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rluzinski

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Everything posted by rluzinski

  1. rluzinski
    Yeh, a win tomorrow would just be icing on the cake. The crazy thing is, whatever statistical advantage the Cubs might have had in season projections has already been mostly overcome. A win tomorrow and those darn stat-heads would consider the Brewers the new favorites to win the division. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif
  2. rluzinski
    How cool would it be for the Brewers to break a certain dubious streak tomorrow, on the first road series of the series and against the greatest rival? Talk about exercising the demons.
  3. rluzinski
    It's from the fielding bible, whatever that is John Dewan, the owner of Baseball Info Solutions and creater of zone rating, wrote it. He published a play-by-play based fielding metric ( systam I think it's called) in there as well. Lee saved 23 bad throws, Pujols 42. I shouldn't have said that the study suggests 20 errors saved is too high because that was relative to the average 1B. Even a bad 1B is going to field some bad throws. Also, as others have argued, some bad throws that aren't fielded by the 1B are not necessarily destined to be errors, provided the runner doesn't advance.
  4. rluzinski
    I guess my main point was that due to some timely hits I have a feeling that Bill Hall and Tony Gwynn are rated higher than they should be. Maybe by the fans but I don't think Melvin isn't going to let a few clutch hits change his opnion of a player's overall ability. I hope not at least. I recall him sighting Miller's good BA w/RISP when he signed him (Miller predictably battied .182 w/RISP that year) but I have to believe that was for public consumption. With regard to the fans, anything that makes them like the players is OK by me.
  5. rluzinski
    It's my hobby and I am no expert. Not even close. I'm just the guy with the links to the experts. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif
  6. rluzinski
    Yeh, it doesn't seem like he was just changing up speeds but who knows. Do fastballs fatigue a pitcher significantly more than off speed pitches or should I just use overall pitch count? Probably overall pitch count, huh?
  7. rluzinski
    Even if I don't think he will develop into a major league starter is it OK if I pull for him as well?
  8. rluzinski
    I think Gagne should have made a tear-filled apology to everyone and offered to give up his salary and play for free this year. I also think that I should be the next closer for the Brewers.
  9. rluzinski
    You could, you know, read the study.
  10. rluzinski
    I accused you of not reading my posts because of this comment: "Well let Gwynn get his sample in the Big Leagues and we'll see." As I have already said, he's probably not going to get a sufficient playing time this year for us to prove anything. It's like when people tried to use Gwynn's first 36 AB last year as proof that he justified getting more playing time. When I pointed out the futility in using a sample that small, I was of course labeled a Gwynn hater who only wanted to see him fail. Not too much has changed since then, apparently. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif I didn't say they were always right. I do think that they can project better than people on message boards though. Some of those projections have come from people who have also worked for major league teams. Is it OK if I use them?
  11. rluzinski
    For someone who knows this stuff, do the matrixes get as complicated as "ball hit at x trajectory with x degree pitch traveling x feet/second landing x feet from home while fielder was positioned in x position with x player on the mound and x player at the plate while x pitch was thrown"? Or, is it more like "was the liner to left caught or not"? For UZR, closer to A than to B: Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), Part 1 Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), Part 2 Many of the questions/concerns/problems with UZR are talked about in the comments section. It is by no means perfect and I'm sure the creator (Michael Lichtman) has attempted to improve it since those articles have been written. I personally don't agree with some of the decisions he's made but I don't use that fact as a reason to dismiss the results out of hand. As long as you recognize that a player being 12 runs above average is only an estimate with limitations, it has value. I'd rather have those numbers when trying to evaluate Braun's defense from last year than simply using only my own, flawed, biased observation. Unfortunately, UZR doesn't rate a first basemens' ability to receive throws. Here's a link to a study that looks at just that, however: First Basemen and Savings Errors Even the best 1B only saved about 6 errors per "year" according to the study and that's not even regresed. At around .75 runs per save, you are looking at 4.5 runs. 20 errors may be too high an estimate.
  12. rluzinski
    http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a345/rluzinski/Zambrano.jpg Ave: 91.3 MPH Max: 96.2 MPH (7th pitch of the game) Min: 86.7 MPH Median: 91.7 MPH Now, pitch type identification isn't perfect (pitch f/x even includes a "type confidnce" column), so maybe a few of those sub 90 MPH fastballs are really something else?
  13. rluzinski
    Injuries aside, one day's worth of performance tells us nothing about what to expect for a whole year.
  14. rluzinski
    Ending velocity is way less (round 87). Marmol topped out at 94 MPH and Zambrano averaged 91.3 both sound reasonable. A radar gun might be picking up the velocity 25 ft away or somethign like. I think it's the radar guns' accuracy that should be questioned, since the velocity it's recording is from an unknown distance away? Zambrano's velocity curve is the exact opposite Sheets'. It's a big smiley face. His velocity was the highest int he 1st inning, averaging 93.9 MPH. How odd.
  15. rluzinski
    Gwynn played very well defensively yesterday and got a flyball when the team needed it. Two line drive outs would be more encouraging than Gwynn's 2 hits, though. Over the long haul, solid contact is going to get you a lot more hits than bloopers and grounders. Counsell smoked a double into the gap in the 10th. That's what Gwynn needs to be able to do more often if he wants to develop as a hitter, not more weakly hit groundballs or bloopers that are usually going to be converted into an out. You might think that's just me being a "hater" but it's just common sense.
