Another Balk-Off July 5, 2011
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Aaron Crow, balk-off, balks
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Kansas City Royals pitcher Aaron Crow ended last night’s game against the Chicago White Sox in an unusual fashion – he balked in the winning run. As David Pinto at Baseball Musings notes, Crow was selected as an All Star this year. Counting last night’s game, he’s pitched 41 1/3 innings in 34 games, finishing 10 of them, with a 1.96 ERA and a K/BB ratio of 2.16 (41/19). It’s his first balk of the season.
Crow came in to start the eighth inning with the Royals leading 3-2. Crow opened by allowing Brent Morel to single, followed by a two-run homer to designated hitter Adam Dunn, dropping behind 4-3. Crow then hopped out of the inning with a pop fly to Paul Konerko, a strikeout to Carlos Quentin, a walk to Alexei Ramirez, and a groundout for Alexis Rios. During the top of the ninth, Eric Hosmer tied it, so when Crow came in for the bottom of the ninth, the score was tied 4-4.
A.J. Pierzynski singled to start the ninth for Ramon Castro, Gordon Beckham bunted him over to second, and he advanced to third on a wild pitch to Mark Teahen (who was pinch hitting for Brent Lillibridge). Teahen struck out, and Juan Pierre walked. Pierre took second on defensive indifference, and while Adam Dunn was at the plate, Crow balked by apparently stepping off the rubber after coming set. That brought Pierzynski home and, of no consequence, Pierre to third.
D.J. Carrasco, of course, balked in Diory Hernandez back on June 16th, with the last balk-off before that coming in May of last year.
At least when Carlos Marmol threw a wild pitch to bring home Jayson Werth, there was no question about what happened.
RBIs with Two Outs July 4, 2011
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Economics.Tags: Boone Logan, Daniel Murphy, Hector Noesi, Jason Bay, Mets, Ramiro Pena, RBIs, Scott Hairston, statistics, Subway Series, two-out RBIs, Yankees
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Sunday’s Subway Series game between the Mets and Yankees ended with a bang – Jason Bay hit a single off Hector Noesi that brought home Scott Hairston. The tenth inning should have been over, but Ramiro Pena committed an error at shortstop that put Daniel Murphy on base for Boone Logan. Hairston’s run was unearned, but no matter – Noesi took the loss and the Mets won the game.
The final score was 3-2, and the interesting thing about the game was that all three of the Mets’ runs came with two outs. (My fiancée, Katie, suggested that this was unusual, and motivated most of the rest of this post.) In fact, so far, the Mets have had 347 RBIs (of 375 runs scored), and 147 of them have come with two outs. That’s about 42.4% of their RBIs. By contrast, only 1070 of 3274 plate appearances – 32.7% – come with two outs. (Less than a third of plate appearances come with two outs because of the double play, among other reasons.) The majority come with no men out (about 34.8%) with the remainder coming with one out. It seems like the high concentration of 2-out RBIs should be explained by the use of the sacrifice bunt, but the Mets have only had 31 sacrifice bunts this season – not nearly enough to account for the difference between 32.7% of plate appearances and 42.4% of RBIs.
Is that pattern common across baseball? So far, there have been 10,037 RBIs in Major League Baseball in the 2011 season. 3686 of them – about 36.7% – came with two outs. Excluding the Mets’ numbers, that’s 3539 out of 9690, or 36.5%. For the National League only, there were 1928 two-out RBIS of 5212 total, or 37%, with 1781 of 4865 (36.6%) of National League RBIs coming with two outs if you exclude the Mets. (Note that I’m defining ‘in the National League’ as ‘in National League parks,’ since what I’m interested in is whether the Mets’ concentration of RBIs can be partially explained by the rules requiring pitchers to bat.)
