Sabermetrics and Soda

I promised baseball for the 5 people who read this blog so baseball it will be, at first.

There is a statistical tracking club for baseball called SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) which analyzes baseball and has come up with categories of statistics called SABERMETRICS over the past couple of decades.

While I am someone who appreciates baseball for its statistical compilations this club has come up with really stupid stat categories yet leaves out a couple very, very important ones; ones which I believe should be a couple of the most important measures of a players offensive importance.

Wins Above Replacement, or WAR, is the most asinine of these stats. 

Here is the definition of WAR : WAR attempts to measure a player's value - expressed in wins - over that which would have been contributed by a fictional "replacement-level player" (essentially a AAA-quality player who can be readily acquired by a team at any time for the league's minimum salary) in the same amount of playing time.

The framework is simple: start with a player's Runs Above Average in various categories - batting, baserunning, double play avoidance, and fielding (plus a position adjustment) on the position-player side, and runs allowed below the league average (adjusting for park, opponents, leverage, and defense) for pitchers. Then figure out how far, in runs, the average player would have been from the replacement level in the player's playing time, and add that to their RAA. The result is Runs Above Replacement, which can be converted to Wins Above Replacement by using a runs-to-wins conversion factor (usually 10 runs = 1 win).

Huh? Total nonsense. 

There are so many variables which are unaccounted in some of these areas that it makes this a complete fantasy. Yet, there are people who swear by this and this statistic, alone, was at the center of a major debate in the 2012 AL MVP race between Miguel Cabrera and Mike Trout.

Trout, who strikes out at least 150 times a year still gets called the greatest player in the game. No one can be called one of the greatest players in the game with that many strikeouts, I’m sorry to say. 

So WAR is dumb.

Here is the other one that drives me nuts…OPS. This one is On Base Percentage plus Slugging Percentage. They add two stats together and come up with this one.

On Base Percentage IS one of the more valuable measures of a players offensive worth. People need to be on base in order for a team to score runs. A homerun is measured as a time on base so it’s a great tool to use to measure an offensive ability. It doesn’t tell anyone WHEN a player gets on base, but even if a team is trailing by a large margin, it still needs players on base in order to mount any sort of a comeback.

Slugging Percentage has always been pretty much of a waste of a stat. Its totals bases divided by times at bat. So if a player is up one time and hits a homerun, that is 4 total bases (a triple would be 3, double, 2, single 1.) The highest someone could manage to get is 4.000. It’s a measure of a power hitter, more than anything else, but if you read a players statistical line and see that they have hit 30 or 40 homeruns a year that is already obvious. 

So since we have those two stats already, and they are telling two different stories, the stat of OPS is a complete waste of time. It doesn’t tell the whole story about a player anyway. If someone has an OPS of .800, what is the stat that is the highest contributor to that total number? If I am a GM and I want a power hitter, I want the Slugging Percentage (although I’m just going to look at the amount of extra base hits he has anyway) and if I want to know if the player gets on base I want to know the On Base Percentage.

There used to be a stat called Game Winning RBI. Now, that sounded like a good one but its now no longer officially kept. Well, they figured it out wrong and that's why it failed. If someone drove in a run to make it 1-0 and the team held the lead all game long but won 10-9, the guy who drove in that very first run got credit for the GWRBI. This scenario is a bit tricky since there is no lead change, but really the guy who drove in the 10^th run is the guy who should have received credit for the GWRBI.

Now, the stats that SHOULD be officially tracked are Game Tying RBIS and Go Ahead RBIS. These are rubs driven in, at any point in any game, which obviously either tie up a game or give a team a lead. These are measures of REAL clutch hitters.

A player could get one of each if he were to hit a 2-run homerun with his team trailing by a run and gave them a lead. If a team was down by four and he hit a grandslam that’s still just one game-tying RBI. That is how this stat would be compiled.

The stat of hitting with Runners in Scoring Position is a decent stat but a runner in scoring position means that a runner is either on second and/or third. If a guy hits a solo homerun, or drives in a run from 1^st base he doesn’t get credit for a positive RISP stat. Game Tying and Go Ahead RBIS handle all of that. 

If I was a GM for a major league baseball team I would hire a statistical tracking service to find out who out there drives in the most of those kinds of runs. It’s one thing to have 6 rbis in a game but they all came when the team was losing by 15 runs, or something. Its quite another thing to have a guy drive in one run in a game but that run tied up the game at some point during the game.

So I would find those true clutch hitters and the guys with the highest On Base Percentage and do what I could to get them on my team.

But, no one is ever going to hire me to run a baseball team.

However, I CAN become a member of SABR and officially pitch those two stats. I would have to make a case for it and just don’t have the time. But if one of you five people who have read this are looking for something to do, feel free to take on my cause.

