Skenes

On this day:
1609
Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.
1835
The New York Sun perpetrates the Great Moon Hoax.
1894
Kitasato Shibasaburō discovers the infectious agent of the bubonic plague and publishes his findings in The Lancet.
1898
700 Greek civilians, 17 British guards and the British Consul of Crete are killed by a Turkish mob in Heraklion, Greece.
1914
World War I: The library of the Catholic University of Leuven is deliberately destroyed by the German Army. Hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable volumes and Gothic and Renaissance manuscripts are lost.
1944
World War II: Paris is liberated by the Allies.
1945
Ten days after World War II ends with Japan announcing its surrender, armed supporters of the Communist Party of China kill Baptist missionary John Birch, regarded by some of the American right as the first victim of the Cold War.
1948
The House Un-American Activities Committee holds first-ever televised congressional hearing: “Confrontation Day” between Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss.

***

An MIT research paper found that 95% of companies have not seen a meaningful return on investment from their generative AI projects.

***

Is economics really "common sense?"

***

Chicago reported 498 homicides between July 2024 and June 2025, 120 fewer than during any 12 months back to June 2016, analysis of police data showed. Only 133 arrests were made. Is that good? Is 500 murders a tolerable number in a free society? Is this just a free society baseline? Is that the best a free society can expect?


***

Uber received more than 400,000 complaints of sexual assault or sexual misconduct in the US against the ride-hailing app’s drivers between 2017 and 2022.
The attacks amounted to one nearly every eight minutes, the New York Times reported, citing unsealed court records.

Those are huge numbers.

But Uber reported 1.2 billion rides in the U.S. in one year in 2022.

***

Skenes

Skenes has been so spectacular that there’s now a reasonable case to be made that the 23-year-old is having the best start to a major-league career of any pitcher in more than a century.

Since joining the Pirates last May, Skenes has been practically untouchable. He leads MLB over that span with a 2.07 ERA, having allowed 66 earned runs in 287 innings. He ranks second in opponent batting average (.198) behind Cincinnati’s Hunter Greene and second in opponent on-base-plus-slugging percentage (.558) behind Detroit’s Tarik Skubal.

Since the start of the live-ball era in 1920, when baseball truly began to resemble the modern game, only one other pitcher went this long into his career with an ERA as low as Skenes’s. That was Vida Blue, who posted a 2.01 ERA over his first 50 starts with the Oakland Athletics from 1969 to 1972.

The game has changed in many ways since Blue burst onto the scene, but one of the most dramatic is how starting pitchers are used now. Blue averaged about 7⅔ innings in his first 50 starts. Skenes is averaging closer to 5⅔ and has yet to throw a nine-inning complete game in MLB. In 1971, Blue had two separate outings in the same month where he lasted 11 innings.

But the object for a pitcher is to prevent runs, and in terms of sheer dominance, it’s hard to argue with what Skenes has done. Again dating back to the start of the live-ball era—105 years ago—only four pitchers have put together consecutive seasons with ERAs under 2.00. They are Hal Newhouser, Sandy Koufax, Greg Maddux and Clayton Kershaw. As soon as Kershaw is eligible, all four will be in the Hall of Fame.

Skenes, whose ERA currently sits at 2.02, has a chance to join that club—in his first two seasons in the major leagues. (Last month, Skenes became the first pitcher ever to begin his career by starting back-to-back All-Star Games.)--from WSJ

Baseball is a hard game, especially when you don't play it well. The Pirates start three position players who hit under .200, one who hits .206, and one who hits .210. They are 25 games out of first place in their weak division--and deserve to be. But Skenes--who does not have a winning record--is fascinating to watch. And he is part of an increasingly fascinating staff. The Pirates lead the league in shutouts pitched. With Skenes, Burrows, Oliviedo (recently reactivated), and Ashcraft, their number one starter at the beginning of last year, Keller, has been bumped down to number five. And the occasionally spectacular Jarad Jones is returning from surgery next year. More, their highly regarded Chandler made his first appearance in relief and looked strong, throwing 100 mph. This staff, on the front end at least, looks good.

Of course, anything can happen. The Pirates are an organization not motivated by quality. And they can do wonders when accidentally encountering talent. The best hitter in college baseball in several years can't hit for them. Their first round pick, Priester, could not pitch a lick for them, but, after being traded, is doing just fine in Milwaukee. And pitchers don't bat.

Nonetheless, struggle is the core of the first three acts of any play and can be fun regardless of the denouement.

Baseball

    
Baseball

I went to a Pirate Grapefruit League game.

It was fun and interesting despite the game being between the Pirates and the Orioles, the two lowest payrolls in the Major Leagues, two teams that spend one-tenth, one-tenth, of the team budget of the LA Dodgers. That's the entire Pirate's starting lineup would pay for one Dodger starter. That disparity shows.

Yet the game is so human. And the game is so intricate, so much a gathering of individual strengths and weaknesses, power and subtly, that one regrets the muting of the game's potential with the coarsest of motives, greed.

But the game itself is so strong a distillation of men and human projects that one tries to salute the uniform and not the man.

Sat Stats/Baseball

 

                             

Sat Stats/Baseball

Last night was the fourth no-hitter of the season. One of those no-hitters was by Joe Musgrove.