Assume that the Mets’ RBIs are drawn from the same distribution as all others’. Then, 95% of the time, I’d expect the proportion of RBIs that come with two outs to be within two standard errors of the National League’s proportion, excluding the Mets. (The ‘two standard errors’ comes from the fact that a t-distribution’s critical value for a large number of trials for 95% significance is 1.96. For less than an infinite number, two standard errors is a handy approximation.) For the Mets’ 347 RBIs, the standard error would be
Thus, 95% of the time, the Mets should be within the interval of (.366 – .052, .366+.052), or (.314, .418). Since, again, the Mets’ proportion is .424, the Mets are slightly outside the 95% confidence interval. That’s pretty close, and certainly could happen by chance, but it’s surprising nonetheless. The question then is whether this is due to some sort of strategy employed by the Mets’ management or to some sort of clutch playing ability by the Mets. Again, there’s more data to collect and crunch (as always).
June Wins Above Expectation July 1, 2011
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Economics.Tags: Baseball, baseball-reference.com, statistics, wins above expectation
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Even though I’ve conjectured that team-level wins above expectation are more or less random, I’ve seen a few searches coming in over the past few days looking for them. With that in mind, I constructed a table (with ample help from Baseball-Reference.com) of team wins, losses, Pythagorean expectations, wins above expectation, and Alpha.
Quick definitions:
- The Pythagorean Expectation (pyth%) is a tool that estimates what percentage of games a team should have won based on that team’s runs scored and runs allowed. Since it generates a percentage, Pythagorean Wins (pythW) are estimated by multiplying the Pythagorean expectation by the number of games a team has played.
- Wins Above Expectation (WAE) are wins in excess of the Pythagorean expected wins. It’s hypothesized by some (including, occasionally, me) that WAE represents an efficiency factor – that is, they represent wins in games that the team “shouldn’t” have won, earned through shrewd management or clutch play. It’s hypothesized by others (including, occasionally, me) that WAE represent luck.
- Alpha is a nearly useless statistic representing the percentage of wins that are wins above expectation. Basically, W-L% = pyth% + Alpha. It’s an accounting artifact that will be useful in a long time series to test persistence of wins above expectation.
The results are not at all interesting. The top teams in baseball – the Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies, and Braves – have either negative WAE (that is, wins below expectation) or positive WAE so small that they may as well be zero (about 2 wins in the Phillies’ case and half a win in the Braves’). The Phillies’ extra two wins are probably a mathematical distortion due to Roy Halladay‘s two tough losses and two no-decisions in quality starts compared with only two cheap wins (and both of those were in the high 40s for game score). In fact, Phildaelphia’s 66-run differential, compared with the Yankees’ 115, shows the difference between the two teams’ scoring habits. The Phillies have the luxury of relying on low run production (they’ve produced about 78% of the Yankees’ production) due to their fantastic pitching. On the other hand, the Yankees are struggling with a 3.53 starters’ ERA including Ivan Nova and AJ Burnett, both over 4.00, as full-time starters. The Phillies have three pitchers with 17 starts and an ERA under 3.00 (Halladay, Cliff Lee, and Cole Hamels) and Joe Blanton, who has an ERA of 5.50, has only started 6 games. Even with Blanton bloating it, the Phillies’ starer ERA is only 2.88.
That doesn’t, though, make the Yankees a badly-managed team. In fact, there’s an argument that the Yankees are MORE efficient because they’re leading their league, just as the Phillies are, with a much worse starting rotation, through constructing a team that can balance itself out.
That’s the problem with wins above expectation – they lend themselves to multiple interpretations that all seem equally valid.
Tables are behind the cut. (more…)
Don Kelly, Utility King June 30, 2011
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Angel Pagan, Austin Jackson, Carlos Beltran, David Purcey, Don Kelly, Jason Bay, Justin Turner, Mets, Mike McCoy, position players pitching, Ronnie Paulino, Roy Halladay, Scott Hairston, Spectrum Club, Super utility dervish, Tigers, utility pitchers, utility player, utilityman, Wilson Valdez
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Super utility dervish Don Kelly is this year’s second inductee into the prestigious* Spectrum Club, which loyal readers if any will recognize as the group of players who have played both pitcher and designated hitter in a given season. Kelly pitched a perfect third of an inning (for those keeping score at home, that’s one out) against the Mets last night during a 16-9 Tigers loss.
