Lookout Landing: FanPosts

3/14/10 Offtop - Visual Awesomeness!

2010-03-14T16:55:39Z

My first Offtop! And somehow its not going to be a gif dump.

Since the Oscars there has been a lot of movie debat which led to some tech talk so I just wanted to share this.

Its a real interesting look on how Color is assisting the movies storyline.

Normal discussions topics are permitted but I also want to know - What are some of your favorite cinematography moments in film? Favorite Cinematographers? Favorite Photographs? Favorite Photographers?

3/10/10 Offtop of Woohoo new things

2010-03-11T02:39:02Z

New OT, frankly because that other one was getting really full plus I wanted to post my first OT plus I just bought a new cell phone because my screen had cracked on my current one. I bought a white MyTouch 3G which comes with the 3.5mm headphone jack and the Swype keyboard. I love new things because the first couple of days are full of the joys of figuring out everything in it. Ah, the joy of discovery. Swype seems like that it will be pretty awesome to use and hopefully once I get used to it I will be able to type at/above the 40 word a minute benchmark.

What are some recommended Android apps? iMusic and Ringdroid were both recommended by T-Mobile.

So what has been your favorite major purchase? What has been your most disappointing major purchase?

Also, new poll.

Poll

Which type of phone do you have/want?

The Banner Unveiled

2010-03-10T16:43:49Z

The banner is complete and it looks great! There is no way this thing will be missed as it is very large at 10' by 2.5'. The plan as of now is to carry it when we do our march to the game at noon on Opening Day, so if anyone wants to join us for that it is my understanding that we are meeting at Occidental Park. Royalcurve can correct me if I am wrong on that.

Between Brett, myself and the other guys I share seats with I think we can get this up at almost every game this season. It is a high quality vinyl sign so even with it being taken down and stowed every game I still think it should survive the whole season.

As I mentioned before, I will be offering two seats to a game behind the sign to Royalcurve, pdb, okdan and Englishmariner for their work in getting this done. If Englishmariner cannot make it to Seattle this year we will hook him up some other time. Between the sign costs and my cost for the seats we fell a little short with our funds so I will cover the difference, but sadly no cash will be going to sexy people from this.

I think that is it. I for one cannot wait for the damn season to start. Go M's and GMZ!

Fullscreen MLB.TV on Dual Screen Setups

2010-03-09T19:21:53Z

Hat tip to Faux for pointing me out to a link that got me started on the right path.

For those of you who have used MLB.TV (or any other Flash-based web video playback) and have a dual screen monitor setup have likely run into a very annoying problem. Whenever you have your video stream set to full screen and you navigate to work on your second screen, MLB.TV loses its focus and collapses back to the smaller window. This is a function of Flash's default code. To get around this problem, you can easily tweak the default behavior.

For 32-bit Windows XP and Windows 7 users, the solution is simple. Simply download FlashHacker and run it on your PC.

If you're running on a 64-bit operating system, there are a few more steps that are required. Not to worry, it's still fairly straightforward.

Uninstall Flash
Install a fresh copy of Flash
Download this modified .dll file
Close your web browser
Navigate to C:\windows\sysWOW64\Macromed\Flash
Replace "NPSWF32.dll" with the modified file you just downloaded

You should be able to launch an MLB.TV stream in fullscreen (or any Flash video) and work on your second screen without it minimizing anymore.

Note: For 64-bit users, you may not need to do steps 1 and 2. I couldn't get it to work until I installed a clean copy of Flash, but that may just be me.

Note 2: I've tested this with both Windows XP and Windows 7. The procedure for Windows Vista should be identical.

Texas Mariners Fans

2010-03-09T16:45:07Z

Hello!

My name is James and I have been a longtime lurker, having enjoyed this community from afar for a few years now.

I moved to Dallas, TX after last fall after eight years in Seattle. The Ms are playing opening weekend against the Rangers (April 9th, 10th and 11th), and if anyone is in the DFW area during that weekend, or if there are any other Texas-area Mariners fans, let me know! I'd love to go to a game.

Thanks,

James

A Thought on Baseball Management and Behavioral Economics

2010-03-08T19:10:27Z

This is a thought per two articles I've read recently. The first was Dave Cameron on Fangraphs asking where Sabermetrics should go next. The other was Larry Stone's interview of Don Wakamatsu in the Maple Street Annual.

