This spam comment made me LOL.
of course like your website however you need to check the spelling on several of your posts. A number of them are rife with spelling problems and I find it very bothersome to tell the truth however I will surely come back again.
Skibby tweeted about looking for baseball nicknames, so I ran a count of the nicknames at Baseball-Reference.com. 286 Leftys!
Baseball Reference has a free trial for their Play Index, so I’m giving it a whirl.
Who are the worst hitting pitchers of all time? I’ve got no magic criteria, but it’s easy find some guys who were epic fails at the plate.
Rob Herbel pitched in 332 games in the 60s and early 70s, mostly for the Giants. He managed only six hits in 227 plate appearances for an anemic .029 batting average. He struck out 125 times (55% of PAs) and walked only eight times. Actually, one third of his hits were doubles, which raised his OPS to .104. I bet a few of those doubles were hit to sleeping outfielders.
Dean Chance won the AL Cy Young in 1964 and accumulated 759 plate appearances in 406 games. He recorded 44 hits, all but two of which were singles. He struck out 420 times (55%) and walked only 30 times. With 128 wins and a 2.92 career ERA, he’s probably the best pitcher ever who was useless with a bat in his hands.
Of the active guys, Tommy Hanson & Ben Sheets are notable. Hanson is 11 for 187 (.059) with 92 strikeouts, 5 walks, and zero extra-base hits. Sheets is 34 for 449 (.076) with 212 Ks and 19 walks.
Although Randy Tate was in the bigs for only one year, he holds the distinction of having the most career plate appearances (47) without a hit. He did manage to draw one walk, though! In six minor league seasons he hit .113, so I guess ’75 was just a down year for him. Tate had an unusually symmetric career: three years in the minors, followed by one full season with the Mets (He pitched in every month of the ’75 season.), followed by three more years in the minors. He was never called up during his minor league seasons, and wasn’t sent down during his only major league season!
And, finally, of the pitchers with the dubious distinction of never having reached base safely ever, the guy with the most plate appearances (33) is none other than Justin Verlander. I think I’ve heard that he’s a decent pitcher, though. Verlander did not reach base during his three post-season PAs, and he never went to the plate during his 20-game minor league career. Let’s hope that the increase in interleague play will give Justin the chance to get off the schneid in 2013.
I took the regular season stats from last season, identified each pitcher with his role (starter/reliever) and his arm (righty/lefty), then tabulated the results. The basic findings:
The surprise to me was that, apart from the fact that they’re used in different amounts, righties and lefties are used very similarly. Lefty starters stay in the game as long as righties. (A bit longer in fact!)
The biggest difference seems to be that the average relief outing is longer for righties, 1.48 innings vs. 1.33 for lefties. That’s the LOOGY factor, but I thought the difference would be even greater.
The totals are shown below, grouped into a few different comparison pairs.
Much better draft than last year. Higher picks, better pool. The pool was much better this year, particularly in terms of starters. Batters were stronger too. Here’s a quasi-scientific measurement, based on the number of “good” players, as measured by my runs-based system:
2012 2013
Good Batters 17 23 +35%
Good Starters 9 14 +56%
Good Relievers 21 21 + 0%
Here’s what Titusville got:
(Round/Overall) 1/ 2 Bryce Harper OF 2/ 12 Edwin Encarnacion 1B 2/ 16 Yoenis Cespedes OF 3/ 21 Scott Atchison RP 3/ 22 AJ Griffin SP 4/ 32 Yasmani Grandal C 5/ 41 Jed Lowrie SS 5/ 42 Wade Miley SP 6/ 52 Pedro Alvarez 3B 6/ 56 Willin Rosario C 7/ 62 Chris Perez RP 8/ 72 Emilio Bonifacio IF/OF 9/ 82 Trevor Cahill SP 10/ 92 Mike Morse OF 11/102 Scott Diamond SP 12/112 Steve Delabar RP 13/122 Jacoby Ellsbury CF 14/132 Eric Hosmer 1B 15/142 Jerry Blevins RP
Wouldn’t it be nice if Ellsbury & Hosmer bounced back?
Here’s what last year’s draft-pick trades yielded:
I was curious about the chances playoff teams have of getting to the Bambino Cup Finals and their chances of being crowned ABL champions. The playoff structure itself has a big impact, for example, the division champions have shorter roads to the cup. Of course, the relative strength of each team is very important, but how can that be measured?
First, let’s consider the playoff structure in isolation. Assume that all playoff teams have equal strength. If that’s the case, then the chance of winning a game or a series is 50%, a coin flip. A division champ (C-Bay or Orlando) has to win two series, so they have to flip a coin twice and have it come up heads both times. That’s one chance in four, 25%. A team with a one-game showdown to get into the lower bracket (LBI or Manahawkin) has win four series. The chance of having heads come up four times in a row is only one in 16, 6.25%. The probabilities of the 2012 playoff teams winning the ABL Championship under these conditions are shown in the table below.
Now let’s look at team strength: how to measure it, and how to use it to determine the probability of winning a game and a series. Bill James applied some statistics to the question of how to measure the probability of one team beating another in one game. He called it log5, and it uses winning percentage to measure team strength. I’ll use the ABL regular-season winning percentages for this exercise.
