Kickass baseball media 2009

hey, did ESPN abolish the "Insider" subscrip wall? These blogs have appeared in full for a couple weeks....

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?name=neyer_rob

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?name=law_keith

Yeah for the blogs they have. I think the articles are still restricted.

Pretty sure the blogs are free in the off-season.

not sure if this belongs here but here's a link to every Baseball Digest since 1945, readable online.

http://books.google.com/books?id=8LcDAAAAMBAJ&output=html&source=gbs_all_issues_r&cad=2_2

Baseball Digest online archive

oh hell, thanks

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3130/3161088827_677f67c4da_o.png

Haha

The article itself is nothing that SG hasn't harped on before, but the intro is great,

"Spurred on by Buster Olney's mention of this same topic in his blog posting today (I shan't link; Olney is, shall we say, persnickety about who he links to, so I shall be the same)..."

http://pinstripedbible.mlblogs.com/archives/2009/01/another_note_on_posada.html

http://mcfarlane.com/toys/product.aspx?product=3848

I don't know where else to put this.

http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2009/01/2008_leaders_an.php

new efficiency stat for Ks... K/100pitches.

pretty interesting way of measuring efficiency with Ks, rather than pitchers who throw 8-10 pitch ABs trying to K a guy who can't hit the ball out of the infield (sup Zito).

LOLivan

Speaking of pitching statistics, has anyone developed a relief stat that is more complex than runners inherited/runners stranded -- one that takes situations (number of base runners, locations of base runners, number of outs) into account?

I think that's what WXRL is supposed to do.

This shit is excessively complicated:

WX

Expected wins added over an average pitcher. WX uses win expectancy calculations to assess how relievers have changed the outcome of games. Win expectancy looks at the inning, score, and runners on base when the reliever entered the game, and determines the probability of the team winning the game from that point with an average pitcher. Then it looks at how the reliever actually did, and how that changes the probability of winning. The difference between how the reliever improved the chances of winning and how an average pitcher would is his WX.

WXL

Expected wins added over an average pitcher, adjusted for level of opposing hitters faced. WXL factors in the MLVr of the actual batters faced by the relievers. Then, like WX, WXL uses win expectancy calculations to assess how relievers have changed the outcome of games.

WXR

Expected wins added over a replacement level pitcher. WXR uses win expectancy calculations to assess how relievers have changed the outcome of games, similar to WX. However, instead of comparing the pitcher's performance to an average pitcher, he is compared to a replacement level pitcher to determine WXR.

WXRL

Expected wins added over a replacement level pitcher, adjusted for level of opposing hitters. WXRL combines the individual adjustments for replacement level (WXR) and quality of the opposing lineup (WXL) to the basic WX calculation.

http://www.weei.com/Can-The-Ballad-Of-The-Captain-Please-End-/3729755

Again, it’s not Varitek’s fault that some still believe that the Red Sox pitching staff would turn into 12 Steven Adler’s if he left. It’s not his fault that Tim McCarver commented last season that if “Varitek were in the Army, he’d be a Colonel”. I still have no idea what that means. It’s not his fault that there are people out there that think he has some miraculous powers because he had an extra letter on the front of his shirt.

My prediction? He hits .236 in 108 games and the Sox win 92 games. My prediction if he didn’t sign? The Sox would get roughly the same production out of the catcher spot and win, oh, 92 games. I swear to you that the pitchers would find their way to the mound from the dugout. I remember Josh Beckett once pitched some games in October vs. the Yankees in a different uniform, throwing pitches to someone else.

nifty Sheehan column the other day, the gist of which is

The average American League batter hit .268/.336/.420. Four AL teams couldn't match any of those three figures from a position at which there's no defensive requirement whatsoever. Eight AL teams got subpar OBPs from their DH slot, which seems like a good way to torpedo your offense. If you were to pick your DH entirely based on their ability to not make outs, you'd be ahead of the game in the American League.

i hated that article, sheehan oversimplifies all the time because he's just looking for an excuse to get outraged about something - easily the worst/most transparent 'analyst' on BP

(not that there isn't a kernel of truth in the argument he's making, i just hate his style)

Dean Ara (Vancouver)
(1391)

Joe - your argument is simplistic.

Without actually knowing the financial (or other) demands these players are making (and you have to believe that Boras is not giving in) how could you categorize the non-signings as "non-sensical"?

You don't have to rehash over and over that these players are good. We get it.

But let's assume that this issue isn't entirely about dumb GMs failing to realize that there are great players out there that could help their team.
Jan 30, 2009 13:10 PM
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owned just owned

own zone population sheehan

I just didn't know last year's DHs were THAT unproductive.

well he's equating productivity w/r/t DH's in terms of OBP...

...but I always stereotype DH's as more SLG types than OBP... bigger lumbering players who can't field thus they DH.

Or, like, Jose Vidro.

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/
http://www.drivelinemechanics.com/

these are excellent blorgs about baseball

LSUdavidterry (Dallas): Here's a quote from Steve Phillips from ESPN's $40MM challenge. Steve Phillips: … I was also surprised as to how much talent you can get for $40M.

Steven Goldman: That's hilarious. I am consistently amazed that Phillips can make a living as an analyst. Having him explain team building is a bit like having Henry Kissinger give a lecture on how to foster peace and amity in Southeast Asia.

Steve Phillips: … I was also surprised as to how much talent you can get for $40M.

Has he not ever played MLB2K whatever?

(Oh, wait, he's IN MLB2K9.)

(Oh, wait again, he was once the GENERAL MANAGER of a Major League Baseball team.)

49. Rob Neyer selects Francisco Liriano (P, Minnesota Twins, $471,500)
Steve Phillips: I was going to take him. Good pick.
50. Buster Olney selects Mike Fontenot (2B, Chicago Cubs, $445,500)
Steve Phillips: I was going to take him, too.

51. Steve Phillips selects Ambiorix Burgos

Steve Phillips: Headed into church. Be back in an hour. Gotta pray over my next selection.

the_real_stevephillips

Steve Phillips may be an idiot, but I think he probably drafted the best team. He also had the least amount of money left over.

lol canks

Although I guess he's relying on one of this three SSs to play 2B cuz he didn't seem to draft one. Still Braun/Quentin/Kemp plus Wright/Ramirez/Aviles?DeWitt?Theriot/Gonzalez seems pretty scary and Lester/Nolasco/Santana/Garza plus Papelbon is not slouchy.

yeah he put together a good team, tho i think i like starks' the best - grabbing wieters and rollins right at the end was p. cool

stark's

IRL Stark's def. has the most upside (Upton, Price, Wieters is sick) but I'm not sure how such things matter in these sorts of simulations. I don't understand how Neyer/Olney leave $1M out there, but I'm sure this is hard to do.

i think they outsmarted themselves a little just looking for the best bargains, not realizing that you don't get extra credit for leftover payroll

will this sim be run w/ real world stats (I stopped going to ESPN)?

No, it's a sim based on projections, not performance this coming year.

Not sure if the fact that I noticed this reflects well on me, but the projections had Neyer beating Phillips like a drum.

Goldman:

http://pinstripedbible.mlblogs.com/archives/2009/02/eleven_reactions_to_the_arodst.html

John (Watertown, SD): What were you trying to do in the draft? Other than draft a ton (21) AL players hoping that the translated numbers would make them better relative to their NL brethren?

SportsNation Rob Neyer: (12:23 PM ET ) dingdingdingdingdingding! Congrats, John: As far as I know, you're the first to notice. Cole Hamels is a lot better than Zack Greinke, right? Actually, not so much. When you account for the DH *and* the AL's clear superiority, Greinke's actually pretty close to Hamels. And I was hoping the sim would take that into account. That's not my only secret, but it's probably the biggest. The other is that I did my best to consider defense. Well played, sir.

Matt (St. Louis): You went up the middle, took the best catcher, second basemen, and center fielder. Then you filled out from there with plus defenders and pitchers who throw strikes. No?

