THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Friday, March 12, 2010

CSNPhilly.com cherry-picks to prove their point

Start with a premise. And ignore what saber-slanted fans REALLY think about Placido Polanco.

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Chico Harlan

Great story.

I seem to remember linking to Harlan.  Didn’t he reference WPA and stuff?

Monday, March 01, 2010

How a beat writer should do his job

An excellent suggestion list.  I’d like to see Murray Chass’s list (not trying to be cute or anything… just trying to see what perspective does Chass offer).

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Chipper Jones and the first-pitch strike

Excellent article by Jon Sciambi:

Let me tell you about an argument I had with Chipper Jones. Last year, I came across an interesting nugget on Fangraphs while doing pre-game prep: Besides Albert Pujols, Chipper sees the fewest first-pitch strikes in the majors.

Chipper is open-minded when discussing hitting, even when he disagrees, so I decided to present him this information prior to the game. He was really surprised. He didn’t believe the facts, even though the numbers were inarguable. Or, more to the point, he believed in what he knew (and himself) more than my stupid, never-played-the-game facts.

Chipper was so surprised that he went around the clubhouse asking teammates, one by one, if they were surprised. None of them were. Everyone saw it but him, the guy with ostensibly the best view. Chipper has great eyes, obviously, and great belief in those eyes, but those eyes can also occasionally lie to even one of the best hitters in the game.

I went on to ask why he’d swing at so many first pitches when the numbers suggest it’s not a great play. Chipper explained that the first pitch is often the only time he’ll get a “heater” the entire at-bat. “OK,” I say, “but clearly, mathematically, factually, you’re not getting a ton of strikes.” We go round and round for a bit without concession on either side and eventually I go upstairs to broadcast the game.

The kicker in the article is what followed after.  Just beautiful.  It’s what happens when the subject of an experiment is aware he’s part of an experiment.

Anyway, in his career, Chipper Jones indeed swings at the first pitch often, 33% of the time, (above the league average of 21%, but not close to league-leading).  He swings and misses about as often on the first pitch as he does in other counts.  He fouls off the first pitch a bit more than often (maybe he’s swinging at bad pitches?).  But when he makes contact, he’s great, pretty much exactly where he should be for a hitter of his caliber.

All to say that this is a perfect example of NOT telling Chipper anything.  Chipper’s approach on the first pitch is consistent with his approach generally speaking, and so, we should not be telling him to change anything, just because for the average MLBer, you might want to change something.  As a general rule, if you are one of the best hitters of your generation, you really don’t need to change your approach.  If Chipper needs a saberist on his side, you can count me in to be there.

He goes on to say:

If Ryan Howard is up, I can talk about RBI and why dependent stats don’t evaluate individual performance well; RBI aren’t what reflects Howard’s greatness, his SLG does. I can mention that Howard’s massive RBI totals may be due to the fact that no player has hit with more total men on base than Howard since 1492 (I believe this is a fact but didn’t feel like looking it up). Point is, there are dead people who could knock in 80 runs hitting fourth in that Phillies lineup.
...
If we eliminate the noise of RBI, runs, etc., keep it basic and utilize the slash stats, I believe that, slowly, the desert masses will drink the sand. The BP base must understand: VORP, EqA, WAR, and Robert Parish are not walking through that door. Not for a while. But it can only help if the broadcasters are a team, too—in uniformity (together, I mean, not wearing those blazers) while patiently holding that door open.

I was speaking to someone at ESPN, and I told him that Win Expectancy charts would be the way to go.  First, ESPN already does that with poker, and it is absolutely vital that they did.  That’s how they get the casual viewer in, to see someone’s chances of winning go from 5% to 90% on one flip.  It’s cool, it’s great, and it makes the casual viewer understand just exactly what happened.

For most fans, the win expectancy chart is implied… they know the odds.  And watching that Prior/Marlins game in 2003 was very palpable and required practically no graphic.  But imagine, at the end of the inning, just as they cut to commerical break, they were to have shown something like this for five seconds:

The viewer’s emotions, there on the screen quantified.  The tension rising as the chances of the Cubs winning dropping.  There’s really nothing to counter it.  There’s nothing to disagree with, since your eyes were actually telling the truth.

