Baseball stats explained for beginners: Batting statistics
Hank Aaron Stats | Baseball-Reference.com
MLB advanced stats glossary: A guide to baseball stats
Joe Tinker Stats | Baseball-Reference.com
What is a Batting Average (AVG)? | Glossary | MLB.com
STATS Hosted Solution | Glossary - MLB - Baseball
Standard Stats | Glossary | MLB.com
mlb batting stats explained
mlb batting stats explained - win
What Was The Best Season Ever by a Reliever? - an Analysis
Relievers. Who are they? What do they do? Until one bright spring day in 1993, nobody knew the answers to these simple questions. Then, MLB scientists made a breakthrough in their labs in the bowels of the Astrodome, and Mariano Rivera sprung forth from his mother’s womb fully formed and sawed off Jason Giambi. But the question they couldn’t answer is ‘what is the best season ever by a reliever?’. At the time, the technology was simply not expansive enough to begin delving into this question. Now, thanks to huge leaps in science, we can finally answer something that has plagued the minds of man since the dawn of humanity. Now, clearly, the answer is Francisco Rodriguez, since he’s the single season save leader and that’s the best stat to measure relievers by. But let’s ignore that. You can just look up which reliever has the most WAR in a single season, which is 1975 Goose Gossage by bWAR (8.2!?!?!) or 1977 Bruce Sutter by fWAR (5.2). The reason for this difference is because BaseballReference uses runs allowed to calculate bWAR, and FanGraphs uses FIP to calculate fWAR. Since relievers pitch such small sample sizes, there’s often a large gap between their FIP and their runs allowed (RA). Since we’re looking at the best season, and not the best player, I’m going to use bWAR (and thus RA) for this exercise. (If you don’t know what FIP is, it stands for Fielding Independent Pitching, which looks at only the outcomes of at-bats which are solely between the pitcher and the batter - home runs, walks, and strikeouts. These stats are thrown together and then given a normalizing factor so that the average league FIP matches the average league ERA. FIP is a wonderful predictive tool, to the point where it is more predictive of a pitcher’s ERA next year than a pitcher’s ERA is. I’d rather not use it here because it doesn’t look at the actual results - if I was trying to find the best reliever, and not the best season, then I’d use FIP.) Using a simple value added stat is incredibly biased towards 1970’s middle relievers who would throw 100+ innings in a year, though. WAR is a counting stat, so the more they pitch, the more they rack up. What about bWAIP? One BBRef search later, and I have this table.
To begin with, bWAR uses RA for its calculations, which uses both earned and unearned runs. Dennys Reyes, Bill Henry, Blake Treinen, Rich Gossage, Fernando Rodney, Dennis Eckersley, and Joey Devine all had more RA/IP in their respective seasons. (The difference between their ERA and their bWAIP isn’t solely explained by this, but it’s good enough for now. We’ll get to that in a moment). This leaves 1986 Rob Murphy and 2016 Zach Britton. Why don’t they stack up? The answer is a little thing I’d like to call ‘run environment’, which is encapsulated by BaseballReference’s stat RA9Avg. It takes what an average pitcher’s run allowed/9 innings (RA/9) was that year, and then adjusts it for park factors, for the defense, and for who that specific pitcher faced. If a pitcher had a relatively high run environment, it means he would be pitching in batter’s parks, faced tough opponents, had a bad defense behind him, etc. For a perfectly average pitcher, their RA/9 will match their run environment. For Murphy, his run environment was 4.11. For Britton, it was 4.32. For Papelbon, it was a whopping 5.00. This makes a huge difference - Papelbon may have gotten slightly worse results, but he was starting from a much more difficult positions. For another good way to illuminate the differences run environments can cause, I can bring up one of my favorite WAR comparisons! In 1965, Jim Maloney equalled Sandy Koufax in bWAR (and surpassed him if you count batting WAR) despite throwing 80 fewer innings with an ERA 0.50 higher. How did he do this? Simple. Sandy Koufax played in cavernous Dodger Stadium with a strong Dodger defense behind him, and so had a run environment of 3.49 RA/9. Jim Maloney, pitching at batter-friendly Crosley Stadium with a poor Reds defense behind him, had a run environment of 4.34, 0.85 more than Koufax. Since Maloney is expected to give up far more runs than Koufax and only gives up somewhat more runs, he has a large bWAIP lead. Run environment is 99% of the explanation behind ‘why does WAR give this weird result?’ questions. Most of the best reliever seasons by ERA have relatively a low run environment - after all, good defense and a friendly park factor really helps a reliever keep the runs down. Fernando Rodney had a run environment of 3.72 in his 0.60 ERA season, because he pitched at the Tropicana and had the Rays defense behind him. Mariano Rivera consistently had a high run environment (career average of 4.72) due to pitching in Yankee Stadium with horrible, horrible, horrible Yankees defenses behind him going against tough AL East opponents. He never had that ‘lucky’ season with a sub-1 ERA, which would likely have put him on this list. He has to live with the stigma of simply being the greatest reliever of all time, unfortunately. Papelbon had an incredible season in a run environment that was incredibly ill-suited for having an incredible season, so his bWAIP is leaps and bounds ahead of anyone else. So is Jonathan Papelbon’s 2006 the greatest single season by a reliever ever? Well, maybe. Pound-for-pound, it certainly is. But some relievers can pound more often than others, even if they're not pounding quite as hard. Should 70’s and 80’s relievers be penalized for being slightly worse in twice as many innings as Papelbon? John Hiller’s 1973 is a good candidate if you prefer quantity over quality - 7.9 bWAR in 125 innings in relief. Of course, you can flip it around - why penalize Papelbon for pitching less when relievers of that era were expected to pitch less? With the bWAIP, it’s safe to say Papelbon was more dominant in his role than Hiller was in his. Are there arguments for other pitchers and other seasons? Absolutely. Perhaps you prefer FIP for some reason - then you can probably give the nod to 2003 Eric Gagne, with 4.7 fWAR in 82 innings. I don’t think FIP works well for this type of analysis, because it doesn’t deal with actual results, but you do you. Perhaps you want to dive into BABIP and pick a season that wasn't as lucky - this seems like a fool's errand, since the best reliever seasons are all lucky ones. Of course, if you believe the best ability is availability, the nod goes to Mike Marshall, who appeared in 106 (!?!) games for the 1974 Dodgers. His 2.42 ERA is tarnished somewhat by the 3.33 run environment at Dodger Stadium at the time, however. Marshall apparently still has very interesting ideas on training to be able to pitch that many innings, but no MLB training staff will let him near their pitchers for some reason. Now, I know we’d all like someone else to have the best relief season ever in baseball - someone who didn’t attack teammates, someone who didn’t watch porn in the clubhouse, someone who doesn’t hit Manny Macha - ok, I’m fine with that one. But why couldn’t it have been someone like Eric Gagne, or Robb Nen, or Heathcliff Slocumb? I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything negative about those guys. Maybe it’s just time to move on, and let bygones be bygones. As I understand, Papelbon is just 24 hours from picking a new team, so it’ll be exciting to see him back in the league. Hopefully, he doesn’t choke his comeback.
[OC] Why Paul Depodesta might be making the Browns the most efficient team in the league in terms of spending, talent, and wins.
We all know Paul Depodesta as the analytical "guru" that was brought in to change how the Browns process the game of football, and morph the way in which the Browns evaluate talent and success.
Depo is a pretty tight lipped executive, he likes to lurk in the shadows and does his work rather than live in the spotlight like other execs. Every indication from the team this year has pointed to Depo having a larger say in operational decisions and talent evaluation, as opposed to years past it seems (Looking at you Dorsey, Freddie, and Hue). But I really wanted to get a deeper understanding of what he was bringing to the table, so I did some research, read his quotes, watched his interviews, and gleamed what I could about his expertise and processes. I thought I’d share some of my key takeaways. Paul learned from A’s GM Billy Beane and sabermetrics creator Bill James to challenge accepted trends and the inefficient understanding of sports. Our eyes deceive us when it comes to talent, we have inherent biases and an inaccurate understanding of what makes a team good. More specifically he challenges the notion of what makes an exceptionally talented team, and how/when/why you acquire the players that make up that team. What Depo has done in every other sporting franchise that he has been a part of, is to create and test a simple equation for wins. Actually wins added I should say. What can a team do to create wins through a player’s output? In baseball it has been relatively easy historically, more runs scored and less runs allowed = more wins. Over a long season and a large enough dataset you can almost predict these two things before you ever play a game just by looking at your players’ key sabermetrics (within a margin of error of course). Depo and Bill Beane did just that in the early 2000s and revolutionized the game of baseball. This is in my opinion Depo’s bread and better. He simplifies the grand scope of a sport into this easily digestible question. This is probably the question he posed to the Brown’s ownership on his first day. The mark for the A’s? 95 wins. That’s how many it takes to get to the playoffs on average in baseball. In the NFL it’s about 11 wins, and that’s the goal for the Browns. The challenge for Depo back then was quantifying how runs came to be in a game. Was it RBIs? No. Was it Batting Average? Definitely No. Was it Walks? Yes, sort of. It was a combination of putting people on base in any way possible and then hitting them home consistently. Depo valued one stat over all others, OBPS (On Base Percentage Plus Slugging). It didn’t matter how the player got there as long as they put themselves in a place to score and the next person brought them home. The A’s went as far as to seek out laughably unconventional ballplayers as long as they filled this stat column (fat guys, old guys, short guys, slow guys, etc). And they told everyone from the minors up that they needed to walk more as well. The next question we might have at this point, is does a similar stat exist in football, or can we create an equation that produces a valuable football stat like OBPS to baseball? * Well no not really, at least it’s not a totally provable hypothesis as of yet. Notably because there are lot more positions in football and each position is graded on a different scale of course. Although organizations like Football Outsiders and Pro Football Focus do try their damndest to find these value stats for each position, nevertheless their methodology may still be flawed. DYAR and DVOA stats are a good jumping off point in this area as well https://www.footballoutsiders.com/info/methods.
*An educated guesser might speculate an indicator similar to OBPS for a team offense is a combination of scoring efficiency and ball control, for defense maybe a combination of turnovers created and red zone stops. But who knows honestly, smarter men than me have probably pondered this for much longer than I have and been paid very well for their thoughts. Paul has indicated in interviews though that he and the Browns front office may have found something similar to this treasured sabermetric in football but he’s very coy and hush-hush regarding tangible football stats the team looks for.
https://youtu.be/CGSDm-xQNlE?t=157 here’s just one example of him discussing draft indicators. In football it’s increasingly more difficult to suss out indicators that player stats correlate with team success. First there's much less data to work with, the NFL has 16 games a year, college even less. The other challenge is that the game is played wholly differently depending on schemes, players, and situation. Think Air Raid vs. Power run. And thus the players in these systems must adapt to their surroundings. Lastly the talent pool is much smaller in football than in baseball, 40 rounds of drafting are more forgiving for finding talent than 7 rounds of course. Which leads to another Depo fact, Playing time and performance at the college level is much more valuable than raw potential and athleticism. He spells this out in Moneyball a lot. The A’s never drafted high school players, contrary to all other MLB teams they despised young five tool ballplayers. In fact they really only drafted college players with significant statistical output and playing time to back the data up. If you look at the Browns’ most recent drafts then you will notice this exact trend being used especially with top draft picks. Take a look: Baker Mayfield: 4 year starter. NCAA record holder & Heisman Winner Denzel Ward: 3 years of play, 2 years starting. All American Nick Chubb: 4 year starter. SEC record holder Jedrick Wills: 3 year starter. All American Harrison Bryant: 3 year starter. All American. Mackey Award Grant Delpit: 3 year starter. 2 x All American, Thorpe Award Jacob Phillips: 3 year starter Donovan Peoples Jones: 3 year starter Outlier: Greedy Williams These players simply produced in college and they produced over multiple years. Depodesta sees a correlation between on field production and future success for sure. Physical traits are always secondary in this regard. I believe Depo values a few positions more than any other on the football field as well. Number one is The Quarterback (I know that’s obvious). They are the hitter in football. They control the offense, the majority of scoring, and the flow of the game. I think that Depo saw something in Baker Mayfield that lit up his talent indicator more than any other college player this decade besides maybe Mahomes and Burrow. He doesn’t just want a game manager; he wants an extra efficient game controller, somebody who puts their team in a position to score on every possible drive (similar to getting on base in baseball). College Baker is a stat nerd’s wet dream. The mixture of total yards, touchdowns, turnover efficiency, and completions is truly a sight to behold. Just take a look at these statistical comparisons before his draft https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stat-analysis/2018/qbase-2018
Top QBASE Projections, 1997-2017
QBASE Players
Philip Rivers 1964 Carson Palmer 1916 Donovan McNabb 1799 Baker Mayfield 1480 Russell Wilson 1288 Peyton Manning 1279 Marcus Mariota 1277 Byron Leftwich 1216 Aaron Rodgers 1216 Ben Roethlisberger 1211 That’s rarified air Baker is put in there, and it was an important indicator for me to jump on his bandwagon early on. Although I will say don’t be totally surprised if the Browns move on from Baker if this year he doesn’t show better production in the second half. Billy Beane and Depo regularly traded or let walk great players if they felt they could find similar efficiency in the market or draft. Eg. Jason Giambi, Ben Grieve, Carlos Pena to name a few. Sidenote: Screw Freddie Kitchens and the rest of the former offensive staff for setting Baker back a year by the way. In my opinion, if we had Stefanski last year then Baker most likely wouldn’t have regressed as sharply as we saw. Another position group he most likely values significantly is the O Line. Without them the offensive efficiency grinds to a halt both throwing the ball and running the ball. Expect lots of money and draft capital to be tied up in these guys every year. Lastly I think on the defensive side he values disruptive players, guys who grind the game to a halt and create offensive opportunities through turnovers. It also gives our "hitter" aka quarterback a chance to score immediately, and damn is our turnover rate good this year. https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2020/opp.htm The 49ers front office built their team around this concept as well last year. Defensive Ends and Cornerbacks come to mind immediately here as positons of importance. I don’t think the team expected Olivier Vernon and Greedy Williams to be out for as many games as they have been which may have thrown a slight wrench in the franchise’s plan sadly. A point hammered home by Depo repeatedly this year is that Everyone in the organization from the top down has to be on the same page when it comes to macro strategies in sports. That includes the owner, GM, scouts, and coaches. Indicated by Depo here: https://youtu.be/JjFYRSikVEk?t=53 Depo expressed that's why he brought in Andrew Berry and Kevin Stefanski specifically this season. Depo and Haslam explained to them what system they were trying to build for the Browns and they needed everyone on board before signing off on their hires (Dorsey and Hue didn’t buy in totally). Billy Beane realized this organizational view early on and his disciple Paul definitely preaches this as well. Now they have a cavalcade of Ivy League economics majors running an NFL team with the same goal in mind, get more wins through any means possible. In Oakland he was tasked with finding out how to add wins with talent that cost substantially less than his opposition. I mean we’re talking magnitudes less of capital ($40m vs $140m). It was thought impossible to compete with large team payrolls at the time. Baseball’s commissioner even put together a panel of economic experts that flat out told him that professional baseball was broken and that competitiveness relied solely on the amount of money spent on talent. Billy Beane and Depo scoffed at that conclusion and proceeded to drag a bunch of misfits and outcasts to Oakland’s best regular season ever. He also did similar with the Mets ten years later (RA Dickey anyone?). Which brings me to the last and possibly most observable takeaway from the browns strategy this season. Homegrown talent is significantly cheaper than acquired talent and you should use that homegrown talent for as long as possible and for as little money as possible. The Browns have the lowest salary in the league right now and are the only team in the bottom 10 salaries to have 4+ wins. https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/cap/ It’s hard to say for certain if Depo is directly responsible for this but it’s safe to assume that he brought a little moneyball swagger to our beloved team. The extensions of key players will be something to watch out for this season and next season as well (Myles is secured, Ward and Baker are next). The A’s were masters of replacing outgoing or expiring talent with cheaper players and regularly fleeced teams with trades that seemed insignificant and stupid at first glance. If the Browns make a trade this year then look for them to add a player with at least two years remaining on their contract and probably someone who isn’t flashy or raw but produces consistently in key categories. It’s hard to tell how much of our success this year so far is due to Depodesta’s overall decision making and influence, or Dorsey’s drafting and player evaluation (mind you we have kept most of the scouting staff from the past 4 years as well). I lean towards the former personally. Really it’s the first time in forever that I’ve felt the team is in good hands and that we are working towards something exceptional with clear goals in mind. I love where the Browns stand right now in the division and I love where they could be in the next few years. I think we finally have a culture and strategy that is set to acquire and utilize talent like our franchise has never seen. Paul Depodesta might be the shadowy puppet master that some people imagine but I think simply he is man that is able to communicate clear and concise goals and make an exceptionally efficient plan on how to achieve them. TLDR. I read Moneyball and had a wet dream about the Browns making the playoffs finally and then losing to New York.
