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Quantifying The Emotion of a Game

April 10, 2011 in Daniel Gettinger, game recaps, Sabermetrics, San Diego Padres with 2 Comments

It is rare for me to get overly excited when watching regular season baseball.  The season is 162 games, and over that long season, there are some ups, and there are some downs, and I know that generally speaking, things smooth themselves out by September.  The good teams make the playoffs, and the bad teams finish with mediocre records. I realize that individual plays, the type that generate excitement in other sports(this is particularly true in football), just do not have the same impact on a team’s likelihood of making the playoffs in baseball.

Last night I had the opportunity to watch my first San Diego Padres’ game of the year.  For most of the evening I watched the Padres struggle to get on base, and listened to Vin Scully’s fascination with Rob Johnson’s home state of Montana.  Scully’s soothing style, the lack of action in the game itself, and my personal tendency to not get too emotional while watching baseball contributed to an incredibly relaxing, yet somewhat dull evening.  Until the bottom of the seventh inning.

Trailing 0-3, with nine outs to go, the Padres had only an approximately a 10 percent chance of winning the ballgame.  However, when Jason Bartlett started the inning with a walk, and Brad Hawpe and Chase Headley soon followed with singles to load the bases with only one out, I started to perk up a little bit.  Sure the Padres still had a win expectancy under 25 percent, but the optimist in me estimated their chances of winning at a much higher rate.

That optimism was short-lived.  Chris Denorfia grounded into an inning ending double play, and in a rare emotional outburst, I smacked the cushion of my couch, let fly a few choice words, consulted my Fangraphs iPhone app, and saw that the Padres win expectancy had plummeted to about 5 percent.

Win Probability Added (WPA) is a stat that I feel is misused all too often.  It doesn’t really tell us who the best players are (although cumulative WPA totals do tend to be correlated with WAR), and frankly, I don’t love its use in supporting MVP candidacies.  That said, it does have its place.  It is a stat that tells a story.  It does a great job quantifying the emotion of games on the daily level.

Denorfia’s double play reduced the Padres chances of winning by about 18 percentage points.  By WPA, it was the single most impactful moment of the game, and somewhat justifies the emotion I felt at the time.

A frequent complaint by people less familiar with the complete array of new baseball statistics is that stats are taking over the game.  That somehow the stats are removing the human element from the game, and reducing baseball to an emotionless matrix of numbers.

I beg to differ.

For me, the stats tell the story of what happened during the games and what transpired over the course of a season, or even multiple seasons.  Many of the newer stats simply tell those stories more accurately and more completely than some of the traditional statistics.

Last night, the existence of Win Probability Added did not suck the emotion out of the game.  It simply helped me describe the emotion I felt.

2011 San Diego Padres Suggested Batting Order

March 23, 2011 in Daniel Gettinger, links, Sabermetrics, San Diego Padres with 3 Comments

A lot has been written recently on the seemingly never ending debate about whether lineup order matters.  The general consensus is that an optimal lineup is worth between 5 and 15 runs more than a standard lineup.  Personally, I feel a 5-15 run advantage is worthwhile, especially since it comes at such a low cost.

Generally speaking, an optimal lineup will have the best hitters in the 1, 2, and 4 spots with the lead-off guy tending towards a higher on-base percentage, and lower power, and the clean-up man tending towards higher slugging.  The rationale is pretty intuitive: get guys on base, and then have your power hitters drive them home.

After placing its three best hitters in the 1, 2, and 4 spots, a team then places its next best hitters in the 3 and 5 slots.  The worst three batters would be placed in the 6, 7, and 8 spots (although there is some debate about whether the pitcher should bat eighth, and the worst hitter ninth).

