Blue Jays Sign Gary Denbo as Hitting Coach

The Blue Jays have wasted no time in hiring a new batting coach, signing 46-year-old Gary Denbo from the New York Yankees to a two-year contract. Denbo has been the Yankees Hitting Coordinator (roving minor league instructor) for much of the last decade, and has also spent time as a minor league coach in the Reds and Yankees organizations.

He had one season as the Yankees batting coach in 2001. After the Yankees offense had an off-year and they failed to win the World Series against the Diamondbacks, Denbo was replaced and worked for the Cleveland Indians as a scout, and then the Nippon Ham Fighters of the Japanese Pacific League before returning to his former role with the Yankees. Denbo also does some catching instruction, and has served as the Yankee’s assistant director of player personnel. He was courted by the Jays last season for a minor league position but decided to rejoin the Yankees instead.

One of the main complaints this season was that the Blue Jays were too often unprepared for upcoming pitchers, and Ricciardi said the Jays would be looking for someone with as much experience in the video room as on the playing field. Denbo has received praise for his thoroughness and preparedness, and is certainly a video geek. According to his bio at the hitting academy:

Players swear by Gary’s communication and teaching and toiling skills, and believe slumps will be more short-lived because of his ability to spot and correct flaws quickly. Gary, considered a ‘new age hitting instructor’, has developed a method of combining video and computer analysis of the baseball swing. He uses a library built with the swings of top hitters in the game to serve as a teaching source in developing proper swing technique.

Another possible flaw about the Blue Jays approach this season was that they were trying to pull the ball too much and were trying to swing too hard for the fences. Take a look at what Denbo worked on with Jeter (he is also known for emphasizing “swing path“.)

Denbo also advised Jeter to try to hit to the middle of the field instead of trying to pull everything. Finally, Denbo counseled Jeter on taking a better swing path and moving his bat through the strike zone at a steady rate.

I’m skeptical about the Jays needing a new hitting “identity”, but this seems like a good move. Despite being a casualty of a typical Yankee overreaction to not winning another world series, Denbo has a track record of getting star players (such like Mike Lowell and Derek Jeter) out of serious slumps and boy do we need that next year. He was originally promoted to hitting coach by the Yankees because Derek Jeter and others were seeking help from him while he was still in the minor league system. Denbo and Butterfield also know each other from their time with New York.

Trying desperately not to overestimate the benefits of technology, adding a scientific approach to hitting instruction is exciting as well. (Hmmm….I wonder if he needs a library/database analyzing pitchers to go along with his one for hitters swings…?? Call me!!!). Lyle Overbay is well known for being a tape junkie, so he has to be pleased at this news. As everyone heard ad nauseum this season, he pointed out something he saw on tape to Vernon, who proceeded to go on his only tear of the season for a couple of weeks. If Denbo can do that a few times next season, he’ll earn his paycheque ten times over.

Translation Time with Ted Lilly

It’s been a while since a good translation was required…a steady stream of “wait until next year” has been coming out of the Jays front office for months now. But here’s a guest appearance from Ted Lilly that’s heavy on the Shadenfreude. In case you missed it, ol’ Ted absolutely imploded on the mound in the second game against the Diamondbacks. He had a terrible outing and after gift-wrapping a 3-2 pitch to Chris Young with a base open to give up the lead further confirmed his mental diagnosis by doing this:

His comment after the game was:

“I believe if I locate that ball, I get a good result,” Lilly said. “In that situation, when he’s looking fastball there and I throw it up and over the plate, he’s very capable of hitting four-seam fastballs. It’s hard for me to expect a good result.

I read:

“I think if I magically acquire command of my fastball for the first time all game, he doesn’t hit it out of the park,” Lilly said. “In that situation he’s sitting on it and I should have listened to my catcher and thrown the curve, because the rookie knows more about pitching smart than I do.”

And then there’s:

“I guess if I want to think up some excuses I could come us with some BS. It’s something I’ll have a hard time with. I certainly want to get another opportunity.”

equals:

“I haven’t come up with anything plausible and it’s going to take me a while. Thinking is something I have a hard time with. I certainly want to get another opportunity.”

Ok. I’m a little bitter when it comes to ol’ Ted. I think it has something to do with being an uncoachable headcase and treating the Jays to frustrating mediocrity for years, then dangling a false hope of returning with no absolutely no intention of doing so in order to milk as much cash as possible out of the free agent market, choosing the freaking Cubs for a supposedly better chance of winning the World Series, and actually winding up being right in large part due to him finally having a full and excellent season. The only thing I would have enjoyed more than his meltdown would have been if he’d blown an even larger lead by experimenting with his famous knuckleball or sidearm pitches and gotten into a fist fight (no contest) with Lou Pinella on the mound.

