I woke up on Friday morning, checked my emails, and read the following news in Lee Sinins' daily ATM Report.

The Cubs re-signed P Carlos Marmol to a 1 year, $2.125 million contract, to avoid salary arbitration.

YEAR AGE RSAA  ERA     G  GS   IP    SO   SO/9 BR/9   W   L   SV  NW  NL  TEAM
2007 24   26   1.43   59   0   69.1   96 12.46 10.38   5   1   1   5   1  Cubs         
2008 25   17   2.68   82   0   87.1  114 11.75  8.97   2   4   7   4   2  Cubs         
2009 26    9   3.41   79   0   74     93 11.31 14.59   2   4  15   4   2  Cubs         
CAREER    40   3.42  239  13  307.2  362 10.59 12.34  14  16  23  18  12  
LG AVG     0   4.35           307.2  235  6.88 12.90  17  17

I glanced at Marmol's three-year stat line and noticed that he struck out 11.31 batters per nine innings last season. Not too shabby, I thought. I had been under the impression that he didn't have a particularly good year. Despite his stellar SO/9 rate (or more commonly referred to as K/9), Marmol did indeed struggle as noted in the column next to it on the right. BR/9 stands for "base runners per 9," which is essentially WHIP expressed over nine innings rather than one (although HBP are included in the former and not the latter).

In Marmol's case, hit by pitch is not a trivial statistic. He hit 12 batters last season, good bad enough to rank third in the majors. The 28-year-old righthander, in fact, was the only reliever to reach double digits in this category.

A BR/9 of 14.59 means Marmol allowed 1.62 base runners per inning. That's a horrific rate for any pitcher, much less a closer/setup man. Marmol got there in a strange manner. Carlos allowed 43 hits, 65 walks, and 12 hit batters in 74 innings.

Nolan Ryan, one of the most famous high walks/low hits pitchers of all time, only had two seasons when he allowed more walks than hits. Unlike Marmol, Ryan never approached a BB/H ratio of 1.5:1. His worst ratio was 1.13 in 1970 when he was a 23-year-old part-time starter for the New York Mets. Marmol's BB/H ratio was 1.51 last year. Ryan's career ratio was 0.71. Marmol's ratio over his first four seasons? A stunning 1.03.

Among pitchers with 50 or more games, Marmol had the second-best batting average against (.171 vs. .170 for Jonathan Broxton) and the third-best HR/9 (0.24) and HR/TBF (0.60%) even though he is an extreme flyball pitcher. However, Marmol also had the worst BB/9 (7.91), BB/TBF (19.40%), HBP/9 (0.16), and HBP/TBF (3.58%).

You might say that Marmol missed the strike zone and a lot of bats. If so, you would be right. He struck out, walked, or hit a batter more than half the time! Yup, Carlos had a combined 170 SO, BB, and HBP while facing 335 batters in 2009.

What should we make of Marmol? His K/9, BAA, and HR/9 suggest he is one of the best relievers in the game. On the other hand, his BB and HBP rates indicate that he is a wild man and far from a polished product. Like my house, you can throw a tent over Marmol. While I wouldn't want to exterminate him if I were Jim Hendry or Lou Piniella, I might be inclined to sell tickets to his circus act if I were new Cubs' owner Tom Ricketts.

By the way, Brett and former major winners Padraig Harrington, Davis Love III, Corey Pavin, Vijay Singh, and Mike Weir all missed the cut last week as Steve Stricker won his fourth tournament in less than a year to pass Phil Mickelson as the No. 2 player in the World Golf Rankings.

The importance of managers peaked at the turn of the century. They inhabited a specific period in the evolution of baseball between two crucial metamorphoses of the game. First, in the late nineteenth century, field generals like Gus Schmelz and Ned Hanlon caused the rise of the modern manager and the extinction of the old business manager. By placing a premium of the preparation of players before contests and handling strategy during them, the position of manager came into its own. A generation later, the rise of the front office diminished the manager’s position by serving as a rival power source within the franchise. Between these transformations, managerial power in the sport crested. Managers ascended into the ranks of ownership with greater frequency than at any other time in baseball history, as there were fewer steps between themselves and owners. Even those who did not own a share of the club frequently had considerable autonomy. When John McGraw became Giants manager, he told the owners which players to keep or remove from the roster, indicating who called the shots for that franchise. Not all managers wielded such authority in this era, and many held considerable power in the future, but they had their strongest opportunity to control the entire franchise at the turn of the century.

Managerial power also reached its zenith because coaching was more important in this period than any other. Old time baseball is often remembered as a glory era, when players dedicated themselves to the craft of the game in a way that modern players with their supposedly softer attitudes never could. Though this attitude is very frequent in the modern day, ideas that the old-timers were better, wiser, and more dedicated are as old as the game itself.

People look at John McGraw and his devotion to those precious fundamentals. He ordered his players come to the park to practice and work out for several hours every day, making the athletes perform precisely in accordance with his formidable will. Other managers, like Frank Chance, made a similar fervent push for sound ball. Chance’s Cubs had a well-earned reputation as the sharpest players in the league.

However, not only was the deadball era far from being the golden era of fundamentals, but the evidence used to make it seem like a Mecca of proper execution are the very facts that indicate otherwise. John McGraw did not want his players practicing constantly because they were so committed, but because those who earned a spot in major league baseball commonly displayed poor fundamentals. The book Crazy ‘08 by Cait Murphy provides an interesting window into baseball during the 1908 NL pennant race. Despite focusing on teams that diligently practiced their basics – McGraw’s Giants and Chance’s Cubs – examples of shoddy play litter the book. It was not a matter of errors; the gloves and conditions of the day made muffed grounders understandable. The problems went deeper. Virtually every game contained at least one boneheaded play that could not be blamed on the conditions. Flies landed between fielders. A base runner would be doubled off on a pop up. An outfielder would misplay a grounder for an inside-the-park home run. These plays still happen, but not nearly as often. If the Cubs and Giants played like that, imagine how the doormats played. There were also some extremely smart plays, but the floor for proper conduct was much lower in 1908.

It seems strange that teams that practiced so religiously played so poorly, but think for a second. Much of what is now received wisdom was still being worked out. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, players slowly began figuring out how to work together, or back each other up. For example, what should a catcher do when a base runner is caught in a run-down between first and second? Where should the shortstop go when the runner on first heads for third on a single to right? People are not born knowing the answers.

Look at it from the point of view of someone born in 1879 earning a roster slot in 1900. He grew up in a world where even the best players at the highest levels were still learning the core basics. It did not trickle down to Iowa’s cornfields or Pennsylvania’s coal mines overnight. Neither TV nor radio existed to teach him how the pros acted. Odds were very good he had never seen a big league game, and may not know anyone who has. Sandlot baseball has always been self-regulating, but there is usually at least some fundamental knowledge for kids to rely on. When he starts playing semipro ball, his manager was likely another player, probably under 30 years old himself. That man hopefully has some exposure to the basics being threshed out, but that was not guaranteed. Even if the skipper had basic knowledge of fundamentals, perhaps he cannot coach well. Depending on the club’s finances, he might be a business manager. If a kid could hit or possessed a strong arm, he would receive playing time, no matter how ignorant he was of fundamentals.

Thus you end up with the following story told by baseball historian Fred Stein. In 1897, a rawboned young buck called Honus Wagner began playing for the Louisville Colonels. His manager, a not yet 25-years-old Fred Clarke, told the kid to “lay one down” in his next at bat. Instead, Wagner hit a home run. Appreciative of the result but curious as to why the rookie ignored his instructions to bunt, Clarke asked Wagner what happened. Shamefacedly, the future Hall of Famer shortstop admitted he had never heard the phrase “lay one down” before. He had no idea what his manager was talking about. This was the situation Clarke, McGraw, and Chance contended with.

Fundamentals first have to be developed. Then they diffuse. Next, their instruction becomes institutionalized. Once the lessons become second nature to one generation, the next wave can be fully and immediately immersed in them. Nowadays, high schoolers are better versed in solid fundamentals than many big leaguers a century ago. After enough years and decades go by, fundamentals are so ingrained even Little Leaguers learn them, and you assume that everyone getting paid to play the game knows them by heart. Even a poor kid from the Dominican Republic has access to more knowledgeable adults and coaches than was the case for an 1890s Wisconsin farm boy.

This might oversell the point. At SABR’s annual convention in 2007, I heard Cait Murphy talk about what she learned from researching her book, and she was surprised at how advanced the level of play sometimes was. Examples of intelligent play existed – for instance the Cubs had worked out an impressive system of defensive signals amongst each other. However, such plays coincided with embarrassing miscues, as the floor for acceptable play was quite low. A wide discrepancy existed in the quality of fundamental ball played in these years. The more advanced examples of shrewd gamesmanship were often the result of major league managers instilling those values into their charges.

