?The Cubs are looking for a Director of Research & Development in their Baseball Operations. If you apply, make sure to say you "heard it from Tango". Since we're on the topic, I am now providing my consulting services exclusively to the Cubs.
Job description follows:
This guy has been speaking with common sense and humility since he was at least sixteen years old (if you can find that interview, I think you'll be impressed by the way he spoke). And he still has a great perspective:
"One of the things I'm most proud of is that as a family we're able to spend June, July and August together on a lake house. It's something my wife and I always dreamed about," Gretzky said. "Fortunately, we found a tremendous place in Idaho and we love it. One of the reasons I don't think about going back to work now is I don't want to give up my June, July and August. From my point of view right now, selfishly, I don't want to give up that time, so that's how I keep coming back to the time is not right for me to be in the game. It's as simple as that."
However, Gretzky admits it's hard to fill the void of competition in his life.
"I miss winning," Gretzky said. "What I'm doing now, whether it be my wine company or my restaurant, you plug along every day and you try to create ideas to better your brand or your company. But ultimately, there are no peaks and valleys. Being a professional athlete, it's all about peaks and valleys. If you win it's everything, and if you lose it's gut-wrenching. You're paid to play, but you're paid to win."
A blogger who's fun to read, talks about a player with an interesting background.?
There are two little facets to baseball that I love more than just about anything else: pitchers-as-batters, and nonpitchers-as-pitchers. I love it because it puts players completely out of their element, providing basically a (mostly) unbiased view as to what's possible with just the most minimal of talent.?
And Jeff takes a look. And no surprise that maybe umpires are nice to them.
Mark looks at his numbers out of zone, as well as "watch him play" reviews.
A wonderful article that asks alot of questions, gives you many considerations, as the author tries to determine if he's a hypocrite or not. It's a sane and sober basis for discussion, one that is short on histrionics and large on coherent arguments. It asks the reader to come up with more questions, and not come up with any summary opinion yet. I think it's such a sensational piece that the author has put the reader in a position to take both sides of the same issue.
In politics, you take one side by focusing on the positives of the position you have CHOSEN, and highlighting the negatives of the opposing side.? This article is the antithesis of politics. The author doesn't ask you to choose sides first, and then defend it like a fool (or politician... same thing). The author wants you to think, ask questions, and try to find your answers, which undoubtedly will actually be even more questions.
Just a terrific piece.
The only thing I've learned about the Verducci Effect is that there's alot of bright young guys out there willing to tackle a problem with eyes wide open. This year, it's Pizza Cutter that gives it a go in this excellent piece.
To say that pitchers on the Verducci list are more likely to experience an injury is correct. However, it's actually the control group that is more likely to land on the DL. In fact, 29.2 percent of controls spent time on the DL compared to 24.0 percent of the Verducci group (not significant, for the record). Perhaps we might interpret this in context. Teams probably treat their young pitchers gingerly, especially in the context of having pushed them a bit in the previous year. Maybe they are a little more careful with minor injuries and push back a start here and there. But there's no evidence that Verducci Effect pitchers are more likely to sustain serious injuries. In fact, what evidence is there runs in the opposite direction....
Verducci status was not associated with differences year over year in strikeout rate (per batter faced), walk rate, home run rate, or ERA (i.e., his strikeout rate went from 12.1 percent to 13.2 percent for a difference of 1.1). This held after controlling for the previous season's number to account for possible ceiling or floor effects.
...
What should be apparent is that Verducci Effect pitchers are a very mixed bunch. There are plenty of ways to get on the list, and different ones might bode well, poorly, or neutrally for a pitcher's future. The problem of the Verducci Effect formulation is that the sample is far too heterogeneous to expect coherent effects out of it. Maybe the real frontier here is in breaking players down into sub-groups based on how they got onto that list to begin with. It's much more complex, doesn't fit nicely onto the page of a magazine, and it's the way that real research is done.
So here's to hoping that I don't have to resurrect this column a year from now. It's time to just admit that the Verducci Effect doesn't hold water and move on.