While the Royals farm system is not the best due to unsuccessful drafting in the middle of the decade, they made it a point to obtain every college pitcher under the sun starting in 2018. The first to be drafted was Brady Singer with the 18th overall pick, and he was (very arguably) the best pitching prospect in the organization. And he would be the first to appear on the Royals, starting just the second game of the season--a game the Royals would eventually win. He would later take a no-hitter deep into the 8th inning in September, beginning a strong finish to his season. Due to injuries, COVID, and the Royals trying to be conservative with their prospect use, Singer led the team in games started, innings pitched, strikeouts, and most other good stats excluding Brad Keller. Kris Bubic (pronounced "boob itch") joined the team just a few days later. His lousy 1-6 record is more of an example of pitcher wins/losses being bad than anything; Bubic had a respectable rookie season that had a 4.32 ERA in 10 starts. Why bring this up? Well, Bubic hadn't even pitched above high-A ball before this season, so the fact that he was called up at all, especially within the first week of the season, shows where the team was at with its starting rotation this year. Josh Staumont pitched a bit in 2019 to mild success, but this year was when he really turned heads, effortlessly and consistently throwing around 100 MPH. With two powerful pitches fueled by a fabulous manbun, he dazzled the Cubs announcers as he struck out the heart of the Cubs lineup. His legend would become widespread after being on the losing end of one of the worst called balls in the history of baseball, analyzed by Jomboy who was just as starstruck as those Cubs announcers.
Fine Additions
After years of signing hit-or-miss (mostly miss) players to 1-year deals, the Royals would do... the exact same thing 2020. The only notable free agent signings they would make were third baseman Maikel Franco (technically in his second year of arbitration), relief pitcher and KC native Trevor Rosenthal, and relief pitcher plus former Championship Royals closer Greg Holland. The three of them would help define the Royals in 2020. Franco's numbers don't stand out amazingly well on paper, hitting .278 with 8 home runs and a mediocre on-base percentage, but most people who watched our regular season games would agree with Fangraphs that he was the most clutch hitter on the team, leading it in RBIs. Rosenthal was beyond bad in 2019, having an ERA that nearly equaled his innings pitched. Soaked in a phoenix's ashes, he was so good in 2020 that he was considered one of the best relievers on the market, and was sent to the playoff-bound Padres for a pretty solid return. Greg Holland, the anchor of the legendary HDH combo in the Royals' crowning years, also reinvented himself in 2020. The shortened season thinned returns on sold players, so Holland remained in KC beyond the trade deadline, going on to replace Rosenthal as the team's closer with nearly as many saves, boasting a 1.91 ERA in 28 innings. While Franco was non-tendered due to a high salary demand and Rosenthal currently remaining unsigned, Holland has already returned to the Royals for 2021, signing a 1-year deal.
Padre Amigos
The Royals would make two trades with the Padres in 2020, both yielding exciting returns for both teams. In the off-season, the Royals traded reliever Tim Hill and his weird ass submarine delivery for outfielder Franchy Cordero. Although he would miss most of the season with a leg injury, it's hard not to be excited for the effortless power he contains. At the trade deadline, the Padres acquired the prized Trevor Rosenthal, sending Edward Olivares in return. Olivares immediately became a fan favorite on /KCRoyals, hitting .387 in his first week on the team and showing that he is compatible with Royals sacred, demonic base hit magic. For a team lacking in young hitters, these were great returns and defined a newfound friendship with the west coast dads.
Salvinator 2: Splashment Day
Salvador Perez is the most beloved player on the Royals for reasons that are too numerous to fit into one Reddit post. His numbers started to go downhill a few years ago, and 2019 had him sit on a bench for the entire year while recovering from Tommy John. But Salvy is no stranger to working hard, and his effort to make up for lost time would not go unnoticed. In this shortened season, he hit 11 home runs and batted .333, the highest in his career and his first time hitting over .300 since 2012. His OPS was .986, just shy of the top 10 in MLB but by far the highest of his career. This says nothing about his defense, which was great as ever. You might ask, why wasn't he considered for MVP if he was so good this year? Because this was done in less than 40 games. A baffling condition that built up fluid one of his eyes and blurred his vision kept him from playing more than 37 games this season. This still didn't stop him from leading the team in WAR, nearly matching his own totals in both 2018 and 2019. Salvy is known to go on streaks throughout normal seasons, but maybe a long break is what he needed to re-solidify himself as one of baseball's top catchers.
Mc Mc BOOM
Ryan McBroom is a handsome man and hit three pinch-hit home runs for some reason. Within one month, no less! It's actually tied for the franchise record. We're all very proud of him. Here they are in their glory: 1(Aug 11)2 (Aug 26)3 (Aug 29)
And the rest
Some miscellaneous bits to explain a bit more of the season; the Royals finished with a 26-34 record, which isn't ideal if you think of winning percentage converting it to about 70-92, but hey, it's an improvement over back-to-back 103+-loss seasons. Mike Matheny was crafty with his lineups and bullpen usage and ended up winning a lot of fans over despite the initial outrage of signing him. Adalberto Mondesi was really bad for a large portion of the season, going into September with a .186 average. Then he stopped being really bad and decided to be really good instead, hitting .356 for the final month. Brad Keller got corona'd and missed a couple of starts at the start of the season, then pitched a 2.47 ERA in nine starts, including a complete game shutout that was saved by our boy Oli. Holland and Staumont combined with Jesse Hahn and Kyle Zimmer for a 1.63 ERA over 94.1 innings in the pen. Ian Kennedy and Matt Harvey were on the team. Second baseman Nicky Lopez was nominated for a Gold Glove. There's a promotion for free Pepsi when Whit Merrifield gets two hits in a game, which he does quite often, so this is a call out to Whit to please change your walk-up music to Pepsiman.
4Ever Gordo
2005 was the worst season in Royals history, where they would lose 106 games. But this is where the future began; with the second overall pick, the Royals drafted Nebraska-native Alex Gordon. Being a third baseman, he was immediately imagined to be the second coming of George Brett and define a new generation of the Kansas City Royals. Eventually, he would, but not by following the blueprint. Gordo failed, giving up on the third base position entirely after his fourth season. But by failing, he succeeded, forging a new path and setting his throne elsewhere. Gordo would stand guard in left field instead, letting nothing get away from him. The outstanding was routine and ordinary for him. And no one could get past him. You can argue that left field isn't that sexy of a position, meaning that the best defensive left fielder in history is a shallow achievement. You can argue that eight Gold Gloves and two Platinum Gloves aren't that special. You can argue that, out of thousands of defensive gems, his most legendary, career-defining moment, the most legendary moment in franchise history, the moment that brought Kansas City to its feet in uproarious applause, is instead a home run, a game-tying home run in the last chances of a World Series game on home soil, with its author iconically posed over first base. What you can't argue is that Alex Gordon defined the Royals of the modern day, and saying his career is worth celebrating would be an understatement. After fourteen seasons, the guardian of Kauffman's left field has retired. Gordo was known for having the back of his jersey splatted with pine tar after a full swing of his bat. To honor him, the players wore jerseys slathered with pine tar over the letters in his final game. In other parts of the league, old friends did the same. Even a wild Moose had a pine tar-y jersey on that day, which is pretty wild I would say. There will be another left fielder for the Royals, but there will never be another number 4 for the Royals. 4Ever Royal.
Better Know the Ones Left Off the Ballot #13: Grant Balfour
Number 13. For those of you who aren't aware, this is a series about the players that qualify for the Hall of Fame ballot that the Selection Committee chose to leave off, for whatever reason. Here, we take a look at who got the short end of the stick. You may catch up on the other 12 I've already done at the bottom. Onto the main course.
