SB Nation User Blog: shawndgoldman

Where the Wild Things Are - A Story in Pictures

shawndgoldman — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:21:57 -0000

Chicago Cubs relief pitcher Carlos Marmol celebrates his closing of a game for the 2009 Chicago Cubs. Can the Cubs expect to see more of this in 2010? (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

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The Chicago Cubs are relying on Carlos Marmol to be their closer in 2010. Is this a good idea?

Well, Marmol is incredibly tough to hit.

(via www.fangraphs.com)

Marmol was tough to hit primarily due his ability to get strike outs at an incredibly high rate.

(via www.fangraphs.com)

In addition to striking out batters, Marmol also doesn't give up many home runs.

(via www.fangraphs.com)

So he's a great pitcher, right? He doesn't give up many hits or home runs, and he strikes out lots of opposing batters. I think everyone reading this blog knows Marmol's main issue. Control. Follow me past the jump to find out more...

Here is Marmol's BB rate chart:

via (www.fangraphs.com)

Yikes. That line is literally off the charts.

Marmol has been bad the last few years when it comes to getting his pitches into the strike zone. (Note the rest of the graphs are not from fangraphs. They're my own creations. I replicated their style so things would match up nicely.)

Unfortuantely, it gets worse. Marmol was pretty good at finding the strike zone in 2008. But he had a low (for him) walk rate rate in 2007, a year in which he was just as bad at finding the strike zone as he was in 2009. So what caused the discrepancy between 2007 and 2009? Well, take a look at the rate at which Marmol got opposing hitters to swing at pitches out of the zone:

So now we see that over the last 3 seasons, there were 3 different versions of Carlos Marmol. In 2007, Marmol missed the zone a lot. However, he was able to compensate for that by getting hitters to swing at his pitches out of the zone. In 2008, fewer batters chased his bad pitches, but he managed an above-average ability to find the strike zone. Then in 2009, he missed the plate and hitters weren't swinging at his pitches out of the zone.

What can we expect out of him in 2010? I consider his control in 2008 to be an aberration. As such, in my opinion this question boils down to whether Marmol exerts some... cough... control over whether or not batters are swinging at his pitches out of the zone. I took a quick look at the break on his pitches over at fangraphs, and didn't see any trends that jumped out at me. So I grabbed the pitch FX database and ran a query on the locations of all his pitches from each of 2007, 2008, and 2009. First, I'll show you the location of his pitches in the vertical direction. The following chart shows the number of pitches at each height, with the strike zone shown as dashed lines.

Hrmm... If anything, Marmol appears to exert better than average control in the vertical direction. He does this by avoiding putting his pitches low and out of the zone. What about the horizontal location? Well, here's the same plot for the horizontal axis, from the catcher's perspective (in other words, a right-handed batter would stand on the left side of this chart):

This is where Marmol's control issues show up. Pay particular attention to the right side of the figure. Marmol throws a lot more pitches to the right of the dashed line (outside to a right-handed batter) than the average pitcher. Perhaps more damning than the "normal" outside pitches are those that are -- as Harry Doyle would sarcastically say -- "just a bit outside." Marmol regularly misses the outer edge of plate by a foot or more. The average pitcher throws pitches a foot or less outside 19.5% of the time. Marmol did this 27.9%, 24.4%, and 20.9% of the time in 2007, 2008, and 2009, respectively. In other words, Marmol has an issue in that when he misses he often misses by a mile, and this allows other hitters to easily identify which pitches to swing at.

To be honest, these numbers scare me quite a bit. I don't see a ton of variation in his pitch location distributions from year to year, other than the spike in strikes in 2008. I fear that spike was an aberration. And in all 3 years, he showed an increasing tendency to throw the ball waaaaay outside. If that wasn't enough, teams have written the book on him. They know that hitters should be able to easily identify the pitches that are far off the plate, allowing them to take balls and swing at strikes. The bottom line is that Marmol either needs to put the ball close enough to the plate to entice hitters to swing, or he needs to put the ball over the plate more often, like he did in 2008. Unfortunately, I don't see any reason to think either of those things will happen in 2010.

Cubs fans should stock up on the Pepto Bismol... and someone should warn Ron Santo to take 9th innings off next year.

