Tag Archives: baseball

Game Recap: O’s 3, Twins 4

I have a new post up at Camden Chat that recaps today’s loss to the Twins. It’s my first game recap for CC; I started off just paying attention to major events for the O’s, but in the 3rd inning I started noting every pitch in the game and whether it was a ball or strike. Later still I started noting whether strikes were looking or swinging.

Here’s a snippet from my notes:

============

Bottom 7th:

  • Teagarden – Ball 1 low, Strike 1 inside, ball 2 low & outside, strike 2 swinging, Ball 3 low, Strike 3 looking.
  • Casilla – Ball 1, … strike 2 foul, single into right.
  • Duensing replaces Swarzak.
  • Markakis – Strike 1 looking, Strike 2 looking, Ball 1 outside, (nick hits lefties – .291 career, duensing gets lefties out — look these stats up), Duensing throws over to 1st 2 or 3 times, Base hit left field.
  • Machado – Strike 1 foul away, Ball 1 low, P4.
  • Davis – the big thunder, steamroller coming into this game, 17 RBI, no hit (yet?) today … can he knock the run in??!?!??!?! ball 1 low & away, strike 1 foul away, Ball 2 up & in, Strike 2, foul (just barely got a piece low & away), G4.

Top 8th:

  • Willingham – Ball 1 low, Ball 2 outside, Ball 3 low (very close), Ball 4 outside. Mastroianni pinch runner.
  • Morneau – Strike 1 foul, Strike 2 swinging, Strike 3 looking.
  • Doumit – Ball 1, (Mastroianni CS – Casilla dove over and tagged the runner on the calf on a headfirst slide), Ball 2, strike 1 looking, Ball 3 outside, G6.

============

(You can see how excited I was about Davis batting in that spot ;-)

Paying attention to each pitch was a bit taxing but very fun. It kept me in the game and increased my knowledge of what was going on by being able to spot trends (that I could later weave into the game recap). By tracking each pitch I could speak more intelligently about what was happening in the game (like noting that Hammel was consistently missing to his arm side.) This enabled me to write the recap immediately after the game ended, since I was noticing trends and things like that during the game itself. I also learned, as I keep on learning, that there is yet another level below “did the batter get a hit or not?” in the game.

People say baseball is boring, but there’s a lot going on if you just pay attention.

I don’t think I will always watch baseball in this way, but I like it enough to keep writing game recaps for CC. The next time I actually go to a ballgame, I might get a pitch-tracking sheet or something like that.

April 7, 2013Permalink Leave a comment

New York Yankees @ Baltimore Orioles, September 10 2012


Phil Hughes
200 mm, 1/320, f/4, ISO 400


Wei-Yin Chen
200 mm, 1/500, f/4.5, ISO 800


Wei-Yin Chen
200 mm, 1/800, f/4, ISO 1600


Russell Martin
200 mm, 1/800, f/4, ISO 1600


Mark Reynolds Strikes Out
200 mm, 1/800, f/4, ISO 1600


Derek Jeter
200 mm, 1/800, f/4, ISO 1600


Adam Jones
200 mm, 1/800, f/4, ISO 1600


Groundskeepers
138 mm, 1/800, f/4, ISO 1600


Alex Rodriguez
200 mm, 1/800, f/4, ISO 1600


Steve Johnson
200 mm, 1/800, f/4, ISO 1600


Boone Logan
200 mm, 1/640, f/4, ISO 1600


Brian Matusz
200 mm, 1/640, f/4, ISO 1600


Ichiro Suzuki
200 mm, 1/640, f/4, ISO 1600

September 15, 2012Permalink 1 Comment

New Baseball Column is Up!

I’m excited to be writing Texas Swing, a baseball column, for local blog Austinist. It’s a weekly series discussing what’s going on in Texas baseball. I hope to use the opportunity to get more familiar with the Round Rock Express and UT Longhorns as well as the Rangers and Astros.

Check out the first column here and let me know what you think!

(p.s. Yes, I took that picture of the baseball & glove :-)

April 3, 2012Permalink 1 Comment

Batting Average is Not a Flawed Statistic

It has become common in the baseball community to bash batting average, to say it is a flawed statistic, for a few reasons:

  • It does not recognize how different types of hits (singles, triples, etc) contribute differently to a player’s value or team’s performance
  • It counts at-bats and not plate appearances (and thus  pretends sac flies, walks, errors, hit-by-pitches, fielder’s choices, etc do not happen)
  • Seemingly significant differences between averages (such as between .290 and .300) are, in reality, the difference of only a few hits

This post was inspired by a blog post that Joe Posnanski wrote about F.C. Lane, a baseball enthusiast in 1916, who argues how BA is useless. Here is Joe summarizing Lane’s four-punch syllogism:

Punch 1. Question: Is a scratch single with nobody on base worth as much as a grand slam?