The log5 method works for one game, but what about a best-of-five or best-of-seven series? Well, there are formulas for that too. So now we can use these formulas to calculate the probabilities of teams reaching the finals. Three pages of scratch paper later…
Quite a spread, isn’t it?
One more series of calculations (and three more sheets of paper) gives the ultimate probabilities of teams getting their name on the hardware in 2012.
A superior winning percentage sure indicates a big advantage in the playoffs. Of course, this is simply a cold calculation based on only the playoff structure and the teams’ winning percentages. Among the factors this calculation does not take into account are:
An unscientific survey of Cardinals player apparel observed at the Cardinals game on Thursday August 9th. Most were name & number on a shirt/jersey.
| Player | Fans |
|---|---|
| David Freese | 43 |
| Yadier Molina | 32 |
| Matt Holliday | 30 |
| Albert Pujols | 14 |
| Stan Musial | 8 |
| Adam Wainwright | 6 |
| Chris Carpenter | 6 |
| Lance Berkman | 6 |
| Carlos Beltran | 5 |
| Lou Brock | 3 |
| Rafael Furcal | 3 |
| Mark McGwire | 2 |
| Jim Edmonds | 2 |
| Scott Rolen | 2 |
| Red Schoendienst | 1 |
| Orlando Cepeda | 1 |
| Whitey Herzog | 1 |
| Ozzie Smith | 1 |
| Colby Rasmus | 1 |
| Rick Ankiel | 1 |
| Tino Martinez | 1 |
Panorama from a stadium named for a bank. (Click to enlarge.)
On August 2 the Dayton Dragons fell to the Lansing Lugnuts 5-2. They’re working on consecutive sell-out #860 or something, but there were lots of empty seats.
Below is a view from the stands of Bowman Field on August 1st, as the Williamsport Crosscutters defeated the Aberdeen IronBirds 7-6. (Click to enlarge.)
When a runner tries to advance after the ball gets away from the catcher, and it’s not ruled a Wild Pitch, two things can happen. If the runner advances safely, the catcher is charged with a Passed Ball. If the runner is thrown out it’s simply an out. You might think the second case is Caught Stealing, but it’s not. From Rule 10.07:
In those instances where a pitched ball eludes the catcher and the runner is put out trying to advance, the official scorer shall not charge any “caught stealing.”
Project Scoresheet codes this as “OA,” Other Advance.
OA is coded for a base runner advance that is not covered by one of the other codes. A comment may be given explaining the advance.
play,3,1,parkr001,??,,OA.2X3(25)
com,"Thompson out trying to advance after ball eluded catcher"
Commish & I saw this happen a couple of times at a B-Mets game this week. Commish was interested to know how many times these events occur. So was I.
Using Retrosheet Event File data from last five regular seasons (MLB 2007-2011), I count 1,522 Passed Balls and 337 Other Advances that involved the catcher. (I didn’t count 19 Other Advances that didn’t seem to involve the catcher.) So, there’s one Other Advance for every 4.5 Passed Balls. A Passed Ball occurs once every eight games on average, while an Other Advance occurs once every 36 games. For comparison, a Wild Pitch occurs once every 1.54 games.
MLB All-Star roster as of July 5th. Includes those on DL.
I never realized before that Busch the stadium came before Busch the beer. Here’s the timeline:
Round/Overall
1/ 7 Andrew McCutchen CF 2/ 17 David Freese 3B 3/ 27 Alex Avila C 4/ 33 Vance Worley SP/RP 4/ 37 David Hernandez RP 5/ 47 Joe Smith RP 6/ 57 Jim Johnson RP 7/ 67 Nelson Cruz RF/LF 8/ 77 Daniel Descalso 3B/SS/2B 9/ 87 Adam Jones CF 10/ 97 Carlos Villanueva SP/RP 11/107 Marc Rzepczynski RP 12/117 Wilson Betemit 3B/1B 13/127 Alexi Casilla 2B/SS 14/137 Will Venable LF/CF/RF 15/147 Yoshinori Tateyama RP
Just missed out getting Ellsbury in the first round. Didn’t really need a catcher, but Avila too good to pass up in third round. Stocked up on relievers early, because that’s where the value was this draft. Late bargains: Adam Jones & Betemit.
01. Ernie Harwell’s Tribute
02. Bill Akers
03. Breaking In
04. Cantaloupes
05. 1921 Cleveland Series
06. 20-Win Season… NOT!
07. 1926 World Series Game 7
08. What Really Matters to a Pitcher
09. 300 Years From Now
On this 1963 LP, Hall of Famer Waite Hoyt spins yarns during rain delays over his long career as Reds broadcaster. The last track ends abruptly, but that’s the way it is on the wax. There was a volume two in the series, which was devoted to Babe Ruth.
Book #1 was based on test23.ps. Copy to test29.ps & make changes: /cyanIntensity from .65 to .85, /altShading from .04 to .06.
The Cardinals’ championship made the papers in Gothenburg Sweden!
St. Louis Story Ends with Victory
“Left for dead in August. Setback after setback. Now the St. Louis Cardinals are American baseball’s most unlikely winners in living memory.”
(Thanks, Anders.)
A caption writer fell asleep during Game Six.
This appeared in Friday’s Alton Telegraph. (Thanks, Arnie.)
