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Braves Ongoing Season Comments Thread..
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Comments
I think trying to quantify "luck/lucky" is a slippery slope. Baseball is far too complex to do that. Take a soft ground ball to 3rd base. Luck? it depends, at least to me, on who's playing third, what the situation is (is he back or playing in) how hard the ball is hit/mishit, how fast the runner is/isn't and maybe even if the first baseman has a good stretch or not.
I love the unexpected things in baseball, like slow rollers down the 3rd baseline. Advanced stats or neanderthal stats - it doesn't matter to me. What happens on the field is what matters most to me. Analyzing the likelihood or luckiness of the "hit" doesn't add much to the game for me.
The thing is we can actually quantify “luck” pretty well. Based on how hard a ball is hit and it’s launch angle, we can look into past data and see how often those hits are singles, doubles, homers, outs etc. this way of viewing results does not account for defense (who is playing 3rd in your example or how deep he is playing) because the pitcher does not control that.
We also know fast runners are the type of people to beat their expected production based on batted ball profile. This is due to them getting more infield hits and stretching singles into doubles, etc. I would not be surprised if this has been quantified to some degree, although I don’t know if any measures for it.
This way of viewing balls in play gives us further information to evaluate how a pitcher is performing. It would tell you that although soroka gave up 2 runs in the fourth last night, he was managing contact well. He got very unlucky that 4 balls that weren’t screamers were all hit against him. One of those balls was hit well and I would guess it was the only one with an expected batting average near or above .500.
Furthermore, all 4 hits were in a row. It is hard to string 4 hits in a row, this doesn’t happen often. We assume that had nothing to do with mikes performance, and say he was unlucky with hit sequencing. There are further stats that try to separate out sequencing luck.
In aggregate baseball is a stochastic game where luck always plays a factor in short term results. When we want to quantify how good a pitcher is we try to separate out the luck, things he can’t control (his defense or ballpark) and things like that. It’s complicated to implement, but the reasoning behind it should make sense.
We also have seen some pitchers who are consistently “lucky” or unlucky to a degree. Usually we can figure out a reason for said luck. For example Julio always outperforms his FIP (lucky), but this is because he always has low batting average against him, likely due to managing contact reasonably well.
Basically there are a lot of different things to look at if you want the most accurate picture and ERA alone is probably not sufficient to tell you everything you want to know.
Kirb. Seriously you overthink pitching, it's a bit egg headed and would put coffee to sleep.
Tough matchup tonight at The Twins with Jose Berrios on the mound for the bad guys. His home ERA for the season is 2.10 and he pitched a 2 hit shutout for 7 innings in his last start. We have Folty who is at best a pig in a poke at this time. He did pitch well in Gwinnett but it's been a long time since he's looked good against big league hitters, and The Twins are as good a power hitting team as we've ever seen.
I hope I’m proven wrong, but folty against this lineup is a recipe for disaster.
IS FOLTY BACK HE HAS A SLIDER AGAIN
Folty looks sharp, especially with the slider. He admitted earlier that fear of the bone spur was keeping him from cutting loose with the slider and his command subsequently was off. That no longer seems to be the case. Hope is renewed.
As for quantifying luck and every other inane aspect of the game, I’ll leave that to all of you fine folks. It takes away all of the color of the game and just makes it lifeless for me. I understand the allure (analyst by profession) but the game doesn’t need more math to be fun for me.
Y’all be civil. This is supposed to be fun.
Folty looked really good for 5 innings. His stuff is good enough to be at worst #2 in the order. It's all about confidence with him.
Depending what a few other hitters do tonight Freeman may well lead the majors in RBIs with 91.
A few #Braves stats of note:
Freddie Freeman's 90 RBI leads MLB.
Ronald Acuña's 91 runs leads the NL.
Ronald Acuña's 26 steals leads the NL.
Freddie has 91 RBIs as of now.
It's a good thing that the Braves have a good offense cause that bullpen is just absolutely abysmal. You can't give up 6 runs late in a game and hope to win most of your games...
3 of the 6 were Folty. But yeah, bullpen will cause anxiety and trust issues to us fans.
Freddie is on pace for.....
128 RBIs - best of his career.
39 HRs - best of hit career
124 runs - best of his career
190 hits - 2nd best of his career, just 1 off his best of 191
39 doubles - 4th best of his career.
If he has an excellent finish he still has a shot at MVP, only his batting average is subpar to the leaders.
Man Greene has spit the bit so far. If he doesn't get it together our prospects don't look nearly as bright as they will if we have a bonafide closer down the stretch. Both Washington and Philly are 5 back in the loss column. There's still work to be done.
I’m glad I was proven wrong. He looked good for 5 innings.