SportsNation Rob Neyer: (12:24 PM ET ) Yeah, that was the other thing. I thought strikeouts would play well, because they're so projectable (as opposed to hits and ERA).

http://www.rotoauthority.com/2009/02/spring-training.html

#
# Russell Martin - took up yoga, "credits his new girlfriend, a model and fellow native of Quebec, with teaching him an organized, grounded way to run his life whipping him."

She must have seen him do that perverse ritual-style water cooler beatdown during the playoffs.

You need to work on getting lose and staying focused when you're being forced to catch 150 games a year.

Being a catcher and not doing yoga seems frankly crazy to me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html

Lewis on Basketball; still (obviously) worthwhile

i see lol images of Yogi Berra (or Sal Fasano) doing yoga

http://pinstripedbible.mlblogs.com/archives/2009/02/the_arod_files.html

As for those on the "steroids corrupt all stats" debate, I remain somewhere between agnostic and outright skeptical. I'd be more willing to believe in a placebo effect than I do in a large-scale impact on home run production. If you feel differently, I'm open to your argument, but we need an argument more solid than, "Look at the home runs, man!" I did a radio spot recently, and the host said -- I loosely paraphrase -- "You puny stathead, I used to play the game, and I look at how Bongs and Ray-Rod can stay back on the ball and still hit it out -- that's unnatural power that can only come from the juice!" And as I struggled to say something more than, "Wait, what?"....

All of this searching for a "natural" production baseline is ridiculous given that there is no such thing. The line drawn between fair and unfair substances is completely arbitrary. No player, in any sport, is competing with only the assets that birth gave him. There's always something else going into the pot, be it aspirin, absinthe, or amphetamines. During his 56-game hitting streak, Joe DiMaggio chain-smoked cigarettes in the dugout to calm his nerves. That gave him an unfair advantage on Wee Willie Keeler. Heck, genes are unfair and should be banned. Consider Barry Bonds and Jose Cruz, Jr. Bobby Bonds was a very good player. Barry Bonds is better. Jose Cruz was a very good player. Jose Cruz, Jr. is not half the player his old man was. Seems like Barry's mom brought more to the chromosome hoedown than did Jose Jr.'s mom. Clearly, Barry Bonds is the beneficiary of genetic hypergamy, giving him a competitive advantage unavailable to other players. As such, his records should be stricken from the book. Breeding, intentional or not, makes a mockery of the level playing field....

kickass baseball media, "arguments worthy of a high school debate team" edition

oh YEAH?

lol or a high school stoner basement i guess:

"you know, like, society's RULES man.......they're all basically arbitrary."

Simmons (LA): Do you think Amare gets traded before the deadline? Oh, shoot. Wrong chat!

SportsNation Keith Law: (1:18 PM ET ) [90210 reference] [porn star reference] [House] [Manning face] [random basketball stat] [TAINT]

no, he's addressing the fiction that all the "populist" columnists are shouting on the 'purity' of pre-1995 baseball.

xp

well it's possible to do that without taking it to the "logical" extreme of "a REAL level playing field would be a bunch of clones."

on home pitchers and BABIP:

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/babip-splits/

cool article.

Payroll efficiency graphs!

http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2009/03/20062008_payrol.php

has anyone read The Diamond Appraised?

not I.

Why are there so many 1930 players in the HOF compared to 1980?

http://www.baseballmusings.com/archives/031345.php

more:

http://www.baseballmusings.com/archives/031349.php

http://www.replacementlevel.com/index.php/RLYW/comments/looking_ahead_to_2009_brett_gardner

Article is just number crunching, but the comment that follows...

"1. Posted at 1:16:42 am on Wednesday, April 1, 2009 by fgasparini

Now, I’m just gonna say right off I don’t have “numbers” to back this up. But this Brad Garner fella reminds me of a young kid off the farm who could do a little bit of everything, including play center field in the House That Ruth Built. Kid who wears a World Series ring. Kid name of Bellinger."

Answering Baseball’s What-Ifs
By ALAN SCHWARZ

You can learn a lot during a major league baseball game. Like Ukrainian, if it is a particularly slow nine innings.

As for the science of baseball strategy, one game teaches precious little. A well-timed sacrifice bunt can backfire and lose the game; a foolish steal can appear brilliant. The vagaries of randomness — the way Sandy Koufax got battered occasionally and a pipsqueak named Bucky Dent hit one of the most famous home runs ever — camouflage the game’s inner forces, which for 150 years have operated somewhere between fact and fable.

One game has little meaning. A thousand seasons can take a while. Thank goodness for quad-core processors.

“Computer simulations work pretty well in baseball for two reasons,” said Carl Morris, a professor of statistics at Harvard University who has written several papers that commingled baseball and formal statistical theory. “In general, they allow you to study fairly complicated processes that you can’t really get at with pure mathematics. But also, sports are great for simulations — you can play 10,000 seasons overnight.”

No one can afford to wait less than major league teams, which crave every extra run or victory they can wring from their $100 million rosters. John Abbamondi, the assistant general manager for the St. Louis Cardinals, says his team and about 10 others use simulations to evaluate potential trades and how they might affect the pennant race.

“It’s all part of the statistical analysis that complements the more traditional scouting we do,” he said.

Using computer simulations to explore in-game and other baseball strategies is by no means new. As early as 1958, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology programmed a behemoth I.B.M. 704 mainframe to investigate whether the sacrifice bunt was a smart play. (More on that later.) Simulators have since grown so complex that the most sophisticated one available to the public, called Diamond Mind, not only runs lickety-split on laptops but even considers minutiae like the effects of wind in individual ballparks.

Under what conditions is bunting advantageous? When does trying to steal make sense, and when does it decrease the chances of scoring? Questions like these turn out to be ideally suited to computer programs through which millions of iterations can smooth out the peaks and valleys of randomness, and converge toward a reliable approximation.

Known among formal statisticians as the Monte Carlo method, this approach takes spectacularly complex phenomena like weather patterns and stock performance and allows their behavior to be approximated, if not determined.

What are the chances of winning a game of solitaire? Rather than writing an equation that tries to take into account the trillions of trillions of possible hands and moves, a statistician can run a computer program that simply plays the game a few million times in minutes to see how often it wins. Dr. Morris says he has seen the Monte Carlo method used to improve computer graphics and explore gene sequences.

Like such competitors as Strat-O-Matic — which made its debut in 1961 with at-bats determined by cards and dice, and remains popular on the personal computer — Diamond Mind is designed to allow fans to play fictional games and seasons, exploring what-if scenarios that real life would be too slow and controversial to allow.

Take the age-old question of how much difference a team’s lineup order makes. This issue so vexed the former manager Billy Martin that he once literally picked his Detroit Tigers batting order out of a hat.

Luke Kraemer of Imagine Sports, which owns Diamond Mind, programmed the simulator to force the 2008 Yankees to bat their best hitter and cleanup man, Alex Rodriguez, ninth — to see how scoring was affected. Mr. Kraemer got the run total not for just one season, which can fluctuate as much as 80 runs in each direction from simple randomness, but for 100 seasons — more than 16,000 Yankees games in all.

The result? The Yankees scored 747 runs per season, 40 fewer than their real-life 787. (Diamond Mind was so accurate that 100 seasons with A-Rod batting fourth averaged 789, almost dead-on.) Most research suggests that those 40 runs would mean only about four fewer victories, for a strategy no manager would ever consider; so the difference with Rodriguez batting third or fifth would be insignificant, and nowhere near worth the forests of trees that would give their lives to the ensuing sports-page debate.

Diamond Mind took its cuts at several other baseball knucklers, running 100 full seasons of games for each:

•

The intentional walk. This frequently used defensive strategy avoids dangerous hitters and can set up a double play, but it also awards a free base, and even the best hitters usually make an out. So is it smart in the long run? Diamond Mind found that it was not, though the difference was only about five runs per team per season.

•

The stolen base. Advancing from first to second puts the runner in scoring position, but he — and the rest of your hitters — will have a hard time scoring if he gets thrown out. Mr. Kraemer looked at a recent team that ran wild (the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays) and one that barely stole at all (the 2005 Oakland A’s) and switched their mind-sets to see what happened. The A’s scored 20 runs fewer, which probably says more about their players’ inability to run in the first place. But when the speedy Rays stole sparingly, they increased their scoring by 47 runs per season — suggesting that perhaps the Rays were running too often in real life.

