The most exciting play in baseball, within context, is presumably the walk-off grand slam with two outs and a three-run deficit. Within context, I imagine it’s almost a perfect correlation between play excitement and Win Probability Added. This is why WPA works as both a baseball statistic and emotion statistic. Any immediate reversal of deficit to victory is going to be outstanding. From the other side, perhaps a game-ending and game-preserving strikeout or double play. Context leads to leverage, which leads to excitement, which leads to viewing satisfaction.

The most exciting play in baseball, removed from context, is up for debate. Some people say triples; some more adventurous, aggressive people say inside-the-park home runs. Some people say steals of home. Some people say other things. What a lot of these have in common is maximum hustle, or maximum effort. People respond well to players putting everything they have into a play, because then you’re watching world-class athletes at their most athletic. That’s one of the points of all this.

As it happens, there was particular hustle on display on Wednesday. And hustle from two of baseball’s premier emerging stars, in Mike Trout and Yasiel Puig. On the road in Yankee Stadium, Puig gathered for himself a hustle double. At home in Anaheim, Trout managed a hustle double of his own. To have two hustle doubles on the same day by different half-player/half-phenomenon entities — the two can’t not be compared. So, below, they’ll be compared, somewhat or mostly arbitrarily.

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Last night in Anaheim, Josh Hamilton had a really bad game. In five trips to the plate, he hit into three double plays, and in the two at-bats where he didn’t make two outs, he struck out, including a ninth inning whiff with the winning run in scoring position. For the day, he finished with a -.48 WPA, so while he didn’t single handedly cost them the game, he was the primary reason the Angels ended up dropping a 3-2 contest to the Mariners.

But I’m not here to lament Josh Hamilton again. His terrible performance is noteworthy, but I think it’s also worth acknowledging that Hamilton was fighting an uphill battle last night, because as a left-handed hitter in a game with John Hirschbeck behind the plate, he was screwed before he ever stepped up to the plate.

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We are a little more than two months into the season, and that means it’s time to check on early season velocity trends. As I’ve mentioned before, declines in velocity are a less reliable signal in April and May than in June and July, but nevertheless large declines can still be a solid predictor that a pitcher’s velocity has in fact truly declined and will remain lower at season’s end. Almost 40% of pitchers that experience a decline in April — and almost 50% in May — will finish the season down at least 1 mph. And while the signal gets much stronger in July, 40% is still a pretty sizable number.

So let’s take a quick look at the major decliners from April and May.

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The Angels won 89 games last year despite starting Mike Trout in the minors. After they promoted at the end of April, they played .580 baseball the rest of the way. Over the winter, they added Josh Hamilton, but more importantly, they added the Houston Astros to the AL West. 19 games against the Astros was supposed to give the western contenders a significant advantage, as they could pencil in 12 or 13 easy wins against a team that wasn’t even trying to compete.

Whoops. The Astros just swept the Angels — in Anaheim — and have now beaten LA’s other expensive disappointment in seven of their first 10 match-ups. In fact, the Astros may end up being the primary reason that the Angels miss the playoffs.

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Last week, Mike Trout hit for the cycle. When asked for a comment, coach Mike Scioscia said, “If I’m a betting man, I’ve got to believe there’s another cycle in his career somewhere.” That got me wondering.

Whenever I was in a math class where probability was being discussed, the question often in the back of my mind was, “How can this be applied to baseball?” One of the things I love the most about baseball is how well it lends itself to situations of probability, compared to most sports. I’m not sure what that says about me. Anyway, I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to refresh my memory (and hopefully some of yours) on how to crunch the numbers on situations like this. Don’t worry — the principles work on useful things other than just calculating the odds of that gimmicky achievement we call the cycle. Read the rest of this entry »

Some weeks, there are major developments in the business of baseball — like a team signing a new local TV contract. Some weeks, there are little developments on the big developments. My posts tend to focus on the big developments, but that leaves you in the dark on the little developments, unless those little developments become big developments down the road.

Dollars & Sense keeps you up to date on the smaller stories that are important but may not justify a separate post. Today, we have news on attendance through the first quarter of the seasons and expanded in replay in 2014.

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8th inning, Angels lead the White Sox 4-2. Dane de la Rosa starts the inning.

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Monday night saw a hot competition in warm conditions in southern California, as Joe Blanton and the Angels played host to Luis Mendoza and the Royals. The Angels, predicted by many before the year to advance to the World Series, were looking to turn their fourth-place season around before a partisan audience. The Royals, predicted by many before the year to play the role of American League dark horse, were looking to keep the pressure up on the Central-favorite Tigers. The game was tight for all nine innings, as the 32,203 fans in attendance were treated to a duel, and in the end the Angels emerged victorious by a score of 0.79 to 0.12.

This was a game marked by excellent pitching, as neither the Angels nor the Royals allowed a single home run, or even one single walk. For the Angels, Blanton started before yielding to Michael Roth and Robert Coello. For the Royals, Mendoza would yield to former starter Luke Hochevar. While the game was therefore light on star power, at least on the mound, those who pitched pitched like aces, with the Angels ultimately only squeaking by.

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Major League Baseball introduced interleague play in 1997, in part to boost interest in the game after the 1994 season was cut short by the players’ strike. More than 15 years after the first interleague game between the Giants and the Rangers at The Ballpark at Arlington, MLB continues to boast about attendance at interleague games. Last season, the average attendance at interleague games was 34,693, the highest since 2008, when 35,587 fans, on average, attended interleague games.

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“I’m not a tremendously gifted athlete,” Mark Trumbo said. “I have to work at it, and be smart out there.” That might be surprising given how country strong the six-foot-four, 225-pound outfielder looks, but if you consider his game at as a whole, it’s obvious that there are aspects that could use refinement. Statistics have helped shape some of his baseball values as he’s worked to improve himself, even if he doesn’t incorporate them daily.

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