Punch 2: Batting average says yes.

Punch 3: Phelon says batting average can’t be improved upon.

Punch 4: Phelon is saying that a scratch single with nobody on base is worth as much as a grand slam.

I understand where Joe/FC are going with this, and I agree that they are headed in the right direction, and I agree with their destination. My problem here is with the wording of punch (premise) 2.

Batting average does not ”say” that a bases-empty single is worth as much as a grand slam. Batting average is not a person with ideas and a mouth. It cannot say anything. It is a statistic, hits divided by at-bats, invented by humans about the performance of other humans. It describes how often a batter has hit safely.

These humans are the ones that say things. Many humans use batting average to do so. Therefore, it is people who cite BA as an important or relevant stat that are saying all types of hits are equal.

The full syllogism becomes: “Batting average does not measure the differences between types of hits. Many people feel that batting average is a useful indicator of a player’s performance. People who feel this way are arguing, indirectly, that all hits are worth the same, e.g. that a single is as important as a grand slam. However, all hits are not the same. Therefore, batting average is less useful than other stats in determining a player’s worth.”

Wordier, for sure, but more precise :-)

It is impossible for a statistic to be flawed. It is only possible for a statistic to not measure what we want it to measure. Sometimes it takes decades before we figure out whether our statistics are useful — hence the current revolution underway in baseball.

When a statistic turns out to be not as useful as we’d though, the statistic can’t change. It’s just math based on a batter’s performance. Instead, we must change how (or whether) we use it to measure something. In that sense, a statistic can be not useful or irrelevant – but never flawed in and of itself.

January 10, 2012Permalink Leave a comment

It’s Over, But … Game 6, Game 7

As it stands now, I’m understanding of the Cardinals’ victory in Game 7. They deserve it. Texas did not, not with the way their offense and pitching (and managing) failed in the final two games.

I’m avoiding coverage of the Cardinals at the moment. It might be a few days until I return to reading about baseball! I assume Freese was named MVP of the World Series. He certainly deserves it.

So in the meantime, enjoy what I wrote after the rollercoaster ride of Game 6.

* * *

If I live to be 100, I doubt I will ever see such an up-the-wall-and-around-the-bend baseball game as I did last night. Errors, clutch hits, terrible pitching, brilliant pitching, several game-tying and go-ahead hits, heart-stopping two-out/two-strike hits, managerial mistakes, silly defensive strategies, a bases-loaded pickoff at third, three — count’em — THREE BLOWN SAVES IN ONE GAME by Rangers’ pitching, and one disgusting turn of Mike Napoli’s ankle. (Yuck.)

I went to bed a sweaty, deranged mess.

People who say baseball is boring should be forced to watch this game over and over again. As it is, this game will stand for the ages, especially if the Cardinals go on to win Game 7. If they do, Freese’s triple will stand alongside such memorable plays as The Shot Heard ‘Round The World, The Catch, Kirk Gibson’s ’88 home run, The One that Got Through Buckner’s Legs, Bucky Dent’s 1978 home run, the Bloody Sock, and Luis Gonzalez’s Bloop Single. Even clutch plays that ultimately end in a series loss — such as Jeter’s 2001 home run — can end up as part of storied baseball lore.

That Freese is a St. Louis native only adds to the cachet. He can go the way of Aaron Boone in 2003 and still never have to pay for a beer in this city again.

However, if the Rangers win it, they will have done so despite the horrendous, inept, by-the-book, situationally-unaware managing of Ron Washington. One of my favorite baseball tirades is that “the manager doesn’t matter much.” That’s true over the long haul of the regular season, when the players’ talents on the field tend to outweigh chance. However, in the context of a single game, with all its reliance on chance and luck, and especially in the win-or-go-home World Series, the importance of managers’ decisions is magnified greatly.

Washington showed us that last night:

  • See his refusal to remove Colby Lewis with a one-run lead, the bases loaded, and two outs earlier in the game. Colby had been pitching well, but not well enough to justify staying in the game in that situation, especially not with the Rangers’ (normally lockdown) bulllpen. He struck out swinging as AL pitchers are wont to do.
  • See his stubborn reliance on Ogando, who has clearly lost what skill he had after starting games for most of the season. Ogando walked two and forced in a run.
  • See his removal of Feldman, absolutely his best pitcher remaining, in favor of … Esteban German … with Napoli at first, to play for one measly base, forcing Lowe into the game.
  • See his stubborn refusal to bat his best hitter (NAP-OH-LEE) higher in the order.

Yes, it still comes down to the players. Ogando, Feliz, and Feldman were not up to their tasks. Mark Lowe is who he is. Cruz dropped a key fly ball, and let’s not even talk about the errors Michael Young made at first.

