A couple interesting things will come of this data becoming more avaialble.
The reliability of UZR and DRS (Fielding Bible metric) over other defensive metrics just went WAY UP. UZR and DRS are one of the few metrics that adjust for the difficulty of each play based on the location, speed, and angle of hit balls.
We'll finally have xBABIP for pitchers. Up until now, we could only use a pitcher's track record (which can be quite accurate after a larger sample considering context).
Bref is based on DRS and Fangraphs on UZR, so both are going in the right direction for hitter WAR. FIP is not going to cut it for pitcher WAR in the future and Bref's simple RAs is better with a larger sample.
One area where I disagree is assuming the Ms had a good defense because of the fact that they had a high MPH staff that led to high BABIP. The park itself depresses BABIP which balances it out, including average FB/GB (their team UZR was -13.5 in 2008).
So the the 2008 defense as a whole was probably about league average, although Ichiro and Beltre carried the team.
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Q. Okay, what is the good news and bad news for the hometown nine?
A. For one thing, be aware that you're about to see the Seattle Mariners' defense get a lot better. They are migrating from a staff full of Jarrod Washburns into a staff full of Michael Pinedas.
We have discovered the existence of pitchers' batted-MPH skill -- and we have discovered which pitchers have it, discovered that pitchers with high K/PA allow low MPH in play. James Paxton, Danny Hultzen and Taijuan Walker are even more valuable after Fast's article than they were before it.
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Notice that Michael Pineda's BABIP was absurdly low last year, .258. He has two, maybe two point five, of the three weapons used to induce weak swings. He's got a 97 mph fastball. That cuts your BABIP from .300 to maybe .285, judging by Nolan Ryan.
Secondly, he has one of the most deceptive offspeed pitches in baseball. The arm action on his power slider is as good as any in baseball. That cuts his BABIP again.
That's two of the three. The third, we'll give him a half credit: Pineda's command is also obviously plus. We'll withhold full credit because his velo and change-speed are the best in the game. Plus is one thing; plus-plus-plus is another.
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Look, gentlemen, when Pineda hits the black at 96 mph, they are not going to be able to take a 1-wood backswing and square the ball up.
The pre-2011 skepticism against Pineda was mistaken; the pre-2012 skepticism against Pineda (the league will catch up to him!?) is going to be just as mistaken. Pineda is going to fan 9 per game, walk 2, and give up weak contact.
Pinedas and Hultzes and Paxes, oh my. What of the rest of the staff? ....
Comments
The 2008 M's out conversion rate was deadeye equal with the expectation per pitcher MPH.
So we have been assuming that the Safeco factor that you mention .... if anything, we thought that it would would have *raised* the ballclub's glovework *to* the exactly-as-expected level.
So, obviously, the glovework itself would have been presumed to have been below average -- by whatever margin Safeco provides in a vacuum.
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If I'm not mistaken, though, when we say that Carlos Silva allowed 75 mph off the bat, that is measuring the entire flight of the ball -- meaning that Silva was giving up 75 mph after Safeco's crosswind cut the ball down!
...I'm not sure about that last assertion, Doc. I think the batted ball velocity was ejection velocity...not average velocity over path...that 75 mph is the average speed of a fair ball immediately after hitting the bat, I think. I don't think we have full-flight hit F/X yet...so we can't have bene measuring the whole arc, can we? Unless they have time to a spot data and are calculating it that way?
Maybe there's a link to show us what they used?
If its the entire flight of the ball that really puts into perspective how truly awful that HoRam/Silva/Batista trio was at the time.
UZR records the speed off the bat and does adjust for park afterwards, so there may actually be a park effect in the batted-ball mph that doesn't exist as much in UZR or DRS.
Whatever it is, I'm sure its miniscule though in non-extreme parks. Very interested to see what analysts are going to be able to churn up with this new tool.
I was thinking of the debate in this thread, especially posts #22-36, where they discussed the idea of overall horizontal velo. There are other threads on Tango's site on this topic, including this week.
The Nov. 16 and Nov. 22 BP articles by Fast are here and here. I didn't look up anything else, as far as what the MPH means.
Come to think of it, it wouldn't make any sense to have a "90-120 MPH" category if you were talking about anything other than launch speed :- )
Feel free to take it from here, Matty. I'm going to look at some prospect stuff so maybe I can sit down as student and you can step up to the chalkboard on this topic :- )