http://sports.yahoo.com/news/25-things-you-didn-t-know-about-baseball.html
8/24/12
JEFF PASSAN
EXPERT
25 things you didn't know about baseball
21 hours ago
This is my favorite column every year because it is all-inclusive. Numbers in baseball can overwhelm. Data can anthropomorphize into a scary monster. Acronyms can get so silly that I can list four (SIERA, SNLVAR, GORP, lgRFG) that look too absurd to be real when three of them actually are.
Sorry, GORP.
The goal here is to cut through the crap and cull numbers and facts that teach you more about the game. Sabermetricians do a wonderful job of that with high-level analytics and snazzy heat maps. This is different because it endeavors to deal in plain-and-simple facts presented accordingly.
I spent far more time than I'd like to admit browsing and sorting data at the wonderful repositories for such things, FanGraphs.com and Baseball-Reference.com. They are invaluable resources for which every baseball fan should be thankful because they imbue knowledge, the sort that barely existed a decade ago.
Now, a few clicks, a keen sense of the sport's oddities and a healthy curiosity can deliver a world of information. So enjoy. I know I did.
1. This year alone, 98 players have popped out more than Joey Votto has his entire career.
When Votto's pop-out numbers went viral this year, they sounded too good to be true. None in 2010. One the following season. While he's been on the DL for most of 2012's second half, he remains stuck on nil again. Over his 2,523 career at-bats, Votto has had the temerity to pop out 10 times.
In 496 at-bats this year, Jimmy Rollins has 33 pop outs. In 315 at-bats, Brendan Ryan has 26. The jester list will soon reach triple digits.
Nowhere close to that list: the other player trying to join Votto, Howie Kendrick and Larry Bigbie – Larry Bigbie! – as those to qualify for the batting title without a single pop out. Votto's companion in popoutlessness: Derek Jeter, of course.
2. Should you bear witness to Jeter lifting a ball in the air, consider it baseball's version of Halley's Comet.
Jeter's love of the groundball is well-documented in these parts. (And in the accompanying mea culpa.) His lack of flyballs this year, however, borders on ridiculous. Most of these advanced metrics date back to 2002, so while the historical reference point is small, there is more than a decade of data. And Jeter's flyball rate of 13.5 percent destroys the previous low of 17.5 percent by Skip Schumaker in 2005.
Thing is, Jeter may not end the season atop the list. Twins outfielder Ben Revere is not far behind at 14.2 percent. It's not his only notable quality, either.
3. Nobody makes contact with balls in the strike zone quite like Ben Revere.
If a pitch is over the plate, Revere is not missing. Doesn't matter the pitch. When it's in the zone, he makes contact on 98.2 percent of his swings. That amounts to 15 misses for the season, and his percentage is the best, one-tenth of a percent ahead of Juan Pierre in 2006 and a half-percent better than Marco Scutaro this season.
4. Nobody makes contact pretty much at all these days.
We've covered the drastic increase in strikeouts before, though it bears repeating. Not only are strikeouts across baseball at an all-time high 7.43 per nine, but also the individual numbers are nuts. Aroldis Chapman is striking out 16.26 per nine, the best rate ever, and five more pitchers (Craig Kimbrel, Ernesto Frieri, Jason Grilli, Kenley Jansen and David Hernandez) now rank in the top 25 ever among pitchers with at least 40 innings.
[Related: Three Rays minor leaguers suspended 50 games after testing positive for meth]
Led by Adam Dunn's 33.6 percent strikeout rate, 15 players who currently qualify for the batting title have struck out in at least a quarter of their plate appearances. The previous high was 12 in 2010, and in 2003 there were only three such prowhiffic players.
5. All of that stands, unless you're talking about Aaron Cook, the strikeout jester.
Before Cook's command four-K performance this week, he had struck out seven hitters in 57 innings. His 1.11 strikeout-per-nine rate was the worst in baseball since 1955. Now he's at 1.6, behind Luis Aquino's 1.46 in 1992 for Kansas City and Nino Espinosa's 1.53 for Philadelphia in 1980.
