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Laynee posted:So, you want a stupid question? I got some. I'll start easy (for you guys). How do I read the score?!? I turn on a game, and there's a ton of numbers! I just want to know who's winning! I'm digging up a week-old post, but hello fellow Pirates fan! If you have any questions about the team in particular, I'd be glad to answer them, here or in some possibly-more-topical venue.
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| # ¿ Apr 15, 2011 09:21 |
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| # ¿ May 19, 2013 15:54 |
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the popes toes posted:Why does the ump indicate a foul tip if it occurs on the first two strikes? Why does it matter? It's a strike in every regard, and the ball remains alive. Why indicate it? Could it be a remnant of when foul balls weren't strikes?
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| # ¿ Apr 15, 2011 23:41 |
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Nerokerubina posted:Plays at the plate are also way way way more awkward when you have to take a throw, block the plate, then reach across your body with your right (glove) hand to make the tag. Also, given that I imagine the majority of hitters are right-handed, it's probably marginally easier for a right-handed catcher to throw out baserunners.
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| # ¿ Apr 15, 2011 23:43 |
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BIZORT posted:I still don't fully understand how the batter can run to first base if the ball bounces in front of the plate. If, with 2 outs, batter x swings at strike 3 but it bounces and he reaches first base running, does it count as an out? I never understood that. What is the origin of this rule? There must be a story behind it It's not if it bounces in front of the plate. It's any time the catcher doesn't catch the ball on a strikeout. Basically, a strikeout is the same as hitting the ball: it must be caught on the fly (in this case by the catcher) or you have to be tagged/forced out at first.
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| # ¿ Apr 16, 2011 01:36 |
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the popes toes posted:You've nailed it there. Because we played ball when we were kids, we bring stuff to the game as adult fans, and some players do as well, apparently. Professional baseball would be a million times better with more chatter. e: And fewer belly itchers
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| # ¿ Apr 16, 2011 03:02 |
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God, now I just imagined Arod sitting around on his off-days, thinking up new soulcrushing chatter slams, and then realizing that no one will ever hear them and going  It's Arod because he is a manchild and owns.
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| # ¿ Apr 16, 2011 03:09 |
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Ticallion Stallion posted:I've been doing that and also paying close attention to PitchFX on MLB.TV so far this season, which helps. I'm also curious about the strategy of different pitch types, as in why a pitcher would throw a changeup at a certain point or why the batter would be expecting certain pitches at certain points in an at-bat if that makes sense. To add to everyone else, hitters are typically weakest against pitches that break away from them. So a right-handed pitcher is going to throw more curves, sliders, or cut fastballs to a right-handed batter, and more sinkers, changeups, or screwballs to a lefty. (Of course, no pitcher has all of those pitches at their disposal.) As has been suggested, hitter's counts tend to call for more fastballs, as they're generally the easiest to control, whereas a pitcher's count lets you throw a curve in the dirt and hope to get a swing. But of course if you always throw a low curve 0-2, then hitters will notice and start laying off, so you have to do something else; or if you always throw a fastball down the middle 3-1, guys are going to start teeing off, so sometimes you hope you can get something else over the plate. It's also worth noting that good hitters can remember previous at-bats against you, so you have to work even harder to mix it up. The greatest hitters and pitchers have (if you believe the stories) an almost savant-level ability to do this--there are stories of guys like Manny Ramirez intentionally striking out in Spring Training so that the pitcher would throw him the same pitch in the regular season and he could crush it. A couple recommendations for future learning: 1) Get a copy of MLB The Show and make a Road to the Show pitcher. I know at least 09 has a feature where you can ask the catcher to suggest a pitch/location. As you play, you'll start to get an idea of the thought process (though obviously a lot less in-depth than real life). 2) Read interviews/books about pitching by pitchers (or hitting by hitters). Greg Maddux stories are definitely good for realizing just how much crazy wheels-within-wheels stuff sometimes goes into the pitcher/hitter duel.