Specifically Wakamatsu said that part of why he bunts is, "everyone on the bench has to get off their seat when a guy [bunts]. That's the dynamic that's not in the numbers." My initial instinct was to dismiss this sort of thing as silliness. Whether or not you jumped out of your seat in the previous inning should have no bearing on your performance going forward. But then later, Wakamatsu said when referring to player platoons, that a sense of fairness comes into play. And this made me think of managerial actions through the lens of behavioral economics.

Specifically I thought of the dictator game which essentially looks at how people respond to being given a portion of a fixed allocation of resources. In the game there is a fixed amount of resources (say, 100 dollars) and 2 players (players A and B). Player A allocates themselves a portion of the resources leaving the remainder for Player B. Player B then gets to accept the allocation given to them, or reject it and both players wind up with nothing. In a perfectly rational world Player B would accept any non-zero number; they would be getting more than the nothing they had initially. However, in experimental settings, the threshold for rejection was far higher than zero (usually in the 25-30% range). Basically what this shows is that we’re biased against decisions we perceive as unfair, and this bias will lead us to act in ways that are detrimental to our own performance.

Now this game doesn’t correlate perfectly to divvying up at bats in a platoon setting, specifically the idea of rejection and the consequences of rejection are quite different, but I think that one could model a game such as this to investigate the psychological aspects of baseball more deeply. How would you measure managerial trust? I’m not sure. But I bet you could come closer to quantifying its value.

Part of the appeal of baseball to the statistically inclined part of my brain is that it is a deeply controlled game. Each interaction is both able to be quantified and discrete (pitcher/hitter matchup, ball in play, baserunning decisions). Also, the end goal is very simple: win. How do you win? Score more runs than your opponent. Runs and run prevention are perfect measures of utility. Every action on the field has a definitive measure of utility.

But with all of that said, baseball players, like all people are irrational. Perhaps more so. And this is where Dave’s article comes into play. I think there are two related questions that haven’t really been sufficiently addressed in a scientific way: how do you motivate players to behave in a utility maximizing fashion (get them to want to bunt only when bunting makes sense statistically), and if some of those techniques involve in-game strategies that do not maximize expected run value, are there times when those seemingly irrational strategies are actually preferable? Maybe the motivational force of a borderline bunting decision actually has sufficient value in player performance to serve as a rational decision in an irrational world. I don't know, but I bet we could find these answers.

Note: It’s very possible that what this post is about has been addressed elsewhere. I just haven’t seen it much in the SABR community, so I figured I might as well write this up. Also, I haven't posted a FanPost before... hopefully this comes out okay.

3/8/10 OFFTOP of Oscar annoyances

2010-03-08T16:14:07Z

I am posting this OT because, well, the other one was too far down the page and I have grown tired of having to scroll down to find it. There. I said it.

ANYWAYS - I will be the first to admit, I didn't watch the Oscars last night. Although, judging by the running commentary in the previous OTFPOTD, there were quite a few who did. Here is what I know - The Hurt Locker beat Furn Gully in Space (told my fiancee that this morning, she asked "What's the Hurt Locker?" So that was interesting..) and Sandra Bullock won for something. That in and of itself is worthy of a "stop the presses" moment, apparently.

But hey, she was hot in Speed!

Who watched the Oscars? What are your gripes?

Finally, a couple more things. People in Seattle know how to drive in the rain - that is a simple fact. Another simple fact? Arizonans cannot. Also, Battlefield Bad Company 2 - great game, or shitty game? Because in my time with it, I am leaning towards the latter.

As per the request on the last thread, OT poll time!

Poll

People who are horrible drivers are the most annoying when...

Y! Fantasy Baseball League Openings

2010-03-08T02:33:50Z

Several buddies and I started a Yahoo fantasy BB league last year and we happen to have some managers that decided not to register for this season. I'd like to offer those spots to my fellow LLer's.

Here's the specifics---

League Name: Water

Password: baseball

Hitting cats: AB, R, H, 2B, 3B, HR, RBI, SB, BB, AVG, OPS

Pitching cats: IP, W, CG, SV, ER, K, HLD, ERA, QS

Right now the draft is scheduled for this Thursday (the 11th) at 8pm, but that's fluid depending on everyone's schedules and availability.

Opening Day meetup?

