Crashburn Alley » Media

Crashburn Alley Podcast Episode 4

Ryan Sommers — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:00:30 +0000

Bill Baer is busy doing Bill Baer stuff, so Michael Baumann helms this week’s podcast with a performance that can only be described with words like “competent” and “well-intentioned.”

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Topics:

Carlos Ruiz’s white-hot start to 2012
Last week’s roster shake-up
Hunter Pence in the doghouse
Break
Ruben Amaro’s opinion on relievers and strikeouts
Cole Hamels trade rumors
Trivia
Twitter Question: Which member of the Phillies has the best hair? (@soundofphilly)
Twitter Question: Who is your all-time favorite Phillie? (@kfk5025)
Outro

As always, any and all feedback is welcome, on iTunes, in the comments section, or on Twitter. We’d love to know what you like and don’t like so that we can improve future podcasts. Some of the audio in this one is a little shaky, but it gets better in the second segment, and we should have the protocols down for a solid audio product for next episode. Make sure you’re following us on Twitter if you want to send in a Twitter question for the next episode:

Bill: @CrashburnAlley
Paul: @Phrontiersman
Michael: @AtomicRuckus
Ryan: @Phylan
Bradley: @BradleyAnkrom

Thanks to Local Wizards for allowing us to use his music for this week’s episode. Please check out his Bandcamp page and give a listen to “Muckrakers,” the album from which the music on today’s episode came, and several other releases.

No Reason to Worry About Halladay

Bill Baer — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 18:33:37 +0000

Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports has noticed some changes in Roy Halladay:

Halladay is using his trademark two-seam fastball 10 percent of the time, compared with 27 percent in ‘11 and 30 percent in ’10. His average fastball velocity is 90.1 mph, compared with 91.4 mph in ‘11 and 92.8 mph in ‘10.

He is throwing 51 percent cutters, 23 percent curveballs and 16 percent splitters, all increases over the past two seasons (Halladay had thrown only 13 percent curves through four starts in ’11 and 14 percent in ’10.).

Halladay’s velocities on all of those pitches also dropped from ’10 to ’11, and they’re down again in ’12. His cutter has gone from 92.1 mph to 90.5 mph to 88.7 during that time.

Not to pick on Ken, because he does fantastic work and is invaluable to the baseball community, but he ticks off a couple of boxes in Mike Fast’s “what not to do with Pitch F/X” article from a couple years ago at The Hardball Times.

Rosenthal mentions Halladay is using his two-seam fastball less. Fast wrote:

The pitch classifications in the PITCHf/x data, as shown on Brooks Baseball, Texas Leaguers and Fangraphs (not to be confused with the BIS pitch classifications also on Fangraphs), are done by an algorithm developed by Ross Paul at MLB Advanced Media. Ross has made significant updates to this algorithm every year, and one of the most noticeable impacts is that the percentage of pitches classified as two-seam fastballs has increased with each update. This does not mean that the pitchers themselves have changed anything about their pitch selection or the movement on their pitches.

If you want to know if a pitcher has really added a new pitch type, explore his data on a site like Texas Leaguers and see if he’s added a completely new pitch cluster from the previous year. Don’t pay attention to how the pitches are labeled; learn for yourself how the different pitch types behave. When you have mastered that, then you’re ready to identify when a pitcher has added a new pitch.

[Update: I originally said that Rosenthal wrote that Halladay was using his two-seam fastball more often, which was incorrect. I have made the appropriate edits, and apologize for the error.]

Rosenthal also notes a decline in velocity for Halladay. This article by Tristan H. Cockcroft at ESPN notes that fastball velocity is at its lowest in April and gradually increases with each month as temperatures rise.

Those March/April numbers are noticeably low, easily the worst in any single month, and while you might claim that less than a half-mile per hour difference between those April and May numbers is small, remember those numbers were accrued over several hundred thousand fastballs per year, and more than 50,000 per month. That’s one monstrous, whopping sample, and it shows that in “blanket statement” form, there might indeed be something to the dead-arm theory.

Rosenthal gets into Halladay’s pitch selection breakdown. While the shift in percentages may seem significant (13 to 23 percent on the curve, for instance), it’s only four starts. Per ESPN Stats & Info, Halladay’s pitch breakdown is as follows:

Fastball: 57
Cutter: 206
Change-up: 68
Curve: 98
TOTAL: 429

What if Halladay had an off-night where he wasn’t feeling one of his pitches, so he decided to lean on his curve? That could have been the case on April 16 against the San Francisco Giants, when 31 of Halladay’s 109 pitches (28 percent) were curves as opposed to his previous start, when he went to the curve for 23 of his 109 pitches (21 percent) against the Florida Marlins on April 11.

