With Ray's bandwidth being completely absorbed by the time and energy it takes to complete college and maintain his title as the 29'ers (PCHL?) Best Dressed Man, he's officially handed over the blog reins(?) to me (Scott) for the remainder of the year. I guess this means I can stop hitting refresh on http://29ersbaseball.blogspot.com/ at an absurdly high frequency (seriously) for the days following each game in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, a new post will be up. When you're on the wrong side of 30 these things matter. So, for better or worse, I'm going to give this my best (mid-level, really) shot, try to keep you interested until the end, and maybe offer a different perspective by pulling apart the numbers of the game(s).
This game, and every game henceforth (I said it) is a must win game. I could feel that added pressure leading up to this game. The entire week before-hand I was thinking about Saturday. I didn't want to walk off the field at the end of the day knowing our season would only last two more games. I feel like the rest of you all understood that as well. It's about more than just knowing it, though. It's about feeling it, the tone of the game, importance of every single play, and basically just focusing on going out there and controlling what you can, in whatever role you have, to get the job done. Across the whole, everyone did their job for the most part. There were a few moments where a couple of us were left scratching our heads, but nevertheless, good job out there, boys.
GAME RECAP | Nobles-7 at 29'ers-12
Well, shit, we got a lot of help in the first inning, putting six runs on the board via the Nobles somewhat shaky pitcher. I mean we had great ab's(?) We almost batted through the lineup, getting 11 men to the plate in the bottom of the first after a relatively quick top of the inning. I walked to lead off the game on four straight, BC followed with one of his own, then Rickey added another to load 'em. With the bases juiced Bobby let the pitcher have a quick break, followed by three more walks to Large, Miles, and Ray. I'm a big fan of watching you all have good at-bats; seeing someone work off 4+ pitches means they're doing their job (more on that later). Pat followed those six walks up with an RBI single, and Zack followed Pats single with yet another walk that scored a run. The line was moving, for sure. DJ smoked a sac fly to center to score one more before we headed back out to the field-- #sacflysmatter. Six runs in the 1st is the right move in a must win game, obviously.
The bottom of the second inning rolls around and we start in much the same way as the first; back-to-back walks out of the gate by Craig and I before back-to-back singles by Rickey and Bobby, both of which produced RBI's.
Coming out of the 2nd we'd put eight on the board. This is where we decided that Ray's words of wisdom before the game were purely editorial and we let off the gas a little. Perhaps it was the Nobles pitcher change, perhaps something else, but there was a definite shift in tone and demeanor coming from the group in those middle innings, just like Ray warned us of. I hadn't really noticed the pattern before then, but after hearing Ray point it out before the game started I could definitely see it manifest in the middle innings. There was a moment when I was coaching third and I look over at the bench and everyone looked flat. I'm not saying I wasn't, too, but something changed. We gotta figure that out because not every team is going to give(?) us eight through the first two-- we all know this, though.
So, eight runs through two is tight. I'm cool with that. I like big leads early.
Spoke too soon.
Nobles come firing back with five/six(?) runs of their own over the first 4 1/3 innings. What the shit? I think I can speak for everyone when I say we were collectively shitting ourselves a little bit when they came back on us. Are we really going to blow an eight run lead!?! With DJ on the bump him and I were working on a couple things prior to the game in an effort to, essentially, fuck with batters by expanding our tool box. I won't go into the things we're adding to the repertoire because other teams may read this, but I think it took the focus away from just going out there and throwing strikes. I'll take the blame for the runs that were let up; I should have just let him do his thing.
Zack relieved DJ and pitched amazingly over the rest of the game. Being behind the plate, he's a fun guy to catch when he's 'on'. When he has command of his curveball-- basically placing the ball wherever he wants-- the swing and misses start piling up and that chess match between pitcher and hitter becomes a little lopsided. I don't remember a single curveball that got hit out of the infield. Zack simply stopped the bleeding the rest of the game, pure and simple. God bless Zack's right arm and windswept hair.
With the game meandering along for a couple innings at 8-7, we arrived at the bottom of the seventh, and the top of the lineup up. I led off with a single. BC walked (check his K/BB ratio, btw!). Rickey singled to load the bases, and Bobby continued his attack on SLG by hitting a double to score BC and I before Ray singled in Rickey three batters later.
OK, this feels better.
