The Hardball Times http://www.hardballtimes.com/main Baseball. Insight. Daily. en amiv3p@yahoo.com Copyright 2009 2009-11-23T20:53:00+00:00 Who should be the Yankees DH? http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/who-should-be-the-yankees-dh/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/who-should-be-the-yankees-dh/ wrote at length about the Yankees DH situation. There's a faction of the fan base that would like to see the team promote from within, and make Cuban defector Juan Miranda the regular DH next season, while giving frequent half-days off to the old-ish lineup by allowing them to DH on occasion. Without thinking about it too much, I agreed with this line of thinking. Keeping Hideki Matsui around in 2010 would A) cost much more than promoting Miranda would, and B) make it more difficult to let some regulars DH on occasion, since Matsui can't play the field.

So I figured just let Miranda start around 100-120 games at DH, and give guys like Posada, A-Rod, and Damon the remaining time at DH to keep them fresh. Well in that article at RAB, Mike headed down that road by saying this:
There are always more DH types available than DH spots open, so the Yanks certainly have options. However, the team is said to be looking to scale back the payroll a bit, and if they can’t retain Matsui on favorable terms, the team might be better off filling the DH spot from within rather than dropping seven figures on a guy in the decline phase of his career. I’m not talking about that silly rotating DH thing when I say filling the spot from within, I’m talking about Juan Miranda.


The article continues extolling the virtues of Miranda, saying how he destroyed lefties this year after struggling against them in the past, and how he has hit MLB pitching well in his extremely limited sample size. Essentially what you would expect to hear from a prospect fanatic like Mike. But then it takes an unexpected twist:

Using the wonderful MLE Calculator, we can see that Miranda’s Triple-A batting line this year would have translated to .249-.318-.412 with 15 homers in the big leagues, though I don’t think the MLEc has been updated to reflect the homer happy New Yankee Stadium yet. For the sake of context, that’s basically what Aaron Rowand hit this year. The same Aaron Rowand whose .323 wOBA ranked 68th among all outfielders with at least 400 PA in 2009. Need more context? Melky Cabrera was 63rd with a .331 wOBA. So yeah, it’s not very good.


Well that caught me off guard. He does have a point though. Miranda might turn out to be a useful player, and he might be able to provide that value as soon as this season. And that's the problem: he might. He also might not. He has some upside, but the potential downside of giving him the starting job is too great, in my opinion, to take a chance on if you are gunning for another championship. The Yankees offense this season pulverized opposing pitching staffs partially because there was rarely a weak point in the lineup. If you look up on June 1st, and the designated hitter is hitting .245/.320/.430, there's a serious issue that needs to be addressed.

And this is why it's all about minimizing risk. For a minute now, let's say the Yankees and Hideki Matsui part ways. They would have a few primary options, including signing a left fielder and making Damon the full-time DH, keeping everything as is and promoting Miranda. The first option would probably involve a lot of money, and the second would, as I said above, involve a lot of risk. In Dave Cameron's post at FanGraphs on Friday, he wrote about this very topic:
Rather than replacing the average player with a superior option, this new graph represents the result of simply having more options. This is a strategy to pursue depth rather than premium talent. It is the baseball version of diversification. Rather than pursuing a single, high-end player with a big contract that still leaves them vulnerable to total loss in case of an injury or inexplicable drop in performance, pairing different types of players can offer similar upside and risk at a reduced cost.


So say no to Matt Holliday and his 7-year $100+ million deal, and say no to relying on a 27-year old rookie to fill the vacant spot. Say yes to... Carlos Delgado. In his last full season in 2008, Delgado smacked 38 home runs and slugged a robust .518. All that in a pitcher-friendly Shea Stadium. Put his batted ball distribution in homer-friendly Yankee Stadium and who knows what that season looks like. But as always seems to be the problem with Delgado, he has been injured. Hip surgery limited to Delgado to just 112 plate appearances this past season, but his triple-slash line was as good as ever in this small sample. Delgado appeared to be nearing a return to the Mets in August before an oblique strain caused them to shut him down, so he's presumably ready to go health-wise.

This isn't about Delgado's pure production, which is difficult to project coming off an injury. CHONE projects .247/.322/.449, while Bill James is more optimistic about Delgado, seeing a .263/.361/.494 line. It's also about Delgado's potentially affordable contract, which could be heavier on incentives than on guaranteed dollars. If the Yankees were to sign Delgado, they wouldn't be making a bet on him alone being that productive; they'd be betting that either Delgado or Miranda (or a combination of both) could produce offensively for a low price. Signing Delgado to an incentive-laden deal allows them to take a chance on Delgado's 30+ home run upside while still hedging their bets with Miranda should Delgado get hurt or be ineffective. Now if only Wall Street could manage its risk like this, we might be getting somewhere.

Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> ]]> Dan Novick 2009-11-23T19:53:00+00:00 Mauer Power http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/shysterball/article/mauer-power/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/shysterball/article/mauer-power/
MVP.

That is, unless you're the (presumably) Detroit-area voter who put Miguel Cabrera in front of Mauer in first place, costing him the unanimous MVP.

Same dude who voted Verlander over Greinke for the Cy Young award? If so, is it time to investigate whether this city-by-city system is the best way to go?

UPDATE: Ken Davidoff Tweets that it was Keizo Konishi of Kyodo News, based in Seattle, who voted Miguel Cabrera first. I can think of no worldly justification for voting Cabrera ahead of either Mauer or Jeter for that matter, so I eagerly await Mr. Konishi's explanation.

Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> ]]> Craig Calcaterra 2009-11-23T18:24:38+00:00 My Morning in Exile http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/shysterball/article/my-morning-in-exile112309/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/shysterball/article/my-morning-in-exile112309/
  • Omar Vizquel is Snake Eyes to Ozzie Guillen's Storm Shadow.


  • Comment of the day comes from Len over at NBC: "Hey, Frenchie might hit a double!"


  • A-Rod's cousin's house is being foreclosed upon. There's a good chance that it's a walkaway as opposed to a hardship case, and the piece itself quotes someone saying that A-Rod is still taking care of the guy financially, but don't let that stop the Daily News from portraying this as a situation in which A-Rod threw his family under the bus and then abandoned him. That's just how they do.


  • If they throw in another $6 million I'll take Mike Lowell off the Red Sox' hands. I could use some veteran presence around the house.


  • Not having enough scouts is the new inefficiency.


  • The biggest difference between blogging full time and blogging part time is that when you blog full time, you pretty much have to opine on things like the backup catcher market. I'm cool with that. In fact, going forward, I'm going to view making innocuous stories like that interesting as a creative challenge.


    • As I mentioned the other day, the job change is tempting me to take a stab at reviving my long dead personal blog. I make no promises that it will keep going -- two blogs tends to be a challenge -- but I've got a new post up today. It won't be anything like my baseball writing in terms of volume -- if I get one or two new things up a week over there I'll be happy. And if it dies again, hell, it dies.

    Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> ]]>     Craig Calcaterra 2009-11-23T15:38:14+00:00     Book excerpt: Evaluating Baseball’s Managers: Pat Moran http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/book-excerpt-evaluating-baseballs-managers-pat-moran/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/book-excerpt-evaluating-baseballs-managers-pat-moran/ his new book, Chris examines the greatest manager you never heard of: Pat Moran.

    Click the title to read more.

    Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> ]]>     Chris Jaffe 2009-11-23T09:26:43+00:00     Players worth remembering, 1901-1924 http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/players-worth-remembering-1901-1924/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/players-worth-remembering-1901-1924/
    Click the title to read more.

    Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> ]]>     Geoff Young 2009-11-23T08:15:44+00:00     How Sabermetrics saved my dissertation http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/how-sabermetrics-saved-my-dissertation/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/how-sabermetrics-saved-my-dissertation/
    Click the title to read more.

    Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> ]]>     Pizza Cutter 2009-11-23T05:05:40+00:00     Why Baseball Needs a Visual Facelift http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/why-baseball-needs-a-visual-facelift/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/why-baseball-needs-a-visual-facelift/
    image

    Take a look at how little the box score has changed since 1876! It’s really the tip of the iceberg in terms of how little innovation there has been in the sport’s design and communication of information. My hope is to be part of a revolution in changing the way baseball is viewed and understood by its fans. In the same way that Sabermetrics has opened up new insight via new and better analysis of information, I'd like to see the same happen via the visual communication of information.

    Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> ]]>     Kevin Dame 2009-11-22T04:08:02+00:00     Introducing Visual Baseball http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/introducing-visual-baseball/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/introducing-visual-baseball/
    Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> ]]>     Kevin Dame 2009-11-22T04:05:52+00:00     Building a Retrosheet database, the short form http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/building-a-retrosheet-database-the-short-form/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/building-a-retrosheet-database-the-short-form/ Retrosheet's event files, including 2009, the 1952 AL and some corrections to other years. This is a guide written for someone who already has an SQL database (MySQL, that is) set up and is comfortable with it. I am in the process of putting together a set of tutorials for those with no SQL experience whatsoever, but I've made a lot of changes to how I set up a database and I know some people would appreciate having those. And mind, this is a tutorial for Windows users. And make sure you have a lot of space free on your hard drive.

    You need to install wget and 7-zip. I have made the presumption that you are installing them to C:\Program Files\. If you are not, you will have to edit some batch files.

