Today on NPR’s All Things Considered, R.A. Dickey was interviewed about his transformation into a knuckleball pitcher and how he’s mysteriously missing his ulnar collateral ligament in his throwing arm. At least he’ll never need Tommy John surgery.
Links:
Listen to the All Things Considered interview
Read the New York Times article
First off: Welcome back baseball! Today is the first day of the Cactus and Grapefruit leagues which means we get our first taste of tangible 2008 baseball stats, sort of.
I’m a big proponent of taking spring training stats with a grain of salt. Spring training is the time to examine opening day position battles and try and get a glimpse of which players are healthy. But can you gain any insight into how a player’s regular season will be based on how he performs in spring training?
For this particular exercise, let’s look at pitcher’s strikeout rates (K/9). If you look at the correlation between K/9 in 2006 and 2007, you get an R^2 of about .58, which is pretty strong correlation. When you look at the correlation between spring training 2007 and the 2007 regular season, the R^2 drops to .32. So as a whole, 2006 is a much better indicator of a player’s 2007 strikeout rate than spring training.
The most innings a pitcher will pitch in spring training is roughly 25, so we’re looking at a fairly small sample size which is problematic. But what if a pitcher during spring training has shown extraordinary improvement in his strikeout ability?
For instance, Rafael Betancourt’s K/9 in 2006 was 7.6 and in spring training it jumped to an impressive 12.5. His was the biggest jump from 2006 to spring training and he did indeed show improvement during the 2007 regular season with a K/9 of 9.1.
Of the 161 pitchers sampled, whichever direction their K/9 moved in during spring training when compared with the 2006 season, 63% of them had their K/9 move in that same direction when comparing 2006 with the 2007 season. The correlation of the difference between 2006 and spring training and the difference between 2006 and 2007 had an R^2 of .19.
So there is something there, but it’s not anything you want to bet the bank on. By no means would I suggest looking at a player’s huge K/9 jump in spring training and thinking that it would definitely translate into 2008 success. Oh, and while I’m at it, spring training ERA should not just be taken with a grain of salt; it should be ignored completely.
As a side note, we’ll be carrying 2008 spring training stats starting soon for your own amusement.
Finally the ZiPS Projections are now available on FanGraphs; just in time for spring training. Huge thanks to Dan Szymborski of Baseball Think Factory for letting us post them again this year. Enjoy!
I made a few highly requested changes to the leaderboards.
– You can now view the entire dataset on one page. This is on a page by page basis at the moment. When you’re done viewing the entire dataset and change your query parameters, it defaults back to 50 records per page. Of course, you can always change it back to full view when you’re ready to export data.
– Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP) is now in the batted ball section.
– You are now able to select the minimum plate appearances (PA) or innings pitched (IP). You can still select only qualified players and all players.
The 2008 CHONE and Marcel projections are now available in the stats pages and the projections board.
Big thanks to Chone Smith for his 2008 CHONE projections and Tangotiger for this year’s Marcels.
If you are looking for downloadable versions you can find them here: CHONE download ; Marcel download.
As of now, the 2008 Bill James Handbook projections are available on the player pages.
On a side note, all the minor league players have been synced with the major league players, so there will no longer be duplicate entries for minor league players that were called up last season.
After last night’s Red Sox game 7 victory, I was rather curious to see who would win the ALCS Most Valuable Player award. Without looking at the numbers, I thought it should go to Kevin Youkilis. I thought there was a chance it would go to Manny Ramirez and also a chance it could go to Josh Beckett. When Beckett was announced the winner, I was a little surprised and went to check the numbers.
It turns out that Josh Beckett did lead all players in Win Probability Add (WPA) in the ALCS. In two starts his WPA was .516 wins compared to Youkilis’ .203 wins. Manny Ramirez’s WPA was just slightly below Beckett’s at .483 wins. Jon Papelbon and Hideki Okajima also were also contenders for the WPA title with .467 and .286 wins respectively.
If you look at things just in terms of run production taking the context out of the situation. Youkilis was indeed the most productive player with a Batting Runs Above Average (BRAA) of 9.3 runs. Ramirez came in second with 6.2 runs, while Beckett was the next best with 4.7 runs.
In today’s New York Times, Dan Rosenheck uses some of the tools available on FanGraphs to delve into the Arizona Diamondbacks dubious Pythagorean record.
While I’m at it, I figure I’ll mention a few things that are going on at FanGraphs.
– Live Win Probability will continue through the post season. I’m sure there will be a few improbable comebacks, which will certainly be fun to follow.
– I will be traveling to Japan next week and will be attending a Yomiuri Giants game and Seibu Lions game. I’ll be sure to write about my impressions of the games along with posting various baseball related photos from my trip.
I was browsing through the Win Probability leaderboards and noticed that Troy Tulowitzki is in the top 10 in Win Probability Added for the season with 2.32 wins. A quick glance in the Batting Runs Above Average column shows he’s the only player in the top 50 who is below average with -1.75 runs. His Clutch hitting has netted him an additional 2.08 wins over what he should have, considering how well he’s hit. So far this season, Tulowitzki has been the most clutch hitter in baseball.
His latest and greatest hit of the season came just two days ago on June 25th when he hit a three-run-homer against Bob Howry to give the Rockies a 9-8 lead against the Cubs. Unfortunately, Rockies closer, Brian Fuentes, couldn’t nail down the save, making his big hit for naught.
