The Expos/Nationals have never been either.
I’ll have to try to track that down. I love BP. I’d think also that there must be a significant difference in that number between the two leagues because of the designated hitter rule.
It’s just math.
There are 162 games in the regular season.
Every game has to end with SOME batter. At whatever point in the lineup the last batter comes up, he and every batter above him gets 1 more plate appearance than every batter below him.
If you assume that the game is equally likely to end at any point in the order - which is not precisely the case, but it’s pretty close - then the game will end 1/9th of the time at the #1 batter (1/9*162 = 18 times) 1/9th of the time at the #2 batter (18 times) and so on. So every spot gets 18 more times up than the next one.
It’s probably slightly higher near the top because those batters are likelier to have high on base percentages and thus to keep the game going but it won’t make a really huge difference.
The DH rule would probably not make a difference worth mentioning. Obviously, pitchers are much likelier to end innings, but it is extraordinarily rare indeed that pitchers would be asked to hit towards the end of the game. It really only happens if the pitcher’s throwing a masterpeice.
Yeah, I think Vlad in particular is a tough hitter to have come up for exactly that reason. The man is completely unpredictable. Now, I’m not certain that his strategy for hitting was the best idea in the first place, but it has to give pitchers fits.
Why would that be?
There are still 9 spots in the lineup. The fact that one league has a DH and the other has the pitcher in the lineup doesn’t change that fact. And, as RickJay notes, the number itself is not some incredibly esoteric figure; it’s the product of fairly simple mathematics.
You can find the discussion of batting order and the 18-plate-appearance-per-spot figure in the BP book Baseball Between the Numbers. It’s in chapter 1-3, “Was Billy Martin Crazy?”
If by “distant past” you mean last year, sure, you got me. Good one.
At which point the Gonzo’s of the world gleefully state, “But the pitching wasn’t good. They lost because the other teams pitching was better.” It’s a brilliantly naive argument that people fall for because it seems so easily verifiable: The team who’s pitchers give up the fewest runs win the game 99% of the time.
It’s certainly the best strategy for him. You can’t deny it has worked; he’s had a hell of a career.
I’ve heard it said that Guerrero would be an even better hitter if he was more selective at the plate (although he’s not absurdly free-swinging; he walks more than some hitters famous for their scientific approach, like Don Mattingly or Tony Gwynn or Ichiro) but you can’t always separate plate selection from a hitter’s other skills. A more selective Guerrero might draw 50 additional walks a year, but lose 40 hits, 15 of them homers, and so be a less effective player. Or he might not hit well at all.
A player’s basic hitting approach is a product of his physical abilities and stature and the way the player learned to hit as a kid. His various attributes - pitch selection, patience, stance, swing characteristics - are all parts of a whole, and aren’t necessarily individually swappable.
The Vladimir Guerrero package simply is what it is, and it works really well FOR HIM. His physical attributes - he is very tall, with very long arms, is immensely strong and had very quick wrists - not only make his hitting style work, but were part of the reason he adopted that style in the first place. It wouldn’t work at all if he wasn’t strong, or if he was 5’10". Willie Mays (who was small) couldn’t have hit like Vlad Guerrero; he had to adopt a style suitable to his size. Were he to have changed his style it might have made him even better but in all likelihood I think it would have made him worse. It is very difficult to be any better than Guerrero has already been - his career OPS+ is 143, which makes him roughly equal to the likes of A-Rod, Willie McCovey, really superior hitters. It’s hard to see him being even better than that - some have been, but not many.
I think he was simply referring to the fact that, aside from the Yankees’ success since 1996, the overwhelming source of that Yankee “legendary status”, that makes even announcers for other teams talk as if their teams are entering Yankee Stadium to face near-deities, took place from the Babe Ruth era through the early 1960s. A period of time when, indeed, the Yankees won the majority (20) of their 27 World Series.
The symmetry of that did not escape me. The only times previously that the Rangers made the playoffs, the Yankees sent them home in short order by playing a better balanced game - better pitching, better base running, better situational hitting. I remember (it was a long time ago) thinking, “Why don’t the Rangers do that?” after the Yankees sacrificed a lead-off runner to second. but, they rarely did in those days. The radio guys always explained it away as, “You don’t want to take the bat out of the hands of a hitter like <fill in the blank>”.
This series, the Yankees lost because of some of the same reasons the Rangers lost back then - their pitching was not up to snuff and their offensive leaders had silent bats. It was like deja’ vu with the uniforms swapped.
But, Rangers’ fans, enjoy it while it lasts because there may be a giant fire sale when the season is over. It remains to be seen if the new ownership will commit to keeping the quality starting pitching or if they will take the same approach as the previous owners and say, “Next year, we’re going to play within our budget.”
My ongoing (read: sporadic) investigation of IBB’s seems to indicate that any given with less than 2 outs stand a very good chance of backfiring badly on the manager issuing them, but 2 out IBB’s may be a worthwhile gamble. I haven’t done the entire season, but in that year when Barry Bonds was intentionally walked like 173 times, if it was with 2 outs the guys hitting right behind him were absolutely brutal.
