baseball notes

Saw the Mets beat the Braves 3-0 at Tarp Field. [BOX] The former B-Mets did well. Ike Davis hit a 458-foot monster solo shot. Thole had a great, nine-pitch at-bat that culminated in a RBI single. Ruben Tejada went 1-for-three with a walk and made a nice play up the middle to get the last out of the seventh.

In Strat-O-Matic, outfielder errors result in the batter reaching second or third. What kind of errors do outfielders really make?

I looked at the 2,386 errors made in MLB 2005-2009. (From Retrosheet, natch.) That’s about one every five games. I divided them into the five categories shown in the chart below.

Only a quarter involve the batter reaching base. The majority involve advancement of other baserunners, most after a hit.

A little more detail in the table below, which shows how many bases the batter advanced on the error.

An error that allows the batter to go to second on a single is, by far, the most common occurrence. The table hides a lot of detail, though, like the base situation and the advancement of those other runners.

I learned that the guys who enter the live MLB data are stringers and that they use an app called “Total Baseball.” Found this on the excellent Fungoes Blog. The proprietor there, Pip, does the duty at B*sch. There’s a link there to a good article at THT that describes what these guys do.

A humorous and arresting series of baseball paintings in the style of orange crate labels by artist Ben Sakoguchi.

• Artist’s site
• 13 larger images at Sports Illustrated

Joe West’s recent comments prompted me to look at some data I’ve always been curious about. We all know (or think we know) that games have gotten longer, but exactly how has game duration changed over the years?

The Retrosheet Game Logs contain time-of-game data, but the data is very incomplete prior to 1956. (There are also a few data errors, for example, a game that supposedly lasted 413 hours in 1947. I considered everything over 500 minutes to be a data error and ignored it.)

The graph below shows the average game time through the years. All games, extra-inning and less than nine, are included.

What surprised me here was the huge increase from 1944 to 1955, where average game time increased 32 minutes over just eleven years! What happened? Longer between-inning breaks to accommodate radio advertising?

After 1955, things settled down, then in 1979 times started to zoom up again, reaching a new plateau in the late ’80s.

I wanted to look at normal, nine-inning games, but it’s not easy to filter those from the Retrosheet data prior to about 1955. The Game Logs contain the number of outs in the game, so my definition of a normal, nine-inning game is one with 51 to 54 outs. The graph below shows the data for nine-inning games, giving a little more insight into the more recent trends.

Actaully, the average game time has been relatively stable for the last twenty years. Still too long IMHO.

I actually scored this one live. The whole damn thing. Got it all on one sheet, though!

box score

With Breen and his buds.

Box Score

Thought I might try to input all the Perfectos games into Chadwick. Some notes on the process.
Continue reading →

A beef I’ve always had with SOM is that the pitcher hitting cards are offered in basic format only. If you use them with the advanced game, then you’ve got a monochromatic, portrait-orientation pitcher card mixed in with the black/blue/red, landscape-orientation position-player cards. Yuck.

So, as a little Photoshop exercise, I created some pitcher hitting cards in the advanced style.

Right now the results are identical against left- and right-handed pitchers, but I may add some differences later and produce separate cards for RHB & LHB pitchers.

1. Derek Jeter
2. Jorge Posada
3. Scott Feldman
4. Doug Mathis
5. Adam Lind
6. David Robertson
7. Ryan Raburn
8. Tim Byrdak
9. Mark DeRosa
10. Leo Rosales
11. Michael Cuddyer
12. Rafael Betancourt
13. Rick Porcello
14. Julio Lugo
15. Jeff Niemann

No huge changes to the rating process this year, though I did make two fairly significant changes: better matchup data & a better representation of the average batter/pitcher. I rated a total of 219 batters and 196 pitchers.

Continue reading →

Ranking figures for 2010 keeps.

For batters, a positive change is an improvement.

          2009   2010   change
          ====   ====   ======
Howard     144    165    +21
Ramirez    122    133    +10
Zobrist    136    144    + 8
Hawpe      123    123      0
Victorino  105    105      0
Utley      134    128    - 6
Rollins    101     84    -17
Soto       113     68    -45

Rollins & Soto will ride the bench this season and hope for a return to form.

For pitchers, a negative change is an improvement.

          2009   2010   change
          ====   ====   ======
Jimenez    124    101    -23
Lilly      122    106    -16
Garza      126    122    - 4
Hamels     100    131    +31

Street     117     63    -54
Rhodes     155    120    -35

Cole will probably cool his heels on the taxi team. Not sure what to do with Garza.

The cards arrived today, one day earlier than last year.

During the 2009 season Perfectos batters faced more than twice as much left-handed pitching as in the previous season. Why the big difference?

                           2008    2009
                          ------  ------
   Lefty Innings Pitched:   9.6%   24.1%
            Lefty Starts:   5.6%   19.4%
Lefty Appearance in Game:  30.6%   61.1%

The legend grows…

Post profile on the Cardinal shortstop

Pictures from the Sunday September 5, 2009 game against the Cubs.

The exterior around the rotunda is attractive. The rest of the exterior looks like a generic college administration building.

The seats in right field were not bad, considering they’re about the worst you can buy. The extra-baseball areas were nice, especially the food court behind center field.

The rotunda was underwhelming. The Great Hall at Yankee Stadium was much more impressive. Also, Jackie Robinson was a great player and an important pioneer, but am I the only one a bit weary of MLB’s 42-glorification program? Exactly when did Jackie play for the Mets?

BOX SCORE

Nice article in the Times about the recent APBA Convention/Tournament. Includes a video.

Also spawned a blog entry about a 1956 replay.

Cubs fan, natch.