2010-03-07T02:34:20Z

I am planning on being at the Elysian Fields across from Qwest at noon on Opening Day to get some less expensive beers in before fighting the crowds at the Safe. They have food there, and people under 21 are allowed in before 9pm (I believe, but this is definitely something I will be checking on for sure), and I have the day off, so why the hell not? Just wondering how many people are going to Opening Day, and how many of you might be interested in such a thing? Hmmmm?

EDIT: Yes, I am thinking about it this early. I know maybe a lot of people aren't sure if they can go, but I wanted to toss the idea out there, just in case.

Women in Professional Baseball

2010-03-07T00:26:12Z

By now we've all heard of 18 year-old Japanese knuckleballer Eri Yoshida, particularly after her recent publicity push which included a visit to Florida to throw a few pitches with Tim Wakefield. There have been exclusive women's leagues in the past (even if Rosie O'Donnell never got to play), and some of us may even know about the short minor league career of Alta Weiss in the 1910s and 1920s.

I always thought a woman with the will and physical gifts would find her way into professional baseball, possibly in the model of an Ichiro/Figgins type player, probably in the infield, or perhaps a finesse pitcher (though a knuckleballer makes even more sense).

The question that doesn't need to be asked, can Eri Yoshida make it in the NPB or MLB, and if not her, how soon can it happen?

First Cactus Game with a Full M's Lineup IN PROGRESS (12:05 PST)

2010-03-05T20:36:14Z

Since I have no way of getting updates beyond the box score, I thought I'd throw this up so people could follow the GTE and get a reasonably good idea of the game.

Here's Jay's game thread post on USSM, and here's the MLB.com live-ish box score as well.

Also, despite his deep, abiding attachment to the French Revolution (he often privately expressed wild, enthralled feelings about the French Revolution even after the Terror and the rise of the Directory), nothing alarmed Thomas Jefferson more than the prospect of France's repossession of the Louisiana Territory during the first term of his presidency. Jefferson called the Louisiana Territory "The one single spot on the globe, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy." New Orleans was the port through which the produce of almost half of America's population flowed.

Although he probably hated the British more than any other prominent public figure of his time, Thomas Jefferson, in a message meant to reach French ears, even told the American diplomat Robert Livingston: "The day that France takes the possession of New Orleans seals the union of two nations who, in conjunction, can maintain exclusive possession of the ocean. From that moment, we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation."

Opening Day in Oakland

2010-03-05T16:40:50Z

So I'm thinking about heading down to the Bay Area for Opening Day this year to try and catch the first couple M's games of the season. Any Bay Area-based Mariners fans planning on being there? What about folks from up here?

I'll probably be going to at least the games on the 5th, 6th, and 7th...maybe the day game on the 8th as well. I'm trying to talk a buddy of mine into heading down with me, but either way it would be great to have some fellow Mariner fans to hang out with...

M's exhibition games on 1080 AM in PDX

2010-03-05T06:49:48Z

On Wednesday I got antsy wanting to listen to the M's on the radio, and I saw that they were in fact being broadcast on 710 in Seattle, so I called 1080 the Fan and left a message with their programing director asking if they will ever get around to putting Spring Training on the air down here in Portland.

Today I got a call back from Jeff Austin, the programing director at 1080, and he let me know that they will in fact be carrying ten Spring Training exhibition games this March. They just put the ink to the contract today for carrying the Mariners on 1080 and sometimes 910 AM for the regular season, as well as the ten Spring Training games. Their first broadcast in Portland will be next Friday the 12th.

Awesome Tool, and Beltre in Fenway

2010-03-04T00:33:16Z

So thanks to The Book Blog I recently discovered this neat site that lets you superimpose BIP data from one player/pitcher/park onto another. Just for fun I superimposed all of Beltre's SAFECO balls in play onto Fenway to check out the results, which, unless the data is wrong, is somewhat surprising:

According to this chart, Belre would have had approxmately 5 doubles and 1 flyout turn into home runs in Fenway last year, which is much less than what I expected. Now obviously this doesn't take into consideration weather, how a batter changes, his approach, how the Green Monster effects balls, etc., etc. But I still found it interesting.

P.S. - The same analysis on Washburn says that about 10 of his doubles and 5 of his flyouts at SAFECO would've been home runs in Fenway. Nice!

Listening to first ST game open thread

2010-03-03T20:34:20Z

Doug Fister. Smoky Lincecum.

MLB.tv has audio, but why no video? Why do you constantly torture me with mediocrity, MLB.tv?

