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 Daniel Gettinger

In his most recent Tuesday Morning Quarterback, Gregg Easterbrook blasts big-time college football programs who do little to ensure their athletes graduate with a degree.  He notes that “90 percent of Division I football players never play a down in the NFL,” yet “in the past two decades, there’s been a race to the bottom, in which many football-factory schools have lowered academic standards for football and men’s basketball, dropping any pretense of education in pursuit of wins.”

Easterbrook points out that success on the field does not necessarily need to negatively correlate with classroom performance: “Cal, Georgia Tech, Navy, Nebraska, Northwestern, Stanford and TCU — all academics-first colleges where football players are more likely to attend class — are on their way to bowl games. Most of them have been in the top 20 nationally this season, and Georgia Tech and TCU even made BCS bowls.”

In my favorite paragraph of the piece, he also cites the success of academics-first schools in basketball:

The field for last season’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament included Boston College, Butler, Cal, Cornell, Duke, North Carolina, Purdue, UCLA, Villanova and Wake Forest. In the women’s tournament, Cal, Dartmouth, Duke, Georgia Tech, Lehigh, North Carolina, Notre Dame, Stanford, TCU, Villanova and Vanderbilt made it. Brackets for the men’s Division III basketball playoffs included Amherst, Brandeis, Carnegie Mellon, Claremont McKenna, Middlebury, MIT, RIT and Washington [University] in St. Louis (which repeated as champion). In Division III women’s basketball, Amherst, Bowdoin, Brandeis, Rochester and Washington-St. Louis all made it. All of these schools enforce academic standards for athletes.

For years, I have privately bashed the concept of big-time college football and basketball.  Many of the athletes barely qualify for acceptance into the schools they play at (and these are already greatly reduced standards), and once there seem to do little but hone their athletic skills.

In August, allegations were levied against the University of Michigan football program by players regarding their time spent practicing.  The NCAA allows 20 hours of organized football preparation per week, but the Michigan team far exceeded that total.  On Sundays alone, the team reportedly worked for at least nine hours. Something tells me more than two hours on each of the other non-game days are spent practicing, weight lifting, and watching tape.

What’s sad is that it is highly unlikely Michigan is the only program bending the rules.  Even teams that stick within the guidelines for organized practice time almost certainly strongly encourage their players to lift weights and watch film on their own time.

Lets assume the average NCAA football player practices/workouts/watches tape for 30 hours over the course of the school-week, and takes a minimal course load of 12 credit hours.  That’s already a 42 hour week.  And that does not account for surprisingly time consuming things like walking to class, changing into workout clothes, eating, and oh yeah completing school assignments and studying.

Its no wonder that the Federal Graduation Rate for NCAA Div I (FBS) football players is close to 55%, and only 51% for basketball players.  Even if the athletes wanted to, there just doesn’t seem to be enough time for students to go to class, let alone complete homework and adequately prepare for exams.

The saddest part about these numbers is there is no reason it has to be this way.  If schools forced coaches to strictly abide by NCAA guidelines, players would no longer have an adequate excuse to fall behind in class.  Furthermore, schools should be incentivizing coaches to graduate close to all of their players. Bonuses based on academic achievement should be as prominent in coaches’ contracts as incentives that reward on-field success.  If all schools acted in such a manner, no school would be at a disadvantage relative to the competition. Sure the quality of play might decrease a little across big-time college sports, but that is a small price for fans to pay to ensure students actually get educated.

As long as I have been bashing football and basketball for doing a poor job at educating athletes, I have also been applauding Major League Baseball for not forcing high school graduates to attend college. Instead, if they are drafted by a Major League team, athletes can start honing their craft in the Minor Leagues. And get paid for doing so.

Because the option to go straight to professional ball exists, I always just assumed that students who chose to go to college actually took their studies seriously.  It turns out that is not the case.

The Federal Graduation Rate for baseball, at about 49 percent, is even lower than for football and basketball.

