Archive for the 'Splits' Category

Kingturtle posted a suggestion about quantifying whether players truly hit better when playing the field instead of DHing. See his comment here.

I looked into this a little. Click through for the details.

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A couple of quick notes on BOS and LAA as the playoffs kick off tonight:

• Boston might be a little bit different of a team offensively from what you're expecting. Check out the list of teams in 2007 with the most player with at least 25 stolen bases. Boston is among 9 teams with 2 such players (Julio Lugo and Count Chocula...errrr Coco Crisp.) You have to go back a long, long way to find the last time the Red Sox did that.
• John Lackey's numbers against the Red Sox leave something to be desired:

    Split          G   GS  GF  W   L   S   CG SHO   IP     ERA    H    R   ER   HR  BB  IBB  SO  HBP
+-+------------+----+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+------+------+----+----+----+---+----+---+----+---+
   BOS            11  11   0   1   6   0   0   0   60.1   6.27   90   49   42  10   26   3   48   3

And his career numbers at Fenway Park:

    Split          G   GS  GF  W   L   S   CG SHO   IP     ERA    H    R   ER   HR  BB  IBB  SO  HBP
+-+------------+----+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+------+------+----+----+----+---+----+---+----+---+
BOS-Fenway Pk       7   7   0   1   4   0   0   0   35     7.46   59   36   29   7   12   1   27   2

We'll see what it all means in about 7 hours.

I wanted to use some league-wide 2007 batting splits to emphasize a couple of points.

First, all the data I am citing can be found on the 2007 AL batting splits page and the 2007 NL batting splits page. This type of data is among my most favorite at B-R.com because there's a lot you can glean from such large sample sizes, and yet this data isn't easily available in many places.

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• Jimmy Rollins hit his 30th homer last night, joining the 30/30 club (the other 30 being stolen bases, in case you've been living under a rock since 1987.) Courtesy of some stats given out during the Phillies' radio broadcast of last night's game, Rollins becomes only the second Phillie ever to have a 30/30 season (Bobby Abreu has done it twice,) and just the 3rd full-time shortstop to do it. That should earn him a few more MVP votes.

• Manny Ramirez returned to the Boston lineup yesterday after missing 24 games with an oblique strain, but he batted 2nd instead of his customary 4th. I assume that Francona was trying to prevent Manny from swinging for the fences and instead just try to make contact, as Manny's oblique is almost certainly not fully healed. Anyway, before last night Manny had just 9 of his career 8331 plate appearances from the 2-hole, and most of those came in his early years with Cleveland. He has batted 4th the most by far, with 5474 PAs hitting cleanup.

• Matt Cain. It's too painful to even go into details of last night's game, but let's just say he was robbed again.

• Prince Fielder homered twice last night to give him 50 on the season, and now he and his Big Daddy are the only father-son combo to each have 50-homer seasons. However, I am very disappointed in both generations of Fielder for airing their family dispute publicly. Cecil has called Prince disrespectful, and now Prince says he's glad to stick it to his father. I understand that people sometimes have differences, but family issues should stay within the family. Public jabs like that only make everyone involved look increasingly immature and irrational.

A lot has been written about Matt Cain's unlucky season, but I just thought I'd add a few tidbits.

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As a general baseball fan, I'd really like to see Kansas City become a competitive team once again. That region is great for baseball, and a lot of great bits of MLB history have happened there.

I'm thoroughly encouraged by Kansas City's pitching staff.

First of all, everybody laughed when KC picked up Gil Meche. Well, he's got an ERA+ of 129, has pitched 202 innings, and has put together one of the most solid seasons for a Royals starting pitcher in a long time. Brian Bannister (who I didn't know until just now is the son of Floyd Bannister) has been equally solid, and together they make a great 1-2 punch.

Now, add that Zack Greinke made his best all-time career start last night, and he might be back on track to becoming another solid starter.

KC's relief pitching has also been good. As of today, here are the splits for relief pitching in the American League. Altogether they've got the 6th best AL ERA and allowed the 3rd-fewest walks with the 2nd-most strikeouts.

