topper09er

Topper, there's no much question that at the higher levels, IF'ers throwing sidearm is a fundamentally sound technique. Not when they are not turning double plays because they are not getting enough on their throws. To be honest I'm not sure what the Soriano play had to do with it. I was talking about him not using fundamentals and how it can cost you even if 99% of the time he catches the ball, I was not talking about throwing sidearm with him, sorry for the confusion. You see..as I said, almost every big leaguer(3B, SS, 2B) throw the ball like that. I think you are talking about at least a 3/4 arm slot because certainly NO MLB 3B throw sidearm or many SS. 2B do a lot, but I am not talking a grounder with no one on base, I am talking about a double play turn where Weeks sometimes actaully releases the ball with his palm facing up and this is resulting in players beating the throw at first. This exacct scenario happened on Monday. Not to mention the terrible feed that Escobar completely bailed him out on.

If you fall behind 2-0 to Ryan Braun you do NOT want to challenge him with a fastball for a strike because if you miss good night, that is a last resort and you wont last very long in the majors if you cannot throw something else there for a strike or get the hitter to chase. If you fall behind Carlos Gomez 2-0 you do NOT want to walk him and have him potentially steal his way to 2nd for Braun/Fielder, so you challenge him by throwing a fastball for a strike. If you have ever pitched you know who the best hitters are and you know to avoid fastball counts to them. You also know you dont want people on base when they are hitting.

You are right anything is possible. However, just because you get the same result 2 different ways does mean they are fundamentally correct. Throwing sidearm puts unneeded stress on your arm and it is not the correct way to maximize the use of the muscles in your body, when you throw sidearm you are not maximize the use of your lower half. However, it is still obviously possible to make a strong accurate throw sidearm. Just like it is possible to catch a baseball with one hand, it does not mean it is the correct way to best do it, as it will likely lead to you dropping a few popups over a long career, but it still gets the job done. Do you recall the play a few years ago when Alsonso Soriano dropped the final out of the game hit by Nate McClouth because he was doing his little jump catch and the pirates went on to win the game? Would you see fit to criticize that? I know how to turn a doubleplay, there are many different ways depending on the feed throw and the runner and the amount of time you have, and when your relay throw lacks the top speed you could have put on it because you just sling it sidearm/underhand instead and it causes the runner to be safe at 1st that is a problem.

Everyone looks different when the pitcher is winding up but there is only 1 correct way to hit when you are swinging/making contact with the ball, and all good hitters look the same at the point of contact. The same is true in golf, people look different bring the club to the ball but all great shots look the same at the point of contact.I also dont care if Weeks doesnt use proper footwork/positioning/throwing technique if he gets the job done. Like when people get all bent out of shape when some player in the majors doesnt use 2 hands to catch the ball, at that level the proper fundamentals of using 2 hands is not required because everyone has enough raw talent to just catch the ball in their glove. However, if a player habitually is making mistakes due to not using proper fundamentals it should be corrected and it bothers me that no one on the coaching staff seems to care about this issue.

Yup, there was a supreme court decision that baseball is a sport not a business, because there were questions in the early days that the AL and NL had a monoply on baseball players and the federal league, which started in 1914, could not compete equally with the AL and NL and wanted the government to apply the anittrust laws to force the AL and NL to give the federal league some of the top players of ther era. They claimed if it is like any other business it would be illegal for the AL and NL to have ALL of the best players because no other league could ever compete, but they lost the suite so baseball is not a business and it is legal for the Yankees to have a monopoly which makes it impossible for other teams to compete equally in a free market environment...i just wish the stupid yankee supporters would admit this.

