DrungoHazewood

No one has reverse splits. Or so few do that it's helpful to just act like no one does, because by the time they've piled up enough PAs to figure out if someone really is the exception (instead of random variation) that proves the rule they're 35 and nobody cares anymore. Looking at a month or two of L/R splits from a single batter is about as meaningful as using a Ouija Board.

.740. Maybe a bit higher if he's mostly playing against lefties. Unless he's still nursing some nagging injuries, then less.

Yea, that's my assumption. But this is probably also why there's talk of tweaking the real book strike zone (or how the robo-umps call it) because the real strike zone means there's going to be WAAAAY more walks than at any point in major league history. My guess is that the IL strike zone ported to MLB would result in runs jumping up to around 5 per game. And probably a non-linear effect where some pitchers who currently have borderline command quickly exit the league. Imagine Felix Bautista never getting what's now a close call on a ball/strike.

I'm a little curious here, but not nearly curious enough to run a few hours of a study. But it would be nice to see matched-pair comparisons of arb awards between relievers with, say, 70 innings, 2.50 ERA, 2 saves, and 70 innings 2.50 ERA, 27 saves. Although you'd expect some differences because my going-in assumption is that the leverage index of the closer will be higher. Then we'd have a much better idea of if this effect exists, and how significant it is. Also, if your hypothesis is true it's plausible that if your main goal is to reduce salaries, the best strategy might be to have your ~7th-best pitcher rack up most of the saves since his worse performance might offset the salary impact of having the most saves. That might be more cost-effective than having 11 guys get some saves, but inevitably your best pitcher still gets most of them since you want him there in the highest-leverage situations.

Do starters make less money now that we're in a world where you can win the Cy Young with a 14-9 W/L record? Or have the arbitration calculations just adjusted to the new normal?

One of the problems is the broad scope of the definition. A save might be getting three outs after starting the 9th with the bases empty and a three-run lead. Which has average odds of success of something like 98%. 98% of those kind of saves are converted. If you blow that you've really done something badly. But a save may also be coming into a bases loaded situation with nobody out in the 9th with a one-run lead. You could go strikeout-flyout-strikeout on seven pitches and still get a blown save. The pitcher probably had about a 10% shot at Houdini'ing that situation. But it's still the same Boolean save or blown save. It goes back to the poor choice to make wins, losses, and saves individual stats when they're really team metrics. That inevitably leads to nonsensical attributions.

If we're getting a time machine to go stop the save rule from being invented there's a pretty long list of things to fix.

But then we could discuss the merits of earned vs unearned runs. You could pick out cases where a pitcher gives up three sharp singles to load the bases with two outs, then some runs score on an iffy hit/error decision that's ruled an error, then the pitcher gives up 2-3 more hard hits and more runs, but because the error was with two outs it's all unearned. Or, the infielders mess up who's going to catch a popup with two outs, it falls untouched for a hit scoring two runs, which are both earned. The world would be a better place if Chadwick had decided in 1870 that runs were just runs, wins and losses were solely a team stat, and 100 years later saves followed that precedence.

I don't really know. I'd have to do some research to see if walk rates track with the league rates. Maybe he gets called up and sees his free passes go down by 44%? All I really know is there are a lot of walks in the minors today.

1) The win rule is a holdover from a long time ago, and they didn't really put too much thought into the starter goes five/reliever can get a single out thing because relievers in 1913 were mostly some random guy who came in when the starter was either hurt or gave up nine runs in 2/3rds of an inning. The details of the rule have mostly been out-of-step with reality since long before any of us were born. 2) Here's a list of several hundred players who hit at least .300, qualified for the batting title, yet had an OPS+ under 100. Patsy Tebeau hit .302 in 1894 and had a 75 OPS+, or lower than Ryan McKenna's career mark. The Mariner's Felix Fermin once hit .317 in a season where he had 11 walks and one homer, and had an 85 OPS+. Hall of Famer Lloyd Waner (perhaps only because the committee got his files mixed up with his brother Paul's) hit .316 yet had just a 99 OPS+, and was a below-average hitter for his whole career.

The IL is walking 4.7 per nine, which is kind of astronomical. Across the minors walks are over 4.0 per nine everywhere except the AA Southern League. That was the case last year, too. Was a little lower in '22. But if you go back to '19 everyone (except a couple rookie leagues) were under 4.0. Is this because of the auto ball/strike system? I think I haven't been paying close enough attention to know. For comparison, the Majors have been over 4.0 walks per nine just twice and just barely, in 1949-50. And in the last 60-70 years have only been over 3.5 a very small handful of times. So the International League sees more walks this year than any year in MLB history, and it's not close. They're walking 44% more batters than the Majors are in '24. It would be nice if some aspiring analyst went and looked to see if AAA pitchers walk rates fall upon promotion to the majors, and vice versa.

It's Ben's Chili Bowl, which is half-smoke sausages that you can get chili on. I don't know if the stadium versions are the same, but the original Ben's is a DC institution.

That's miserable. The food situation at any sports stadium is often ridiculous. The prices outrageous, and anytime during the game it takes 10, 15, 20+ minutes to go through the line, and the whole time you're thinking I'm supposed to be here watching the friggin' game not in line! My boys and I went to a hockey game in Chicago in March and two of us missed a good 10 minutes of the game getting some wildly overpriced chicken tenders. The area around Nats' Park and Audi field is not great for vehicle access. I didn't have your experience, but was at DC United on Saturday and even 1.5 hours before kickoff it's a bit of a mess. Luckily I have a CAC card and can park on Ft. McNair for free. But getting out is a 30+ minute ordeal. I would have lost my mind if I lost my cell phone at the game.

Remember when expansion supposedly diluted pitching? When I'd ask why expansion didn't dilute hitting just as much the answer was usually something along the lines of "well, it's obvious that there are all kinds of effects that the scarcity of pitching shows that there's just more hitters in the pipeline and kids these days can't see that the training and stuff isn't like the ways that the people did it back in the 50s and all that... yea." Until someone shows me relevant data confirming Rosenthal's hypothesis I'm going to assume he has no idea if it's true or not. But his article will now be cited as evidence by any number of people who claim it is.

I haven't read the article, just the snippets in the original post. But I'm guessing there's no study to accompany this, where they show a bunch of statistically significant samples of rookie performance in their first X games in, say, the 1970s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, and then compare the data to the 2020s with a clear trend line that it really is more difficult to break in today? Because without that, this is more-or-less a fluff piece speculating on the causes of an effect that nobody has shown to actually be true.