•

The sacrifice bunt. Is it worth making an out intentionally to move a runner from first to second? Forcing a team that hated that maneuver (the 2005 Boston Red Sox) to do it a lot cost them 19 runs per season. But making a bunting team (the 2008 New York Mets) avoid it also cost them — by 15 runs on average — suggesting that the Mets’ managers, Willie Randolph and Jerry Manuel, used it quite intelligently. (The 1958 M.I.T. statisticians found that the sacrifice was rarely a good move; major league managers paid little attention.)

One problem with computer simulations is that no matter how realistically they might be programmed, they can say more about the programmer than baseball itself. A computer, after all, cannot feel human emotions like pressure or the will to hit in the clutch.

“We can run the experiment in the simulation environment and think we’re measuring the effect of a great defense on a pitching staff, but it might tell us more about how we modeled defense,” said Tom Tippett, who wrote the original Diamond Mind code in the early 1980s. “The simulation is real close to real-life baseball, but in the end it isn’t real-life baseball.”

After developing Diamond Mind into the industry standard, Mr. Tippett was hired a few years ago by the Boston Red Sox — a sign of how much some teams have come to value simulation research. While none will discuss exactly what they model and how, Mr. Abbamondi, of the Cardinals, said they could provide objective insight into how an offense might be affected by trading for a hitter in midseason; how many games that might improve the team; and how that hitter might improve or deteriorate as he ages. Many of these measurements come in the form of scenarios of increasing uncertainty, not unlike the projection of hurricane paths.

As Mr. Tippett suggested, however, simulations have inherent limits, and probably will not ever model baseball’s vicissitudes of fate — how scrubs morph into all-stars and some teams just collapse. (Indeed, fans of the recent New York Mets would be relieved that some things defy re-creation.) Tony La Russa, the Cardinals’ manager, who is a sure bet for the Hall of Fame, said the value of computer simulations in baseball tended to stop at the dugout entrance.

“There’s way too much importance given to what you can produce from a machine,” he said. “These are human beings, and I don’t think any computer is going to model that close to what we deal with at this level.”

That can be as true now as it was 25 years ago, when a Tank McNamara cartoon captured it best. A downtrodden manager peered over his computer. He asked plaintively, “But will it take the blame?”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Sheehan:

"I think the management of bullpens around the game has been a source of hilarity, from the idiotic resource management we saw last week to the process by which some managers... some veteran managers... some veteran managers of NL Central teams... that are long-time rivals... assigned roles to their relievers and then ran away from those decisions based on two outings. I have no idea how managers do this; you spend first an offseason and then an exhibition season reaching a conclusion, and then you abandon that conclusion in less than a dozen batters faced.

Maybe Kevin Gregg should be the Cubs' ninth-inning guy. Maybe Carlos Marmol should be. To let Gregg's first two outings change your mind about the answer, however, isn't decision-making, it's panic. The same goes for Jason Motte in St. Louis, who didn't even get to blow a second save before being lifted for another reliever. To the first category of bullpen follies we can throw in Joe Girardi, who played righty-lefty games against something called Brayan Pena on his way to having Phil Coke face three straight righties with the game on the line yesterday. I assume Edwar Ramirez was trapped under something very heavy...."

you should have quoted the part where sheehan talked about hanging himself. guy needs a huf.

or a hug

or a puf

Run value by pitch location:

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/what-did-warren-spahn-know/

Matt Taibbi on Brian Cashman.

i have mixed feelings on the premise but taibbi is so great it doesn't matter.

That article should go in the Dumbass thread.

lol predictable reaction

I'm not sure Cashman's the best GM ever (Yankees drafts have been an embarrassment esp. compared to the Red Sox) but it's not like Taibbi has any suggestions for what he should have done better (except for the oh hindsight is 20-20 Santana deal which wasn't going to be any cheaper than all the other overpriced deals he's bitching about.) Lame stuff.

Ahem I'm sure Cashman's not the best GM ever.

So many dudes that Yankees overpaid were dudes that the Red Sox tried to overpay but just barely didn't get.

Not to mention that one of Taibbi's arguments appears to be the Yankees shouldn't pay for players who don't want to be Yankees which is probably anyone sane so who the hell is left then?

That was horrible.

I guess you can fault Cashman for overpaying top-tier free agents (and certainly for the likes of Pavano) - but everyone else in baseball would have been gunning for Sabathia and A-Rod too. It's not like the Yankees can't afford to overpay.

Pavano was pretty dang good in the year before he was a Yankee, and has shown flashes of that talent this year. Sometimes dudes just get injured.

there are plenty of ways to criticize this article from a baseball perspective, but at least some of you have probably loled @ cashman for building a $200 million team with no bench or bullpen too. and the point abt how he has managed to convince everyone that all the big ticket free agents have been ordered on him from above (whatever the truth happens to be) is otm.

Dumb article. And too many similes!

pretty cool stats on baseball tonight wrt lester's win today...number of fastballs thrown, average pitch speed and number of swings and misses (21!). nothing mindblowing but it's different than what i'm used to seeing there

do they not use Kruk bloviating for 20 minutes anymore? since MLB uses more clips I never watch BBTN now.

I snapped after tuning in a couple weeks ago and hearing that "FILL THINE HORN WITH OIL!!!!!!.... and go" nonsense (like five times within three minutes). NO MORE. NEVER AGAIN.

Plus, those MLB Network segments where they just play the highlights w/ the game's announcers >>>>>>>> all other game-highlight segments

So jealous of people who have the MLB network. :(

oh i have that, is it worth watching? now that roland garros is over i'll pay more attention to baseball during the week

yeah it's def worth watching, their highlights are second to none at the moment.

what i cant figure out is are they going to screw us next year and try to make us pay for it?
because mlb network has basically killed any lingering desire i've had in the past to subscribe to extra innings.

i don't think so, i think they've fought pretty hard to get it onto mid-tier cable. if the nfl network is any indication the leagues would rather have more people get the channel.

Neyer:

Wednesday night, I ran into a guy I know who used to pitch in the minors. One of his minor-league managers is now a major-league manager, and recently my guy went to a game and afterward hung out with his old skipper. As my guy tells the story, his old manager was bemoaning today's young players, who care about little except their stats (and their salaries) and scoff when asked to (for example) move a runner from second to third with a tidy little grounder to the right side.

Now, leaving aside that giving yourself is a give-up play, of course I figured this was just another example of good-old-days-ism. I also figured I might as well check. I mean, I might as well ask another guy I know to check ...

In 1977 and '78, batters moved the runner -- runner on second base, nobody out -- to third base with a grounder to the right side 12 percent of the time.

In 1987 and '88, they moved them over 13 percent of the time.

If 1997 and '98, they moved them over 12 percent of the time.

In 2007 and '08, they moved them over 12 percent of the time.

NICE

Posnanski talks to Bill James about walks:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/joe_posnanski/06/08/james.walks/index.html

Haven't had a good one in a while:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/magazine/09littleleague-t.html?ref=magazine&pagewanted=all

Joe Mauer tops in AL in RBI percentage:

http://baseballmusings.com/?p=39282

dave cameron on why we should disengage from the annual battle over end of season awards

I don't care, but Jim Rice's MVP votes were used to help justify his bullshit HOF election. So let's not care about that either?

nope, let's not care about that either!