An Encouraging Interview With Ricketts

shawndgoldman — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:10:57 -0000

An Encouraging Interview With Ricketts

Check out this interview of the new owner of the Cubs by Bruce Miles. In particular, those of you that have an appreciation for the utility of statistical analysis and don't understand why people boo will enjoy reading this.

On Baseball, The Scientific Method, And Adam Dunn

shawndgoldman — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 07:50:31 -0000

First, I want to say that I should be and plan to be around here more often than I have been since my original post. (For those that weren't around for it, I'm the new "stats guy" here at BCB. The first post was an introduction to me. This one is more of an introduction to the way i think about things.) I had an insane couple of weeks of work and some epic struggles with a code I’m developing for my research projects, including an episode where my computer was essentially telling me that 11 > 202. My goal is to post articles once a week, on Mondays. I’ll try to do some catching up going forward, but can’t make any promises. (I’m working on some really cool stuff at work right now, and haven’t felt stressed despite putting in lots of hours. That’s a situation that leads to me not having much time to spend on baseball.) Anyway, onto "this week’s" topic… My intention here is to give you some insight into how scientists analyze things as varied as baseball, supernovae, and fossilized bug bites. My hope is that by giving everyone a brief introduction to how scientists ask and answer questions, it will provide a better understanding of the source of the confidence sabermetricians (and scientists) have in their projections.

The scientific method is often summarized this way: research a topic, form a hypothesis, predict something based on that hypothesis, and then test that prediction. If the test results do not conform to the hypothesis, accordingly discard or refine the hypothesis. Either way, devise new tests for the (perhaps new) hypothesis and continue to improve upon it with repeated tests and refinements of hypotheses. Things that cannot be stated in the form of a testable hypothesis are not considered science, and do not factor into the scientific method. Examples of things that do not fall under the purview of science are statements such as: "there is a God," or "the Cubs are cursed." However, one can test the veracity of statements (hypotheses) such as "carbon dioxide can absorb infrared radiation emitted by the Earth," and "there is a better correlation between a pitcher’s FIP (fielding independent pitching) one year and his ERA (earned run average) the following year than there is between his ERA in one year and his ERA in the following year." Such questions and statements fall under the purview of the scientific method, and they’re very useful things to consider because we can make – or in the case of fans, recommend – decisions based on extrapolations from these hypotheses.

However, the power of the method is not that it can help make decisions, but that it should always improve the foundations upon which those decisions are made. Adam Dunn, a player at the center of much debate here over the years, is a great example of this. A few years ago many sabermetric Cubs fans – including yours truly – wanted the Cubs to pursue Adam Dunn. We saw the eye-popping OBA (on-base average) and SLG (slugging average) numbers he posted year after year, and thought he would be a great fit for the Cubs’ lineup. Today, most statistically inclined Cubs fans no longer want Dunn in Chicago. Why? Our understanding of baseball has improved. It was once thought that defense contributes relatively little to the value of a player. Furthermore, the ability to determine how value defense had for individual players was poor, and thus relatively inaccessible to the scientific method. A tool was eventually developed (UZR, or ultimate zone rating) that allowed quantitative defensive analysis of players and opened the analysis of defense up to the scientific method. The tool invalidated the hypothesis that defense did not contribute much to a player's value, particularly for extreme cases such as Dunn’s. Now that we have a reliable method of measuring defense, and can ascribe value to players based on that method, we can include it in our evaluation of the player. In short: we're better at this evaluation thing than we were a few years ago, thanks to those that developed UZR and other defensive metrics.

The degree to which Dunn was overvalued also serves as an example of something else: scientists and sabermetricians are going to be wrong, but yet seem to be persistent in their claims that "they know best." This isn’t necessarily ego (but it admittedly can be). We have a high degree of confidence in recommendations and projections because they are the result of a mountain of past work, very little of which is our own. That’s not to say we expect these recommendations and projections to always be right. On the contrary, we expect them to be inaccurate and treasure our mistakes as opportunities to refine hypotheses and devise new tests for them. Additionally, the best science will present uncertainties alongside measurements and projections, thereby admitting the likelihood that they will be "wrong." Those uncertainties give us an idea of just how wrong we are likely to be, and that gives us some semblance of confidence. (In fact, we call the degree of uncertainty a "confidence level.") What's more, because those uncertainties are known (more or less), there's a limit to how wrong they are likely to be. That's not true when it comes to predictions, opinions, and judgements based on one person's subjective analysis of a situation.

