Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with baseball

Help me peak as an athlete.

vito90 — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 13:24:43 -0800

I'm looking for tips on how to peak for an athletic performance. I'm 38 years old and soon to go head-to-head against more talented and athletic foes. I've been playing recreational baseball for the last 9 years every summer, and for the last two years at a highly competitive level.

I've mostly performed as our backup catcher but was just informed that our starter is taking the year off and I'll go into the season as the first-string catcher. In other words, I've been called up to the show.

I'm very motivated to take my game to its highest level this year, and want to start preparing now to be completely at my best by mid-season, which will be around July. I want to take a comprehensive approach to my training, in fact I'm looking a little bit less for advice on workouts than other aspects of improvement. I would especially love to hear tips on how to improve my vision, hand-eye coordination, reflexes, ability to recover, mental approaches, leadership tips, diet and supplements, anything you can think of. Anything that can help a slightly older, yet still pretty durable body to withstand some punishment this season.

I would love to hear old crafty baseball tips too...most of my opponents will be in their twenties and I know that just knowing a few things the kids don't will give me an advantage.

Really any kind of advice is welcome. How did you prepare for the competition of YOUR life?

Baseball Bat lawsuit WTF?

Mitheral — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:24:39 -0800

Is there a rest of the story to the recent award of US$850K to a person hit by a baseball from the bat's manufacturer? The story says the award is because their wasn't sufficient warning labelling on the bat. Which seems crazy on the face of it considering that the bat was 60 feet, give or take, from the person who died and was, I'm assuming, not owned or even handled by the person who died. How would he have ever seen the warning?

Is there a back story like the McDonalds coffee case that isn't making it into the press?

Help us find a good World Series bet...

Towelie — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 07:59:47 -0800

World series bet: Philadelphia/New York office 'rivalry'…ideas? We have six offices - with the Main Office in NYC and an office in Philadelphia.
(Staffing is about 9-10 in NYC, and 3-4 in Philly) We have four other offices (each with similar staffing levels.)

Any ideas on a 'good bet' - this is mostly for fun/morale reasons. I'm thinking that it'd be interesting/vested for our other offices to pick/align with the split over the worlds series…and have an interesting bet…

I just can't think of something beyond cheesesteaks/cheesecakes or wearing phillies/yankees wear (for one day) that would be interesting.

Help me out-Billy Beane my fantasy baseball league!

po822000 — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 07:06:34 -0800

How do I appropriately valuate players in my competitive fantasy baseball league? I just took over a horrendous team in a very competitive fantasy baseball league. I'm very familiar with sabermetric stats employed by real-life GMs, but it occurs to me that those same stats are not necessarily going to be helpful to me in fantasy baseball. (Especially because so many of the stats we score on are non-sabermetric in nature.)

To wit: real-life GMs use sabermetric stats to find players who avoid making outs (hitters) or get outs most efficiently (pitchers). In my league, I'm looking to maximize or minimize the cumulative results in specific statistical categories across my lineup.

To that end, I'm trying to put together my own valuation system for players, but it's been awhile since my econometrics and statistics courses in college. Can you help me put together an appropriate formula - or point me in the direction of how I should be analyzing/comparing the statistics - to properly valuate the players in my league?

The details: I'm in a weekly head-to-head rotisserie league based upon the following statistical categories:

HITTERS
Runs
Singles
Doubles
Triples
Home Runs
RBI
Walks
Strikeouts (lowest total wins this category)
Stolen Bases
Batting Average

PITCHERS
Walks (lowest total wins this category)
Strikeouts
Complete Games
Wins
Losses
Saves
Holds
ERA
WHIP (lowest total wins this category)
K/9

I'm not sure if any other parameters are needed, but any help you might be able to provide would be most appreciated.

a tex message to right!

joyceanmachine — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:59:07 -0800

Yankees fan in Philadelphia. Sports bar in Center City where I won't be lynched? I mean the lynching in only a three-quarters joking sense, as I'm told that there was a delivery truck driving around Center City today dragging a Yankees hat behind it.

Any suggestions about venues where I could catch a game and do a little discreet cheering, or am I doomed to choosing between streaming Suzyn Waldman and ESPN radio Joe Morgan?