Grant Balfour
Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor: 12 Career bWAR (12 years): 9.2 Stats: 30-23, 84 SV, 3.49 ERA, 119 ERA+, 534 G, 203 GF, 539.2 IP, 571 K, 252 BB, 1.219 WHIP League Leading Stats: None Awards: All-Star (2013) Teams Played For: Twins (2001, 2003-04), Brewers (2007), Devil Rays/Rays (2007-10, 2014-15), Athletics (2011-13) Grant Balfour is probably the worst name for a pitcher I've ever seen. You can certainly make up worse names, like Walkstonsofbatters McAllowswaytoomanyhomers, but within the confines of realistic names, I don't think there's a worse one. He is literally named after the thing he is coached not to do. It's like an offensive lineman being named Dee Venz Knoblauch. Like, I can't address you without mentioning one of the worst things you could do here. And yet, even with a name like that, Walk Batters played in the MLB long enough to qualify for the Hall of Fame ballot. And if I'm being honest, he wasn't half bad. As great as it would've been to see a relief pitcher named Grant Balfour on the Hall of Fame ballot, I don't think he deserved that honor. Maybe that explains why he was always so angry. Balfour was born in 1977 in Sydney, Australia. Okay, now it makes sense. The Aussies probably got baseball backwards and thought walks were a good thing for pitchers to do. Anyway, at 19, Balfour was signed as an international free agent by the Minnesota Twins. After slowly but surely making progress in the minor league system, going from the Rookie Leagues to double-A in four short years, Pitch Fourballs switched starting pitcher to closer in the midst of some struggles in high-A. And it worked like a charm. From a 4.25 ERA in 10 high-A starts in 2000 to a 1.04 ERA in 35 double-A appearances in 2001. Even got some MLB pitching in there after a depleted Minnesota team called him up at the end of July. Both his appearances were against the Seattle Mariners, who were kinda good in 2001. His first time stepping onto a Major League field took place on July 26, 2001. Balfour was 23 years old, facing a team that had already won 70 games, and had never pitched in the Majors before. Still, the first batter he faced, Mike Cameron, struck out. The next batter, Al Martin, was Granted Ball four, marking the first time someone had performed their full name in a game. At least, I think so. Don't remember Home Run Baker ever bringing an oven into the stands. Anyway, following that game, in Balfour's next appearance he allowed home runs to both Ichiro and Bret Boone, and then returned to the minors. He'd linger there for the next two years. Every time it seemed like he was ready in triple-A, something would knock him down again. That is, until July of 2003, when the Twins moved a Rule 5 draft pick from a couple years prior up from the bullpen to the starting rotation. They needed another reliever, and so they gave Grant a call. Balfour, who'd been doing pretty well as a Rochester Red Wing, was a Major Leaguer once again. And this time, he wasn't letting that go lightly. After four appearances and 3 runs in 8.1 innings pitched, Balfour got sent back to the minors in favor of James Baldwin. After Baldwin sucked, and that Rule 5 pick named Johan Santana turned out okay, Take Yourbase came back in August, and started his time back right with 8 consecutive scoreless innings, plus his first career win. Manager Ron Gardenhire liked what he saw, and tapped Sony Walkman to start September 3rd against the Anaheim Angels. It did not go well, with Balfour issuing five of his last name in just 2.2 innings, not to mention giving up a home run to a rarely seen creature named Shawn Wooten. Back to the bullpen he went, finishing the year with 26 innings pitched, and 30 strikeouts to show for it. He also had a 4.15 ERA and 14 walks to his name, so there was room for improvement. 2004 would hopefully bring that around. Or he could also allow 7 earned runs in his first 2.2 innings of the year. Fourth Pitchoutside apparently figured out that that was a bad thing to do, because he only allowed 6 over the next 3 months of mop up duty. Even struck out 36 in the 30.1 innings he pitched over that time plus earning 5 decisions, 4 of which were wins. Then a DL stint came, he came back, and allowed 6 runs in 6 innings of September baseball. The Twins still made the playoffs, and he pitched 2 innings of perfect baseball, but he was playing for Minnesota, and they were matched up against the Yankees, so it's not like it mattered. After that year ended on the wrong foot, he intended to start afresh in 2005. That was before elbow ligament reconstruction surgery followed a spring training injury, and completely wiped out any hope of Balfour doing that. By this point, the Twins, who finished the season 83-79 in lieu of Base Onballs getting injured, had plenty of young arms coming into the fold and doing very well. Names like Francisco Liriano, Scott Baker, and Jesse Crain were all holding their own, and all were below the age of 25 at season's end. They also had other capable pitchers in the bullpen, like Juan Rincon, Matt Guerrier, J.C. Romero, and a proven closer in Joe Nathan. Balfour would turn 27 that winter, was coming back from a serious injury, and had never finished a season with an ERA below 4, something everyone previously mentioned who was not the 21-year-old Liriano had done. All of that to say, at the end of 2005, the Twins released Grant Balfour from his contract. I guess you could say, they, uh, let him walk. HaHAAAaaaa. A minor league offer from the Cincinnati Reds in January meant O.B.P. Helper spent 2006 bouncing around their system, never quite putting it all together before getting selected off waiver by Milwaukee in October. That was apparently what it took. Balfour started the next season in double-A, and over the next three-and-a-half months, would pitch in 32 minor league games, 43.1 innings, and two different leagues. At the end of it, his ERA was 1.87, he had struck out 68, and he was getting called up to the Brewers. Balfour wasn't done, and he would show up this time. He certainly did, appearing in three games right off the bat, and allowing 6 runs in 2.2 innings. An improvement over his start to 2004, but also a showing that resulted in 2 losses. Only a couple days after his last outing where he faced 4 batters in the 12th inning without recording an out, Balfour was designated for assignment, and traded to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Over the rest of the season, he'd win another decision and not lose any more, which is nice, but he'd have a 6.14 ERA and the Devil Rays would lose 96 games, which is not. After a lackluster spring training effort meant he started the year in the minors, at this point, there was no reason to expect anything. Perhaps Guy Whopitchespoorly could get one, maybe two more years of baseball, but that was it. At least, that's what everyone but Balfour could expect, because he wouldn't stay in the minors for long. After only 15 games in AA, B.B. Surrendered got called back up to the newly-renamed Tampa Bay Rays. Why, you may ask, did the team call up Balfour, a 30-year-old reliever whose season prior was horrendous? Maybe because in those 15 games (and 8 saves), he pitched 23.2 innings, and through them all, allowed only a single run. Oh, and he had 39 strikeouts. Yeah, that'll be a call-up from me. On May 31st, Another Wideone's first MLB appearance of 2008 would be to get the last out of a game against the White Sox's Brian Anderson. It took him two pitches to induce a flyout, and record his first career MLB Save. And that was just the beginning. Over the next four months, Grant Balfour would become the best relief pitcher on the Rays. In 58.1 innings of work, he'd only allow 10 runs for a 1.52 ERA, strike out 82 batters, and maintain a WHIP of 0.891. He finished the year as the fourth most valuable pitcher on the team by bWAR, rotation or bullpen. He also helped carry his team to a playoff berth, where they faced the White Sox in the Division Series. Balfour contributed 3.1 innings of scoreless ball, including the final two innings of the decisive Game 4 to clinch it for Tampa Bay. His ALCS was less exemplary, particularly the time he allowed 4 runs in 0.2 innings that led to his team losing a game they'd led 7-0 in the seventh inning. Thanks to the rest of Balfour's team, the Rays still advanced past the Red Sox in 7 to face the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series. Just Abitoutside did his best, only allowing one run in the three games he pitched, but the good fortune Tampa Bay had sown with the baseball gods dried up before they could close it out and win that elusive piece of metal. Still, Balfour had shown he was far from done pitching great baseball. The Rays rewarded Ball Numerocuatro for his excellent season by keeping him around for two years. He'd do okay, not the best bullpen arm but nowhere near the worst. 7-5 with a 3.67 ERA and 125 strikeouts in 122.2 innings. Not bad at all, even good enough for a 113 ERA+. 3.28 FIP, too. Probably didn't help that he walked 50 people and only saved 4 games, but you can't win em all. Balfour's last three pitching appearances for the Rays were all scoreless outings in the ALDS, a series they'd go on to lose. Afterwards, because they're the Rays, they decided not to bring him back, and so Opposite Ofastrikeout became a free agent for the first time in four years. That offseason, after being named the 42nd best free agent available by MLB Trade Rumors, Grant Balfour signed a 2-year, $8 million contract with the Oakland Athletics. I can imagine Peter Brandt telling Billy Beane, "the thing people don't like about him is his name. He's a great pitcher, but his name sounds like 'ball four,' so he'll be cheap." Walk Joke would spend his first season in Oakland as a setup man for closer Andrew Bailey, and he'd perform that job well, notching a career high 26 holds in 2011. Even after Brian Fuentes took over after Bailey got injured, Balfour didn't waver, finishing the year with a 2.47 ERA and a 1.032 WHIP, the best WHIP he'd had since that magical 2008 run. Figuring that still wasn't good enough, and after a nice spring training, Somethingabout Badpitches found himself in the A's closer spot at the beginning of 2012. It was a spot he wouldn't relinquish for... about a month. A couple bad outings left the spot open for Ryan Cook, but once he also began to struggle in mid-August, Balfour once again took over, and would hold the job for the rest of that season and the next once his option was picked up. Over that time, Balfour at one point had saved 44 games in a row, an Athletics franchise record. In a franchise whose history included both Rollie Fingers and Dennis Eckersley closing games, the record for most consecutive non-blown saves belongs to a guy whose name means "walk a dude." Baseball, man. That streak even got Balfour an All-Star nod after an injury was sustained by his teammate Bartolo Colon, aka "Portly Pulchritudinous." All told, in his three years in Oakland, Grant Balfour went 9-7, sustained a 2.53 ERA and 1.043 WHIP, struck out 203 hitters, saved 64 games, and gathered 5.8 bWAR. Pretty nice if I do say so. Nice enough that he was out of their price range, and so back he went to the land of the free agents. After a snafu with the Orioles wound up with a 2-year $15 million contract being overturned due to a poor physical, his old friends the Tampa Bay Rays swooped in and gave him 2 years and $12 million instead. Balfour showed that that physical might have been more right than he wanted to let on, as the 36-year-old put up a 4.91 ERA and a 1.444 WHIP, both of which were his worst stats since the year he played for the Brewers. He lost the closer job after just 12 saves, and never regained it, getting released less than a month into the second year of his contract. After an attempted comeback when the Rays offered him a second-chance minor league deal, Theschtick Isgettingold got released again, and officially retired on April 29, 2016. And on that day, the list of players whose names could actually be performed in the game was reduced to zero. Well, except for Brandon Belt. Just wear a logo on your belt and bam. Balfour's most interesting aspect, at least to me, will always be his name. Some others might point his Athletics' consecutive save record, which is valid. Some others might point to his penchant for pitching while enraged, which would regularly get him into altercations with batters he faced. That's also valid. But I am still fascinated by the fact that someone whose name is literally Grant Ball Four became a pitcher in the MLB and stayed there for long enough to qualify for the Hall of Fame ballot. I suppose the baseball gods have a fickle sense of humor. I am disappointed he is not on simply based on his name alone, but I understand why. Because at the end of the day, he just didn't deserve to be there. Sorry Thisjoke Isdead. Balfour would visit the Hall in an Oakland A's cap for his 64 saves, 2.53 ERA, and 203 strikeouts with the franchise. How would he get inside, you ask? Why, as his name would suggest, he'd walk. Oh that was awful. These baseball players are less important than anybody on the ballot but you can read about them if you want #1: Randy Choate #2: Kevin Gregg #3: Dan Uggla #4: Josh Hamilton #5: Delmon Young #6: Willie Bloomquist #7: Grady Sizemore #8: Kevin Correia #9: David DeJesus #10: Rafael Betancourt #11: Clint Barmes #12: Adam LaRoche
I listened to Astros at-bats from the 2017 postseason through 2018 for whistles.
Hi everyone, I listened to a whole lot of Astros baseball to see if I could find some signs of cheating via whistling. I got my PhD in physics about a year ago and decided to take a couple months off. Unplanned by me, around the time I started seriously searching for jobs in data science/analysis Covid happened. To keep myself occupied and have a data project to show to perspective employers I did this. If you'd prefer to read this as a pdf and look at the datasets and spectrograms I made follow this link to a google drive with all that in it. The pdf has more than what I'm posting here, because I hit the character limit for a Reddit post. the pdf has been revised a bit more, an intro that sort of sets up the whole paper (but thats what I'm doing here), a methods section that explains how I did everything, an authors note telling you I'm taking a break from this topic for a bit and encouraging other people to do their own investigations and appendices. here is the link. Background section is more for setting up why I'm doing this. As I was telling family and friends about this project I noticed that the level of knowledge about who did what when and how was lacking. Even avid baseball fans I talked to didn't know about certain aspects of the timeline. I even learned more about the cheating then I knew originally by doing research to write this section. The Preliminary Discussion is pretty much there to explain how damning this project can be. It's not a silver bullet of proof but its a first step towards questioning the 'Astros won 2017 WS with the help of cheating, then just stopped'. Then I get into the results. I go over game 5 of the 2017 WS in particular because it shows the particular whistles that I searched the rest of the 2017 postseason and 2018 season for. Then I made some figures that show what I found. Conclusions and future wraps up all I found again and put out some ideas I (or you?) might do with the datasets or other projects. Last before I get into this, just a personal shout out to all baseball fans to treat Astros fans nicely (I know me asking probably wont stop anyone but I just want to put it out there). I spent a week or so watching/listening through 20 second clips of 2018 Astros home games. Lots of fans of all ages innocently happy for the WS win and proud of the team and their city for bouncing back after the hurricane. Kids holding up replica WS rings, Huge moustache dude hanging out by the crawford boxes, Bobby Dynamite moving the train around, drunk guys Rick Flairing for Reddick. They didn't cheat or condone the cheating. Some vocal Houston fans will defend the team no matter what but there are a lot of people who have had good memories tarnished by all this. Blame the Astros org and MLB.
Background
On October 30th 2019, The Washington Nationals defeated the Houston Astros in game seven to win the World Series. Less than 2 weeks later, Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich published an article in The Athletic titled “The Astros stole signs electronically in 2017 — part of a much broader issue for Major League Baseball” In the article it is explained that the system was conceived between a player and a manager for the Astros, Carlos Beltran and Alex Cora (Later it would be revealed that these two built up the cheating system along with Cintron in the 2017 season but the groundwork was being set earlier by the front office and Bregman. During home games, the Houston Astros used a video feed installed in a stairwell leading to their dugout, trained on the opposing catcher’s hand signals. They deciphered the signs being conveyed by the catcher and relayed the type of pitch to the Astro’s batter by banging on a trashcan with a baseball bat or massage stick. The system had no trashcan bang meaning fastball, bang meaning off-speed or breaking ball. The journalists had four sources for this information, three anonymous and Mike Fiers, a pitcher who was with the Houston Astros during the 2017 season and has since played for the Detroit Tigers and Oakland A’s. Two of the sources stated that the cheating continued into the postseason, while a third source denied this and claimed that the cheating stopped before the playoffs began. This was a culmination of prior rumblings of the team’s shady practices. An article describing the Cleveland Indians preparation for facing the Houston Astros in the 2018 ALDS included mentioning they had planned on a complex system of signs to prevent cheating . Cleveland was destroyed by the Astros in that series, being swept out of the playoffs. The day after the final game, Cleveland put a complaint in about having to remove an Astros employee from the journalist’s section twice during game three in Cleveland. This information was passed on to the Astros’ ALCS opponent, the Boston Red Sox, who had to remove the same man during game one . MLB’s investigation into the man’s actions found no wrong doing. In the 2019 postseason the New York Yankees also put in a complaint stating that the Astro’s were conveying information about pitches via whistling, again MLB investigated the accusations and again found no wrong doing. In February of 2020, it came to light that the Oakland A’s also accused the Astros of cheating in late August of 2018. In this instance, MLB acted not by reprimanding the Astros but by placing personnel at the replay stations allegedly used by the Astros to view the signs during the 2018 postseason. These three official complaints added to a narrative of the Astros organization having an operation of pushing the limits of gamesmanship in every aspect of the game. From the personal perspective of a Cleveland fan three recent examples of headlines that call into question the Astros organization’s morals were: Accusations of using illegal substances to improve their pitchers , acquiring Roberto Osuna after his alleged Domestic Violence suspension was up , and a Cleveland reporter, Andre Knott, commenting that (paraphrasing): “Minute Maid makes me feel like one other place I’ve been to as a sports writer, Gillette Stadium, like you’re being watched.” After the 'The Athletic' article was released, MLB announced it would be investigating the allegations (actually an expansion of an ongoing investigation into an Astros executive’s treatment of female reporters ). In the interim, baseball fans took matters into their own hands when it became clear that the trashcan bangs were readily audible during broadcasts. For example, YouTuber and Yankees fan, Jomboy, discussed a game between the White Sox and Astros that had been cited as an example of the system. Fans also dug deeper, some searched into the possibility of the Astro’s using buzzers while others looked into whistling accusations. The commissioner’s investigation concluded and the results were published in a nine page report on January 14th 2020. The Astros were confirmed to have cheated in the 2017 regular season and Rob Manfred said signs pointed to the cheating continuing into the playoffs. However, Astros player Carlos Correa disputed this, saying that their home park was too noisy during the playoffs to hear the trashcan bangs and the teams were constantly changing signs. Two weeks later on January 29th, 2020, Tony Adams, an Astro’s fan needing to know to what extent they were cheating, pulled every home game that was available to search for trashcan bangs and cataloged them. The cheating was extensive but Tony did observe that the banging ended abruptly in the beginning of September. The Astros clinched the division on September 17th, and then played the White Sox from September 19-21. Bangs registered in the dozens throughout this series but then stop during the following final two home series against the Angels and Red Sox. The last game where dozens of bangs are registered is the same game in which the White Sox pitcher Dan Farquhar noticed they were cheating, September 21, the same game that was named as an example of their cheating in reports and that Jomboy reported on. It has been reported that Farquhar’s recognition caused ‘panic’ in the Astros dugout and the trashcan banging stopped. The question was, did another system replace the banging. Rafael Garcia, a software engineer and youtuber by the name of B27, posted a video linking whistles to pitches in the 2017 World Series, most notably during game five. The video was about five minutes, presenting trimmed clips of certain pitches. He argued that a ‘charge’ whistle was coming out before off-speed pitches, and a note that quickly rises, called here a ‘pwip’ whistle, was heard before fastballs. Rafael Garcia promised a 5-part series of videos on the topic but stopped after releasing two. The game Rafael pulled the whistles from is available on YouTube in its entirety , no doctoring or editing occurred and the whistles he presented were confirmed to be there. The trashcan bangs were not heard in the 2018 season, the MLB stated that the Astros stopped cheating in 2018, and the two leaders of the 2017 system, Carlos Beltran and Alex Cora, left the organization after 2017. However, Kurt Suzuki was quoted as saying that you could ‘hear the whistling coming from the dugout’ during the 2019 World Series. And as mentioned previously, the Yankees also accused the Astro’s of using whistling in the 2019 ALDS to convey signs. In the same way that Tony Adam’s cataloged trashcan bangs for 2017, could whistles be identified and cataloged for the 2017, 2018 and 2019 seasons?
