Blue Jays Discussion: The official Munenori Kawasaki fan club (avatars/wallpapers: posts #1-4)

[Nasty Nazem]

Just like I predicted, Laffey DFA'd. Looking at the 40 man, there is Evan Crawford who could be called up but that's happening... because he is pretty bad.

Guess it will need to be someone outside the 40 man. I dunno, Juan Perez? Wagner? Germano.

 

[canucksfan]

Our bullpen is going to be so burnt out by the time our Starters decide to keep us in games and our bats dont strike out 5 times an inning.

The bullpen has been the only bright spot. Only a matter of time before they get tired.

 

[Scion]

He's not intentionally giving him easier pitches to hit... he's being even more careful not to walk him because you're giving away a base runner to the good hitter.


People evaluated the game for over 100 years without advanced statistics...



What's funny is you added "myth" to the end of it... no kidding you got results like that. If I type 9/11 conspiracy I get conspiracy links rather than news.

Now when I searched it without a pre-determined belief in mind, I got:
http://didthetribewinlastnight.com/2013/04/04/swisher-provides-protection-for-jason-kipnis/

"Not only did Kipnis seem to get better pitches to hit, he also saw more pitches in the strike zone when a better hitter batted behind him. Zone% is the number of pitches a hitter sees in the strike zone. When followed by a better hitter, Kipnis’ Zone% was 51.2%. When a similar hitter batted behind him his Zone% was 47.6%, and when a worse hitter hit behind him his Zone% was 45.5%. The quality of pitches is verified by his zone contact percentage. He made contact with 83% of pitches he swung at in the strike zone with a worse hitter following him. With a better hitter behind him his zone contact percentage increased to 91%."

http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/primate_studies/discussion/wright_2003-06-30_0/
"Looking at overall performance by totaling the 27 protectee?s stats together, it looks like OPS increase by about 3.5%, (BB+K)/PA increased by about 6.4% and TB/H increased by about 2%. The data can be seen here."


The batter still has to take advantage of it. But the fact is in most situations the pitcher is going to pick the corners far less than if you have Johnny Mac behind you rather than Bautista.

From your very own link,

The sample size is very small but he hit much better when a player with an OPS 50 points above him batted behind him in the lineup.

Not only is the sample size incredibly small, the writer is using an arbitrary measure (OPS +/- 50 points) as a criteria for "protection."

You obviously didn't bother reading the articles, and just posted the first two links that supported your argument.

 

[canucksfan]

May is a tough month too. Red Sox, Yanks, Rays, Orioles, Giants and the Braves. The only easy team are the M's.

 

[dredeye]

Gotta say this team is not as fun to watch as I thought it would be. I just can't stand watching this team.

 

[Scion]

Gotta say this team is not as fun to watch as I thought it would be. I just can't stand watching this team.

No team is fun to watch when they are losing this often. The good news is that there is literally no way to go but up from here.

 

[The Nemesis]

He's not intentionally giving him easier pitches to hit... he's being even more careful not to walk him because you're giving away a base runner to the good hitter.


People evaluated the game for over 100 years without advanced statistics...

And people believed a lot of ridiculous things that aren't necessarily true because they simply didn't know any better.

What's funny is you added "myth" to the end of it... no kidding you got results like that. If I type 9/11 conspiracy I get conspiracy links rather than news.

Now when I searched it without a pre-determined belief in mind, I got:
http://didthetribewinlastnight.com/2013/04/04/swisher-provides-protection-for-jason-kipnis/

"Not only did Kipnis seem to get better pitches to hit, he also saw more pitches in the strike zone when a better hitter batted behind him. Zone% is the number of pitches a hitter sees in the strike zone. When followed by a better hitter, Kipnis’ Zone% was 51.2%. When a similar hitter batted behind him his Zone% was 47.6%, and when a worse hitter hit behind him his Zone% was 45.5%. The quality of pitches is verified by his zone contact percentage. He made contact with 83% of pitches he swung at in the strike zone with a worse hitter following him. With a better hitter behind him his zone contact percentage increased to 91%."

http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/primate_studies/discussion/wright_2003-06-30_0/
"Looking at overall performance by totaling the 27 protectee?s stats together, it looks like OPS increase by about 3.5%, (BB+K)/PA increased by about 6.4% and TB/H increased by about 2%. The data can be seen here."