Nah arguments about these kinds of things are a good half the fun of being a fan.

who Mauer will lose to:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/joe_posnanski/08/19/jeter/index.html

Jeter is a good second or third choice, infinitely better than Tex.

wait i just reactively posted the article without reading it.. now that i am going through i am crestfallen by this username:

*One of the longtime posters at the awesome "Baseball Think Factory" Web site gave himself the brilliant name "Pasta Diving Jeter" -- a moniker so utterly inspired that I think it should be served at every restaurant in New York City.

are you ripping off screen names? SAY IT AIN'T SO

I never used "PASTA"

http://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2009/8/19/992832/albert-pujols-anatomy-of-the-swing

espn's gamecast now shows the percentage of balls put into play in certain parts of the field, if you run over the little field w/ the cursor

sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo long

http://www.ranyontheroyals.com/2009/09/im-done.html

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2009/10/7/1074320/playoff-games-of-the-day-10-6-2009

strike zone grafixxxxxx

http://www.detroittigertales.com/2009/10/saber-correct-tigers-efficient.html

The American League team which got the biggest bang out of their offensive output was the Oakland Athletics. Yes, Billy Beane's collection of softball players who clog the bases and don't play the game the right way had the most efficient offense in the majors. The Athletics scored 50 more runs than their runs created estimate. One reason for this was that they were the best base running team in the Majors according to the Equivalent Base Running (EqBRR) statistic at Baseball Prospectus (Base running skill beyond SB/CS is omitted from wRC). Based on EqBRR, the Athletics created 12.5 more runs with their base running than the average team.

The least efficient AL team might also surprise some people. The New York Yankees led the Majors in runs scored with 915 but should have created 971 according to their wRC. One reason for the discrepancy is that the Yankees did not hit as well with runners in scoring position (.766 OPS) as they did with the bases empty (.854 OPS).

the Yanks intentionally held back on the scoring so they could have more WALK-OFF WINS

Hitting to the score

Jeter's split (bases empty/RISP) is 931/736 ... because he's saving it for the playoffs BAY-BEE.

Steven Goldman:

No matter how many times the announcers say that Bobby Abreu somehow turned the Angels into a team of Ed Yost-ian walking men, it just ain't true. With the exception of Howie Kendrick, who was threatened with professional extinction if he didn't get wise to himself and his impatient approach, most of the improvement shown by the Angels is down to Abreu himself. As with so many things, like the Angels "creating havoc" on the bases, it just ain't true. They were third in the league in stolen bases and got caught more than anyone else. If this be havoc, the Yankees should say, let us have more of it....

Second point about "havoc." It's just one bloody base. If Team A steals three bases and Team B hits three home runs, guess which team is going to win? As with the sacrifice bunt, the stolen base is a situational tool, and that's all. Babe Ruth changed that in 1920. At the end of his career, after Lefty Gomez was let go by the Yankees, he had a tryout with a National League team. Asked the difference between the two leagues, Gomez said, "Over here they play like they don't know John McGraw has been dead for ten years," by which he meant that Dead Ball-era tactics were still being employed in the Senior Circuit. That Gomez was incorrect to cite McGraw notwithstanding -- the Little Napoleon was among the first to realize the strategic implications of the lively ball and to change his ways -- he was correct that many in baseball did not know that those old weapons had diminished in value, and even today there are many who do not know.

http://pinstripedbible.mlblogs.com/archives/2009/10/sabathia_sets_an_example.html

http://www.subtraction.com/2009/11/08/watching-yankees-spending

interesting piece. what i noticed, tho, looking at his list - is that even with the investment% - being decent the Yanks still had easily the highest profit, even after you take away what they reinvested.

the espn otl piece on baseball in cambodia is pretty nuts.

BASEBALL REDEFINED! Last week's Cys prove sabermetrics is ascendant.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/sports/baseball/22awards.html

“I love WAR, because you’re not only seeing if a guy had 20 home runs and 90 runs batted in, but how good is he compared to other guys at his position?” Bannister said. “I thought Zack had a chance to be the first 10 WAR pitcher.”

Alas, Greinke just missed, posting a WAR of 9.4, the best in the majors this season but a half-victory behind Randy Johnson’s 9.9 mark in 2004. A WAR of 10 does not have resonance as a hallowed number in a sport with so many others. But it will be a goal for Greinke next season, whether or not the Royals contend....

“It seems to me that the best pitchers won, and they might not have two or three years ago,” ESPN.com’s Rob Neyer wrote in an e-mail message. “That said, I also believe that if the Cardinals hadn’t blown that big lead in Wainwright’s last start, he certainly would have beaten out Lincecum.”

That may be true because 20 victories, while an arbitrary number, is a well-established benchmark for excellence. But Lincecum’s victory was still significant.

“Five years ago, Lincecum wouldn’t have stood a chance in the voting,” Dave Cameron wrote at fangraphs.com, the site Bannister used to check Greinke’s WAR. “He might not have even stood a chance a year ago. But there are clearly members of the Writers Association who are not clinging to the analysis that they grew up with.”

I thought this was a good article.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/free-at-last/

Eric Seidman on perceived defensive value:

Simply put, perception of effort is directly proportional to opinions of fielding prowess. Shane Victorino is widely regarded as a very good fielder, taking home two consecutive Gold Gloves—insert your own generic anti-Gold Glove comment here—while boasting the reputation of a high-octane speedster who covers plenty of ground. Unfortunately, these characteristics overstate what he brings to the table, especially in relation to Carlos Beltran, who covers more ground (at least before last season's injuries) but in a seemingly nonchalant fashion. If each player starts in the same position and ranges to field an equidistant fly ball, Victorino’s hustle will create the illusion of a better play. If Beltran appears to have had little trouble reaching the ball, the play looks routine, and our minds tend to veer off into the wrong direction, assuming that Victorino’s ball was tougher to reach. By virtue of that, he made a better play.

In actuality, Beltran can travel greater distances with less effort, but his catch appeared mundane and no different from the dozens of fly-ball outs a fan sees each and every game, becoming easily forgettable in the process. Spatial recognition issues based on the television angles presented and the areas to which attention is drawn preclude us from grasping exactly how much distance was actually traveled. When this occurs, the backup generator in our minds reverts to assuming equal talent amongst those being compared, using effort as the tiebreaker in judging the quality of a play and player.

Things should work in the opposite fashion, with a realization that Victorino needed all of that extra effort to stand a fighting chance of recording an out, whereas Beltran put little doubt in the minds of anyone as to the play’s eventual result. Had Victorino made a diving catch, his actual range would be immaterial; a diving play is perceived to be great no matter what. In relation to his own abilities, the catch could be considered great, but the fact remains that he had to work harder to glove the ball. Beltran naturally reached the spot at which the ball would descend and should be lauded for having displayed such great range.

With that in mind, when Victorino does not rate as highly in a specific advanced fielding metric, it annoys fans who swear he ran his heart out, covered ground, and made fantastic plays, losing sight of the fact that he might have made certain plays look tougher than they were. This has the compound effect of making the balls he cannot reach seem unreachable for everyone else, an inaccurate extrapolation based on a faulty initial assumption.

Victorino and Beltran were merely examples here, so try not to get too caught up in the specific names and focus on the concept itself. Overall, as our perception of effort increases, so too does the perceived fielding value of the player.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=9792

^^^thought this was widely known as the "Jeter effect", so named for his penchant for playing out of position.

old news

http://1987topps.blogspot.com/

This is a weird card. First, Dennis looks like he knows some secret that he's afraid we might figure out. And I'm guessing it's the identity of the guy behind him. Check out that stirrupped foot behind his back. If you look quickly, it almost makes it look like Powell is wearing one of those wireless mic battery pack things that talk show guests wear. That's also a strange edifice in the background. It almost looks like a travel trailer that's halfway underground. Maybe someone more knowledgeable about Dodgertown has an idea what that is.

Worked with this dude 4-5 years ago - thanks for the impromptu reconnection, Google Wave! Now I just wish he'd finish the set :/

It was Mark Davis, briefly!

http://wezen-ball.com/2009-articles/december/the-history-of-the-highest-paid-player-in-baseball.html

Ruining Your Weekend on a Friday Night

Lest you forget, the organization's fascination with speedy centerfielders did not start when Dusty Baker got here. The brutal text:
Jim Bowden, the Reds' general manager, declined to discuss the Yankees' involvement, but an official familiar with the Wells talks said Steinbrenner called Bowden Saturday night and offered pitcher Mariano Rivera and catcher Jorge Posada.

