Sunday, July 31, 2016

2017: NON-SAVE SITUATION PITCHING PERFORMANCE UPDATE

Thought we were dead? No such luck...we became embroiled in so much "film intrigue" beginning in late July of 2016 that we were dead to the world as far as baseball was concerned...though we watched the Cubs break their jinx via much good play and many fortunate breaks--winning, in fact, in spite of Joe Maddon turning into the usual post-season caricature that one would have thought he (of all people) might have avoided.

Just as we were getting ready to bring the BBB blog back into something resembling live action, however, another twist of fate roiled into play. We called it the "trifecta"--you are more likely to call it triple bypass surgery. (Yes, the man who adamantly, stubbornly, even absurdly demands more triples in baseball wound up with the biggest "triple" of his life.)

The chest pain had manifested itself a few times before a friend convinced us to visit the ER in late March. One thing led to another--the cath test, where they give you silly drugs and run a tube from your wrist into your heart to look for arterial blockage, showed that there was too much "clog" to avoid the riverdance of full bypass surgery. After a weekend of addressing every detail in every worst-case scenario, we were wheeled up to the top floor of Santa Barbara's Cottage Hospital, where a jaunty crew met us at the crack of dawn.

They didn't give us any time to think about the consequences of failure, though it cannot help but reside in the silent recesses of one's mind. What we knew was that if we made it, we would slowly and strangely emerge from the fog of anesthesia into what we might first mistake for an ante-room of Hell but that in some amount of short order would be recognized as the Intensive Care Unit.

And that's just exactly what happened. One eye opened to a haze of lights and a fractured perspective; voices of unseen people were ladled with a weird vibrato. Then, in what seemed like just a few minutes but was in actuality more than a half hour, the other eye came back online, and sound was suddenly the way it had been before we'd been pumped full of enough stuff to stay underneath all forms of radar for the four hours needed to fix things and keep them from falling apart.

So--a month later, we remembered that some people might actually want some of this type of recalcitrant commentary--even in a time of resistance to the infinite cruelty of those who would make America a plantation again. And it would be a pleasure, in fact, to be that blissfully irrelevant--even if only occasionally.

With that, we remind you of our most intriguing discovery in the past several years--the data lurking in the shadows of Forman et fils pitching breakouts--what they call "non-save situations." (You can search through the maze of past posts to get re-acquainted with the particulars of all this, but suffice it to say it's the games where teams are tied with their opponents or behind--situations that have no "save" or "hold" component, that fit into this category.)

You might remember that these games produce an aggregate .560 WPCT for teams, belying the idea that everything in baseball is a zero sum proposition. But what you probably don't remember is that the distribution of these WPCTs clearly show that the teams who do better than average in winning games from such situations are the ones who go to the post-season.

Here's today's stat takeaway: from 2000-2016, teams that failed to make the playoffs had an aggregate .543 WPCT in non-save decisions.

Whereas teams that made the playoffs had--wait for it--a .625 WPCT in those same situations.

This is the greatest distance between "haves" (playoff teams) and "have-nots" (also-rans) in baseball history. (Could it be that this is related to the general rising inequality in America? Or are we just stretching things too far because we can?)

At any rate, you'd be well-advised to follow this split in Forman et fils Play Index. We'll update it periodically during the 2017 season--when we have time (we're still working on a non-baseball book and, trust us, it's a beast).


Friday, July 29, 2016

HITTERS OVER THE PAST 365 DAYS

Courtesy of David Pinto's Day-by-Day Database at Baseball Musings. Former MVPs in blue.

Here are the top guys...



Former MVPs in blue. David Ortiz plans to retire? Jeez.

Next tier...


Adrian Beltre looks like he will hang in to get 3000 hits. After he and Iricho! do it, however, it will be a long while before anyone else does it...

Third tier...


You can see how recent NL MVPs (Buster Posey and Andrew McCutchen) have declined...they have some work to do in the second half of 2016 to help their teams make the post-season.

Thursday, July 14, 2016

2016: COMPLETE GAMES #39-42

Updating the ever-ongoing CG chase to oblivion...

Ten days passed (from 6/25 to 7/5) between CGs 38 and 39.

The CG count at the All-Star Break: 42, nine behind the 2015 pace, a year that saw CGs dwindle down to exactly 100.

It's looking more and more likely that we will see CGs drop into double figures this season.

The team emerging as the practitioner of the CG: the San Francisco Giants, who now have eight (8!) complete games for the season. (And it's only July!)

Pitcher won-loss records in CGs remains quite high: 37-5 (.881)...compared with .780 (78-22) in 2015. Overall ERA for 2016 CGs is 0.72, as opposed to 0.92 last year. Last season there were 9 CGs with at least 4 runs allowed; thus far in 2016, that total is...zero.

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

TOTS GETTING TATERED IN CINCY--A NEW HR RECORD ABORNING??

We all too often focus on baseball's offensive statistics from the point of view of the offense...which is natural, because the offense is what drives run-scoring. But we don't often look at the offensive stats that accrue from what opposing batters do versus the collective pitching staffs of individual teams.