Canada Sends Troops to Sabotage Yankee Dynasty

In a brazen attempt at revenge for either the war of 1812 or the Yankees breaking baseball’s fiscal system and dominating the AL East since the last time the Blue Jays won a world series, on Friday night Joba Chamberlain was attacked on the mound by “Canadian Soldiers” in the bottom of a critical 8th inning.

Coming into the game to bail out Andy Pettite with one out in the 7th, Chamberlain seemed his usual invincible self in his first post-season appearance, retiring the two batters he faced with runners on first and second in dominant fashion. But as the next inning started, the northern troops descended onto Jacob’s field and turned the tide of a pitched battle in favour of the Native Americans. Although Chamberlain did not allow a hit, he walked two, hit one, and threw two wild pitches, the second of which allowed the tying run to score.

In the 9th, the troops began to fall back, allowing Fausto Carmona to strike out Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez to end the Yankee threat and complete his 9-inning masterpiece. There was one unfortunate friendly-fire incident when a Canadian dive-bombed Kenny Lofton’s eye, mistaking him for an elder US stateman. The Cleveland Indians took advantage of the turn of events and went on to win the game with a bases loaded single by Travis Hafner in the bottom of the 11th.

US reaction to the Canuck agression was swift. Fighter Jets were scrambled in an attempt to counter the aerial invaders, and a reported 3,781,542 Canadian casualties were reported, most coming in vicious hand-to-hand combat in the bleachers. Reports of chemical warfare were also reported, although the use of the controlled substance DEET against civilians was quickly denied. Fearing retaliation, the Toronto Blue Jays have been evacuated to a secret heavily reinforced concrete bunker code-named “The Rogers Centre”.

::

Something You Already Knew About John McDonald

John McDonald got off to a ridiculously good start this season, hitting .447/462 (ha!)/.605 over his first 15 games. That’s a pretty ridiculous streak for a career .240 hitter, and even though he has hit .227 since then, it made people think he was a mediocre hitting SS because he was still clinging to a .270 average months later (and is still above .250). One of the things responsible for that run was that he was getting a lot of starts against lefties, who he is batting .329 against this season. It also seemed that he liked the soft-tossing variety but was overmatched by anyone throwing heat.

So, to test this pitch database I’ve finally got running, I ran every pitch it has recorded for him this season and what the result was. Here are the percentages for every possible result of each pitch by velocity. Batting average is hits/contact, but since we’re breaking it down pitch by pitch it doesn’t mean the same thing. (By the way, if anyone wants me to ask the all-knowing database something about their favorite/least favorite, let me know…pretty much anything- counts, pitch type/location, situations, results, can be analyzed…Want to know what percentage of first pitches to Vernon were popped straight up? Well, no, you probably don’t want to know. But if you DID…)

I was surprised that he doesn’t swing through as many good fastballs as I thought he did, but he takes them for strikes instead. And while on pitches between 80-90, Sir John gets a hit about 1/3 of the time he makes contact, it drops below the Mendoza line (.190) as soon as someone throws a ball over 90 mph.

The number of balls he fouls off increases at about the same rate as balls decreases, so his eye disappears as velocity increases (not surprising since he has to ‘sell out’ and start his swing super early to get around). What eye, you say? Well, he actually has a pretty good one for curveballs:

Pitch Type	Foul Ball	Looking Strike	Ball Taken
Breaking Ball	0.06	0.17	0.42
Fastball	0.15	0.24	0.29

Just another reason nobody should, ever, ever, ever, throw him one (I’m looking at you, Kenny Rogers, cursing away after that 0-2 count). On pitches between 70-75 mph this year, McDonald didn’t foul off one, and he hit .500.

::

Do You Have What it Takes to be a Major League Hitter?

Step 1: Forget about the years of training, knowledge, practice, physical fitness, visual acuity, genetics, etc. I’m talking pure mental synapse-firing capability.

Step 2: Go to this site and measure your reaction time.

Step 3: Post it in the comments.

Step 4: Realize that .200 is what most MLB hitters have to operate at.

Step 5: Slink back to the couch never again to criticize a player for freezing up on a 95 mph heater right over the plate/biting on a slider that ends up in the visitor’s dugout.

(That’s you. Looking stupid. Why didn’t you swing? Huh? It was right there. Right. Over. The. Plate. I could have hit that. Loser. We pay you enough to hit that pitch.)

• Update: there’s something very similar here, except with cute graphics and it seems a lot easier. Now I can crack that .20 margin and hit about .900…with power, too! And I defy anyone to beat this Soco and Seven-influenced, not at all flukeage-related time of 0.04 seconds. Proof positive I could mash off Zumaya if I was just loaded all the time!!!