The 5 most significant plays from the game were: Inn Score Out RoB Pit(cnt)Sequence R/O @Bat Batter Pitcher wWPA wWE Play Description b6 4-4 1 -2- 4,(2-1) ..BBFX R MIL J. Gerut R. Flores 16% 76% Double to RF (Ground Ball); McGehee Scores b6 3-4 0 1-- 4,(2-1) BSB>X MIL C. McGehee A. Cook 16% 61% Single to RF (Ground Ball thru 2B-1B); Edmonds to 3B t1 0-0 0 12- 7,(3-2) CCB*BBFX R COL T. Tulowitzki D. Davis -13% 28% Double to LF (Line Drive to LF Line); Gonzalez Scores; Fowler to 3B t7 4-5 2 -23 7,(3-2) .*BBBC>S.FS O COL M. Olivo C. Villanueva 12% 79% Strikeout Swinging b5 2-4 0 -2- 1,(0-0) 2X R MIL R. Weeks A. Cook 10% 46% Single to CF (Ground Ball thru SS-2B); Counsell ScoresOk, obviously, the go ahead run turned out to be the most important, getting the tying run to 3rd with 0 outs was really important. Everyone already knows this, if you go back through the IGT for each of these plays you will mind multiple people saying things like great job, clutch play, that was huge right there. I just dont see that value, all this is good for is telling you things you already know.

I am basically responding to this post that you made: rluzinski wrote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When discussing optimal game strategy, it's pretty irrelevant how it turned out in one instance. We have thousands of games of data that suggests it is generally a bad move to sacrifice bunt in that kind of situation. If Gomez was on his own and thought he could get a hit, so be it. I can't imagine he caught the corners napping, though. Where it appears you are actually saying you should use past game data to tell you what to do. Now you are saying this: But no one is suggesting managers should use Fangraph’s win probability estimates to make decisions so I have no idea why you keep bringing it up. My other point deals with this issue: It just tells us that those plays had little effect on who might win the game (based on a very simple model for calculating win probability). That's it. So you are supporting a system that says a play which causes a team to go from behind to tied had no effect on the game? Also, the entire system is just not really necesary because As I’m sure you know, those win probabilities don’t consider strength of teams, batting lineups or anything of the kind. But no one is suggesting managers should use Fangraph’s win probability estimates to make decisions so I have no idea why you keep bringing it up. Which seems to contradict your original statement that you knew that the bunt was wrong. Its like saying in basically every scenario you should instead analyze the entire situation instead of use the win% based on previous games as a guide, thus making the entire effort of calculating win% pointless. For most at bats in baseball not much thinking is required for optimal strategy, it is too hit the ball as hard as you can which increases your chances of getting on base. I dont need a computer to tell me that it is better for Ryan Braun to get on base than strikeout or I shouldnt bunt if down by 4 in the 8th inning, everyone already knows that. The times when a computer may be useful is a play like the Gomez bunt play, but when the computer is applied the result is: inconclusive, make this decision based on your intuition of situation...which is what you use to make all decisions anyways. So if you should make the decision based on the all factors for the situation how can you say you know that bunting is wrong based on thousands of past games. I felt like it was a close game, at home, we have a good bullpen, the rockies closer looked bad on Monday, Braun and Fielder will still bat again later in the game, I think if we have an oppurtunity to tie the game without needing a hit it is a good strategy and we should do it. I would rather take that then deal with leaving a runner on base that we could have scored without getting a hit which we may reglret later in the game.

Exactly, yankee fans act like this is a free market economy where all things being equal whatever you are willing to pay for something is what its worth like there is some kind of supply/demand arguemt there. One of the principal concepts of capitalism is that companies must be able to compete equally for it to work, hence monopolies are illegal. CC Sabathia had no value as a free agent, no matter what any team decided was the most they could possibly afford to pay for him (his value in their eyes) the yankees will just offer more. It is not possible for a player that the yankees want to have a "value" because all they will do is pay more than the next team for him. The only time they dont get a player is when some other teams beats them to an offer first, like A-rod to the rangers. The yankees were just waiting around thinking about what some other team will offer and how much more they will go and then the rangers offer him $250 mil and Boras is like I dont care about any more negotiating we are taking this deal now. And of course the Yankees are now the team actaully paying him for that contract. There is hope though, because Bud Selig has wisely aranged that all internet revenue is shared equally among all teams and in the future everyone will be getting their TV over the internet. Boy that will be a great day when everyone in milwaukee and manhattan have google television and the brewers and yanks get the same amount of money from TV.