For example, many people knew for years that the 1961 Yankees set a new team HR record. There were three reasons for this, in order of significance: Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and the fact that the new record (240 HRs) was a nice round number.

But ask folks what team's pitching staff has surrendered the most HRs in a season and you will receive the "catwalk stare"--that blank look that runway models have brought to "perfection" as they avoid eye contact while making eye contact...

Hell, even we didn't know the answer. (But we promise that our stare will be "gimlet-eyed" at the very least.)

Before we reveal it, however, let's go on record with the fact that it's a record in grave danger of being shattered in 2016. If you've read the posts further below, you know that HRs are currently spiking, bringing us back to HR/G levels not seen since the early days of the 1990s offensive explosion.

And while investigating that trend, we stumbled onto the "Batting Against" statistics at Forman et fils and proceeded to watch our eyes pop when we saw that the Cincinnati Reds had already given up 154 HRs in the first 89 games of the 2016 season.

That rate extrapolates out to a staggering total of 280 HRs, which was characterized above as "shattering" the current record.

The current record for HRs allowed by a team is 241, which was set by the 1996 Detroit Tigers. (The team record for hitting homers has evolved up to 264, set by the 1997 Seattle Mariners, and there has always been a bit of a "lag" in the "homers allowed" stat.)

But those Reds look to be breezing their way to a total that will surpass that. We checked to see if this might be due to a series of short-term performers on the Cincinnati pitching staff who gave up some mind-boggling number of HRs before being sent to the back to the minors--one pitcher (Jon Moscot) fits that description, having allowed 10 HRs in just 21 1/3 innings. And Alfredo Simon, an established starter for the past several years who's currently sporting a 9.85 ERA, has also been prone to the long ball: 14 HRs in 53 IP.

That might seem to mitigate the Reds' chances a bit, but we also checked the HR/G rate in the first part of July, when neither of these estimable gentlemen were active--and they are still giving up taters at an elevated rate: 20 in the past ten games.

So this is going to be very interesting to track as the Reds' abysmal season plays out. (And poor overall performance, rather unsurprisingly, goes hand-in-hand with giving up carloads of HRs. Of the 71 teams that have allowed 200+ HRs, only 13 have managed to play at least .500 ball while doing so.)

Stay tuned...

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

2016: QMAX COMP...KERSHAW v. ARRIETA

Too bad that Clayton Kershaw is down indefinitely with back miseries, it would have been interesting to see just how his terrific start in 2016 would have played out with a full set of starts.

The Quality Matrix had "the Claw" as a sub-4 pitcher through his first 16 GS (2.56 "S," 1.31 "C", 3.87 "T"). His QMAX matrix chart was free of anything to the right of a "2C" game until his last start (when the injury surfaced).

His QWP (QMAX Win Pct), built from the probabilistic won-loss from each of the 49 sectors in the QMAX matrix grid, was an excellent but not superhuman .742. The reason it's not hovering closer to .800? You have to really avoid "hit hard" games...Kershaw's 13% is excellent but not superhuman. You've really got to be in single digits with respect to HH to optimize your QWP. (Now there's some jargon for the ages...)

Jake Arrieta is showing some slippage in comparison with last year's CYA form. Over his first nine starts, his ERA was 1.29--a good bit lower than what even his QMAX scores to that point (2.33 "S," 2.89 "C") would have projected...but these numbers were still close to his overall numbers in 2015.

In his last eight starts, however, Jake's control has gotten shakier and he's become a good bit more hittable...his ERA over this span is 3.79 and the QMAX totals (3.75 "S," 3.75 "C") have been bringing him back toward earth. Overall, his BB/9 is close to double what it was in 2015.

Jake's QWP over his first 17 GS in '16 is a solid but not great .650. His hit prevention is still very good (3.00 "S"), but as his QMAX matrix chart indicates, he's gotten a good bit more erratic.

Monday, July 4, 2016

DICK ALLEN REDUX, OR: SOME SHOULD TAKE THE FIFTH ON THE FOURTH...

In a perpetual party-hearty world of desperate iconoclastic conformity, where so many seem in the grip of an intellectual poverty draped in the Bible and the American flag, we come to the fourth of July in this year of mock-fear and silicone-implant trembling, and find ourselves squarely in that darkling plain where the old, otherworldly poet is supposed to intervene before the pure products of America go crazy.

And, man oh man, does all of that strung-out syntax bring us crashing back to Dick Allen, who contains more multitudes than William Carlos Williams' siren call or a universe full of Whitman's samplers--a man who discovered, like our outgoing president, that backlash is more powerful, more relentless, more festering than any force in the dark heart of white America.

Dick Allen did not bear his burdens with grace while he was playing baseball, and that--and the impact of the backlash that imprinted itself on his brilliant but mercurial career--is why he remains an outsider to this day, both in terms of the world at large and in the tiny circle of faux-meritocracy that we clench our throats to call the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Baseball had the healing moment for the 1960s--that frenetic and foul decade that continues to split the country into shards of hate--in its hands for many, many years. It had a chance for one of the great symbolic moments in its history, simply waiting for--no, not inspiration, but mere common sense. It had two players who represented the polarities of the 1960s, the frenzy and the frustration from all sides, the warp and the woof in that tensed canvas of a history that so many have since taken in vain.