Theo Epstein became the youngest general manager (GM) in the history of MLB, when the Boston Red Sox hired him at the age of 28 in 2002. In 2004, the Red Sox won their first World Series championship in 86 years and won another championship in 2007.

On October 21, 2011, he resigned from his job in Boston to become president of baseball operations for the Chicago Cubs. The Cubs won the 2016 World Series, their first World Series championship in 108 years. In 2020, Epstein stepped down as president of the Chicago Cubs.


This year he joined Major League Baseball as a consultant "regarding on-field matters." Epstein will focus on determining how various rule changes might affect the game. He'll work with baseball analytics experts from the Commissioner's Office and the 30 MLB clubs.

Epstein said, "The executives like me who have spent a lot of time using analytics and other measures to try to optimize individual and team performance have unwittingly had a negative impact on the aesthetic value of the game and the entertainment value of the game in some respects. We need to find a way to get more action in the game, get the ball in play more often, allow players to show their athleticism some more, and give the fans more of what they want."

Some problems he noted recently:

25% of at-bats end in strikeouts. That is comparable to Sandy Kofax or Nolan Ryan at the peak of their games.

The average time between pitches in the 1970s was about ten seconds; now it is about 60.

A fan watching a game will wait on an average of 4 minutes before he sees a ball in play. Just in play.

The average fastball is 94 mph. There is no need for a pitcher to pitch deep into a game; everybody in the bullpen can throw over 94.

The game is slower, the competition has shifted more to batter-pitcher, away from any idea of team competition. Management can hide their decisions in their adherence to analytics. And the quality of play has faded into statistical generalities. Last night I saw a team with the bases loaded not score. The following inning a man was picked off first--and he got back safely! On the next pitch, he was picked off again.

And this doesn't consider the nomadic nature of the players and the disparity of team quality caused by the disparity of investment and baseball management skill.

That Epstein was hired at all implies a lot about baseball's anxiety.

Where was Cole?

In the academic world, diversity means black leftists, white leftists, female leftists, and Hispanic leftists. Demographic diversity conceals ideological conformity.--Sowell

Chris thought the penitentiary in Philly was fascinating. 

Penitentiary (n.)early 15c., "place of punishment for offenses against the church," from Medieval Latin penitentiaria, from fem. of penitentiarius (adj.) "of penance," from Latin paenitentia "penitence" (see penitence). Meaning "house of correction" (originally an asylum for prostitutes) is from 1806, short for penitentiary house (1776). Slang shortening pen is attested from 1884.

According to Chris, the Eastern State Penitentiary took this literally and every prisoner was kept in monk-like isolation and contemplative silence. Fearing it could become an organizing factor among criminals, no inmate ever saw another and they were admitted and discharged hooded.

The Chicago Cubs are moving on from shortstop Addison Russell, non-tendering the shortstop Monday.

Williams found that less-experienced umpires often performed better than veterans in ball-strike performance. Moreover, Williams found that there was typically little change in an umpire’s year-to-year missed call rates, suggesting that improving umpiring skills is difficult. The average service time of all MLB umpires this year was 16 years. 

There is a new, updated Andromeda Strain that is getting good reviews. Written by the guy who wrote Robopocalypse which I thought was really pretty bad.

The UK’s Apostrophe Protection Society has closed down because its frustrated chairman said that “ignorance and laziness” had won in regard to the proper use of the apostrophe.
 
For the late author Ayn Rand … the essential meaning of Thanksgiving was “a celebration of successful production.” The lavish meal, she wrote, is “a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production. Abundance is (or was and ought to be) America’s pride – just as it is the pride of American parents that their children never know starvation.”--Kirkpatrick



I think this Yang guy is interesting and smart but this ad gives him away--if he's responsible for it. Economies are not built, they evolve. They are emergent, not designed. Anyone who thinks an economy can be built should be exiled to the Nineteenth Century.

This week, the U.S. national debt reached the 23 trillion dollar mark for the first time ever.  There was no fanfare, there were no politicians giving speeches about fiscal responsibility, and there has been very little national outrage.  We have simply come to accept that it is “normal.” I am unsure how much damage fossil fuel will hurt the next generations but I am certain that debt will.

An explosion at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, on December 3, 1984, led to the worst industrial accident in history. At least 2,000 people died and another 200,000 were injured when toxic gas enveloped the city.
And eleven people, including three high-school students, were killed on December 3, 1979, when a crowd of general-admission ticket-holders to a Cincinnati Who concert surged forward in an attempt to enter Riverfront Coliseum and secure prime unreserved seats inside.

                                   Where was Cole?

A basic tenet of writing is to create tension. Drama. Conflict. It is a staple from Hamlet to 90 Day Fiancé. I read Column of Fire by Follett recently and in the middle of the religious upheavals in Elizabethan England, he creates a conflict on every page.
So, in the denouement of one of the most memorable World Series in history, the announcer asks, "Where is Cole?" Shouldn't Cole, he asked, a pitcher who has not pitched in relief since college and needs four days rest between starts, pitch in relief for the Astros in their final game?
Conflict. Drama. The game wasn't enough. Every minute demands a narrative.

Major League Baseball and the Speed Problem

Imports are receipts and exports are payments. How, as a nation, can we expect to better ourselves by diminishing our receipts? Is there anything that a tariff could do, which an earthquake could not do better?--Keynes on protective tariffs, before he changed his mind

Somebody named Conway does not like Trump and his opinion was the lead story on Yahoo news.