So, I agree with Jon, you need to tell the viewer something, and you tell him PART of a SPECIFIC story.  WAR, VORP, etc, those won’t cut it.  It’s too general and overally-feeling.  It gives you no profile, no sense of the player or the situation.  It leaves zero impression.

To tell the viewer the idea that Howard drives in just a few more runs than an average hitter given Howard’s runners on base profile?  That’s a winner.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

A call to arms, by Will Carroll

Will said this:

We need to find ways to engage and educate each and every baseball consumer who’s willing to listen and wants to learn. We need to fight the anti-logic bias this country has and we need to do it soon. The tech world is about to get the iPad. What’s baseball going to get?

We had a similar thread a while ago.

Will I think has great knowledge, like Mike Silva has.  A knowledge to ask the questions that is bugging him, the questions that I can answer.  I don’t know what’s in his head, as surely as I did not know what was in Mike Silva’s head.  Mike asked fantastic questions, great questions, questions that gives us insight into a vast mainstream.  Will I believe is the same way.

UPDATE: Will is open to me being on BPR, but I declined.  I don’t have a good reason for declining, just that I decline all non-email interviews.  As I said, not a good reason, it’s even a terrible reason, but it’s my reason.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

John Sickels on sabermetrics, or, How the road less travelled is the road not taken

The blogosphere is all atwitter by John Sickels speaking his mind:

I got sick of grad school when the things they wanted us to study (19th century Belgian weavers for example) became so granular as to become meaningless. I’m starting to get the same feeling about sabermetrics sometimes.

Note that this is John talking about how he feels about sabermetrics.  In my case, the granularity is where I find the education. 

The interesting thing is that after I quit grad school, my love of history returned.  I now wonder if a similar process is underway in my baseball mind. I still love baseball, and I still love studying, analyzing, and projecting minor league players. It doesn’t put a bad taste in my soul the way history did from 1994 through 1997. But when it comes to the most advanced sabermetric stuff regarding major league players. . .that old grad school feeling is returning.

But, what granular things is he talking about, since those things that are getting granular, he shares my general opinion:

The newest stuff is becoming so granular…

I don’t think this is true on defense, where genuine ground-breaking progress is being made. I’m paying close attention to the new defensive metrics, even when I don’t completely understand how they are derived.

I agree that the new data generated by Pitch F/X promises a revolution in our understanding of the game. However, (putting on my historian’s hat here), we are very early in this process. We still need to see which paths are blind alleys and which ones will lead to actual results. Revolutions seldom turn out the way you expect them to.

So, exactly what is John talking about?  I have no idea.  I’m 41 and sometimes I have the same feelings as John, but this is not a sabermetric issue, but a presentation issue:

I’m 42 now and starting to feel my age. Perhaps this is all part of that process. But I’m finding that as I read the most advanced sabermetric stuff regarding major league players, my eyes glaze over and I start to get the grad school feeling again: why am I reading this? I’m not enjoying it. I want to watch a baseball game.

Indeed, his last line is really the only question that needs to be asked, and it has nothing to do with sabermetrics itself, but of anything in any field that is being presented to anyone:

So am I just entering my dotage prematurely? Or is advanced sabermetric analysis becoming so specialized that no one but physics and math majors can understand it, leaving us humanities majors behind, let alone the average fan? If that is true, what can be done about it? I don’t mean stopping research; obviously it needs to go forward. But I mean, how do we find ways to disseminate the new knowledge and make it comprehensible for the non-math folks among us? How do we integrate and explain the new knowledge?

Basically, if there’s no Picasso to present something for everyone, if there’s no Bill James, then how much effort do I REALLY want to put in to understand this thing that I have at least a passing interest in?  I read anything that has any sort of sabermetric bent.  And I mean anything and everything.  But, sometimes, the writing style simply doesn’t match my reading style.  (And I am sure that there are PLENTY of people that have a hard time reading what I write.) It’s not a granularity issue, but a presentation issue.  I think John asked the right question: How do we integrate and explain the new knowledge?  But, it has nothing at all to do with his angst toward sabermetrics.

I’ll still go and read everything, because I look forward to finding those many diamonds in the coal.  If it hasn’t been fun for John, then he’s been going down the wrong roads too often.  Don’t blame sabermetrics.  Blame yourself.