The batter still has to take advantage of it. But the fact is in most situations the pitcher is going to pick the corners far less than if you have Johnny Mac behind you rather than Bautista.

Did you look at what you quoted? Based on your evidence, the benefit of protection is a less than 5% increase in OPS and 2% increase in the # of bases gained per hit. Those are so small as to almost be statistically irrelevant.

I put "myth" because I was looking to see if there were entries that were specifically looking to respond to the sabr belief that it is a myth. I was looking for pieces that debunked the idea of it being a myth. That was the reason for the phrasing. And indeed several examples that you find under that search string start like this: "modern stat analysis holds that the idea of protection in the lineup is a myth. But is this true?"

So the phrasing is not nearly as loaded as you're making it out to be.


But for the sake of appearances and non-bias, here's some results from when I searched for "baseball lineup protection true"

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120503&content_id=30286114&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb

James Click, a former Baseball Prospectus writer and currently the Rays director of baseball research and development, analyzed the question in the 2006 book "Baseball Between the Numbers" and came to a definite conclusion.
"Protection is overrated," Click wrote. "There's no evidence that having a superior batter behind another batter provides the initial batter with better pitches to hit; if it does, those batters see no improvement as a result."
If an opposing manager or pitcher does take protection into account and walks a batter to get to the next one, Click wrote, it's almost always the wrong choice.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=14010

There are two issues to consider:

1. Do players (pitchers and/or batters) behave differently based on who is on deck?
2. Is the overall impact better or worse?

In The Book, we looked at this topic. Luckily for you, it was excerpted a few years back at The Hardball Times (please read that). The first takeaway is that yes, definitely the players respond differently. And really, when you are talking about human beings in different situations, the expectation is that they should respond differently. After all, they are not automatons, are they? And they respond on the surface as you'd expect: the pitcher is avoiding the unprotected batter, which results in more walks (and more strikeouts).
So, score a big one for conventional wisdom.
But, even though there is a different response pattern by the players involved, that does not by itself mean that it favors one side or the other. Indeed, the result of our study shows that when it comes to putting the ball in play, there was no significant impact.
So, score a wake-up call for conventional wisdom

For a more qualitative look:

http://www.ussmariner.com/2010/06/29/the-problem-with-the-protection-theory/

There’s two problems with this, however. The first one is that there’s no evidence to support the protection theory. It has been studied many times, and there’s been no link found between the performance of a batter and quality of the player hitting behind him. It’s a theory based on speculation, not on data, which should always make you take pause.
However, that’s not the only issue, nor the one I want to focus on, because making the data argument just leads us back down the tired road of people suggesting we’re too tied up in numbers (read: facts) and miss the human aspect of the game. So, instead, let’s talk about that human aspect, and the side that never gets brought up when the protection theory is espoused – the pitcher.
Pitchers want to get hitters out. In general, pitchers who get to the major leagues and stick around are pretty good at this singular job. It’s what they do, and what they get paid for. However, a key assumption of the protection theory is that major league pitchers are dumber than a box of rocks.
Seriously, here’s the basic theory – if there’s a good hitter on deck, pitchers will want to avoid pitching to that guy with a runner on base, so they’ll throw more strikes in order to avoid walks. These strikes are apparently meatballs, and because the batter in front of the feared hitter is now getting good pitches to hit, he’ll get more hits and get on base more often. The theory demands the pitchers actually pitch in such a way that they fail at the original stated goal, which is to avoid pitching to good hitters with runners on base. Apparently, we’re supposed to believe that pitchers are dumb enough to not notice that this suboptimal pitching strategy allows the guy in front of the good hitter to get more hits, as they just continue pounding fastballs in the strike zone that Mediocre Hitter X can whack.
Seriously, this is the backbone of the theory, and it doesn’t make any sense at all. Why would a pitcher rather give up a hit to a mediocre batter than a walk? They wouldn’t, and they don’t. If a pitcher saw that the way he was attacking guys in front of the sluggers was allowing more baserunners (a necessary result of the idea that guys like Figgins will perform better than they have been), then they would pitch differently, because they would actually be faced with more situations where the slugger had a chance to drive in runs, not less.

