Baseball Analytics

CSF77

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Pretty strong reason for the weakening of starting pitching.


"Baseball's baseball. It's been played for however long, 120 years or whatever, and it's always going to be the same. You rely on your defense as a pitcher, and somehow we get punished for that."

Greg Maddux, in particular, always said he didn't want to strike anyone out. That took too many pitches and he wanted to go 9 innings, but that game doesn't exist anymore.

It's all about max effort early now and hope to get through 5 innings.

"Obviously, strikeouts are great," Lester said. "But at the end of the day, it's about winning the baseball game. And if you're winning the baseball game, that's all that matters.

"I think when guys pitch well, there needs to be a justification for it."
 

fatbeard

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Pretty strong reason for the weakening of starting pitching.


"Baseball's baseball. It's been played for however long, 120 years or whatever, and it's always going to be the same. You rely on your defense as a pitcher, and somehow we get punished for that."

Greg Maddux, in particular, always said he didn't want to strike anyone out. That took too many pitches and he wanted to go 9 innings, but that game doesn't exist anymore.

It's all about max effort early now and hope to get through 5 innings.

"Obviously, strikeouts are great," Lester said. "But at the end of the day, it's about winning the baseball game. And if you're winning the baseball game, that's all that matters.

"I think when guys pitch well, there needs to be a justification for it."

Implement a pitch clock of a duration such that guys can't throw max effort every pitch without burning themselves out in three innings. Faster game, fewer strikeouts, more balls in play, less TTO baseball.
 

TC in Mississippi

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I've been sour on Rozner a bit lately, so much so that I've stopped listening to Hit & Run, but boy does he nail it here. Analytics should be the start of the journey not the alpha and the omega. The mantra for fifteen plus years has been that the "eye test" can trick you, and it absolutely can, but somewhere along the way we forgot that it's also important for a complete evaluation of a player, a team and a game. One of the things I've noticed this season is that people are realizing that while BA is not the all important stat it was considered to be for a century, it's also not something that should just be ignored. I'm OK with power guys hitting .250-.260 but it's also OK if they hit .280 or better and you can't field a team of launch angle guys. The Cubs are going to hit 50 fewer HR than last year and have a better offense. OBP is important, but so is hitting.
 

CSF77

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Implement a pitch clock of a duration such that guys can't throw max effort every pitch without burning themselves out in three innings. Faster game, fewer strikeouts, more balls in play, less TTO baseball.

I think the concept of getting easy outs should be brought back at the lower levels vs valuing SO rates.

A strike out honestly is a situational out. Any contact produces a run. So the desired result is a strike out. But sabermetrics and FIP had made the strike out the holy grail and now pitchers are judged by strike outs and limiting walks.

I believe there is a place for it but as a goto it turns starters into 5 inning pitchers. Let’s face it there are only a handful of guys that can pitch 7 innings while striking out every one. You end up with far more Karry Wood types struggling to get 5 in.
 

fatbeard

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I think the concept of getting easy outs should be brought back at the lower levels vs valuing SO rates.

A strike out honestly is a situational out. Any contact produces a run. So the desired result is a strike out. But sabermetrics and FIP had made the strike out the holy grail and now pitchers are judged by strike outs and limiting walks.

I believe there is a place for it but as a goto it turns starters into 5 inning pitchers. Let’s face it there are only a handful of guys that can pitch 7 innings while striking out every one. You end up with far more Karry Wood types struggling to get 5 in.

You also end up with baseball games being dominated by walks, strikeouts, and home runs. No one moving. No speed, no baserunning, no balls in play. An awful viewing product that drives fans and advertisers away. Lots of action is fun. Latin American baseball is a blast.
 

TC in Mississippi

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You also end up with baseball games being dominated by walks, strikeouts, and home runs. No one moving. No speed, no baserunning, no balls in play. An awful viewing product that drives fans and advertisers away. Lots of action is fun. Latin American baseball is a blast.

Yes, but don't forget that the "launch angle revolution" was driven in part to HR being down after the steroid era and "chicks dig the longball". Baseball is a game of adjustments, sometimes it adjusts to far in one direction sometimes too far in another. I love watching pitchers with velocity, for instance, but the sexiness of velo led to guys who just knew how to pitch but threw 90-92 being drummed out of the game in the low minors. The success of Kyle Hendricks and others, admittedly guys with low margin of error in terms of command, have shown organizations that maybe letting these guys advance past A ball, each according to their physical gifts, might just be a good idea.
 

CSF77

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The swing that Bryant uses is perfectly fine. It gives a longer hit box vs swinging down in the zone.

My opinion is just scout the hitters. See their tendency and exploit. Force them to improve or get booted out. Javy was a sucker for a slider in the dirt and he has laid off them. He was pull happy and now is looking to drive to RF.

A pitcher has to know where a hitters holes are. If he is locked in on fastball then go off speed in zone and velocity out. Later game when he is on his front door then amp it up.

The desired result shouldn’t be strike out. It should be an out that you set up.
 

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The overload of metric bullshit is not only damaging the game but damaging young arms as well. These kids can read, they know that the fastest way to turn heads is strikeouts which leads to a boatload of extra pitches and stress on young arms. How many times did Greg Maddux miss a start? Not many. It's not brain surgery, throw strikes and throw to contact.

I honestly don't know if there is any substance to this but I'm just wondering what the correlation between pitching analytics and TJS's....just a guess that they are NOT strange bedfellows.
 

CubsFaninMN

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I think it's important, too, that even Bill James has (somewhat hesitantly) chimed in against reading too much into specific metrics, like OPS. If the King of SABRE Metrics can be heard cautioning people not to read *everything* into specific metrics, it's the beginning of yet another re-assessment of how to judge and predict player performance.

