Thursday, November 22, 2007

Turkey Day Link Dump

I thought I'd send out a "Happy Turkey Day" to everyone. My parents were in town a few weeks back and we had our turkey dinner then, so we're going out to eat tonight for the first time in either of our lives. Should be fun.

I've been working up my player value piece on pitchers, but it's been slow going. Hopefully tomorrow or the next day.

Link Dump

Torii Torii Torii

Congrats to the Angels for signing Torii Hunter. I think. Hope his body holds up.

Batting Stat Reliability

Pizza Cutter has a fantastic article at StatSpeak that addresses the question of how many PA's we need to have a reliable indication of what a player will do in the next set of PA's of equivalent number. The results may surprise you:
50 PA - swing percentage100 PA - contact rate, response bias (both just missed at 50… the real number is probably around 70)
150 PA - K rate, line drive rate, pitches/PA
200 PA - BB rate, grounder rate, GB/FB ratio
250 PA - flyball rate
300 PA - HR rate, HR/FB
350 PA - sensitivity
400 PA - none
450 PA -none
500 PA - OBP, SLG, OPS, 1B rate, popup rate
550 PA - ISO
600 PA - none
650 PA - none
Req more than 650 PA's: AVG, BABIP, 2B+3B rate, WPA, WPA/LI
A few quick thoughts after seeing those results:

1) This gives a good reason to pay a lot of attention to batted ball stats, especially early in the season.

2) We have some reason to be skeptical of the surprisingly good first-season performances of Jeff Keppinger and Norris Hopper.

3) I wonder if there is any reason, aside from perhaps historical documentation, to continue doing monthly reviews of the Reds next season, especially when I look at monthly player splits...

Pitchf/x for the masses

You've likely already seen this, but Josh Kalk put out a fabulous pitchf/x tool. It only does a few things so far, but it has the potential to be a great resource for folks like me who are too lazy to put together their own pitchf/x database.

Don't forget to also check out his player cards at Kalk's blog, which features even more information on both pitchers and batters.
Posted by at 1:42 PM
Labels:

2 comments:

  1. 2) We have some reason to be skeptical of the surprisingly good first-season performances of Jeff Keppinger and Norris Hopper.

    Jeff Keppinger has a .321 minor league batting average in just over 2300 plate appearances. He has hit over .300 in every league he has played in except for his first year in the minors. He has hit everywhere he has been. He has never had a setback when moving up to a new level. He hit .368 in roughly 250 PA in Louisville. I think I read that the Major League Equivalent for that was .326. Add that to his numbers in Cincinnati for 2007 and you get over 500 PA at roughly a .330 clip. I am pretty confident that Jeff Keppinger is gonna hit.

    Since coming into the Reds' organization in 2006 Norris Hopper has done nothing but hit. (just over .320 BA in about 1000 minor league PA and just over .330 BA in about 375 major league PA)I am pretty sure there will be no big drop off with regards to Hopper.

    If the Reds don't want to move an established OF, because of concerns over whether Keppinger and Hopper will keep hitting, then these concerns are unfounded. Their histories would indicate that BOTH of them aren't going to fall on their faces. I am fairly confident that both will continue to hit and certain that one or the other will.

    If teams had to be 100 percent certain that their backup plan is going to work, moves by teams would be few and far between. The Reds have to take some risks to get into contention. This would be an acceptable risk IMO.
    ReplyDelete
  2. Dave, haven't we had this conversation before? :)

    My concern with Keppinger has more to do with his SLG than his batting average. It's the power that was surprising. My initial profile on Keppinger indicated that I thought he might be a good contact/obp guy (I compared him to a poor man's Gregg Jefferies). But his SLG last season with the Reds was higher than anything he'd done in the minor leagues over a full season.

    With Hopper, my concern is his BABIP, which was 0.367 last year despite a 19.7% LD rate. His ability to get infield hits accounts for some of that, but I'd be surprised if he can maintain a 0.350+ BABIP next year. And given that his batting average constitutes the vast majority of his offensive value, a drop in BABIP could mean a big drop in value.

    Naturally, I hope I'm wrong on both counts. But I'd be surprised if at least one of them didn't decline substantially next year. Don't get me wrong--I think both are nice options for the 4th outfielder/5th infielder spots. But we need to treat their '07 performances with caution.
    -j
    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)