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01-22-2020, 02:55 PM | #1 |
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I owe my success to a short porch, expansion pitching, and my corked bats. - Norm Cash
Expansion pitching may have helped Norm but did it help everyone? Some say the scoring increase in 69 over 68 was largely caused by expansion, not the smaller strike zone and lower mound.
So let's test it. I created two baseline end of 68 scenarios and ran 69 ten times on each, five with expansion and five without. No adjust league totals, no injuries, no suspensions, three year recalc. Here you go. Base 1 Runs per game per team 1964 4.18 1965 4.08 1966 4.03 1967 4.16 1968 4.23 1969 Expansion No Yes 3.95 3.77 3.97 3.83 3.83 3.93 3.95 3.86 3.86 3.96 Overall no expansion 3.91, expansion 3.87 Base 2 1964 4.20 1965 4.14 1966 3.97 1967 4.08 1968 4.19 Expansion No Yes 4.07 4.11 4.18 4.07 4.25 4.17 4.19 4.14 4.31 4.22 Overall no expansion 4.20, expansion 4.14 |
01-22-2020, 03:10 PM | #2 |
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Norm Cash's big outlier season was 1961, which was an expansion year with the Angels and Senators: Part Deux coming into the league.
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01-22-2020, 03:10 PM | #3 |
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So fewer runs ??? with expansion slightly .
I believe the lower mound hurt the pitcher - the strike zone was attempting to better clarify what is the strike zone I also believe this is the time that had ALL umpires switch to the inside chest protector . Attempting to get NL and AL strike zones more uniform . Some expansion teams picked young players --- some picked old veterans with a year or two remaining . I hope the teams, coaches, and players competed to win - although the talent was not there . UNLIKE the NFL where some teams and coaches were clearly tanking .
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01-22-2020, 09:24 PM | #4 |
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I believe the difference isn't meaningful. If it is it would take a huge number of tests to show that the new pitchers were less worse versus existing pitchers than new batters were versus existing batters. Or that batters were more worse etc. I'm willing to call the results substantially the same which is enough to shoot down the theory expansion caused the scoring increase 68 - 69. |
01-23-2020, 05:12 PM | #5 |
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Something interesting is that while the setup years 64 - 68 don't track RL they track each other for whether scoring is going up or down from the previous year.
Based on previous work I did where an on line league increased talent and this one with a talent decrease my conclusion is that expansion helps good pitchers and good batters equally while the addition of less talented players keeps league averages about the same. But Cash... well, pitching talent couldn't have changed all that much 61 - 62 yet his batting average fell 118 points!!! That might be a record for a batting champ, the reverse of what Matty Alou did, increasing his average year to year by 111 points for the year he won the batting title. However Alou continued the higher performance while Cash did not. |
01-24-2020, 10:39 AM | #6 |
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From some accounts I have read over the years Cash was also fighting serious alcohol addiction. Who knows how that played into things? An then of course, there was the corked bat.....
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01-28-2020, 09:05 PM | #7 | |
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Quote:
He got 193 hits in 535 ABs for a BA of 361. 20% of those ABs would have been against expansion pitchers. Eliminating 61 from career totals, Cash's career average is 264. His best year is 286, a difference of 22 points. And his yearly stats are remarkably consistent, a maximium of 22 over and 21 under the 264 career average for years where he played over 120 games. So what would be a spectacular unexpected performance by Cash? Twice his maximum plus figure is 44 points, added to 264 gives him a BA of 308. Three times is 264 plus 66 for a BA of 330. That would be truly spectacular for a career 264 hitter whose otherwise highest year is 286. So let's say that Cash had that spectacular year. Eliminate the 20% of his ABs due to expansion pitching and apply the 330 BA to 80% of his plate appearances. That gives him 141 hits in 428 ABs. which means in the remaining ABs against poorer expansion pitching he was 52 for 107 for a BA of 486 against expansion pitching. Don't think so. Show me a player whose performance decreased 222 points going from AAA to MLB. And something else. The common thought would be he faced AAA pitching 20% of the time. Not so, although 20% of the pitchers were ones who otherwise would have been in AAA. The bottom 20% of the pitchers did not pitch 20% of the ABs. Lots of those ABs were pitched by guys who were MLB pitchers in 60. Admittedly they were the 8th or 9th or 10th pitcher on the staff, but they were still MLB pitchers not AAA pitchers. So actual expansion pitches were a bit tougher than AAA pitches. |
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01-28-2020, 09:10 PM | #8 | |
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Quote:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...ball-19613464/ |
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01-29-2020, 09:42 PM | #9 |
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I was merely pointing out that this Cash quote was making light of his performance in 1961 rather than 1969. It was in no way arguing the validity of his statement.
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01-30-2020, 12:18 AM | #10 |
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For whatever reason the ball looked like it came in slow and big to Cash that year.
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