What if Halladay was facing a lineup that was comprised mostly of hitters who are weak against the curve? The Giants’ lineup featured three consecutive left-handed hitters in the 5-6-7 slots: Aubrey Huff, Brandon Belt, and Brandon Crawford. 14 of Halladay’s 31 curves (45 percent) were thrown to those three hitters exclusively. He threw only three curves against right-handed hitters throughout his entire start.

With a sample of only four starts, the effect one outlier can have is enormous. Sure, it’s possible that Halladay is wearing down after throwing so many innings season-in and season-out. But we must be cognizant of small samples this early in the season and be aware of our human tendency to look for stories where there may not be one.

Phillies Q&A with Lee, Howard, Thome, Papelbon

Bill Baer — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:42:06 +0000

Cliff Lee, Ryan Howard, Jim Thome, and Jonathan Papelbon took questions at the 2012 On Deck with the Phillies Reception, a Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce event. Watch the video below to see what they had to say.

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Papelbon isn’t the most well-liked guy in baseball, but he seems very affable and funny at this event. Thome is as lovable as always, Lee couldn’t care less that he’s at this event, and Howard seems rather optimistic about his future given his injury. Overall, it was a very interesting Q&A session that should only make you thirst even more for Opening Day.

Tune in to 94 WIP Tonight!

Bill Baer — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 12:00:25 +0000

I will be speaking with Spike Eskin on 94 WIP tonight around 11:20 PM ET to talk about the Phillies and my book “100 Things Phillies Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die”. Make sure you tune in!

UPDATE: You can listen to my spot by clicking here. It starts at about 21 minutes.

Talking Phillies on WBCB 1490 AM

Bill Baer — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 17:00:41 +0000

I’ll be on WBCB 1490 AM at 2:45 PM ET tomorrow (Monday) to talk about the Phillies and promote my book “100 Things Phillies Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die“. If you’re in the area, tune in. You can also listen live on the station’s website.

On Wednesday, I’ll be speaking with Tom Holzerman (@tholzerman) on his podcast, previewing the 2012 season.

Sam Harris on Statistical Concepts

Bill Baer — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 15:28:45 +0000

Author, philosopher, and neuroscientist (what a combo!) Sam Harris appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience yesterday for a few hours of discussion. Towards the end, Harris and Rogan discussed some statistical concepts such as sampling bias, the hot hand fallacy, and probability. As this blog makes heavy use of Sabermetrics and statistical concepts in general, I felt that part of the discussion was quite enlightening.

You can watch the discussion below, or click the link for the transcript. Be warned that there is some strong language (not much), and a very brief discussion of religion, so use your discretion if you are easily offended.

Transcript

Harris: A huge component and perhaps the component that explains all of those experiences is what’s called sampling bias, where you notice all of the hits and you don’t notice the non-hits. You don’t notice all the times you pick up the phone and you had no idea who was calling you, which is most of the time.

[...]

The hits are salient to us and the failures aren’t. Religious people do this all the time: God always gets credit for the good things he does, but he doesn’t get scored for all the disasters he fails to prevent. A bus crashes and everyone’s dead except one little girl, and it’s God’s miracle that she walked away, but what about all the dead people?

And so the non-hits always outweigh the hits. The classic demonstration of this, which is still shocking to people, is called the hot hand fallacy in basketball: the idea that people get on a shooting streak. Michael Jordan would shoot two outside jumpers, when he goes up for his third, there’s this sense both in him and in the audience that he’s actually more likely to make that third shot having made those prior two because he’s just on a roll. So, that whole feeling of being on a roll in basketball has been studied because what’s amazing about professional sports like basketball is these statistics are every single game that has ever been played, it’s completely broken down. We know every shot, every basket, every rebound, so statisticians can just sit down and analyze: Is there such a thing as the hot hand? Is it actually true that if a guy has made three jumpers in a row, he’s more likely to make the fourth, or is the fourth truly independent of everything that’s gone before.

They’ve found that, despite the personal experience of being on a roll and despite the fact that we feel like we’ve seen someone on a roll, there’s really no such thing as being on a roll in basketball. Now, there may be other sports where it’s different, but there’s so much chaos and so much uncertainty, once that ball leaves your hand, it’s a low-percentage enough phenomenon that it’s actually insensitive to the fact that you feel great and everything’s going well for you and you just sank two baskets and you go up to sink a third, that third — you’re no more likely to sink that third than you were if it was your first one, or you just missed two and then you go up for the third.

