Red Sox Scandal

Buster Olney reports that the Red Sox violated MLB’s international signing system, and are being severely punished. They will not be allowed to sign players during the new signing period, and:

Because of the violations, the contracts of players involved in the situation have been voided, including outfielders Simon Muzziotti, Albert Guaimaro, pitcher Cesar Gonzalez, and infielder Antonio Pinero.

Wow.

I still think that everyone should be an unrestricted free agent all the time. The more rules MLB passes, the more teams will try to game the system. The Boston front office was trying to be clever, I’ll bet, and now they’ve created a mess. Let the teams and players decide what can be spent, not some competitive balance rules.

Update: I wonder if this is why Dave Dombrowski move was made, and if Ben Cherington stepping down was really a firing?

Update: Here’s more on what happened:

Boston was limited last year to spending a maximum of $300,000 on international prospects after exceeding its spending limit the year before by spending $62 million on Cuban prospect Yoan Moncada. The Red Sox skirted the $300,000 threshold by packaging highly regarded prospects with lesser ones, paying both similarly and allowing the players’ agent to give the lion’s share of the money to the better prospect, according to the source.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/29agTUv

Games of the Day

The Indians go for a franchise record 14th straight win as they send Josh Tomlin against the Blue Jays and Marcus Stroman in a Canada Day afternoon game. The Indians went 4-1 in Tomlin’s starts in June, losing his best pitched game of the month, a 3-2 fall to the Royals on 6/14. Stroman’s 5.33 ERA is a bit of a disappointment, given his strong return at the end of 2015. His low K rate appears to be leading to a ton of hits, especially with runners in scoring position. Opponents are hitting .347/.432/.495 in that situation.

The Cubs and Mets continue their series with Jason Hammel battling Jacob deGrom. Hammel, at seasonal age 33, is posting the best single season ERA of his career, about 1.8 runs lower than his MLB average. In a year when home runs are booming, he cut his rate. The Mets scored 0 or 1 run in each of deGrom’s five June starts, with the only win coming when deGrom threw eight shutout innings his last time out.

Enjoy!

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/297SW1F

Beat the Streak Picks

Here are the top picks my programs produced for use in Beat the Streak. This post mostly explains the ideas behind the calculations. In addition, this post shows tests on the Neural Network (NN). This post discusses an NN that includes the ballpark.

First, the Log5 Method picks:

0.325 — Daniel Murphy batting against Anthony DeSclafani
0.322 — Jose Altuve batting against Miguel A Gonzalez
0.312 — Danny Valencia batting against Jeff Locke
0.309 — Xander Bogaerts batting against Jhoulys Chacin
0.306 — Paulo Orlando batting against Jeremy Hellickson
0.303 — Wilson Ramos batting against Anthony DeSclafani
0.303 — Freddie Freeman batting against Justin Nicolino
0.297 — Francisco Lindor batting against Marcus Stroman
0.295 — Starling Marte batting against Sonny Gray
0.295 — Aledmys Diaz batting against Matt Garza
0.295 — Jeff Francoeur batting against Justin Nicolino
0.295 — Buster Posey batting against Shelby Miller
0.295 — Angel Pagan batting against Shelby Miller
0.295 — Ryan Braun batting against Jaime Garcia
0.295 — Chase D’Arnaud batting against Justin Nicolino

The list is a bit long, since a number of players work out to a .295 probability of a hit in a plate appearance. I’d be careful about picking a batter against Shelby Miller since he is now healthy.

The NN produces this top ten list:

0.322, 0.763 — Jose Altuve batting against Miguel A Gonzalez.
0.325, 0.749 — Daniel Murphy batting against Anthony DeSclafani.
0.309, 0.743 — Xander Bogaerts batting against Jhoulys Chacin.
0.290, 0.735 — Eduardo Nunez batting against Martin Perez.
0.251, 0.735 — Ben Revere batting against Anthony DeSclafani.
0.312, 0.732 — Danny Valencia batting against Jeff Locke.
0.297, 0.732 — Francisco Lindor batting against Marcus Stroman.
0.285, 0.726 — Stephen Piscotty batting against Matt Garza.
0.295, 0.726 — Buster Posey batting against Shelby Miller.
0.284, 0.725 — Robinson Cano batting against Kevin Gausman.

It’s the usual suspects, with the NN agreeing ton the top three, but in a different order.