On one of the next tapings of WoW with Marsh & Mike we are going to discuss the fact that the City of Philadelphia just passed a soda tax. Now there is going to be an additional 1.5 cents per ounce charged to each soda purchase, whether its regular soda or even diet soda.

This communist tax is one which is supposed to help keep fat people from staying fat and they are using the children of Philadelphia as an excuse to implement this tax.

The problem with these taxes, as is the case with tobacco taxes, is that revenues only go up for a short period of time, then decrease. Budgets will be made predicting all sorts of windfall revenues from these taxes. Then when the revenue begins to dry up the communist politicians will figure out something else to tax.

Yes, I’m going to continue to use the term communist, because that is only what this is. Deal with it.

I already heard the new communist mayor of Philadelphia say this morning that this is “just the beginning,” with my own ears. 

These people need to be defeated…at every level. Every. Single. Level.

That’s it.

Done.

Baseball. Just Baseball

More about baseball and its recent changes today.

The changes about how a baserunner slides into a base, or how a catcher now has to block home plate, I believe are good ideas. 

Sure, it can be fun to knock out a catcher or break a shortstops leg on a non-slide (right Muttley?) but there’s clearly a difference between playing hard and playing dirty. This sport has done a fairly decent job of cleaning up itself over the 140 years it’s been in existence. 

Two changes coming up next year were recently announced. The first is that it will no longer be necessary to throw 4 pitches wildly out of the strike zone to intentionally walk a batter. This is a great change for MLB. Seeing a pitcher throw one of these pitches so far out of the range of the catcher practically never happens and this will speed up the game. No one tries to steal a base during these things and no one ever tries to hit one while being walked. 

Good move, MLB. Leave it for Little League for the time being, maybe, but perhaps take it out of there too. 

The other change is in the strike zone. The bottom part of the zone is moving from right below the knees to right above the knees. This is an effort to increase offense. 

In 1969 the pitching mound was lowered because of the lack of offense in 1968 and now MLB believes this change will increase offense once again.

I’m not really a fan of this type of change because it does make a big difference in the game. It can practically change an entire era of the game. 

In 1969 the average runs scored per game jumped one half a run across the Major Leagues. But that was also an expansion year with what one could argue was watered down talent. 

1968 was an aberration though. At an average ERA of 2.99 there hadn’t been an average that low since 1919, the year before the ball was juiced up a bit because of the popularity of the homerun and Babe Ruth. 1919 was also the year of the Black Sox scandal and it was thought that the change in offense would lure fans back to stadiums.

Since 1968 there hasn’t been an average ERA lower than 3.49 in the NL and this year, currently, its at 4.10.

It seems that MLB is more concerned about the amount of strikeouts being compiled by pitchers. There is a very noticeable trend upwards in the amount of strikeouts per game. In the late 60’s and early 70’s the average number of strikeouts was roughly 5 per game. Then in the 80’s and 90’s it moved into the 6 and lower 7 range and now it’s in the high 7’s and in the NL so far this year pitchers are striking out an average of over 8 per game.

I have to imagine that polls suggest that offense still draws in more fans than defense. But who doesn’t appreciate a Clayton Kershaw striking out 300 in a year when limited to a certain amount of pitches per game? Who doesn’t appreciate Noah Syndergaard blowing away batters with 100 mph fastballs? That is just as exciting as watching a guy hit a 450-foot homerun to me. 

These changes make debates about who are the best players of all time much more difficult to have, too. 

We had a Deadball era, a Spitball era, a Wartime era, and a Steroid era, to name a few. How, then, with these changes in rules and changes in times can someone say that Christy Mathewson or Randy Johnson was a better pitcher? Who can say that Hank Aaron or Johnny Mize was a better hitter? Makes it tough. Not a big deal in the overall context of life, of course, but as a fan of the sport it makes a difference.

How about instant replay? What do you think of that? I find it annoying, frankly. It’s abused by managers already. I think the “Manager’s Challenge” needs to be removed. I believe that replay should only be used by an umpire crew which believes that they need to get something right.

For instance, take the game on June 2, 2010 when Tigers pitcher Armando Gallaraga was pitching a perfect game. With two outs in the ninth a groundball to the right side of the Tigers infield was fielded by Miguel Cabrera who threw to a covering Gallaraga. Pretty much everyone in the world, except the first base umpire, saw that the runner was out and that just the 21^st perfect game in MLB was just thrown.

https://youtu.be/j5HTFZainm4

However, he was called safe. 

The next day the umpire even apologized at home plate to Gallaraga for the call. MLB Commissioner Bud Selig refused to overturn the call which, was the correct call even though it was unfortunate. 

