Posted on

Daniel Murphy is Pure Chaos

Baseball players don’t have enough cool nicknames.  So when Ted Berg suggested, via Ike Davis, that “Pure Chaos” would be a good nickname for Daniel Murphy I decided to run with it.   It may not describe his hitting style, but I do think it applies to his general approach to the game.  Before you say anything, The Irish Hammer does not count as a nickname.

 

Howie Rose: “Coming up in the bottom of the inning for the Mets: Niese, Tejada and Pure Chaos.”

 

Sports Radio Update Guy: “It was all Pure Chaos at Citi Field last night, as the Mets walloped the Phillies eight to one.”
Daniel Murphy's Nickname is Pure Chaos

 

Posted on

The Islanders Battle For Contention

John Tavares celebrates a goalFootball is over and it’s still nearly two weeks until pitchers and catchers report and even longer before baseball games start. In the meantime I’m going to enjoy some New York Islanders hockey. Last night they held off the Flyers for a 1-0 shootout win. Evgeni Nabokov played an amazing game in goal, blocking all 45 shots and he always seemed to be in exactly the right place.

 

The Islanders are not one of the top teams in the league, but luckily the NHL takes the top 16 teams into the playoffs. The Islanders are not currently one of those 16, but they’re starting to make a push at it. They currently sit in 11th, 9 points behind the 8th place Ottawa Senators. However they’ve played four less games than them, and still play them head to head. In essence this means the Islanders actually control their own destiny, although there are still too many games left to break it down like that.

 

Can they do it? They certainly can, although it still remains a long shot. They would need to eliminate the extended periods of time in which they’re just not playing very well. They got away with one last night, but Nabokov will not always be perfect. On the other hand, John Tavares had very little to do with this victory and stealing a game when he’s not at his best is a good way to get winning streaks going.

 

The Islanders may not be talented enough to maintain the level of play they need for long enough to make the playoffs, but they’re still quite a fun bunch to watch. They’re playing some thrilling games and John Tavares is one of the best players in the league. Still, long shots occasionally do come through, and it wouldn’t be a huge surprise to see the Islanders play good enough hockey to leapfrog some other teams that also aren’t great at hockey. Either way they’ll provide some good entertainment to bridge the gap to baseball.

Posted on

Poll: Which NY Team Will Have The Next Parade?

Congratulation to the Giants for winning the Super Bowl. I wonder, which team will next win a championship in New York? The Rangers will probably be a popular answer, and the Giants are certainly going to be riding a wave of optimism to repeat. The Nets aren’t technically eligible for a parade until 2013, but that’s really not that far away.

So what’s your pick?

Who will have the next championship parade in New York?
Mets
Giants
Islanders
Rangers
Nets
Yankees
Jets
Knicks
Liberty
Red Bulls
  
pollcode.com free polls 
Posted on

It’s All About The Giants..But Not For Long

This weekend is about the New York Giants.  It’s about the Super Bowl, and a championship.  It’s about perhaps a parade on Tuesday and random rankings of Eli Manning among the greatest QBs in the game today.

 

So good luck to the Giants.  I’m looking forward to this game, and like so many so-called experts on Twitter, blogs, radio and tv, I’m going to give you my meaningless prediction.  30-16 Giants.  It’ll seem closer than that though.  The Giants will score early in the second half to go up 23-13, and the Patriots will answer with a field goal.  The next score will be halfway through the fourth quarter when Tom Brady is picked off deep in his own zone.   He’ll then turn the ball over on downs on the Giants 44 yard line, and Eli will run out the clock slowly driving down the field and taking a knee.

 

The Giants, and NY and NJ, will celebrate.  The Senate will drink NY beers bought by New England politicians.  There will be a parade.  Then, despite five other local sports teams playing professional sports, all eyes will turn to baseball.  We’ll tick into single digits of days remaining until pitchers and catchers report.

 

And it can’t come soon enough. Let’s Go Mets!

Posted on

Home Run Derby Alternatives

David Wright at the 2006 Home Run DerbyTholeMoley over at Mr. Met Is My Brother wrote a post about watching the NHL All-Star Game.  Actually she’s wrote a couple of them, but I want to talk about one of them specifically.  I wanted to watch the festivities this weekend, especially with John Tavares a part of them, but I had other things to deal with and missed it.  TholeMoley highlighted some of the events in the skills competition, and talks about how much better it is than the Home Run Derby.

