Aaron_Kennelly

Just tuned in. Not sure what the deal is with this Ohtani guy.

Arrieta's average sinker velocity was 91.7 mph.

Shocking, I know, but Chris Taylor is hitting .189/.205/.270.

#wearegood

Alright, we somehow have two men on for one of our 2 major league baseball players.

Ol' Drinky Joe.

The Brewers are the new Reds.

Obviously I wouldn’t care too much about one game’s velocity readings. Anything that happens during one event could just be the happenings of a weird day. But even after only 2-3 consecutive starts with similar velocity numbers, I start worrying. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I do.

I agree that it is silly to read too much into changes in release point and movement over small samples, but velocity stabilizes very quickly. I think it is one of the things that can give us useful information early in the season. I think the main problem last year was that MLB changed the process by which they captured velocity. So it made it impossible to measure it against previous years’ data, which is the only way you can even learn anything about velocity. So any analysis last year was fucked out of the gate. And it led to a lot of guess work and confusion. But even still, looking at the guys who had lost a lot of velocity a couple of starts in... things didn’t work out very well for that group. A lot of guys were either pitching injured or ended up injured. Some others proved completely ineffective and aren’t even in the league anymore. Even looking at our pitchers: Lackey was horrible and retired. Arrieta, Lester, and Hendricks weren’t quite as effective and all missed some time. Hendricks was the only one that saw his velocity recover. Most importantly though is that velocity changes have been shown to correlate with success. Obviously a change in velocity won’t affect all guys the same. But velocity matters. With release point, it’s guesswork if it’s just noisy, why it’s changed, what a change will result in, and why it will matter, if at all. A guy could just be pitching differently but with the same results. A guy pitching slower seems a lot different to me, though. So I agree that release point and movement is too noisy and doesn’t interest me much in small samples. But velocity changes still scare the horsefeathers out of me.

Vaunted

Javy is like one of those legends you read about that absolutely isn’t true, except I actually did just see him score from first on an infield single.

Well, I can't watch tonight, so they should be good for about 12 runs.

I figured it was best to not post any of the pictures that would be recognizable. At least until the scoreless streak reaches 5 games.

Live look in at NSBB:

Taking it a step further, how about a 34-32 22-inning game in which we strike out 21 times?

I'm going to get blocked. [tweet] [/tweet]

Good for Jesse deciding that he no longer needed his jamfan alt account.

He's so stupid. We need to get him to join in these game threads.

Cubswin11 brought up Hard% to suggest we've hit the ball hard and that people are too results-oriented. He didn't use that information to then suggest that we should stop hitting the ball so hard, since hitting the ball hard hasn't worked out for us. That's why nobody is scolding him.

Also, there's a much easier explanation for anomalous numbers in Pull% and BABIP and the like: horsefeathers happens. The Cubs' numbers are weird because the bats are "off." They aren't hitting the ball right. It most likely has nothing to do with their approaches or organizational philosophy. Collectively, they're just off. I'll use Kyle Schwarber as an analog for the whole team. When Schwarber pulls the ball, it's usually on the ground. So when he's off, he's going to pull it a lot and his balls in play aren't going to go for hits. But all those grounders are a byproduct of him trying to hit the ball hard and get it in the air. When he's right, he won't pull it as much and he won't be hitting it on the ground. And his balls in play will fall in for hits. I don't want him to change his approach, necessarily, though, because I want him to try to hit it hard. When he does, he hits bombs. When a bunch of guys are off, there is going to be some weird batted ball data. And it will even out because they will all get hot at some point. That's what happens in baseball. This is basically the same squad that we've trotted out since 2015 and our BABIP has been between .302 and .305 in all of the past three seasons. The league average over that time is .300. There is no fatal flaw with our approaches. Our BABIP will be fine. Our Pull% 5 games into the season doesn't matter. Stop trying to read so much into incredibly small samples of a completely unstable stat.

The thing about BABIP that makes it really weird and fluky is that goes far beyond just "luck." It isn't just a case of defense and luck impacting BABIP. When we're looking at what happens when a ball leaves a bat, we're talking about fractions of an inch and hundredths of a second having enormous impact on what happens to that ball. Other periphs are more stable not only because they are more skill-based, but also because there are numerous tangible inputs that are more going into them. To walk or strikeout, it takes a series of pitches. The batter must choose to swing or not. And he must be able to recognize the pitch. Being a tenth of a second late on three pitches is going to crater a guy's BABIP this early in the season. It's a lot easier to not swing at a ball than it is to hit every pitch on the screws. It's why guys go through slumps. And it's why it's silly to look at BABIP in small samples.

Since we are digging into those numbers I will point out that we are 1st in pull % and have the highest BABIP among the top 5 in that category at 280. I get it that we are hitting the ball hard and we want to summarily attribute that to bad luck but I think we must acknowledge that in this day of defensive shifts and more accurate than ever spray charts, we are playing into our opponents hands a bit. This is the same nonsense you spouted ad nauseam last year. We told you repeatedly that you were digging too deep into things and trying to make stats say things that they weren't capable of saying. And then the Cubs BABIP'd .328 in the second half last year, completely debunking your notions. And now you're ready to dive back in after a 5 game sample? I mean, seriously, you are trying to take Pull% from 4 games and deducing some Big Theory about our organizational philosophies.