BTW, is ESPN forwarding you Neyers paycheck. Cause all his blogs in the last 2 weeks have included your homework.

Otis Nixon was another player who was an absolute nut, not about statistics, but about information. It’s been 15 years, but I remember reading an interview where he talked about keeping track of his steals on a computer, writing down pitcher’s moves and tendencies. It was his own private computerized scouting report.

Here’s hoping Banny continues to do well. He seems like a great guy.

He. Was. Brutal.

I’m too lazy to see how many blown saves he had for the Royals, but it was a lot.

http://champdesreves.files.wordpress.com/2006/08/strike-zone-ted-williams.jpg

Banny was fantastic in the minors, posting respectable ERAs and great WHIPs. He did it by posting a very nice +3/1 K/BB rate in the minors. He made the Mets rotation out of spring training in ‘06, and performed just well enough, but was contstantly in trouble, consistantly putting runners on the bases on many occassions. He worked out of enough jams to post a respectable-for-a-rookie 4.26 ERA, but his WHIP was an ugly 1.47 because he walked more batters than he struckout. I’m sure if you asked Banny he’d admit that is no way to consistantly succeed in the majors.

Worse yet, his season followed a bad trend, his first couple starts were like his minor league starts, working efficiently to great results, but things turned south fast, his next 3 starts, he allowed *30* baserunners in 15 IP. I’ve no doubt that given the opportunity to straighten things out, Banny would’ve, but tragically, Banny pulled a hammy running the bases in his 5th game. (Fun fact, Banny has a career batting line of .333/.375/.533, if this pitching this doesn’t work, maybe he can Rick Ankiel it in the outfield. )

Anyway, after rehabbing for most of 4 months, BB finally returned to the Mets late in the year, and the rust showed, allowing 17 baserunners in 10 innings of work. Not an encouraging trend in Mets front office eyes. BB got the bad end of this small sample size, and it seems that the Mets figured he was a AAAA pitcher, a guy who could only get minor leaguers out. The Mets probably had at least 3 other pitcher prospects more highly prized than BB (Pelfrey, Humber, recent draftee Kevin Mulvey). Burgos was a 22 year old flamethrower who posted very nice minor league strikeout rates. They were flipped, in a trade of solid performance for raw potential.

Now, I’m not saying I liked the trade, not just because of my fandom of BB, but with his minor league resume, he should have been given a better shot. That said, the trade is at least defensible.

On the issue of why more “baseball people” don’t seem to embrace statistics… I believe it comes down somewhat to Art versus Science. I honestly believe most all of these guys came up either in the scouting area or had stints where player evaluation was important in their baseball role. And, I believe that most of these guys felt like they could watch a player bat, field, or pitch a few times and then assess their ability. I think they feel that boiling it down to statistics truly cheapens their player evaluation talents since most people will come down to the same conclusions if they are only looking at statistics.

I just wish these guys would balance their subjective opinions/evaluations with objective (statistics) findings… FWIW

But, at the same time hitters seem to get a pass on strikeouts. It doesn’t matter that Adam Dunn strikesout a lot for example.It does matter, in the sense that it depresses his BA — how is he gonna hit .300 overall, when 200 of his at-bats don’t put a ball into play at all? (Only Ryan Howard can do that.) But since the hitter’s BABIP regresses to the mean much less strongly, there is less reason to think that a player who puts up a higher or lower BABIP than average is necessarily going to stop doing that. (It still can be expected sometimes — e.g., if a slow guy puts up a .350 BABIP, or a fast guy puts up a .390 — but it’s a much less dramatic thing.)