  16. rluzinski
    I'm very late to the party but I've started messing with some of the Pitch f/x data that MLB provides through their Gameday service, which can also be accessed here: http://gd2.mlb.com/components/game/mlb/year_2008/ I remember a fellow Brewer blogger playing with this stuff as well. Who was that? I want to make sure I'm not wasting my time doing something that someone else already has done (and probably better). I'd also like some questions answered if possible. I was curious where Sheet's fastball was for his first start and how it might have been affected by the rain delay. I am using what they call the starting velocity, which is really the velocity of the ball when it's 50 ft from homeplate. I don't know how that compares to what a radar gun typically picks up. It seems to be in the same ballpark (the ending velocity is significantly lower). Sheets threw 62 fastballs over 6+ innings on Monday. Here are the basics: Ave: 92.4 MPH Max: 94.6 MPH (third pitch after rain delay) Min: 87.5 MPH (first pitch of the game) Median: 92.6 MPH Here's his fastball velocity over the course of the game. The white vertical lines show the start of a new inning. The yellow line is the rain delay: http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a345/rluzinski/sheets_small.jpg I'm sure that everyone knows that it usually takes a little while for Sheets to get his velocity up and this game was no different. Is this pretty typical for a pitcher? Typical for Sheets?
  17. rluzinski
    Can we just let the kid play until he's had enough AB's to make a reasonable judgement? Unfortunately, he's not going to get the opportunity to get enough AB to prove much of anything this year. He'll probably get something like 16 starts before Cameron gets back, which works out to around 75 PA. After that, he'll be a backup who gets the occasional start in CF. I'll be surprised if he gets even 250 AB this year. Getting back on topic, when a mediocre player gets overhyped because of a couple memoriable hits, it's only a matter of time before he also has his share of failures. Fans are fickle and will change their opinion on a dime.
  18. rluzinski
    I think defense can be very valuable. I'm just not ready to compare Gwynn's defense to the best SS in the league quite yet.
  19. rluzinski
    According to Gameday, Gagne's fastball averages around 92 (93 to the first 2 batters). 12 of the 14 pitches to the first three batters were fastballs (2 changeups). He just didn't have his location early on.
  20. rluzinski
    That's the biggest flaw in your projections. We always talk about not having a large enough sample. Well let Gwynn get his sample in the Big Leagues and we'll see. You couldn't have possibly read anything more than the first sentence of my last post.
  21. rluzinski
    I think the Brewers will finish with something like an 86-76 record, which is a .531 winning %. The average team takes about a 4% hit to their winning % on the road. That would give the Brewers an expected winning % on the road of around .491 for 2008, which works out to about 40 wins. You guys want the over or the under? http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif
  22. rluzinski
    It just gets old when people throw around these projections like they are fact. I throw them around like they are the best statistical guess, based on past performance, nothing more. As I've said many times before, projections are not the final word, especially for young prospects. I don't have access to professional scouting information, however. Very few of us message-boarders do. Because I'm not confident in my own ability to objectively assess a player's raw tools, I rely almost exclusively on past performance. I use the projection systems I feel do the best job of using past performance to objectively estimate future performance. I readily concede that they are still just an estimate with a high degree of uncertainty. There's a chance that any young player could make that jump and prove his projection completely wrong. So the question isn't really if a player has ANY chance of developing into a starter, it's if that chance is large enough to justify giving the player significant enough playing time to find out. I've simply offered up my OBJECTIVE opinion that the odds of Gwynn becoming a major leaguer does not justify giving him enough AB to really find out. I can't speak for anyone else but if gwynn does end up getting enough ABs and proves me wrong with spectacular play, I will be very happy to be proven wrong.... you know.. because I'm a Brewer fan.
  23. rluzinski
    I think his approach at the plate is bad and his good year(2006) was above where he really projects. If you want to say that both players were/are over hyped, fine. Both players have had some memorable hits, which But to compare their ML achievements in any way is way off base. Hall didn't just have one good year; he had a good year in 2005 as well: .291/.342/.495/.837 Hall had 1038 good AB over those two years. Also, his 2007 season wasn't good but it wasn't THAT bad (.254/315/.425/.740). Hall's ZiPS projection puts him at .270/.336/.475/.806 for this season. That seems like a pretty reasonable projection to me and it would make him about an average hitting 3B. If he can also play decent defense, he's going to be a asset to the team this year as a starter.
  24. rluzinski
    What I find unbelievable is the fact that the Brewers were apparently very interested in signing Pierre. I tell myself that it was all Mark A's idea, to make myself feel better about Melvin. Of course, I said the same thing about Suppan's signing as well but Suppan at least has positive value. Pierre shouldn't even be a starter anywhere.
  25. rluzinski
    Why do people have to take it personally when someone doesn't think their favorite player should start? Gywnn had a great game, today. As a Brewer fan, I couldn't be more happy that he did. That said, a smart baseball fan knows not to let one game change their opinion of a player, good or bad. I don't think Gwynn will ever be good enough to justify starting him on an everyday basis. You think he will? Great. I hope you are right and I am wrong. There are players every year that prove the that projections aren't an exact science. Just don't be silly and act like one game of baseball proves anyone right or wrong about anything. One month doesn't even prove much. Didn't we learn that last year, though? And again, someone needs to explain to me why Gwynn being the son of a well respected major leaguer would make some want to see him fail. Like how we all wanted to see Prince fail? Completely absurd. Like he's been so good that you can't imagine an unbiased observer NOT projecting him as a major league starter?
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