SB Nation User Blog: RoyalPug

OT: ingram nabs the heisman

RoyalPug — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 02:00:29 -0000

OT: ingram nabs the heisman

This is pretty disgusting...Its similar to if the MLB writers gave Sabathia the Cy young simply because he played for the Yankees.
Whether you wanted Gerhart or Suh to win, this is just horrendous.

Just how bad/biased was Greg Gibson?

RoyalPug — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:51:45 -0000

*Lets be honest here, I'm probably risking my nonexistent press credentials, but since I planned on attending my final Royals game of the year later today, I think I'm alright.

It was pretty clear to just about anyone watching the game yesterday that something was off in the home plate umpires calls of balls and strikes. Not just a little off, like Tim McClellands notoriously small strike zone, or the occasional random bad decision most umpires make. I'm talking a full fledged out and out bias for Red Sox pitchers and a tightening of the zone against Royals pitchers.

Now to be fair, I'm ONLY going to address the pitch calls. I'm not going to discuss Gibson's handling of the Zach situation, the warning given out after a wild pitch, nor the further situation with Trey Hillman.

So using the very convenient graphs at Brooks Baseball(ironically enough a very pro-Boston site) I decided to take a look at just how the game was called.

The first thing we need to look at is the overall game calling to see if something is amiss.

The first thing we notice is a MAJOR shift of the plate. For the most part the Vertical location of the calls was pretty good, there are still a few missed calls but that's to be expected. However the Horizontal location of the calls is absolutely atrocious. Not only were the calls for the left side of the plate sheared off by almost half of a normal strike zone (Note: the scale above uses a normalized strike zone, since this is fairly accurate to the rules, the distance from -1 to 1 is about 17 inches) this effectively cuts almost 5 inches off the left side of the plate. For comparison the average diameter of a baseball is about 2.9 inches. So where did that extra room go? To the right side of the plate, where Greg felt compelled to add on as much as 3 inches to the strike zone.

One major problem with this setup is that it favors right handed batters by a good deal. While it may be nice to throw half way to the right batters box when a lefty is up, it would prove too easy to hit any righties who might crowd the plate. This leaves righties with a strike zone less than 3/4 of its original size. At the same time it allows the pitcher to basically throw strikes well beyond the reach of your average left handed batter, giving them a good margin.

So was this biased against the Royals? Well if it was then the Red Sox didn't seem to know before game time. Despite a strike zone with a large anti-lefty bias the Red Sox started just one fewer lefty than the Royals (5 to 6).

BUT that just means that the "strike zone" didn't have a bias. But did the CALLING of the strike zone have a bias? Lets take a look.

via i979.photobucket.com

What we have here is a edited version of what you saw earlier, I removed any pitches that were more than a ball length away from the traditional strike zone as well as from the "Gibson Strike Zone", which I marked in blue.

So now we have to count and see if preferential treatment was being given to one team or the other.

First we have to see the number of pitches compared to the Traditional zone Including the edited out pitches.

# of Correct KC Strikes: 27

# of Correct KC Balls: 61

# of InCorrect KC Strikes: 7

# of Incorrect KC Balls: 18

Totals: 88 correct out of 113 called pitches (77.8%) 6% incorrect Strikes, 16% incorrect balls

# of Correct BOS Strikes: 21

# of Correct BOS Balls: 45

# of Incorrect BOS Strikes: 11

# of Incorrect BOS Balls: 8

Totals: 66 correct out of 85 called pitches (77.6%)13% Incorrect Strikes, 9% incorrect Balls

And compare them with the number in the "Greg Gibson Strike Zone"

# of Correct KC Strikes:32

# of Correct KC Balls: 67

# of InCorrect KC Strikes: 1

# of Incorrect KC Balls: 13

Totals: 99 out of 113 Correct (87.7% correct) 1% Incorrect Strikes, 12% Incorrect Balls

# of Correct BOS Strikes:32

# of Correct BOS Balls: 50

# of Incorrect BOS Strikes: 0

# of Incorrect BOS Balls: 3

Totals: 82 out of 85 Correct (96.8% correct) 0% Incorrect Strikes, 3% Incorrect Balls.

Important to note that many of the Correct balls for both sides were no-doubters well away from the strike zone. All told about 80 pitches combined were likely not even close, this makes the miscalls all the more important.

So what does this tell us? Well for starters it means that Greg Gibson got only about 3/4's of his calls right tonight across the board. However it also tells us that Greg was twice as likely to miscall a strike for Boston and about half as likely to miscall a ball. But that's compared to the normal strike zone. Inside his own Zone Greg was much better, rarely miscalling any strikes, he was however FOUR TIMES more likely to miscall a ball against Royals pitchers.

