Editor’s note: A recent reddit post — this one to be exact — really stuck with me. The author is an Irishman who’s looking to get into baseball and, not knowing where to start, he asked for help. Well, this week at Infield Fly, we aim to help everybody’s who’s just getting into the game. If you’re a new fan, if you’re interested in becoming a fan or if you know somebody who think would love the game and you want to point them our way, hopefully this week will have something for you. We plan to cover the how and the why for new fans.

Today, resident stats guru coolhead2011 goes over the basic stats and numbers needed to understand the game.

Baseball players do not, in fact, carry calculators around in their back pockets. In fact, most players, when interviewed about a streak they are on, or counting stat they’ve accumulated, will claim they don’t pay attention to that sort of thing at all. I assume some of them are lying, because many players are also fans of the game, and when talking about the game, it often comes down to comparing players to one another. The baseball gods have given us a game from which we can draw so many numbers, and the discussions based on those numbers never end.

So, let’s start with the numbers a new fan needs to understand, just to know what’s happening on the field, and then we’ll look deeper into how those numbers have grown into a way to evaluate players.

Part 1: The Structure Numbers

First, one of my favourite quotes:

Ninety feet between the bases is the nearest thing to perfection 
that man has yet achieved. 
	- Red Smith

A little list of numbers follows. These are the backbone baseball. Period. As soon as you change one of these numbers, all comparisons to previous incarnations of baseball are really not fair. Change one of these building blocks, and you change the nature of the game itself.

Innings: 9

Outs per inning: 3

Strikes taken or swung on to make an out: 3

Balls taken to award a walk: 4

Fielders: 9

Bases: 4

Distance from pitching rubber to home plate: 60’6″

Distance between bases: 90′

Width of home plate: 17″

Angle of playing field: 90 degrees

There’s baseball. Change any of those numbers, and you break the game itself. I know some of you are saying there was an 8-pitch walk in the 1800s, but that game is baseball in name only. If you wonder what I’m talking about, imagine how a roster and the defense would change with a tenth man on the field and in the lineup. What about a plate stretched to 20 inches? Strategies would shift radically as the offense and defense scrambled to take advantage of any change to these core numbers.

Part 2: The Counting Numbers

The first counting number that ever mattered in any team game was the win. How many games did your team have vs. how many it lost. Simple. You win a baseball game by scoring runs. Score more than you allow and you win. Simple. Count runs. Teams score runs.

In sports like soccer and hockey, those responsible for the scoring are relatively easy to spot. The last person who touched the ball is responsible for the point. Sometimes other people on the same team gave him the ball before he used it to score a point, they get some credit for helping out. Some players have lots of chances to get those points; they are supposed to play close to the point scoring area. Simple.

In baseball, every player gets the same opportunity to contribute to the scoring, a minimum of 3 times in each game. The official term for these opportunities is ‘plate appearances’. The quest for counting runs (which are the building blocks of wins) is where things start to get, shall we say, murky. The first stat that comes to mind as trying to count a players value, might be the run. When you cross home plate, you get credit for a run. Watching a game or two, it’s obvious that the talent involved in scoring a run is minimal. It can involve not stumbling and falling down while jogging 90 feet. So, unlike team runs, which win games, player runs mean almost nothing.

Someone noticed this fairly early on in baseball history, and so, other accomplishments have been counted for hitters for a very long time. Hits are the other elementary offensive stat. If you hit the ball and end up standing safely on a base, you get one hit. Doesn’t matter which base, one hit is all you get. Also, we count walks. If you don’t manage to hit the ball, but the pitcher throws you unhittable garbage, and you recognize that, we’ll give you a point for that too. That’s a different point than the one for the hit, though.

After the counting stats, we come to the next step in the process. Rate stats. If I have ten hits, and you have ten hits, we have both contributed ‘equally’ to the team’s success. However, if it took me 20 trips to the plate to get my 10, and it took you 40, well, we need some division to show who is more likely to be effective. Hits/At-Bats= Batting average. I bat .500; you bat .250. I am the superior hitter. (Maybe, actually, keep reading to see if we might have missed something.)

