Bat design, for one.    If you require that bats have thicker handles it slows down the bat and discourages trying to jack pitches out in front of the plate.   But, since it increases the hitting surface of the bat, its overall effect on hitting is minimal.  

That is true of Mitchum.    Do you ever watch old WC Fields stuff?   Fields has some movies that are hilarious as long as he in on the screen but which just die and stink when he is not in the picture.  

Well. . .have you actually seen that on microfilm, or are you relying on a published source? 

I would guess there are 30 or more teams that started 10-21 and wound up in the hunt for the pennant. . . .just guessing.    A lot of pitchers have been hit and were fine; the key is serious injury.     When you have a serious injury your subconscious mind starts to take over your body to prevent that from happening again.  

Oh, right, I remember.   Wonderful characters both times.   Part of what I liked about him is that his characters were almost always extremely intelligent--not physical, not sexy, not hot, but extremely smart.   That was kind of fun.  

7 Thank(s) 44 taptaptap 51 7.4 9

THanks.    I think this is the second time in my career I've gotten into a Walter Matthau discussion.   I think the first time was about 1985, when I compared him to Juan Samuel.    He's really talented, but no matter where you put him, it still doesn't work.  

OK.    Is it "Kotch" that he plays a retired CIA agent gone slightly rogue?   I remember thinking that Matthau was good but the movie still didn't work.   Matthau was very DISTINCTIVE, and when an actor is distinctive there is a tendency to try to build on THAT, rather than developing a story line and a set of characters that are all essential to the movie.  

It is difficult to research what is outside the range of experience.  

I'd have given up on Hochevar, but as to the general point. . . .In 2000-2001 the Royals had a starting pitcher named Blake Stein.   Acquired in mid-season, 2000, he made 17 starts for them and was 8-5, 4.68 ERA.    They were generally pleased with that.   In 2001 he made 15 starts, 21 relief appearances, with a 4.74 ERA, which actually was a better-than-league ERA in 2001.   In his 15 starts he was 6-6, 5.08 ERA.   In 2002 he was in their bullpen, and, admittedly, he was terrible in 2002.

 

But let's go back to 2001.   Who did they have, who was better than Blake Stein, to take his place?   Who was it that they wanted to get into the rotation, who was BETTER than a 4.70 ERA?

 

And if you don't have somebody BETTER, what's the point of trying somebody ELSE?   

 

Same era, 2000, they had a pitcher named Mac Suzuki.   In 2000 he was 8-10, 4.34 ERA.   In 2001 he made 9 starts for them.   Well, OK. . .who you got that's better than that?

 

There are two ways to look at it:

 

a)  We gave him a chance, he wasn't that good; let's give somebody else a chance, or

b)  We tried him, he wasn't that bad, let's see if we can build on it.

 

Maybe it's just a philosophy thing, but I say, let's build on it.     After Stein they tried Jeff Austin, and then Chris George, and then Darrell May, and then Kyle Snyder, and then Mike Wood, and then Jimmy Gobble.   Through 2012 they were still in that phase, just trying this guy and that guy.    As long as a pitcher doesn't get hurt, he's got a chance to get better.  

Right.     I agree with that, but only the reader can tell us what he was really asking.    And that only if I would agree to publish it.  

Well, thank you for the question, and, not to blow too much sunshine up your skirt, but to be able to take on questions of this nature is really the goal and purpose of this feature.   I appreciate questions that

 

a)  require research, and

b)  lead to gains in understanding once the research has been done.  

 

That's the definition of a good question.

 

Anyway. .. .I took all rookie pitchers in the years 1960 to 1990, minimum of 20 starts, maximum of 40 starts at the conclusion of the season and maximum of 50 game appearances at the conclusion of the season.   There were 327 pitchers in the study.   I sorted these into 10 groups, 33 pitchers in Group 1, 33 in Group 2, etc. . ..some of the groups had to have 32, obviously.    Then I looked at the "rest of career" and "end of career" results the ten groups.      Fidrych and Bunker were in Group 1. ..Kerry Wood is too late for the study.  Candelaria doesn't qualify for the study because he made 18 starts as a rookie, and I don't know which "McDowell" you mean, in that both Jack McDowell and Sam McDowell had lousy rookie seasons.   Group 1 includes Fernando Valenzuela, Doc Gooden, and Ron Guidry, but also Wayne Simpson, Dave Rozema and Pat Zachary.

