THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Sometimes he will, because players don’t always run 100% down the line.  Sometimes they aren’t 100% and will run slower.

I’ve got a DVR, so I can rewind live TV.  I checked Gomez twice and got the same 3.1 each time.  For comparison, Casey Kotchman ran a 4.4 on his 9th inning infield single.  He’s coming from the left side while Gomez is coming from the right, normally a 0.2 second difference, so Gomez is 50% faster than Kotchman!  Gomez also slid, so had he run throw he might have even been a tick faster.

The way I time is I start at the crack of the ball hitting the bat and end when he touches 1B.

I did mean that under the same context, the standard deviation will be very small.

Certainly, if Carlos Gomez is hitting a HR, a triple, a grounder to 1B or an infield pop, his speed from home to first will be much different. 

I presume that when a scout times a runner, he’s taking the context into account, and won’t bother putting a timer on a guy if he’s not running close to full speed.  Fans also implicitly measure based on this.

Considering when he was with the mets, Carlos gomez would race jose reyes and beat him most of the time, i think its fair to say gomez is pretty fast.

3.1?  3.1!?!  From the right side?  Was he shot out of a cannon?  That’s crazy fast, like world’s fastest human kind of fast.  Rally, you may want to check your stopwatch or DVR or twitchy thumb or something.

fwiw, I looked at that Gomez bunt using what I figure are two faulty tools—my cell phone’s stop watch and mlb.tv. I did it like 10 times and I’m getting 3.25-3.3

There’s no doubt he’s fast but I think we’re overreacting about about how fast. His left foot was well out of the front of the box before he made contact on that bunt. He basically gave himself a running start.

I’d be more interested to see his times running to first on legal contact.

I’ll have to compare it to my old stopwatch.  I was using the iPhone stopwatch, not sure how accurate it is.

Gomez has the kind of speed that young Mickey Mantle had, according to legend.

Good point on the running start - since he took off before he made contact, if you time him from the start of the run it might be .2 seconds or so difference between timing from contact, as I did.

MB, at what point did you start your clock?

As an Astros fan, I’m not used to seeing players run fast, but Bourn’s a burner. He easily stole two bases last night and made a long run for a catch in center field to save three runs.

Rally, same as you ... when the ball touched the bat (at least that’s what I was trying for).

This article (and the one it links to) discuss the seemingly impossible 40 yd dash times at the NFL combine and the possible explanations for them.  Probably a lot of what is being said also applies in this case.

http://www.patsfans.com/new-england-patriots/messageboard/showthread.php?t=32114

As a point of reference, I recall hearing in the 80’s that Willie Wilson or Vince Coleman was 3.6 to first.

The fact that he isn’t swinging makes it a lot faster though, right?  Doesn’t it take probably a few 10ths of a second to recover from the follow through on a swing and start running?

Very interesting.  Here’s the direct link:
http://www.usoc.org/11611_32384.htm

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The key is when the clock starts.  In track, it’s the starter’s pistol that goes first, and the clock start on that.  The runners then run off the pistol, which takes say 0.20 seconds of reaction time.

For the batter and runner, it’s the batter and runner that goes first, then we start the clock.  So, the 0.20 seconds reaction time goes the other way.

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As an aside, in 1996, Linford Christie was disqualified for 2 false starts.  The first one was legitimate, but the second one “wasn’t”. 

What happened is that he actually left AFTER the pistol, but he left too quickly after the pistol.  Apparently, he moved faster than the allowable human reaction time (which I think was .09 seconds).  So, he got out of the gates at say .07 seconds, which was too fast for him to do so after hearing the pistol.  Basically, he anticipated the gun, and he timed it perfectly.  Just, too perfectly.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980CE2DD1439F93AA15754C0A960958260

However, the false-start system, designed by the Swiss timing company Swatch/SMH Microelectronics, was activated on the second occasion because Christie left the starting blocks less than one-tenth of a second after the gun was fired.

“There is some precedent for choosing that amount of time,” said Bob Podkaminer, the assistant athletics competition manager for results. “It’s about the same amount of time it takes people to react to something they see in the road and move their foot off the gas,” he said.

Christie insisted the system was wrong. “I felt that I had the perfect start,” he said today at a news conference. “I went with the gun.”

I remember back in the 1980s and early 1990s, they’d have those skills competition, and Kenny Lofton won in something like 3.1 (from the left side, a bunt).  He was the fastest of them all, IIRC.

