I don't know about you guys, but I can't be bothered with having an extra link between me and the PRMLB thread (now that the Smarch one is off the front page). This is the April thread. Let the April begin.

Here are some relevant links:

The PRMLB Homepage: http://ootp.petrocw.com

The last OOTP thread: http://www.purplerow.com/2012/2/29/2832731/prmlb-march-thread

Here are some irrelevant links:

Nyjer Morgan, 'The Catmance'.

21st century Pearly Gates.

A rather handy website.

Obligatory Music. Korean style. :) =) :) =)

Continue reading this post »

In thinking about the offseason, the FO is obviously faced with some tough decisions. So far, the team is literally in the red at both 2b and 3b which have produced totals of -.5 WAR and -1.4WAR respectively. I don't care what your thoughts are regarding WAR but I think by any metric it's abundantly clear we've sucked at those positions and they are the greatest levers for change. Being a mid-market team that strongly values its farm system; I get the impression that the Rockies have enough in the budget for one flashy FA acquisition and one big trade.

I've been looking at a handful of trade targets for the Rockies this offseason. Personally, and with all due respect to Rox Girl and whoever else, I really (and I mean really) dislike the idea of signing Michael Cuddyer. It's not that Cuddyer isn't a good player and it's not that I don't think he couldn't help, but rather, I don't see what problem he solves. We already essentially have Cuddyer on the team except he goes by the name of Ty Wigginton. Wigginton is about 18 months older than Cuddyer, but beyond that they're fairly similar players. Neither can play anything but first base and be considered above-average defensively, both are aging but offer a respectable offensive skillset with some pop and versatility to play multiple positions.

Regarding Cuddyer, I can't envision the benefit to having both him and Wigginton on the same team. Additionally, for a team with relatively limited resources, I don't think it would be a wise idea to hand out a 3 year contract to a guy who will be 32 at the start of next season and most importantly is coming off of a career year - we'll almost certainly overpay. It honestly sounds like a great way to perpetuate the Rockies current status of "fringe-contention mediocrity".

I'm also not too on board with signing Aramis Ramirez unless he wants to sign a 1 or 2 year deal to try to set himself up nicely for one last big contract, which brings me back to the trade candidates.

Now before I list names, I think it's important to consider a few things that I kept in mind when composing this list:

First, we need a player that we don't have to sell the farm for.  I don't mind losing quality pieces, but we can't do what the Brewers did this past offseason.

Secondly, this team has been borderline okay this season with negative production at 2b and 3b - having 2WAR players at each position would have improved our win total this year by 6(!) which would leave our record at 72 and 69. I'm not writing this piece to suggest I'd be content with a 2WAR player at each position; rather I'm just using this to emphasize how big of a turnaround the Rockies could experience from only the most modest of improvements.

Third, we still play in Coors, we still will benefit a ton from ground ball pitchers, and we'll also be breaking in a new crop of young pitchers next season - Pomeranz, White, and Nicasio to compliment a still-maturing Chacin, and a recovering JDLR. This means defense will be critical. All of these pitchers are already big time ground ball pitchers and the younger guys will almost certainly allow more hits due to their inexperience. In targeting trade candidates I placed a greater importance on defense than I would otherwise. This is also why you won't see Michael Young on this list.

Fourth, this is all hypothetical. Clearly the packages that other teams demand dictate their attractiveness and likewise how on-board I'd be with a trade. I'm not sure how interested other teams are in moving these players. Since we don't really know what the demand consists of, I'm mostly ignoring that with this list, so please don't think I feel as strongly about acquiring Casey McGehee as I do David Wright.

The list of names is as follows:
Sean Rodriguez
Aaron Hill (not actually a trade candidate but a possible free agent)
Gordon Beckham
Chase Headley
Daniel Murphy
David Wright
David Freese
Martin Prado
Casey McGehee

In the interest of keeping this short, I'm only commenting on the players that I consider the biggest/best targets. I'll post my thoughts on the remaining players in the comments but essentially, they're all high risk/high reward types that may not improve the team OR the players' current team most likely has no interest in dealing them. That being said, if you read this and feel a certain way about player X, make sure to check the comments to make sure he hasn't been discussed. Of course, if there's someone else you like who isn't on this list, then please comment away!

