While watching the Red Sox-Yankees Series over the weekend, I got into an argument with one of my friends about whether these games were enjoyable or not (Red Sox fan) I was thinking, how do I quantify a baseball game’s entertainment value, mainly to prove him wrong. Since I don't recall ever seeing anything that measures how "good" or "entertaining" a game was,  what I've done is develop a preliminary Entertainment Score for a baseball game, or an E-Score. The methodology I used was essentially Bill James’ pitcher Game Score rating. It's not the prettiest method but I wanted to use this mainly to figure out a way to rank the greatest baseball games, As I think that the 14 inning game on Friday was really entertaining, but wanted to see how it compared to other "great" games like the 2003 ALCS and such. I should note I envision E-Score being context and team-neutral, while I realize a lot of entertainment is derived from the context like standings and WC etc, I wanted to measure the quality of the game itself. (Like if you went to a PIT-KC game)

The issue I've run into is that after spending 30 or such minutes on google, it's kinda hard to find a list of "great" baseball games. I know there's a book that talks about the best 100 games and I'm stopping by the bookstore tomorrow, but I want some fairly recent games (like 1990+). So that's why I'm here, I've made a couple so far that I've found and off the top of my head but I was wondering if y'all had any favorite games or exciting games you remembered, and if you could share them, it would really, really help me figure out a way to rank the games.

Here's what I've got so far:

Thanks for your help in advance! And incidently, I developed the score way before I read this THT article while searching for best games. Don't know what it means, but I found it interesting.

Look there he is!

via lostinsoxcountry.wordpress.com

As I’m currently in NYC for the summer, I got a chance to see my boy Edwin Jackson pitch against the Yankees last Sunday. I proudly wore my Rays Jackson jersey throughout the game (okay I don’t really own one, did anyone ever?). Funny thing is, Edwin Jackson is actually good this year, as the buddy I went with reminded me. Incessantly.

Seriously, what happened to Edwin Jackson? For the Rays he was at best, average, and at worst, well… it was painful. Moving to Detroit he all of a sudden found command, mastered his slider which always gave him fits, and blossomed into an All-Star pitcher. Which got me thinking as I was sitting there, lost in Yankees country, how did he do it? What changed?

Let’s look at his 2008 and 2009 splits just for fun before we dig in.

Good grief, it’s an entirely different pitcher. More strikeouts, less walks, less homers. But look at that BABIP and O-Swing percentage. Jackson’s getting lucky and batters are chasing his pitches. The 2009 version is the Ejax we could only dream of.

But, looking at 2008 and 2009 Pitch f/x data, I’ve come up with the conclusion Jackson really doesn’t appear to be all that different. Okay, that’s not entirely true, one of his pitches is entirely different, but could that pitch be the sole explanation for why Jackson suddenly turned into a beast?

2008 Pitches

2009 Pitches

So the 2009 Jackson is throwing slightly fewer fastballs and more sliders. He’s also throwing his fastball for more strikes, 64.8% vs 62.1%. Everything looks roughly the same between 2009 and 2008. So how did he become the dominant pitcher he is today? If you look closely, you’ll see the slight shift in horizontal break in all his pitches. I admit I was surprised when I saw the shift and don’t really know what it means. Maybe it’s better as more of his pitches tail away from lefties? Although, what’s also interesting is that his fastball-changeup speed difference, and fastball-slider speed difference both gained about 1 mph. But the pitch that’s really jumps out is his slider. It’s essentially a completely different slider as seen below.

via lostinsoxcountry.wordpress.com

Look at that change from 2008 to 2009. His 2009 slider has more drop and significantly less horizontal break. It still has the same speed, but it’s no longer breaking away from righties as much. Is this the answer to why Jackson has suddenly become ridiculously good? Everything else in his 2009 pitches seems to be in line with his 2008 pitches, except for that slider. Any ideas on what else it could be?

Or, as my buddy quipped, maybe he’s just channeling his inner Verlander, duh.

Thanks to: Baseball Reference, Brooks Baseball, Fangraphs, StatCorner

As a followup to RJ's and FreeZorilla's Kazmir post, I decided to look at Kazmir's pitch f/x to see if there was any difference between pre and post DL. Turns out, there's actually some interesting things. Especially with regards to his fastball.