This explains why coaching fundamentals mattered so much for this generation of managers. The basic ideas of how to play had been worked out, now it was a time to diligently instruct them to the players. McGraw, Chance, and their ilk focused on the fundamentals because their players so sorely lacked knowledge that these pointers could significantly improve squads.

A century later, in his bestseller Moneyball, Michael Lewis introduced the phrase “market inefficiency” to baseball fans. He argued the 2002 A’s won 103 games despite a low payroll because they realized the baseball world undervalued the importance of on-base percentage. By exploiting this gap between reality and perception, A’s GM Billy Beane made his team a winner. A century earlier, the market inefficiency was fundamentals. The best managers, such as McGraw and Chance, were those who could transform raw clumps of talent into majestic creations. One should not underestimate how important sound play was back then. In the early twentieth century some teams made 100 fewer errors a year than their rivals. Combined with improved base running, solid mental play, and all those other little things, proper fundamentals were worth many wins.

Chris Jaffe is an instructor of history and a columnist for the The Hardball Times. He lives in Schaumburg, Illinois. For more information about Chris Jaffe and Evaluating Baseball’s Managers, visit the author’s website.

I still read box scores, the medium has changed to the internet, but the box score itself is largely the same. I guess the format has stayed largely the same since the mid-1800s. Some of the stats are different but the layout is very similar. Over 150 years with little change shows that the format is remarkably successful, but that does not mean there cannot be innovations. FanGraphs's WPA charts are not box scores per se, but are a very effective way of presenting what happened in a game.

I thought it would be an interesting exercise to attempt to create a new box score. I wanted it to retain the original box score's quality of presenting a relatively large amount of information in a relatively small space, but making that data accessible and not overwhelming. Beyond that I hoped my new method gave a more immediate feeling for the pace and tenor of the game, like the WPA chart does.

Here is my attempt. The image is may be too small, but I kept it that way so that it didn't push out the right margin of the page. You can click on it for a larger version. I used game one of the 2009 World Series for the example.

Each at-bat is represented by a bar, the height of which denotes the base the batter reached. White bars are for outs, black for hits or walks. The batter's progression around the rest of the bases that inning is indicated in gray (steals have a vertical black line through them). Runners on-base during an at-bat are indicated in red: circles for those not moved over in the at-bat, lines to show their progression as a result of the at-bat and an 'ex' if they were thrown or tagged out in that at-bat.

The score can be counted along as the black or gray bars reach the top. That also allows you to count individual batter's runs scored or pitcher's runs allowed. Red lines that reach the top are RBIs.

Compared to a traditional box score it is harder to find an individual player's line. For example to see that Chase Utley went 2-4 with 2 HRs, 2 runs, 2 RBIs, a strikeout and a walk you have to go through, find his at-bats and count all of the events. But the trade-off is, I think, this formulation gives a better feel for the pace of the game, and allows the events to be easily recreated: in the top of the first CC Sabathia escaped a base-loaded two-outs jam; Phil Hughes took over to start the eighth and walked the only two batters he faced, both of whom came around to score on Raul Ibanez's single; Utley's two solo-HRs were the only runs through the first seven innings; Cliff Lee didn't allow a runner past first until the ninth, and up to that point faced just three batters over the minimum; the Yankees burned through five relievers, who gave up four runs, in the last two innings; the top of the ninth ended with Shane Victorino getting thrown out at home on a Ryan Howard double and the game ended with two more Cliff Lee strikeouts. All of this can be easily seen through a close, but not difficult, reading of the chart.

What do you think of this format: Complicated and poorly laid out? Hard to read? Brilliant? I welcome constructive criticism in light of what you want from a representation of a baseball game.

Batters have the advantage when the pitch is middle-middle, and for the other eight zones, the run value is negative.

Getting right to the leaderboards. There are nine of these, but I’m going to leave the commentary short and I’ll leave a spreadsheet at the end.

Down-In

Ryan Howard and David Ortiz are similar type hitters who like the ball out over the plate but can get beat inside. Carlos Delgado hit a homer, three doubles and a single on his eleven swings at pitches down and in.

Down-Middle

I’m surprised Derek Jeter’s on this list, as he’s a successful groundball hitter. Dan Uggla and Jack Cust on the other hand are fly ball hitters.

Down-Away

It appears foot speed is instrumental if one is to succeed by swinging at pitches down and away. I’m assuming the highest percentage of grounders are on pitches in this location, and speed is important to get on base via the grounder. Pitching Howard down in the zone seems to be a good idea.

Middle-In

Derrek Lee likes the ball inside.

Middle-Middle

This is clearly the most telling list in terms of quality of hitter. To be successful swinging the bat, you have to be able to hit the ball pitched down the middle.

Middle-Away

I already knew that Adrian Gonzalez and Robinson Cano excelled hitting the ball the other way, so it makes sense that they also excel at hitting outside pitches. The Phillies are not so good at hitting the ball when pitched away. They are good at baserunning, however.

Up-In

Michael Young also likes the ball inside. He beat out Lee by six runs last year on pitches at least half a foot inside. Seth Smith had seven hits on the 14 pitches he swung at up and in, including four for extra bases.

Up-Middle

Michael Cuddyer was last at pitches up and in, but first at pitches up and over the plate. I find this very interesting. If you’re a pitcher, you can jam Cuddyer, but you better not miss.

Up-Away

It took you a whole article to find Albert Pujols at the top of a leaderboard. My analysis confirms Rich Lederer's preliminary hypothesis. Pujols continues to be good.

Here's a spreadsheet containing all hitters with at least ten pitches swung at in a zone. And why not? Pitchers too.

In the lineup David Ortiz, Victor Martinez and Adrian Beltre will become unrestricted free agents at the end of the 2010 season. Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon's contract also expires and given his not-so-subtle eagerness for his big payday, it's fair to say he will probably be moving on. The most critical looming free agent decision, however, will center on Josh Beckett. Beckett will pitch out his 30-year old season this year, his fifth in a Red Sox uniform.

The choice to extend Beckett will test Theo Epstein and his Baseball Operations staff. Beckett's popular, both with teammates and Boston's rabid fan base. We all know that Beckett has experienced an inordinate amount of post-season success. And yet, whether it's a nagging injury here or there, his proclivity to give up the gopher ball or the mere fact that he will be 31 in the first season of his new contract, the Red Sox have a number of red flags to consider. Let's take stock of the factors surrounding Beckett's case.

The first thing to understand is that Beckett is a truly elite pitcher. Since he joined the Red Sox, let's look at where he has ranked in the American League in both xFIP and Wins Above Replacement (WAR):

          xFIP      WAR
2006       21       30
2007        4        2
2008        2        8
2009        7        7

In just under 800 total innings pitched since 2006, Beckett has a 116 ERA+ but if you take out his outlier 5.01 ERA season his first year in Boston, that ERA+ figure jumps to 126 while averaging just under 200 innings per season. To see how he has stacked up since 2007 with other American League pitchers, consider below:

                IP      ERA+
Greinke        553.2     149
Halladay       710.1     141
F. Hernandez   629.2     133
Lackey         563.2     129
Sabathia       593.1     129
Beckett        587.1     126

You get the picture. Josh Beckett is an excellent power arm with historically standout peripherals and dependable durability, and that's a critical part of this equation. He's not Mike Hampton or Barry Zito. And yet, before you commit the sort of dollars it will take to secure Beckett's services, it's essential to understand how pitchers perform from 31 on.

Above, I showed where Beckett stacked up among American League pitchers from 2007 to 2009 with at least 500 innings pitched. Applying the same parameters but extending it out to include the National League and pitchers 31 and older, we get a total of 10 pitchers (as opposed to 35 under 31). Half of them posted ERA+ totals under 100 over that time, and the rest of the list looks like this:

                IP      ERA+
Lilly          588.2     124
D. Davis       542.0     110
Lowe           605.2     108
Pettitte       614.0     104
Washburn       523.1     102

The rest of the list includes Kevin Millwood, Jamie Moyer, Braden Looper, Jeff Suppan and Livan Hernandez. Aside from Ted Lilly, I think the Red Sox would be disappointed with output in line with any of the other 9 pitchers. But let's tinker with the list further. Let's say the Red Sox or any other team giving Beckett 5 years would like him to average 175 innings per season. So let's set the following Play Index list parameters: at least 875 innings (5x175) with an ERA+ of at least 110 from 2000 to 2009, age 31 and older. Here is what we get.

Whoa. You might have to go to the very bottom of that list before you even get to a non future Hall of Famer. In Major League Baseball, only the truly elite starting pitchers survive. And Jamie Moyer and Tim Wakefield, I suppose, but that's another story.

