No postseason shutout for Verlander this time, either.
Talk about Athletics at Tigers: ALDS Game 1
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You say furlong, I say nautical mile….
Nautical, because he’s clearly underwater when he “breaks” from first.
http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=25344133
That’s a good one John. Leyland was trying to avoid the double-play by going with the hit and run but got exactly what he was trying to avoid. Bad call by the skip — not only does it take a while before Delmon drops the refrigerator, but Peralta strikes out a lot. No harm no foul yesterday since they won, but I have to wonder how much the lack of team speed might hurt the Tigers as the playoffs progress. When Berry isn’t in the lineup,they not only lack speed, but they’re downright slow.
There is so much to love about Verlander.
IMO, the best is his 63 game streak of at least six innings
pitched. The streak ended on July 26,2012.
Because of this, if I need to win one game, I would pick
Verlander to start it.
I know one thing for sure, Justin Verlander gets me to
the seventh inning with a chance to win.
In a one and done scenario, what more can I ask for?
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I’m actually DVR’ing the game, intended to have a family movie night, but now we have tech troubles.
Here’s the DET postseason strikeout record, by the way:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/DET/DET197210100.shtml
Richtig, Hans.
Ein paar Mitgleider von UK Subs war gestern Abend hier, sowie urspringliche Band-Mitglied von der bahnbrechender, Schweizer weiblicher “punk” Gruppe Kleenex.
A fun time was had by all, though I had to pack it in by 1:30 am. They still smoke up a storm in most of the clubs here, and my tennis- and beach-volleyball playing lungs can’t handle it.
Yes.
From fading memory only, but it seems that teams that do make post-season runs get big contributions from unlikely heroes (Pat Borders, Gene Tenace, etc.) Quentin Berry made his major league debut this year at 27, and Alex Avila slumped most of the year, though still solid behind the plate. Of course JV was JV after usual first-inning jitters.
ESPN reports the following:
“Rick Porcello and Drew Smyly are on the roster for the Detroit Tigers for their AL division series against Oakland…there was speculation Porcello could be left out since he’s not part of the starting rotation for this series, but both he and Smyly can be options to pitch in long relief.”
Er, what? Who’s starting game four if there is one? And it’s still not clear that Scherzer is even 100% for game three. I mean WTF, they were considering leaving these two guys off the roster???
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African-Americans and Latins signed by George Genovese? Wasn’t that the Giants’ scout’s name? Were you really leading us that way and just looking for someone to type the first response that came to mind?
However, without looking, who what was resoponsible for AL superiority from 1930 – 1946?
Or the AL superiority from the mid-90s forward. Is it just randomness, or cyclical, or are there are factors at play in all cases? I too hesitated to answer since the obvious (and accepted) reason was the NL embraced signing black players much more quickly and aggressively than did the AL. It goes beyond one addition such as Jackie Robinson. Teams like the Red Sox, Yankees and White Sox seemed to really shun the signing of black players throughout the 1950s,. This could have opened the door to the Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Joe Morgan, Bob Gibson etc,… Read more »
Well, the best answers usually start with the questions. : -) The NL’s more-rapid embrace of black and then Latino players seems like a good starting point. After Jackie Robinson, teams had a new talent pool to tap, but was it tapped equally by both leagues? Were AL teams as interested overall as NL teams in signing black players? Without researching it, it doesn’t seem like they were. Meanwhile, NL teams may have been scouting and signing a higher percentage of black players to remain competitive with each other, and the imbalance grew as the escalation between NL teams intensified.… Read more »
I think I disagree with the White Sox comment. Chico Carrasquel, who was then pushed out by Luis Aparicio. Minnie Minoso. Al Smith. Connie Johnson. [To this point, these names are all off the cuff, quickly, by memory. Now I look at BBRef, everybody with 100 PA, or ~30 games pitched, in a year for the Sox from 1950 through 1959.] Luis Aloma. Hector Rodriguez. Willy Miranda. Miguel Fornieles. Sandy Consuegra. Earl Battey. Larry Doby. Harry “Suitcase” Simpson. Rudy Arias. Some pretty well-known names, some stars, some also-rans. But, I think, a pretty good collection of players, including the Sox’s… Read more »
Phil, I actually was going to post a quick update right after I hit submit, acknowledging exactly what you wrote above and probably not fair to include the White Sox in that group. I think the overall point on the AL’s less-than-enthusiastic approach to signing black players holds, although turns out that’s not what JA was seeking.