In the days before spreadsheets, computers, and archived statistical websites, this was considered an effective way of evaluating a player’s skill and value to a team. It’s since become a little more sophisticated. They started counting hits, doubles, triples, home runs, walks, hit-by-pitch, strikeouts. They even made up situations where they didn’t want to penalize a player for being told to ‘strategically’ make an out. Sacrifice bunts, sacrifice flies. If the right runners are on base, the stathead of old decided that not getting on base should not be penalized.

And all that was just fine and dandy. Games were played, players traded, and championships were won and lost. Except that it was a game being played and managed with blinders on. Nobody wrote about, or even thought about little things such as why some players who took a lot of walks didn’t get as much credit as others who hit a lot of singles. There they were, standing on first base, either way. A .300 hitter could get paid some good money. A .250 hitter who got on base 35% of the time did not get paid so well. Why? As long as you ended up on first, not in the dugout, what was the difference?

Silly questions like that never seemed to get published in magazines or newspapers, but we know at least one man was thinking about them. We know because he published his own book with his own money, asking just those kinds of questions.

His name was Bill James. In 1977, he published the Bill James Baseball Abstract. It was a book that uncovered the tip of an unbelievably massive statistical iceberg. People with open minds and math backgrounds started to ask more questions. These non-traditional stat seekers ended up with their own field of mathematics that we now call sabermetrics. Literally, this is the Mathematics of Baseball.

What makes sabermetric stats different from traditional stats? Well, most of the baseball establishment claims not to understand them, even 30 years later. They are trying to do a few different things, things that counting hits and runs batted in (RBI) are not able to reveal.

My next ‘stats primer’ post will look at the results of that sabermetric revolution. Every fan can benefit from the time and effort that has gone into creating a better description of the game. You don’t even have to take a university math course to understand it.

It’s news like Adam Lind’s demotion to AAA Las Vegas (and subsequent outright waiverage) that makes you really understand how baseball is not just a game of numbers but a game involving real people as well.

Now, I’m not here to suggest that Lind, the owner of a .186/.273/.314 slash line this year, shouldn’t have been sent down. Despite his past successes, there’s only so far the rope should extend and from a make-the-baseball-team-better standpoint, I applaud the move. However, from a man-that-must-be-a-tough-blow view, I feel for Lind.

Like many Jays fans, I have developed an affinity for players and it was hard not to love Lind after his breakout 2009 campaign. He might not come across as the brightest or most personable guy in the world in interviews, but he’s still been a central part of this team for the past seven years. That stretch also makes him the longest-tenured Blue Jay on the roster. Unless you don’t count Jason Frasor’s half-season interruption from the Jays when he was traded to Chicago.

I know Lind expects better of himself, and he really has no grounds to protest the situation, considering the fall-off-a-cliff-esque performance that has been his last few years. But still, the guy has a wife and family and no doubt has a house and other heavy ties in Toronto, it can’t be an easy thing to just pack up and leave.

It’s a situation different than a guy like say Drew Hutchison or even Mike McCoy last year. Both those guys are likely fully aware their time in the major leagues could come to an end at a moment’s notice and as a result they probably aren’t out with real estate agents putting downpayments on fancy houses in the GTA. Lind on the other hand, probably never would have predicted he’d ever have to ride another minor league bus. It must come as a blow to the ego.

That being said, it’s hard to have too much sympathy for a guy who will make more in a year than most of us will make in a lifetime. A guy who could never see another major league pitch and still live comfortably without working for the rest of his life. But still, there does have to be a certain degree of empathy, after all. These are our Blue Jays.

