SPORTS WITHOUT CHARM
Entering 2012 the jury still seemed to be out on Adam Jones. He had showed very good power throughout his major league career but had poor plate discipline. His defense seemed enigmatic with different advanced metrics placing him anywhere from awesome to awful in center field. However, he was only 26 and it seemed possible…
On Saturday night, Jason Hammel one-hit the Atlanta Braves. This week in By The Numbers we break down Hammel’s performance to see exactly why he was so dominant. This season Hammel has been a five-pitch pitcher using a four-seam fastball (FF), two-seam fastball (FT), slider (SL), curveball (CU) and changeup (CH). The graphic below shows…
Now that the dust has settled on the MLB 2012 draft let’s take a quantitative gander back at the Orioles choices in the first 200 picks. The idea here is to apply research of several known variables to evaluate how well the Orioles did in drafting, given the talent available. I encourage the By the…
On Sunday, Adam Jones signed a six-year contract extension paying him $85.5 million. For the Orioles the decision to lock up Jones at this price through 2018 was a no-brainer for two reasons: The price tag for Adam Jones was only going to go up the longer the Orioles waited to sign him. The contract…
What’s up with Jake Arrieta? He began the year with improved velocity and through May 2nd he had two outings where he gave up 0 runs and only one disastrous outing (a 4 inning, 5 run outing in LA against the Angels). However, since May 2nd Arrieta appears to have turned into a pumpkin. On…
Yesterday, Chris Davis became the first position player to record a win in the last 40 years. Here we’ll look at Davis’ win By The Numbers. First we’ll look at how clutch Davis’ performance was in the 16th and 17th innings and then we’ll look at the “stuff” Davis brought with him to the mound….
Jason Hammel is one of the largest reasons for the Orioles hot start to the 2012 Season. The 6’6 right hander who was acquired in the offseason for former opening day starter and perennial fan favorite Jeremy Guthrie, has posted a 1.73 ERA in 26 innings while accumulating 3 wins. As the attentive reader knows,…
One of the skills of good pitchers is the ability to get hitters to swing at pitches outside of the strike zone. This week, we’ll look at the Orioles starting staff in this regard. Among AL starting pitchers the median rate for coaxing hitters to swing at pitches outside the strike zone (O-Swing %) is…
The return of April baseball has begat the rebirth of By The Numbers. This week we try and weed through the myriad of “on-pace” numbers that come along with the first week of actual MLB games and identify three statistics that are likely to identify real trends. We’ll start down on the farm after the…
The graph above shows the weekly Rush DVOA for the 2011 and 2010 incarnations of the Baltimore Ravens. Rush DVOA is a percentage, so a team with a Rush DVOA of 10.0% is 10 percent better at running the ball than the average team. Its also important to note that Rush DVOA measures not just…