JA, My first reaction on reading this was the same as Paul and Mike’s. But on reflection I’m not as sure. As I understand it, WAR would be a fixed-sum system within a league, absent interleague play. So the question really isn’t about the quality of the league, but the curve of distribution of WAR. (Is that right?) Looking at 7+ WAR players over the ’46-’68 span, it seems to me that the NL has substantially more than the AL even among players who are not African-American (55 to 42 – I’m including Latin players who were black, like Minoso… Read more »
Just a quick addendum – the uber-frequency of Mays and Aaron on these lists of 7+ WAR seasons (23 appearances between the two) do seem to skew the picture a bit. No other pair has more than 12 appearances (Mantle and Teddy Ballgame). But in percentage terms, each of those pairs accounts for 20-25% for their respective league’s total 7+ WAR seasons, so the contrast seems to hold through both high- and low-frequency 7+ WAR players (to the extent I’ve looked at it, anyway).
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Thanks, guys. Yes, the NL’s advanced pace of signing African-American and Latino players is an accepted reason that they were an objectively better league. But I didn’t make my question clear: How does WAR “know” that the NL was better in that period? The leagues were closed systems; they never played except in the WS, which is not included in WAR measures. (And the AL won 13 of those 23 WS, anyway.) You might just as well compare WAR for the major leagues to that of some 16-team minor league. They’re unrelated; there’s no reason for the MLB WAR to… Read more »
John, I’m not sure this is the answer, but it might lead to a hypothesis. The infusion of black and Hispanic talent into the NL overall probably increased the amount of variance in the league as a whole. As many have argued, variance in complex systems decreases steadily over time, which narrows the ole right tail of distributions. As outliers were allowed into the league, the increased variance might have led to more opportunity to accumulate WAR over “replacement level.” I don’t know much about WAR; it’s not my favorite statistic in the world, so I’ve never really spent the… Read more »
tag: Agreed. For every extremely, superior talent (as evaluated by WAR)like Jackie Robinson or Willie Mays, there probably is a front office reaction to be somewhat satisfied with their elevated level of aggregate team talent. Hence, let Eddie Miksis play 135 games….or something like that which lowers the bar? I’m still trying to figure out how Willie Mays, with fifty fewer walks and fewer RC/27 outs, is better than Mantle. Obviously, Mays was the superior fielder, however how the hell can we be certain about metrics like dWAR or fWAR or fRuns and the degree to which Mays is the… Read more »
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tag, thanks. I did take a quick look into that theory, but found that the AL had more negative-WAR players in that period. More crucially, and I kick myself for not realizing this at first — we don’t even have to talk about WAR distribution among players, because each league’s WAR total is presented right on the league/season page. The NL had significantly more lump-sum WAR than the AL in each of those years. I don’t get that. Same number of teams and length of schedule during that entire span, except that the AL’s expansion and 162-game season came 1… Read more »
John – It’s not that WAR “knows” that one league is superior to another. It’s that Sean has decided that’s the way things are. “Finally, the leagues are not always equal in their quality levels as evidenced by things like inter-league play and also player performances when shifting leagues. Taking these differences into account assign slightly different multipliers to the leagues, but centered on 20 for 162 game seasons and 19 for 154 game seasons. One example of this is the post-war integration. The National League integrated far more quickly than the American League and was a higher quality league… Read more »
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b @58 — Here’s that comment comparing Jackie’s Dodgers with the ’90s Braves:
http://www.highheatstats.com/2012/10/the-all-time-los-angelesbrooklyn-dodgers-team/#comment-40403
I took a look at Sean’s replacement level chart mentioned in post #37. According to that chart the NL had higher multipliers even before and during the early years of integration when there were too few Afro-Americans to have an impact.
Here are the stats:
Year….NL….AL
1940….22….16
1941….22….16
1942….19….13
1943….19….13
1944….19….13
1945….19….13
1946….22….16
1947….22….16
1948….22….16
1949….22….16
From 1950 to 1970 the NL advantage ranged from +3 to +5. If I am interpreting correctly the NL seemed to have more of an advantage prior to integration. Am I right or wrong?
