By Jake, on May 31, 2009, at 11:21 pm |
When you put an umpire behind the plate who calls a lot of strikes like John Hirschbeck, and two pitchers face off against each other who are corner magicians, you typically get a low scoring game. And that’s what we had Sunday with Maholm and Hampton. Just twelve hits, only three walks, and three total runs scored.
The difference in this game? A passed ball by Diaz in the seventh with one out and two men on. That forced John Russell to pull the infield in half way and Tejada hit a little flair just over Sanchez’s head to score what would become the winning run. No passed ball there.. no run, all things being equal. Truth be told, it looked like Diaz got crossed up on the one that got away as he seemed to be looking for a fastball, but got a slider.
One thing became clearly exposed during this series was the Bucs love for pitches high in the zone. When we face pitchers who keep the ball down with some movement, we roll over on the pitches time after time from both sides of the plate. When a pitcher starts elevating, we crush them. That’s pretty much been the story all year.
Continue reading » No bats, a passed ball, and a rainbow throw = loss
By Jake, on May 30, 2009, at 10:45 pm |
Everyone in Pittsburgh knew there was going to be a record crowd at Saturday night’s game with a concert and fireworks slated after the game plus the Penguins playing on the road. So for the first time this season John Russell finally shuffled his lineup to put some of the higher OBP guys at the top of the order and sat some cold bats in McLouth and Adam LaRoche.
And it paid off as you would expect.. lots of runners on base for the guys swinging the hotter bats, and lots of runs scored. Oh, and a win to boot. Wait.. maybe it was the second time.. I think I remember Young leading off some too.
Anyway, don’t think for a second that all this was done intentionally by Russell to try and jump start a generally lethargic offense. Naw, that’s too obvious. Instead, focus on the front office probably sending him the card for this game because, like I said before, everyone knew it was going to be a big draw night.
What upsets me as a fan is that Russell and the Pirates have had numerous opportunities to shift our sinking lineup around and bench non-productive players for weeks but they refused to do it. Instead, they wait until they got a full house. That’s rank, almost as rank as..
Matt Capps’ bullsh*t in the 9th inning.
Continue reading » Pirates shuffle lineup expecting large crowd; finally win one
By Jake, on May 30, 2009, at 12:26 am |
Another Ohlendorf start, and yet another three-plus hour boring baseball game but this time he didn’t get his average of 6.68 runs scored of support from his team and ended up with the loss. In fact, he didn’t even get 6 hits of support from his offense who looked lazy in the box against Brian Moehler all night.
Coming off a devastating loss against the Cubs Wednesday night you would have thought the Pirates would have showed up to play a little harder baseball but I suppose they were still reeling. Ohlendorf didn’t help matters with his extremely slow mound work and you know, you would think the guy would be able to pick up on batter’s body language better with so much time in between every pitch. That didn’t happen Friday night.
The game turned against him in the fourth inning of a 1-0 Astros game after Pudge lined one into right for a single and later, with two outs, Maysonet came to the plate who had already hammered or fouled off almost every pitch Ohlendorf has in his arsenol during his second inning at bat.
When I saw Maysonet step in the box and start bouncing around a bit, as an ex-catcher I told myself he was sitting dead red on the first-pitch.. he was too anxious. Ohlendorf and Jaramillo couldn’t get together and Maysonet nervously backed out of the box. He then stepped back in and, sure enough, Ohlendorf fed him a thigh-high fastball inner-third and he took it yard pretty much putting the game out of reach the way we’re swinging the bat right now.
Continue reading » Bucs show up, play disinterested baseball
By Jake, on May 29, 2009, at 1:00 am |
(Edit: since this post has drawn a lot of attention and quite a few folks have asked for a copy of the raw data, I’ve decided to make the resultset available to you. You can download it here in Excel or CSV format.)
Since there has been so much uproar over the strike zone this year, I thought I’d take a quick look at which pitchers and teams appear to be getting the worst of it all. I was surprised by what I found. But let me tell you how I came to these conclusions first so you can follow along if you have your own PITCHf/x (Pfx) database.
I decided to evaluate only one subset of pitches – those that crossed the plate in the strike zone but were ultmately called a ball. So I asked the database to show me all pitches that were in a zone no wider than the plate (17″) and equal or less to the top and bottom of the batter’s height as measured by Pfx operators ((p.px>-0.7083 and p.px<0.7083) and (p.pz>=p.sz_bot and p.pz<=p.sz_top)).
But since I knew the Pfx system hasn’t been 100% accurate on batter heights, I first determined the median batter’s height (both top and bottom measurements) and then only took those pitches that were 25% either side of those two measurements (((p.sz_top>=2.563 and p.sz_top<=4.272) and (p.sz_bot>=1.169 and p.sz_bot<=1.948))).
My disclaimer would read that even though I limited the pitches used herein, even that can’t correct the Pfx operator errors of 2008 where batter heights were measured differently game-to-game. So this isn’t perfect science but it’s worthy enough to warrant more than just a casual glance, if you get my drift. And so you know, I took only 2009 data and compared it to 2008 based on the same criteria and found nearly identical results almost across the board so it’s dang close.
Continue reading » MLB umpires: when a strike is called a ball
By Jake, on May 27, 2009, at 10:21 pm |
What an absolutely bizarre series we just had with the Cubs. Freaky stuff.