This would have been one of those times where the other umpires, who maybe had a better look at the play, could come over,  and said, “let’s just double check that one.”

As someone who referees two sports in my free time (volleyball and basketball) I can attest that there are just times when a ref gets blocked from a proper view or a boundary call of some sort is just so close or happens so fast that it’s difficult for the naked eye to see. For those cases I don’t have a problem with replay. Some of them are still difficult to call even with replay.

I just have a problem with coaches running over to the phone on every single close play to check with their video crew to see if a fingernail came off of a bag while a fielder’s glove is still making contact with the runner. It’s particularly annoying when a guy slides into a base, seconds before a tag is applied, and while sliding a bit over the bag but not past it, his body lifts up a bit and he gets called out. That’s not even close to “the spirit of the game.” It’s one thing if a guy slides past a bag, for example, but clearly another in that other situation. 

Hopefully some of the annoying aspects of video replay will iron out over the next few years. 

What I really don’t want to see is what I have already seen suggested…robotic calling of strikes and balls. Umpires, officials, and referees are part of every sport and need to continue to be part of sports. Bad calls are part of games and, let’s face facts for a minute…umpires are needed to give players excuses for losing games. They also give reasons for fans to believe that the umps blew the game and not that their own team didn’t really do what it took to win the game. Umpires have to be right 100% of the time or they are vilified and charged with blowing games. A batter in MLB who successfully gets a hit just 30% of time (to hit .300) doesn't get blamed, as often it seems, and then goes to the Hall of Fame. 

A discussion of new baseball stats will be next. But for now I’m…

Done

Baseball and Guns

May and June are my busiest times of the year so there isn’t much time to devote to posting on here. But since I am in my car a great deal, and that is where I have found I have done my best thinking, I have lots to write.

Oh, where to begin?

My thoughts about the Orlando shooting will be written at the bottom of this post. I know that you have heard, seen and read everything about it (except, most likely, all of the facts) so since I know that everyone’s attention span is very short people will be out of here before that part comes up in this post.

Let’s talk about baseball, ok? It’s been a while since I’ve babbled about that.

Here is a cliché to recall…”Change is inevitable.” 

Baseball has changed throughout the years and continues to evolve today. Here are some of the changes that have taken place in baseball.

It used to take 8 balls for a base on balls.
Players played without gloves.
Catchers caught without masks.
An extra base taken on a single was considered a stolen base.
The pitching mound used to be higher.
Baseball was always outside.
Baseball was always at night because there were no lights.
Fans used to sit in foul territory.
There was just one league.
There were three leagues.
There were no minor leagues.
Blacks weren’t allowed to play in the Major Leagues.
You were allowed to spit on the ball before you threw it.
There was no DH.

Many of these changes have been for the better of baseball except, of course, for the DH, a horrible decision that only allowed physically failing players, or players who couldn’t perform a few of the basic baseball tasks such as field and throw, a chance to play baseball.

In the recent decades there have been other changes to baseball, some of which aren’t rule related, that are having major effects on the game.

Instant video replay.
The Buster Posey Rule, where catchers can no longer block the plate with their bodies.
The Chase Mutley Rule, where runners cannot jump onto defenders legs and break them while trying to break up a double play.

Side bar…I am a Met fan and Utley should have been arrested for that play. 

Pitch counts.
Bizarre statistical compilations.
Timed meetings on the mound.
Steroids.

Here are a couple of thoughts about recent changes.

The pitch count issue for pitchers is perhaps one of the biggest changes and challenges in the game of baseball right now. 

This whole concept began, in earnest, in 1981 when a 40-year old Nolan Ryan returned from a stint on the DL and was limited to 100 pitches per game. 

Think about that for a moment. Now we have 23 year old pitchers, with healthy arms, being pulled after that amount of pitches.

I know I have mentioned that in here before so that was just a refresher note.

I read an article recently which featured 3 or 4 guys who were pitchers in their lives who believe that a lack of pitch counts when they were coming up ruined their careers. Their contention was that these pitch counts were, as a result, totally necessary. In that same article a college coach was fired for having one of his starting pitchers throw 150 pitches in a very important playoff game.

One of a few things has to happen here.

There should be a real solid study about how kids, and older players, work to train their arms for the position of pitcher. 

There was a time when kids were growing up and pitching when they were told never to throw anything except a fastball and learn how to throw it to spots and to vary the speed of the pitch, only. This was to be done without twisting or snapping the wrist when they threw the ball. No curveballs, forkballs, sliders, screwballs, knuckleballs, knuckle curves, etc. The second pitch taught, when a person’s arm had become strong enough, was a change of pace (changeup) and then a curve ball. 