    By the same token, I am assuming that everything else goes in the folder C:\Retrosheet. If you put it somewhere else, you will have to edit some batchfiles. I have created a zip file that contains everything you need. Simply place that file in the C:\Retrosheet folder (you may have to make one first) and use 7-zip to unzip the file there. That file contains EVERYTHING you need except the event files themselves. That includes a copy of Chadwick version 0.5.2, which is used to parse Retrosheet's event files.

    WARNING: The database schemas in here will only work with the version of Chadwick provided. You will get errors (or corrupted data) if you try to use an older version of Chadwick to parse these files and then load them into the database.

    Go to C:\Retrosheet\data\zipped and run the get_zip_files.bat file. (If you have installed 7-zip or wget somewhere other than the default, you'll need to edit this file.) This will download all the zip files from Retrosheet's website and extract the contents. Then go to the folder C:\Retrosheet\data\zipped, which should contain the files you just extracted. There are three batch files in there:


    • $cwevent.bat
    • $cwgame.bat
    • $cwsub.bat


    Run those to parse the event files through Chadwick.

    Okay, time to load that database. A warning - a lot of these queries will take a long time. The first thing to do is run retrosheet table schema.sql. That will wipe out anything you have in any database named "retrosheet," so if that's important to you, make a backup before starting. Then, you will find three files in the loaders directory:


    • events.sql
    • games.sql
    • subs.sql


    Run those. (In SQLyog, that option is called "Restore From SQL Dump," under the Tools menu.) They will populate the database. (Note - if you are using a different directory structure, you need to edit these files first to reflect that.) Then, run the partition.sql file - that will "partition" the database to make it easier to load into memory. This will dramatically speed up queries. (After you've run partition.sql, you can feel free to delete the tables events_bck and games_bck.) Finally, run lookup_codes.sql to load the lookup tables (the ones that will tell you what the different codes mean).

    That's it!

    Thanks to Tangotiger and Mat Kovach, whose work this is based on, Ted Turocy for providing the Chadwick tool set, and Dave Smith and all the volunteers over at Retrosheet for their hard work.

    I hope this is useful to you. Let me know if you need help or if something doesn't work right. And again, if all of this is a bit more advanced than you're prepared for right now, I am working on a set of more indepth tutorials that should get you started - look for them sometime this week, hopefully.

    UPDATE: Last time I posted a Retrosheet tutorial, I included some run expectancy code. Quite frankly, it was pretty poor. This is much better. It includes code for figuring linear weights as well. It is very compute-intensive, though, and requires roughly four times the code of the old method. I think it's worth it, but then again I'm kind of an obsessive on the topics of run expectancy and linear weights.

    Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> ]]>     Colin Wyers 2009-11-21T16:24:36+00:00     HR/FB Park Factors http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/hr-fb-park-factors/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/hr-fb-park-factors/
    I used BIP data and the methodology from Baseball Reference to determine simple HR/FB park factors for 2009 and 4-year weighed factors (weights are 5,3,2,1).

    Update: My spreadsheet was thrown off by the Rays' name change. I've corrected the numbers below

    Without further adieu, here's the list:

    Team        Park                         2009    4 Year
Angels      Angel Stadium                 110      96
Astros      Minute Maid Park              104     108
Athletics   McAfee Colisuem                95      92
Blue Jays   Rogers Centre                 105     108
Braves      Turner Field                   90      95
Brewers     Miller Park                   108     106
Cardinals   Busch Stadium                  86      84
Cubs        Wrigley Field                  97     103
DiamondbacksChase Field                    99     106
Dodgers     Dodger Stadium                 89      95
Giants      Pacific Bell Park             104      95
Indians     Jacobs Field                   75      88
Mariners    Safeco Park                    95      96
Marlins     Dolphins Stadium              109      99
Mets        Citi Field                     98      98
Nationals   Nationals Stadium              91      92
Orioles     Oriole Park at Camden Yar     109     115
Padres      PETCO Park                     73      75
Phillies    Citizens Bank Park            109      94
Pirates     PNC Park                      105      94
Rays        Tropicana Field               110     111
Rangers     The Ballpark at Arlington      98      97
Red Sox     Fenway Park                    98      90
Reds        Great American Ballpark       121     114
Rockies     Coors Field                   103     112
Royals      Kaufman Stadium                73      78
Tigers      Comerica Park                  94     101
Twins       Metrodome                     109      96
White Sox   US Cellular Field             115     118
Yankees     New Yankee Stadium            130     130


    The Mets and the Yankees Park Factors are one season only

    The Nationals Park Factor is two seasons, weighted at 5 and 3

    Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> ]]>     Dan Turkenkopf 2009-11-21T11:58:38+00:00