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.
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.
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.
Manny’s First 27 Games (or, the Marginal Product of Drug Use) June 4, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Economics.Tags: Baseball, baseball-reference.com, Dodgers, economics, Manny Ramirez, performance-enhancing drugs, sabermetrics, sports economics, statistics, suspension
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Last year, Manny Ramirez was suspended for 50 games on May 6. The suspension came after his 27th game of the season. On May 25th of this year, Manny played his 27th game of 2010. That means we can take a look at the first 27 games of each season, when he was using performance-enhancing drugs (in 2009) and when he wasn’t (presumably, this year). The differential line is behind the cut.
Does the DH Rule Cause Batters to be Hit? June 2, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Economics.Tags: Baseball, baseball-reference.com, designated hitter, economics, hit by pitch, Kevin Youkilis, regression, sports economics
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In an earlier post, I crunched some numbers on the Designated Hitter rule and came to the conclusion that the DH adds about .3 extra trips to first base per game after accounting for trend. I’m going to play around with another stat that a lot of people seem to think should be affected indirectly by the DH rule.
The Conventional Wisdom™ is that the DH should increase hit batsman. The argument is that pitchers don’t bear the costs of hitting a batter with a pitch because they don’t bat, so they’ll be less careful to avoid hitting a batter or more likely to plunk a batter out of malice. Do the numbers bear that out?
Quickie: Balk-Offs June 1, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: balk-off, balks, baseball-reference.com, Braves, Casey Blake, Diamondbacks, Dodgers, Esmerling Vasquez, Kelly Johnson, Rockies, Taylor Buchholz, weird lines
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Last night, Esmerling Vasquez took the loss in relief for Arizona against the Dodgers. In the bottom of the 9th inning with the score tied, Vasquez balked with a runner on third, bringing in the winning run.
Balks are fun. The rule is designed to keep the pitcher from “deceiving the baserunner,” but also serves to encourage good fundamentals in young pitchers at the lower levels of play. For example, it’s a balk to even accidentally drop the ball.
Walk-off balks (balk-offs) are fairly rare. It’s not surprising that Vasquez, a sophomore in MLB, was fooled by Casey Blake, because balks can result from inexperience, and it’s fairly rare to have an inexperienced pitcher throwing the bottom of the 9th inning in a tied game. I ran a search on Baseball-Reference.com for losing pitchers with at least one balk who finished the game for the visiting team, which are necessary conditions (but not sufficient) to find a balk-off. After wading through the game logs, I found that the most recent balk-off was almost two years ago, when Colorado visited Atlanta in September of 2008. Taylor Buchholz balked in Kelly Johnson to take the loss.
Buchholz was in his third (and so far final) major-league season and is best known for having allegedly failed a trade physical when Houston tried to trade him to the White Sox. He’s still with Colorado and currently on the 60-day DL for Tommy John surgery.
NL Cy Young: Heating up early May 31, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Baseball, baseball-reference.com, Cy Young, Dallas Braden, Mark Buehrle, Roy Halladay, Ubaldo Jimenez
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There’s considerable debate, following Roy Halladay‘s perfect game, as to whether he or Ubaldo Jimenez should be considered the top contender for the National League’s Cy Young Award. Of course, it’s way too early to make those sorts of decisions, but let’s take a look at some of the data quickly.
Jimenez is sitting at 3.7 Wins Above Replacement and 38 Runs Above Replacement in 10 starts:
| Year | Age | Tm | Lg | IP | GS | R | Rrep | Rdef | aLI | RAR | WAR | Salary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 26 | COL | NL | 71.1 | 10 | 7 | 45 | 0 | 1.0 | 38 | 3.7 | $1,250,000 |
| 5 Seasons | 577.2 | 93 | 241 | 362 | 0 | 1.0 | 121 | 12.2 | $2,392,000 | |||
Halladay has considerably less, with 22 RAR and 2.4 WAR:
| Year | Age | Tm | Lg | IP | GS | R | Rrep | Rdef | aLI | RAR | WAR | Salary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 33 | PHI | NL | 86.0 | 11 | 23 | 45 | 3 | 1.0 | 22 | 2.4 | $15,750,000 |
| 13 Seasons | 2132.2 | 298 | 893 | 1407 | 19 | 1.0 | 514 | 49.8 | $88,991,666 | |||
Of course, 10 or 11 starts is far too small a sample to draw conclusions from this early in the season. Halladay has a perfect game; Jimenez has a no-hitter. Still, there’s no reason to believe that a perfect game, in and of itself, is enough to get Doc a Cy Young Award. After all, Mark Buehrle didn’t win the Cy last year, and Dallas Braden isn’t even in contention.
If both players keep pitching at or near this level, Halladay becomes a realistic contender, because at that point his marginal contribution may make the difference between whether the Phillies make the playoffs or not. As it stands right now, the NL East is entirely too volatile to make that decision.
(Incidentally, I love Baseball-Reference.com’s new stat sharing and player link tools!)
What is the effect of the Designated Hitter? May 30, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: baseball-reference.com, designated hitter, R, regression
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Intuitively, the designated hitter rule seems like it should increase scoring. By getting on base more often than the pitcher would have, the designated hitter helps produce runs by hitting, by being on base so that other players can drive him in, and by not accumulating outs by bunting or striking out as often as the pitcher does. However, there should be a corresponding effect from having pitchers left in the game longer: a better pitcher who remains in the game might get more outs than a reliever who came in simply because the manager pinch-hit for the starting pitcher because he needed offense.
Behind the cut, I’ll explain the testing I did to determine whether the effect of a DH is positive (hint: it is) and look at how big an effect is actually there.
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