This NPR interview was done back on March 28th, but don’t worry, it’s still relevant. Baseball science has not changed that much in 2 weeks.

Ira Flatow on Science Friday interviews three experts on why fans remain loyal to their team, the physical act of hitting a baseball, and why lowering the pitchers mound might help prevent injury. It’s definitely a good listen.

I know I usually don’t talk about baseball video games, but I can’t hold back my rage any longer.

The other day I picked up a copy of MLB 08: The Show for Playstation 3. For those of you unfamiliar with this game, the standout feature is you can create a player and take him all the way up from the minors to the majors, while increasing his skills along the way. It’s a fun idea since you only control your created player instead of the usual baseball sim where you control everyone.

Overall, “The Show” feature is executed pretty well, yet the main problem is the annoyance factor of the actual baseball game. Sure the graphics are great, but there are a number of glaring problems.

First off, the fielders are idiots. Nothing is more annoying than seeing the shortstop field an easy grounder, leisurely take his time throwing to first, and watch the base runner be safe by half a step. If the fielder had even an inkling of urgency, the runner would have been out by a mile. Instances like this happen all the time in all sorts of situations.

The other problem with fielders is that there is no collision detection. My player can run through any other fielder like he’s not even there, making for a very unpolished game experience.

The strike zone is a problem too. The designers thought it would be fun to have incredibly inconsistent umpires. If a ball is thrown to the edge of the strike zone, it might sometimes be a strike, or sometimes a ball. While this may emulate real life in some ways, (let’s leave that discussion for another time) it makes my head hurt when a ball is so blatantly a strike and it gets called a ball. I think we call all agree that typically umpires do not try and make the strike zone size random. The game designers did.

I also feel that pitching in general is a bit unrealistic. I never get a sense that I’m expanding the strike zone when I get ahead in the count. Batters seem to keep the same strike zone regardless of the count. There’s also way too many foul balls. In baseball there are about .6 foul balls hit per batter faced. Rarely is there an at-bat in the game where I don’t have at least one foul ball.

I could go on with my gripes about the actual game, but my biggest problem of all is that it’s not nearly as good as EA Sports’ MVP Baseball 2005, which in my opinion is the greatest baseball video game of all time. That game was made 3 years ago and since EA lost their rights to create an MLB licensed product, baseball video games have taken a huge step backwards.

MVP 2005 had extremely responsive fielding controls, a great pitching system, a simple batting system and it really felt like you were in control of all 9 players on the field. For all the pretty graphics the new games have, you never really feel like you’re in control of the players and that is where they ultimately fail.

I just wonder how many more years I’ll have to wait before a baseball sim as good as MVP 2005 comes along again.

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

The other day I attended an Orioles game and just like every other baseball game I’ve been to in my entire life, I didn’t catch a foul ball. I didn’t catch a home run ball either, but that would have been impossible where I was sitting.

While I was watching a few lucky fans snag souvenirs, I wondered what my chances of catching a foul ball actually were. Doing some quick back of the envelope calculations, I figured there were maybe 30 balls a game hit into the stands, and maybe around 30,000 fans at each game. If that were the case, about 1 in every 1000 fans would walk away with a foul ball/home run.

In reality, there were 120,946 foul balls and home runs during the 2005 season and 74,915,268 fans in attendance that same year, which ends up being about 1 in every 619 fans end up with a ball. This is probably better than the actual odds since not all foul balls are hit into the stands.

If we were to say half of all foul balls were hit onto the field and the other half hit into the stands then the odds jump to 1 in 1189.

Finally, there are some places in a stadium where you couldn’t possibly catch a foul ball, and other places where you’d likely increase your chances, making that 1 in 1189 is hardly 100% accurate, but good enough for a rough estimate.

Odds are, the only way I’ll be getting a baseball at a game, is at the souvenir stand.

It’s only the fifth inning and the Nationals have already worked there way into a mere 9% chance of winning (according to Live Win Probability). As a Nats season ticket holder, I honestly couldn’t be more excited about this season. I am not a particularly huge Nationals fan, but since they’re the only viable option in the D.C. area, I suppose I feel some sort of affinity to them. Yet what makes me so excited you ask?

The Nationals this year could be a truly historic team, as in historically awful. Will they approach the 134 loss season of the 1899 Cleveland Spiders? Probably not. However, the Mets’ 120 loss season of 1962 may be within reach.

In the past 25 years, there have been 25 100-plus loss teams. But the 2004 Diamondbacks with their 111 losses, and the 2003 Tigers with their 119 were the only teams to eclipse the 110 loss mark during that time period.

If the Nationals can muster up at least 110 wins, it will at least be a season to remember, instead of just another “typical” losing season. So this season, instead of rooting for the Nationals, I’ll be rooting against them. It won’t be out of hate (like Yankees haters), but it’ll stem from my hopeful awe of witnessing one of the greatest train wrecks of a team in baseball history.

Way back in December (I think), I got tickets to the Phillies/Red Sox exhibition series. Little did I know at the time of purchase, Daisuke Matsuzaka would be pitching the second exhibition game. I was able to snap some photos, which I think turned out especially well, considering my photography skills are severely lacking.

Here’s Dice-K working his way through a warm-up pitch:

And here he is throwing to Chase Utley:

His control was pretty off early in the game, especially with his breaking pitches, but he seemed to settle in as things progressed. For his past two starts, the only person who could really beat Dice-K has been Dice-K himself.

I was browsing a used bookstore this past weekend and stumbled upon a graphic novel by James Sturm titled: The Golem’s Mighty Swing. I’ve been on a graphic novel kick lately and I couldn’t believe my luck in finding one that was actually about baseball.

Set in the 1920’s, it tells the tale of an all Jewish barnstorming team called the Stars of David Baseball Club. Their fictional leader, Noah Strauss, was for a short time a member of the Boston Red Sox, playing behind Tris Speaker, Duffy Lewis, and Harry Hooper. Barnstorming in the 20’s was far from a lucrative profession, so when a sports agent approaches the team about dressing up one of their players as a golem, (a mythical Jewish protector/destroyer) they have little choice but to say yes. Unfortunately, the golem only heightens the already prevalent anti-semitism that existed in the small towns they played in.

The story is beautifully illustrated in black and white and when the Stars of David take the field, Sturm has a knack for bringing the game of baseball to life. Within each comic frame, players are perfectly suspended in mid-motion, making that slide into second, or a pitchers windup seem all the more real.

It’s a quick read, but if you’re a fan of baseball or graphic novels, it’s definitely worth your time.