Appearances as Pitcher and DH June 17, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: baseball-reference.com, Cardinals, designated hitter, Diamondbacks, Felipe Lopez, Jeff Kunkel, Mark Loretta, pitcher, Wade Boggs
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Earlier this year, Felipe Lopez pitched in relief for the St. Louis Cardinals in their 20-inning game against the Mets. Last year, he also played DH during an interleague game for Arizona. That made me curious how many players have at least one appearance each at DH and pitcher. I generated this table at Baseball Reference to check.
Several of these – for example, the bottom two in the list – were pitchers who started games at DH to allow their managers to insert hitting specialists when the DH came up. This led to a rule that the DH has to come to bat at least once unless the opposing team changes pitchers.
More interesting are the three at the top of the list – Jeff Kunkel, Wade Boggs, and Mark Loretta – all of whom have two seasons in which they both DHed and pitched. Loretta pitched an inning in 2001 and a single out in 2009, with Kunkel pitching for Texas in 1988 and 1989 and Boggs pitching for the Yankees in 1997 and the Rays in 1999. Hopefully the Cards will find an excuse to DH Lopez at some point this year just to even things out.
Quickie: Changing hosts June 17, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Uncategorized.add a comment
After having a ton of trouble with my previous web host (and having a lot of downtime as a result), I switched over to WordPress.com’s domain mapping service. Hopefully this will be a lot more reliable.
June 15 Wins Above Expectation June 16, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Angels, Baseball, Rays, Tigers, wins above expectation
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Wins Above Expectation are a statistic determined using team wins and the Pythagorean expectation, which is in turn determined using runs scored by and against each team. The Pythagorean expectation is the proportion of runs scored squared to runs scored squared plus runs against squared. It’s interpreted as an expected winning percentage.
Wins Above Expectation (WAE) is then the difference between Wins and Expected Wins, which are simply the Pythagorean Expectation multiplied by Games played. It’s a useful measure because it can be interpreted as wins that are due to efficiency (in economic terms) or, more simply, play that’s some combination of smart, clutch, and non-wasteful. It rewards winning close games and penalizes teams that win lots of laughers but lose close games, since the big wins predict more games will be won when all those runs are spent winning only one game.
Using Baseball-Reference.com, I crunched the numbers for AL teams up to June 15. As usual, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim lead the league in WAE with 3.68, with Detroit’s 2.39 a close second, but the Tampa Bay Rays are a surprising last with -1.96 WAE. Obviously, this early in the season it’s too soon to conclude anything based on this, but the complete data is behind the cut. (more…)
Grand Slam, First Career At-Bat June 15, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: batting order position, Daniel Nava, first career at-bat, grand slam, Jeremy Hermida, Kevin Kouzmanoff, probability, Red Sox
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On Saturday, Daniel Nava hit a grand slam in his first at-bat (hitting ninth for Boston). Needless to say, the odds against this are exceedingly long.
So far in 2010, there have been 1786 home runs hit in 73122 Major League Baseball plate appearances, for a rate of about .024 home runs per plate appearance. The American League has a league on-base percentage of .331 and the National League’s OBP is .329. That means that the prospect of any plate appearance ending in an out is (using .330 as the average OBP) .670. The likelihood of the bases being loaded at any point in an inning is the sum of three probabilities – three on base with 0, 1, or 2 outs.
![p[bases loaded, 0 out] = .33*.33*33 = .036](https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=p%5Bbases+loaded%2C+0+out%5D+%3D+.33%2A.33%2A33+%3D+.036&bg=ffffff&fg=666666&s=0&c=20201002)
![p[bases loaded, 1 out] = .33*.33*.33*.67 = .024](https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=p%5Bbases+loaded%2C+1+out%5D+%3D+.33%2A.33%2A.33%2A.67+%3D+.024&bg=ffffff&fg=666666&s=0&c=20201002)
![p[bases loaded, 2 out] = .33*.33*.33*.67*.67 = .016](https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=p%5Bbases+loaded%2C+2+out%5D+%3D+.33%2A.33%2A.33%2A.67%2A.67+%3D+.016&bg=ffffff&fg=666666&s=0&c=20201002)
![p[bases loaded] = .036 + .024 + .016 = .076](https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=p%5Bbases+loaded%5D+%3D+.036+%2B+.024+%2B+.016+%3D+.076&bg=ffffff&fg=666666&s=0&c=20201002)
Note that this slightly overestimates the probability, since it ignores the likelihood of an extra-base hit. Obviously an extra-base hit would increase the chance that three people made it to base but one or more scored, leaving the bases unloaded.
Now, with a home run probability of .024, and a bases loaded probability of .076, the (again, slightly overestimated) probability of a grand slam is about .002, or .2%. That is, about one in every 500 at-bats should be a grand slam.
Since 1920, there have been only 10 people who have hit a home run and had 4 or more RBIs in their first game. The list is here. Of those games, six (including Nava’s) involved any player hitting a grand slam (including three hit by the rookie in his first game – Nava, Kevin Kouzmanoff on September 2, 2006, and Jeremy Hermida on August 31, 2005). Incredibly, both of them hit grand slams in their first career at-bats, with Kouzmanoff in the lineup as the DH in the #8 slot and Hermida pinch-hitting in the #9 spot.
Also interesting is that Hector Luna played with both Kouzmanoff and Hermida when they hit their grand slams, and that in 2009, the Red Sox had no home runs with runners in scoring position by the #9 hitter. Quite a turnaround.
(I should point out that Bill Duggleby also hit a grand slam in his first career at-bat in 1898, but that the searchable data doesn’t go back that far.)