PERL before swine

bluejayway — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:23:53 -0800

PERL filter: I'm a PERL ignoramus and trying to run a script from Baseball Hacks to download a bunch of zipped files from retrosheet.org. I'm getting an error that says: URL must be absolute. I can't figure out how to make the url absolute, as each file's location is different and supplied by variable values. Any hints would be super appreciated. (Script is after the jump). Here's the script- copied directly from the book- I only modified the date ranges and changed the non-html-friendly characters for the purposes of posting here:
use FileHandle;

use LWP::UserAgent;
$ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
$baseurrl = "http://www.retrosheet.org/";

for ($year = 60; $year LESSTHAN= 92; $year++) {
foreach $league ("al", "nl") {
my $filename = '19' . $year . $league . '.zip';
my $url = $baseurl . '19' . $year . '/19' . $year . $league . '.zip';
my $req = HTTP::Request->new(GET =GREATERTHAN $url);
my $res = $ua-GREATERTHANrequest($req);

print STDERR "fetching $filename\n";

if ($res-GREATERTHANis_success) {
my $fh = new FileHandle "GREATERTHAN$filename";
if (defined $fh) {
print $fh $res->content;
$fh-GREATERTHANclose;
} else {
print STDERR "could not open $filename: $!\n";
}
}
else {
print STDERR $res->status_line, "\n";
}
}
}

Why are postseason baseball games so long?

madcaptenor — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 18:38:10 -0800

Why are postseason baseball games so long? (Data inside.) As I start to write this question, it's 9:09 pm. The Phillies and Dodgers started their game tonight at 8:07 pm and just finished the second inning. At this rate (31 minutes per innings) the game will take around four and a half hours.

Now, it's 6-0 Phillies, and it takes time to get all those men on base, so this isn't typical. But in Major League Baseball, playoff games in general seem to take longer than regular-season games.

Last year's postseason game times (obtained somewhat laboriously from baseball-reference.com):
World Series: 3:23, 3:05, 3:41, 3:08, 3:28
NLCS: 2:36, 3:33, 2:57, 3:44, 3:14
ALCS: 3:25, 5:27 (11), 3:23, 3:07, 4:08, 3:48, 3:31
NLDS (Phillies-Brewers): 2:39, 3:00, 3:31, 2:53
NLDS (Dodgers-Cubs): 3:10, 3:10, 3:03
NLDS (Rays-White Sox): 3:10, 3:10, 3:07, 3:13
NLDS (Red Sox-Angels): 3:14, 3:51, 5:19 (12), 2:50

If you just glance at this, you see that games over three hours predominate. Median game length is 3:13; mean is 3:24.

For comparison, the median length of games played by the same eight teams during the regular season was 2:53, the mean 2:55. (In the interest of full disclosure, games between two of those teams are counted twice.)

Why are postseason games longer? More pitching changes? Longer breaks between innings? (They don't seem longer, but an extra thirty seconds at every commercial break is ten minutes or so over the course of a game.) Something else I haven't thought of?

Does THAT Belong In Your Mouth?

hippybear — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 17:39:31 -0800

What is the strange white plastic ring thing that I see baseball players chewing on during the postseason games? I just saw a Yankee player chewing on this thing, it looked vaguely like maybe a high-tech handle to one of those ring pops from years ago. It was white plastic, sort of squared off, and it was in his mouth.

What on earth IS that thing???

A sad brother-in-law at the Tigers game?

palindromic — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 21:06:11 -0800

How should I (or just should I) ask my bereaved brother-in-law to a baseball game next week? My brother-in-law's mother recently, suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. The funeral is tomorrow, and I unfortunately can't make it because of some mandatory training programs for my job. Both he and my sister know, and understand that I would rather be there to support them, so this isn't one of those touchy 'they're mad at me' situations or anything. Baseball ticket does not equal emotional bribery here.

Instead, I just want to give him and my sister something to take their minds off their grief, even if only for a few hours. (For what it's worth, we are all Tigers fans and the game is against division rivals, the White Sox, after a pivotal four game series with the Twins, who trail the Tigers by only two games right now - in other words, should be an interesting and fun game.) I already have the tickets and would have absolutely no problem finding two other people to see the game with me, but I would rather keep it in the family if it's in good taste.

At that point it would be about two weeks since his mother's unexpected death. Too soon for baseball, good sister-in-law gesture, or what?

I'm thinking the best way to do it would be to just say that I have two extra tickets for the game next Saturday, and would they like to go, and keep all mention of the sad badness out of the conversation. Good way to go?

I don't know. He's an ex-Marine and so kind of stiff upper lip about everything, and I'm bad at the whole grieving process thing.

Is there anywhere in Cork, Ireland to watch an American baseball game tonight?

nitsuj — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:06:08 -0800

Is there anywhere in Cork, Ireland to watch an American baseball game tonight? St. Louis Cardinals vs. Florida, FWIW.

Seeking a vintage, red bomber jacket

Khazk — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:31:57 -0800

I can't find this "adidas"-lookalike retro jacket from this Utah Saints "Something Good" music video, and I kind of want to buy one for ~$50 in Canada! I have already raided the parents' "vintage" boxes at home and it appears that the Striped Cuff, fall/spring rainjacket style was pretty popular in the late 70's/early 80's, but my folks don't have one in red. I have tried a few vintage stores in my local area (Edmonton Alberta) but to no avail. Adidas had/has a similar style of jacket on the market but they eliminate "old" articles from their online catalogue as soon as the new season starts. I've seen them posted as "varsity jackets", "baseball bombers", and "aviator" jackets.