Preliminary Discussion
Some discussion needs to be had on how damning any correlation between whistles and pitches would be. First, with the trashcan bangs, multiple 1st hand sources from within the organization admitted to journalists that the Astros cheated and described how. Then, after that information was released, fans investigated and found the proof. Here, the evidence is searched for without any 1st hand sources admitting to a system nor describing how the system works. Thus, this work is unable to prove wrongdoing but rather provide evidence for the plausibility of a system without trashcan bangs, and to attempt to build a case against the claim made by MLB and the Astros that the behavior stopped. Second, the incriminating nature of the out of place noise of a trashcan bang should be considered. That is not a normal baseball game sound and so it is easy to recognize and catalog them. Whistles on the other hand, are a baseball game staple, and discerning the possibility of a ‘nefarious intent’ whistle as opposed to a fan who spontaneously decides to start whistling before every pitch, is subjective. The choice to filter the time window to around the pitches only and limiting the types of whistles to document was an attempt to address some of this ambiguity. Whenever possible it is verified that the pitcher has already confirmed the pitch before a whistle is documented but even then, it could be a fan. By documenting every whistle that comes out near a pitch trends can be looked for that surface from the cataloging of the entire season. Similar to the first point, because no sources have come forward, these findings have a limit. Ultimately, a member of the Astros could come forward to corroborate which whistles were used and how. Further, any member of an opposing dugout could also come forward and state which whistles they were hearing from the Astro’s dugout. The dataset presents audio timestamps for most home game pitches of the 2018 baseball season, so even if the categorization of pwip and charge whistles is wrong, any statement on what whistles were heard could be immediately be searched for in these games. To that end, YouTube comments have been made on every game that was processed with timestamps to each pitch. Each pitch also has a designation on whether a whistle was heard or not. One game in particular will be looked at in detail, game five of the 2017 World Series. This displays the two types of whistle that were listened for throughout the 2018 season and the rest of the 2017 postseason and is probably the most extreme example of correlated whistles and pitches. Then the results of this listening is presented in its entirety. In a vacuum, most games don’t have egregious passages of whistles and no whistles, but looking at the full catalog reveals trends. Finally, due to the 2020 MLB season starting, one final point of credibility can be addressed. The microphone that picks up the game audio is near the field of play. Umpire calls and player expletives can be heard, pitches hitting the dirt, the bat weights clacking to the ground. The whistles cataloged were attempted to be discerned from crowd whistles using this fact. A ‘nefarious intent’ whistle would be loud enough for the batter (and microphone) to hear but not much louder. Since the person whistling is assumed to be in the dugout there would not be excessive reverberation of the whistle before it was picked up on the microphone. In contrast, fans whistling in the crowd are as loud as they can be and would echo about the stadium as it reached the microphone. If whistles came out right before pitches but had these loud, echo-y characteristics they were not cataloged. This assumption was confirmed when games started being played in empty stadiums. The loud reverberating whistles were gone, but during any game for any team, whistles can be heard that are ‘calm’ and with minimal echo. These must be staff or players either trying to get players attention or to convey information to them during the game. It was these same kinds of whistles that were looked for in the games listened to from 2017-2018.
Results
2017 Postseason
The 2017 postseason comprised of three series, the ALDS against the Red Sox, the ALCS against the Yankees, and the World Series against the Dodgers. The first two series are more interesting for what is not there. There were no trashcan bangs found. This agrees with Correa saying they stopped in the postseason and the reporting that the Astros moved away from the trashcan after getting spooked by Farquhar noticing it during the White Sox series in September of 2017. Also missing in the first two series were charge whistles. Each game had at most two or three charge whistles. In the World Series against the Dodgers, there are many more instances of charge whistles right before pitches during all three Astros home games. It hurts the case that charge whistles were fan noise when over the course of six sellout home games during the ALDS and ALCS their instance of directly preceding pitches was sparse. Then over the course of the three home World Series games they were much more consistently there. Interestingly, charge whistles correlated more with fastballs in games three and four, and with offspeed/breaking balls in game five. There is nothing preventing the Astros changing what pitches they choose to put charge whistles on. The focus here will be on game five of the World Series. This game has some of the most consistent patterned whistling, with fastballs having pwips and offspeed/breaking balls having charges. Tony Adams made a video looking at the charge whistles in game five . Here, there is a difference of opinion. Adams looked at every charge whistle during the course of the game, and found them all throughout the game; during Astros at bats, Dodgers at bats, times when no one was in the batter’s box, after pitches were made, and on fastballs. The argument is that because of this the charge whistles cannot be a signal. This is an issue of signal and noise. When collecting data its often important to perform actions to clean the data, removing known sources of error. If the data is significantly noisy it may only look like random noise until you properly process it. Here in this situation, by collecting every charge whistle in the game, whistles that have no chance of being a signal to Astros batters are needlessly included. Only the whistles that come out in the vicinity of a pitch have any possibility of being a signal. The rest can only be legitimate fan whistles or possibly ‘smokescreen’ whistles to mask the pattern of charge whistles coming out before certain pitches. When only focusing on the time window around pitches to Astros batters, you remove a large source of noise and only focus on whistles that could be a signal. The test then becomes does this particular whistle come out on particular pitches, after the signs and before the pitch. The first exemplary sequence was Alex Bregman’s second at bat against Clayton Kershaw in the 5th inning. Table 1 presents the 10 pitches Bregman saw that at-bat along with links to the video of each pitch and if a whistle was heard. A Charge whistle is heard three times, before each of Kershaw’s three curveballs. It would seem very unlikely that a fan chose to spontaneously make a charge whistle before only those three pitches, coincidentally all curveballs.
The result of this at-bat was walking Bregman and knocking Kershaw out of the game. Kenta Maeda replaced Kershaw, Tony Watson replaced Maeda, and Brandon Morrow replaced Watson. Whistles were heard sporadically but not in such a tight sequence as this Bregman at bat. Tony Cingrani replaced Morrow in the 7th inning. Table 2 shows every pitch Cingrani threw in his appearance. Here you can see a high coincidence of pwip whistles coming out on Cingrani’s fastballs. Out of 14 fastballs thrown eight had pwips before them with one pwip coming out on a slider during Gurriel’s at-bat. It should be noted, McCann rarely had trashcan bangs come out during his at-bats in the 2017 season and it has come out since that he was opposed to his team’s actions . Given this, the fact he did not receive whistles on his at-bat versus Cingrani is not surprising. If these fastballs are excluded, then of Cingrani’s 12 fastballs, 8 had pwips and only one non-fastball had a pwip. See figure for example spectrogram.
Cingrani was relieved by Stripling and then the Dodger’s called on their closer Kenley Jansen. Table 3 shows all 33 pitches Jansen threw. Jansen threw 31 cut-fastballs and two sliders. Jansen is effectively a two-pitch pitcher who predominately cutters while sprinkling sliders in. The slider is there to keep batters on their toes. The batter can never sit too comfortably waiting for the cutter because Jansen could surprise with a slider. By signaling when the sliders are coming, Jansen’s abilities are then greatly hampered. One of the two sliders thrown by Jansen has a charge whistle. There is a charge whistle before the second slider as well, but it comes out very early making it unlikely that the signs were down yet and the camera is not trained on the Dodgers catcher to verify. Also tellingly, only one charge whistle is heard directly before any of Kenley’s Jansen’s other 31 pitches. In this instance it is suggested you watch his appearance in its entirety because other charge whistles come out during his time and they appear to cause Jansen to step off the mound. It would seem that Jansen recognized they were stealing his signs. Pwips were also heard throughout Jansen’s appearance. This would seem redundant since he only throws two pitches. The crowd was very excited at this time so the possibility of some of those pwips being fan whistles is high. It’s also possible the pwips were conveying location. Its worth noting, Bregman’s walkoff hit was preceded by a cut-fastball with a pwip. A charge is heard earlier, but its before Bregman steps into the box.
Here we present the season wide analysis of the 2018 season. A similar analysis of the 2017 postseason was not performed. Pwips were heard throughout the postseason but the comparatively small size of total pitches was a detriment. With that, the fact that the charge whistles only appeared in one series and which pitch they correlated with changed (fastballs in games three and four, offspeed/breaking in game 5) suggests the alleged system was very fluid at this time, so finding trends from the whole set is less likely. The 2017 postseason data is still provided for independent analysis of the nine games but are not examined here. In 2018, 1,269 pitches were observed throughout the year to have either a pwip or charge whistle directly preceding it out of a total 9,208 pitches seen by Astros batters in the games analyzed. The number of these whistles heard fluctuates from game to game with an average of about 20 whistles per game. The percentage of pitches with whistles preceding them is plotted for each game that was analyzed and presented in figure 9. The average percentage of pitches with whistles over the 2018 season was about 14% and is indicated in figure 9 by the horizontal dashed red line. For comparison, Tony Adams looking at the 2017 season found 1,142 pitches had trashcan bangs out of a total 8,274 pitches in the games analyzed, or 13.8%. As mentioned previously, after accusations by the Oakland A’s of cheating during a late August 2018 home game, MLB stationed personnel at the replay booths during the 2018 postseason. The whistles observed notably drop once the Astros enter the 2018 postseason. Since the personnel were stationed there, the assumption is made that this form of cheating should have stopped. The whistles that were observed during the postseason then can be used as a coarse estimate of error. On average nine pitches with whistles (or about 5%) were observed for games where there should hypothetically be zero. Then we can project that for each game as many as 5% of whistles that were observed that were not nefarious in intent were cataloged. On the contrary, the error of whistles that were there but missed depends on crowd noise and audio issues (broadcasters talking over the game). No estimate of this upper error is found so the same nine whistle/5% error is used in lieu of a more accurate error. Some argue that (paraphrasing) ‘Astro’s fans love to whistle’ and that the charge whistles heard during the World Series game five are nothing but fans. Charge whistles are heard in 2018, but as can be seen in figure 9, rarely do they actually appear right before pitches like they did during the 2017 World Series. Only one game of the 65 games analyzed had significant amounts of charge whistles before pitches, May, 11th, 2018 versus the Rangers. In an attempt to attribute the whistles to innocent crowd noise, correlations in the fluctuations of whistles with benign explanations were searched for. First, do weekend games have more whistles than weekday games. Weekend games are marked in red text along the x-axis in figure 9 and on average nine more whistles were observed on weekend games than weekday games. This suggests that a ‘rowdier’ weekend crowd was producing more whistles in general and were coincidentally produced before pitches and cataloged. This gives another source of lower bound error that actually agrees with the previous discussion of the postseason whistles. In both cases we have reasons to believe up to 5% of whistles a game that were cataloged were innocent in origin. Less likely an explanation for the increase in weekend whistling but worth putting forth would be that the rowdy weekend crowds are louder and force the Astros to whistle louder, thus allowing them to be picked up by the microphone more readily. Another search for an innocent explanation for the whistles was to look at the Minute Maid Park attendance for each game. If whistles were coming from fans, then more fans should mean more whistles. Crowd size as a percent of total Minute Maid Park capacity are displayed as black dots in figure 9. A Pearson product between the capacity and percent whistles with pitches can be performed to find how correlated the two variables are. For perfectly correlated variables (as crowd goes up whistles go up) you would get a value of 1, for inversely correlated variables (as crowd goes up whistles go down) a value of -1 would be found. A value close to 0 means the two variables are not correlated. Here the correlation between crowd and pitches with whistles was 0.001 meaning that crowd size had no impact on whistle count. Next, we look at what type of whistle (pwip or charge) preceded each pitch, the results of which are plotted in figure 10. Only 78 charge whistles were heard before pitches while 1,190 pwips were heard. 68% of pitches with pwips were fastballs (two-seam, four-seam, cutter, sinker) whereas 21% of the time the pwips came out on breaking balls (slider, curveball, Knuckle curve) and 11% on offspeed (changeups and splitters). The whistle occurrences are also broken down by each player who took at-bats for the Astros in 2018 in figure 11. The whistle occurrences were not evenly distributed, meaning it was more likely for whistles to come out before pitches for certain Astros. Marwin Gonzalez saw the highest amount of pitches with pwips at 16.16% followed by Carlos Correa and Alex Bregman. On the low end, Brian McCann and Max Stassi had the lowest amount of whistles for players who saw over 200 pitches. This breakdown can be compared to the same breakdown done by Tony Adams with trashcan bangs which is presented in figure 12. Josh Reddick and Jose Altuve saw large increases from trashcan bangs to pitches with whistles while Marisnick saw a decrease. Outside of these changes Gonzalez, Bregman and Correa maintained similar high percentages and McCann retained his low percentage. Lastly, whistles are broken down by base occupancy in figure 13. Whistles were heard most often when bases were empty, but the situation of having bases empty is much more frequent. If you look at the percent of pitches that had whistles for each base occupancy the whistles came out least often with bases empty, at about 11%. Whistles as a percent became more frequent when runners were in scoring position (second and/or third).
