by Ben Davey

Bill Center wrote a recent article in the UT listing the UT’s top 15 Padres prospects for 2010. While I am aware that rankings are extremely difficult and can change drastically from one expert to another, my problem was not  that the UT gave rankings, but that they were not the UT’s or Bill Center’s. In fact they were a “consensus.” Bill Center writes “Based on results, potential, and proximity to the major leagues, here is a CONSENSUS of the Padres’ top prospects.”

I wonder, who is this consensus? Could it be Baseball America? What about Madfriars (insider article)? Or John Sickles? What about Tops? So I figured just looking at these 4 I would develop an actual consensus and see how they stack up.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Myron Logan

Okay, so I mentioned it in yesterday’s post, and I’ve been thinking more and more about re-subscribing to Baseball Prospectus, which announced some changes on Monday.

The short back story: I found out about Baseball Prospectus somewhere around 2004 after reading Moneyball. I quickly bought one of their annual books and subscribed to the online content. I was hooked. BP was essentially my Bill James, piquing my interest in sabermetrics and a deeper understanding of the game. Articles by Nate Silver, Dan Fox, and Keith Woolner (among  others) were always insightful, entertaining, and thought-provoking. Not to mention, I had access to PECOTA and the rest of the stable of solid BP writers. $40? That was a bargain.

Somewhere in the last few years, however, I realized myself visiting BP less and less often. $40 a year still was not breaking the bank, but was it worth it for something I rarely used? Nate Silver left the site for his political endeavors, Keith Woolner joined the Indians, and Dan Fox similarly found himself in an MLB front office. It is a credit to BP that about half of their stats-based authors seem to eventually get scooped up by MLB teams, but it also left an unfilled hole in their content.

Now, it seemed to me at this time, BP made a concerted effort to become more “mainstream,” to appeal to a wider audience. They had gained tremendous popularity through the years, and were now serving a broader demographic of people, with maybe only a small percent really caring about which pythagorean win estimator worked best. This was fine, and probably a good business decision, but it did not really appeal to my specific tastes.

At the same time, it seemed like sabermetric writing was popping up all over the net. The Hardball Times was as good as ever, Beyond the Boxscore had been rejuvenated, FanGraphs added a writing element to complement their great stats section, and Tango’s Inside the Book Blog was being updated daily. There were more, too, like Baseball Analysts and Statistically Speaking, not to mention countless team-based blogs.

With all that considered, I let my subscription run out, and have gone without it for a good year or so. Say, for instance, you are an avid bowler, and you have three local alleys to choose from. Two are free, and one is two bucks a game. If the one happens to be vastly superior to the other two, then maybe you will fork up the extra $2 dollars to bowl there. But if the three alleys are essentially equal, well, in time you are probably going to quit going to the one that costs money, and spend your time at the free ones. That is basically what happened. BP shifted their content away from what I wanted, and other sites emerged or improved to fill the void. And my mom saved $40 a year.

In Kevin Goldstein’s announcement, however, it appears that BP is going to again put a much stronger emphasis on pure sabermetrics, with the additions of guys like Russell Carleton/Pizza Cutter (whose work has been featured primarily at StatSpeak) and Colin Wyers (StatSpeak and The Hardball Times). Both guys are super active in the saber-community; they are smart, creative, and they write well. BP has also brought in Tommy Bennett (Beyond the Boxscore) and Jeff Euston (proprietor of Cot’s Contracts), adding to a group of saber writers that also includes recently hired Eric Seidman (graduating from about eight different baseball sites) and Matt Swartz.

To get back to my original question, is this form of Baseball Prospectus worth $40, when I can still get a bunch of analysis, research, and stats for free at the above-mentioned sites? That is certainly an individualized question; personally, I am not sure yet, but the decision is harder than it was a few days ago. What is your take?

by Daniel Gettinger

Randy Johnson retired yesterday.  He was a good pitcher.  Arguably the best of his generation.

I could cite a bunch of stats that demonstrate how great Johnson was.  I just don’t see the point.  We all know he was good.  We can leave it at that.

That said, the urge to use stats to highlight Johnson’s greatness can be great.

In a twitter post, Tim Sullivan wrote: “How tough was Randy Johnson on left-handed hitters?  Consider: Tony Gwynn went 1-for-12 against him with four strikeouts.”

Although a neat little factoid, that Gwynn went 1-for-12 with four strikeouts against Randy Johnson actually tells us very little about Johnson’s success against lefties.

