Category Archives: Research

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Baseball, Research

Data update

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Little by little I’m uploading data sets from my data base. The latest are tables are the foundation for the Bill James Win Shares calculations that produce the individual evaluations that can also be found on the data page.

Today’s new one is this year’s park adjustments — estimates of how much the parks that team played in influenced run scoring. These are not the same as park factors and combine the effect of a team’s home, road and neutral venues. These come in three flavors:

  • Team Run Adjustment: Fairly straight forward. A run adjustment of 1.1 means that the parks that team played in over the course of the year appear to have inflated runs scored and allowed by that team (per inning) by 10 percent.
  • Team Home Run Adjustment:  Again fairly straight forward.
  • Team S Factor: This is a measure of how much this team’s parks during the year affected scoring aside from home runs, essentially how easy or hard it is to hit and draw walks there. Tokyo Dome is a classic example of a good home run park, that is a pitcher’s park, because it suppresses singles, walks, doubles and triples.

Below is a screen shot of the latest table. The data page is all downloadable PDFs which if you care to you could copy and paste from. I’ll be posting each team’s individual adjustments for this decade, so please check back.

 



2018 NPB team run adjustments and so on

 

Baseball, Paid Content, Research

More to come from PL MVP Yamakawa

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Hotaka Yamakawa has only been the Seibu Lions’ regular first baseman for 1-1/2 years, but the Okinawa native has already established himself as an elite home run hitter, but during the Japan MLB-All Star Series, he sounded an ominous warning.

Although he led both of NPB’s elite leagues in home runs with 47, Yamakawa said his glass was only half full. He hit well enough against pitchers he sees over and over during the year and was honored as the Pacific League’s MVP this year, but against major leaguers he’d never faced, he looked completely lost.

“I dislike facing pitchers for the first time,” he said. “On top of that, the major league pitchers have good late movement on their fastballs. It’s clear from this that I have a lot to learn about getting the barrel of the bat on the ball.”

Among all players in NPB history with a minimum of 750 plate appearances, Yamakawa ranks third in home run frequency behind only Hall of Famer Sadaharu Oh, and iconic Hanshin Tigers slugger Randy Bass.

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“I hit 40 home runs this year, so I know I have power. But you know what? I hit almost all of them without really squaring it up. So that’s something I need to work on,” He said that prior to Game 3 when he had a good pinch-hit at-bat that turned series around.

“Whatever I learn here, I’m going to apply as much as I can going forward.”

And as scary a hitter as Yamakawa already is, the idea of him making even better contact is not a pleasant one for PL pitchers.