MLB - 2007 Season

[Imran Siddiqui]

And in response, it seems the Yanks have fired their strength coach.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Arrian
huzzah for a scapegoat!

Yep, that's Georgie's way.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I dislike the Yanks, but this was just too funny:



Yep... that is Tom Brady, of the New England Patriots, sporting a Yankees cap.

[Arrian]

The guy who sits next to me at work (Pats/Sox fan) sent me that today.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

By the way, I know this will be a terrible shock to all of you, but...

Carl Pavano is off to see Dr. James Andrews, after "feeling something" during a bullpen session. There is speculation that he will need TJ surgery, which would mean he's officially done as a Yankee (recovery time would be through the end of the contract). One of the worst contracts in team history. How happy are Sox fans that they "lost out" on Carl? How happy are they that Duquette traded him for Pedro?!? Hoo-ahh.

-Arrian

[Ninot]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

It took me a while to notice the hat..... or brady...

[Arrian]

Is that one of the women he knocked up?

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Thank goodness for the Rangers. They SUCK. I'll take the 3 game sweep, of course.

The Yankee pitching has come around some (aided and abetted by the Rangers hitters, of course), but the Yankee offense is not exactly firing on all cylinders. There are four guys who are hitting:

Jeter
Rodriguez
Giambi
Posada

Thankfully, those guys are *really* hitting. That's great, but Damon, Abreu, Matsui, Melky and ManCaveItch have all been bad. Abreu has been the anti-ARod of late... totally lost at the plate. There are signs that Matsui and Melky are coming out of it, which is important because there is no way ARod can keep this up, and Posada is a little over his head right now too (he's not gonna hit .320).

Thank goodness Moose looked good last night. I was so relieved to see "89mph" flash on the screen. With that fastball, he can be a good pitcher. Before he hurt his hammy, he was at 85, which is "bad Moose" speed.

In other news, Matsuzaka had a rough outing, but the Sox won anyway. Neither of the expensive imports is doing very well right now (DiceK - 5.45ERA, Igawa - 6.08 ERA)... and then there's Hideki Okajima, who is apparently utterly unhittable. Heh.

-Arrian

[Imran Siddiqui]

Here is an incredibly interesting article on the HR production rate and whether the 90s were way out of line with HRs (hint: they weren't ):

http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/designated_hitter/index.php

Was the 1990s Home Run Production Out of Line?
By David Vincent
In the last five years, baseball fans have read and heard a lot of commentary from politicians and the media about what a travesty the home run totals have been since the mid-1990s. The average fan, having heard this mantra so much, has come to believe it is true. But is it?

In order to examine this question, we need a way to compare eras. Raw counting totals will not suffice. The method employed here is a "home run production rate." It is calculated not by dividing homers by at bats, similar to batting average, but by calculating how many circuit drives were hit per 500 plate appearances. The 500 plate appearance standard was chosen because the official minimum performance standard for individual batting championships as listed in rule 10.22(a) [in the 2007 edition of the rules] is 3.1 plate appearances times the number of games scheduled for each team. Thus, in the 162-game schedule, 502 plate appearances is the minimum, but that was rounded here to 500 for simplicity. The home run production rate will generate numbers that can be compared to other numbers that have some context for the reader, such as a 30-homer season by a batter.

Figure 1 shows a graph of the home run production rate for all major league players each year since 1919. One can easily see a gradual increase from 1919 to the present. The numbers in the charts do not represent the total homers hit in the major leagues for any one season but rather the home run production rate (homers per 500 plate appearances).



Figure 1 - Home Run Production Rate (1919-2006)

The fact that the home run production rate in the major leagues has increased steadily from 1919 to the present should not come as a surprise to many people. Many factors have affected the production rate, including rules changes, equipment changes and even some events outside of baseball. For a complete discussion of Figure 1, please read Home Run: The Definitive History of Baseball's Ultimate Weapon, from which the figure is taken.

