from Amazon
Monday, September 10, 2007
I took statistics in college…
In a recent published interview with Dave Trembley, manager of the Orioles, by Baseball Prospectus, he was asked, “What is your opinion of the relative value of OBP and SLG?” Not withstanding the strange and “set-up” nature of the question (heck, I’m not sure how I would answer that, or even what it means), here is Trembley’s full response:
I think that on-base percentage is something that everyone is looking for, and there’s validity to that. I think slugging percentage can be somewhat skewed. I took statistics in college, so I understand about plus and minus standard deviations. With statistics and match-ups, you don’t really know when it happened; what was the situation, the score of the game, when did the guy hit, how important was the run? I think you can use those things, but they’re not the end-all, or be-all, in making decisions.
“Plus and minus standard deviations?”
I think that Oriole fans can feel secure in knowing that Trembley took statistics in college, understands it, and therefore ought to be the perfect strategic manager! And if ever a question of standard deviation comes up in a game - boom!
Actually the reason for this thread and a mention of the interview is that I was watching the Orioles/Sox game last night. In the 8th inning with a runner on third and 2 outs, and a tie game, Trembley left Bradford in to pitch to the switch hitter Crisp. I thought that was curious. Here we have a high leverage situation and you have basically a ROOGY out there in Bradford (although I’m not sure he can get righties out anymore - his fastball tops out at 78 mph) against a batter hitting lefty (who is also a little better from the left hand side). You can immediately see that Bradford is only going to be effective versus RHB, due to his extreme sidearm/underhand style and his 78 mph fastball. Indeed, his lifetime OPS against versus RHB is .583 and versus LHB, it is around .790, and that is probably a sub-average pool of lefties. Also, he should have plenty of other arms in the pen.
My only guess as to why he left Bradford in there was that he had “good numbers” against Crisp in the past (which has no predictive value of course, but since Trembley understands statistics...). Maybe someone can look that up. Anyway, it seems like I have seen him do that lately - leave Bradford in there against LHB in high or fairly high leverage situations. And BTW, Bradford’s strength, again, mostly against RHB, is low walks, ground balls, and few HR’s. ALL OF THOSE are exactly what you DON’T care about in that situation (2 outs, runner on third, tie game). All you care about in that situation is a pitcher who can get the most outs. Bradford has a career .295 average against versus LHB! And that may be worse now at 34 years of age and a declining fastball speed (not that it was ever much higher than the low 80’s) - in fact, this year it is .348!