Have not and will not engage in this as a point of discussion.

If the Sox fans feel that is a player hits to the Right Side 99% of the time and they want to play that guy straight up, so be it. They appreciate the game more than us Cubs fans do.

They might appreciate it from a far, but appreciate it.

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I wasnt referring to you.


No, Im really not. I explained it pretty clearly


Thats not true. Believeing BAPIP will average out does not mean its 100% random

David Ortiz might hit 90% of his balls in play to the right side. They'll probably end up around the normal .300 bapip against normal defenses. It can benefit a team to have more fielders in the general area he hits the ball 90% of the time to try and take away some hits and lower his BAPIP

What you're sayiing is akin to saying an NFL defense should never stack against the run because the league average is 50/50 and it might be a pass.

Again, you can shade your fielders according to spray charts. That does not disprove BAPIP. It just means that when a hitter





No Im not. Its pretty lazy of you to throw me in with what Bernstein does.

Ive laid out up there what I think and its pretty logical.


Just because BAPIP usually averages out, doesnt mean you shouldnt try and lower it, if an extreme (like Ortiz) presents itself.

The numbers are stubborn. They really can't be argued. It's the conclusions people draw from those numbers that may be disputed. But the word random has a definition. And the idea that a team can move fielders to have a better opportunity to field batted balls defies the idea that batted balls are random. The ability of the pitcher(s) to spot the ball where he/they want to make the ball go to a general area must be considered. As the argument between James and his colleagues illustrates, there isn't really consensus on this issue.

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I dont think its hard to see why a line drive smoked down the line stabbed by Scott Rolen should give a pitcher less credit than a weak grounder to Rolen

In general though, at least to me, it seems many here are increasingly dismissive of advanced stats. I get that some people just dont like them and will never accept them. Thats fine. Now we seem to be losing some that were on our side.

Im not sure if it has to do with Epstein being with the Cubs or not, but the timing certainly works out.


These stats arent perfect and they're always evolving but every one of them is useful.

Well, that wouldn't really be random then. But I think the evidence shows that the shift hasn't worked against Ortiz. Again, what the Cubs are doing and being lauded for isn't anything as radical as the Williams shift. However, it has resulted in a BABIP against forty points lower than last season. We'll see if that normalizes to .300 by the end of the season.

Let me ask this simple question: When Castro caught that rocket right behind the bag yesterday, was that the result of strategy or just getting lucky?

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I dont think you've ever seen me use the word random in regards to BAPIP.

Its not an all or nothing proposition. Its not "Either the pitcher completely controls where the ball goes" or "The pitcher has absolutely no control"

Also, BAPIP Is the league average. That doesnt mean single guys arent going to defy it.

Im sure Rivera's BAPIP is pretty low because of the way he pitches and how good he is.

The same way Ortiz is not completely random.

But I think it is possible, that while where it might land within a hot zone is random, the zone it lands in most often can be used.


Please dont attribute Bernstein's misunderstanding of the stat to me.

Well, there is evidence to suggest that teams should never punt and should on-side kick every time possible. It's so radical that no one has adopted it. But I guess your football analogy depends on how many times teams get burned on a pass and the ultimate results.

Anyway, if pitching to a specific area and correctly positioning the fielders to handle that ball is a skill rather than luck, why are you reluctant to give a guy like Mark Buehrle, who on several occasions has done it nearly perfectly, credit for it?

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This is why I asked you to quantify what "less credit" means. It is my opinion that on every outcome, the pitcher gets a majority of the blame and a majority of the credit. Of course a great play can be made for a catch but ultimately it's the pitcher that had the most to do with putting the ball into a position to be caught. For one thing, he stopped a home run(which is very important according to advanced statistics). He also avoided a walk(which is very important according to advanced statistics). He also forced a batter to hit into a catchable result. Now, the offensive player may have had an easier or harder job based on the positioning of the ball. I don't see how you can not give the pitcher a majority of the credit for every out.

Therefore, when a pitcher goes 27/27 it's as good as he could ever do. There was luck involved, but there is a level of luck on every at bat including strikeouts. It all evens out. If a pitcher is getting every pitch crushed they won't always get away with it.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Thats not a simple question, Joe.

I think you can put yourself in a higher percentage place for success, but that doesnt mean its all strategy. So I think its a little of both.

I don't think you misunderstand the stat. But I don't think he does either. bernstein simply seems to adjust his thinking to suit the current argument. When he wants to say DeAza is "bad at baseball", BABIP is all luck and DeAza couldn't possibly sustain a .400 BABIP. He can't sustain it, true, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's luck either. When he wants to blow Theo, the luck factor is mitigated and Theo is in control by positioning his fielders.

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And that's the crux of it right there. Some of the Ortiz numbers suggest that maybe overplaying isn't really the higher percentage. But that can be deceiving too.

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This is exactly the way I view baseball. Each event begins with the pitch and everything goes from there. The pitcher wants the batter to hit it here, the batter is trying to hit it there. It's also why I don't acknowledge the specious concept of "run support". One man's "run support" is another man's ERA.

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Im not refusing to give Buehrle credit. Thats ridiculous.

My argument was that Buehrle gave up some very hard hit balls, that he clearly didnt hit his spot on.


If Buehrle's non strikeout outs are weak grounders and pop ups, then he's done his job and should get credit.

If he gives up a rocket shot to the wall, he should not get credit

My whole point RE: Wood vs Buehrle was that Wood didnt have ONE ball hit hard all day. Buehrle did.