Kelly’s lifetime pitching statistics: 0.1 IP, 0 R, 0 H, 0 E, 0 HR, 0 BB, 0 K, 1 BF. That batter was Scott Hairston, who flied out to Austin Jackson at center.
Kelly came in after David Purcey, the Tigers’ last arm in the bullpen, pitched the last out of the eighth and the first two of the ninth. In his one inning, Purcey gave up five hits, four runs (all of them earned), two walks (one intentional), and no strikeouts. Purcey’s ninth inning started promisingly when Justin Turner grounded out and Carlos Beltran flied out, but David then gave up a double to catcher Ronnie Paulino, walked Jason Bay, and then allowed Angel Pagan to double, scoring Paulino. At that point, Jim Leyland called on Kelly, who took care of Hairston to end the inning.
That makes three utility pitchers thus far this year. Of the position players who pitched, Wilson Valdez, Mike McCoy and Don Kelly have each played at least three non-pitching positions. Valdez has played at second base, third base, and shortstop; McCoy has played second, third, shortstop, center field, and left field; and Kelly has played first, third, left, center, and right. They’re three of the four pitchers with fifty or more plate appearances. (Roy Halladay is the fourth, with exactly 50 PA this year.)
Over the course of his career, Kelly has been a utility ubermensch, playing every position except catcher. As a lifetime .242/.287/.341 hitter, Kelly needs to be versatile defensively to keep himself working. That’s essentially the same way Mike McCoy keeps his job. Kelly had never pitched professionally before.
*not a guarantee
Justin Turner Takes One For The Team June 23, 2011
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Economics.Tags: Athletics, Brad Ziegler, Charlie Morton, Dane Sardinha, hit by pitch, Jeff Francoeur, Justin Turner, Mariano Rivera, Mets, Oakland As
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The Mets’ Justin Turner quite literally took one for the team last night when he wasn’t trying to get hit, but, oops, managed to get plunked in the bottom of the 13th inning with the bases loaded. Brad Ziegler was the losing pitcher for Oakland. It was the first game-ending hit by pitch since last year, when Mariano Rivera nailed Jeff Francoeur for the loss in a September game.
In 185 plate appearances this year, Turner has been hit three times. The other two were both by Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Charlie Morton, eleven days apart; Morton is not especially known for hitting batters, since he, too, has only been involved in three hit batsmen this year. (The third plunking was Dane Sardinha.) It was the Mets’ only go-ahead HBP this year, and the only one of this year’s six go-ahead hit batsmen to occur in extra innings.
Turner has a way about him. He’s hit ten go-ahead RBIs this year (and yes, a hit by pitch that forces in a run is an RBI), which accounts for a little over ten percent of the Mets’ 95 go-ahead RBIs. Only Carlos Beltran, with 13, has more. It’s also the Mets’ only game-ending RBI this year. I guess Turner will take what he can get.
Quickie: Mike McCoy, Utility Pitcher du Jour June 13, 2011
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Blue Jays, Mike McCoy, position players pitching, Spectrum Club
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The Blue Jays used seven pitchers in their 16-4 loss to the Red Sox on Saturday. One of those was utility player Mike McCoy, who pitched his first major league inning in the ninth. He managed no strikeouts but also no walks, and finished with an impressive perfect inning.
McCoy is unusual among position players who pitch in that he’s pitched before professionally. Most recently, he finished a AAA game for Colorado in 2009, but he’d also finished two games in A – one in 2004 and one in 2005. His pitching history in the minors is here.
McCoy is also the first inductee into the prestigious* 2011 Spectrum Club, which is a group of players who have both pitched and played designated hitter in the same season, showing off the full spectrum of their abilities from purely offensive to purely defensive. He’s made a few appearances as a pinch runner for the DH, but back on April 6, he played a complete game as the designated hitter and so became this year’s first member.
Of course, for position players pitching, nothing beats Wilson Valdez, Utility Pitcher Extraordinaire, or Andy Marte in the Best Game Ever, but if you’re especially curious, check out last year’s Utility Pitcher Roundup.
