Category Archives: Statistics

2008 Season, Pitching, Research, Statistics

Not pounding the zone

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Way back in 2008 I started to run a series using pitch f/x data to look at strike throwing tendencies. Sadly this is the slowest moving “series” of posts ever. Nonetheless, it’s time for part 3 where we look at how teams do when they get strikes outside of the zone. For this exercise I’m not looking at those generous calls off the corners, but for those strikes when hitters go fishing.

The first table we turn to is the fish rate, or the percent of pitches outside of the strike zone that hitters swung at. This is presented by count. As for the pretty shading, red are lower numbers and green are higher numbers.

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2009 Season, Pitching, Statistics

Tigers 2009 WAR Projections – Pitchers

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Earlier in the week I posted my wins above replacement projections for the Tigers 2009 lineup. Today I turn my attention to the men on the mound.

For the projections I used the Marcel 2009 FIP projection for pitcher ERA (available at Fangraphs). In terms of innings pitched, I used some judgment. I penciled in Justin Verlander for 200 innings, and every other slot in the rotation for 180. Feel free to disagree with this, I won’t mind. But I think we can agree that the success of the team will largely hinge on the staff’s ability to stay healthy.
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2009 Season, Defense, Offense, Statistics

Tigers WAR Projections

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It seems as if calculating wins above replacement, or WAR, has become the cool thing to do this offseason. We’ve delved into WAR here in the past when evaluating contracts. Now Fangraphs has made WAR available to the masses. Detroit Tiger Tales has already taken a look at the 08 Tigers numbers. And now a call to action from Beyond the Boxscore has inspired me to project the 09 team numbers.
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Defense, Statistics

Fangraphs now has UZR

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Fangraphs continues to become the stat site for sabermetric player stats. Today they announce the addition of MGL’s UZR fielding system which is widely regarded as one of the most sophisticated fielding systems available.

UZR has been largely unavailable for the last several seasons because MGL has been consulting for big league teams. He’s posted leaders and trailers the last few years, but now the full data set is available. The only difference is that this set uses Baseball Info Solutions data instead of STATS Inc.

You can find them on the player pages and leader boards on Fangraphs site. But I thought I would drop in a few of interest here. These are runs per 150 games.

Jack Wilson: 06: -2.8, 07: 12.7, 08: 2.2
Adam Everett: 06: 24.9, 07: 24.4, 08: 10.0
Cesar Izturis: 06: -10.8, 07: -2.5, 08: 12.5
Edgar Renteria: 06: 2.1, 07: -2.2, 08: 1.1

2008 Season, Pitching, Statistics

Pounding the zone by count

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In part 1 of the series I dumped some big tables in here that looked at the rate at which teams threw a)strikes and b)the ball in the strike zone. Today we’ll continue along the same path, but we’ll start to differentiate based on count.

Pitches In the Strike Zone by Count

In 2008 teams pitchers through the ball in the strike zone (as defined by pitch f/x) at the following rates:

  • 0-0: 48.0%
  • 1-1: 45.0%
  • 2-2: 43.0%
  • 0-1: 40.0%
  • 0-2: 27.1%
  • 1-2: 34.6%
  • 1-0: 49.8%
  • 2-0: 51.6%
  • 3-0: 49.9%
  • 2-1: 51.2%
  • 3-1: 55.9%
  • 3-2: 53.8%

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2008 Season, Defense, Statistics

The Tigers according to PMR

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The Tigers defense was the cause of much consternation this season, and rightly so. Now that David Pinto has released his PMR defensive metrics, we can take a detailed look at each position.

If you’re not familiar with PMR, it is a system that looks at each ball hit into play and the probability that the ball should be converted into an out. That probability is based on a number of characteristics including the handedness of the batter and pitcher, the type of hit, the direction of hit, and how hard the ball was hit. It is based on data from BIS which also provides the data behind the +/- system and revised zone rating.

The table below shows how the Tigers fared at each position, as well as the primary players at each position. It shows the number of balls in play (this is constant at the team level), the actual outs and predicted outs, the plays made above or below expected and then a conversion to runs. The last 2 columns scale the plays and runs to 4000 balls in play which is approximately 150 games or the normal workload of a full time player.

2008 Tigers PMR
2008 Tigers PMR

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2008 Season, Statistics

Fun with the Bill James leaderboards

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The Bill James Handbook is always one of the first baseball books to come out each year. It’s not a riveting narrative by any means and it consists largely of tables of numbers. But there are always some interesting pieces and there seems to be something new every year. Last year it was the Young Talent Inventory. This year it is a bullpen analysis. They sit alongside managerial stats, baserunning stats, and the Fielding Bible awards. But one of my favorite sections is the leaderboard.

I’m not going to copy a bunch of leaderboards for you here. That might be kind of tedious and boring for everyone, and it would definitely be a copyright violation. But I will point out some Tiger related items that are either interesting, or surprising, or noteworthy.

