Joe Sheehan looks back at Morris to see if he really could pitch to the score.
Silicone. Margarine. O’Doul’s. Why fool around with watered-down imitations when you’ve got the real thing ready and available?
Rightly or wrongly, a lot of attention has been focused on pitch counts in the past several years. That’s partly because of the efforts of people like Rob Neyer, Keith Woolner, and Will Carroll, not to mention those coaches, executives and agents who understand the importance of protecting their golden-armed investments. Pitch counts have become easy to take for granted because pitch count data is more readily available now than it ever was in the past. These days, just about any self-respecting box score lists pitch counts alongside the rest of a pitcher’s line, a far cry from the dirty newsprint days of yore, when pitch count references were about as common as mentions of Reality TV or the Information Superhighway.
But what about when you don’t have pitch count information available? Like, say, you’re at a ballgame, and wondering whether Dusty Baker should send Kerry Wood out for another inning? Or you’re perusing through minor league stats? Or you’re looking at old boxes on Retrosheet, which wonderful as they might be (this, folks, was the first game I ever attended), don’t contain any information on pitch counts?
Well, it turns out that it’s not that difficult to make a reasonable guess at pitch counts based on other information that’s much easier to come by. Looking at a complete set of data from the 2001 and 2002 seasons as provided by Keith Woolner, I ran a simple linear regression of pitches thrown against various other characteristics of a pitcher’s stat line. Here was the formula that I came up with:
The Mets’ season already looks like a mess, though Jose Reyes, Aaron Heilman, and yes, even Ty Wigginton could brighten the picture. Jose Jimenez has gone from solid, unheralded reliever to arsonist; Shawn Chacon has gone from arsonist to early ace. The Orioles are bad at the big-league level, bad at the minor-league level, and may finally start to feel the economic pinch too.
Jimmy Anderson proves yet again that he’s Triple-A fodder, Dean Palmer’s three years past being a lost cause, the division-leading Royals get Beltran back, and Johnny Estrada takes a swig of Mr. PIBBB.
Normally, I open light and breezy. I talk about coffee, beer, or even the heavy stuff (NyQuil–and I’m feeling much better, thank you). UTK is my way of talking to a bunch of people all at once, and anyone who’s met me knows that I talk and talk and talk. Today, however, I’m going to say that Tony Gwynn is as full of crap as Jose Canseco or Ken Caminiti, and simply leave it at that.
The word “steroids” is becoming de facto shorthand for performance enhancing drugs, both legal and illegal. It’s also becoming de facto way for lazy journalists to point at a game and players they’ve come to loathe and besmirch it with an air of community service. Buster Olney is a really good writer (with a very interesting interview over at Bronx Banter), but he’s fallen into the same trap as many before him: Find an ex-player with an agenda, find someone within the game willing to back him up for an unquestioned reason, and play at public perceptions that baseball players really aren’t more talented than you or me–they’re just on drugs.
Today, I want to look at the relevance of a hot start on a team’s overall winning record. (I know–where do I get these ideas?)
As I write this, the aliens who have collectively taken over the Kansas City Royals’ entire roster are 14-3, the best start in team history. Not to be outdone, the Yankees are 15-3 and have outhomered their opponents this year by the miniscule margin of 35 to 4, which is a stat that deserves its own DTN article, if not its own episode of The X-Files. And both teams are trying to keep up with the Giants, who after Sunday’s loss are 15-3 despite outscoring their opponents by the downright-reasonable margin of just 107 to 81.
The topic of the meaningfulness of hot starts has intrigued analysts since the Tigers’ remarkable 35-5 start in 1984 persuaded Bill James to look at the subject in his 1985 Abstract. One of the major problems with this sort of data analysis is just getting the data for the day-by-day standings for every day in baseball history. James, working by hand, only had data from 1965 to 1984, but then he did not have the services of the incomparable, indispensable David W. Smith (the W. stands for “Support Project Retrosheet!”), who graciously provided me with just the data I needed.
So far, this column has been a day-by-day review of factoids. That’s a fun and profitable way to review box scores, but this week I have re-oriented Box Lunch toward a topical focus, using Earl Weaver’s maxims to introduce a variety of subjects. There’s little worth knowing about baseball that Weaver hasn’t already covered, and so far I have found more than 40 observations in Weaver on Strategy that are relevant to things we can study using box scores as the primary source. This week the emphasis is on how managers select and use their rosters.
“When a manager has been pushing the same buttons day after day and losing, he’d better start pushing different ones.”
