ashbury

Mod note: I bumped up the older thread on Rasmussen here in the minor league forum area. It's perhaps a worthwhile tangent, but let's please keep it out of the discussion on the new guy.

Rasmussen came up in the new thread on Pete Maki, so I thought I'd encourage side discussion of the old coordinator by bumping this thread. Rasmussen pitched during the era when free agency was just starting to be a thing. Baseball-reference.com doesn't show salaries on his page, but by glancing at his pitching performance and the transactions, I infer that he had bad timing for contract leverage following his few good seasons and he never reaped enough financial reward such that he could retire at will. Now he's going to be 66 next Spring Training, and if he was counting on a few more years of employment then this is a pretty rough turn of events for him because latching on with another team won't be easy. He could keep busy by coaching for a high school or college team, who in principle would likely welcome him with open arms but the pay would be extremely minimal - however if he resides in the Ft Myers area then it may be that even HS opportunities aren't plentiful. I dunno, it's just that the human side of the game is a little difficult.

The MLB/AAA/AA logjam exists only as long as everyone stays healthy. One injury makes things less tight, and two completely eliminate the issue. What do you think the odds are that everyone reaches Opening Day ready to pitch?

Maybe the timestamp is an explanation...

It was exhausting for me just to write it. And therefore I hope it was exhausting to read.

I think Sam is underselling Babe as a pitcher by quite a bit. Through his age-22 season Babe was on a pace to comfortably assure eventual Hall of Fame selection with whatever he would have done by age 30, and then whatever he tacked on after that would have been gravy. Of course that's only a pace - for instance undiagnosable "sore arms" felled many a bright light in those days. But being dominant at age 21 (the only reason he wasn't the best in the Majors was a couple of more-senior guys named Johnson and Alexander) is a nice early indicator for greatness, and marked him as better than "pretty good". However, the two-way era for him in 1918-19 was a mixed success at best. Monkeying with a great pitcher in hopes of turning him into a great hitter was a gamble. So the basic point regarding a comparison to a current player trying it still stands just fine. I just gotta defend the Babe's soupbone.

I have a related concern, not addressed by this study: loading up on modestly talented "hustle guys" who exploit the mistakes made by the other team, to compile so-so stats during the regular season. My speculation is that such position players may not provide much value at all if you succeed in reaching the post-season, where the opponents no longer make as many mistakes as average and don't just "give" you much of anything. Or, on the pitching side, guys with trick pitches (or whatever it is) that works well against AAAA hitters found in regular season lineups but are mysteriously absent come playoff time. Against them, you don't get 4 outs to work with on offense, nor do they let you off with 2-out innings when you pitch to them. Every player likely suffers a decline due to these reasons in the post-season; but a guy like say George Springer starts with high enough value that he still contributes, while a guy with little regular-season value becomes a downright negative. So, on that note, a big hole in this methodology IMO is that it doesn't have a way of addressing why a given "scrub" racked up less than 1.0 WAR; or, for that matter, *how* any particular WAR level was achieved (I haven't even touched on injury-shortened seasons). Of course I don't have any way in mind to help sort out the Nick Puntos and Jason Tyners and Scott Diamonds of the baseball world just from "WAR" types of stats. Scott Diamond gave us a 2-WAR season one year, but I wouldn't trust him in a playoff game any farther than I could throw him (which was about as far as he could throw his fastball). Not being able to filter the data usefully doesn't mean the data doesn't contain the needed information. Anyway, this present study feels like it contains almost more noise than signal.

Doing what, taunting fans that he won't be signing with us?

I hold no hope for him whatever. The contract extension turned a smart signing into a fiscal drag on the team.

That's the kind of bet you want, isn't it*? Pete Rose was banned because of this concern. * Unless you have inside information.

Pitching and hitting are not mirror images of each other. Pitching is about achieving location. Hitting is about either punishing the mistakes or going with what is given to them. Batters of both kinds can succeed, and many batters adopt a blend. It's rare for a pitcher without command to get anywhere in the majors, with just his stuff. So it's no paradox for pitchers to try to strike batters out without giving them anything good to hit, while power hitters may swing for the fences when they see something they like.