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| # ¿ Apr 18, 2011 19:00 |
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Dusseldorf posted:It's still putting a counting stat where there shouldn't be one but at least it's not dependent on support runs or anything. I don't really see any reason for it to be picked up unless people are looking to replace Wins with something less lovely, but in that case why not nothing at all? Also the runs allowed restriction is really arbitrary, so it kind of sucks in that way. Like if you go 6 innings and allow 4 runs, is that really a better outing than a CG where you allow 5? I'd be alright with a QS that was something like "at least 5 innings, ERA of at most 5" or something, since I think there is value in a quick stat for how many good outings a guy had in a year. But still, a strictly back-of-the-baseball-card fun stat, not anything useful. e: I should make it clear that I'd really prefer a non-linear IP/RA scale for what constitutes a quality start. Mornacale fucked around with this message at Apr 19, 2011 around 02:05 |
| # ¿ Apr 19, 2011 01:57 |
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chrysamere posted:Is there value in low OBP high power guys? Mark Reynolds in my Baseball Mogul Orioles has a ton of power, but relatively low OBP, around .310 or so. Yeah, the big thing is just to keep in mind that not all hitters with similar OPSes are equal. A dude with a .400/.400 OBP/SLG is a fair bit better than .200/.600, even though that latter guy basically hits nothing but HR (and, in less extreme circumstances, OBP may still be undervalued compared to DINGERS, so he could come cheaper too). So the lower the OBP, the more extraordinary the power has to get to compensate.
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| # ¿ Apr 19, 2011 10:40 |
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Who hit .420/.465 and managed no more than .341 wOBA.
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| # ¿ Apr 19, 2011 19:12 |
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Um, Nyjer Morgan played hockey, so his grit is off the charts. Adam Dunn doesn't even like baseball.
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| # ¿ Apr 23, 2011 17:10 |
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The part that makes this all sensible, in case it's not coming through, is this: every player loses some of their skills as they age. But if a player has "young player" skills, say a speedy CF, then when they lose a step they can shift to a less demanding defensive position and possibly (not definitely, for sure) rework their offensive game some into more of a classic old-player game. On the other hand, someone who starts with old player skills and begins to slip doesn't really have a fallback position. They started slow and now they're even slower, so they're not going to provide value on defense or the basepaths, and now suddenly their bat isn't providing as much pop as it used to. Of course, it's possible to point out tons of examples as well as tons of counterexamples. The important thing is that the question has been statistically verified. So we're certainly not saying that, say, Jimmy Rollins will age better than Ryan Howard; we're saying that he's more likely to, based on this aspect of their games.
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2011 17:15 |
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JediGandalf posted:Pitching metrics question(s): I think the easiest way to think of SIERA is like the pitching equivalent of a linear weights metric like wOBA. It tries to break pitching down into the most basic outcomes that pitchers have control over--strikeouts, walks, and the GB/LD/FB split--determine how relatively good each of them is, and then combine a pitcher's rate of each into one number. xFIP is sort of like the OPS in this analogy, I guess, though really it doesn't match up great. Mornacale fucked around with this message at May 12, 2011 around 05:35 |
| # ¿ May 12, 2011 05:26 |
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More revenue sharing (with requirements that it be spent on baseball), punitive luxury tax, equality for the people.
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| # ¿ May 18, 2011 06:43 |
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:More importantly, though, it's actually easier to find a serviceable - not great, but serviceable - fifth starter than it is to find a really good closer. You can tell, because good closers get large amounts of money and serviceable fifth starters get peanuts. That's the Invisible Hand in action, yo. While closers are definitely paid very highly, it's definitely not true that "fifth starters get peanuts". The market for a reliable back-of-the-rotation guy is pretty ridiculous itself right now. Also, judging relative player worth by how much they get paid is silly. "Closer" is a meaningless term, and you can find many very capable relievers for very reasonable costs (though that era may be coming to a close now, thanks Yankees and Tigers!). Off the top of my head, look at what the Pirates and Rays have been doing the last couple years. In fact, if any team was going to do something like this, the 2011 Pirates bullpen would be a good model to build on. Hanrahan, Meek, Resop, and Veras can more-or-less reliably shut down an inning, and Karstens and McCutchen are quality long guys who could probably fill up those extra frames. It'd be harder to support a LOOGY like Beimel, but there's probably an inning in any given game where he'd face at least a couple lefties. The real issue is lack of flexibility. Because you're stretching your staff so tight to pitch every inning without getting overworked, you end up without good answers to the following questions: - What happens if you go into a long extra-innings game? - What happens if your LOOGY is now facing three right-handers in a row? - What if a guy can't locate his pitches and walks the bases loaded with no outs? - What if your long guy, who you were counting on to pitch the first 2-3 innings, gets hurt after one batter? Sure, you have more pitchers than the game has innings, but if even a single thing goes wrong you're suddenly looking at using almost your entire staff for the game. How many baseball games have nothing go wrong? How much benefit is this really going to give you, to make it worth that sort of risk?