Now comes the news that he has been placed on outright waivers, a move which on the surface seems the Jays are “giving up” on him. I think it’s not so much that as it is a couple things. One, Adam Lind has at the very least earned the respect that if the Jays can’t use him in a major league capacity, he should be given the opportunity to ply his trade elsewhere in the MLB. I am far too lazy to go find the source, but I recall reading on Twitter that Lind was only 45 days away from having enough major league service time to be able to reject assignments to the minors.

Wanted and missing: Adam Lind, circa 2009

Two, it isn’t all that likely he will be picked up. As much as people griped about Lyle Overbay’s production while at first base, he was a guy who AT LEAST got on base at a good clip (typically was one of the top on the team). There would be a market for a guy like Overbay, but I really can’t imagine where there are teams in the major leagues that would look at Lind as an option as a starting 1B.

Of course, a team might want to take him on as  reclamation project of sorts, to see if they can tweak or fix something that maybe Toronto coaches couldn’t, while perhaps using him as a bat off the bench. That remains to be seen. His contract isn’t horridly large (relatively speaking, of course) over the next two years, so it’s not an enormous financial burden for a club to take on.

With that said, I found it ridiculous that Gregg Zaun was saying he didn’t like the move by the Jays as he wants Toronto to get something back for Lind should he leave the team. Sure that’s nice in theory, but let’s give Anthopoulos a LITTLE credit. If there was a move to be made involving Lind and another team do you not think he would have made it before giving every team in the league a free crack at him? Alex Rios left the team in a similar situation and while his move was more of a salary dump even in that case the Jays weren’t able to get anything in return (that move is a bit more questionable, to be honest).

Is the Adam Lind era over in Toronto? It’s entirely possible, but I’m guessing no, that the Jays will hold onto him and we’ll see him again in Toronto later this summer.

Is that what fans want? It’s really hard to say. He’s become a Vernon Wells-esque scapegoat in recent years, with fan seemingly not even wanting him to succeed.

“I didn’t mean to hit him, your honour; I just meant to fire a warning shot.”

At some point, likely today, Brett Lawrie will be suspended for his actions during the ninth inning of last night’s loss to the Tamp Bay Rays. Lawrie deserves whatever sort of punishment MLB metes out and, unless the punishment is harsh, he probably deserves more than he gets.

Lawrie says he didn’t mean to hit the ump with his helmet. I believe him. But intent only matters up to a certain point.

Hitting an umpire — even if unintentional, even if the ump just called you out on two borderline pitches you thought should be balls — is completely inexcusable.

Lawrie must pay for his actions and he should do whatever he can to make good with the umps so that any lingering anger isn’t taken out on his teammates in the form of questionable calls going against them.

GIF courtesy of Ian, the Blue Jay Hunter.

Why did Jose canseco cross the road ,,,,,,,,,to slap you haters—
Jose Canseco (@JoseCanseco) May 06, 2012

Well, a guy in Ottawa took Canseco up on his offer to challenge him and this past weekend, Canseco was in Ottawa to take part in a home-run derby with Evan Malamud, appliance salesman.

Canseco lost the derby.

In fairness, Canseco had to hit baseballs out of the park and Malamud had to hit softballs over a much shorter softball fence. But still, Canseco lost.

I was unable to find video of the derby itself, but I did find this gem: Canseco’s media scrum. He says some interesting-in-a-crazy-way things: Twitter is like acting (presumably implying that he’s not really crazy); he believes he could still lead the majors in home runs if some team would just give him a chance already; and he’s developed an anti-aging drink that really works, you guys.

Without further ado, the man himself:

Some things have been really difficult to swallow. For a rising power in the AL East, the team has not jelled offensively. After being limited to 4 hits tonight by Charlie Allstaff, after Jeff Niemann was knocked out with an injury at the end of the first, the Jays are a lineup full of holes.

On the road trip, the two cleanup hitters had the following slash lines. .156/.229/.344 and .162/.220/.361. Take your pick. Eric Thames had a tidy .182/.200/.333 road trip. Colby Rasmus is hitting a lot of line drives. 24.7% is a great rate, but the road trip resulted in a line of .229/.308/.286. Yes, he slugged .286, lower than his OBP.