Bowden, looking to cut his payroll, obviously decided he preferred Goodwin, a 23-year-old left-handed hitter, who in 87 games with the Orioles last season batted .263 and had 22 stolen bases in 26 attempts.

http://www.redreporter.com/2009/12/11/1196962/ruining-your-weekend-on-a-friday
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/27/sports/pro-baseball-the-rich-get-richer-as-orioles-get-wells.html?scp=1&sq=Rivera&st=nyt

The Reds passed on drafting Jeter. On Earth 2, I suppose all of these guys end up Reds and we win a couple of titles. (More likely they would have gotten traded for Griffey and the cycle would not be broken.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=gammons_peter&id=4734773

Really gonna miss this guy, even if he was mailing it in for the last few years.

maybe the mlbtv will revitalize him? also that mariano + posada for wells is insane

rob neyer's top 100 players of the decade (not sure this is really 100% kickass, but it's interesting)

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?id=4740695

Juan Pierre, CS king of the '00s!

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Ten-noteworthy-offensive-statistics-from-the-200?urn=mlb,206571

also, naming the DOZEN guys who hit 300 HR in the decade is quite a challenge.

i got 8 of em.

This is beautiful:

http://a323.yahoofs.com/ymg/ept_sports_mlb_experts__43/ept_sports_mlb_experts-817700987-1259865072.jpg%3FymxfZTCDEoxniOBU

Barf: http://a323.yahoofs.com/ymg/ept_sports_mlb_experts__43/ept_sports_mlb_experts-817700987-1259865072.jpg?ymxfZTCDEoxniOBU

Jim Bowden, the Reds' general manager, declined to discuss the Yankees' involvement, but an official familiar with the Wells talks said Steinbrenner called Bowden Saturday night and offered pitcher Mariano Rivera and catcher Jorge Posada.

Just saw this now ... yep, consider my weekend ruined!

"...The Mariners franchise still hasn't been to a World Series, joining the Nats/Expos and Rangers as the lone squads to never know the feeling of playing on the ultimate stage in October. "

I did not know this!

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/If-you-were-on-Jeopardy-and-the-final-category-w?urn=mlb,217699

Should we just have a rolling kickass thred?

7/10, missed 1, 5, 8.

also got supposed toughie #3 in abt 2 seconds.

i missed 1, 5, 9

oh and by saying I missed #8, I saw 'Duk's clue and thought to myself, I wouldn't have got that on the question alone. If I had missed it after reading Duk's clue, I deserve to be sb'd from this board until 2020.

also, maybe a new thread for 2010?

i support undated rolling thread, this one only went a little over 100

agreed

http://baseballresearcher.blogspot.com/2010/02/rabbit-maranville-is-not-nazi.html

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/comment/11/2010/02/aea98a0bc51872880046f51895ad1095/original.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgOeAofwq-w

Does not embed; possibly germane; does not pay off until the very end

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/introducing-the-paintomatic/

Morgan Ensberg's blog isn't bad:

http://morganensberg.wordpress.com/

In defense of Joe West (to a point):

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/3116/youve-got-a-point-there-country-joe

Tina Fey's legs might be the real payoff.

Contract year myth:

http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/13/yankees-phillies-astros-business-sports-bloomberg-baseball.html

Since when did bloomberg make an mlb analytical tool?

http://espn.go.com/espnradio/player?rd=1#/podcenter/?id=5142374s&callsign=ESPNRADIO

rob neyer plays "Ryan Howard or..."

I like advanced metrics as much as the next guy, but Ryan Howard is pretty dang good.

It will be interesting to see Pujols OBP drop now that STL has a legitimate cleanup hitter. OBP loses a lot of value when you're playing on a weak offensive team, just ask Bonds about that.

Andrew (Toledo)

Remembering my childhood in the 80s, brings me to realize that baseball was just better then. Lots of competition and not every player hit 20+ home runs. What say you?

Rob Neyer (12:08 PM)

Well, sure. Of course, we didn't have any Japanese players, most everybody was hopped up on greenies (or worse), a lot of teams played on fake grass in ugly stadiums, and the owners were colluding like there was no tomorrow. But yeah, otherwise everything was peachy.

Is Andrew an Indians fan? One Indian hit 20 HRs last year.

prolly a tigers fan

EVERYBODY HIT LIKE TOMMY HERR IN 1985 IN... UH... 1985.

the mascot the yankees had from 79-81:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703389004575304961535825960.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_newyork

already posted on Yanks thread!

well i won't go to that thread so

j/k mostly

do keep up

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/3996/will-mlb-survive-three-days-in-k-c

Baseball is so EMO

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/5159/letter-to-a-43rd-round-draft-pick

Haha I came here to post Neyer's article from the day before:

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/5155/waiting-for-joe-vottos-first-pop-up

http://www.detroittigertales.com/2010/09/giving-cabrera-credit-for-his.html

the Massive Tie scenario

http://baseballmusings.com/?p=58426

From Neyer:

UPDATE: Ripken was asked about the situation during a SportsNation chat:

Tim (Boston): Cal, during the Derek Jeter debate last week, about him not really getting hit by a pitch, I heard Tim Kurkjian on ESPN say that what Jeter did is something that you would have done....so, I want to ask, is that something you would have done?

Cal Ripken (2:38 PM): Yes, I would have done it, except for bringing the trainer out and the whole act of it all. I have had calls go for and against me. I've hit balls off my foot and the ump said it didn't go off my foot. I've had balls hit close to my foot and told to go to first. I would have just taken my base and run to first.

Basically this is kickass becuz leave it to some schmo to ASK THE DAMN QUESTION rather than assume some golden halo around our Sports Heroes. Also, Cal Ripken coming with some real talk.

My comment could be phrased better as: "some schmo shows up Professional Journalist And Box Score Keeper Tim Kurkjian; earns honest answer"

HAY GUYS:

What is your preferred blog (affiliated or otherwise) for your team info? I'm partial to the stylings of Replacement Level Yankee blog and Pinstriped Bible, which is happily pessimistic for an affiliated site.

strangely, i have yet to find a red sox blog worth reading despite them being probably the 2nd most popular MLB team. there's a handful of decent nats blogs but i don't really bother with them.

i do like to read general baseball-related blogs like joe posnanski and stats and prospect dudes, basically anything that might have non-obvious insight into the game

True Blue LA and Dodger Thoughts for Dodger stuff obv.

Purple Row is far and away the most comprehensive Rockies blog. Quite bluestocking, but hugely informative.

OK, it looks like today's Playoff Prospectus projection is non-premium:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=12201

BP's Bob Hertzel wrote about Kirk Gibson's HR in the '88 WS (no subscription needed):

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=12251

I thought I was sick and tired of hearing about this HR, but I really enjoyed the article.

I really liked this recollection of the '72 Tigers from James the other day (prompted by an e-mail about Eddie Brinkman's mysterious 9th-place finish in the MVP vote that year):

Billy Martin, managing the team, had loaded 600+ innings onto his top two starters, which enabled him to carry an enormous bench. He would pinch hit seemingly forever. He would start using pinch hitters in the sixth inning, and, by the ninth inning, he would still be rolling them out there...good ones, mostly old guys like Gates Brown, Tony Taylor, Al Kaline and Tom Haller, but also Duke Sims, Willie Horton, Dick McAuliffe, Ike Brown and Wayne Comer. It was unbelievable; you were SURE he was out of pinch hitters by now, and here would come Norm Cash or Bill Freehan or somebody.

haven't even read this yet, but it seems pretty kickass (no sanskrit):

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/cooperstown-confidential-the-1960-world-series-part-one/

Rangers' starting pitchers NOT giving them more innings than previously:

http://cmdr-scott.blogspot.com/2010/10/myth-hoax-lie-or-exaggeration-texas.html

"No other primarily power pitcher was a regular starter at 45 years old"

Randy Johnson is mad about this lie.

Goldman on Sparky Anderson's third act:

http://www.pinstripedbible.com/2010/11/04/sparky-third-act/

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/extras/extra_bases/2010/11/blue_jays_buy_a.html

"Did you see what the Blue Jays did yesterday? They traded a PTBNL to Colorado for catcher Miguel Olivo then almost immediately declined his option and paid his $500,000 buyout.