The first lesson here is that it's critical to understand that there is a premium to be paid on the unrestricted free agent market, and that you have to recalibrate performance expectations. You might not get the late-aughts Beckett for his next contract, and it might feel like you've overpaid at times, but when you consider how much value Boston got in this last contract, it could all even out. Let's take the John Lackey deal as an example and given Lackey's similarities to Beckett, it's not a bad proxy at all. If you believe Fangraphs free agent dollar values assigned to each win, all the Red Sox need from Lackey to make the deal worthwhile is output like Scott Baker or Carl Pavano produced in 2009, or Andy Sonnanstine in 2008. Can Beckett do that in his 31 to 35 seasons? Maybe.

The second lesson is that, given the odds of a 30-plus pitcher living up to his end of the deal, there are probably better areas to allocate your free agent spend. In Boston's case, this is especially true given the commitment they have made to John Lackey this off-season. As a Red Sox fan, I am not ready to state explicitly that they should let Beckett walk but $35-$40 million committed to Lackey and Beckett annually from 2011-2014 has the potential to hamper Boston's flexibility. As with anything else, this decision will come down to Boston's ability to meld medical, scouting and performance analysis insight to generate an accurate projection of Beckett's future output.

Now don't mess it up!

For those unfamiliar with the type analysis, the point of it is to reduce a large number of potentially correlated variables down to a few key underlying factors that explain the variables. The researcher feeds the computer a bunch of records (in the this case, players) and several key variables (in this case, their statistics), The computer, blind to what those variables actually mean, spits out a set of underlying factors which explain the "true" underlying causes for the variables in question. It does this by maximizing the variability between the players. It's then up to the researcher to interpret what each factor represents. In this case, I'm looking for the one underlying factor that best describes a player.

In the baseball world, I wondered what one underlying factor best determined a player's statistics. Normally, this type of analysis would be done on many more variables, but I wanted to see what it would pick out from players' basic, non-team influenced statistics: 1B, 2B, 3B, HR, BB, K.

The principle component analysis spits out a bunch of factors, each with decreasing importance in determining a player's statistics. Only the first one really had much meaning to it, and with only six variables to analyze, this wasn't much of a surprise. The analysis attempts to differentiate players as much as possible, but the big question was how did it divide the players? It could have pitted good players vs. bad players, power hitters vs. contact hitters, patient players vs. free swingers, etc. But what happened?

In fact the factor loadings for the first principle component were as follows:

1B -.556
2B .132
3B -.259
HR .502
BB .382
SO .456

As it turns out, the analysis shows that if you want to put the players into two distinct camps, one camp (whose overall scores will be positive) is made up guys who hit with power, walk a lot, and strikeout a lot, while another camp (whose scores will be negative) is made up of guys who hit a lot of singles and triples and make contact.

I actually think this makes a lot of sense in describing a player's hitting style in just one number. While of course there are plenty of metrics out there to determine a player's skill and value to a team, there isn't a single metric that describes a player's playing style on a sliding scale. A Batting Style score using these values as weights does just that.

On one end of the spectrum are contact hitters, small-ball, Mike Scioscia/Ozzie Guillen type players who make their living with singles, triples, and not striking out much. The other end are Earl Weaver/Billy Beane type players who hit homers and draw walks. Which type of player a man is best determines his statistics. It's Moneyball vs. small-ball. This one number represents the spectrum of playing styles.

To get a Batting Style score for each player, we can simply multiply their normalized statistics by the weights above. Doing so gives a normally distributed set of players with a range going from about -4 to 4. To make the results a little more intuitive, I converted this to a scale where the average was 100 with a standard deviation of 15. Players with high scores are "three true outcome" type players while those with low scores play with the opposite style.

How does the Batting Style number look according to 2009 data? The top ten most extreme players of each batting style are shown below:

Now, it's hard to imagine a two more different sets of players. Everything that the first group of players does well, the second group does poorly, and vice-versa. Both sets have some good players and some bad players, and whether a player is good or bad doesn't much affect his Style score. Adam Dunn and Jason Bay provided good hitting value to their clubs, as did Jacoby Ellsbury and Ichiro, they just did it in different ways. A stat like wOBA tells you the value of a particular player. For instance, in 2009 Russell Branyan had a wOBA of .368 and Ichiro had a wOBA of .369. So they seem like pretty much the same player, right? Of course not. Ichrio and Branyan have two completely opposite styles of play. Ichiro has speed, gets a ton of singles and rarely homers, walks, or strikes out. Meanwhile Branyan's entire value is based on the long ball and the base on balls. The Batting Style score shows the immense difference between the two players. Branyan has the fifth highest Batting Style score, while Ichiro has the second lowest score.

Of course, not every player falls into one of these two types. Players who have a "medium" style can have moderate scores on each metric. For example, Ronnie Belliard does everything about average, hence his Batting Style score is about average. It also includes unusual players who don't fall into the usual patterns. Aaron Hill doesn't walk much or strikeout much, but he hits homeruns. Hence, his overall style falls in the middle. Meanwhile Bobby Abreu walks a lot, but also gets a lot of singles. Hence, he doesn't fall into either extreme either. The Batting Style doesn't discriminate based on the skill of the player, although as you might expect, guys who have the power/walk Batting Style are as a whole slightly more valuable simply because guys who hit a lot of homeruns and take a lot of walks, are generally more valuable than singles hitters, though the difference is not major. Guys on the contact end of the spectrum have a wOBA of about 10 points lower than guys on the power end of the spectrum. You can check out the full list of player Batting Style scores here:

View image

It's also interesting to look at this same list through history. Which players had the most extreme styles of during each decade? The list below (including all players with at least 1000 career PA's) shows the top three extreme players in each decade.

As you might expect, Babe Ruth is the original power/walk/strikeout player. As someone who revolutionized the game in that regard, it comes as no surprise. Harmon Killebrew, Mark McGwire, Dave Kingman, are others that famously fall into that same mold and are identified here. Meanwhile, Willie Wilson, Nellie Fox, and Matty Alou are on the other end of the spectrum - precisely the guys that you would expect. The analysis was run on the dataset as a whole (though to really be correct, it really should be run on each individual year). Over time, the styles have definitely shifted away from the contact approach and towards the power/walk style. Overall, there's not really a surprise in the bunch except for the fact that I've never heard of some of the older, more obscure players. Personally, I find both styles of player fun to watch as their extreme styles seem to make them more colorful, though I think that the power guys have historically caught more grief from fans and have been underrated up until the recent sabermetric revolution.

Whether a statistic like Batting Style has any real value to it or not, I think it's fun. Obviously, a line of six statistics isn't too hard to digest, but I like the idea of a single number describing a player's hitting style. In any case, it was interesting that the principle component analysis picked up on the two distinct styles and drew the scale the way it did. I think if you asked fans to name two completely opposite hitters, you would get a lot of Juan Pierre/Adam Dunn responses, which shows that the principle component analysis picked out an intuitive result.

The fantasy product, to be released this month on a trial basis, contains a draft kit and in-season tools. Player news, stats, and data visualizations are all available with at most three clicks of the mouse. Bloomberg Sports is not providing any new data sources to the consumer, but in partnerships with MLB and Rotowire, BBGSports aggregates relevant player statistics and news, laying the data out in a friendly and efficient interface. Pretty much all of the offensive and pitching stats/splits available on Baseball Reference and FanGraphs are available in Bloomberg’s product. Even better, those stats that aren’t included can be written into the system. You can create new stats and the product is adaptable to the most obscure fantasy league settings. All of these stats can be easily ranked and charted. The best visualization I saw was their “spider” chart, which is similar to Justin Bopp’s DiamondView and Kevin Dame's 5 Tool Analyzer.

Attached to the fantasy product will be a team of writers led by Jonah Keri, whose background in business and baseball analysis makes him a neat fit, but more importantly, Keri’s refined post-up game and precise outlet passes are reminiscent of a younger, Jewish Wes Unseld. BBGSports has decided to produce some of its written content for free, and lock some behind a pay wall. I imagine the free content will be similar to FanGraphs’ written content, in that it will use progressive analysis to inform the reader as well as to promote the site’s statistical engine. But what will be behind the pay wall? The Baseball Prospectus model is sensible in that BP leaves its more random material, for lack of a better term, in the open (Interviews, TWIQ, Roundtables), while leaving its selling point—progressive analysis—behind the pay wall. However, BBGSports isn’t selling its analysis. In fact, BBGSports is selling others' analysis, as Bloomberg specializes in collecting and distributing relevant news from thousands and thousands of web sites. So I wonder if BBGSports is just going to put some of its written content behind the pay wall to satisfy the consumer who likes to feel that he’s getting more bang for his buck. I hope that BBGSports finds a way to differentiate its free analysis from that which is paid for. I look forward to seeing what Keri and Co. have in store, and who it is that composes Keri’s company.

