Longtime readers of this column know that the Nachoman is an inveterate statistician. I have a Cincinnati Reds Official Scorebook, the same version used by Marty Brenneman and Joe Nuxhall (RIP) in the Reds broadcast booth. In that book are records of games back to 1988 – in fact, I used that book as evidence when a friend challenged my contention that Craig Biggio had begun his career as a catcher.
Nowadays I keep scorecards professionally for STATS, LLC. One of the fringe benefits of working for STATS is the occasional enlightening email from my boss, Chuck Miller, highlighting an obscure stat that he’s compiled from his crew’s data entry.
For example, for each putout, assist, and error, the STATS reporter rates the difficulty of the play on a scale of 1-4, where a 4 means that the play should make Sportscenter’s top ten plays of the night. A couple of years ago Mr. Miller sent us a list of the batters who had most often been victimized by a level-4 defensive play in the 12 years we had been collecting data. I wrote about this statistic in this 2006 column… but before you click over there, try to guess which batter topped the list.
This year comes a hidden stat that provides some evidence for my gut feelings about team defense. On every ground ball to an infielder, a STATS reporter is asked if the first baseman attempted to scoop a throw that bounced in front of him. If so, we also indicate whether the scoop attempt was successful.
Before reading further, think about which first basemen you think are best at making said scoops. Now, “best” here isn’t necessarily easy to quantify. If the rest of the infield is any good, then the first baseman won’t have that many scoop attempts because he’ll generally get on-target throws. We can look at the percentage of throws in the dirt that the first baseman scooped successfully, but even that could be a misleading stat unless we have a large sample size. The data I have are for the 2008 season through August 25, and demand a minimum of 21 scoop attempts. With the small sample size caveat, let’s look at the numbers:
All major league first baseman have attempted 1500 scoops, and are 80% successful at turning these throws into outs. My first reaction is “That’s pretty danged good.” This winter at Umpire School I twice jumped into a game at first base[1] and found it incredibly difficult to field a bounced throw. The main difficulty was the grass cutout, which sits a couple of inches above the surrounding dirt. If the ball bounces anywhere near the cutout, the bounce is nearly unpredictable. When a throw headed for that cutout, I could hardly prevent myself from curling up into a ball to protect my face and other delicate parts from the approaching projectile. Perhaps I should have worn my mask.
Who was the best scooper, percentage wise, in the majors? Ross Gload of KC fielded 32 of 34 attempts, a 94% success rate. Mssrs. Helton, Delgado, and Garko were all at or above 90%. Perhaps even more impressive were the performances of Justin Morneau and Ryan Howard, who made the most successful scoops of anyone – 54 in 66 attempts, an 82% rate but with far more opportunities than most other first basemen.
What about the butt end of the list? Hovering at 68% are the Angels’ Teixeira, the Marlins’ Jacobs and the A’s’ Barton. They are only second-to-last-place. The absolute worst scooper by percentage in the majors, at 61% (for 55 attempts), is the Reds’ Joey Votto.
A look at the list by team is even more damning to the entire Reds organization, not just to Mr. Votto. The Reds have fielded the third-most bounced throws in the majors, at 64 throws. Only the Twins and Phillies have made more of these bad throws (though both teams have scooped at an 80% clip). Bounced throws by themselves could be construed as an indictment of a whole infield – the Mariners have only made 32 bounced throws to first base.[2] Furthermore, the Reds as a team have the worst scoop percentage in the majors, at an overall 63 percent. It’s not just Mr. Votto who can’t pic it.
No wonder Edinson Volquez and Johnny Cueto often seem afraid to pitch to contact. Inexperienced pitching, a teensy ballpark, and the worst infield defense available… recipe for success or disaster? One look at the standings will answer that question.
I hope none of my tax dollars paid for the rap song
Though I have legitimate credentials as a physicist, I don’t toe the line politically with the rest of the physicist community. I was pleased when the Superconducting Supercollider was cancelled in the mid-1990s; I do not generally support enormous government outlays for ever-bigger particle accelerators and manned spacecraft boondoggles. It is certainly true that basic scientific research has demonstrable long term economic benefit. However, there are other ways to support basic research than to blindly allocate billions of dollars to keep high-energy physicists employed.
The next of the giant particle accelerators – which have made essentially one significant discovery in the last 25 years[3] – is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Europe which will begin operation this year. That’s great in the sense that the LHC will verify or de-verify the existence and properties of the Higgs Boson, which is necessary for the verification of virtually all of particle physics theory. That’s great. My objection is the cost… just how much, exactly, is the knowledge of the Higgs Boson worth? Leon Lederman, 1988 Nobel Prize winner, called the Higgs the “God Particle” in his book of the same name. Me, I call it the “Six Billion Dollar Particle." [4]
Whatever your stance on the LHC, you simply must observe a few moments of the “Large Hadron Rap” on the video below, which features seemingly authentic physicists in hardhats and lab coats lip-synching badly. Thanks to El Molé for the link…
Nowadays I keep scorecards professionally for STATS, LLC. One of the fringe benefits of working for STATS is the occasional enlightening email from my boss, Chuck Miller, highlighting an obscure stat that he’s compiled from his crew’s data entry.