Ultimately, our confidence and arrogance isn’t about being right about everything… but instead comes from the knowledge that when averaged over time, projections and recommendations that follow from application of the scientific method will be better than those based primarily on one person’s conjecture. That’s where I (and others, I think) are coming from, and why I hope you understand we can come off as "know it all's" from time to time. It’s not that we know it all or think we do… It's that the products and tools that arise from a community that applies the scientific method is something to trust over any one person’s opinion, including our own.

Why Am I Here?

shawndgoldman — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 04:12:29 -0000

Look! It's a nerd... complete with graphs and stuff!

View full size photo »

This post is a bit of an extended introduction, and its title is a nod to this thread, where Al asked the question: "Why are we Cubs fans?" I'm going to expand on this question a bit to also let you know why I use statistics, why I care about them so much, and why I'm happy to take on a larger role talking about them here at BCB.

Let's start with the origins of my Cub fandom. I started out a very young White Sox fan, just like everyone else here... right? ;-) I could see Comiskey from our apartment building, and so I rooted for the White Sox to win so I could watch the fireworks. I also remember telling my dad that because we lived closer to Comiskey than Wrigley the White Sox were my "hometown team." The fact that Harold Baines lived in our apartment complex reinforced this notion in my mind. (Insert joke here about how even at a young age I was failing due to an over-reliance on logic and facts.) My dad, a lawyer, told me that we lived closer to Wrigley but that it was on the other side of our building and so I didn't realize how close it was. In other words, he lied. Well I bought the lie, and many Harry-filled summer afternoons later I was a Cubs fan for life.

There's something else that happened in those afternoons spent in front of a TV tuned to WGN. I watched games on TV with my dad... every. day. My dad was pretty old (over 50) when my parents had me and this meant that we didn't have the typical father-son relationship where we'd play catch in the yard or where he'd teach me how to hit a curveball. Instead, we'd watch games together and I'd ask him about everything... and I mean everything. Little details about the rules, strategies, numbers, stats - you name it, I wanted to know all about it. I suppose I did this to some extent with other sports, but nothing compared to the fascination I had in baseball and the passion I had for the Cubs. I think all the way back then I was already starting to become the fan I am today, with a love for the game but and an obsession about its details (more after the jump)...

When I was in high school I was by no means a typical jock or outstanding athlete, but I did play sports. Unlike most other athletes, I also started a career in sportscasting. And unlike Michael Jordan, when I got cut from the varsity basketball team I hung up my sneakers and picked up the mic full-time. My passion for talking about and analyzing sports continued to develop, and I did everything I could get my hands on: video editing, hosting a call-in radio show, play-by-play, color commentary, and finally co-producing, co-writing, and co-hosting a SportsCenter-like studio show for our high school teams. I loved it, and found I really enjoyed talking about sports with all kinds of people: friends, family, coaches, players, and most of all fans that had previously been complete strangers. I think that background makes me really enjoy interactions on sports blogs, as it's a little bit of my past come back to life.

At the end of high school, I had a tough decision to make: I could either go to a college with a strong sportscasting program or to one with a strong pedigree in more "traditional" disciplines. In the end, I chose the latter route and started a new journey that led to a career as a scientist. During that journey, I was trained to value and apply the scientific method and developed the belief that the communication of science is the greatest responsibility of modern-day scientists. Therefore, I agree with this sentiment from Goodie1969 and share the hope that what I do here is more teaching and less lecturing. Despite all my love for the Cubs, I wouldn't spend my time writing here if I didn't think I could teach some readers a little bit about the sport and a little bit about science... and I'd go a step further than that. In addition to teaching some of you a little, my sincere hope is that I learn a lot from all of you in return... and that the Cubs win a lot of games in the meantime... oh, and I'll over-use the ellipsis... a LOT... Anyways, I hope you enjoy my writing as much as I expect to appreciate your feedback.