There is a big debate over the proportion of labor and capital in the economy. One problem is how to define the working entrepreneur. A suggestion is  decriminalized pushcart vending!

Are gender differences reflected in the relatively stable self-selections of different college majors especially over the most recent 20 years? Further if these stable trends in college majors since 1997 reflect the voluntary “revealed preferences” of millions of college students selecting majors that best suit their interests and abilities, why are some of these outcomes selectively considered to be a problem in higher education, e.g., the “shortage” of women in certain STEM fields (Engineering and Computer Science, but not Biology or Health Sciences)? Why such massive efforts and devotion of campus resources, funding, and scholarships to “socially engineer” outcomes that be unnatural, undesirable and un-achievable, i.e., coercing more women to major in Engineering and Computer Science? And where’s the equivalent concern about the significant female over-representation in nine of the college majors?--from Perry

The International Monetary Fund already expects Chinese growth to slow to 6.2% this year and to 6% in 2020. That would be the weakest since 1990, but analysts believe real growth has already dipped below those levels. 

Of all its destructive tendencies, Trumpism’s most destructive is misunderstanding the world and its economic relations as a zero-sum game. A richer Mexico would be a blessing to the United States, and a poorer one would represent an expense, a diminished market, a lost opportunity — and a danger. Compared to the rest of North America, Mexico is both weak and poor. Even if President Trump’s tariffs worked, the result would only be to leave Mexico even weaker and even poorer. And that would leave the United States weaker and poorer, too, even if there are a great many people in Washington who are too ignorant and blinkered to understand the fact.-- from Kevin Williamson’s National Review article “Invest in the Neighborhood“

Based on the result of the investigation, Mexico's Financial Intelligence Unit  moved to freeze the accounts in Mexico of the 26 individuals and entities that are believed to have helped fund the migrant caravans or contributed to human smuggling organizations. Mexican authorities were able to trace the source of the funds to the U.S., England, Cameroon, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. The U.S. and England.

          

              Major League Baseball and the Speed Problem

All sports are threatened by the ancillary technical add-ons that enhance the game at home and seem to be discouraging attendance in favor of home viewing. But baseball has a special problem: The growth of power.

Baseball is a game of nuance, of shading. The battle between the batter and the pitcher is exciting, but, for all their interest in the chess game of baseball, the fan wants the ball in play, the game to be in motion. And the game has slowed down; it is less in motion.

MLB has identified a culprit, a defensive system that regularly absorbs the impact of its more fearsome hitters: the shift. In a typical shift, three infielders crowd into one half of the field to cover the areas where a given batter is most likely to hit the ball—almost invariably the pull side. The maneuver has a long history, famously tormenting Ted Williams, but has become more popular in the last half-decade.

But there is more going on than just "the shift." Strikeouts, not shifts, are the real issue.

Since 1993, batting average on balls in play (BABIP) has stayed within a narrow range from .293 to .303, with no particular trend. Despite the perception that batters are seeking to hit more fly balls, there’s been no discernible movement in fly-ball rates. There is also no obvious change in the propensity of hitters to pull the ball. There is a steady decline in hits, but the reason is that players simply aren’t leaving the batter’s box as often. The strikeout rate in 2000 was 16.5 percent, but in 2007 it began a steady upward climb. Last year, it reached 22.3 percent.

Home runs made up 10 percent of the hits in the 2014 season. That percentage spiked in ensuing years, rising to 11.7 percent in 2015, 13.3 percent in 2016, and a stunning 14.5 percent last season, which had a record number of homers. This season, home runs account for 13.6 percent of hits (through Wednesday.)

Now the shocker: In 2018, strikeouts exceeded hits for the first time ever. Ever. And strikeouts, walks and home runs totaled 1/3 of the at bats; one third of the time the ball is not in play.

Here the blue is hits, the red strikeouts, from 1980 to 2018.

1980

1980

2018

9.06 hits

8.47

9

8.44

per team, per game average

7

5

4.80 strikeouts

1980

2018

9.06 hits

8.47

9

8.44

per team, per game average

7

5

4.80 strikeouts

Statistics through Wednesday

Source: Baseball-reference.com

By The New York Times

Fifteen years ago, only seven qualified pitchers averaged 8.4 strikeouts per nine innings. Now, 8.4 is the major league average. Collectively, batters are hitting .248, the lowest average since 1972, the year before baseball introduced the designated hitter.

And it’s not because defenses are more effective. Hitter success once the ball is in play has changed little since the early ’90s. If we pretended the 5.8 percent increase in strikeouts hadn’t happened and redistributed those plate appearances using league average rates for walks, home runs, and BABIP, we suddenly recover two decades of lost baserunners. Jayson Stark of the Athletic, working with Sports Info Solutions, found that banning the shift would create just under three extra hits per team per month, most of which would be singles.

Now the power. Since 2002, average fastball velocity has increased from 89 miles per hour to 92.8 mph, according to Baseball Info Solutions. Managers have also increased the number of pitchers they use each game, from 3.63 per team in 2002 to 4.36 last season. Starting pitchers aren’t expected to throw as many innings and can pitch closer to the limits of their velocity for more of their time on the mound.