David Wright

The cost of acquiring David Wright may be rather high and he means more to the Mets than any other team. From the Mets' perspective the reasons to trade him are as strong as the reasons to keep him. He's expensive, his defense has been really poor the past few seasons, his offense has dropped since his peak 5 years ago, and he spent a large portion of this season on the DL with a fractured vertebrae. The good part? He's David Friggin' Wright. He has played plus defense in the past and his offensive numbers have improved this past season. His strikeout rate is back down to where it was 5 years ago after ballooning to Ian Stewart levels the past few seasons. He is a right-handed power bat and his offense would more than make up for his poor defense. His back injury was about as not-serious as any back injury could be. He has one year with a club option left on his contract, but that last option can be voided by him in the event of a trade. Any team trading for him will do so envisioning him as a one year player. This makes it perfect for us if Nolan Arenado keeps being awesome. It also however is a good reason for the Mets not to trade Wright.

Chase Headley

I really like the idea of Headley playing for the Rockies. Headley is a switch hitter who had an amazing season on defense in 2010 and has been average to below average defensively in 2011. He has some pop and look at his home/road splits for his career - PetCo has really kept him down. He has a career line of .303/.365/.442 on the road. While I wouldn't interpret his road line as how he'd perform on any other team, it is rather insightful to see what a quality player he has been away from PetCo. The other thing I love about Headley is that he has improved pretty much every season. His strikeout rate has continued to fall and he's become quite adept at drawing walks. However, there are some major burdens associated with trading for him. First, he plays for the Padres so the whole stupid ‘no trading inside your division' rule applies. Second, the Padres really wouldn't have a good reason to move Headley anywhere, let alone to a division rival. Third, Headley is coming off of a career year so we'd have to pay a premium. With this in mind though, the Padres ARE rebuilding so it may not surprise me if no one is untouchable on that roster. Also, even though he's coming off of a career year so far, with PetCo killing his numbers, Headley seems like he would have an even better season next year for any other team.

Martin Prado

Lastly, and perhaps my favorite trade target is Martin Prado. Prado will be 28 years old next season, is a tremendous contact hitter, bats right handed, has decent pop (think 15 home runs) and can provide plus defense at either 3b or 2b. Most importantly for me, he is having a career worst year. His line drive rate has fallen but that's about it. His babip this season is 60 points below his BABIP of the past two seasons (.335!). Additionally, he's playing LF for the Braves. He was a 4.4 WAR player in 2010 through 140 games and was a 3.2 WAR player in 2009 through 128 games. Even in a down year, he's on pace for about 2 WAR.

Martin Prado's cost will never be lower and acquiring him gives us some flexibility. For instance we can acquire him and resign Mark Ellis. Those two could provide 6 WAR with fantastic defense. Once Arenado is up, we can slide Prado to 2b with no problem. I'm not sure how interested the Braves are in dealing Prado but his down year and him playing LF coupled with the Braves' lack of offense may mean they might be open to dealing Prado. I'm thinking Tim Wheeler would be a great person to include in a trade as Prado is a great buy-low candidate and Wheeler is a great sell-high candidate. Wheeler has provided some awesome power in Tulsa this year in the OF and after Heyward, the Braves don't have much in the way of outfield players. Of course, Wheeler could be awesome for the Braves (though his strikeout rate of 26% in AA really worries me about his long-term potential). Even if Wheeler does breakout, it wouldn't mean the Rockies got robbed, but rather both teams made a win-win trade.

What do you guys think?

Poll

Out of the list, who do you think would be the best acquisition for the Rockies? Explain why in the comments!!

0%

Sean Rodriguez

0 votes

0%

Aaron Hill

0 votes

0%

Gordon Beckham

0 votes

25%

Chase Headley

7 votes

0%

Daniel Murphy

0 votes

22%

David Wright

6 votes

3%

David Freese

1 votes

40%

Martin Prado

11 votes

7%

Casey McGehee

2 votes

0%

Other (Explain in comments)

0 votes

27 votes | Poll has closed

Today, Captain Andrew Martin said this in the comments:

"I don't have the time to look but xBABIP explorations would be someone interesting for Cargo's H/R splits"

Now first, we have to understand that Mr. Martin speaks a different dialect of English from the rest of us. Whereas we speak English, Mr. Martin speaks what is known as the ‘Preferred Queen's English'.

