The secret stats

When Bill James started his pioneering work some three decades ago, he was consistently denied access to the scorecards. The Elias Bureau, baseball's official statisticians, had them, and they wouldn't share the information with an outsider for love or money.

That attitude ultimately led James and others to start Project Scoresheet, which led to the creation of STATS Inc. and Baseball Info Systems, and, along other tangents, to Retrosheet and Baseball Reference. If you want play-by-play info from games gone by — what James sought to buy from Elias in the 1980s — it's on the web, and it's free.

For a good while, there was more sophisticated baseball information available to the fans than the teams, or at least a good many of them, themselves took advantage of. That's past now.

Let somebody start doing some innovative Pitch fx analysis and start posting the results on a website, and pretty soon a tech-savvy organization will call, offer the analyst a job — and order the site shut down. You work for us now. James himself works for the Red Sox, and he is limited in what he can share with the public as a result — and he was, after the struggle with Elias, outspoken about his desire for openness in baseball research.

This came to mind while reading this Thomas Boswell column from the weekend about the Washington Nationals offseason. This is Nats GM Mike Rizzo talking about the trade for Doug Fister:

The Nats statistical analysts consider Fister (14-9) a virtual duplicate of [Jordan] Zimmermann right down to “average velocity off the bat.”

“They do it differently, Zimmermann with velocity, Fister with movement. But they get the same results,” Rizzo said.

Average velocity off the bat.  Boswell cites Fister's won-lost record out of habit, but that's not what gets Rizzo revved up. It's how hard batters hit the ball off Fister — and Rizzo has actual data to back it up.

And it's not information available to the masses.

Most — maybe all — teams have their own statistical systems to evaluate defense. We outsiders have access to such metrics as ultimate zone rating and plus-minus; the teams have that access too, plus their own analysis.

We're back where we were when I started following baseball, when the people running the teams truly knew more than even the most sophisticated fans did. For a good part of my adult life, that hasn't necessarily been the case.

As a Twins fan, I just hope this development isn't leaving my team behind. I have, truly, no idea if Terry Ryan and the people advising him know what the average velocity off the bat is for Ricky Nolasco, or even for Sam Deduno. I do know they'd be better off with the knowledge than without.

A hole in the glove

A glove on display at the Hall of Fame museum with a
hole in the palm. I think this one is Frank Frisch's.

A few days ago, in writing about the mass of material at the Hall of Fame, I said I was still picking up on stuff during repeat visits to the displays. Here's an example:

In his autobiography, "Nice Guys Finish Last," Leo Durocher (Hall of Fame manager) tells of growing up in the same city in which Rabbit Maranville (Hall of Fame shortstop) made his offseason home. (Durocher and Maranville were essentially the same player — outstanding defensive shortstops with flamboyant personalities who couldn't hit a lick, and their playing careers overlapped a few years.)

The black glove is Rabbit Maranville's. It does not
have a hole cut into the palm.

Maranville advised the young Durocher to cut a hole in the palm of his glove; this, Maranville said, would give him a better feel for the ball. And Durocher did so, playing for years with his palm exposed. Then, Leo relates, as he was about to cut out the palm of a new glove, he asked himself why he was doing this — and opted instead to thin the leather instead of removing it all together.

So ... now I'm looking at gloves on display in the Hall of Fame museum, and I start noticing a number of infielder gloves from that era with holes in the the palm. Frank Frisch, for example — Durocher's manager and double play partner on the Gas House Gang — his glove has a hole in the palm.

Know whose displayed glove doesn't have a hole? Rabbit Maranville. Go figure.

The Hall of Fame vs. the museum

The blog author takes a break in a row of
seats from the long-gone Shibe Park/Connie
Mack Stadium in Philadelphia.

The sign over the door says: "The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum." And, indeed, if you pay attention, it's easy to tell the difference.

The Hall of Fame, per se, is just that: A hall. It's a long gallery of plaques — we came up with a count of 240 — of the players, umpires and executives who have been formally enshrined.

This is the place we mean when we talk about whether Jack Morris should be in the Hall of Fame.

It's also pretty close to the last place visitors are supposed to get to.

Enter the building, and you are quickly herded to the left for admission and off toward the museum. Which, as I explained in an earlier post, is an exhausting proposition. Rewarding, to be sure, but exhausting.

