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Monday Morning Memo: Yankee Candle Burns Forever

Posted by Drew Fairservice under Monday Morning Memo on May 13, 2013

New York Yankees v Colorado Rockies

At the start of the 2013 season, the Yankees faced an uphill challenge. Starting the season without three of their key components, the Yanks would rely on veteran fill-ins, just hoping to scrap through the first two months of the season in decent enough shape that eventual returns of Curtis Granderson, Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, and Mark Teixeira would buoy a strong second half. Just get the Bronx Bombers through the early days of the season and let the stars carry the team to their requisite post-season appearance.

It hasn’t exactly gone to plan.

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Ryan Dempster and The Razor’s Edge

Posted by Drew Fairservice under Analysis, Boston Red Sox, Ryan Dempster on May 01, 2013

Kansas City Royals v Boston Red Sox

Far too often in the early days of the season, you can head over to your favorite baseball blogsite and read the fateful words “small sample size but” in many different forms. It isn’t exactly high treason to base a blogpost on less than stable information but, especially among true stat folks (read: not me) it goes against the entire nature of the beast.

In the early days of the season, it is usually more telling and more informative to look for dynamic differences rather than statistical differences. Things that stand out as changes in process, rather than result.

Jeff Sullivan wrote a very interesting post on Ryan Dempster’s early season strikeout swell for Fangraphs earlier this week. It is Sullivan-ian in its quality and depth of research, keying on many dynamic differences in what Ryan Dempster‘s done since joining the Red Sox.

Ryan Dempster is doing things slightly differently in 2013 but his results are vastly different from previous years. A result of this tinkering and adapting? Perhaps. The product of good fortune in key moments? Absolutely.

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Roto-Relevant Research: Contact Rate

Posted by Eno Sarris under Adam Dunn, Bryce Harper, Colby Rasmus, Roto Relevant Research on Apr 25, 2013

St Louis Cardinals v Washington Nationals - Game Five

We know some stats stabilize earlier than others, that’s well-traveled ground. But a recent chart over by Charlie Adams at Beyond the Boxscore depicts the race to significance visually for us:

PAs_until_stabilize

It’s early in the season. The samples are short. Many stats won’t matter for a while. But! Players have made changes to their swing and contact rates that might hold steady. Of course, all we are saying is that we can learn more from the player’s rates than the league rates at this point — we aren’t saying these rates will hold steady all year. But we can learn from them.

So who changed their approach the most? Here are the top 15 guys who decided to swing more:

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Roto-Relevant Research: Projecting Billy Hamilton

Posted by Eno Sarris under Billy Hamilton, Cincinnati Reds, Roto Relevant Research on Apr 18, 2013

Montgomery Biscuits v Pensacola Blue Wahoos

That’s a misnomer. We don’t need to project Billy Hamilton overall, that’s why there are projections systems. He won’t have much power, and he has elite speed, we can use his minor league walk and strikeouts and presto, bingo bango: projection.

Here’s the thing. Billy Hamilton has speed like you’ve never seen before. He set the record for minor league stolen bases. The real Billy Hamilton facts are so ridiculous you don’t even need to make up fake ones. The guy he beat out for the record, Vince Coleman, once rode the no-power, inconsistent-walks, too-many-strikeouts train to some seasons that any fantasy player today would love to own — even his first season, when he hit .267 and stole 110 bases (and he had better).

So perhaps, when Steamer projects Billy Hamilton to hit .245, perhaps it can’t account fully for Hamilton’s elite-elite speed. You don’t build a projection system to be right for the two dots way out out on the extremes, you build it for the heart of the bell curve.

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Less Than Zero – The Walkless Wonders

Posted by Drew Fairservice under Analysis, Bryce Harper, Jayson Werth, Sample Size Theatre on Apr 08, 2013

Washington Nationals Photo Day

The start of the season is a special time, statistically. The fresh canvas yet unspoiled by slumps and significant sample sizes makes for beautiful art, where one good day at the dish can turn an ugly start into business as usual. Hot Aprils live much longer in the memory than any other time of year. April’s edition of Arbitrary Endpoint Theatre is Shakespeare when compared to the Byzantine off-off-off-off-Broadway performance of a May 3-June 2 hot run.

No player wants to be the last on the club to collect a hit. No player wants their slash line to start .000. Currently five players are on the hitless schneid, provided 10 plate appearances. In a stunning bit of journalism, I predict at least four of them to get a hit at some point during the remainder of the season. But don’t quote me.

The woes of the hitless are well known and routinely documented. But what about the other side, those who can hit but cannot walk? Can we spare a feeling for those who sport an on base percentage identical to their batting average? Getting Blanked would like you to meet the Rascal Scooters – the players unable to walk.

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Pile On Now While We Have the Chance

Posted by Drew Fairservice under HardBall Talkin', New York Yankees on Apr 01, 2013


Mere hours ago I wrote that counting out the Yankees is foolish. Reckless even. They have too much talent, wizened as it might be, to be a punchline for the entire season.

But in that spirit, take a look at the Yankees Opening Day roster have a yourself a good, satsisfied moment of sheer smugness. Go ahead, the Bronx Bombers missed the playoffs once in what, twenty years? You’ve earned it, friends.

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How Will American League East Lineups Look In 2013?

Posted by Darren Kritzer under Analysis, Preview on Mar 28, 2013

Atlanta Braves v Toronto Blue Jays

Over the next week, we will take a look at how each team’s lineups looked to start the season in 2012 compared to the projected look for 2013 (all ZiPS projections courtesy of Fangraphs.)

We covered the NL West and NL Central, NL East and AL West. Now we look at the American League East.

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