SB Nation User Blog: matty fred

HBT: "How Soon is Now?"

matty fred — Mon, 05 May 2008 12:45:25 -0000

HBT: "How Soon is Now?"

The Hardball Times' Chris Jaffe on the Cardinals' surprising start, and their prospects going forward.

Cardinals Baseball Card Battle

matty fred — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 17:43:01 -0000

Way back in the olden days befor YouTube(like 3 years ago), there was this thing called "public access television." Some of you may remember it.

Here's a great Cardinals-related clip from "The Matt Sinopole Show" that some of my friends worked on.

The other clips posted are pretty good, but I thought everyone in these parts would especially get a kick out of this one.

Enjoy!

ISO and the Cardinals' Starting Rotation

matty fred — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 02:30:14 -0000

"Keeping the ball in the park" is most definitely a skill worth having for a major league pitcher. The less homeruns allowed by a pitcher, the better his team's chances of winning the game. Preventing homeruns is especially crucial for pitchers who don't strike out a lot of batters. If a pitcher allows a couple of batters to reach base via base hit or walk, a homerun suddenly puts three runs on the board for the opposition. (That's why a high strike-out rate/low walk rate pitcher like Johan Santana can give up a long ball now and then - 22 last season - and still have such a low ERA; those homeruns often were given up with few or zero baserunners.)

But what about giving up singles, doubles and triples? Opposing slugging percentage takes all of these into account, in addition to homeruns. The only problem with slugging percentage is that it measures as equal a light hitter who goes 4/4 with 4 singles and a power hitter who goes 1/4 with a home run. Now, maybe these two players are equal sluggers, but equal power hitters they are not.

Getting back to the Johan Santana example, we can see how opposing slugging percentage could be deceiving. If Santana scatters 8 singles over 9 innings of a complete game shut out, his opposing slugging percentage for that game would be the same as if he gave up 2 solo homeruns over 9 innings for a complete 2-run game. While there was less power-hitting in the first example than in the second example, the opposing slugging percentage for each game would be the same.

Still, opposing slugging percentage does a good job of measuring the value of a pitcher. Obviously, a pitcher with a low opposing slugging percentage is more preferable to a pitcher with a high opposing slugging percentage. 4 consecutive singles in an inning likely will do just as much damage (if not more) than a single solo homerun.

To see how much power-hitting a pitcher gives up, opposing ISO can help. A hitter's ISO is his slugging percentage minus his batting average. In subtracting batting average from slugging percentage, ISO better measures a hitter's power by adjusting for the potential high-average/only singles hitter. (Not that there's anything wrong with that kind of hitter!)

When applying ISO to pitchers in the form of opposing ISO, you can get a better idea not only of the pitcher's propensity for giving up the long ball, but also for extra-base hits in general. Opposing ISO alone can't tell you the merits of one pitcher compared to another. A pitcher could have a low ISO, but nevertheless give up too many hits and walks. Meanwhile, another pitcher could have a high ISO, but give up hits and walks at such a low rate that the times he does get tagged for doubles and homeruns, the damage is minimal.

What I think opposing ISO can be useful for is a "quick and dirty" way of measuring how hard a pitcher is hit that's a bit more accurate than counting homeruns allowed. I also think it could be useful as an "internal" measurement of a pitcher's potential for success if he can cut down his walk rate, raise his strikeout rate, and/or learn to induce ground balls. (Then again, inducing more groundballs probably would lower one's opposing ISO, as groundball base hits tend to be singles.)

So, without further ado, the 2006 Cardinal starters' opposing ISOs (including Ponson's)

Carpenter
2005 .120
2004 .147
2003 ---
2002 .172
2001 .175

Mulder
2005 .137
2004 .153
2003 .127
2002 .134
2001 .100

Marquis
2005 .165
2004 .155
2003 .120
2002 .199
2001 .144

Suppan
2005 .153
2004 .163
2003 .176
2002 .180
2001 .157

Ponson
2005 .150
2004 .144
2003 .132
2002 .167
2001 .198

NL
2005 .152
2004 .160
2003 .155
2002 .151
2001 .164

AL
2005 .156
2004 .163
2003 .161
2002 .160
2001 .161

Point/Counterpoint on the Cards '06

matty fred — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 01:38:57 -0000

Point: Sean McAdam has doubts about the Cards' chances in '06:

Despite moving into a new stadium, the Cards have refused to increase their budget, causing them to lose a number of free agents, including outfielder Reggie Sanders and second baseman Mark Grudzielanek. Larry Bigbie and Junior Spivey, their respective replacements, can hardly be considered upgrades. Starter Matt Morris left for San Francisco, leaving a significant hole in the rotation, and adding Braden Looper to the bullpen may not be such a positive move.