Cook can take solace in not losing his title of ignominy this year. The next-worst rate is Derek Lowe at 3.42.
6. Aroldis Chapman has generated more swings and misses than Jered Weaver.
And Roy Halladay, Dan Haren, Matt Harrison, Jeremy Hellickson, Josh Beckett, Erik Bedard, Kyle Lohse, Ryan Vogelsong and more than 100 other starters. Chapman has thrown 1,036 pitches this season. Hitters have swung at 508. They have missed 211. That 41.5 percent miss rate is 7 percent better than the next-best pitcher, Joaquin Benoit.
Oh, and for reference, Weaver has generated 204 misses on 979 swings,
7. Aroldis Chapman isn't the hardest-throwing player in baseball.
Meet Kelvin Herrera. Not only is he the hardest thrower this year, but also he's threatening to be the hardest ever. His average fastball of 98.6 mph is tied with Joel Zumaya's 2006 fastball for hottest ever. At 97.8 mph, Chapman is closer to Nate Jones (97.4) than he is Herrera.
Herrera also threw the single hardest pitch in baseball this season at 102.8 mph. Chapman just missed that title at 102.7.
As for starters, Stephen Strasburg is the king this season at 95.7 mph, not far behind Ubaldo Jimenez's record 96.1 mph that he set in 2009 and matched in 2010. After adding an extra mph to his fastball this year, David Price is close behind Strasburg at 95.6.
8. Fernando Rodney is threatening to render Dennis Eckersley's mustache-and-mullet-fueled 1990 season to the reliquary.
Currently, Rodney's 0.77 ERA is the third best among pitchers with at least 50 innings, behind Rob Murphy's 0.72 in 1986 and Eck's incredible 0.61 in 1990. Eck finished that season giving up five earned runs in 73 1/3 innings.
Rodney is currently at five runs in 58 2/3. If he keeps his current pace, he'll finish the season with exactly 76 innings, and if he throws all zeroes, his final ERA will be 0.59.
It's not impossible. Rodney's current no-earned-run streak is at six innings, and he needs 14 more scoreless to pass Eck. His longest streak this year: 22 innings.
9. As great as his relief peers' accomplishments may be, what Brad Ziegler is doing this season is a hundred times more unfathomable.
The 32-year-old Ziegler already is something of a freak as an Arizona Diamondbacks relief pitcher. He's a pure sidearmer whose fastball floats in around 86 mph, the eighth-slowest among pitchers with at least 50 innings. To make up for his lack of velocity, Ziegler sinks the sucker like the Lusitania, sinks it so hard that he makes opposing hitters turn into Jeter.
Ziegler's flyball rate this season is 6.9 percent. That is not a misprint. Ziegler has thrown 712 pitches this season. Hitters have lifted 10 of those as flyballs. Nobody has popped out. Nobody has hit a home run. Nobody can do much with a Brad Ziegler sinker.
The previous low flyball rate also was owned by Ziegler – and it was 13.4 percent, nearly double. Ziegler, as you might imagine, also is on pace to set a groundball-rate record at 72.9 percent, a smidgen better than Jonny Venters' 72.5 percent last year. That makes another record he's close to doubling: groundball-to-flyball ratio, where his 10.5 will top Venters and Cla Meredith's 5.29.
10. Billy Hamilton has more steals than the top four stolen-base artists in the major leagues – combined.
That gem came from Jason Collette on Twitter the day Hamilton, the 21-year-old Cincinnati farmhand, broke Otis Nixon's minor league record with his 146th stolen base. Hamilton now has 148 steals, more than every major league team, and we could do 25 Hamilton facts if we were so inclined, but we'll stick with just a couple more via Twitter from the day he nabbed the record.
From Matt LaWell: "Hamilton also leads the Southern League and California League in steals."
And from Bradley Ankrom: "[H]e has more steals than 181 professional clubs; more steals than 129 clubs have attempts."