That is unacceptable.  Very few college baseball players are good enough to make it to the Major Leagues. Coaches must commit to educating their student-athletes first, and winning games second.

The low graduation rates in college baseball do not seem to get the same publicity as the figures in basketball and football.  But they should.  By not ensuring their baseball players graduate, institutions whose missions are to educate, are failing both the students and society as a whole.

by Daniel Gettinger

I wish I had more time to fully comment on the Padres’ decision to fire Kevin Towers, but here is the short (edit: actually, it turned into the medium) version:

I like Towers, and feel he has always done a pretty decent job considering the fairly low budgets.  I feel 2009 was actually a really good year for him and the baseball operations department.  The Peavy trade was magical, they swiped Everth Cabrera from the Rockies, and they found a few bargain bin contributors such as Kevin Correia that were just good enough to keep a team with a miniscule payroll from losing 90 games.

That said, I am not surprised Jeff Moorad wants to pick his own general manager.  He has his own vision for what a G.M. should look like.  Moorad and his partners paid a lot of money to purchase the club, and they certainly have the right to have their own guy run the baseball operations side of things.

My biggest concern is losing some of the great non-G.M talent the Padres have had on payroll the past few years.  Will Paul DePodesta stick around if he is not chosen as general manager?  How about some of the other quantitative analysts such as Chris Long?  Like the new owner, a new G.M. will likely want to change some of the existing processes, and may prefer to have his own guys in some of these roles.  Even though I have no way of knowing what they actually are, I currently trust the Padres analytical processes, but a completely new baseball ops. department will have to win that trust back from scratch.  Lets just say I probably won’t be “blindly supporting” their draft picks or other moves anymore.

by Ben Davey

This seems like a weird sentiment to pose when for the first time in awhile the Padres actually signed ALL of their 1st 10 round picks, but the fact of the matter is the draft is severely flawed.   I am not just talking about the insane bonuses that are given or signability issues, but almost EVERY aspect of the draft, which makes me wonder… “Is it fixable?”

In other sports a player is drafted and before mini-camp starts he is signed.  Baseball is the only sport where the draft happens in the middle of the season.  Heck, when the draft happens some of the players are still playing in the CWS.  While this is already a slight problem it wouldn’t be a big deal if they were signed within a week of the draft.  Instead we have long holdouts.  and players who might as well have been drafted in the offseason because of the number of games they get in.   I know that Tate, Williams, and Sampson are all going to Peoria, but for example Eugene has already played 57 games this year.  That means that some draftees will have probably played in 60 games before our #1,2, and 4 picks play 1 game.

Even when they do arrive in Peoria and finally play, there are only 9 games left in the season!  Let me repeat: there are 9 games left in the season as of August 18th.

But is their a way to fix this aspect of the game?  MLB did attempt to do something about this a couple years ago when they got rid of the draft and follow players, but what they really needed to do is move the signing date to make it within a few weeks of the draft.  Make it the same day as the all star game (just a thought), but if you make it in mid July (or earlier) you force teams, advisers, agents, and players to start working right from the beginning.

We heard for over a month that Strasburg, Tate, and Ackley were not offered more than the initial contract that they were given when they were drafted.  That is an entire month that they could have played, but instead were sitting around, unsure if and when they would sign.  Force the teams to sign the players early, because like most of us it seems teams love to procrastinate.

Which brings me to my next thought.  The commissioners office.  Their slot bonuses are completely ridiculous because no one is forced to sign for that amount of money.  In football if the #4 pick signs for 10 mil and the #6 pick signs for 8 mil, chances are the #7 pick will sign for right around 9 mil.

In baseball you can have 6th round picks getting paid more than 1st round picks.  There are players who give ridiculous demands, and if they are not met, the player seems to have little problem with not signing.

Of course this is because unlike football or basketball, the MLB can draft high school players.   Because of this you have high school kids who would normally go in the first few rounds, but fall back to the mid rounds because of signability issues.

