jimmer
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Everything posted by jimmer
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and by success rate in this instance they mean the bunt was put in play fair not that was a hit or that it did it's intended purpose.
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That's just bunts put in play not all bunt attempts.
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- danny santana
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and a followup article about bunting against the shift //www.fangraphs.com/blogs/more-about-bunting-and-beating-the-shift/
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http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-truth-about-bunting/ 'The frequent bunters bunted the ball fair 49.5% of the time. The infrequent bunters bunted the ball fair 46.1% of the time. I should note before I forget that I excluded pitchers from this. There’s a clear advantage to bunting more often, in terms of bunt success, but it’s also pretty small, and even the upper-tier bunters, as a group, bunt poorly a lot.' 'So why don’t we see more bunting against the shift? Certainly, there has to be some element of stubbornness. But it’s also just a hard thing to do, even with a lot of practice, which most shifted hitters don’t have. A foul bunt or a missed bunt is just a strike, a strike that also makes the defense aware of the bunt possibility. The pitcher, as well, becomes aware of the possibility, and might throw less buntable pitches. The math might still work out in the pro-bunt favor — I’m not close to smart enough to work all that out. But I’ve never seen bunt success rates before, and I wasn’t expecting 50%. That’s a pretty low success rate, for bunts that aren’t even necessarily successful.' 'For years, it’s seemed so obvious to me. When Kyle Seager successfully bunted for a single against the shift last summer, it felt to me like a top-ten Mariners moment. If the defense wants to give the hitter an easy hit, the hitter should take the easy hit, without question. I could never understand how hitters could be so stubborn in the face of a potentially high batting average. Turns out there’s no such thing as an easy hit after all. Oh, bunt singles against the shift look easy when they’re successful, but so do Chris Davis home runs. Most of the time, Chris Davis doesn’t homer.'
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True and he might get thrown out on the attempt. :-)
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And, you know, K rate is up across the league (not just our team's fans' favorite punching bag). Due to the continued K rise across the league, MLB is looking to change it. Over the past five seasons, the strike zone has expanded about 40 square inches, from 435 square inches in 2009 to 475 square inches in 2014 The largest part of that expansion is in the lower area of the strike zone, with umpires more frequently signaling strikes for pitches below the kneecap. Low pitches are generally considered more difficult to handle for batters, most of whom have a tougher time driving the ball when reaching down for it. Not surprisingly, the walk rate across the majors is down while the strikeout rate is up. http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/12320861/major-league-baseball-shrink-strike-zone-2016-report-says
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According to MLB they did expand the strike zone and instructed the umpires to expand it more than they normally had in recent time (and likely due to Questec). Some believe this was in response to too much scoring that many equated to PED and so they looked to lower scoring a bit more hurried by expanding the K zone.. 'Over the past five seasons, the strike zone has expanded about 40 square inches, from 435 square inches in 2009 to 475 square inches in 2014' So as the zone has expanded this batter with a keen eye has seen his K rate rise as well. It's not so easy to have a certain pitch be a K your whole career, get really in tune with it, and then just change it. Your mind tells you what is an isn't a strike based on years of experience. The rest are slights on Mauer's character that are unfounded so I won't address.
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'I do not automatically believe he will go back to his MVP level, although a post-fatherhood bounce back is somewhat likely in my opinion, although it's really more of a theory.' I think his issue have more to do with MLBs decision to expand the strike zone, which they will supposedly fix this season and which can really effect someone so in tune with what is and isn't a strike. And then there's the effects of the concussion. He had a wRC+ in the mid 120s in the 2nd half. Seems on his way back to normal.
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He's only had 20 or more GiDP in a season 3 times. Two of those times he won batting titles and finished 4th and 6th in MVP voting, and the third time he led the league in OBP. Miguel Cabrera has twice as many seasons with 20 or more GiDP than Mauer including one time when he led the league and won MVP.
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Exactly. And some are easily shown to be wrong and have been shown wrong in this thread. And everyone knows that since he had a horrible year last year for him, that's how he'll be from now on. I hope we never have a manager look at the guy with the best OBP on the team and say let's bat him in the lower half of the lineup.
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I really like this post. I'd still rather not have him as a leadoff guy. I still think based on many things, including the relative inexperience of the members of our lineup that would fill the 2nd and 3rd spot, but it's a compelling argument because you are right, his OBP and smart baserunning are big pluses. Still have to consider how well he normally hits with RISP and how no comes close to how well a normal Mauer creates runs on this team as of yet.
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If you read the whole article you would see that there was much more to it than that. But again, I never thought the article would change too many people's minds. I know it doesn't work that way. I will, however, continue to post things to let those interested in considering other points of view by well regarded people, even if ultimately they disagree with them. And I will also continue to respect the efforts of highly regarded people and trust in their methods even if I choose to ultimately disagree with their conclusions based on my expect opinions on studying the game.
