Monthly Archives: July 2012

More quotes from “The Hall of Nearly Great”

High Heat Stats is an affiliate for The Hall of Nearly Great. Follow that link to purchase a copy of the book, and you’ll be supporting this blog as well.

Following are some selected quotes from the electronic book. Please consider purchasing a copy (for just $12!) to support not only a great collection of essays, but also the concept of crowd-sourcing great efforts like this. Note that the baseball card images below are from checkoutmycards.com and are not reprinted in the ebook itself.

Joe Posnanski on Dale Murphy:

“That’s what I mean when I say that Murphy represented the ideal baseball player. He did not drink, did not smoke, and would always pick up the check. He would not give television interviews with his shirt off. The man endorsed milk, for crying out loud.”

Wendy Thurm on Bobby Bonds:

“There must have been a time when Barry Bonds was known as Bobby Bonds’ son. At some point, that changed.”

Jeff Passan, interviewing Marvin Miller for his essay on Andy Messersmith:

‘How are you, Marvin?’ I ask.    ‘Not good,’ he says.

Marvin Miller is 95. He’s tired these days. He says he doesn’t have much time. I tell him I’d like to talk about Andy Messersmith. He talks for 30 minutes straight.”

Sam Miller on Brian Downing:

“Christopher Reeve resemblance aside, Superman isn’t the right superhero for Downing, and neither is the Incredible Hulk. Those guys were strong because of circumstances out of their control; they were merely the vehicles through which power flowed. Every major leaguer worked hard, works hard, puts in effort that we can’t imagine. But they’re, at their core, Superman. They’re the Hulk. They’ve been given their talent. Downing is, if any superhero, Batman: a self-invented force of will. He did something all of us could do, but that, in the end, none of us can do.”

 

Still not convinced you should buy The Hall of Nearly Great? Read my first review of the book for more excerpts and a more detailed explanation of why this project is so well worth supporting.

MLB attendance is at a record high (fractional capacity)

Using ESPN.com’s attendance data I calculated total attendance as a fraction of capacity for each year going back to 2001 (as far back as ESPN has the data). In brief, I made sure it was weighted properly by essentially finding the total number of seats available at all games in all ballparks, then taking the total actual MLB attendance as a fraction thereof.

So far in 2012, 72.9% of all seats have been sold, the highest number in the entire available range back to 2001. Leaders are the Red Sox and Phillies, both of whom apparently are overselling capacity (though this is known to be a sham in Boston’s case, as local ticket agencies are required to buy up any unsold tickets for each game and Fenway itself rarely close to full on game day.)

Here is the fraction of total capacity sold each year:

2012	72.9
2011	70.0
2010	68.3
2009	68.2
2008	72.1
2007	72.4
2006	69.4
2005	69.4
2004	67.3
2003	60.4
2002	60.2
2001	64.3

Attendance reached a high (in both absolute numbers and fraction) in 2008, then started to decline as the US recession deepened. Since then, the economy has improved slightly, but capacity has also shrunk with, for example, the new (smaller) Yankee Stadium opening.

As average game attendance every season prior to 2001 was lower than the average in 2012, I think it’s a reasonable guess that fraction of capacity was also lower in all those earlier seasons. The only seasons with a higher average attendance that 2012 were 2007 and 2008, and as we can see, the fraction of capacity is higher in 2012. Of course, as the year drags on and more and more teams fall out of contention (or trade their stars as will happen in the next couple of days), attendance is likely to fall in many places and 2012 may fall out of first place.

Notes on 2012 MLB averages

Just some quick notes on MLB seasonal averages:

  • Run scoring is up slightly from last year (4.33 R per game, from 4.28), but is still the 2nd-lowest value since 1992.
  • Strikeouts have reached another all-time high, which has been true for 5 years running. So far in 2012 they stand at 7.5 per game, up a whopping 5% from the record rate last year of 7.1.
  • Meanwhile walks are down to 3.06 per game, the lowest value since 1968!
  • As you might imagine, the 2.43 K/BB ratio is astronomically high. That’s up nearly 6% from last year’s ratio, which itself was an all-time record.
  • Hits per game are at 8.65 per game, the lowest value since 1989.
  • Attendance stands at 31,381 per game, the highest since 2008 and a pinch higher than pre-strike level of 31,256 in 1994.
  • Intentional walks are down to just 0.21 per game. That’s the lowest level in recorded history, which goes back only to 1955. I presume as run-scoring goes down, managers are increasingly reluctant to put more runners on base. Sabermetrics has come a long way in the last 20 years to show just how much the chances of scoring increase when any batter is walked.
  • Interestingly, sacrifice hits have also dropped way down, to just 0.30 per game. That’s also the lowest level since they’ve been recorded, which is back to 1954. Managers have also learned that giving up an out in exchange for a base advance is worth it far less than thought for most of the 20th century.

LVP: Least Valuable Player

In order to accumulate a large negative number in Wins Above Replacement, a player cannot be merely bad. After all, most players who perform at less than replacement level for any extended period of time get, well, replaced.  So to pile up a substantial negative number a guy has to be both performing poorly and getting playing time anyway.

That might be because his team believes, for good reason or not, that he will turn it around.  Or his team believes that he is more valuable (for tangible or intangible reasons) than the WAR numbers suggest.  Or there are sentimental or financial reasons to keep the player playing independent of performance.  Or the team simply has no current better alternative, because the organization doesn’t happen to have access to a replacement level player at the position required.

The current Least Valuable Player in the majors for 2012 — the non-pitcher with the most negative b-ref WAR — is Jeff Francoeur, who continues to be Kansas City’s everyday starting rightfielder despite an OPS for the season of .643 (for a starting corner outfielder!) and a 2012 WAR of -2.9.  Francoeur has long been a favorite target for statistically-oriented fans and observers.  He is both a charming fellow and capable of hot streaks that lead teams to believe that he can be successful.  But in the long run Jeff just can’t ever seem to overcome his poor strike zone judgment. Twenty-five more years of “Least Valuable Players” after the click-through.   Continue reading

Quiz – Time Warp Trivia

All of these players were active in the 1960s or 1970s. All were journeymen, and all played for at least three franchises.

Besides the above, what is the more specific common thread that unites these players?

Congratulations to yippeeyappee! He identified (in just 28 minutes) that these players played for a 1960s or 1970s expansion franchise in its inaugural season, and are natives of that team’s state/province. Where there were multiple such players, these are the ones who played the most games in that season.

No players on the 1969 Royals or 1977 Blue Jays matched these criteria.

Wins Above Replacement (WAR) vs. Wins Above Average (WAA)

First, an introduction: I’m Adam Darowski and I’m a longtime fan (and occasional commenter) of HHS and its previous incarnations. If you’ve seen my name before, it was likely related to the Hall of wWAR work that I’ve done. I also contribute to Beyond the Box Score and Baseball Past and Present. This is my first post at HighHeatStats, though I already have another project in the works. Hi, everyone!

When Baseball-Reference updated their Wins Above Replacement (WAR) framework, they included Wins Above Average (WAA). Personally, I found this to be a tremendous addition. I had recently started calculating and visualizing Wins Above Average based on Rally’s original WAR spreadsheets. While B-R rendered all of my underlying data useless, they at least had the decency to save me from redoing all my work.

As I’ve started using WAA, I’ve had people ask me:

  • What’s the difference between WAR and WAA? and
  • Why haven’t we just been using WAA all along?

While both metrics are similar, they do serve very different purposes.

Continue reading