Milton Bradley is my Underpaid Salesman

shawndgoldman — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 06:19:57 -0000

Originally posted at Another Cubs Blog

Here’s a somewhat pretend scenario based on a true story. Let’s say you’re running a company, and hire a guy with a 3-year contract worth $300,000. You give him a $40,000 signing bonus, will pay him $50,000 in his first year, $90,000 in his second year, and $120,000 in his third year. Let’s furthermore say his occupation is such that his value can be measured in a very real and important number: dollars ($). A salesman would be a great example of this. Finally, let’s say the guy you hired – let’s call him Mitch… Brinks – had incredible sales elsewhere but some of his "reference" letters mentioned some attitude problems. So here’s the game: it’s currently nearing the end of year 1 and Mitch just got into a bit of a yelling match with someone, so you figure now is a good time to review the return on your investment.

When you look at the numbers, you see Mitch had a rough start. He had moved from the West Coast, and didn’t adjust to East Coast time (and your company’s early-to-rise schedule) for a while. His luck was pretty bad. There were quite a few deals he made that due to some bad luck, Mitch didn’t seem to close. So his sales were down. Waaaay down. To make matters worse, he also rubbed some customers the wrong way. (Fortunately they were the type to write a nasty letter but show up again tomorrow.) Finally, the whole company seemed to be in a rut. Not only were Mitch’s numbers down, but one of your other top salesman – Adolphus Scranton – has been sick all year and has seemingly cost the company money. Another salesperson, Alex Randley, was out sick for 3 months. The company has had a horrible year, and Mitch had been really, really disappointing.

But then you noticed something else… Around halfway through the year, something clicked for Mr. Brinks and he started getting the sales you expected. His luck turned around quite a bit, and most of his deals were closing. His attitude still didn’t agree with people at times… but Mitch has been a damn good salesman the past few months. In fact, he’s been such a good salesman that it’s only October and Mitch has already earned his salary for the year! In fact, he’s earned enough – $65,000 – to be worth his yearly salary ($50,000) plus the pro-rated portion of his signing bonus ($13,334)… and he’s still got 2 months to go!!

You start patting yourself on the back for hiring this guy, because you realize that you’re probably underpaying him for his sales performance this year. You’re also fairly confident that he can live up to the escalating portions of his contract because the past few months have been more in line with his career performance levels than the first half of the year were. This belief is reinforced by your knowledge that other employees have also had slow starts with the company, only to rebound late in the first year of their time with the firm.

So you look at all this, and are getting some unpaid advice from some blowhard "friends" of yours that don't know the first thing about sales but know a LOT about making their opinions heard. They tell you to cut bait with Mr. Brinks and fire him immediately because he hasn't gotten along with everyone. You start to consider their opinion, until you remember that they're blowhards and what's worse they're professional rabble-rousers that profit from the attention their loud (albeit ill-advised) opinions generate. (This action also has the unfortunate side effect of getting the neighbors to taunt Mr. Brinks whenever he tries to make a sale.) Given all this, do you take their advice, and fire your solid salesman? Of course you don't.

--------------------------------------------------

Here’s why this analogy works, using numbers: Milton Bradley signed a 3-year, $30M dollar deal that paid him a $4M signing bonus and will give him $5M in his first year, $9M in his second year, and $12M in his third year. Divide these numbers by 100 to get Mitch’s numbers. Bradley had a very slow start. He claims it was due in part to adjusting to Wrigley. Whether or not that’s a valid reason, we know many others including Derrek Lee, Moises Alou, Jacque Jones, and Ryan Dempster have had slow starts to their time with the Cubs. It’s also pretty clear that Bradley was the victim of some bad luck early on in the season. His BABIP is about average on the season, but look at how low it was in the first half:

Furthermore, Bradley has rebounded very well in the second half of the season. He’s hit .295 with an OBP of .416, a SLG of .467. He has been a one of the 10-best right fielders in MLB in the second half with a wOBA* of .388. He’s been worth $6.5M** this season, which is more than his $5M salary plus the $1.3M pro-rated portion of his signing bonus. In other words, he’s already been worth more in on-field production than his entire 2009 salary… and there’s over a month of baseball left in the season! In other words he’s overpaid.

What will the future hold? No one knows, but Bradley has been worth $40M over the last three years (2006-2008) combined. That’s about $13M/season, on par with what he’ll be making on average in the last 2 years of his contract. This, when combined with his bad luck in the first half and his rebound in the second make me confident he’ll be able to make good on the rest of the deal going forward.