Conclusions and Future
In 2017, The Houston Astros cheated by using a camera system to decipher pitch signals between the opposing team’s battery. Sources from within the Astros organization admitted it, baseball fans found evidence of it in publicly available video, and the MLB investigation confirmed it. MLB also stated that evidence of cheating stopped during the 2018 season. The recent track record of MLB acting on accusations of cheating were not reassuring. Cleveland threw an Astros employee out of the journalist’s section during the 2018 playoffs and the Red Sox had to remove the same person during the next series. The Oakland A’s accused the Astros of patterned clapping on certain pitches during a game in the 2018 regular season. The Yankees accused the Astros of whistling during certain pitches during the 2019 playoffs. MLB found no wrong doing and the only actions taken that are known at this time was installing personnel that watched the review stations during the 2018 postseason. In articles discussing the 2017 system it is stated that the Astros tried clapping and whistling to convey signs before settling on using a trashcan bang. MLB puts forth the narrative; nothing to see here. An alternative line of reasoning would be this; the Astros continued cheating after 2017 but reverted to more subtle ways to convey information. A system they fell back on when trashcan bangs were being noticed by the White Sox and when the 2017 postseason became too loud to hear trashcan bangs. MLB’s investigators of the 2018 and 2019 season either were truly unable to find any evidence of wrongdoing despite multiple teams telling them what they were hearing, the team admitting they used those same systems previously, and guaranteeing immunity to the players of any repercussions, or MLB didn’t want to admit finding anything and assumed the 2018-2019 system was too subtle to be noticed. Game 5 of the World Series was suspicious and was described in detail. The same whistles heard in that game were looked for in the rest of the 2017-18 games. A similar percent of pitches had trashcan bangs in 2017 that had whistles in 2018, 13.8% compared to 14%. A noticeable decrease in whistles per game occurred in the 2018 postseason when MLB personnel were installed to monitor the replay stations used to cheat. Individual players share of pitches with whistles largely reflected the same share of pitches the players had with trashcan bangs the year previous. This would appear to be evidence of wrongdoing continuing. This project is not proof that the Astros cheated in 2018 by whistling but it does build on that theory, providing a set of data and performing exploratory analysis on said data. The analysis performed here only begins what could be done with it. Other possibilities are looking into swing rates and contact on pitches with whistles versus those without. Further, while pwips came out a majority of the time on fastballs, the system is more complex than that. Certain pitchers faced had pwips consistently on pitches other than fastballs suggesting that the system was adjusted for particular pitchers. Other times it was not a single pwip but two or three in quick succession, possibly conveying different information than a single pwip or possibly just making sure the pwip was heard. Altuve in particular tended to have bursts of four or five pwips in a rowspectrogram during at bats but these details were not pursued. Beyond the current form of the datasets there are other ideas worth investigating. Pwips and charges were not the only whistles observed but to limit the scope of the project, were the only ones cataloged. Notes were made of other common whistles found like the wiggler , the downturn and the weird . Beyond that as the A’s suspected and the Astros have admitted doing in the past, claps were not cataloged or focused on. But, in a few instances it was impossible to ignore a quiet game moment where only one person in the stadium seemed to be clapping, coincidentally right after the signs were put down . The dataset provides a YouTube timestamp for every pitch observed. A YouTube comment has been posted on every video analyzed providing time links to each pitch. Any individual could use the datasets and timestamps to search for other whistles, claps, or even whether certain players were changing in or out of undershirts during games. If manual listening appears daunting the hope is that the collection of pitch spectrograms may benefit individuals interested in machine learning. The Fourier transform settings used to create the spectrogram come from a paper showing the use of a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to identify birdsong via spectrograms . The idea is that the 10,000 pitch spectrograms created will be enough to train a CNN to accurately identify pwips and charges. This CNN could then be used on the remaining 13 home games. Further, the CNN could be used on all the Astro’s away games of 2018 or the entire Astro’s 2019 season (if they were made available) to automate the search for these whistles. It could even be used on other teams games if there’s evidence of the same whistles being used. If particular claps or whistles are cataloged the CNN could even be updated to search for those as well. If any of the project ideas with the dataset or spectrograms sound intriguing, I encourage you to pursue them. I definitely will be playing around with a CNN and might look into Tony Adams 2017 dataset for whistles but beyond that I'll be taking a break from Astros cheating. I plan to come back to this at some point but I'm interested in pursing other topics at the intersection of physics/stats/baseball that doesn't have me listening to hours of game audio! I'm on twitter @DrNateTurner1 if you want to keep up on any projects I do in the future. Also reach out to me if your interested in giving this a more permanent home then a reddit post and a google drive folder!
The meaning of “Glitched” Swing and why People can hit with some players but not with others
This is my first year playing the show and it has been a really fun time and the community seems so amazing. I see that a lot of people online talk about “Glitched” swings. I understand the concept that certain players hit amazing regardless of stats, but from a first year perspective, shouldn’t the game strictly be “input:output”? Is this a MLB folklore that people hit better than others because of their in game swing? Or are swings specifically designed differently by SDS for this effect? Personally post-season Kiermier is hitting .476 with 10 home runs for me. But someone like Lightining series Tatis has about 7 home runs and is batting maybe .300 in triple the amount of games. I had always just thought of it as confidence with certain players. I already feel like Kiermier is going to get a hit so I’m more relaxed with him at the plate, thus, a hit. But when Tatis comes up, I expect so much from him and he always shits the bed. Could some veteran players further explain this phenomenon to me?
2020 r/baseball Power Rankings -- Week 4: Top 10 Has New NL West Members, Flying Fish Soar, Blue Jays Plummet, Houston We Have a Problem but Phoenix and DC, Too
Hey Sportsfans — it's time for Week 4 of baseball's 2020 Power Rankings — Four weeks into the season and we've learned a lot: some teams win, some teams lose, and some don't play baseball at all. We solider on, trying to make sense of a season best described as 'baseball as viewed by a drunk Jake Peavy through a broken kaleidoscope'. You may notice the Cardinals are being treated differently this week. There was one tie this week between the #22 and #23 teams -- our 2nd tiebreaker, run differential, was used to break. Difference of just two runs! Every voter has their own style / system and the only voting instructions are these:
"To an extent determined individually, you must take into account how strong a team is right now and likely to be going forward. You must, to some degree, give weight to the events and games of the previous week."
The auxiliary post with added data / fun can be seen here. TRANSPARENCY: this link will show you who voted each team where and has added neat statistics! If something is a little messed up, feel free to pester me let me know. Total Votes: 29 of 30. So close.
#
Team
Δ
Comment
Record
1
Dodgers
+1
Ohhhhh Mooookieeee, when you caaame and you gaaave without taaakinnnng, and I need ya today ohhhh Mookie. I am in love. Hell, even AJ Pollock did the impossible, and won me over despite his 0 for everything playoffs last year. Now if only Cody could find himself... Here's the scary part: The Dodgers are rolling and they are nowhere near playing at their ceiling. If you can't beat this team while its firing on half its cylinders, how the hell do you beat them when they're firing on all of them?
11-5
2
Yankees
-1
Bit of a rough week for the Yankees, but the bats are still alive and well against pitchers I've never heard of. Everyone knows Judge leads the league in HR, but did you know DJ leads the league in Singles? Great to see him having a bit of a repeat from last season's performance. Additionally, Britton and Green have been fantastic out of the pen, and Chapman is going to be back at some point.
10-6
3
Athletics
+4
Mon. had a ten run W vs. the M's. Next was TEX- Piscotty hit the 2nd walk-off GS of our year then we finished a quick sweep. The HOU series opener was cursed- we had 15 LOBs, left a runner on 3rd with 0/1 outs 3 seperate times, but down to our last strike A. Allen hit a single and M. Semien sealed the game. Montas/Luzardo/Bassit were dynamic and our pen is the league's best. Our lineup might lead MLB in Ks, but we're second in BBs. Just before sweeping the cheats R. Laureano, worth 1 bWAR, got his 2nd HBP of the day. We lead the league in those. After jawing at the RP, he arrived at 1st base. Their batting coach, a human dirtbag, taunted our mvp into a brawl even if it was he worked for a club shamed by scandals and a HS JV quality bullpen.
12-4
4
Braves
0
Roller-coaster week for the Braves. We lost our ace for the season. We got Markakis back and Will Smith made his debut. Acuña quadrupled his homer total in one day and Freeman continues to hit. Still looking good for us, but we definitely need to make a move. Our bullpen is incredible, but this meme made by u/riseupidemic sums it up: Our bullpen is doing big things, but...
11-6
5
Twins
-2
We capped off a six game winning streak with a 4 game losing streak. Some were pretty flukey, but we really need the bats to wake up. Also, having three starters on the IL isn't ideal.
10-6
6
Cubs
0
The Cubs played well against the Royals, and then the Cardinals series was postponed. With no evidence that any Cardinals players actually went to a casino or broke protocol more than any other team, I believe that fans making moral judgments against the Cardinals are wrong. Perhaps we shouldn't blame teams for getting a deadly disease during a global pandemic; getting the coronavirus is not a moral indictment. Let's be better fans and better people as the world is falling apart.
10-3
7
Indians
+2
The Tribe pitching continues to dazzle - the rotation has put up a quality start in all but two games, one of which was 5.2 shutout innings. Meanwhile the bullpen has a sub-1 ERA if you take away a single nightmare outing by Brad Hand. The less said about the batting order the better, but there's no way they can rank dead last in BA and SLG all year, right guys? G-g-guys?
10-7
8
Rockies
+6
The Rockies have the 2nd best run differential in baseball going into Sunday's games due in large part to their starting pitching. Their offense has been middle of the pack so far but that's with Nolan Arenado hitting about as poor as we've ever seen from him. Charlie Blackmon is the early favorite for NL MVP as he racks up a .446/.475/.679 slash. Last week: 5-2. This week: 3 vs AZ & 3 vs Texas.
11-4
9
Rays
-1
A return to Dome Sweet Dome is what the Rays needed to right the ship, splitting the sox and winning a tight series with the Yankees. The bats still need to come around, you would think it'd be hard to stay ice cold in Florida and all. The most inspiring things for Rays fans this week were the retunr of Austin Meadows and having a non-Zunino catcher not only bat, but also get the clutch walkoff to send the Yanks home. Let us all pray Charlie Morton is ok and flap on.
8-8
10
Padres
+1
The Pads scored every one of their fourteen runs in the Arizona series by way of the long ball. We got to see Luis Pattiño in some relief after being called up, and saw Hos return to action. Fernando Tatis Jr. is very good at baseball. This week we started against the Dodgers, then played the D’Backs, while looking ahead we play the Dodgers, then have a series against the D’Backs…
9-7
11
Astros
-6
Our pitching is, for the most part, bad. Seriously, almost our entire bullpen is comprised of AA and A rookies with a handful of MLB appearances under their belt. When the pitching is not bad, our offense is bad and we can't provide enough run support. I've seen enough extra inning games this season. Hard to feel confident in the team right now, but hopefully the beginning of a homestand will turn things around.
6-9
12
White Sox
+1
Eloy getting tangled in the left field netting is going to be on lowlight reels for a long time and his 0-20 slide makes it worse. Thankfully, we're looking at a 4 day weekend with the Cards series in doubt. If you told the fanbase in the spring we would be 8-8 after 16 games, most would be happy. A week of the offense averaging 2.5 runs makes 8-8 feel a lot worse. On the plus side, Giolito has looked like an ace again and Moncada is on a 20 game on base streak.
8-8
13
Brewers
-1
Props to BeHereNow91 for stealing my lead in about Yelich this past week, short version Yelich is rocking a 1.400 OPS this week. A few other key players have been getting some really interesting BABIP stats. Hiura with his .333 BABIP and only .250 AVG and Gyorko with the .375 BABIP/.250 AVG split.
6-7
14
Reds
+2
It’s a special kind of hell having the best rotation in the entire league and the worst bullpen in the entire league. Yesterday’s loss was a microcosm of the season: leading 2-1 going into the 6th inning and trailing 9-2 by the end of the 7th. Michael Lorenzen has surrendered 10 earned runs in 5.1 innings while the combination of Gray, Bauer, Disco, and Mahle have allowed the same number in 64.1 innings. If you remove Tejay Antone’s stellar mopup job against Chicago, the Reds’ bullpen has an unfathomably bad 8.32 ERA. In other news, they’re batting .203 as a team and got shutout by the Indians two nights in a row.
7-9
15
Nationals
-5
The Nats did not respond well coming out of their break. They have played poorly against AL East power-team, the Baltmiore Orioles, and have not given a lot of reason for hope. However, Sean Doolittle is a national treasure and it is completely unacceptable to harass a human on Twitter for poor sports performance. If you logged into your account and tweeted or DM'd Doo, you should be ashamed of yourself and turn in your World Series gear because you don't deserve it.
