DrungoHazewood

Is there any significant correlation between winning percentage in one-run games and in other games? It looks like there is some, but there's far more luck in one-run records than in other games. That Eddie Epstein article is probably 20 years old, but it showed that very good teams win fewer one-run games than otherwise, and bad teams more. This piece (mostly on the '12 Orioles) shows a very weak correlation year-to-year in one-run performance, again indicating a big luck component. So... if a .600 team wins 55% of their one-run games, and a .400 team wins 45% that's expected. If they out- or under-perform that by a significant margin that's probably due mostly to luck.

There's been a team in Baltimore called the Orioles every year since 1882, with the exception of 1900 and 1915. The first year they ever drew 2,000,000 fans was 1983.

If the Orioles' biggest problem is a creeping concern that Mike Elias might leave for another team at some undetermined point in the future when his contract, of which we don't know any of the details, expires... well, I think the organization is in pretty good shape. This is similar to the folks who see that the Orioles haven't signed a long-term lease yet, so they've begun to develop a detailed life plan for when the team is playing in Nashville and OPACY is a silent, deserted, windswept ruin.

Sure, I'm reasonably familiar with what the World Series is and of the history of the Orioles. The 1966 Orioles' staff had a great week. But they won the pennant because they easily had the best offense in the American League.

The 1966 Orioles had a 102 ERA+. The 2023 Orioles had a 103 going into today, and just pitched a shutout. The AL league ERA in 1966 was 3.44, and the O's played in a pitcher's park. McNally had a 3.17, Palmer a 3.46, Bunker a 4.29, John Miller a 4.74, and Eddie Watt a 3.83. I don't know what stonewall pitching is, but the '66 Birds were a bit above average.

I was in the 6th and 7th grade during that season. It's strange, but aside from the Lenn Sakata game I don't remember a lot of games or moments from that year. Part if it is that is was 40 years ago and I was 12. I remember playing in the middle school band at the St. Mary's County Oyster Festival the day of the last game of the World Series, and rushing to get home to see most of it on TV. I first remember the 1979 Orioles, so it was kind of baked into my brain that the Orioles were the best run organization in baseball and that they'd been good since before I was born, and would be good forever. So I almost feel like I was tricked. They hooked me, they win the Series when I was 12, and by the time I was a junior in high school they'd lost 21 straight to start the season and they've not been back to the Series since. Of course there have been 1000 great moments since '83, but that was just about the end of them being the model franchise in the sport.

So, not exactly the same thing, but Jackie Robinson had played some Negro League ball prior to winning the first ROY. And that was the highest level he was allowed to play at the time. For me it's always been hard to deny someone who's previously played in Japan or Cuba or Mexico the ROY because Jackie pretty much set the precedent you can have played high-level ball elsewhere from day one of the award.

You probably need to regress his performance to some kind of established level. I like weighting the last four seasons at 4-3-2-1, which puts Santander's established level a little over two wins a season. Then I use the rule of thumb of a player declining half a win a year. So he's going to be worth 2, 1.5, 1, and 0.5 wins over four years. That adds up to 17, 13, 8.5, and 4.3M, for a total of about 43M, add in some inflation and I get maybe $50M over four years.

I understand the reality of the situation and that it's likely that nobody is going to bench a player who's OPSing .900 with men on base. But don't let that obscure the fact that clutch is descriptive, not predictive. The most likely outcome going forward is that Frazier is going to OPS .750 with runners on.

I have no idea if my simple contract evaluator works anymore, I haven't updated it in 5-6 years. But Santander has an established value of just over 2.0 wins, and it says he should get a contract of something like 4/50.

Yea, sure, that's fine. The only counter I have to that is that's it's pretty likely that Westburg, Ortiz, etc are better players. Longer term much better. Certainly when you take defense into account.

That's certainly part of it. The idea of a farm system was pretty controversial at the time. From the start of pro baseball the minor leagues were just like the major leagues, only in smaller cities, and often not even that (see: Baltimore in the International League in years where the city had a bigger population than Cincy or Washington). Then MLB teams started to convince minor league teams that it was easier to stay profitable if they sold their souls to the big leagues, and stopped trying to find players to win the pennant. A lot of folks in charge thought this was a terrible idea, that it would kill minor league baseball, and by extension ruin the grassroots popularity of the game. Which has pretty much come to pass over the last century. Commissioner Landis in particular was against this, and had a few instances of "freeing" minor leaguers caught up in this kind of thing. But nevertheless, Branch Rickey led this charge to sweep up and assimilate vast numbers of minor league teams and hundreds upon hundreds of players. And that gave his teams a huge advantage. Other teams like the Senators and Browns didn't have the resources or the drive or maybe desire to do the same thing, and as late as the 1950s still had threadbare minor league systems. And these MLB teams struggled mightily to compete. I've long thought that baseball as a sport would have been far better off if Landis had made a rule in about 1930 that MLB teams could only have one or two minor league affiliates, and all the other teams were independent and fighting for players and trophies.

The analytics department is well aware that performance in any particular split, especially contexts like "clutch" or "Tuesday" or "September", is highly likely to revert to something like the player's overall performance. So Frazier is a .728 kind of hitter, and even accounting for the fact that everyone hits better with runners on than not, the best guess at his clutch performance going forward is about .750.