Utilizing the Yahoo/Altavista Babelfish Translator,

I was able to come to understand that what Mr. Martin meant by:

"but xBABIP explorations would be someone interesting for Cargo's H/R splits"

Was actually intended to read:

"But, xBABIP explorations would be pretty interesting for someone with Home/Road splits as extreme as CarGo's."

To which yours truly responded:

"uh oh, someone's making a quick and dirty fanpost!"

Challenge accepted!

For the unfamiliar, xBABIP is 'expected BABIP'. The work of Peter Bendix and Chris Dutton provides people like us with an xBABIP calculator that, after inputting of a number of different pieces of data, generates what a player's expected BABIP should have been for that time period.

So to do this I immediately went to Fangraphs.com. I was able to get a look at Carlos Gonzalez's data from 2010 through the present 2011. In the following table what you'll find are his total, his home, and his away stats for this time frame and specifically, the stats that the xBABIP calculator requires.

One quick note here is that while the bulk of this data was easily obtained, CarGo's raw number of fly balls, infield pop-ups, and groundballs decomposed in terms of home/away splits were not so easily obtained. To derive this, I would take CarGo's number of at-bats while away and subtract from that his number of strikeouts. The remaining number would then be multiplied by CarGo's road flyball/groundball percentages (which were easily available) and the resulting numbers I used as an estimate of how many actual types of batted balls CarGo hit. The one last thing I did was then take the resulting number of flyballs and multiply that by CarGo's infield fly percentage to derive the number of infield fly balls. This same process was also repeated for his home numbers as well.

So are these numbers perfect? Nah, not really. But they're close enough!

The following table was produced:

	ab's	HRs	Ks	SBs	LD%	#flies	#infield flies	#grounders	2011 babip	Xbabip
Total	1002	57	223	43	19.4	281	33	349	0.354	0.357
Home	541	41	96	21	20.9	163	17	188	0.373	0.342
Away	461	13	127	22	17.4	116	14	159	0.33	0.335	WAS
										0.338	ATL
										0.33	MIL

You'll see I have three different expected away BABIP's for CarGo. The xBABIP calculator asks you to input which team the person plays for. Naturally, by playing in Coors, a player's BABIP and therefore xBABIP is higher. To get a better estimate of what CarGo's expected road BABIP would be, I did a quick look at ESPN's park factors and decided that Nationals Park, Turner Field, and Miller Park are all fairly neutral parks. Technically, I felt that Nationals Park was the most neutral but since that team had only been around for a few seasons when the xBABIP calculator was created - and that data may have contained data from RFK stadium, I just decided to present all three.

So what we see here is that en masse, CarGo's actual BABIP has been pretty much spot on with his xBABIP. Looking deeper, we see that he's gotten quite lucky at home and has hit with a BABIP one would expect on the road.

His lucky home BABIP may be due to him being a high-BABIP type of player who we feel is rather well-suited to hitting at Coors. Or it could just be random variation.

However, I was disappointed to see that what he's done on the road for the past 2 seasons is pretty much exactly what we would expect him to do (at least in terms of BABIP).

Looking at his road BABIP for just 2011 at Fangraphs however, one sees he is currently hitting with a .258 BABIP away from Coors. To explore this further, I decided to compute his xBABIP away for just the 2011 season.

Using the same process above, I arrived at the following numbers:

	ab's	HRs	Ks	SBs	LD%	#flies	#infield flies	#grounders	2011 babip	Xbabip
2011	174	8	46	6	15.6	43	4	65	0.258	0.329	WAS
										0.333	ATL
										0.324	MIL

So according to this table, CarGo should be hitting with a BABIP of .329 or so on the road.

What does this mean? Well I figured out how many extra hits he would have had on the season had he been hitting with a BABIP of .329. It turned out to be 7 hits.

