Last Sunday, Evan Longoria and B.J Upton got into an argument over B.J. taking his time chasing down a ball hit to the wall. This may seem like a small spat between teammates, but may have an unseen racial impact with people that saw it.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100627&content_id=11667090&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

First we will need to take a step back and look at how the brain works. In the book “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell, he states:

“First of all, we have our conscious attitudes. This is what we choose to believe. These are our stated values, which we use to direct our behavior deliberately.....our second level of attitude, our racial attitude on an unconscious level, the immediate, automatic associations that tumble out before we have time to think. We don't deliberately choose our unconscious attitudes”

Observers of the confrontation between Longoria and Upton probably didn't even notice the race of the players, but our subconscious mind is being told something else. It is see the black player (Upton) as lazy and the white player (Longoria) as the leader and putting the black player in his place.

The racial under tone is not limited to just the Longoria-Upton argument. I know there are plenty of examples that contradict the this example, but are those players making the headlines that we read everyday. Milton Bradley is a trouble maker. David Eckstein is a gritty veterans. Chris Brown is a malingerer. Pete Rose is Charlie Hustle

In most of our normal daily activities, the racist subconscious is a non factor, but as Malcolm Gladwell states:

“It's a powerful predictor of how we act in certain kinds of spontaneous situations.”

The people that have a bunch of spontaneous situations during a game that witness the behavior are the players, managers and umpires. The umpire could have seen the flare up in the Rays dugout on Sunday and he has to make a call on a close play and his mind has to make a decision between a white catcher and a black base runner.

I am not sure if there is a workable solution to this problem. As Galdwell states:

It [un-biased associations] requires that you change your life so that you are exposed to minorities on a regular basis and become comfortable with them and familiar with the best of their culture, so that when you want to meet, hire, date, or talk with a member of a minority, you aren't betrayed by your hesitation and discomfort

The media will not change what they report on, so what we see, hear and read will always be out of our control. I think the best way to fight this issue as fans is to understand the what is going on our subconscious mind and look in our personal lives for chances to train our brain differently.

Status of Blog

I have not been able to keep up linking my posts and have taken on writing at Driveline Mechanics also. To see my current work, go either:

beyondtheboxscore.com

Drivelinemechanics.com

Update of Posts - 5/22

I looked at players ont he KC A's and Royals at:

Link

Average and replacement level HOFers using WAR:

Link

Is Farnsworth's nibbling leading to better results:

Link

Outfield UZR Aging Patterns

Link

Recent entries to the 300 win Club

Link

Couple of recent articles at BtB since 5/18

Members of the 500 Home Run Club Not In The Hall Of Fame

Post-Season Comparison - Is it Tougher to Win the Super Bowl or Make it to the Final Four?

Joined Beyond the Boxscore

I have joined the group over at Beyond the Boxscore and plan on posting most of my new work there. If any article gets published, I will go ahead and link them here. For now I have two new pieces

A Look a Joakim Soria is the same Pitcher this compared to last.

The All Jeff Team

Analysis of the FSU college baseball team

Pitching Mound Construction Leading to Higher Scoring at Texas?

Gil Meche, before his last start in Kansas City, was asked about his last start at Texas and here is his response:

"The reason I was stiff," Meche said, "is the mound (in Texas) was so flat. From the first pitch in warm-ups, I knew I was going to have to battle.

"With a flat mound, I don’t know if it’s the way my hips move or the way I stride out, but it affects something. That’s why I like steep mounds. I feel like I can generate more power instead of having my leg land too early and me having to generate power with my arm. That’s the only problem I had. That’s why I threw so many off-speed pitches."

This got me thinking about some work I did previously on individual park factors where I noted Rangers Ballpark in Arlington's official park factor was ~1.05, but it was predicted to be ~1.01. It has been stated that the stadium funnels the air to flow to center field was causing this discrepancy, but there seem to be another factor.

I decided to see if there was any truth to what Gil was talking about. For a initial look to see if there is anything to the accusation, I examined the average and maximum speeds of the opposing starting pitcher's four seem fastball that have pitched so far at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington in 2009. I limited the comparison games to those that happened as close possible to the start at Arlington, in case there was an injury to the pitcher. Also, I wanted to take the Texas pitcher's out of the study because they will be used to the supposedly smaller mound (I will look at Texas's pitchers as I get the time to see how they actually compare). There have been 9 pitchers so far that meet this criteria and here are their numbers:

