Matt: I think we’ve become a little more sophisticated now in evaluating players & performance. We don’t just look at batting average, home runs, & runs batted in anymore.

It’s finally happened. Sweet Lord, I thank thee for this day. Your child, Matthew Eduardo Vasgersian is learning things. He has decided to augment his broadcasting ability with a thirst for knowledge. He is paid to explain baseball to people. Now he will compliment this position by learning what really smart people have studied about the sport.

Comeuppance, sweet comeuppance.  I can taste you. Vasgersian continues…

Matt: You look at things like “what they’re hitting after the 7th inning”, and “batting average with runners in scoring position”.

Mark: And [hitting with] Counts.  How many times we see that now?

Comeuppance!! Comeuppaannnceeee! You were my only friend, now you’ve left me stranded on the side of the interstate, mouth dry, contemplating drinking that gross radiator water even though the sign says not to. What a disappointing situation. I thought I was getting laid. Or at least, you know, an accidental boob graze.

This goes on.

Matt: Part of why baseball is so wonderful & why anybody thinks they can be a general manager [is that] information is available to everybody. Anybody can get access to just about anything they want.

(Padres-Dodgers, 9/3/2008)

Yes Matt, I’m aware of this. Are you? Because from your entire body of work as an analyst it’s clear that research is a brand fucking new concept.

And yes, I see the irony that Matt is insulting numbnuts like me because I’ve read a few Nate Silver articles and think I’m so great. I’ll admit my wealth of knowledge isn’t as broad as my stupid online persona might have you believe. But here’s the thing: I’m a dude and a keyboard.

Matt Vasgersian is paid to get on TV and explain how this stuff works. That’s it. That’s his career. And he’s using this position to tell people who rely on him that sabermetrics is all about how well you hit after the seventh inning, like somehow runs count more late in the game. And who exactly is it that uses batting average with runners in scoring position to evaluate players? Murray Chass?

Here’s a fun science project: over a reasonable population size, most players hit better with runners in scoring position than they do without. This is because bad pitchers tend to put more runners on base than good pitchers. So if someone claims a hitter isn’t clutch, more than likely you can drop the BA with RISP bomb to easily and irresponsibly get out of the discussion. Being right makes you more of a man, so that’s nice too.

Anyway, congratulations Melvin. The Sacrifice Bunt is now a low-rent Fire Joe Morgan. You should be proud.

San Diego @ Pittsburgh, 7/24/2008, Channel 4 Padres broadcast.

The Good

He brought up OPS.  He called its O-P-S.  Do people do that?  In my head it’s always been “Awps”.  Either way, Ops isn’t perfect but it’s a step in the right direction for Channel 4. And it wasn’t the first time Quis used the decent compared to most metrics they use on TV.  Cheers to him.

The Funny

Grant: See those seven X’s?  That’s the size shirt I wear. XXXXXXL.*

Quis: And the kind of movies you buy.**

This was followed by a long, awkward pause, presumably Quis getting yelled at for saying something so outrageously inappropriate on air.

The Quis

He’s kinda spazzy, and not as flashy as Vasgersian, but he comes across like he actually does research.  I like Steve, though I think I’m the only one.

* Paraphrased

** Definitely not paraphrased, but hiliariousiphrased.

Ever wondered how much time you waste being advertised to during a normal baseball game?  During a Channel 4SD broadcast between the San Diego Padres and St. Louis Cardinals on May 20th, 2008 I decided to find out.

The game of baseball has changed a lot over the years.  Technological advancements, most recently those of the Internet age, have changed the rules of interaction between the entertainer and the entertainee.

The fears of broadcasters that were envisioned when home videotaping was declared legal, are finally coming to pass.  People are watching fewer commercials and baseball is no exception.  Yeah no shit Melvin, enough with the overly dramatic intro.  Get to the point.

Wait, did I say that or just think it?

The point, jerk, is that Channel 4 San Diego, the Cox Communications owned cable channel that broadcasts the Padres, has to find a way to turn a profit in this difficult landscape.  Their response, has been to increase sponsored broadcast time during Padres games in addition to standard commercial breaks.

The San Diego Padres, in conjunction with the City of San Diego own and operate Petco Park.  To boost revenues, the small market team sells advertising signage in a multitude of sizes and locations throughout the ballpark.  This of course, though the sign density has varied in ballparks throughout history, is not news.  What is news, is that new signs are still popping up, they even hinder fan views of the game. (Hat tip Gaslamp Ball)

How much does that add up?

Lots of new information about the nature of baseball was discovered over the last decade or so.  We learned most of it by taking a new approach, using evidence and data to support theories.  My intent is to apply this principal to another aspect of the baseball fan experience.  Instead of simply estimating,  I want to know exactly how much time we spend being marketed to while watching a San Diego Padres broadcast.

My plan is to accurately measure both normal commercials and in-game advertising.  To do this, I used two watches and measured each category separately.  I hope you’re envisioning this beautiful image of me sitting in front of both a TV and computer, taking notes, and intensely operating not one but two stop watches.  If only my high school crush could see me now.  Lucky for my pride it was only a Tuesday night.

The first stop watch was the easy one.  It kept track of time during every commercial break, of both the national and local variety.

The second watch was the doozie.  It ran during every second that a viewer saw or heard any type of paid marketing message, not including normal commercials.  This also did not include in house MLB or Padres messages.  Though those types of messages were included if they were corporate sponsored messages, which was usually the case.

