SB Nation User Blog: robcast23

Video: K-Rod/Bruney Skirmish

robcast23 — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 01:43:23 -0000

Video: K-Rod/Bruney Skirmish

What's wrong, cat got your tongue Bruney?

The Award-Winning Amazin' Avenue

robcast23 — Tue, 12 May 2009 13:35:28 -0000

So I've realized we have it pretty good here. And not just because AA was recently ranked the 14th best MLB blog out there on the Sports Blog Index.

Specifically, I posted that Consistency Factor stuff on all of the NL blog sites (as well as Beyond the Boxscore). And after a few weeks of keeping tabs and gauging responses I've realized that we've got quite the little baseball blog going. Because while responses to the pretty forward-thinking material were generally pretty positive, most blogs just gave a couple "nice jobs" and that was about it. In fact, I received quite a few "why is this post so long" as well as a few "too many #'s/graphs" responses. Basically, most blog communities just didn't care.

A comment from Bucs Dugout:

"When you sit down to prepare something like this, do you ever take into account that the game of baseball is played by human beings? Sometimes you numbers-crunchers get too much into your FOOLproof ANALysis... I see the game differently from the graphs/charts with a million and one abbreviations that often read to me in the end: BFD."

comment from Talking Chop:

"More power to you guys who get into this kind of thing but I just can’t stomach it."

"Same here"

I've since realized that this is how most of these blogs operate. With a few exceptions, there is very little reader-generated statistical analysis. Maybe I'm wrong but to me that seems like it would just be an avalanche of "This is my opinion about the team without any substantiation" which would get really boring really fast. Basically thats the difference between us and sports radio. Even worse, many readers just couldn't believe that I'd put that kind of time into my team/blog. This is the single feature that makes our site stand out more than anything else. Because it seems like each day if it isn't Eric, Sam, James or bojudd one of the readers here is spending their time coming up with another interesting way to evaluate a mets-related issue or even just an hilarious Paint photo.

However, I can't say that they were all bad. In fact, a number of sites had some pretty interesting aspects that we could definitely borrow/learn from here:

Probably the most interesting one came from McCovey Chronicles I think; they do annual awards for readers (i.e. ROY for the best new reader of the season, MVP for the best overall, etc.) based on readers votes.
Similar to Meddler's reports, South Side Sox looks like they run a regular segment once a week wrapping up some of the news and notes from their farm system.
AZ Snakepit utilizes John Sickels very popular 'Crystal Ball' for D-Back players. Other interesting Sickels segments include 'Player Retros' & 'Player Smackdowns'
Brew Crew Ball, while pretty oblivious of the Rec feature, do a kind of cool 'Pictures of the Week' segment.
Reds Reporter had a very interesting writeup of a reader's experience following the team on a road trip including pictures, good baseball stuff and some good non-baseball related stories.
And as much as I love our Sunday Comics, whoever does them for Bleed Cubbies Blue deserves some serious credit.

But basically I'm saying we're pretty lucky here. AA is the perfect mixture of a well informed all around Mets news source that also includes tremendous reader-generated content that a site like MetsBlog just can't compete with. Thanks to excellent moderators and equally excellent readership, AA is definitely one of the better sports blogs and THE best Mets blog out there.

The Return of Fernandomania

robcast23 — Tue, 26 May 2009 21:35:58 -0000

The Return of Fernandomania

It isn't just a movement beginning at Citi Field on May 26, 2009, it's a great song by Mexican rapper 2mex. If Fernando isn't rocking this song as his entrance music I'll be disappointed.

Devil's Advocate 2.0

robcast23 — Fri, 22 May 2009 14:36:30 -0000

For anyone who missed it, I decided to run a season long comparison of the guys Omar actually chose versus the guys he could/should have chosen. You can check out the original post here to see where the matchups stood about a month ago. And without any further ado...

*statistics as of Monday, May 25

	IP	ERA	Pitches/IP	HR	BB/9	BABIP
Oliver Perez	21.2	9.97	20.8	3	7.20	.378
Derek Lowe	62.2	3.45	16.1	2	3.16	.266

Didn't think it could get worse, then it did...Believe it or not Ollie is only the 3rd worst in pitches thrown per inning among qualified NL starters while Lowe is way way down on the list at #71...the BABIP's actually do suggest that Lowe's getting a bit lucky while Ollie was quite unlucky; but does that mean anything? no

	AVG	OBP	SLG	RBI	SB	UZR
Luis Castillo	0.282	0.364	0.339	11	6	-2.9
Orlando Hudson	0.344	0.412	0.497	29	4	-2.6

Though still quite valuable, Castillo has come back to the pack a bit while Hudson is still surging as one of the top second baseman not named Utley/Kinsler...just to really tip the scales, Hudson has appeared in 46 games compared to Castillo's 37...though Castillo still sports the better BB/K (Castillo: 1.31 Hudson: .77) and neither has been great defensively...and apparently Hudson's middle name is Thill, strangely enough...