My feeling is that solid pitching is a lot more important than hitting, because it's significantly easier to either develop (from within) or attract (as free agents) good hitting, especially with a good young pitching staff. Ultimately they'll need both to be successful, but I think they're pretty close to having the more difficult one nailed.

A few notes on some of the Red Sox starters:

• Tim Wakefield just had his worst game ever against Tampa Bay (I mean worst game against TBD specifically, not worst game in his career.) And that's saying something, because prior to that game, he was 19-2 against them, with a 2.72 ERA in 188.1 innings. Looking at his career splits, he's got far better numbers against Tampa Bay than against any other team (minimum 10 starts,) although he's got nice numbers against Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Toronto. What active pitchers have more wins against specific franchises....anybody know?
• Looking at pitchers in 2007 with at least 10 wins, 10 losses, and an ERA over 4.00, we find two BoSox starters: Wakefield and Daisuke Matsuzaka. Overall, it's not a very impressive list, with the exception of Zambrano, who has had a strange season. It makes one wonder if Matsuzaka has topped out already in his major league career. (I swear, I wrote this before Steve posted something very similar this morning.)
• Fenway Park hasn't been very kind to Josh Beckett since he joined Boston, but then again it hasn't been kind to very many pitchers over the last 100 years. Beckett's success this year is quite probably for real, as it's his road numbers that have vastly improved. Last year on the road, he had a 5.21 ERA with 24 HR in 95 innings. This year, it's 2.23 with 7 HR in 84.2 innings. Odds are that he'll be somewhere in the middle next year, which will still make for a very good season.
• Curt Schilling currently has the 35th best ERA+ for a pitcher 40 or over making at least 20 starts. And he currently has the 51st best WHIP for the same criteria. There was so much talk in spring training about him wanting a contract extension. He's certainly pitched well enough (although maybe not often enough) to get plenty of interest as a free agent this winter.

• Before yesterday, Jake Peavy was 3-0 in 4 starts this season against Arizona, allowing 5 ER in 26.1 innings for a 1.71 ERA, with 8 walks and 45 (!!) strikeouts. Yesterday, he gave up 8 ER alone in just 4 innings.

• Carlos Pena set the record for RBIs in a game by a Devil Ray. He's already got the Tampa Bay record for HR in a season. With 13 RBIs, he'll have that season record too. Not bad for a guy who's been traded or released 5 times.

• The use of the Play Index by baseball journalists is becoming quite prevalent. Here's an example by Peter Abraham of the Journal News.

A reader asked, so I'll post the answer here.

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Have you seen Pat Burrell's batting splits for pre-All-star and post-All-star this season?

Very interesting:

 I Split         G   GS  PA  AB  R   H  2B 3B HR RBI  BB IBB  SO HBP  SH  SF ROE GDP  SB CS   BA   OBP   SLG   OPS  BAbip sOPS+ tOPS+ Split
+-+------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+--+--+--+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------------+
   1st Half      81  69 291 228  32  49 11  0 11  37  58   1  58   3   0   2   2   7   0  0  .215  .378  .408  .786  .236   112    73 1st Half
   2nd Half      44  44 181 145  25  51 11  0 11  37  31   0  35   1   0   4   0   1   0  0  .352  .459  .655 1.114  .388   188   142 2nd Half

He has had an OPS more than 300 points higher, and has the same number of HRs and RBIs in each half (in many fewer PAs in the second half.) If the Phillies make the playoffs, it will be in part thanks to Burrell, as well as Ryan Howard's resurgence and Chase Utley's return from injury (not that Tadahito Iguchi did poorly in Utley's absence--quite the opposite.)

And by the way, Burrell's second half stats don't include his 2 HR and 3 RBI from yesterday. Burrell must have loved his key homer off Billy Wagner yesterday given their nasty history.

By the way, Burrell is not one of those players who always hits better in the second half. Prior to this season, his first-half and second-half numbers over his career were very similar. He's had a couple of years where he hit significantly better in the first half.