Trends in DH use June 11, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Economics.Tags: Baseball, baseball-reference.com, designated hitter, economics, Interleague play, Mets, regression, sports economics, Stuff Keith Hernandez Says
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Last night, Keith Hernandez was talking about how the Mets are scheduled to play in American League parks starting, well, today. He pointed out that the Mets will be in a bit of a pickle because they aren’t built, as AL teams are, to carry one big hitter to be the full-time DH. Instead, an NL team will be forced to spread the wealth among lighter hitters who are carried for their defensive acumen as well as their offensive prowess. Keith then corrected himself and said that AL managers are using the DH differently – to rest individual players instead of having an everyday DH.
That pinged my “Stuff Keith Hernandez says” meter, and so I decided to crunch some numbers and see if that’s true. I interpreted Keith’s statement as implying that the number of designated hitters should be increasing, since managers are moving away from an everyday DH and toward spreading the DH assignments around a bit more. The crunching also needs to account for interleague play, which should obviously increase the number of DHes. So, after controlling for interleague play, does DH use show an increasing trend with time?
Early one-hitters June 11, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Baseball, baseball-reference.com, Jon Niese, Mat Latos, Mets, Padres
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Last night was an unusual confluence of events, in that the Mets lost the first game of a day-night doubleheader against the Padres and won the second game, with Jonathon Niese pitching a one-hit complete game in his 18th career appearance. That seems fairly unusual, so I generated a table with pitcher W, Complete game, 1 hit or less. It turns out that since 1920 there have only been 55 of them, and one of them belonged to the Padres’ game one starter, Mat Latos.
The complete table is here.
Win, 1 Batter Faced June 10, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Baseball, baseball-reference.com, Chris Narveson, Elmer Dessens, Eric O'Flaherty, George Kottaras, John Parrish, Jorge Sosa, Mets, Pedro Feliciano, Randy Flores, weird lines
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So far this year, 15 games have ended with the winning pitcher having faced only one batter. Using Baseball-Reference.com’s Play Index, I ran a search for those games to examine the trends. The most recent was Elmer Dessens, but the Mets’ Pedro Feliciano leads the league with two.
The most interesting fact to me was that only one third of the games were won by left-handed pitchers (Feliciano twice, Eric O’Flaherty, Randy Flores, and John Parrish). That doesn’t quite make sense because LHPs are more likely to come in for one batter than RHPs. (So far, 189 right-handers have games with one batter faced, compared with 198 lefties). That indicates that wins aren’t distributed uniformly across appearances.
Also interesting is the efficiency shown by Jorge Sosa in the Marlins’ May 31 game against the Brewers. He threw one pitch to pitcher Chris Narveson, who was doubled up along with catcher George Kottaras. Sosa ended up credited with 2/3 of an inning pitched and the win.
Is Hatred-Based Investment Rational? June 9, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Economics, US Politics.Tags: economics, finance, investment, Scott Adams, utility hedging, Wall Street Journal
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Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) has an essay in the Wall Street Journal about investing in companies you hate. His reasoning is that “the company is so powerful it can make you balance your wallet on your nose while you beg for their product.”
Is hatred-based investing rational? Making the usual assumptions (people are rational utility maximizers, etc), and assuming that you gain some utility from seeing a company you hate losing money, and that you lose a commensurate amount of utility from seeing that company make money, then it’s absolutely rational under certain circumstances. Mainly, it would serve as a hedge strategy against emotional distress. In Adams’ example, he’s talking about BP and their recent oil spill. Owning BP provides a hedge against the disutility of watching BP potentially recover and begin to profit again – you get paid an amount that should offset some of your lost utility. Conversely, if you lose money, at least your money loss is offset by a gain in utility.
Obviously, it’s not something to do with all of your money. The optimal hedge ratio will also vary consumer-by-consumer.
Three Interesting Events Last Night June 9, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Alex Cora, Baseball, Dodgers, Elmer Dessens, Ike Davis, Jose Reyes, Matt Kemp, Mets, Mike Pelfrey
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Last night, the Mets hosted San Diego and three interesting things happened. First, Jose Reyes hit a home run that was initially ruled a double, leading to a review and the Mets coming up to 4 for 5 all-time for instant replays.
Second, Mike Pelfrey threw what would otherwise have been a complete game, and a respectable one at that – 9.0 IP, 5 H, 1 R (earned), 0 BB, 6 K, and 103 pitches for a Game Score of 79. Mike, however, was criminally unsupported and the game ended up going into extra innings. Elmer Dessens ended up taking the win for the Mets with 1/3 of an inning pitched because he happened to be the pitcher of record when the third interesting thing happened. (Pelf went 0-3 at the plate and Jerry Manuel double-switched Alex Cora in after the 9th.)
In the bottom of the 11th, Ike Davis (who was 0-4 at the time) hit a solo walk-off homer. It was only the third walk-off home run for the Mets this year, and the first that wasn’t hit by a catcher. Interestingly, Matt Kemp of the Dodgers did the same thing last week – 1 for 5, with the only hit being a walk-off extra-innings home run.
How much should Manny’s stats have dropped? June 8, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Economics.Tags: Baseball, baseball-reference.com, Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez, sports economics, steroids in baseball
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In an earlier post, I used Manny Ramirez‘s differential line to make the case that discontinuing use of performance-enhancing drugs was largely responsible for his drop in production. That’s vulnerable to the criticism that Manny is 38, and that even the best 38-year-old player’s stats drop from his 37-year-old stats.
With that in mind, I queried Baseball-Reference.com’s Play Index to find the stats of players from 1961 to 2009 who, like Manny, played 50% or more of their games in the outfield or as a designated hitter (where Manny might be if he played for an AL team). On average, the 37- and 38-year old players played about 105 games, so I scaled Manny’s drop in stats over the first 27 games to 105 games in order to make the comparison clear. The differential line is behind the cut.
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