November 22, 2009
Order Now The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 is now in development and will ship in mid November! This year's book will feature articles by THT's staff as well as Bill James, Tom Tango and Craig Wright. If you use this link to purchase the Annual, you will be in the first group to receive it and you'll be supporting THT. 
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John Barten Brian Borawski Craig Brown Evan Brunell David Gassko Jonathan Hale Brandon Isleib Chris Jaffe Max Marchi Bruce Markusen Harry Pavlidis Jeff Sackmann Dave Studeman Steve Treder Bryan Tsao Tuck! Dan Turkenkopf Colin Wyers Geoff Young John Brattain And here's the full roster.
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Ten Things I Didn’t Know Last Weekby Dave StudemanApril 26, 2007 The third oldest major league stadium, where the parking stinks.I was sitting around chatting with my brother the other day when he asked me a baseball trivia question: What's the fourth oldest major league stadium? Now, I know that Fenway and Wrigley are the two oldest stadiums, but then there's a big gap in years. I guessed Dodger Stadium, which it turns out is the third oldest major league stadium. The fourth oldest is Anaheim Stadium, we think. Anyway, my brother (who has been attending Dodgers games for over 30 years) then proceeded to tell me how Frank McCourt (a parking lot magnate) has ruined the parking at Dodger Stadium. It used to be that parking was logical and manageable. You were assigned parking near your gate, it was easy to get in and out (if you knew the system) and parking was affordable. I guess it's hard to leave a good thing alone. On Opening Day, the Dodgers announced that all general admission attendees would now have to use just one entrance, and that you might not be able to park anywhere near your gate. And, to top it off, they raised the price from $10 to $15. This ridiculous move has been a nightmare for Dodgers fans and my brother has since refused to attend another Dodgers game. You can read more about the Dodgers parking debacle at 6-4-2. Let's hope the Dodgers admit their mistake and fix this PR snafu quickly. By the way, here's an article about the oldest ballpark in the world. The Royals are raking it in.I'm not talking about the Royals on the field, but the Royals in the business office. Forbes released its annual survey of baseball franchise valuations last week, and found that the average franchise value has increased 15% from the previous year. Last season's free agents surely aren't surprised by that increase, though our own John Beamer has some questions about the manner in which Forbes conducts their estimates. But I mostly enjoyed reading about the Kansas City Royals. Why? Because the Royals' valuation is a compete contrast with its on-field lack of success. The Royals are now worth $282 million, according to Forbes, three times as much as owner David Glass paid for it a mere seven years ago. This despite a decrease in ticket sales of 18% during that time. How have the Royals pulled this off? Two words: revenue sharing. Last year, for instance, the Royals collected $32 million from other teams in revenue sharing. This isn't really a bad thing, because Major League Baseball had to address the issue of competitive balance. The increase in the Royals' valuation shows that the strategy has "worked." But it also shows how being in the right place at the right time can make a lot of money for a baseball owner. I just hope that the pressure to spend all that money on the franchise doesn't result in more signings like the Gil Meche deal. Some teams stink at close games.The Cubs are off to a lousy 7-13 start, but they've actually outscored their opponents by seven runs (as of Wednesday). As you might guess, the Cubs are 0-8 in games decided by two runs or less, a big reason for their poor start. The culprits appear to be their batters, who have averaged 4.4 runs a game (about the league average) but have a cumulative -3.5 WPA total. In the American League, the Yankees are 2-10 in close games. In New York's case, you might want to point a finger at the bullpen. Yankees relievers have a respectable 3.67 ERA but a -1.28 WPA (I think only Kansas City's is worse). The normally spectacular Mariano Rivera has compiled a WPA of -1.34, third worst in the majors. The three best bullpens in the majors, according to WPA, are San Diego's, Milwaukee's and Atlanta's. I guessing you're not surprised that the Padres are at the top of this list, but the Brewers and Braves might have your eyebrows raised. Last year, the Braves and Brewers were second and third worst in the league, respectively. Adrian Gonzalez is our early-season Mr. Clutch.Have you noticed the fine start of San Diego's first baseman? Adrian Gonzalez is batting .329/.389/.600, which is pretty darn impressive for someone who plays half of his games in PETCO Park. He's tied for fourth in home runs and 13th in GPA in the majors. But he's also excelled in "clutch" situations, batting .600 (!) with runners in scoring position and he's second in the majors in "Clutch," a statistic calculated by Fangraphs using WPA statistics. By the way, guess who's first in Fangraphs' "Clutch?" The Marlins' Cody Ross, that's who. Ross is batting a spectacular .333/.381/.692 in only 42 at-bats and he's managed to lead the Marlins in batting WPA in each of the last three games he's played. At this stage of the season, of course, these stats are meaningless. But they're still lots of fun. Tim Hudson is off to a pretty good start.Speaking of meaningless early season stats, you have probably noticed that Tim Hudson has a 0.62 ERA so far in 29 innings. I thought it might be interesting to break down his early season stats to find an explanation for his short-term improvement over last year:
