Fuck Zorp You Stathead Turds

[morpheus]

Bump.  http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D98VS5RG1&show_article=1

"He was like 'You need to respect me.' He was in my face. He was obviously trying to intimidate me and scare me," Hilton said. "I was like 'I don't need to respect you. I don't respect you and I did say this, and I knew that it would be the worst thing I could possibly say to him because he was acting the way he was. I said 'You know what, I don't respect you and you're gay and stop being such a faggot.'"

Sounds oddly familiar.

[Wheezer]

TORONTO (AP) - Police have charged the tour manager of the Black Eyed Peas with assault after he allegedly gave celebrity blogger Perez Hilton a black eye outside a Toronto nightclub.
[...]
Hilton, who was at the club with Lady Gaga, said he then left the club and was punched from behind. The pop stars and the blogger were among celebrities in Toronto for the MuchMusic Video Awards on Sunday night.

I'm having trouble imagining the mechanics of this, but it sounds cozy.

[Eli]

Statboner:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/sports/baseball/10cameras.html?_r=2&hp

[RV]

Statboner:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/sports/baseball/10cameras.html?_r=2&hp

Great link, Eli. Although Gary Hughes is still waiting for the statrat who can tell him what WILL happen, not what HAS happened. I really hope they make the information public so that petabytefaggots like ChuckD can accurately determine the Dirty Jersey Factor (slides + dives + jersey dirt + wall collisions / stubble).

[Tank]

Statboner:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/sports/baseball/10cameras.html?_r=2&hp

Great link, Eli. Although Gary Hughes is still waiting for the statrat who can tell him what WILL happen, not what HAS happened. I really hope they make the information public so that petabytefaggots like ChuckD can accurately determine the Dirty Jersey Factor (slides + dives + jersey dirt + wall collisions / stubble).

Anyone who's ever peeled off a sweaty jock strap after a round of bro-on-bro knows you need 31 cameras minimum to accurately capture usable stubble data.

Faggot.

[Tank]

Some really fucking advanced ass xBABIP modeling from the 2008 offseason, faggots...

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/batters-and-babip/

Some people like to add .120 to a batter's Line Drive Percentage to predict his BABIP (a guideline originally suggested by Dave Studeman). But one would expect that BABIP depends on more than just the ability to hit line drives. Speed, for instance, clearly seems to play a significant role. And what about the ability to control the strike zone, make consistent contact and hit the ball to all fields?

For example, if Jacoby Ellsbury hits a ground ball in the hole between short and third, he has a higher chance of getting a hit than if Bengie Molina hits the exact same ball in the exact same place. Anecdotally, this is how Ichiro manages to get so many hits every year. And fans of the Red Sox, Yankees and Rays can tell you that David Ortiz, Jason Giambi and Carlos Pena have been robbed of many a base hit because of the extreme defensive shifts used against them, whereas Dustin Pedroia, Derek Jeter and BJ Upton have gotten more hits because of their batting eye and their ability to use the whole field. Surely, these factors contribute to whether or not a batted ball becomes a hit.

We endeavored to take a more scientific look at batted ball data to develop a better method of finding a hitter's expected BABIP. Using Baseball Prospectus data from 2002-2008, we calculated a range of variables that we considered to be the primary factors in determining BABIP...

...

Our regression model yields an R-squared value of .348, and all non-vector explanatory variables are significant at the 1 percent level. This suggests that the factors included are all highly significant, and jointly explain roughly 35 percent of the variance in a hitter's BABIP. As an additional test of accuracy, we find a robust 59 percent correlation between actual and predicted BABIP for all players in our sample.

Given the tremendous uncertainty regarding the outcome of balls in play, these results are extremely promising. By contrast, commonly used models based on line drive percentage alone explain only about 3 percent of the variance in BABIP when applied to the same dataset, and yield a mere 18 percent correlation between predicted and actual values.

Fun!

This, of course, gives me pause:

Finally, let's take a look at the players who were the most lucky and unlucky this season. We'd expect that many of these players will regress in 2009—not necessarily all are going to, as some are simply going to get lucky or unlucky again. However, we can be confident that most of these players will experience regression in '09.

