THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Friday, June 13, 2008

Aramis Ramirez: a new approach to hitting?

Eric takes a look.  The most stable of the output stats is strikeouts and walks.  If you see a big change there, then you know that something is going on.  Now however, we don’t have to rely on the output stats.  We can look at the quasi-input stats: how much is he swinging at pitches out of the zone (making sure to compare by count)?  How often is he taking?  All the things that lead to Ks and BBs would be based on his swing/take approach at each count.  And while you might need say 100-200 PA to achieve 50% reliability, if you look at his Ks and BBs numbers, we’d need to have fewer than 100 PA if we know his swing/take approach.  That’s why scouts are so important: their uncertainty level is much lower than the output stats at under 100 PA.

Friday, December 21, 2007

Groundballs in play: great for scoring and preventing runs!

Dave Cameron alerts us that:

...the Mariners are signing Carlos Silva because they believe that his combination of no walks, no strikeouts, and some groundballs will lead to him not giving up many runs.  At the exact same time, the Mariners have built an offense that doesn’t walk, doesn’t strike out, and hits a lot of groundballs, believing that having a bunch of guys with that skillset will lead to the team scoring a lot of runs.

Monday, August 20, 2007

Tim Raines

My favorite player of all time.  Baseball should get back to the 1980s style of baseball.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

What about all these biomechanical experts?

I wrote this on BTF in reference to this article about the recent trend (I guess) toward biomechanical analyis of hitters and pitchers by “non-scientists.” I added the “non-scientists” as there was no mention of that in the article.  I am refering to guys like Will Caroll and Carlos Gomez.

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Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Going the other way

More rolling sleeves work, as John gives us an insight into how hitters hit the other way through time.

A little nit: he shows how around 10% of HR used to go the other way.  So, for every 9 HR pulled, 1 would go the other way.  At one point in the mid 90s, it was 20%, or for every 11 HR pulled, 2.75 would go the other way.  So, it’s possible that what Greg Maddux is quoted in the article as saying is correct, that the number of opposite field HR tripled.  It’s just that the number of pulled HR also increased, but by only 20%.

And in the graphs where John splits by LHB/RHB, it’s also possible that you get different rates if you also include the pitcher’s hand (so, LH/LP, LH/RP and RH/LP, RH/RP) that might explain some of the gaps.

Regardless, great work.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Pedro: Close your eyes, open your mind

I love Pedro.

His program for the day called for 25 throws at 45 feet, 50 at 60 feet, and 25 at 75 feet, the last distance an increase in length from what he had been doing the previous week.  Remarkably, at the two shorter distances, he threw to his personal trainer, Chris Correnti (who was formerly with the Sox as an assistant trainer), with his eyes closed. Why pretend to be blindfolded? The point was to help Martinez be consistent with his release point and feel free with his motion. It was impressive to watch him hit Correnti’s glove almost every time.

It doesn’t matter what it’s called, but what it does:

His take on the so-called gyroball, a pitch that is now in the heads of some batters and likely is more myth than substance: “I think it’s more of a backdoor slider. That’s what I think he’s throwing,” Martinez said. “If that’s what they call it in Japan, well, that’s what they call it.” Others are calling the pitch a screwball, similar to what Martinez has thrown in the past. Pedro is clearly amused by the discussion.  “The rotation I see is a backdoor slider, that’s all; it’s not anything fancy,” Pedro said again. “A screwball is more what I throw. I throw it as a changeup. It’s a good changeup. It spins away from lefties, inside to righties. According to what I saw, the ‘gyro’ is a backdoor slider. He throws it from the outside, and it burns the corner. People have a tendency to give up on that pitch. If he throws hard, and he uses it, it’ll be good. That’s the mystery.”

(Hat Tip: Baseball Musings)