I found the articles with the data I was looking for:
In Theory, Diamondbacks Are Winning Way Too Often (New York Times – Dan Rosenheck)
No Mirage in Arizona (The Hardball Times – Chris Jaffe)
This is a small sample of data and it could be luck. But the point is, there does appear to be a reason for their overperforming their Pythagorean record.
And, the point still stands: A whole seasons worth of run differential and statistics should be thrown out the door come October – the D-Backs, if they catch fire, could do just as well as anyone else in the playoffs.
TwentySeven
Hey, TwentySeven here. I’d just like to respond to Red’s last post.
The Diamondbacks actually haven’t been as lucky as it seems, to be honest. Part of the reason why their run-differential is so bad is actually because their bullpen is so polarizing. I don’t have a link to put up, but I know someone at The Hardball Times did an article about this very topic and showed that when the Diamondbacks start losing, they put in their worst relievers, who are ridiculously bad, but when they are winning, they put in their elite relievers (i.e. Jose Valverde & co.) and they don’t give up a lot of runs. It hurts their run differential. They are a good team.
Besides of which, just because they are theoretically a bad team, it doesn’tmean that they couldn’t take it all. A bad run differential might mean that you could expect a seasonal regression, but certainly not a regression over a few playoff games.
-TwentySeven
Filed under: Arizona Diamondbacks, MLB, New York Yankees, Seattle Mariners | Tags: Bill James, clutch hitting, Pythagorean Record, stephen jay gould
I mentioned earlier that the D’Backs have an astounding +11 win difference between their actual record and their Pythagorean record, meaning they have been extremely lucky the entire year. As of now, their record is 89-70, enough to lead the NL West by a game. However, their Pythagorean record is 78-81 – good enough for fourth in the west. The fact that the D’Backs have been so lucky means that they probably will have to come down to earth and realize their “real” record – there’s only so much luck around. In other words, don’t expect them to go far in the playoffs, if they even get there.
Key example: The Mariners. I said it before, but I’ll say it again: they were outperforming by far the whole year, and finally the last month or so they played like their Pythagorean said they would. They once led the wild card by three games, but now they trail their division and wild card by 7.
The reverse happened with the Yankees – they were extremely unlucky the first third or so of the season, and I knew sooner or later they would have to regress to their norms, this time a winning norm. Since then they’ve played like their pythagorean record said they would (sound familiar?) the result is that they’ve clinched a playoff spot, and I am happy.
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Baseball is a lot about luck and things evening out. Bill James and the late Stephen Jay Gould among others (both pictured, one when he was a lot younger than the other) have talked a lot of about luck and how baseball likes it so much. People like to turn things nearly always dependent completely on luck to turn it into a “skill”; clutch hitting, ability of a pitcher to “win” games, the ability of a catcher to call games, etc.. Johnny Vander Meer, Don Larsen, Ted Williams, everybody who’s hit four homers or six hits in a game; they all worked with luck. Luck says that those improbable events are bound to happen among the thousand upon thousands of major league ball games ever played. What makes Joe DiMaggio’s streak so amazing is that he worked against luck. Even luck says that streak should never have happened in all those games through the years. But that’s a whole different thing, and there’s an excellent Gould article on the subject here.
Outliers in a basic linear pattern of baseball, like a breakout season or a surprisingly good stretch of games by a so-so team, are almost always connected with luck and are therefore likely to regress back to the norm. Bill James has predicted that eventually pitchers will go back to dominating games, pitching more complete games, even going back to a permanent four or three man rotation. Why? No statistics at all have to be calculated, just the simple fact that baseball has a tendency of evening itself out over time.
And that’s the beauty of baseball, one of the fundamental aspects that make it the best game there ever was.
In other news… I don’t have a Baseball Prospectus subscription (something I’m working on, next season I promise), but I happened to come across a certain column. Yep, that’s right, a Baseball Prospectus column on how to build a fantasy team. A fantasy team. Has BP has gone to the dark side? Now don’t get me wrong, I like fantasy baseball a lot, I play about three or four teams a year. It’s just really fun. However, don’t you think there’s enough fantasy advice on the net? Of all people, Baseball Prospectus shouldn’t be writing on that kind of stuff, stuff already too plentiful in my opinion. These two things – fantasy baseball and PECOTA, VORP, EqA, etc. -don’t go together. Granted, those stats could sometimes be useful when building a fantasy team, but it’s completely different ways of looking at the game: prediction for fun and a possible $5,000 prize (not to mention big-time bragging rights), and prediction to analyze the entire structure and motives of the game. BP shouldn’t go into draft sleepers and Rotoworld shouldn’t start analyzing wins expected matrix.