Scott Kazmir started off the season with 2 wins, 10 strikeouts, and 3 walks against Boston and New York. Things were good, but after the next 7 starts, where Kazmir had trouble getting out of the 4th, and saw his walks and ERA balloon, it was evident there were serious issues. As a result, Kazmir landed on the disabled list in May with the directive to figure things out. Old lights out Kazmir was missing. While on the disabled list he sought out the advice of his old Mets pitching coach, Rick Peterson, to see if he might give his mechanics a tweak. In his 4 recent starts after the consultation and DL trip, Kazmir has pitched a lot better than in his first 9 games. Could it be Rick Peterson? Let’s look at Scott Kazmir before and after his visit to the pitch doctor to see what exactly, if anything, changed.

Well, that’s quite the difference in before and after. Kazmir has a lower ERA (although still not vintage Kaz), lower whip, and a better strikeouts-to-walk ratio. Let’s break it down a bit more to see what exactly has changed with Kaz.

Pre Rick Peterson

Post Rick Peterson

Difference (Post – Pre)

Hey! It looks like Kazmir has definitely gotten better after his DL trip. Now whether that was due to getting over his injury or maybe tweaking his mechanics due to Rick Peterson’s magic is unknown, but Kazmir definitely sees an improvement. The big thing that jumps out is his velocity. His slider and 4-seamer are about 2 mph faster, but what’s really interesting is his 2-seamer, which is actually 3 mph slower in his post DL stints. It seems rather intriguing that the fastball velocity difference between his 4-seam and 2-seam has been significantly larger. I wonder if that difference has helped lead to his success. It probably has helped considering before the DL trip his 4-seamer and 2-seamer differ very slightly whereas now they’re completely different.

Kazmir’s also changed his pitch usage. It appears he’s throwing his fastball less often, and utilizing more changeups in its place, but what’s really exciting is that when he does throw the 4-seamer and changeup, both go for strikes more often.

What’s also interesting is the difference in movement on Kazmir’s pitches. His 4-seamer appears to have roughly the same amount of vertical break, but less horizontal break, which suggests it doesn’t cut as much into lefties as before. But when combined with his 2-seamer, which has a lot more drop and more break, there’s a pretty strong distinction in movement and speed between his two fastballs. His change up appears to have slightly more drop and more break away from righties while his slider appears to have less tilt.

So, it looks like whatever happened while Kazmir was on the DL definitely changed Kazmir. Rick Peterson magic? Maybe. But Kazmir’s pitches in his recent starts have been reasonably better. They’ve got slightly different breaks and speeds than before, with his 2-seamer the most noticeably different. What I’d personally like to see is a slightly better change up, the speed difference between his 4-seamer and the changeup actually increased from 11.3 to 12.2, and Dave Allen’s done excellent work on figuring out the optimal difference is between 5 to 10 mph.

Enough nitpicking. He may not be vintage Kaz, but I’ll take it. Let's hope he's healthy.

I’ve been a  long time lurker here on draysbay and I recently decided to try my hand at writing about baseball. I posted something similar to this on BtB and I figured I’d construct a similar post for the defending AL Champs. I'm new to posting, so I'm hoping this fanpost is somewhat interesting and reasonably sabermetrically sound.

Basically what the post looks at is the career pre and post ASB numbers for Rays players on roster, excluding injuries like Aki (I included Percy, because we'll never be able escape Percy, ever, okay kidding I didn't include him), and then attempts to come up with team runs above replacement values based off a 1st half and 2nd half team wOBA and FIP.

Wow, that’s a large run difference in the 2nd half. It appears the Rays have a lot of 2nd half performers, with hitting and starting pitching expected to improve and relievers holding steady. Overall, the 2nd half team should play a lot better than the 1st half team and at 2.7 wins, it will make the competitive AL East race even tighter.

You can see from the hitting table that the Rays hitters play a lot better in the 2nd half. They’re batting average improves to go along with less strike outs. Walks also decreased but their BB/K shows some improvement. At 17 runs or 1.7 wins, the already dangerous Rays offense could get a 2nd half boost.

Rays starters have pitched poorly over the 1st half of the season. However, looking at career splits, we see that their 2nd half has historically been better. All the good signs are there, more strikeouts, fewer walks, and lower HR/9. A 12 run pitching improvement just might be what the Rays need to get back in the race.