4-7
16
Mets
+4
This was an interesting week. Just when you think the Mets are in freefall they come back, and go 4-2, including taking 2 of 3 from "The Best Team in the League" (technically, at the time) Miami Marlins. On top of that Conforto is swinging a hot bat, the team has scored a couple of actual runs, and deGrom even got a win (two in a row!). However, Alonso is quickly turning into Adam Dunn with a better (at times) glove, and the bullpen is still shaky despite Jared Hughes being the bright spot nobody saw coming. Well, what's see what this next week brings... together :) #GiménezNLROY2020
7-9
17
Phillies
0
The Phillies didn't have all that bad of a week all things considered. After a week long break, they split a series with the Yankees and went 1-2 against the Braves. Harper and Realmuto have looked great, and the introduction of Spencer Howard a better (?) Arrieta means the Phillies might just have a servicable rotation. The bullpen is a different story. If they can somehow put together a not terrible bullpen, they should have a shot at the playoffs and maybe some more.
4-6
18
Marlins
+9
What this team has been able to do with a bunch of replacement players is a testament to the coaching staff Miami has. Primarily, the bullpen. We may have even found a couple diamonds in the rough. That being said, replacement batters havent fared as well. After some initial success, solid Mets pitching has shown that the lineup sorely misses Ramirez, Rojas, Cooper and Alfaro at the plate. Once our guys come back from covid, this team should be able to finish out tough games like yesterdays. Wouldnt be a surprised to see them finish at or slightly above .500 this season. We got Blue jays and Braves this week.
7-3
19
Tigers
+6
Don't look now, but Detrot is one half game off the lead for the AL Central, making these boys rather tough to rank. If the Tigers can continue to be competitive, look to find Casey Mize getting the call sooner rather than later to help shore up the back end of the rotation. This week: 3 vs. CWS, 2 vs STL (although this is unlikely), and 3 vs. CLE.
8-5
20
Orioles
+4
It's week 4 and the Orioles are at .500. A miracle if you ask me. They get swept by the Marlins (probably to avoid COVID) and then should have swept the Nats. Can anyone explain to me why the Yankees got a rain shortened win earlier this year and the Orioles have their game suspended? Weird...
Wear a mask. Wash your hads. Started the weekend with the worst record in the AL, now 2nd place in the AL West with a playoff spot after a sweep of the Angels and still 2 games below .500. That's the Rangers way.
6-8
23
Blue Jays
-7
The Buffalo Blue Jays are finally going home! The first MLB game at Sahlen field will take place on Tuesday, and the migratory birds will be able to settle in. Hopfully it will lead to the bats waking up. The Jays have been the 5th worst hitting team in baseball by wRC+, posting a pitiful line of .218/.277/.366. Good thing the pitching has been good.
5-8
24
Giants
-3
7-10
25
Red Sox
-2
Decent week for the Sox this time around. Our pitching staff came to play for once, however with impeccable timing the offense decided to disappear for a bit, leaving us with a respectable 3-2 record for the week. Of note is Verdugo, who had a standout game against Toronto with 2 HRs as well as robbing one from off of none other than Former-Red-Sock Travis Shaw. Calling it now, Verdugo 2022 AL MVP
6-9
26
D-Backs
-6
D-backs continue to underperform their talent level as their streaky offense can't buoy a terrible, no-good pitching staff. MadBum hasn't looked like himself all year and is currently being evaluated for back issues in Phoenix, while Ray is as frustrating as ever. Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly have looked legitimately fantastic, but it's hard to get by on two good starting pitching performances a week.
6-10
27
Royals
+1
A winning streak and a sweep of the Twins? Really? That just happened? While Brad Keller helps the rotation, and getting rid of Jorge Lopez helps any pitching staff, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. This is still a rebulding team, and while the sudden show of competence is nice, the Royals are not suddenly going to contend for the postseason. Unless Lopez was that fucking useless...
7-10
28
Mariners
-2
Justus Sheffield claimed his first career win this past week. Another bright light in a ridiculous season. Once baseball returns for real, the Mariners should be a force to reckon with as the new guys are looking fantastic. Evan White's glove is a beautiful thing.
In March 2019, Baseball-Reference's annual WAR recalculations quietly reshuffled the 2017 rWAR leaderboard. The top 3 are now Kluber (8.14), Judge (8.08), and Altuve (8.06). Altuve appeared to lead in October 2017 because park adjustments inflated his WAR by .26 rWAR. Judge's 2017 rWAR is unchanged.
At the end of 2017, when you visited Baseball-Reference's leaderboard page, 2017 batters page, or Altuve's individual page, you'd see that Altuve appeared to lead the league with 8.32 rWAR, Judge had 8.08 rWAR, and Kluber had 8.00 rWAR — view the source to see WAR totals with two decimal places. On March 21, 2019, the same pages were quietly updated to show Kluber had 8.14 rWAR, Judge led all position players with 8.08 rWAR, and Altuve finished with 8.06 rWAR. If you didn't know better, you would be confused to see that ESPN's 2017 leaderboard and Altuve's Wikipedia page still incorrectly cite Altuve as 2017's leader in rWAR. Why did this happen? Baseball-Reference recalculates a player's WAR in recent seasons so that park factor adjustments are computed from three year rolling averages centered at the season in question. For example, a player's 2017 park adjustment on Baseball-Reference is now computed using data from the 2016-2018 seasons. Fangraphs also does similar annual recalculations, but their park adjustments use data from a 5 year period. This means that, unlike RBI totals or slugging percentage, WAR and other stats like OPS+ and wRC+ that incorporate park factors are not finalized until several years after the season ends. Even after that, WAR may be changed because of the addition of new data, or alterations to the formula. Sometimes, the recalculations will not change a player's WAR total that much, if at all. On Baseball-Reference, Aaron Judge's WAR was listed at 8.08 (7.20 oWAR, 0.31 dWAR) at the end of 2017, 8.09 (7.20 oWAR, 0.32 dWAR) after 2018's recalculations, and 8.08 (7.19 oWAR, 0.32 dWAR) after 2019's recalculations. When players compete at ballparks that have become more or less friendly to hitters or pitchers, their WAR may be inflated or deflated by up to half a win accordingly, until corrections that reflect these changes are made a few years later. This uncertainty is one of the reasons that WAR isn't supposed to be differentiate between players that are within one win of each other. It just so happens that that in 2017, the BBWAA voted for a player on a team with the most inflated park factors in baseball. The Astros' position players lost a total of 2.76 rWAR. Altuve lost 0.26 rWAR, going from 8.32 rWAR (8.05 oWAR, 0.74 dWAR) to 8.06 rWAR (7.78 oWAR, 0.74 dWAR). The only position player to lose more WAR was Josh Reddick. On Fangraphs, which uses a longer period for calculating park factors (5 years instead of 3), Judge kept his ~0.7 fWAR lead over Altuve—both gained about 0.1 fWAR. I'm limiting this discussion to position players because Baseball-Reference changed their formula for pitching WAR to accomodate openers at the same time as they published 2019's recalculations. This sort of thing has happened before — in 2015, MVP Josh Donaldson appeared to finish with 8.81 rWAR, while WAR Lord Mike Trout's had 9.39 rWAR. Again, Baseball-Reference's later recalculations determined that Donaldson and the Blue Jays hitters had the most inflated park factors in baseball that year. The Blue Jays position players lost a total of 2.80 rWAR; Donaldson's new total for 2015 is 8.54 rWAR, and Trout's new total for 2015 is 9.35 rWAR. The park factor changes are listed here. You can see that Globe Life Park in Arlington and Minute Maid park were more friendly to hitters than previously calculated. This is why Astros and Rangers position players lost the most rWAR—see the table below. In particular, MMP's 2018 park factor was much friendlier to line drives and fly balls hit to the left fielder. The removal of Tal's Hill may also have been a factor. Sports-Reference posted about their 2018 update about their annual WAR update, but did not do so for their 2019 update. Historical rWAR data is available here, and here is my list of rWAR changes for 2017's batters. Here are 2017's top ten biggest position player WAR losers:
Name
Old
New
Change
Josh Reddick
4.37
4.08
-0.29
Jose Altuve
8.32
8.06
-0.26
Alex Bregman
4.06
3.80
-0.26
George Springer
4.96
4.71
-0.25
Brian McCann
1.24
0.99
-0.25
Carlos Gomez
1.80
1.57
-0.23
Yuli Gurriel
2.58
2.36
-0.22
Delino DeShields
2.23
2.01
-0.22
Carlos Beltran
-0.58
-0.80
-0.22
Marwin Gonzalez
4.30
4.09
-0.21
Here are the 2017's top ten biggest position players WAR gainers:
In March 2019, Baseball-Reference's annual WAR recalculations quietly reshuffled the 2017 rWAR leaderboard. The top 3 are now Kluber (8.14), Judge (8.08), and Altuve (8.06). Altuve appeared to lead in October 2017 because park adjustments inflated his WAR by .26 rWAR. Judge's 2017 rWAR is unchanged.
At the end of 2017, when you visited Baseball-Reference's leaderboard page, 2017 batters page, or Altuve's individual page, you'd see that Altuve appeared to lead the league with 8.32 rWAR, Judge had 8.08 rWAR, and Kluber had 8.00 rWAR — view the source to see WAR totals with two decimal places. On March 21, 2019, the same pages were quietly updated to show Kluber had 8.14 rWAR, Judge led all position players with 8.08 rWAR, and Altuve finished with 8.06 rWAR. If you didn't know better, you would be confused to see that ESPN's 2017 leaderboard and Altuve's Wikipedia page still incorrectly cite Altuve as 2017's leader in rWAR. Why did this happen? Baseball-Reference recalculates a player's WAR in recent seasons so that park factor adjustments are computed from three year rolling averages centered at the season in question. For example, a player's 2017 park adjustment on Baseball-Reference is now computed using data from the 2016-2018 seasons. Fangraphs also does similar annual recalculations, but their park adjustments use data from a 5 year period. This means that, unlike RBI totals or slugging percentage, WAR and other stats like OPS+ and wRC+ that incorporate park factors are not finalized until several years after the season ends. Even after that, WAR may be changed because of the addition of new data, or alterations to the formula. Sometimes, the recalculations will not change a player's WAR total that much, if at all. On Baseball-Reference, Aaron Judge's WAR was listed at 8.08 (7.20 oWAR, 0.31 dWAR) at the end of 2017, 8.09 (7.20 oWAR, 0.32 dWAR) after 2018's recalculations, and 8.08 (7.19 oWAR, 0.32 dWAR) after 2019's recalculations. When players compete at ballparks that have become more or less friendly to hitters or pitchers, their WAR may be inflated or deflated by up to half a win accordingly, until corrections that reflect these changes are made a few years later. This uncertainty is one of the reasons that WAR isn't supposed to be differentiate between players that are within one win of each other. It just so happens that that in 2017, the BBWAA voted for a player on a team with the most inflated park factors in baseball. The Astros' position players lost a total of 2.76 rWAR. Altuve lost 0.26 rWAR, going from 8.32 rWAR (8.05 oWAR, 0.74 dWAR) to 8.06 rWAR (7.78 oWAR, 0.74 dWAR). The only position player to lose more WAR was Josh Reddick. On Fangraphs, which uses a longer period for calculating park factors (5 years instead of 3), Judge kept his ~0.7 fWAR lead over Altuve—both gained about 0.1 fWAR. I'm limiting this discussion to position players because Baseball-Reference changed their formula for pitching WAR to accomodate openers at the same time as they published 2019's recalculations. This sort of thing has happened before — in 2015, MVP Josh Donaldson appeared to finish with 8.81 rWAR, while WAR Lord Mike Trout's had 9.39 rWAR. Again, Baseball-Reference's later recalculations determined that Donaldson and the Blue Jays hitters had the most inflated park factors in baseball that year. The Blue Jays position players lost a total of 2.80 rWAR; Donaldson's new total for 2015 is 8.54 rWAR, and Trout's new total for 2015 is 9.35 rWAR. The park factor changes are listed here. You can see that Globe Life Park in Arlington and Minute Maid park were more friendly to hitters than previously calculated. This is why Astros and Rangers position players lost the most rWAR—see the table below. In particular, MMP's 2018 park factor was much friendlier to line drives and fly balls hit to the left fielder. The removal of Tal's Hill may also have been a factor. Sports-Reference posted about their 2018 update about their annual WAR update, but did not do so for their 2019 update. Historical rWAR data is available here, and here is my list of rWAR changes for 2017's batters. Here are 2017's top ten biggest position player WAR losers:
Name
Old
New
Change
Josh Reddick
4.37
4.08
-0.29
Jose Altuve
8.32
8.06
-0.26
Alex Bregman
4.06
3.80
-0.26
George Springer
4.96
4.71
-0.25
Brian McCann
1.24
0.99
-0.25
Carlos Gomez
1.80
1.57
-0.23
Yuli Gurriel
2.58
2.36
-0.22
Delino DeShields
2.23
2.01
-0.22
Carlos Beltran
-0.58
-0.80
-0.22
Marwin Gonzalez
4.30
4.09
-0.21
Here are the 2017's top ten biggest position players WAR gainers:
3.) Building Your Team A.) Owner The owner is the only member of your organization that you have no control over (unless you go into commissioner mode), and he can greatly impact how you run your organization. The owner personality traits are pretty self-explanatory, so I won’t go into detail explaining them, but I will say that a meddling or interfering owner is not very fun to work for. If I get an owner with one of these traits, I go into commissioner mode and edit them. The reason being that these owners will re-sign players and sign free agents for you, which can totally sabotage your plans. I know that it is meant to provide an added level of realism to the game, but to me it only provides frustration. B.) Scout i.)Scout Ratings Scouts have ratings in four different categories: Majors, Minors, International, and Amateur. The ratings range from “Unproven” to “Legendary”, with “Legendary” being the best. The better a scout is in a category, the more accurate his reports in that category will be. Scouts also have a “Projection” rating that ranges from “Highly Favors Ability” to “Highly Favors Tools”. Scouts that favor ability will be better at identifying a player’s current ability and will find more serviceable MLB players. Scouts that favor tools won’t find as many serviceable MLB players, but will find more superstars. I would highly recommend getting a scout that “Highly Favors Tools” and has good ratings in all four of the scouting categories. If you have to hire a scout with subpar ratings in any category, I would prioritize scouting amateurs and minors over the others. Homegrown superstars on minimum scale contracts are the most valuable asset in the game, and a scout that favors tools gives you the best chance at acquiring these. This is the most important member of your organization. Every decision you make will be influenced by the scouting reports your scout provides, so money is not an object. Pay the best scout available whatever they want. At the beginning of every offseason look to see if there is a better scout available, and if there is hire him, even if you just signed your current scout the past offseason. ii.)Scouting Budget You can spend a minimum of $8,000,000 and a maximum of $24,000,000 on scouting, and then you can decide where to allocate this money. There are four areas where you can invest money into scouting: Majors, Minors, International, Amateur. The more money you spend in an area the more reports you will get, which means better accuracy. I would recommend putting the maximum amount of money into your scouting budget. It’s the same as with acquiring the best scout available, all of your decisions are influenced by your scout’s evaluation of players, so you want the best information possible. Where to allocate your budget is dependent on where you are as a franchise. If you are in rebuilding mode you should be spending more on amateurs and minors, if you are in contention you might want to spend more on major league scouting. I personally prefer to keep my scouting budget balanced amongst the four categories