My chief criticism of BBGSports’ fantasy product is, oddly enough, with its only never-before-seen-to-me data. Again, I don't think the product was built to harvest any new data, but rather to provide an incredibly convenient database that consists of already-available information. In that mission, BBGSports has succeeded. But BBGSports went ahead and set up a proprietary algorithm to rank players in a traditional 5x5 fantasy league. The rank, called “B-Rank,” is not customizable to league settings as of yet and the methodology behind the ranking system was not explained despite multiple questions from the audience. The speakers, headlined by the impressive Stephen Orban, did not share any intentions to market the B-Rank, nor did they explain the B-Rank’s value, yet they nevertheless insisted on keeping it entirely secret. Now, to be fair, there is a very nice ranking feature that allows you to rank players using whatever categories and filters you’d like, and exclude drafted players or put players on your watch list and all that good stuff. But the B-Rank looms over it. One of my favorite things about my fantasy experience at ESPN is the player rater, which rates players in each category based on a Z-Score, and then sums those scores to form a comprehensive rating. This is intuitive and understandable, and I can adjust these rankings to my own whims since I understand what goes into them. But with the B-Rank, I have no idea why players are ranked where they are.

Same with the new projection system. Even if BBGSports is releasing the new PECOTA, we wouldn’t be buying it, since BBGSports hasn’t shown that it is an expert in sabermetrics, and the speakers were in fact adamant that they are not baseball experts. So why should I care that BBGSports is launching a projection system? If you were to follow the projection’s advice and draft Ryan Howard fourth or Matt Kemp sixth, I would take pity on your children, for they would have been born to a poor fantasy baseball player. Instead of taking its cue from Baseball Prospectus, whose initiative it is to develop new and progressive analytics, BBGSports should follow in FanGraphs’ footsteps and assemble an assortment of projections. And if BBGSports wants its own projection system, I feel the user should have the ability to modify the projections however he or she pleases. If BBGSports wants B-Rank to catch on, then BBGSports will need to treat it the same way as FanGraphs treated WAR. FanGraphs went through pains to ensure that readers understood the thought process and calculations behind WAR. It would be a big plus and potential selling point for BBGSports to create a ranking system that can become universally accepted among fantasy players, but that’s not happening if fantasy players don’t know what the hell B-Rank consists of.

BBGSports might want to allow one of its programmers to play around with the data and periodically release new metrics that incline to the sabermetric bent. As I’ve stated, I don’t think Bloomberg should be trying to introduce any proprietary metrics, but along the same lines as BBGSports' written analysis, perhaps a quantitative analyst can demonstrate how the product in place can be utilized to develop one’s own projections/rankings/metrics using only the data provided by BBGSports. The B-Rank would be a great start, if only its purpose wasn't defeated by protecting the algorithm.

Fortunately, BBGSports appears genuinely interested in consumer feedback. I feel that its willingness to accept and respond to feedback will be instrumental to BBGSports' success. The fantasy product exists to make the fantasy player’s job easier and more fun, which necessitates the fantasy player’s input. As for the pro product, with only 30 teams to sell to, BBGSports will have to cater individually to each and every team. To get a glimpse of the the pro product, see David Appelman’s post. Incorporated into the pro product are pitchf/x data and and the tools to integrate whatever proprietary information teams are already holding into the BBGSports database, which can only be accessed via a proper bar code and finger print. The visuals provided by Appelman and Ben Kabak speak to BBGSports as an innovative and interactive product. And from what I've heard and seen so far, improvements will be ongoing.

Already in an advantageous relationship with MLB and MLB advanced media, Bloomberg Sports will likely want to partner up with STATS, Baseball Info Solutions, and Baseball America. Bloomberg Sports will eventually become the leading distributor for all private data collectors, as BBGSports does a better job of presenting that data than any other provider I’ve seen.

I'm grouping his four-seam and two-seam fastball. When I split the two, I find his two-seamer is much more effective than his four-seamer, but still not even as valuable as his off-speed offerings. I mean his changeup and slider are true out pitches. In fact, his change might be the best out pitch in baseball. You probably already know that. Yet his fastball on these counts is merely average. Would he be better off sacrificing some of the effectiveness from his changeup in exchange for some added effectivenss on his fastball? Theoretically, yes, this would be the right move, and theoretically, he could do this by throwing his changeup so often that batters come to expect it, and at the same time throwing his fastball so rarely that it acts like an out pitch, in that batters are fooled by it.

Yet for some reason, whenever I look at a pitcher's different pitch type run values, I notice disparities. Check out the A's duo of Brett Anderson and Mike Wuertz, who possibly possess the two best sliders in the game. Apparently, their fastballs suffer in spite of their extraordinary sliders. My guess is that they use their sliders as out pitches, so I wanted to see if there's a trend among pitchers to have a disparity in value between their out pitch and their fastballs. This type of analysis could, and probably should, be done for all counts, but I've been intrigued by the theory of the out pitch, so I'm limiting my sample to only pitches on 0-2 and 1-2 counts.

For the sake of simplicity, I'm grouping all fastballs together (four-seam, two-seam, cutter), and all off-speed pitches together (curve, slider, change, splitter, knuckler). So, in the following plot each pitcher represents a data point (minimum 200 pitches, Mo excluded), and the color of each dot represents how often a pitcher throws his fastball.

There appears to be a slightly positive trend line heading in the direction we would expect. Pitchers who extract value from one pitch type tend to get some value out of their other pitch types. Also, I see more yellow and red points on the right side and more blue points on the left side, meaning pitchers who throw more off-speed pitches have had better success with them than pitchers who throw fewer off-speed pitches.

Given that the average run value is defined as zero, 59% of pitchers perform at an above average rate with their off-speed offerings, while only 38% are above average with their fastballs. There are two and a half times more pitchers who have above average off-speed pitches and below average fastballs than pitchers who have below average off-speed pitches and above average fastballs.

As for correlation coefficients, which are on a scale of -1 to 1 with 1 representing a strong positive relationship, -1 representing a strong negative relationship, and 0 representing little or no correlation, I found that there is a weak correlation of .09 between fastball and off-speed run values. In addition, there is a correlation of -.25 between pitch type run value and pitch type frequency. Again, all of these data suggest that pitchers are not throwing their best pitches often enough in out pitch situations.

Returning to the above graph, one interesting note I made is that the two bluest points also show up as the two highest points on the graph. This means that the two pitchers who have the lowest fastball percentage have also had the poorest fastball results. Want to take a guess at the names behind the data points?

Well, it turns out knuckleballers should stick to the knuckleball. R.A. Dickey and Tim Wakefield aren't fooling anybody by trying to sneak a fastball in there. Wake's thrown 34 fastballs in 0-2/1-2 counts, and he's generated nine outs compared to six hits. That's abysmal. Dickey is just as bad, with 14 outs against nine hits. They're doing batters a favor by throwing fastballs.

There seems to be a stigma to pitching backwards, but if your out pitch is your best pitch, and you can throw it for strikes and it doesn't add stress on your arm, then you should consider turning your fastball into a secondary pitch, making it a potential out pitch as well

Pitch type run values don't tell the whole story. It's important to look at what happens in the entire at-bat, not just the one pitch. For example, it's possible that pitchers are throwing fastballs outside the strike zone to set up breaking balls as their out pitch. So they're intentionally lowering the value of their fastballs, and therefore are getting better overall results when they throw the fastball even though the fastball doesn't get the glory in the run value column. However, the conclusions I found when looking at the linear weights value of the entire at bat remain the same as when I analyzed single pitch run values.

I'm including a scatter plot of the categories I've used--fastball/off-speed percentage, fastball/off-speed run value, and fastball/off-speed linear weights-the overall linear weights value of the at-bat following the 0-2/1-2 fastball/off-speed pitch). Use the scroll bar on the bottom right to locate your pitcher of interest.

The problem for the Cubs, and any other team for that matter, is that resources and roster spots are finite. Coming off of 83 wins playing in one of baseball's weakest divisions, a few focused, tactical moves could have resulted in enough wins added to spring the North Siders into contention. As it stands at the end of the Hot Stove season, their starting rotation looks thin and injury prone while their offense looks to be improved. On the whole, it looks like this Cubs team should be just a bit better than last year's club. With luck, they'll contend. With Xavier Nady in the fold, they'll still need luck.

It's hard not to think back to the Milton Bradley episode and how much it distracted Chicago when looking at their moves this off-season. Losing Bradley and picking up Carlos Silva and Marlon Byrd, wherever you come down on the argument that they just had to part ways with Bradley, amounts to wheel-spinning. Byrd is no better than Bradley, Silva is just awful. Nady might hit southpaws better than Kosuke Fukudome, but how much of that differential offensively does Nady give back when he takes the field in right? As I see it, the most enticing part of this addition is that it protects against further Soriano deterioration. That's no small thing, but in an off-season where just a few shrewd moves could have made all that difference, Bradley, Byrd, Silva, Nady - the Cubs just haven't seem focused.