The thought then becomes will a team draft them knowing it might be a wasted pick unless they offer him 1st round money.  But at the same time, if you can get a 1st round talent in the 8th round isn’t that considered a steal?

Demands of the agent, players, and issues signing players before the deadline is arguably the biggest problem with the draft and something that I dont think they can fix.  If Bud Selig does make the signing bonuses extremely rigid then we will see a LOT fewer high school prospects, as those taken after the first few rounds can only be offered peanuts and will go to school in hopes of being a higher pick in a few years while earning their education.

If they limit how much a team can spend in total for the draft that would hurt the teams picking high in the draft and prevent them from doing much more.  Strasburg signed for 15 mil, which alone is more than some teams spent.  If there was a cap then Strasburg might be the only player signed by Washington this year (outside of rounds 20+), or they just are not able to offer him anywhere close to the 15 mil and he goes back in the draft next year.

Meanwhile, teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, etc… might have only signed their 1st round pick for a mil, which would then give them the opportunity to sign and draft more high school prospects or players with high demands, thus actually making it better to draft in the lower rounds.

I know there are a lot of other things to talk about including passing on players because of money, not being able to trade picks, and well, a bunch of other stuff.  But since I was talking about slot money I figured I would just mention the flaws of Bud Selig.

A lot of players including Sampson were, for all intensive purposes, signed a week or two ago, but Selig made it so that the signing wouldnt be official until the last day.  Why?  Because players signing for over slot money give other players leverage to ask for more money.

In that aspect it makes sense but at the same time, when there are only 2 weeks left in the minor league season, how important do you think doubling the number of games would have been for a lot of these minor league players?  I know Selig doesn’t like it but for the sake of the players who do sign, they need to announce it when it happens and not hold off.

There are a lot of things wrong with the draft, and despite that, the draft has steadily become more and more hyped over the past few years.

Five years ago when the Padres drafted Matt Bush, everyone who reads this might have known maybe 5-10 other players in the draft.  But now, at least speaking for myself and many others, I knew almost every name in the 1st round and many of those in the 2nd and 3rd rounds.

The draft is becoming a bigger spectacle which IMO is good for baseball, but MLB needs to make a lot of changes when the new CBA is put in place in the next 18 months.  Hype the spectacle, hype the event, but dont let almost 2 months of nothing happen before the creme of the crop are signed and finally play.

by Daniel Gettinger

• 2 Home runs?  Come on Adrian, I can’t say I expected more, but I was certainly hoping for at least a respectable performance.  That said, while 2 home runs is pretty weak, I’m willing to give Adrian a pass this time.  Not only does the home run derby not matter, but it sounds like just getting to the park was a bit of an adventure.
• Every year I get somewhat excited for the derby, and every year, I get bored after about 5 minutes. The first few home runs are cool, and some of them do go quite far, which is very impressive, but after a little while, I find myself rooting for outs rather than home runs.  I force myself to sit through the whole thing, but don’t really enjoy it.
• Over the weekend, I was channel surfing and watched a few minutes of the 1999 home run derby. Ken Griffey Jr. won his third derby.  ”Pitching” to him was former Rockies manager Clint Hurdle.
• Chris Berman has only one home run call: “back, back, back, back, back…”!  And its been that way for well over a decade, maybe even two decades.  For something like the home run derby, I don’t really mind his schtick, but just a bit more creativity would be nice.
• I know Nelson Cruz has hit 22 home runs this season, but I did not want to see him win the home run derby.  When I think about home run hitters, Nelson Cruz does not come to mind.  Prince Fielder does.  The derby is about watching fan favorite power hitters put on a display.  Prince is the type of guy I want to see win the thing, not someone like Nelson Cruz.
• I love the umpires in the outfield.  Those guys are not umpires so much as they are baby-sitters for the ball-kids in the outfield.
• Speaking of the ball-kids…is anybody else surprised more of them don’t get smacked with a line drive or hit in the face with a ball?  That outfield is total chaos with dozens of kids waving their gloves in the air and doing anything in their power to catch each and every ball.  The balls are hit hard, and with all the distractions, I can’t imagine they have a great view of the ball.
• I get a real kick out of the fans who will do anything to grab a home run ball.  45 year old guys routinely push 8 year old kids out of the way while diving face first onto concrete stadium steps for a chance at a ball.  Have they forgotten that this is a home run derby?  Dozens of home runs are hit. Grabbing a ball is nothing special.  Those balls have minimal monetary value.  They are certainly worth less than the dozens of beers that are dropped in the quest to take a ball home.
• If San Diego ever hosts the all-star game, I think they should let the derby participants use aluminum bats.  Otherwise, a record for quickest home run derby of all time could easily be set.

