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. Most Recent Comments
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Building a Retrosheet database, the short form (2) HR/FB Park Factors (5) Is peak at age 29? (7) On whiffing (4) 
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Wednesday, August 12, 2009Trevor Bell makes debutAngels prospect Trevor Bell made his major league debut today against Tampa Bay. Bell started the game lasting 5.1 innings giving up four runs on nine hits including a pair of home runs by Carlos Pena. Bell struck out four and walked just one batter. He threw 75 pitches in the outing, flashing his entire repertoire of fastballs, cutters, change-ups and curveballs (MLB Gameday incorrectly classified his hard breaking curve as a slider). He threw 29 fastballs averaging 93.2 miles per hour and topping out just over 95. He also threw 23 cutters (average speed of 91 mph), 19 curveballs, and just four change-ups. His change averaged nearly 85 mph which is not a great change in velocity from his fastball. Below is his his pitch movement courtesy of Brooks Baseball. Click for more... Brewers shake up roster: Demote Hall, Hardy for EscobarThe Milwaukee Brewers imported David Weathers, now they're shaking up their offense by bringing up Alcides Escobar along with Jason Bourgeois and kicking Bill Hall and J.J. Hardy to the curb. Click for more... Random Scott Podsednik stuffHere's some random stuff I haphazardly found out while noodling at Baseball-Reference.com. In his last 33 games, Scott Podsednik’s hit .258/.313./341 for an OPS of 653 (well, I get 654, but b-ref says otherwise, I guess they’re adding up SLG & OBP’s full numbers, and not just rounding off). For comparison, Josh Fields as a year-round OPS of 655 which gives him an OPS+ of. . . . 68. So that’s Podsednik over the last month. In his first 19 games with the team this year, Podesednik hit .268/.303/.324 for an OPS of 627. Based on the OPSs and OPS+s of Ramon Castro and Josh Fields, I reckon that works out to an OPS+ of 61 for Podsednik. In between those two stretches, Podsednik played 36 games in which he hit .340/.401/.455 for an OPS of 856. That’s Gordon Beckham territory right there, for an OPS+ of about 118. So, putting it another way 19 games: 61 OPS+ 36 games: 118 OPS+ 33 games: 68 OPS+ And of course the year before he had an OPS+ of 68 in 93 games. And this all ignores his rather underwhelming defense. I knew Podsednik was playing over his head overall, but I didn’t realize he’s spent most of his time with the Sox playing at about the level he should. He's had one great spurt that prop him up, but otherwise he's been what one should've expected: an empty .260ish batting average. It's a damn good thing for the Sox they just got Alex Rios. They managed to get about half a season of what was overall respectable production from Podsednik (.295/.349//387 on the year thanks to his hot spurt) without needing to use his season line completely crashed to earth. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||