Flashback Friday

Hope is high in Toronto, Blue Jays fans. The Red Sox are looking beatable after a late-season collapse, and the Jays are just getting better and better as they emerge from their rebuilding phase with a strong core and rumors of cash to spend. They have one of the best outfielders in the league. They have a highly-touted rookie (albeit with some questions about his glove at his current position) who stormed through the minors and absolutely mashed in September when he was called up last year.

They have an ace who is undeniably one of top pitchers in the league, in his prime, under control for a while. Behind him comes a fireballer with huge potential who is dominant at times and could be a Cy Young if he puts it all together. Their bullpen is anchored down by a high-strikeout closer. Really, it looks like all this team needs to make a decent run is some starting pitching depth and a slugging DH, and to do that, upper management is apparently willing to put the payroll up to 100 million (it now sits just above 70) at some point in the next few years.

The PR machine is pumping vaguely but incredibly optimistic, “our time is soon” propaganda and implying that they are willing to do what it takes to get to the top. The rest of the league is saying nice things about the team in the way that you do a former rival who is no longer living on the streets but hasn’t quite pulled it together enough to cause you any trouble. It is a time of less shame. Not pride, but less shame. Look out AL East, here we come!

But wait – I don’t mean now. I’m talking about 2006! Does this all seem a little familiar? Back then, all that was true too, and the Blue Jays had just finished with 87 wins (compared to 81 last year), ahead of the Red Sox for the first time in 1.4 million years, who had gone 9-21 in August (the Bosox went 7-20 in September last season, apparently the worst streak of all time that has ever happened in this game ever). And yet, the World Series was won by the Red Sox and the Yankees twice in the next three years, and the Jays continued to drone on slightly above .500. Not a single sniff of the playoffs, let alone a chance to collapse down the playoff run, and back into rebuilding and a new GM.

So let’s call a spade a spade — this offseason has been a massive disappointment. Patience? Ha. Anthopoulos pulling off more of his wheeling and dealing magic does not change the fact that he needs a lot more money to seriously compete with the Yankees and Red Sox, or even the potential second wildcard with, for one, the Nuclear Arms Race going on between the Angels and the Rangers in the American League West. I don’t care if you can make insane contracts go away or acquire former hot prospects for nothing, you can’t wheel and deal your way past teams with almost three times the payroll, even if you have had movies made about how smart you are (*cough* Beane *cough*). And the powers that be still don’t believe that this is the year, or next year might be the year, or that it is profitable in the long-term to invest in elite players at anything other than super bargain value in order to build a fanbase. As a fan, that SUCKS.

But hey, at least they didn’t go halfway too soon and then cut all new acquisitions off in a huff when it didn’t work out. At least AA didn’t believe his own hype and sign some brutal contracts in a desperation move when the reasonable deals he wanted didn’t work out. Really, AA is stalling, and that’s not so bad — there are a bunch of players who need to bust out or be bussed out (sorry), and with a young team, why would he not wait to take his one and only shot at playing with a real team? But as a fan, the only real question is when and for how much are the pockets going to be opened? Obviously they’re willing to go up in terms of payroll, but are we talking enough to have a chance at squeezing into the wildcard, or a serious attempt at re-creating a big-money profitable team that could compete for years in the AL East? Tune in next year…

Flex This!

Ok, first off I am being compensated for this post. I apologize for the commercial intrusion to the 20 or do die hard RSS feeds that still follow this blog; in exchange I have opened up the archives of 500-some in-depth hard-hitting sports articles on this site for FREE, yes that’s right, they’re now all FREE!! What a deal.

But anyway…I’m all for the concept of a ticket liquidator (or to call a spade a spade, a scalper hub) when the powers that be won’t let you buy single tickets to spring training. What’s that? If I’m not sure yet if I’m going to be hauling my ass down to Florida and just want to lock down ONE game I know I want, I can’t — not for any price? What’s that? We get a one day window in December and then have to wait over another month so things have been picked clean? What a threat – I’d better panic, and buy large numbers of tickets I’m not sure I want! Umm….no. This is the internet/capitalist age, children. If you don’t want to take my money in a way that makes sense, someone else will be very happy to do it for you.

And how! The first game is “regular”, which the team’s site says would be $19 a piece (if you could buy them). Online, they range from $34-$58. A premium game such as March 7 against the Red Sox (despite it being a split squad day — how gross to charge another $7 for that kind of ‘premium’ quality) would be $26: online they start at $49 and go up to $92! It’s like the early days of the Dome, when scalpers sneered at you instead of crying and begging and showing you pictures of their children.