	IP	ERA	WHIP	HR/9	BB/9	Saves/Opp
Francisco Rodriguez	21.2	0.83	1.02	0.42	4.15	13/13
Kerry Wood	15.0	7.20	1.80	2.40	6.00	7/9
Brian Fuentes	16.2	4.32	1.44	0.54	3.24	12/14

This guy is quickly becoming my favorite Met...Although, K-Rod's peripherals, especially that walk rate, will probably not allow that perfect season we're all hoping for...but you can't argue with results and this guy has been far and away the best of the bunch and really the best closer in baseball so far...surprising how bad Wood has been, hes already allowed 4 HRs but his BABIP is high at .368 and his Avg. FB velocity hasn't been this high since 2003...Fuentes has been quietly OK but nothing special

Didn't expect to see this the other night watching the Magic/Celtics...

robcast23 — Tue, 12 May 2009 13:14:36 -0000

Didn't expect to see this the other night watching the Magic/Celtics...

Consistency Factor

robcast23 — Sun, 03 May 2009 15:42:49 -0000

Hey everyone, I'm a regular poster at the Mets SB Nation site, Amazin Avenue. I put this little case study together and thought you guys might be interested since there's some pretty interesting info in here; basically I developed a stat that I feel is pretty useful. So enjoy.

In honor of Oliver Perez week, I figured I would try to wrap up this case study on consistency. For anybody who missed it, I took a shot at quantifying start to start consistency, or what I'm calling Consistency Factor (CONF), for pitchers a few weeks back in this post. It was enlightening but the results just didn't seem quite right. So I've made some tweaks, basically utilizing Bill James' Game Score to evaluate each game started instead of WPA.

A brief refresher for those who missed the original post or forgot how it worked: Basically I evaluated a pitcher's starts individually (using Game Score) and then took a Standard Deviation of those 30-something starts. The higher that #, the higher the range a pitcher regularly pitches within thus the lower his consistency. So lower = better. However, this # does NOT relate to how effective a pitcher is. A pitcher can have the worst CONF but still be very good, all it means is that he doesn't pitch consistently from start to start.

I compiled the CONF #'s from 2008 as well as the last 3 seasons totaled for every qualifying NL starter. However, before we dive into all of those #'s, here's a nice visual breakdown of this idea using, who else, Oliver Perez:

So as you can see, each point represents a start measured in Gamescore (high=good low=bad), the gray area represents 1 Standard Deviation away (in both directions) from Oliver's Mean (which happened to be a Gamescore of 51.65). In english, the blue points are each start, the gray represents the average range where he usually pitches and the red baseline is the level of his average start in 2008.

Now let's take a look at another pitcher for some perspective. How about Tim Lincecum:

First of all, Lincecum's Mean or average start is obviously higher (Gamescore: 62.06), the guy did win the Cy Young. (For reference, a Gamescore of about 50 represents Replacement Level) More importantly for us, Lincecum's starts are packed much more densely within his average range than Oliver's. Only a handful of starts fall outside of the gray area whereas Perez has many more fall outside. As a result, Lincecum's Average Range is smaller, which represents less variation and higher consistency.

As far as the most important figure that we can draw from these graphs, its that Standard Deviation I mentioned that makes up the gray Average Range. This is the figure that represents Consistency Factor. For Lincecum it's 13.18. For Perez, it's 17.08. The league average is around 16.

So now that we can kind of visualize where these #'s come from, lets look at the results. I grouped all NL starters (who pitched at least half a season in '08) by team and I've got all the teams here so lets look at them by division, East first of course:

Well there are a few interesting things we can see here:

We already knew that Johan was awesome, now we know hes consistently awesome.
Apparently Maine & Redding are very consistent as well, although Perez, Livan & Pelfrey are not.
However, Oliver Perez: not that inconsistent... at least not as much as many of us would think.
Brett Myers on the other hand... ugh.
However, Cole's about average and guy's like Moyer & Blanton are really only valuable because of their consistency.
And damn, we all know Josh Johnson is going to be great but hes already pretty damn good (though to be fair this was based on only half a season of starts).
Another surprise, Daniel Cabrera wasn't bad at all in '08.