But there is one more step to the puzzle. We can tell from the top graph that Greg was just as harsh against both teams on the Right side of the plate. But what about his little "growth" on the left side? Was he fair there?

via i979.photobucket.com

Here's our final edit. I narrowed the field down to just the difference between Gregs apparent strike zone and the normalized one. Remember this represents almost 4 inches of space OFF the outside edge of the plate.

In this area Greg called:

KC Strikes: 8

KC Balls: 8

BOS Strikes:14

BOS Balls:3

Now take from this what you will, But it seems obvious to me that not only was Greg Gibson an inaccurate disgrace to his profession, but one with a large pro-Boston bias. The biggest problem that I have is that with the exception of 1 Miscalled KC Ball there are BOS Strikes that are called further out of the zone, so this isn't simply a matter of the BOS strikes being close and the KC Balls being on the fringe, this is a case where the KC Balls and BOS Strikes look like someone tossed them into a blender. There is simply no reason, AT ALL, for this sort of inconsistent calling from the umpires.

*Edit: fixed some spelling, minor grammatical errors

Excellant Article by the Poz

RoyalPug — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 19:41:13 -0000

Excellant Article by the Poz

In a nutshell, teams like KC cant win traditionally, need to think outside the box, but are afraid to because of their pride of being a "professional" team. interspersed with Bill James quotes and PAUL BYRD

Dr. Nick Swartz or: How I learned how much injuries hurt this team and how to look to next year

RoyalPug — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:40:08 -0000

http://www.ranyontheroyals.com/2009/06/release-hounds.html

There. For the like 3 people who haven't already read it.

That gets you up to speed. The idea? That this Royals team, the one we are painfully watching day in and day out, the one beset by injuries, is much better than the product on the field.

So I went ahead and did a fairly brief analysis of what this team would have been like with all its parts intact, no injuries to Soria, Aviles, Gordon, Crisp or Buck. I believe I did my best to approximate the playing time and performance of as much of the team as possible. For the most part I used the projections from Fangraphs for the players who missed large chunks of playing time, (Aviles, Gordon, Crisp) and simply extended the stats for those who didn't.

Then I compared that to the team without those players. For that I simply used the players performances so far as a starting point and extrapolated from there.

Other than that I made very few changes, certain things (like Catcher defense, running ability, final ERAs) I did my best to approximate, which is why the changes to those categories are generally quite small.

With Injuries: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AosqUw817rAGcmdLTWtxVHBVc0ZRQzlkaFA3YVJUVWc&hl=en

Without Injuries: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AosqUw817rAGcnBicHdaSkpRaXVpakZLbTdVRm9lMWc&hl=en

Basically I reused the old spreadsheet form the start of the season to determine the projected season.

Now this was a pretty quick and dirty method and if anyone notices any major discrepancies let me know, but I feel like this is a pretty good estimation both of the team that we had to start the year...and the one that is currently on the field.

Also just a small side note: I really, REALLY think people under appreciate David DeJesus. If he was hitting close to what he did last season, David would be a 5+ WAR player in LF. For comparison, here's the list of ALL OF's with more than 5 WAR last season :Carlos Beltran, Manny Ramirez, Grady Sizemore, Nick Markakis, Matt Holliday, Ryan Ludwick, Alex Rios. That's it. For those of you keeping track, only three of those guys, Markakis, Sizemore and Rios, are in the AL.

Are Jose Guillen and Mike Jacobs being overpaid or misused?

RoyalPug — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 20:06:13 -0000

One of the biggest points of concern for the Royals is maximizing the return on their investments. As a small market team every dollar spent is a dollar that needs to be used correctly for this team to have success. So obviously Jose Guillen and Mike Jacobs present a huge discrepancy to this idea. But are the two sluggers being over paid or simply misused?

As has been mentioned before the best possible combination of these two players(due to atrocious defense and some major platoon splits) would be for the two to platoon the DH role with Mike hitting against righties and Jose hitting against lefties (Note: JoGui actually hits better against righties than lefties, but 100 points less than Mike, and while he isnt great against lefties hes far better than Mike)

But are they overpaid for what they should be doing? Lets see.

Here are the numbers for this arangement: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=r8P4YmO8CFA1pGHRgHuh4yQ

( I could not for the life of me figure out how to just insert that)

We can quickly see that Jacobs, although an abominable defender and saddled with the positional detriments of the DH is quite worth his money...against right handers. Against Lefties hes so bad that it drags him back down to replacement level.

Jose on the other hand is just bad. Against righties, hes not terrible and is worth about one WAR, but atrocious defense and poor hitting against lefties destroys him.

So the answer is yes they as a tandem are being overpaid without a doubt.

But it would seem that if GMDM could bring in someone who could mash lefties just as well as Jacobs hits righties for a similar price(4 million) and platoon them at DH, then you would have a pair that could stack up against most any other DH in the league.

As a side note I also tried Olivo's numbers in the calculations at first, since his OPS is 50 points higher than JoGuis against Lefties. Thing is Jogui walks enough(first time you've ever read that) that he balances out the extra couple of singles and XB hits that Olivo gets. So in terms of wOBA Olivo actually clocks in about .010 points lower than JoGui.

