Heart

[brettac1]

I do want to thank BrewCityUnit. He has started some good discussions lately that have been quite fun to be a part of.

[bjamesw22]

ESPN quit tracking it when they realized that the teams that were at the top of productive outs were in the bottom of runs scored, and vice versa. It was basically a useless stat, that again had no correlation to winning.

 

That is an unfair assessment. You're comparing apples to oranges. Of course the teams with the most productive outs were in the bottom of runs scored. That only makes sense. Those are the teams that for the most part have much less power anyways. So it's only natural.

 

If you have two teams with the same talent makeup, the team that makes the most productive outs will win more IMO. It is a mingled stat, meaning there has to be a balance.

 

Does the team that hits the most HR's always or even usually win the division? No, teams need balance between BA, BB, SLG, ERA, WHIP, K's, etc.

 

So what does scoring runs and giving up runs have to do with winning ballgames? The Pathagorean thingy will get you close, but what makes for the deviation from that? You say luck, I say "heart."

[BillScottCanRake]

Being in the "stathead" crowd, I'll admit that "heart" or "grit" exist, yet in an unquantifiable state. I'll admit it readily.

 

What kills me, is day in and day out, people on here and other forums claiming as fact that "this team has no heart" or "there's no fight in this team"

 

Ain't a guy here (aside from the lucky few who work in the organization) who know how much effort is being given, or how much they "want to win". No one here knows what's in the mind of those guys, and shouldn't be claiming to know. "This team has no heart" is a blanket statement, and a ridiculous one at that.

 

So we lost to the Cardinals bench. This is freakin' baseball. 162 games. GOOD teams LOSE to BAD teams now and then. It happens. And we're not even a GOOD team, we're a *mediocre* team. It doesn't mean we "threw in the towel" or "didn't care", or (sigh) "have no heart". It means it was one of those days, that are BOUND to happen over a 162 game schedule.

I swear to god I've read on here that of our 118 games this year, about 80 of them were "must win" games, and that if they didn't win the "must win" game in question, then the team has (yeah, you guessed it) NO HEART!

 

I don't know how hard Bill Hall is trying. Or Damian Miller, or Chad Moeller. I'm not going to CLAIM to know. And I won't claim to know how important "heart" is in determining wins and losses, because nobody knows, let alone li'l ol' me.

 

I think some people might have missed this post, because I haven't seen a reply yet. So, I thought I'd repost it, since its one of the best posts I have seen in the last couple of months here.

[DHonks]

But how do you identify it and how do you correlate it's existence with winning? Baseball is for the most part an individual sport, football isn't

 

If that were true, then the A's would have been far less successful this past 5 seasons. I went into the Fall League last year expecting a bunch of jerks. I figured the A's took only high performance studs, not phyical specimens, so these guys--the OBP college studs--would be a bunch of wild punks. In reality, they were all very polite. Several were southerners who responded to questions with "yes, sir" or "I'm just happy to be playing pro ball." The A's make it a point of drafting high character players, and it seems as though the Brewers value character quite a bit. Character is important, because you have to live with them each day for 8 months. There's a reason that Luis Terrero is disliked on the Diamondbacks, Curt Schilling is disliked wherever he goes, and other stars--like Bonds, Pedro, etc-- get lukewarm comments from teammates.

[rluzinski]

If that were true, then the A's would have been far less successful this past 5 seasons.

 

I thought it was because they were very talented.

[rwa12]

Chris-Of course there has been no response, the thread contained common sense, and was entirely true IMO...but it also puts an end to an argument, and some people will never let an argument die, especially when it has run its course like this one has..

[bjamesw22]

I haven't been one of the people that has said that the Brewers have no heart. So it is not fair for me to tell you what I believe they mean.

 

I have been making a case saying that "heart" plays a good part in this game just like productive outs, or doubles, or SB's, or RBI's, or HR's, or WHIP, or K's, or quality starts, or fielding percentage, etc. Individually these stats mean nothing to me, but when you put them within the context of games within a season they mingle together into a type of baseball that your team plays. The teams that have the best balance of all of these factors wins the most ballgames. You can't look at a each of these individually and say, yup, that is the reason they won the series! The thing is, "heart" has an effect on all of these things. As insignificant as you may think it is, even an insignificant improvement in each of these areas can make a big overall improvement.

