they are easier to measure and less entangled with other factors of the game. However, those only exist originally to prevent degenerative behavior. Strikes are called to prevent batters from waiting for perfect pitches, balls are called to prevent pitchers from trying to throw pitches that can't be hit, home runs occur because fences are needed to keep the balls from rolling into the street. A lot of "baseball" people have a nice 19th century mentality to the purpose of the game. Only the drive to win has allowed these actions to become important to the game. Compare to a lot of softball leagues where these rules are modified in the name of "fun".

It was reported by some of the Giants beat writers sometime shortly after pitchers and catchers reported. Apparently Bumgarner's off-day routine was lengthier than average.

Perhaps a better scheme would be to judge GMs by the FAs signed, trades, and draft picks they made using something like WAR to sum up the players. Then rank by WAR/salary or something.

Agreed. Sabean made good moves to complement Bonds during that period. Really if you just look at Sabean's moves prior to the Pierzynksi debacle, his only bad move was signing Marvin Benard to a 3-year deal. Other positive moves: Getting Nen during the Marlins fire sale, getting Ellis Burks, the white flag trade with the White Sox. The biggest criticism of him during this period would be the poor quality of the draft picks. Of course, it turned out to be a decent strategy because they were always flipping those poor picks for decent veterans.

Who has access to the full HitFX then? Nobody or only people who pay for it? If it's pay, why doesn't BP pay for it, or is something that costs a few million and so only the teams buy it? For sure if they are just using Gameday, then they don't have great speed data then.

Oh, I had assumed that you guys had access to the real data sets.

After the update. So every NL team will be between 76 and 86 wins, except for the Pirates. With that close of a range virtually every possible standing order is within the range of the standard deviation.

Obviously VORP does not have a rotational component as all 5 pitchers would be replaced by the 6th guy. But they've fixed that, although Bengie's numbers are still wrong, it looks like his HR/RBI totals are not being adjusted to the estimated 50% PT, as the 20/102 is listed for 644 PA in the spreadsheet.

I thought you were using the hitFX data. Doesn't that have batted ball velocity?

Yeah, and the VORP for Bumgarner/Sanchez is weird in that it predicts virtually identical stats to them, but gives Bumgarner +14 VORP compared to Sanchez.

Also FYI, Oakland and SF are in the same metro area. Actually these are the only pair of major league ballparks that can see each other.

Anybody who employs Thom Brennaman is by definition not someone to be regarded as relevant to anything.

Steroids are bad because they are a health problem. Period. Therefore the type of sport the players are in is irrelevant. If steroids had no drawbacks, then they'd be just like weight training or watching video or the myriad of other things that make todays athletes superior to ones of the past.

I would think that the Red Sox would much rather Halladay not be traded at all (unless it's to them) because then they might have to face him in the post-season. Unless he's traded to the Yankees, his location will have little bearing on whether they make the playoffs, but if he's on the Angels, Phillies, or Dodgers, having to face him twice in a postseason series is a lot worse than playing him while on the Jays for the rest of the regular season.

And another point about his mental makeup: Given his experience with run support the last two years, the fact that he hasn't come remotely close to going homicidal on somebody would suggest that he's extremely grounded in the head.

Yeah, great article. As a Giants fan whose watched most of his starts so far this year, I have to assume that those crazy splits of bases empty vs runners on has at least something to do with his windup/stretch mechanics. I think a nice follow up to this would be a discussion with somebody about them.