Year of the Pitcher? Nah. Year of the Fielder.
Some thoughts and math into the huge offensive decline this season.
Comments
Read it in a rush, will have to read it more thorough later, but I am still inclined to go with the pitchers are more dominant than hitters theory. I am sure that there have been some slick defensive plays to help preserve the great pitching performances. Does that article say anything about good contact/bad contact swings? Like Joey Votto got bad contact in the 9th inning against Hamels and the result was an easy DP.
Other than that, I still blame Brady Anderson for the fall of power numbers.
Strikes per 9 went down wheras fielding percentages went up. That’s a huge indicator right there.
Is that strikes per nine or strikeOUTS per nine? If it’s strikes per, does that mean batters are swinging earlier at less favorable pitches? If that is the case then sure, the pitchers throwing better pitches making the batters swing at ‘junk’ which results in easy groundball/flyball outs, which result in higher fielding percentages (most of the cases. There are a few Dan Uggla’s out there).
Strike_outs_. Type-o on my part. Just read the article, it’s in there.
My smarter friends had comments about this and feels the data isn’t being used properly. Maybe you all will understand what the hell they were talking about:
Friend #1’s response:
“That said, their analysis here leaves a bit to be desired. For one, they assume a linear relationship in their regression analysis, which is a big leap. And even if you’re willing accept the assumption of a linear relationship, their conclusion that the higher R-squared values associated with the fielding stats shows a higher correlation with runs scored is flawed because it’s widely accepted that R-squared values below .5 mean there is little or no correlation between the variables being comp….. oops, excuse me, my pocket protector fell out. Now where was I?”
Friend #2’s response:
“American League runs dropped 841 RUNS out of the 1111 runs that were dropped [75.7%!!!]. Of the 429 HR that decreased, 351 came from the American League [82%]!!!!. Something just seems fishy here.
This article suggests that emphasis in fielding has influenced this number more than anything.
It has not. 55% of the total drop in runs come from the decrease in Home Runs. Home Runs account for about 34-35% of runs scored. Yet the decrease in runs more than half of the drop comes from the decrease in Home Runs.
These guys love advanced SABR-metrics to figure out why counting stats are down. And then ignore the actual counting stats themselves."
This made me realize how little I understand statistics and how easy it is to fiddle with numbers to get what you want. It’s kinda my problem with Freakonomics. I like it, and the book was really interesting, but I think there might be a few holes in what they came up with (not just baseball-related.)
Huh, that is really interesting. Friend one definitely has a point about R-squared being below .5. The R-squared value is basically a relationship between two numbers that tells you how good Number A is at describing Number B. If the R-Squared is low, i.e., below .5, it’s not very good.
And I think the reason for this is what Friend #2 said: they didn’t factor in homeruns. Which is a huge oversight.
So then what is it? What has made this season what it is? New training regimens for pitchers? The removal of steroids? Sheer statistical chance?