Yeah, and also I’m happy about the fact that the blowhards, who mainly Yankee fans around me, were so hilariously wrong about both leagues’ heavy favorites this time around. I’m rooting like crazy for the Giants to upend the Phillies so that I can sneer at all the jerks who oh-so-confidently predicted, with maximum condescension, that we’d of course be seeing a NY-Philly Series again because these two masterful teams were obviously the class of their respective leagues. When I dared opine, “Well, they DO have some games to win before that point,” I was patted on the head and told, “A mere technicality.”
I do hate the Yankees, with force and vigor and delight, but I think I hate condescending front-runner know-it-alls worse. Fortunately, this year I may get to have the last word to all of them.
The guys at BP deal with this issue in the same chapter i cited above.
They note that Bonds’ protection was bad that year, but they go on to say that the whole issue of batter protection is over-rated.
Looking at Run expectancy tables, they look at a couple of different situations: no-one out, no-one on base; and two out, men on 2nd and 3rd.
In the first situation (0 outs, bases empty) they conclude that, even if an awesome player like Bonds (2004: .362/.609/.812 !!!) is followed by a brutally bad hitter like Chad Moeller (2004: .208/.261/.303), the run expectancy for the hitting team is still higher if you intentionally walk Bonds than if you pitch to him. They say:
In the case of 2 outs, men on 2nd and 3rd, things obviously change, and they find an overlap in the run expectancy before and after a walk, a small area of intersection where, in some cases, an IBB is a better move than pitching to the guy at the plate.
But, in order for this to be the case, the guy on deck needs to be about 60 points worse in AVG, 95 points worse in OBP, and 175 points worse in SLG than the guy being walked to make the IBB worthwhile. This was definitely the case for Bonds in 2004, but most teams don’t have that sort of discrepancy between consecutive hitters in their lineups.
And the 2-out, men on 2nd and 3rd situation is at the far edge of the curve here. That is the situation where an IBB is most likely to be worthwhile. For the vast majority of situations, the run expectancy changes make it a bad idea to give an intentional walk, even if you’re giving it to a very good hitter.
They conclude:
Emphasis in original.
mhendo has pointed out some of the research, but I think we’re all in agreement that Girardi’s use of the IBB was… well, it was puzzling. Stupid, even. Girardi was doing precisely the opposite of what almost anyone would think the ideal IBB usage would be; he was using it early in the game in an effort to pitch to a proven elite major league power hitter. He wasn 't walking Bonds to pitch to Doofus late in the game; he was walking Josh Hamilton to pitch to VLADIMIR GUERRERO (with Nelson Cruz following, by the way) in the middle of the game.
The pitching in this postseason has often been excellent but the managing has left something to be desired on many occasions. I also return to my criticism of Girardi in that early in the series the Yankees were caught a few times letting the Rangers pull a few baserunning stunts of the sort they’d pulled against the Rays. You would think he would have had his team prepared for that exact thing.
Of course, that’s MUCH better than your team actually winning something. Did you type that with one hand forming a “L” on your forehead?
Congrats to the Rangers. The more teams that reach the postseason, the better it is for baseball. I lived in San Francisco for 7 years so I’m rooting for them but it wouldn’t bother me if the Rangers win it all.
What will the Yanks do now? Man, they looked old up against the younger and more athletic Rangers. Perfect managing wouldn’t have saved this series but I’m completely unimpressed with Girardi.
Here’s a fun, cathartic poll that lets you play Yanks GM: http://espn.go.com/new-york/polls?id=5706685
Can anyone explain the popularity of Nick Swisher?
Like when?
I don’t disagree about the age and about Girardi. I’d throw A-Rod in there as another player I’ve never been impressed with (even though he has a good post season last year.) A-Rod is all compilation and rarely carries the team like someone of his stature would be expected to. As for Swisher, I do like him. He really played well this year when a lot of the bigger names were struggling. By all accounts he’s also a great clubhouse guy. Keeps everyone loose, and the Yankees are not a loose group in general.
Heh. I was thinking more along the lines of the way very good teams so often completely and inexplicably fall apart late in games during the postseason when playing against the Yankees. Like what happened to the Yankees in the 9th inning of Game 3. Somebody must have swiped the Yank’s voodoo chicken and sacrificed it on the Rangers’ behalf this year
Isn’t Nolan Ryan one of those owners? I can’t see him letting that happen.
Oh, I should modify my earlier comment about a “West Coast World Series” to “Western Division World Series”. Cuz Texas ain’t exactly “West Coast”.
Everybody takes pleasure in something. I take pleasure in the Yankees losing, the Yankees suffering, the Yankees’ plane crashing into the side of a mountain. But mainly I enjoying discoursing with Yankees’ fans on the days following such events. There’s nothing quite like listening to smug, self-satisfied blowhards being forced to admit that, even with more more money than God, their team is not destined to win every single year. That’s just the sweetest thing…