With the ownership commotion surrounding the club and Soriano's bi-weekly direct deposit hamstringing baseball operations, I can empathize. But at the same time, this was an off-season that called for even greater focus. There wasn't going to be a lot of money to spend, but the Cubs had a roster on the cusp. And it still is on the cusp, so it's not like they've mismanaged their way out of any hope for 2010. They just could have done more, and the announcement of the Nady signing tells me that they're not thinking strategically enough. Nady just won't make much of an impact, when there was impact at a great price still to be had on the free agent market.

You want to go short money and improve the club? Well what about Orlando Hudson or Felipe Lopez for a team whose second basemen hit .254/.310/.357 in 2009? If the Cubs opted to bolster their starting pitching instead, to avoid relying on some combination of Tom Gorzelanny and Randy Wells and Sean Marshall for 400 innings, then Jon Garland and his 200 league average innings could have helped. Garland would have led the 2009 Cubs in innings pitched. And heavens, Johnny Damon is still sitting out there. Maybe you don't want to hurt Alfonso Soriano's feelings or you otherwise sense a logjam in the outfield, but Damon is still an excellent player whose value seems to have plummeted without good reason.

Again, I want to stress that I can't get too worked up about any of the Cubs moves this off-season. I understand the chemistry stuff and the case for why Bradley had to go. Center field was a hole that Marlon Byrd should be able to fill. Xavier Nady adds some depth and a nice platoon partner if deployed appropriately. But if the Cubs looked at their roster and determined they only had a few moves to make this off-season, I wish they would have been executed with more focus and precision. Because a couple wins could mean all the difference in the National League Central.

A major explanation for the difference in stolen base strategies is that teams were rationally reacting to run environments. As scoring became harder, teams played "small ball" in order to scratch out runs. The goal here is to find out if teams actually did this and whether it was a rational strategy.

First, the relationship between runs and stolen bases. One would think that stolen bases would increase as run scoring decreased. Is this the case? According the above scatter plot, we see a very tenuous relationship. The points out to the right are deadball era years, where stolen bases are high. However, contrary to popular perception run scoring wasn't all that low during the deadball years. The relationship isn't any stronger after 1920 either - the rest of the scatter points are basically in a big clump. That pretty much puts to rest the myth that stolen base trends are a reaction to run scoring.

But is there another relationship between offense and stolen bases? Indeed, the graph above shows the relationship between steals and home runs over time. As you can see, steals and homers seem to be inversely related. Meanwhile, it doesn't have much of a relationship with scoring. A scatter plot doesn't tell quite as strong of a picture, although it's very easy to identify various eras based on these two statistics, which is something that I found pretty cool, even though it wasn't the point of the study.

It would make sense that teams would limit their steals when run scoring was high, but it might make even more sense when those runs are coming via the longball. Obviously, there's no point in taking an extra base if you're likely to be knocked in with a homerun anyway.

The real test of looking at the value of the stolen base is the break-even point. How often must a stolen base attempt be successful, before it is a good play? And how did this breakeven point change over time? Using Tom Tango's Run Expectancy Generator (which didn't do a perfect job across eras mainly because of differing error rates, but it's close enough) I calculated the break-even points on a no-out steal of second base. Obviously there are other situations in which a steal takes place, but being a common one, it's reasonable to use this as a baseline for how advantageous the stolen base is across eras. Picking the most typical point in each of the eras above, and tossing in anomalies 1968, 1930, and today, we can see that while the breakeven point has changed some, there's not a huge difference.

1905: 74.0%
1923: 80.3%
1930: 81.8%
1937: 80.5%
1959: 79.3%
1968: 75.2%
1985: 79.3%
2001: 81.1%
2009: 81.0%

Obviously looking at the break-even rates, we would expect that the number of steals would be highest in the dead-ball era and in 1968. While steals were higher in the dead-ball era, the number of stolen bases in the 1960's was eclipsed by the 1980's and even the current era, which has much higher scoring. While stealing was a better proposition in the 60's, it was used as much as it is today.

Of course, there is a final factor that comes into play: the likelihood that a stolen base attempt is successful. I can't think of much good reason for why the stolen base success rate would change over time, but the fact is that it has changed dramatically. Modern base stealers are vastly more successful than they have been in the past. Why this is, I'm not sure. Perhaps players are faster now, without a corresponding increase in catcher arm strength and accuracy. Perhaps teams are better at reading and timing pitchers' moves to the plate. Or perhaps teams are just better about stealing bases they know they can make. In any case, the chart below combines the data.

As you can see, the stolen base success rate varied tremendously over time. The variation here is far more than the variation in the break-even rate. Hence it would make sense that teams would steal more bases today than in the past. Certainly there is more stealing in the modern 1974-2009 era, than there was between 1930-1973. However, the odd scenario is the deadball era and the 1920's, where stealing was still prevalent, despite abysmal success rates. In the 1920's stealing was about as lucrative as it is today, but with about a 55% success rate vs. a 73% success rate. Nevertheless, stealing was a common tactic.

Looking at the data as a whole, there's not a lot of rhyme or reason about why some eras are high stolen base eras and others are not. The rate of stolen base tends to go up and down without any real correlation between rate of success or strategic value. Part of the problem seems to come from the fact that homeruns seem to be the biggest determinant of whether teams steal or not.

However, home runs don't have a major impact on the breakeven rate. Using today's data, I kept the number of runs constant but doubled the number of homers. The breakeven point went up, but slightly (from 81.0 to 82.9). Similarly I brought the number of home runs down to zero (keeping scoring constant), and the breakeven point again changed very slightly (from 81.0 to 80.5). With the breakeven point barely moving despite dramatic differences in homerun rate, using homers or lack of homers to justify base-stealing strategy isn't a good move. However, I have a feeling that if home runs dropped precipitously today, teams would begin to employ vastly more basestealing - likely an irrational move. More important to a team's strategy is the run-scoring environment, no matter how the runs are scored.

In conclusion, baseball teams have behaved irrationally with their base-stealing strategies through history. It seems that steals have been a function of homers, or simply fashion, and not based on the actual value of the steal. But did you really expect John McGraw to have read the Hidden Game of Baseball?

In this week's edition of Graphing the Hitters, I'm going to concentrate on Plate Discipline. The graph below plots walk rate (BB/PA) on the x-axis and strikeout rate (SO/PA) on the y-axis for every qualified batter in 2009. The intersection of the MLB averages for BB% (8.88%) and SO% (17.96%) created quadrants that classify players as better-than-average in both (lower right), worse-than-average in both (upper left), or better-than-average in one and worse-than-average in the other (lower left and upper right).

Unlike Fangraphs, I believe the denominator for strikeout percentage should be plate appearances (rather than at-bats). For whatever reason, Fangraphs defines walk percentage as BB/PA but strikeout percentage as SO/AB. As a result, while the raw numbers were downloaded from Fangraphs, the BB% and SO% were calculated separately.

Note: You can download a spreadsheet containing the PA, BB, SO, BB%, and SO% of the 155 hitters here. This information can also be used to locate the 134 players not labeled in the graph below.

My first question following the Productivity graph was "Is Albert Pujols any good?" Well, after looking at the Plate Discipline graph, I've got to ask the same question once again. This time around, I'm going to shout out my question.

OK, I think I've made my point now. Not that it was really necessary. Everybody already knows that Pujols is better than good. I mean, this guy is great. In fact, he is on pace to become one of the greatest hitters of all time and perhaps the best or second-best righthanded hitter ever.

Pujols has played nine seasons in the major leagues. He has ranked in the top ten in batting average, slugging average, on-base plus slugging, total bases, and times on base every year. What is less known is that Albert has improved his walk rate every single season while reducing his strikeout rate by a third since his rookie campaign in 2001.

In 2009, Pujols had the sixth-highest BB% (16.43%) and the ninth-lowest SO% (9.14%). That is a remarkable combination. He was the only player in the top 50 in walk rate with a strikeout rate below 10.0%. You have to go all the way down to No. 57 in the walk rankings to find someone with a lower strikeout percentage (Dustin Pedroia). The Red Sox second baseman had the lowest SO% (6.30%) in the majors.

Pujols and Pedroia are two of only 13 qualified hitters with more walks than strikeouts.

Adrian Gonzalez led MLB in walk rate and walks (119) last year. He was one of five first basemen with more walks than strikeouts. Three second basemen, three catchers, one shortstop, and one third baseman also accomplished this feat, including three projected starters for the Boston Red Sox in 2010 (Marco Scutaro, Victor Martinez, and Pedroia). The St. Louis Cardinals are the only other team with more than one representative (Pujols and Yadier Molina).

At the other end of the spectrum, Yadier's older brother, Bengie Molina, had the lowest BB% (2.50%) in baseball. Bengie struck out in 13.08% of his plate appearances, which means he whiffed more than 5x as often as he walked.

