THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Is the Shift actually working?

First of all, I’d like to see the data.  Dewan posted another article that tells us the frequency of shifts, but he doesn’t show us the outcome when a shift is on.  Why not?  I have no idea.  But, clearly, we need this data in order to have an intelligent conversation.  And I don’t just mean batting average on groundballs when the shift is on.  I mean THE ENTIRE SPLIT LINE when the shift is on.  I want to know what the K, BB, and HR rates are.  I want to know how often a ball is put in play with the shift on.  I want to know the out rates not only on groundballs, but on airballs as well.

Why do we need that?  Becauase players are not automatons.  They REACT differently given different stimulii.  (Is that the right word? I don’t know, and I’m too lazy to look it up.  It’s a word now!).  So, the pitcher is probably throwing it inside more, the hitter is being pitched to differently.  This is going to cause some change in hitting approach, and some change in the rate at which a ball is put in play.  It’s going to cause the spray angle and launch angle to change once the ball is contacted.  EVERYTHING potentially changes.  That’s why we need that data.

Until I actually have that data, then I’ll have to make due with the limited data we have been given.  Dewan shows five teams that shifted zero, once, or twice this season.  Here are their DER, on ALL BIP (shifted or not) as tracked by the incomparable Fangraphs:
.273 Whitesox
.292 Cards
.297 Phillies
.298 Reds
.327 Rockies (historically, Coors leads to highest BABIP in league)

League-median this year is .283.  (Note: From 1994-2010, the league BABIP hovered around .300.  Prior to 1993, and for decades before that, the league BABIP was .280.  It seems that the tide has turned, and the juiced ball/bat/strikeZone era may be over.  It is such a quick turnaround over such a short period of time, that it almost necessarily points to a sudden change to something, which almost usually means the ball, the bat, or the strike zone.)

So, of the teams that don’t shift, only one is better than the median.

Dewan also notes the top 10 teams that do shift.  In order, here’s how they are doing (again, overall, because I don’t have the data otherwise).
#1 Rays, .284 So the team that shifts by far the most also happens to represent the median.
#2 Orioles, .274
#3 Indians, .278
#4 Jays, .257, and by far MLB best in DER
#5 Royals, .310
#6 Yanks, .314, and 3rd worst in the league in DER
#7 A’s, .273
#8 Brewers, .323, 2nd worst in league, and if we adjust for Coors, would be worst
#9 Redsox, .300
#10 Rangers, .271

The median of these 10 teams is .281, or matching the overall league median.

That leaves us with the other 15 teams who neither shift alot nor a little, including the #2 in DER Nationals (.267), #3 in DER Dodgers (.268), and #4 Padres (.269).  And of course at the other end: .311 for 4th worst Tigers, 5th worst Mets and Braves at .310.

Basically, all that Dewan has showed us is that there is a huge change in the number of shifts, but no indication that the shift is actually effective.

And as I said in the other thread, if the shift is going to be part of the fielding alignment, then big bopping LHH better learn to bunt.  That’s the only way to keep them honest and stop the overshift.

Shyam Das

Kinda of a weird system that any time you don’t like a decision, you can fire an arbitrator.  Murray Chass gives great historical perspective, as any well-trained blogger would do.  Good job on him.

Four games for reckless contact

I’m surprised by the low number of games suspended.  Lawrie was a pure hot head, he had, basically, a weapon in his hand. He threw it in the vicinity of the umpire.  The laws of physics decided to apply here, and so the helmet bounced back up and hit the umpire.  The worst part is that Lawrie continued to go after the umpire.

Even if Lawrie could argue he was right up until the point he took off his helmet, the blame completely shifted to Lawrie once that helmet struck the umpire.  Umpires need far better protection than the four games Lawrie got.

In hockey, they gave a player 20 games for intentionally tripping an official (25% of the season).  I don’t know how much reckless unintentional actions should receive, but 10% of the season would seem to be in order.  I’d have given Lawrie 16 games.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Now you frame it, now you don’t

Wonderful article by Ben, on the Molina v Lawrie episode (though Molina was invisible to everyone except Ben).

Dodgers’ win reversed because Mattingly did not attest to proper score!

Incredible, but because Mattingly did not attest to the correct final score, MLB reversed the game and awarded the win to the Diamondbacks.  This happened even though everyone in the stadium was able to see the score.