Maybe a better analogy would be poker. There is a concept called pot odds, which basically say you want the odds on your money to be better than your odds of winning a hand and in the long run you will come out on top. So if you have to pay $10 to win $100 and you think your odds against winning are 3:1, then you should pay that $10 because over the long run you will win $100 for every $40 you spend, so you come out on top. If you do this in every cash game or tournament you play for your entire life you will come out way ahead. Now pretend that your goal is not to come out on top over the entire span of the 1000s of hands you will play in your life, but to just win 1 tournament. In a tournament the only way you can lose is if you lose with all of your money at risk. When you get 2 Aces you have a ~80% of beating any hand, which means 1 out of 5 times you will lose. So in general, every single time you get 2 Aces you want to risk all your money with a chance to double up because you will come out ahead in the long run. However, if you get dealt Aces 5 times in a tournament you do not just want to risk all of your money every time because it will cause you to lose all of your money once which means you cannot win the tournament, which is your goal. So instead you need to analyze each play on their own and not put as much weight into the average values you know based on past results, maybe you know a certain hand is playable but the opponent is very strong and most of the other players at the table are weak, so theory would say to play your hand but the better decision is to let it go and wait until you can play against a weaker player. Maybe if you have 2 Aces against who think is the best player at the table you would want to risk all your money because you want to play against him with the best hands, but not so against a weaker player because you know you can outplay them later in the hand so you dont want to risk all your money right away. In this example a baseball game is like a tournament that you want to win.

Some of the plays we were talking about from the 4/7 game: Gomez bunting Weeks over in 5th inning: -2% chance of brewers winning the game IBB to Giambi in 5th inning: -1% for brewers and heres the interesting one: Kottaras' SF in the 6th inning that caused the game to go from 3-4 to tied: -1% for the brewers....so the SF to TIE the game in the 6th inning decreased the brewers chances of winning the game. Some thing to take from this, -all of these plays have only a 2% or 1% difference in the game, easily within the margin of error of win%...so all the number crunching on these 3 plays tells us nothing reliable. -this system thinks that when a backup catcher ties the game in the bottom of the 6th inning, in a situation where a double play was a possibility and the following hitters are a rookie and Corey Hart, that is a bad thing.

A player's season or career batting average is useless in terms of 1 game scenarios. Carlos Gomez went 4-5 on Monday, he is not near a .800 hitter. Also, players can be on streaks and things like that managers need to pick up on and evaluate on a game to game and even at bat to at bat timespan to make a decision on what to do. Batting averages cannot be used for reliable future prediction on the time scale of 1 game. Whatever a players batting average is the thing basically came from different combinations (and permutations and zim-zam) of .000, .200, .250, .333, .400, .500, .666, .750 etc and it will fall somehwere between .250 and .333.

Its like a few teams all valued a player at a similar amount and the agents actaully had to ask their clients who they would rather sign with instead of telling them who offered them the most money and informing them where they will be playing baseball for the next few seasons. The agents did not understand how to deal with this scenario so they assumed there must have been foul play. Its so annoying to hear athlete after athlete say they signed with the Yankees because they wanted a chance to win, when that may be nice for them the real reason was because the Yankees offered them the most money. It would be so refreshing to hear someone just say I signed with this team because they offered me the most money...I mean seriously Adam Dunn you did just decide to play for the Nationals, just say why. I can picture the Onion Sports headline now: Player signs with 3rd team in 6 years because they offered him the most money! and then elaborate on how this is a huge shock to everyone in the media/sporting world.