* - wOBA is weighted on-base %. It’s easily the best single-number out there for measuring a player’s hitting results and .388 is very good. If you want to know more, ask in the comments or use google.

** - These estimated values from from www.fangraphs.com. Basically, they measure how many more runs this player produced in your lineup (or in the field) compared to your average AAA replacement player. They then convert the number of runs the player adds to your team (or costs your team) into wins, and convert those wins into $$$. The latter conversion is based on past free agent contracts. Basically, they use the free market value for talent in MLB and use that to calculate the value of a player’s performance in $$$$.

Poll

Milton Bradley's $6.3 million salary (w/bonus) for 2009 is:

too much

85 votes

about right

128 votes

too little

32 votes

245 votes | Poll has closed

Why the Booing Has to Stop

shawndgoldman — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:23:09 -0000

This is just the latest in a long line of events that have made me angrier and angrier with the unruly mob that is Cubs fans:

``It's never comfortable,'' he said after going 4 for 4 with a homer in Tuesday's 15-6 loss. ``It's hard to be comfortable when you don't get a hit and get booed every time. When I go home and look in the mirror, I like what I see. My family's there. I have people I can talk to who are very supportive in spite of everything and all the adversity and hatred you face on a daily basis. But I'll be all right. I always have.''

I realize not all Cubs fans act this way (most probably do not), but enough of them do. Bottom line: if you're a Cubs fan and you boo players you're hurting the team. If you're a Cubs fan that watches other fans boo players without saying anything about it, you too are hurting the team. I've been silent long enough and have finally decided to speak up on this issue in this public forum. Last warning: rant against Chicago Cubs fans imminent...

I've had something on my chest for a long time, and after reading this I have to get it out there: I hate the way Cubs fans treat their players. In particular, I hate the booing they receive on a regular basis as I consider booing of the home team to be one of the most selfish, arrogant, megolmaniacal, and destructive acts a fanbase can participate in. There is almost no good that can come of it; the most likely tangible outcomes that can come of it are things like this event, where one of the more talented players on the team feels uncofmfortable in their own ballpark... and for what? A slump that lasted a few months? Congratulations, those that boo or think that it is acceptable! You're succeeding in driving one of the most talented players in town right back out of it. Enjoy watching Sam Fuld in right field. Wait... let me put that another way you'll probably understand better: enjoy the "lovable losers" that will go something like 80-84 every year.

Unfortunately, this is far from an isolated event. Milton Bradley, LaTroy Hawkins, Corey Patterson, Neifi Perez, and Jacque Jones have all been booed mercilessly. And if Milton Bradley is traded away, I have no doubts that the mob will pick a new player to boo next season (likely Soriano). I take pride in the "home atmosphere" Cubs fans create for the team when it travels on the road, so it pains me greatly when I see that for certain players many fans create an "away" atmosphere when the team plays at home.

Here are 10 commonly stated reasons for booing a player, along with my counter-arguments that they do not justify booing:

1.) It's their job.

No, it isn't. Their job is to play baseball games. Booing is only something that people with these jobs deal with because there are morons out there that think booing them is somehow productive, right, or entertaining. This argument represents very poor logic by the booing crowd: boo players -----> see argument against booing -----> claim everyone gets booed (because you booed them), and that it's a part of their jobs!

2.) I paid $XX dollars for my ticket! I have the right to voice my displeasure!

Yes, you do. I also have the right to walk into a public square and yell "I'm a moron!" at the top of my lungs. I can also do so with a bunch of friends just to make sure my point is made. That doesn't help anyone, nor is it smart.... but I have the right to do it. Having the right to do something is not a reason to do it.

3.) I'm telling management how I feel.

Be honest. No, you're not. If that were the case the obscenities we've heard shouted at players by their own would not be so personal. Booing is inherently an emotional release, not a logical call for a different course of action. And even if you boo for different reasons, you are in the minority here and are only helping to support the din of those that boo players directly.

4.) They're making $eleventy-billion!!!! They can deal!

