Willihammer

http://i.imgur.com/aOQ2S3b.jpg
 
Well that turned quickly. Four pitches into the ninth and what looked like it could be a win on a night where he pitched fantasticly turned into a no decision.
 
But since this is about the starting pitching let's focus on that fantastic part. Nolasco gave up 3 hits, 1 walk, 2 hit by pitch and had six strike outs over 7 innings on 97 pitches. With the exception of the two HBP, his command was strong. Both HBP were on Billy Butler, a man who clogs the base paths, but both were leading off an inning, and both when he was ahead in the count (0-1 and 1-2 respectively). Still, he only allowed 6 baserunners all night, and only once (2nd inning) did he allow more than one runner on in an inning. 22 foul balls/tips (I swear I'm going to edit my template and start including that in here) and 8.2% swinging strike rate, but as I mentioned last week, Kansas City has one of the lowest Swing and Miss rates in the league (28th of 30, 7.9%), so this is no surprise.

The other day, I was watching Moneyball, one of my favorite films. My favorite scene is when Billy Beane is in the room with a bunch of scouts saying the team should sign a bunch of questionable players. His response, as I'm sure most of you know, to all the criticisms he receives is "He gets on base." This got me thinking, how important is it to get on base?
 
Using Fangraphs, I collected a bunch of data from last season, focusing on the team as a whole rather than individual stats. My goal was to see which aspects of hitting (OBP, OPS, wOBA, etc) had the largest impact on the number of runs the team scored. Some of the stuff I found seemed obvious, other stuff was quite surprising.
 
For each statistic I ran a linear regression between total runs(y) and that statistic(x). I have reported the slope and correlation coefficient for each one:
AVG: slope=4.76(r=0.81)
OBP: slope=4.96 (r=0.89)
SLG: slope=2.91(r=0.90)
OPS: slope=2.04(r=0.94)
wOBA: slope=5.00(r=0.94)
BB%: slope=4.18(r=0.48)
ISO: slope=2.87(r=0.60)
HR: slope=1.47(r=0.53)
SB: slope=-0.08(r=-0.03)

It comes as no surprise that wOBA has both the strongest correlation and the most runs per percentage point of all the statistics I looked at. If anything, all this means is that wOBA truely is a great way to measure offensive value. In addition, the fact that OBP has a slightly larger impact than AVG indicates that getting on base via BB, HBP, Error, FC, etc. does create more run-scoring opportunities. However, the correlation between BB% and total runs was quite weak. Now that I think about it, this may be because a team can walk less and hit more and still recover their OBP, so this is really no different than AVG having a lower r-value than OBP. I'm surprised that SLG and OPS have a smaller impact than AVG and OBP, but I think this just exposes the weakness of those stats compared to wOBA. The fact that ISO has such a weak correlation with total runs further emphasizes that hitting for extra bases does not tell you as much as simply getting on base. I figured ahead of time that using HR and SB would provide weak correlations since they are counting stats, but it was interesting to see there is no correlation whatsoever between stolen bases and total runs scored.
 
I guess I didn't really learn all that much from doing this, but I can say the simple act of getting on base is more important to scoring runs than the business of how one gets on base (OBP vs AVG or BB%), and that wOBA is an awesome and useful statistic. So I guess Billy Beane was right, if a player gets on base, he's worth having on your team.
 
I'm new to Twins Daily and this is my first blog post! I love numbers but I also love the other aspects of the game, so as I continue to publish I promise not everything will be quite this dry
 
Thanks for reading and feel free to share your own thoughts and analysis!

http://i.imgur.com/eB9pmdG.jpg
 
Mixed bag tonight from Nolasco. Nolasco's Fastball velocity seemed all over the place. He started the first two innings around 91-92 mph with both his 4 and 2 seam, but at the end of the first he touched 93 with back to back 2 seams. Then, in the third inning his velocity dipped down, registering 89-90 (thouched 92 with his last 2 seam of the inning). Then for the rest of the game he seemed hovered at 91-92, while a few 89, 90 and 93 mixed in. The Indians came into tonight's contest with the 7th lowest SwStk% in the league (8.5%), so his 8.6% is right on pace, if a little low still. His slider, while effective for some swinging strikes, when put in play did not help him much. I seemed surprised when I looked up and noticed it was 2 outs in the 7th inning when Nolasco was pulled. It really didn't seem like he had his best stuff and that he seemed in trouble often, but did a moderately good job pitching around it. That inherited runner that scored took his start from a respectable (respectively anyway) 4.05 ERA outing to a 5.40. 6 Ks, for an 8.1 K/9 rate tonight is also a nice number to see.
 
It's hard for me to tell if Nolasco is mechanically right yet or not. The velocity dip on the fastball over a full inning makes it seem as if something still falls out of place every once in a while. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

I got a bit video crazy Thursday night and if you'd like to see a bit of the result, click here to head over to Knuckleballsblog.com for a look.
 
Video of Jake Reed's work on the mound in the 9th.
 
Mitch Garver's leadoff double in the 11th.
 
Bryan Haar's game winner, driving in pinch runner Jon Murphy to beat Kane County 4-3.