Rogan: So, do you completely discount the player’s comfort, like when they feel like they’re in the zone, it doesn’t exist? [overlapping talk] So no one’s ever more likely to make a basket, is that what you’re saying? Even though they’re confident and they make the basket knowing they’re going to make the basket? Statistically, you say.

Harris: [...] My understanding is, there’s zero evidence of what’s called the hot hand in basketball. Literally, it is a subjective error everyone feels powerfully. And so, given that, just map that on to all of our so-called psychic experiences where you feel like you knew someone was going to call.

Rogan: It’s just luck. How do you know, though? How do you know it’s just luck? How do you know it’s not either/or?

Harris: It’s testable. It should be testable.

Rogan: By placing the experiment on anything, don’t you automatically alter the results? Especially when you’re talking about something so ethereal as an idea of a friend, and then -boom- there’s an email in your box and you haven’t talked to them in years. I’m just playing devil’s advocate here, because I don’t believe that. But I don’t know that I don’t believe that, either.

Harris: Statistically, it seems completely beyond the pale, but again, there are going to be low probability events that happen every day. I know a guy who went, for instance, his college girlfriend broke up with him and went to Europe and he was convinced the relationship wasn’t over. He decided he was going to go to Europe to find her. He’s like 18, not a crazy guy, just a really romantic guy and it was not a scary break up. So anyway, nice story, they got back together. Only an 18-year-old can get it into his head to do this, he gets on a plane and he doesn’t even know which country she went to, so he just goes to Europe. He goes to Spain because he speaks Spanish. He’s like ten days into his trip, so he’s in Barcelona. Other tourists hand him a camera and say, “will you take our picture?” He picks up the camera and he’s taking their picture and into frame walks his ex-girlfriend. Within ten days he just found her, so what are the chances of that happening?

Rogan: Pretty fucking small.

Harris: But that stuff happens to people. It would be a miracle if low-probability events never happened. It would be a miracle if no one in human history ever had a story like that to tell. We’re in a system where there’s bound to be very low-probability events.

Rogan: Or it’s just not fully evolved and this kid went on his instincts. He tapped into the information of the universe and he knew instinctively where to go. He met his sweetheart like a goddamn Sandra Bullock movie.

Harris: If it’s an ability that anyone should care about, it should be testable. It should be strong enough that we can test it.

Rogan: But how can you test something when it’s a unique event that very rarely takes place, completely uncontrollable and it’s something that’s almost like a natural phenomenon that rarely occurs. How are you going to put something in a testing environment, the environment of a laboratory, and see if it really does make sense that you think about someone before they call you.

Harris: It might be Sheldrake that’s doing this, there’s the test of the phone call phenomenon. People can subscribe, they enlist like the five closest people in their lives to call them at random intervals. I guess they disable their caller I.D. or whatever.

Rogan: That’s still not a true moment because they’re acting on an experiment. How do you know that someone calling you might not just be calling because they tapped into this idea of loving you and this idea of missing you, and that is the tune that breaks through all the way to you and causes you to look at your phone right when they tune in. That’s not replicable. The idea of unique events isn’t disproven by experimenting with it. I don’t know that it’s true that sometimes you know when someone is calling, but I’ve had the experience myself, but I haven’t had it in years. It’s been years and years since I knew who was going to call me and I looked at it, but I do remember having it happen in my life several times. What if it’s something that just, you know, on a fucking summer solstice, the planets are aligned, your own biology, you have a certain amount of biology in your system and boom, there’s a certain amount of love and the thought gets through. Is that possible?

Harris: Sure, it’s possible. But the question is, even if it’s true, given this description, it doesn’t really seem to matter. It’s not a sign of how connected you are with the person, because sometimes you know it’s somebody you don’t even like. It’s not a measure of how crucial it is that they reach you at that moment because sometimes it’s completely trivial, and then other times when someone really had to get a hold of you because your dad was sick, they couldn’t find you, and you were just blissfully ignorant of the fact that the closest person in your life is having a medical emergency.

Rogan: No one is saying that it works all the time and that because it works in a blue moon that it can’t…

Harris: But then that’s not working.

Rogan: It’s not that it’s not working, it just doesn’t work all the time. It’s a rare event. Is it possible that there are rare events like that?

Harris: Given what we’re talking about now, this is all much more likely to be coincidence. You don’t have that many people in your life that you think about, you don’t have that many people in your life who call you. If you actually just run the numbers on this… one problem is that we have very bad intuitions of probability. Have you ever heard of “the birthday party problem”?

Rogan: No.