8/24/12
JEFF PASSAN
EXPERT
25 things you didn't know about baseball
21 hours ago
This is my favorite column every year because it is all-inclusive. Numbers in baseball can overwhelm. Data can anthropomorphize into a scary monster. Acronyms can get so silly that I can list four (SIERA, SNLVAR, GORP, lgRFG) that look too absurd to be real when three of them actually are.
Sorry, GORP.
The goal here is to cut through the crap and cull numbers and facts that teach you more about the game. Sabermetricians do a wonderful job of that with high-level analytics and snazzy heat maps. This is different because it endeavors to deal in plain-and-simple facts presented accordingly.
I spent far more time than I'd like to admit browsing and sorting data at the wonderful repositories for such things, FanGraphs.com and Baseball-Reference.com. They are invaluable resources for which every baseball fan should be thankful because they imbue knowledge, the sort that barely existed a decade ago.
Now, a few clicks, a keen sense of the sport's oddities and a healthy curiosity can deliver a world of information. So enjoy. I know I did.
1. This year alone, 98 players have popped out more than Joey Votto has his entire career.
When Votto's pop-out numbers went viral this year, they sounded too good to be true. None in 2010. One the following season. While he's been on the DL for most of 2012's second half, he remains stuck on nil again. Over his 2,523 career at-bats, Votto has had the temerity to pop out 10 times.
In 496 at-bats this year, Jimmy Rollins has 33 pop outs. In 315 at-bats, Brendan Ryan has 26. The jester list will soon reach triple digits.
Nowhere close to that list: the other player trying to join Votto, Howie Kendrick and Larry Bigbie – Larry Bigbie! – as those to qualify for the batting title without a single pop out. Votto's companion in popoutlessness: Derek Jeter, of course.
2. Should you bear witness to Jeter lifting a ball in the air, consider it baseball's version of Halley's Comet.
Jeter's love of the groundball is well-documented in these parts. (And in the accompanying mea culpa.) His lack of flyballs this year, however, borders on ridiculous. Most of these advanced metrics date back to 2002, so while the historical reference point is small, there is more than a decade of data. And Jeter's flyball rate of 13.5 percent destroys the previous low of 17.5 percent by Skip Schumaker in 2005.
Thing is, Jeter may not end the season atop the list. Twins outfielder Ben Revere is not far behind at 14.2 percent. It's not his only notable quality, either.
3. Nobody makes contact with balls in the strike zone quite like Ben Revere.
If a pitch is over the plate, Revere is not missing. Doesn't matter the pitch. When it's in the zone, he makes contact on 98.2 percent of his swings. That amounts to 15 misses for the season, and his percentage is the best, one-tenth of a percent ahead of Juan Pierre in 2006 and a half-percent better than Marco Scutaro this season.
4. Nobody makes contact pretty much at all these days.
We've covered the drastic increase in strikeouts before, though it bears repeating. Not only are strikeouts across baseball at an all-time high 7.43 per nine, but also the individual numbers are nuts. Aroldis Chapman is striking out 16.26 per nine, the best rate ever, and five more pitchers (Craig Kimbrel, Ernesto Frieri, Jason Grilli, Kenley Jansen and David Hernandez) now rank in the top 25 ever among pitchers with at least 40 innings.
[Related: Three Rays minor leaguers suspended 50 games after testing positive for meth]
Led by Adam Dunn's 33.6 percent strikeout rate, 15 players who currently qualify for the batting title have struck out in at least a quarter of their plate appearances. The previous high was 12 in 2010, and in 2003 there were only three such prowhiffic players.
5. All of that stands, unless you're talking about Aaron Cook, the strikeout jester.
Before Cook's command four-K performance this week, he had struck out seven hitters in 57 innings. His 1.11 strikeout-per-nine rate was the worst in baseball since 1955. Now he's at 1.6, behind Luis Aquino's 1.46 in 1992 for Kansas City and Nino Espinosa's 1.53 for Philadelphia in 1980.