  • Despite coming back from a horrific shoulder injury, and ending the season early, Joel Zumaya still let the AL with 18 pitches thrown over 100MPH. Brandon League was next closest with 4. Fernando Rodney even managed 2 over the century mark.
  • Speaking of fastballs, Justin Verlander’s 93.6 average was 6th in the AL and Kenny Rogers’ 85.2 MPH heater was slower only than Tim Wakefield’s.
  • Armando Galarraga threw a slider 38% of the time which was the highest rate in the AL.
  • Despite Verlander’s struggles, his .377 slugging percentage against was good enough for 8th best.
  • Rogers and Nate Robertson both ranked in the top 5 in GIDP/9. Just think how bad things would have been if they hadn’t had so many twin killings.
  • Edgar Renteria was 4th in SS pivot percentage. Renteria also had the 2nd highest batting average against left handed pitching with the 7th highest batting average at home. If only the Tigers faced lefties at home more often…
  • Curtis Granderson continued his maturation by taking the 8th highest percentage of pitches and seeing the 5th most pitches per plate appearance.
  • Placido Polanco struck out less per plate appearance than anyone else in the AL, but it didn’t help him in run production where he had the 8th lowest RBI percentage (5.96)
2008 Season, Pitching, Statistics

Most homers allowed by a reliever

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As Kyle Farnsworth allowed his 15th homer of the year, I was curious as to whether he was chasing any kind of history. After all, 15 homers in less than 60 innings seems like kind of a lot. Over 200 innings that would be 50 homers. It turns out that Farnsworth isn’t even close to setting the record for pitchers who were used exclusively as relievers.

That distinction belongs to John Wyatt who allowed 23 in 1964 out of the pen. It’s worth noting though that Wyatt threw 128 innings that year.

But what about the modern day reliever, you know, the guys who throw less than 100 innings a year? That honor goes to Gabe White who surrendered 18 dingers in 2001. He’s followed by a handful of guys who are tied with 17, including 2 other Tigers seasons.

Doug Bochtler allowed 17 in 1998 and Joe Boever did the same in 1995. I honestly have no recollection of Doug Bochtler whatsoever. Not just this accomplishment, but the fact he played major league baseball period.

Aurelio Lopez cracks the list when he allowed 16 homers during the 1984 season. Lopez pitched a remarkable 137 innings that year with a 2.94 ERA.

Oh yeah, back to Farnsworth. He’s at 15 and there’s still 2 weeks of baseball left. The thing is, he’s battling 2 other AL relievers. Justin Speier and Joel Peralta are in a 3 way battle. Peralta is “winning” having done it in only 50.2 innings.

In a coincidental twist, Roberto Novoa allowed 15 homers in 2006. Novoa was one of the players the Tigers sent to the Cubs to acquire Farnsworth before the 2005 season.

2008 Season, Players, Statistics

Random Friday factoids

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Some stats and such that may or may not be interesting:

Edgar Renteria might not totally suck

Edgar Renteria is hitting 288/351/404 since the All Star Break. He is a career 290/347/404 hitter. He also has only 4 strike outs in his last 57 plate appearances (and 4 GIDP – eek). A return to normalcy or a blip in a crappy season?

Defensively he looked the best he has all season in the Indians series and +/- still has him at 0, meaning he is quite average. In RZR there are 9 qualified shortstops in the AL and Renteria is tied for 4th meaning he is kind of average.

Guillen can pick it

It turns out that Carlos Guillen can play defense. He isn’t stellar, but his .716 RZR is 6th out of 11 qualified shortstops. He rates as -1 in +/- which is 14th among MLB third baseman. Not stellar, but not bad for a guy on his 3rd position in the last calendar year. Considering that AL third sackers are hitting 266/339/428 and Guillen is hitting 286/374/437 that’s not a bad situation.

On kind of a downer note, Guillen hit 318 – 320 – 320 from 2004 to 2006. He dropped to 296 last year and 286 this year. And his slugging percentage is the lowest it’s been since his hamstring plagued 2005 season. His OBP is still solid, and there is a league widde dip in slugging so his OPS+ is still at 116. But is this the first step in what may be a rapid decline? It’s certainly possible for a player on the wrong side of 30.

Plunkocity

Clay Rapada drilled Grady Sizemore yesterday with the bases loaded driving in a run. It was the 5th time this season that a Tigers pitcher has plunked in a run. Also of note, Tigers pitchers have plunked 13 Indians batters this season. That is more than double the next closest team, the White Sox who have received 6 bruises from Tigers pitchers. A complete plunkocity report is available for your perusal.

2008 Season, Offense, Statistics

About that 1-25 record…

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It is quoted after nearly every game, with only the loss column frequently changing. Currently it is 1-25, with IT being the Tigers record in games in which they score 4 runs or less. Some people point to it as a sign of the pitching staff’s futility while others question why the offense is scoring so little so often. Like many of the Tigers struggles this year, it can’t be attributed to just one area.