Harris: If I put you in a room with just random strangers, how many would I have to have in the room for you to be confident that two people in the room had the same birthday.

Rogan: Jesus. It would have to be thousands for me. And that would just be a guess.

Harris: So that’s basically everyone’s guess. “There’s 365 days in a year, we gotta get two people on the same day, that’s gonna be a lot of people.” The truth is, and this is just a fact, that if you get 23 people in the room, you have crossed the 50 percent threshold so that it’s more likely than not that two of them have the same birthday. 23 people. What’s crucial to understand is that, the crucial piece — and this deflates so many conspiracy theories and other bad ideas — is that it’s absolutely crucial that we didn’t specify which birthday. It’s any two birthdays. Any two people, any single birthday. That changes the game entirely. If I said, “how many people in a room to find one with my birthday?” that changes it. But any two people on any given birthday, it’s 23 people.

Rogan: If you go with just your birthday, that would be thousands. That would have to be thousands.

Harris: I don’t off-hand know what that would be. Our intuitions are bad about probability.

Follow @JoeRogan

Follow @SamHarrisOrg

Those points apply to baseball as well. There is a lot of sampling bias involved in justifying belief in clutch hitting, for example. The ninth-inning walk-off will always register more strongly in your memory than a ninth-inning ground out that sent the game into extra innings. When people justify calling a player clutch, they rattle off all of his clutch hits, but don’t put it within the context of total chances nor do they consider other factors that may have been at play.

The hot hand fallacy gets some play in baseball, especially when players go on hitting streaks. Jimmy Rollins went 1-for-6 in the first game of what would become a 38-game-hitting streak in 2005-06. If you had asked anyone within the first 13 games if Rollins was dialed in, they most likely would have affirmed. However, Rollins actually put up a lackluster .254/.318/.356 line. Rollins wasn’t any more likely to get a hit then than he was in any other situation at that time.

Rare events certainly drive baseball narratives. The Red Sox slipped out of post-season contention at the end of the regular season last year, and it was blamed post-hoc on the team’s consumption of beer and fried chicken in the clubhouse. Other teams have thrown away their post-season hopes in worse ways than the Red Sox, and it had nothing to do with beer and fried chicken. They went 7-20 (.259) in September, which is bad. But if you swapped their September with June (16-9, .640), the beer-and-chicken narrative goes away. It’s certainly not impossible for a .557 team to lose 20 of 27 games in a given stretch. Some of them happen early, some of them happen late, but it’s only when it happens late do we really pay attention and assign meaning to the occurrence.

Phillies 24/7 HD Radio Links & Info

Bill Baer — Tue, 31 May 2011 13:56:07 +0000

I was a bit forgetful in procuring the clip from my appearance on Spike Eskin and Chris Johnson’s show “What’s the Word?” on Phillies 24/7 HD Radio last week. Although the topics are a bit outdated, you may still enjoy listening to the 20-minute segment. Use the player below.

What’s the Word? with Bill Baer by Crashburn Alley

If the player doesn’t show above, try viewing the page in a different browser or use the links above.

Today’s edition of “Stathead” is also ready to go at 3 PM ET today. Spike is filling in for Jeff Sottolano, who had to attend to more important things on this beautiful Tuesday mid-morning. We’ll be talking about that amazing 19-inning game, the resurgence of Raul Ibanez, what’s in store for Vance Worley, and the best Phillies starting pitcher Cole Hamels. If you have an HD radio, tune in to 98.1 WOGL HD-4 at 3 PM ET.

Talking Mets-Phillies with SNY.tv

Bill Baer — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 18:14:41 +0000

I took a few minutes to chat about the upcoming Mets and Phillies series with Ted Berg (@OGTedBerg) of SNY.tv. We briefly talked about some injuries, the Phillies’ offensive decline, and the great pitching staff. (Now with more Worley!)

You can listen here:

Consider that a taste of what you can get every Tuesday at 3 PM ET and Wednesday at 2 PM ET on WOGL 98.1 HD-4 with the “Stathead” show.

Be sure to check out the series preview with Joe Janish. Click here for his answers to my questions, and click here for my answers to his questions.

“Stathead” Airs @ 3 PM ET Today on 98.1 WOGL HD-4

Bill Baer — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 17:14:09 +0000

Just a reminder, in case “Stathead” isn’t a part of your routine yet. The new statistically-focused show “Stathead”, with myself and Jeff Sottolano, airs today at 3 PM ET on 98.1 WOGL HD-4. We’ll talk about the best and worst plays of the first nine games, what we think about the offense, the surprising starts from some unexpected sources, and Cole Hamels’ first two starts.