due to the fact that I don’t think you should ever be tanking, and you should never be sacrificing your future for a small championship window. You want to field a good competitive team while also developing players for the future. C.) Trainer The trainer is another very important member of your organization. They help prevent injuries and influence how long it takes to recover from them. Trainers have ratings ranging from “Unproven” to “Legendary” in nine different categories, with “Legendary” being the best. These are the nine different ratings and how I rank them from most to least important: 1.) Prevent Arm Injuries 2.) Fatigue Recovery 3.) Prevent Leg Injuries 3.) Prevent Back Injuries 5.) Prevent Other 6.) Heal Arms 7.) Heal Legs 7.) Heal Back 9.) Heal Other Unlike the scout, I would not prioritize finding a balanced trainer. If you can find someone that’s good in everything that’s great, but the most important thing is preventing injuries. Every time a player is injured, they are more likely to get injured again, so you want to prevent injuries at all costs. Fatigue recovery does not help prevent any one specific injury type, but since fatigued players are more susceptible to injury, it helps prevent all injuries. Pitchers are more susceptible to injuries than position players so you should prioritize “Prevent Arm Injuries” over the other prevention ratings. Like the scout, you should look at the beginning of the offseason to see if a better trainer is available, and if there is hire him. It does not matter if you just hired your trainer last season and have to eat $4 million dollars for firing him. Your trainer is responsible for the health and well-being of all 200+ players in your organization, money should not be an object. D.)Coaches Major league coaches aren’t quite as important as minor league coaches, and definitely not as important as the scout or trainer, but you should still put some thought into who you bring in to fill these roles. A lot of who you hire will be dependent on your organizational philosophy (there’s a section on this below), but no matter what your philosophy you want coaches with good development influence and relationships (in that order). i.) Bench Coach Assuming you’re playing as GM and manager, this will be the guy that makes decisions when you sim games. You are in charge of setting lineups and depth charts, but he decides when to bring in a relief pitcher or pinch hit. You can view the bench coach’s tendencies toward these things on their profile page. The bench coach also influences fielding and running development, so he can help maintain the skills of your veteran players. When searching for a bench coach filter for development influence and try to pick the guy that has the highest development influence, but also fits what you’re trying to do organizationally and has good relationships. ii.) Hitting Coach Hitting coach preference is also dependent on the type of team you have and your organizational philosophy. I like to build my team around defense, so I have a wide variety of hitter types, and usually hire a neutral hitting coach. When searching for a hitting coach sort by development influence the same as with the bench coach and find the guy that best fits what you’re trying to do and has good relationships. iii.) Pitching Coach This is pretty much the exact same as for the hitting coach. Try to find the guy with the best development influence that fits what you’re trying to do and has good relationships. I prefer groundballers so I almost always hire a groundball pitching coach. E.) Assistant GM A lot of people say you can leave this position vacant, and they’re not wrong. If you’re managing every aspect of your organization, you’re paying this guy $500,000 per year to tell you whether or not he likes the trades you’ve constructed. He has no trade ideas of his own, only critiques of yours. I fill this role partially for role playing purposes, but also as a sanity check when making trades. Try to find an assistant GM that values the same things you do (look at their value ratings on their profile page), and he’ll help make sure you’re not doing anything too crazy, but at the end of the day you shouldn’t be paying too much attention to this guy. F.) General Roster Building Guidelines i.) Organizational Philosophy An Organizational philosophy isn’t an official part of the game, it’s just what you value and how you’re trying to build your team. There are many different ways to win at this game, and I’m definitely biased as to which strategies I think work best, but if you find something that works for you go with it, you don’t have to follow what people other people tell you is the best way to play. If you’re having fun and fielding good teams you have a good strategy. For pitching it seems that most people either go with the power pitcher approach or the groundballer approach. Power pitchers rely heavily on striking batters out, so they require a high stuff rating. Groundballers allow a lot of balls in play so they rely on a high movement rating to prevent the ball from being hit hard, which gives the defense a better opportunity at fielding the ball. Even with high movement though, groundballers require good infield defense. All pitchers require good control. I don’t know of any effective strategy that involves walking a lot of batters. For batters there a multitude of strategies, and I would be lying if I said I understood how all of them work and what’s the best one to use. The two strategies that seem to pair well with the pitching strategies mentioned above are an all offense, power hitter approach to go with power pitchers and a defensive oriented lineup to go with groundball pitchers. The powepower combo works well because power pitchers aren’t relying too much on their defense to get outs, so you can sacrifice defense to get more offense in the lineup. The groundballedefense combo is really the only combo that works with groundballers. If you don’t have good defense, groundballers really aren’t very effective. You can sacrifice some outfield defense with groundballers to get more offense in the lineup, but you really can’t skimp on the infield defense. Whatever approach you decide on, you should have coaches and players that fit this philosophy at every level of your organization. I personally prefer to build my team around groundballers and elite defense. These teams usually won’t get you the 120+ win seasons like the powepower combo, but they are much more consistent. My teams grind out 100-105 wins per season and perform very well in the playoffs. Hitters can easily go cold for an entire playoff series, but defense is always there. Also, these teams are usually cheaper to build, so it makes getting off the ground easier. The AI undervalues defense and there’s always a 45 overall groundball pitcher out there that can give you 160-170 IP and around 2 WAR. ii.)Injury Proneness Injury proneness is listed on the player profile page and lets you know how likely a player is to get injured. “Wrecked” is the most likely to get injured and “Iron Man” is the least likely to get injured. When evaluating any player this is the first thing you should look at. I’m a firm believer in “the best ability is availability”. If a player is not on the field, he provides no value to your team, so I would avoid fragile and wrecked players like the plague. In addition to looking at a player’s injury rating you should also look at their injury history. If a player is listed as durable but just came off a torn Achilles, they are not durable, they are normal. Treat this player as such and either trade him while he still has value (if he’s on your team) or pay in a trade/signing for him what you would pay for a player with normal injury proneness. Remember, every time a player gets injured, they are more likely to get injured again. As with all things there are some exceptions to this. You can usually get by with a reliever or DH that is fragile, but I wouldn’t play the DH every game and I wouldn’t have more than one or two fragile relievers. Also, I wouldn’t commit for more than a season or two with these players. Sometimes there will be a god-like, but fragile, starting pitcher that is available, and it might be worth acquiring him short-term for a playoff push, but he should be a luxury, not a necessity. iii.)Player Character Player character is another important aspect to look at when evaluating players. High character players are more likely to develop to their full potential, can impact development and performance of their teammates, and can improve team morale. Low character players have the opposite effect. There are six character attributes viewable for each player and I rank them by order of importance like this: Work Ethic > Intelligence > Leadership > adaptability > greed = loyalty. Work ethic and intelligence affect the development of the player with those attributes, so you really don’t want a low rating in either of those, unless you have a high rating in one to go with a low rating in the other and the player’s talent is just too good to pass up. Leadership affects other players on the team, so a player with high work ethic/intelligence and low leadership is ok, just make sure you don’t have too many of them and that you have more high leadership players than low leadership players on your team. Adaptability affects how well a player adapts when being promoted a level or moving to a different team. This is nice to have, but not critical. Greed affects how much money a player wants. This shouldn’t affect you too much, but keep in mind that a player with high greed can become upset if he feels he is underpaid. Loyalty affects how likely a player is to re-sign with your team; nice to have but not necessary. Player’s with a specific set of character attributes will have a listed personality. As you can see from that table there are some hidden character ratings. If you’re interested in looking at the hidden ratings for a particular player, you’ll have to go into the editor. Captain, Fan Favorite, Prankster, and Sparkplug are all good personalities to have. Captains are elite leaders and can keep team morale up during difficult stretches. Fan favorites are extremely popular; they increase fan interest when acquired or re-signed and help maintain fan interest during the season. Pranksters help keep the mood light and also help maintain morale during tough stretches. Sparkplugs are high energy and less susceptible to slumps. I also think sparkplugs perform better at the top of the lineup, but I have not been able to confirm this yet. I’m pretty neutral about Humble, so I wouldn’t go out of my way to acquire a player with it. The other ones I would avoid (Disruptive, Outspoken, Selfish, Unmotivated). iv.) Player Roles Each player has a desired role they would like to play. If they are not playing in this role it can have a negative impact on their morale. These roles are not static and can change depending on player experience and talent. The roles are: Starting Rotation – It’s usually pretty easy to predict when a player will want to be a starting pitcher: they’ll have 3+ pitches, 35+ stamina, and have spent a season or two as a starter (starting in the minors counts!). Some players will want to be a starter even if they don’t have these ratings, but will change their expectation if put into a bullpen role for a season or two, so you will need to decide if the morale hit to that player is worth taking the time to change their expectation. If you are wanting a player in your farm system to play a bullpen role in the majors, I would recommend playing him in that role in the minors. If a player has too much talent, he might not ever accept his fate as a bullpen arm, so you might just have to take the morale hit for those fringe starters you want to use as long relievers. Bullpen – This role is usually the one that gives me the most trouble. It seems that everyone wants to be either a starter or closer, and it’s really hard to find good bullpen guys willing to accept this role. If a player is talented enough you can just take the morale hit, but for middle of the road guys you want them to be as happy as can be. If you have a really good reliever coming up through your system, make sure they’re in that role and not starting. If a player has never closed before they won’t have a desire to, but if you let him close out games for a season, he’ll desire that role for the next five seasons. Closer – It’s very easy to find someone willing to accept this role. I’ve never seen a bullpen guy that didn’t have that expectation after closing games for a while, and I’ve even gotten starters to accept the role. Starting Lineup – This is the expectation most position players will have and it’s pretty easy to deal with, just put them in the starting lineup. Unfortunately, you can’t platoon a player with this expectation to make him happy. He has to be listed as the primary starter on the depth chart. I’ve had guys start ~100 games and get ~400 PA and be angry over their role. A lot of times you’re just going to have to take the morale hit for your bench players, because it’s very difficult to find someone good enough to play at the MLB level, but desire to be a bench player. Bench Player – This role is even easier to deal with. You don’t have to do anything at all. Finding a player with this expectation that is worth having is difficult though. Middle of the Lineup – These players desire to hit in the 2-4 spots. They seem to be ok batting leadoff but if you put them in the 5 spot they get angry very quick. This one is very frustrating to deal with because a player in real life that desired to bat in the middle of the order would be perfectly ok batting fifth. It’s also frustrating because most good hitters have this desired role. So, if you want to have more than four good hitters in your lineup, at least one of them will be angry about their role. Top of the Lineup – This one is pretty rare, not many players desire this role, and the ones that do desire it usually deserve the role. I’m pretty sure they are fine with batting in the 1 or 2 spots, but anything else they’ll be upset with. v.)General Batter Guidelines There are no hard rules for what ratings are acceptable for batters. It all depends on what your team needs, and a lot of times on what you’re willing to accept to justify the defense a player provides. Unconventional players are usually cheaper than prototypical stars. Try to find inefficiencies in the market and fill out the back half of your roster with value. In general, gap power isn’t overly useful, and I wouldn’t prioritize it. Home run power is nice, but very expensive. Eye/Discipline is more expensive than Contact/Avoid K’s, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better. If you’re trying to determine if a player can “survive” as a hitter at the MLB level, I’ve found these few archetypes that seem to “work”. “The Grinder” – This guy doesn’t hit for power, and he actually doesn’t hit much at all, but he does see a lot of pitches, which is useful for wearing down a pitcher. These players will have 50+ Eye/Discipline and Avoid K’s, with one of those usually being 55+, and 44 or less in their other three ratings. This is acceptable for a catcher batting 8th. “Moderate Power” – This guy is going to hit 20-25 HRs per year and that’s about it. Look for a player with 55+ HR power and 40 or below in their other ratings. This guy can bat 7th. “No K, No Power” – This guy will hit the ball, not draw walks, and has no power. These players will have 50+ Contact and Avoid K’s, with one of those usually being 55+, and 40 or below in their other ratings. You need to make sure this guy has decent baserunning and speed, or he’ll be a DP machine. This guy can bat 9th. Hopefully your elite defenders fit one of these profiles instead of the much more common “Well-Rounded Suck” guys. These guys are a 45 or below at all five ratings and are pretty much a black hole offensively. Make sure you pay attention to L splits. These are very important. Players can have significantly better ratings/stats against one type of pitcher than the other. Unless your lineup is full of players that are perfectly balanced, you probably shouldn’t have the same batting order against righties and lefties. vi.)Positional Versatility Players that can play multiple positions are very useful. They allow you more flexibility when injuries occur, when pinch hitting, and when filling out your active roster. This chart gives you a good idea of who can be trained to play other positions competently. The game doesn’t do a good job of mimicking players real life ability to move between C, IF, and OF spots, but it correctly simulates that SS and CF are the most