Monday, February 08, 2010

Michael Farber’s award-winning article from 1982 on Tim Raines

Here you go.

Glove-slap Kincaid for showing us about google archives.

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Blogger gets into a professional writer’s association

Golf:

I don’t normally talk about personal achievements on this website.  I prefer to focus on the news (or what I perceive to be interesting).  But I wanted to take a few seconds to let everyone know that I got into the Golf Writers Association of America. This is a very exciting achievement for me, as a guy who runs a blog, to be admitted into this organization.  I don’t know how many guys and gals that write a blog are in the GWAA, but I am very excited to be one of them. I’m very thankful to the good folks at the GWAA.

Glove-slap: Eric Simon.

Friday, January 22, 2010

MLB really loves having unpaid writers cheerleading them

Jayson Stark makes a seemingly excellent suggestion: have a reliever’s award.

Now, there are already two awards out there:  the Rolaids one, that is purely on the numbers, and The Sporting News has its Fireman of the Year award, based on selections by a panel of 31 GMs and assistant GMs.

Stark however thinks it’s time that the media have an award for relievers.  As you know, I think the media should get out of the business of reporting on news they create.  I’m not sure why the media does not more heavily report what 31 GMs and assistant GMs think about the players they have and trade for, than on what the media itself thinks of those same players.

So, I’m in favor of the BBWAA sponsoring a reliever award… as long as the BBWAA doesn’t vote for that award.  If you want to do something bold, commission SABR, Primer, BPro, and SBNation to vote (in some constructive way).  BBWAA creating an award that they will vote on, write articles on… well, many editors believe there’s a conflict of interest there.  Maybe they are right.

MLB for its part can commission their own awards (and have them, though I have no idea if they have one for relievers).  But, why would MLB spend one breath of air when they can get all the free publicity it wants from Holy Writers who act like giddy school girls when it comes to baseball?  MLB loves this free publicity.

And I see myself like a giddy school girl too.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

My new best friend forever of the day

In response to “Hell, real, legitimate baseball writers have claimed that without steroids Canseco would have been a career minor-leaguer. “

Richard Bergstrom (36532)

Real, legitimate baseball writers apparently don’t think Tim Raines is a Hall of Famer. I question their analysis.
Jan 11, 2010 18:07 PM
link
rating: 8

And the 8 BPro readers who approved.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

“Leading the discussion”

Will Carroll:

Leading The Discussion by Will Carroll

In the last day, BP has posted two articles — one a quick Unfiltered post about Mark McGwire and his steroid confessions, another a longer statistical look at aging curves by an outside writer — that have had long, involved discussion threads. Call them “comments” if you want, but to me, it’s a discussion and even sometimes an argument thread. A couple years ago when Dave Pease first started proposing the addition of comments to BP, I was probably the loudest voice against. I didn’t think we could have substantive discussions because of what I saw taking place across most of the internet. I was wrong.

The fact that BP subscribers are almost by definition substantive people helps. The fact that we limit discussion to subscribers helps. But mostly, it’s just good discussion. At times, it gets a bit screechy and there’s a few people who are so regularly disruptive that I would have kicked them off the playground a long time ago if it were just up to me. But by and large, it’s been awesome. Whether it’s a debate about steroids or a respected writer/thinker like J.C. Bradbury, I’d love it if BP became the pulpit for discussion again. So, while I don’t make decisions on this (or anything), I want to personally invite *anyone* who thinks they have a high quality idea that needs a bigger audience to bring it up. I’m not saying BP will publish anything and everything, but I hope that we’ll have more guests in the coming months. And a lot more good discussion.

Friday, January 08, 2010

The Holy Writer removes his halo

Thank you Buster Olney:

First and foremost, it’s a clear conflict of interest. As a writer, I should be reporting on the news and not making it. It’s Journalism 101 (I assume, since I was a history major). It’s not my place, as a reporter, to determine whether Andre Dawson is inducted into the Hall of Fame, no more than it would be for a Capitol Hill reporter to cast a vote on health-care legislation while reporting on it.

The Baseball Writers Association hands out annual awards for the MVPs and for the top pitchers, top managers and top rookies. But there is a subtle difference between those votes and that for the Hall of Fame, because while those elections have blossomed into something very important, the awards are the property of the association. This really is no different from Time magazine’s picking its Person of the Year.

