SB Nation User Blog: BAC

Keith Law on Tanner Scheppers

BAC — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 23:50:56 -0000

Keith Law on Tanner Scheppers

Scheppers' first ten fastballs: 95 96 95 97 98 97 98 98 96 95 96. Mike Stanton #fisted one of the 98s to RF for a single.

That's really good news. God I hope his arm holds up.

Holland got Squeezed

BAC — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:57:56 -0000

Last night, as I was watching the game, I kept thinking that Holland was getting some pretty bad calls that weren't going against Burnett.

So, I went and looked at the PitchF/X from last night and it seems to bear out that impression.

Here is Holland's graph from last night:

via brooksbaseball.net

By my count, there were at least 8 (maybe 9) strikes not called last night against Holland. By contrast, Burnett shows 4 missed strikes.

via brooksbaseball.net

Burnett threw 30 more pitches and had 4 less missed strikes called against him. I think its fair to say that Holland got screwed last night. While Holland wasn't great, he could have, and should have, had a lot better line.

The rest of the series appears to be pretty even with both starting pitchers having about 5-7 missed strike calls per game and no discrepancy of more than 1. So, Holland's 8 was the highest of the series and Burnett's 4 was the lowest while also having by far the biggest discrepancy. Suck.

Baltimore Umpires

BAC — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:10:54 -0000

I was astounded by how many calls the home plate umpires seemed to miss during this series against Baltimore. During Padilla's start, even TAG was consistently pointing out the numerous mistakes.

So, I went back to look at the weekend through Pitch F/X. There are a lot of graphs, so if you have slow internet or just don't care, you should consider stopping now.

Here are the breakdowns by game:

4/24: 135 total pitches, 30 swings, 18 mistaken calls.

4/25: 148 total, 32 swings, 24 mistakes.

4/26: 149 Total pitches, 32 swings, 20 mistakes

For the weekend, there were 432 pitches thrown by Rangers' pitchers, 94 swings by Baltimore batters, and 62 missed calls. Of calls made by the umpires, about 18% were incorrect.

I haven't done a previous 3 game series for comparrison, but 18% seems really horrible. The umpire for Padilla seemed especially erratic.

First, here is Vicente Padilla's strikezone plot from 4/24:

via brooksbaseball.net

From what I can tell, Padilla had 10 pitches called balls that were actually strikes. He also had 7 pitches called strikes that were balls (including one in the lower right that must be a joke or something). Padilla threw 104 pitches and 22 of those were swung at, so about 21% of his called pitches were mistakes.

Eddie Guardado threw 5 pitches, all correctly called. Same for O'Day and his 2 pitches and C.J and his 18 pitches.

Frank Frank, however, had a pretty blatant missed strike:

via brooksbaseball.net

Now, on to Feldman 4/25:

via brooksbaseball.net

It looks like Feldman had 3 for sure missed strikes and 3 more that were pretty close. He also had 8 balls mistakenly called strikes. So, of his 79 pitches, 17 were swung at and 11 were clear mistakes. That's about 18% called wrong.

For Holland:

via brooksbaseball.net

It looks like Holland had 6 strikes called balls (several of them really bad). He also had 3 balls called strikes. Since Holland threw 48 pitches and batters swung at 9 of them, 23% were called incorrectly.

CJ threw 8 pitches, all correctly called.

Frankie again had a badly missed call but may have gotten a makeup:

via brooksbaseball.net

For 4/26

McCarthy seemed to really be getting squeezed, but I think most of the problems came during a couple of at bats:

via brooksbaseball.net

McCarthy had 10 strikes called balls with 6 balls called strikes. He threw 91 pitches and batters swung at 21 of them. So, 23% of mistakes.

Jennings had 1 missed strike and 2 missed balls and Guardado had one missed ball.

Marlon Byrd = Wonder Woman

BAC — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 16:30:20 -0000

Marlon Byrd = Wonder Woman

Jason Stark has his year-end awards column up. Mendoza gets worst pitcher.

But, the best part is down in the "Managerial Barnstorm" section where Stark describes when the Rays walked Hamilton with the bases loaded.

""I was laughing," said first baseman Carlos Pena, "because I thought, 'That's the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life.'"

