Prince's defense

Somewhat lost in the shuffle in all the talk about Prince Fielder's fantastic offensive season this year is that, amazingly enough, despite being known as one of the worst defensive first basemen in the game, UZR actually has him as about an average defender this year, around -1.1 runs. UZR is highly susceptible to small sample size fluctuations, and it's possible that this is one of those, as it's significantly better than any other number he's posted (usually around -8 to -10), but it's also possible that getting in better shape has improved his defensive ability. Prince is already one of the best players in the game, but if he can become an average defender, he'll be even more valuable, and maybe shake the "future DH" label, and be seen as more of a well-rounded player than just an all-or-nothing slugger.

Buehrle sets retrosheet record for 9x3s

As you've all heard by now, Mark Buehrle pitched a perfect game today. Perhaps even more significant is that it was the third "9x3" of his career. A 9x3 is a game where the pitcher only faces 27 opposing batters, even if some of them reach base; the ones who do reach base are erased by double plays, caught stealings, etc.

I've often wondered what to call such a game; I asked my dad for a suggestion, and after his initial suggestion of a 3x3 animal style, we settled on 9x3, as in facing all 9 batters in the lineup exactly 3 times, and nothing more.

Baseball-reference recently made a list of this, and apparently as of 2007, it had only been done 35 times since 1957, exclusive of perfect games. Buehrle, at that time, was the only pitcher with two games on that list; Koufax had one plus his perfect game, so they were tied for the retrosheet lead with 2. Buehrle, of course, as I mention above, has now taken the lead.

A 9x3, even of the non-perfect variety, is quite an accomplishment, as evidenced by its rarity, but you never actually hear about it. I suspect this is because there's no snappy name for it, so I suggest from now on, we all agree to use the phrase "9x3" as casually as we say "no-hitter" or "perfect game". Okay? Okay.

The Mets trade Ryan Church to Atlanta for Jeff Francoeur.

I'm speechless.  This is like the front office equivalent of Luis Castillo dropping the pop up against the Yankees, except far worse, because the consequences extend beyond one game.  The #1 rule for any GM this season had to be "DON'T trade for Francoeur"...and here we are.  The only possible explanation I can see for this is that Omar Minaya realized he'll never be the Orson Welles of GMs, and so decided to be the Ed Wood.

Economists wouldn't have a problem with this idea...

I'm currently standing in line in Madison Square Park to get food from Shake Shack.  Shake Shack is a small walk-up restaurant in New York that serves excellent burgers and shakes.  It's extremely popular and, consequently, the lines for it often resemble those for the finer E-ticket rides at Disneyland.

This gave me a thought.  Many fast food chains, most notably Ben and Jerry's, will often have promotional days where they give away free product.  These days are, of course, accompanied by extremely long lines, because TANSTAAFL.  Many economics blogs have run commentaries on this phenomenon (I believe Freakonomics did; I'll try to add a link later).  I wonder if Shake Shack would be willing to run their own equivalent of this promotion: have a day where they charge $20-$30 for a burger, so you don't have to wait in line.

Like I said in the subject, economists would like the idea.  I suspect no one else would, though.

Return to blogging with a quick post, and maybe a longer one later

Hi, I haven't posted here in a while; I've been meaning to on several occasions, but I haven't had time to lately. Anyway, though, I have a long post about various things, including UZR and other fielding metrics, but first, speaking of UZR, I wanted to point out something exciting, that I've been thinking will happen for a while but finally has.

Check it out:



Ryan Braun officially has a positive UZR on the season for (I believe) the first time in his career.

It's a small sample, for sure, like UZR usually is, but personally I think it could last, and expect Braun, when all is said and done, to end up reliably a few runs above average in the outfield.

Braun's gettin' on base

Now, having just emphasized the small sample size present in the last post, I'm going to disregard my own advice and look at some of Braun's numbers so far this year. In particular, I wanted to analyze the comment I made earlier that Braun has been drawing walks at a solid pace. I made this graph of his AVG, OBP, and SLG so far this year:



As you can see, even when his AVG and SLG were swooning, Braun's OBP has consistently stayed very solid. It got as low as .304 on April 11th, but ever since April 13th it's been higher than .340, which suggests that even when he hasn't been hitting, Braun has been good enough at drawing walks to keep getting on base. Again, it's a very small sample size, so there's no way to tell if this will keep up, but it's very encouraging, as patience has always been the weakest part of Ryan Braun's game.

Very Quick Point About Sample Size

So, it's a cliché at this time of year to say that we shouldn't read too much into a batter's performance because it's such a small sample size, but I thought I'd use an example to illustrate that point. Going into the series in Philadelphia, Ryan Braun's slash line was sitting at .222/.340/.356, not completely terrible, but certainly not what we expect from him. However, coming out of Philly, after just three games, Braun has raised his line to the Pujolsian .327/.448/.600. Even after just the first game, where he went 5-for-5 with two homers, he had raised his line to an awesome .300/.397/.540. BTW, note how Braun's ISO discipline (OBP-AVG, basically a measure of patience at the plate and skill at drawing walks) has been pretty consistently great. Braun has actually been drawing walks this year, and if he keeps that up, he can go from being great at the plate to being an absolutely dominant player.

So the next time you read something about small sample size, keep this in mind. We're still at the point in the year where 5 at-bats can turn a guy from suck into awesome.