The Hall of Fame voting, on the other hand, is done at the behest of the Hall of Fame, naturally; the writers are providing a service for the Hall.

Perhaps we can all write to Bob Dutton, president of the BBWAA (and Poz’s former boss I believe) and ask him if we can get his membership to vote on other things, and also report on them.  Let’s see: vote on the Most Outstanding Player for Tangotiger.net, and then report that.  What’s that?  They already vote for the MVP for their own awards that they report?  So?  They can vote for the MOP for my site, I’ll give out an award, but the BBWAA better report on it.  If they can report on their own award, they can report on my award that they voted for. 

Should I pay you Bob Dutton?  What that make it better or worse? I’m confused with all these different ethical scenarios.  Tell you what, why don’t you explain to everyone how it works.  I love to see the cherry-picked argument wherein the prosecutor, defense, and judge are all the same people.

Your hole is almost six feet deep, BBWAA.  Report on that.

The formula for not voting for Tim Raines

Take it away, Bill Conlin:

WHAT ABOUT Tim Raines? How could you not have put him on your 2010 Hall of Fame ballot? When I wrote a column Dec. 30, revealing my ballot and praising the quality and depth of the first-timers up for election, the e-mail reaction I received the most involved why there has been so little support for one of the greatest leadoff men of all time.

My answer was formulaic. And I apologize for that. However, with the number of deserving carryover players each year, the annual flood of newcomers and the unique 15-year format, there has to be a winnowing process. It is simply not fair to keep placing your bet each year on candidates who simply have not been as highly regarded by your BBWAA colleagues as a man you consider worthy of a vote.

I voted for Tim Raines his first year of eligibility. But when he failed to get 25 percent of the vote, he was moved to the back burner. Sorry, that’s just the way it has to be. Maybe more eligible ballwriters should have measured the Rock’s career numbers in all phases against those of analog basestealer and first-ballot inductee Lou Brock. Try it, you’ll be amazed.

Good news for Raines, however. Yesterday, in one of the most bizarre elections in a bizarre process, he collected 30 percent and is now back on my radar.

Wow.  I’m trying to follow the logic.  Bill Conlin, to his credit, voted for Raines the first time through.  He has, for some reason, a threshhold so that a player must get at least 25% support of his peers for him to keep the player on his radar.  Apparently, there are so many new eligibles that he can’t reconsider someone he already considered worthy.  So, rather than keeping whoever he voted on last year, and adding to it this year any new eligibles or old holdouts that he reconsidered on, he instead DROPS a guy he voted on, in favor of… well, I’m not sure in favor of what because he says:

Anyway, despite the lack of a catcher and outfield scarcity, this is one of the most talented groups of HOF ballot first-timers ever. And therein lies the peril. You can only vote for a maximum of 10 players. I checked six names on my ballot and have never voted for more than six. Three are guys who have been knocking on the door and need to be affirmed by the BBWAA before they wind up being passed onto a dazed and confused veterans committee that last year honored World War II second baseman Joe Gordon. I voted for two pitchers, Bert Blyleven and Jack Morris, whose numbers look a lot better now that the 300-game winner is being excised from history by the pitch-countniks, and The Hawk, wonderfully talented rightfielder Andre Dawson.

From the impressive list of ballot virgins, I voted for Alomar, Martinez and McGriff. I’m already feeling guilt for not giving a nod to Gallaraga. Next year.

So, in an insane way, he makes sense.  Sort of.  Instead of relying on the fact that he CAN vote for ten players, he instead decides that it’s better to stick to six.  And, if that means that Raines and Galaragga is out for him, then so be it.  He simply will agonize himself to death to make sure he doesn’t exceed his self-imposed limit of six.  And so, he’s simply betting on the winners.  Bill Conlin is not voting for the best players necessarily.  He’s trying to push guys along who deserve more of a push at this particular point in time.  He’ll get to Raines eventually (as long as 25% of his peers think so), but he wants to make sure all the other little old ladies are crossing the street too.

Colin is going to have a heart attack when he sees the list coming up in 2013.

And sorry Bill, but The Big Cat did not get to 25%.  So, you actually have zero chance to vote for him next year, even if you have 4 empty slots to fill in.