Gwynn went 0-for-8 against Mark Wohlers, and 1-for-13 against Kent Bottenfield.

Over his career, Wohlers had significantly more success against righties than lefties.  Bottenfield had approximately equivalent success against righties and lefties, but nobody would ever use him as an example of a pitcher incredibly tough on lefty batters.  Against lefties he surrendered a 0.776 OPS-a bit worse than league average.

That Johnson struck Gwynn out four times in twelve at-bats against is also not significant.

Because Johnson was very good at forcing all batters to swing and miss, we would expect Gwynn to strike out more against him than against the average pitcher.  That said, sometimes, just due to small sample size, Gwynn struck out a lot against certain pitchers.  In fifteen plate appearances against Mike Madden, Gwynn struck out five times.  Madden only struck out 5.5 batters per nine innings in his short career.

Randy Johnson of course was incredibly tough against left-handed batters.  Lefties only managed a 0.571 OPS against Johnson during his career.  His SO/BB ratio against lefties was 4.12.  Amazing stuff.  Using Gwynn’s struggles against Johnson does little to show such domination.

My point here is not to call out Tim Sullivan.  His factoid was almost certainly intended for amusement, and not serious analysis.  Its just that all too often people do use samples as small as Gwynn’s 12 plate appearances against Johnson to back up larger claims.

I have found such information to be disseminated most often on radio and television broadcasts.  I implore Dick Enberg, the Padres new play-by-play guy to fight the urge to provide viewers with pitcher-batter splits.  The information is not meaningful.

Special thanks to Baseball Reference’s play index for facilitating my research for this short piece.

by Myron Logan

Multiple sources are reporting that the Padres will announce Dick Enberg as their lead TV announcer for next season. Enberg is a premium voice, obviously, but he has not really been a play-by-play baseball guy in a while. Should be interesting.

Also, and perhaps more importantly, the Padres are expected to name Jason McLeod as their assistant general manager of scouting and player development. McLeod worked for the Padres from 1994 through 2003, so this is not new to him. He has been the man behind many solid drafts in Boston, but we will see how he does here with less financial resources.

Kind of a big day, for non-player related off-season news. Feel free to discuss in comments, as always.

By: John Conniff

No, newspapers are killing newspapers.

Recent reports show that the industry is losing significant portions of its circulation, including the San Diego Union Tribune which saw its readership decline by ten percent from last year.

What we all remember reading every morning has morphed into an increasingly multi-faceted media platform, delivering information in a variety of forms; print, on-line, audio and video.

However, despite the new format which was unveiled a few weeks ago on SignOnSanDiego.com, the San Diego Union Tribune’s website, the people that run the newspaper/website are still implementing the same model they used twenty years ago rather than with their new 21^st century infrastructure.

What works in print is different from what drives people to visit different sites; similar to the distinctions between radio and television programming. To have a thriving website and newspaper each must have its own original information, tailored to their own unique audiences.

Why would anyone want to go on-line to read the same content that was in the morning paper?

Baseball is one of the better examples of how many websites, both nationally and locally, have filled voids that daily papers fail to cover.

San Diego Padres new general manager Jed Hoyer was hired for two primary reasons, his ability to run a scouting and development program - the draft and the minor leagues - and his ability to understand and implement saber-metrics, or the use of baseball statistics.

Looking to read anything about these subjects on the new and improved SignOnSanDiego?

Good luck.

Most newspaper editors have determined that statistics laden sites such as Baseball Prospectus, a pay site run by full-time journalists, are too esoteric for their readers. In reality these types of articles play off much better on the Internet; where the authors hyperlink players and technical definitions.

Herein lays the problem. It’s understandable to choose to go in another direction or ignore this subject if you are only interested in running a print operation. However, by not having some type of basic saber-metrics on their website, similar to the excellent articles that Geoff Young has written for so long on Ducksnorts.com, ignores a very important part of the game that many fans would like to know more about.

The draft and development side, while not as Internet centric as statistics, is equally ignored by the UT. The Padres farm system is spread out throughout the country, with only one team, the Lake Elsinore Storm, within an easy reach of San Diego. Thus, the Union-Tribune chooses not to cover this subject for a variety of reasons, cost and space the two biggest, regardless of how much the team’s future depends on the development of young talent.

In a minor concession this year, they introduced a cursory “minor league blog” by Padres beat writer Bill Center, who does his penance by writing a few sentences derived from the nightly box scores. No interviews, no analysis and no quotes other than the occasional blurb from a Padres’ front office official swinging by the press box or the ubiquitous unnamed scout dropping a comment on random San Diego minor leaguers.