Onto the NL Central:

The Cubs have a remarkably consistent staff...
...except for Carlos Zambrano who is officially THE least consistent starter in the NL.
Surprisingly consistent seasons from the 2 young Reds rookies especially Volquez, not so much from their 2 vets though.
As usual Paul Maholm is quietly very good.
And a shockingly consistent season by Todd Wellemeyer and that came in only his first season in the rotation.

And finally the NL West:

2 more young guys with surprisingly consistent seasons in LA, not so much for Hiroki Kuroda.
What's the only difference between the Giants rotation and a roulette wheel? Tim Lincecum.
SI product Jason Marquis, very nice.
Surprisingly high from Webb, even more from Garland who is known for his consistency.
And a perfect example of what I said earlier about consistency not always equaling performance, Kevin Correia the NL's most consistent crappy pitcher (Gamescore Mean: 43.63...ugh); looking at these #'s, it's amazing he is still in a Major League rotation today.

And last but not least, here are the rankings of the best and worst performers of 2008:

Redding on the Top 5 (3 Year) list, I didn't expect that
And John Garland on the Bottom 5 (3 Year) list, I bet people would have had him pegged as super consistent not the other way around...
Another supposed "Mr. Consistency", Derek Lowe finds himself on the Bottom 5 (3 Year) list
And yes, Oliver would have been on that list too but I gave him a little home-cooking if you will by excluding that bizarre stretch in '06; basically I'm just evaluating him in his time with the Mets.

So I hope this has been enlightening. At the very least I figured it would break up the interminable dross that we've witnessed in the FanPosts recently. Just as last time, I apologize for the high level mathematics and such but thats the breaks.

I set out to disprove the myth of Oliver Perez as "Mr. Inconsistency" and I think I've done that. That title definitely goes to Carlos Zambrano. Perez is definitely on the higher end but even if I included all of the #'s, he's not as bad as the media portrays. I think a lot of that mindset derives from how he can be so inconsistent in-game or inning to inning rather than game to game, which definitely is no myth. That would be another interesting case study but thats another story for another day. As far as what this means to his overall performance, not too much because he's obviously been terrible this year anyway. But at least he's been consistently terrible...

Consistency Factor

robcast23 — Sun, 03 May 2009 21:08:20 -0000

Hey everyone, I'm a regular poster at the Mets SB Nation site, Amazin Avenue. I put this little case study together and thought you guys might be interested since there's some pretty interesting NL East info in here in addition to the Oliver Perez stuff. Enjoy.

In honor of Oliver Perez week, I figured I would try to wrap up this case study on consistency. For anybody who missed it, I took a shot at quantifying start to start consistency, or what I'm calling Consistency Factor (CONF), for pitchers a few weeks back in this post. It was enlightening but the results just didn't seem quite right. So I've made some tweaks, basically utilizing Bill James Gamescore to evaluate each game started instead of WPA.

A brief refresher for those who missed the original post or forgot how it worked: Basically I evaluated a pitcher's starts individually (using Gamescore) and then took a Standard Deviation of those 30-something starts. The higher that #, the higher the range a pitcher regularly pitches within thus the lower his consistency. So lower = better. However, this # does NOT relate to how effective a pitcher is. A pitcher can have the worst CONF but still be very good, all it means is that he doesn't pitch consistently from start to start.

Now let's take a look at another pitcher for some perspective. How about Tim Lincecum:

Well theres a few interesting things we can see here:

We already knew that Johan was awesome, now we know hes consistently awesome
Apparently Maine & Redding are very consistent as well, although Perez, Livan & Pelfrey are not
However, Oliver Perez: not that inconsistent...at least not as much as many of us would think
Brett Myers on the other hand...ugh
However, Cole's about average and guy's like Moyer & Blanton are really only valuable because of their consistency
And damn, we all know Josh Johnson is going to be great but hes already pretty damn good (though to be fair this was based on only half a season of starts)
Another surprise, Daniel Cabrera wasn't bad at all in '08

Onto the NL Central:

The Cubs have a remarkably consistent staff...
...except for Carlos Zambrano who is officially THE least consistent starter in the NL
Surprisingly consistent seasons from the 2 young Reds rookies especially Volquez, not so much from their 2 vets though
As usual Paul Maholm is quietly very good
And a shockingly consistent season by Todd Wellemeyer and that came in only his first season in the rotation

And finally the NL West:

2 more young guys with surprisingly consistent seasons in LA, not so much for Hiroki Kuroda
What's the only difference between the Giants rotation and a roulette wheel? Tim Lincecum
SI product Jason Marquis, very nice
Surprisingly high from Webb, even more from Garland who is known for his consistency
And a perfect example of what I said earlier about consistency not always equaling performance, Kevin Correia the NL's most consistent crappy pitcher (Gamescore Mean: 43.63...ugh); looking at these #'s, it's amazing he is still in a Major League rotation today