Right. When you swing right-handed, your body gets twisted towards third and your feet aren’t positioned to start a run towards first. It does take a moment to get your body turned the right way and your footwork sorted out. Bunting shouldn’t have those issues since you don’t turn so far from first and you can get ready to run before the ball hits the bat.

It seems like the best way to compare how fast runners are is on a straight steal of second. They may not have precisely the same lead, but they all start from a standstill from the same position and can be counted on to run full speed the whole way. That’s probably the most consistent way to measure players during a game.

That’s a response to #12.

I got 3.3 a couple of times for the Gomez bunt.

With electronic timing in the men’s 100 meters, I believe the fastest legal reaction times to the gun are regularly on the order of .130 seconds. I thought the threshold for legality was currently set at .100 seconds; I’m not sure where to look that up.

10 meter interval splits are available for some of the top 100 meter races of the last 20 years. A world record level men’s sprinter (circa 9.80 seconds), from starting blocks and having to wait for the gun, on the more ideal surface represented by a synthetic track, would reach 90 feet (with his torso, not reaching ahead with his foot or hand) in an interpolated 3.45 seconds (automatic timing - which is usually at least .10 seconds slower than hand timing).

Obviously the moving start before contact by a left hander on a drag bunt, shortening the distance to first, is a big advantage. I believe I hand-timed Bo Jackson once, a right handed batter on a regular swing, in 3.7 seconds to first. Jackson was a national class sprinter when not playing football or baseball; I believe he ran about 10.20 for 100 meters in college. I don’t think we’ll see right handers to first much faster than Jackson. I’d suppose very fast lefties on a real swing might achieve 3.4 - 3.5 seconds. I’ve seen 3.1 from the left side on a bunt reported several times, but never seen a bunt like that myself (I follow the Red Sox.)

To me, the intersting thing is that, of the 10 players Tango listed, only 2 are good players I think (Crawford and Reyes).

Just asking---it’s been implied (by mgl I think) that speed is a huge factor in UZR. But, when I look at the issue (admittedly, much more casually than MGL), I’m left with the sense that speed is a strong determinant of what position you are allowed to play. But once you qualify for a given position, speed is a fairly neutal factor. If you are fast enough to be a regular SS, for example, the faster 15 regular SS are not really any better than the “slower” 15 SS, perhaps because the “slower” SS (as suggested by sb, cs, 3b, etc.) get better jumps, etc.

Any validity to this?

IIRC, the average speed of the CF on a 0-100 point scale, (where 50 is an averge player, and the top 10 speedsters are 90), was a 70.

So, there’s a bit of room there, but not much, as David is suggesting.  I think that the “90” CF probably add +5 runs based on their speed, over the “70” CF.  (Just a guess at this point.)

I got my old stopwatch out and timed Gomez from the MLB.com replays.  I’m getting between 3.25 and 3.4 now.  I might have had a quick thumb yesterday, or could be some difference in the broadcast (watching ESPN HD yesterday).

Still amazing speed.

I took a look at my baserunning +/- spreadsheet, and I think 5 runs is charitable. There doesn’t seem to be any noticable difference - the average center fielder is a +1 baserunner, and the CFs with 85+ speed are about 2.5 runs. (I used a weighted average.) And some of that is probably due to the fact that the 85+ center fielders averaged roughly 60 more opportunities.

I am open to the possiblity that I suck at constructing baserunning metrics.

Tango #13

I actually attended an indoor track meet around 1985 in which Greg Foster set the world record for the 60M (or 55m) high hurdles.  The race was essentially over before they reached the first hurdle, as Foster got an incredible start out of the blocks.  My track coach’s comment at the time was that he got a “roller” or rolling start, which basically meant that he had properly guessed the starting gun, but didn’t get snagged.  He (my coach) speculated that this was most likely the case for any indoor sprint record as their is virtually no time to make up for a bad start, no matter how fast you are.

Colin, I meant +5 runs in FIELDING.  That is, if you can manage to separate fielding runs into its components (speed, anticipation, arms, etc), just the blinding speed would be worth an extra 5 runs.

My top 10 from my speed scores, based on 2007 data (min 100 PA): Tony Gwynn, Gomez, Bourn, Dave Roberts, Nyjer Morgan, Ichiro, Curtis Granderson, Richie Weeks, Nate Schierholtz, Eric Byrnes.  Five of them totalled under 200 PA.  The next five fastest regulars were Kaz Matsui, Jimmy Rollins, Shane Victorino, Jason Bartlett, and Rajai Davis.  Some agreements, some disagreements.  I’d love to get a stopwatch time on everyone in baseball for comparison.