A fellow baseball blogger, Sky Kalkman wrote something interesting this morning. In a post exploring the relationship between control and command for pitchers, Sky opined:

My non-expert hunch is that one of the main reasons pitchers don’t throw more pitches in the strike zone is that their stuff isn’t good enough. They aim for the edge of the zone because the cost of missing outside (a ball) isn’t as bad as the cost of missing over the heart of the plate (a line drive or home run.) A pitcher with impeccable aim but mediocre stuff won’t rate highly in control.

My first impulse was to disagree with Sky, considering Greg Maddux threw in the 80s for much of his career and was an expert at slowly widening the strike zone. With a look at the numbers, though, Sky may have a point.

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— I’ve lost a few baseballs in the bushes, but never like this.

• Adrian Beltre as a pinch-hitter is 4 for 13 with 3 HRs. But this was the first time he really impacted a game.

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Here’s a quick look at how much Albert Pujols’ performance has cost over his career. Continue reading →

It’s not just Albert … Through Friday 5/4, one in four qualified first basemen (6 of 24) has an OPS+ below 60 and a BA of .195 or below, with an average of 2 HRs and 7 RBI.

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I have a player in mind. Your job is to guess who he is. To help you guess, you can ask me questions. But, only objective questions and only questions that can be answered Yes/No.

You have to get the answer within 20 questions to win. All questions, whether good or bad, count towards the 20 total. So, be careful to word your questions correctly.

Congratulations to bstar, who solved the quiz on the 10th question. The hints were a 10-year player who played entirely since 1961 and who ranked first (best) in one career statistical category and last (worst) in another, both among players who played only in 1961 or later. The answer is Greg Minton, who played from 1975 to 1990, and ranks first in HR/9 ratio and last in SO/BB ratio (both for min. 1000 IP) among pitchers who have played only since 1961.

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From 1997-2011, here’s the number of pitchers with at least one 15-save season, by club: Continue reading →

Dexter Fowler has played three qualifying seasons and each time has accomplished what has become a fairly unusual feat, that of stealing 10 or more bases and having 10 or more triples. What makes this feat even more noteworthy is that over the past two seasons, Fowler had more triples than stolen bases. It is far more common for players with some speed to have more stolen bases than triples.

In the past 4 seasons, having more triples than stolen bases while achieving double figures in both has happened four times. But that is more often than had occurred in the 30 previous seasons (1978-2007). Looking just at triples in isolation, since 2000 there have been 6 seasons with triples in more than 3% of ABs (min. 502 PAs). That is the same number as occurred in the 50 previous seasons (1950-1999). 

Are these signs of a return to the running game in baseball? After the jump, I’ll take a look at that question.

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As the Angels take the field for their first game following Jered Weaver‘s no-hitter, we look at a question of particular urgency to them: Does a team generally play better after a no-hitter?

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A tweet by ESPN baseball writer Buster Olney has me thinking. Buster tweeted a little earlier:

Tim Kurkjian and I have argued whether Rivera would be on the Yankees’ Mt. Rushmore. I say yes, with Ruth, Gehrig and DiMaggio; he says no.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) May 4, 2012

It’s an easy time to offer sympathy for the longtime Yankees closer, who injured himself this evening shagging balls in the outfield before a game, though I think Olney is going a little far here. I don’t see how anyone other than Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle are the Bronx Bombers’ equivalent of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Abe Lincoln. At most, Mariano Rivera is Harry Truman, the best relief president in American history, but no one who deserved to have his visage retroactively chiseled into a mountain.

I think Olney’s idea could be extended throughout the majors. For my favorite team, the Giants, I go Christy Mathewson, Mel Ott, Willie Mays, and Barry Bonds, and if I’m being a homer, I also find a spot on that mountain for Will Clark. He’s my all-time favorite player and one of my childhood heroes, though I’ll concede that for purposes of presidential metaphors, Clark might be Woodrow Wilson, another man whose talent and potential exceeded his accomplishments and who some say was a racist.

To anyone reading: Which four players are on your team’s Baseball Mount Rushmore?

Angels celebrate following Weaver's no-hitter / PRESSWIRE

Jered Weaver threw the 10th regular-season no-hitter since in the majors since 2010 last night, defined as team pitching performances of at least 9 innings with zero hits allowed. Are no-hitters becoming much more common? Is pitching becoming much more dominant? Click through for some analysis. Continue reading →