Again, the web on a national basis with Baseball America, which despite a bi-weekly print publication is more of an Internet site than a magazine with all of its original content appearing first on-line, has filled the void once occupied by the old Sporting News and is the unquestioned leader in national high school, college and minor league coverage.

Other writers on the minor leagues such as Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus and Keith Law of ESPN.com are also widely read and have no real comparable equivalents in print. Locally Padres’ fans can go to MadFriars.com, a pay site where the writers visit all the minor league teams in addition to daily interviews with players, coaches and members of the front office.

What does the UT provide? A recap of last nights’ game, a few tidbits from the daily meeting the manager has with the beat reporters and occasional feature pieces, which is essentially the same information that would have been reported in the team’s inaugural season in 1969.

So are they incompetent? Full of aging people attempting to turn back the clock and hope this internet fad flames out?

No.

Their problem is covering baseball statistics and the minor leagues don’t really fit into the print model; and seemingly if it doesn’t fit into it, then it’s not really news; which isn’t a great philosophy as they are attempting to have a presence on the web.

Newspapers seem to yearn for the same thing network television executives do, a return to the days when there were only ten to twelve choices on the dial as opposed to the 500 plus we now have with cable and satellite.

Unfortunately for both the days of limited competition are over.

SignOnSanDiego should be the premier web site for sports in the city. It has incredible natural advantages, specifically a large and established readership base and more resources than any of the sites mentioned. There is no reason they can’t offer the same type of information that is on the web other than the misperception that what is being covered really isn’t important.

Ideally the typical San Diego reader would go over his sports page in the morning with their coffee, catch up on a few things they missed at lunch and then maybe log in during the afternoon to read two or three new stories that would appear on the web. And they would be articles, interviews or analysis, not leftover “Twitter” feeds or random blog posts; but actual journalism designed for the new medium.

Or to make it a little simpler for my older colleagues, what you are doing now is simply repackaging the morning edition and trying to sell it as the afternoon paper.

To be relevant going forward there are many changes that must be made other than cosmetic.

Some change needs to be substantive as well.

John Conniff is a senior writer at MadFriars.com and a freelance contributor to Baseball America

by Myron Logan

Here’s the video:

I don’t think the discussion is quite as bad as it is being portrayed on BTF. I mean, some valid points were made. But, yeah, overall, there was a little too much negativity towards sabermetrics from the panelists, outside of Matt Vasgersian, and a little too much faith put into the evaluations of the scouts. And nobody – again, outside of probably Vasgersian – seemed to realize that both things can (and do) coexist. It isn’t one or the other. Couple of random thoughts:

1. The intro to PECOTA was great. It was very concise, but hit on all the main points. Perfect for a mainstream audience, but detailed enough to give people an idea of what PECOTA is really  about.

2. Vasgersian, as we know from his time with the Padres, is very bright, reasonable guy. What a great hire for MLB Network.

3. The phrase “touch and feel” was said way too much. I think Barry Larkin started it, and it kind of caught on.

It is nice to see that MLB Network is at least going to discuss this stuff. Next time, maybe they will get a couple of guys more familiar with PECOTA, or sabermetrics in general, to argue on its behalf. It seems like they’d have the resources to do this, and it would make for more interesting debate, rather than simply going with three ex-ball players who share a similar opinion on the issue.

So far, though, I’ve been a big fan of MLB Network. I don’t even mind Harold Reynolds, only because he reminds me of when I used to watch Baseball Tonight every night, back in my earlier years. Good times ….

After reading some of the comments on this article by Dayn Perry, it’s apparent that this theory is as alive as ever.

… in case you don’t want to click through to those links … Perry’s article is about first half awards in MLB. Many (not all) of the commenters insult him for not picking this guy or that guy (on their favorite team, I’m sure). To me, it’s fine if you write, “Perry, you’re way off the mark here” and provide some type of explanation as to why. But when someone writes, “Dayn, you’re an ass/idiot/whatever,” well, needless to say, that’s pretty ridiculous. Just my opinion, of course; I’m not trying to be the internet police here.