And last but not least, here are the rankings of the best and worst performers of 2008:

Redding on the Top 5 (3 Year) list, I didn't expect that
And John Garland on the Bottom 5 (3 Year) list, I bet people would have had him pegged as super consistent not the other way around...
Another supposed "Mr. Consistency", Derek Lowe finds himself on the Bottom 5 (3 Year) list
And yes, Oliver would have been on that list too but I gave him a little home-cooking if you will by excluding that bizarre stretch in '06; basically I'm just evaluating him in his time with the Mets

Consistency Factor

robcast23 — Sun, 03 May 2009 21:20:37 -0000

Hey everyone, I'm a regular poster at the Mets SB Nation site, Amazin Avenue. I know i know, you don't like me and I don't like you. But I put this little case study together and thought you guys might be interested since there's some pretty interesting NL Central info in here in addition to the Oliver Perez stuff.

In honor of Oliver Perez week, I figured I would try to wrap up this case study on consistency. For anybody who missed it, I took a shot at quantifying start to start consistency, or what I'm calling Consistency Factor (CONF), for pitchers a few weeks back in this post. It was enlightening but the results just didn't seem quite right. So I've made some tweaks, basically utilizing Bill James Gamescore to evaluate each game started instead of WPA.

Now let's take a look at another pitcher for some perspective. How about Tim Lincecum:

Well theres a few interesting things we can see here:

We already knew that Johan was awesome, now we know hes consistently awesome
Apparently Maine & Redding are very consistent as well, although Perez, Livan & Pelfrey are not
However, Oliver Perez: not that inconsistent...at least not as much as many of us would think
Brett Myers on the other hand...ugh
However, Cole's about average and guy's like Moyer & Blanton are really only valuable because of their consistency
And damn, we all know Josh Johnson is going to be great but hes already pretty damn good (though to be fair this was based on only half a season of starts)
Another surprise, Daniel Cabrera wasn't bad at all in '08

Onto the NL Central:

The Cubs have a remarkably consistent staff...
...except for Carlos Zambrano who is officially THE least consistent starter in the NL
Surprisingly consistent seasons from the 2 young Reds rookies especially Volquez, not so much from their 2 vets though
As usual Paul Maholm is quietly very good
And a shockingly consistent season by Todd Wellemeyer and that came in only his first season in the rotation

And finally the NL West:

2 more young guys with surprisingly consistent seasons in LA, not so much for Hiroki Kuroda
What's the only difference between the Giants rotation and a roulette wheel? Tim Lincecum
SI product Jason Marquis, very nice
Surprisingly high from Webb, even more from Garland who is known for his consistency
And a perfect example of what I said earlier about consistency not always equaling performance, Kevin Correia the NL's most consistent crappy pitcher (Gamescore Mean: 43.63...ugh); looking at these #'s, it's amazing he is still in a Major League rotation today

And last but not least, here are the rankings of the best and worst performers of 2008:

Redding on the Top 5 (3 Year) list, I didn't expect that
And John Garland on the Bottom 5 (3 Year) list, I bet people would have had him pegged as super consistent not the other way around...
Another supposed "Mr. Consistency", Derek Lowe finds himself on the Bottom 5 (3 Year) list
And yes, Oliver would have been on that list too but I gave him a little home-cooking if you will by excluding that bizarre stretch in '06; basically I'm just evaluating him in his time with the Mets

Consistency Factor

robcast23 — Sun, 03 May 2009 21:14:57 -0000

Hey everyone, I'm a regular poster at the Mets SB Nation site, Amazin Avenue. Yes I know, you don't like me and I don't like you. But I put this little case study together and thought you guys might be interested since there's some pretty interesting NL East info in here in addition to the Oliver Perez stuff.

In honor of Oliver Perez week, I figured I would try to wrap up this case study on consistency. For anybody who missed it, I took a shot at quantifying start to start consistency, or what I'm calling Consistency Factor (CONF), for pitchers a few weeks back in this post. It was enlightening but the results just didn't seem quite right. So I've made some tweaks, basically utilizing Bill James Gamescore to evaluate each game started instead of WPA.

