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Time to Pull the Tarp over the White Sox
2006-09-19 00:56
by Scott Long

The race for the AL Central, which looked so exciting has ceased to be. With the Tigers dismantling of the White Sox in game 1 of their series, the playoffs seem to be set. If the A's sweep of the Sox (led by my buddy Frank Thomas) hadn't of already of locked it up, losing the way they did on Monday clinched it.

Without going into too much detail of why the White Sox have fallen short this season, I would point to these 3 factors.

1) The starting staff logged a ton of innings last year, especially when you consider what they provided in the playoffs. A tip of the hat goes to Herm Schneider and his training staff, which has managed to keep all of their Big 4 from suffering any major arm injuries. While they might not be visiting Dr. Andrews, these starters have looked fatigued all year.

2) The bullpen is completely different than last season. The White Sox started last year with Takatsu (remember him and where is he now?), Marte, Politte, Hermanson, Cotts, and Vizcaino, as their main guys. Only Cotts and Hermanson are left with the team now, with the former nowhere close to his last season's brilliance and the latter only joining the team over the past week. Bobby Jenks was the team's savior last year and pitched well this year, but seems to have hit a wall in August. Jenks' velocity is quite a bit down from his flame-throwing peak. Plugging in McCarthy and adding Riske and MacDougal have kept them competitive for most of the year, but they can't match the bullpens of the Twins, A's, and Tigers.

3) If you compare Scott Podsednik's stats from 2005 and 2006, you will notice a 20 point drop in OBP this season. While that might not seem like a big deal, Podsednik last year was a catalyst for the team. The White Sox played small ball during the first inning, where Scott seemed to reach base at a much higher clip than the rest of his at bats. The White Sox were masters at getting the lead first (they set a MLB record for most straight games scoring first). They played like a football team with a great defense, trying to score initially and then pitching and defense helping them hold on.

This season, Podsednik rarely set the table and the White Sox played from behind a lot more. The increased power hitting for the team kept them in the race, despite a drop in pitching and hitting from the leadoff spot, but it only could sustain them for so long.

I know my evidence is completely circumstantial on the Podsednik theory, but I would guess most fanatical observers of the team would go along with some of my theory. If I had the time or desire, I would go through all the box scores from last year to calculate what he hit in his first at bat and what is the winning percentage when a team scores first. I'm not that guy. If you have the interest, I would love to have you do the research and co-author a piece with me on the subject.

The National League continues to be an interesting battle, no matter how mediocre the competition is, but the AL teams can begin to set their starting staffs for the playoffs. It's about time for the White Sox to play Josh Fields and Ryan Sweeney everyday, while also giving a couple of their young pitchers the opportunity to start a couple of games. If the White Sox are going to compete with the incredibly strong AL Central teams in 2007, they need to know if these players are major league options. The World Champions are just about done with the defending part of their reign.

Comments
2006-09-19 07:54:46
1.   Mike J
20 points of OBP? The reality is 20 points of OBP is one extra time on base every two weeks. That's not enough to make much of a difference over the course of a season.

The bullpen stinks and the starters are tired. And Ozzie hasn't exactly been a genius this year. That's all there is to it.

2006-09-19 08:05:29
2.   spycake
I don't have the exact stats, but ESPN has some related splits:

1st time facing pitcher in game:
2006: .231/.325/.307
2005: .268/.336/.321

Leading off an inning (any inning):
2006: .239/.345/.360
2005: .304/.374/.379

Now, given that he only has roughly 230 leadoff AB in each season, that's only a difference of about 10 times reaching base overall. And he's only on pace for about 4-5 fewer runs scored this year.

I think the sentiment applies, though, especially when you consider his increase in K's and drop in SB's. Plus, it's hard to blame anyone else in that lineup, besides Anderson and possibly Uribe.

2006-09-19 08:09:48
3.   mehmattski
Because I have some time, but not that much time, here's some digging on ESPN and CBS's splits pages:

2006 (Overall .260/.332/.353)
First inning: 97 AB, 24 R, 11 SB/3 CS, .216/.333/.330

2005 (Overall .290/.351/.349)
First inning: 124 AB, 26 R, 21 SB/7 CS, .333/.419/.417

2004 (Overall .244/.313/.364)
First inning: 136 AB, 7 R, 19 SB/6 CS .254/.321/.369

A couple of things scream out at me, especially "fluke" when describing Pod's 2005 season. Also, he hit much better in the first inning last year (I don't know if it's "significantly" higher) compared to overall, wheras its the opposite this year. However, he has still scored a similar amount of first inning runs for the White Sox. Since he's getting on base less, I would guess this has to do with the sluggers behind him this year. I think that also might explain some of his low walk total- pitchers are throwing him more strikes because they don't want him on base when Dye gets up. He has struck out more than last year, but it doesn't seem like there's a higher percentage coming in the first inning:

2006: 93 (20 1st inning)
2005: 75 (16)
2004: 105 (18)

I don't know if I can blame the White Sox fade this year on the fact that Scott Podsednik failed to repeat his career best. For one thing though, the combination of he, Juan Uribe, and Brian Anderson in that lineup is weighing them down considerably, compared to the Twins and Tigers.

2006-09-19 08:16:04
4.   mehmattski
1 "You know what the difference is between hitting .250 and hitting .300? I got it figured out. Twenty-five at bats a year in 500 at bats is fifty points. Okay? There's six months in a season, that's about 25 weeks-- you get about one extra flare per week-- just one... a gork. You get a groundball a... a groundball with eyes... you get a dying quail... just one more dying quail a week and you're in Yankee Stadium! "

Sorry, just saw it again last night, had to...