Assuming all of those extra hits were singles, this is what his avg/obp/slg slash line would look like with a .329 BABIP:

Actual Slash Line =  .230/.299/.414

Xbabip Slash Line = .270/.335/.444

Essentially, CarGo has been playing as a .713 OPS hitter on the road when, according to the xBABIP calculator he should be a .779 OPS hitter on the road, at least in terms of 2011.

Now this could just be normal variation. He could be getting somewhat unlucky on the road. Encouraging though is that his core peripherals - his k rate, walk rate, and power have all improved on the road in 2011 compared to 2010.

Personally, I think these extra-deflated numbers are a combination of some poor luck on the road + that insidious Coors Hangover effect.

Conclusions? CarGo seems like he'll always have some pretty strong home/road split differences, but going forward, they shouldn't be as extreme as they've been. And his improvements on the road bode well for the team in 2012. Let's hope he keeps it up and keeps on getting better.

As always, questions, comments, concerns are welcome and encouraged.

So I don’t know about you guys but I’m looking more and more toward 2012. I still plan on continuing to love everything about this team except for one facet – their win/loss record which at this point inspires very little. I think it’s also important to consider that the past several seasons have featured numerous teams go from strong seasons to horrible ones, and from horrible seasons to strong ones (the Mariners, the Rays, the Rangers, the Indians, our very own Rockies are recent examples). As a result, optimism should remain and there should be no reason to panic and either have a fire-sale, acquire expensive free agents, radically shift org philosophy etc. etc. That being said, I have several thoughts on the team and rather than disperse them periodically via comments, I figured I’d write this (because seriously, I have a bunch of work I need to attend to and am finding scanning the comments dangerously time-consuming). Going forward, I hope everyone absolutely loves these ideas and all are overwhelmed with the desire to send me money, women, booze, or thank you cards - but since that’s pretty unlikely, I attempt to present it more as a thought-piece to generate discussion and hope none of it comes off as gospel. Lastly, sorry, it’s hella long.

Regarding Jim Tracy: I have two thoughts.
1. Let him go at the end of the season (replacing him now won’t really do much). My reasons? See the 2011 season with special attention towards months May through present.

2. Keep him and let him go early next season. Why? If you ever read what I thought about the Hurdle -> Tracy switch, my opinion of our big turnaround was never what Tracy brought to the team (not to knock the team’s and by association Tracy’s accomplishments), but rather the team was energized not by what Tracy was, but what he wasn’t (i.e. Hurdle). It sounds counter-intuitive I suppose but should the media, the fans, and more importantly the team lose faith in Tracy, then replacing him may provide an energy boost and a renewed sense of focus.  The drawbacks of this are of course things running astray early on, and the difficulty of replacing a manager in-season as it tends to just fall into the lap of the bench coach when I’d rather hire someone more progressive thinking.

On this last point, hiring someone more like Joe Maddon (and I say that not meaning to anoint him a saint as most things baseball-related in Tampa Bay are). The baseball world is still in the dark as to what exactly a manager brings to the table. Technically, they all bring the same thing since they’re all essentially water drawn from the same well. It’s my opinion that Maddon’s interesting approach to management may lead to beneficial effects not due to the in-game decisions as they are, but rather to a few elements: a. He has philosophy and adheres to it. When managing you need to be able to stick to decisions to generate buy-in from subordinates. Tracy’s style this season has appeared more and more trial-and-error based. While there are merits to this approach, I think it leads to too much shifting around based on immediate past results and not an underlying logic. b. Given the variability in Maddon’s approach, it may actually keep all of the players on their toes. Despite me praising Maddon for something I just essentially criticized Tracy for (numerous, shifting decisions), it’s not necessarily the outcome but rather the process that I think is important – Maddon’s numbers-based approach as opposed to a trial and error one. Remember, the manager’s job is to motivate players for 180 days, not just make simple tactical decisions on batter/pitcher handedness (we could just have a computer in the dugout doing that for us). Maddon’s inventiveness as well as his planned inclusiveness may keep the players more engaged throughout the course of the season.

