memos: matty_fred at hotmail
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Thursday, August 25, 2005
The Royale and the Royals
Tuesday night, I moseyed on over to The Royale, an eating and drinking establishment owned by my friend Steve Smith. Nice place. If you live in or will be in St. Louis, you should check it out. It's across the street from the (in)famous Courtesy Diner on South Kingshighway. In addition to the Royale, Steve also runs a boxing gym just north of downtown called the Panda Athletic Club. Chronicling his adventures as a bar and boxing gym proprietor, as well as general goings-on about town is his always interesting blog STL Streets. Check it out.
As for me, I think I'll jaunt (rather than mosey) over to Kansas City, MO this afternoon to see Curt Schilling's return to the Red Sox rotation vs. the hapless Royals. I'll have a full report of it tomorrow.
Posted at 12:45 pm by matty_fred
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Tuesday, August 23, 2005
I was planning today to write a little bit about yesterday's release of an American Research Group Poll showing Bush's approval numbers cracking the 30's at 36%. But before I began to write today, I came across this article in Salon. It's a gallery of photographs of the Iraq war most Americans haven't had the chance to see. They are gruesome and they are heart-wrenching.
If you have visited this site regularly, you know I have a predilection for numbers, graphs and statistics. Still, all of the charts, graphs and polls in the world can't adequately describe the gross brutality, agony, and despair of war. In the face of these photographs, any smart-looking chart or graph one could devise appears flippant.
Posted at 01:59 pm by matty_fred
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Monday, August 22, 2005
Fangraphs is a cool new website that provides daily-updated graphs of major league player performance going back to 2002. The graphs remind me a bit of those stock indexes one would find in the business section of the newspaper. Check out the graphs for Tampa Bay Devil Ray Aubrey Huff. Looking at how his on-base and slugging performance climbs high in the second half of each season, Huff's reputation as a "second-half player" appears well-earned.
From a fan's perspective, I love these graphs, simply because I can look up favorite players and see how they've performed over the years. From a fantasy baseball manager's perspective, these graphs could prove very useful, much in the way stock indexes can give a Wall Street speculator valuable information on stock performance. If, for example, you know a player like Aubrey Huff consistently starts the season sluggishly only to hit the heck out of the ball after the All-Star break, you can buy him low mid-season and expect a high return for the second half. Likewise, if you have a player who the graphs show consistently to start strong in the first half but diminish in the second half, you can trade that player for, say, an Aubrey Huff.
Another cool thing about this site is viewing the graphs by season for a player like St. Louis Cardinal Albert Pujols. As the OBP, SLG and AVG points show, Pujols has produced at a remarkably high and remarkably consistent rate. What's further impressive is the yearly decline in strikeout percentage and the yearly increase in walk (BB) percentage, suggesting that his pitch recognition has only improved over time. An already high "upside" is only getting higher for "El Hombre."
Posted at 03:33 pm by matty_fred
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Friday, August 19, 2005
I'll be back home in the STL for the next 10 days. I can't wait to see my friends and family. See you soon.
Posted at 12:10 am by matty_fred
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Thursday, August 18, 2005
fifty polls, one map, one graph and five suppositions
Survey USA's recent state-by-state summary of Bush approval polls shows Bush with higher approval numbers than disapproval in only 10 states: Alabama (+7%), Idaho (+23%), Mississippi (+2%), Montana (+5%), Nebraska (+13%), North Dakota (+6%), Oklahoma (+4%), Texas (+11%), Utah (+19%) and Wyoming (+20%). The Left Coaster:Those states accounted for only 79 electoral votes in 2004. If you want more eye-opening numbers, take a look at how things look right now for Bush in Missouri (-20%), Ohio (-23%), Virginia (-10%), Iowa (-13%), Kentucky (-11%), Nevada (-17%), New Mexico (-15%), and Florida (-9%). These are all states Bush claimed in the red column just ten months ago, and gives you an idea of how the Democrats, with the right candidate, could recapture these key states, especially the border states like Missouri, Kentucky, and Virginia in 2008. Doesn't look much like a political realignment anymore, does it? How has Bush already lost so much support in the "Red States?" Suppose its partly due to the fact that bullets and roadside bombs don't discriminate between "blue state" soldiers and "red state" soldiers:
(via The Palm Beach Post. Click here for an updated and interactive map.)
Or, as I mentioned earlier, suppose it's those rising gasoline prices bringing about higher Bush disapproval in the "Red States."
Suppose it's both, and suppose these two factors of continuing American combat deaths in Iraq and high gas prices reinforce each other's impact. Whether or not the United States' invasion and occupation of Iraq is responsible for high gas prices is debatable. Many economists and industry experts point to increasingly higher global demand as the culprit in raising oil prices. Still, every American knows where their gasoline comes from ... the same region of the world where American soldiers are dying daily in a war in which the prospect of victory (however ill-defined) seems to grow more and more slim. Suppose this connection between Middle East war and Middle East oil is made by someone every time he or she spends sixty bucks at the pump just to get back and forth from work for the week.