It has seemed to me for some time that the various metrics are all looked at in a particular vacuum. Not necessarily between numbers and flesh, though there is that, but in a vacuum of not taking into account that a batter, over the course of a season, is facing a range of pitchers, all with varying abilities, strong and weak pitches, rates at which they tire, number of pitches their respective managers will allow them to throw in a game, etc. At the same time, pitchers face a wide variety of batters, each with different strengths and weaknesses, who may be in self-generated slumps or may be swinging the bat better than God right then. And the pitcher you are rating just happens to run across a bunch of guys playing over their heads in one stretch.

The general line is that such variations all even themselves out over the course of a season. But they often don't, and sometimes can't. There are strong and weak divisions, which really strongly impact the individual numbers of players on last-place teams in historically strong divisions. There are park adjustments to some individual metrics, but no divisional adjustments.

In terms of how we judge players, it just seems to me that the numbers all seem to assume that every batter faces the same quality and talent of pitching as every other batter, each at-bat, and each pitcher faces the same quality and talent of hitting, every at-bat. For a game that often boils down to epic battles between two determined men, one on the mound and one with a bat, this statistical rounding out of any differences from one match-up to the next, and judging performance as if there are no significant variations, or winners/losers of these face-to-face competitions, is what hurts the game to me.

YMMV.
 

Diehardfan

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I think it's important, too, that even Bill James has (somewhat hesitantly) chimed in against reading too much into specific metrics, like OPS. If the King of SABRE Metrics can be heard cautioning people not to read *everything* into specific metrics, it's the beginning of yet another re-assessment of how to judge and predict player performance.

It has seemed to me for some time that the various metrics are all looked at in a particular vacuum. Not necessarily between numbers and flesh, though there is that, but in a vacuum of not taking into account that a batter, over the course of a season, is facing a range of pitchers, all with varying abilities, strong and weak pitches, rates at which they tire, number of pitches their respective managers will allow them to throw in a game, etc. At the same time, pitchers face a wide variety of batters, each with different strengths and weaknesses, who may be in self-generated slumps or may be swinging the bat better than God right then. And the pitcher you are rating just happens to run across a bunch of guys playing over their heads in one stretch.

The general line is that such variations all even themselves out over the course of a season. But they often don't, and sometimes can't. There are strong and weak divisions, which really strongly impact the individual numbers of players on last-place teams in historically strong divisions. There are park adjustments to some individual metrics, but no divisional adjustments.

In terms of how we judge players, it just seems to me that the numbers all seem to assume that every batter faces the same quality and talent of pitching as every other batter, each at-bat, and each pitcher faces the same quality and talent of hitting, every at-bat. For a game that often boils down to epic battles between two determined men, one on the mound and one with a bat, this statistical rounding out of any differences from one match-up to the next, and judging performance as if there are no significant variations, or winners/losers of these face-to-face competitions, is what hurts the game to me.

YMMV.

I will never understand the highlighted line above. Why are these baseball extremists so preoccupied in predicting the future. The average fan reads this crap then gets disappointed when it doesn't happen. The fact is, that unless someone has a Delorean, it's never gonna happen. I always liked Lester but like him even more when he states that while this might be old school, that maybe people should just watch the games. Baseball stats, no matter how you want to label them are nothing more than numbers and numerical equations.....good luck tying that into the human factor.
 

TC in Mississippi

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I will never understand the highlighted line above. Why are these baseball extremists so preoccupied in predicting the future. The average fan reads this crap then gets disappointed when it doesn't happen. The fact is, that unless someone has a Delorean, it's never gonna happen. I always liked Lester but like him even more when he states that while this might be old school, that maybe people should just watch the games. Baseball stats, no matter how you want to label them are nothing more than numbers and numerical equations.....good luck tying that into the human factor.[/QUOTE

I get what you’re saying but predicting anything with mathematics is fun. I don’t go grocery shopping without trying to predict how long it will take based on the variables of the day. I literally have spreadsheets for everything I do (drives my wife nutty). That said I think you can try to predict with math but also understand that you have to watch the game to put everything in context. Both the eye test and statistics tell you something and putting those things together make the game more fun.
 

Diehardfan

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I will never understand the highlighted line above. Why are these baseball extremists so preoccupied in predicting the future. The average fan reads this crap then gets disappointed when it doesn't happen. The fact is, that unless someone has a Delorean, it's never gonna happen. I always liked Lester but like him even more when he states that while this might be old school, that maybe people should just watch the games. Baseball stats, no matter how you want to label them are nothing more than numbers and numerical equations.....good luck tying that into the human factor.[/QUOTE

I get what you’re saying but predicting anything with mathematics is fun. I don’t go grocery shopping without trying to predict how long it will take based on the variables of the day. I literally have spreadsheets for everything I do (drives my wife nutty). That said I think you can try to predict with math but also understand that you have to watch the game to put everything in context. Both the eye test and statistics tell you something and putting those things together make the game more fun.

Funny you should say that. I've always had this thing for numbers which also drives my wife nuts as well....but I don't do spreadsheets, I do it in my head. She actually has stopped using a calculator when I'm around as she's convinced God has embedded one in my head. Not sure why all these baseball numbers annoy me so much....it's probably that I use baseball as an escape where I don't have to calculate....just watch.
 

anotheridiot

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ANAL itics told Joe to bat LaStella 5th yesterday over a rookie with the biggest hit of his career, and everyone expected Q to pitch well again.

This is why ANAL itics will never truly take over.
 

fatbeard

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ANAL itics told Joe to bat LaStella 5th yesterday over a rookie with the biggest hit of his career, and everyone expected Q to pitch well again.

This is why ANAL itics will never truly take over.

Every single MLB front office is heavily driven by proprietary analytics. You lost the war, cupcake. Go home. The south shall not rise again.
 

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