Regarding 3rd base I feel like we have 2 more or less clear options:
1. Keep Stewart and work with him over the offseason in the hopes that he may experience a turnaround a la Alex Gordon (seriously, he still has potential and if there is any lesson to be learned from Andres Torres – who spent a year completely deconstructing and rebuilding his approach in the model of Pujols, or Jose friggin’ Bautista, things can change).

2. If Stewart is traded (which I’m not opposed to), keep Wigginton. He’s been an above average bat, and has a BABIP of .275. If that were 20 points higher – his career norm, he’d be pretty damn good for us. He’s an established commodity and could be a solid bat with pop from the right side not costing us much money. Furthermore, there are basically zero 3b options out there. Wigginton may give us a simple solution to whom we are contracted with for only one more season – which may be the most important feature of all given Nolan Arenado’s development. If we were to panic and run out and try to acquire someone, we’d block Arenado who has hit at all level’s thus far and is a rather high-contact, low strikeout hitter (something we’ve lacked). Should Arenado stall in AA for a bit, we’d still have Wigginton holding down the fort, and if he matures and excels, then it wouldn’t be hard to part with Wigginton at all.

Regarding 2nd base – honestly, just play Chris Nelson there. Trading for Aaron Hill or some other player aside, Nelson seems to have little to gain from the minors at this point (especially since he’d just be playing in Colorado Springs) and has yet to be given anything resembling consistent playing time at a consistent position (seriously – 26 games started as of Aug 1st). We’ve dealt with mediocrity at 2b for years and I don’t say that to suggest that it’s acceptable but rather that we should be able to exercise patience and really attempt to understand his skillset.

The other alternative is of course to re-sign Mark Ellis. I’m not opposed to that really but then I wouldn’t be sure what to do with Nelson or Wigginton and heck, Ellis might not want to resign with us. That being said, Ellis’s defense, veteran presence, and ability to not totally suck offensively are all assets that shouldn’t be undervalued. If playing Nelson is my first choice, then resigning Ellis is something of a choice 1a for me.

Regarding CF:

This is pretty complex – technically, CarGo can handle CF well enough and given Blackmon, Wheeler’s emergence and… the ghost of Jay Payton, Dexter can be viewed as expendable.

If we keep Dexter – who continues to show flashes of ability as well as an awesome walk rate, I think we’d need to spend the offseason refining his approach (which is an issue I’ll revisit in a bit). Like Nelson, Fowler has nothing to gain in AAA.

This is also one area where I may be in favor of a free agent signing in Coco Crisp. He plays above average outfield defense, has some pop, a decent walk rate, and can actually steal bases at something higher than a 40% success rate.  Additionally, he would represent a true leadoff hitter, a right-handed bat, may be looking to come to CO on a short-term deal after Oakland suppressed his numbers and will be 32 next season – young enough where he’s not so old, and may be looking to set himself up for a nice contract should he have a strong year. However, Crisp may be looking for a lot of money or a multi-year deal or both, and has a lengthy injury history. However, his injury proneness may be somewhat mitigated by our OF depth and if he is signed to a longer-term contract that is trade-able, we may be able to flip him in-season for whatever (if such a need were to arise).

Regarding Jason Giambi:

Just google image search the guy – your eyes and heart will guide you towards a decision (one that is crystal-clear might I add).

Regarding the rotation:

I’m not sure if a big FA signing is feasible. Chacin, JDLR, Nicasio, Rogers, and Hammel may be enough. Possible FA’s include Jeff Francis(!), Rich Harden (<3333), Edwin Jackson, Paul Maholm, Joel Pineiro, and Bartolo Colon. These are all guys who we could probably sign for not a lot of cash, a short-term deal, or both (some obviously more-so than others).