I’m just so tired of being jerked around by the latest Rogers marketing scheme to yank a little more money out of fans. Over the last few years it has been one damn squeeze after another – absurd “convenience” fees for buying your own ticket online; insulting “premium” games that flat-out admit they are not putting a product on the field that is worth paying full price for; random jerk moves like deciding that opening day is not part of the season for the sake of the Toronto Star SEASONS PASS; raising only the cheap seats in the middle of an economic disaster when your team is rebuilding, etc, etc, etc. Just raise the damn ticket prices instead of all this sleight-of-hand to hide the fact that’s what you’re doing and I would feel more like a valued fan and less like the target of an extended con.

Combined with the concession gouging, it’s sad that it has come to the point that despite being the best kind of fan there is (loyal/stupid), I have so much negative goodwill built up when it comes to Rogers pricing that being extorted by some fat sleazy parasite seems fun and new.

Bang it Like Bautista

This song was in some serious trouble when it referred to Bautista’s cedar bat in the first line, but it more than makes up for that inaccuracy with a generous helping of vivid sexual metaphors. There’s also a clean version, but how can anything sanitary touch Shaker’s Rap?

10 Reasons to call up Brett Lawrie NOW

1) AAA is bunk.

Why do we even have all these stupid minor-league levels, anyway? Name me ONE hot Jays prospect not named Rios, Lind, or Snider that had any problems adapting to the majors after fast-tracking through AAA. Preparing for the major leagues via a carefully-planned and long-established series of steadily-increasing levels of difficulty is the worst idea Branch Rickey came up with other than the batting helmet.

2) 3B is easy.

From what I remember watching Scott Rolen, it’s the simplest position ever. The ball flies into your glove so fast you barely even have to move your feet. Lawrie should be able to adapt almost instantly as there’s no real difference between third and second other than the throw across the diamond, the speed of the ball, the angle off the bat, charging bunts, the hops, the dives, instincts and skills required. I flipped Lawrie across the diamond in my copy of MLB: The Show and in his first game he was laying out on shots ripped into the hot corner like he’d been doing it all his life. And that game isn’t just realistic — it’s ultra realistic.

3) The Jays are in contention.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH….ok, sorry. I’m really sorry. Tried to keep a straight face for that one, I really did. Alan Ashby is going to have to step in here for a second while I catch my breath and get rid of the giggles. Hee hee…in contention. Whoooooooo. Boy.

“Do you want to sit there and say, what if?” Ashby asks.

Ok, I’m good.

4) You can tell just about everything about a player’s level of readiness from 25 spring at-bats.

Some pitchers aren’t throwing anything but fastballs at this point of spring – and during the major-league season, there are more fastballs thrown than any other pitch. So it’s a truer test, really. Also, 25 at-bats is a small enough sample size that there’s not a lot of noise. I mean, has anyone ever had this Gross a spring training, only to have the hype fade almost instantly?

5) Scouts are stupid.

Raw talent? Needs some more time? Questionable hands? You morons. I have HIGH DEF on my TV, and I’m pretty sure I can tell when a swing is ready for the bigs. I haven’t actually seen him make any plays in the field yet, but they sounded all-star caliber over the radio. I don’t need some loser ex-player who has nothing better to do than follow baseball players around night and day, creeping around minor-league parks to see them first-hand so he can use his vast “experience” and extensive baseball “knowledge” to tell me what’s what.

6) Kid needs to be taken down a notch.

Lawrie comes with a certain cocky attitude, which is really the sort of thing you want to beat out of a player by putting them in over their head as soon as possible. There could be a long-term attitude benefit in crushing him mentally this year, and his kind of faux-bravado personality would almost certainly respond to failure and demotion well. An added bonus would be if Lawrie hit so poorly for the first month the team was forced to choose between “giving up” on him by sending him back to the minors, or platooning him with Encarnacion for a while. Part-time play is so frustrating and difficult that it teaches a player how much they want to avoid it at all costs. Which makes them try harder. Which makes them play better. Works every time.

7) Get that clock running!

Everyone knows that players typically have their best seasons in “contract” years, i.e. right before they hit the free agent market. The Jays need Lawrie at their best when they are ready to compete; can they really wait six whole years to get the best out of him? Best to get Lawrie’s clock running as soon as possible — he will be hitting his power years in 2016 and with a little financial motivation could slam the door hard on his way out of town.

8. The Jays don’t need contractual control anyway.

On the other hand, the Jays don’t have to let Lawrie walk when that time comes. Rogers has a gabillion dollars, and since they’re a publicly-traded company I’m pretty sure AA is free to spend as much of shareholder’s money as he wants (since most of them are from Toronto). Anyway…there’s no need to worry about being thrifty or careful in managing control of potential future stars, since the Jays can always keep them around. Again and again, management has shown a willingness to commit to signing home-grown players no matter the cost to long-term extensions in order to keep them in Toronto until it’s time to give them away to teams that can actually afford those contracts.

9) He’s done with the minors.