Dustin McGowan – Dissection of a Masterpiece

Now that the time of year has come where all that’s left to do as Toronto Blue Jays fans is look back at the season wistfully and cheer for whichever team is facing the Yankees, the best play/moment/game lists are making the rounds. Sure Aaron Hill’s steal of home was a great moment of jubilation, but for me everything pales in comparison to Dustin McGowan’s one-hitter.

After years of disappointment and questions about his mental composure during a rough start to the year, Dustin finally put together a series of quality starts only to get demolished by the Dodgers, blown out in under than 2 innings after 8 hits and 3 walks. But he bounced back in stunning fashion his next start and officially announced his arrival as an elite pitcher by taking a no-hitter into the 8th against a powerful Rockies lineup. Let’s take a look at how he did it.

First, here’s a another really good McGowan start for comparison. It was his first win this season (and his first in over a year), where he shut down a struggling Yankees squad for 7 2/3 innings, the only blemish a 2-run home run by Hideki Matsui that ended his night. (0,0) on these graphs are how a pitch that was not affected at all by spin would move, from the hitter’s perspective.

His pitch movement looks a lot like A.J. Burnett, except his fastballs are tailing even more. The blue dots are his curveball, the green his slider and on the other side his change-up. (If you haven’t seen one of these charts before, the middle is where a pitch with “no spin”, only gravity, would go- fastballs are up and to the left because backspin keeps them up). I was watching this game and noticed a few pitches that started inside, froze a left-handed batter by starting right at him, and then broke over the plate like a reverse slider. It was no trick of TV- his best change-ups have about as much break sideways and down as his slider (compared to his straight fastball). I hope he teaches Burnett how to throw that thing. Otherwise, pretty typical results for a power pitcher. And now here’s his “no-hit stuff”.

WOW. Not exactly the fingerprint I was expecting. His two-seamer isn’t tailing as much. His Curveball is downright terrible. His slider is breaking about as much as Jesse Litsch’s cutter. His velocity wasn’t great (coming later). So what the heck was so great about this day?? Location, location, location.

What he had was absolute command over the inner half of the plate. He threw his two-seamer almost exclusively and it broke in on the hands of righties and away from lefties. All those pitches just slightly off the plate started as strikes and then broke about 6 inches to be almost unhittable. He also threw almost all of his sliders for strikes.

The only blemish? See that arrow on both graphs? That was the one hit. After the game, Gregg Zaun said:

“He put a good swing on a really good pitch and he was able to break up the no-hitter with a legitimate line drive,” Zaun said. “I’m still kind of fighting my emotions right now, because I really wanted it for [McGowan].

Good thing to say to a disappointed young man, but it was a terrible pitch. It didn’t tail at all, though it was thrown at the speed of a 2-seamer. Zaun had not called a 4-seam fastball since the 46th pitch in the 4th inning and McGowan had thrown 6 all game to that point, so there’s not much chance that’s what it really was. Dustin was trying to go back inside with the 2-seamer that had worked all game and for whatever reason (read: nerves), it flattened out and stayed over the plate. That’s why it was a solid line drive.

So what caused this great command and loss of breaking ball? Maybe it was his release point. In his first win (and most of his other starts since then are around there), he was dropping down and to the side a lot more (although some of that vertical difference could be due to variations in where f/x has been measuring it throughout the season).

That would make sense- sometimes pitchers try to get movement on their pitches by throwing a little more sidearm, and he certainly had it in spades against the Yankees. Also notice that his curve and fastball are coming from noticeably different Horizontal spots (though I’m not sure how much an inch of difference is going to make to a batter trying to pick up a pitch). However, during his one-hitter, he was coming more over the top and all his pitches were coming from the same location:

One last thing I wanted to look at was his disaster of a start (5 innings, 6 runs, 8 hits, 3 HR) against Boston after a 10-day layoff for the all-star break. His pitches weren’t really that bad, but his velocity was way down. Here are the fastballs he threw in the last two starts mentioned as compared to his shelling at the hands of Boston. And no, that spike way downwards is not a mistake. Those were fastballs at the end of an inning that prompted a visit form Brad Arnsberg. He got out of the inning by inducing contact and came back in the next frame throwing harder.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Fielding Statistics are Pretty Useless

Fielding statistics are the cutting edge in baseball statistics right now, full of complicated math and constant developments. There’s been a lot of progress since fielding percentage was the best thing out there. First came Range Factor, a simplistic but surprisingly effective way of looking at a player’s range based on how many times they touch the ball. But the big revolution was when STATS started manually (3 staff members record every game independently) tracking every batted ball and recording where it went based on a number of zones.

There have been a ton of defensive metrics developed since then (PMR, UZR and +/- are the most popular), but the data they crunch is all gathered in the same way. There are now two companies, STATS and Baseball Info Solutions (BIS), that collect play-by-play data and sell it for thousands of dollars to teams and organizations. Here’s an article talking about the difference between the two and how much they correlate. It mentions that:

During this year’s MIT Sloan Sports Business Conference, Rob Neyer told attendees that the evaluation of major league player hitting, pitching and fielding performance has been adequately addressed, and Bill James agreed with him.