Given our recent grab of pitching prospects, it’s unclear if such a FA move is advisable. But our recent difficulties with player development as well as a rotation incorporating two relatively green pitchers in Nicasio and Rogers, a guy coming back from TJ surgery, and Jason Hammel, we may want something more of a ‘sure thing’ in the event stuff goes wrong…

Regarding the offseason:

If we’re still in possession of Stewart and Fowler, something needs to be done. Again, these guys aren’t going to be able to find IT in AAA (can they even be optioned at this point?). However, I’m curious as to what the offseason consists of for these players. Fowler and Stewart may be able to benefit from live pitching. I know Ubaldo pitched in the winter. If we have any pitchers interested in pitching during the winter (either to stay fresh, to learn a new pitch, whatever), this may give Fowler and Stewart the opportunity to work on their approaches and work on making changes that will stick (and won’t be abandoned at the first sign of struggle, nor be under loud media scrutiny while the team attempts to secure a playoff spot). Anytime a player or anyone for that matter attempts a shift in strategy or approach, a short-term decrease in productivity shouldn’t be viewed as failure but rather should be expected.

Anything else I left out at this point is probably intentional – though there may be some oversight. I also don’t have any ideas regarding the bullpen since bullpens are comprised of mercurial, fungible, silly people. However, I will say that I’d advocate for acquiring bullpen arms in any trade involving guys of lesser-value (Wigginton, Ellis, EY2, Spilborghs), as opposed to something else since I doubt any starters or position players would be of any value to the big league club.

Go team.

 

Hey everyone,

This is a very long fanpost, so if you just want the goodies (whatever that means), skip to the end. If you want to read and learn about some statistics and projecting our players, then make a sandwich, open a soda/beer/juicebox, and continue after the jump off.

Continue reading this post »

Hey all, its projection time. No, not the classic Freudian defense mechanism, but rather, player projection. The fine people over at fangraphs have set up a ballot system where we can enter how we think our beloved Rockies players (or anyone else) are going to fare in the 2010 season. Ultimately, these rankings will be averaged out and appear on the player pages alongside the Bill James, CHONE, etc. projection systems in an effort to see if the collective wisdom of the fans can offer something beyond the algorithms of the systems.

 

For hitters, we can project:

Games Played, Batting Order, Position, Batting Average, Doubles / Triples, Home Run, Strikeout %, Walk %, Stolen Bases, Fielding (UZR).

 

For pitchers, we can project:

Innings Pitched, Pitcher Role, Wins, Losses, ERA, K/9, BB/9, HR/9.

 

Anyway, here's the link to the post, which contains the link to the actual ballot.

One disclaimer - you need to register (it's totally free) and be logged in on fangraphs to actually make your projection.

Hey all, I originally posted this over at Purple Row. Pardon me if it seems somewhat simplistic or a little "audience specific" or something but I figured hey it might have some interesting stuff and can only do more good than harm. Enjoy.

 

Hey everyone, after reading RockiesMagicNumber's post about Chris Iannetta, it got me thinking about how much BABIP is correlated with other statistics. Specifically, in the post he discusses how Iannetta's linedrive rate is uncharacteristically low and that's contributing towards his low BABIP. He mentions it in that post but BABIP is Batting Average on Balls In Play. I guess you could call it a "sabermetric stat" but honestly it's just batting average without counting strike outs and home runs. It also gets referred to as an index of luck. Batters tend to have a BABIP around .300. Power hitters and speedy hitters tend to average a BABIP higher than that. (Garrett Atkins, Ian Stewart, and Chris Iannetta are all currently sporting BABIPs of .250~)

 

Anyway, I wanted to see just how correlated linedrive rate and BABIP are. I got the numbers from fangraphs (with the import to excel feature - seriously, how friggin cool is that website?) for the 164 batters who qualify and ran some correlations.

Here's the output:

via img99.imageshack.us

None of this stuff is too profound, and there's a good chance it was already available somewhere on the net, but what the hell, it's an off day and I needed a good excuse to mess around with SPSS.

So in the end, BABIP and line drive % have a correlation (r) of .489. To get the r-squared statistic (r^2), you take the correlation coefficient r (.489), and square it (straightforward enough). The r^2 stat for this is .239. What this basically means (and please correct me if I'm wrong), is that 24% of the variation in BABIP is attributable to line drive rate.

For those of you who don't know, correlations have a range of  -1.000 through 1.000. The further you are away from the midpoint 0, the stronger the correlation.

So some other things in that table - BABIP and Fly ball percentage have an even stronger correlation than BABIP and linedrive rate (although only by .001). However, whereas an increase in linedrive rate leads to an increase in BABIP, an increase in flyball rate leads to a decrease in BABIP - Iannetta's increase in fly balls this year may also be why his BABIP is down.