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| # ¿ May 24, 2011 20:00 |
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The Lord of Hats posted:I'm not entirely new to baseball, but there's one thing that I still haven't quite figured out: is there any set of guidelines as to what constitutes an error and what doesn't? Nope. (I mean, I think there actually is, but it's 100% subjective and left up to the individual scorer, so de facto no.)
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| # ¿ May 24, 2011 21:45 |
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Actually, I think a more interesting experiment would be building a team of guys who can all go several innings, but who tend to do poorly if they have to go through the order more than once (so, basically 2-pitch guys with okay stamina). Then just have one pitch innings 1-3, one for innings 4-6, and one for 7-9. They could probably throw about twice as often as a normal starter, so get say nine of those guys and three great one-inning/situational dudes and see what happens. e: Added benefit in the NL is that, while you can't guarantee it, your pitchers will still get very few ABs.
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| # ¿ May 25, 2011 03:58 |
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Captain Internet posted:Okay, so I know how the game of baseball is played because I played it as a kid but reading the MLB threads on SAS I honestly don't know what the hell most people are talking about. I tried looking up each of the stats individuality but it became pretty daunting. I had always heard that baseball was very statistics based but never tried to read baseball fans on forums. Welcome to the Pirates bandwagon! We have a small but cool crew here on SAS. Here are some things for you: 1) My favorite Pirates blogs are: Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke?; Pirates Prospects; The Mc Effect; and Bucs Dugout. WHYGAVS is run by a cool dude and hence @whygavs is a fun Twitter follow, and @Dejan_Kovacevic is a PPG sportswriter with lots of good news and so-so opinions. 2) Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference are your go-to sites for looking stuff up. They're really overwhelming at first, but they're incredibly invaluable as you get more into things. 3) I think the biggest key to understanding baseball is to understand the value of an out. Most other sports are limited by a timer that runs for both teams, whereas baseball gives each team a separate pool of outs. The more outs you use up, the closer you are to losing. Hence why we think OBP is such an important stat--it could just as easily be called "probability of not getting out"--and why we generally hate sac bunting and low-percentage baserunning. If you'd like, I can make a follow-up post giving you an overview of the 2011 Pirates and their farm system. e: 4) Make sure you know a quality therapist. Mornacale fucked around with this message at May 25, 2011 around 19:23 |
| # ¿ May 25, 2011 19:12 |
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dog poop n doritos posted:I'm trying to explain to some people why Dusty Baker isn't that great of a manager, but I'm having a hard time finding actual concrete evidence, it's mainly just me saying "Well, he leaves his pitchers in too long and also plays bad people and makes stupid lineups" with them going "nuh uh". I mean, with something like my justified hatred of Jonny Gomes I can point to .168 BA or the fact that he has 44 strike outs in 43 games or whatever, and it's pretty hard to argue with. Is there anything sort of along those lines I can point out about Dusty or is it just going to be a he said/she said thing where neither of us agree with the other and we end up not on speaking terms? You can show them the pitch counts for some of his pitchers (though I hear Dusty has been a lot better the last few years), but frankly there's a fair chance that anyone who thinks he's a great manager is not going to care about pitch counts. e: Here's a question I was wondering about this morning. Does anyone know the origin/purpose of throwing around the horn? Is it just to keep infielders loose/attentive? Mornacale fucked around with this message at May 27, 2011 around 20:11 |
| # ¿ May 27, 2011 19:12 |
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This could also be of use.