Oh, sorry, I meant that this happened in a state tournament in golf.  Because everyone’s been conditioned to know this rule, been taught this rule, having absorbed this rule, everyone accepts this rule.  In fact, I believe this rule was the impetus for George Orwell writing 1984.  It’s true.  Look it up.

Anyway, the MLB rules committee has proposed this rule, and it’s starting at Little League, so that everyone can be taught the rule, absorb the rule, and accept the rule. Once the conditioning is set, then that’s it, there’s no controversy.  All of the hockey fans that will mock the baseball fan for having this rule will face the scorn of the baseball fan because the hockey fan doesn’t understand baseball.

Does changing your pitch frequency lead to substantial change in results?

This writer gives us some examples of what happened following changes in pitch selection frequencies.  Obviously, it is both anecdotal, and shows no specific correlation=causation effect.

But this is one of those areas of PITCHf/x that could potentially lead to dramatic results.

Sponsoring MLB jerseys

It’s bound to happen.  It’ll start with the NHL, then the NBA, the NFL, and finally MLB.  But, it might not hit all the MLB teams right away.  The Yankees for example won’t corporate-name their stadium.  That’s because the Yankees IS a corporate-name.

Eventually, teams will realize that just like they can sell their stadium names (and get a money stream unavailable to the Yankees), they will do the same with jersey rights.  I think the Pirates and Marlins and A’s would dearly love to sell rights on their jerseys.  Eventually, the other teams will follow.  But, the Yankees?  It’s possible they won’t.

And, how would it work?  Will it be a team-by-team negotiation, or will all teams split the money equally (but only if they participate)?  Or, will MLB actually force the Yankees to participate, thereby depleting (to a small extent) their corporate-value name of Yankees?

***

Grantland has an article about the Goldman Sachs Yankees.  I haven’t seen it, because their RSS feed is blocked at the office, except for the headline.  Feel free to post clips of that article below.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Andre The Hawk Dawson speaks

A nice little interview with Hawk.

Euro 2012 Preview

Big Lead Sports gives us a preview, starting with host Poland.

How to beat the shift

David Ortiz shows that he’s man enough to bunt.  Surprisingly, this is an extremely rare occurrence, as Ortiz, in his career, has only five bunt hits on ten bunt attempts entering today, and now 6 for 11 for a 55% success rate. 

The question is how often can a hitter bunt to make it more effective for him to produce runs, than to work the count and/or swing away.  We know that Ortiz has a career wOBA of close to .400 when he doesn’t bunt, which is where you will find great hitters. 

With the bases empty, the wOBA equation gives a weight of almost 0.9 for a single with 0 outs and under 0.8 with 2 outs.  So, in order to get a .400 wOBA (and breakeven for a great hitter), a batter would need to successfully lay one down about 45% of the time with 0 outs, and 50% of the time with 2 outs.

Ortiz as I said, is a career 55% success rate.  That is of course based on only a sample of 11 attempts, so we really don’t know how good a bunter he is.  Any hitter who can lay one down over 50% of the time against the shift should simply keep bunting.  As Jeff notes, it’s the batter’s equivalent of the IBB.

The Mariners, like most baseball teams or every baseball team, shift the infield for David Ortiz. In the fifth inning today, Ortiz dropped a perfect bunt down the third-base line for a single. Fans eat it up when players do this, even though it takes the bat out of their hands. When players get intentionally walked, they get the bat taken out of their hands, and fans can’t stand it. Fans are so weird.

Anyway, a player once told me that he could lay one down 100% of the time if the pitch were over the plate, and 50% of the time if the pitch was off the plate.  That would mean that roughly 75% of the time, a great hitter should be able to lay one down.  Even if this player is exaggerating, let’s say it’s 80% of the time he can lay one down if it’s over the plate and 40% if it’s not.  That still sets the success rate at 60%, and that’s if the hitter bunts equally if the pitch is a strike or not. 

What if we’re trying to be realistic and more complex?  How about if it’s a strike, he can lay one down 70% of the time.  If it’s off the plate, he can lay it down 35% of the time.  And let’s say that he’ll attempt the bunt on 90% of the strikes and 30% of the balls.  And let’s say pitchers throw an equal number of balls and strikes. That gives us a success rate of .9*.7*.5 + .3*.35*.5 all divided by .9*.5 + .3*.5 equals 61%.