This argument is so absurd I doubt it should even have to be countered... but since people make it all the time I suppose I must. If you want to boo somebody because they don't make a lot of (perhaps too much) money, go to your nearest corporate headquarters and ask to speak to the CEO. Or just hang out. The amount of money one makes has nothing to do with whether or not they should be booed, and it has nothing to do with whether booing them is acceptable. It isn't, regardless of someone's salary. The two things have nothing to do with each other. The only way in which they're related is that you are jealous that they get paid a lot of money to play a game. And in that case, you're just booing because you're a petty individual. That's your fault, not theirs.

5.) They have to know when they mess up!

Are you kidding me? Do you think someone that is talented enough to get to the major leagues and has had a myriad of different coaches explain the nuances of the sport to them doesn't know when they messed up? Do you think Milton Bradley doesn't know he screwed up when he threw the ball into the stands? Do you think Corey Patterson thought it was productive for him to strike out at pitches thrown at head level? Do you think LaTroy Hawkins would have been a better closer if only he knew that blowing saves was a bad thing? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you're a fool.

6.) They must try harder!

While I agree that there's something romantic about the guy that sprints as hard as he can to first on every routine ground ball, there's also something silly about it. What if a star player gets hurt trying to leg out that single? Oh, wait... That happened. At least twice. What if one hurts himself crashing into the wall? Should he try to play through the pain and "tough" it out? If he does, will you boo him when his season is horribly short of expectations? Tell that to Alfonso Soriano. Let me be clear here: yes, players should hustle. But when you boo a player for not hustling, you are making a number of assumptions, any of which could be wrong. First, the player may be nursing an injury that while doesn't make them worse than the backup demands caution on the basepaths or in the field. Second, you assume that your booing will let them know that they weren't hustling. Most of the players know this themselves 99.99% of the time without your inputs, and even if they stop hustling because of a mental lapse (as opposed to an injury) they realize their mistake immediately. They also have managers and coaches that know the injury concerns of these players, and that know a lot more about baseball than you or I do. Let them handle it.

7.) But Jimmy "go-go" Ballplayer said it was O.K.!

So what? One player not caring about or being affected by booing does not make it O.K. or acceptable to boo all players. If Jimmy thinks it helps him, then fine. Boo Jimmy. But everyone's mental makeup is different and that doesn't mean it will help or be ignored by most players.

8.) But they're the enemy! We're supposed to make them feel bad!

Don't get me wrong here. Boo opponents all you want. Boo umps too, when they blow the call. That's part of a team's home field advantage. I just don't see the point in booing your own team.

9.) But they have to deal with it on the road!

Yes, they do. That doesn't mean it helps them to hear it at home, too. I you feel booing the opponents will help your team's chances of winning a game then by logical extension booing the home team will hurt your team's chances of winning.

10.) It makes me feel better.

This is the one I won't argue with. If booing makes you feel better, fine. If it's the emotional release you need for a player or a team or a life that has disappointed you, fine. If you enjoy being the center of attention for it, fine. If it makes you feel justified because they're making more than you even though you work so darn hard, fine. I just hope you realize that you do these things at the following costs: adding unneeded pressure to a franchise and players that have enough pressure (100 years worth) without your contributions, making the Cubs a less attractive free agent destination -- particularly for African American players as they have been more often than not the target of booing, making you and your allies look like complete morons, and turning one of the best, most loyal fan bases in the world into a disadvantage. So if it makes you feel better, I won't argue that isn't true. That's for you to decide. But I will tell you that you're an arrogant, selfish, megalomaniac for thinking that makes it a justifiable course of action.

Like I said earlier, I know this doesn't apply to everyone, but it does apply to enough. There is very little good that can come of it but a whole lot of bad that can come of it. I believe that if a "curse" exists in Wrigley Field it is solely from the pressure the fan base puts on the players; it certainly has nothing to do with some long-dead goat that has nothing to do with the physical or mental performances of today's teams. In other words, I consider you (the "boo-ers") to be the most logical explanation for a curse (if one exists). Even if the chances are small that you are having an effect on the players and even if the size of the effect is small... it needs to stop. Your selfish acts are hurting the team I've loved all my life, and I'm pissed at you for it. If I were one to boo people, I'd boo you. Stop it.

