Advanced Run Celebrations

flipflopflyball:

For some reason, I hear this song in my head when I see this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQNUeOOqMyU

Neat choice, but I was thinking maybe something more along the lines of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie_R1H9L4eI

Rethinking Jo-Jo’s Bizarre Adventure

So, I’ve been doing some thinking.

In an attempt to work out why Jo-Jo Reyes seems to look better on the mound when he keeps his fly ball total under or around his ground ball total, I went stat hunting. What I found, for reference sake, looked like this:

Nothing that really busts or confirms my thoughts in the group. Since posting it last night, I’ve been left with a kind of an itch that I haven’t been able to scratch. This is in-part due to the wise words of super-cool-bro 1 Blue Jays Way, who reminded me how stats are best used: to backup a theory. Not as the support.

So, where does that leave my notion about Jo-Jo and his fly balls?

One factor that I didn’t take into effect is the fact that he’s working in in Toronto about half of the time. SkyRogers CentreDome seems to be a hitters park and fly balls do tend to carry deeper than in a more neutral park. So, in that sense, Jo-Jo would be playing with fire if he continues to let opponents take him to the sky most of the time. Eventually, all those outfield hits are going to catch up with him and, like we saw last night with the inside-the-park-homer, the mistakes that are made in the outfield can have far more impact on the game than a bad throw from third by senior DFA Pool lifeguard Edwin Encarnacion.

I like Jo-Jo Reyes. He’s shown us glimpses of being a reliable arm in the back of rotation that could move up a bit if he keeps improving. But the ball has to stay on the ground, especially in hitters parks like Rogers Centre and the Great American Ball Park, or he’s going to joining said Encarnacion in also said DFA pool.

Then There’s the Times Where an Idea Blows Up in Your Face…

Trying to find stats to prove or disprove a theory can be a difficult and frustrating task. This is doubly so in baseball.

During tonight’s game between the Jays and the Cincinnati Reds, I thought I recognized a correlation between the success of Jo-Jo Reyes and the number of fly balls that he put up. Going into the seventh inning (before the Rolen HR where the wheels started to come off), Jo-Jo had pitched well, garnering only one inside the park homer that really wasn’t his fault. He had ten (10) ground balls compared to his seven (7) fly balls along with five (5) strike outs before he got run off the mound.

This got me to thinking if the amount of balls that he puts in play for his fielders and where they end up have any direct dictation over how well or poorly he ends up pitching. So, I start scouring fangraphs for some good old stats… and right about here is where the theory done blew up in my face like a firecracker at the Encarnacion residence.

I highlighted the number of flyballs and the Win Probability Added for each start in red. Any start where he had a high number of fly balls in comparison to his ground ball total and he suffered because of it is in green. Any time where the results deviate from my theory (either due to pooping the bed with more/equal ground balls or where he did well in spite of them) are in blue. Jo-Jo’s complete game victory is in yellow. Pretty even ratio of GB/FB in that game. I highlighted it just because.

What does it tell us? Inconclusive. He’s shown the ability to get around skying balls for the outfielders some of the time. However, he’s also been punished for doing it, too.

I don’t know guys. Thought I had something, but it looks like this turned into a thirty minute statistical wank-fest with no real satisfaction at the end. I think I just figuratively blueballed myself with pitching stats.

I don’t like this feeling.

Jon Rauch uses his super secret chameleon powers and freaks out Jose Molina for a while during tonight’s win against the Royals by taking a few swings for him. #GiantRauch

(Photo Courtesy of Reuters)

Chilling, Totally Not Shilling: Eephus League Scorebook

Hey, guys! Roll’s actually doing some blogging again! (wooo.)

Getting down to brass tacks, I think it’s of no surprise that I am a bit of a baseball fanatic. I’m always looking for something to do in or around baseball to fill up my spare time. (This blog comes to mind.) So, when given the opportunity to do something as intricate and vital to the game of baseball as keeping score, I jumped right on it. Hell, if anything I’d get a bit of amusement/stress trying to split hairs between errors and fielders choices for a while and get some stats to remember a few evenings by.

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(Source: emojuanuribe)

For @AndyMc9293