Archive for Daily Graphings

You’re making decisions all of the time, even if you might not realize it. You decided, for example, to click on this post. You’ve decided, for another example, to continue reading this post, despite the first couple sentences. You decided where to browse, and what to wear, and when to scratch your neck, and when not to get up to take a walk to get a break from the computer. You are a decision-making machine, but most of your decisions are made quickly and quietly, without other people being made aware. Usually it’s not really their business.

Baseball umpires are also making decisions all of the time. They make ordinary decisions like how to stand up and when to rub their eyes, but they also make decisions pertaining to the gameplay. These decisions affect other people, and they’re made consciously and deliberately, with future decisions resting upon current decisions. A baseball game requires constant umpire decisions in order to proceed, and they’re not always obvious, not always black and white. Many can be questioned, reasonably, which adds certain stresses to the work. Sunday was an interesting day in baseball umpiring. Let’s quickly examine four questionable decisions, and remark on their egregiousness. We’ll go in ascending order.

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Even after their big offseason moves, the Blue Jays were not the consensus pick to win the 2013 American League East, as three or even four teams seemed to have a good shot. Very few, however, probably thought the Jays would be the one team left out of the race almost from the start. Yet here we are in the middle of August, and Toronto is the only team in the division under .500, a distant seven and a half games behind the fourth-place Yankees. The litany of problems is well-known: the starting pitching has been terrible, Jose Reyes got hurt, and more. Not every player has been disappointing, however. Colby Rasmus, who came to the Jays in a 2011 trade with the Cardinals, is having his best season since 2010. Indeed, his performance this year resembles that 2010 season in multiple ways.

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Just so no one’s offended, I want to make one thing very clear: I am not here to be overly critical of Tyson Ross, baseball player. Tyson Ross is a pretty good baseball player, who’s succeeding at his primary job. Right now he’s sitting on an ERA in the mid-2s. Over eight starts with the Padres, he’s averaged a strikeout an inning. He can run his fastball up to 95 or 96, and he’s still young, and he’s a righty who manages to keep lefties on the ground. The Padres added Ross for Andy Parrino and Andrew Werner, and right now they’re probably thrilled. Neither Parrino nor Werner looks like a loss, and Ross might be helping San Diego for a while.

On top of that, Ross has a surprisingly dangerous swing at the plate. Before reaching the majors, Ross hadn’t swung a bat since high school, but he looks like he knows what he’s doing, even if he can be exposed by breaking stuff. He takes a strong enough hack to get announcers’ attention. Recently he lined a single off Zack Wheeler. He’s hit a couple line drives off Patrick Corbin, and he slammed a Clayton Kershaw pitch off the wall in center field. When Ross swings and connects, he can put a legitimate charge into the baseball, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him one day club a home run.

But, boy oh boy, has Tyson Ross ever sucked at bunting.

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I recently posed a question to 10 players. It was a question that doesn’t have an easy answer. Given the subjectivity involved, it doesn’t even have a right answer.

What is the best stat to evaluate pitchers?

Their responses are listed below in alphabetical order. Read the rest of this entry »

Hey there everybody, and welcome to whatever jokes I have left about the same swings at the same pitches we’ve been looking at for months. For the jokes I’ve already used, here’s a link to the whole Worst Of The Best series archive. With the wildest pitches, at least there tends to be a little variety. I don’t know precisely what to expect every week. With the wildest swings, almost invariably we end up with five swings at two-strike breaking balls in the dirt. That’s just the way it is, and of course all those swings are ill-advised, but part of the fun is supposed to be the surprise, and here we don’t really get many surprises. I don’t know what to do about that and it’s too late in 2013 to just up and change the methodology. On one hand, maybe it’s interesting to keep re-visiting the same stuff and seeing what ideas there might be. What’s still fresh and original after four and a half months? On the other hand, this is getting increasingly difficult to write about. Which, presumably, means it’s getting increasingly difficult to read. I am sorry. I am sorry. I’ll have to figure some stuff out before 2014.