We’ll start by looking at some broader data. Below is data for the American League showing runs scored per game and the corresponding winning percentage so far in 2008.

AL Run Distribution

Not surprisingly it’s hard to win your scoring fewer than 2 runs a game, and the odds increase dramatically with the 2nd and the 4th runs. Now let’s look at what the Tigers have done.

What you’re seeing is how frequently the Tigers scored a certain amount of runs, how frequently it was done in the AL, how many games the Tigers won at each run point, and how many they would be expected to win given AL norms.

The thing with the 1-25 record is that the Tigers have scored fewer than 2 runs 12 times giving them 12 games with virtually no shot to win regardless of the pitching. And in those 4 run games where the team should have nearly a 50-50 shot of pulling out a W, the Tigers have only had 3 such games.

So with some normal pitching, the Tigers should have expected to win at most 3-4 more games. Chalk those up to the staff, but the bulk of the others fall squarely on the shoulders of the offense.

2008 Season, Statistics

The Second Inning – 2008

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The following was compiled by DTW reader and commenter Sam Hoff. He breaks down the season into 18 game innings and reports how the team does.

The 2nd Inning is over.

Each 18 games represent 1 inning of a baseball season. The Tigers record for the first 2 innings in 2008:

                                        Starters:         Bullpen:
    W-L   RS –RA     HR-SB-AVG/OBA/SLG    W-L-IP-   ERA     W-L-S-ERA
1:  6-12  74 -112    15-10-262/345/404    3-9- 96.2-5.96    3-3-3-5.28 
2:  9-9   98 -87     21- 6-261/350/426    5-8-105.2-5.11    4-1-2-3.61

The first 2 innings have been ugly. The team has endured a 7 game and a 5 game losing streak. The offense, whose initial starting lineup has an average lifetime BA of .297 is hitting 35 points below that collectively. The starters, 60% of who are left from the 2006 World Series team which lead the major leagues in ERA has collective ERA well over 5 with the best performance coming from an 8-year minor leaguer.

The good news is that the team is only 3.5 games out of first and if they play near their career norms should be able to easily make that up. In 2006, the Tigers last 3 innings were 9-9, 5-13, and 9-9 and that team went to the World Series. In 2007, the Tigers had 2 successive 7-11 innings (innings 6 and 7). In 2003, you couldn’t piece 2 innings together where the Tigers had as many as 15 wins!

The bullpen had a very good 2nd inning lead by Bobby Seay (5 scoreless innings), the departed Jason Grilli (4 scoreless) and Clay Rapada (1.59 era in 5.2 innings). The only member of the bullpen with an era over 5.00 was Denny Bautista (8.44era in 5.2 innings).

The starters were consistent as each of them had exactly 1 win. Galarraga (1-1-3.18) and Bonderman (1-1-3.93) were respectable. Rogers (1-0-6.19), Robertson (1-3-6.38), and Verlander (1-3-5.84) all really struggled. Verlander is a big concern as he has never looked this bad in his career and rumors are circulating that his shoulder is hurting.

The highest OPS in the 2nd inning belonged to Ramon Santiago (1-8-312/421/750) in 16 At Bats! Marcus Thames (1-4-412/444/588), Polanco (2-8-383/422/583), Granderson (5-10-254/362/593) and Ordonez (4-17-324/397/544) have all been hot. The guys who struggled in the 2nd inning were Inge (1-4-154/292/231), Guillen (0-8-246/333/281), and the departed Jacque Jones (1-2-146/265/317).

It is NOT time to hit the panic button. The Yankees started 21-29 last year and made the playoffs. The team definitely needs to start playing better baseball and the biggest disappointment, the starting pitching, needs to get better. Here’s hoping it does, otherwise when the Wings and Pistons are over, all we will have to look forward to are the Lions???

2008 Season, Defense, Front Office, Statistics

Junkballing: riding the river of news

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A startling amount of news from the beat writers and analysis from bloggers today. Inge likes catching, Cabrera at first base, and more.

Inge says catching is fun

Brandon Inge is just too fascinating to resist. The very different views of his defense, the despair over his offense, the sympathy and lack of sympathy over his plight to get traded, his early season success while essentially being a full time player the first 25 games, people clamoring for Inge to return to third base, it’s the gift that keeps on giving for bloggers. Now it appears that Inge thinks catching is cool.

Inge said Tuesday that he still prefers to play third base — “my first love” — and that a chance to play at third regularly could persuade him to play elsewhere.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m not gonna lie,” Inge said, “but I’m good with the catching, too. I don’t like sitting.

“And I love Detroit. I love everything about it.”

It’s quite the shift from his stance this spring when he was catching and complaining about it, and doing it enough to draw ire from me. He later backed off those statements when it became clear Vance Wilson wouldn’t be breaking camp with the team.

I’m in agreement with Ian and Kurt that the possibility of Inge catching next year if Pudge Rodriguez isn’t back would definitely be a nice option for the Tigers to have.
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