They almost assuredly will get 24 of them, one by one by one - barring rain or a forfeit or other unusual and premature end to the game. The difference maker is how many balls are put in play while accomplishing that arduous task, because some of those fall in safely or leave the park as home runs. Strikeouts cut down on the chances of the first of those happening, giving no chance for good things to happen for the offense. That, plus walks+HBP, will define their success. With enough success, or with home field advantage, they may even be allowed to try for 27 outs. And that's the goal.

Let me know what different results you get from studying this question.

I ducked this part in my other reply because it's really far from my point about strikeouts in relation to other outs, but... I'm not even sure I'm willing to say one "is" better than another. Kintzler had a better *2017*, because mainly he didn't give up so many walks and (especially) HR as those other two. I spent some time explaining elsewhere my reservations about FIP for backward looking purposes, but as a predictive tool for 2018 FIP suggests it's about even-money whether Duffey or Kintzler will have the better year. Pressly... he needs to work on a few things.

The analogy of SO to dunks probably breaks down when considering that dunks are much less common. Nobody dunks often enough to make that be what defines their team's season. Likewise, I don't think I was demonstrating why strikeouts must line up precisely with ERA (they won't). And certainly not that the pitcher with the most Ks is the "best". Merely to explain a reason why a strikeout is more valuable among other outs, and not simply a paradox; you have to look further up the stream than after the out has been recorded, to notice why. As for correlation, I note if you rank major league teams by strikeouts recorded by their pitchers, you need to go down all the way to #9 (Mets) to find a team that missed the playoffs. The two teams that did make the post-season, but weren't in the top 8 in SO, both were bounced in single-game appearances. Strikeouts by batters aren't quite so dire - you can find a team at #6 (Arizona) who made the post-season. But yes, there is much in baseball that counts besides just strikeouts. Thank goodness!

It finally dawned on me that the reason I'm not a wizard with b-r.com's database in particular is that I've been too big a cheapskate to pay for their Play Index which does allow more of what I want. Perhaps Santa will hear my wish in a few weeks...

I'm taking the second half of your post separately as I see it as a separate (and interesting) issue. Baseball-reference.com has all kinds of seasonal stats that one can sort on. The stats that apply here would be SO/9, BABIP (BA on Balls In Play), and Pitches/PA. (Actually I wish they offered SO/PA, but it is what it is.) BABIP would seem to address what you are asking about. Unfortunately the site does not place these three on the same page with each other, and I am not a wizard with databases. So all I can do is sort on one stat or another, and do a bit of sampling rather than try to do something more statistical. Maybe somebody with mad skillz can help me out here. One initial observation is that BABIP is renowned for high variability. The same pitcher may have consecutive seasons of BABIP above and below average (which usually is around .300) - few pitchers are really consistent year to year, suggesting that low or high is not a repeatable skill held by the pitcher. OK, so if I sort 2017 MLB pitchers who had enough innings to qualify for the ERA title, I see at the top for pitches per PA Jake Odorizzi. Your surmise would be that his fielders are on their heels; instead, he has a very stellar BABIP of .228 this year, indicating his fielders were making the plays for him, when the batter did finally put the ball in play. I bet he doesn't repeat that feat next year, but anyway we're off to a bad start. Next on the list is Eduardo Rodriguez; his BABIP is .300, a very average figure. Third is Wade Miley, and his BABIP is .333, in keeping with your surmise. Next is Trevor Bauer, and his is .338. Next is the sainted Mike Pelfrey, and his BABIP is .276. A very mixed bag. Working next from the bottom of that list, the fewest pitches per PA belonged to Iván Nova. His BABIP was .303. Next best was Big Sexy himself, Bartolo Colon. His BABIP was not very good, .335. Next comes Clayton Richard with BABIP .354, Mike Leake with .312, and Luis Perdomo with .327. These are the guys whose fielders should be the most alert, and again it's a mixed bag or even trending the wrong way. Now, this methodology, if you can even call it that, of the 5 top and 5 bottom, is slanted toward good starting pitchers - pitchers who were trusted enough to rack up a lot of innings pitched by br-com's cutoff for rate stats. Maybe a careful study that includes relievers and/or bad starters would show a different trend. You can approach it differently, by sorting on SO/9 (since SO is the subject here), since the top Pitch/PA is not necessarily the top strikeout pitchers. Again, we'll only look at pretty good starters this way. Chris Sale was the top pitcher for strikeout rate, and his fielders allowed him to amass a BABIP of .303. Next was Robbie Ray, and he had BABIP .270. Max Scherzer, .248. Corey Kluber, .268. Chris Archer, .325. Among the pitchers with lowest strikeout rates: Ty Blach, .296. Andrew Cashner, .267. Jeremy Hellickson, .248. Martin Perez, .330. Zach Davies, .306. Every time I start to see a pattern emerge, another datapoint comes along to break it up. It reminds me of flipping coins. Interestingly, as a side note, the list of highest strikeout pitchers does not correspond to the list of pitchers with highest pitcher per plate appearance. (Edit: just as Chief expressed.) I wrote this rather stream-of-consciousness, expecting to rewrite it or at least condense it when a pattern emerged. It didn't, so for whatever it's worth, this is a very shallow but non-cherry-picked look at your question. I don't think a pattern exists, and this sampling of data doesn't motivate me to go take a course in database analysis to try to dig one out.