So, yeah, here come five stupid terrible swings at pitches low that weren’t fastballs. They’re all from between August 9 – August 15, and they’re the swings at the pitches furthest from the center of the strike zone. I had to exclude a checked swing by A.J. Ellis that would’ve ranked No. 1. Also, DJ LeMahieu was called for a strike on a checked swing at a pitch-out during an attempted hit-and-run. That hits my exclusion double whammy, so you’re not going to see it, but I’m just happy to finally have encountered a busted hit-and-run. Now they’re not just theoretically excluded. Also the runner was safe. Padres!

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Hey there, nerds, and welcome to another blog post about baseball. I have to assume you have virtually limitless options. You have elected to read about baseball instead of something more conventionally important, like finance or international politics. You’re not learning a new language, unless you’re trying to learn English, in which case I can recommend way better tutorials. Is this education, is this betterment, or is this fun? If this is just for fun, is it necessary? Have you improved yourself enough today to justify this use of your minutes? Couldn’t you be a much more well-rounded person? On the other hand, people bond over sports, and there’s nothing more important than interpersonal interaction and communication. What would we be without our bonds? What would so many of our bonds be without sports? Maybe this really is important, dammit, and here’s a whole archive of this series. Whatever, read everything. Maybe it really is the most important thing you can do from your desk.

We’re going to look at the last week’s wildest pitches, as the headline has already told you. It’s a PITCHf/x-based top five, from the August 9 – August 15 window. A few pitches that just missed the cut: Bryan Morris to Daniel Descalso on August 15, Bruce Rondon to Avisail Garcia on August 13, and Chris Rusin to Joey Votto on August 14. (Votto didn’t swing.) Additionally included below is a bonus, something that doesn’t qualify for the list but something that deserves to be presented. It is one of my favorite .gifs of the season. I’ll explain when I get there. I’m just about to get there! I’m getting there right now!

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In case you didn’t know, Jacoby Ellsbury will become a free agent after this season. It’s presumed that he will take his services to the open market, and the Red Sox may not have much of an inside track on his services. Whether they do or not, there will be no shortage of teams who want the Madras, Ore., native. Earlier this week, Ken Rosenthal suggested the Mariners may be in the market for him. This got me thinking just how deep the pool of suitors may be. So let’s take a trip through Major League Baseball and reason through it, shall we?

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Yes, this is Part II to a study that you probably haven’t read Part I to yet.  Like a James Bond movie, you do not have to see the first one to be able to enjoy the next.  Exactly like James Bond.  To get the full background of my project, you can find Part I HERE in the Community Research Blog archives from earlier this season.

For those of you that choose not to look back, I am looking at the top 50 hitters in Major League Baseball from 2012 according to FanGraphs Batting Runs stats, with an eye on quantitatively measuring how they swing the bat.  I hope to use this data to apply specifically to amateur players eligible to be drafted, and by extension any player that is an unknown in regards to how they will perform in American professional baseball.  This project was designed to assist anyone who is unable to watch a player in person but wants to get an idea as to what kind of hitter he is through video.

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With several FanGraphs authors descending on Boston for the 2013 Saber Seminar, we’ve decided to put together a meet up. On Friday night, August 16th, we will be gathering at The Mead Hall in Cambridge beginning at 7 pm. The Mead Hall has over 100 beers on tap, and we’ll hang out in their upstairs area and watch the first game of the Red Sox/Yankees series.

Among the FanGraphs crew in attendance:

David Appelman
Dave Cameron
Paul Swydan
Bill Petti
Steve Slowinski
David Laurila
Carson Cistulli

Because a lot of smart baseball folks will be in town for the weekend conference, expect a few guests — perhaps some even named Bannister, Brooks, and Pavlidis, potentially — to be there as well. If you haven’t been to a FanGraphs meet up before, it’s a great time to just watch baseball and interact with others who generally think math is okay.

We look forward to seeing you guys there.

Brett Oberholtzer’s best pitch is his changeup. Well, that’s the one that gets the Astros’ starter his whiffs and has been his signature pitch. But it might be the curveball that best describes his approach on the mound. Because the curveball is two pitches. Brett Oberholtzer has a slider.

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