The Rays bullpen has been surprisingly effective the past two years. In the 2nd half it appears that they’ll be about 2 runs worse. Given their workload already, it doesn’t bode too well. Fewer strikes and more walks will make for some tense late innings, but overall the relieving corps should hold steady.

With a 27.7 run improvement in the 2nd half, The Tampa Bay Rays will put pressure on the rest of the AL East. The defending champs still have some life and their career splits give them some hope. Better batting, better starting pitching, and a steady bullpen sure sound like a winning formul.

Thanks for reading! Any feedback or suggestions would be much appreciated.

I’ve been a reasonably long time lurker here on BtB and I recently decided to try my hand at writing about the sport I love. I’m hoping this fanpost is mildly interesting and reasonably sabermetrically sound. I think it provides some insight into the 2nd half of the season and what we maybe can expect. I apologize in advance for my attempts at sarcastic humor, and if it reads a little article-ly, and for novice excel-ing.

We hear all the time about how players perform better or worse in the second half of the season. For example, Aramis Ramirez of the Chicago Cubs has posted .827 OPS before the All-Star Game and .866 after the game over his career. The slight .039 increase could theoretically indicate the Cubs will get a tiny offensive boost (or so they’re hoping). On the other hand, Adam Dunn of the Natinals (okay really the Washington Nationals) has posted .922 before and .882, which means that .040 drop in OPS will make any remaining Nationals fans cry more over their offense.

We’re going to look at the career hitting splits of the major hitters and pitchers of each team and that are contributors (some DL’s withheld, and there’s a bit of subjectivity here). Then we added them up into team stats, and attempted to convert those team stats into runs (ultimately wins) above replacement. For those of you interested in the methodology, we calculated wOBA and FIP (tRA would have been too tricky) for the respective halves based on combining each player’s career splits and then projected those runs over a half season’s worth of plate appearances and innings.

To recap, we essentially added up all the career split stats and converted to Runs Above Replacement. Sure, there’ll be arguments that certain players might have deteriorated, but that’s no different than what commentators already do when comparing pre/post ASB stats. Plus, we’re also that hoping that our team sample size drowns out any irregularities.

But why go through all this trouble? (and believe me, it took a long time since we don’t know how to webcrawl yet) Well, theoretically it should measure how much better or worse the 2nd half team is compared to the 1st half team in terms of (theoretical) wins. Granted, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the team’s themselves are any worse, but it could forecast better or worse performance

Let’s take a look at the AL leaders: the Boston Red Sox.

We’ve broken it down into 3 areas: hitting, starting pitching, and relievers. Looking at the data it appears that we can expect Boston’s dangerous offense to cool off by about 10 runs (or 1 win), their starting pitching to be worse by about half a win, and their relief pitching to be slightly better. So theoretically, we can expect the 2nd half Boston Red Sox team to be a little worse than the 1st half Boston Red Sox. It’s important to note that these are theoretical wins, not actual wins, which essentially means that if the 1st half and 2nd half teams were to play over the course of half a season, the 2nd half team would come out 16.9 runs, or 1.69 wins, worse.

Let’s go a bit more in-depth:

You can see from the hitting table that historically the Red Sox hitters on the current team are slightly worse across all 3 major categories BA/OBP/SLG in the 2nd half of the season, which naturally translates into a slightly lower offensive output. It would also appear that while their walk percentage remains about the same, hitters take a few more strikes.

For those of us that are fans of the first 3 columns (we prefer not, but they have their uses), you can see that Boston starters over their careers actually appear to perform roughly the same before and after the break. They throw slightly more strikes, less walks and more innings. The only problem is the large increase in home runs given up, which explains their increased FIP and ultimately why Boston starters are about 6 runs worse in the 2nd half.

It appears that Red Sox relievers have performed about the same before and after the break. They’ve gotten more strikeouts and given up fewer home runs, which probably explains the slight run improvement over the 1st half.

Looking at these career 1st and 2nd half splits suggests that the Boston Red Sox offensive output might decrease a bit and that their starters might give up a couple more runs. We’ll narrow down the specific Red Sox players who might be poised to rebound or drop off in the 2nd half a little later using the same methodology. So what’s the point of all this data? Ultimately, the Red Sox are still an insanely good team, but we can maybe expect a teeny bit less in the 2nd half, which should make the AL East race all the more exciting.

Thanks for taking the time to read!

Sources: Baseball Reference