Figure 2 adds a trend line to Figure 1 and this trend line shows the steady increase in home run production from 1919 through 2006. The movement of the rate line around the trend line documents the pendulum effect of the production through the years. The home run rate topped 10 for the first time in 1950 when it reached 10.7 homers per 500 plate appearances. It dipped below 10 in the next two seasons, but from 1953 through 1966 the production rate was above 10 each season. This time period is the bubble above the trend line about half way through the chart from left to right.



Figure 2 - Home Run Production Rate with Trend Line (1919-2006)

In 1994, the production rate reached 13.8 homers per 500 plate appearances, only the second time in history that the rate climbed above 13.0. From 1994 through the present, the production rate has been above the trend line with the exception of 2005. The highest point in the chart is 2000 when the production rate reached 15.0. However, it is evident from looking at Figure 2 that the period from 1950 through 1966 is further above the trend than is the period starting in 1994. Both periods follow time frames when the home run production rate was well below the trend line, further accentuating the explosion of homers in the following era.

As a side note about the last 13 years, Figure 3 shows the home run production rate from 1994 through 2006. The rate has held fairly steady through the period and, contrary to pronouncements by the commissioner, the production rate has not dropped in the years since Major League Baseball instituted its drug testing policy. This is clearly shown by Figure 3 as the rate has held steady since 2001, slowly undulating around the 14.0 per 500 plate appearance line.



Figure 3 - Home Run Production Rate (1994-2006)

Another series of negative comments made in the last few years concerns the number of players joining the 500 Home Run Club. From August 5, 1999 through June 20, 2004, five players joined the club: Mark McGwire (1999), Barry Bonds (2001), Sammy Sosa (2003), Rafael Palmeiro (2003) and Ken Griffey, Jr. (2004). That is five sluggers in about five years. Let's compare the period from September 13, 1965 through September 13, 1971. In those six years, seven players joined the 500 Home Run Club: Willie Mays (1965), Mickey Mantle (1967), Eddie Mathews (1967), Hank Aaron (1968), Ernie Banks (1970), Harmon Killebrew (1971) and Frank Robinson (1971). Thus, more players (seven) joined the club in six years during the late 1960s than the five who joined in the first part of the 21st century. These 12 sluggers are the players primarily responsible for the surge in the home run rate in the 1950s and the 1990s. Four hitters are poised to join the club in 2007: Frank Thomas, Alex Rodriguez, Jim Thome and Manny Ramirez.

It is clear that the production rate of the late 1990s is closer to the trend line than was the rate during the 1950s. Perhaps the emotional statements at the beginning of the twenty-first century are overblown and misleading, since they are not based on factual evidence but rather on conjecture, and are more inflammatory than informative.


SABR member David Vincent, the "Sultan of Swat Stats," is the recognized authority on the history of the home run. He is the author of Home Run: The Definitive History of Baseball's Ultimate Weapon, published by Potomac Books, Inc.

[OzzyKP]

With all the hype early in the season did ARod end up having a record breaking April?

[-Jrabbit]

I believe he tied the month's HR record with 14.

[Arrian]

Correct.

I saw that article, Imran. Baseball Analysts is a cool site

Speaking about studies of conventional wisdom, I read an interesting article yesterday on Baseball Prospectus (sub req, sorry) about which type of pitcher has more errors made behind them: "hummingbirds" or "sloths."

CW says that a pitcher who works fast "keeps his defense on their toes," leading to fewer errors.

So the author of this article selected two groups of pitchers, each of which is better than league average (even though the sloths include Steve Trachsel ). And guess who had more errors made behind them?

The hummingbirds, of course. Heh. The theory advanced by the author was that lots of fast workers are sinkerballers. Groundballs result in more errors than flyballs.

-Arrian

[MichaeltheGreat]

I guess Igawa's back to being Igawa. Ouch. Nice to see that ninth inning rally collapse with Judas Demon's popup.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
I dislike the Yanks, but this was just too funny:



Yep... that is Tom Brady, of the New England Patriots, sporting a Yankees cap.

It's the woman's fault. (of course, if Salma Hayek said she'd stroll down the street with me hand in hand if I wore an MFY cap, I might do it... )
















Naah, I'd need more than that.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Sorry, Mike, Brady has been on record as being a Yankees fan for a quite a long while... not just because of Giselle .