I was going to write up a semi-long (for me) recap of the Rockies-Yankees game on TBS, which was actually pretty interesting. But then I saw that wonderful post by meat and decided I don't want to take up too much space with either sincere Twins talk (in brief: we suck) or sarcastic real-baseball-teams talk. Go read that recipe just below here and commence salivating instead.
Hitter and Pitcher of the Week: Sesame Pork Roast
Weather: 67 degrees, cloudy
Wind: 12 mph, out to center
Time: 2:28
Attendance: 39,819
The Case of the Missing Mojo - Part II
The doll had no idea what she was getting into when she poured herself into my office on a dreary summer night a couple of weeks ago. Then again, I had no idea myself that the hunt for the Twins' mojo would take me from the Twin Cities to the sunny California coast and all the way back east to Brewtown. The name's Twayn. I'm a shamus.
I'd been on the case for two weeks, trying to find out who had the mojo, but this puzzler had more twists and turns than a barber pole. It seemed clear as gin at first - the starting rotation had to have it. Pavano, Baker, Liriano, Blackburn, they were pitching like a carnival barker - hard, fast, crooked and all night long. How else could you explain the way they've been dominating on the mound? Then in San Fran the offense took off like a Chinatown rocket, at least for an inning, so maybe they had the mojo. One thing was sure, there was no shortage of guys suddenly playing better than they were before the start of June.
One thing that jumped out at me as I perused Light Rail's B-R page was his strikeout rate: 8.6 K/9. What? It did increase from 7.3 in 2009 to 7.8 in 2010, but I wasn't expecting another 0.8 jump. However, the season is just shy of 50% complete and so, how much of the increase is real? Fortunately, that was recently answered.
What we want is the K/(PA-IBB-HBP)* line, and that says at 126 denominator units, 50% is the player's ability and 50% is the mean. Baker has 369 PAs, which means 74.5% of the 8.6 K/9 is him while the other 25.5% would be regression to the mean. The mean we want would be Baker's historical performance with however much regression is needed.
Taking the last three years, Baker has 2240 PAs, which means we need 94.7% of those three years and 5.3% league average. Baker's three year average for those three years is 7.5 K/9, which is reasonably close to the league average of 6.8. Let's just use 100% Baker. More rounding error.
Putting it all together means the best estimate for his talent right now is 8.3 K/9. Combined with the miniscule (0.09) increase in his BB/9 rate equals good things for his results. His xFIP so far is easily his best yet and his FIP is slightly better than from 2008. Finally, an ace!
* I'm calling these PAs from now on, despite it actually not being a plate appearance. He has one intentional walk and four hit batters, so it's basically rounding error anyway.