The slew of recent articles on lineup optimization got me thinking: how should the San Diego Padres set up their batting order?  What follows is my suggested line-up for the 2011 Padres, with ZiPS projected OBP/SLG in parentheses:

  1. Orlando Hudson (0.333/0.370)
  2. Chase Headley (0.342/0.418)
  3. Brad Hawpe (0.331/0.386)
  4. Ryan Ludwick (0.329/0.445)
  5. Will Venable (0.322/0.407)
  6. Cameron Maybin (0.319/0.379)…Note: I originally had Nick Hundley slotted here, and Maybin eighth, but moved Maybin up after re-reading the research from The Book, which suggests putting a light hitting base-stealing threat in the sixth slot.
  7. Nick Hundley (0.302/0.401)
  8. Jason Bartlett (0.337/0.370)
  9. Pitcher

In conducting the research for this article, it struck me just how similar most of the 2011 Padres position players project to be.  With the exception of Nick Hundley, all of the Padres have a ZiPS OBP projection between approximately 0.320 and 0.340.  Likewise, outside of Ludwick, all of the players have SLG projections in the high 0.300s to low 0.400s.  The projections are so similar that my suggested lead-off hitter, Orlando Hudson is projected to have a nearly identical line to my suggested eighth hitter, Jason Bartlett.

The similarity of the Padres hitters has a somewhat interesting implication: while lineup optimization might lead to a 15 run increase for some team, it is unlikely to be that high for this Padres team.  When a lineup is filled with a bunch of the same hitters, where those hitters are slotted hardly matters.

***Here are a few links to articles on line-up optimization:

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2009/3/17/795946/optimizing-your-lineup-by

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/be-cautious-with-lineup-analysis-tool/

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/how-significant-is-batting-order/

Concern About the Rotation

January 29, 2011 in Daniel Gettinger, San Diego Padres with 6 Comments

I have been thrilled with the moves the San Diego Padres have made this off-season.  Trading Adrian Gonzalez was essential to the future success of the franchise, and helped re-stock the farm system.  The acquisitions of Jason Bartlett and Orlando Hudson vastly improved the middle-infield situation.  Cameron Maybin, Brad Hawpe, and Jorge Cantu were all acquired on the cheap, and have some upside with minimal risk.  With the exception of losing Gonzalez, the team has certainly improved.

That said, I am concerned about the starting rotation.

Mat Latos should be solid, but nobody should expect a repeat of last season.  Its not that Latos will fall victim to some mythical sophomore slump, but rather, regression to the mean must be built into his projection for next season.

Clayton Richard was quite valuable last season, and given his contract, should continue to be so in 2011. However, I worry that his 2010 xFIP of 4.19 is more indicative of what we should expect out of him than his 2010 ERA (3.75).

Tim Stauffer is an obvious regression candidate.  He came out of nowhere to post a 1.85 ERA in 82 innings. However, Stauffer’s success was greatly aided by good luck.  He had an unsustainable 0.33 HR/9 rate, and an equally ridiculous 0.263 BABIP.  Stauffer does not have the raw stuff to consistently strike out a lot of batters, and thus must rely on limiting his walks, homeruns, and his defense.  Pitchers like Stauffer can be somewhat successful, but hoping for an ERA much better than 4.00 from Stauffer in 2011 is probably quite optimistic.

I do like Aaron Harang.  The Padres were able to acquire him cheaply, and he should benefit from moving from Cincinnati into Petco Park, as he does surrender a large percentage of fly-balls.  That said, last season, his K/9 rate dropped to 6.61–his lowest mark since 2003, and his BB/9 rate increased to 3.06–his highest mark since 2002.  I am hopeful that his numbers will regress towards his career averages (7.47 K/9, and 2.52 BB/9), but he is starting to age, and did struggle with injuries last season.  It is possible that 2010 was a sign of things to come, and not a one-year abberation.

As for guys like Cory Luebke and Wade LeBlanc–I am not expecting very much.  Luebke has very limited major league experience, and LeBlanc has not had much success in the majors.  After LeBlanc and Luebke, I just don’t see many starting pitching options.  The Padres will need at least 7 starting pitchers over the course of the season, as injuries or ineffectiveness to some of the projected starters are likely.

In all, while I don’t mind the pitchers the Padres currently have penciled into the rotation, I do wonder whether they are good enough to help the Padres contend for a playoff birth.  They strike me as a bunch of league average/slightly below league average starting pitchers with a good amount of uncertainty surrounding their 2011 projections.

