ABS Reps

Joe Sewell had 8,333 plate appearances in a career that went from 1920-1933. In that career, he walked 842 times and struck out 114 times. In a 14 year career, he struck out a little over twice as many times as Javier Báez struck out in August 2014. The strikeout rates of players before my time are a little otherwordly to me. Luis Arraez is the modern equivalent, and he strikes out about three times as often as Sewell did.

So suppose ABS had existed in Sewell’s day? Would he have struck out more or less? The answer (“we don’t know”) should be obvious — We know virtually nothing of the accuracy of the strike zone in those days. We don’t know whether Sewell tended to strike out taking or swinging. We know little about the accuracy of pitchers. On the other hand, we know all of that for Luis Arraez. And Statcast has now begun to analyze the ABS results this season. I’m still in the process of writing up an ABS challenge model, but Statcast ahs beaten me to it, and I can discuss some of its early results.

Firs, what should you look at? Everyone so far has focused on percent of challenges upheld. And obvously some players are better at this than others. But that clearly isn’t the best metric, because it completely ignores the times you should have challenged and you didn’t. People don’t think about that, because not challenging a call was the status quo for 150 years. But you should. Offensive and defensive players have been handed a new weapon to make their offensive and defensive productions better. The correct metric is how well they are using it.

So in Statcast, what you ought to look at is this chart. This is the chart that ought to be followed as the season progresses to see what teams are getting from the ABS system. And the first column Runs Gained vs. Expected, is exactly the column to use. What is it? Well, two columns to its right is Runs Gained, which is just the sum of runs gained on offense and runs gained on defense. Note that in the ABS system you can only gain runs. If you win a challenge, you gain runs, since the situation of changing a strike to a ball improves the run prospect for the offense, for example. but losing the challenge costs you only an opportunity to challenge later. (And for those who are new to a runs-gained metric, every 10 runs, approximately, generate an additional win.

But that’s not quite the right measure, becuase you have to measure against what you’d expect to pick up to figure out whether your ABS challenge practices are helping or hurting relative to other teams. I haven’t wuite tracked down exactly what they’re doing to generate the expected number, but I know they have the right inputs: the count and inning and bases occupied and run situation.

I’ll talk about that more when I understand it better in the future, but for now, here’s what we see. Minnesota has challenged the most, and also has the highest gain relative to expected. The clear lesson here is that teams aren’t challenging enough. In parallel, the teams who are losing opportunities are indeed the teams who have challenged the least. So, at least early on, the problem isn’t losing challenges. It’s not challenging enough. Will teams learn? We shall see.

The other lesson is that while I have focused on the Braves poor results in challenge percentage. (and indeed they are near dead-last in percentage of offensive challenges won) they are actually not bad at all in net runs gained, currently sitting in 9th place at 1 net run gained. (1 net run gained is of course almost worthless… but it could have been worse. Cleveland has lost 14 runs against expectation.)

The Game

Kyle Schwarber cannot be held down forever. (He had a single in 8 at-bats in the first two games of the series.) A two-run homer in the first broke the ice. The top of the second was a huge ABS win for the Phillies. With two outs and men on first and second, a 3-2 pitch to Mauricio Dubón was called ball four. Bases loaded and two outs is worth an expected 0.22 runs. The overturn of the call saved those 0.22 runs.

The next Braves batter, Michael Harris II leading off the third, smeared an Andrew Painter curve ball to left to make it 2-1. For what seems like the first time ever, Folk Hero™ Dom Smith failed with 2nd and 3rd and one out in the fourth.

In the fifth, Painter dried up. after opening singles to Acuña and Baldwin, he was replaced by Tim Mayza (what you call Corna) who proceeded to hock up the lead with a walk, an infield out and infield single and a double. But in the bottom of the fifth, Sherlocks got into some difficulty and Aaron Bummer came in and gave up a double to Schwarber to face Bryce Harper representing the go-ahead run. Bummer may well be no better than Mayza, but he was bailed out by a nice play by Austin Riley and Olson to keep it 5-3.

Tyler Kinley took the 6th and survived another 2 man on scare. Right now, the Phillies seem to be in one of those ruts where they can’t get men on but can’t score. This one ended on a called third strike to Schwarber. These things come and go, and facing the Phillies while this is happening is an juicy piece of luck. In fact, Atlanta proceeded to hibernate after the fifth as well. But hibernation with the lead is a venial sin, not a mortal one.

Raisel Iglesias took the 9th. Bryson Stott led off with a bloop double (a play I think Eli White could have made, but didn’t) which made it interesting. After a pop out, he walked Justin Crawford (his first walk of the year) to turn the lineup over wioth they the winning run represented first, by Trea Turner who struck out, and Schwarber, who lined out to Acuña to end it.

A Quick Note on Announcing

Since Chip left, I have had very little to say about announcing, proving once and for all that I’m not just an announcing curmufgeon. Gaudin and Nitkowski are fine. AJ Pierczinski and Adam Wainwright who do the Fox color are fine as well.

And then there’s John Kruk. Kruk is a beloved figure in Philadelphia and I liked him as a player. And his baseball commentary is quite good. But his I’m-just-a-dumb-jock shtick grows old. He might even be sincere. But it is really tiresome. The Phillies announcing team is very good, including Kruk, until he goes into his Aw-shucks routine.

That said, he told a great story in the 8th. It started with this incident, in which Wally Richie hit Otis Nixon and Otis charged the mound and got a pretty good piece of Richie. Richie, after serving a suspension, came back and was going to hit Kirk Gibson for some transgression of the unwritten rules. His manager came out and said: “Don’t hit Gibson.” Richie said: “I have to. Gibson can’t do that.” And the manager said: “Otis beat you up. Just think of what Gibson would do to you.”