[brettac1]

The A's make it a point of drafting high character players, and it seems as though the Brewers value character quite a bit. Character is important, because you have to live with them each day for 8 months.

 

DHonks, you made an excellent post, and I agree with rluz saying the A's were very talented, and they were/are. This part I really agreed with, but I don't consider character to be a part of heart. I would think things like criminal histories, etc. are accessible and in the context of this discussion, quantifiable.

[H0FFY]

A couple of years ago Baseball Prospectus did an analysis of how teams did over a few years in one run games. And they found some teams won (regularly for a few years) a disproportionate amount of those games and some teams lost a disproportionate amount.

 

The pure 'stats' showed this should not be the case. And the winningness seems to stick with a team for a few years and not bounce randomly from team to team. The winners were winners and the losers were losers.

 

BPs conclusion was, I paraphrase, 'we dont know why this is true, we cannot explain it, but it seems certain teams are just better than others in 1 run games'.

 

Hmmmmm, I wonder what 'stat' is this elusive factor.

 

And before all the stat heads jump up and down, be careful what you diss. I am only pointing out what the BP guys said. They were/are confused. (but I am not)

[brettac1]

I believe they said that bullpens were likely the reason for this, and why some teams succeed more in one run games, like the Angels of recent years, or the Nats earlier this season, as Cordero was, and still may be, first in WXRL.

[bjamesw22]

I would love to see the link to this analysis so I could read up. Sounds interesting. I'd like to see what conclusion they came to. Although I think my last post sums up what I believe about how "heart" plays a part and I really have nothing more to say about it, it'd be nice to see what BP said.

[Mass Haas]

And this "Heart" thread hasn't included any images of Mrs. Cameron Crowe, aka Nancy Wilson yet, excuse me if I say still hot at *gulp* age 51.

 

I'm officially old. Nancy forever!

 

http://www.epiphone.com/images/N_NancyInt12.jpg

[brettac1]

I will try and find it, I think it's probably in their "Library' section on the site.

 

LINK : Bullpens, a good piece on one-run games in here

 

I couldn't find the exact piece that HOFFY was talking about, but you may be able to find it by searching the site.

[bjamesw22]

Mass,

 

I'm 25 and I wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating crackers!

 

I will try and find it, I think it's probably in their "Library' section on the site.

 

Cool brettac1. Thanks.

[NlGHTWlNG]

www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=347

 

Here it is.

[brettac1]

Beat ya to it NIGHTWING, but here's some more links, not from BP but relevant no less:

 

"How Mighty the Pen Can Be" (KC Stat Guy)

"Ten Things About One-Run Games" (Hardball Times)

 

There's a few links in the second one that are good, as well. Enjoy.

[NlGHTWlNG]

There is interesting stuff in both of those. The only problem with the original is that the BP study, that was published on ESPN.com, is missing.

[brettac1]

There is interesting stuff in both of those. The only problem with the original is that the BP study, that was published on ESPN.com, is missing.

 

I found that, through Woolner's old Stathead page, however, I had to highlight everything in order to read it. Other than that, yeah it's a good article as well.

 

LINK: "Blowouts and the Value of Closers" (Keith Woolner)

[NlGHTWlNG]

"The Phantom Text" Thanks for the link.

[brettac1]

I would have posted the entire article, but for some strange reason I am incapable of having really long posts for some reason, if you keep up with the "Issues" forum - I can only do a couple paragraphs, which sucks.

[NlGHTWlNG]

I read it. I just wonder why it is black on black text. I'm also incapable of long posts, but for different reasons. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

[batman]

"Blowouts and the value of closers"

By Keith Woolner

Special to ESPN.com

Wednesday, August 16

 

Editor's note: The team of writers from the Baseball Prospectus will be writing twice a week for ESPN.com. You can check out more of their work at their website at baseballprospectus.com.

 

With blowouts of a different type in the news, it seems to be an opportune time to talk about blowouts in baseball. The offensive explosion of the last eight years, while decried in some quarters, is defended by others as a good thing since it supposedly generates more fan interest, because fans like more scoring and more home runs. But judging by the number of fans leaving in the seventh inning of a 12-1 game I recently attended, they like games to be close as well.