Monday it started with the Cubs (having hit a buck-sixty in their last six games) and since we had Maholm on the mound, I thought we had a good shot. Then the freaky acts started.. shots off Andy LaRoche’s glove into left field, numerous shots over LaRoche’s head into the corner with Morgan playing in left center, Maholm walking batters left and right, Dempster beating the heck out of a gatoraid machine in the dugout, and all that just before the third inning ended in game one. Then the good stuff started – players yelling at the umpire crew in games one and three, Zambrano actually bumping the home plate ump and getting tossed in game three, a starter in the Cubs dugout tossed in game one, our catcher arguing a foul tip with the home plate ump – as a batter, no less – in game two, umpires out of sync with the catchers, catchers out of sync with the pitchers, pitchers out of sync with everyone, and on, and on, and on.
It was ‘The Series of the Freaks’ to be sure.
Continue reading » Deja vu: Littlefield Circus Acts; Bucs limp home
By Jake, on May 27, 2009, at 9:01 pm |
Any talk about the Pirates 2009 First Year Player Draft has to start with the name Miguel Sano. We’ve heard whispers from a few sources that the Pirates may choose to take a lower level selection in the first round so they can use some of the money they save toward signing Sano in July.
I’m not so sure those whispers make any sense.
Consider this.. if the Pirates sign Sano who just turned 16 May 11th, sources tell me he’d probably sign a 2010 contract and his clock would then begin that year at age 16, turning 17 in May. That means if the Pirates used every second available to them to develop Sano, he would have to be placed on the 40-man roster after the 2016 season. That also means Sano would start his six years on the Bucs’ 40-man at age 22, turning 23 in May, and then enter free agency after the 2022 season at age 27, just turning 28 next May. That assumes, of course, the Pirates don’t allow him to get into a Super-2 status.
Now consider this – if the Pirates drafted and signed a high school player at age 18 this year, that same player would have to be added to the 40-man one year earlier – after the 2015 season. If the high school player was 17, then not until after the 2016 season which is the same as Sano. But in both cases there is one difference – age of the developed player. The 18 year-old will be 25 his first year on the 40-man, the 17 year-old would be 24. Sano would be 23, so it’s not exactly the same thing.
Continue reading » Expect Bucs to be aggressive in the draft, & for Sano
By Jake, on May 26, 2009, at 11:08 pm |
So through the first four innings Snell has only thrown a handful of mistake pitches and just two of them came back to bite him. The first was Fukudome’s home run on a heater down the middle of the plate he hammered over the left field wall, and in the third, Hoffpauir was fed back-to-back fastballs.. the first one he crushed foul pulling it too hard, the second one he ripped off the right field wall scoring Bradley who had made it to third after Snell walked him with two outs in the inning. The third Cubs run crossed when Fontenot lined a double into the right field corner in the pouring rain and eventually scored when Mike Marshall slashed a single into center with two outs.
Starting the fifth, Snell was quickly approaching that magical 80 pitch mark I talk about here so often and, sure enough, his game fell apart. Soriano somehow managed to get wood on a slider 6″ off the dirt and drive it into right for a single leading off the inning and, with Theriot up, Soriano stole second on Snell and Diaz airmailed a throw 15′ off the bag that went into center instead of holding on to it, and Soriano took third. Luckily, Andy LaRoche handled McLouth’s throw to third because that was 10′ off the bag as well. Theriot flaired one into shallow center with the infield in scoring Soriano and Snell then walked Fukudome putting men at first and second with no outs and taking him over the 80 pitch mark. Bradley then walked taking him to 86 pitches.
And then Snell’s fun began.
Continue reading » Ian Snell rocked. Again.
By Jake, on May 26, 2009, at 1:29 am |
The charts below show on-base averages allowed by Pirates’ pitching on all balls in play from each zone. The first number in each zone is the OBAA and the numbers below that show the number of hits / the number of balls put in play from that zone. The top chart is Pittsburgh pitching only, the bottom chart shows all MLB pitching not including the Pirates. Where you see a red background, that indicates at least a 15% higher OBAA allowed over the MLB average and a green background indicates 15% or less OBAA than the MLB average. Pittsburgh’s hitting chart compared to MLB’s is here.
You’re free to comment on the charts but remember that we’re talking about small sample sizes, even for the MLB numbers. Still, it tends to show interesting trends like living in the middle of the zone has significantly helped us to convert balls in play to outs. Tell me you would have drawn that on your plan going into the season. And there’s much more to scrape from this here but I’ll let you have fun with them for now.
Continue reading » Fun with numbers – Bucs Balls in Play On-base Averages Allowed
By Jake, on May 26, 2009, at 1:27 am |
I found every ball in play from the PITCHf/x database (disclaimer: MLB’s system isn’t 100% perfect yet, but dang close) that was either a hit or an error where the batter reached and counted those as “reaching,” the rest were “outs.” The stats for each zone are below and you can compare us to the MLB averages in the flash chart below that. The red backgrounds behind the averages indicate a zone we are hitting 15% or better in, and the green background represents a colder zone at 15% or more below the MLB average. The numbers below the averages represent the number of hits/number of balls put in play ffrom that zone.
If you don’t have flash turned on, you might want to check it out. Have fun! Next step is to look how batters are tee’ing off on our pitchers in the same zones. If you have any trouble, I’d appreciate a note below.
Continue reading » Fun with numbers – Bucs Balls in Play On-base Averages
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