Now let's take a look at another pitcher for some perspective. How about Tim Lincecum:

Well theres a few interesting things we can see here:

We already knew that Johan was awesome, now we know hes consistently awesome
Apparently Maine & Redding are very consistent as well, although Perez, Livan & Pelfrey are not
However, Oliver Perez: not that inconsistent...at least not as much as many of us would think
Brett Myers on the other hand...ugh
However, Cole's about average and guy's like Moyer & Blanton are really only valuable because of their consistency
And damn, we all know Josh Johnson is going to be great but hes already pretty damn good (though to be fair this was based on only half a season of starts)
Another surprise, Daniel Cabrera wasn't bad at all in '08

Onto the NL Central:

The Cubs have a remarkably consistent staff...
...except for Carlos Zambrano who is officially THE least consistent starter in the NL
Surprisingly consistent seasons from the 2 young Reds rookies especially Volquez, not so much from their 2 vets though
As usual Paul Maholm is quietly very good
And a shockingly consistent season by Todd Wellemeyer and that came in only his first season in the rotation

And finally the NL West:

2 more young guys with surprisingly consistent seasons in LA, not so much for Hiroki Kuroda
What's the only difference between the Giants rotation and a roulette wheel? Tim Lincecum
SI product Jason Marquis, very nice
Surprisingly high from Webb, even more from Garland who is known for his consistency
And a perfect example of what I said earlier about consistency not always equaling performance, Kevin Correia the NL's most consistent crappy pitcher (Gamescore Mean: 43.63...ugh); looking at these #'s, it's amazing he is still in a Major League rotation today

And last but not least, here are the rankings of the best and worst performers of 2008:

Redding on the Top 5 (3 Year) list, I didn't expect that
And John Garland on the Bottom 5 (3 Year) list, I bet people would have had him pegged as super consistent not the other way around...
Another supposed "Mr. Consistency", Derek Lowe finds himself on the Bottom 5 (3 Year) list
And yes, Oliver would have been on that list too but I gave him a little home-cooking if you will by excluding that bizarre stretch in '06; basically I'm just evaluating him in his time with the Mets

Consistency Factor

robcast23 — Sun, 03 May 2009 21:02:25 -0000

Hey everyone, I'm a regular poster at the Mets SB Nation site, Amazin Avenue. I put this little case study together and thought you guys might be interested since there's some pretty interesting NL East info in here in addition to the Oliver Perez stuff. Enjoy.

In honor of Oliver Perez week, I figured I would try to wrap up this case study on consistency. For anybody who missed it, I took a shot at quantifying start to start consistency, or what I'm calling Consistency Factor (CONF), for pitchers a few weeks back in this post. It was enlightening but the results just didn't seem quite right. So I've made some tweaks, basically utilizing Bill James Gamescore to evaluate each game started instead of WPA.

Now let's take a look at another pitcher for some perspective. How about Tim Lincecum:

Well theres a few interesting things we can see here:

We already knew that Johan was awesome, now we know hes consistently awesome
Apparently Maine & Redding are very consistent as well, although Perez, Livan & Pelfrey are not
However, Oliver Perez: not that inconsistent...at least not as much as many of us would think
Brett Myers on the other hand...ugh
However, Cole's about average and guy's like Moyer & Blanton are really only valuable because of their consistency
And damn, we all know Josh Johnson is going to be great but hes already pretty damn good (though to be fair this was based on only half a season of starts)
Another surprise, Daniel Cabrera wasn't bad at all in '08

Onto the NL Central:

The Cubs have a remarkably consistent staff...
...except for Carlos Zambrano who is officially THE least consistent starter in the NL
Surprisingly consistent seasons from the 2 young Reds rookies especially Volquez, not so much from their 2 vets though
As usual Paul Maholm is quietly very good
And a shockingly consistent season by Todd Wellemeyer and that came in only his first season in the rotation

And finally the NL West:

2 more young guys with surprisingly consistent seasons in LA, not so much for Hiroki Kuroda
What's the only difference between the Giants rotation and a roulette wheel? Tim Lincecum
SI product Jason Marquis, very nice
Surprisingly high from Webb, even more from Garland who is known for his consistency
And a perfect example of what I said earlier about consistency not always equaling performance, Kevin Correia the NL's most consistent crappy pitcher (Gamescore Mean: 43.63...ugh); looking at these #'s, it's amazing he is still in a Major League rotation today

And last but not least, here are the rankings of the best and worst performers of 2008:

Redding on the Top 5 (3 Year) list, I didn't expect that
And John Garland on the Bottom 5 (3 Year) list, I bet people would have had him pegged as super consistent not the other way around...
Another supposed "Mr. Consistency", Derek Lowe finds himself on the Bottom 5 (3 Year) list
And yes, Oliver would have been on that list too but I gave him a little home-cooking if you will by excluding that bizarre stretch in '06; basically I'm just evaluating him in his time with the Mets