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| # ¿ May 27, 2011 22:47 |
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Pumpkin McPastry posted:Didn't Baker also bat like, Corey Patterson lead off for a year with him OBPing like .270? Funny that you should mention Corey Patterson. e: Dusty Baker, 2007 posted:Who have been the champions the last seven, eight years? Have you ever heard the Yankees talk about on-base percentage and walks? . . . Walks help. They do help. But you aren’t going to walk across the plate, you’re going to hit across the plate. That’s the school I come from. e2: Oh my god, it keeps getting better. Justin Breen, professional sportswriter posted:Any club searching for the right guy would simply have to look at Baker, who's not Jim Leyland, but he's pretty darn close. Mornacale fucked around with this message at May 27, 2011 around 23:57 |
| # ¿ May 27, 2011 23:09 |
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The only downside to otf's avatar is how disappointed I'd be if I ever found out he didn't actually look like that.
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| # ¿ May 28, 2011 08:31 |
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Longbaugh01 posted:That was already recently found out in a N/V thread where he linked a Nats highlight that he was in the crowd for and on camera. Shutupshutupshutupshutup la la la la la
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| # ¿ May 28, 2011 22:05 |
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Groucho Marxist posted:In high school. Look at the top high school pitching prospects any year and you'll see them throwing 90s. That's not entirely true. You see a lot of kids drafted due to "projectable frames," indicating that there's an expectation that some will take until their early 20s to fill out all the way.
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| # ¿ May 31, 2011 00:12 |
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Until Fenway and Wrigley are both dead and gone, there's no chance that they'd ever standardize baseball dimensions. Also I agree that it would be a boring and dumb thing. Having every baseball field be unique is one of the unique and cool things about the sport. e: Also, it helps to create an actual home-field advantage, and home-field advantage is fun and should be encouraged.
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| # ¿ May 31, 2011 18:22 |
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JediGandalf posted:I guess I see that now. Having "bandboxes" and pitcher friendly parks does add something to the sport. It's chance, for the Pirates at least. Last season the Pirates went 17-64 on the road and actually pretty decent at home. This season they're 15-14 on the road, 9-14 at home. PNC's park factors are basically neutral. e: As far as home-field advantage, I meant more along the lines of building your team around the park. For example, PNC's left field is significantly larger than right field, so they put Jose Tabata's superior defense there. Mornacale fucked around with this message at May 31, 2011 around 20:09 |
| # ¿ May 31, 2011 20:01 |
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Also, an error is scored as an AB, unless I am really confused.
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| # ¿ Jun 2, 2011 17:51 |
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alpha_destroy posted:e: Ok, I am a long time baseball fan, but am really new to sabermeterics and general baseball theory. Here is my question, if steals and bunts and the like are bad, how do the Angels' win so often? I mean, they seem to me to be the biggest offenders of "scrappy small ball." Am I just totally off base? Sometimes you get lucky.
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| # ¿ Jun 6, 2011 06:54 |
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Dusseldorf posted:The median for every batter in the league, including Bautista, is an out. He's talking about median game performance, though, not median PA. It would pretty much be Joe Morgan's favorite statistic, since it rewards  consistency (Joe Morgan would actually complain about how Billy Beane wrote a book about it.)
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| # ¿ Jun 7, 2011 18:54 |
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oystertoadfish posted:he's asking if anybody ranks all the players and finds the median. you could either find the normal median of all players over X PAs or you could make it a weighted median* by listing instead of each player's rate stat, that rate stat X number of times where X is the number of PAs you have, then putting all of those values in order and finding the weighted median No, I think he's just saying if you take a guy who's had a .250/.400/.500 line in five games, is that because he went 1/4, BB, 2B in every game or because he went 0/4, 1 BB in three games; 2/3, 2 BB, 2 2B in one; and 3/5, 3 2B in one. (forgive me if I messed up my contrived stats)
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| # ¿ Jun 7, 2011 19:13 |
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I think stuart scott irl is saying we ought to ask Gio what he meant by his question.
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| # ¿ Jun 7, 2011 21:05 |
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I can't say much about the history of the cutter, but I can say that there is no such thing as "late break" (e: except maybe from a knuckleball, because knuckleballs are magic). You're right, though, that a cutter is basically just a faster, flatter slider.