Unsurprisingly, Flyball rate and groundball rate have a -.931 correlation.

 

P.S. Ironically, Chris Iannetta's numbers did not contribute towards this "study" as he does not have enough at bats to qualify.

Hey everyone, after reading RockiesMagicNumber's post about Chris Iannetta, it got me thinking about how much BABIP is correlated with other statistics. Specifically, in the post he discusses how Iannetta's linedrive rate is uncharacteristically low and that's contributing towards his low BABIP. He mentions it in that post but BABIP is Batting Average on Balls In Play. I guess you could call it a "sabermetric stat" but honestly it's just batting average without counting strike outs and home runs. It also gets referred to as an index of luck. Batters tend to have a BABIP around .300. Power hitters and speedy hitters tend to average a BABIP higher than that. (Garrett Atkins, Ian Stewart, and Chris "DOOMDreamyDisciplineDESTRUCTOBEAM" Iannetta are all currently sporting BABIPs of .250~)

 

Anyway, I wanted to see just how correlated linedrive rate and BABIP are. I got the numbers from fangraphs (with the import to excel feature - seriously, how friggin cool is that website?) for the 164 batters who qualify and ran some correlations.

Here's the output:

via img99.imageshack.us

 

None of this stuff is too profound, and there's a good chance it was already available somewhere on the net, but what the hell, it's an off day and I needed a good excuse to mess around with SPSS.

So in the end, BABIP and line drive % have a correlation (r) of .489. To get the r-squared statistic (r^2), you take the correlation coefficient r (.489), and square it (straightforward enough). The r^2 stat for this is .239. What this basically means (and please correct me if I'm wrong), is that 24% of the variation in BABIP is attributable to line drive rate.

For those of you who don't know, correlations have a range of  -1.000 through 1.000. The further you are away from the midpoint 0, the stronger the correlation.

So some other things in that table - BABIP and Fly ball percentage have an even stronger correlation than BABIP and linedrive rate (although only by .001). However, whereas an increase in linedrive rate leads to an increase in BABIP, an increase in flyball rate leads to a decrease in BABIP - Iannetta's increase in fly balls this year may also be why his BABIP is down.

 

Unsurprisingly, Flyball rate and groundball rate have a -.931 correlation.

Also in the table, I threw some more Sabermetrickey stats such as wRAA and wOBA.

Have fun digesting the info and let me know if you have any questions.

P.S. Ironically, Chris Iannetta's numbers did not contribute towards this "study" as he does not have enough at bats to qualify.

So now that Jason Marquis leads all of baseball with 12 wins and is clearly on his way to his first Cy Young award, it comes time to discuss a very serious question. As Silverblood just mentioned in her Rockies Review, Jason Marquis hails from beautiful Staten Island, New York, which is a place I don't expect many people to know much about (including New Yorkers who regard S.I. as more of a whipping boy than legitimate borough).

Some of you guys may not be aware of this but another great export from Staten Island, an export of which the entire world has served as beneficiary, is the Wu-Tang Clan. The Wu-Tang Clan has been keeping it real in the world of hip-hop since the late eighties and I'm almost positive they occupy a warm place in Jason Marquis' heart. So without further ado, here is the poll:

P.S.  Please discuss the rationale behind your vote as this is a very serious matter.

P.P.S.  Even if you don't know a thing about the Wu-Tang Clan you should still probably vote and then just make up a logical (or not) rationale behind the choice.

P.P.P.S.  Bonus points will be given for referring to Staten Island as "The Shaolin" should one need to do so.

Poll

Who is Jason Marquis' favorite member of the Wu-Tang Clan?

6%

The GZA

2 votes

9%

The RZA

3 votes

9%

Method Man

3 votes

21%

Ghostface Killah

7 votes

9%

Raekwon

3 votes

21%

Ol' Dirty Bastard

7 votes

6%

Masta Killa

2 votes

12%

Inspectah Deck

4 votes

3%

U-God/Golden Arms

1 votes

32 votes | Poll has closed