Baseball Detectives

Douglas Dinsmoor at his Open Stance blog writes a piece about being a baseball detective.  It seems a movie was filmed in Boston with a Red Sox game figuring into the equation.  Using all sorts of clues from the movie, a Baseball-Reference.com reader was able to pinpoint which Red Sox game was being filmed, the inning, who was on base, etc.  Douglas applied that to his foul ball and home run baseball collection.  He pieces info together from the ball, his memory, ticket stubs and so forth to figure out which game he snagged a particular ball.

I've done the same thing, and it's really fun.  I just remembered as I started typing this that I used to tag each ball - including batting practice balls - with a piece of masking tape that had all the info on it.  Date, inning, who hit it, all of that.  I kept them all in a big box.  Over the years, the masking tape lost its stickiness, and many of the tape pieces fell off.  So I've had to do some pretty detailed detective work to get the proper labels back to their rightful owners.  Some of the clues are whether it's an AL ball, NL ball or the newer MLB balls.  Who's signature appears on the ball and when was he the league president?  Was umpire's mud rubbed into the ball?  This may help distinguish the ball as a game ball or batting practice ball.

Dinsmoor's is the first baseball blog I ever read and his was an inspiration, both in layout and content.  We have quite a lot in common, baseball wise, and some things not.

Luck Statistics

Over a 162 game season, everything averages out. Right? Well, I wonder. With both an imbalanced schedule and an asymmetrical one, how is the schedule fair to all teams? Let's compare the schedules of the Marlins and Mets. Since interleague play was introduced, each team's "rival" team (the other league's intra-metro or intra-state team they play six games against) is the Rays and Yankees respectively. Aside from last year, the Marlins have had probably a built-in two game advantage in only playing the hapless Rays as opposed to a near dynasty Yankees.

But other invisible things are real, and it would be interesting to see the following statistics. Like stats that show how hot or cold each opponent is when your team plays them. Say a team is good but they've had the bad luck of playing more of the teams - even the mediocre ones - while they were hot. Or in a slump. Maybe there could be a stat for winning percentage of opponents in the previous five games (or other number) before playing them.

Or what about stats that show how each team fares in facing other teams' starting rotations? The standard series in baseball is a three-game series, with some two- and some four-game series. But the standard rotation is a five-man rotation. Each team hits or misses the ace and second man in the rotation each series. What if some teams hit slightly more aces of other teams, and some teams fewer? How could this affect the final standings? Let's say the Mets hit the Yanks' aces each interleague series, while the Fish hit the bottom of the Rays' rotation each time, and the Marlins finished a game ahead of the Mets in the standings? Maybe the Mets hit the Nationals while in a slump three times, while the Marlins hit them while hot two times?

What if a World Series winner was just an above average team that had a bunch of breaks, or a great team hit a bunch of brick walls? Bill James, you out there?

Proposed Stat: Incomplete Plate Appearance

I've thought of a new statistic that could prove some use for baseball. I'll call it the "Incomplete Plate Appearance." Baseball has a stat called the "At Bat" which consists of all hits, outs and fielder's errors combined. An expanded stat called the "Plate Appearance" (is this the "AP" for "Appearance at the Plate"?) includes "At Bats" but adds walks, hit by pitch, sacrifices and sac flies." This is commonly viewed as the number of times a batter appears at the plate. But it is not.

Another incident in baseball that has no official accounting anywhere is the time when a batter comes to the plate, sees pitches, but the third out of the inning is made on the bases before his at bat concludes. This has no category. Because the third out is made during the at bat, he leads off the next inning, and that plate appearance is counted. But I'm wondering if his "appearance" the previous inning isn't counted anywhere because he doesn't decide the out. This unaccounted for "thing" may actually have a large effect on the game. It could eat up the pitcher's pitch count.

Say a batter comes up with a runner on and two out. He works the count to 2-2, fouls off five pitches, and the next pitch sees the runner caught stealing for the third out. He just ate up 10 pitches. If the pitcher has a 100 pitch limit, that one "thing" that isn't counted for is responsible for 10% of the opposing pitcher's time out there. And if he leads off the next inning with a five pitch "real" accounted for plate appearance, he could chew up 15% of the other pitcher's value, get him yanked an inning early, setting up a bullpen meltdown, resulting in a victory. The most valuable plate "appearance" could go unnoticed in the stats. The pitches he uses up are counted against the pitcher's pitch count, but the plate appearance isn't.

Better yet, let's say this player is a pinch hitter who doesn't stay in the field for the next half inning. He could prove to be the most valuable player of the game, but shows up nowhere in the stats. Let's account for this by creating the "Incomplete Plate Appearance."

Longest World Series Droughts

Here's a list of how long it's been for each team not to have won a world series. Years in parenthesis mean that team has never won, and the year listed is the year when they were an expansion team or moved to their current city

1908 Chicago Cubs
1917 Chicago White Sox
1948 Cleveland Indians
1954 San Francisco (1958) & New York Giants
(1961) Texas Rangers (1972) and Washington Senators
(1962) Houston Astros
(1969) San Diego Padres
(1969) Milwauke Brewers (1970) and Seattle Pilots
(1969) Montreal Expos and Washington Nationals (2005)
(1977) Seattle Mariners
1979 Pittsburgh Pirates
1980 Philadelphia Phillies
1982 St. Louis Cardinals
1983 Baltimore Orioles
1984 Detroit Tigers
1985 Kansas City Royals
1986 New York Mets
1988 Los Angeles Dodgers
1989 Oakland A's
1990 Cincinnati Reds
1991 Minnesota Twins
1993 Toronto Blue Jays
(1993) Colorado Rockies
1995 Atlanta Braves
(1998) Tampa Bay Devil Rays
2000 New York Yankees
2001 Arizona Diamondbacks
2002 Anaheim Angels or Los Angeles or whatever
2003 Florida Marlins
2004 Boston Red Sox
2005 ???