It was 1973. Palmer won 22 and led the league, Ryan won 21. That's pretty much it. Ryan didn't reach mythical status until much later. Yes people were impressed by the no-hitters. But he led the league in walks by a country mile every year, and his W/L records were 10-14, 19-16, 17-18 as often, or more often, than 22-16. In the middle of his career, watching him pitch every week, it was probably easier to notice that he was a terrible fielder, a bad hitter even for a pitcher, and he allowed an ungodly number of steals. And things like WAR and FIP wouldn't exit for 30+ years.

I think you inadvertently stumbled across a significant footnote to this story. Looking at the Cards' rosters from 1942-45, they kept most of their stars for most of the war. Stan Musial only missed 1945. He was putting up prime, peak inner circle HOF seasons from 1942-44 during this run. Walker Cooper was one of the better catchers in the NL, same thing. Marty Marion won the 1944 MVP, weirdly because he OPS'd .686. But he never went into the Army. Walker Cooper was one of the best catchers in the NL, only missed part of '45. Harry Breechen was a very good pitcher, and pitched all of '43-45. Walker's brother Mort was a pitcher and won 22, 21, and 22 games in '42-44, never went to war. Max Lanier was their 2nd or 3rd-best starter, never got drafted. I swear I've read something about this before, but I think someone on the Cards was friendly with the local draft board. When most of the rest of the stars were in the Army, they kept most of theirs through the whole war.

Is it just me, or is this a record that nobody had ever mentioned in any context ever prior to about two weeks ago? I mean, it's kind of cool and all, but the O's are still 51 series short of the record. The '44 Cards better look out for June of '24, the O's are comin'! And there's a hint of "one of these things is not like the other" in that all of the other teams besides the Orioles played in one or more World Series. So it's a little like those lists of X homers, Y steals, Z triples, and 19 or more sac hits that end up lumping together Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Ty Cobb, and Claudell Washington. This is one of those things that became a thing because Retrosheet and bb-ref data has become more complete and data analysis tools made it easier to figure this out without spending six weeks pouring over box scores. You're welcome for the bucket of cold water.

Deserving Hall of Fame pitcher who spent the bulk of his career with the Orioles. Whether or not you agree with that argument, it's still clearly an argument.

I think maybe there's some confusion over what record they're referring to. I think it has to be fastest by calendar. Because, for example, Aroldis Chapman had 106 strikeouts in 54 innings in 2014. He clearly got to 100 Ks in fewer innings than Strider. Eric Gagne in 2003 had his 100th K in his 60th inning. Also, with a lot of strikeout records, this is highly dependent on league context and schedule. For example, for much of baseball history the season didn't start until mid-April. Sandy Koufax had 92 Ks by May 28th, 1965, but that was in just 10 starts because the season didn't start until April 14th. And for much of the 1893-1960 era strikeouts were less than half of today's rate, so it was essentially impossible to get to 100 Ks before at least midseason and well over 100 innings. Rube Waddell had the pre-Koufax/post-1900 record for Ks in 1904 at 349, but because the season started later and he averaged 8 K/9 he didn't get to 100 until June even pitching mostly complete games. In the 1920s and 30s Lefty Grove led the league in Ks seven straight years and never had more than 209. And they made the cutoff 1893 because prior to that there was a period where strikeouts were higher after legalization of overhand pitching and before the 60'6" distance, and pitchers pitched a lot more. Retrosheet doesn't have game-by-game stats prior to 1900 yet, but if you look at the 1886 Orioles' schedule you can see they played 29 games by May 28th and Matt Kilroy started just about 50% of their games and he struck out 513 batters. So it's at least somewhat likely that he struck out 100 batters in his first 14-15 starts, perhaps quicker than Strider. Louisville's Toad Ramsey struck out 499 that same season, so he could have been faster to 100, also.

I look forward to the day in 10-15 years when the Yanks have to start handing out uniforms with negative numbers and fractions and scientific notation because they've retired all the one- and two-digit integers. They could go back to having the monument area in play like in the original Yankee stadium and any line drive up the LF gap is like trying to shop in Big Lots with the boxes all over the aisles.

I'm sure that's part of it. Also, I have to think they had scouting reports and data that indicated they could change his mix of pitches to be more effective.

I've not been as active around here in a while, so haven't participated or read through this whole thread. But Frazier is a weird, polarizing player. A little bit out of that Rougned Odor mold. Been a really good hitter with runners on, but just Chris Davis kind of bad with the bases empty. DRS has him as a very slightly below average fielder, but he's either last or very close to last in OAA, which should be trusted far more. His xBA is in the top 10% of the league, but his actual average is .239. 7th percentile exit velocity, 4th percentile hard hit, 10th percentile barrel, but 90+% contact. All in all a decent player, I'm guessing he's not going anywhere this year. But with the backlog of middle infielders in the system I don't see him returning for '24 unless a bunch of trades are made.

With the A's it was 5.40, which is not good. That's essentially replacement-level for a reliever.

Just remember "the Sammy Stewart thing" was coming in when the starter was knocked out in the third and go the rest of the game, and that's not a thing any more. Unless we have a very bizarre set of circumstances there's approximately a 0% chance Fujinami pitches 5-6 innings of relief in a game.

A rental with an 8.59 ERA.

Going back to his time in Japan he's started seven games since 2018. In those seven games he's 0-6 with an ERA over 14.00. He started 13 games for Hanshin in 2018, had an ERA over 5.00. It appears he's uniquely unsuited to starting.