Seeking Volunteers

by Corey Ettinger on Mar 21, 2010 10:24 AM EDT

Yesterday I posted a FanPost postulating that the injuries in the Twins bullpen were a result of it's key setup men being consistently overused. Now comes the process of proving or disproving the hypothesis. However, undertaking that sort research is a tad bit daunting, that's where you come in. I'm looking for 4-5 volunteers to help take on one division each.

The task:

Compile data on each teams primary relievers over the past decade. I'm thinking that by compiling the usage and injury data on each teams two or three primary relievers for each season, we can get an idea of 1) how other teams use their relievers and 2) what sort of injuries result.

If teams use pitchers the same way the Twins do, and injuries do not result, it could be assumed that the Twins have simply been unlucky, as some people think. However, if teams are using their primary relievers differently than that Twins, and NOT seeing injuries, one could speculate that those lighter workloads are at least somewhat to credit for the increased health.

If you're interested, you can simply leave a note here or e-mail me at CoreyEttinger@gmail.com. I'll be happy to take on which ever division the others don't want - you know, like the NL Central.

Tweet Comment 12 comments | 0 recs |

Do you like this story?

Comments

I'll take the AL East.

by Jesse on Mar 21, 2010 11:10 AM EDT reply actions

Matt Guerrier

Pitched 76 games (2008) and 79 games (2009) both coming in first in the AL for relievers.

Matt Guerrier = not injured.

by PortlandTwins7 on Mar 21, 2010 1:46 PM EDT reply actions

He has completely burned out late in the season a couple times though

by ckb on Mar 21, 2010 1:57 PM EDT up reply actions

besides,

there are exceptions to every rule.

I’m not saying Corey’s hypothesis is true. I am simply saying that an exception here or there does not disprove anything.

by montanatwinsfan on Mar 21, 2010 2:28 PM EDT up reply actions

No saying

what happens to Guerrier this season…

by Kamanyourpants on Mar 21, 2010 4:51 PM EDT reply actions

Interesting

I’m in no way volunteering, but I love being an armchair quarterback, so I’m throwing my thoughts out there.

Here is what I’d look at:
Response variables (aka outcomes):
- injury frequency (as measured by an appearance on the DL)
- injury severity (as measured -by 60 day DL),
- “worn out arm” as measured by a well as a decline in statistics (maybe ERA rises by more than ?.?? points in the last Aug/September compared to April-July),

Based predictor variables:
- Number of innings
- Number of pitches
- Number of appearances
- Number of appearances with 0 days rest
- Number of appearances with 1 or fewer days rest
- Percentage of appearances with 0 days rest
- pergentage of appearances with 1 or fewer days rest

Just something to think about when you’re gathering data.

What were you going to look at?

by snolls on Mar 21, 2010 4:56 PM EDT reply actions

Pretty much all of that stuff.

With the exception of # of appearances on certain days’ rest. I think the plan is to look at the top two IP’s for RP’s for each team, each year for the decade.

by Jesse on Mar 21, 2010 5:37 PM EDT up reply actions

a couple of questions

Are you going to account for pitchers that injure themselves after switching teams in that 10 year period?
Do you plan on tracking the number of innings/pitches that the pitchers threw in the minors?
Also, are you taking into account the times of pitches that each pitcher throws and the effects that these pitches may have on their arms?
And finally, pitches thrown in high leverage situations, such as 2 on and 1 out. I dont know if that would have an effect or not though.

Ild be interested in helping out with your research. How soon would you want it?

by Richard Peach on Mar 22, 2010 12:21 AM EDT reply actions

1) If such a situation were to be encountered, it would be absurd not to. Just because you changed teams doesn’t mean your history is invalidated.

2) I did in my hypothesis, so yes.

3) That may be further than our limited research abilities would allow. Though that would depend on how many volunteers we get. The more people we have, the more work we can do, though for the purpose of analysis, you have to be careful to not invalidate your control subject. In this case, usage patterns. As soon as you introduce a secondary or tertiary variable, you lose the ability to govern the analysis.

4) No. I’d value all pitches as equal, and over large enough sample sizes, they should be.

5) That’s great. I’m asking folks to simply choose a division to do the background work on. I would assume we could begin work as soon as we have a team ready. Hopefully by the end of this week or sooner.

Corey Ettinger writes for Infieldirt.com, a site that is primarily Twins related, but which has frequent notes, stories, and thoughts from other teams around baseball, with a focus on the AL Central. If you live in the Fargo area, you can listen to Corey on the Derek Hanson show every Tuesday at 3:30 on AM1660.

by Corey Ettinger on Mar 22, 2010 12:39 AM EDT up reply actions

#3

I’m assuming here that Richard meant “types of pitches” instead of “times of pitches” – in that case, for recent seasons you could probably get PitchFx data from FanGraphs to figure out at what they throw various pitches. Of course, if you’ve got ten years of other data, the pitch type stuff would have sample size issues, comparatively.

"There are only two things that are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

by BeefMaster on Mar 23, 2010 2:06 PM EDT up reply actions

An interesting idea

I heard bert blyleven talking during a game a year or two ago about why pitchers get injured or seem to be injured more often now than in the past. His thought was that it is because of pitchers lifting more and more weights instead of doing all the stretching that pitchers did back in and even before his day. If anyone in here has some sort of personal training, physical therapy, hell, even a gym teacher might know, maybe they could shed some light on berts thoughts for me.

by sheet stain on Mar 22, 2010 11:10 AM EDT reply actions