We tacked on another run in the bottom of the eighth via a leadoff walk by Zack and a monster double (shot of the game?) by Shaun to score him.
We were able to hold Nobles to those seven runs, but this one felt a lot closer than it should have. The takeaway here is not to get complacent, just like Ray talked about. Easier said than done, I know, but we gotta keep the pressure up the entire game. If there's one thing I've learned over the last ~2 years, it's that runs can get on the board quickly by any team in the PCHL. Let's not forget that.
The Ray's a lot better at these and I can't come up with anything and feel somewhat inadequate now defensive play of the game goes to Bobby for his 5-3 double-play. A special shout-out to Large on this one, as his perpetually effortless pick-skills at first buttoned this play up nicely. Is there really a better first baseman in the league than Large? ... I wouldn't bet against him.
Player of the game award goes to Zack, who got the game ball. A solid line at the plate (2/2, 1RBI, 1R, 2BB) and perhaps an even better line on the bump (I wish we had pitching stats). Zack was contributing everywhere in this one. Good work, bud. I kinda miss him/us right now. Call/text me?
DIGGING DEEPER
In his perpetual "do as I say not as I do" approach to managing, Miles told everyone to see pitches in this game. We listened, Miles, we listened. The team notched its highest BB total of the season with 13 total walks. We also had an above average (9.9/game) hit total with 14. As most of you know, I love a good at bat. There's a ton of good that can come from working the count and seeing pitches. How do we turn that into more than just rhetoric, though; what's the math behind it? I'm glad you asked.
I went through the scorecard and took a look at the number of pitches each batter saw (great work to everyone for keeping track of that, btw). The team had 47 total at bats. I went through each at bat to see if the player got on base (error free, of course) and how many pitches that player saw. This doesn't take into account foul balls with two strikes because those aren't tracked, but that's OK. Further, I counted a sac fly, for example, as, essentially, not getting on base even though it's a positive play. #sacflysmatter
Going through the spreadsheet I identified whether or not a player had a "positive at bat" by assigning it a "1" (got on base) and "0" for "negative at bats" (did not get on base); meaning, a walk and a hit is basically the same. We simply want to find any correlation between getting on base and how many pitches a batter saw. Here's what I found out:
- H+BB: 27
- Pitches Seen per Positive AB: ~4
- Pitches Seen per Negative AB: ~3
Now, these two figures may not seem that far apart, but the difference is ~33% more pitches seen on "positive at bats" (batter gets on base). This is just a one game sample, but it's indicative of a broader trend proven through thousands/millions of at bats in MLB. Simply put, seeing more pitches will yield better results. This doesn't mean that you let an 0-1 fastball get by you, but it does mean you should consider trying to see as many pitches as is practical every single time up.
Seeing pitches does a couple things that can't easily be measured. For example, if you can, as a batter, let the guy in the on-deck circle see a handful of pitches while he's getting in his practice swings, that'll help your boy and his timing. Further, getting that overall pitch count up on the opposing pitcher will help get him out of the game sooner; pitchers simply can't throw forever. If, as a team, we're able to get through their first and second pitcher before the eighth inning, for example, we're spending the last two innings vs. they're number three or four guy. That's where you want to be at the end of the game.
Now, we all know positive results from at bats is good, but how good is it; how does it correlate to runs? I'm glad you asked...
I went through each of our games over the season and took the total average runs score per game and divided it by the average H+BB per game. Here's how that data breaks down:
- Average H+BB/Game: 15.625
- Average R/Game: 7.8125
Knowing those numbers allow us to break down how much a H+BB is worth relative to Runs, which works out like this:
- Avereage R/Game / Avereage (H+BB/Game): 0.5
Hits tend to be a little bit more valuable than walks, for obvious reasons, but the underlying principle here is, for every "positive at bat" you essentially put half a run on the board. That's cool, right? You like runs, don't you? I found that to be pretty interesting. Your job as a batter is to simply get on base. To do that, it makes sense to see more pitches. Now, again, this is aggregate data and just because you see four pitches does not mean you're going to get on base (obviously). But if you can adapt your approach to seeing more pitches across enough bats, I think you'll see positive results overall. Math doesn't lie.
Ok, Beers are up next and they barely lost to the Cleaners (2-4). Show up. Keep your head in the game. Keep your foot on the gas.
I love you.
-Scott
STATZ
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