Ok, so we’re done, right? Problem solved? Hardly! While I agree that the systems are ingenious, you don’t have to poke around much to find some huge inconsistencies between the two sources of data they’re analyzing, and it’s not the sort of thing that you can get around by comparing or weighting both sources or multiple systems. I was hoping that I’d totally overlooked something, so I sent in the following question to the Hardball times (ignore my typo, I meant RZR, and they returned the favour by calling me Jonathan G.)

I have a question about UZR. A lot of sites have Troy Glaus’ zone rating at .737, which is the worst in the American League. That makes sense seeing that he has been hobbled by plantar fasciitis this season. However, Hardball Times has his UZR at .706, which is among the best in the AL. He also has more balls fielded out-of-zone than most players, which makes his range look like the best in the AL other than Brandon Inge. I thought that UZR was just ZR separated into two different components. How could it give such a different impression of a players’ range?

– Jonathan G.

I was rather disappointed that the answer wasn’t just that I was being an idiot. As the Hardball Times said in their reply, the difference in Troy Glaus’ zone ratings is due to STATS and BIS (ESPN uses STATS, the Hardball Times uses BIS) recording very different totals for both the number of balls hit into Troy’s zone and how many he fielded; enough to swing his ranking between the second-worst and the second-best third baseman in the league (now, as opposed to when I asked the question originally).

First, the two companies have significantly different definitions of the size of a player’s fielding zone. STATS gives him a total of 281 chances, while BIS shows 204 balls hit into his zone and 48 plays made outside of it, for a total of 252. That’s a difference of 10%, but the zone doesn’t have to be that much larger; it makes more sense that it’s only a little bigger but a lot of balls were hit just outside BIS’s zone, because under their system Glaus leads the league in balls fielded outside of zone and wasn’t exactly known for his diving plays or lightning-quick first step this year.

As long as everyone used the same zones, using larger ones wouldn’t make a difference for figuring out a player’s relative ability. However, the two systems also differ by 15 on how many plays Glaus made, with STATS crediting him with 207 plays (281 chances, .737 ZR) and BIS 192 (144 in zone, 48 outside of it). So who’s right? In the article by Sean Smith mentioned in their reply, he points out that most putouts (which are mostly fly balls, line drives, etc.) don’t count as “plays” for the purposes of Zone Rating (unless a player fields a grounder and steps on the bag). Troy Glaus had 197 assists this season, so according to STATS he made an additional 10 plays by way of the putout. However, according to BIS, he completed 5 fewer plays than assists. In that case there had to be some unusual assists, such as a deflection to John McDonald that would give Glaus an assist but not credit for a play.

Either there’s a lot of human error, or there’s a really different definition of what counts as making a play. The BIS number is closer to the number of assists, but having watched Troy limp around out there and gaze wistfully at balls he would have dove for last year, I find the excellent ranking given by their system a little suspect, especially the huge number of balls ‘out of zone’ (48) he got to. But who knows? That’s one of the problems with secret, proprietary statistics. Unless someone has 10-20 grand lying around to delve into the raw data, there’s no way to know or to break it down and see what’s causing the difference or whose system could be leading to inaccuracies. And if the only two sources for play-by-play data available can report a player on absolutely opposite sides of the fielding spectrum, how can you take the results of all the fancy analysis based on them seriously? GIGO.

Somebody Call BJ Birdy

Because the Jays are getting back to their roots. Next year the Jays will have a second “Home Alternate” uniform:

in addition to some other changes:

• Change to road jersey lettering
• Addition of sleeve patch to road jersey
• Change to batting practice jersey lettering
• Addition of alternate uniform (all-sky blue pullover jersey from the 80s)

As you can probably tell from the giant, gaudy banner, I just want to see the old classic logo from time to time instead of the current steel-grey, Tampa-Bay-ripoff garbage (incidentally, the Rays are undergoing a “Complete identity change including Club name and Club colors.” Yeah, that’ll get the fans back!!). Powder Blues were beyond my wildest dreams. I just pray that “alternate” means “every second day”, because those are amazing. I could probably hit a home run if the reward was trotting around the bases looking that fine…

The Pen is Mighter Than the Bat

First, I just have to thank John Brattain.

His weekly tirades columns are some of the best Blue Jays material out there, bar none. He always finds a way to be insightful, funny, and encapsulate many of my thoughts about Blue Jay land, while still reflecting on some of the larger moments in this franchise’s past 3 decades (this week, the flop of 1987 brings back tough memories even to those of us who, at the time, may have been more concerned about the gum that came with the cards then the cards themselves).