Players always know best when they’re ready. Especially super-young, comically-confident ones. Nobody knows better than Brett Lawrie if he’s ready for the majors. Except his coaches. And I’d give it to the professional evaluators, too. Ok, probably some other players with way more experience of what it’s really like. Maybe some really good stats guys. Ok, there are many, many, people who know better than Brett Lawrie if he’s ready for the majors. But that’s beyond the point. He’s a pure athlete.

10) Zero downside.

It’s not like there is anything to lose by rushing a young prospect. Offhand, I can’t think of a single third-base prospect who had his development completely retarded to the point of almost ruining his career by a team that threw him into the majors way too early, causing him to bounce around for years as a washout journeyman before finally getting the time and training he needed to break out long after his original team had given up on him and traded him for nothing. (Bautista came up as an outfielder, smartass).

And hey, if the Jays hurt his development by getting greedy in a meaningless season for a slight upgrade at a position we’re paying 2.5 million to fill already, who cares? They have plenty of other hot prospects, or can always just trade another front-line starter for one. Lawrie is expendable.

Analysis of the Travis Snider demotion

He should have kept the ‘stache.

Into the Flow of the Season

I’m sure this has been posted everywhere already, but has anyone noticed how the path of “good” leads directly to the Jays? Apparently we are perceived as: soulful, caring, dedicated, realist, spontaneous, non-racist, non-violent, traditionalist, encased meat-eating and benevolent fans. Encased meat….mmmmMMMmmmm.

Winning Sports Journalism from Toronto’s Most Repected Newspaper

Update: Today the Jays held a coaches meeting and actually announced the obvious about Romero, while stating that “The final two members of the staff likely won’t be announced until the final week of Spring Training,” as Farrell wants to see as much of them as possible before making a final decision. Boooo-ring. It’s bracket time. “(Litsch and Drabek are officially)…The final two members of the staff…(but that)…won’t be announced (to anyone other than me) until the final week of Spring Training.” SCOOPVILLE!!

Today the Mockingbird brings you inside the latest inside scoop, with a word-for-word transcript of the inner workings of star reporter Mike Rutsey of the Toronto Sun as he gleans a major scoop on the Jays’ rotation from a seemingly innocuous series of quotes from Blue Jays’ manager, John Farrell.

Farrell: “To say who’s one, who’s two and three and so on, I don’t know where we’re at the point of designating those guys or are really ready to announce our opening day starter…”

Ok, so you really want to dodge making any kind of statement about the rotation, even who the opening day starter is going to be, despite the fact that everyone already knows. I get it. You hate us reporters. You want me to starve. Because two weeks of spring training just isn’t enough for you to make major decisions about the makeup of your first club, nooooooo…

“But at the same time you look to arrive at some kind of contrast of style, to split up the lefties that have effective changeups, yeah, you’d like to get some power (Brandon Morrow) in between those two…”

Yeah, yeah…standard manager boilerplate. If you have a choice, go lefty-righty-lefty, or soft-hard-soft. Any other revelations, like you’re thinking of putting a guy who steals 50 bases in the leadoff spot? Maybe you’re going to let someone else hit for the pitcher this year? I’m staying in a seedy motel 6 in Ft. Fucking Myers for this?

“We’d also like to get a power arm in the five spot preceding Ricky the next time through, or whoever that might be….”

Gaaaaaaaaaaa…..this is going nowhere. You won’t even trick yourself into referring to Ricky as the #1, you wily bastard. And while obviously Drabek’s power arm (although you could be thinking Zach Stewart) is eventually going to break into the rotation as a great #5, since he’s only pitched two innings this spring there’s not a chance you’re going to make a call on whether such a young kid is ready as that would have huge ramifications for him, as well as the rest of the guys duking it out for the last two spots. So you’re being vague and rambling about that fast-slow garbage again in the hopes that I’ll go away. Can I at least get a crowd-pleasing comment about opening up the running game this year? No???

You know what I’d wish you’d said? Something definitive along the lines of the opening day honour officially going to Romero and the hot prospect having made the team. People love scoops like that. Oh, what the hell. I’m a baseball Journalist, not a blogger! We don’t just relay news, we make it! Let’s have some fun with the ol’ interpretive brackets. Drabek confirmation, in. Romero set in stone, in. Twice. BAM!

“We’d also like to get a power arm in the five spot (Kyle Drabek) preceding Ricky (the No. 1 starter) the next time through, or whoever that might be (too late, the rabbit’s out of the hat).

Now that is a serious improvement right there. Way to go, Mikey! They give you shit to work with, and you manage to excrete pure gold. Now if only he had said (or not said) anything about the race I just decided just got a lot tighter for the last spot between that yo-yo guy, and Rzy…Rezpy…Rpez…oh fuck it, I’m pretty sure it’s going to be Litsch. I already wrote an article about how he says he’s “feeling strong“, so it’s basically a lock, anyway.