And what about the fastball itself? Believe it or not, those numbers are available. The number of fastballs over 100 mph pitched in 2008: 65. In 2016: 1269. In 2018: Over 2000. This year the estimate will be over 2200. What is a batter supposed to do with a guy like Felipe Vazquez, nee Rivero, who regularly throws 101 mph with a slider of 93 mph and an excellent change?

What to do? MLB has lowered the mound before—exactly 50 years ago, after the 1968 season, causing an immediate jump in offense. A taller mound allows pitchers to gain velocity as they step downhill, and increased velocity is the most obvious correlate to the rise in strikeout rate over the last decade. Lowering the mound would likely give hitters a substantial advantage compared to today’s game. Whether that advantage manifests as more contact or more power on contact is an open question, but it’s fair to assume that offense would spike.

Another secret plan: The Independent League is moving the pitcher's mound back 2 feet.

The Pirates and Their Numbers

I know of no other country where love of money has such a grip on men's hearts or where stronger scorn is expressed for the theory of permanent equality of property.--deTocqueville

Surrogate motherhood is the ultimate in appropriation and the ultimate dysphoria. A mother who is not, a son or daughter who is not, it's a creepy sci-fi come true. Motherhood with the distance of fatherhood.

There is a paper claiming that excess regulations in the nation cost 2 trillion dollars a year.

If this next election  turns into a fight over abortion, I am turning in my voter's card.

One of the problems with this "adversity score" in schools is that it seems to violate some generally understood rules. Diversity implies disparity at some level. Diversity is not an endpoint of nature, it is a tool of nature. It is an engine of change and advancement. Legislating against it is like legislating against gravity.

On this day in 1455, in the opening battle of England’s War of the Roses, the Yorkists defeat King Henry VI’s Lancastrian forces at St. Albans, 20 miles northwest of London. 

                     The Pirates and Their Numbers

Baseball has become obsessed with numbers. Numbers make the man...and the team. No team is more devoted to this new approach than the Pirates. But their numbers don't work.

The Pirates have scored 169 runs and allowed 208. That's a negative-39 run differential; the statistics would predict a 18-26 record with a differential like that. Generally speaking, when teams are out-performing their run differential to such a ridiculous degree, they have excelled in one-run games. Yet the Pirates are 6-7 in one run games. 

They've had a road-heavy schedule, too, with 18 home games and 26 road games so far. Again the numbers make no sense; they play worse at home--but better than the numbers would predict. The Pirates are 9-9 at home with a negative-25 run differential. On the road, they are 15-11 with a negative-14 run differential. 

The National League has 15 teams. There are only four with a better record than the Pirates. Yet, here's where the Pirates rank in some key categories: 

• Runs: 14th
• HR: 14th
• Average: 8th
• On-base percentage: 11th
• Slugging percentage: 13th
• ERA: 8th
• Run differential: 13th
• (imagine where they would be without Bell)

The only teams with a better record are the Cubs, Dodgers, Phillies and Brewers. The only teams with a worse run differential are the Giants and Marlins. 

This month, the Pirates have gone 11-6. Among NL teams, only the Cubs (12-6), Dodgers (11-5) and Phillies (12-6) have been better and that's only by a half-game. Yet during that great run, the Pirates have been outscored by 20 runs. Only the Nationals and Marlins have a worse run differential among NL teams in the month. 

Absolutely nothing makes sense with the numbers on this team. Maybe they are assuming the personality of Marte or Polanco, talented but foolish with flashes of random talent. Or maybe, once again, man has excelled his measurements.

Me? I'm betting on the numbers.

Shohei Ohtani

Ohtani struck out the first three batters he faced opening his first home game Sunday. Then he pitched a perfect game into the seventh. He got Matt Joyce to line out for the first out of the seventh inning, but Marcus Semien broke up the perfect game with a single to left field.

Shohei Ohtani’s first couple of weeks with the Los Angeles Angels, have been tremendous. Hitting and pitching he has looked initially at least like those crazy Babe Ruth comparisons were reasonable.

He actually has been better. For example, in one of his first two MLB games pitched, Ruth did not strike out 12 batters while allowing one or fewer hits and walks. In fact, that feat had only been achieved twice before Sunday, by Juan Marichal in 1960 and Steve Woodard in 1997 (per MLB.com).

Over seven masterful innings against the Athletics, in a 6-1 Angels win, Ohtani joined that Ruth-less duo, getting his second win in as many starts.   And that came after the 23-year-old hit a home run in each of his previous three games as a designated hitter for Los Angeles.

Ruth was among only two players to hit a homer in three straight games and have an outing with double-digit strikeouts in the same season, having done so in 1919 — Ken Brett also did it in 1973 — before Ohtani did so in the same week. He was perfect through 19 Oakland batters Sunday, at which point, combined with a debut outing that also came against the A’s, he had retired 27 straight hapless hitters.
“That’s as good a game,” Angels Manager Mike Scioscia said (via USA Today), “as you could ever see pitched.”

• Ohtani became the 14th major leaguer with at least 12 strikeouts in one of his first two starts, and the first since the Nationals’ Stephen Strasburg in 2012.
• His game score of 90 is tied for seventh-highest for a pitcher in his second MLB start.
• Ohtani’s 18 strikeouts are tied for the most by an Angel in his first two starts.
• His 54.5 percent whiff rate (the number of misses on total swings by opposing batters) Sunday was the fifth-highest in a game since Statcast began tracking such information in 2015.