 

Now, personally I like the Home Run Derby.  There is nothing more magnificent in all of sports than watching a baseball player swing and smash a baseball 400+ feet in the air.  There’s just a simple majestic beauty to it, especially if you see it in person like I did in 2006.  (And that’s not just because you can’t hear Chris Berman)  Most of what people object to about the Derby is the massive amount of time between batters and all the other stuff besides the mammoth home runs.

 

So broadening the spectrum might be fun and could include more than just the Home Run Derby and the random eight players they can find to participate.  TholeMoley suggests a fastest trip around the bases to parallel the fastest skater event.  She also mentions fastest players, hardest throwers, and the most accurate throwers getting their time to shine.

 

You could do an accuracy event.  Set up some milk bottles on a table, and have the players throw a baseball at them.  If they hit it they advance to the next round and take five steps back.  Repeat this until you have a winner.  If all players miss at the same time, simply repeat that round.

 

Not to take anything away from the kids that get to shag balls in the outfield, but you could position the All-Star outfielders at the walls and let them try to rob home runs all night.  Most of them clear the fence by quite a bit though.

 

Perhaps giving out more titles is the way to go.  In a social media society we’re all used to get badges and titles for things as simple as checking in to the ballpark more than anyone else.  Instead of just crowning a winner, crown the guy with the farthest home run, with the most home runs back to back and the guy with the highest single round total.

 

These are just a couple of suggestions, and none of them seem too much different than simple warm-up activities so there shouldn’t be any real concern about anyone getting hurt.  It’d be an interesting way to spice up the event and might spike interest that has been fading over the years.  There are other things they can do to, like break up the idea of National League versus American League since the advent of interleague play takes away some of the mystery of it.  It’s pretty clear that the All-Star Game is not perfect, and MLB should always be looking to tweak it.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on

The Bisons Beer Dinner, Mets Beer Competitions?

Prost!The Buffalo Bisons are having a Beer vs. Wine II dinner Thursday at Coca-Cola Field.  It’s a rematch of a dinner they had last November.

 

This is a pretty cool idea and a great use of the park during the offseason.  $60 gets you a 5-course meal and a wine and beer pairing with each.  Your vote decides which paired better, and the votes are tallied at the end for a winner.  Of course beer won the first dinner.

 

I’m not going to whine (haha, get it?) about the Mets not doing something similar at Citi Field, although I do think it’d be a fun idea.  I’m not that unreasonable that I demand all my interests to align in one centrally located area within Flushing.

 

Except this isn’t really that much different than an event the Mets already have.  Oktoberfest!  The Mets already have a plan in place for food and drink events, so why not host a couple more?  I’d make a point to go to a “Summer Beerfest” event before a Mets game.   The competition angle is one way to go too.  When the Padres visit in town, pour five Stone Brewery beers on one side, and five Brooklyn Brewery beers on the other. Ask fans to rank their top three beers and then announce the winner during the 5th inning, which would double as a great way to advertise the next competitive beer tasting event.

Posted on

More on Citi Field’s Uninspiring Beer List

Citi Field is a first-class venue.  It’s got amazing food, and much of it is local.  The Citi Field beer list is extensive, but it’s also uninspiring.  Beer and baseball go together so well yet most of the beers available, particularly to the general public, at Citi Field are only the typical expanded list of beers available via Anheuser Busch distribution. Some of these beers are pretty good, but it lacks that local flair and originality.  I’m not knocking the Redhook beers; but it seems sloppy to get them through Anheuser Busch when the brewery itself is only a handful of miles away. Even though they’re all over the place now, the Danny Meyer stands are New York creations.  Cascarino’s is a New York pizza place.  Pastrami on rye is a very New York food, and Keith’s burgers are especially homey.  Even McFaddens was first a New York staple.

 

So why was Brooklyn Brewery priced out?  Why aren’t there more Sixpoint beers around the stadium, especially now that they serve the beer in cans? What about some of the other local breweries?  Chelsea? What about Schmaltz Brewing Company which makes the Coney Island Freak line of beer. Interestingly, the Brooklyn Cyclones, the Mets rookie team, plays in Coney Island.  Maybe the Mets could serve Albino Python when the Diamonbacks are in town, or the Mermaid Pilsener to mock the Marlin’s cheerleaders.  What about Harlem Brewing Company’s Sugar Hill Golden Ale?  Harlem is where the Mets first placed, and where the Giants played before them.  Blue Point Brewery is probably the only real local beer outside of the Delta Club.  Their Blue Point Toasted Lager is available at Catch of the Day, but they’ve got other beers as well.