***

Over/under as to when the BBWAA gets out of the HOF voting?  I’ll say the first year Neyer is eligible.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Baseball is not all of sports

Joe wrote a good article, but he had to think of baseball as the universe:

He made the choice that he wanted to be with the Phillies so much—and wanted to be with them immediately so much—that it was worth it to him to leave $60 million, $80 million, maybe $100 million unclaimed. There is no way anyone could have predicted this even a few weeks ago.... There is no precedent for it in sports.

Marian Hossa is at least one precedent as his agent said:

“I have never been involved in a deal and seen a player get so excited to take $85 million less than he was offered elsewhere,” Winter told The Canadian Press. “It’s almost incomprehensible, even to an agent. But Marian is a special player.”

And this is North America.  I presume Europe, Africa, Asia also has some similar type of story to offer.  Baseball, as wonderful as it is, is not the only sport in the world, and neither is America the only nation on the planet.  I see this “There is no precedent for it in sports” line all the time.  It drives me nuts each time I hear it.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

The Holy Writers name award after a sworn racist

I always thought it was cool in the NHL that they have an award named after various pioneers and greats in the game.  It’s not the MVP, but the Hart Trophy.  Best goalie?  Nope, Vezina.  And so on.  And I thought that it would be good for MLB to name their awards similarly.  Instead of the MVP award, why not call it the Babe Ruth award, and so on.

Well, the writers DO have an official name for the MVP, and if wikipedia is to be trusted, it is named Kenesaw Mountain Landis Memorial Baseball Award.  For those not big on history, Landis was MLB’s first commissioner, a former federal judge brought in to clean up the game after the Black Sox scandal.  But, he was also a racist:

Landis perpetuated the color line and prolonged the segregation of organized baseball. His successor, Happy Chandler, said, “For twenty-four years Judge Landis wouldn’t let a black man play. I had his records, and I read them, and for twenty-four years Landis consistently blocked any attempts to put blacks and whites together on a big league field."[6] Bill Veeck claimed Landis prevented him from purchasing the Phillies when Landis learned of Veeck’s plan to integrate the team. The signing of the first black ballplayer in the modern era, Jackie Robinson, came less than a year after Landis’s death on Chandler’s watch and was engineered by one of Landis’s old nemeses, Branch Rickey. Eleven weeks after Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Veeck became the first American League owner to break the color line.

So, these Holy Writers, so quick (and correct) in chastising the Cleveland Indians for its racially-charged logos, sit there all smug that they have an honor, their highest honor, named after a racist.  And yet we will hear about McGwire and Bonds for the rest of our lives.  MLB, so quick to put Pete Rose on its ineligible list because of the “integrity of the game”, does not ask for Landis to be removed from the HOF for the same reason.

It’s not that Landis was a racist like Ty Cobb.  He was a racist that actually prevented the best players in the game from playing.  That brings it to a whole new level.  But, the Holy Writers have more important things to worry about than their highest honor.  They have to make sure that they are all standing watch by the pearly gates, to make sure that those guys who did what half the writers themselves would have done had they been in their position, doesn’t get passed them.

“Do as I say, not as I would have done.”

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Nomination for sports article of the year

I’m going with John Buccigross’s article on Brendan Burke, son of Brian Burke, NHL GM and general tough guy and power broker:

“I hope the day comes, and soon, when this is not a story.”—Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke

Monday, November 16, 2009

Media turmoil in Quebec

The locked-out workers of Quebec’s largest circulating newspaper, Le Journal de Montreal decided to create their own website (named after the street name of its newspaper), and setup shop across the street from the head office, while it continues to picket.  Quebecor is a media giant which runs its own successful website (which is basically a collection of all its newspapers across Canada).  Here’s the story from the Toronto Star.  They also are launching a $1.99 iPhone app, if you can believe it.

It’s fascinating (as an outsider) to watch the tornado sweeping newspapers across North America, and how (at least in one case) employees are not sitting down waiting for the explosion before reacting.  Whether this is a viable way to earn a living, who knows.  But, you gotta love the entrepreneurial spirit here.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

“Powerful bombers just too tough for fightin’ Phils to overcome”

or, “Phillies confidence, team chemistry, and 08 experience trumps the power of the Bronx Bombers”

or, “Amazingly, Rollins calls it (’Phillies in 5’”

or, “Rollins eats his words”

Each storyline is waiting to be used, depending on who wins each game and who wins the Series.