by Daniel Gettinger

In today’s UT is an article titled “Hairston’s Injury Leaves the Pads without Pop.”  In the article, author Bill Center tries to demonstrate just how valuable Scott Hairston has been to the Padres this season.  Center’s observation that “the only hitter more valuable to the Padres is Adrian Gonzalez,” is dead on.  The manner in which he proves his case is not.  

Center first attempts to demonstrate Hairston’s worth by pointing out that he has driven in the second most runs on the team (behind only Adrian Gonzalez).  I don’t like using RBI’s when discussing the quality of a player’s season.  It is a statistic that is too context dependent.  But, if Center had moved on to more enlightening stats, I would not have minded the quick mention.  Unfortunately, things only got worse.

Center’s next statistic of choice was batting average:

“Hairston carried the Padres’ top overall batting average (.327), the highest at Petco Park (.311) and the highest against left-handed pitchers (.379).The latter mark was 95 points over Gonzalez’s second-highest average against left-handers and 161 points above the team norm. And Hairston’s mark at Petco Park was 93 points above the team average.”

Umm…okay.  These numbers are, all else equal, pretty good.  But we know that batting average does not tell the complete story.  Why not use on base percentage or OPS, both of which explain run production better than batting average, and are becoming mainstream statistics.  It’s not like I am calling for the use of something like wOBA.

The final straw was Center’s decision to point out Hairston’s success in various small-sample size situations.  He wrote:

Hairston was hitting .414 with runners in scoring position (12-for-29) with three homers, 17 RBI and a .793 slugging percentage and was 6-for-11 in RISP situations with two outs.

Overall, Hairston was a .395 hitter with two outs; .a 379 hitter in tie games, and had a .329 average with five homers and 16 RBI in Padres wins.

Did you also know that Hairston is batting only 0.250 (9-for-36) when he leads off an inning?  Or that as a left-fielder, he is batting 0.217 (10-for-46)?  Splits are fun things to look at, but with the exception of righty-lefty matchups, they don’t really tell us anything about the player.  The differences are almost always a function of small sample sizes.  Nothing more.

Scott Hairston has played well this season.  I applaud Center for attempting to convey to UT readers just how good Hairston has been.  I just wish he would have done so using statistics that properly capture the quality of Hairston’s play.

by Daniel Gettinger

I am confused.  The Padres were supposed to bad.  But now that the team is struggling, many fans appear to be frustrated.  In the comments section of Corey Brock’s most recent post, “Kaybee” wrote:

I think we definitely need some changes. This team is not working right now, especially on the pitching side. We need some new arms. I think Moreno needs to go. Probably another guy in the bullpen as well. Time to go dumpster diving!

“PittsburghPeavyFan” let out his/her frustration by writing:

Can anybody say free fall??!! They are sinking fast! It’s frustrating to see the promising start fade so fast! Peavy, Chris Young, and Heath Bell are the stoppers and we just wasted a Peavy gem!!!!! Sanchez has got to go!! He is so ineffective!!