 

This all says nothing of the possibility of finding a partner to brew Mets themed beers.   Brooklyn Brewery has an expanded brewery now, and when they provided beer to Box Frites, it was their own beer called Blanche De Brooklyn that they renamed Blanche we Queens.  Why stop there?  What about a Home Run Apple Lager?  A World’s Fair Oktoberfest?  A Darryl Strawberry Blonde? The possibilities are endless. Maybe Schmaltz would be intrigued by the opportunity to create a Brooklyn Cyclones Ale for MCU Park and Citi Field.

 

I think the Mets, and Aramark, may underestimate just how many Mets fans are huge beer fans as well.  It’s not just the hardcore fan either.  There are plenty of casual baseball fans out there that could be drawn off the fence and into the park if they were tempted to try a unique beer.

 

Stay tuned, later this week I’m going to talk about what some of the other stadiums around baseball are doing with beer.

Posted on

New Mets HOF Member John Franco: First Pitch at Citi Field

Congratulations to John Franco for being selected for the Mets Hall of Fame.

Did you know John Franco threw out the first ever ceremonial first pitch at Citi Field?  It’s true!  It took place at an exhibition game between St. Johns and Georgetown.  Franco went to St. Johns, so was tagged to do the honors.

John Franco throws out the first ceremonial first pitch at Citi Field. -CeetarJohn Franco Throwing out the first ceremonial first pitch at Citi Field for a St. Johns game. -Ceetar

Posted on

My Problems With FIP

The formula for the Sabermetric stat FIP is (13HR + 3(BB+HBP-IBB) – 2K )/ IP That’s then added to a constant to equate it to normal ERA ranges.  (xFIP  provides some extrapolation on HR rate per fly ball, but my overall concerns remain the same)

 

The general idea with FIP is to try to determine how well a pitcher pitches without luck and the fielders altering his results.  Once the ball leaves the bat it could be a bloop that no one reaches, or a screaming liner that happens to be right at someone.  This is not affected by the pitch the pitcher throws, and the only way a pitcher can be sure of a result is to strike out the hitter.

 

It’s supposed to be irrelevant to the statistic. FIP treats a screaming double off the wall the same as Jeterian soft groundout to short.  Except it doesn’t really.  The ground out is .1 IP and lowers FIP by raising the denominator in the formula.  This is part of the problem with the stat.  It does successfully remove bad defense from the equation by not penalizing a pitcher for an infield single that or a liner that finds a hole, but it also credits pitchers with good defense with extra outs.

 

The stat was created with the assertion that pitchers lose control of what happens after ball hits bat.  So the idea is the pitcher is ‘better’ if he can overmatch the hitter and beat him via being a better pitcher than he is a hitter, and striking him out.  Another problem is the pitcher does have some control over the batted ball, and no one knows how much or how to measure it.  You can see a pitcher one year induce a ton of soft contact, and then all of a sudden induce a lot of strong contact another year.  That’s hard to measure.  Matt Cain is one example, and Chris Young another, of pitchers that always seem to outperform their FIP.

 

Actually inducing soft contact, something groundball pitcher seem to do better, is something that _can_ be done.  As of yet statisticians haven’t been able to conclusively measure soft contact, and I’m not even sure pitchers can actively decide to do it with any real consistency.   It may be that the quality of contact can be reduced by keeping the hitter guessing.  Ground balls yield more outs than fly balls, but it’s also true that the times you most want to throw a pitch that gets more ground balls is also the times that the hitter knows you want to throw that pitch.

 

No stats are perfect, and we shouldn’t hold FIP to a higher standard, or use it in a more absolute manner, than any other stat.  I’m certainly not saying that we shouldn’t ever reference FIP, or that we should abandon the quest to expand our knowledge of baseball.

 

I haven’t done the math, but I could see FIP being a stat useful for picking the reliever you most want to bring into runners on situation. These pitchers should theoretically be the most likely to get an out without a runner scoring due to a lucky bloop, or a home run doing lots of damage. This is especially true of relievers because their smaller sample size of innings pitched leads to much more variance in their ERA.