He will be followed by Morrow, then Cecil, then Litsch, or whomever, and then Drabek.

Wow. It all fits together so perfectly – almost as if it were some sort of fantastical preconceived notion. Now all we need a sign-off that sounds pithy and so ridiculously overconfident that this is what Farrell actually meant that if he calls me on it, I can bail and say I was just kind of joking and speculating wildly, and that it was a “tip”, i.e, my loosely-drawn opinion, and not the actual first-hand information with any kind of weight to it that people will no doubt take it for as it is redistributed widely across the internet.

So it is written, so it shall be.

Boo-yeah! That’ll teach you to dodge reporters’ questions for the sake of the team, you stupid manager! Exactly what you refused to come out and say is now splashed across the internet as fact! From now on when I come knocking, you’d better tell me what I want to write, and what people are clamoring to hear. Or else. Eat. My. Brackets.

Just enough, no doubt!

Ok, I lied about the photoshopped Bautista. I do have some more numbers, though. They’re kinda fun. According to Hit Tracker, Bautista lead the league in:

“Just Enough” home runs – Means the ball cleared the fence by less than 10 vertical feet, OR that it landed less than one fence height past the fence. These are the ones that barely made it over the fence.

With 13. But of course, he also lead the league in the real ones by a considerable margin. So what percent of Bautista’s home runs were cheapies? Here he is compared to the top 10 in the AL:

Name	Just enough %
Jose Bautista	24 %
Paul Konerko	28%
Miguel Cabrera	26%
Mark Teixeira	21%
David Ortiz	34%
Josh Hamilton	31%
Vernon Wells	32%
Alex Rodriguez	37%
Vladimir Guerrero	31%
Nick Swisher	21%

 

Looking good, Jose! If Bautista was a fluke, it’s because he was running into balls, not because they were creeping over the fence.

And just for curiosity’s sake, here’s the same list with no-doubters, defined as

“No Doubt” home run – Means the ball cleared the fence by at least 20 vertical feet AND landed at least 50 feet past the fence. These are the really deep blasts.:

Name	No Doubter %
Jose Bautista	35 %
Paul Konerko	15%
Miguel Cabrera	26%
Mark Teixeira	36%
David Ortiz	19%
Josh Hamilton	16%
Vernon Wells	35%
Alex Rodriguez	13%
Vladimir Guerrero	21%
Nick Swisher	28%

 

Also comforting…I still hate this contract!

An Open Letter to ESPN about BABIP

Dear poor intern who works at ESPN pumping out preseason player comments:

I know it’s hard. You have to make some kind of bold prediction for every single player, with pretty much squat to go on other than what fans can already get from Fangraphs. You’re not a scout. You haven’t seen these players swing live lately, maybe never at all. And even if you had, you’re not a hitting coach. You wouldn’t be able to tell what has gone terribly wrong, or what a guy finally figured out last year that has changed everything. Most of the time your best bet is to take a page from Marcel the Monkey, and predict that a player’s numbers are going to be the same as his career averages, slightly adjusted for whether he’s on the still-learning or declining side of his career. But you got this job because of your reputation as a statistical whiz, and that’s just not going to cut it. Your boss wants some kind of numerological wizardry, for you to predict the future with your big brain and the lastest SABR science. I get it. I’ve been there.

But please stop using BABIP every time you get stuck. You’re hurting statistics, shredding whatever scraps of credibility have been won over the last decade, turning back the tide of superior metrics creeping onto scoreboards and into newspapers and even coming out of announcers mouths, reinforcing the stereotype of sabermetricians being pimple-faced teenages who know nothing about how the game is actually played, who don’t even watch it, preferring instead to read boxscores and crunch numbers long after the games are over from the safety of their parents basements, blah, blah, blah-dee-blah blah blah…

I know, I know…years ago Voros McCracken turned stats on their head with BABIP. He started a huge controversy and was eventually hired by the Red Sox after stumbling over the fact that, in a nutshell, pitchers don’t have much control over anything other than strikeouts and walks. Once contact has been made, batted balls fall in at the same rate no matter who is on the mound (after defense, park effect, etc, is taken into account). Therefore, pitching to contact is not what it’s cracked up to be, and if a pitcher has a really low or really high BABIP, you can say that over that period he has been “lucky” or “unlucky”, because nobody maintains a very high or very low BABIP; eventually every pitcher’s will end up the same. (Almost…for example, we now know that closers can have lower BABIP’s, but not by all that much). This makes for a great tool to gauge the amount of statistical fog when dealing with small sample sizes for pitchers, and an incredible tool for pumping out quick fantasy baseball comments.