 

Anyway, the conlusion is that ONLY group 1 has a meaningful "rest of career" advantage over the other pitchers.    Group 1 had a rookie-season average won-lost record of 15-9, 216 innings with a 2.81 ERA.    In the rest of their careers they had an average won-lost record of 103-90, 3.74 ERA, which is quite a bit better than any of the other groups.

 

However, interestingly enough, once you get out of Group 1, then one group is pretty much the same as the next in terms of rest-of-career performance.    Group 2, as rookies, was on average 13-9, 198 innings with a 3.20 ERA.   In the rest of their careers they were 61-60, 4.08 ERA.       Group 6, as rookies, was just 9-10, 158 innings with a 3.90 ERA, but in the rest of their careers they were 57-62, 4.18 ERA--not really very much different than Group 2.       So. . .not only do the "superstar" rookies have a long-term advantage, but they are actually the ONLY group of rookie pitchers who have any long-term advantage.

Well, searching for a question in there that I can answer, let's assume you had just asked about OPS.    If you have two teams of players with identical OPS, but one has a low rate of three true outcomes and the other a high rate, it is likely that the team with the lower rates of strikeouts and walks would win.   The reason this is true is that OPS over values power.   However, OPS UNDER values walks, so really, it is a question of whether the team with the higher rate of three true outcomes is getting more of a gain in power or in walks.   If they're getting more of a boost in OPS from their walks, then they would actually be better. 

 

I don't THINK that's what you're trying to ask; I think you're trying to ask about interactive effects, rather than about the shortcomings of OPS.    You threw in Win Shares, but Win Shares are derived from wins, so if one team won more often they would therefore have more win shares. . .thus, it is an unanswerable question.    But if you're asking about interactive effects. . .well, but run creation is ALWAYS a matter of measuring interactive effects, so, again, it's an unanswerable question.    In essence, it's like asking "If two teams are identical but one of them wears blue uniforms and the other wears red uniforms, which one will win?"   There's no answer.

 

The second part of your question assumes that power causes runs to "cluster", making them less impactful on wins.    I'm 90% sure that is untrue, because power does not, in fact, cause runs to cluster.    Actually, the opposite is true.    If you scored all of your runs by hitting solo home runs, there would be no clusters whatsoever, whereas if you scored all of your runs by hitting singles, then the number of runs you score would depend upon your ability to form clusters of singles.     I've always been puzzled by the fact that people think that home runs cause runs to be scored in clusters, when, if you think about it, it is a singles-hitting offense that benefits from clusters, not a power-hitting offense.    I would suspect that, if anything, the opposite (of what you suggest in your second paragraph) would be more true.    I might study it and see what I can learn.   On the other hand, I'm fairly sure that to demonstrate that it is true would require a study of far more teams than actually exist in major league history.   

Well, I am certainly rooting hard for Brandon McCarthy to come back, but I think the answer is "no".   I don't believe that any pitcher has ever come back successfully after taking a line drive off of his face leading to significant injury.  

I would suspect that the police linked those by natural proceses indigenous to police work, probably, because there are a relatively small number of young girls who suddenly go missing (within a given area.)   The situation in which my method would be useful would be if there were a larger number of cases, so it wasn't apparent whether cases were linked or not, then my approach could be used to perhaps gain some insight into which of these cases might be looked at together.  

 

On the other hand, sometimes police (like the rest of us) are just stubborn; sometimes you have two cases which are pretty obviously linked, but the police investigating one will have formulated a theory about the case and the specific policemen investigating the other one will have formulated a theory about their case, and they will refuse to consider the possibility that the cases are linked because that forces both sets of police investigators to admit that they were barking up the wrong tree.    I have certainly seen that happen.   So if that was the case, then, yes, that approach might have been useful to that investigation.