But, I mean, do people really care enough about a writer’s opinion on the “first half MVP” to get that upset? Really? Sometimes I have to wonder about these big sites even allowing comments. When it gets to this point, it kind of detracts from the article and just looks, uh, bad. On the other hand, I’ve seen some pretty awesome discussion elsewhere (like Rob Neyer’s blog). If Baseball Prospectus allowed comments, my guess is that you’d see a lot of great discussion. The Book Blog and The Hardball Times (via Ball Hype), for example, almost always have interesting comment sections (that enhance, rather than detract, from the actual article). Obviously, it depends heavily on the readership. Maybe heavy moderation is needed on these mainstream sites? Would that be worth it to them? I have no idea.

Couple of other things:

• If you write an article like this, on a major site, you pretty much know you’re going to get this type of response. I’m guessing that they’re written so often because they get comments, reaction, links, page clicks, etc.
• In my first experience in the online baseball world, I was kind of a jerk. No, I didn’t reach the nasty level many of these commenters reach, but I was probably unpleasant and annoying far too often. I chalk that up to some combination of immaturity (I was only 17 or so), a shortage of wink faces, and Moneyball for making me think I was actually smart.

Anyway, you guys have any thoughts? And, please, let’s keep it civil ; )

H/T: BTF

In an article yesterday, Tom Krasovic referenced:

• ERA+ from Baseball Reference
• Defensive efficiency (or whatever you want to call it; converting balls in play into outs)
• Baseball Prospectus’ postseason odds report

We already know Mr. Krasovic is quite the stathead (that is supposed to sound like a compliment, btw!), but seeing more and more of this stuff in the ‘mainstream’ is certainly … um … cool. Gives us bloggers less to complain about, though!

Anyway, the bar has been raised, and so to have my standards. Next time I expect FIP, UZR, and a playoff odds report that takes each players recalculated projections (to that point in time) and then simulates 1000 some odd seasons (per MGL’s suggestion).

… Just kiddin’, kinda : )

hat tip: Padres SuperForum

Not much in Padre-land with the continuing struggles … so we’ll go back to the well — blogs and MSM — with this edition of Friday links (with some other stuff after that).

Here’s a Bob Costas interview with Aaron Barnhart discussing, as you might imagine, Bissenger’s remarks on “Costas Now” and the whole thing in general. Costas:

While there is unquestionably a new media revolution going on, and much of it is good, the part that — speaking for myself, the only part, the ONLY part — of which I am critical, is that there is an ethos on a significant portion of the web, an ethos not of criticism or skepticism or a contrarian viewpoint. There is an ethos of abuse, where not only is cogent thought not required, it’s almost resented. Where a reasonable argument has no place and where ad hominem attacks reign. That is not all or even most of the web, but no fair-minded person would say that isn’t a significant portion of it. That’s my criticism.

There’s a bunch more there from Bob. His criticism seems to be that some blogs are bad and some are not. He doesn’t like the bad ones. Hmm … fair enough. But what’s the point of getting frustrated by that? Clearly, Costas is aware of the good ones (or the ones he personally would define as ‘good’ or valuable):

Now, coming with it are there many important fresh new voices? Absolutely. Are there places where people like you, who were one of the first ones, and Joe Posnanski, not to name all Kansas City guys, but where you can go to get more expansive or quirkier versions of their thought? Yes. Are there nichier places … baseball-centric sites filled with detailed statistical analysis or, say, everything you want to know about the Seattle Mariners? That’s great. Nothing wrong with that.

Why read that bad ones or the ones that you don’t like? The value that I see in blogs, in general, is the diversity. You’re going to get a whole lot more areas of expertise from anyone who can start a blog than you’re going to get from the specific subsets of journalism school grads or talk show hosts. Now, like I mentioned yesterday, I’ll bet that your average professional writer is better than your average blogger. The content in your average newspaper is better than the content you’ll find in the average blog out there. But the main point — for me, anyway — is that blogging gives an opportunity for anyone to get their stuff out there. And many times it is better, or at least more interesting, than your average newspaper guy’s material. Weed out what you don’t want to read and concentrate on the good stuff.  

Joe Posnanski has, as usual, a great take on the issue:

“I think blogs are dedicated to cruelty,“ Buzz said just before he started screaming and swearing at Will, and this is so weird because I was actually thinking for a long time about calling this blog ”Dedicated To Cruelty“ or DTC (you know, for the kids). Come on. Is journalism dedicated to lies because a couple of pretty famous writers made up stories? Are books dedicated to murderous anti-semitism because Hitler wrote ”Mein Kampf?“ Is music dedicated to demeaning women because Flo-Rida sang “Low?” How are you going to judge blogs and the Internet because some anonymous jerk on a message board or in a comment section decides to tell poo-poo jokes about Tony LaRussa?

