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.
As it has been well-publicized by the media, both in and outside of the Colorado area, Mike Hampton’s time in the Mile High City was anything but successful. In his two years with the Rockies, Hampton posted a won-loss record of just 21-28, along with a major league-high ERA of 5.75—more than half a run higher than the next closest starter, fellow Rockie and member of the Great Changeup Experiment, Denny Neagle.
And yet, as 2003 regular season gets under way, whose name do we see listed in the Atlanta Braves starting rotation? None other than Michael William Hampton. Acquired over the off-season in one of the most complicated deals of all time not involving Herschel Walker, Hampton joins perhaps the most vulnerable Braves rotation in a decade—a unit that has already seen its star have a brush with mortality, and an off-season signee go down until July.
What can be expected of Hampton, though? Members of the media have spent more than their fair share of time waxing philosophical on the situation, with most coming to the conclusion that gambling on the 30-year-old lefty is a worthwhile risk. Granted, this might very well be the case, as Hampton was among the winningest pitchers in the National League before signing with Colorado in 2001. Fellow Rockies refugee Darryl Kile was able to make the transition from 5,200 feet above sea-level to Busch Stadium without missing a beat. If he could do it, why can’t Hampton?
I’ve recently written a couple of columns sketching a general measure of outfield fielding by looking at putouts the outfield turns as a percentage of team fly balls, using 2002 season data.
What about unit defense in the infield, though? Can we do the same thing there, except with ground balls instead of flies? And can that lead us to some really strange conclusions?
Yes on all counts, with some problems. While outfield putouts are context-neutral–each time a putout is recorded the batter, and only the batter, is out–infield putouts are context-heavy. A man on first means a successfully turned ground ball to short goes to the second baseman for the first out, and then (if possible) a second putout is recorded by the first baseman if the ball arrives there in time to get the batter.
For my purposes, though, I’m only interested when the infield turns any out, and only that first out. I’m going to try and isolate that by looking at infield unit POs by making a few adjustments:
The Phillies are 9-6, tied for first in the NL East. Even after a couple of low-scoring nights against the Marlins, they lead the world in runs scored. I mention that because this is going to seem like a strange time to pick on their offense. Bear with me.
In my NL East preview, I wrote the following:
“It is interesting to look at the Phillies’ lineup and see just how many slots have major platoon issues. Jim Thome and Bobby Abreu routinely lose 150 to 300 points of slugging against lefties, while Polanco and Mike Lieberthal are everyday players in name only; neither hits right-handers well enough to justify his lineup spot or salary. The Phillies might get away with this during the regular season, but it’s hard to envision them winning a short playoff series against a good manager, one willing to exploit these weaknesses.”
Here are the career platoon splits, through Tuesday, for the eight Phillies starters and their current center fielder. They’re listed in the most common order in which they’ve appeared.
One of the glaring weaknesses in the injury analysis game is the lack of data. As the injury database is built and populated, we are left with spotty research and anecdotal knowledge, especially when it comes to the crossroads of sports medicine and pitcher workloads. Adding to the problem is the lack of data for both minor league and college pitching. Since pitching is pitching, opponents of workload limitations often bring this up.
In one of the first systematic studies of early pitching workload, Lee Sinins, creator of the Sabermetric Baseball Encyclopedia, studied 135 pitchers who threw 175 innings or more before the age of 22.
John Patterson reclaims his spot in the Snakes’ rotation, Ricky Ledee gets a golden opportunity, the Pirates continue to bury Craig Wilson for no rational reason, and Chris Kahrl details the saga of the Indonesian Navy jacket.
In last week’s 6-4-3, Gary Huckabay wrote about the fact that our perceptions are more often colored by the way information is presented than by the substance of the information itself. There are plenty of examples of this, drawn both from the ballpark and the world at large. Get your hands on most any media guide, and you’re sure to see the familiar rotisserie categories–batting average, home runs, RBI–presented prominently in bold face. Now, a typical media guide runs about 400 pages, and there’s plenty of information to go around, ranging from the trivial (Mike Lincoln’s career ERA at Busch Stadium is 14.29) to the frivolous (Joe Borowski’s wife is named Tatum). Thus, should it really be that much of a surprise to find out that in the thick of that pulp forest, the people who rely on media guides to grab information on the fly–like beat writers pushing on a deadline and radio announcers trying to keep a cadence–gravitate toward those bits of knowledge that are literally staring them boldly in the face?
In response to one of last week’s Box Lunch articles, one reader asks: “I see the intellectual interest in all the detective work of reconstructing an inning from a box score, but in this day and age, who would do that instead of clicking on the game log provided right next to the box score at ESPN if you really want to know what happened?”
Maybe some of the same people who think it’s still worthwhile to cook their food on a stovetop. Also, newspapers don’t publish game logs. Box scores are portable, foldable, markable.