Filed under: Barry Bonds, Steroids, baseball hall of fame | Tags: banish it, bestow it, brand it, dave petroskey, mark ecko, vote756.com
Marc Ecko has just announced that the votes from his site vote756.com to decide the fate of Barry Bond’s 756th home run ball have been tallied and the results are:
Banish it: 19%
Bestow it: 34%
Brand it: 47%
Even better is the Hall of Fame’s reaction:
“This ball wouldn’t be coming to Cooperstown if Marc hadn’t bought it from the fan who caught it and then let the fans have their say,” [Hall of Fame President Dave] Petroskey told The Associated Press. “We’re delighted to have the ball. It’s a historic piece of baseball history.”
I’m glad the hall of fame isn’t shying away from this – they are a seperate institution not necessarily officially “endorsed” by MLB, or at least not owned by it. Therefore, it’s their duty to recieve anything donated to them, no matter if it’s contreversial, as long as it is, as Petroskey said, “a historical piece of baseball history,” which it undeniably is. Now, we just have to wait as to how they’re going to “brand” it. Duct tape should do the job.
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One Dennis G Carrier in the comments section just pointed out some quite frightening and disturbing racial history of the term “branding.” I don’t really believe that Marc Ecko meant any racist implications, I think often many of those terms get tossed around without knowledge of previous uses and obviously Ecko should reconsider using it. Unless I’m missing a key point of Ecko’s beliefs or opinoins, as far as I know I don’t think he mean any implications like that. If, for example, Ecko had McGwire’s 500th home run or 62st home run ball in his possesion, and again, unless I’m not aware of past specific racist beliefs by Ecko, I doubt he wouldn’t not use the term “Branding.” However, it’s still important to be aware of those things pointed out by Mr. Carrier.
Filed under: MLB
Ok, so Jose Molina doesn’t exactly have the whole beginning, middle, and end concept down pat, but his words still stay true. It always surprises me at how much people don’t seem to realize the Yankees when looking to win, look to win, and it even sometimes surprises me at how much they sacrifice personal playing time for a better ballclub. Oh, and another thing.
Jose Molina w/ NYY: .321 AVG, .339 OBP, .472 SLG, 5/17 (29%) CS, 1 pickoff
Filed under: Baseball Scouting, Baseball Statistics, Baseball Strategy, Mike Pagliarulo, Mindless Twits, New York Yankees | Tags: Blue Jays, Mike Pagliarulo, Yankees
This article was one I found after I posted before, and I thought that this was as ridiculous, if not more, than the other…
As the New York Yankees begin an all-important four-game series with the Toronto Blue Jays today, let’s take a look at how individual Blue Jays pitchers have fared against the Yankees. Yes, it’s a small sample size, so individually it’s difficult to read too much into these stats. But, collectively, we see a trend. Let’s go behind the stats and understand them.
The Yankees are a great offensive team. They lead the majors in team runs, batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage. Yet within this dominance, there are weaknesses.
The Yankees are an aggressive low ball hitting club, especially their power bats A-Rod, Giambi, Cano, and Abreu. And, they are an excellent off-speed hitting team, led by their captain Jeter, Damon, and Matsui. It’s not a surprise then, that when the Yankees play against “command” types who throw a lot of offspeed pitches, they can run up the score. On the other hand, the Yankees are susceptible to hard throwers. Looking at the Blue Jays pitching stats from 2007 (diagram above [look on the actual link]) versus the Yankees, you’ll see that generally the pitchers who have done well are those with above average fastballs. Those pitchers are highlighted.
Given that the Blue Jays will be throwing three pitchers (Burnett, Hallady and McGowan) with plus fastballs against the Yankees, and only one command guy this series (Marcum), look for the Yankees offense to be mitigated.
Again, in the last paragraph they call him Hallady instead of Halladay. Copy editing, please.
So… A.J. Burnett, Roy Halladay, Dustin McGowan, Jason Frasor, and Jeremy Accardo have all been good against the Yankees? And, this can somehow be explained because they have plus fastballs? Damn! It’s genius!
Maybe this is just me, but don’t most teams have trouble against pitchers with good fastballs?
But the general idiocy of this is that those are all good pitchers. Sure, the Yankees have trouble with them, but maybe that’s just because they’re good. Take a look at their stat lines:
A.J. Burnett: 153.3 IP, 9-7, 3.40 ERA, 136 ERA+
Jeremy Accardo: 65.3 IP, 28 SV, 2.20 ERA, 210 ERA+
Jason Frasor: 54.7 IP, 3 SV, 4.28 ERA, 108 ERA+
Roy Halladay: 218.3 IP, 15-7, 3.71 ERA, 125 ERA+
Dustin McGowan: 159.3 IP, 11-9, 3.84 ERA, 121 ERA+
The irony is that the post is title, ‘Using and Understanding Stats’. It’s kind of sad, really. If the people on this site stuck to just scouting, and only focused on the main elements, i.e., what pitches so-and-so throws, or where in the zone certain batters can hit well, it would be a great blog. But no, they have to go into the ’stats’ that aren’t really stats and they have to try to actually provide analysis.