Posted at 01:55 am by matty_fred
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Wednesday, August 10, 2005
we got a great big convoy
Ah, breaker one-nine, this here's the Rubber Duck. You gotta copy on me, Pig Pen, c'mon? Ah, yeah, 10-4, Pig Pen, fer shure, fer shure. By golly, it's clean clear to Flag Town, c'mon. Yeah, that's a big 10-4 there, Pig Pen, yeah, we definitely got the front door, good buddy. Mercy sakes alive, looks like we got us a convoy ...
I says, "Pig Pen, this here's the Rubber Duck."
"We just ain't a-gonna pay no toll."
So we crashed the gate doing ninety-eight
I says "Let them truckers roll, 10-4."
Click here for a larger graph from Pollkatz. Click here for complete lyrics.
Posted at 10:36 pm by matty_fred
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Monday, August 08, 2005
pitcher abuse: in dusty don't trusty
 Suckers.
Chicago Cubs hurler Carlos Zambrano left his start against the Mets early last night due to injury.Carlos Zambrano (8-5) left after 80 pitches because of tightness in his lower back. He gave up two earned runs and four hits and departed trailing 4-0.
"He's had that from time to time. That's the first time he's had it this year, but when a guy comes to you and says his back is really tight, you can't leave him in there,'' Baker said. "It's just unfortunate that it happened tonight at the end of this trip, a bad road trip.'' Cubs manager Dusty Baker used the term "unfortunate," but even many casual baseball fans are aware of Baker's reputation as a skipper who overworks his starting pitchers, thus leaving them susceptible to injury.
So, does Baker abuse his starting pitchers any more than other managers? In order to try and answer this question, I examined Baseball Prospectus' compilation of Pitcher Abuse Points (PAP) for every starter in the Major Leagues from 2003 to the present.
PAP's are earned for every pitch by an individual pitcher exceeding 100 per game. The number of pitches exceeding 100 are then cubed, and the result is the PAP's for that start. For example, if a pitcher throws 110 pitches in an outing, 10 x 10 x 10 = 1000 PAP's for that outing.
So, why is the number cubed? Keen observers at BP have noted that when a pitcher approaches around 100 pitches in a game, each susequent pitch inflicts an ever-multiplying amount of abuse upon the pitcher. Though the formula for PAP is by no means exact, the 100-pitch threshold nevertheless creates a "bright line" for evaluating pitcher work loads.
Okay, back to Dusty's use of his starters as compared to the rest of the Major League managers. I examined PAP's for Major League starters from 2003 to the present, because 2003 was the first season of Baker's tenure as Cubs manager. Since I was looking for a pattern of high abuse of pitchers by Dusty Baker, I scanned only the top quintile of PAP scores in search of Chicago Cubs. I chose to examine only the top quintile under the admittedly dubious assumption that "normal" circumstances would show rougly one pitcher from each team in the top quintile due to the near uniform use of 5-man rotations.
Cubs Pitchers in Top Quintile of PAP (2003 to 2005):
|
Percentile |
PAP |
| 2003 |
|
|
| Kerry Wood |
99th |
261,206 |
| Mark Prior |
98th |
232,397 |
| Carlos Zambrano |
96th |
110,824 |
| Matt Clement |
83rd |
35,679 |
| 2004 |
|
|
| Carlos Zambrano |
99th |
158,715 |
| Kerry Wood |
94th |
67,576 |
| Matt Clement |
88th |
43,460 |
| Mark Prior |
83rd |
36,854 |
| 2005 |
|
|
| Carlos Zambrano |
99th |
108,375 |
| Mark Prior |
91st |
31,466 |
Barely missing the cut in 2003 was Shawn Estes in the 77th percentile. So far for 2005, Glendon Rusch is in the 73rd percentile. Rusch may yet climb to the 80th percentile this year now that Zambrano may be out for a while.
Compared to the rest of the majors, a higher than normal amount of Cubs starters have been abused at higher rates than normal during Dusty Baker's tenure as Cubs manager. What should disturb Cub fans is that despite the injuries suffered over the last two seasons by Wood, Prior and now Zambrano, Baker hasn't set limits on pitchers' workloads per start. Kerry Wood's health issues should have served as a warning to Baker to lessen pitch counts. Yet the warnings against pitcher abuse represented by Wood's and later Prior's injuries went unheeded.
In 2003 when Baker took the helm in Chicago, he was hailed as a "player's manager" whose rapport with the modern baseball player allowed him to credibly impart his "old-school" teamwork philosophy. He was going to be the North Side's savior, finally bringing a National League Pennant, perhaps even a World Championship to long-suffering yet faithful fans. A popular motto around Chicago that year eventually found its way on countless t-shirts: In Dusty We Trusty.
But for a "player's manager," Baker has certainly done much to jeopardize the careers of several talented young pitchers – talented young pitchers who were to provide the backbone for years of successful pennant races and playoff series wins. Not only did trusting in Dusty wear out some pitchers, it may very well have dashed the Cubs' hopes for a World Series berth for many years to come. That's not unfortunate. That's preventable.
Posted at 04:09 am by matty_fred
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