“Drama” in a gaslampball thread shared that he is “100% mentally prepared not to see one more victory this season.“ 

Even U.T. columnist Tim Sullivan seams distraught by the recent play, penning an article titled: Reality Check, This Team is Going Nowhere.

It is true, the Padres probably are going nowhere.  They are more likely to challenge for last place than first place in the NL West.  But this should not be a surprise.  Based on comments made by fans prior to opening day, I believed people were resigned to a long season where wins were the exception, not the rule.  I thought expectations had been properly set, and fans, though hopeful for a miracle season, would not come to expect one.

I guess I was wrong.  Maybe the twelve game stretch in which the Padres started 9-3 was impressive enough to convince people to revise their expectations.  Attendance climbed steadily throughout the Padres winning streak (after tossing out opening day), but dropped over 50% from the Padres last home game to their most recent one (30,848 to 14,717).  Maybe those who publicly stated they expected the Padres to struggle in 2009, were privately holding out hope for a successful season, and are now disappointed with reality.  Really though, the recent losses should not come as a huge shock. 

The thing that bothers me is not so much the dissapointment with the team-after all, nobody likes to watch a loser-but rather, the cries to make immediate improvements.  There is not much the Padres can do to substantially improve.  If there was, those moves would have already been made.  Of course, we already knew there was not much the Padres would be able to do to improve.  That is one of the reasons expectations were so low to begin with. 

Losing baseball is not as fun as winning baseball.  But it’s still baseball.  It’s time to once again recalibrate our expectations, and be happy when the Padres do well, but not overly disappointed when they (predictably) struggle.  Calls for immediate improvements are unlikely to be answered (nor should they be), so I urge everyone to just enjoy a losing season as much as humanly possible.

by Daniel Gettinger

It’s a shame the Padres are unable to spend money this off-season.  For the first time in recent memory, there seem to be a lot of good free agent deals out there.  Today’s Garland signing just reinforces this point.  Furthermore, many of these affordable deals are short-term, acting to cap risk.  

As I alluded to yesterday, I am anxiously awaiting the details of Ben Sheets’ eventual signing.  Something tells me that in a different year, the Padres might have been able to sign Sheets, Garland, and possibly Randy Johnson, without forking up too much dough, and without sacrificing too much payroll flexibility in the future.  Then again, there is a reason free agents are not getting paid what they have in the past. Thinking about such scenarios completely ignores reality, and is not an altogether productive exercise.

by Daniel Gettinger

In the wake of the Yankee’s latest trip to the big-league toy store, many fans can once again be found clamoring for a payroll cap*.  Their logic makes intuitive sense: if all teams are forced to compete within a smaller payroll range, then competitive balance is sure to increase.  Many analysts have argued a payroll cap will have little impact on competitive balance.  This may or not be true, but the real problem is a payroll cap would not good for baseball fans.

*Because footnotes are impractical in blog posts, I will, in this instance, borrow from Joe Posnanski the use of the asterisk.  Anyway, Payroll caps are often inappropriately referred to as “salary caps.”  A salary cap suggests the institution of a maximum salary for any individual player, whereas a payroll cap puts a ceiling on the summation of a team’s individual salaries.

For a payroll cap to increase competitive balance, higher spending on players must currently result in greater on-field success.  Unfortunately, merely looking at the correlation between payroll and some measure of success (such as playoff appearances), is inherently biased.  As Keith Law explained to The Big Lead:

If a team enters an offseason thinking it has a chance to contend in the following year, that team will spend more to acquire talent because the marginal benefit of adding, say, a four-win player is higher. (The financial gain to a team of reaching the playoffs - think of it as turning playoffs=0 into playoffs=1 in your revenue equation - is substantial.) A team that knows it won’t compete in the short term will tend to trim its payroll, shedding expensive players who are not likely to be around when the team is competitive again and acquiring inexpensive players with longer periods of control remaining. This is just good business.

