As has been pointed out, any player can get hot (or cold) for a 60 game stretch. Here’s a quick note to suggest just how hot or cold a . I took the main 14 Braves position players and calculated their maximum and minimum OPS for a 66 day stretch in their careers. I wasn’t super careful about the OPS calculation, using a simplified formulation because math is hard. In addition, rather than a 60 game stretch, I used a 66 day stretch, because it was way easier and I’m lazy. Finally, to avoid outliers where someone, because of injury or because the season ended put up an unrepresentative number, I required at least 100 plate appearances in the 66 day period.
Here are my results…
Hot/Cold for 66 Days
A few things to note. For the youngest players with the least experience (Austin Riley, Dansby Swanson, Charlie Culberson, Ronald Acuña Jr. (barely)) their hot and cold periods actually overlap. Indeed, Riley’s career consists of a couple of overlapping 66 day periods. For most players, their hot periods have more ABs than their cold periods, which makes sense, but in 2014 Flowers went out there for a very cold stretch, as did Hechavarria in 2013. Finally, many of the cold streaks (Freeman, Inciarte, d’Arnaud) were at the start of their careers and may be unrepresentative of what a bad streak would look like for them today. On the other hand, for players without a lot of ABs, the low numbers are probably too high, like Culberson.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this piece, check out Jonathan’s “Playoffs are a Crapshoot Series!
Now let’s get a W, shall we?
Did I just watch Duvall kill a dog in the stands?
Love how Fried is attacking the zone. I feel like even 4 years ago the Braves org would’ve tried to have him throw two-seamers down int he zone.
Apparently nothing is a strike today. He’s tried middle of the plate above the knees and middle of the plate at the belt, no dice on either.
@3 yeah, makes me think that mlb should have tried robot umps this weird season and say it was done to have less people on the field.
LOL…Fried can’t get pitches right down the middle called as strikes, yet Matz is turning around like he deserves a strike-three call on a pitch which was at least six inches outside.
We had an issue where newest thread wasn’t showing up at top. It is now. Sorry about that.
Fried was looking at his fingers and they always scares me.
Yup. From what I’ve seen so far in the first 3 days of the season, the home-plate umps have been pretty shaky.
But still, when Fried has that hook working, he’s nasty. I still love seeing Major-League hitters get tied up with an ultra-precise curve.
Trending: cold
Poor AJax is getting smoked by MLB pitching.
Braves haven’t faced 96+ velo in camp and it shows.
These bats got coronavirus. No pun intended.
Anemic.
Oh not Minter. I don’t have the stomach for this yet.
The season has started: I just told Chip to shut up.
Chad Fairchild isn’t very good.
AJ! Well done, young man.
Acuña is not swinging the bat well.
Booo, Ronald is broken
RAJ is swinging like his bat is too heavy or something. Frankly I expected if anyone was going to show up for this weird season looking out of sorts it’d be Freddie, but he’s looked pretty normal.
Not a lot of fun watching the Braves flounder against the Mets, but so grateful to have baseball back!
Ozuna!
Ozuna: Bringer of Pain.
If it goes to extras, I believe we get to see a runner on 2nd to start every inning.
McNeil screams F bombs like McCann.
I miss baseball.
Nice, Dansby. All gifts are appreciated.
Woo, kid!
First big league hit is a big one!
Acuña has struck out 6 times in these 2 games.
Why is Melancon not in?
Oh God, Jackson? I haven’t been following the team news, I thought it’d be Will Smith time.
Something must be wrong with him. This is inexplicable.
29 —He has COVID-19.
That Luke is a cool hand. Nice win. Wasn’t real baseball but it’s a win.
Great win! One of the features of this Braves team is a very deep bullpen—and for now they have something like 17 pitchers on the roster. So I would not have expected to see Tomlin and Minter in highly leveraged situations, and Jackson getting the final six outs in a close game. All three guys were on the roster before last July 31, and were part of the reason they went out and got the new guys.
But it worked! Minter in particular was really sharp. Always loved his stuff.
Pitching has been good.
There are 12 NL pitchers tied for the league lead in ERA among qualified starters, all at zero. Soroka is one, while Luke Jackson is another as his 2 IP qualifies (for now). Any chance a reliever pitches 60 innings this season? I assume no, but it is the same number of innings as a regular season for a reliever, and would could argue that relievers pitch more frequently anyway, so they might be more able to compress the usual number of innings into a smaller number of games than starters. It would be kind of fitting for a reliever to win the ERA title, or other statistical oddities for an odd season. Great to have baseball back!
So how do runs in extra innings count against a reliever’s ERA? When a runner starts on 2nd and scores is that run earned?
The run is earned, but not charged to any pitcher.
I’m half-right. “For the purpose of calculating earned runs, the runner who begins the inning on second will be deemed to reached that spot because of a fielding error. No error, however, shall be charged to the opposing team or to any player. The pitcher would not be charged with an earned run.”
JonathanF’s quote of earned run calculations isn’t that clear (though I know he is just the messenger) for situations like today’s 10th in which the pitcher gets two outs with zero or one run scoring. If the initial runner is assumed to have reached via a “fielding error”, than that would make all two-out runs unearned (if you replace the “fielding error” with an out, which is the usual way of dealing with errors. The rule, in my opinion, should make the first run unearned (if it scores as a result of a runner starting on 2nd) but have no effect on subsequent runs.
I was surprised Jackson pitched the 10th. Any idea if Melancon will be good to go on Sunday?
I was also surprised to see Adams stay in to hit against a lefty.
What do I know? Nice win. It didn’t look promising. Does anyone know the win probability in the 9th with two strikes on Ozuna?
@38: I see your point, but imagine a base hit in which an overthrow puts the runner on second. or a passed ball moves the runner to second. In that case, the second out wouldn’t have ended the inning.
For the win probability, use https://gregstoll.com/~gregstoll/baseball/stats.html#V.1.9.2.1.3.2
comes up with 3.7%, which seems a little high to me, honestly.
Acuna, less gold more old.
Luke Jackson, how he gets there we don’t care, just close it as only you can.
William C. About time, move him UP. Snit’s innate conservatism on display again.