Their plan is to apparently offer him arbitration, which he will decline, then take the supplemental first-round draft choice as compensation as Olivo will be a Type B free agent.

Basically, the Blue Jays are paying $500,000 a draft pick that will probably fall in the No. 45 range."

you know the draft class is loaded when...

Doesn't that assume that Olivo will decline arbitration....

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/6363/commissioners-history-off-by-just-a-little
http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/6363/commissioners-history-off-by-just-a-little
http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/6363/commissioners-history-off-by-just-a-little
http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/6363/commissioners-history-off-by-just-a-little
http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/6363/commissioners-history-off-by-just-a-little

Posnanski's takedown of Selig over the Abner Doubleday letter was really good too.

Link?

http://joeposnanski.si.com/2010/11/08/history-lessons-with-bud/

tyvm

“Just in my present mood,” Graves finished off his letter to the commission, “I would rather have Uncle Sam declare war on England and clean her up rather than have one of her citizens beat us out of Base Ball.”

i agree w/this guy btw

Neyer's article linked to this Hauls of Shame post that in turn linked to a bunch of different articles about Bud "Truth Commission" Selig officially signing onto the Doubleday myth.

http://haulsofshame.com/blog/?p=2347

Dave Fleming, James's right-hand guy on the site, has a piece up on the most over/underrated players in the game. His picks:

2011 Most Overrated Player: Carlos Gonzalez
2011 Most Overrated Pitcher: Cliff Lee
2011 Most Underrated Player: Daric Barton
2012 Most Underrated Pitcher: John Danks

Obviously, he supports his choices with lots of numbers.

Are we talking about the future?

I just noticed the dates now (cut and pasted right from the site). That is confusing. The piece is written as if he means right now, so I don't know why everything's post-dated--or why he skips forward two years for John Danks (that one's probably a typo).

Overrated in what way? Fantasy teams? Or is he basically saying they'll underperform their 2010s? In Cargo's case, of course he will, but I'll be fine with 30 homers and a .900 OPS.

Just generally overrated. (Not saying I agree with him, by the way--don't shoot the messenger!) Actually, he mentions fantasy baseball in connection to Gonazalez, saying that he does really well in the categories that are valued by fantasy players, not so well in others. He even mentions the nickname Cargo.

Anyway, I read Fleming's little bio at the bottom of the page, and it says he currently resides in New Zealand. So we can now immediately discount everything he says.

I think I do disagree with him about Barton, though. I don't know much about him, but looking at his stats, how underrated can a first baseman with a career slugging percentage one point under .400 be?

barton just had a breakout year so looking at his career stats which are half-comprised of his poor rookie season is a bit disingenuous

i think the idea is that cargo's value is almost entirely in batting average and home runs, which are the 2 things the non-discerning fan looks at, and barton's value is almost entirely in walk rate and defense, which are the 2 things that are most ignored by casual fans. they're extremes.

still, a first baseman who hits 10 home runs!

Dave Fleming, James's right-hand guy on the site, has a piece up on the most over/underrated players in the game. His picks:

2011 Most Overrated Player: Carlos Gonzalez
2011 Most Overrated Pitcher: Cliff Lee
2011 Most Underrated Player: Daric Barton
2012 Most Underrated Pitcher: John Danks

Obviously, he supports his choices with lots of numbers.

― clemenza, Tuesday, December 21, 2010 8:13 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

could you... link to this?

High-OBPing, low-slugging first basemen with great defense have always been a bit underrated, if Keith Hernandez is any indication

not that Barton's really in his stratosphere yet...

Mark Grace was probably rated about right. John Olerud was probably underrated a little bit. JT Snow was definitely overrated.

paywall tease

Yeah it is kind of hard to tell if this article is dumbass or kickass if you don't include any of the text of the article.

I've quoted stuff from James's site at length in the past, but a reader wrote in at one point and asked him how he felt about people pulling stuff from the site, and his response was something like "a little is okay." So I try to honour that. As I've said before, I highly recommend it for $3 a month. (I'm not Bill James's agent, promise.) I mostly use it for the "Ask Bill" section, where James writes almost every day, but he does post articles too--sometimes a flurry of them, sometimes only intermittently. And Fleming's very good, even if you have doubts about his underrated/overrated picks.

Maybe you're right about Barton. He looked like a Lyle Overbay type to me with more walks, but he's only 25, so maybe he's on his way. I hardly think it's disingenous to make reference to the .399 slugging average, though--his slugging average last year, which accounts for almost half his career AB, was .405.

Oh, didn't realize it was a pay site. my bad.

interesting barton fact: swung at lowest percentage of pitches outside the zone in all of baseball this year

highest walk rate in the majors too

He definitely has plate discipline--the 100+ walks are impressive. (His defense, I don't know anything about...call me a non-discerning fan!) He also had 33 doubles and 5 triples, and that's good. I just didn't see anything else in his batting line worth noting. But hey, he's 25--by the time he's 30, he'll probably be signing somewhere for $15M a year.

Didn't realize Barton hit 9 of his 10 HRs on the road last year.

if you consider the home parks he looks like a lefty version of pre-08 kevin youkilis. not really the best fit for the A's though who are power-starved and playing him at the easiest position to find power at.

i guess that's bit of a reach as a comp though, but the top-of-league-in-OBP-but-little-power hitting profile is one of the rarest in baseball

How rare is it for a first baseman to have five triples in a year? I'm sure it's been done many times, but I've got to believe it's somewhat rare. I think Cecil Fielder had one towards the end of his career...even more impressive, I think it was an inside-the-park triple.

How do you get an outside the park triple?

Quick random check: Palmeiro twice, Bagwell once, Pujols, Murray, and Mattingly never. I don't know if that's representative of anything or not...That was a joke, Alex.

Wow--Cecil somehow managed seven in his career. I bet you could watch Berlin Alexanderplatz in the time it took him to leg them out. Not sure who, but I know there was somebody in the last decade or so who very ceremoniously rung up his first triple towards the end of a fairly long career.

I bet you could watch Berlin Alexanderplatz in the time it took him to leg them out.

haha!

I think McGwire got his first one in like 10+ years in his last season.

Bengie Molina hit a triple last year. He has been consistently rated the slowest player in MLB over the past few seasons.

Frank Thomas also got one of his very few triples in his last season apparently.

i think it was thome who got one this year for the first time in ages

Cecil Fielder, Frank Thomas, Jim Thome, and Mark McGwire are all Usain Bolt compared to Bengie Molina.

You guys are chasing rainbows looking thinking 1B are the slowest players in baseball. I did a quick google, but all I could find is this article from 2005:

Lowest Career Speed Scores (Active)    Lowest Career Speed Scores (Non-Catchers)
1  Johnny Estrada      1.4             1  John Olerud         2.5
2  Jason Phillips      1.5             2  Scott Hatteberg     2.6
3  Geronimo Gil        1.9             3  Daryle Ward         2.6
4  Bengie Molina       2.0             4  Tony Clark          2.6
5  Mike Redmond        2.1             5  Paul Konerko        2.7
6  Damian Miller       2.1             6  Aramis Ramirez      2.7
7  Matthew LeCroy      2.1             7  Olmedo Saenz        3.0
8  Charles Johnson     2.1             8  Kevin Millar        3.3
9  Toby Hall           2.2             9  Doug Mientkiewicz   3.3
10 Victor Martinez     2.3             10 Frank Thomas        3.3

Molina was #4 in 2005, but trust me, in 2010 he was by far #1.

Bengie's a good one. He might be the slowest position player ever.

the molina cycle ruled btw

Obviously, catchers are the slowest--I took that as a given. First basemen must be next, though, right?

Maybe pitchers (or DHs if you're in the AL, as they are probably the least athletic type of baseball player) then 1B?

I think there is a range of athleticism in pitching (that's unique to the position.)

lack of athleticism only referring to DHs there.