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I'm glad you enjoyed the read, That was the only point of providing it. To make one think about preconceived notion in regards to the stolen base attempt. I know most of the time, people are just going to stick with whatever they believe no matter what, and that's certainly their choice, but I would hope an article by a highly regarded person in his field would at least get some to think a bit more about how important they truly are. That should be a good thing, I would hope. Before today, I thought the As only started moving to the forefront of analytics in the late 90s/early 00s. I was shown it could likely be other-wise, depending on how far we want to stretch the definition. I appreciated the info. Learned something new. I like when that happens.
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right, but as long as we remember that a base on balls extends the inning by one batter, adds another a potential run to the basepads, and there isn't much of a chance of the batter/runner getting thrown out on a base on balls:-) again, the study I provided is just something to CONSIDER if we're going to start pushing our team to start attempting to steal a lot. I'm not sure I buy it but I appreciate the people who puts years into the study to give us an actual study's result as opposed to just saying they have value because we've been told forever they do or cause we think it does. I can't PROVE the study is wrong, nor have I read any studies that make a better argument saying it's wrong, so I'm not going to for sure say it is wrong. I'm going to allow for the possibility that what I was told most of my life and what I believed for some of my life might be wrong.
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Just a question. Has there been a new study that says other-wise? I haven't seen one. Has anyone else?
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and the study done over years didn't say there was NO value and NO positive, just that the positive is negligible over the course of the season to a team's wins and losses when factoring in stolen bases and caught stealing.
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True. But over the course of the a season, we have to factor in the caught stealing numbers too and how that affected things. Since the stolen base attempt has a chance to fail too. And we do count them as doubles, just like we do count successful stolen bases as stolen bases. Did I suggest we shouldn't? It's a stat. The question is the value of the stolen bases stat. Again, just passing info on studies done by people over years and years.
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Potential value, not value for sure. Value only if the stolen base results in scoring. Like it's likely good strategy if playing for one run towards the end of the game if the stolen base gets the runner in scoring position AND THEN he's knocked in. But if he steals 2B and get stranded, no value at all, even if it was considered good strategy.
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I'm not hard pressed to get at anything, I'm sharing info. Something interesting I read a long time ago. I'm not downgrading Henderson as a player and neither is Bill James. Just talking about the stolen base. Not Home Runs, Not OBP. It's not hard to believe that many stolen bases don't actually result in a lot of runs. Steal 2nd base, 3rd out happens right after, guy is left at 2B. Stolen base didn't result in anything.
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Bill James did a study on Rickey Henderson's 1982 or 1983 season in regards to stolen bases. I'm going by memory and it been a long time since I read the article. Used to be a simple google search to find and now I can't find it for the life of me. Perhaps that's because ESPN's Ralph Miley decided to basically call James a racist because of that study. Edit, found it: 'Yet for all the fame they're bringing him, Henderson's stolen-base exploits this year have done virtually nothing to help his team from a dismal fate. Why? Despite the attention they command, stolen bases are not, I repeat, very important. Picture a vast desert. A single tumbleweed blowing across the landscape will attract the eye because it's the only thing moving. A runner stealing bases draws attention not because what he's doing is important, but because he is moving.' 'How important are stolen bases? In an article in the 1976 Journal of the Society of American Baseball Research, George Wiley reported on many years of study to determine the correlation between records in each statistical category and team success. He found the correlation between stolen bases and team wins "so low as to conclude that in themselves they have little or no effect on final team standing." http://www.si.com/vault/1982/09/06/624392/so-whats-all-the-fuss
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Yes, like he's very much involved in creating a run when his single/double gets a guy from 1st to 3rd so the next guy can make an out with a ball deep enough to score the guy now sitting on 3B. Was his contribution to the run scoring not key even though he didn't get a run scored or an RBI?
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That's 'runs produced' not 'runs created', two different stats. And that stat uses two stats heavily dependent on other player's actions. The actual runs created stat, he was 50th in the majors in 2013 even though he missed the last 6 weeks. RC= on-base factor times advancement factor divided by opportunity factor. Which, in it's easiest calculation (one that uses info we grew up knowing) is: (H+BB)X TB divided by AB+BB. H=hits, BB= walks, TB= total bases.
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I have not argued for Mauer to bat leadoff.
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How many of these base runners were in scoring position? What was the difference in speed of runners on base (cause Hunter batted after speedy guys, Plouffe not so much)? How often were the runners going at the crack of the bat cause there was two outs, and so on and so on. So many variables that are out of the hands of the guy doing the plating.
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When you just look at runs, RBI and HR, you take away moving guys over on the bases, you miss extending innings, you miss many things. And there's an assumption that if he had just tried a bit harder/been more aggressive, it automatically would have resulted in an RBI even if the pitcher isn't giving him anything really good to hit. Votto talked about this kind of reasoning a lot. It was a good read, Guy gets on base by single, walk, HBP, etc. Next guy gets a single to deep LC or RC, and the runner goes to 3B. Next guy makes an out with a fly deep enough to score a runner. The guy who got the single and put the guy at 3B so he could be plated by a fly out to the OF gets no credit at all for the run scoring, yet he was instrumental in that guy scoring.
