A fan of the Yankees, Red Sox, and large sample sizes.

 
MARLIN POWER SPLIT

Three players on the Marlins have hit 9 HRs so far this year - Lowell, Choi, and Cabrera. Nobody else on the team has more than 2 HRs.

The Cubs, on the other hand, have every member of their starting lineups with at least 3 HRs, plus their 4th outfielder, but nobody's hit 9 HRs.

Posted by Sky at 6:13 PM | 0 comments

 
HELP. PLEASE.

If the Dodgers had finished last in runs scored by only one run last year (instead of by 70 runs), they would have been expected to win 92.5 games, or 9 games better than they'd be expected to win given their actual runs scored. 92 wins would have been good enough for the Wild Card. (Which means there would be no talk about the amazing small-ball Marlins.) The Dodgers are off to a solid start this year, thanks to a competent, if not great, offense. As Bill James preached, there's value in being average. The 2003 3.19 team ERA didn't hurt, either.

Let's look at another NL West team that's having both an amazingly good year in one respect, and an amazingly poor year in another - the San Francisco Giants. Barry Bonds v. 2004 is putting Barry Bonds v.2001-2003 to shame, which is hard to do. And the rest of the San Francisco offense? Um, yeah.

Barry Bonds: 424/682/1.017 for a 1.699 OPS
Rest of team: one other players with an OPS above .800 - Marquis Grissom at .906

Bonds has created roughly 30 runs, making 34 outs. That works out to be about 22 runs/game (25 batting outs).

The rest of the team therefore has accounted for 98 runs in 720 batting outs. That works out to be 3.4 runs/game.

Last year, the offense that held the Dodgers out of the playoffs scored 3.5 runs/game. It's just criminal that a lineup featuring one of the best hitters of all time having one of the best years of all time might rival one of the most pathetic lineups of all time. Were the Giants able to find two league-average OBP players to bat first and second, and one or two solid power hitters to hit fourth and fifth, San Francisco would destroy opposing pitching. Brian Sabean gets cut a lot of slack, even by sabrmetric types, because he's built many successful teams using his own methods. But the 2004 Giants are a complete waste of talent. Hell, if the Red Sox can find a way to be at the top of the league in fielding and bullpen ERA, the Giants can find some MLB-ready hitters.

Update: The Hardball Times has Barry Bonds at 38 Runs Created. My 30 runs created was a rough estimate using Extrapolated Runs, making sure to treat the IBB differently from the non-IBB. If we credit Barry with creating 38 runs, that puts him at 28 RC/25 and the rest of the Giants offense at 3.1 RC/25. Way, WAY more pathetic.

Posted by Sky at 4:03 PM | 0 comments

 
THE HARDBALL TIMES STATISTICS

I love these graphs. Not only do they contain information slightly different from what you can get anywhere else, it's real easy to visually see how the teams compare to each other.

Today I was looking at the DER (defensive efficiency ratio - the percentage of balls in play that the defense turns into outs) of the Anaheim Angels. The Angels have been a pretty good fielding team since their championship year, thanks in large part to Darin Erstad in centerfield. John Lackey pitched a shutout last night, yielding only three hits in 9 innings. He also only struck out 3 batters, thus relying on his fielders for a whole lot of help. Are the Angels still a good fielding team even with Erstad at firstbase?

Nope. Their DER this year is basically in a three-way tie for last in the American League with Detroit and Minnesota. Their all turning balls-in-play into outs a 66.4% clip. The top team in the AL, Tampa Bay, is at 72.0%. Boston, following the "screw the fundamentals/Moneyball" approach, is second in the league in fielding.

How were the Angels at fielding over the past few years? Looking at the historical graphs over at Baseball Graphs, I estimated the Angels DERs the years Erstad has played CF (since Edmonds left). Also, after each year is the number of games Erstad played in CF.

2004: 66.4% (13th in AL) - none
2003: 71.5% (4th in AL) - 66 (all when healthy)
2002: 73.5% (1st in AL) - 143
2001: 71.8% (4th in AL) - 146
2000: 71.5% (1st in AL) - 30 (112 in left, GAnderson in CF)

Hmm, looks like some great fielding most of those years, and then a crash this year. Garret Anderson played CF in 14 games, actually posting lower range factors and zone ratings than Chone Figgins and Jeff DaVanon in the same number of games.

Yup, if Erstad's going to be taking up a spot in that lineup, he should be in CF.

Posted by Sky at 10:52 AM | 0 comments

 
ANTI-ANTI-MONEYBALL

I've tried a few times to write about the anti-Moneyball backlash going on, especially over at ESPN.com and on Baseball Tonight. Each time my thoughts haven't come out very coherently, but Jay Jaffe was nice enough to write almost exactly what I was trying to write.

I don't usually link to other articles, but this one is definitely worth reading.

As far as Buster Olney's Productive Outs article goes, the part that amuses me the most is that the anti-statistics movement not only tries to use a statistic to prove its point, but uses the statistic poorly. As usual, the argument ends up being something like, "'Cause I said so."

As far as ESPN baseball announcers go, the part that amuses me the most is that the guys who had pretty good careers (Joe Morgan and John Kruk) owe much of their success to OBP, especially Kruk who was approximately a career .300/.400/.450 hitter.

Posted by Sky at 4:44 PM | 0 comments