On the flip side, the pitching staff has been walking the entire planet. And doesn’t seem too bothered by it. They have allowed 135 walks, 50 since Henderson Alvarez’s CG shutout in Anaheim. Also, they have given up 44 homers, second to Minnesota, the league’s worst team.

The American League’s dark-horse playoff candidate has been playing a dangerous game on both sides of the ball. Only the snappiest defense in the league has kept them in these ballgames.

Soon, the Jays will find the first third of the season under their belt. It looks a lot like they will have a .500 record to show for it, unless they can prove that they know how to beat the Rays, Yankees and Mets more often than not.

I want to see a team confident it can win. As a fan, it’s disappointing to see one stifled after just one big inning.

But, as much as I value math and people who are really, really good at it, I do think some people have a tendency to take the numbers too far. Baseball players are human beings and there’s a definite human element to their performance — unless the player in question is a Roy Halladay-like cyborg, of course.

Except for 2009 and a brief period of last season, Adam Lind has proven that he is not a good MLB hitter. Despite that, the team keeps running him out to first base everyday and, until very recently, he was batting cleanup on a daily basis.

Why does the team keep running Sleepy out there despite his obvious deficiencies? Well, he has shown that he has the potential to crush MLB pitching and he’s currently signed to a very team-friendly contract, so why not give him the chance to figure things out?

And, even if he didn’t have those things going for him, who would the team replace him with? David Cooper? Ha!

The only legitimate internal option is the trifecta of moves oft-mentioned by fans: Travis Snider promoted and installed in left field; Eric Thames moved to DH; and Edwin Encarnacion taking over first. In theory, I like those moves. In reality, it doesn’t seem likely as team management seems committed to finally giving Snider some stability and leaving him at one level (Triple-A) for an extended period.

Human beings, when threatened, generally go into fight or flight mode. Confront the problem head on or run away from it and hope for the best. Some, but not all, lapse into a sort of contentment when they’re not really threatened.

I won’t pretend to know what goes on in Lind’s head, but given his previous comments about how much he hates working out, I wouldn’t be surprised if he tends to feel content when he’s not pushed. Struggling at the plate? “Big whoop, what are they going to do? Call up Cooper?”

If that’s his attitude — and it may well not be, but hear me out — maybe he needs a push.

The team may have given him that push on Thursday.

At 37, Vladimir Guerrero is a shell of his former self. But the shell of a likely Hall of Famer is better than what Lind’s been doing lately. That Toronto signed the Impaler to a minor-league deal can only be viewed by Lind as a threat to his job security.

If Guerrero can prove in the minors that he’s got anything left in the tank, the team could easily improve its offence by moving Encarnacion to first and letting Vladdy DH while Lind rides the pine. Not only would it be a good move in terms of improving the offence, it’d have to be a PR score, too. Employing the services of a Montreal Expos legend isn’t exactly going to hurt.

Of course, there is always the possibility that Lind, sensing that he’s threatened, fights for his job and does whatever it takes to get as close to his 2009 form as he possibly can. If he does, the team wins on this deal with Vladdy.

If Lind doesn’t improve and Guerrero ends up making the Jays a better team, the team wins on this deal with Vladdy.

If Lind doesn’t improve and Guerrero doesn’t have anything left to contribute, well, Vladdy’s deal is for peanuts, relatively speaking, so the team doesn’t lose on this deal with Vladdy.

It’s a win-win-draw deal if I’ve ever seen one!

Samuel Peralta Sosa hit 63 or more homers 3 times. He is the only player to have managed this unusual feat. Even though his reputation is somewhat tarnished by the outside factors during the offensive explosion in the late 1990s, early 2000s, you can’t deny it’s a unique feat.