Pretty Plots of Soriano's Power

shawndgoldman — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:57:03 -0000

This is a link to my work over at ACB on what's wrong with Alfonso Soriano... or, more accurately, what was wrong with Soriano. The short answer is his power has declined steadily over the last few years and he's lost some plate coverage. The good news is that it looks like he may have made adjustments in July that have the potential to bring him back to previous production levels. The sample sizes are small on this so only time will tell whether he does become the monster at the plate we know he's been or if this is just a temporary respite from the ills of age-induced regression.

I'll be in and out all day as I have other (real) work to do. But if you have questions feel free to leave them here or at ACB and I'll be happy to answer them at some point.

What's wrong with Harden?

shawndgoldman — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 20:02:28 -0000

Why is Rich Harden's ERA over 5 this season? Come along and find out...

The short version? Hill is giving up more HR's. He isn't giving up more fly balls, so the issue is that he's giving up more HR's on his fly balls. My best guess is this is probably caused by a higher degree of consistency in his fastball velocity compared to last year. Bob Brenly may be right!

The Bears Pass Coverage was Good in 2008

shawndgoldman — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:07:40 -0000

So after reading wiltfongjr's excellent piece on the cover 2, I quickly realized the numbers back up and expand upon one of his main points, using the 2008 Bears as an example. Namely, pressure on the passer is a key to the success of the cover 2 defense.

<blockquote>Penetration from front 4 is essential to any variation of the Cover 2. If you are forced to blitz, like the Bears were last year, you just can't run the defense. You need those 4 down lineman to penetrate and disrupt running plays or to pressure the QB on passing plays, so your remaining 7 defenders can play their zones accordingly. This is why Lovie calls the signing of Defensive Line Coach Rod Marinelli such an important piece of the puzzle. If Marinelli can max out the potential of the D-Line the defense will get back to more Cover 2, and subsequently less blitzing. Last years numerous blitzes and Mug look (lining the LB's up close to the line of scrimmage near the A gaps) took away from what Lovie Smith had built the defense up to be.</blockquote>

If you look at the breakdown they have at footballoutsiders.com, you'll see that the Bears had the 7th-best D in the league, according to both their DVOA stat (5.5% better than average, see here for an explanation of how FO arrives at these numbers) and their weighted number (2.5% better than average). Their rush D was particularly good -- 16.5% better than the average team -- and was the 5th-best in the league. Their weakness was against the pass, where they were 3.3% worse than average, and only ranked 11th in the NFL.

Now, if you look at the numbers they had against different types of receivers, they actually did quite well. They did better than average against #1 WR's, #2 WR's, "other WR's" (i.e. 3/4/5), and TE's. They only were worse than average against RB's (where they were pretty bad). This may lead you to ask how they were below average against the pass, if they were good against everything but RB's, who don't get many passes thrown their way. The answer is simple, and right on the page those numbers come from: DVOA of defense against receivers does not include sacks or passes with no intended receiver listed. To put it another way, the problem was the Bears simply allowed too many passing plays to turn into pass attempts; they didn't get enough sacks. The numbers also bear this out as the Bears were horrendous at rushing the passer. They had a sack rate of, 5%, which was 6th worst rate in the league. This was the case despite the Bears high blitz rate. This blitzing was also probably part of the reason the RB was successful catching passes out of the backfield, as it was often the OLB's blitzing, who would otherwise be responsible for wrapping up the RB after the catch.

If you ask me, the Bears need to upgrade their pass rush this offseason more than anything else on D. When you blitz the passer and don't get pressure on the QB, you're going to have trouble in coverage no matter your scheme; that's not on the secondary, it's on the D-line. And if this happens when you're playing the cover-2, the problem is accentuated. The passing D was a problem last season, but it wasn't the secondary or "coverage" that was the issue. Rather, the problem was the D-line and the pressure (or lack thereof) on the QB. They didn't really make any big acquisitions in terms of pass-rushing D-linemen this offseason. Hopefully, Rod Marinelli can turn improve the talent they already had.

Bears add DT Darwin Walker

shawndgoldman — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 19:45:31 -0000

The offseason evolution of the Bears' D-Line took another step forward today when they traded a 5th round pick to the Bills for Darwin Walker, a former Eagles player. Apparently, the Bills were in a bind as Walker hadn't reported to camp and would have had to give Walker back to the Eagles for a 6th round pick if he didn't report by August 5th.

Here's his ESPN page.