Is this happening today? Are kids being taught this or are they just more concerned about how many pitches they throw? Someone let me know…I don’t coach little league any longer but I do know from visiting the little league world series last year that there is a pitch counter on the scoreboard at the Williamsport, PA complex. 

Shouldn’t we find out how to strengthen a person’s arm so that they can throw more pitches?

I am certain it can be done. Personally, I tore the labrums in both of my shoulders. Ironically, I did it while lifting weights on a machine which torqued my shoulders the wrong way. I was told that I either needed surgery, which required a year’s worth of recovery time or, since I wasn’t an athlete, I could just rehab it on my own. The labrum doesn’t have a blood supply so it will never heal but the areas around it can be strengthened. 

I chose the latter option after witnessing, the very next day, a person who just had that same surgical procedure and was in horrific pain.

This was about 10 years ago now when I was 44-45. I am now lifting…and I do not exaggerate when I say this, 5 times as much ON THAT VERY SAME MACHINE that caused the initial injury and, yes, I am 54.

I did this on my own without any “expert” advice. 

So, just from my own personal experience, and anecdotal evidence, I am rather certain that pitchers arms can be strengthened for extended use and have even longer careers, if they train their arms the proper way. Now, I never could throw baseball any faster than 42 miles per hour and the elbow is a bigger problem with pitchers than the shoulder. So I don't know how the different exercises necessary to strengthen the area around the elbow would work. But it couldn’t hurt to explore this much more fully, speaking from the outside looking in to the dugout, of course.

I began to think even more about this. Suppose that these young baseball players are correct and that the SOLE reason arms and careers are getting destroyed is because they are allowed to throw too many pitches. Did Major League Baseball discover this as some sort of fact? Is there growing evidence to suggest that the decisions made by coaches have led to careers being ruined?

Has there been a conspiracy, like the one with the NFL and concussions, in MLB? Is there a possibility that we are going to find out that MLB in fact KNEW or knows this and has covered this up to the public and determined that pitch counts should be used at all levels of baseball? 

Is MLB potential liable for some massive lawsuits in the future?

I would think that the true and hard count would be a bit more than 100, of course. We see pitchers climb over that mark, although not very far, in box scores every day. What could it be? 125, 135, 150? Who knows? But its starting to get very suspicious. 

Look, these guys will never get to throw that many pitches or throw 200 innings on a regular basis because they hardly throw enough at the lower levels now. That only makes sense. You can’t take a guy who is a half-miler for all of his younger days and make him a marathoner overnight. But the strength in their bodies is greater when they of college age, when it comes to arm anyway, so I believe the tapering process has to happen much more quickly.

If something doesn’t change with that, there is going to be a need for a new rule change and that is an expansion of the 25-man roster. The bullpens are overworked too. Pitchers are throwing less in the minor leagues and it seems that more of them are relievers than they are starters. These guys, who have even less stress on their arms, because of the lack of work, are being asked to work more. Aren’t their arms getting blown out too?

There probably is a need for three more, if not five, roster spots on an MLB roster. Pitchers are routinely getting yanked after 6 innings and there are generally only 6 – 7 relievers on a squad. That means they have to pitch a great deal more and what if some of them just have bad days when they go out there? This happens a lot too, of course, and then other guys have to come in to pitch.

Ok, so that was a much longer rant about pitch counts than I thought there would be. So I’ll save more of my brilliance about baseball for another post here soon.

I suppose it’s obligatory to mention the terrorist attack in Orlando in some way. Since I did just spend 24 of my last 96 hours in the car listening to the radio I have heard pretty much every opinion about it. Not as many facts, but plenty of opinions.

I’ll just make this part very simple.

Once upon a time there were no guns. Then, one day, someone invented a gun.

So, those who believe that regulating guns, banning guns, or confiscating guns is going to work, are just wrong. The cliché, “when there is a will, there is a way,” is apropos here because someone else will just make new guns and won’t need a gun manufacturer to do it.

See how simple that is? 

Once upon a time when people were mentally ill and, say, had suicidal or homicidal tendencies, we had them committed in a mental institution…a State Hospital. 

We closed WAY too many of them. 

Let’s open up more of them and commit more people. A much tougher choice, of course, but people knew that the scumbag who shot those people in the South Carolina choice was one of those who should have been committed.

When the second amendment was written the US Military didn't have tanks, planes, assault rifles, bazookas, and the like. They had single-shot rifles and pistols.
The second amendment was written so that citizens could protect themselves...from a tyrannical government.
Now the US Military has all of the above...and nuclear weapons.
I'm not saying every citizen should be allowed to carry nuclear weapons, but we need more of a fighting chance if that day ever comes when there is another revolution or civil war in this country to protect our families.
Clearly I have a stand on this issue. Surely that will upset or offend some people. I just tell it as I see it.

That’s all for now.

Done.