Niehaus is already confused, saying warning track when he means outfield wall.

Ichiro and Figgins both come around to score on Lincecum in the 1st inning.

Niehaus says nobody can figure out where Sandoval got his nickname. I always thought it was because he's fat like a panda.

Hopefully that's enough words for a fanpost.

OT of Uninspiration. 3/2/2010

2010-03-02T16:39:30Z

Or Lack of Imagination, it's a distant cousin of underwhelmed only for... a lack of creativity. Not the word I'd like to use but apparently my internal thesaurus can't be bothered today

Favorite comedy routines. No Cure For Cancer, Denis Leary. Bought this one on tape several times, and they all sucked. Rote delivery, no punch, the only thing missing was a laugh track. Illegally downloaded it and found paradise, it was an early live version. Bootleg or something, knocked it right out of the park. Elvis "Gimme a cheeseburger and a blow job, hubba hubba hubba", tracheotomy man, throwing styrofoam cups out the window of an 1968 El Dorado, it was all in there. (NSFW!) But no link, I can't find a copy online that I really enjoy.

Patton Oswalt, the failure pile in a sadness bowl is classic (lunch gun was used in a thread once). My personal favorite is Black Angus Steak routine "every time you eat a steak a hippies hacky sack goes in the sewer". "53 BACON CHEESE BOMBS! THEN BEND OVER DAISY MAY 'CAUSE HERE COMES THE GRAVY PIPE" Fantastic line! (NSFW?)

Bill Cosby: Wonderfulness. This entire album is brilliant, Chicken Heart bit takes the cake (for me). His early stuff was magic, especially for working 'clean'. Found it on youtube, it's on CD and I'd recommend buying it. My grandparents had the original on vinyl growing up, wonder if that's worth anything now. "SNAKES!... SNAKES!... I'M GONNA STICK MY TOE OUT, IF YOU'RE THERE GIVE IT A LITTLE SNAKEY LICK! LICKA LICKA LICKA!" Part I, Part II.

Any favorite comedians or bits to share? Also the baby photos were hilarious, Activision is manned by evil people, and would using the jump make these work better for mobile users, or users in general?

Poll

Tim's Cascade Chips. Salt and Pepper vs. Jalapeno

Anybody have any interest in a Lookout Landing Fantasy baseball league?

2010-03-02T07:09:33Z

Me and a couple of my friends were setting up a head to head auction league when we realized that we don't know very many baseball fans (or possibly that we don't have very many friends, we're not sure which). Anyways, we've got this league all set up and we were thinking it'd be cool to make it a Lookout Landing fan league so I thought I'd see if anybody here wanted to join. If so, leave a comment with your email address and I'll send you an invite.

Simple Adjustment of Our Pitching Staff for Team Defense

2010-03-02T03:13:31Z

There are many ways to slice the same pie. I was playing around on Fangraphs when I should have been working or sleeping and eventually had a bunch of numbers and an idea. Its an idea which I'm sure has been done before but I think its useful just because I think it will show how much of an impact defense can have on a pitcher's stats.

The basics behind the idea is that we know a pitcher's R/9 which is easy and straightforward. We also know how valuable our infield defense and outfield defense is. Finally, we know the batted ball profile of each pitcher. Using the team defense numbers and the batted ball profiles we can adjust a pitcher's R/9 to make it defense neutral. Its simple and doesn't require DIPS theory like most other stats. I am about 99% sure I have seen this done before but I was curious and went ahead and calculated the Mariners adjusted R/9 (I'm gonna call it xR/9).

Working from numbers from Fangraphs, I went through some simple math and divided up the defensive impact. I'll try to just state what I did right here. If its boring, skip it and go to the stuff later on.

From Fangraphs I was able to compute UZR runs per BIP for the OF and IF. The Mariners OF was +62.1 runs and IF was +23.4 runs or 0.036 runs/BIP and 0.013 runs/BIP. Then I could just look at how many GB and FB were allowed by each pitcher to figure out how to divide up the defensive contribution. The final equation looked something like this:

xR/9 = 9*(Runs Allowed - xFB - xGB)/IP

xFB = (FB BIP) * (team OF UZR / team FB BIP) [runs saved on flyballs by defense]

xGB = (GB BIP) * (team IF UZR / team GB BIP) [runs saved on groundballs by defense]

Its pretty simple. Basically all we are doing here is saying that a pitcher benefits from a defense based on how many balls in play he allows and where these balls in play go. I ignored line drives basically because it was hard and not totally clear how to treat them. Lets say I'm ignoring line drives because they usually go for hits even for good defenses (this might be false).

