Baseball analysis and discussion.
Let’s face it: one of the most time-consuming things in the world is the process of ranking any category of players for (fantasy) baseball purposes, let it be pitchers (starters or relievers), batters, prospects, mascots, whichever you need/want to rank. Furthermore, most of the time, it can be a very subjective task and that makes … Read more
At first glance, a pitcher who has a lifetime ERA of 4.24 and a record of 42 wins and 30 losses in 109 games shouldn’t attract much attention. Of course, if we add that said pitcher plays at a home park colloquially known as “The pitcher’s graveyard”, Coors Field, well, we take it as a … Read more
Hitting the ball hard frequently and keeping a good, constant launch angle sounds like a good recipe for successful hitting. A lot of research has been made about the importance of maximizing the Exit Velocity of the hit ball while doing it on the appropriate Launch Angle. On this topic, it is just as important … Read more
Looking at the 2020 season numbers only, these are the pitcher’s tiers going into the 2021 season, rated by speX. If you are not familiar with speX, it is a Simple Pitching Estimator indeX, an aggregate indicator of sorts comprised of other stats, namely CSW, (K-BB)/IP, SIERA, and real FStrike%, weighted and scaled so the … Read more
Some pitching stats, like Called Strikes plus Whiffs (CSW) and Strikeouts minus Walks per inning (K-BB)/IP, are useful to get an initial estimate of pitcher’s performances due to their descriptive capacities, but also because of their predictability qualities, confirmed through their correlation with other stats. As an example, in a constrained data set, CSW and … Read more
After the first three games in this WS, Dodgers took the advantage and leads 2-1 thanks to a stellar performance by Walker Buehler who kept Rays’ batters on a leash for most of the game. Now, we head to game four and the announced openers are Julio Urias and Ryan Yarbrough, two lefthanded pitchers with … Read more
Sandy Koufax, Bert Blyleven, Satchel Page, Tom Glavine, Barry Zito, Clayton Kershaw: all of them amazing pitchers with a big common thing: they own some of the best curveballs in the game. We are used to seeing Kershaw’s 12-to-6 beautiful curveball, like this one, in action: That was Nick Ahmed being Kershaw’s 2500 lifetime strikeout … Read more
Picture this: you are an MLB pitcher, finishing your warm-up routine in the bullpen while your team, as visitors, is batting for the first time in the game you are going to be the starter. Between throws, you take a peek at the field and you see movement around the bases; your playmates are getting … Read more
Johan Santana is, in my way of seeing things, the best pitcher born in Venezuela. As an example, we have the 5-year period that he had in the big leagues between the 2004 and 2008 seasons, including both, in which he accumulated the following numbers: During that period he was the leader in Wins Above … Read more
How many times have we heard or thought during a game that X player is a clutch batter? Or, on the contrary, that he tends to choke when needed the most? These comments are most of the time based on narratives we, as observers, create from specific situations that get fixed in our memories and … Read more