Then, of course, there are Ohtani’s heroics at the plate, including a .462 batting average with six RBI in three home games, following a 1-for-5 outing in his MLB debut at Oakland. At the end of Sunday’s game, in which he did not bat — who else can’t wait for him to pitch in a National League park? — his 71.4 percent rate of hard-hit balls (defined as having an exit velocity of at least 95 mph) was the highest among all MLB players with at least 10 balls hit.
(some from the WashPo)

The Baseball Draft

A team like the Pirates, with their limited revenue base, simple can not compete in the free agent market; they must develop their own talent, hang on to them as long as possible and then trade them for the opportunity to develop more. Established pitchers command astonishing salaries now. But building through the draft has surprising uncertainty. In football, the top ten draft picks do well statistically but from then on, most is luck. The statisticians and great scouts hope to refine this and improve the chances of success. For low income baseball teams, this is life and death.
In the 2009-11 drafts the Pirates spent 22 of their 30 picks in the top 10 rounds on pitchers. Seventeen were high school arms. The Pirates signed 18 of those 22 pitchers to bonuses totaling $25.6 million. It was a rare commitment to prep pitching.

Glasnow and Taillon probably will become the first prep pitcher from that group to pitch for the Pirates.

Two springs ago, Larry Broadway, the Pirates director of minor league operations, said: “From an organizational, 30,000-foot level, we felt like it was time to try and stockpile some of these arms and see if we can't by the law of averages come out with a few aces.”

Cheap, cost-controlled starting pitchers are among the most valuable assets in the game. But high school pitching also is the riskiest prospect demographic.

 Here are the six prep or international pitchers awarded seven-figure signing bonuses by the Pirates from 2009-11:

• Zachary Von Rosenberg ($1.2 million bonus, sixth round 2009) was released last spring.

• Luis Heredia ($2.6 million bonus, international signing in 2010) was exposed to the Rule 5 draft in the fall and not selected.

• Stetson Allie ($2.2 million bonus, second  has converted to first base.

• Clay Holmes ($1.2 million, ninth round 2011) returned to pitch last season after 2014 Tommy John surgery.

• Colton Cain ($1.1 million bonus, eighth round 2009) was traded to Houston for Wandy Rodriguez and posted a 5.29 ERA in the minors last season.

• Taillon ($6.5 million) had Tommy John surgery in 2014.

Said John Hart, now the Braves general manager, to the Tribune-Review in 2014: “A truism is if you have 10 (pitching prospects), you can really count on two of them making it.”

Those odds sound like the odds of a venture capital group. It should make anyone cautious about projecting from good estimates.

Foul

We went to a ballgame recently and sat in some great third base seats close to the field. Interestingly  as we sat down and we all immediately encouraged vigilance in each other; we were in direct line from a line drive foul ball. This general knowledge among the ball fans spread locally as people in front of us and behind us also urged  caution. This is unusual behavior at an event generally deemed to be relaxing-- the mutually agreed upon threat.

A few popups and some soft drives came by but none in our section. Late in the game, however, a right-handed batter got in front of a changeup, hit the ball on the nose and pulled it hard foul. A screeching line drive fired into our section. The crowd gasped as it ricocheted off an empty seat beside a woman holding her child on her lap. She never saw it. The seat was the child's; had he been in the seat and not in her lap I can not imagine how the child would have survived it.

In 2002, 13-year-old Brittanie Cecil died two days after being struck in the head by a puck at a Columbus Blue Jackets ice hockey game. 
Three other spectator deaths have been reported in hockey games due to injuries sustained from a puck during a game. All three occurred at minor league games where the vertical barrier between fans and the ice is shorter than at NHL arenas.
After Cecil’s death, the NHL forced all teams to install behind the goals 18-foot mesh nets, designed to catch pucks that fly above the standard eight-foot glass barrier, beginning with the 2002-03 season.

Auto racing has seen a number of spectator deaths from cars and car parts crashing into the stands. In 1998, three spectators were killed at Michigan International Speedway when a tire from Adrian Fernandez’s race car flew into the stands. A fan was killed in a similar incident at the Indianapolis 500 in 1987.

 

Baseballs batted into the stand are known to have caused injuries, though never death. But it is not that baseball is not expecting problems. Any ball--or bat--that goes into the stands results in several stadium attendants rushing to the area to observe the damage done. It is as if they are professional bystanders who arrive to encourage and assess.

Broken bats are a newer problem. Tyler Colvin was the 13th pick in the first round who played on to the Cubs' opening roster in 2010. He was having a great year into September with 20 home runs and an .816 OPS with 395 AB.. Against the Dolphins, Sept. 19, he drew a bases-loaded walk and had reached third when Welington Castillo took a swing that broke his bat. The ball went over third base, and Colvin turned to follow the ball's path. He did not see the barrel of Castillo's bat spinning toward him. The sharp end of the bat stabbed Colvin's chest then hit the ground. It punctured a hole in his skin and left lung, which deflated. He suffered a collapsed lung, required hospitalization and recovered. But he never played at the same level afterwards.

In a study of 2,232 broken bats, the league found that maple bats were three times more likely to shatter than bats made with ash. Maple bats are also more likely to explode when they shatter, while ash bats more often splinter into small fragments. Maple bats became popular after Barry Bonds started using them about a decade ago and are used by about half of the players in the Major Leagues.