A pitcher can make mistakes, like Buehrle did, and get saved by his defense. He still made a mistake.

I dont think Wood made any mistakes that day.

That's ludicrous. He made at least one that was 100% his fault.

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Wood hit a batter, didn't he? That's a mistake. They're different kinds of pitchers. I might look at it like, Wood's mistake sent a man to first while Buehrle's mistake at least had a chance to be caught (and ultimately was). I'm not saying one performance was better than the other. I don't have to make that call. But the difference between the two guys and the way the pitch is so great that it's difficult to make comparisons. Is it harder to maintain pinpoint control over 27 batters than it is to use a rocket arm and a nasty curve to blow guys away? I don't know? Strikeouts are flashier than grounders. In a way, Humber's game was more dominating than either of them. He never even had a three ball count until, I think the last man in the eighth.

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And I completely disagree with that. Buehrle didnt put the ball Wise caught in a position to be caught.

And a pitcher shouldnt get any credit when they give up a rocket shot line drive.

See most times thats a hit. But because Rolen was a magician at 3b, it was caught.

The guy pitching for Rolen's team, didnt make a better pitch than the guy who had Jose Hernandez at third and ended up with a double.


Not really. The ball was hit out of the park. Wise brought it back in.


I dont see how you can believe that. I find that extremely ridiculous.

Yeah, I was trying to remember if maybe he did that on purpose.

Let me rephrase

No one hit the ball well of Wood, all day

This statement just doesn't make any sense to me.

I think we've already discussed that though so it's better just to end this.

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Fair enough

What do you think about pitchers getting credit for every out?

Spark just dominated that handicap match. Give the man the belt.

I think they have to.

Wise caught the ball, therefore he was in position to catch the ball. It can't be subjective on selective occasions. Pretend that Buehrle's perfect game occurred before television and all you had was the box score.

If we're going to give Theo credit for his team fielding a screaming line drive that almost killed Castro, we've got to give credit on all fielded balls, don't we?

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Do you think Buehrle was trying to give up a 400 foot shot to Left Center?


When someone says they put it in position to be caught, that ususally means a weak grounder, a weak fly ball, or a ground out


I cant believe you actually are saying that you think Buehrle should get credit for that pitch.

It was a mistake, that got crushed. Luckily for him, Wise made a nice play.

Wow that is really surprising. Were you at that game? Did you think Buehrle made a good pitch there


and Why cant it be selective?


Anyway, if you guys believe that ALL outs a pitcher gets are equal, then we just fundamentally disagree.

Not really man.

Im not gonna Bernstein it up and pretend I invented these stats.

We are in the infancy of advanced stats and they will keep evolving and things we think know, we will know we were wrong about.


I'm just trying to keep up with these stats, understand them, and use them if I can.

I don't know if he made a good pitch or not, but the heart and soul of advanced statistical analysis is objectivity. Numbers scouting is driven by the concept- the fact- that no one can see every game, every pitch, every at-bat. But because Wise's catch was so high profile in such a high profile game, we're going to tend to assign judgments which would not normally be assigned. For the sake of analysis it either has to be treted like every other out on a batted ball or we have to judge all other batted ball outs similarly.

In much the same way, we'll tend to see Ortiz hit right at the oddly-positioned shortsstop in the shift and jump to the conclusion that the shift worked, while when he sneaks a hit through the shift or accidently makes a bad swing which spins one wildly to left and cannot be fielded and results in a double we pat Ortiz on the back for being a good hitter or lament the pitcher's "bad luck" respectively. In any case, the result is the result.

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Baseball's better here

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I think you do.

,
But not in this forum, where we are specifically trying to compare two games.

Basically you're saying, we cant look that deep into the numbers.

Im saying we can, and if we do, its probably Kerry Wood

I dont think anyone can deny the fact that Buehrle was hit harder than Wood was. Thats my statement.



Who does that?

I mean a specific study was cited in this very thread about Ortiz. Of course if you're judging the effectiveness of the shift, you have to penalize it when it doesnt work.

I mean, yeah old schoool announcers and casual fans may not take the time and say things silly like that. But why do we care about them? Especially for our purposes here

I think everyone does that. It's human nature. Certain things stick with people and other things are forgotten. For example, I'd bet the Wise catch wasn't the worst pitch Buehrle made that day. It's just the one we're talking about.

It's not a bad thing to be emotional about events. Emotion is necessary for people to live their lives in the society we have created. People talk about logic as if it is a positive attribute. But that isn't always the case. You couldn't get by being logical all the time. You would never be able to make decisions. Advertisers are well aware of that.

Back to how it relates to the way we view baseball. Of course when a team puts on a ridiculous shift and the ball goes right to the guy who is playing what would normally be out of position, it's human nature to leap to the conclusion that "that worked great!" That's an entirely emotional repsonse unsupported by data.

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RPB, you probably know more about this than I do, so when we say BABIP "normalizes" at .300 are we saying that over enough at-bats every pitcher will have pretty close to a .300 BABIP against and every hitter will have close to a .300 BABIP? Or is that for the entire league at a given time? I know the belief in randomness came out of the fact that BABIP varies wildly for individuals on a season-to-season basis.

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I'm pretty sure that he was referring to .300 being about MLB- average, year in and year out.

Of course there are wild variations, some guys are able to sustain high BABIPs over multiple seasons and careers. I don't think anyone is referring to them as "lucky".

Last time I looked into it, LaHair had a ridiculous BABIP. I don't think he's lucky, the guy is hitting rockets all over the diamond. Whether or not he can sustain it, is a different question...

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