Putting the "Erm..." in Sabermetrics

Particularly absurd post on Mets Geek charting each team's bullpen's average fastball speed against strikeouts. Don't even try to wrap your mind around what it might even mean to average the pitch speeds of an entire bullpen together, the results are random noise, not "a slight trend."

Late in the Game to be Making Adjustments

I didn't watch the game, but the recap of yesterday's win over the hated Yankees mentions that Oliver Perez had been trying a new delivery:

In his second week as the pitching coach, Warthen had allowed Perez to change his position on the rubber -- he moved from the third-base end to the middle -- and he also had adjusted Perez's delivery, so he would use his legs more and move from the rubber to the plate with greater force.

Doesn't that seem crazy, that a starting pitcher in the big leagues would still be tweaking things that fundamental at this point? But I guess it worked, so what do I know.


Anyway, I of course would suggest that Perez widen his stance on the rubber.

Pitching (nullus)

Last night Peter and I had a small bite to eat at the sports bar around the block from my house. Peter had a copy of the latest Times' "Play" magazine, which is like a sports insert they do on Sundays. But it had this cool little article on pitching where Mike Mussina laid out how he pitches in different situations, which pitches he throws and how they work, and how the strike zone has been affected by computer-aided umpire evaluation. The online version is not nearly as cool, because the really neat part of it were the illustrations of the strike zone, where the pitches were thrown in the different batter examples, and the different grips for pitches. Worth checking out, especially if you have the hard copy lying around.