And here’s Jason Whitlock.

Ahh, alright, enough of that for now.

Here’s a great piece on Brian Bannister and Zack Greinke – they may just be my favorite pitching duo in baseball.

I haven’t read any of this yet, but here’s part three of Pizza’s series on foul balls.

Colin Wyers has been doing some awesome work with the fielding portion of the PITCHf/x data. Check out his other posts on it, too.

Jeff Moore from Dugout Central has a piece on how to spice up the mlb draft. A lot of the suggestions sound interesting. It also gives me a chance to talk about the “draft series” I mentioned a while back. You probably don’t even remember it, but I said I was going to make a series of posts on the draft at some point. Well, I haven’t yet and I probably will not. I will most likely have some posts on it as the process certainly does interest me. But the truth is that I simply don’t follow college or high school ball closely enough to really provide much value there. Just wanted to mention that in the rare case someone was looking for those posts.

Paul Nyman has an article on Phil Hughes’ mechanics. Personally, I am very skeptical of all the analysis on mechanics out there (not necessarily Nyman, who seems to have a better grasp on it than most, especially me; but I still remain skeptical, in general). For some reason, despite the fact that almost everyone that talks about mechanics seems to know what they’re talking about (although, they many times disagree!), I need to see some kind of evidence. Now I’m not exactly sure what that evidence would be, but for me there has to be something. I know, not counting MGL and some others, I’m probably in the minority on this. But so be it — it’s not like anyone cares about my opinion in the first place.

The Pads are one of the teams in pursuit of Juan Castro, says mlb trade rumors (and the L.A. Daily News). Hmm … pass, anyone? Castro would have to be a helluva fielder to make up for his truly awful bat.

Fun piece on Ed Barnes, new producer of Pads telecasts on Channel 4 (h/t: BTF):

Since Barnes made his initial impression by doing statistical research and analysis, his friends have wondered if the telecasts will become a visual version of “Baseball Prospectus” or “The Bill James Gold Mine” (even though many local media members and fans could learn a thing or 20 if he did, or if they read such books). Barnes says not to worry.

…

“I don’t want it to be wall-to-wall stats,” he said. “I’m not the guy who’s going to be introducing EqA – equivalent average – to the show or something like that. . . . If we can find a way to put a nice bow on something and provide a nice context, then I don’t think a new stat is necessarily a bad thing. But we are not going to be scanning ‘Baseball Prospectus’ from this year and putting that on the air.”

Of course not. With all of that fancy equipment up there, BP’s annual is just too big. There’s only enough space for both Hardball Times books, Shandler’s Forecaster, The Book, Ducksnorts, and the Bill James Historical Abstract.

And no need to explain EqA when you can go right to wOBA. EqA’s too complicated, anyway. I’m with ya so far Ed. How about this mid-summer’s night conversation?

Vasgersian: Second and third, two down, and the Padres are going to put Pujols on here.
Mud: They played it by The Book there Matty.
Vasgersian: Sure did. On page 298 it says, “The only base/out situation in which a walk reduces the run expectancy is where there are men on second and third, two outs, and an unprotected elite (Pujols-like) hitter and that plate.”
Vasgersian: So here’s Troy Glaus. Glaus had a 4.6 WARP last year.
Mud: *cough*You coulda had a 4.6 WARP with a replacement level that low, Matty*cough*
Vasgersian: Fly ball to left, 3 away. Glaus’ WPA drops to .14 and the Padres have a 65.8% chance of winning as we head to the 7th.

In all seriousness, congrats to Barnes here on getting this gig. Think I remember hearing his name a few times, but I really didn’t know any of his story. I’ve always been impressed with Vasgersian — mentioning Baseball Prospectus and Ducksnorts/GLB quite a bit. Maybe some of that comes from Barnes.

I think the most ’saber-friendly’ guy I’ve heard is Jon “Boog” Sciambi when he worked for espn a few years back.

Anyway, I’m not on one of those crusades to get stat-talk on tv (… like it would matter if I was). But I do think it’s nice to occasionally here some intelligent baseball conversation during the game (not that you can’t do that without numbers) and I think we’ve generally got that on the Pads’ broadcasts. It’ll be interesting to see how they continue to try to infiltrate more sabermetric concepts into the mix … both on Channel 4 and baseball in general. Sciambi’s no longer at espn …