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September 28, 2015 Everything You Could Have Learned This WeekSeptember 21-25, 2015
This is the first time I have ever included one of my own articles in this feature. I feel like, in the history of Field Generals, I've learned a lot of things about baseball and maybe even taught you all things about baseball. But maybe because of modesty or because I wasn't entirely convinced of the novelty of my conclusions, I never included the articles here. Until this week! Sometimes you've gotta treat yo self, and that means plugging one of your own articles in a different feature that you write.
Monday
Run scoring seems to be (back) up, and a lot of it is due to more dingers: Welcome Back, Offense, by Jeff Sullivan, FanGraphs
In August, there was a league rate of 4.1%, the highest since August 2009. And now in September there’s a league rate of 4.4%, the highest since August 2004. Again, yes, I know, it’s a partial month, but let’s put some stuff together. In this season’s second half, which is nearly complete, the league rate of home runs on contact has been 4.1%. Since 2000, there have been 32 individual “season halves.” This half’s rate would rank third-highest, behind only the first half of 2000 and the second half of 2004. The first half’s rate this year, incidentally, ranks 24th. The seasons below it are fairly recent. In the second half, homers have taken off, and they’ve taken run-scoring with it. It’s not just your favorite team that’s scoring more runs lately. It’s most of the teams. Sorry if that’s discouraging? WAR is the solution to all MVP debates, right? No, not at all: Stats Can't Tell Us Whether Mike Trout Or Josh Donaldson Should Be MVP, by Rob Arthur, FiveThirtyEight
In 53.5 percent of the fictional seasons, Donaldson exceeds Trout. But in the other 46.5 percent, Trout betters Donaldson. With such an even split, it’s difficult to say for sure whether Trout or Donaldson has contributed more to his team’s success. If we use WAR as our guide, we have little basis to determine which player deserves the MVP more. The confidence interval on Donaldson’s WAR is simply too large to be sure that he’s the more valuable of the two. That’s not to say that Donaldson isn’t our best guess, only that we are not confident in that guess; Trout is a perfectly defensible choice as well.
High-leverage situations don't appear to have a noticeable impact on whether a pitcher gets more tired: Why Do Pitchers Get Tired?, by Russell Carleton, Baseball Prospectus
Mulder probably also started being a little more careful in his delivery. He might have noticed a small mistake he made on the pitch before and made a point to correct it on the next one. There is no room to make a mistake in a runners-in-scoring-position scenario. So while a pitcher might rely on muscle memory in a different at-bat, now he finds himself thinking about the thing that he does with his left elbow. This might actually improve his pitches (or might not), but for something that is usually automatic and does not require a lot of thought, it suddenly becomes something that requires a lot of energy-draining pondering. Pitchers are getting more rest than ever!: Is there such a thing as too much rest heading into October?, by Matthew Trueblood, Just a Bit Outside
James wasn't exactly wrong. He said that a four-man rotation was feasible and possible, and could be successful. He didn't say it was probable. His hypothesis remains untested. What's jarring is how it seems certain not to be tested, maybe ever again. Injuries haven't been prevented more successfully as teams have gradually decreased their reliance on each individual pitcher on their staff, and while run scoring is down, "pitchers are better" is perhaps fourth or fifth on a good list of reasons for that. It sort of matters in the playoffs how good of opposition you faced in the regular season, but it doesn't matter enough to really matter, ya know?: Does It Matter Who You Beat On the Way to the Playoffs?, by Jeff Sullivan, FanGraphs
Based on only this very limited evidence, Mets fans shouldn’t worry, and Jays fans shouldn’t get overconfident. We know the playoffs are pretty random, and this doesn’t look like a way to be able to see how they’ll go. I can even turn the tables around: while the Mets have struggled some against better opponents, they’ve throttled the crap out of weaker ones. And while the Blue Jays have crushed better opponents, they haven’t kept that up against weaker ones. It’s a lot like platoon splits and hitters — you don’t want to pay too much attention to the splits themselves, because you can probably get the most information from the overall performance. The Mets have done worse than some teams in one area, and better in the other. That which is encouraging and discouraging cancels out. Wednesday
The BBWAA does a pretty dang good job of picking deserving winners for Manager of the Year: Predicting the Managers of the Year, by Ian Frazer, Baseball Prospectus
Ideally, a good manager would be able to bring his team to heights thought impossible based on its on-field talent, and since 2003, every MOY has done that. All 24 winners since then helped their respective teams beat their PECOTA projections. Thursday
Qualifying for a batting title without hitting a home run doesn't seem to happen anymore: Dingerless Wonders, by Matthew Trueblood, Baseball Prospectus
Let's make this clear: A zero-homer regular is fundamentally distinguishable from a one-homer regular. That might sound silly to the statistics-minded, but I believe it's true. While zero-homer seasons often are the result of fluke or environment or not being allowed to complete the season, there is a subspecies of big-league batter (or there was one, at least) that actually lacks the power to hit a home run. The difference can sometimes be of kind, not of degree. It's a pretty weak relationship, but taking time between pitches correlates with hitting for power: The Relationship Between Pace and Power, by Eno Sarris, FanGraphs
If you delve deeper, it’s a little more complicated. Below is the graph of the relationship between pace and home runs per fly ball output for 500-plus qualified batters since 2007. While the output looks promising, and the relationship is significant (p is less than .0001), the relationship is not strong. A player’s pace at the plate explains about 10.1% of their power output. That’s weaker than the relationship of a player’s batting average on balls in play from one year to the next — and that’s generally considered a weak relationship. Friday
MLB execs prioritize consistent playing time and prudent advancement over making sure a player is at the exact right minor league level all the time: The Starting Line, by Brendan Gawlowski, Baseball Prospectus
Many in player development believe that, with good makeup and the right mentality, players can build their skills at any level. For Nichols, players need to have the fortitude to handle failure and be able to embrace the possibility that they will struggle before they succeed: “makeup is as important as talent, in my opinion. Baseball will humble anyone. If you don’t love the game and the competition, you are not going to survive.” Similarly, Levin says that most players will respond well to a difficult assignment, and he values players who aren’t afraid of failure: “if you think a guy will mentally struggle (with a difficult assignment) he may not be a guy you want in your system anyway.”
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