DHs, probably--that's generally the next (and last) stop if you're a good-hitting, slow first baseman. I was wondering about 1B vs. pitcher, but I think Alex is right, there's such a range for pitchers that it'd be difficult to generalize. Mickey Lolich, David Wells, C.C. Sabathia, not so fast. But clearly there are lots of them who are quite athletic, witness that it's not all that uncommon to see a pitcher pinch-run on an off-day or in extra innings.

Not exactly kickass, but I really like CJ Wilson. His Twitter feed is good value, too.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/jimmy_traina/12/22/cj-wilson-talks-cliff-lee-brett-favre-mark-zuckerberg/index.html

SI.com: Lastly, I can't wrap this up without asking you about your girlfriend. You're dating [noted Ilxor] Dominique Leone. How is that going?

Wilson: Well, I'll just say this: Abstract Expression is my album of the year of 2009.

kickass media 1921

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60613FE3E5A1B7A93C3A81782D85F458285F9

rob neyer done @ ESPN.com

(scroll down to the last half)

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/6904/bo-knows-amazing

aw damn

neyer's def not my fav but he was a reliably enjoyable read. wonder what he's up to next.

I remember reading him on SportsZone.

I guess after 15 years he was due for a change. When he's on, he's on, and when he's off, he's one of those guys that's still worth reading.

maybe he'll join Prospectus so you guys can watch him suck so bad

He's gone to SB Nation.

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2011/2/1/1967537/rob-neyer-joins-sb-nation-becomes-part-of-us-not-them

lol i guess sb stands for sports blog? i can only imagine it standing for one thing.

Yep. The hugely active (and excellent) Rockies blog I frequent is an SB Nation one, as are many of the other best team blogs. It's an excellent site and a huge coup for the sports blogging community.

Worst chat ever:

http://espn.go.com/sportsnation/chat/_/id/36822/mlb-insider-rob-neyer

"Rob, no problem at all. I just thought the comments section was for them, not for us."

Go cry, emo kid.

Neyer's twitter feed is solid. Less for him than what he retweets, but at least he's got good taste.

emma span on baseball slashfic

You just do not ever expect to encounter the phrase, to quote one story, "Doug Mirabelli's huge, unlubed . . ."

Comments are almost as hilarious as the article although sadly not as "kickass".

I once ran across an astonishing gay porn fic involving an orgy of 30-40 All Stars, with baroque anatomical detail.

"ran across"

haha, the story was random, the site was not!

loved Kevin Parks' comment about Eddie Gaedel/Jon Rauch.

Looks like cad, b4rry and ciderpress were 2 weeks early in declaring on the Dumbass thread that BP "sucks."

i don't think BP sucks, i just don't think they're worth paying for anymore when there's loads of good free baseball content on the internet now

Comments are almost as hilarious as the article although sadly not as "kickass".

OTM, this might be the statnerd equivalent of Pitchfork choosing "My Love" as their #1 single of the year in '06, or something.

I liked the article and think it's great that BP wants to diversify and drop its rep as being just a stats site, but like I said on the other thread, my idea of diversification doesn't involve Mark Normandin blabbing about his favourite video games or half the masthead talking about their luck with girls in high school. Even Christina Kahrl's habit of writing like she's stuck in 1920 and peppering every paragraph with offhand comments about Austrian politics from the 1840's has gotten a bit hard to take.

Dave Fleming has an interesting piece up on James's site called "The Next Blyleven?" (i.e., the next guy whose HOF case might be resurrected via sabermetric advocacy). His pick: Rick Reuschel. I skimmed the piece really fast, but the idea's not as far-fetched as I initially thought it was.

i'd expect the next Blyleven in that sense to be Scott Rolen assuming he has a couple more productive years to push him over 70 WAR. excluding deadball, no one with 70+ career WAR on bbref has missed the hall yet (except Pete Rose), and yet Rolen looks to get there without the air of a legendary player media-wise.

or i guess Mussina if he's not seen as a lock by people (is he?)

Reuschel's name has been coming up a lot lately in HOF articles about Morris and Blyleven. His HOF case would have been helped immeasurably if he'd won a Cy Young award in the 70's, which he probably deserved to do. Or if he hadn't been pitching in Wrigley Field during his prime.

Mussina is definitely the new Blyeleven, if there is one.

Tim Raines is the next Blyleven.

the problem with Raines is it could hypothetically reach the point where he's the 11th best player on the ballot even sabermetrically and then what do you do

the thing with Blyleven was that he was a slam dunk by traditional stats too, i feel like anyone who's ever played fantasy baseball even with the oldschool 5x5 categories would look at his bbref page and correctly identify him as a Great Pitcher. (what kind of boggles my mind is that ERA is supposedly a traditional stat by now, one which sabermetrics has exposed the flaws with and has moved on from, and yet there are still sportswriters struggling to make the jump from pitcher wins to ERA [see: contention over last couple years' CY voting]. they're a whole generation behind!)

Vote the other ten guys in first, I guess.

But I don't see how that's not a problem with Mussina too with the add'l problem that if Raines is the 11th best player on the ballot sabermetrically then Mussina is 12th.

Actually I guess it depends on which sabermetricians you talk to... still Mussina's other problem is there a lot of great pitchers coming up and I see him kinda getting lost in the shuffle of Maddux, Glavine, Johnson, Martinez, etc.

xp well its apples and oranges but Mussina was a better player than Raines value-wise, i'm pretty sure

anyway, i agree that Raines is gonna get some pushing and shoving from sabr dudes next year now that Blyleven is in but i don't know what's gonna happen when the entire superstar cast of the steroid era starts hitting the ballot the year after

Maybe I'm off here--once Mussina retired after the 20-win season, I figured he was a pretty safe bet. Before that was somewhat dicey. (I realize the 20-win season is symbolic, and shouldn't really affect his case on the merits, but it's still a powerful symbol for voters, and retiring immediately after will bolster his case too.)

Yeah I think Mussina's going to get in pretty quickly ultimately. 10 top 10 Cy Youngs, slew of GGs, 270-153 W-L. That's pretty unassailable even for tradionalists.

Raines ultimate value seems to hinge on whether the defensive stats you are looking at consider him an above average or average LF in his prime. If you believe the former is correct he was probably one of the five or so best position players in the 80s, if you believe the latter then he was probably only in the top ten-fifteen. Either way you are right it's apples and oranges.

i think some of the steroid era leftovers are going to fall off the ballot pretty quickly and allow guys like raines to stick around. wouldn't be surprised to see mcgwire and palmeiro lose support even from guys who would like to vote for them, since they may feel they'd rather throw a vote towards raines and similar players and recognize that the upcoming packed ballots won't do them any favors.

I'd actually never even thought about that before--I wonder how much strategic voting goes on with Cooperstown? It might become a common thing during the steroid ballots, for the reason you cite.

Like with Blyleven, people are going to argue that Mussina was never viewed as a dominant pitcher (never won a Cy Young, only finished higher than 4th once), wasn't a winner (his star took a tumble when he joined the Yankees and was never considered the ace of the team or a "true Yankee"), was an all-Star only four times, etc.

Raines ultimate value seems to hinge on whether the defensive stats you are looking at consider him an above average or average LF in his prime.

I dunno, I think you're complicating the issue too much ... Raines' biggest problem has been and always will be unfavourable (and unfair) comparisons to Rickey. Also, the game has changed so much since the early 80's and players like Raines aren't valued anymore. In the 80's, EVERYONE killed to have a power/OBP/speed player like Raines, but now, with the very rare exception of people like Carl Crawford, those kinds of players no longer exist and the value of having someone like that has fallen off everybody's radar.

Billy Beane would still kill to have a player like Raines!

