Given the high density of drinkers and/or alcoholics on the site anyways, I figured it'd be a fun idea to come up with an official drinking game for this season, and then pick one (or several) game/s this season to have everyone on VEB participate, if they are so inclined.

Continue reading this post »

I'm not a biomechanical expert by any means (I'm looking at you, thepainguy!), but even I can tell that Colby's changed his stance throughout the year.  In a Joe Strauss article (I know, I know...), dated June 6th, Colby acknowledged that he'd been working with his father on his swing by leaning more towards the plate and modifying the leg kick.  He explained the reasoning: "I wasn't swinging at that many bad pitches, but those pitches that were coming over the plate, I was missing them. Then they would make a good pitch and strike me out...Today, I hit balls that were over the middle"

If only there was a site, where fans could view stats, possibly in graph form.  Unfortunately, I can't break up the requisite plate discipline statistics by date, but I think overall numbers will do just fine.  Numbers after the jump

Continue reading this post »

As we all know, Fangraphs is a great site... They continuously pump out great content, and they damn sure know who to hire (I'm looking at you, Erik...)

One beef that I do have with them, however, is the fact that they don't have FIP splits, something that should be easy given their resources.  This would provide even better background on a pitcher's true abilities by quantifying how they fare in certain situations.

I decided to do it on my own.  Results after the jump

Continue reading this post »

To preface this, the formula for Pythagorean W/L is 1/(1+((RunsAllowed/RunsScored)^1.63)).  That's ugly in this format, I know

In today's discussion on VEB, we got into the topic on comparing actual W/L to the Pythagorean W/L of the team, based on runs scored and runs allowed.  While it is impossible to know what this truly signifies, it is indeed a start and no worse a way to judge a manager than what the general baseball populace uses.  With no further ado, here is the info from Tony's reign in St. Louis:

I'll try and do this with more managers that have been with their teams for awhile.  I think that I'll start with Torre's Yankees and Cox's Braves.  Like I said above, I don't even know if this information is statistically significant; I'm doing this purely for information's sake

I'm dying here at work without my VEB fix, and I'm sure there are others.  Cards won 10-0 yesterday despite being outhit, we have probably the best 1-2-3 punch in our rotation, and our offense has been averaging 6 runs a game since the Holliday trade. 

However, the 800-lb elephant (subtle reference) in the room is Albert Pujols' struggles since his 2 HR game against Jon Garland. His line for the last 7 days looks like this; .167/.286/.167.  Slump, or the end of the world as we know it?

Discuss!

This is my first FanPost, so excuse me if I mess something up.  In today's VEB discussion, there was a link to the Royals Review idea of the GRIT Average.  I decided to do the same thing for our hitters this year.

The NEW equation for GRIT is:

(Age x 10)+(BA x 100)+(BARISP x 100)+(CS*10)+(Positions Played*10)+(Inches below 6' *10)+(Sac Flys*10)+(Sac hits*10)+(HBP*10)+Bonus

Bonuses

Better fielder than hitter +30

Good clubhouse guy +20

Team leader +20

Plays injured +30

And to scale to BA, EqGRIT is your raw GRIT average x .600.  Here are the new results:

For good measure, here's David Eckstein's 2005 season with the Cardinals and Aaron Miles' 2006 season with the Cards

This new iteration of the formula, I feel, incorporates MANY more of the "gritty" stats than the one before. Sac flys, sac hits, and HBP? Very gritty.  Multiple positions played and short? SO gritty.  By adding in the sac stats and HBP, David Eckstein's grittiness in 2005 shines through with an astonishing .526 mark!  I'd wager a guess that that is one of the grittiest seasons of all time!  Keep in mind that these are only Cardinals' stats, so DeRosa, Lugo, and Holliday don't have the counting stats that the other players do.  If you extrapolate for a full season, I would think that DeRosa would come up much, much grittier.  I have him down for playing 4 positions (1B, 2B, 3B, OF).

Thoughts? Improvements?