The next logical place to look for correlation would be team revenue.  Again though, there is a problem.  In Baseball Prospectus’s Baseball Between the Numbers, Neil Demause points out that “postseason appearances increase revenue…not only are playoff tickets a lucrative item, but a winning team typically sees regular-season sales soar.”  While Demause finds that the number of playoff appearances from 1995-2004, and average revenue from that same period have an (R-squared) of 0.51, the data could just as easily be interpreted as “telling us that half of team revenue can be explained by who gets to the postseason,” rather than the other way around.

To get around this problem, Demause compares postseason appearances with TV market size rather than revenue or team payroll.  His 2005 study found market size accounts for only 11 percent of playoff appearances.  Keeping market size constant, I updated the data to include results from the 2006, 2007, and 2008 seasons.  Due to successful seasons by many of the large market teams in this period, the R-square doubled from 0.11 to 0.22.

This jump is alarming, and causes me to think that market size may have more to do with on-field success than previous research indicates.  Perhaps, in the past, large market teams spent their money unwisely, while smaller market teams, knowing they could not compete with large payrolls, were more progressive in developing new player evaluation models, and instead spent the money they did have more wisely.  However, the big market teams may have caught on, and are now using the same progressive processes.  Combining “small-market smarts” with the ability to spend lavishly, large market teams may now be maximizing their inherent advantages.

Another possible explanation is that in recent years, the advantage of playing in a large market has increased, with teams finding new ways to generate revenue.  I am sure there are many more explanations, but regardless, I am not prepared to rule on whether market size has anything to do with a team’s ability to be competitive.

While further research is necessary to reach a more definitive conclusion, it should not affect the payroll cap debate.  Traditionally, player unions have only accepted payroll caps that guarantee players a certain percentage of league revenues and contain a payroll floor as well.  A few weeks ago Sean Hoffman at B.P. concluded (subscription required) not only would the payroll floor affect more teams than the payroll cap, but also many teams would be unable to afford even the minimum required level of spending.  Basically, a payroll cap would cripple, even putting out of business, the teams it is intended to help.

Not only are some small market teams (and their fans) potentially hurt by a payroll cap, but I argue perfect parity is not good for baseball, nor the fans.  Large market teams, almost by definition, have more fans than small market teams.  These teams should make the playoffs more than teams with fewer fans. 

To understand this logic, lets consider a hypothetical world with four teams.  Team 1 has one fan, Team 2 has two fans, Team 3 has four fans, and Team 4 has six fans*.  In total, there are thirteen fans, of which ten support one of two teams.  It seems pretty clear that aggregate fan utility would be maximized by creating a system which allows teams 3 and 4 to win more than teams 1 and 2, while still providing some hope to fans of team 1 and 2. I admit, this example was artificially contrived, and overstates the benefits of having the Yankees and Red Sox win more than all other teams.  However, it does a good job of illustrating perfect parity is not something that would be good for baseball fans.

*The ratios that can be calculated between teams in this example are very close to the corresponding market sizes between the Royals, Twins, Red Sox, and Yankees.

Okay, I recognize I have begun to babble on too long (actually, that happened about 500 words ago), so let me sum things up:

1)    Market size may or may not have an effect on competitive balance.

2)    Even if market size affects competitive balance, a payroll cap would not be good for baseball fans.  This is because:

a.     The corresponding payroll floor has the potential to cripple a number of smaller market teams, possibly putting them out of business.

b.     Complete parity is not actually good for the aggregate utility of baseball fans.

***Note: This article argues baseball fans in general will be unhappy with the results of a payroll cap.  A payroll cap will benefit some fans, but hurt others.  I am not sure what the effect on Padre fans will be. 

I deleted this post because it was simply horrible, and had nothing to do with much of anything. I’ve only deleted one (well, actually, two) of my posts and I don’t plan on doing it again. Anyway, I left the comments up only because I don’t want to erase something that someone took the time to write.