chw42

I did a little more digging around for this. From 2000-2004, there were over 5700 bunt attempts with a runner on first and nobody out, which means the batter at least attempted to bunt at a pitch sometime in the at bat. In this case, the batter reached base or advanced the runner 69.1% of the time, meaning he failed 30.9% of the time. Overall, this case had a run expectancy of .831 runs (because these are just at bats where bunts were attempted, some of these at bats could have resulted in the hitter swinging away due to fouling off two strikes, etc). This does not include pitchers bunting. However, of the successful sac bunts, the run expectancy was .7. So there is a .131 run advantage in bunt attempts over actual sac bunts, that alone seems, well, weird, considering that this includes the 30.9% failure rate (getting out with no base advance). Then you have to also think about the run expectancy advantage of just swinging away, where the run expectancy is .875 (not .9). So usually, swinging away has its advantages and generally, sac bunts are bad. This also applies in late inning high leverage situations. The sac bunt, in almost every case, decreases win expectancy (this is from actual data from the 70s, where bunts were still used a lot). The decrease is not gigantic, it's less than 1% in fact, but in general, the bunt in late inning situations does not help you. Of course, you have to take numerous views at this. It really depends on who is pitching, who is running ,and who is hitting. However, keep in mind that the average hitter that bunted from 2000-2004 had a .343 wOBA, above average. Of all these hitters, 40% were mediocre, 40% were bad, and 20% were good (based on wOBA). It seems like some managers are wasting outs.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 16, 2010 -> 02:11 PM) Like Mauer? Depends on the type of left handed hitter. Thome and Mauer most likely won't gain anything form the park, since they have very good opposite field power and usually don't pull their home runs. But for a guy like Morneau, it doesn't hurt.

QUOTE (Cali @ Jul 16, 2010 -> 01:55 PM) Home Run Derby is gonna be kinda lame at the park when they (eventually) get the all star game Left handed hitters will love it though.

Keep him there until you find out he is truly back to 09 form. Messing with him right now would be a bad idea.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Jul 16, 2010 -> 01:38 PM) I wish the search function worked. I wanted to have Ronnie Brewer's baby in 2006. I hated the Sefolosha pick. Glad we scooped him up. He can effectively guard the elite 2's in the league. Something we desperately needed. Brewer was a hell of a player two years ago. He was about as good as Luol Deng actually (at least offensively).

I don't think the Bulls can trade first round picks in back to back years, can they?

I'd like for the Bulls to go out and get Rudy Fernandez.

Nice deal for Brewer. If only he can shoot 3s...

My god, Soriano hit a rooftop yesterday?

QUOTE (onedude @ Jul 16, 2010 -> 12:10 PM) Safe to say Beckhams blast didn't get a chance to die. Ball was destroyed It went 388 feet. Long distance for a line drive.

This new park isn't doing the Twins any favors.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 16, 2010 -> 11:06 AM) Some rotation news for next week: we'll see King Felix on Wednesday, and then Brett Anderson is scheduled to return to face the Sox over the weekend (we also have to face Cahill). Anderson's back? Damn it, horrible timing. Although I remember we hit him really well last year.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jul 16, 2010 -> 03:03 AM) Ptatc's evaluation doesn't sound good. As it turned out, Jake was a complete waste of money. He's a gamer and all, but it's money down the drain. And yes, I wish him the best in his recovery. It sucks he got hurt. I don't feel sorry for baseball teams that waste money like this, however. Giving pitchers multi year megabuck deals is just stupid in this day and age of coddling arms that in the best of times can't give a team more than 105 pitches a night. Nobody held a gun to the head of owners who brought this upon themselves. He's here until 2012, still a lot of time left. Stop the negativity man.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 16, 2010 -> 10:18 AM) Or his slider isn't as sharp as it was earlier this year. He's still striking guys out at a blazing rate.

QUOTE (flavum @ Jul 16, 2010 -> 10:10 AM) I'll take a guess: Pierre, Ramirez, Rios, Konerko, Quentin (dh), Jones (rf), Pierzynski, Viciedo, Beckham It'll probably be Castro.

Mark Buehrle = great guy and a great player. Talk about using your talents to the max.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jul 16, 2010 -> 09:07 AM) I dont agree with this at all. Their rotation is extremely suspect, Blackburn and Slowey are throwing BP right now We get to face both of them this series.

Liriano's been getting hit hard. 8.31 ERA in July. His peripherals still look great, part of the reason why his ERA is that high is due to a .429 BABIP. So he's not losing it, it might be a bit of bad lucky combined with bad location.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 16, 2010 -> 09:45 AM) To be fair, Rios got A LOT of glove on it. I would have given him an error, but it wasn't really his fault, if that makes sense. Yeah, I agree with that. He should have caught it, but it wasn't his ball to begin with. I would have charged him the error, he had the ball in his glove.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jul 16, 2010 -> 09:28 AM) I don't see anything in the Trib or MLB.com articles about it, and missed the 2nd inning. What happened in the outfield that Hawk was going on and on about, that resulted in the big inning for the Twins? Who screwed up, and what happened? Quentin misplayed a routine fly ball, Rios went over there to cover for him and dropped it (I like how Chris Rongey wanted to blame Rios for that play...). Had that been caught, Danks probably has a 1-2-3. You know how Hawk is about this kind of stuff...

Another possible 11 game-winning streak? Hit me!

This place sure ain't the Metrodome, if this was the Metrodome, we probably lose this game.

QUOTE (BearSox @ Jul 15, 2010 -> 10:25 PM) Does this play data take into account the fact that for decades teams have been batting their best players 3rd and 4th, and thus causing the 4th and 5th hitters to obviously have more AB's with runners on (considering the best hitters usually have the higher OBP on the team)? Sorry to beat a dead horse, but just got back from an errand I had to run. Go Sox! It doesn't, however, there have been studies done to explain what you just said. If you were to make a Markov Chain of nothing but average hitters 1-9, you will see that every hitter will come up a similar amount of plate appearances to the actual play by play data. In addition, in the normal play by play data, the clean-up hitter comes up with a man on base half the time, when you look at this from the average player model, it is virtually the same. So basically, it's really not all that dependent on what you just brought up. Plus, you should know that 3rd place hitters come up with two outs nearly 37% of the time. The highest figure of all hitters in the lineup. So putting your best hitter third is somewhat of a waste. Nevertheless, lineup optimization only gets you 10-15 runs per year, so it's not a gigantic difference. However, those 10-15 runs can result in an extra win or two.

I thought Paulie hit that one out.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Jul 15, 2010 -> 10:22 PM) I enjoy Bobby's curves. Fatty chaser you are?