Now here’s the two things that I find really weird. First, Sosa never led his league in a year where he hit 63 or more homers. Second, the three years in which he hit 63, 64, and 66 homers are the only 3 years in the history of MLB in which it was possible to hit 60 or more home runs and not lead the league.

Sammy Sosa had the strangest timing of any home run champ, ever.

If your closer can make Brandon Inge celebrate like this, he probably shouldn’t be your closer.

It’s not Francisco Cordero’s fault. It’s really not. Never mind the fact that, to date, opposition batters have posted a 1.164 OPS against him. Never mind that his ERA is closing in on double digits. Never mind the fact that he’s blown three of five save opportunities so far this year. It’s really not his fault.

The blame for Cordero’s failures has to fall squarely on the shoulders of manager John Farrell. No, Farrell is not on the field failing to get the job done, but Farrell is the one who continues to put Cordero in at times when it seems he shouldn’t be called upon.

Farrell has said many times that he misused the bullpen last year and that he believes the relievers need defined roles to help them succeed. I’m not one to completely deny the fact that psychological factors can affect a player’s performance, so I’m willing to buy it. But for Farrell to say that Cordero is “our guy” is just plain wrong.

The team has a capital-C closer (whether a team really needs someone in that role is an argument for another day). His name is Sergio Santos. Yes, he’s on the disabled list, but just because he’s out, doesn’t mean his role has to be filled.

It seems to me that Farrell should be telling his guys that, while Santos is out, who he calls upon to close out a game will be a decision based on how his relievers have pitched lately and any sort of statistical evidence that suggests a given pitcher would have success against whoever’s due up for the opposition in the ninth. Maybe that’s Jason Frasor or Darren Oliver. Maybe it’s Luis Perez. Hell, maybe it’s even Cordero.

I do believe that Cordero has value. I do believe there are situations in which he could be called upon to do good for the Toronto Blue Jays. But it’s obvious that, for right now anyway, he should not be the team’s go-to ninth inning guy. And bad results that come out of the team continuing to call on him in save situations have to fall on Farrell for continuing to treat Cordero as “our guy.”

Pitching, on television, is nothing like pitching live. I know, because I umpired minor (kids and teenagers) baseball for three years. It is the closest you can possibly get to pitching and catching, and not be responsible for touching the ball. There is a very real hiss to a baseball coming in at anything over 50mph. The impact into the mitt of a 60 or 70 mph fastball is something that reverberates in your ears. You can feel it when it hits the mitt. To lean into that at MLB game speed would make me flinch.

I know that my eyes and ears could not tell me the whole story as an umpire. All I had to focus on was where the ball was when it hit the front edge of the plate. That isn’t really hard to do, with a little practice. Measuring what happened before and after that never really entered my head at the time.

I also know that the single outfield camera does not convey or measure what is going on at home plate. It just isn’t in the right place, or at the right distance to really tell how and where a pitcher releases the ball.

Combine these methods with the play-by-play and colour announcers on TV, and everything gets jumbled up. Some fastballs have ‘late life’, some have ‘hard sinking action’, some are ‘backdoor cutters’. Cute, but how do you tell which of those descriptions is anywhere near accurate? None of the guys in the booth has crouched down to catch the pitcher in question, they are relying on a story from someone else. And if you’ve ever tried to convey a story through two or three people, you know how any description can get jumbled up.

Pitch f/x to the rescue. If you are not familiar with pitch f/x, there is a primer here. All of my data comes from the very comprehensive data at brooksbaseball.net. Very briefly, 2 cameras are positioned in each park to give accurate data about the behavior of every pitch thrown in the Major Leagues.

I have 2 charts to compare the fastballs of the current five members of the Toronto Blue Jays rotation. As of this writing, they are Ricky Romero, Brandon Morrow, Henderson Alvarez, Kyle Drabek and Drew Hutchison.They are identified by their initials in the charts.