Those two men? Ron Santo and Dick Allen. Opposed forces in all senses--Santo, a white working-class diabetic with a quick temper  and what was characterized by several teammates as a chip on his shoulder; Allen, a deceptively fragile behemoth who would not bow to the desperate plantation mentality that washed over baseball like a bad smell exactly during the years he was active in the big leagues.

The game didn't come easily for Santo--while he was a difficult, daunting personality, he was driven to succeed and arguably overworked himself into a premature exit--one of the reasons that it took so long for him to finally be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Allen, by contrast, made what he did at the plate look easy: he was so good at it, despite imperfect eyesight, that he knew he didn't need to go through what he considered to be the needless rigors of spring training, or pre-game hitting practice. He knew how to marshal his talents, and he kept everyone away from them. Santo kept everyone away by being the most belligerent obsessive-compulsive on any diamond that he inhabited.

Despite these issues, both men deserved a spot in Cooperstown. But baseball dragged its feet. Bill James didn't help when he turned into a mendacious, muckraking moralizer about Allen in his fascinatingly fetid The Politics of Glory. Yes, Bill, you will forever be a lugnut for the cruel and all-too-usual punishment that you let loose on Allen in the closing pages of a book that desperately needed a machete-wielding editor to save us from all that moralizing. It only made it more rancid that your publisher draped the first edition of the book in red, white and blue bunting, clearly inspiring you to later make some of the most ill-advised and insipid interpretations of the Warren Court this side of Glenn Beck in Popular Crime.

Had those words been tempered with mercy and an actual understanding of what was happening in the 60s and 70s, they could have led to the healing event that baseball needed and will never get--the seemingly unimaginable embrace of the Silent Majority and the "Black Maudit." Santo, wheeled onto the dais to give a tear-stained speech about his love of the game and the value of forgiving one's enemies, particularly oneself; Allen, striding with a gingerly grace, admitting that he'd hoped for the honor despite his pose of unwavering indifference and resignation, turning to Santo and saying to him, "Look, Ron, this time we really are teammates...and God bless you."

It should have happened in 2009, the year we installed an African-American in the White House, before he spent too much time trying to appease the forces of white darkness that would look to thwart and hound his every move, and turn back the clock in favor of oligarchy, sexism, and fear-based hate. Those two elderly ballplayers,  on the Cooperstown dais on a Sunday not too far removed from the fourth of July, would have told the country that it was finally all right to quit fighting about the 1960s, to put it behind us at last--to let go.

But--no. It didn't happen. Santo had to die before he could be inducted, and one figures at this point that, after the one-vote-short fiasco that was the Veterans Committee result in 2015, that the same fate is now set in the house of cards for Dick Allen as well. One could hope that the new biography of Allen by Mitchell Nathanson, the curiously entitled God Almighty Hisself, with its (mostly) meticulous look at Allen's career and the media reception he encountered, would provide additional impetus to Allen's induction chances, but the response to the book has been mostly tepid.

That may be due to the fact that Nathanson often fails to get the flavor of Allen the ballplayer into his narrative. A careful, even-handed recitation of Allen's life as a lightning rod is detailed to a fault, but it rarely brings alive what Allen's presence on a baseball field was like--which was electric in the extreme. In his rush to examine the 1976 season as an example of how Allen could not step away from controversy when it came to management's attitude toward minority players, he undersells Allen's on-field contributions. Pointing out that Allen had only seven home runs in late June, he omits to mention that this total had been amassed in 119 ABs, a ratio that works out to a total of at least 30 HRs over an entire season. He mentions that Allen bristled at being dropped to seventh in the batting order, but he omits the fact that Dick was put back in the fifth slot after hitting .395 in the twelve games he hit from the #7 slot. In short, the world doesn't know (and mostly doesn't want to know) that Allen, when healthy in 1976, was close to his usual self (155 OPS+).

The man who made it look easy at the plate played hard on
the field...maybe too hard: he had more than his share of injuries.
The reason why Dick Allen belongs in the Hall of Fame is because he is one of the game's greatest hitters, and his peak is sufficient to carry him over any wonky "measurement standards" that can be imposed by those who purport to be objective but who ought to recuse themselves due to various forms of ideological bias. His career (1749 games) was short by some people's idea of a Hall of Famer, that's true, but these folk are loath to hear any excuses or extenuating circumstances, even as they create elaborate rationalizations for other, more favored, less "threatening" players.

As we've said many times, the Hall of Fame needs to be as large and inclusive as it can be in order to maximize its own scope and impact--it must reach out to all the people in order to make its message synonymous with the real meaning of the fourth of July, which is  not flag-waving and liquor consumption but "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Those who would tamper with others in those latter elemental efforts should find themselves in front of the kangaroo court that they've allowed to be installed in the so-called highest legal institution of the land and be forced to take the Fifth Amendment in response to relentless and protracted questioning.