THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

This seems like the worst kind of pseudo-analysis to me.  You plot a graph and draw a conclusion on conjecture with absolutely no research to back it up.  First of all Feireabend didn’t pitch all that much worse than Washburn.  He allowed 5 hits and 3 walks in 7 innings, Washburn 3 hits and 4 walks in 6.2 innings.  The only significant difference was that 2 of the hits Feireabend allowed were bases empty homers.  Second, there is no evidence that mixing speeds within pitches is a good thing.  It may be good, bad, or not important one way or the other, but we would never no it from what is presented in the article except for the author claims that it is a good thing.

I give a little leeway to the newspaper sportswriter that is under obligation to publish a column everyday.  Somedays he has nothing and so he is just going to write fluff because he has space he has to fill.  But there is no excuse for fluff in blog writing.  Wait until you have done the research and have something real to report.

Yes, God forbid anyone talk about anything besides published and peer reviewed research articles. 

I explicitly talk about the fact that my statements are opinion and that I don’t have any data to backup my assumptions.  I don’t present it as any kind of definitive statement on anything, nor am I drawing conclusions from the results of one game or their respective performances so far this year.

And, for what its worth, I’d argue that blogs that have the readership levels of USSM are under the exact same need constraints of need for daily content.

I take the opposite view.  Blog (weblogs) are logs… journals.  They are whatever thoughts you have.  I like the thought, and if that spurs someone else to do more research all the better.

David - If you are satisfied with having `your name be associated with unsubstantied opinions and your readership is satisfied with that then so be it.  You will have plenty of mainstream media writers for company.  When you offer advice like “This is what Feierabend has to get better at” that sure sounds like a definitive statement to me and you ought to have done at least a little research to show you know what you are talking about. That or qualify things with a “maybe” or “probably” or “this area deserves more research”.

Tango presents research in all stages of development on this site and that is a good thing.  But what you presented wasn’t research and it wasn’t presented as an idea that needed further research.  It was pure opinion with a graph that didn’t even offer any support for that opinion.  Why should anybody take that seriously?

I just read it as his opinion.....not anything definitive statement on the issue.  But what it did do when I read it was spark an interest......do mixing speeds on different pitches....is that more effective then say throwing the same type pitch the same speed?  And if it sparked an interest in me, maybe it will spark someone else to research it a bit more.

I see Dave’s article as very subjective, “scouting” if you will.  I actually pay attention his opinion because he’s earned my trust.  But it’s not gospel.  The charts are presented as a visual example of what Dave’s talking about, not as proof.

The graphs tell us that Feierabend has two speeds, while Washburn’s is more of a continuum - in one game. I didn’t see anything that would convince me that this made Feierabend a better or worse pitcher than Washburn, or that the one trait is better or worse than the other.

Too small a sample size on number of pitches, and too small on number of pitchers.

I saw this a couple days ago and planned on commenting on it but didn’t feel like creating an account or login or whatever.

I actually draw the opposite conclusion from the author.  If you’re batting against Feierabend, you have to pick one speed or another.  If you were to try to play the middle, you’re certain to be off by 5mph.

If you play the middle against Washburn, there’s a decent chance you’re going to be perfectly timing one of them, and you can smack the ball.

I understand it was an opinion piece, but it sure seemed like you were pretty certain of yourself… without having any evidence at all.  I’d be somewhat skeptical reading your post if Glavine or Maddux or Moyer or Mazzone was the author, but from a blogger - Superfan or not - I think you need a little more there if you’re going to put forth your theory as fact.

Mike #8—Here’s the other view on that.  Against Feierabend, if you guess correctly, you will always time him exactly correct and smash the ball.  Against Washburn, you will almost never time him exactly (although you’ll way off much less often) and will never crush the ball (although you’ll make decent contact more often.)

That’s all just conjecture, from both of us.

Hm. Missed this.

I have charts like this for a few reasons:
a) Bandwith and processor time are cheap! Why not?
b) I had a pitch speed “line plot” with the dots connected and Josh Kalk kept telling me to make it a scatter plot, and since he knows best I made a scatter plot. =)
c) Every once in a while it comes up with something neat looking:
http://www.brooksbaseball.net/index.php?post=2008/08/quick-fix-odd-shift-in-velocity
d) It is the easiest way to see when Varitek inexplicably calls for 28 fastballs in a row, damn him to hell.

And now in regards to the thread:
1) I’ll agree that you should probably look at a much larger sample than this and actually look at the difference between pitchers who change speeds more often and correlate that with a bigger set of results. I don’t think Peter and Mike and Brian and whoever else are wrong in their assessment.
2) Again, I don’t disagree with the overall feelings on this, but its somewhat dubious to call them out in a very public forum, especially when, for the most part, they didn’t choose to advertise their work in it (though I have no idea of the situation here). I realize I have no real authority with which to say this, but one of the great things about the baseball research community is the fact that people are, for the most part, good to each other. Again, I’m not disagreeing with the criticism and perhaps I am simply reading too much into an internet post, but I think there are sometimes better ways to handle things.