The other simple thing I tried was regressing each player's HR/FB numbers to the team average. Then I could use the linear weights value for a home run to correct the pitcher's total runs allowed for the number of home runs they should have allowed. Since I lack much creativity, I'm going to call this xR*/9. I don't want to say xR/9 is equivent to FIP but if xR/9 was FIP then xR*/9 is like xFIP.

Now to the results.

The Mariners benefited from some great defense last year. The Mariners outfielders were freaking amazing though being 62.1 runs above average compared to the Mariners infielders who were more good than divine at +23.4 runs. The question is how much did this defense help our pitchers' numbers and who did it help the most. If the defense helped all pitchers equally, each pitcher should see their R/9 decrease by 0.53 runs (11%). We know that defense doesn't benefit all pitchers equally though because some pitchers limit balls in play and others don't. Obviously Felix Hernandez with high strikeout and groundball rates will benefit less than Jarrod Washburn with low strikeouts, walks and high flyball totals.

I know its a big chart so I also posted a shortened chart and graph below to try to pick out the major pitchers you are probably interested in. I just wanted to point out the column labeled "tdiff" is how the pitcher's xR/9-R/9 differs relative to the team average.

The major thing I think jumps out to me is that almost all pitchers affected relatively evenly by a good defense. Although Washburn is a contact hitter and others aren't they all roughly benefit by around the same amount. Only looking at the major pitchers on the team, Ryan Rowland-Smith appears to have been helped the most and either Felix Hernandez or Erik Bedard were helped the least by the defense.

I think I like this approach of looking at how defense affects a pitcher's R/9 because its fairly simple although it definitely isn't as useful as metrics like FIP. I think its mostly just an interesting way to quantify how much defense can help different types of pitchers. If you would have asked me, I would have guessed Washburn would have been helped much more than Felix but its really only a tenth of a run between the two.

USA vs. Canada Gold Medal Match Open Thread

2010-02-28T18:30:09Z

By virtue of an unbeaten tournament record the U.S. is the designated home team in today's Olympic Hockey match, giving them the option to wear their circa-1960 throwback uniforms. That is where the advantage ends for the American side. This battle will be waged deep in funny-accented enemy territory. Our intrepid wanderers Matthew and Jeff are presumably experiencing their own drunken Miracle on Ice and are compelled to provide a full report whence they return from the not-so-frozen North.

United States vs. Canada, 12:15 PM Pacific, NBC. Line: Canada -1. Over/under: 5½.
All-time Gold Medal match records: Canada 7-4, USA 2-7. Head-to-Head in Gold Medal matches: Canada 5-1.
Last Olympic Hockey Gold Medal: Canada 2002 (Salt Lake City), USA 1980 (Lake Placid).

The U.S. has clinched the overall medal count victory in these Olympics, while Canada has won the most gold medals. The host country's claim to "Own the Podium" will ring hollow for Canucks and Québécois alike if the Americans beat them out of hockey gold on their own ice. This is for all the Vancouver 2010 marbles.

My contribution may at some point be reduced to all-caps incoherence and/or spilling beer on the keyboard.

Theo sounds like Jack in a confiding mood

2010-02-26T21:29:18Z

I ran across this link to an interview with Theo Epstein, and I'm still getting used to this strange resulting feeling. Not so long ago I would have been frustrated by the contrast in flexibility and commonsense that it presented with our own asshat operation. Instead, the line of thinking feels vaguely familiar.

The big contrast for me is a surprising level of candor on Epstein's part. Some of the questions try to get at team sore spots or probe relationships with players, and his answers are forthright while still being respectful of everyone who has played for him. The amazing thing is that he's so candid when he has to deal with that breathless pack of Soxnuts.

Jack Z has generally struck me as being pretty careful not to tip his hand too much in operations. I certainly respect that, but I hope over time he grants us a little better window into his mindset. Imagine getting a peek at his thought process in working Yuni out the door!

Added note: I'm curious about the proprietary fielding evaluation system they talk about. I assume it's more than simply handling the public data in a different way. It's conceivable that they'd have dedicated personnel or equipment for recording batted-ball types and zones. It'd be great to be able to compare the systems. Who else besides Ellsbury would turn up contrasting results?