Filed under: Baseball Scouting, Baseball Strategy, Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Mike Pagliarulo, Mindless Twits | Tags: John Lackey, Mike Pagliarulo
Today, I’ll be taking a page out of the Fire Joe Morgan playbook and I’ll be talking a bit about the general idiocy going on over at Mike Pagliarulo’s ’scouting’ blog the BaseLine Report. FJM has done some analysis already, so I’ll be leaving that stuff to the big guns…
This is from a scouting report on John Lackey:
Lackey is a tall, durable right hander that has become the most dependable starter on the Angels
staff – and one of the dependable starters in major league baseball. He’s an intense competitor that
pitches with a plan and executes his pitches. He works at a good quick tempo and establishes his
fastball while getting ahead in the count to most hitters.
They start off well by playing the ‘intense competitor’ card. I love it. Because John Lackey really wants to win. Unlike all sorts of other players who are really trying to lose when they play baseball. Alex Rodriguez, you know it. J.D. Drew, I’m looking at you.
For the sake of brevity, I’ll skip some of the less idiotic portions of this article… Moving right along…
Strengths
• Above aveage command of fastball, slider, curve and change-up.
Now maybe this is just me, but it seems that the easiest way to appear unprofessional is to have spelling errors littered throughout your text. Please, please, please get a proofreader/copy editor.
I’ll skip over some of the more contextually correct content and get to some more interesting stuff.
- BEST MATCHUP
- John Lackey is capable of overpower hitters by using his fastball to each side of the plate as well
as up in the zone to finish a hitter off. Because of the fact that JD Drew and David Ortiz have
holes in the strike zone highlighting areas above their belt, Lackey matches up well vs. both hitters. Look for a high hard fastballs when he’s got two strikes on these players.- WORST MATCHUP
Pesky contact type hitters such as Dustin Pedroia and Jacoby Ellsbury that are capable of using
the entire field and do a good job of battling with two strikes, these hitters will give John Lackey the
most problems. Pedroia and Ellsbury both do a good job of putting the ball in play and can handle the high strike very well. They will be difficult outs for the Angels #1 starter.
So you’re telling me that John Lackey will have more trouble with Pedroia and Ellsbury than with David Ortiz? Maybe this is just me, but I don’t believe that.
KEYS TO SUCCESS:
John Lackey must establish his fastball early and get ahead in the count. He needs to hammer
the strike zone but mind the danger areas of each potential HR threat, namely Ortiz, Ramirez, and
Lowell. When he is ahead in the count Lackey maintains more weapons to put hitters away with
than most. His concentration shouldn’t be distracted by the basestealing threats of Ellsbury and Crisp, as
Mathis is quite capable of handling the running game. An umpire with a forgiving strike zone will favor Lackey, as the Red Sox hitters are more patient than the Angels offense.
So you’re telling me that he needs to get ahead in the counts? And he needs to keep fat fastballs away from the power zones of power hitters? No way, you’re kidding me, right? I mean, most pitchers try to get behind in the count and then throw fastballs right down the spots where the batter hits well? Right?
I really like how they are targeting this blog for baseball fans, and yet they seem to be explaining things to your typical tennis fan who doesn’t know much about baseball.
Pitcher Plan
For John Lackey to be effective he must get ahead of hitters early in the count by getting strike one
with his first pitch. This will enable him to utilize his variety of outpitches. He must throw strikes
allowing his very consistent defense to work at a good pace behind him. Jeff Mathis is very capable
of handling Boston’s running game which is one less worry for Lackey.
So basically the exact same thing as the ‘Keys to Success’? Not only are they being idiots, but they are repeating their idiocy to us over and over again.
I hope to have many more features of this idiocy… It’s just too good.
Filed under: Baseball Strategy, Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, Player Draft, Top Lists
This list is a short one because I’m too lazy to actually think of five and there are only three really. This is just a reminder that we don’t need the division title to accomplish our goal.
3. If they don’t win the division, they get a higher position in the draft than the Red Sox, which is always useful.
2. The past few World Series winners have all been from the Wild Card anyways!
1. The team with the best momentum going into the playoffs wins the World Series, not the best team. The playoffs are a crapshoot and any team that reaches the playoffs can win (i.e. the Cardinals).