Royals are Web-gemmy

RoyalPug — Mon, 04 May 2009 07:55:11 -0000

Royals are Web-gemmy

Well we've all seen the statistics and the highlights about how the Royals are one of the better defensive teams this year, but this kinda hammers home the point that not only is this team doing well, but that it really is a team effort.

Our Beloved Boys in Blue are currently second in Web gem appearences with 8, and no single player with more than 3. Compared to some teams like Detroit(Inge has all 7 of theirs) or the mets(6 of 7 belong to David Wright) this shows it really is a team effort.

A Former Royal Honored

RoyalPug — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:46:03 -0000

A Former Royal Honored

You know I always liked Reggie, he always seemed better than our other options(emil) but with less shooting TV reporters.
It would be nice to see him make the HoF, but I dont think people will even remember him when his (admitably) small chance comes around.

Fangraphs ranks the Royals System

RoyalPug — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 23:55:42 -0000

Fangraphs ranks the Royals System

Overall: C-

The Royals are a clear step ahead of the previous three teams, but still have an awful lot of work to do before they could ever be considered a legitimate World Series contender. Unfortunately, the moves the team has been making over the last year don’t inspire an awful lot of confidence that the team is going to make the necessary transition in philosophy, and filling out the roster with replacement level veterans is simply never going to work. With a smaller paryoll, they have to emulate the Cleveland/Oakland/Minnesota/Atlanta philosophies of getting big returns on small invetments, and right now, that’s just not happening in Kansas City.

Suffice to say: Ouch.

A modern day Brett Vs. Boggs?

RoyalPug — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 23:44:26 -0000

You're probably all familiar with the nearly 20-year old debate over which 3rd baseman was the better player.

But what you might be familiar with is that its possible that we could quite possibly have the exact same situation brewing today, only this time the battle has switched from the hot corner to the gritter middle infield.

Two players every Royal fan is undoubtably familiar with is this years Royals player of the Year Mike Aviles, and this years ALMVP Dustin Pedroia. Alot of people felt that Pedroia's MVP case wasnt the best in the league, while a lot of people thought that Aviles had an equal case for Rookie of the year as eventual winner Evan Longoria.

But what a lot of people may not realize is that the two players might be much closer in terms of talent than they appear at first glance.

Take their lines this year:

Pedroia:

.326

.376

.493

.869

Aviles

.325

.354

.480

.834

Thats pretty close, not close enough to really spark a debate, but close enough to warrant a second look.

The first thing you would probably notice is that both players have some decent platoon splits, Pedroias are a little wierd as he hits righties more often, but hits the ball harder against lefties. Aviles on the other hand just crushes lefties, making more contact, being more selective, and hitting it much harder.

The second (and possibly most controversial) thing is their home/road splits. Much like in the historical rivalry, the parks the players call home seem to have a significant impact on their hitting ability.

Aviles manages to hit just .311/.339/.420/.759 in 219 ABs at "The K" with only 10 doubles compared to .340/.370/.545/.915 in 200 AB with 17 doubles.

On the other side Pedroia, our reigning MVP hits .344/.393/.519/.912 in 320 ABs with a whoping 35 doubles under the shadow of the green monster, but fades to just .309/.359/.468/.827 in 333 ABs with a more pedestrian 20 doubles away from Fenway.

Lets also not forget the often overlooked area of defense. While advanced defensive metrics were not in place for the historical rivalry, we now benefit from being much better able to judge the quality of our two performers.

And this is where the situation gets VERY cloudy. While never really considered a great defensive shortstop, Aviles apparently didnt get the letter, posting a very solid 32.0 UZR/150 rating at shortstop this season. Dustin Pedroia however attempts to defy advanced rating by relying more on his grit and posted a 10.4 UZR/150 at 2B, improving over last years 4.0.

So what does this boil down to? To put it very simply Mike Aviles, in about 2/3 of the playing time of Dustin Pedroia(and playing 1/4 of that time at a position he is not proficient at) put up almost EXACTLY 2/3 of the WAR of the Reigning MVP (4.4 WAR to 6.6)

*Edit cause I suck at polls....

Poll

So I ask which player do you think is better RIGHT NOW, Mike Aviles or Dustin Pedroia?

Mike Aviles

20 votes

Dustin Pedroia

47 votes

67 votes | Poll has closed

Carl Pohlad dies at 93

RoyalPug — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 01:07:03 -0000

Carl Pohlad dies at 93

Carl Pohlad, the richest man in baseball, died at 93.

Mixed feelings, on one hand he probably saved baseball in Minnesota.

On the other Carl Pohlad is the epitome of an owner who could have done a lot more for his franchise and didnt, as much as people complain about the Steinbrenners at least they put money into their team.