Mark Reynolds had the highest SO% (33.69%). He set a single-season record with 223 strikeouts in 2009. The 26-year-old third baseman has played three seasons in the majors and owns the top two strikeout totals in the game's history. His SO and BB rates have increased each year. The good news is that his BB% has risen 29.2% while his SO% has advanced just 8.0% since his rookie campaign in 2007.

Russell Branyan (29.50%), Jack Cust (30.23%), Adam Dunn (26.50%), Ryan Howard (26.46%), Brandon Inge (26.69%), and Carlos Pena (28.60%) stand out for their high strikeout rates. However, Inge was the only one with a walk rate (8.48%) below the league average.

Lastly, there were 13 qualified hitters with walk rates over 15%. Other than Pujols, every player in this baker's dozen bats lefthanded or both. Therefore, I believe it is safe to say that the three-time MVP is truly unique. As the graphs have shown, Pujols is the most disciplined and productive hitter in the game today.

In 1953, a baseball fan in New York City turning the radio dial had several delightful choices. The trio of Red Barber, Connie Desmond and Vin Scully were the voices for the Dodgers; Russ Hodges and Ernie Harwell called Giant games; Mel Allen, Joe E. Brown and Jim Woods were the broadcasters for the Yankees. Never before and not since have so many excellent broadcasters congregated in one city in one season to broadcast big league baseball.

Before 1939, the three New York teams, fearful that radio play by play would curtail attendance, kept radio broadcasts out of their ballparks. There were some exceptions to the radio ban. A few opening day and other scattered games were aired. All-Star games and the World Series were broadcast on New York radio stations. However, New Yorkers were unable to hear major league baseball on a regular basis until Larry MacPhail, brought to New York from the Cincinnati Reds to take over operation of a moribund Brooklyn Dodger franchise, broke the radio blackout in 1939.

Red Barber was the first of the seven legendary broadcasters of 1953 to take the air for a New York team for a full season of games. Red's first broadcasting job, taken while he was a student at the University of Florida, was at radio station WRUF in Gainesville, Florida. During his time at WRUF, Barber was able to hear the powerful signal of Cincinnati's WLW at his home in Gainesville. Red followed that radio signal to its source to audition for a job at the radio station that has long been dubbed as "The Nation's Station" because of the wide sweep of its AM transmitter.

In 1934, Red realized his goal of a job at WLW. Powel Crosley, the owner of stations WSAI and WLW in Cincinnati, took over control of the Cincinnati Reds during the Great Depression. With a team and two radio stations, Crosley naturally looked for a broadcaster to air the games of the team he owned. There were plenty of capable broadcasters in the Cincinnati area, but the job went to the young man in Florida who had never broadcast or even seen a big league baseball game.

Red's radio work involved more than sports and baseball broadcasts. Only about twenty Reds games were broadcast on the radio in 1934, so Red worked more as a staff announcer than as a baseball broadcaster in his first year in Cincinnati. The next year Red's baseball broadcasting career blossomed. Larry MacPhail brought lights to the Reds home park in 1935, and the Reds played the Philadelphia Phillies in the first night game in major league history on May 24th. Red Barber broadcast that game over the new Mutual Broadcasting network. Red's call of the major's first night game was the first sporting event ever carried by Mutual. After the end of the regular season Red was back in the national spotlight as a broadcaster for Mutual's coverage of the 1935 World Series between the Cubs and Tigers.

Red stayed in Cincinnati until the end of the 1938 season. Powel Crosley did not want to see his talented broadcaster leave. Red was offered more money to stay in Cincinnati than he would make in Brooklyn, but the lure of greater career possibilities in New York caused Red take the Dodger job.

Mel Allen will always be remembered as the voice of the Yankees. However during his early years as a baseball broadcaster Mel was actually the voice for two major league teams, the Giants and the Yankees. After Brooklyn broke the New York radio blackout, the Yankees and the Giants in 1939 joined forces to broadcast their home games over WABC. Brooklyn broadcast its entire schedule, home and away, although road games were recreated.

The principal broadcaster for the Yankee and Giant games in 1939 was Arch McDonald, a veteran broadcaster who had done Senator games in Washington, DC. McDonald's assistant was Garnet Marks. Marks was fired early in the season, and in June of 1939, Mel Allen was hired to take his place. After the 1939 season, McDonald returned to Washington and Allen became the primary broadcaster for Yankee and Giant home games in 1940.

Like Red Barber, Mel Allen was raised in the South. At the age of fifteen Mel enrolled at the University of Alabama. After completing his undergraduate degree, he began law school, also at the University of Alabama. While in law school, Mel became the public address announcer for University of Alabama football games. Shortly before the 1935 season the radio broadcaster for University of Alabama football games quit. The P.A. announcer was transferred to the radio booth to call Alabama football and a brilliant broadcast career was born.

In 1936, Mel traveled to New York for a winter vacation. While in New York he decided to audition for a job, and he landed a staff position at CBS radio in early 1937. Allen appeared in a variety of capacities for CBS including game shows, soap operas and big band broadcasts. In 1938 Mel appeared along with France Laux and Bill Dyer for CBS radio coverage of the World Series between the Cubs and Yankees. It was the first of many World Series broadcasts for perhaps the most recognizable voice in baseball broadcasting history.

Connie Desmond was the third of the seven legendary broadcasters to arrive in New York. In 1942 Desmond was hired to work at radio station WOR. Connie began his broadcasting career in 1932 in his hometown, Toledo, Ohio. During the 1942 baseball season, Connie teamed up with Mel Allen to broadcast Giant and Yankee home games over WOR. Connie also worked at WOR in a variety of capacities, including music shows that featured his own singing.

Red Barber's assistant broadcaster, Al Helfer, went into the military after the 1942 season. Desmond met with Barber and asked for Helfer's job. Connie was hired as Barber's assistant. In 1943 the Giants and Yankees did not broadcast any of their games, so Connie and Red were the only big league broadcasters on the air in New York during the 1943 season.

After World War II, a pivotal figure in New York baseball broadcasting returned from military duty. Larry MacPhail returned to New York, but not with the Dodgers. MacPhail became a co-owner of the Yankees and once again he brought change to baseball broadcasting in New York. MacPhail was not satisfied with the broadcasting partnership between the Giants and Yankees. In 1946, the Yankees began broadcasting all their games, home and away, on WINS. Mel Allen, also out of the military, returned as the principal Yankee broadcaster. The Giants hired Jack Brickhouse as their primary broadcaster in 1946. For the first time, all three New York teams were on the radio for a complete season of home and away games.

Russ Hodges was the fourth of the legendary broadcasters to reach New York. In 1946, Russ was hired to assist Mel Allen on Yankee broadcasts. Before taking the Yankee job, Hodges broadcast for the Cubs and White Sox in Chicago, and for the Senators in Washington, DC. Like Allen, Russ Hodges was a law school graduate. Hodges stayed with the Yankees until the Giants hired him to be their primary broadcaster for the 1949 season.

Ernie Harwell arrived in New York during the 1948 season to broadcast for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Ernie began his baseball career at an early age. When he was five years old he was a bat boy for visiting teams of the minor league Atlanta Crackers. At the age of sixteen, Ernie became the Atlanta correspondent for the "Baseball Bible," the Sporting News. Harwell began his broadcasting career at WSB in Atlanta in 1940 after graduating from Emory University. Ernie broadcast Atlanta Cracker games before the war, and after being discharged from the Marines, he resumed his baseball broadcasting career with the Crackers in 1946.

Ernie was brought to New York to fill in for an ailing Red Barber during the 1948 season. That year, the Dodgers began live broadcasts of their road games. Red Barber became severely ill with a bleeding ulcer during a Dodger road trip. Connie Desmond took over as the sole broadcaster for the Dodgers while Dodger management sought a replacement for Red. The Dodgers looked to Atlanta and the talented Harwell to fill in during Red's illness. However, Ernie was under contract to the Crackers, so Ernie's boss in Atlanta, Earl Mann, needed to be compensated for losing his play by play broadcaster. For the only time in major league history, a team traded a player for a baseball broadcaster when the Dodgers shipped minor league catcher Cliff Dapper to Atlanta for the services of play-by-play broadcaster Ernie Harwell.

Ernie remained with Red Barber and Connie Desmond through the end of the 1949 season. Ernie left the Dodgers to join Russ Hodges in broadcasting New York Giant games in 1950. To the delight everyone who has had a chance to listen to him during the past sixty years, Red Barber chose Vin Scully to replace Ernie in the Dodger broadcast booth.

Vin Scully graduated from Fordham in 1949. While he was in college he worked at the campus FM station and also played the outfield on the varsity baseball team. Vin sent letters to radio stations up and down the Eastern seaboard in search of a broadcasting job after graduation. He landed a temporary job as a summer replacement announcer in Washington, DC for the CBS affiliate, WTOP. Management at WTOP appreciated his talent, but at the end of the summer, they had no permanent job for him. Vin left Washington with a promise of a future job at WTOP, but no immediate employment.