And of course Ozzie Guillen loves guys who steal bases whether they get on base or not!

lol crawford as an OBP guy

Well, yeah LOL that Crawford was the closest modern day comp I could think of (maybe Curtis Granderson during the two years he played like a star would be a better comp). Anyway, it just goes to show how great Raines was when we can't think of a single player in the 2010's with his combination of skills.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1003031250/the-eephus-league-baseball-scorebook-revival-proje

I find the idea agreeable even as I am happy w/ generic boxes to fill out

Everyone bait:

Hi, Bill, not sure if you would want to answer this or not, but I'll ask regardless. I grew up with the traditional statistics and have always enjoyed them. I enjoy the new stuff also, and I'm not trying to champion one over the other. I'm just curious as what of the traditional stats you still find relevant, or find yourself checking even if you don't necessarily use them yourself. Thanks.
Asked by: 77royals

Answered: April 26, 2011

[James's response} Oh, I'm like you; I grew up with the old stuff and I still use the old stats. Wins, Losses, ERA, RBI...these are still very much a part of how I think about the game.

Yankees prospect reviews:

"6) Andrew "The Scranton Horror" Brackman, RHP, Grade B-: 7.26 ERA with 58/69 K/BB in 76 innings for Scranton, 71 hits allowed. He is hounded by abominable, eldritch control problems, like insane flute music pulsating with a mind-bending disharmony of universal, ultimate chaos. Those who ruminate overmuch on the chthonic mysteries of Andrew Brackman's career put their sanity at risk, as their mental boundaries melt under the hideous assault of such an unspeakable waste of talent and money. Ia! Shub-Niggurath! Ia! Ia! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Walks!"

:D

http://www.fangraphs.com/not/index.php/the-myriad-emotions-of-jeffrey-leonard

12. Jeffrey Leonard finally understands, for the first time, what it’s like when doves cry

laughed a little too hard at this

this one's great too, short and sweet
http://www.fangraphs.com/not/index.php/nl-central-race-in-dog-gif-form/

There's a line in Posnanski's column today (about the hypothetical perfect pitcher) that captures why I've been enjoying him more the past year than anyone since James:

I’m sure that many of the stories are apocryphal, but one of my favorites was that supposedly Maddux was sitting in the dugout watching the game when suddenly he turned to a teammate and said “watch out.” And on the next pitch, the batter hit a line drive into the dugout exactly where that teammate is standing. Like with all Maddux stories, I don’t want to know that it’s not true.

It's the last line I like so much--even though he's thoroughly grounded in (and constantly advocating for) all the newest statistics, he still gets a charge out of all the old silly stuff.

Posnanski brings it yet again:

http://joeposnanski.blogspot.com/2011/09/meaning-of-600-saves.html

This got me thinking ... closers have short lifetimes, guys tend to be great for maybe a few years and then flame out. In that sense it's pretty incredible that Hoffmann and Rivera managed to last in that role for fifteen years. How many position players can sustain that kind of peak? Closers with ten year peaks are a lot rarer than position players with ten year peaks, so is being a great closer "harder" than people realize?

Also, has the one inning closer model led to more injuries? If more relievers had to throw 1+ IP in all their appearances, then they'd have to pace themselves more instead of putting 100% into every fastball. Pos thinks that Rivera could have been great if he'd always been used like he was in 1996, but could that kind of usage (60-70 G, 100-120 IP) really have been sustained for fifteen years?

A study of the framing of pitches by catchers:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=15093

http://mlb.sbnation.com/2011/10/1/2461670/joe-maddon-matt-moore-tampa-bay-rays

"Do you realize what 22-year-olds are like? They're usually morons. No idea about anything. And there are probably some 22-year-olds who are all offended by that, but look at what's in your left hand right now. Drugs. You're holding drugs and possibly a set of keys that don't belong to you. That's because you're 22 years old. Joe Maddon had to look Matt Moore in the eyes and figure he was cool. He could pitch a playoff game for his second start in the majors. No problem."

xp that catcher article is amazing btw.

Placebo-ball: the science of baseball's magical necklaces

Boston Red Sox pitcher Josh Beckett endorses Phiten necklaces. The necklaces did not keep the Sox from choking during the pennant race, however.

I have a Spacemen 3 single called "Transcranial Stimulation" IIRC.

i think there's a thread on these... lemme check.

nope, but a few mentions, strangely, in the Kickass baseball media 2008 thread.

i actually searched for 'science' and 'physics'

maybe a gygax! should remove the 2009 from this thread?

NM Bill Simmons,

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7739030/a-nervous-exchange-red-sox-e-mails

"Schur: I'm excited for when Bogaerts gets to the majors, has a great first week, and Baskin-Robbins releases "Xander Bogaerts Frozen Yogaerts." (EllsBerry Blast. Chocolate Chip Youkie Dough. Bailey's and Cream. Come on, guys, do I have to do everything for you?)"

Posnanski says this is his last SI column (on Bubba Watson), but doesn't explain why:

http://joeposnanski.si.com/2012/04/08/bubbas-and-goodbyes/?sct=hp_t13_a1&eref=sihp

He got a new gig

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7793059/john-burgeson-ibm-computer-start-baseball-video-games

could cross-post with people who've figured out how to live

He got a new gig

― polyphonic, Monday, April 9, 2012 5:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

doing what?

A "USA Today/MLB Advanced Media joint venture", apparently.

its still under wraps whatever it is

http://joeposnanski.blogspot.com/2012/03/old-news.html

it sucks that he hasn't written much lately, it's weird how much i enjoy his blog

Should I just take the year off this thread title?

yeah do it

Why I like so Posnanski so much:

http://joeposnanski.blogspot.ca/2012/09/trout-miggy-and-mvp.html#more

He's able to make the argument for Trout--which I've never disputed--without treating it as a zero-sum game where you must therefore diminish the significance of a Triple Crown.

I’d love to see Cabrera win the Triple Crown. I was one of those kids who would score the daily leaders in the morning paper and try to figure out what Jim Rice or Fred Lynn or George Foster had to do to get to the Triple Crown. In some ways, I still am. But let’s not turn this MVP race into yet another argument about traditional stats and modern ones, between fossils making outdated arguments and pointy-headed, basement dwelling bloggers with slide rulers. It’s none of that. Miggy Cabrera might win the Triple Crown! Mike Trout is having a season for the ages! One of them won’t win the MVP. which is a shame. But one of them will.

Perfect.

ESPN's feature about the 20th anniversary of the Sid Bream slide of '92 (interviews with many of the players involved):

http://espn.go.com/mlb/feature/moment/_/page/SidBream%27sElectricSlide/sid-bream-electric-slide-1992-nlcs-game-7

From the Van Slyke interview:

One more out and the Pirates would go to the World Series. So Van Slyke wanted to make sure. He told Barry Bonds, the Pirates' left fielder, to move in.

"I got his attention," Van Slyke said. "But he flipped me the bird. He put his hand up and said, 'I'll play where I want to play.'"

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=19460

Posnanski:

Today's other birthday -- the most important one for the author -- is my daughter Katie. She turns 8 today. When I dropped her off at school, she hopped out of the car and literally skipped to the door. Then she held the door open for a stream of children who had been behind her. She just stood there for 10 or 15 seconds, holding the door, watching the kids go by, happier than anyone in the entire world because she was helping. For her birthday, I wish I could give her the gift of staying that happy for the rest of her life. But I can't.

If you were a Jays fan when they first started winning in the mid-'80s, this bit from James is nice:

Bobby Cox in Toronto was the last great platoon manager. In 1984 he was platooning Ernie Whitt and Buck Martinez at catcher, Cliff Johnson and Willie Aikens at DH, Garth Iorg and Rance Mulliniks at third base, and he was really platooning Jesse Barfield and Dave Collins in the outfield (Collins in left, Barfield in right...George Bell would move to RF to allow Collins, who couldn't throw, to play left, and Barfield, who had a cannon, to play right.)

Those were ALL, with the arguable exception of Barfield, just free-resource players at the time the Blue Jays acquired them--but the Jays got 19 homers and 77 RBI out of their catchers, a .291 average out of their third basemen, 25 homers and 85 RBI out of the DHs, near-MVP performance out of their left fielders (42 doubles, 17 triples, 15 homers, 198 hits, 59 stolen bases and a .297 average), and a .291 average with 24 homers out of their right fielders. They had a nine-man offense, and they had pinch hitters out the wazoo.

(The context was how much managers give up today by carrying 12 or 13 pitchers to accommodate a specialized bullpen.)