I think this analogy is not correct because you know that all coin flips are independent and will assume a tight normal distribution with large numbers. You know that the expected value of 10 flips is 5 heads and getting 0, 1, 2, 8, 9 OR 10 heads has a probability of 2(1+10+45)/2^10 = 112/1024 = 10.9%, so 90% of all results will end up near the average, which means the average is a good indicator for future prediction. Baseball run scoring is not as tightly distributed, so for example say you have thousands of at bats with R3 1 out, whatever, and the chance of scoring 1 run is 48% over all at bats. If that is a reliable number, you should be able to take your 10,000 samples and randomly break them up into groups of say 10 and then see that also the percentage of 1 run should be near 48% for any randomly selected group of 10 at bats. I am saying there is waaaaay too much variablity in at bats and what you would actually find is that the numbers from the groups of 10 would be all over the map...the average would still be near 48% but any random group would have a much better chance of being on the fringes, unlike the coin example where 60% of the possible outcomes have 10% chance of happening. Thus I believe the estimations that you make are not that good/reliable so you should not try to use them for future prediction. I was wrong to say you would advocate scoring the most runs all time because it is about doing the thing with the highest win %, but end of game situations are pretty obvious, if it is tied in the bottom of the ninth I think we have understand that no one would advocate playing for 2, Im sorry if you actaully thought I meant that. I was refering to the situations in less obvious times where reasonable people can disagree, such as the 5th inning today. Another example is the IBB on Giambi, I will assume (correct me if I am wrong) that you would basically never support a IBB in any situation (except obvious late game times) because there is no time when adding a player to 1B would decrease the run expectancy. It clearly worked because the brewers actually got the DP they wanted, even though it was obvious to everyone in the park they did that to try to get the hitter to groundout and he knew it and did it anyways.

Oops thats right, I was thinking of times when teams accidentally lost their DH because I remember some American league game recently where the pitcher hit. http://www.baseball-refer...s/TBA/TBA200905170.shtml

So what data do you have to show the added probability of Carlos Gomez bunting Rickie Weeks to 3rd base with 1 out with Braun/Fielder coming up facing Aaron Cook with the score 3-4 in the 5th inning at Miller park in a day game factoring in the Rockies lineup/bench/bullpen and the Brewers lineup/bench/bullpen vs allowing him to hit away there? Because earlier you stated that it doesnt matter what happened there you know it was the wrong play because based on games from 1999-2002 that play would cause the brewers to score less runs in the game. rluzinski wrote: When discussing optimal game strategy, it's pretty irrelevant how it turned out in one instance. We have thousands of games of data that suggests it is generally a bad move to sacrifice bunt in that kind of situation. If Gomez was on his own and thought he could get a hit, so be it. I can't imagine he caught the corners napping, though.

I never though about hitting Jason Kendall 10th! That would have been a nice idea...I still wish we would have DHed for him instead of Gallardo just once to prove a point. Gallardo did outslug Kendall last year, .310 to .305.

Here is a link to Tom Tango's Expected Run chart which simply calculates the percentage of time that a certain number of runs were scored based on all possible runner/out situations from 1999-2002. http://www.tangotiger.net/RE9902score.html These are used to calculate the added win probability of at bats by players by seeing the change in expected runs from before the at bat vs after the at bat based on the score. There is no future prediction type equation which can confidently predict the actual winning percentage of any situation, all that is done is what has happened is compared to average results over many previous games which were played by different players in different stadiums in different weather conditions etc etc. Some people contend that a teams best strategy is to make offensive decisions at all times which lead to the highest run expectancy. Run expectancy is like the weighted average of all of the columns in the link, so for example in a bases loaded 0 out situation the run expectancy is greater than 1 because it is the average runs scored in that scenario from past games, not the percentage of times a certain number of runs are scored. They contend that if you always follow this it will cause you to score the most possible runs over the course of the entire season, or maximize your offense. So for example, if you are losing by 1 run in the middle of the game and you think you could score that run by bunting or something you should never try to score that 1 run if a different strategy has a higher run expectancy, because over the long season it will be better for you. I contend that this entire reasoning, although interesting, is not the best appraoch because the assumption that all baseball events (at bats) are basically the same so over the long run the average values in the charts will be very accurate is incorrect. Actually, the variation in runs scored is very large so it is unreasonable to think that just because something has happened 40% the time over some past amount of games it will surely happen close to 40% over the 50 times it happens to a team in a season (just examples of #s there). This is because it is unlikely that that 40% number came from values of 38%, 39%, 43%, 44% etc, but rahter values like 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 60% etc. So even though 40 is the average it does not have a small spread of values. I would say that it is better to handle all situation son a game by game basis, so if you are in a close game and down by 1 you should try to tie the game up if you can manufacture a run without the need of a hit rather than just sit back and wait for HRs, especially if they player you want to bunt is a good bunter, has a reasonable chance of even bunting for a hit and is not one of the best hitters on your team. So, basically I would say that there are situations where, as manager, I would consider bunting even with Albert Pujols for very extreme situations, whereas some people would immediately call for my head if I did that. Any thoughts?