Vin returned to his home in New York and contacted CBS radio in search of a job. Vin was able to meet with Ted Church, who was director of CBS radio news. Church had no job for him, but he did introduce Vin to Red Barber, who in addition to being the Dodger play-by-play broadcaster, was the director of sports for CBS radio. Red had no job to offer, though he was favorably impressed after talking with the youngster.

One of Red's primary duties as director of sports for CBS radio was selecting broadcasters to go to various college games throughout the country for the CBS college football roundup show. Luckily for Vin, in 1949 Red was unable to find a broadcaster for the Boston University-University of Maryland football game played at Boston's Fenway Park. Red remembered the young man he had met at CBS headquarters in New York and arranged for Vin to fill in at the last minute in Boston. Vin's performance impressed Red enough to give the youngster another assignment on the football roundup and a chance to be a major league broadcaster for the Dodgers.

Vin joined the Dodger broadcast booth after an eventful meeting with Red Barber and Branch Rickey that took place after Red returned to New York from a 1949 college football broadcast on the West coast. In an interview with author Ted Patterson for the splendid book, The Golden Voices of Baseball, Vin recalled the terms of his employment: "The agreement reached was that I would go to spring training on a one-month option. Either I make it, or they could lose me in the Everglades."

Jim Woods was the last of the seven legendary broadcasters to reach New York. In 1953, Jim teamed with Mel Allen to broadcast Yankee games. Joe E. Brown joined Woods and Allen for some Yankee broadcasts, but Brown primarily worked on the Yankee pre- and post-game shows. Woods had an eventful career before he arrived in New York. Jim replaced Ronald Reagan as the football radio voice of the Iowa Hawkeyes in 1939. After spending four years in the military during World War ll, Woods eventually landed in Atlanta where he replaced Ernie Harwell after Ernie left the Crackers to broadcast for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Woods followed Ernie's path to New York as a major league broadcaster in 1953.

The seven splendid broadcasters were together in New York for just one season. Ernie Harwell left the Giants to become the principal broadcaster for the Baltimore Orioles in 1954. Harwell's departure was not the only shift in the New York baseball broadcasting landscape. After the 1953 season, Red Barber left the Dodgers to join Mel Allen and Jim Woods in the Yankee broadcast booth.

Vin Scully and Connie Desmond continued as Dodger broadcasters in 1954. However, Connie missed some games because of alcoholism. In 1955, the only year Brooklyn won the World Series, Connie was gone from Dodger broadcasts. Dodger owner Walter O'Malley gave Connie a last chance to continue his career in 1956, but when Connie began drinking again, he was replaced for good by Jerry Doggett before the end of the season.

The Yankee broadcast team of Mel Allen, Jim Woods and Red Barber stayed together until the end of the 1956 season. Phil Rizzuto, whose Yankee playing career ended in 1956, was hired to replace Woods as a Yankee broadcaster. Woods was able to stay in New York by shifting to the Giants broadcast booth in 1957.

The departure of the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants for Los Angeles and San Francisco after the 1957 season forever changed the face of baseball and baseball broadcasting in New York. Vin Scully and Russ Hodges relocated with their teams to the West coast. Remarkably, in 2010, Vin will begin his 61st consecutive season as a Dodger broadcaster. After the 1957 season, Jim Woods departed New York for Pittsburgh, where he teamed with Bob Prince to form one of the best play-by-play tandems in the history of baseball broadcasting.

In 1964, Mel Allen was fired by the Yankees. Mel broadcast for the Atlanta Braves and Cleveland Indians after leaving New York. Mel returned to the Yankees as a cable-TV announcer for SportsChannel in 1978. His primary fame though after 1964 was as the voice for the popular TV show, This Week in Baseball. TWIB with Mel Allen was on the air for seventeen terrific years.

Red Barber, the man who in 1939 was the first broadcaster for a New York team, was the last of the seven legendary broadcasters of 1953 to broadcast for a team in New York. After the 1966 season Red was fired by the Yankees. In the last years before his death, Red returned to radio as a regular guest of Bob Edwards on NPR's Morning Edition.

Sources:

Sports on New York Radio: A Play by Play History by David J. Halberstam is an absolute gem for anyone interested in the history of sports broadcasting. Ted Patterson's Golden Voices of Baseball is rich in pictures and commentary about the history of baseball broadcasting. The book includes two CD's containing excerpts of the author's interviews with various broadcasters. Both books are well worth their purchase price.

Also useful in this article were interviews of Vin Scully and Red Barber broadcast on Larry King's radio show for Mutual in 1982. A partial transcript of the King-Barber interview is available at Dodger Thoughts. I also used material from a radio program produced by a Cincinnati NPR station that was narrated by Marty Brennaman. The CD is available for purchase through the Cincinnati radio station's internet site.

Ross Porter's essay about Ernie Harwell, gives some details about Ernie's life that I included in my article. Also, Ernie has an audio scrapbook that is rich in information and is a delight to hear. It is available for purchase on the internet.

Some of the material about Mel Allen was taken from Mel's obituary in the New York Times. The obit from the New York Times is online. There are a few errors in the obituary though. Also helpful was a taped interview of Mel done by baseball broadcast historian Curt Smith.

Stan Opdyke grew up on the East Coast listening to baseball on the radio. He still prefers baseball on the radio (if the broadcasters are good) to baseball on TV.

I think this is a very interesting idea to explore further, and the PITCHF/X data set is a great tool for it. To do that I created two groups of hitters. First the twenty regulars with the top wOBAs in 2009 (wOBA is a stat of TangoTiger's construction that measures overall offensive impact), and second the twenty regulars with the lowest wOBAs in 2009.

One common assumption is that good hitters see fewer fastballs and this analysis bears this out. The top-wOBA group saw 58.4% fastballs versus 61.5% for the bottom-wOBA group. But that actually understates the difference. The top group saw many more pitches in hitter's counts and pitchers throw more fastballs in hitter's counts. It is best to consider the difference in each count.

Fastball Frequency by count
        top   bottom
0-0   0.626    0.663
0-1   0.551    0.545
0-2   0.549    0.511

1-0   0.587    0.664
1-1   0.542    0.559
1-2   0.497    0.484

2-0   0.659    0.780
2-1   0.579    0.679
2-2   0.530    0.528

3-0   0.717    0.848
3-1   0.735    0.823
3-2   0.591    0.705

Here you can see the difference is largely driven by hitter's counts (e.g., 1-0, 2-0, 2-1, 3-0, 3-1) where the top group saw on average 10% fewer fastballs than the bottom group. Interestingly in pitcher's counts (e.g., 1-2, 2-2) the differences are very small.

The next thing we can look at is where those pitches end up. Here I plot the location of fastballs to the two groups. Areas where the top-wOBA group sees more pitches are red and where the bottom-wOBA group are blue.

Not surprisingly the top group sees many fewer balls in the strike zone. The extra pitches end up inside more than they end up outside, which is a little surprising to me. This also shows that the pattern of good hitters seeing fewer pitches in the zone is not just a result of them seeing fewer fastballs, which are more likely to be in the zone. That is good hitters see fewer fastballs AND the ones they do see are less likely to be in the strike zone.

Overall the top group saw 47.6% of their pitches in the strike zone, compared with 51.8% for the bottom group. But again this 4% difference understates the difference because the top group gets more hitter's counts in which pitchers should be around the zone. Breaking up by count we see:

Proportion of pitches in the strike zone
        top   bottom
0-0   0.507    0.548
0-1   0.428    0.473
0-2   0.325    0.325

1-0   0.505    0.575
1-1   0.478    0.526
1-2   0.376    0.424

2-0   0.505    0.592
2-1   0.545    0.580
2-2   0.443    0.489

3-0   0.471    0.554
3-1   0.607    0.646
3-2   0.553    0.598

Here the difference increases to 4% to 7% in each count. It is clear the pitchers avoid the heart of the zone, and the zone as a whole, against the better batters.

This is another example where the pitchf/x data support the prevailing assumptions: good hitters see fewer fastballs and fewer pitches in the zone. But there are some interesting patterns: the smaller frequency of fastballs seen by good batters is largely driven by a much smaller frequency in hitter's counts -- not all counts across the board -- and the out of zone fastballs that good hitters see are more likely to be inside than outside.