I tracked down an article in the NY Times from that day, that gives a little perspective for those who enjoy a punch in the eye little refresher:

— Copyright New York Times Oct 5, 1987

It will either be remembered as one of baseball’s most inspired comebacks or one of its most embarrassing collapses. The Detroit Tigers, a team that some predicted would be among the worst in its division, captured the American League East title this afternoon with a dramatic 1-0 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays for a stunning three-game sweep of the season-ending series in the tightest pennant race of the year.

The Tigers began the season losing 19 of their first 30 games, and were as many as 11 games out of first place. Now, they will face the surprising Minnesota Twins in the American League Championship Series, which starts Wednesday evening in Minneapolis.

”We got the job done this weekend, but we’ve still got a job to do,” said Alan Trammell, the Tigers’ shortstop and a candidate for the league’s most valuable player award. ”We won’t take Minnesota lightly.”

In contrast to the Tigers’ resurrection, the contest was the conclusion of an ignoble collapse for the troubled Blue Jays, a team that had lived up to its billing as one the league’s strongest teams for most of the season. They owned a three-and-a-half-game lead over the second-place Tigers just one week ago, but endured one of their worst slumps of the year, suffering from injuries and an absence of timely hitting. They lost their final seven games of the season, including the final three here, where they stranded a total of 25 baserunners.

Each of those runners was crucial because each of the final seven games played between these two teams this season was decided by a single run.

”We played well, we just didn’t hit,” said Jimy Williams, the Toronto manager. ”It wasn’t for a lack of effort. Things just didn’t work out.”

The game’s only run was provided by Larry Herndon, the Tigers’ right-fielder. Herndon spoiled an otherwise outstanding three-hit pitching performance by Toronto’s Jimmy Key (17-8) with a second-inning home run over the left-field fence. The fly ball was aided by the blustery conditions that marked the entire series.

That proved to be all the offense needed by Frank Tanana, the Tigers’ 34-year-old left-hander who has learned to rely on mixed speed in his pitches as his velocity wanes. In notching his fifth complete game and his third shutout of the season, the 31st of his career, Tanana (15-10) defused the already frustrated Blue Jay hitters. He allowed just six hits while striking out nine batters, tying his highest total of the season. It was the Tigers’ third commanding pitching effort of the series, following similar performances by Doyle Alexander and Jack Morris.

Tanana’s toughest inning was the first when two of the first three batters reached base, on a single and a walk. But he ended the inning by striking out Juan Beniquez, who had replaced the slumping George Bell as the Blue Jays’ cleanup hitter, and getting Jesse Barfield to ground out.

”They slumped at a bad time and ran up against a pretty good ballclub,” Tanana said. ”After getting out of the first, I felt good.”

Tanana mastered the Blue Jays this season, holding them to two earned runs and 19 hits in more than 32 innings, while getting 23 strikeouts.

The contest ended when the pitcher fielded a weak grounder by Garth Iorg and converted an underhand toss to Darrell Evans, the Tigers’ first baseman. It was a moment that touched off a delirious celebration by the Tigers and most of the 51,005 fans in attendance.

”This series put a real strain on our hearts, our bodies and our minds,” said Lou Whitaker, the Detroit second baseman who got the only other two Tiger hits today, in the midst of the joyous champagne-soaked celebration in the locker room. ”It took us time to catch on this season, but once we got through that we put it all together. Any time we needed something, somebody in this room provided it.”

”We’ve come so far in six months because everybody in this room helped us win a game at some time this year,” said Bill Madlock, an in-season aquisition from the Dodgers. ”This has been the most enjoyable season of my career.”

It will probably prove to be the most haunting season for most of the Blue Jays. Key, their best pitcher this season, struck out eight batters, including the final three batters he faced in the eighth inning. But that was small consolation for a team that was forced to endure the stretch run without two starters – Tony Fernandez, the shortstop, and Ernie Whitt, the catcher.

”We missed them a lot, especially emotionally,” said Willie Upshaw, the first baseman. ”They were a large part of this ball club.”

Their absence did not have a major effect on the team defensively, although the Tigers’ game-winning hit on Saturday went through the legs of the replacement shortstop, Manny Lee. But it greatly altered the dynamics of Toronto’s lineup. The result had been disastrous, especially for the team’s best hitters.

Bell, who entered the series as a strong favorite for most valuable player, may have threatened that in just one weekend. He managed only 2 hits in his final 26 times at bat, and was 1 for 11 in this series. He looked worse that that, managing to get the ball out of the infield only twice in the series.

Barfield, the right fielder, finished with just 3 hits in his last 24 turns at bat. And Beniquez, the designated hitter, didn’t managed a hit in his last 15 plate appearances.