Same crap, different day…

‘Powerful bombers just too tough for fightin’ Phils to overcome’

or, ‘Phillies confidence, team chemistry, and 08 experience trumps the power of the Bronx Bombers’

or, ‘Amazingly, Rollins calls it (Phillies in 5)’

or, ‘Rollins eats his words’

Each storyline is waiting to be used, depending on who wins each game and who wins the Series.

Same crap, different day…

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Deconstructing Joe Sheehan’s analysis of Game 6 of the ALCS

You might have missed John Lackey getting hosed on a 3-2 strike to Jorge Posada that Fieldin Culbreth turned into a ball.

He didn’t get “hosed”.  According to some of the pitch f/x guys, Culbreth usually calls that pitch a ball and umpires in general call that pitcher a ball 80% of the time. How is that a “hose?” Disclaimer:  I don’t quite believe the “80% ball” thing for that pitch.  I would have guessed that it was less than 50%.  But a minor point.

It was at this point that Mike Scioscia moved into one of the most puzzling sequences of his long career. With Darren Oliver up in the bullpen and the left-handed Johnny Damon at the plate, Scioscia let Lackey stay in the game.

Joe is 100% correct.  Oliver is an excellent reliever.  Against a LHB, he is even more excellent.  Much better than Lackey even in inning 1.  In inning 7 (when Lackey is on the 4th time through the order), Oliver is infinitely better versus a LHB than Lackey.

Not bringing in Oliver to face Damon is defensible from the standpoint of a typical manager, or even a fan or commentator, but after he gets Damon out he then brings in Oliver, which makes no sense at all of course.  This may be the only thing that Joe gets right in his analysis, although this one is pretty obvious as a head-scratcher.

This wasn’t a problem—Lackey was pitching well up to the Jeter walk, and he’s Scioscia’s best pitcher by any measure.

Can we PLEASE (please, please, please) never use the words, “He was pitching well or not pitching well” in order to explain or justify taking someone out or leaving them in?  Please, please, please.  If you are a “sabermetric writer,” you should never, ever, ever utter those words!  Even if it were true that pitchers who are “pitching well” for a few innings, pitch well for the next few innings and vice versa, the person who utters those words usually has NO IDEA whether the pitcher was “pitching well” or not.  What constitutes pitching well and for what time period?  The score?  The number of K.  The number of hits?  Walks?  HR?  What if a pitcher lets up 3 walks and 7 hits in 5 innings, but no runs?  What if he allows a 3-2 walk on a close pitch, a bloop hit, and then makes ONE mistake that is hit for a HR, all in 4 innings of work?  What if, like Burnette, you allow 4 runs before recording an out in the first inning and then throw 5 shutout innings after that?  Are you “pitching well?” At what point were you “pitching well?” What about after the 4th inning?  Was he “pitching well?” The whole idea of a pitcher “pitching well” or not based on the score is NONSENSE!  And PLEASE don’t tell me that managers look at other things and not the score to determine whether pitchers stay in or come out and to determine whether a pitcher has been “pitching well” or not. They don’t!  If a pitcher gives up 6 line drive outs and 3 warning track fly balls but is pitching a shutout, the manager and everyone else in the world (not me or my cousin in Deluth) considers the pitcher to have been “pitching well.” But if he gives up 3 walks on close pitches, 2 bloop hits, and 2 HR, one on a bad pitch and one on a good pitch, in 4 innings of work, he is considered “pitching badly” because he has given up 5 runs (or whatever), and is likely coming out of the game.

Anyway, enough of that.  It just makes my blood boil and my head spin!

Oh, I forgot about this part:

and he’s Scioscia’s best pitcher by any measure

Yes, Joe, he is probably the Angels best starting pitcher.  He is a very good, but not great, starter.  He is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the Angels best pitcher though!  Is there anyone who knows what the word sabermetrics means that does not yet know that a starting pitcher the 4th time through the order is considerably worse than he is overall or when the game starts?  ALL of the pitchers in Scioscia’s bullpen, Joe, are better pitchers than Lackey in the 7th inning! Please repeat that or write it on a chalkboard 200 times!