*not a guarantee
Cheap Wins So Far June 7, 2011
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Cheap Wins
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Chad Billingsley‘s cheap win the other night on a tiny 35 game score, matched by Mat Latos‘ 48 game score cheap win the same night, led me to think a little about cheap wins in general. Then, Brian Matusz beat Oakland and Max Scherzer eked out a win over the Rangers (both last night) and I knew I had to do an entry.
I’ve talked about Cheap Wins before. They use Bill James’ Game Score stat, which gives a starting pitcher 50 points and then adds or subtracts points for hits, runs, walks, and so on. A quality start is defined as a game score of 50 or above. A Cheap Win is a pitcher win in which the pitcher didn’t have a quality start. That is, it’s a game in which the pitcher has both a Win and a game score of 49 or less.
So far this year, the Rockies are at the top of the leaderboard with 7 Cheap Wins. The Cardinals, the White Sox and the Yankees are backing them up with 5 each. That’s not entirely surprising – the Yankees and the Cardinals are known to be high-scoring teams. Individually, Jeremy Hellickson leads the Majors with 3 Cheap Wins for the Rays, followed by a spate of players (including Carlos Zambrano, Edinson Volquez, Mark Buehrle and AJ Burnett) with 2 each.
It’s worth keeping an eye on Cheap Wins and their converse, Tough Losses, as a way of gauging the relative quality of pitchers. A pitcher with a high proportion of Cheap Wins is relying a lot on his team to buoy him through difficult games, while a pitcher with a few here and there is probably getting himself through the tough spots.
Chad Billingsley’s Home Run June 6, 2011
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Casey Blake, Chad Billingsley, Diamondbacks, Dodgers, James Loney, Keith Osik, Matt Kemp, Nationals, Nick Swisher, Pitchers batting, position players pitching, Rays, Reds, Travis Wood, Yankees, Zach Duke
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Chad Billingsley had what was by all accounts an unremarkable start on the mound last night: 5 IP, 8 H, 4 R, all of them earned, 3 walks, 3 strikeouts, 1 HBP. Considering that the Dodgers have seven tough losses already (only the Rays and the Nationals have more), this would ordinarily be a short entry commenting on how Billingsley needs some work.
Actually, scratch that. I wouldn’t make that entry – the folks over at Mike Scioscia’s Tragic Illness would.
Billingsley managed to earn a mention last night by hitting the second home run of his career (solo in the second) and going 2 for 2 with a walk. Billingsley’s Win Probability Added (WPA) from the plate was a team-leading .215 (Matt Kemp was second with .168). Of course, he evened that out with actually subtracting WPA as a pitcher. Still, his walk in the third forced Casey Blake in for a second RBI, and his double in the fifth brought James Loney home and ultimately pulled Reds starter Travis Wood out of the game.
Oddly, Wood himself managed a three-RBI night back on May 9, as did the Diamondbacks’ Zach Duke on May 28. Like Billingsley, both of them took the win in those games.
The most stylish home runs by pitchers happen when the player doesn’t even know he’s a pitcher, though – on April 13, 2009, Nick Swisher hit a home run in the top of the fourth inning while playing first base and then was called on to pitch the bottom of the 8th in a 15-5 loss to the Rays. He’s the only player in the last 10 years to start the game as a position player, hit a home run, and pitch. Admittedly, that’s a weird set of conditions. Luckily, there’s another instance that almost fits, so I don’t feel like I’m cheating. Keith Osik didn’t start on May 20, 2000, but came in as part of a triple-switch in the top of the 8th to play third base. Osik hit a two-run homer to bring Mike Benjamin home in the bottom of the 8th, then gave up 5 earned runs on 5 hits in the top of the 9th.
Hopefully Billingsley will repeat his performance at the plate and will continue cleaning up on the mound. Last night was his first Cheap Win of the year, and he already has two Tough Losses. Not a bad showing as far as ability goes.