So, we should be setting our expectation that a great hitter would lay one down and be successful 60% of the time, which would give them a wOBA of .500 to .550, and turn them into Barry Bonds.

That we don’t see this happening is a huge inefficiency among great hitters who are shifted.  These batters, when shifted with no runners on, should bunt, bunt, and then bunt some more. 

Among average to poor hitters, the breakeven point is that much lower.  Whereas the breakeven point for a great hitter is 45% to 50% success rate on bunts, for an average hitter, it’s all the way down to close to 40%, and for a bad hitter, it’s around 35%.  And, we’d expect average hitters to be able to bunt better than great hitters (because of experience), and similarly, the bad hitters may be the best bunters (because they need to learn whatever to survive as hitters).

So, to shift against an average or worse hitter is about the worst defensive alignment you can imagine, and the average or worse batter needs to bunt any chance he gets, when the bases are empty.

Will Pujols end the season with at least 30 HR and .500 SLG?

Just fantastic work from Poz:

This is a very good example of how regression toward the mean works.  A better one would be to add pro-rate his current 2012 stats for one more week, and then repeat what Poz did starting May 22 to end of year for each season.

And the best way is to do the pro-rating for one week, then May 22 to end of month give him some random player’s stats for May 22-31 (any random player), and then take Pujols’ June 1-onward like Poz did.

As you can see, just going with the Poz approach gets you most of the way there.

Really, a very good way that Poz is doing it.

Kershaw v Strasburg, part 2

This is an update from last year, comparing Kershaw since July 26, 2011, to Strasburg’s career:

IP: 140, 140
K: 172, 128 <--
BB: 31, 28
HR: 8, 10
H: 108, 100
R: 43, 31 <--

Strangely enough, all those extra Ks are being counteracted by outs on ball in play for Kershaw.  They are matching on walks, hits, and HR.  Strasburg’s career BABIP is close to league average, which must mean that Kershaw’s BABIP since July 26 is among the league lows.  (Now that I think about it, I should have used Pinto’s Day-by-Daytabase to do this.)

On top of which, with the much lower runs scored, despite matching component numbers, means that Kershaw has favorable splits with men on base and/or Strasburg has unfavorable ones (relatively speaking to their own greatnesses).

It’ll be interesting to see how long Kershaw can continue to keep pace, since Kershaw is winning in the two things that sabermetrics would argue is filled with random variation (BABIP and performance with men on base).

And since we can presume that Strasburg’s “raw stuff” is superior to Kershaw’s, that must mean Kershaw beats him on location and/or sequencing and/or having more good luck go his way in order for him to match him overall.  Compared to Strasburg, Kershaw is the “crafty lefty”!

Did Manny Pacquaio actually quote Leviticus?

The article reads like Manny is talking about basically being god-fearing.  But, in the paragraph in question in the article it shows:

Pacquiao’s directive for Obama calls societies to fear God and not to promote sin, inclusive of same-sex marriage and cohabitation, notwithstanding what Leviticus 20:13 has been pointing all along: “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”

I bolded that part.  When I read it, it seems like it’s the author, not Manny, that is quoting Leviticus.  However, the other media are quoting the article as if Manny repeated Leviticus.  “Notwithstanding” is an odd word to use in this case.  The author is saying that, in spite of what Leviticus is saying, Manny is saying to fear god.  There’s no spite there.  Indeed, it’s the exact opposite of spite: in accordance with.

So, using notwithstanding is out of place there, and, the author seems to quote Leviticus, rather than attributing the quote to Manny.

Mets fielding storylines

For those who can’t get enough, Mark has you covered.

Rolodex: Psst… wanna work for some major league team?

NOTE: Thread originally posted Nov 17, 2008, but it’s always relevant.

I get asked every now and then “if you know some guy...” who wants to work for some major league team (baseball or otherwise).  I figure I should create a rolodex, so that when the time comes, I can be a good matchmaker.  So, send me an email (tom~tangotiger~net), type at least the word Rolodex in the subject line, and with numbered answers, to the following questions:
1. your preferred sport(s)
2. where you live
3. where you’d consider relocation (or answer “no")
4. general skillset