Let's start with 2008's luckiest hitters:

  YEAR  NAME                BABIP   xBABIP   Diff
  2008  Joey Gathright       .278    .156    .122
  2008  Chipper Jones        .382    .325    .058
  2008  Matt Kemp            .359    .312    .047
  2008  Ryan Theriot         .335    .291    .044
  2008  Felipe Lopez         .324    .287    .037
  2008  Milton Bradley       .375    .334    .041
  2008  Aaron Miles          .337    .301    .037
  2008  Yadier Molina        .307    .274    .033
  2008  Shin-soo Choo        .359    .320    .039
  2008  Geovany Soto         .331    .295    .036
  2008  Mike Aviles          .355    .317    .038
  2008  Reed Johnson         .338    .302    .036
  2008  Jason Bay            .318    .285    .033
  2008  Chone Figgins        .329    .295    .034
  2008  Chase Headley        .356    .319    .036
  2008  Howie Kendrick       .351    .316    .035
  2008  Edgar V Gonzalez     .335    .302    .033
  2008  Ryan Doumit          .328    .297    .031
  2008  Manny Ramirez        .360    .326    .034
  2008  Aaron Rowand         .318    .288    .029

Unsurprisingly, this list includes a lot of 2008's surprises—Bradley, Miles, Aviles, Doumit, Choo, Lopez. Interestingly, Gathright's xBABIP of .156 was nearly 90 points lower than the next-closest person (and remember, we do take speed into account in the model). Maybe Geovany Soto isn't quite this good. Perhaps Manny Ramirez and Milton Bradley will disappoint whoever signs them. The Cardinals' middle infielders aren't as good as they seemed.

Bear in mind that this model is a work in progress, but here's how a revised version of it stacks up against other methods of estimating expected BABIP...

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/fantasy/article/whats-the-best-babip-estimator/

Plus, an Excel toy to play with here...

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/fantasy/article/simple-xbabip-calculator/

[Eli]

So Joey Gathright was the luckiest hitter in baseball in 2008?  And still put up a .584 OPS?  That's amazing.

[Kermit, B.]

So Joey Gathright was the luckiest hitter in baseball in 2008?  And still put up a .584 OPS?  And Jim Hendry still signed him?  That's amazing.

Triple chin'ed.

[Tank]

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/hardens-huge-whiff-rate

Over the weekend Matthew noted that the only starter who comes close to getting as many swinging strikes as called strikes is Rich Harden. He does it with just two pitches, a four-seam fastball and a changeup. Sliders and curves, generally, get the most swinging strikes so that makes Harden's feat that much more amazing. Harden used to throw a splitter and a slider as well, but gave them up in hope of decreasing his injuries.

Harden four-seam fastball averages about 92 mph with over 10 inches of 'rise'. The fastball has a 18.7% whiff rate (misses per swings). Among starters only Ted Lilly, Jonathan Sanchez, Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer have fastballs with a higher whiff rate.

His changeup is an even bigger reason for his huge number of swinging strikes. Hitters miss 48% of the time they swing at his change. As Harry Pavlidis highlighted that is the third most of any pitch in the game, and tops amongst changeups. The changeup has about 8mph separation from his fastball, with less tail and 'rise'. Because he lacks any other secondary pitches he throws the changeup almost equally to lefties and righties, about 37% of the time. Harden starts about a third of of his at-bats with the changeup and has had better results when he pitches it before his fastball (1.3 runs per 100 above average) then when he throws it after (0.6 runs per 100 above average). This is the opposite of what we saw with Tim Lincecum. Hitters must be expecting the fastball on the first pitch of the at-bat and the changeup trips them up.

Harden's results so far this year have been poor, but that has largely been driven by his high BABIP and HR/FB. His K and BB rates are inline with his career numbers, so going forward we should expect him to be very good.

According to this DL tool it looks like Harden has spent 26 days on the DL this year and 38 in 2008 way down over from 100 days in both of 2007 and 2006, so it looks like getting rid of the splitter and slider may have helped him stay healthy. That left him with two pitches, both of which rack up tons and tons of swinging strikes. It as a testament to how those pitches are that he can succeed as a starter with just the two pitches.

[Oleg]

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/hardens-huge-whiff-rate

Over the weekend Matthew noted that the only starter who comes close to getting as many swinging strikes as called strikes is Rich Harden. He does it with just two pitches, a four-seam fastball and a changeup. Sliders and curves, generally, get the most swinging strikes so that makes Harden's feat that much more amazing. Harden used to throw a splitter and a slider as well, but gave them up in hope of decreasing his injuries.

Harden four-seam fastball averages about 92 mph with over 10 inches of 'rise'. The fastball has a 18.7% whiff rate (misses per swings). Among starters only Ted Lilly, Jonathan Sanchez, Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer have fastballs with a higher whiff rate.