Spitballing: Position changes June 3, 2011
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Alex Rodriguez, Angel Pagan, Buster Posey, Carlos Beltran, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Kenley Jansen, Luis Castillo, Spitballing, Stuff Keith Hernandez Says
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First thing’s first: this entry was prompted by Buster Posey and his horrific ankle injury, but it’s not just about him. The first time I started thinking about it seriously was last year, when the Mets’ Carlos Beltran was about to come off the DL and Angel Pagan‘s placement was in doubt. Either Gary, Keith, or Ron tripped my “Stuff Keith Hernandez Says” meter by saying that fans had suggested moving Pagan to second base to fill in for the ailing Luis Castillo, and commented that “You can’t just move a guy to second base.” Very true.
Similarly, it’s very hard to “just move a guy” to catcher, which is why a guy like Buster Posey is so valuable. In the National League, the median OPS+ for players with at least 100 plate appearances and who played more than half their games at catcher was 91. Posey’s OPS+ was 129 – that’s over 40% better. If instead you look at first basemen with at least 100 plate appearances, the median OPS+ is 107. All of a sudden, Posey’s offensive value-added drops to about 20% above average, and that’s before accounting for regression to the mean. Moving him to third base instead mitigates the damage and takes full advantage of his arm, but he’s suddenly a much less special player when he’s on the hot corner instead of behind the plate.
It’s also maddening to hear about efforts to move Derek Jeter to center field. Even though he’s on the downswing, he’s hit well above average every year from 1996 through 2009. Even last year, his 91 OPS+ was acceptable, especially considering his popularity. Granted, he costs his team runs on defense (he’s rarely had a positive defensive Wins Above Replacement), but his offensive contribution more than makes up for it. He’s 6’3″, making him more than big enough to move to first base, and first base doesn’t require him to have the range that center field would. After Jorge Posada hangs it up, splitting the duties at first base and DH between Jeter and Alex Rodriguez will start to make more sense, and using homegrown prospects to take over at shortstop and third base ensures continuing fan loyalty.
Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention future Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen. Although his 2.000 OPS last year grossly overstated his batting ability (only two plate appearances, compared with a lifetime .229 batting average in the minors), Jansen is a success story in his move from catcher to fireballing reliever. That was an excellent move by the Dodgers system – they took Jansen’s innate ability (his cannon-like arm) and moved him to a position where his contribution would be optimized. Whether or not Jansen turns out to be a future dominant closer, he’s probably gotten more playing time as a reliever than he ever would have as a catcher, and he’s generated more value for the Dodgers.
Basically, player moves are difficult. It’s important to try to optimize a player’s contribution, and that needs to take into account his defensive talents instead of merely trying to find a place for him to play. I can only hope Buster Posey’s recuperation goes smoothly and there’s a value-maximizing slot for him with the Giants.
Did Run Production Change in 2010? June 2, 2011
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Economics.Tags: Chow test, run production, Year of the Pitcher
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Part of the narrative of last year’s season was the compelling “Year of the Pitcher” storyline prompted by an unusual number of no-hitters and perfect games. Though it’s too early in the season to say the same thing is happening this year, a few bloggers have suggested that run production is down in 2011 and we might see the same sort of story starting again.
As a quick and dirty check of this, I’d like to compare production in the 2000-2009 sample I used in a previous post to production in 2010. This will introduce a few problems, notably that using one year’s worth of data for run production will lead to possibly spurious results for the 2010 data and that the success of the pitchers may be a result of the strategy used to generate runs. That is, if pitchers get better, and strategy doesn’t change, then we see pitchers taking advantage of inefficiencies in strategy. If batting strategy stays the same and pitchers take advantage of bad batting, then we should see a change in the structure of run production since the areas worked over by hitters – for example, walks and strikeouts – will see shifts in their relative importance in scoring runs.
Hypothesis: A regression model of runs against hits, doubles, triples, home runs, stolen bases, times caught stealing, walks, times hit by pitch, sacrifice bunts, and sacrifice flies using two datasets, one with team-level season-long data for each year from 2000 to 2009 and the other from 2010 only, will yield statistically similar beta coefficients.
Method: Chow test.
Result: There is a difference, significant at the 90% but not 95% level. That might be a result of a change in strategy or of pitchers exploiting strategic inefficiencies.
R code behind the cut.
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