Two people at Fenway were hurt by broken bats in the last two years. After the first injury the players union claimed the players, in each of the last two rounds of collective bargaining, proposed that protective netting extend down the foul lines and even to the foul poles, according to major-league sources. The owners, however, rejected the proposals for the 2007 and 2012 labor agreements, citing concerns that additional netting would detract from the experience of ticket buyers in certain premium seats, sources said.

 

Japan's ball fields are completely encircled in protective netting. Why the Americans don't do that is a mystery to me.

Sabermetrics

Sabermetrics is the empirical analysis of baseball, especially baseball statistics that measure in-game activity. The term is derived from the acronym SABR, which stands for the Society for American Baseball Research. It was coined by Bill James, who is one of its pioneers and is often considered its most prominent advocate and public face. (wiki)
Sabermetrics has revolutionized baseball. The game is being approached as a science. Throughout the game, statisticians are applying analytics to speed, strength, power, OBPs--everything they can evaluate to get an edge in the drafting of players, in matching them up on teams and matching them against each other.
Yet, when it is all said and done and all the information is in, they still play the game. Why?

First, unlike physics and other natural sciences, the variables the statistician can measure may not be the important ones.  So they emphasize the few things they can measure because they are easier to study. No statistician would estimate that  Kansas City would have been successful with their aggressive approach to hitting in the World Series last year. Their persistent success in the tournament last year was simply off the charts, in violation of most sabermetric hitting laws.
Second, while the statistician can produce general predictions, unlike physicists they cannot generate precise results. No statistician would estimate that Harrison would be Pittsburgh's leader in RBIs or McCutchen would be hitting .225.
The third reason baseball differs from physics relates to the first two: the information necessary to test detailed baseball predictions is impossible to gather. Usually right-handed hitters have an advantage against left-handed pitchers but that is not true with the Pirates' left-handed Watson who is much more effective against right-handed hitters. There is no material difference between the very average Arrietta from 2013 and the devastating Arrietta from 2015. St. Louis' Diaz' success had no augury in the minors. These distinctions are simply not analyzable. The factors are just not understood.

So we analyze as well as we can but still play the game because we know that our information, however voluminous, is flawed and incomplete. That is why we enjoy the competition after everything is analyzed: Significant uncertainty remains.

Now read the above again and substitute "economics" for "baseball."

Stats vs. Prejudice

A fireballing righthanded relief pitcher is brought in to the game in the bottom of the ninth. There are two outs with the tying run at third and the winning run at second. First is open. Next up in the third position is a weak hitting shortstop brought in for defensive purposes earlier currently hitting .220 with one home run and six rbis. On deck is the opponent's power hitter, a left hander with 30 home-runs and 70 RBIs, hitting .290. The question--that the relief pitcher probably never asks--is would both these encounters, the relief pitcher vs. the shortstop or the number four hitter, be the same. Would the pitcher do just as well pitching to the number four hitter?
The answer, of course, is no. The reason is that, while God has created all humans with equal love and spiritual value, in some social situations there are hierarchies.
This is not to diminish shortstops but, sometimes, they just can't hit.

Change-up

Work fast. Throw strikes. Change speeds. This is the classic advice to major league pitchers as they try to influence the batter's accuracy in hitting his pitch. Of all these components, high speed and deceptive slower speed are the pitcher's strongest weapons. Most pitchers cannot consistently overpower a major league batter. But any pitcher who can change speeds well will confound any batter.

The change-up is a pitch that looks like a fastball coming out of the pitcher's hand but comes to the batter slower. Some change-ups are dramatically slower but most believe that too much of a difference allows the batter to adjust. Seeing both pitches tracked over time is remarkable as the separation occurs after about 30 feet in the 66 foot approach. The slower pitch drops a bit as well and some pitchers can make it fade to the left or right.

The essence of the pitch is that it is thrown with less of a strong grip. The fastball is gripped with the strong index and middle finger and comes out of the hand with the help of those fingers. But the change-up is thrown with the index and ring finger. The little finger is used sometimes too. The "circle change" is only an elaboration; the forefinger, usually off the ball, touches the thumb making a circle--like an "ok" sign.

Where the pitch is thrown is crucial. The batter moves the bat through the strike zone extremely fast with the head, the far end, moving the fastest. His hands on the handle, while driving the bat speed, are slowest. Consequently, if he is fooled and swings expecting a fast pitch, the head of the bat is committed first and goes through the zone first. If the pitch is outside, the head will miss. But if the pitch is inside, the slower handle of the bat--vulnerable to the fastball--might be slow enough it make contact with the slower pitch.

Baseball Errors

Josh Harrison, a marginal utility player for the Pittsburgh Pirates who must make up for lack of talent with focus and commitment, rounded third from second on a short single to right by Jose Tabata and steamed down the third base line towards Yadier Molina, the fine catcher for St. Louis, and hit him full stride, shoulder to head, as Morales received the relay throw. Morales held the ball and Harrison was called out but Molina, while he continued to play, was hurt. Several innings later at his next at bat, Harrison was hit by a pitch. The umpire jumped forward and warned both benches.

