Given a thoroughly disappointing end to the Twins’ 2024 season, I wanted to look back to interesting (and hopefully excellent) Twins performances throughout my lifetime. As I often do, I started at Stathead and began exploring. Here are two batches of unimportant tidbits.
Continue reading “Idle Minnesota Twins Statistics Exploration”Aim For the Gaps
Sports offer excellent metaphors that are used for general success in life precisely because they exist to be entertaining microcosms of life itself. Individuals or teams vie in a competitive landscape typically officiated by imperfect referees. Preparation is allowed, but on-field performance is all anyone remembers. Sports reflect real life in numerous ways, and each sport brings its own flair to the conversation.
Golf of any variety is a wonderful mix of planning, tactics, and execution. It’s about discrete decisions, managing each shot based on given strengths and the likelihood of success. I became overwhelmed each time I tried untangling these metaphors. It was too much.
Let me instead focus on one mindset adjustment I first jokingly heard in a disc golf YouTube video, but which I found impactful: The woods are mostly air. Aim for the gaps.
Continue reading “Aim For the Gaps”Angel Stadium
A short post during a hectic time. I’ve officially visited all MLB stadiums within a reasonable distance of the Pacific Ocean: Petco Park (San Diego), Dodger Stadium (Los Angeles), Angel Stadium (Anaheim), Oracle Park (San Francisco), Oakland Coliseum (Oakland), and T-Mobile Park (Seattle). The next two closest to the west coast are Chase Field in Phoenix and Coors Field in Denver.
On my way to San Diego this weekend, I stopped in Anaheim to see the Los Angeles Angels play the New York Mets. It was a toasty experience in 90º heat, but I found the stadium beautiful and the game itself was good. Going to a stadium surrounded entirely by parking lots is weird—I’ve grown used to Oracle Park and Target Field in Minneapolis, both nicely nestled within their cities—but the setup was nice. It feels good to check it off the list.
The 2024 Red Sox Stink at Fenway
Going into the MLB All-Star Break, the Boston Red Sox have a respectable 53–42 record, good for third in the AL East. However, their 24–25 record at home is surprisingly poor. I had to investigate what could cause that. Spoiler: I’m left with more questions than answers.
Continue reading “The 2024 Red Sox Stink at Fenway”Two Baseball Charts
I made two more charts in the past week that are worth a brief discussion. The first looks at injuries by team, and the other considers team winning percentage at home or on the road.
Continue reading “Two Baseball Charts”Here Come Your Nuts!
I went to Modesto this past Friday to watch my first Single-A baseball game between the local Modesto Nuts of the Seattle Mariners organization and the San Jose Giants, creatively named after their parent organization, the San Francisco Giants. The environment reminded me of a mid-season high school football game, complete with inexpensive food vendors, large groups from local church and youth sports organizations, and season ticket holders who maintain conversations from several rows away. There are angry dads, town heroes, and four-dollar hot dogs. I adored it.
The local sponsorships were charming. Here’s one I’ll never forget, repeated each time a Nuts pitcher struck out an opposing batter:
This strikeout is brought to you by Aspire Public Schools. Don’t strike out on your education; enroll in Aspire Public Schools todayyyyy.
Another, when a Nuts batter walked:
Nice take! Donatello’s Take and Bake!
I purchased a hat with one of their mascots, Wally the Walnut, on the front.
I heard good-hearted banter about the players and a couple of mean-spirited comments from fans directed towards the umpires that led to a guy in front of me nearly being ejected. Instead, the umpire thought the chirping was coming from a bench, and one of the Nuts’ coaches got tossed.
I kept score as usual. Heading towards the gate after the game, I saw a small group of kids against the fence along the left field line where the Giants players were walking. A six-foot-seven-inch Bryce Eldridge, the top pick by the Giants in the 2023 draft, towered over them. I walked over on a whim and, once all the kids had balls autographed and selfies secured, asked him to sign the scorecard along his batting line.
As with many experiences this past year, I regret not jumping at the opportunity earlier. I had immense fun watching baseball in such a casual environment, with each part driven by the community. I’m eager to return to Modesto and visit San Jose to see the Giants play at home. Minor League Baseball reminds me of my time playing in town ball leagues around Minnesota at the end of high school, and it more appropriately embodies what baseball can mean to a city. It sends me back to the nostalgic times I never experienced when baseball was the country’s pastime.
Making MLB Team Scatter Plots
You may have seen any number of scatter plots on the internet that show data comparisons among players or teams in a given league. These are part of my daily experience on the /r/baseball community, and I finally decided to scratch my statistical presentation itch by making my own. This post isn’t to cover what statistics to compare, just the process I’ve settled on for now to turn a table of comparisons into precisely-designed charts suitable for sharing on the internet.
Continue reading “Making MLB Team Scatter Plots”I Just Learned What BBCOR Means
In early high school, I remember all the hubbub about requiring metal baseball bats to align to the BBCOR standard. Given the pronunciation of this (“Bee-Bee-Core”), I always assumed it was a regulation about what specific materials must be used to make the bat. That’s only true insofar as the standard actually defines a material property.
BBCOR stands for “Batted Ball Coefficient of Restitution”. In other words, the standard tells you how elastic the collision between ball and bat is allowed to be. This standard was designed to dull metal bats in an effort to protect pitchers, the most likely players to be grievously injured by a batted ball. It was adopted by the NCAA in 2011, and most youth leagues that I’m aware of followed their lead. I used BBCOR-certified bats throughout high school, and continue to do so in my adult league.
You can read through the NCAA protocol for BBCOR, where the most fascinating part is the testing procedures starting on page 5. There is a table defining what the moment of inertia must be a distance of 6 inches from the knob of the bat—where the batter grips the bat—to ensure the bat isn’t “too easy” to swing. Then they use a ball cannon—that’s the term they provide—with a muzzle velocity of at least 150 mph which imparts spin at a rate of less than 10 rpm to fire fresh baseballs at clamped-down bats.
They perform six consecutive valid trials to measure the restitution of the bat using three sensors placed along the trajectory of the ball (which must be accurately placed to a tolerance of 0.005 inches.) After all that, the average measured BBCOR must be no more than 0.500.
I loved reading this, and I now want this to be a physics problem in some college class.