On one of our tours of the museum, we encountered a man (wearing a Philadelphia Phillies cap) who was surprised to find Pete Rose memorabilia in the exhibits about the Big Red Machine dynasty of the mid '70s and again in the display about the Phillies of slightly later vintage. "I didn't think they let anything about him in here," he said.

That illustrates, I think, the difference between the Hall of Fame and the museum. Rose's gambling transgressions have barred him from the Hall of Fame. They haven't kept him out of the museum. One cannot tell the story of baseball in the 1970s and '80s (and part of the '60s) without Rose, and he is well represented in the museum.

It's two different functions under one roof. (The research library, which is of more limited mass interest than the plaque room and the museum, is a third function.) We tend to get the two functions jumbled up, which is how the Phillies fan wound up surprised to see any acknowledgment of Pete Rose,

The Sunday Funnies

The Philadelphia Phillies were, in the 1920s, '30s and '40s, the dregs of the National League. They played for much of that period in a dump known as "Baker Bowl", which was not merely cramped and uncomfortable but downright dangerous (seating sections twice collapsed during games, in 1903 and 1927).

The combination of bad baseball and lousy accommodations did little to encourage attendance.

The story goes that during one boring midsummer game the writers in the dilapidated press box at Baker Bowl started throwing water at each other. The water fell through the cracks in the wood floor into the seating area below.

The Phillies owner burst into the press box to castigate the scribes. "Knock it off!" he ordered. "Don't you know there are paying customers sitting down there?"

One of the writers lunged for his typewriter. "My god!" he bellowed. "What a story!"

Cooperstown in the offseason

The blog author at the main door of the National
Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, all decorated
for the holidays.

I have been to Cooperstown twice, at drastically different times of the year.

The first time was Induction Weekend of 2001, when Kirby Puckett and Dave Winfield (and Hilton Smith and Bill Mazeroski) were inducted. The little village was packed with thousands of visitors; it wasn't easy to move about on Main Street or in the Hall of Fame building.

The second time was the week before Christmas. There were some visitors, but there was never a problem getting a table at lunch time at the Doubleday Cafe. Many of the memorabilia shops and restaurants that dominate Cooperstown's Main Street were closed — there's something odd about seeing a sign in a retailer's door that says Closed until after Christmas, but so it was.

Winter is the offseason for Cooperstown's tourism for cause, of course. But to a large degree, I came away from this trip convinced that if one's motive is to absorb as much about the game of baseball as the Hall has to offer, the offseason is the time to go.

Here's the thing: There's too much there to grasp in a day, or two days. My wife and I went to the Hall five days, and each day I noticed things that had eluded my attention previously. Yes, one can rush through the three floors of the museum — not to mention the plaque gallery — in a day, but understanding what's there is another matter. I found that  after one floor, my brain was numbed.

Go there in the summer, and the crush is on. Hundreds of people are trying to see the same stuff you are. Go in the winter, and you can dawdle and study without blocking somebody else's view of Honus Wagner's bat or Mariano Rivera's muddy spikes. You can take a lengthy pause at the broadcast exhibit and wait to hear Herb Carneal's call of the last out of the 1987 World Series (yes, it plays in rotation).

There are drawbacks to going in the winter. We had vague plans to visit the research library and perhaps investigate the connection between Mankato and Deacon Phillippe, a pitcher who starred in the first NL-AL World Series. But the library operates on very limited hours in the winter (and even if it had been open, they prefer a couple weeks notice to line up the material). The support businesses around the Hall are limited. And, while we were on the whole fortunate with the weather during our visit (it was 55 degrees on Sunday), winter in the Catskills can be pretty heavy on the snow.

The trip and its timing could have backfired. It didn't. And I got more out of this longer, leisurely visit that I did out of the more frenetic one a dozen years earlier.

Catching up

Kurt Suzuki has played seven years
in the majors, most of them with
the Oakland Athletics.

I was gone for the past week -- a holiday week in Cooperstown, actually, something I'll be posting about in coming days -- and in keeping the spirit of the venture I avoided actively blogging. Yes, there were fresh posts each day, but they were all pre-written and scheduled to be posted. I took note of the Ryan Doumit trade just before leaving town, and everything since was canned.

But if I was idle in terms of blogging for eight days, the Twins, in terms of shaping their 2014 team, were not. Time to catch up:

Kurt Suzuki signed. When the Twins traded Doumit to Atlanta, it was pretty obvious that they were going to add a veteran catcher. The chatter about free-agent backstops, once A.J. Pierzynski and Jarrod Saltalamacchia signed elsewhere, was about John Buck and Suzuki.

