Archive for the 'Bloops' Category

Graham MacAree had an interesting post at Lookout Landing the other day. (H/T to BBTF.)  Here's two snips on what he had to say in it:

Once upon a time, sabermetrics was an interesting field. Better, it meant something. Those curious about how baseball worked were lifting the veil and understanding the mechanics of the game. New metrics were developed that gave us a better idea of not only what a player was worth but how to puzzle that particular question out. Following the logic behind the new wave of baseball statistics was a ride through the logical skeleton of the game. Understand the stats, and you understood baseball. And there were a bevy of talented writers to guide you down that route.

Now, things are more than a little different. Sabermetrics seems to have lost its way.

Proper sabermetrics is something that has to come from the top down (baseball-driven) rather than the bottom up (mathematics/data driven), and to lose sight of that causes a whole host of issues that are plaguing the field at present. Every single formula must be explainable without recourse to using ridiculous numbers. Every analyst must be open to thinking about the game in new ways. Every number, every graph in a sabermetric piece must tell a baseball story, because otherwise we're no longer writing about the sport but indulging in blind number-crunching for its own sake.

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree with MacAree's points in the feature?

Curt Schilling told a Philadelphia radio station on Wednesday that:  “There’s a lot of good young pitchers in the game right now, but far fewer players are cheating. One of the bigger reasons they all did (steroids) was it allowed them to be April fresh in September and that helped you hit home runs. Anybody who ever says performance-enhancing drugs didn’t help players produce offensive numbers is full of crap.”

And with those numbers came championships that Schilling claims were tainted.

“There isn’t a team in the last 20 years that has won clean,” he said.

Here's the source.

So, what do you think of this claim?

The rosters have been unveiled for 82nd All-Star Game. Have at it and discuss!

According to Buster Olney: Sources say MLB and the MLBPA are talking about realignment.  What do you all think about what's being discussed in this report?

Ben Blatt of the Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective used linear programming to plan the optimal road trip to all 30 MLB stadiums.

I thought it was an error in the play-by-play, but no -- Texas catcher Mike Napoli really did score from 1st base on a single Sunday, waved home by the 3rd-base coach with 2 out and sliding under a high tag with the winning run.

http://scores.espn.go.com/mlb/recap?gameId=310529113

In case the Enos Slaughter reference is obscure, it is often written that Slaughter scored from 1st on a single with the deciding run in game 7 of the 1946 World Series. But the hit by Harry Walker that scored Slaughter was officially scored a double.

Of course, it's possible that the official scoring of "Napoli's Mad Dash" will be changed later, which is why I'm going to enjoy it now.

I don't recall seeing Napoli run the bases, so all I can judge by is the statistical record. He seems to have above-average speed for a catcher. He has 22 career SB (with 14 CS, true, but how many catchers would even try 36 times?). His career rate of extra bases taken is 47% (i.e., going 1st to 3rd on a single or scoring from 1st on a double); that's the same as Ivan Rodriguez had through age 30, and Pudge was considered pretty fast for a catcher.

By the way, Napoli went 3 for 4 Sunday and hit his 8th HR in just 99 AB. His BA is just .212, but his OBP is .358 and he's slugging .505. Somewhere, Fiore Gino Tennaci is smiling....

Today's Big League Stew makes note of that fact that on Saturday, in the 2874th game of his career, Omar Vizquel played first base for the first time.  This brings to mind a thread from last season in which it was  noted  that in 2009, Vizquel played 3rd base for the first time in his 2683rd career game.

Click here to see what other players our reader's discovered as having played a new position after a substantial career.

Spencer Fordin has the story at mlb.com.

Read the rest of this entry »

Nine More Outs is a group of three guys -- two Mets fans and a Yankee fan -- who go to various ballparks and act as though they are the home team's biggest fans for 1 game. (You may remember them from this post last year.) This time around, they visited Fenway Park in the guise of die-hard Nation members.

A fascinating list from David Schoenfield of ESPN's SweetSpot blog. I posted the link at Stathead, but I knew I needed to post it here as well, because it's a great discussion starter and all-around trip down memory lane.