But it just doesn’t work the same way for hitters — and nobody (even Voros!) has ever maintained that it does. It would be like saying that a spike or fall in batting average has to be luck, because for hitters, BABIP is just the same damn thing with K’s and HR’s removed from the equation (really two of the last things you want to exclude when trying to decode if a streak or slump or bad year is due to something tangible). While it is true that if a player has an extremely uncharacteristic BABIP over a period of time, those results should be taken with a grain of salt, you could just as easily say that about batting average because they’re practically the same damn stat. Obviously, nobody would call every .200 hitter a victim of luck — all that’s really going on here is that if you don’t hit somewhere in the realm of league average, you’re not going to get major league at-bats for long.

Still, BABIP is regularly used these days as a diagnostic when there is a suspicion of someone’s skills having deteriorated — and in that sense, it just doesn’t tell you anything at all. It is of zero value for making future predictions. It is nothing more than a huge misunderstanding, a misapplication of a SABR truth that has gone viral. I repeat, there is absolutely no universal number that all batter BABIP’s (or averages) bounce randomly around, as there is for pitchers.

Because a very low BABIP could mean player is simply making lousy contact, which unlike pitchers, batters are certainly capable of affecting.  Compare the BABIP of a great contact hitter like Joe Mauer (note: his exceedingly high BABIP is not because he’s beating out infield hits with his speed as per Fangraphs explanation of Ichiro’s consistently high numbers) over the last three years — .348, .373, .343 — to a noodler like John Mcdonald — 260, .269, .235. That’s some 100 points of consistent difference, and obviously not luck-based. So when a player’s BABIP plummets 100 points, it could be a fluke — or it could mean he used to make contact like Ichiro and now, for whatever reason, he’s making contact like John Mcdonald. You have to look deeper to have any idea what’s really going on.

Last year, BABIP was everywhere in the discussion about David Ortiz’s early struggles, which were obviously the result of mechanical difficulties and not luck. This year, batter BABIP is continuing to bloom — I’ve seen at least a dozen snippets like this one about Aaron Hill (Carlos Quentin is another good one).

Think you’re unlucky? Even though Hill hit 26 homers in 2010, his batting average plummeted to .205 thanks to a .196 batting average on balls in play. To put that in perspective, that was almost 100 points below his career mark and 30 points below the next-lowest mark in the majors. That’s unlucky. Also consider that Hill’s strikeout rate held steady and that his walk rate improved, and it jibes with the scouting that says Hill hit the ball hard right at a lot of people for much of the year.

I’d like a word or two with some of these scouts, because anyone who watched the Jays last year knows that Hill wasn’t getting unlucky in the slightest. His contact SUCKED. His whole season was one weak pop-up, head down, jog to first after the other. Hill looked like a completely different hitter, his beautiful compact line drive swing gone long and loopy – and a little deeper delving into the numbers agrees: his fly ball rate soared from his terrific 2009 (41.0), past his career average (41.4), to insane heights (54.2). His line drive rate also fell from 2009 (19.6) past his career average (18.5) to untold depths (10.6). His infield fly percentage (one of my favorites because it’s a 100% guaranteed out – like a hidden strikeout, but still included as a ball in play) rose from 11.6 to 12.9. Spraying balls like this will clearly and provably lead to a consistently much lower BABIP. And so the numbers actually overwhelmingly agree with what the old-timers would say: Hill’s swing went to hell last year.  Luck had nothing to do with it.

Now yes, players tend to return to their normal numbers. That’s usually a good thing to point out because it’s really rather amazing how even the most terrible results over extended periods of time can be due to random fluctuation. We can’t help but think we see what looks like conclusive results of a player’s skill level having changed that are in fact just baseball doing its crazy and unpredictable thing. (An example from the classic “The Book” is that even over 1000 batters faced, one in every 20 pitchers will have an ERA more than a run over their true skill level over that time). So it is still a very good bet that Hill (or any other major leaguer with a highly uncharacteristic BABIP) is going to bounce back.

But that is not because of any statistical techniques. It’s because nobody with that kind of pedigree and years of success hits under .200 in his prime for long unless something has gone terribly, terribly, wrong physically (it was his hamstring, FYI), something which he is likely to be able to recover from. But when you state authoritatively to the millions and millions of people who read your comments that a comeback is predicted by pure numbers with no need for a turnaround in his on-field performance or condition, an entire range of astute fans will begin to think that all stats are stupid and all analysis useless because they don’t jibe with most obvious truth they know and can see and hear about baseball: that a sweet swing and solid contact from a good hitter makes a ball jump off the bat, while a poor hack from a guy lost at the plate sends up a dying quail.