This embodies several very bad aspects of modern baseball. First, collisions are for football and hockey. Blocking home plate, the high-spike slide at second, the thunderous Pete Rose hit on the catcher at the plate are the stuff of thugs. Period. International soccer penalizes for "dangerous play." Baseball should too. Throw a flag, then throw the guy out. No blocking home plate, no forcing contact at second, no spikes. It's a beautiful game; if someone makes it dangerous or less beautiful, throw him out.

Second, there are some symbolic traditions in baseball. Throwing at a batter after he has violated baseball etiquette is one of them. This would all be avoided if the batter was not given the option of hurting someone--indeed now in the game encouraged to--but it has become part of its lore. There was no effort to hurt Harrison with the pitch, just to establish that the pitcher was angry. If that is objectionable, do not warn him; throw him out.

Intimations of Immortality

The Pirates have been living with some tension in left field. They have been playing journeymen there, more recently Tabata who has been serviceable but below the level that such a power position demands and there have been rumors to trade a prospect for another journeyman to help this year's team's surprising run. One option, a minor leaguer named Starling Marte who led Double A in batting last year, could be brought up.

They brought him up last night and he started his first major league game last night in Houston. On the first pitch of the game, his first major league pitch, he homered.

111 men have homered at their first major league at bat, including Hoyt Wilhelm. 29 hit their home run on the first pitch. 4 hit grand slams. Only 18 of these players went on to hit 100 or more home runs in their career.

It takes a long time before a man knows he was born under a star. After homering on his first pitch, it takes a longer time to learn you were not.

Harper and Promise

Saturday night Bryce Harper, the 19 year old number one draft choice of the Washington Senators, came to bat at number three in the first inning with two out. He is a phenom, the fifth youngest player to arrive from the minors to the majors ever (number one is ARod), and was brought to enervate the increasingly talented first-place Washington team. He is a catcher with a rocket arm. Right now he is playing left field but he has played center. He is currently hitting .308 with a .424 on-base percentage and .500 slugging percentage. On the mound was Cole Hamels, the talented Phillie. Hamels throws 93 miles an hour behind Harper and hits him in the back.
Harper turns and goes to first. Up next, Jayson Werth, and he singles. The swift Harper goes to third without a throw. Werth moves off first, Hamel watches him, then goes to first. With the move to first Harper steals home. Steals home!

In the second, the Phillie catcher Ruiz comes to bat. "They are going to hit him," says the color guy, a former player. "They gotta hit him." But the Washington pitcher, Zimmerman, strikes him out with every pitch on the plate. The color guy seems a bit surprised.
When Hamels comes to bat in the third, Zimmerman hits him.

Harper has been terrific in the eight games he has played although most thought he would not stay in the majors this year. But, later in the game, Jayson Werth, the left fielder, sliding to make a catch, broke his wrist. He is their number four hitter with a 7 year, 126 million dollar contract. His backup is Xavier Nady.
Michael Morse, the original clean-up hitter who plays first and left, will return from his back injury soon as will infielders Ryan Zimmerman and Adam LaRoche but, with Werth's injury, Harper now may have to stay.

 

A Game of Her Own

I know a woman who was, in her youth, one of the girls from "A Game of Their Own." She was a terrific baseball player and was one of the first recruited to go on tour with the women's baseball teams. Her parents were dead and she lived with her brother, all staunch Catholics who could not imagine a girl traveling on her own from town to town playing baseball. Consequently they declined and she never went. But she was something of a women's baseball legend and this week was asked to throw the first ball out at the Pirate opener.

She uses a walker now, says she is too old and weak and doesn't want to embarrass herself...BUT...her friends brought her some balls and gloves and she's practicing, just in case.

Penn State and the Rule of Errors

The career of Bill Buckner's career teaches a lot about life. He played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball, 2517 games, 9397 at bats, 2715 hits, was in the top ten in doubles ('81 and '83), had 174 homers, 1208 rbi's, top ten in stolen bases ('74 and '76), averaged .289 with an OBP of .321 and a fielding percentage of .991. He batted number two because he was an accomplished contact hitter. In 1985 he hit .299 with 16 homers and 110 rbi's.

This looks like a good career and he seems to have been an able player, certainly an above average number two hitter. But in the sixth game of the 1986 World Series with the Mets down to their last out, he misplayed a soft grounder to first which allowed the Mets to tie the game and eventually win it. In the seventh game the Mets won the series. Buckner is remembered for that single moment in his career--not for the other 22 years of accomplishment.

Baseball only gives errors for physical mistakes, not mental, emotional or character errors and, while most fans remember Buckner's error, if pressed, they will give him his due. Yet it is still a harsh reality in sports that defining moments may not be characteristic ones. But errors in judgment, errors in character and errors in virtue are invariably seen as characteristic ones. This fierce rule will ruin the lives of everyone at Penn State who has been involved in this mishandling of the Sanduskey scandal, will invalidate their accomplishments and destroy their futures.

Free Time! Occupy the Ballpark!

If our life on this planet is limited by time and our enjoyment in life a function of free time, what greater inequity in life is there than the unequal distribution of free time? A mystery to philosophers and a plaything of physicists, time, in some respects, is all we have.

There is no greater example of this inequity in life, this disparity of leisure time, than the unfair distribution of time by time zones and the callousness of the fat cats who control the World Series this year, particularly last night's game. A back-and-forth battle, individual and team heroics and three astonishing comebacks from the brink of disaster were all rolled up in an eleven inning contest that might go down as one of the best in the championship's history. And where was I? Asleep, preparing to go to work the next day.