Here’s the original post with a bunch of information relevant to the show, and here is the program schedule. The show will re-air tomorrow at 2 PM ET in case you can’t catch it today. If you listen, I’d love to hear your feedback — positive and negative — here in the comments, on Twitter, or via e-mail.

Announcement: Phillies 24/7 HD Radio

Bill Baer — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 12:00:55 +0000

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve heard me hint about an announcement for a while now, and I can finally spill the beans. I’ve been asked to contribute to a new HD radio station with WOGL that will have Phillies content 24/7. My show is called Stathead and will air Tuesdays from 3-4 PM ET. Jeff Sottolano will co-host the show with me.

Below is the official press release and information about the shows on the Phillies 24/7 HD radio station.

PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES PARTNER WITH CBS RADIO’S WOGL ON DEDICATED HD RADIO STATION

PHILLIES 24/7 TO FEATURE LIVE PLAY-BY-PLAY OF EVERY PHILLIES GAME

PLUS GAME RE-BROADCASTS EVERY MORNING AT 9AM

Philadelphia, March 31^st, 2011 – The Philadelphia Phillies and CBS RADIO’s WOGL today announced the launch of Phillies 24/7, the first ever HD Radio multicast station exclusively dedicated to a Major League Baseball team. Phillies 24/7 will air continuously throughout the year and feature live play-by-play of every regular season Phillies game on-air at 98.1 WOGL HD4, plus game re-broadcasts the following morning at 9am. The channel will launch on Friday, April 1 when the Phillies take on the Houston Astros in their home opener (1:05pm).

CBS RADIO’s WPHT serves as the Phillies radio broadcast flagship, a position they’ve held since 2005 after previously holding that title from 1982-2001.

In addition to game coverage, Phillies 24/7 will broadcast a full schedule of unique daily and weekly programs centered on the team, as well as provide behind the scenes access at Citizens Bank Park, and archived audio content including classic game replays. Phillies fans can expect to hear new shows heard only on Phillies 24/7, including Phillies Today – a daily look at all things Phillies on the field and off, Phillies Phorum – a weekly opportunity for fans to ask questions via email, Facebook, and Twitter, and Phillies Playlist – a look at what’s playing on a different Phillies’ mp3 player each week.

Marc Rayfield, Senior Vice President of CBS RADIO Philadelphia had this to say about the partnership, “We are thrilled to embark upon this new endeavor with the Phillies. There is an insatiable appetite for this team, and CBS RADIO’s HD platform allows us to use new technology to bring Phillies related content to their fans 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. And the best part is it’s free!”

“Creating this channel for our fans is a natural way to give them even more access to the team. We are excited to partner with CBS RADIO on this unique and exciting project,“ Phillies Senior Vice President of Marketing and Advertising Sales David Buck added.

HD Radio™ Technology is fueling the digital evolution of AM/FM radio in the US and elsewhere. It allows broadcasters to offer new digital channels through multicasting, crystal-clear sound, and advanced data services – all free, with no subscription fee. HD Radio Technology is available nationwide with more than 2,000 digital stations on-air and an additional 1,300 HD2/HD3/HD4 digital-only channels that broadcast fresh new content that can only be heard with an HD Radio receiver. These receivers are available in retail stores and online from major electronics brands, as well as in new vehicles from 17 automotive brands. For more information, visit hdradio.com.

ABOUT WOGL

WOGL AND WPHT are owned and operated by CBS RADIO, one of the largest major-market radio operators in the United States. A division of CBS Corporation, CBS RADIO owns and operates 130 radio stations, the majority of which are in the nation’s top 50 markets. CBS RADIO also owns and operates KYW-AM, WIP-AM and WYSP in Philadelphia.

The landing page for the station can be found here.

Stat Head (Most Tuesdays at 3pm)

Statistics have always been a big deal in baseball. There are the numbers you know about, the hits, runs and errors. There are other numbers though, deeper numbers. Our resident stat head, Bill Baer of CrashburnAlley.com breaks them down for you and tells you what you might be missing.

Tune into the show and please leave feedback here and on the station’s website/email. This week’s show covers expectations with the starting rotation, choosing between Ryan Madson and Jose Contreras, and what’s left at second base sans Chase Utley. I think the show is unlike anything else you’ll get on the radio — level-headed, objective analysis of the Phillies.

If you’re unfamiliar with HD radio, as I was, check out this page as it explains everything you need to know. To tune in, just find 98.1 WOGL HD-4. You should be able to find HD radios at most electronics stores such as Best Buy and Radio Shack.