 

Has the increased offense of recent years resulted in more 12-1 yawners, or have yesterday's 2-1 pitchers' duels become 9-8 hitters' battles? To investigate this question, I looked at all games over a 21-year-span, from 1979 to 1999. The data was made available thanks a combination of sources: Retrosheet, the Baseball Workshop and Total Sports among them.

 

Taking a cue from the definition of a save, we'll consider any game that ends with a three-run or less margin of victory as "close." We'll double that threshold and call any game won by six or more runs a "blowout." Let's look at the frequency of close games and blowouts over the years:

 Year Close Blowout 1979 65.5% 17.0% 1980 65.8% 14.3% 1981 63.6% 14.3% 1982 65.6% 15.8% 1983 65.6% 15.7% 1984 65.0% 14.8% 1985 63.2% 17.3% 1986 64.7% 16.4% 1987 61.8% 18.8% 1988 65.0% 15.8% 1989 63.4% 16.5% 1990 63.0% 16.4% 1991 64.6% 15.7% 1992 66.1% 15.4% 1993 63.3% 16.8% 1994 61.1% 20.0% 1995 60.5% 20.3% 1996 60.8% 20.6% 1997 61.2% 20.0% 1998 62.0% 18.8% 1999 59.3% 22.2% Avg. 63.4% 17.4% 

The past six seasons, along with the rabbit-ball year of 1987, are the seven years with the highest percentage of blowouts since 1979. Similarly, the number of close games has declined by five to six percentage points. Perhaps this shouldn't be too surprising -- we'd expect the highest scoring seasons to have the most blowouts -- but it confirms that the rising offensive levels are turning 4-2 games into, say, 12-4 blowouts more often than into 9-7 games.

 

The percentage differences aren't small either. The gap between the high and low points in the above chart means that teams in 1999 were playing in 10 to 11 fewer "close" games, and were involved in 12 to 13 more blowouts, than they were in previous decades. Allowing for some overlap between the two, teams are seeing a tenth of the season pushed into decidedly less interesting categories of games. I wonder what that's costing teams in late-inning concession sales.

 

Of course, the final outcome of the game may not reflect the actual level of tension during the game. A rally in the ninth inning could turn a one-run squeaker into a foregone conclusion. So to account for that possibility, let's look at the run differential between the two teams at any point during the last three innings of the game. We'll again use the three-run margin for close games, and a six-run gap as a blowout:

 Year Close Late Early Blowout 1979 79.4% 9.2% 1980 80.7% 7.7% 1981 79.7% 7.7% 1982 79.5% 7.2% 1983 80.3% 7.2% 1984 79.6% 8.1% 1985 78.8% 8.4% 1986 79.6% 8.0% 1987 77.1% 9.9% 1988 79.6% 7.9% 1989 78.9% 8.6% 1990 78.9% 7.8% 1991 79.2% 8.3% 1992 80.4% 7.0% 1993 79.5% 7.7% 1994 76.6% 10.3% 1995 76.0% 10.6% 1996 75.9% 10.3% 1997 77.4% 10.0% 1998 79.1% 8.9% 1999 76.2% 10.2% Average 78.7% 8.6% 

The percentage of games that are close at any point in the last third of the games increases, which makes sense since the previous category is a subset of the games we're looking at now. Still, we again see a decline in games that are still close in the late innings and an increase in early blowouts. We're still looking at an increase of about one game in 14 where the differential between teams late in the game makes the outcome seem like a foregone conclusion. Is baseball seven percent less interesting nowadays (Hmmm ... perhaps that's introducing too many numbers ... )

 

The increase in blowouts is not just a matter of entertainment. It can affect in-season decisions as well, particularly in bullpen management. With more and more games out of hand before you can get to your closer, the number of opportunities to use a top reliever in high-leverage situations decreases.

 

This is counterbalanced, to some degree, by what started this discussion -- offensive levels are rising. Teams are scoring more runs, hence effective run prevention is more valuable and harder to come by. Does the value of run prevention in the late innings balance the lack of opportunities for a closer? Are closers worth more or less in a high-offense environment?

 

Let's consider an idealized closer: one who is capable of shutting down the opposing team completely for one inning, and is brought in solely when the team is winning in the ninth inning.

 

In a previous article I wrote for the Baseball Prospectus website, I developed a formula for estimating how often a team of differing offensive strengths would score 0, 1, 2, 3, etc. runs per inning. I've used this formula to figure out how much impact our ideal closer could have in different offensive environments.