Of course, I said the same thing about the 2010 rotation, and they ended up in the top half of the league in FIP.  Combined with a very good bullpen, that is all a team really needs to have high quality pitching.

Hitter-Pitcher and the Hall of Fame

January 3, 2011 in Daniel Gettinger with Comments Off

Played in the backyard with a tennis ball and an all too heavy baseball bat, the home-made game of “Hitter-Pitcher” provided hours of after-school and summer-time enjoyment for me and my younger brother.  A mix between baseball and cricket, Hitter-Pitcher was a perfect two-person game for imaginative youngsters.

The game started with each player selecting five major league hitters and five major league pitchers to be on their team. The game itself was scored like baseball and included the classic concept of the ghost runner, where players on-base magically move around the base-paths not based on baserunning ability, but rather based on what the outcome of each subsequent at-bat.

The game’s twist was that pitchers were allowed to bounce the ball (single-bounce only) as well as throw normal pitches.  In addition, strikeouts counted as three outs, as did balls caught in the air.  Balls caught on a single-bounce were worth two outs, and balls caught off a double-bounce were worth one out.

Yup, hitter-pitcher was a fun game.  But its probably not that fun to read about.  So why did I write about it? Well, with the Hall of Fame votes about to be announced, my memory drifted to thoughts of Hitter-Pitcher. Players were selected by my brother and I for our teams based on three criteria:

1. Greatness

2. Coolness

3. An awesome batting stance or pitching motion.

Some players, such as Ken Griffey Jr. had all three.  Some, such as Hideo Nomo (an awesome pitching motion) had only one.  The selections were arbitrary, but always seemed to make sense.

Personally, as far as the Hall of Fame selection goes, I don’t really care about the stats.  I just want the selections to make sense.

I always thought of Roberto Alomar as a hall-of-famer, so if I had a vote, I would vote for him.  I don’t remember watching Bert Blyleven (I was too young), but his stats are so overwhelming, I would vote for him too.  Both selections make sense to me.

As for other candidates such as Jeff Bagwell and Barry Larkin?  Good players, but they don’t strike me as Hall of Famers.  Maybe I will change my mind someday, and I certainly won’t complain loudly if they do eventually get elected, but I just don’t care that much about their candidacies.  Even if the stats tell me I should.

***Note: for a more objective perspective on who is likely to be elected to the hall, I recommend you check out Chris Jaffe’s latest article at The Hardball Times.

PTBNL: Eric Patterson

December 16, 2010 in Daniel Gettinger, roster moves, San Diego Padres, trades with Comments Off

The San Diego Padres announced today that Eric Patterson will be coming to the club as the player to be named later in the Adrian Gonzalez trade.

Patterson, who is 27 years old has bounced around quite a bit the past few seasons.  He was drafted by the Chicago Cubs in 2004, and reached the majors in 2007.  Patterson was traded to the Oakland Athletics in 2008 as a part of the Rich Harden deal.  Oakland dealt him to Boston last season.

For his career, Patterson has displayed little power (0.353 SLG) and on-base skills (0.299 OBP).  Defensively, he has played second base, and all of the outfield positions, albeit at a below average level at every position (at least according to UZR).

As a major league player, Patterson has been pretty bad, but his minor league record is very solid.

In over 2,500 minor league plate appearances, Patterson has an 0.845 OPS.  1550 of those plate appearances have come in AAA, where Patterson has a 0.363 OBP, and a 0.487 SLG.  Patterson has also displayed good speed, stealing 178 bases in the minor leagues, including a 2009 campaign where he had 43 SB compared to only 6 CS.

In the minors, Patterson played mostly second-base, and rated above average according to total zone (which is probably surprising to Red Sox fans).

For the Padres, Patterson is a nice throw-in to the Gonzalez deal.  The team does not have a second baseman currently on the roster, and Patterson’s minor league track record indicates he might still be a useful major leaguer given the chance (he only has 471 major league plate appearances).

Patterson’s ability to play multiple positions could allow him to fill a utility role on the club, and given the team’s complete lack of depth at the middle infield positions, Patterson may very well find himself starting on the 2011 team.

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