Toronto also suffered critical lapses. In the fourth inning today, Lee missed a hit-and-run signal, which caused Cecil Fielder, who hadn’t attempted to steal a base all season, to get thrown out easily at second. On the next pitch, Lee tripled to right.

”I don’t think anybody can label us chokers,” said Tom Henke, the Toronto reliever. ”They just had great pitching performances every night. It’s one of those things. You can’t blame anybody. You just have to go on.”

—

Sorry if that article caused anyone some serious internal hemorrhaging recalling Herndon’s homer off Key – but all is not lost as it brings us to today’s history lesson: while the bats are cold – they will never be THAT cold again.

Back to my original point – while reminding us of something terrible, John also reflected on one of the finer points of the game. This day in age with our Barry Bonds’, Michael Vick’s and our Rick Ankiels’, falling so fast so quickly, it is easy to overlook some of the Hidden Jems in the game. Cal Ripken, for one, will always be one of my all-time “nice guys”, as nobody in our time has given more back to the fans, or recognized how truly important us fans are to the game (despite all the bizzare rumors we might dream up about his wife and Kevin Costner).

I could easily get into a epic tirade about my feelings on Barry Bonds on this subject, but I think I can let him speak for himself. Personally I have always thought his speech after breaking Mark McGuire’s record was one of the most self-indulgent, ass-backward moments in baseball, even more when viewed in light of the entire steroid scandal – it can be viewed here (if you’re still feeling masochistic).

Now here is one of those Hidden Gems:

26-year-old righthanded reliever in the Padres minor league system, Dirk Hayhurst.

You can even watch him doing his thing on youtube here.

Other then his tremendous baseball talent, he is also know for his talent with the pen, writing for a local newspaper as well as a non-prospect diary for Baseball America (too bad the same can’t be said for our own Ricky Romero’s blog at MiLB):

http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/minors/features/264668.html

Here is a little tidbit of his stuff from a local paper:

“The sports editor of this paper told me to mention I was a pro baseball player because people will listen to me. So be it. I am a pro baseball player, but there is nothing important about me that is not also important about you.

We are the same. We are people and need one another. Our voices should have the same power. We don’t have to be big league baseball players to save the world, because big league or not, we all have hearts and the ability to act, love, show kindness, humility and mercy.

Those things know no class distinction, nor should we.”

Here’s hoping you make it big, Dirk.

Finally Five

So the Blue Jays finally made it to a five game winning streak, their first in 182 games (despite what the Star thinks). They also have a chance for their first 6 game winning streak in 555 games, and that looks possible considering they have won 5 of their last 6 games with Friday’s starter, Josh Towers, on the mound. And then comes the Doc, so who knows where this insanity will end…

Continuing my recent trend of reducing the intricacies and beauty of baseball to a few not-entirely representative columns of data, I decided to calculate the probability of either of these two droughts occuring. If you really want to put yourself to sleep with the math, be my guest. The results are:

Probability of a team with our record not winning 5 games over a 182 game period: 3%

Probability of a team with our record not winning 6 games over a 555 game period: 1.4%

There are a couple of baseball-ignorant assumptions made for these calculations. Although we have a .506 record since the last 5-game winning streak, of course that doesn’t mean we had that chance to win every game. Teams go hot and cold, home and away, face winning and weaker opponents. But those are actually more likely to group wins and losses together.

The real streak-breaker is having a terrible 5th starter. Although the 2006 Josh Towers was not in the rotation for the 5-win drought (the last time we won 5 in a row was the week we dropped him from the rotation), the back end of our rotation has been a black hole for a while now (11-32 last season). Having really good and rather bad starters instead of constant mediocrity will make it harder to put up streaks – e.g. if all your starters are .500, your chance of winning the next 5 games is about 5%. Having the same record but with a 75% starter and a 25% starter lowers your chances to 2%.

Unfortunately, none of this means that we are any more likely to win tomorrow due to the “law of averages.” As much as it pains me to reject any assistance, however mythical, to the Jays continuing to win games. Heck, if the Easter Bunny wants to help keep them on a roll, I say we pencil him in at rover…

Still consistent, still crappy.

I took a stab last week at comparing a team’s consistency in scoring runs to the style of ball they play. The result was a little counterintuitive- that last year, the Jays were more consistent than the best “small ball” teams, despite the idea that those teams can scratch across a run here or there when we need it, while the Jays sit back and wait for the home run.

I had a few requests to run the standard deviation for this season, so I did it for a few more teams this time:

I though the Jays would be higher this season because in May they hit .230 and slugged 40 home runs. But they’re pretty much where they were last year, which is at the lower end of the scale. And again, speed has no particular effect on the results.

I might be convinced into doing more teams if anyone can think of something (other than total runs scored) that might correlate with more consistent scoring, but for now I’m happy with the results:

1. The Jays have not been an inconsistent team this year or last;
2. Having a running game does not even out the runs you score.