Ump Roundup

Check out Mike Fast over at Baseball Prospectus dishing the latest on the way umpires call the strike zone and making me blush. As to reasons for why the zone seems to get bigger in hitters’ counts (among other situations) and vice-versa, I have a couple of ideas:

1. Every so often, an umpire just doesn’t have enough information to make a call one way or the other. Maybe it’s on the exact edge of the zone. Maybe he didn’t get a good look at it. Whatever. It seems obvious that an umpire would be reluctant to ring a guy up, or issue a walk, in those cases. Making a harmless call is both the best thing for the game, and the least likely to result in an angry player blowing up in the umps face, 50,000 fans losing their minds, etc. Consciously, or not, umps can’t ask for a do-over, so they do the next best thing: prolong the at bat. They might be swayed the the situation if it’s really close as well, but they almost certainly are when it’s a 50-50 call in their minds.
2. Another likely effect is what is known as “expectation bias”. In a nutshell, it means humans are more likely to think what just happened is what they were expecting to happen anyway. This is a rampant phenomenon among scientists, judges, and even professional poker players — so you bet your ass umpires aren’t immune. When it’s an 0-2 count, and the catcher moves outside, and everyone in the park KNOWS that the pitcher is going to waste one, any human being is going to be biased in favor of calling a close pitch on the corner what was expected, a ball. Same goes for 3-0, when the expectation is a pitch grooved down the middle. In the heat of the moment, your mind will trick you, just a little, into thinking it was closer than it was.

But before we start having pipe dreams about replacing biased humans with superior machines, (they’ve already proved their superiority at chess and Jeopardy…how far can baseball be behind?) here are two strikes against the idea:

1. The zone real umpires call, which is missing corners, is superior for the game of baseball than the rulebook one. It removes pitches on the corners that are impossible to hit, and gives a little at the belt, where hitters can actually reach them. It is a strike zone that is subtly altered to the pitches that are actually driveable, and both batters and pitchers have programmed themselves over all the pitches they have seen in their life to know this. Go to a “perfect” zone in order to remove the occasional miscall, and you fundamentally change baseball at the higher levels — and for the worse. Picking out the corners (and an emphasis on control over electric stuff) would become hugely more important to the game, and hitters would have to adjust to be able to slap those pitches away (because there’s not much more you can do with them, really). Less aggressive pitching + weaker hits = BARRFFFFF.
2. How would you ever set the vertical height of a hitter’s zone? Nowadays pitch f/x measures it for each hitter before the game and it’s all over the place. Even an extra inch would be huge to a hitter. Do you force hitters to keep the same stances, or measure them in action before each game? It might not be a deal breaker, but I can already hear just as many complaints that the umps used to get being directed towards the poor sap who sets the official strike zones…

A different look at BABIP

Boy, I had no idea there was such hate out there for BABIP. I’ve gotten some emails that even made it sound like I actually discovered something new here, when I was really just trying to tell the mainstream to go re-read their SABR manual. I do have something else to add that has been rolling around in my head for ages, and it’s about BABIP for pitchers. Warning: it’s pretty spacey. And very nerdy. I’ll have some wacky photoshopped pictures of Bautista’s head on someone else’s body next week, I promise.

The problem

There was an outcry when it was discovered that BABIP was essentially the same for all pitchers. McCracken’s statement that: “there is little if any difference among major-league pitchers in their ability to prevent hits on balls hit in the field of play” simply made no sense to baseball minds.

Although that statement has been softened over the years (we now know that the ability is just very, very, small, and almost impossible to see through all the luck), it’s still deeply troubling. This is because it implies that the ball comes off the bat on a dirty slider on the outside corner is just as good as on a slow fastball down the middle. Pitchers can only hit, or miss, bats – otherwise it’s all the same. Pitching to contact does not exist.

That makes no intuitive sense, and even less if you’ve ever tried to hit a 90-mph fastball. If some major league pitcher was facing a team full of me’s, it’s obvious he would have a really low BABIP as I dribbled the occasional ball back to the mound and popped up a few (in addition to putting Pizza Pizza out of business). Ok, I’m an absurdly low-talent example, but the variety in quality of swings and pitches to hit in baseball is pretty wide, too. All contact can’t be the same.

And it isn’t. Different counts show different BABIP’s. Different locations, too. Breaking pitches each have  different BABIP‘s. So why wouldn’t a pitcher who threw more breaking balls have a consistently and significantly lower BABIP? Or one with significantly better control? And how do all these different numbers in different situations possibly even out to be the same for everyone?

Important realization #1

At least to some extent, the reason is that these factors are in balance. Throw tons of sliders, or pitch to the corners, and on those pitches you’re going to get weaker contact (i.e. a lower BABIP). But you’re also going to fall behind in the count more often and have to come in with a fastball down the middle, which will be hit harder (and thus for a higher BABIP).

Conversely, if you’re pounding the zone with fastballs, you’re going to give up more hits because that’s fastballs do, but you’re also going to be getting ahead more often, since they’re easier to control. (And the closer to down the middle you aim them, the more hits you give up, but the more often you get ahead). The advantage of being ahead in the count will balance to some degree disadvantage of throwing pitches that are more hittable.

