Friday, April 24, 2009

Piling On

Game 14: Bulls 3, Tides 4
Season: 10-4
Wrap, Box, Virginian-Pilot Story

Somehow it just doesn’t seem fair. First on Wednesday I pointed out that, although Chris Richard and Jon Weber had a good game, the Bulls weren’t hitting well. Then Ryan Campbell at Indy Week made a persuasive argument that the Bulls really weren’t hitting well. And then Doug Mihoan over at Rays Prospects (using a stat I’m not very familiar with) implied at they truly were not hitting well.

I'm not entirely sure that any of us are quite right about what's going on with the hitting. These are close games that we're winning and losing. Two of our guys (Ruggiano and Johnson) are having bad years and Richard isn't far behind, but this division seems to have some strong pitching as well and all we've seen so far is Southern Division teams.

In the meantime, last night they got three runs on seven hits, but mostly the bats were quiet (11 strikeouts).

Sigh. Maybe tonight. Tides are only a 1/2 game back of us. They've won 8 in a row. New pitcher, James Houser, gets his first start.

3 comments:

  1. people on rays prospect and other blogs tend to use stats as there main argument on anything. there just isn't any eye ball testing involved. bill james says he could put a team together purely on stats, just would not want to be part of that team.

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  2. I tend to agree, especially as you drill deeper and deeper into the numbers. Then there's the odd possibility of a simple error creeping in as it just did here when I typed in 9-4 instead of 10-4 for the season numbers. Gotta fix that in a couple of minutes. Nothing accounts for, say, a walk, a blown double play leading to a runner on third, and a little chip single scoring a run.

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  3. I agree Chris, stats don't cover 100% of a teams results. Errors sometimes lead to runs which sometimes lead to victories. But errors even out over the year, and you certainly score more runs from walks and hits than from errors.

    Depending on the stat, I think they give us the best objective measure of a player. Let's take your example. In the stats Player 1 will get credit (how much depends on the stat) for a walk and Player 3 for the single. Player 2 gets no credit because he didn't do anything positive, the defense made a mistake. Player 1 and 3 should get credit because hits and walks lead to runs, while grounding into double plays don't (95% of the time).

    Now if you want to know WHICH stats are the best, don't ask me, I don't think anyone has PROVED they have the best stat. I read about the different stats and, if the reasoning behind it makes sense, I use it. And I realize the numbers from Statcorner.com may be a bit much for some, that's why I also post the more basic stats.

    Really like your site, I've been reading daily lately and added you to our sidebar links. Keep up the great work.

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