SB Nation User Blog: haymister

BP's Nate Silver goes political

haymister — Fri, 30 May 2008 15:01:33 -0000

BP's Nate Silver goes political

After a few months of posting anonymously on DailyKos and at his own web site about the polls and data behind the primary and the presidential race, the writer known as "poblano" reveals his true identity: "My real name is Nate Silver and my principal occupation has been as a writer, analyst and partner at a sports media company called Baseball Prospectus. What we do over there and what I'm doing over here are really quite similar. Both baseball and politics are data-driven industries."

Baseball Prospectus writeup on Lee

haymister — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 18:01:41 -0000

Baseball Prospectus writeup on Lee

"I’d venture to say that half the pitchers in the majors today would struggle to put up those numbers if they got four starts in the [low Class A] Midwest League ... Lee's stretch of pitching is unmatched in at least 50 years, and quite possibly ever ..."

Fantasy baseball fiction

haymister — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 20:13:00 -0000

The premise of this little piece is that the author's father...

...AS OWNER OF HIS
FANTASY BASEBALL
TEAM, HAS A MEETING
WITH HIS PLAYERS
TO EXPLORE THEIR
CONCERNS ABOUT
FRONT-OFFICE
MANAGEMENT.

DAD: I just want to say, first off, that you all suck so bad.

ANDY PETTITTE: I never wanted to be on this team in the first place.

DAD: Well, I didn't want you on my team, either, asshole. But I was drunk at the draft, and I thought you were that other tall, brown-haired Yankee pitcher, the one who does crosswords. That's who I wanted, you Yankee shit.

cont...

Writeup on the Cobra at Baseball Analysts

haymister — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 14:45:02 -0000

Al Doyle at Baseball Analysts writes What Good is an 83-MPH Fastball, a piece on Byrd and how pitchers like him maybe deserve more opportunities. Doyle went to the May 25 game at Comerica and spends a few lines detailing the particulars of Byrd's performance and poses the following:

So how do Byrd and his fellow finesse types survive in a time when radar guns and numbers like 98 have a slavish, cult-like following? The desperate need for even semi-competent pitching and depth in the rotation means teams have to tame their one-track quest for power arms and settle for other options.

Adam Miller...closer?

haymister — Tue, 22 May 2007 15:04:04 -0000

Nate Silver answered the following question yesterdays chat:

ericturner29 (Chicago): Who would you have close for the Tribe?

Nate Silver: Adam Miller. Maybe.

Discuss. Idle chatter (yawn)? Great idea, never happen? Stupidest thing you've heard since Steve Phillips said (insert anything he's ever said0? Papelbon redux?

Quality Starts

haymister — Mon, 07 May 2007 15:51:49 -0000

Some of us have been scratching our heads wondering why the Tribe's record is as good as it is. How come this year, the Indians are outperforming their Pythagorean record when they've underperformed it in the past?

Is it grit?
Is it luck?

Or perhaps it is Quality Starts....

....have our quality starts have made our opposing team be what the the Indians have been the last couple of years...a team vulnerable to close losses because they've had to dip into their bullpen earlier and more frequently in order to stay in the game.

I won't speak to how much luck or grit is involved in these numbers, but I think they are interesting:

Cle 19 QS
Opp 7 QS

Breakdown in wins:

Cle QS, opponent no QS: 11 W 3 L
Cle QS, opponent QS: 3 W 2 L

Cle no QS, opponent QS: 0 W 2 L
Cle no QS, Opponent no QS: 4 W 3 L

A 1992 article over at Diamond Mind points out that:

The ERA of starting pitchers when they have a quality start is over five runs per game better than in games in which they do not have a quality start (1.91 vs 7.50 overall).
The winning percentage of the starting pitchers when they have a quality start is more than twice what it is when they don't have one (.674 vs .311 overall).
The innings pitched per start is also substantially different in quality start and non-quality start games (7.45 vs 4.80).

I think there is a some argument that we are "making (some of) our own luck" by:

having more quality starts than the opposiiton.

patiently driving the oppositions quality starters out of the game before they have a chance to get through 6 innings.

Here are a list of starts where we forced there bullpen in before the pitcher made the requisite 6 innings for a QS:

Player IP R Pit-Str

J Vazquez 5.1 2 112-68
J Danks 5.1 2 96-60
J Contreras 5 2 101-56
D Rasner 4.1 1 81-47
C Silva 5 3 103-67
S Trachsel, 5.2 2 109-54

And though this line is a bit difference, the Indians still wore this guy out as much as you can hope for:

J Santana 7 4 109-74

Just some food for that. I couldn't easily dig up how many QS the Tribe had last year, so I'm curious is to what the percentage of QS's was last year versus this year....and how many QS's opposing pitchers had against us. Perhaps it was the same...and all this is just hooey...

another reason to be thankful for Indians management

haymister — Wed, 02 May 2007 22:10:38 -0000

The Yanks have just fired their strength coach after all the injuries they've faced. Perhaps he is just the fall guy, perhaps they hired the wrong guy.

By and large, it seem like the Indians are exteremely progressive in their management of injuries. They do appropriate conditioning (seems like something that yanks might have screwed up on), convince their players to be cautious with their bodies when they feel pain (macho-ism isn't rewarded), and they rehab well.

Here's the link to the NY Times story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/sports/baseball/03miller.html?ref=sports

Bill Simmons on Cleveland/Tribe fans

haymister — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 02:04:31 -0000

Personally, I took no offense and found this kind of funny:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/060816

"10. Cleveland
Not sure what happened with these guys. The Indians would have made a much better roto team.

(Note: Normally I'd have more to say, but I'm tired of Cleveland readers complaining every time I write something even mildly negative about one of their teams, no matter how accurate that assessment might be. Now I'm thinking that Cleveland fans are like women -- if they ask you how they look, just tell them, "You look fine, you look great" or else you're in for 20 minutes of pure hell. So to recap, the Indians look fine, they look great. Let's move on.)"

milb Marte homerun derby final

haymister — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 00:59:35 -0000

Andy Marte is on hitting them out as part of the home run derby at milb.com if you care...you can see Marte's stroke right now 5:53 PST. He's rocketing them out in the round before the final. The commentators are noting his easy stroke. He's up to 12 in this round. He's up against Ryan Ludwick, I believe in ths final round.

BP's Postseason Odd's Reports

haymister — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 15:28:22 -0000

Oh, how important it is to remember how good it is to not be the Royals. The Royals clock in with a .06% chance of making the playoffs and when they adjust for Pecota it drops to a 0%.

Here are the AL Central projections from Baseball Prospectus's Odds report which plays the season a million times.

Playing the rest of the season a million times:
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/ps_odds.php

Playing the rest of the season a million times with some help from Pecota:
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/ps_oddspec.php

Average wins by position in AL Central: 99.3 91.8 84.5 73.3 57.8
AL Central W L Pct3 Avg W Avg L Champions Wild Card Playoffs
Tigers 35 18 .552 95.8 66.2 55.01185 15.24513 70.25699
White Sox 33 19 .544 93.0 69.0 35.73172 18.23417 53.96589
Indians 26 26 .541 86.0 76.0 8.92673 9.27632 18.20306
Twins 24 28 .448 73.7 88.3 .32945 .43446 .76391
Royals 13 38 .409 58.2 103.8 .00025 .00035 .00060