But this is Washington’s deal. Either he felt Game 6 was not necessary due to some confidence in Matt Harrison for Game 7 or he just cannot manage in NL ballparks. Maybe he has some secret knowledge of Chris Carpenter that we do not, some kryptonite weakpoint that he feels will be Carp’s undoing. More than likely, he is just who he is, a manager who gets by on the strength of his players, so when they falter or go through slumps as sometimes happens, he has no recourse for victory.

The nail in his coffin is that, to the media at least, he absolved himself of any blame, saying things like “It just wasn’t meant to be.” Notice the passive voice in that statement, rivaling the infamous “mistakes were made.” Um, that’s bullshit dude. No higher power or force of fate is controlling this game (despite Hamilton’s insistence that God told him he’d hit that home run). Nothing is meaning this game to be anything. You are in control. Man the fuck up and take some responsibility for your actions. If you can’t recognize your own weak points, especially in situations like these, you are doomed, just doomed.

October 29, 2011Permalink Leave a comment

Game Five, Game Six

Our plucky heroes sunk the Cardinals’ battleship yet again, winning 4-2 by capitalizing on some hilarious miscommunication between Cards’ skipper Tony La Russa and his bullpen coaches. I find my faith in humanity shaken a tad when teams can afford to pay players $25 million a year but let a simple thing like misunderstood phone calls get in the way of sending the proper reliever into the game. Even my 13-year old cousin knows that TEXT MESSAGING is how you communicate your message clearly in a noisy environment. Sheesh!!

I didn’t see the game, but I read a detailed summary and facepalmed a number of times. Both Wash and TLR seemed intent on giving the damn game away — asking players to bunt or steal when it didn’t make sense, intentionally walking players with nobody else on base, and other blunders (such as Wash batting his best hitter — Napoli — eighth). We baseball nerds call those moves “giving away outs,” which is never a good strategy. Outs are like crisp $100 bills — they are the currency of baseball. You only have a few and should only give them up if you get something of equal or greater value in return. Otherwise, hold them close and don’t let them slip out of your wallet.

Despite that, we find ourselves up 3-2 in the series, able to clinch it Wednesday if our pitching can hold the Cards at bay and somebody besides Napoli can squeak a few hits out of the infield. Jaime Garcia is on the mound for the Redbirds; he struck out 7 last Thursday but we had Colbayashi on the mound to do the same to them. Since we’ve seen Garcia a few times now, we’ll hopefully be able to hit him better this time. Of course the same danger is there for Colby, and the Cards will be on their home turf, making the climb a tough one — home teams win 52% of the time, controlling for everything else.

Related Links:

October 25, 2011Permalink Leave a comment

What’s Going On?

Well …

Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple, triggering a flood of writing like this: I remember that I used to hate Macs. Especially when the first iMac came out. My girlfriend at the time was like “ooh, it’s pretty. I want one.” I, the former CS major and serious computer snob, was like “yeah it’s pretty… And that’s it. It doesn’t even have a floppy drive ferchrissakes!!”

Um, flash forward 11 years and I am typing this blog post on an iPad, purchased after falling so deeply in love with the iPhone 4. And it’s highly likely my next computer will be an iMac of the 27″, 8 GB RAM variety. Either that or a mac mini. Either way, it will not have a floppy drive!

I have started a program at work called Healthy Eating Every Day, or HEED for short. This means I am now one of those yuppies who talks about calorie counts and sighs “oh, but I shouldn’t” when faced with the prospect of eating a donut. In my defense, I am turning 30 in a few months.

Speaking of turning 30, it’s highly likely that my birthday (and New Year’s) will be spent in Israel. My cousin is getting married in Jerusalem this winter and I am attending. As a white, middle-class, suburban Jewish boy I do feel some regret for not having gone on the Birthright trip before I was 26. So this trip is as much attempting to atone for that transgression as it is seeing what the rave scene in Tel Aviv is like. “Disco, disco!!”

There will be pictures. Oh yes, there will be pictures.

Lost in all the kerfluffle was the fact that Rob Malda resigned from Slashdot the same day Steve resigned from Apple. Coincidence?

And finally, there is a little over a month left in the regular baseball season. I have been enjoying my ability, thru MLB.tv, to watch any out-of-market game whenever I want. I watch maybe 2-3 times a week, enough to justify the cost to me. I doubt I will purchase the postseason package … Unless I do! It can sometimes be tough to find friends who want to go watch games at sports bars, and I don’t like doing that alone. Just feels weird. And I feel like kind of a mooch just inviting myself over friends’ houses solely to watch the games.

As long as the Orioles avoid losing 100 games, I’ll be happy. And hopefully the Rangers make the playoffs. Anything to increase the presence of baseball in Texas.

August 27, 2011Permalink Leave a comment