http://www.virtualsportsnetwork.com/forum/showthread.php?119967-The-lineup-protection-myth

The protection theory sounds true enough, but it begins to break down once you look at the evidence and think through the conclusions it forces you to draw. After all, the basic premise of the theory is that pitchers are going to change their approach in such a way that it benefits the hitter being protected, making it more likely he gets a pitch to hit. However, that is the result the pitcher is supposedly trying to prevent, so the protection theory forces us to believe that pitchers choose to throw pitches that make it more likely that they have to face the scary on-deck hitter with a man on.

If the protection theory held true in real life, it would be on prominent display in Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and Cincinnati. The evidence suggests that pitchers simply aren't pitching McCutchen, Braun and Votto any differently now than they were when they were better protected, and all three are carrying their teams despite a lack of firepower behind them.

These are just a couple of examples that are coming from what you would deem a less biased phrasing of the search (or if anything, a counterbalancing phrasing to the "positive" side)

By and large, no matter how you phrase it, there certainly seems to be more widespread support for the idea that protection is a myth than the idea that it's true.

At best, you get something like Tom Tango's finding that it appears to make a difference in approach, but ends up making no difference in results.

and I agree with the qualitative look at the theory that basically questions why you would change your approach to a batter just based on who's behind him. If you have Colby Rasmus in the 2 hole with the Blue Jays, and you know that he can crush fastballs and is baffled by breaking balls, and is exceedingly tempted by pitches out of the zone, why would you throw him more fastballs in the zone just because Joey Bats is behind him. If you have an approach that works against a batter, changing it for any reason feels like tempting fate. If you want to take stats and figures and number-crunching out of the picture entirely, it just makes sense.

 

[Dwight K Schrute]

Baby steps for Norris. Finally a start that wasn't a complete disaster

4ip 3h 3bb 1er 4k

Sanchez with a good start 5ip 2er 7k 1bb 5h

 

[The Nemesis]

Baby steps for Norris. Finally a start that wasn't a complete disaster

4ip 3h 3bb 1er 4k

Sanchez with a good start 5ip her 7k 1bb 5h

Good to see the Ks are back for Sanchez. Though to be fair it wasn't that bad that he was still productive without the strikeouts, because it means he's able to get guys out without requiring the K.

 

[Kb21]

amazing how the yankees only got 6 hits yet scored 6 runs because of 10 walks,7K, a WP and a PB. some how we had 10 hits and only scored 4 runs because of only 2 walks and 13K.

i missed the game but were our K's the typical ones, swing and miss at bad pitches, or were we facing a red hot david phelps?

 

[dredeye]

amazing how the yankees only got 6 hits yet scored 6 runs because of 10 walks,7K, a WP and a PB. some how we had 10 hits and only scored 4 runs because of only 2 walks and 13K.

i missed the game but were our K's the typical ones, swing and miss at bad pitches, or were we facing a red hot david phelps?

Didn't watch the whole game but every k I saw were swing and misses at garbage out of the zone.

 

[RayzorIsDull]

Just a nasty team to watch right now the only teams with a worse run differential are Houston, and Miami.

 

[habamillions]

I can't watch anymore. Don know how they couldn't get anything going against a scrub who only played because of an injury. Embarrassing

 

[canucksfan]

Just a nasty team to watch right now the only teams with a worse run differential are Houston, and Miami.

Wow, that's really bad.

It can't get much worse though

 

[weems]

Wow, that's really bad.

It can't get much worse though

Sure it can!

Right now were losing and 6 games under .500 but you can still use the "It's extremely early" excuse but if this team plays like this for the next 20 games we will be like 10 or more games under .500 and its not longer that its early and the reality might set in that this team maybe just isnt that good.