What you say is true, once the play is completed. But just in advance of that, a dunk is about a 95% shot to make it, versus something around 50% for various other locations around the floor. If you could work it so you had a slam dunk every time down the court, you'd win going away. And what is the On Base Percentage for strikeouts, versus walks, versus balls put in play by the batter? Those are .000, 1.000, and around .300, respectively. The strikeout is just another out, except you get about 30% more of them versus letting the batter get wood on the ball. That's what the strikeout does for your team. It is, indeed, analogous to a slam dunk by the pitcher.

Well doggies! I do believe the young fella has struck oil! (Or if you prefer, Black Gold... Texas Tea.)

Yes. Everyone's waiting for one particular thing to happen, and everyone (minus one or two) thinks they have a shot.

Addendum: OK, I see a source saying that the House version of the bill had only 4 brackets. That would probably be the genesis of your statement above. However, at this point it looks like reconciliation will resemble the Senate bill more than the House's - there was some speculation I heard that the House might even simply vote the Senate bill verbatim, but that sentiment probably has eroded a day later. We'll just have to stay tuned.

As it happens, I saw a new article in the meantime with some useful details: https://www.yahoo.com/news/does-senate-tax-plan-mean-170504099.html This table from it sheds light on your example: At 65K the marginal rate (i.e. the rate on the last dollar earned) for joint filers goes down from 15% to 12%. At 150K it goes down from 25% to 24%. I could have missed one, but I don't see an income level in between these values (or anywhere really, except $400K to $416K) where income is taxed at a higher rate. Since one's tax bill is computed from tax tables that use all the brackets below one's marginal rate, and since the standard deduction is going up not down (except maybe for really large families), most taxpayers not itemizing would seem to come out slightly ahead. I don't see any scenario where one's marginal rate would zoom from 12% to 25%. Now, someone like me in a high state-tax state who itemizes* will need to do the math to find out. But it's said that the majority of taxpayers take the standard deduction. As I learned in 2016, people like me don't count very much in electoral calculus. You know I'm not in favor of this bill by any stretch. I am just concerned with claiming that vast numbers of middle class taxpayers will see an increase, and then getting that argument cut out from under us just in time for election season. Finally, as for 2027 or whenever certain provisions expire or phase out, I'm not interested at this time: 1) people will vote with their current experience in 2018, and 2) there will be one or more changes in occupant of the Oval Office and/or the makeup of Congress by tax year 2027, giving plenty of time for further legislation to modify or negate these effects before they even happen. (Just look at how original projections for Obamacare in 2020 are starting to shape up in light of recent mutilations to that law. All projections come with a giant grain of salt - use as directed.) * Technically my dear wife is the one who itemizes and computes** and presents me a completed tax return to sign. ** Technically technically TurboTax does most of the heavy lifting.

Source? I haven't seen mention of either that much, or that soon. But details are only just emerging, and I could have missed it. Here's typical of what I've been seeing: https://slate.com/business/2017/11/the-sneaky-ways-republicans-would-raise-taxes-on-the-middle-class.html BTW, I started to comment that this thread title is "General Politics" and we have just witnessed the spectacle of a General pleading guilty to lying to the FBI.

... additionally, pitched well enough to record quite a number of outs in the 7th inning and beyond.

Mod note: please, let's not let a passing reference to Terry Ryan turn this thread about present prospects into yet another referendum on old topics...