 

Assume two teams with equally potent offensive lineups (they average the same number of runs per game), as we move them into different offensive environments. The odds of one team overcoming a one-, two- or three-run deficit in the ninth inning varies as the offensive level ranges between three and six runs per game:

 

Chance of blowing a:

 1-run lead 2-run lead 3-run lead 3.0 R/G 12.2% 4.6% 1.7% 3.5 R/G 13.6% 5.5% 2.2% 4.0 R/G 14.9% 6.4% 2.7% 4.5 R/G 16.2% 7.3% 3.2% 5.0 R/G 17.5% 8.4% 3.9% 5.5 R/G 18.4% 9.0% 4.4% 6.0 R/G 19.4% 9.7% 4.9% 

So, the likelihood of a comeback increases quite a bit as offense levels rise. Naturally, this makes each appearance by the closer in a tight game more valuable, since the odds of the opposing team coming back are greater. The heightened likelihood may make the game more interesting, should it be close enough in the late innings.

 

Measuring subjective perceptions like this is probably too difficult, but we can reasonably hypothesize that it's related to the chance that the outcome of the game will be reversed in the late innings. We could consider the value of a closer as a proxy for how interesting a game is to a typical fan.

 

Therefore, the impact of a closer increases as the likelihood of a comeback increases (which, as we have seen, happens when offense increases), and decreases with the chance that the game will be close in the late innings (which decreases as scoring increases). These factors work against each other but don't completely cancel out.

 

Multiplying these two components together yields a factor proportional to the expected value of a closer. Comparing this factor to the overall offensive level, we find a slight overall increase in the value of a closer as scoring increases. In fact, between the lowest-scoring season and the highest-scoring season, the value of a closer has risen roughly 13 percent (assuming they were to be used in the idealized way described above -- we aren't considering the evolution of the closer strategy over time). The "shape" of that contribution is different, however, as it comes into play in fewer games but has more impact on those games.

 

We have theoretical support, then, for what common sense may have already told us: that thanks to rising offensive levels, fewer games will be in question in the late innings, but those that do will be real nail-biters. And can anyone who's watched the Mariners' bullpen in recent years claim otherwise?

 

Keith Woolner writes for the Baseball Prospectus, the annual book by the same name, covering over 1500 players with in-depth statistical analysis and hard-hitting commentary. Keith may be reached at kwoolner@baseballprospectus.[/b]

[brettac1]

Thank you, Bill. There are a bunch of others on the EZIssues forum having the same problem I am, so hopefully they can get it resolved so I can ramble.

[bjamesw22]

Heart.

 

Top of the second inning. Branyan hits a double off the right center wall. Their RF is sprinting all out getting to that ball and holds Branyan to a double instead of a triple with no one out in the 2nd.

 

The point is, you don't know what effect that had on the rest of the game. But the chances of an extended inning or at least scoring a run would have been much higher if Branyan could have gotten to third. The positive outcome of scoring could have triggered more positive outcomes after. And the effect that has on the game cannot be measured by stats.

[BillScottCanRake]

So, let's stop side-stepping the issue and start getting to the bottom of this:

 

- Who amoung Brewer players doesn't have heart? And which ones do?

 

Let's start naming names. Given our access to a players weight program, their off season training programs, their pre-game workouts, etc, we can easily identify those players with enough heart to work hard and those who don't have it.

 

Not only that, but given how easy it is to determine the limit of a players physical ability, we can easily see whether a player has reached those physical limits or whether their lack of heart is causing them to under-perform.

 

I'm most interested in finding out which players are too weak-willed to put their entire heart into each of the 162 games played each year. Those players who skip work outs or games to be with family members who are sick, having babies, graduating, etc, obviously are not committed to the team and should be pointed out.

 

- How much has a lack of heart contributed to this teams current record?

 

Given the list of names above, how has the lack of heart in certain players contributed to this teams medicority?

 

Rickie Weeks, for example, probably doesn't have enough heart to have a truly historic rookie season. He shouldn't be in the mall buying beds, he should be taking four, five extra hours of BP to work on hitting sliders and curve balls.

 

- How much has heart contributed to this teams current record?

 

Given the list of names above, how the precence off heart in certain players contributed to this teams medicority, and helped prevent them from being less bad?

 

I look forward to seeing some replies.