A good example is a guy like Jesse Carlson, who broke into the league throwing more sliders than anyone else in the league (Fangraphs says 56%, pitch f/x says higher), and maintained a .230 BABIP over his first season. His second time around the league made the adjustment and stopped swinging at so many his sliders, meaning he was constantly working from behind against guys sitting fastball. He went through a really tough time, and then adjusted. He is a far more normal pitcher now, with a normal BABIP.

Hypothesis

Maybe why everyone’s BABIP is similar that it is the “golden mean” for how much you should nibble, how much of the plate you should on average be catching. If your BABIP goes below league average, that means your stuff is nasty enough that you should be challenging hitters more, and getting more strikeouts at the expense of a little BABIP. If it goes way above, you’re finding too much of the plate and should work the corners or throw a ball once in a while, even if it means your walk rate goes up a little.

My big shiny idea is that (underneath the mighty wallop of luck that runs through it) the reason pitchers see a very consistent BABIP is not that “all balls in play are the same”, but because the optimal level of aggression in pitching for most pitchers — neither getting ahead too often or too little — results in a BABIP of that value.

Examples

1) Imagine a pitcher whose BABIP happens to be exactly .300. Lets say we teach him a slider he can only throw once in an at-bat — but it’s the best slider in existence! Guys just can’t touch it, and when they do, they only manage a .100 BABIP off it. But our imaginary pitcher is an idiot, so he throws it only on the first pitch of an at-bat. As a result, his BABIP goes down, and statisticians everywhere say that he’s been getting really lucky.

But then his catcher and pitching coach have a long talk with him, and convince him that he’s got to start using this thing for better use – punching guys out. It’s going to be a lot better if he can get guaranteed outs rather than guaranteed first strikes. So he starts throwing it on 0-2, and punches out a whole bunch of guys who were behind in the count and more likely to put the ball in play weakly — so his BABIP starts going back up, as his nastiness is correctly being converted into a much better result: maximum strikeouts. See! We say, he stopped getting lucky!

2) Now take another guy who of a sudden becomes incredibly hittable. He is overnight Joshified (Towerized?), and as you would expect, his BABIP goes way up as hitters start gearing up and crushing the ball off him, over the wall, etc. Statheads scream “how unlucky!” (As we did in 2004, when Josh Towers put together one of the worst seasons in baseball, but had a BABIP of .341). After a barrage of towering upper-deck shots, he will almost certainly become more fine: picking out the corners and throwing more junk, effective or not, will lower his BABIP (at the expense of some walks). And since he can’t quite finish guys off as well he used to with his weakened repertoire, what used to be K’s on 0-2 now result in the kind of weak contact you get on 0-2 lowering his BABIP further (although not necessarily making him any better). ”It’s starting to even out!”, we cry…

I don’t know exactly how much this is happening, but it’s almost certainly part of the answer. Otherwise, pitch f/x analysis tells us electric stuff would mean lower BABIP, just as you would expect.

Possible ramifications

Once again, the real excitement is hit f/x, which will make this look like child’s play. But it’s possible that we could use BABIP to understand when a pitcher is catching too much of the plate or working around hitters too often. Although obviously only to some extent, because there’s still so much luck. But think about a 2008 Matsuzaka. He had a really low BABIP, and I think a lot of baseball experts, or anyone who watched his games, felt like he was underperforming in some ways for his stuff, because he pitched in such an odd, backwards, not MLB optimal BABIP style (and a .258 BABIP).

Or Roy Halladay. There were a few seasons when he was almost certainly “pitching to contact” because because of concerns about his arm. In 2005 and 2006, he had a BABIP of .262, and .276. There’s no way that was a coincidence, or an unmaintainable result. He struck out about one less a game, and just by watching him pitch you know why his K rate was so low and his GB rate so high – he’d get guys to 0-2 and throw a third sinking fastball, stuff like that. The use of his power curve dropped dramatically. And the truth is, he wasn’t as effective – his ERA+ dipped to 143 and then 121. Sometimes those 0-2 tappers would go through.

Now the doc is back to converting those weak 0-2 grounders into K’s again, and his overall numbers have increased dramatically (up to a 165 ERA+) over the last three years, while his BABIP has stopped being abnormally low. I would suggest that he was negatively affecting his results by pitching too aggressively, and has now returned to optimal.

Summary

A possible alternative (or at least a contributing factor) to the reason that pitchers don’t have widely different BABIP’s being that they have extremely low “ability” to affect what happens to balls in play is that deviating from the norm, or the perfect balance between contact, walks, and K’s eventually interferes negatively with your results, and is therefore weeded out, or corrected by major league pitchers. It may be possible to peer through the randomness involved in BABIP in order to use it to make general statistical statements about pitchers being too straightforward, or too crafty for their own good.