I need the jacket for an upcoming party and I'm very particular about the color scheme: red jacket with elastic red cuffs and white stripes on the collar and wrists. No other tones or colored sleeves...as close as possible to the one in the video!

I'm looking for a retailer online that sells this style of jacket, unbranded if possible.

Cheers and thanks from the Great (soon to be) White North

KZ

When can a relief pitcher enter a baseball game? (Also, unassisted triple plays.)

madcaptenor — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 18:53:57 -0800

When can a relief pitcher enter a baseball game? (Specifically, in reference to the first inning of today's Phillies-Mets game.) Also, why are there more unassisted triple plays than before? Phillies-Mets game today. Top of the first, two outs, Phillies up 6-0. Pedro Martinez is batting, Oliver Perez pitching. Three balls, no strikes to Martinez... and Perez gets pulled for a new pitcher. Right in the middle of the at-bat. Martinez strikes out to end the inning.

So what happened? I was under the impression that pitchers can't be pulled in the middle of the at-bat except for an injury, which is not what happened as far as I can tell. Rule 3.03 states that substitutions can be made whenever the ball is dead but the definition of the ball being "dead" seems to be scattered in bits and pieces throughout the rules.

Also: the game ended with an unassisted triple play. As a Phillies fan, I knew that Mickey Morandini had one in '92; the list at mlb.com indicates it was the ninth all-time, and there have been seven since then, including one each in '07, '08, and '09. Why are there more now than there used to be? (I don't think the presence of more teams now quite explains it.)

In search of a cleft-footed Giant

bluejayway — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 21:15:12 -0800

Baseball Trivia Filter (really, really trivial): A couple weeks ago, during the LA broadcast of the Dodgers-Giants game, Vin Scully mentioned that one of the Giants' players ran very well considering that he had been born with a cleft-foot. My Google-Fu has failed me. Can anyone tell me who this cleft-footed athlete is?

Is a team committed to a pinch hitter substitution, even if the hitter never gets to bat?

csimpkins — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:32:21 -0800

In MLB, if a pinch hitter enters the on-deck circle to warm up, but the side is retired before he actually gets up to bat, does the team still have to go through with the substitution? Or can they 'back out'? Just a silly question that's been bugging me for a couple weeks.

We're talkin' softball...

TheSecretDecoderRing — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:22:48 -0800

Softball-Hack-Filter: I joined my company's softball game, which we play weekly. I've been at it a few games now and haven't embarrassed myself too much yet, but what sort of tips and rules of thumb can help me be a more confident and competent player? I've been an MLB fan since I was a kid, so I'm pretty familiar with a lot of the principles of the game, but other than a few casual games in my youth I've never been in any organized league.

I've looked around on the web a lot but mostly find advice for real novices and have been looking more for stuff just above that. I know there's potentially tons of advice to be given, but I'd like to know if there's anything in particular that you learned that really opened your eyes and made you wish you'd known it earlier. Or of any useful online videos or sites. One insightful book I skimmed through was "Baseball's Sixth Tool."

I play outfield, and one interesting tip I've read is to judge incoming balls relative to the brim of the cap (if it goes above it, it's likely to require moving back). Another is how a ball hit by a lefty to LF will tend to veer towards the foul line (and vice versa), though I don't know how much that equates in softball. Anything more along these lines, esp in regards to catching those tricky (and scary) line drives?

One source of frustration is my weak arm. I was not blessed with Ichiro-like fast-twitch muscle fibers, but is there any way to add a little more zip to my throw? And the extra size of the softball makes me feel like throwing for distance will cause my shoulder to explode, so I often just sort of fling it while playing catch.

For the record, this is slow-pitch, no stealing/leadoffs, no bunts, and (for any hitting advice) we start with a 1-1 count, and foul balls hit with 2 strikes are considered an out. And I'm more of the David Eckstein mold than the Albert Pujols one. Thanks in advance.

How to have an awesome time at the ballgame?

philotes — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 14:04:53 -0800

Take me out to the ballgame, MeFites! My boss gave me tickets to this Friday's Cards game, so I’m grabbing my buddy and heading downtown. But it’s been ages since I’ve been to a game (>8 years) and I’ve never been to the new Busch Stadium. What do I need to know?

Background: I’m a casual baseball fan, as in I keep track of the league and our standings, and when I owned a television I would have the game on in the background often and I’d do my happy dance when we scored. But since my tv died last year I haven’t watched a game. (Feel free to catch me up on the players/this season’s big events.)