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| # ¿ Jun 7, 2011 21:47 |
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taladel posted:Thanks to this thread (and I CHALLENGE THEE's 'Ask/Tell' thread), my interest in baseball has been reinvigorated. My dad grew up listening to games on the radio and watching with his dad, but got fed up during the '94 strike (I was three, so I don't remember it) and rarely watches. It's also worth noting that pitches are not always easily classified by break alone. Here are some graphs detailing the pitches of Royals starter Sean O'Sullivan. The top-left graph shows horizontal and vertical break of his different pitches; note how the sliders (red) and curves (purple) are all mixed together. If you look down on the next row of graphs, you'll see break vs velocity, which shows a cleaner break between the two pitches, but there are still a whole bunch of sliders that seem to be mis-classified. In any event, the point is that the line between what is a "slider", a "slurve", a "curve" etc. is not extremely well-defined. Next, please tell me the difference between O'Sullivan's four-seamer (green) and his two-seamer (blue). (The fact that all his pitches tend to run together is probably one of the reasons that O'Sullivan is the worst starting pitcher of all time.)
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| # ¿ Jun 7, 2011 23:31 |
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stuart scott irl posted:I think the advantage to the cutter for a lot of pitchers is that it looks like your four-seam fastball but breaks to the other side of the plate, isn't that right? You're thinking 2-seamer. Actually, a cutter breaks to the "same" side as all the other fastballs, it just breaks less so than they do. So if you set a four-seamer as "no break", then a two-seamer and a cutter break in opposite directions.
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| # ¿ Jun 8, 2011 00:58 |
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OdinsBeard posted:Wrong. Huh. I could've sworn I always saw it mostly in the 2nd quadrant of break graphs. My bad.
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| # ¿ Jun 8, 2011 02:06 |
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Jeff Loria is legitimately an evil man, though, and it makes me upset that he's going to get what he wants again.
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| # ¿ Jun 8, 2011 18:17 |
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Nate RFB posted:I don't think that's how WAR works, at least. I think as far as WAR is concerned, every win is equal. Hypothetically that may be wrong I guess though. I'm not sure I understand why you feel you'd get diminishing returns, though. I mean I sort of understanding diminishing returns when it comes to "too much pitching" or "too much hitting" (IIRC Baseball Between The Numbers talks about this), but a 120 win team can "make up ground" a number of ways by improving its players further still can't it? No, I'm pretty sure he's right. WAR is actually just RAR/10, because someone did a regression or whatever and figured out that 10 runs ~= 1 win on average. But really, runs translate into wins proportionally to the number of runs the rest of the team scores/allows: turning a +500 run differential into +510 is probably going to do less than turning +0 into +10. So 10 runs = 1 win is in fact an estimate; very good or very bad teams will probably see less improvement, mediocre ones will probably see more. I couldn't say how much more/less, though.
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| # ¿ Jun 14, 2011 23:50 |
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Basically, the fact is that even some of the more basic metrics (even just straight OBP) are so effective at measuring a batter's ability that the difference between them and hyper-advanced super mathemagic like wOBA and wRC+ is always going to be slight. e: ^^^ 1) No, there's no limit to how far you can lead off. You could just have a leisurely stroll around the bases if the other team let you. 2) It may be required that someone be listed as officially playing each of those positions, but in general the players can line up anywhere they want on the field. Check out some of the defensive alignments against guys like David Ortiz, where the 1B plays right on the line, the 2B plays at their normal position, the SS plays right behind second base, and the 3B plays in short right field. Also, I know I've heard of someone (probably TLR) using a 5-infielder alignment once or twice. Mornacale fucked around with this message at Jun 22, 2011 around 18:23 |
| # ¿ Jun 22, 2011 18:19 |
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Pretty much the whole world is an NYC market, which is a lot of why the Yankees will have a significant advantage over every other team until and unless baseball's economy is reformed.
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| # ¿ Jun 22, 2011 23:24 |
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| # ¿ May 19, 2013 15:54 |
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Captain Charisma posted:How exactly would "reforming baseball's economy" make the Yankees less popular It wouldn't, idgaf if the Yankees are a worldwide brand. The point would be to keep that popularity from translating directly into a competitive advantage. Man-Thing posted:gently caress you. Let's dispel this talking point again.
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| # ¿ Jun 23, 2011 23:53 |
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