Lackey was pitching well save for the walk to Jeter, from which he’d bounced back. He really should have been out of the inning. Oliver has had an effective season, but there was no reason to use him against Mark Teixeira, a switch-hitter with no platoon split, with Alex Rodriguez behind him. Scioscia downgraded as far as the pitcher he’d have on the mound, for no tactical gain, at the biggest moment of the game.

More of the same nonsense about Lackey pitching well (and I don’t understand the “save for the walk to Jeter” - how about “save for all the Yankees who got hits or walks in the first 7 innings so far") and more nonsense about Lackey being the best pitcher that the Angels have available at that time.

Four minutes later, Scioscia was presiding over a tied game following a double, an intentional walk, and a single. With Robinson Cano due up and the go-ahead runs on base, Scioscia went to the mound and hooked Oliver. Oliver hadn’t thrown enough pitches, in my opinion, to reach a conclusion on his stuff—and quite frankly, Hideki Matsui hit a pretty good pitch up the middle—and bringing in the righty for Cano, who doesn’t have a big platoon split save for his contact rate, which is much worse against lefties—seemed rash.

OK, Joe is right on here again.  Taking out Oliver for a RHP versus Cano makes no sense at all.  (And neither does Joe’s statement, “Oliver hadn’t thrown enough pitches, in my opinion, to reach a conclusion on his stuff” - does Joe really think that is how a manager should making pitching personnel decisions?)

I’ve seen some criticism of the decision to allow A.J. Burnett to start the seventh inning with a two-run lead. I spend a lot of time criticizing managers, and many decisions really do have a right and a wrong. In this case, I don’t think using Burnett was a problem, nor do I think starting the inning with Phil Hughes would have been a problem. Burnett had been lights-out since Morales’ first-inning single, and there was no tactical reason to take him out the game at the start of the seventh.

Again, with the “Burnett had been pitching well since the first inning.” As if the first inning doesn’t count.  This is a perfect example of the nonsense of pitching well or pitching badly. He was pitching the same all game - first inning, second inning, etc.  Sometimes you get hit, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you get walks, sometimes you don’t.  Sometimes a batter squares up a mistake pitch and sometimes he doesn’t.  Sometimes a line drive goes in the gap and sometimes it is hit right to a fielder. Sometimes a ground ball sneaks through the hole and sometimes it goes right to the SS for a 6-4-3 DP.  Sometimes a 3-2 pitch nicks the corner and the umpire calls it a ball and sometimes he calls it a strike.  There are hundreds of ways that a pitcher can “pitch well” or “pitch badly”, give up some runs or none at all, and NONE of those hundreds of things have anything to do with the talent of the pitcher.  Trying to find out how “well” a pitcher is pitching based on the score, hits, WHIP, or anything else like that is like trying to find a needle in a haystack - can’t be done.  And even if you could (make a fair and objective evaluation of how a pitcher is pitching - whatever that even means), we still have NO evidence that it has any predictive value over and above the pitcher’s long-term true talent estimate or projection!

Anyway, here is the part that Joe gets completely, 100% wrong, and again should be obvious to any sabermetric writer worth his pen’s weight in salt:

there was no tactical reason to take him out the game at the start of the seventh.

Joe, the reason is that Phil Hughes is a MUCH better pitcher (for one or two innings) than Burnett right off the bat.  He is 1000 times (OK, not literally) better after 6 innings!  Burnett is probably a 4.25 pitcher in the 7th and Hughes is around a 3.25 at worst, maybe a 3.00.  That is a BIG difference folks.  This is the clinching game of an ALCS.  You have almost a week to rest your bullpen.  You bring in Hughes for the 7th, and Mario for the 8th and 9th, or something like that! It is a no-brainer.  You should probably have brought in Joba in the 6th.  Joba in the 7th would have even been fine.  He is a lot better than AJ the 4th time through the order!

I can’t figure what sequence of events Girardi foresaw, up two runs in the seventh, in which he would have preferred Chamberlain to Hughes.

Well, I think Joe was thinking Joba in the 7th, Hughes in the 8th, and then Rivera in the 9th or in the 8th with 1 our 2 outs or if Hughes gets in trouble.  I don’t have any problem with that really.

While Hughes was throwing, Burnett walked Erick Aybar, which is a pretty clear sign that you’re done.