			Game before Texas		Game at Texas		Game after Texas		Start before Texas		Start after Texas
Date	Team	Starting Pitcher	Average Speed	Max Speed	Average Speed	Max Speed	Average Speed	Max Speed	Difference in Average Speed	Difference in Max Speed	Difference in Average Speed	Difference in Max Speed
Mon, Apr 6	Cleveland	Lee	--	--	89.74	91.6	90.65	92.5	--	--	0.91	0.9
Wed, Apr 8	Cleveland	F Carmona	--	--	92.01	94.1	91.35	93.9	--	--	-0.66	-0.2
Thu, Apr 9	Cleveland	C Pavano	--	--	87.73	89	90.34	93.2	--	--	2.61	4.2
Mon, Apr 13	Baltimore	K Uehara	87.83	89.4	85.78	87.8	87.88	89.4	2.05	1.6	2.1	1.6
Tue, Apr 14	Baltimore	A Simon	92.97	95.3	89.93	91.8	--	--	3.04	3.5	--	--
Wed, Apr 15	Baltimore	M Hendrickson	87.16	88.7	86.24	88.7	86.54	88.1	0.92	0	0.3	-0.6
Fri, Apr 17	Kansas City	Meche	91.32	94.6	89.79	92.4	91.96	94	1.53	2.2	2.17	1.6
Sat, Apr 18	Kansas City	Greinke	92.93	95.6	92	94.7	94.17	97	0.93	0.9	2.17	2.3
Sun, Apr 19	Kansas City	Davies	92.12	94.2	90.62	92.3	90.9	92.9	1.5	1.9	0.28	0.6
		Average Values =	90.72	92.97	89.26	91.35	90.45	92.64	1.66	1.68	1.28	1.36

Just using this small sample size, it can be seen that there seem to be a little truth to ability of pitchers to throw their fastest stuff at Texas. Fausto Carmona is the only pitcher that has thrown faster in a start before or after going Texas compared to the start at Texas. In the other 14 cases the pitcher through slower in Texas by ~1.5 mph.

These numbers have peaked my interest enough that I will continue to update the preceding data as the season continues, expanding it to the Texas pitchers and look back at 2007 and 2008 data with pitch F/X to see if the smaller mound is linked to higher than expected scoring at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.

Ron Mahay - Analysis Before and After his Trip to the DL

In 2008 left hander Ron Mahay, just off signing a 2 year, 8 million dollar deal with the Royals, seemed to cruising through the season and helping the Royals solidify their bullpen. On August 15, he had an ERA of 2.91 and help make the pen at Kansas City one of the leagues strongest by joining Ramon Ramirez, Leo Nunez and Joakim Soria. On August 22, Ron was retroactively placed on the 15 DL and since that point, his results have not been the same. Ron was place on the disabled list for “plantar fasciitis in his left foot”. Plantar fasciitis is condition in the foot caused by excessive to the supports to the arches of your feet. Pain is felt in the heel of his plant foot.

After looking at Ron's numbers it seems like injury happened ~5 starts earlier. Here are Ron's stats for the 5 appearances before he went on the DL, the 11 appearances before those 5 and the 11 appearances he has had since coming off the DL.

Games Before DL Stint	ERA	FIP	WHIP	KK/9
6 to 16 before	0.73	2.07	0.97	9.44
5 before	31.3	21.03	4.35	7.83
11 after	12.68	6.86	2.96	11.41

Ron was rolling right along until his foot began to bother him an then his numbers just started going through the roof. After the surgery his numbers came down a little, but they still haven't been very good. The interesting stat is that he has been able to strikeout more batters since he came off the DL.

I wanted to see how the injury effects his pitch speed and movement. Looking at the same three time periods using Pitch F/X data, some some interesting results materialize on his 3 main pitches: Change up (CH), Slider (SL) and Fastball (FF)

Type of Pitch	Games Before DL Stint	Start Speed	End Speed	Break Angle	Break Length
CH	6 to 16 before	83.97	77.58	-29.21	6.64
CH	5 before	82.52	76.52	-28.16	7.02
CH	11 after	83.7	77.42	-27.33	7.04
SL	6 to 16 before	82.83	76.81	-3.74	7.47
SL	5 before	81.33	75.66	-1.4	8.04
SL	11 after	81.94	76.31	9.81	4.2
FF	6 to 16 before	90.58	83.1	-39.23	3.93
FF	5 before	90.62	83.27	-36.01	3.82
FF	11 after	90.07	82.57	-32.95	4.07

Lets look at the changes to each pitch type:

• Change-up – Right before going on the DL, his change-up dropped by ~1.5 mph and had more of break (mainly do to more time to break before crossing the plate). Since the injury, he has not gotten all his speed back on his change to pre injury level
  


• Slider – Like the change-up, his slider lost significant velocity before going on the DL and he has gained some, but not all of it back. More significantly, since going on the DL, his slider has just half the break while having a different break angle.
  


• Fastball (4 finger) – It lost some velocity since he came off the DL, but it hasn't changed too much otherwise.
  

As a whole each pitch is just not as sharp as it was before he was hurt. Let's see what the results were for when each type of pitch was hit into play.

	Change ups			Fastballs			Sliders
Games Before DL Stint	Out	Safe	% outs	Out	Safe	% outs	Out	Safe	% outs
6 to 16 before	4	3	0.57	15	5	0.75	6	0	1
5 before	1	1	0.5	4	6	0.4	3	0	1
11 after	3	3	0.5	8	11	0.42	1	3	0.25

The loss in overall speed (and slider break distance) has led to more balls hit into play to be hits, especially for his fastball and slider. Though this is a small sample size, but he just not being very effective. In Ron's last two appearance, Trey Hillman him in the eight inning and Ron has allowed the tying or go ahead run to score. Ron just not the same pitcher he was in the first 2/3s of 2008, but Trey keeps using him as if he was the same pitcher.