You may have seen our big project launch yesterday, and then seen it was promptly canceled about an hour into it. I came to realize that even though I think our proposed work didn’t break any laws I was likely in for some massive headaches nevertheless. This is pretty devastating for me, as I spent a couple hundred hours and a lot of money prepping that project. At this point, I am going to resume my retirement. I don’t know what this means for the future of High Heat Stats, but without a funding source the site cannot continue as I am currently paying out of pocket.

Forty years ago today, on November 30, 1972, there were 9 trades in MLB:

The Detroit Tigers traded Jim Foor and Norm McRae to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Dick Sharon.

The Chicago Cubs traded Bob Maneely (minors), Joe Decker and Bill Hands to the Minnesota Twins for Dave LaRoche.

The Texas Rangers traded Horacio Pina to the Oakland Athletics for Mike Epstein.

The Texas Rangers traded Tom Ragland to the Cleveland Indians for Vince Colbert.

The Philadelphia Phillies traded Joe Lis, Ken Reynolds and Ken Sanders to the Minnesota Twins for Cesar Tovar.

The San Diego Padres traded Al Severinsen to the New York Mets for Dave Marshall.

The Cincinnati Reds traded Hal McRae and Wayne Simpson to the Kansas City Royals for Roger Nelson and Richie Scheinblum.

The Cleveland Indians traded Terry Wedgewood (minors) and Del Unser to the Philadelphia Phillies for Roger Freed and Oscar Gamble.

The Atlanta Braves traded Taylor Duncan and Earl Williams to the Baltimore Orioles for Pat Dobson, Roric Harrison, Davey Johnson and Johnny Oates.

Some notes on these trades:

• Two different McRaes were traded
• All-Stars: LaRoche, Hal McRae, Simpson, Scheinblum, Dobson, Johnson
• Players w/ memorable nicknames: Superjew, Pepito, Spider
• Future managers: McRae, Johnson, Oates

In the last 30 seasons (1983-2012) there are 169 now-retired players to have registered at least 1 season worth 5 Wins Above Replacement. This group is led by Barry Bonds, who did it a whopping 17 times, and Ken Griffey, who did it 9 times. The players atop that list are among the best to have played MLB in the last 3 decades.

But by looking at things a bit differently, we can come up with some surprising names among that same group. Read the rest of this entry

As the Steroids Era has faded away, offensive levels have returned quite close to where they were in 1992, The Year Before Everybody Got Jacked. On the surface, the two seasons look pretty similar in terms of numbers:

Stat              1992      2012
BA                .256      .255
AB per game     33.93     34.00
Hits per game    8.68      8.65
Runs per game    4.12      4.32

While those basic numbers are just about mirror images, there are some massive differences as well.

Read the rest of this entry

I would like to hire someone who is handy with WordPress for a couple of hours to update my installation of WordPress and do a few other things. Please email me if interested. I’ll pay $50/hr.

High Heat Stats turns one year old today!

This blog, on highheatstats.com, has been around since February, but I first opened our temporary home on Blogger 1 year ago today.

I just wanted to say thanks to all of our great readers and writers for making this such a great place.

Also, here’s a little more info on the project I’m working on. I mentioned before that something big is brewing. I told you that some of our writers will be involved. I have also commissioned several artists to produce original artwork, and this artwork is a key part of what we’re doing–meaning it’s NOT that I’m just getting a few book illustrations. I can also share that the final product of this effort will be something physical, as opposed to an e-book, web site, or other electronic medium.

All will be revealed in the first week of December when we launch a major campaign around this project.

Here’s an interesting set of players–these are guys with at least 20 batting runs, no more than 400 plate appearances, and a ratio between the two of at least 8 batting runs per 100 PAs.

Pretty interesting, huh?

A few random notes:

• It’s awesome to see two members of the 2010 Twins on the same list.
• Kevin Mitchell (1994), Matt Williams (1995), and Gary Sheffield (1995) all did it in strike-shortened seasons.
• Johnny Grubb rarely played full-time. After his Age 27 season, he had 10 years where he didn’t top 400 plate appearances, and only 1 where he did. The guy finished with a 121 OPS+ in his career.
• Hubie Brooks put up his best season (rate-wise, at least) in 1986, posting a 161 OPS+ despite a career mark of 100.

US PRESSWIRE

I don’t have time to write a proper post, but here are some quick notes on last night’s performance by the man Lou Piniella used to call “Rawl EYE-buh-nez”.

• His 2-homer game carried the 5th-highest Win Probability Added in playoff history.
• It was the 2nd-highest WPA by a non-starter (behind you-know-who)
• It was only the 5th playoff game in history where a non-starter had 2 extra-base hits. He’s the only guy to have both be homers. Amazingly, also yesterday was the 4th such game, a few hours beforehand, when Joaquin Arias came in as a sub and hit two doubles.
• Ibanez has had only 2 regular season games with greater WPA. Number 1 on that list is a game from a few weeks ago where he also entered as a pinch-hitter and ended up with 2 homers.
• Ibanez had another pinch-hit game-tying 9th-inning homer against the Red Sox less than 2 weeks ago.
• And courtesy of our friend Sean Forman at Sports-Reference, Alex Rodriguez is the greatest player to ever be removed for a pinch-hitter in a clutch post-season moment.

I just wanted to give a little info on why I haven’t posted much lately. I am working behind-the-scenes on a colossal High Heat Stats project. Ever since Sky Kalkman and Marc Normandin put out The Hall of Nearly Great, I have been carefully considering how best to leverage the collective talents of our community here to create a product that would be greatly satisfying to a wide baseball audience and also generate a small chunk of revenue we can use to further upgrade this blog. (My idea of upgrading includes paying our writers, making the server even faster, and adding more features.)

Anyway, after the better part of a year of laying out ideas, scrapping them, and reforming them, I’ve finally come upon a winning formula. Adam deserves a lot of thanks for that by enduring many open-ended questions and posits from me and playing a key role in developing the framework.

So, the big idea is….well, you’re going to have to wait for that. (Sorry!) I’ll release more information around Thanksgiving. For now I’ll just say this much:

- A lot of baseball talent is going to be involved in this project, including numerous folks who have never contributed to HHS before (although many of our existing writers will be involved too and just don’t know it yet)

- Everybody involved with HHS, including our readers (even lurkers) will have an opportunity to get involved early and contribute to the shaping of this big project.

If things go as planned, HHS is going to new places. I look forward to seeing you all along for the ride!

More to come late next month…

Ryan Vogelsong / USPRESSWIRE

Check out some of Ryan Vogelsong’s stats in 2011 and 2012:

Stat     2011     2012
G         30       30
IP       179.2    184.2
H        164      169
HR        15       17
BB        61       61
SO       139      151
WHIP       1.25     1.24

The numbers above are, for all intents and purposes, identical. But there’s one big difference: in 2011, he allowed 54 earned runs, whereas in 2012 he’s allowed 71. Those translate into seasonal ERAs of 2.71 (2011) and 3.46 (2012), and ERA+s of 129 in 2011 and 101 in 2012.

Why has a guy who has seemingly performed exactly the same on the mound allowed such different amounts of earned runs?

Let’s dig in to find out… Read the rest of this entry