Of the two, I prefer Suzuki, although that's not saying a great deal.

Suzuki is a 30-year-old catcher who was worked hard by the Oakland A's in his mid-20s and hasn't been an effective hitter since. At one point the A's hit him third quite a bit, although he wasn't a legit middle-of-the-order bat. It was akin to the Twins hittting Brian Dozier third in September this year; somebody has to fill that slot, and Dozier/Suzuki were the best of a bad bunch of options.

Suzuki is essentially a generic catcher. He'll start if the Twins decide Josmil Pinto needs more minor league time, or if Pinto's troublesome shoulder isn't up to the task (Terry Ryan downplays the shoulder issue, but it has taken Pinto out of winter ball); he'll back up Pinto if the kid starts.

I hope it's the latter role.

Mike Pelfrey's signing also became official. I've said my piece on Pelfrey a few times already. I'm at a state of grudging acceptance and moving on.

Darin Mastroianni outrighted. The Twins had opened a 40-man roster spot with the Doumit trade, so they needed another to execute the two signings. Mastroianni lost his spot.

The outfielder remains in the organization -- he wasn't eligible to declare free agency -- and I think he still has a legitimate chance to make the club out of spring training. Not being on the 40 already is a bit of a hurdle, but not as big as proving that his 2013 ankle injury didn't steal his most important tool, his speed.

This wasn't a Twins move, but Liam Hendriks -- who the Twins lost on waivers to the Cubs in an earlier roster-opening move -- was waived by the Cubs and claimed by Baltimore.

Odd, this, because Baltimore had to pass on Hendriks for him be to claimed by the Cubs (when the Twins put a player on waivers, American League teams have the priority). So the Orioles passed on him when the Twins waived him but claimed him when the Cubs waived him.

Scott Diamond and ground balls

Scott Diamond had a difficult 2013.

The 2014 Bill James Handbook contains a nine-page essay by the sabermetric pioneer that digs into the "Pitcher Analysis" data. This is the segment, referred to frequently in recent weeks during posts about Ricky Nolasco and Phil Hughes, that records, pitcher by pitcher, how many strikes, how many balls, how many ground balls he got, how many swinging strikes, yada yada yada.

As one with a perhaps irrational belief in Scott Diamond — a belief that is probably a big part of my discontent with the re-signing of Mike Pelfrey, who may well keep Diamond out of the rotation —  the third part of the essay really caught my eye:

3. How important is Ground Ball Rate to success as a pitcher?

It isn't. At all.

James being James, he defends this assertion for a couple of pages. I'm not going to quote the whole thing, but his interpretation of the data makes sense. And in 2013, at least, the two groups of pitchers who had the lowest ground ball rates were the two most effective groups.

James' basic point: It's more important for a pitcher to get strikeouts than ground balls.

I believe that to be true. Yet I also believe that a ground ball pitcher — an extreme ground ball pitcher — can be effective.

Diamond was that extreme ground ball pitcher in 2012. He wasn't in 2013.

According to the Handbook: Diamond, in 2013, faced 576 batters. He got 227 ground balls (39.4 percent), 154 fly balls (26.7 percent) and 103 line drives (17.8 percent).  This appears to be on the high end of ground ball rates — the chart only gives bulk numbers — and it didn't result in a good season for Diamond.

In 2012, Diamond had 714 BF,  311 GB (43.5 percent), 149 FB (20.1 percent), 122 LD (17.1 percent). The difference is obvious. Fly ball rates up sharply, ground ball rates down sharply, line drive rate up a bit. 

What's more troublesome for the lefty: he threw just 62 percent strikes (not real high) in 2013 and had just 10 percent swinging strikes (extremely low). 

The 2013 Handbook doesn't give the same data for the 2012 season, so I can't directly compare Diamond's strike-throwing from year to year. But given the rise in his walk rate and the decline in his strikeout rate, it's a safe bet that he wasn't throwing strikes at the same rate in 2013.

None of this is really new information, of course. Diamond's 2012 success was based on doing the things he does well — throw strikes, get ground balls — extremely well, top-of-the-league well. In 2013, he declined in those things, and that won't work for him.

He doesn't have a swing-and-miss pitch. He has to work around that, and James' essay, without ever mentioning Diamond, tells us why that's not easily done.