Behold, Chart 1

Speed and Spin Direction

Taken as an average from all pitches thrown in 2012. This is pretty much just speed differences. I was hoping, when I input the data for spin direction, that the sinkers would cluster apart from the four seamers. Not so lucky. And can you tell I haven’t made any charts since my second year at community college? But enough about me. Four seamers are blue data points, sinkers (usually thrown with 2 seam grip), are in red. Kyle Drabek is the only one who throws enough cutters to be of any note. That’s the yellow diamond. Notable points, Henderson Alvarez is the hard thrower of the bunch, not Brandon Morrow, as you may have guessed. Drabek next, then Morrow. These are all above 94mph and are very good fastballs, especially for MLB starters. The other odd thing is Drabek’s two data points are very close together in the MPH, unlike a typical pitcher, changing to the sinker grip doesn’t cost him even 0.5 mph.

Behold, chart the second.

Movement, including gravity.

This chart shows us movement from the catcher’s perspective. It tells us that Rickey Romero may, in fact, be left-handed. I’ll check into that later. Also, the two purple circles are Romero’s and Alvarez’s sinkers. Getting ground balls happens naturally, as even mistakes are carried down under the bat quite often. The green circle is Morrow’s ‘rising’ fastball, and it makes it easy to see why he’s a natural fly ball pitcher. Here we can cross-check if Drabek’s sinker (which we saw him throwing extremely hard, above) has had any of its movement cancelled out by his extra velocity. I would have to say no. The distance between his straight and sinker data points is similar to both Morrow’s and Hutchison’s. Also, Drabek’s cutter does, in fact, cut its way back across the middle of the chart with a little reverse break.

So, next time somebody tells you who they think throws the hardest, now you’ve got some pictures to back up your own arguments. This also gives an idea of how far from straight even a ‘straight’ four-seam fastball can be.

If anybody would like to see any other pitch types broken down this way, or two pitchers and their pitch mixes put head-to-head, put it in the comments, and I’ll try to cook something up.

Albert Pujols, who signed a 10-year, $240-million contract with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim this past off-season is off to a horrible start this season. The 32-year-old who was the most common rebuttal last year to the claim of Blue Jays fans that Bautista was the best hitter in the game has so far posted a slash line (batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage) of .208/.252/.287. As a point of comparison, Pujols’ career slash line is an amazing .327/.418/.612.

Now, we’re only a few days into May and Pujols is such a good hitter that he’s likely to turn it around — and turn it around soon — but Angels fans do have some reason to worry about their expensive new toy: He hasn’t yet hit a home run.

The most popular theory as to why Pujols is suddenly struggling at the plate has to do with the fact that this is his first year in the American League. It’s a well-known fact that when pitchers and hitters have never faced each other before, the advantage almost always goes to the pitcher. It’s one thing for a batter to know what a pitcher throws, it’s another to actually face the pitcher and see first hand what kind of stuff he’s got and how deceptive his delivery may be.

If Pujols’ offensive problems can truly be traced to his unfamiliarity with the pitchers he’s facing, he’s unlikely to turn it around this weekend as the Angels host the Blue Jays for a four-game set. Of the four pitchers Toronto has scheduled to start against the Angels, Pujols has only faced one — Brandon Morrow — and even then, Pujols only has three at-bats against Toronto’s No. 2 starter.

As for Toronto’s struggling slugger, Bautista has had good success against both Dan Haren and Ervin Santana — scheduled to start Games 1 and 2, respectively, for L.A. — over the last five years. In 14 at-bats against Haren, Bautista’s got an average of .357 and has hit two home runs. In 17 at-bats against Santana, Bautista’s got an average of .297 and has one homer.

Bautista hasn’t seen much of L.A.’s other two starters, but if he can leverage his past success against Haren and Santana and get himself in a nice groove, that might not matter.

Bautista and Pujols are the kind of hitters who, when they’re on a roll, can hit almost anything that’s thrown at them. But if one of the two struggling sluggers is going to turn it around this series, I’d put my money on Bautista.