Last year in the ML the average runs per game was 4.6 and even lower at 4.4 in the NL. The brewers averaged 4.8 runs/game, so if those are reliable numbers then the brewers record should have been 162-0. Well, thats silly because no statistical model is perfect so Im sure the record was not 162-0, it was something close. Actually, they were 80-82 which is pretty far away, that is weird, that must mean that using the average runs to predict the future outcome is not a good idea. In fact, for the 6 NL central teams last year, the average runs were 4.3/game with a standard deviation of 3.0, and a COV of .70. That is huge and basically means that you should assume that average values are not good representatives of a random event from the sample. So it looks like instead of just trying to score 5 runs every single game it is better to make decisions based on game to game situations to maximize your wins.

Braun is 55 for 114 in his career at scoring a runner from 3rd < 2 outs, which is 48% which happens to be the same as the rate of scoring 1 run in that scenario between 1999-2002. This does include situations with 0 outs, not sure how many, where he should be trying to get a hit so that may skew the number down a little. He also had 6 walks and 4 HBP of these 114 PAs so if you take those out he is 55 for 104 which is 53% which is above average.Also Braun is 1-2 this year in this scenario, he had a SF on opening day in the 9th inning. Braun is .308/.372/.565 with RISP in his career over 532 PA.

I tend to agree but you could also say the better the hitters coming up the more you want to have RISP situations.

It lowers the overall run expectency though, so you have to really pick the spots where the value of 1 run is great. I already said this, and anytime in any baseball game when you are losing by 1 the value of 1 run is great. There is just a heck of a lot of evidence that MLB teams currently utilize it too often. Do have the sac bunts rates for the American league or can show that they are using it too much because it seems that no one ever bunts today. The object is to win games. You do that by scoring more runs than the opposition. Thank you Charles Barkley Every run you score adds to the probability of winning the game but those odds are dependant on many factors that change every second. I hate the added probability stats a lot, they are pointless and meaningless to me on the scale of the team W-L. For individual players it is ok. Seriously, obviously if you are winning 4-0 in the first you have a good chance to win but not amazing, but winning 4-0 in the 9th you have an amazing chance to win, wow, Im so glad someone tracks this for me. Infact, I did not have the intuition to realize that going from a 1 run to a 2 run lead in the 6th inning increases your chances of winning but not by a huge margin, but if you went from a 1 run lead to a 7 run lead in the 6th inning your chances increase a lot...amazing! The fact the people try to claim that they can calcualte these effects to more precisely than single digits is laughable. Small ball strategy MIGHT increase your odds of scoring one run in some situations but it generally decreases overall expected number of runs. R3 R2 1 out gives you the same chance of scoring 2 runs as you have to score 1 run with R1 R2 0 outs....so clearly you should bunt 100% of the time in that scenario, unless playing for 2 runs in 1 inning is not good enough in the 5 run environment we have nowadays (which was actaully 4.4 in the NL last season) Also, obviously generally it decreases your chances of scoring a run, I only mentioned exactly 1 scenario where you should bunt/move the runner as #1 priority, R2 0 out. At no other time have I advocated it here. And my biggest problem with Tom's little Expected Runs chart...it is based on how the game is currently played now where many teams do not manufacture runs and just try to hit HRs every time (1999 - 2002). You are essentially using data to show that small ball does not work when in fact the data is not taken from a sample that plays small ball. The 1 run probablity for R3 1 out is only 48%... a scenario which requires a SF or a middle infield groundout and players only get the job done 48% of the time...why...because they are trying to get a hit. If those charts reflected numbers of teams who were intentionally trying to manufacture runs the numbers would look more favorable towards bunting a little more.

Kottaras 2 RBI with 0 hits, difference in the game.

1-4 hitters go 2-14 with a walk and 1 RBI and we win, very nice.

I am definetly not saying to always go for 1 run, only in situations when you can do so without getting a hit. I am not for bunting a guy to 2nd base in the 3rd inning.

Yes, we scored a few last night