Since I guess Chass probably maintains a broad readership and has decided to come at me personally in his column, I suppose I should respond to a few of the points he made. It's evident to me that Chass doesn't like the tone of the Hall of Fame debate, and I suppose that's reasonable. Heck, we get awfully passionate around here about it, maybe excessively so on occasion. Chass points out one reader who emailed to say that one candidate "clearly deserved" enshrinement, and Chass thought that language was too strong. Fine, I suppose, but surely there are "clearly deserving" Hall candidates, no? Anyway, and Craig Calcaterra has already dealt with this nicely, problems arise when Chass veers off "can't we all just get along" course and into this:

“Clearly deserve” in whose judgment? His, of course. Does that make him right and me wrong? Of course not. Am I right? Yes. Why? Because my opinion counts and his doesn’t. My ballot was one of the 539 counted in the election. He did not have a vote. Therefore, his opinion is worthless as far as the election is concerned.

That’s the real problem self-proclaimed experts have. They want to be the ones voting, but they don’t have that privilege. It’s their own fault. They chose the wrong profession. Accountants, lawyers, doctors, teachers and salesmen don’t get to vote for the Hall of Fame. Baseball writers do.

Someday, a curious individual might set out to understand why it was that baseball websites were able to amass strong followings at a time when the profession of mainstream media baseball writing was still so entrenched in American culture. How could Rob Neyer and Nate Silver and Jonah Keri and Joe Sheehan and Keith Law and David Cameron and Sky Andrecheck and Cliff Corcoran have risen to such prominence, when the baseball writing establishment was still churning out columns? Well, that individual researching why it was that new internet baseball writers succeeded will stumble across what Chass has written above, and it will all make sense.

You don't get credibility because you hung around clubhouses for 30 years. Or because you traveled on the team plane, have had cocktails with Lou Gorman, were at Fenway the day Bucky Dent hit his home run or because you can recall the fear in opposing pitchers' eyes as Jim Rice came to the plate. You don't even get credibility because you have a vote. You get credibility by doing good work. And if your work is good, it stands on its own. If a new age of writers comes along with a new way of thinking about the game, and a new medium like the internet emerges, you don't kick and scream and yearn for yester-year, you evolve and learn and continue to do good work.

As for the notion that a non-voter's opinion is "worthless", tell that to Bert Blyleven or the proprietor of this site. Blyleven has publicly expressed gratitude for Rich Lederer time after time, and recently Peter Gammons praised Rich's work as well. About a dozen writers have explicitly attributed their Blyleven support to Rich's Blyleven series. How many more writers have been persuaded and not admitted as much? Rich may not have a vote, and he may not have swayed Murray Chass, but his opinion is anything but "worthless".

To be sure, there are nobler causes to take up, but there is virtue in working to ensure the Hall of Fame voting process is more just. A baseball career is a man's life's work, and there is no more prestigious recognition than to be enshrined in Cooperstown. So if Murray Chass and Dan Shaughnessy can't be bothered to figure out who the best players were, others will have to take it up. Whether we're writers or salespeople or money managers or entrepreneurs or consultants or lawyers, we'll take it up. We'll do so by building strong cases for the candidates we think deserve enshrinement, and we'll do so by exposing and discrediting flimsy logic. Because flimsy logic, when it comes to the Hall of Fame, can lead to a man's life's work being remembered in the wrong light, or even not remembered at all. Readers, fans, other voters - they'll be the ones to decide whose judgment should be called into question. Not Murray Chass through a baseless assertion on his baseball blog.

==========

As I noted at the outset, Chass also came at me personally in his blog entry, and I want to address it quickly. It was actually quite harmless but let me just offer up a few thoughts. Chass wrote the following...

Patrick Sullivan, a name unknown to me, ridiculed Dan Shaughnessy, a highly respected columnist for the Boston Globe, for writing that … well, just about anything. I don’t know that Shaughnessy wrote a sentence that Sullivan didn’t ridicule.

One of the statements he faulted Shaughnessy for was his belief that Jack Morris was better than Curt Schilling. Preposterous, Sullivan suggested. True, I say in agreement with Shaughnessy. But then I would probably take Shaughnessy’s view over Sullivan’s on any subject. Shaughnessy has a track record; Sullivan doesn’t, as far as I know.

I have had a similar debate with a reader over Morris and Bert Blyleven. Like Sullivan in his case for Schilling, the reader used statistics to argue his case for Blyleven. Most of the Hall arguments today seem to be statistics-centered.

All I can say is if you're going to be called out in public by a washed-up sportswriter on his baseball blog, this is how you want it to be done; in a fashion that is so self-evidently discrediting. We learned three things from this Chass excerpt:

1. Chass thinks Shaughnessy is right and I am wrong because Shaughnessy has a track record with which he's familiar.

2. Chass thinks Shaughnessy would be right and I would be wrong on ANY subject because Shaughnessy has a track record as a baseball sportswriter and I do not.

3. He thinks Jack Morris was better than Curt Schilling.

Two thoughts. One, how harebrained do you have to be to admit freely that you won't entertain the merits of a particular argument, but rather will simply appeal to authority? What a great way to discredit your whole philosophy in one fell swoop.

Two, and I can't be clear enough about this. If you think Jack Morris was a better pitcher than Curt Schilling, THEN YOU DON'T KNOW THE VERY FIRST THING ABOUT BASEBALL. Talk about life's work? The life's work of Murray Chass, all those days and nights hanging around a smelly clubhouse, and what does he have to show for it? A baseball mind that leads him to believe that Jack Morris is better than Curt Schilling. It's nothing short of embarrassing.

The piece ends the way so many of these do. After berating those of us who look to statistics to form the basis of our baseball-related arguments, he transitions to Tommy John's Hall of Fame case, comparing his to Blyleven's.

John had a career 288-231 record with a 3.34 earned run average. Blyleven’s record was 287-250 and his e.r.a. 3.31. John retired 57 percent of the batters he faced, Blyleven, with all his strikeouts, 59 percent.

Yup, stats. But not just any stats, moronic, wrong stats that say Tommy John yielded a career .430 on-base percentage and Bert Blyleven yielded a .410 figure. Truth is, John's career on-base against was .315 while Blyleven's was .301. I am not sure where that gets us, but at least we're dealing in reality.

Anyway, back away from the word processor, Murray. People, successful people, knowledgeable people who adore baseball, are all laughing at you.

The first time a batter faces a curveball, he might be caught off-guard. That’s why pitchers throw predominantly fastballs the first time through the order. And that’s why batters do so well the third time they face a pitcher. They’ve seen most of his repertoire, and are able to recognize the curve. As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me…you can’t get fooled again.”

First, here is the average run value per 100 pitches based on the number of times a batter has seen a given type of pitch. I include all data points for which I have approximately 1,000 pitches.

For reference:
F2: Sinker/Two-Seam Fastball
F4: Four-Seam Fastball
CB: Curveball
SL: Slider
CH: Changeup
FC: Cut Fastball

This chart indicates that a batter facing a fastball from the same pitcher for the 12th time will perform better than a batter facing a pitcher's first fastball. Chances are, however, that batters who face 12 fastballs are better from those who only face a few. One way to get around this bias might be to take the difference in run value between the 11th fastball and 12th fastball. This method, called the delta method, allows you to compare apples to apples as each change in measurement is at least composed of players from the same sample. This produced the following chart:

The magnitude of the results is enormous, if the results are to be believed. A batter facing a changeup for a fifth time is expected to perform over five runs per 100 pitches better than he performs the first time he saw the changeup. That's pretty much the difference between the best and worst hitter in the league. Unfortunately, I have to say that I don't think the delta method is the way to go here, and I'm not sure how to fix my sampling problems. Batters who face at least three changeups have a rv100 of 0.2 on the third changeup, but they only have an rv100 of -1.1 on the second change. This is a delta of 1.3 runs. Meanwhile, batters who face at least four changeups have an rv100 of -1.3 runs on the third change and 0.3 on the fourth, another huge delta of 1.6 runs. This would mean that batters perform three runs per 100 pitches better on the fourth changeup they see than on the second. The oddity here is that batters who face at least three changeups are above average on the third changeup, but batters who face at least four changeups are well below average on the third changeup. I think what this means is that once pitchers get burned on a given pitch, they quit throwing it to that batter the rest of the game. I don't know how to solve for these biases.

I went on and produced the same two charts, except this time at the at-bat level instead of the game level.

Batters who face seven fastballs in an at-bat are good, in that they are able to work the count. Meanwhile, pitchers who throw five sliders in an at-bat are good, in that they are either ahead in the count or can locate their breaking balls.

Using the delta method:

No pitch gains in effectiveness after its been thrown once already in an at-bat. This finding was applicable at the game level as well. However, there are differences between the at-bat and game level. Off-speed pitches such as the changeup and curveball lose more value than fastballs during the game, given an even distribution of pitches. But in an at-bat, off-speed pitches do not lose as much effectiveness as fastballs when they're repeatedly thrown. It makes sense to me that changeups are the worst pitch to show multiple times to the same batter throughout the game, since the success of changeups is built on deception. Yet I'm not sure why changeups don't lose as much effectiveness in an at-bat once thrown multiple times as fastballs do. I think it has something to do with the count in which they're thrown and the theory of the out pitch.