Several reasons have floated around for the cause of the Braves’ historic collapse. Many people point to the horrible September that the Braves and their players experienced. Similar down months happened previously in the 2011 season, but went unnoticed due to the lack of playoff implications.

No Offense

The Braves offense was not a powerhouse over the entire season. They averaged just under four runs a game (3.96). It was 10th in the NL. While not great, it was even worse over the last month. They scored only 87 runs, or 3.22 runs per game. Now, which of the following slash lines led to the offensive collapse:

#1: 0.235/0.300/0.357
#2: 0.222/0.290/0.388

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The Phillies are the best team in baseball this season. Their pitching staff is amazing and the hitters are good. Here is a look at how many bad teams would need to be combined to make a team that would be comparable to the Phillies in talent.

Note: The WAR values used in the article are from 9/21 have changed a bit since I collected the data.

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Several pitchers like Max Scherzer, Brandon Morrow and Danny Duffy have struggled with control this season. Each has thrown a ton of pitches resulting in both walks and strikeouts. The number of pitches they have thrown has limited the amount of innings they are able to pitch in a game. By limiting the number of pitches thrown per batter, a pitcher will end up increasing the number of innings pitched over an entire season.

Many pitchers take a quite a few pitches to get through a game. The main causes for more pitches is a high number of strikeouts and walks. Each of these events take a certain number of pitches, 3 or 4 at minimum, for the event to happen. A pitcher that walks and strikes out 3 batters an inning will not allow any runs to score. Each of these innings will take 21 pitches to get through. The problem is that they will only throw 5 to 6 innings since the pitcher will be at 100 pitches near the beginning of the 5th inning. Depending on the pitcher’s pitch count limit, they will not even make to the 6th inning to qualify for a quality start.

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A couple days ago, Tom Tango, did a study to show how hitters produced at different times of the day. One possible problem with the data is that shadows from the stadium could be skewing the data. We would like to know if at any time of the day there is a shadow between the pitcher and the hitter and from what time to what time does the shadow stay between the two combatants. Finally, if any one knows the information on any closed stadium, that information would be helpful.

With this information, it can be seen if the shadow has an effect on the hitter-pitcher match-up. I would expect the number of strikeouts to increase as the batter would have a harder time picking up the ball, but it would be nice to put a number to the theory. Thanks for your time and I am sure someone will jump right in for the data on Tropicana Field.

Mark Buehrle will be a free agent after this season. It couldn’t come at a better time for the 32-year-old, who will get plenty of interest from teams that need pitching because the thin free-agent class. Besides being a decent thrower, he’s extremely durable. Since 2001 — when the left-hander became a full-time starter — he hasn’t missed a start for any reason (player’s transaction information on the bottom left). Read the rest of this entry »

Every season some players have a power breakout (Granderson) or meltdown (Dunn). I decided to look at the players with the highest and lowest ISO increases this season and the reasons behind the changes for a few of the players.

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Tonight, Stephen Strasburg returned from Tommy John surgery to make his season debut for the Nationals. Here is a look at his Pitch FX speeds from tonight compared to one of his starts from last season. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently it was brought to my attention that Roger Maris had a career BABIP of 0.254. This value seems low for him or any player with an extended major league career. In the video I have seen of him, he looks like a line drive hitter. With your help, I would like to find out what kind of batted ball profile Maris had over his career.

Maris’ BABIP was always low throughout his career. In his first MVP season of 1960, it was 0.255. In 1961, the season when he hit 61 home runs, it was 0.209. It averaged anywhere from 0.209 to 0.287 over his career.

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Ichiro Suzuki is having a down season and is nearing the end of his career. Many people would consider him an automatic hall-of-famer with the work he’s put together since joining the Mariners as a 27-year-old in 2001. But how good is he, really? Well, for comparison’s sake, I took the production of all hitters from 27 years of age and older and put them against Ichiro’s career numbers. The results are interesting and will only add to the debate.

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Jose Reyes will become a free agent this offseason. The Mets’ shortstop looks to make quite a bit of cash, but his recent injuries might limit what teams are willing to pay.

From 2005 to 2008, Reyes averaged 157 games a year. During that time, he averaged 5.2 WAR per season and accumulated the thirteenth-highest combined WAR among all players. His wOBA was .347.

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