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Willihammer

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Everything posted by Willihammer

  1. Willihammer
    If anything I think maybe that exercise shows that a hitters propensity to miss or foul when swinging is an important consideration in weighing whether or not to bunt (regularly, not just in special late game situations) against a shift. For someone like V-Mart who has tremendous contact ability and excellent results on balls in play, the equation probably won't favor bunting nearly as much (if at all).
  2. Willihammer
    Eh... I goofed on my math initially. Someone should check my math. See link.
  3. Willihammer
    Right. By comparison, on swings, Gomez fouls 41.0% of the time (Brooks baseball) and whiffs 26.9% of the time. He has an OBP% of .210 on swing attempts and Slg% of .341 (.550 OPS). Assuming Gomez is an average bunter, then his whiff+Foul% is 49.6%. With a .452 BIP BA% on bunt attempts then his Bunt attempt OBP is .228 and Slg is .228 (assuming all bunt hits are singles), for an OPS of .456. So even with a guy who swings and misses a lot, and who gets on base a lot when he does get the bunt down, Gomez is still better off swinging. By 100 points of OPS. Edit: correction, gomez's OBP% on Swing attempts is .130 and Slg% on swings is .211, for a OPS of .341. Shoot, the bunt attempt wins, by a landslide? https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5pIzP28qdp-SnlBQTVCaXgyVUU/view?usp=sharing
  4. Willihammer
    This has been my understanding as well. I never heard about MLB expanding the zone on purpose. What umpires have done since they got access to pitchf/x data for self-evaluations, is call the rulebook zone more accurately and consistently.
  5. Willihammer
    But to actually break the shift the hitter has to succeed at a high rate. Really high for an elite hitter like Ortiz. Otherwise he's just giving away strikes and outs which just compounds the effectiveness of the shift in my mind. I was only trying to quantify that breakeven point in terms of OPS. If a hitter is OPS-ing .500 in order to break the shift, has he really succeeded? Seems to me a defense would just keep letting him bunt away at that point.
  6. Willihammer
    We're talking about two different things I think. I'm talking about the outcome of the plate entire appearance, not individual bunt attempts. I'm also assuming the goal is to get a hit and not simply to flash a bunt. If you read the fangraphs post linked to by Jimmer above, it shows examples of hitters attempting the bunt and not breaking the shift. Even a case where the hitter had succeeded in getting down a bunt (for a hit) earlier in the game.
  7. Willihammer
    On top of that, the breakeven point must scale with the skill of the batter. For a .750 batter like Kyle Seager, the breakeven point for successful bunts, defined as bunts that beat the shift and go for a single, is 38%. A 38% success rate equates to a .380/.380/.380 (.760) OPS. For a .950 batter like Ortiz, the breakeven point would be 48%. Again these are bunts that are both fair and go for hits (not just fair). So bunting doesn't seem like a viable tactic for any decent hitter, considering that even a good bunter is barely going to get the ball in play 50% of the time, and a portion of those will be outs. But if Aaron Hicks or Jordan Schafer gets shifted on, then its probably a different story.
  8. Willihammer
    Source?
  9. Willihammer
    This abstraction gets painfully clear when Mauer's not in the lineup. I'm thinking specifically about the 2nd half of 2013 when he was concussed. Man those were brutal lineups to watch.
  10. Willihammer
    According to your article, the 3-hole is for a team's 5th best hitter...
  11. Willihammer
    I think its an interesting throught experiment regardless of what stat you choose. If a manager says "you're going to bat in decending order of (fill in the blank stat)" then it takes the decision out of the manager's hands and puts the onus on the players to achieve whatever that stat values - XBH's in the case of Slg%, walks in the case of OBP, everything in the case of wRC+, etc. It would be interesting to see how each batter changes according to the system - perhaps Mauer would start pulling the ball or Arcia would take more pitches, etc.
  12. Willihammer
    Might be a harder sell with players but yeah, any rate based stat that correlates well with team scoring. Heck, Slg% would be as good as anything Santana Vargas Arcia Hunter Plouffe Dozier Suzuki Mauer Hicks*
  13. Willihammer
    In keeping with that, I wonder if the best lineup is simply to slot guys in decending order of OBP. Might even be able to sell that to the players if anyone moans about being moved down in the order. "Want to bat higher? Then quit swinging at crummy pitches and get your OBP up." That method would look like Mauer Santana Suzuki Dozier Hicks* Plouffe Hunter Vargas Arcia
  14. Willihammer
    You'd platoon Santana? Against righties?
  15. Willihammer
    And more PA's (Dozier excluded).
  16. Willihammer
    I admit if I were manager, I'd have a hard time telling Santana he's going to bat 8th or 9th because of his BABIP. Its definitely one of those areas where Molitor's commitment to analytics will be tested. If the overall impact of lineup construction is negligible, my guess is he'll stick with what Gardy did last year (that worked). Santana-Dozier-Mauer, etc. But as to the question who *should* leadoff, Santana comes in 3rd for me.
  17. Willihammer
    I'd lean Dozier over Mauer but only barely. As Mauer hit last year he had only a ~.020 point advantage in OBP, I imagine Dozier's superior baserunning skill makes up for that. If Mauer gets back to a ~.400 OBP I would flip em.
  18. Willihammer
    Isn't that what a 2-strike approach is for? I guess I don't understand why you would throttle anyone back until they get to two strikes. And are you going to blog on this development?
  19. Willihammer
    Kade and Karli? I'm guessing they're the youngest. http://www.imaginivity.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/bob.jpg
  20. Willihammer
    No, but it does show actual facts regarding Walker's swing tendencies as opposed to hearsay, even but it is limited to 2 strike counts. FWIW his BB% was 7.9% compared to a career average of 6.8%. So unless his swing and miss tendencies changed in 3 ball counts, he did not see a significantly higher proportion of them last season.
  21. Willihammer
    I always thought players with extreme contact tendencies could benefit by adhering to a red light-green light matrix. If Walker's whiffing is putting him at a disadvantage, give him the red light! On the opposite end a guy like Revere might have benefited from a red light since he never swung and missed. All his balls went into play and he never got deep enough into counts to draw any walks.
  22. Willihammer
    I can't find any data to support this. In fact it looks like Walker swung as much as he ever has. From minorleaguecentral.com
  23. Willihammer
    Can't help but notice that the guy scouts say has durability concerns due to his lack of size has been among the most healthy/productive pitchers in the Twins system. Hope it stays that way because this kid's stuff is electric.
  24. Willihammer
    Not too late to DFA Milone. If they do it before ST they only owe for 30 days pay.
  25. Willihammer
    http://i.imgur.com/gMhfLE0.gif Next!
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