The one thing that Pizza noted is about looking at batters faced and not innings, because a guy can pile up innings by getting lucky outs from his fielders. So, why not just presume that Verducci meant to say 130 batters faced and not 30 innings? Or that he meant 500 pitches and not 30 innings? We talked about this last year in regards to Strasburg, where the game-by-game (presumed) control was based on pitch counts, but then, when we talked about the aggregate, it was always about innings.
And since Verducci threw out 30 innings as a proxy for 500 pitches, he was obviously not in a position to say 500 pitches any more than he could say 250 pitches or 750 pitches of increased workload. So, I don't think we necessarily want to hold him down to the 500 pitches.
There's plenty of great young saberists out there, including Pizza and all the other guys he linked to in his article (David, Jeremy, Derek). And Pizza noted a long list of potential biases, all of which are valid.
Really, the legacy of the Verducci Effect is how creative the saberists can be in trying to find something to the notion of forecasting the injury probability of a pitcher. For the aspiring among you, this is a great place to cut your teeth.
?Glenn continues his terrific work, this time focusing on wOBA. Expectedly, the coefficient for the walk regressed the least, while the single regressed the most. What is interesting is that the coefficient for the single regressed so much that it now predicted wOBA worse than the walk! This is something we talked about a long time back.
?Alan uses Greg's HR data, and reverse-engineers the variables that impact the ball's trajectory:
[quote]Simulations confirm that finding and show that, once the initial velocity, the landing point, and hang time are specified, there is very little wiggle room left over for determining the rest of the trajectory. The technique is very powerful and one that I have utilized many times for baseball analysis.[/quote]
He then notes:
[quote]We have found that the initial velocity vector is not sufficient to determine the total distance traveled, and that is the primary conclusion of this study. We have also found that wind is not the major cause. We have further shown that variation in both the drag coefficient and the backspin accounts for the spread of distance values, although some of the effects—particularly the correlation between drag and spin—are quite subtle. There are suggestions of a spin-dependence as well as a ball-to-ball variation to the drag on a baseball.[/quote]
I'm finally off and running. Feel free to use this thread to test commenting, registration (needed for commenting), navigation, or whatever else.
And a special thanks to the handful of Straight Arrow readers that tested the site.
Nov 23 14:15
Layered wOBAcon
Nov 22 22:15
Cy Young Predictor 2024
Oct 28 17:25
Layered Hit Probability breakdown
Oct 15 13:42
Binomial fun: Best-of-3-all-home is equivalent to traditional Best-of-X where X is
Oct 14 14:31
NaiveWAR and VictoryShares
Oct 02 21:23
Component Run Values: TTO and BIP
Oct 02 11:06
FRV v DRS
Sep 28 22:34
Runs Above Average
Sep 16 16:46
Skenes v Webb: Illustrating Replacement Level in WAR
Sep 16 16:43
Sacrifice Steal Attempt
Sep 09 14:47
Can Wheeler win the Cy Young in 2024?
Sep 08 13:39
Small choices, big implications, in WAR
Sep 07 09:00
Why does Baseball Reference love Erick Fedde?
Sep 03 19:42
Re-Leveraging Aaron Judge
Aug 24 14:10
Science of baseball in 1957
THREADS
November 23, 2024
Layered wOBAcon, for Pitchers
November 19, 2024
Layered wOBAcon
October 24, 2024
Layered Hit Probability breakdown
October 18, 2024
Describing the season of a pitcher: ERA v FIP
October 04, 2024
Binomial fun: Best-of-3-all-home is equivalent to traditional Best-of-X where X is
October 02, 2024
Component Run Values: TTO and BIP
October 01, 2024
Cy Young Predictor 2024
September 25, 2024
Arm and Movement Angles
September 25, 2024
Runs Above Average
September 23, 2024
Clase and Cy Young voting for relievers
September 20, 2024
Spray angles and xwOBA, part I-lost-track
September 17, 2024
FRV v DRS
September 15, 2024
Sacrifice Steal Attempt
September 11, 2024
Skenes v Webb: Illustrating Replacement Level in WAR
September 06, 2024
Small choices, big implications, in WAR
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