Please Don’t Shoot the Meaningless Figurehead – He is Doing the Best he Can

Another myth the projections blow out of the water is that a manager’s in-game strategy means a lot. You don’t have to go to many street corners to find someone willing to venture that John Gibbons has cost us “at least 10 games” this year, like that time he pulled that pitcher, or didn’t pull that pitcher, or went with his gut, or played the numbers, etc. Here’s an article from Jay’s Nest that says “Gibby has personally lost about 6 or 7 games this year alone–despite injury.”

Using the same rationale as clutch hitting (below), ALL the effects not directly related to the team’s ability to score or prevent runs have added up to less than two games over the entire season. There is simply not a manager in the league who could squeeze a 55-43 record (7 more wins) out of a team that has scored 9 more runs than they’ve given up.

In fact, looking at two universally lauded managers- Jim Leyland and Tony Larussa, it’s interesting to see that their teams have exactly the records that their runs for and against predict, despite the notion that they can conjure up wins out of thin air.

There’s still a lot they might be doing to help their team score more runs in the long term (such as nurturing players and putting them in positions where they are more likely to perform) and the short term (shrewd pitching matchups, defensive alignments) – but as a rule of thumb it takes 10 runs saved/added to equal a win, and that’s a lot of good moves to have a noticeable effect.

Usually when people complain about a manager it’s usually for not coming up with the right move in a specific situation that would have won/saved a close game. And those almost entirely even out- no manager defies his team’s numbers.

Nothing else Matters

Ok, last post that has anything to do with pythagorean projection, I promise. I’ve just started to see the game in an entirely new light because these things are so eerily accurate. The inevitable conclusion is despite all the agonies we go through in terms of individual situations and strategies, nothing really matters except how many runs you allow and score over the course of a season.

Especially after this last terrible series against New York, a lot of commentators (including most recently, DJF) have concentrated on the Jays’ lack of situational hitting for the season’s woes. As I pointed out in a previous post, going into that series they were hitting significantly better with runners on or in scoring position. Even after that hideous bout of stranding runners, they still hit better with runners in scoring position (.266) than they do without (.259).

The damning stat often quoted is that the Jays are .222 with runners in scoring position with 2 outs, which is a fluke stat that doesn’t mean anything. Why does it matter how many outs there are when you fail to bring someone home? The Jays are also hitting .301 with RISP and less than two out- do all those runners that we scored at an impressive rate earlier in the inning count for less?

It’s because as fans, we put more value on hitting with 2 outs because it’s the last chance to drive in those runs. We totally forget about Glaus whiffing madly at a pitch that bounces before the plate if Frank hits the first pitch he sees for a home run. But if Glaus had done his job, the end result for the team and the game would be exactly the same. There’s also the idea that with 2 outs, the situation is more likely to be “clutch”, meaning the game is on the line and therefore those at-bats matter more. But clutch hitting (i.e. hitting better in high leverage situations) doesn’t exist. It’s just random fluctuation, and even that has little effect.

To see this, take a look at the Jays win/loss projection so far. If they were hitting worse in game-changing situations, then they would have won fewer games than their projection (which is by definition for a team that scores runs randomly). The projection is pretty easy because they have scored almost exactly as many runs as they have allowed, and gives a win % of .502. That’s 47.5 wins. The Jays currently have 46 so ok, they’re under-performing by a whole game and a half.

It would be different if they were hitting poorly with RISP- then you could argue that they weren’t driving in as many runs as they should be. But they’re doing that just fine. But if you’re arguing that the Jays hit the ball better when it’s meaningless, but choke when it matters (may I suggest the “close and late” stat- they’re hitting .235), keep in mind that if true, at an absolute maximum the effect has been between one and two games this year. That’s not the reason the Jays are 10 games behind Boston- hitting under .260 as a team is.

Project Projection

The last post was meant to show that method of projection has some sort of validity over the long run – but it’s useful for things other than hindsight and moaning about what could have happened in a season. Although it gets more prone to error over the short term, we can also use it to estimate a pitcher’s record based on their ERA and run support. This has a few uses:

1) Determining whether or not a pitcher “just knows how to win”.

You know the old chestnut- a certain pitcher might not pitch that well all the time, but he’s able to do just enough to get the win. Jack Morris is the archetype; the Blue Jays Version is Gustavo Chacin, with his career record of 25-15 despite a 4.18 ERA.

Unfortunately for the little person inside you who has watched too many movies and just wants to believe in gutsy performances and brave stands, this phenomenon never holds up to analysis. Gus allowed 93 runs in his career year of 2005, and was given a stunning 140 runs in support. Using these numbers, he was projected to win .693 of his decisions that season, which would have given him a record of 15-7. He actually finished 13-9. In other words, he actually figured out how to win less than he would have if the runs he allowed were randomly distributed that season.

