Bucco Blog is going to have monthly contests between March 1st and the end of the season where you can win monthly prizes and the top ten winners each month will accumulate points toward the grand prize of no less than $500 at the end of the season.
That’s right, cold hard cash.
The idea is simple.. each monthly contest will have one grand prize (like game tickets or gift cards) that can be won. If more than one party qualifies to win the prize, they each get equal shares of that prize, not an equivalent prize. Sorry, you guys would bankrupt me if I did that.
The winner also will get a higher number of points (for instance, 50 points) added to their Bucco Bank, second through tenth place finishers will also get points (for instance 20 – 40 points), and everyone who participates will receive like 10 points.
At the end of the year the person who has the most points in the bank will win the grand prize which will be no less than $500 cash. I suspect the grand prize might grow over the season since a couple of business owners have already said they would like to participate.
More later this month.
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Over the next few weeks I’m going to be pushing a lot of stats at you since fantasy baseball is heating up and I’m getting more and more requests for data.
To get you going, here’s a query against the MLB PITCHf/x data set which shows the percentage of fastballs thrown by four of our starters inning-by-inning last year as against the MLB average:
Get used to these type of charts because I’m going to be using them a lot. For instance, using your mouse you can identify any value by pointing your mouse at an anchor (one of the dots in any of the lines above).
We can readily see from the chart above that our four main starters last year threw a fastball three out of every four pitches in the first inning. That’s pretty typical as the MLB league average was 78.4% as you can see. But look at Gorzelanny’s line.. that’s quite an overreliance and we’ll see how that hurt him down the road. At the same time, Snell had an underreliance but that’s somewhat expected as he only has two better than average pitches and he throws his slider a lot.
At the end of this post are charts showing our projected starting five pitchers and their percentage of pitch types thrown inning-by-inning for you to look at. Eventually I’ll have one page per player so you can view all of their material a lot easier. And during the season I’ll be updating each player’s page after each game.
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You know, if season ticket holders pay their way to get down to Bradenton the Bucs should provide them spring training tickets for free. Heck, every team should be doing that right now.
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Pedro Alvarez’s new nickname floating around the circuit: Chung King. I guess a few folks still think he’s a bit slippery.
I heard an interesting scouting report on him today from a scout who had broken him quite a few times since high school days and he said the Pirates will probably eventually move him to left. Not first, not third, but left. He said it shouldn’t happen right away because he believes Alvarez has more than enough range and glove to handle the hot corner right now, but he thinks left is where he will eventually land down the road. Oh yeah, and he said his bat will play right now in Pittsburgh.. he doesn’t see him riding buses very long.
Interesting stuff.
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Here’s the charts:
Related posts:
The scout’s comment on Pedro, not riding the buses very long, man, that would be awesome. When I read what Manny San said about his swing and all the glowing reports of him killing balls my expectations rose considerably. But Pedro in left? Can’t see that at all.
You get my highest kudos for your blog’s personal stimulus package. I always enjoyed your contests on the mlb board. Sure you’ll have something good and unique.
On to some odds and ends that you or others might enjoy commenting on;
1. The future of N. Walker. Just where does he fit, if at all. There doesn’t appear to be a spot for him, unless he’s the next Joey Bats.
2. AndyLa-if he continues to flop in ’09 is he the next Andy Marte?
3. Hansen or Meeks in the pen? Is it at all possible that the brass could keep both Veal and Hansen?
4. The Nats are overloaded with outfielders. Possible trading partners and if so, who do you see in the deal?
5. Ohman a Buc? I like the guy and he will be relative cheap. Plus, he wears his pants the old fashioned way! Also looks like Biemel’s going to be somebody’s bargain. These guys are going to bring a nice return in July if a noncontender picks them up.
6. Are Barthmaier and McCutch the pitcher legit shots at making the rotation based on S.T.?
no way alvarez will move to left down the road. But yes very very awsome about the scout saying alvarez bat can play in pittsburgh now ans that he wont be on the buses very long. I agree with you very much salem about neil walker i think his future is at either 2nd base or a utility man in the outfield. Bartmarier or mccutchen could make the team as the 5th starter that would be kool both have good upside. If andy laroche does good maybee andy moves to second or ss we will have to see.
looks like Russell just got his option picked up. i am fine with this mov-I thinik he will be better this year with not leavind his pitchers out to long. Can’t wait for alvarez to be in Pittsburgh!!!!
Bill
Jake,
Like the graphs a lot…one thing you might do to make them a bit easier to read is index everything so that MLB avg is 1. This which would let you get rid of the blue line and it’d be a little easier to see how far above/below average guys were. In the first graph, Gorz throws 81% fastballs in the 2nd inning vs. an MLB average of 70%, so he’d be 1.15 (81/70 = 15% above average),
In the individual pitcher graphs, the fastballs dominate the scale, but if you indexed each pitch vs. the ML avg for how often it was thrown in that inning, you’d be able to see know if Duke’s 16% curveballs in the 2nd inning is relatively a lot or a little compared to the league…I’m not sure if it’s possible, but if you want to get really crazy, you could index it to the league average for RHP and LHP too.