For example, for each putout, assist, and error, the STATS reporter rates the difficulty of the play on a scale of 1-4, where a 4 means that the play should make Sportscenter’s top ten plays of the night. A couple of years ago Mr. Miller sent us a list of the batters who had most often been victimized by a level-4 defensive play in the 12 years we had been collecting data. I wrote about this statistic in this 2006 column… but before you click over there, try to guess which batter topped the list.
This year comes a hidden stat that provides some evidence for my gut feelings about team defense. On every ground ball to an infielder, a STATS reporter is asked if the first baseman attempted to scoop a throw that bounced in front of him. If so, we also indicate whether the scoop attempt was successful.
Before reading further, think about which first basemen you think are best at making said scoops. Now, “best” here isn’t necessarily easy to quantify. If the rest of the infield is any good, then the first baseman won’t have that many scoop attempts because he’ll generally get on-target throws. We can look at the percentage of throws in the dirt that the first baseman scooped successfully, but even that could be a misleading stat unless we have a large sample size. The data I have are for the 2008 season through August 25, and demand a minimum of 21 scoop attempts. With the small sample size caveat, let’s look at the numbers:
All major league first baseman have attempted 1500 scoops, and are 80% successful at turning these throws into outs. My first reaction is “That’s pretty danged good.” This winter at Umpire School I twice jumped into a game at first base[1] and found it incredibly difficult to field a bounced throw. The main difficulty was the grass cutout, which sits a couple of inches above the surrounding dirt. If the ball bounces anywhere near the cutout, the bounce is nearly unpredictable. When a throw headed for that cutout, I could hardly prevent myself from curling up into a ball to protect my face and other delicate parts from the approaching projectile. Perhaps I should have worn my mask.
Who was the best scooper, percentage wise, in the majors? Ross Gload of KC fielded 32 of 34 attempts, a 94% success rate. Mssrs. Helton, Delgado, and Garko were all at or above 90%. Perhaps even more impressive were the performances of Justin Morneau and Ryan Howard, who made the most successful scoops of anyone – 54 in 66 attempts, an 82% rate but with far more opportunities than most other first basemen.
What about the butt end of the list? Hovering at 68% are the Angels’ Teixeira, the Marlins’ Jacobs and the A’s’ Barton. They are only second-to-last-place. The absolute worst scooper by percentage in the majors, at 61% (for 55 attempts), is the Reds’ Joey Votto.
A look at the list by team is even more damning to the entire Reds organization, not just to Mr. Votto. The Reds have fielded the third-most bounced throws in the majors, at 64 throws. Only the Twins and Phillies have made more of these bad throws (though both teams have scooped at an 80% clip). Bounced throws by themselves could be construed as an indictment of a whole infield – the Mariners have only made 32 bounced throws to first base.[2] Furthermore, the Reds as a team have the worst scoop percentage in the majors, at an overall 63 percent. It’s not just Mr. Votto who can’t pic it.
No wonder Edinson Volquez and Johnny Cueto often seem afraid to pitch to contact. Inexperienced pitching, a teensy ballpark, and the worst infield defense available… recipe for success or disaster? One look at the standings will answer that question.
I hope none of my tax dollars paid for the rap song
Though I have legitimate credentials as a physicist, I don’t toe the line politically with the rest of the physicist community. I was pleased when the Superconducting Supercollider was cancelled in the mid-1990s; I do not generally support enormous government outlays for ever-bigger particle accelerators and manned spacecraft boondoggles. It is certainly true that basic scientific research has demonstrable long term economic benefit. However, there are other ways to support basic research than to blindly allocate billions of dollars to keep high-energy physicists employed.
The next of the giant particle accelerators – which have made essentially one significant discovery in the last 25 years[3] – is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Europe which will begin operation this year. That’s great in the sense that the LHC will verify or de-verify the existence and properties of the Higgs Boson, which is necessary for the verification of virtually all of particle physics theory. That’s great. My objection is the cost… just how much, exactly, is the knowledge of the Higgs Boson worth? Leon Lederman, 1988 Nobel Prize winner, called the Higgs the “God Particle” in his book of the same name. Me, I call it the “Six Billion Dollar Particle." [4]
Whatever your stance on the LHC, you simply must observe a few moments of the “Large Hadron Rap” on the video below, which features seemingly authentic physicists in hardhats and lab coats lip-synching badly. Thanks to El Molé for the link…
And finally, a quiz
Can you name the one significant discovery made by large-scale particle accelerators over the past 25 years? Put your answer in the comments, or I'll mention the answer in the next post.
NM
[2] A reasonable counterargument here could be that an infielder is more willing to make a hurried or off-balance throw if he has confidence that his first baseman can make a scoop; without that confidence, the infielder might just eat the ball, preventing the throwing error but giving the team no chance of recording an out. Don’t worry, I know that this stat is hugely context-dependent.
[3] Compare that to the success of NASA’s space telescope program, which has produced uncountable advances in astrophysics in just 15 years.
[4] Note that I give no credence whatsoever to those fringe elements – including my hero Tuesday Morning Quarterback – who quote debunked science to garner media attention to complain that the LHC might destroy the universe. I’m not kidding. The Wikipedia article on the LHC has been locked for editing because said idiots are vandalizing the article by over-promoting the “safety concerns.” The discussion on this topic is enlightening… take a look at the LHC talk page.
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