The study includes any shilling from Mud for his various spokesdeals, though it deserves mention that play-by-play was called by Steve Quis on this particular broadcast.  The guys in this game kept the paid lauding to a minimum.

In addition, any time a stadium sign ad was clearly readable, time was kept.  This constituted behind the plate ads seen from the center-field camera angle, and ads in the dugout.  I watched on an older 19” standard def television, from about 8 feet away.  It’s safe to say that this setup, a bastion of bleeding edge television technology, didn’t offer any unfair viewing advantage.

The results

Here’s a list of the various sponsored baseball happenings, brought to you by this or named after that through Cox Channel 4.  I’ll leave out the names of the corporate sponsors, though any semi-regular watcher could probably rattle them off quicker than names of family members.  Most of them appeared more than once throughout the broadcast.

• SAP telecast
• defensive alignments for both teams
• lineups for both teams
• “mlb comparisson” stat board
• trivia question
• bottom of the screen out of town scoreboard
• all middle of the inning pitching changes, plus select new inning pitching changes
• “major league leaders” stat board
• the box score
• beyond the box score
• postgame show
• pregame show
• pitch tracker
• various incarnations of replays

Moving on to the meat, the total game time was 144 minutes. Of that, the regular commercials lasted 28 minutes and 30 seconds.  The total in game advertisement time including all shilling and visible stadium ads came to 33 minutes and 55 seconds.  This means that both categories of product hawking during the broadcast took up a grand total of 62 minutes and 25 seconds, roughly 44% of total game time (there is a small amount of round off error in the chart).

What does Melly Mel think?

If it isn’t clear from my tone, I’m not all that into advertising.  That said, it doesn’t take a Joe Morgan intern to glance at the sidebar on the right and notice that even the great Sac Bunt sells advertising space.  The big deal to me is that while broadcasters are working to compensate for viewers watching fewer commercials by selling airtime during games, they still show as many commercials as ever.

It’s a long slow process, I know.  But I think the graph above demonstrates that shit’s getting a bit excessive.  It needs fixin.  As more in game advertising increases, lets spend less time dilly daddling around with the same old crap in between innings.

Whatever changes happen, they have to start with the fans.  If the powers at be think we’re ok with it, they’ll pile it on til the cows come home.  This goal of this article is to draw attention to what is happening, and encourage people to speak their mind about it.  For all I know, people might be ok with the clutter.  But considering the reaction to the above mentioned Spider Man movie debacle, I don’t think this is the case.  That’s why we should talk about it.

In honor of Padres broadcaster Mark Grant’s criticism of the Padres’ high strikeout totals during the pre-game show and during play today, I submit for your review the following table courtesy of ESPN.
For informational and entertainment purposes, teams who made the playoffs have been highlighted.  Anyone see a trend here?  Because I sure don’t, and I’d love to hear Grant’s explanation:

Granted, high strikeout numbers aren’t a particularly good thing.  But in the grand scheme of performance indicators they don’t mean a team isn’t playing well.

Further in his analysis, Grant goes on to advise hitters to shorten up their swings to put more balls into play.  This plan will likely lower strikeout totals.  The downside though, and this is a biggie, is it effectively eliminates power.  I’d love to hear that conversation between he and Ryan Howard or Dan Uggla on the horrendous problem of strikeouts and why they need a new approach.

edit 5/18: Ray suggested I take a look at changes in hitting on two strike counts. The idea is that hitters often take the Grant’s suggested approach with two strikes on them. Batters shorten their swing to “protect the plate”, or avoid the strikeout. We can use this situation to imitate how slugging shapes up under Grant’s recommendation .  Here’s the “pass through” count data from 2006 courtesy of Tom Tango:

This simple analysis shows that when hitters (presumably) shorten their swing with two strikes, even with full counts, their power deteriorates significantly.  It should also be mentioned that hitters’ OBP and wOBA drop way down with two strikes on the batter.

*This is 2006 median, not mean, slugging

Matt and Mud were wondering on the air today about a batter’s propensity to foul pitches off on full counts.  Baseball-Reference PI can calculate by player, unfortunately I don’t know how to do it inclusively.  Individually, the contact percentage in my informal study seems to vary wildly by player and batting count.

I’ll take this opportunity to ignore their question and talk about something I find more important: expected outcome by count.  Tango has some work on the subject.

Expected outcome at 3-2 count:

Think of wOBA as something like OPS, an all inclusive type stat but set to the scale as OBP.  So .340 would be about average, etc.

The predicted outcome of wOBA and OBP on a 3-2 count makes sense inherently.  A batter won’t be as productive overall with fewer than three balls, and will be more productive with 3 balls and fewer strikes.

What strikes me as odd, is the slugging drop off on a 3-2 count compared to 2-1, or even a 1-0 count.  You’ll have to click over to Tango’s site to see the entire table.

My thinking is that hitters are so asked to attempt to make any kind of contact (protect the plate) with two strikes.  This means they’re more likely to just toss the bat in front of the pitch, even with 3 balls and a walk imminent.  Hitters face a seemingly irrational scorn for looking at strike three, which appears especially strange on full counts.  This may correlate with Matt and Mud’s theory of more foul balls on counts that are full.

One note from Tom Tippett: be careful to differentiate between the “through” count data with the “at” count data.  The advantages to hitter friendly counts and disadvantages to pitcher friendly counts are skewed all funky like unless you look at the “through” count data.  Otherwise the context and meaning of the rest of the at bat is lost.

Tough loss today for the Padres.  On the plus side, Brian Giles is off to a fantastic start.