Rather than stay up late in the night on the east coast I was forced by circumstance--my job, my responsibilities, the distortions of time zones, the fatigue from my work of the day--to miss this terrific game and be excluded from the excitement and enjoyment of it as well as the participation of of the game in history. I will have no memory of the great moments, no excitement to recall and no community of fellow participants to join. Nor will I experience the positive effects of the best of sports competition, a hallmark of American culture. Instead I will join that community of those who were forced by circumstance not to participate, those people --excluded through no fault of their own--who work, are fatigued from work, who at an early morning must rise to some occasion and especially those who are victimized by the eastern time zone when the games are in the central or west.

This morning I did not wake up on third base thinking I hit a triple, I woke up in the empty stands wondering what happened.

Workers of the world, unite!

Sunday Sermon: Carpe Diem

"The home run is not hit, it is pitched."

So said the esteemed philosopher and power hitter, Prince Fielder. Mr. Fielder is no ivory tower academician, he is a feared power hitter in Major League Baseball known for his athleticism, strength and intensity. But , according to Mr. Fielder, before he can bring his considerable skills to the athletic moment, the circumstances, i.e. the pitched ball, must be right.

Thus Mr. Fielder modestly sees the home run as an event dependent upon multiple factors and places the batter at the end of a series of evolving circumstances. The batter does not create the event, he completes it. But the philosopher does not imply the batter has no responsibility in some paean to postmodernism. What is crucial is what is not said. Every pitch is not a home run pitch and cannot be made one. But the home run pitch is always a home run pitch and it is the batter's responsibility to make it so. His success will depend upon his eye, his recognition, his training and practice, his strength and coordination, his mental preparation and his focus. The home run pitch will be completed depending upon the quality of the batter.

So the pitcher assesses the moment, what he knows of the batter's strengths and weaknesses and tendencies, what he has shown the batter, the pitcher's own strengths and weaknesses, training, scouting and planning, the count and what to stay away from. Then he winds and--with his strength and coordination--delivers the pitch which rockets towards the plate It is now the batter's time, his time to complete what the pitcher has put in motion..

In a fraction of a second the batter seizes the moment and becomes a hitter. Or not.

Pirate Logic

Over the last three years the Pittsburgh Pirates earned about 11 million dollars in profit annually, profit from a franchise recently valued a bit less than 300 million dollars. That return is about what the owners would get in a bond fund if they had sold the franchise and invested the money. A conservative return, certainly not a great return. Now with that knowledge, with 300 million dollars as the denominator, imagine how things would change if the owners changed the numerator, the earnings, by investing in players. How could the owners invest that profit, that numerator, so that the earnings would add more to the numerator than was spent? In other words, how could money from profit best be spent that guarenteed a net larger numerator?

This is a tricky question because the Pirates are paid to lose and such disincentives are extremely complex. The Pirates receive revenue sharing money from more profitable teams based on the money the Pirates do not make; if they start making more money, they receive less in revenue sharing. Moreover Bradbury's new book shows, according to him, that a team spending money to move from 60 wins to 70 wins actually loses money and the positive return doesn't appear until the team reaches the middle 80's in wins.

The problem, then, is more than improving the quality of the team, it must be improved in a quantum manner. Not only does money invested have to result in an improvement, that improvement must allow an improvement to at least 85 game wins. Under these conditions, a team owner must be very careful. Improving his roster may not help and may hurt his bottom line. Put another way, the team's success and the owner's success may not coincide. Indeed, they may be in opposition.

Consequently, the team cannot simply get better, it must get significantly better. Say, for example, Pujols decides to do missionary work in Pittsburgh and agrees to work for them for 5 million dollars a year. I doubt his addition, while interesting and entertaining, would make much difference; the opposition would pitch around him and offence is only part of the game anyway. The Pirates can't pitch either. But with Pujols' 5 million dollars--as much as a bargain as he would be--the ownership has already spent half--half--of the money they have to spend. Pujols is still batting fourth on a team with a lineup of seven other number six hitters and no, zero, pitching. And, if Bradbury is correct, with some luck and a few career years in the lineup the team could win 75 games, qualify for much less revenue sharing as a result and not even afford to pay the charitable Pujols the following year.

Building with free agents requires tremendous insight from scouts and the general manager. It also requires tremendous luck because the free agents would have to agree to a contract of more than a year or two. The available money would thus be tied up for years in free agents who would have to be had at a bargain, be willing to sign a long term contract and all of those investments would have to be successful. The team would be betting its solvency on several turnaround situations.

The other way is the draft, a longer but cheaper route although fraught with the uncertainties of untried youth. But the losses are limited, the players are locked up for 6 years and the luck is homogenized among the teams. And a team with good judgment of talent can succeed. The Marlins do it every cycle.

So the owners are making a reasonable return, they probably should not gamble in the free agent market and it seems likely their only option is the draft done with a good eye. They should hire a good eye. The city of Pittsburgh should be happy they can see major league baseball visit 82 times a year. And until the team management shows they can draft well the city will have to settle for pirogi races, nostalgia, mascots, fireworks, aging rock band performances and, generally, going to a county fair with a baseball team attached.