from Amazon
Thursday, August 05, 2010
More beliefs of Ken Funck
Ken is back for part 2. These are the ones I don’t believe:
25. I believe a player who comes in contact with a base prior to being tagged should be called safe, regardless of whether the throw beat him there.
In theory I believe that. In practice, where the ump doesn’t have things in slow-mo, you have dirt, and the sweep of the tag can happen on any part of the body, it’s just way too much to expect from a human being to make this call right a good portion of the time. Umpires are simply applying probability here. They know that when a throw beats the runner, 51%+ of the time the fielder applies the tag prior to the sliding runner reaching base. Unless the umpire can clearly see the play, he can and will call a routine-looking play as if it was routine. An umpire knows that if he has to call each play as if it was its own universe, he may get more than 50% of them wrong. They are just like managers, and you people out there: risk averse.
26.... I believe they need to protect their teammates if they’re being thrown at by opposing pitchers.
I prefer the hockey method, where, essentially, one player challenges the other to a duel. It’s an act of cowardice to do what pitchers do. That’s not to say it’s wrong. Sometimes, being a coward and throwing a ball at an innocent is the right thing to do to prevent an escalating conflict, especially if both sides expect that to be the way to end the conflict. So, is there a way to handle this in baseball, without it being cowardice?
Baseball’s greatest coward may have been Ben Christensen:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1208/is_27_223/ai_55198802/
We always say “does someone have to die to change the rules”. And the answer is: yes. Until then, we act as if what we are doing is quasi-dangerous, rather than playing with fire. (Yes, yes, I know, it’s “not the same thing”.)
It’s cowardice. As long as you believe what Ken believes is cowardice, but you accept it as needing to be done, then fine. I may also believe it is necessary.
However, the selection process to become a major-league pitcher ensures that the variation in this skill is much less than you might think – the hitability gap between Mariano Rivera and Nick Blackburn is tiny compared to that between Blackburn and, say, the best starter at your local community college.
The hittability gap may be tiny, but 75% of PA end up with BIP, so the small gaps add up. It’s like with hockey goalies, where the save percentages range from .890 to .930 (40 point gap). The BABIP gap is say .280 to .320 (also 40 point gap). In hockey, the goalies face about 28 shots per game. In baseball, pitchers give up about 27 BIP per 9 IP. The difference is that in hockey, goalies play 60 games, so they will face 1500-2000 shots per season, and so that small gap manifests itself for the season. In baseball, in order to give up 1500 BIP, you need to make about 90 starts (3 seasons).
Yes, not the same thing. Just giving you a different perspective on the matter.
However, I suspect (with admittedly no tangible evidence) that the extreme outliers in this data probably might be reasonably predictive of a given pitcher/hitter who truly does “own” a given hitter/pitcher, and it makes sense for a manager to use this information when selecting a player to use in a given situation, all other factors being somewhat equal.
I DID provide tangible evidence of the most extreme of the batter-pitcher matchups, and there is NO predictability.
38. I know it’s a bit of a chestnut, but I do believe that making consistent solid contact with a wooden bat on baseballs thrown by major-league pitchers who are trying to deceive you is the most difficult achievement in sports.
This is an oldie but a goodie. That’s bullsh!t isn’t it? If what baseball hitters are doing is the most difficult, then what baseball pitchers are doing is the easiest, right? Hockey goalies save 90% of the shots they face… man, that must be easy to be an NHL goalie. So, far, Ken’s list has been good, a justifiable list. But this one is just so Field of Dreamers that it’s just out of place here. It’s something that is said without thought to make sure that your favorite sport is placed at the top. How about the most difficult thing in sport is a soccer goalie trying to stop a penalty kick? Or an NHLer trying to score a goal?
I believe that teams are limiting veteran pitchers to many fewer innings than they can safely work.
I dunno. The most pitches thrown, in their careers, were made by pitchers of the Nolan Ryan generation (born 1942-1951), and then by the Clemens/Maddux generation (born 1962-1971). It seems to me that teams may be justified in their approach.
I believe the combination of money and wisdom in New York and Boston will keep both the Yankees and Red Sox from posting another losing season for the next, oh, let’s say 20 years
If Ken is taking bets, I’m willing to accept. Let’s say that Redsox and Yanks make sure to spend, and spend wisely, so they have a 90-win team each and every year. By luck alone, it’s almost certain that one of those 40 teams will win 80 games or less. Playing at 1.5 SD below your true mean will happen once every 16 tries. So, for any one season, Ken will be right 93.3% of the time. But, he needs to be right on 40 such rolls of the dice. Basically, you lose any time you throw two dice, and you get 1-2 or 2-1 (more or less). I’ll tell you, making 40 such rolls and not losing once will happen 6% of the time (.933 ^ 40).
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42. I believe I personally owe a debt of gratitude to Rob Neyer for using his column at ESPN.com to initially fuel my interest in baseball analysis
Not a point of disagreement. I just want to take the time to thank Rob Neyer for continually linking to my blog, and to many other blogs, around the web. There’s no site around the web that generates as much referrals to this blog as does his blog. It is always an avalanche when he is kind enough to mention this blog.
He is easily the best spokesperson for saberists among the mainstream. Even when others are picking fights with him, or disagreeing with him, Rob rises above them all to accept when he’s wrong, or highlight why he is right.
In order for Ken to be right about the Yanks/Redsox thing, they have to play at 2.12 SD below their true mean to have a 50/50 shot of winning 80 games or less once in 20 years.
Since one SD is 6.36 wins, then 2.12 SD is 13.5 wins, which means they have to spend as if they are a 93.5 win team (.577).
In the last 10 years, we’ve observed the Yanks to play at .605 and the Redsox at .573. I mean, it’s POSSIBLE that their true talent levels were each at .577 for those 10 years. Maybe.
In any case, Ken’s bet is not a slam-dunk kind of bet at all. It’s at best break-even. And it’s likely a windfall for anyone who wants to bet him.