Who has hit the most home runs in 1-0 games.Over on the SABR-L mailing list, David Vincent posted this list of batters with the most home runs in 1-0 games. Ted Williams 5 Jim Wynn 4 Bobby Bonds 4 Dwight Evans 4 Bobby Grich 4I don't know why, but I find this list fascinating. It made me wonder which teams have played and won the most 1-0 games, so I wandered on over to Baseball Reference and came up with the following list (for the years 1950-2007): Team 1-0 Wins Dodgers 147 Cards 115 White Sox 113 Mets 111 Angels 107 Orioles 106 Phillies 104 Astros 103 Giants 101 Braves 100The Red Sox are further down the list, with 80 1-0 wins. Note that the Mets didn't even exist until 1962, which makes their total particularly impressive. Red Sox pitchers are special.Red Sox pitchers are apparently special, anyway. As this rant points out, pitchers who have spent significant time on the Red Sox currently rank second, third and fourth in active leaders in hit batsmen. Also, Red Sox pitchers have exceeded their "expected" number of no-hit games more than any other team. According to David Gassko in last week's Heater supplement, Boston has thrown six more no-hitters than you'd expect based on their underlying pitching stats (primarily overall outs per nine innings). No other team has exceeded their expected total nearly that much. Naturally, the one team that significantly misses its expected total is the aforementioned Mets, by seven hypothetical no-hitters. 1-0 winners and losersSo, the next thing I wondered is which teams have won the highest percentage of 1-0 games. Once again, Baseball Reference came to my rescue: Team Games Wins Losses Win% TBD 18 11 7 0.611 LAN 252 147 105 0.583 ATL 181 100 81 0.552 BAL 193 106 87 0.549 SFG 185 101 84 0.546 TOR 74 40 34 0.541 HOU 192 103 89 0.536 STL 215 115 100 0.535 LAA 201 107 94 0.532 MIL 108 57 51 0.528 TEX 145 76 69 0.524 NYM 213 111 102 0.521 SDP 153 78 75 0.510 NYY 190 96 94 0.505 CLE 182 92 90 0.505 COL 16 8 8 0.500 CHW 230 113 117 0.491 PHI 217 104 113 0.479 DET 175 83 92 0.474 FLA 38 18 20 0.474 MIN 181 84 97 0.464 OAK 184 85 99 0.462 CIN 186 85 101 0.457 BOS 175 80 95 0.457 PIT 190 86 104 0.453 SEA 71 32 39 0.451 KCR 105 47 58 0.448 WAS 141 61 80 0.433 CHC 196 83 113 0.423 ARI 25 7 18 0.280It's no surprise that there are a couple of expansion teams at the top and bottom, but it seems as though the Cubs have quite a history of not winning the close ones, doesn't it? Lots of things about Jackie Robinson.Retrosheet has published a page dedicated to Jackie Robinson's stats, including year-by-year splits and how he performed against every pitcher. Some highlights:
A-Rod is off to a hot start.Yeah, you knew that one. But here's a new angle for you: A-Rod has compiled 2.16 WPA in less than a month. Over a full year, that would equal 18 WPA, or 36 games above .500. That is truly a phenomenal start. So phenomenal, in fact, that Baseball Prospectus's Joe Sheehan thinks A-Rod has a legitimate chance to drive in 200 runs this year, beating the major league record of 191. Finally, consider Dan Heisman's comments on SABR-L: The past six years Alex Rodriguez has broken the record for "Most HR by Age N" where N is the player's age on July 1.Barry Bonds will receive a lot of attention in a couple of months, but this has been A-Rod's year so far. When all is said and done, those two guys may well be two of the five greatest players ever. References and Resources I didn't do my research on ballparks, but several readers have. Here is a list of ballparks by age, available from http://www.ballparksofbaseball.com/yearopened.htm: 1 Fenway (1912) 2 Wrigley (19140 3 Yankee Stadium (1923) 4 RFK in DC (Oct, 1961)* 5 Dodger Stadium (1962) In my defense, Yankee Stadium was pretty much completely rebuilt in the 1970's (remember when the Yankees played at Shea?) and RFK went a long time without being used. So perhaps I should call Dodger Stadium the third-oldest ballpark that has been continuously played in, without being rebuilt. Close enough, anyway. Dave was called a "national treasure" by Rob Neyer. Seriously. Comments about this article can be sent to him through the miracle of e-mail. Commenting is not available in this weblog entry. Do you have a general question or comment for one of THT's writers? Send it in to our weekly mailbag We also welcome unsolicited op-ed pieces of approximately 500 words for consideration. We reserve the right to edit for length, clarity and consistency of style. Please include your whole name and location to be considered. If you have a comment about this specific article, please email the writer. Next Article: THT Daily: Sosa Smacks Two>> <<Previous Article: Pennants Added |