 

[Stephen]

What a mess. I wonder if RA Dickey's still waxing poetic about winning the World Series...

 

[trellaine201]

What a mess. I wonder if RA Dickey's still waxing poetic about winning the World Series...

LoL he has been very quiet for someone that likes to speak with the media.

 

[Puckstuff]

this team is a disgrace - I was planning on heading up to Toronto to watch a couple of the upcoming Boston games- but not a chance. I will always support this team but this team simply has taken every ounce of energy out of the city. People will stop going to the games now and this team will continue to suck. They suck at everything - they're just so hard to watch... they're a bunch of losers and it's not even fun to watch anymore. For what ever reason I enjoyed games last year despite the loosing season because they were on the rise... this team took a huge chunk out of the farm for this team and there struggling. Morrow, Johnson, Buerhle, Izturis, Bonifacio, Rasmus and JP gtfo... half of this team is massively under achieving. Johnson good luck with becoming the highest paid pitcher ever bro, Buerhle is proving my point early on that it's stupid in trading for has beens... I want guys who want to win a world series not guys who have already won it... Buerhle winning the world series with the sox does nothing for the jays... People say "leadership" yeah i'm not seeing any of that. Morrow you're not a number 2 and you never will be... you have the stuff but this guy just lacks the ability to go deep and always seems to find a way to have that one bad inning even when he's having a good game. Izturis you are currently the worst second basemen in the league... AA said your a winner, your a loser.... this guy is contributing nothing. Bonifacio = worst utility man ever. I thought he could be at least average in the field... this guy is a train wreck. Rasmus - k k k k k k k k k k k k k hr, k k k k k k k k k k k hr, k k k k k k k k k k k k k hr, k k k k k k k k k k k k k k hr k k k k k k k k k k k k I don't care if he hits 25 home runs he can't do anything else offensively... he's got that sweet swing but he's never put it all together. The guy is a bust... AA thought maybe he could turn this guy around it was a worth a shot but now it's time to cut him loose. Arencibia - If you were sound defensively I could live with all the K's because you can provide some pop... but this guy's errors come at the worst times.

 

[Dwight K Schrute]

this team is a disgrace - I was planning on heading up to Toronto to watch a couple of the upcoming Boston games- but not a chance. I will always support this team but this team simply has taken every ounce of energy out of the city. People will stop going to the games now and this team will continue to suck. They suck at everything - they're just so hard to watch... they're a bunch of losers and it's not even fun to watch anymore. For what ever reason I enjoyed games last year despite the loosing season because they were on the rise... this team took a huge chunk out of the farm for this team and there struggling. Morrow, Johnson, Buerhle, Izturis, Bonifacio, Rasmus and JP gtfo... half of this team is massively under achieving. Johnson good luck with becoming the highest paid pitcher ever bro, Buerhle is proving my point early on that it's stupid in trading for has beens... I want guys who want to win a world series not guys who have already won it... Buerhle winning the world series with the sox does nothing for the jays... People say "leadership" yeah i'm not seeing any of that. Morrow you're not a number 2 and you never will be... you have the stuff but this guy just lacks the ability to go deep and always seems to find a way to have that one bad inning even when he's having a good game. Izturis you are currently the worst second basemen in the league... AA said your a winner, your a loser.... this guy is contributing nothing. Bonifacio = worst utility man ever. I thought he could be at least average in the field... this guy is a train wreck. Rasmus - k k k k k k k k k k k k k hr, k k k k k k k k k k k hr, k k k k k k k k k k k k k hr, k k k k k k k k k k k k k k hr k k k k k k k k k k k k I don't care if he hits 25 home runs he can't do anything else offensively... he's got that sweet swing but he's never put it all together. The guy is a bust... AA thought maybe he could turn this guy around it was a worth a shot but now it's time to cut him loose. Arencibia - If you were sound defensively I could live with all the K's because you can provide some pop... but this guy's errors come at the worst times.

You should.... try... breaking that up... into more than one... paragraph.