“A pretty clear sign that you are done?” That almost made my head explode.

Damaso Marte came in to face Figgins, who greeted him warmly with a ridiculous sacrifice bunt on the first pitch. I’m pretty sure that giving Marte an out is tax-deductible; doing it from the right side may qualify you to have your student loans canceled. Marte got Abreu to ground out, with a run scoring, at which point Girardi finally got Hughes into the game.

As most of you know, I am an advocate of sometimes bunting and sometimes not to keep the defense from playing too far in or too far back.  I am also an advocate of making the defense pay if they are not playing in an optimal position, given the batter and the situation.  I don’t know why Joe thinks it is “ridiculous” to bunt here.  I don’t know how often it would be correct to bunt or not (my guess would be 50/50 unless the defense were playing sub-optimally).  And I have no idea what Joe is talking about with Figgins batting RH.  You would be MUCH more likely to bunt with a batter batting RH, and Figgins batting RH especially.  Figgins is a worse hitter RH I think.  A RH hitter hits into more DP.  And a RH hitter moves the runners over less often when he is not bunting.  It is the left-handed hitter who should be less likely to bunt.  They will move the runners over more often on a non-bunt grounder to first or second or a deep fly ball to RF or RCF.  And they will stay out of the GDP more often.

o in the seventh inning of a playoff game, with Vladimir Guerrero at the plate, what I don’t think we should be seeing is Hughes shaking off Posada.

Where does he come up with that?  Pitchers can and should throw what they want to throw. All pitchers do that, young and old. And how does he know what Posada wanted and what Hughes wanted?  He doesn’t.  You didn’t see them arguing when Posada went to the mound.

Guerrero beat Andy Pettitte’s fastball—a cutter, fine—Tuesday, and he beat Burnett’s in the first inning Thursday, and he’d just swung and missed at a big curveball 15 seconds prior to fall behind 1-2, and he may have displayed an occasional tendency to swing and miss at balls way out of the strike zone. Hughes decided to announce his presence with authority at the wrong time against the wrong hitter in most definitely the wrong location.

Yeah, we heard McCarver go on for 5 minutes about how that was the wrong pitch to throw - that he should have thrown the curve ball again.  Well, McCarver is an idiot also.  Hughes has to mix up his pitches, like all pitchers at all times, so we cannot say what single pitch he SHOULD have thrown!  We can only guess what percentage of the time he should throw each pitch, and then he and Posada flip a mental coin.  If McCarver or Joe Sheehan thinks that the correct strategy is to throw a curve ball 100% of the time, I definitely don’t want them catching or pitching for my team.  Do they think it would be OK for them to also say out loud, “Hey Vladdy, I’m going to throw you a curve ball in the dirt!  That OK with you?”

In that situation, Hughes was trying to throw a shoulder high fastball a little inside which was a perfectly acceptable pitch choice.  He just didn’t execute it very well, needless to say. He could have just as easily thrown another curve ball. Or a fastball away. Or whatever other pitch he has in his arsenal and given the batter and the situation.  And what if he hung a curve ball and Vladdy got a single or a HR?  Would McCarver and Sheehan find a way to criticize him for that pitch? And what if he threw a curve ball in the dirt for a wild pitch?  That possibility was obviously part of the equation.

About Fuentes:

He’s not an effective pitcher right now, and if he’s asked to protect a small lead against big hitters this weekend, it may not go well for the Angels.

My head is spinning again.

There might be an argument for running Brett Gardner out there for a day, or maybe Jerry Hairston Jr., given that it’s Joe Saunders starting Game Six. Guys like Swisher—Three True Outcome players—bring a lot to the table, but sometimes you just need a single. Hairston was a better choice for that at-bat last night, and might be the better choice for six innings or so this weekend.

Hairston is not a bad player, especially with a LHP on the mound, so I am not going to argue who is the better choice here - I don’t really know off the top of my head.  But Swisher is the same player he was 3 weeks ago or 2 months agao.  We show that in The Book and we write about that ALL THE TIME.  Joe, are you listening?  Have you even read The Book?

Not to blow my own horn or anything, but I can’t imagine in a million years a sabermetric writer not reading The Book and practically memorizing it. Seriously.

OK, my blood pressure is already through the roof…