Counterpoint: Adrian Mott at his Baseball Nuggets site "scratches his head" about McAdam's Cards blurb in an entry entitled New Stadium, New Outfield, Same Results and thinks the Redbirds are primed for another first place finish.

What Mott writes about Spivey is pretty interesting:

Sure, Spivey is a risk at second for the Cardinals, and is not the steady, consistent type of player that Grudzielanek, who seems to run though walls and still hits .300 year after year is. But Spivey has more potential to be an upgrade to Grudzielanek's offensive production and figures to be just that if he can stay healthy.

The entirety of Mott's article is worth the read. He does an interesting job of breaking down the Cardinals '06 team.

Payroll vs. Development

matty fred — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 19:31:14 -0000

Here's an interesting STLToday piece on the Cardinals' approximate $90MM payroll ceiling for 2006. Here's Dewitt from the article:

DeWitt says calls for a $100 million payroll are misguided and overlook the franchise's increased commitment to becoming more self-sufficient.
"It's not just what you spend on the major-league payroll," DeWitt said. "In the last year we've purchased a Double-A franchise (in Springfield, Mo.), paid more than double for early-round draft picks and opened an academy in the Dominican Republic. We've made a much greater investment in international scouting and player development. Perhaps those things aren't as apparent as major-league payroll, but they're there and they have tremendous significance."

I think this is an interesting point. Jacking up the Major League payroll now may bring some instant gratification and short-term success, but putting that same money (or even a fraction of it) in player development could bring about returns exponentially larger than initial investments.

Any thoughts?

Albert Pujols' Pitch Zone at THT

matty fred — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 02:16:40 -0000

This is cool. Thanks to Baseball Info Solutions, it's now possible to compile by location pitches turned into hits for any batter.

For the sake of comparison, Pitch Zone charts for Albert Pujols and Corey Patterson are used. While Albert is at-or-above league average throughout the strikezone, Corey has a lot holes.

This Pitch Zone looks like it will be a really useful tool in evaluating hitters. The person who wrote the THT article is David Appelman, who is also the creator of fangraphs, a site which to me is very addictive!

Caribbean Cardinals

matty fred — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 22:08:45 -0000

The Post Dispatch ran its first intallment in a series of articles concerning the Cardinals organization's re-institution of baseball academies in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.

Especially interesting is the photo essay: young men (kids!) as young as sixteen working out and practicing in Cardinals uniforms, honing their skills and dreaming of the big leagues.

All in all, it's a very interesting piece, and well worth reading and following.

Hagin out, Rooney in

matty fred — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 18:18:43 -0000

According to STL Today.

I didn't mind Hagin all that much, though I've heard good things about this Rooney guy as well.

I will miss the commercials for hand sanitizer that Hagin did. For some reason that one always cracked me up.

I wonder if that Todd Helton flap on Hagin's part had anything to do with his being let go.

What do all of y'all think??

Tearing Down Busch: A Peak Inside

matty fred — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 03:40:17 -0000

A friend of mine in the demo business sent me an inside shot of the demolition at Busch Stadium. I put the picture in a yahoo album account, and here it is.

How quickly the demolition has begun! When I went to my last game at old Busch, I didn't truly think it wasn't going to be there anymore.

Hey LB, I have a more high-res type pic of this. Email me matty_fred at hotmail and I'll send it to you. (The details in the higher res pic are pretty interesting; seems the demolition workers put up some graffiti ...)

fangraphs

matty fred — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 19:42:35 -0000

Cross-posted at my weblog. I took a look at Albert's amazing numbers through the lens of the new fangraphs website.

Fangraphs is a cool new website that provides daily-updated graphs of major league player performance going back to 2002. The graphs remind me a bit of those stock indexes one would find in the business section of the newspaper. Check out the graphs for Tampa Bay Devil Ray Aubrey Huff. Looking at how his on-base and slugging performance climbs high in the second half of each season, Huff's reputation as a "second-half player" appears well-earned.

From a fan's perspective, I love these graphs, simply because I can look up favorite players and see how they've performed over the years. From a fantasy baseball manager's perspective, these graphs could prove very useful, much in the way stock indexes can give a Wall Street speculator valuable information on stock performance. If, for example, you know a player like Aubrey Huff consistently starts the season sluggishly only to hit the heck out of the ball after the All-Star break, you can buy him low mid-season and expect a high return for the second half. Likewise, if you have a player who the graphs show consistently to start strong in the first half but diminish in the second half, you can trade that player for, say, an Aubrey Huff.

Another cool thing about this site is viewing the graphs by season for a player like St. Louis Cardinal Albert Pujols. As the OBP, SLG and AVG points show, Pujols has produced at a remarkably high and remarkably consistent rate. What's further impressive is the yearly decline in strikeout percentage and the yearly increase in walk (BB) percentage, suggesting that his pitch recognition has only improved over time. An already high "upside" is only getting higher for "El Hombre."