The NN that considers parks changes the list like this:

0.322, 0.721 — Jose Altuve batting against Miguel A Gonzalez.
0.325, 0.708 — Daniel Murphy batting against Anthony DeSclafani.
0.309, 0.707 — Xander Bogaerts batting against Jhoulys Chacin.
0.290, 0.701 — Eduardo Nunez batting against Martin Perez.
0.251, 0.696 — Ben Revere batting against Anthony DeSclafani.
0.312, 0.693 — Danny Valencia batting against Jeff Locke.
0.297, 0.693 — Francisco Lindor batting against Marcus Stroman.
0.295, 0.691 — Buster Posey batting against Shelby Miller.
0.285, 0.689 — Stephen Piscotty batting against Matt Garza.
0.290, 0.689 — Adrian Beltre batting against Ervin Santana.

Buster Posey gets a boost, and Adrian Beltre replaces Robinson Cano in the tenth slot. Altuve and Murphy are the consensus picks. As always, your pick will not get a hit about 25% of the time. Good luck!

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/29xbR2T

Players of the Month

June produced some gaudy on-base and slugging percentages, with the top four players in OBP doing it all. Jose Altuve hit .420/.492/.620, his OBP the highest in the majors. Matt Carpenter missed first by a hair, with a .349/.491/.633 slash line. Altuve collected more hits, but Carpenter walked more with more power. Josh Donaldson provided even more power with a .368/.487/.705 slash line, hitting six doubles and six home runs, adding four triples as well! The four triples are 1/3 of his career total. Finally, Anthony Rizzo hit for even more power, with a .378/.467/.744 slash line, smashing nine doubles and eight home runs.

Brandon Moss, just at the edge of qualifying, slugged .792 to lead the month, but Wil Myers slugged .765 with 10 doubles and 11 home runs while playing in 26 games. He also drove in 33 runs, the most in the majors, while scoring 25. Adam Jones scored 30 runs to lead the majors, scoring 11 of those on his own home runs. In a big month for home runs, the leaders hit 11, including Edwin Encarnacion.

This is a very tough choice. Altuve hit .420, and hitting .400 for a month is a great feat. Donaldson hit for more power, and scored more runs and drove in more runs than Altuve. Wil Myers was a machine playing in what used to be a tough hitters park. In the end, I have to go with Donaldson, with the best balance of all the talents you want to see in a player. Josh Donaldson is the Baseball Musings Offensive Player of the Month for June 2016.

On the pitching side, Michael Fulmer posted a 0.61 ERA, 0.7 runs better than anyone else in the majors. That might be enough in most months to give him the award. There are some caveats there, however. His inning total was low, 29 1/3 pitched, and his strikeout and walks rates were not outstanding. It terms of three-true outcomes, Jose Fernandez takes the cake with 14 K/ 1.67 BB/ 0.33 HR per nine innings. Again, however, that’s just in 27 innings pitched. Max Scherzer, with a 41 1/3 innings and a 12.63/1.52/1.09 line and a 1.96 ERA looks like a better candidate.

Danny Salazar won all five of his starts while posting a 1.91 ERA. He did walk 15 batters in 33 innings, and 33 innings isn’t all that much. Workhorse Jon Lester went 4-0 in six starts with a 1.41 ERA, pitching 44 2/3 innings.

I like Lester’s innings and ERA, I like Scherzer’s innings and three-true outcomes. In the end, however, my awards are about results, and the innings and ERA give Lester the edge. Jon Lester is the Baseball Musings Pitcher of the Month for June 2016.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/299ES6e

June Home Run Total

The eleven major league games on Thursday generated 28 home runs, bringing the total for the month to 1012. That is the most ever in the month of June and the third most for any month. It is also only the third month to crack 1000 HR. Despite being a short month, June holds places three, four, and five in the list. June 2001 generated 995 homers, and June 2000 generated 982. I suspect that is due to a combination of warm weather and the players not quite being worn out from the season long marathon yet.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2959Nxk

Friday Update

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/29glOnW

WIP Warrior Priest: Part 2

A bit more progress on the priest this week, including the first look at a base for him...

Thanks to the advice of my fellow bloggers, I worked the flesh tones and I think the change was fairly dramatic, I'm much happier with where this is going now..

Really digging the cold shadows now, i think it'll work nicely with the plans I have for the base.. 

The base I've been planning strong light effects from the torch, but that'll probably come much later, for now I've just been trying to get some basic colours in. Looking for a cold lit night feel..

 

I think next steps from here is to add some water effects to the base and work the cloth a bit on the priest. I have an idea that yellow might look better instead of red, what do you think?

from Noobs and their paintbrush http://ift.tt/299VSfI