His changeup is an even bigger reason for his huge number of swinging strikes. Hitters miss 48% of the time they swing at his change. As Harry Pavlidis highlighted that is the third most of any pitch in the game, and tops amongst changeups. The changeup has about 8mph separation from his fastball, with less tail and 'rise'. Because he lacks any other secondary pitches he throws the changeup almost equally to lefties and righties, about 37% of the time. Harden starts about a third of of his at-bats with the changeup and has had better results when he pitches it before his fastball (1.3 runs per 100 above average) then when he throws it after (0.6 runs per 100 above average). This is the opposite of what we saw with Tim Lincecum. Hitters must be expecting the fastball on the first pitch of the at-bat and the changeup trips them up.

Harden's results so far this year have been poor, but that has largely been driven by his high BABIP and HR/FB. His K and BB rates are inline with his career numbers, so going forward we should expect him to be very good.

According to this DL tool it looks like Harden has spent 26 days on the DL this year and 38 in 2008 way down over from 100 days in both of 2007 and 2006, so it looks like getting rid of the splitter and slider may have helped him stay healthy. That left him with two pitches, both of which rack up tons and tons of swinging strikes. It as a testament to how those pitches are that he can succeed as a starter with just the two pitches.

I was thinking about this over the weekend...

Normally, when a pitcher only has two pitches, he's ripe for the pen, right?  It seems that with Harden, the opposite would be true, since neither pitch is meant to deceive the hitter on its own, it's the combination that does it.  The more a hitter sees Harden, the better Harden's chances are, or at least I don't think it helps the hitter as much as hitting against other pitchers.

It seems great relievers have a great breaking pitch or a great splitter (Hoffman's change-up and Rivera's cutter being exceptions).  Eckersley is the closest comp I can think of to Harden, who also seemed to just get by on a fastball and change-up.

Does this seem right, or am I Weebsing it up?

[Eli]

I was thinking about this over the weekend...

Normally, when a pitcher only has two pitches, he's ripe for the pen, right?  It seems that with Harden, the opposite would be true, since neither pitch is meant to deceive the hitter on its own, it's the combination that does it.  The more a hitter sees Harden, the better Harden's chances are, or at least I don't think it helps the hitter as much as hitting against other pitchers.

I like this.  Interesting thought.

Cumulatively, in the last three years, all major league starters are broken down like this:

Code Select Expand

Time
Through
Order    PA      AVG/ OBP/ SLG    OPS
   1     130,882  .262/.326/.415   .741
   2     127,740  .273/.335/.436   .771
   3     96,999  .285/.347/.460   .807
   4     11,355  .289/.355/.448   .803

For Harden, in 2009, it looks like this:

Code Select Expand

Time
Through
Order    PA      AVG/ OBP/ SLG    OPS
   1     158    .213/.273/.418   .691
   2     148    .281/.370/.570   .940
   3     88     .211/.310/.250   .560
   4     7      .571/.571/.1000   .1571

Probably not enough data to draw a real conclusion here, but so far, hitters do best the second time they see Harden (throwing out the 7 PAs from the four times row).  They suck the first time, have success the second time, then are worst of all the third time they see him in a game.  That definitely goes against how most pitchers perform, but again, small sample size.  It would semi-support your theory, if true.

I think we'll just have to see how it plays out, right?

[JD]

I think we'll just have to see how it plays out, right?

You're exactly right, nerd.  We will see how it plays out.  On the field.  ON the field.  Not on your spreadsheet express program thingie, but on the field of play.  Your numbers don't tell me anything solid.  They're diarrhea to me.  You tell me how many K's, W's, and IP's he's got and I'll tell you the size of his manhood. 

[Eli]

I think we'll just have to see how it plays out, right?

You're exactly right, nerd.  We will see how it plays out.  On the field.  ON the field.  Not on your spreadsheet express program thingie, but on the field of play.  Your numbers don't tell me anything solid.  They're diarrhea to me.  You tell me how many K's, W's, and IP's he's got and I'll tell you the size of his manhood. 

k.

[Philberto]

Goddamnit JD i fucking love you dude. like, totally.

[JD]

I think we'll just have to see how it plays out, right?

You're exactly right, nerd.  We will see how it plays out.  On the field.  ON the field.  Not on your spreadsheet express program thingie, but on the field of play.  Your numbers don't tell me anything solid.  They're diarrhea to me.  You tell me how many K's, W's, and IP's he's got and I'll tell you the size of his manhood. 

k.

Yeah!  And that goes DOUBLE for Oleg.