2) Isolating run support vs. dumb luck

We all know that a pitcher’s wins are a pretty useless way of determining how they’re performing, but they’re never going to be abandoned because they provide a broad, easily digestible at the season so far. But we can adjust them to isolate two factors:

1. Dumb Luck: by comparing the pitcher’s actual wins to how many they were projected to have (based on the same runs scored and allowed), you get an idea of how much they have been helped or hurt by the distribution of said runs (which is for the most part random). Lets call that EWins for “expected”.
2. Run Support: Similarly, comparing how many wins a pitcher would get with the team’s average run support to the number of Ewins he got with the run support they gave him (I’m using Ewins instead of actual wins to eliminate the luck factor), you get an idea of what sort of effect the support or lack thereof of the team has had on a pitcher. Let’s call that N wins for “normal”.

Here are the Blue Jays Starters this year, adjusted for luck and run support:

I really like Nwins. Saying that Roy Halladay has received an extra run and a half per game doesn’t really mean much to most people. Saying that because of that he’s won about 3 games he would have otherwise lost does. Of course this is particularly useless for the guys who haven’t had a lot of decisions (especially Marcum), but it does show the extent to which Roy Halladay has been bailed out this season by the offence, and the fact that despite the sensation that AJ has been pitching better than his record, his W-L is right where it belongs.

3) Figuring out how well a pitcher would do on a better team

Let’s take Dan’s example of Matt Cain from a previous post (check out the blow-by blow of his torturous season in the comments). He is now a ridiculous 3-10, but his losing record is not so much the fault of the Giant’s woeful offence as it is with luck and him getting runs at all the wrong times. His record should be .500 this season because he’s allowed as many runs as he’s received in support. It would rise to 7-6 if the Giants scored their average number of runs for him, but it would only make it up to 8-5 if he played for a league average team (like the Blue Jays).

Going 3-10 has only been possible because of the insanity-inducing pattern the runs have been scored in, and that won’t last in the long run. But still – Matt Cain right now is a .500 pitcher for the Giants, but would be in line to win 18 games for the Tigers.

Speed Slumps

Another argument against relying on the HR is that slugging teams tend to put up huge numbers when they are hot, and then slump terribly when the sluggers go cold. The cliche is that “speed doesn’t slump”, i.e., if you have a fast team and play small ball, you can always score runs even when your hitters are slumping. It is often argued that the Blue Jays tend to blow out a team one game, and then score no runs for the rest of the series, rather than having the day-to-day consistent run production that contact hitters and a more aggressive offence would provide.

I could buy that. In the same way that you would prefer to have a pitcher who puts together quality starts every game and gives you a chance to win every time than one who alternates between masterpiece and disaster (*cough* Burnett *cough*), if a power team was hot and cold, they might win fewer games than their runs scored/game would imply. And it could be the case that “big innings” come less frequently and sometimes in bunches.

Fortunately, there is a pretty easy way to figure out if this is the case. It’s called standard deviation.

It’s really not that complicated. For every game you just add up the difference between what you scored and the average number of runs you score, and then find the average per game (along the way you put in a square and then cancel it out with a square root to make the number more accurate). The result is a reflection of how close the values stayed to the average number. Assuming a team scored 5 runs on average, every time they score 10 or 0, it goes up, and every time they score 5, it goes down.

I ran the results for last year, when the Blue Jays were 22/30 with 65 steals, against three small ball teams- the Angels, Dodgers and the Twins. The results?

2006 Standard Deviation for Runs Scored

Blue Jays: 2.988655327

Angels: 3.123041987

Dodgers: 3.372060515

Twins: 3.408520562

Honestly, I figured the numbers would just be close enough we could call them statistically irrelevant, but the small ball teams all showed more variance, and it’s a relevant amount for the Dodgers and the Twins. They were more likely to score either significantly more or fewer runs than their average per game (which was 4.99 for the Dodgers and 4.94 for the Twins as compared to our 5.04) than the Blue Jays.

The only other argument that could be made is although the runs scored are distributed just as evenly, all the big numbers for a power club occur in groups (say by month) because they somehow feed off each other. This could be number crunched as well, but I’m not going to bother because rearranging the same offensive outputs wouldn’t make any difference to the number of games won, just to the streakiness of a team (and I expect that team streakiness is as questionable a concept as it is for individuals). Honestly, I hope that’s the case for the Blue Jays if they are going to have any chance in the second half, but the reality is the Jays have been an amazingly un-streaky team under Ricciardi.

This is not to say that speed might win more close games, or that it doesn’t help to have another trick in the bag- but the idea that station-to-station teams score runs in bunches, tack on useless runs in blowouts and then go dry does not hold up. You still need to get on to steal a base, and speed runs just as hot and cold as power.