I’m primarily looking for info on baseball game behavior. This thread was hilarious, but not quite what I need. This is St. Louis, after all, and we’re more likely to give an opposing player a [totally undeserved] standing ovation than to insult his girlfriend. (That whole “Best Fans in Baseball” thing kind of went to our heads.) But if you know of any cheers or crowd responses I should be prepared for, or any fan faux pas I should avoid, please share!

I’m also looking for general baseball enjoyment information: the forecast is sunny but you never know in the Midwest, so should I bring a poncho anyway? What about food? I love junk food but my stomach doesn’t: recommendations on what to indulge in and what to pass up; or what to bring and what to buy?

Also, I have a parking pass, but what should I know about getting around the Ballpark area? Anything I should see before/after the game? Place we should grab a celebratory beer (since, of course, the Cards will win)? Oh, and Ted Drewes was a post-game tradition when I was a little girl. Is that still the case?

Lastly, any fans of any team are invited to share their game experiences. What did you do that made it more enjoyable?

A million thanks!

Who's on first?

sixpack — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:03:12 -0800

Did any other leagues in any sport in any country hold an all-star game before Major League Baseball started holding its annual game in 1933? This comprehensive article on the beginnings of the game calls it "the grandfather" of all-star games, but provides no further details. (Though it does mention the first Negro League All-Star Game later that year.) I know the NFL, NHL and NBA games all came later, but what about other sports/leagues?

2009 MLB All-Star Game First Pitch Time?

dtpollitt — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:40:09 -0800

What time will the first pitch of the 2009 MLB All-Star game be? Television broadcasts start at 8 pm EST, but there will be player introductions, ceremonies, and President Obama's toss. I'd like to know the actual time the first pitch of the game will be at. Thanks.

Where can I watch the MLB All-Star Game tomorrow night in Ithaca, New York?

madcaptenor — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:52:17 -0800

Where can I watch the MLB All-Star Game tomorrow night in Ithaca, New York? The Major League Baseball all-star game is tomorrow night. I would like to watch it. Ordinarily this would be easy. What makes this hard, you ask? I'm in Ithaca, New York for a conference at Cornell. I am staying in a Cornell dorm (on North Campus), there is no TV in my room, and there are "TV lounges" but the key I have doesn't unlock them. Presumably they give those of us who are here for conferences different keys than the students who stay in this building during the academic year. And I am carless; presumably someplace in Collegetown would be the closest but my Ithaca geography is not so good. The Internet connection in my room is good, so feel free to make suggestions that take advantage of this.

Bonus points if I won't be surrounded by Mets or Yankees fans. (I'm from Philly, and I went to college in Boston so I absorbed "Yankees suck" pretty quickly.)

What are some good songs about baseball?

nitsuj — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:35:42 -0800

What are some good songs about baseball? Old/new/whatever. Link to YouTube (or other player) if possible!

Caught a grand slam, what to do with it?

PhillC — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 08:55:55 -0800

I was with a couple of friends at the Cardinals and Royals baseball game last night. In the third inning, Ryan Ludwick of the Cardinals hit a grand slam right to us. My friend caught it and has two questions: 1) Would a player typically want a grand slam ball back? And if so, who the hell do we call? 2) And if he doesn't want it, can we get it signed? We have tickets to today's and tomorrow's game too.

You got a permit for that cannon

antonymous — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:44:44 -0800

So a good major league pitcher can hit nearly 100 mph throwing off a mound. But how fast can infielders and outfielders throw? I'm just trying to get a gauge of how much of an advantage the pitching mound is, and what impact fielding has on throwing. I mean, I've seen some wicked throws from right-fielders to get a guy at the plate, and equally fast throws to first on bouncing balls down the third base line. How fast are these throws? If you want bonus points, how does this compare to the speed of a throw from a routine grounder to second?

Baseball Movie

Judyst — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:54:34 -0800

Earlier this year I read a review about a baseball movie. It was a drama and appealed to kids and got a good review. I've searched everywhere, but can't seem to find it. Does anyone know the movie? Obviously I can't remember the title, but I seem to remember it being about a team that had a great season and all it took for that to happen. It might have been a true story and it might have been in Texas.

How do I get one ticket to tomorrow's Yankees' game?

docgonzo — Sat, 23 May 2009 17:03:14 -0800

Best way to get a solo Yankees ticket for tomorrow? I'm in NYC for the weekend and want to go to Sunday's matinee game -- sit in the bleachers, drink beer, etc. What's the best way to get one ticket? (StubHub appears to only sell doubles...) Thanks!

What are those circles in Fenway Park?

bensherman — Mon, 18 May 2009 09:39:13 -0800

In Fenway Park, close to the base lines between home plate and first and third bases, there are two dirt circles in the grass. What are they? Example. They are too close to the baselines to be the on-deck circles, and I have never seen a photo with anyone standing in them.