Cook can take solace in not losing his title of ignominy this year. The next-worst rate is Derek Lowe at 3.42.
6. Aroldis Chapman has generated more swings and misses than Jered Weaver.
And Roy Halladay, Dan Haren, Matt Harrison, Jeremy Hellickson, Josh Beckett, Erik Bedard, Kyle Lohse, Ryan Vogelsong and more than 100 other starters. Chapman has thrown 1,036 pitches this season. Hitters have swung at 508. They have missed 211. That 41.5 percent miss rate is 7 percent better than the next-best pitcher, Joaquin Benoit.
Oh, and for reference, Weaver has generated 204 misses on 979 swings,
7. Aroldis Chapman isn't the hardest-throwing player in baseball.
Meet Kelvin Herrera. Not only is he the hardest thrower this year, but also he's threatening to be the hardest ever. His average fastball of 98.6 mph is tied with Joel Zumaya's 2006 fastball for hottest ever. At 97.8 mph, Chapman is closer to Nate Jones (97.4) than he is Herrera.
Herrera also threw the single hardest pitch in baseball this season at 102.8 mph. Chapman just missed that title at 102.7.
As for starters, Stephen Strasburg is the king this season at 95.7 mph, not far behind Ubaldo Jimenez's record 96.1 mph that he set in 2009 and matched in 2010. After adding an extra mph to his fastball this year, David Price is close behind Strasburg at 95.6.
8. Fernando Rodney is threatening to render Dennis Eckersley's mustache-and-mullet-fueled 1990 season to the reliquary.
Currently, Rodney's 0.77 ERA is the third best among pitchers with at least 50 innings, behind Rob Murphy's 0.72 in 1986 and Eck's incredible 0.61 in 1990. Eck finished that season giving up five earned runs in 73 1/3 innings.
Rodney is currently at five runs in 58 2/3. If he keeps his current pace, he'll finish the season with exactly 76 innings, and if he throws all zeroes, his final ERA will be 0.59.
It's not impossible. Rodney's current no-earned-run streak is at six innings, and he needs 14 more scoreless to pass Eck. His longest streak this year: 22 innings.
9. As great as his relief peers' accomplishments may be, what Brad Ziegler is doing this season is a hundred times more unfathomable.
The 32-year-old Ziegler already is something of a freak as an Arizona Diamondbacks relief pitcher. He's a pure sidearmer whose fastball floats in around 86 mph, the eighth-slowest among pitchers with at least 50 innings. To make up for his lack of velocity, Ziegler sinks the sucker like the Lusitania, sinks it so hard that he makes opposing hitters turn into Jeter.
Ziegler's flyball rate this season is 6.9 percent. That is not a misprint. Ziegler has thrown 712 pitches this season. Hitters have lifted 10 of those as flyballs. Nobody has popped out. Nobody has hit a home run. Nobody can do much with a Brad Ziegler sinker.
The previous low flyball rate also was owned by Ziegler – and it was 13.4 percent, nearly double. Ziegler, as you might imagine, also is on pace to set a groundball-rate record at 72.9 percent, a smidgen better than Jonny Venters' 72.5 percent last year. That makes another record he's close to doubling: groundball-to-flyball ratio, where his 10.5 will top Venters and Cla Meredith's 5.29.
10. Billy Hamilton has more steals than the top four stolen-base artists in the major leagues – combined.
That gem came from Jason Collette on Twitter the day Hamilton, the 21-year-old Cincinnati farmhand, broke Otis Nixon's minor league record with his 146th stolen base. Hamilton now has 148 steals, more than every major league team, and we could do 25 Hamilton facts if we were so inclined, but we'll stick with just a couple more via Twitter from the day he nabbed the record.
From Matt LaWell: "Hamilton also leads the Southern League and California League in steals."
And from Bradley Ankrom: "[H]e has more steals than 181 professional clubs; more steals than 129 clubs have attempts."