"Guys [in the bullpen] were like, 'No way!'" said Troy Percival. "But I was saying, 'You don't let Superman beat you when you have Wonder Woman on deck.'"

Piazza Hurt

BAC — Thu, 03 May 2007 04:31:46 -0000

Mike Piazza hurt his shoulder and is out for 4-6 weeks according to ESPN.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2858574

So...does Oakland have anyone left?

Bobby Kielty, Milton Bradley, Rich Harden, Estaban Loiaza, Mark Kotsay, and now Mike Piazza are on the DL.

Seriously, we're 2 games back of them? They weren't that good to begin with. I'm embarrassed.

Trade Otsuka?

BAC — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 21:16:20 -0000

Fist, I'm not a super good with the stats, so if someone better wants to provide some insight or correct my 1,000 errors, feel free.

Anyway, here's why I'm alright with trading Otsuka: I'm not convinced he is going to have an other good season next year.

When Otsuka came over to the Padres in '04, he was really good. He had an ERA+ of 238, Win Share of 11.4, and a VORP of 32.5; went 7-2 with a 1.75 era.

But in '05, he had an ERA+ of 108 (down 130), Win Share of 4.2 (down 7.2) and a VORP of 9.2 (down 23.3); went 2-8 with a 3.59 era. That's a HUGE drop.

In '06, he was back to an ERA+ of 227, Win Share of 11.1, sorry don't know the '06 VORP; went 2-4 with a 2.11 era.

Why the precipitous drop in '05? Well, one thing I heard tossed around after the CY trade was that Otsuka would have a good year for Texas because the AL hitters wouldn't be ready for his quirky delivery.

Otsuka has that unusual hitch in his motion and I think it throws a lot of hitters off. This could be one of the reasons he was so successful in '04: hitters weren't ready for him. However, in '05, the NL hitters had time to study his delivery in the off-season, and had also seen him several times.

Then, when he came to the AL in '06, he was facing new hitters again. I haven't heard anything about any injuries in '05, so I have to think this may be a plausible explanation.

I really wish I could find Otsuka's stats against the AL during interleague play in '05. Anyone got anything?? If he was stellar during interleague play but weak during division play, I think it may prove my point.

Anyway, 3 years are hardly enough to establish a pattern, but I am still a little worried about next season. I think that if we can get a good return for Otsuka, especially considering the depth of our pen, we should take it.

2008

BAC — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 08:54:15 -0000

So, I've been reading LSB pretty much all season, but I've never posted till now (I'm in law school and busy as hell). Anyway, it seems like everyone on this site is freaking out about next year. I'm worried that the Rangers might choke over this off-season and screw themselves over for next year.

I mean, this free agent class is pretty lame. Matsuzaka was the only potential ace. Zito, Schmidt, Padilla, Lilly, ect. are all good but with serious problems. Soriano is the only top-flight hitter (and I worry about his commitment...Soriano may have pulled a Dampier and gone crazy during his contract season only to regress next year). Lee and Ramirez are both better than average hitters.

But look at next year's (potential) free agents. It's scary.

Carlos Zambrano, Joe Nathan, Chris Carpenter, Curt Shilling, Jason Jennings, Bartolo Colon, John Smoltz, Jake Westbrook.

Ichiro, Andruw Jones, Carlos Guillen, Vernon Wells, Pudge, Michael Young, Torii Hunter, Marcus Giles, Adam Dunn, Milton Bradley, Jermaine Dye, Brandon Inge,

That's a ridiculous list, especially compared to this year's meager selections. Now I'm sure that some of those guys (please God, Michael Young) will sign early, but it will still be an amazing class.

Basically, I'm worried that the Rangers are going to be so focused on 2007 that they are going to give some big, long-term contracts to Zito types and not have any money for 2008. I'm not good with the whole money situation, so maybe someone smarter can figure out what salaries the Rangers have coming off the books after next season.

If we go get Zito, Padilla, Frank Thomas, and Brian Roberts, what $$ will be left?

Because Wells, Dye, and Zambrano sounds a lot better

P.S. What's the deal with all the lawyers on LSB? Weird.