Believe it or not, most of our writers didn't enter the world sporting an @baseballprospectus.com address; with a few exceptions, they started out somewhere else. In an effort to up your reading pleasure while tipping our caps to some of the most illuminating work being done elsewhere on the internet, we'll be yielding the stage once a week to the best and brightest baseball writers, researchers and thinkers from outside of the BP umbrella. If you'd like to nominate a guest contributor (including yourself), please drop us a line.
I was asked to write a brief biography, as well as a preamble. In bullet form:
- I co-authored The Book—Playing the Percentages in Baseball and run a blog of the same name.
- I'm a heavy proponent of sabermetrics and especially enjoy discussions where both sides can move upward and onward to the next issue.
- If you have a summary opinion with no evidence, I will call you on it.
- In the "a lot" v. "alot" debate, I stand with "alot." I also have a son and a dog, so I've got plenty of experience with bedtime stories and leashes. If you ask me about women, I can tell you the one, and only one, thing I've learned.
So, post your questions or thoughts below, and in a week or so, I'll do my best to provide my comments. I know some of you think there are "too many numbers," while others can't get enough of this stuff. I'm very interested to find out what the typical Baseball Prospectus reader is thinking about regarding quantitative and qualitative analysis, as well as critical thinking. Even feel free to unload your exasperated thoughts, and maybe I can placate you to some degree.
Your turn.
Editorial note: comments are now closed.
Thank you for reading
This is a free article. If you enjoyed it, consider subscribing to Baseball Prospectus. Subscriptions support ongoing public baseball research and analysis in an increasingly proprietary environment.
Subscribe now
I guess what I'm saying is that if there are times when an intentional walk doesn't increase the offense's chance of scoring (and I think we all agree that there are such situations -- #8 hitters in NL lineups, etc.), then the corollary to that would have to be that there is at least something to the notion of lineup protection.
Everytime the Giants walked Bonds to get to Kent it helped increase their chance of scoring. It's in the book Richard mentions below.
I guess basically, Do the numbers show an effective usage pattern for season long maximization of your pitching staff?
Also, how does sabermetrics make itself more relevant - it seems to me that sometimes more and more good work is done, only to be ignored by much of the media and baseball as a whole.
And what about hitters? High BA hitters tend to stay that way. Does that say hitters do have control over BABIP?
You could argue that the players ought to be self-motivating and should always give 100%, regardless of who the manager is, but I think that would ignore the fact that the players are human beings, not robots. It would seem like any managerial tactical or strategical deficiencies can be corrected or compensated by providing the manager with a set of rules regarding lineup, pitcher usage, when to sacrifice bunt, when to steal, etc (or would such guidance insult the manager?).
Ultimately, what the question boils down to is if you had to choose between the two, would rather have a manager with superior dugout skills (tactics/strategy) and mediocre clubhouse skills (player relations) or a manager with superior clubhouse skills with mediocre dugout skills?
That is, suppose you have a scale of sabermetric discoveries something like this (your rankings may vary, feel free to recalibrate):
Runs Created: 10
Voros and DIPS: 8
Players' aging curves: 6
Strikeout pitchers have longer careers: 4
Clutch hitting doesn't exist much: 2
And supposed you ranked teams' top five discoveries that the general sabermetric public doesn't know about. How would they rank on that scale?
Nonetheless, we constantly hear about catchers' role in calling a game and helping the pitcher.
Have there been any developments on this issue?
why bat your 5th best hitter 3rd instead of your 3rd or 4th best hitter? I am assuming it's to prevent the lineup from being too top heavy?
The other is why in the AL you bat your worst hitter 9th and in the NL you bat the pithcer (your worst hitter) 8th? Is this because of just how bad pitchers are at hitting that it becomes optimal to bat them 9th, and at what point would the worst hitter on an AL team have to be for it to be optimal to bat them 8th and not 9th?
My question is: From your experience, what are some of the "things they obviously know" that we, as typical fans, do not? In most cases, are even foolish-looking decisions truly rational when all factors (including those unbeknownst to the general public) are considered? Or is there truly just a lot of bad decisionmaking taking place on major league diamonds and in front offices?
Why did foot first sliding disappear? I recall two types of foot-first slides. The hook slide away from the tag and the straight ahead foot-first of which I have fond memories of Lou Brock's classic form going into the bag, and popping up ready to take another base. Has head first sliding been proven in some way more efficient?
I appreciate your take on three questions, if you can do so without reavealing anything that your MLB employers would frown upon:
1) What sabermetric advancement do you think is the least-appreciated by a majority of franchises?
2) I like to flatter myself that I'm an 'early adopter' to the sabermetric perspective on the game, even though it's been so many years since its introduction and uptake by those like yourself. Is sabermetrics already 'mainstream' in your mind, or how long do you think it will be til it is?
3) What was / will be the tipping point to #2?
Thanks in advance.
Bonus Question: What are your thoughts on playing slot machines and if you played what would your strategy be?
The Phillies are currently 27-17, which is called 10 games over .500
The Mets are currently 22-22, which is .500
Yet the Mets are considered only 5 games behind the Phillies.
Why do we interpret team's relative standings two different ways?
Put more starkly, in one park a deep drive would be the pitcher's "fault" because the fence is a few feet closer - while in another stadium, DIPS says that there but for Lady Luck that same deep drive could as easily have been a harmless swinging bunt, since it stayed in the park. Now I realize that HR/FB normalizations are done in the more sophisticated defense-independent pitching stats (like xFIP). But how can an identical batted ball be purely the pitcher's "doing" in one park, but essentially the batter's "doing" in the other? I cannot get my head around this seemingly artificial construct.