dave gershman

dave gershman

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Screen Shot Central: 5/23/11 Edition

Posted by dave gershman under HardBall Talkin' on May 24, 2011

Last night’s games didn’t just feature some exciting home runs, impressive pitching performances, and a couple of returns from players who were greatly missed by their team. It was a perfect night for screenshots, which is why I took initiative to snap a few of them. I only went back and captured the three best ones but I’m sure there were plenty that I forgot. Well, without further ado…

Of course, if that was Brad Hawpe and not Prince Fielder at first base it probably wouldn’t be as funny looking and certainly not screenshot worthy. However, it is Prince and this is a pretty loud image, if you ask me. If you’ll induldge me, here’s a quote:

“Maybe you can fix your hat on your own time? We’ve got a ballgame to play, man, and you’re blocking my view”

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The $159.99 Baseball App

Posted by dave gershman under General on May 19, 2011

This stunned me. The fact that some dude named Buddy Repperton charges $160 for a baseball app, a limited app nonetheless is astounding. So before you go on a read the description, just note that the word “handicapper” does come in to place once or twice.

I traveled to the link (that you see above) and this what I gathered:

“Buddy Repperton is a freelance sports handicapper who delivers PREMIUM sports picks. He is not affiliated with any sports book and does not advertise any products or services on his site. He is a gifted, dedicated sports handicapper with years of experience in the business who wants to share his talent with you.”

So, yeah…Ugh, $159.99. Hard to imagine anyone’s paying that much for an app, but hey, if Edwin Encarnacion can make 1/3 of the Jays errors this year, I guess anything is possible.

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Marlins Giving Phils’ Sellout Streak a Run for It’s Money

Posted by dave gershman under General, HardBall Talkin' on May 16, 2011

This guy poses an interesting question about the Florida Marlins’ perceived attendance problems: are they for real or do we need to start taking a closer look at the stands during broadcasts?
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The Graphically Hip: Jose Bautista Hits the Ball Hard

Posted by dave gershman under General on May 12, 2011

Jose Bautista is a great hitter. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that. Aside from watching him hit baseballs over the wall in left, well, kill baseballs over the wall in left, you can look at some ordinary statistics to get your scoop of what Bautista does or what he’s made of. If that doesn’t suit you, you can look at advanced stats that depict his wOBA, wRC+, and WAR as being near the best in baseball if they aren’t there already.

I took on something new. I wanted to gather what Bautista was doing with the bat that stats didn’t necessarily show. I wanted to see if Bautista was doing certain things at the plate that inflated his numbers or gave him more of an advantage and I came across some data in which I was able to compile that displayed the “speed off bat” in which Bautista hit.

It should be noted that because only the speed off bat of home runs is available, there is a large standard deviation at play. The league average speed off bat has increased every year since 2008, and despite there being a lack of complete numbers measuring the speed at which balls leave bats, it’s still an interesting aspect of home runs.

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The Graphically Hip: Dealing With Bad Luck the Hard Way

Posted by dave gershman under General on May 04, 2011

Note: Bring your own roller skates to roll bounce night. Seriously.

Ever since it was created by Tom Tango, FIP (fielding independent pitching) has been the most conclusive way to judge pitchers. As most if not all of you know, FIP is a statistic that only counts what the pitcher is most responsible for. Using ERA, you don’t know if fielder A was eating a donut when the ball was hit in the air resulting in a double for batter X.

BABIP (batting average on balls in play) is also a fantastic statistic. It’s most often used as a means of determining how lucky or unlucky a pitcher is. If the pitcher has a high BABIP, it means that more than an average number of balls that get put into play by a batter are counting for hits. As we see above, there are more ways to judge a pitcher than merely looking at his ERA.

In this graph, I listed the top 10 FIP leaders with an ERA over 3.90. Matt Garza, for example, leads Major League Baseball in FIP (wow), but has an ERA that’s close to four. If you watch the MLB Network, you’ll hear analysts discuss how lousy pitchers such as Daniel Hudson or Travis Wood may be doing, when in fact their fielding independent numbers reveal that they’ve just been tortured by horrible defense and/or bad luck.

Dave Gershman is a contributor to Getting Blanked. He’s also an editor for Beyond the Box Score and authors his own site, Penn League Report

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The Graphically Hip: Outing Lengths Of Jays Starters And Yogi Bear As Well

Posted by dave gershman under General on Apr 25, 2011

Pardon this graph not having a title — That isn’t an accident. This graph displays the length each Jays starter went in games this season starting with Opening Day (1) and ending with yesterday’s game (21). The goal for you is to guess which Jays starter pitched the length they did in each box. I explain more in the paragraphs below. Enjoy!

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The Graphically Hip: A Look At Ricky Romero's Arsenal

Posted by dave gershman under General on Apr 14, 2011

This numbers represented in the graph are prior to Tuesday’s start.

In 2010, Romero’s pitches looked like this:

Fastball: 90.8 mph, 9.7 RAR.
Slider: 82.1 mph, 0.9 RAR.
Cutter: 90.1 mph, -0.9 RAR.
Curve: 75.5 mph, 5.4 RAR.
Change: 83.9 mph, 6.9 RAR.

Dave Gershman is a columnist for Getting Blanked. You can find him at Beyond the Box Score as well as on his Twitter Account @Dave_Gershman

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