2006-09-19 10:56:35
5.   Scott Long
I have never been much of a believer in the concept that small ball works, except when it's late innings and one run is needed. Last year changed that for me some, as Podsednik took a lot of pitches and when he got on base, created a lot of stress for the defense. I know a lot of this flies in the face of CW of sabermetrics, but watching over the first 4 months of last year, I still believe the White Sox formula of getting a 1st inning run was vital to their success.

I really appreciate those of you that did some digging. I'm happy to say that the stats you came up with don't make me look like a complete fool. I know they don't point to winning like they did last year, but I stand by the notion that 1st inning small ball and then the rest of the game playing longball was a great formula for the team. And yes, Podsednik did have a flukey year in 2006, but then winning a world championship in Chicago is maybe even more of a flukey happening.

With the addtion of offense from Dye, Crede, and Thome the White sox still could have survived this, if the pitching was anywhere near as good as 2005. Agreed. This is why I rated the starting staff and bullpen's decline as reason 1 and 2 of why they will not make the playoffs. I do believe though that the other reason they have dropped off is the poor season by Podsednik, especially his failure to get the team off to a good start in inning one.

Does anyone know the stats of what a team's winning percentage is when they score the first run of the game?

2006-09-19 14:36:25
6.   mehmattski
5 I spent a good 45 minutes trying to find something on that, with the assistance of Google. Someone asked Dave at FanGraphs.com a similar question a while ago, he responded that he didn't have exact stats on that, but if you want to play with the win probability calculator, that could give you some things that are pretty similar:

http://www.fangraphs.com/forums/printthread.php?t=29

As someone points out, the more likely correlation is between good offenses and winning, not between scoring first and winning. That is, it's more likely that a team that scores first has a better offence relative to that pitcher... not that scoring first has any added advantage.

I came across numerous articles making statements like "The Mariners are 20-6 when scoring first" but I couldn't find a (free) source for this kind of data. If I had the data somewhere, I might be able to come to some conclusion.

2006-09-19 21:27:35
7.   chris in illinois
The Leyland-led Pirates of the early nineties did that sort of thing as well, (Jay Bell had 69 SH batting second in 90-91) I remember him explaining that getting an early lead was very important to him. Of course, maybe if you batted the guy with the .406 (90), .410 (91) and the .456 (92) OB%'s 2nd or 3rd instead of fifth, you might have scored a few more early runs without having to pretend that it's 1909.

The problem with the 'small-ball in the first' approach (as I see it anyway) is that the tendancy is too give too much credit to it for your success and to ignore the bigger factors (i.e.: hitting 200 homers or getting great starting pitching) that really made you successful.

I think Kenny Williams (to his credit) did not fall into that trap and the Sox looked to make stronger areas that were already strengths. Unfortunately for him, it's freakin' hard to repeat and now he has to contend with a horde of knuckleheads who think that the absence of Aaron Rowand and his chemistry set are keeping the Sox out of the playoffs.

Good luck Kenny.

2006-09-20 02:18:43
8.   joejoejoe
The White Sox Pythagorean* Won-Loss record is almost identical from 2005 to 2006. That suggests they just had extreme good fortune in '05 when they surpassed their Pythagorean W-L record by 7 to 8 games. This year the White Sox are winning games at the rate their offense and defensive numbers predict. Don't feel bad. The Indians have outscored their opponents by 68 runs this year and are 10 games under .500.

Now that's bad luck.

*Pythagorean winning percentage is an estimate of a team's winning percentage given their runs scored and runs allowed. Developed by Bill James, it can tell you when teams were a bit lucky or unlucky. (Baseball-Reference)

2006-09-20 12:27:47
9.   Scott Long
OK, here I am taking on a sacred cow again, but pythagorean winning percentage fails to measure certain teams well. The Twins have generally beaten this measurement, as their defense and bullpen I believe aren't properly measured using this stat. The A's are playing much like Twins of past seasons, which is why they are so far out ahead of the stat.

Cleveland reminded me so much of past White Sox teams, as they have a great collection of hitter, good starting pitching, but little team chemistry, defense, or bullpen ability. My belief is that when you have this type of makeup, you end up winning a lot of 7-2 games and losing a lot of 4-3 games. This is when pythagorean percentates fail. I also think that when you have a great bullpen, getting the lead first gives the rest of the team such a lift, as the starting pitcher can throw with a little less anxiety.

(I realize that some of what I'm saying sounds like a guy laying on a couch just free-associating. Sorry, but it's my gut instinct, something that I occasionally go by. Maybe I should write a book entitled "Scott's Gut Instinct Baseball Guide". I could have such other great followers of this technique like Jim Hendry and Dave Littlefield to write the introduction.)

2006-09-20 16:05:53
10.   joejoejoe
9 I agree with you. It's hard to win and sometimes the breaks have to go your way. Brilliant analysis, huh?

The Yankees won two of their recent WS going 92-70 and 87-74. They won 103 games in 2002 and got eliminated from the division. Sometimes the ball bounces your way, sometimes it doesn't. If the Yanks don't get to win every year, neither do the White Sox or any team.

If I were Kenny Williams I'd try and get some good RH platoon players. The White Sox are no better than a .500 team against lefties over the last 2 years. That's a cheap tweak that could pay solid dividends in '07. I like Podsednik but he's career .254/.323/.354 against lefties. That's awful at the top of your lineup.

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