 

[trellaine201]

LOL im glad he said most of what i think

 

[Scion]

this team is a disgrace - I was planning on heading up to Toronto to watch a couple of the upcoming Boston games- but not a chance. I will always support this team but this team simply has taken every ounce of energy out of the city. People will stop going to the games now and this team will continue to suck. They suck at everything - they're just so hard to watch... they're a bunch of losers and it's not even fun to watch anymore. For what ever reason I enjoyed games last year despite the loosing season because they were on the rise... this team took a huge chunk out of the farm for this team and there struggling. Morrow, Johnson, Buerhle, Izturis, Bonifacio, Rasmus and JP gtfo... half of this team is massively under achieving. Johnson good luck with becoming the highest paid pitcher ever bro, Buerhle is proving my point early on that it's stupid in trading for has beens... I want guys who want to win a world series not guys who have already won it... Buerhle winning the world series with the sox does nothing for the jays... People say "leadership" yeah i'm not seeing any of that. Morrow you're not a number 2 and you never will be... you have the stuff but this guy just lacks the ability to go deep and always seems to find a way to have that one bad inning even when he's having a good game. Izturis you are currently the worst second basemen in the league... AA said your a winner, your a loser.... this guy is contributing nothing. Bonifacio = worst utility man ever. I thought he could be at least average in the field... this guy is a train wreck. Rasmus - k k k k k k k k k k k k k hr, k k k k k k k k k k k hr, k k k k k k k k k k k k k hr, k k k k k k k k k k k k k k hr k k k k k k k k k k k k I don't care if he hits 25 home runs he can't do anything else offensively... he's got that sweet swing but he's never put it all together. The guy is a bust... AA thought maybe he could turn this guy around it was a worth a shot but now it's time to cut him loose. Arencibia - If you were sound defensively I could live with all the K's because you can provide some pop... but this guy's errors come at the worst times.

 

[The Nemesis]

this team is a disgrace - I was planning on heading up to Toronto to watch a couple of the upcoming Boston games- but not a chance. I will always support this team but this team simply has taken every ounce of energy out of the city. People will stop going to the games now and this team will continue to suck. They suck at everything - they're just so hard to watch... they're a bunch of losers and it's not even fun to watch anymore. For what ever reason I enjoyed games last year despite the loosing season because they were on the rise... this team took a huge chunk out of the farm for this team and there struggling. Morrow, Johnson, Buerhle, Izturis, Bonifacio, Rasmus and JP gtfo... half of this team is massively under achieving. Johnson good luck with becoming the highest paid pitcher ever bro, Buerhle is proving my point early on that it's stupid in trading for has beens... I want guys who want to win a world series not guys who have already won it... Buerhle winning the world series with the sox does nothing for the jays... People say "leadership" yeah i'm not seeing any of that. Morrow you're not a number 2 and you never will be... you have the stuff but this guy just lacks the ability to go deep and always seems to find a way to have that one bad inning even when he's having a good game. Izturis you are currently the worst second basemen in the league... AA said your a winner, your a loser.... this guy is contributing nothing. Bonifacio = worst utility man ever. I thought he could be at least average in the field... this guy is a train wreck. Rasmus - k k k k k k k k k k k k k hr, k k k k k k k k k k k hr, k k k k k k k k k k k k k hr, k k k k k k k k k k k k k k hr k k k k k k k k k k k k I don't care if he hits 25 home runs he can't do anything else offensively... he's got that sweet swing but he's never put it all together. The guy is a bust... AA thought maybe he could turn this guy around it was a worth a shot but now it's time to cut him loose. Arencibia - If you were sound defensively I could live with all the K's because you can provide some pop... but this guy's errors come at the worst times.

Dude.

Paragraphs.

 

[Eyedea]

All I read was

"Rasmus - k k k k k k k k k k k k k hr, k k k k k k k k k k k hr, k k k k k k k k k k k k k hr, k k k k k k k k k k k k k k hr k k k k k k k k k k k k I"

 

[The Nemesis]

You know what? With just 1 post remaining after this one before we get to 1000, I'm gonna bring this thread to a merciful end right now.

New discussion thread up in a minute.