 

The difference in ERA and FIP can also be telling, although not conclusively.  Looking to see how much a pitcher’s FIP is off from his ERA can be a way to predict if he’s getting lucky, or unlucky.  It’s not a tell-all though; it can be used as a warning flag to look further, but it’s not a direct relationship from out-performing FIP to being due for a drop off in performance.   Jonathan Niese will be a good study in this this year.  His ERA last year, as it’s been most years, was much higher than his FIP. He had a 3.36 FIP and a 4.40 ERA.  He’s rewarded for striking out a lot of guys, but the mounting data is starting to suggest that the high amount of hits he gives up aren’t just due to luck and bad fielding.

 

I’ve started playing around with some of the numbers, but haven’t gotten that far.  Tweaking the formula to use batters faced instead of innings pitched doesn’t make that much of a difference.  The high numbers of batters bad pitchers face tends to lower their numbers in that case.  Pitchers like Oliver Perez who face a zillion guys but then strike out the side to get out of danger would do well in that situation, but even the simplest of analysts knows that’s not a good job.

 

Next I tried correcting for balls in play.  Instead of simply batters faced, I removed the percentages of outs from balls in play that simple luck would turn into outs.  Then I adjusted the formula to take away extra outs the defense provided, or add back in outs they should’ve made back towards normal.   This looks better, but I’m still looking at the numbers and playing with the formulas to see if I like it.   I’m also still just trying to figure out how to smoothly create and maintain a database of baseball stats, so there is a lot of trial and error going on over here.

 

Sabermetrics have given us a much better understanding of baseball, but it’s only just starting.  They got there by questioning the established logic, and it’s a philosophy we shouldn’t abandon just because we’ve taken a big step in understanding.

Posted on

Apparently Optimism Is Not A Sin

Ted Berg over at Tedquarters.net is doing a four part series on “If absolutely everything falls right” and looking at the upward bounds of expectations for the Mets roster.  It’s nice to know I’m not the only person looking at the optimistic avenue.  I was beginning to feel a little like Highlander as an optimistic Mets fan.

 

I think this post on the infield  is very reasonable, and it’s even possible that some of the players overshoot his proposed projections.   The most unrealistic part is them all staying healthy all year.  Still, health is not an unreasonable expectation.  I’m not expecting Wright to break his back again, or Ike Davis managing to fall in exactly the wrong way to ruin his season.

 

His second part, on the outfield, seems a tad more pessimistic to me.  Maybe Bay does rebound a little.  I’ve mentioned that here in the past, but  I think we’re doing a disservice to Duda in projecting his ceiling defensively as “not terrible”.  His outfield experience in the minors was mostly in left, and he’s only got about half a season of time in the majors.  Perhaps his hulking frame tends to make one  believe he’ll never be good defensively, but I think he can hit “not terrible” just by having all of Spring Training to start at the position and build on it as the year goes on.   He can clearly hit the baseball, and if he were to improve on what he did last year he could be our own version of Mike Stanton.  In fact, their offensive WAR on baseball-reference were very similar factoring in playing time.   Ralph Kiner and Keith Hernandez both love his swing, for whatever that’s worth.

 

Ted dreams of Jason Bay having a great first half and becoming a trade chip and Kirk Nieuwenhuis forcing his way up to the majors.  Personally I think that’s unrealistic, because I don’t think a half season of good baseball is going to yield the type of return to make it worth trading him.  He’s not Carlos Beltran and his trade would come along with 24 or so million dollars owed to him and a possible vesting option.  More likely if Nieuwenhuis does warrant a call-up, Andres Torres will become a fourth outfielder.  If this happens we’ll lose a little defensively, but gain a lot offensively, including some flexibility with defensive replacements.

 

So what’s the highest fWAR we can expect from the Mets offense?  I’m going to say somewhere in the 28-30  range.  This would’ve had them 4th in the NL last year and best in the NL East.   I think this number represents of everything goes well.  It’s certainly possible that if one or two things turn out to go extraordinarily well, they could shoot past it.  Because fWAR heavily relies on fielding, if the pitching does better there will be less balls in play and less fielding damage to the values.  I assume part three and four of Ted’s series will deal with the rotation and the bullpen.