I’ve had similar wonderings John. I cannot understand how one league’s mean (and total) WAR can be higher than the other’s if you have no games played between leagues. But I’m unclear if that’s what you’re claiming or not. The number of players exceeding a certain threshold value can certainly differ–and often will differ–if the distribution of WAR differs between the leagues.
oops, I see (35) that that *is* what you’re claiming. And rightly questioning as a legitimate fundamental tenet IMO.
Honestly, the more I read about WAR (which granted has been scattered and fragmentary), the less I trust its usefulness and/or validity. It’s not clear to me why someone would compute such a statistic in the first place. What’s it supposed to explain really?
Um, a replacement-*level* player is a hypothetical player based on an estimate (of course; all such calculations are based partly on estimates: park factors, OPS+, you name it) of the level of freely available talent (i.e., AAA players, etc.); in other words, especially if Player X performs at *below* replacement-level, then you’ve made a bad choice in employing Mr. X, because you *easily* could have had something better without, presumably, even spending as much as you have spent on X. I recommend you read a little Bill James if you’re not familiar with the concept. Anyway, to answer your second… Read more »
Yeah, I know all those standard explanations Phil, which have holes–or at least question marks–big enough to drive a truck through, conceptually and mathematically. Such as for example, that if you’re only interested in a comparative evaluation of different players’ contributions to wins it doesn’t matter *WHAT* baseline you use.
And since its Fangraphs, Baseball Prospectus and Baseball Reference who actually make the calculations, I focus on their explanations, not Bill James’ ideas from 25 years ago or whenever, though if I had time and could find a good and accessibly summary by him, I’d certainly look at it.
Actually, Jim, I *wasn’t* recommending comparing X to someone else: I said that comparing him to (figuratively) zero was the best benchmark to use: gives similar-looking answers for everyone. That (fixed benchmark) approach is what’s used in so many sabermetric concepts, isn’t it? OPS+, etc., compare everyone to their league/season average, adjusted for park effects, etc., thus giving everyone a common benchmark to shoot at.
@Jim #52, I’m not sure what conceptual or mathematical problem you’re pointing out by saying it doesn’t matter what you compare it to. Are you saying that a ‘replacement player’ is a bad thing to compare to (vs, say, an average player)? Or are you arguing that calculating win shares in any form is not accurate or valid? I’m just not clear, from your post – you seem to be saying both, but your example addresses only the former. WIth regards to John’s research, yeah that does seem problematic if one league is given more wins to work with –… Read more »
Bells, welcome! Sounds like we might have another regular on board.
I disagree, though, that making this “judgment” call invalidates WAR at all. I think it just adds to the thoroughness and sophistication of the metric.
Wouldn’t we be complaining a lot more if clearly inferior AL players were compiling as much WAR as their more-talented NL counterparts?
It sounds like you’re more of a WAR believer than a doubter, though.
Phil (63): Yes I understand that you are arguing that you need a baseline reference. I am saying in return that it doesn’t matter what that baseline is. They make sort of a big deal about the whole “replacement level player” concept at BR.com when it’s just not that important. Compute a z score (number of standard deviations from the mean) just like everyone and their brother does in all kinds of analysis, and be done with it. You don’t *need* the replacement level concept–it doesn’t advance anything whatsoever as far as I can tell. Bells: See above. However, there… Read more »
Jim, I agree to a certain level. I have issues with WAR because it’s a mathematical equation that is only as good as its input. Assumptions are made. As a longtime follower of SABR going back to the very eary 80s, I am very interested in using metrics to better evaluate players, although as time has gone on I’ve become a bit uncomfortable with the sometimes blind acceptance people have toward all advanced statistics. The more time I’ve spent studying WAR I’ve concluded it’s a good thing, but I don’t accept some of the input and thus the conclusions. Yet… Read more »
The rate and degree of integration is as important as the initial date. As late as ’64, the Yankees and Red Sox had only 1 African-American regular and Detroit 2 (if you count Bruton) vs. the Dodgers in ’55 with 4 (neither year being an aberration for those teams). Once the Phillies integrated, they quickly established a line-up that by ’64 included 4 black regulars (Taylor, Covington, Allen, Gonzalez).
Re: Integration: There’s a really interesting piece in the New York Times today about the Washington Redskins delay in bringing in a black player until 1962. You can find it at
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/sports/football/50-years-ago-redskins-were-last-nfl-team-to-integrate.html?ref=sports
Preston Marshall wasn’t all that different than a lot of other owners.