Hardball Times Season Previews

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So what are you waiting for? For just $14.95, you will finally get the answers to such timeless mysteries as: “will Jose Bautista hit 50 home runs again”, “can Adam Lind make the transition to 1B seamlessly”, and “does anyone want to get together to watch old clips and pretend it’s the early nineties?”

The One That Got Away

So you used to know this girl. A real knockout, hugely talented, tons of potential. She Was a little gawky and went through some ups and downs in her early 20′s (like most of the special ones do), but you held on to each other and worked through the rough times and it was worth it.

But you were a bit of a mess back in the day and never wanted to commit, even to such an amazing creature. To really just dive in and go for it, the big one, the whole shebang. Through time that became an issue, and after giving up a lot to be with you eventually she just had to leave, despite you still being in love with each other. You parted on good terms but still it hurt so bad. Deep down, you both knew that she was wasting your time with you in the gutter.

Now you see her in concert years later, really flourishing. Playing on the world stage, a virtuoso performance. And you’re happy, truly happy for her. You had your time and still have your memories but now she’s where she belongs, with someone who can really give her the stability and room to shine that she always deserved. You even meet her new man (a great guy, real winner) and talk about the old days before the show, smile and laugh. It’s all water under the bridge.

And hey, you have no real complaints. You’re seeing a bunch of hot young talent. You got a lot out of your time together. After you went your separate ways it shook you up a little, and now you’re finally getting your life together. People are even pleasantly surprised at how you’ve turned things around so quickly, and think that you might actually be going somewhere. Life is good, and things turned out for the best, really.

But as you slink out the rear exit of the concert hall on your way back to your dingy apartment and everyman existence, you look back at her on stage, glowing, as she receives a standing ovation from a packed house, and in that moment she catches your eye for just a second and it all comes rushing back the way it used to be: thrilling, intense, incredible, and despite your best attempts at high-minded graciousness the loss and the shame of it all stabs you in the gut like an icicle and you think: FUCK. That could have been me. Waiting with a glass of champagne in the limo, for royalty, at this perfect and triumphant moment. Forget all the logical bullshit about why it wasn’t meant to be – if I had really, truly, wanted, I could have made that happen. What was I thinking? What have I done? And then you drink.

Congrats, Doc. You deserve it all. I still love you.

Strike Zone Control By Height

Strike Zone Control by Height
Height:	Called Strike	Ball	Foul
Short:	16.8	37.0	17.0
Medium:	17.5	36.8	16.7
Tall:	17.1	38.7	16.3

Cecil’s Other Offspeed Pitch

With Brett Cecil making his second major league start today, here’s a look at his first game – which was pretty stellar despite him drilling three people (he reminds me of me!). The pitch that Cecil is known for, his slider that was “major league ready” when he was drafted is in green, but it looks like he has picked up a few tricks during his one (1) season in the minors so far as well…

It’s not a Brandon League sinker sinker, but along with his 93-95 four seam fastball, Cecil threw a 90-92 mph 2-seamer about half the time in his first start. His slider comes in at a standard 85-86, and his Curve loops in at 80. But the wacky thing is so does his changeup. He threw a LOT of them, and they were down at 80-83.

That’s a difference of about 15 mph from his fastball, which is very unusual. I’m pretty sure John Walsh was right when he wrote this:

The change-up, despite was you sometimes read, is not the slowest pitch thrown (the curveball is). I read recently a claim that somebody’s change-up was 20 mph slower than his fastball—no way! The average difference between fastball and change-up is 9 mph. I haven’t checked, but I’m confident that nobody has a 20 mph difference between the two pitches.

I don’t even think anyone else regularly has a 15 mph difference between their changeup and fastball – I can’t find anyone off the top of my head. He threw it exclusively to RHB and threw it for strikes or grouped it well off the outside corner.

That has to be an annoying pitch coming from the left side, especially because his change almost cuts, unlike most changeups that tail away. Otherwise he mostly worked the inside of the plate with his slider and fastball to both right and left-handed batters. (Let’s not mention the pair of curveballs he eephused up there).

Here’s that same chart with where Cecil got misses and where he allowed hits. It would be more obvious broken down by L/R, but he threw his changeup exclusively to RHB, and his slider more often breaking away to lefties. They didn’t like that at all. His hits came (yawn) on fastballs and sliders left up and over the plate. And his beanballs? Two fastballs and a slider.

One last thing no note is Cecil’s release point- other than his curveball, which is again a joke, it’s consistent. Most pitchers come from a slightly different place with their offspeed stuff, but the only thing you can really notice with Cecil is that he gets under his 4-seam fastball an inch or so lower for that extra 3-4 mph, and releases his changeup about that much higher than his slider and 2 seamer – which move in completely opposite directions but come from the exact same place.