difficult IF and OF spots to learn, respectively. I would recommend training your players to play any position they can play competently. The best time to do this is Spring Training. vii.)Speed, Stealing, and Baserunning It can be easy to just look at batting ratings and stats and forget about the baserunning aspect, but this is also important to consider. Speed affects how often a player attempts to steal, Steal affects how successful they are at stealing, and baserunning affects how likely a player is to make baserunning mistakes. Players with high Speed and low Steal are not desirable. They might steal twenty bases, but they’ll probably get caught twenty times also. The AI values speed, so you’ll have to pay for this skill, even if it’s a detriment to the player. If you do have a player like this, you should lower their Stealing Bases frequency in their Game Strategy page. Baserunning is not crucial, but it’s nice to have. It can generate a few more runs and the AI doesn’t seem to value it much. G.)Positions I’ve listed the positions in order of defensive difficulty and will give recommendations for ratings thresholds for the position. Keep in mind that I heavily favor defense and these ratings are not necessary to competently play the position. Also, there are always exceptions, so these ratings thresholds are not set in stone. If you’re looking for someone to just be competent at a position, subtract ten from the ratings I suggest. In general, you’ll have better batters at the less demanding defensive positions. i.) Catcher Catcher is the most important defensive position because he has a direct influence on every one of your pitchers. They are usually the weakest hitters on your team though. If you can find an elite defensive catcher that can also hit, you should acquire him at all costs. This is the rarest asset in the game. Catchers have two defensive ratings: Catcher Ability and Catcher Arm. Catcher Ability is the ability to frame pitches; the higher this is the more strikes and less balls your pitchers will throw. Catcher Arm is the ability to throw out runners attempting to steal. I would recommend getting the best defensive catcher you can acquire, and not worrying too much about offense here. Prioritize Catcher Ability over Catcher Arm if you have to make a choice between the two. I require my catchers to have at least 65 ability and 55 arm, but I always want better. If I can find a catcher with 70+ ability and arm, I’m perfectly fine accepting 40-60 OPS+. Catchers get fatigued quicker than other position players so your backup will have to start a decent amount of games. You can fill the backup role with another defensive wizard, or you can try to get some more offense here. I personally try to go with another defensive wizard, but there’s definitely value in having an offensive catcher for pinch hitting situations. Ideally, I like to have a left-handed hitting starting catcher and a righty backup, with both of them being elite defensively. The lefty will start against RHP and the righty against LHP, with each “backup” set to start every 4-7 games. Since there are significantly more RHP in the league this means the lefty will start more often. ii.) Shortstop This is another position where you really want to emphasize defense. An elite defensive shortstop will do wonders for your pitching staffs ERA. I require these defensive ratings: 70 Range, 70 Turn DP, 60 Arm, 50 Error (if the other ratings are elite). I wouldn’t worry too much about offense here, especially if it means you can get a truly elite defender. Your backup at this position isn’t as important as your backup catcher because they don’t fatigue like catchers do, but you still want someone competent manning this spot at all times. Usually my starting 2B or 3B will slide over to shortstop as the backup, which allows me to prioritize offense a bit more with my utility IF spot. The same as with catcher, if you can acquire an elite defender here that can also hit, you should acquire this player at all costs. This is probably the second most valuable asset in the game. iii.) Center Field Once again, this is a spot where you should emphasize defense. You probably won’t ever have to field an offensive black hole here like you would at catcher or shortstop, but more than likely this guy won’t be leading the league in any offensive categories. These are my ratings thresholds for the position: 70 range, 50 arm, 50 error (if everything else is elite). Range is king at this position. A guy with 80 range, 50 error, and 50 arm can win gold gloves here, so make sure to emphasize this skill. If you find a guy here that also hits well and you want to lock him up long term, I would recommend making sure he has a good arm (60-65+). This will allow for an easy transition to RF when his range inevitably starts to decline. Make sure one of your other outfielders can back up this position competently, because like shortstop you want a good defender manning this spot at all times. iv.) Second Base Second base is the second most important infield position defensively, especially if you’re using groundball pitchers. I require these defensive ratings: 65 Range, 70 Turn DP, 40 Arm, 50 Error (if everything else is elite). The profile is very similar to a shortstop, except with a weaker arm, so weak armed shortstops are usually good candidates to convert to 2B. A lot of times second basemen are only good defensively at that position. They don’t have the arms to play SS or 3B every day, and don’t have the height to play 1B. So, be careful when drafting or acquiring young second basemen in trades. It’s very easy to end up with a log jam at the position. v.) Third Base Third base is the third most important infield position defensively. You can get by with a weaker defender here, but I prefer to have someone solid due to my use of groundball pitchers. These are the ratings I require: 65 Arm, 60 Range, 50 Error (if everything else is elite). Turn DP is nice to have in case of shifts, but not necessary. Older shortstops are excellent candidates to convert to third base, so when you sign that elite defensive shortstop that also hits to an eight-year deal this is probably where he’ll be playing on the back end of the deal. Unless you’re carrying two utility IFs, or your 1B was converted from 3B, you’re probably going to take a hit defensively when your backup plays here. This is fine though, because the alternative is taking a hit at SS or 2B. vi.) Right Field Right field is the second most important outfield position, but nowhere near as important as center field. This is the first spot on this list where I would think about hiding a poor defender. If you have multiple elite bats in the outfield that are poor defenders, put the better defender of the two here. The better your center fielder is defensively (especially range) the worse your corner outfielders can be defensively. These are the ratings I require: 60 range, 65 arm, 50 error (if everything else is elite). I would avoid committing to a corner outfielder long term unless he has elite defensive ratings or can produce 7-8+ WAR with just his bat. Defensive ratings decline as players age, and only one of these guys can play DH. I usually end up trading them while still on their minimum scale contract and replacing them with a minor leaguer or a veteran short-term solution. vii.) Left Field Left field is very similar to right field except you can put a slightly weaker defender here. These are the defensive ratings I require for this position: average rating of 55+ for range, error, and arm, with no individual rating being lower than 50. Since you don’t need much defense here, this should be one of your better hitters. viii.) First Base If you need to hide someone in the field, this is where you do it. This is the only position that factors in height. Also, Arm and Turn DP really don’t matter here. These are the defensive rating I require: 40 range, 40 error, 6’0 height. I recently had a 6’8 guy with 50 range and 50 error win 5 straight gold gloves, so the bar for defensive excellence here isn’t very high. Since it’s pretty easy to play this position defensively, you should have a good hitter here. Tall guys that can hit, third basemen that don’t field their position very well, and second basemen with low Range/Turn DP (but decent height) are good options to play first. I really wouldn’t invest a lot in one of these guys because they’re so easy to find. ix.) Designated Hitter There are two main strategies I’ve used here: get the best hitter you can that plays absolutely no defense or use a DH by committee. Which approach you use depends on what players you have available. If you have an abundance of outfielders like I always seem to do, and an even split of lefties and righties, then just platoon those guys. If you have an all-world hitter that plays no defense play him. If you have both of those things available, I would probably go with the platoon approach because it’s cheaper and provides more lineup versatility. I would avoid committing to a DH long-term unless they are one of the top-5 hitters in baseball. I just don’t feel comfortable paying that much money to a guy that can’t play in the field. x.) Starting Pitcher This can be the most replaceable position on the team and also the most difficult to fill. Truly elite ace pitchers are very hard to find, and more than likely you’re going to be hesitant to acquire them due to injury concerns. If you find a guy that fits your profile, has good character, and has no injury concerns, don’t be afraid to pay a lot for him. I prefer groundball pitchers, so these are my rating thresholds: 45 stuff, 55 movement, 40 control, 3+ pitches rated 50+, 45 stamina, 55 hold runners. The hold runners is not necessary if you have a catcher with an elite arm, but I usually sacrifice catcher arm for ability and need my pitchers to help keep runners in check. A player with these minimum rating can give you 160-180 IP and put up ~2-3 WAR. If you can’t acquire the elite guys, I would just fill my rotation with these minimum type players. The middle tier pitchers are usually extremely overpriced, and your money can be better spent elsewhere. Whenever possible acquire pitchers with 4 or more pitches. They produce much better than their ratings suggest, and the AI does not properly value them. The only exception to this is a knuckleballer. They will produce just fine with that one pitch. Try to have at least one lefty in the starting rotation, preferably two or three. xi.) Relief Pitcher Your bullpen composition will be dependent on your overall pitching philosophy and your starting pitchers. I would recommend keeping 7-9 players here. I look for groundballers with these ratings thresholds: 50 stuff, 55 movement, 35 control, 2+ pitches rated 50+, and 55 hold runners. My bullpen is pretty much an extension of the starting rotation, except they have a bit more stuff and a little less control. If I have a starting rotation that can eat a lot of innings, or a versatile lineup that allows me 9 bullpen arms, I like to get low stamina relievers with 3+ pitches. If you don’t overwork them these guys are fantastic. The only problem is they sometimes want to be in the starting rotation if they have 35+ stamina, and it’s really hard to know which ones will and won’t have that expectation. Try to keep an even balance of lefties and righties in the bullpen. I don’t worry too much about bullpen roles, unless I have an elite reliever that wants to be the closer, then I’ll let him have that role. If I have a fringe starter or two in the bullpen, I’ll usually set them to long relief. Other than that, everyone is a middle reliever. H.)Building a Lineup/Depth Chart My general approach is to have high OBP at the top of the lineup, power in the middle, and hope for the best at the bottom. I generally bat better hitters higher so they can get more PAs. Be sure to pay attention to L balance, because you want to avoid long stretches of either righties or lefties in the lineup. If you have a roster with an imbalanced number of righties and lefties, you’re always better off having more lefties. They perform better against RHPs, which there are significantly more of than LHPs. i.) Top of the Lineup You want players with high wOBA and good baserunning at this spot. Preferably they’ll be good at stealing bases, but I don’t think it’s that important. ii.) Middle of the Lineup I put my two best hitters at the 2-3 spots. The better baserunner usually bats second, and the better power hitter bats third. For the 4-5 spots, I usually put my lower contact, high power hitters here. iii.) Bottom of the Lineup I put the best power hitter of this bunch at the 6 spot as a continuation of the 4-5 spots. I try to put my best baserunner at the 9 spot. He’s essentially a second leadoff type guy. The worst hitter goes at the 8 spot, and whoever’s left bats 7th. I.) Example 26-man roster i.) Pitchers Starting RHP x3 Starting LHP x2 Bullpen RHP x4 Bullpen LHP x4 ii.) Batters C x2 1B x1 2B x1 3B x1 SS x1 LF x1 CF x1 RF x1 Utility IF x2 Utility OF x2
Batting Stats The next part of understanding baseball stats are the three main batting stats: batting average ( BA , or AVG above), on-base percentage ( OBP ), and slugging ( SLG ). Visit ESPN to view 2020 MLB stat leaders. MLB has enhanced its code of conduct pertaining to harassment and discrimination, has set up an anonymous hotline for those with information about sexual Batting Average: OBP: On-Base Percentage: SLG: Slugging Percentage: BB: Walks: PA: Plate Appearances: RAT: Ratio of AB/HR : RC: Runs Created (see: RC/27: Runs Created per 27 outs: Ht: Height: Wt: Weight: Yr: Year: Lg: Minor League Level: POS: Position: GB: Number of Fair Ground Balls Hit (hits, outs and errors) FB: Number of Fly Balls Hit (excludes line drives) G/F: Ratio of Grounders to Fly Standard Stats For more than a century, statistics have been a staple of the game of baseball. Arguably no sport has a closer relationship with the stats that chronicle its every play. In order to qualify for batting titles in averaged categories (Avg, Slg, OBP, OPS, RC, OW%, #P/PA, G/F), a player must average at least 3.1 plate appearances for every game his team has played WAR Explained (v2.2): 8+ MVP, 5+ A-S, 2+ Starter, 0-2 Sub, < 0 Repl; Player News. Add Your Blog Posts Here ; Player News Archive; Player News RSS Feed; Postseason Batting. Postseason Game Log; Become a Stathead & surf this site ad-free. Standard Fielding. Appearances. The Great Minds of Baseball, Grass Valley, CA. sponsor(s) this page. "These are the saddest of possible words: "Tinker to Evers MLB advanced stats glossary: A guide to baseball stats that go beyond RBI, batting average, ERA Confused about some of advanced stats used in baseball analysis? Glossary / Standard Stats / Batting Average (AVG) Batting Average (AVG) Definition. One of the oldest and most universal tools to measure a hitter's success at the plate, batting average is The official source for sortable MLB player and team stats, including customizable splits and filters. WAR Explained (v2.2): 8+ MVP, 5+ A-S, 2+ Starter, 0-2 Sub, < 0 Repl; Player News. Add Your Blog Posts Here ; Player News Archive; Player News RSS Feed; Show/Hide More Stories; Postseason Batting. Postseason Game Log; Become a Stathead & surf this site ad-free. Standard Fielding. Appearances. Appearances on Leaderboards, Awards, and Honors. Hall of Fame Statistics. Similarity Scores
Reigning American League MVP Josh Donaldson joins Mark DeRosa in Studio 42 to deconstruct his swing and shows how he approaches each at bat.MLB Central is ou... Filthy Hooks, Nasty Curveballs, Exploding Sliders, Horrifying Knuckleballs, the real deal! We hope you enjoy! A great way to learn and teach the game of baseball. Two female baseball fans explain, in a fun way, the things that make baseball America's past time great.... This video is unavailable. Watch Queue Queue. Watch Queue Queue Video made for entertainment purposes onlyClips belong to MLB.com/MLB Advanced Media When is a pitcher committing a balk? When is he not? Former MLB pitcher Ryan Dempster and former stolen base champ Harold Reynolds discuss in Studio 42. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features Press Copyright Contact us Creators ... Join us on this special lesson where you will learn how to calculate slugging percentage, how to calculate batting average, and how to calculate on base perc... It started with batting average, home runs and RBIs. Then sabermetrics came along and introduced a new set of results-driven statistics. But results only tel... Ninh explains the Rules of Baseball. A beginner's explanation of Major League Baseball Rules.Watch this short video tutorial guide on how to play Baseball un...
