Fire Up The Hot Stove November 2, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Aubrey Huff, Buster Posey, Cliff Lee, Giants, Rangers, Tim Lincecum, Yankees
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Although I’m usually fairly heavy on the statistical content, I can’t help but mention a few impressions from Game 5 of the World Series last night.
- If I didn’t have Baseball-Reference.com to tell me different, I’d have assumed Aubrey Huff wasn’t an everyday first baseman from the way he played last night. He was competent and made some nice picks, but he didn’t seem to have the ankle-preservation instinct that most everyday 1Bs do. He seemed to have his heels back quite far on the bag most of the time.
- The rumors about the Yankees pursuing Cliff Lee strike me as cartoonish supervillainy. “If I cannot defeat you, I will simply BUY you!”
- Game 3 was the Lee vs. Tim Lincecum gem that we all assumed Game 1 would be.
- Somewhere, Bengie Molina is secretly pouring champagne all over himself.
- If the postseason came before voting, Buster Posey would be a lock for Rookie of the
Mariano’s Walk-Off Beanball September 12, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: As, David Robertson, Derek Jeter, hit batsman, hit by pitch, Jeff Francoeur, Jose Molina, Lenny DiNardo, Mariano Rivera, Nelson Cruz, odds, probability, Rangers, Yankees
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Mariano Rivera did something strange tonight: He plunked in the winning run. He hit Jeff Francoeur of the Texas Rangers to force in Nelson Cruz for the winning run in extra innings. It was his fourth hit batsman of the year and only his third loss.
A walk-off beaning requires an extraordinary set of circumstances. First of all, like all walk-off plays, it requires the home team to be at bat in the bottom of the inning. In this case, it was in extra innings rather than the bottom of the 9th. It additionally requires a tied game in the bottom of said inning. Finally, it requires the bases to be loaded when the plunking occurs.
This is all magnified by the face that Rivera does not ordinarily load the bases. Assuming his 2010 OBP against (.214) held, the probability the bases being loaded with two outs or fewer is:
Then, if that situation occurs, we still have to deal with the unlikely event of Mariano hitting a player with a pitch. Before this evening, Mo had hit three batters in 196 plate appearances, for a rate of about .0153. Thus, the probability of Mariano Rivera hitting a batter with a pitch after having loaded the bases is
That means that in 10,000 innings, we would expect that to occur about 4 times, assuming that Mariano wasn’t removed after having walked the bases (which would obviously introduce some bias).
Oddly, the last walk-off hit by pitch also involved the Yankees, albeit on the other side, way back on July 19 of 2008. That night, the A’s’ Lenny DiNardo hit Jose Molina with a pitch to force in Derek Jeter, again in extra innings. David Robertson grabbed the win that night.
At the other end… June 22, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Andre Ethier, As, Cedrick Bowers, Diamondbacks, Esmerling Vasquez, extra innings, free baseball, home runs, Joey Votto, Michael Wuertz, Ramon Hernandez, Rangers, Reds, Scott Rolen, weird lines
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Although AJ Burnett had a bad first inning last night, the Oakland As had a bad tenth inning. After taking a 2-2 game into extra innings, the Cincinnati Reds knocked three out of the park against pitchers Michael Wuertz and Cedrick Bowers. The first was hit by Ramon Hernandez; Joey Votto and Scott Rolen went deep back to back. Although extra-inning home runs aren’t very rare (there have been 35 so far this year), only three pitchers have surrendered more than one, and neither of the other two (Chad Durbin and Matt Belisle) gave them both up on the same night.
Last year, everyone’s favorite balk-off artist, Arizona’s Esmerling Vasquez, gave up two home runs in extra innings against the Texas Rangers on June 25th. Those were two of 83 free-baseball homers in 2009. Extra-innings home runs are more common in the tops of innings, because in a tied game a home run for the home team is a walk-off whereas the road team will get the chance to capitalize on their momentum, but I would have expected the proportions to be much more different than they are. In 2009, for example, of those 83, only 44 were hit by the away team with 39 hit by the home team (and 33 of those were game-enders).
So far, no batter has more than one extra-innings home run this year, but last year there were several. Andre Ethier led the pack with 3, with a bunch of batters who had 2.
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