Alan Trammell is doing the drunkard’s walk. On Wednesday he started Bobby Higginson in center field. It was the first time Higginson played the position in the majors, and he hasn’t played there since. And then on Saturday, with his team sniffling along at 1-14 and losing its 16th game 9-2, Trammell had Craig Paquette pinch-hit for Higginson. It was the eighth inning and Royals reliever Albie Lopez was working on his fifth consecutive scoreless inning, so maybe it was despair, and maybe it was the managerial equivalent of Brownian Motion, but the move had no strategic justification. Removing your best hitter is the worst way to start a rally. Paquette is Trammell’s de facto designated pinch-hitter, so maybe he was trying to keep Paquette fresh. Pinch-hitters come in cold and they can’t really be kept fresh, but even if you could crisp them up with two or three swings every other day, what would be gained by wasting one of your stars’ turns on a bag of sand like Paquette? It wasn’t a platoon decision. Higginson is a lefty and Paquette and Lopez are righties. If Higginson was injured you can’t tell by the box scores; he had played the previous inning and was back in the lineup the next day, and there was nothing in the next day’s news about an injury to Higginson. All I can think of is that Trammell was either conceding the game by giving him a breather or–this has to happen sometimes–a leisurely bathroom break.
In this installment of Prospectus Triple Play, Prospectus authors look at the Red Sox closer situation, the Reds’ injury woes, and Ryan Klesko’s improved defense for the Padres. Plus tips o’ the cap to Trot Nixon, Kevin Millar, and Brian Lawrence.
Would you kill someone for $1,000? What about $10,000? How far do I have to go before you start thinking “Well, do I know them? Are they bad people?” Or the opposite question: How much would you pay to prevent someone from being killed?
This is the choice baseball faces when they consider their security. It’s much like the choices architects make when they construct ballparks: price, speed, and ease of construction each weighed against comfort, quality, security, earthquake resistance.
Baseball this last week was forced to re-assess the balance it had struck, when four fans ran out onto the field during a White Sox game, including a guy who apparently was really fond of umpire Laz Diaz’s leg (and was stomped for his love).
Normally, UTK comes to you powered by a fine beer or a gourmet coffee of some sort. Tonight, it couldn’t be much more different: I’m ‘powered’ by NyQuil and about two boxes of Puffs with the lotion in them (ick). We’ll keep things short, sweet, and I hope reasonably coherent, but no guarantees. Like that’s any different from any other day…
Prospectus Triple Play debuts with a look at the Yankees, Marlins, and Pirates.
See how the Yankees are handling Derek Jeter’s injury. Delve into the mystery that is uberhacker Alfonso Soriano. Marvel at Jeff Torborg’s ’82 Cardinals baserunning strategy. Scratch your head over Pudge’s transformation into Jim Thome. Watch in horror as the Pirates slip into Tigerville sans Brian Giles. And light a candle for the return of John Wasdin.
So did you miss me? Don’t answer that, I probably don’t want to know the answer. After a week at the fabulous Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, it’s back to the cool rain-filled air of Indianapolis.
Thanks for all the response to the articles published while I was gone, especially the interesting piece with Lee Sinins. I apologize, but there’s no way I’m going to be able to respond to all the emails. I did read them all though. To summarize most of the answers, I realize that it is far from a scientific study, that nothing was “proven,” and that a “control group” study is needed–and don’t think that’s not in the works! What the piece was is interesting, since several distinct patterns came up during an observable time frame among a more or less random sampling. Until the injury database is up and populated, we’re left with studies like this; imagine analyzing hitting without any data to work from and you’ll realize just how primitive injury analysis is at this stage. Any step, no matter how small, is movement towards something, even if we had found nothing. At worst, I get great response from my readers that help us find the next direction to go.
Randy Johnson isn’t used to handling questions over lousy performances, Derek Lowe dishes out a DIPS hit, Tom Prince pulls to within 1394 steals of Rickey Henderson’s record, John Schuerholz might have to field Millwood-Estrada questions until the day he dies, and Darren Baker offers a hitting lesson to Barry Bonds and company.
Sixty years ago, America was at war.
That one was very different, and one of those differences was the way baseball reacted. This time around, no one from the major leagues was going to take any part in the fighting, and certainly won’t now that it’s winding down. It is unlikely that anyone from the minor leagues will take any part (if there are any minor league players who are in the Guard and have been called up, I haven’t been able to find any mention of it.)
There are a number of ways to look at how much difference the military service of ballplayers made on the quality of the league at a given time. One of the simpler ways is to compare the aggregate statistics of players coming into the major leagues to the aggregate of the players who were going out.
I was messing around with ESPN.com’s sortable stats late Thursday night, when I began to realize something. We’re on the cusp of when the performances we’re seeing start to have some meaning; guys are making their fourth starts, hitters are edging towards 100 plate appearances. For a performance analyst, it’s a fun time to take a global look at the numbers.
The Red Sox swap arsonists in the Amazing Super-Flammable Bullpen. Could this be the last stand for Alan Benes and Ryan Christenson? Another icon hits the disabled list in Cincinnati, and Jeff Hammonds makes it through 10 games before doing the same.