Random Things You May Not Have Known
Here are some interesting Mariner-related statistics that you may not have known. We’ll do it did you know style.
Did you know that Yuniesky Betancourt had 18 extra base hits in August? That was 55% of his hits for the month, and is the highest monthly total of XBH any Mariner hitter has had this year.
Did you know that the Mariners have seven pitchers on the roster with an ERA of 10.00 or higher in September? Jeff Weaver, Horacio Ramirez, Eric O’Flaherty, Brandon Morrow, Sean Green, Ryan Rowland-Smith, and John Parrish have formed their own arson squad.
Did you know that opposing hitters have a .331 batting average on balls in play against the Mariners in the second half? The only guys below .300 are J.J. Putz, Mark Lowe, and Sean White. Remember, BABIP is more about defense than pitching – the M’s defense has been killing them all year, but never is this more obvious than since the all-star break.
Did you know that the Mariners team ERA in games they lose is 7.21? Only Tampa Bay gives up more runs in losing efforts.
Did you know that opposing teams hit .347/.399/.515 against the Mariners in the first inning of ballgames? This is, by far, the worst in the American League. Hitters have only managed a .674 first inning OPS against Jarrod Washburn, but they’ve teed off on everyone else, especially Jeff Weaver.
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All I remember hearing about Yuni when he came up was his spectacular defence from the announcers. That he was a guy if he hit .260 he’s helping the team. Now, it seems in truth he’s gonna have to hit .290 with 40 2Bs to help. He is a lot of fun to watch though.
98 – I know the framing issue has been around since he’s been here. What do you think of his game calling?
Johjima’s 37% CS rate is AL 3rd best, behind Mauer (best since a young I-Rod) and Laird. He’s been charged with one error all year. His WP+PB/G average is .360, fifth best. He’s a tremendous asset, and extremely underrated. I think I heard more great things about Dan Wilson in a month than I do about Johjima.
Johjima also gets a bad rap (with varying degrees of unjustness) for “not framing pitches” and for “stabbing at the ball.” A few commentators also seem convinced he doesn’t call games at all and gets all his direction from the dugout (I am hesitant to ascribe motives in the absence of facts, but cynic that I am I have a dark suspicion that these assertions — which are contrary to provable facts — arise from xenophobia at best and very possibly from something far worse).
WRT Jeter and eyeball evaluations — we’ve been over this before but I think people can be fooled by what we might call an aesthetic sense of how we expect an athlete to play. Jeter is undeniably graceful, and that makes people think he’s a better player than he is (conversely, players with jerky motions may be underrated). In the same way people unconsciously ascribe more competence to the good-looking (and good-looking people are more likely to get hired and earn more and get promoted faster than others) they presume that a smooth defender is automatically better, and more rangey, than a less-smooth one. (And aside from his motion, a lot of people think Jeter is good-looking, so he’s got that going for him too. Which is nice).
I suppose as ball and player tracking gets better, we may one day get to the point where we know exactly the vector of the ball coming off the bat, and the exact starting position of every defender at that moment, and from the resulting time-and-motion results (exactly when the defender gloves the ball, his vector of motion at that moment, and when the resulting throw gets to first — factoring in double-pumps for slow runners and pokey 1st basemen) determine exactly how good each defender actually is vs his peers. (We’d also want to add a dimension for “smarts” or “anticipation” — based on that initial positioning of the defender — but we would need to know when the defensive alignment has been specified from the dugout and when it is in the hands of the players). PitchFX is just the beginning; DefenseFX — that’s the new frontier.
I think Betancourt was probably originally somewhat overrated based on slick early play. My opinion of him has been revised to moderately above average.
But I still don’t buy that he is worse positionally than Ibanez and nearly as bad positionally as Sexson, so there has to be something weird in that THT metric that was quoted.
#99 – Then again, those years are a little fuzzy, for a variety of pleasant reasons. So maybe I’m the one that’s crackers.
They may be for Blowers, too, possibly for some of the same reasons.
Does anyone have Yuni’s error splits by month this year? I looked around at si/espn/sportsline/THT and was unable to find them. Seems like he was throwing the ball away a lot early on and has come back to nbormal the last few months but I can’t find the numbers to prove it.
Dave style quick-hits
-BPro’s Rate stats are worse than bad. I wouldn’t ever even mention them if you want to be taken seriously.
-Beltre is awesome.
-Yuni hasn’t made a high # of OOZ plays.
-Johjima is much improved over ’06 defensively.
-Lots of Yankee fans know Jeter’s defense is bad.
-Sexson sucks because he has no range, not because of his “picking” ability.
-Yuni has good arm strength.
-Yuni was almost certainly overrated amongst the Ms faithful, but he’s not 11 plays/runs below an average SS. He does muff some simple plays now and then, but his throwing errors seem behind him and he does have above average range and turns a great DP.
#89: That Big 2004 is more apt to be called an ‘outlier’ than a peak. His peak is more in like with his last 3 years than that one huge year. ergo the phrase “career year” and not “peak year.”
Blowers wasn’t claiming to do that, just that from 3rd to 1st he’d had a strong throw. His whole point was just how good Beltre was.
w/r/t Johjima game calling: I don’t remember anyone ever asserting that all the pitches were called from the dugout, but I certainly have noted that – especially in his first year – he sometimes did look to the dugout, apparently getting pitch signals from Bavasi.
This wasn’t with runners on, either, when you might think it was “pitchout/no pitchout” type signals.
Re: RZR and Betancourt
Then number of balls-in-zone for Betancourt is really not all that large in the RZR methodology–just 390. Yuni made plays on 311 of those balls-in-zone, giving him a .797 RZR. Consider that if he had made five more plays, he’d have a .810 RZR (moving up to 3rd on the list), and if he had made five fewer plays, he’d have a .784 RZR (moving down to 3rd-worst on the list.)
It seems like this really isn’t enough data to meaningfully differentiate the SS from one another–you’d definitely need to do something like average over three seasons and probably apply a park factor, too.
Having said that, I don’t think Yuni’s anything special out there. He’s got a cannon arm which can be inaccurate, and his footwork seems a bit ‘meh’ at times where he’ll seemingly make the play harder than it needs to be. Probably above average overall, given his tools, but not by a whole lot in my estimation. (There also seem to be a lot of SS in the AL right now who are out there solely for their glove, which would make Yuni’s impact a little bit smaller when we’re comparing DER amongst AL teams.)
Bavasi was calling pitches from the dugout? Man, that puts an entirely new spin on this team.
If he was in the dugout he has to be in uniform, right? That’s what Francona got crap for earlier this season….
Maybe they could use him like Buhner in the commercials, employing his head like a mirror to blind opposing pitchers.
Doh. You know what I meant.
Of course. But this way was far more entertaining.
Did you know that BRETT TOMKO won tonight? (Dave, I believe that you advocated signing him.)
And JASON ELLLISON pinch-hit a homer?
Since when does Ellison earn extra L’s for good play?
43. No, because the pitching makes it hard to hit the ball where you want it. That was my point.