Thank You, Indians Fans

by Matt Swartz on Aug 27, 2010 7:13 AM EDT

A couple weeks ago, I posted a FanPost on this site asking for which lefty and switch-hitting sluggers on your team had regularly faced The Infield Shift, and which sluggers in your division your team regularly shifted against. I also posted the same information at the other 29 SBNation.com blogs. Overall, the 30 websites shocked me with how helpful they were, providing over 400 comments and an excellent list of hitters to run the tests that I needed to run.

I finally published the article at Baseball Prospectus today. It is called "The Clutch and The Shifted." I asked that this article not be subscription-only, so that everyone who helped me with it can read it. Feel free to email me about it you have any questions, and I'll do my best to reply if you comment here (though keeping up with 30 blogs was challenging!.

Anyway, as part of my study, I also got the list of right-handed sluggers who hit over 20 home runs at some point between 1993 and 2010, so I will post your teams' three lists below in case you were curious. Thank you again to all who helped.

LHB

Shin-Soo Choo
Grady Sizemore
Travis Hafner
Matt Lawton
Jody Gerut
Jim Thome
David Justice
Paul Sorrento

SHB

Victor Martinez
Roberto Alomar
Eddie Murray
Carlos Baerga

RHB

Kelly Shoppach
Jhonny Peralta
Ryan Garko
Casey Blake
Ellis Burks
Marty Cordova
Juan Gonzalez
Travis Fryman
Manny Ramirez
Sandy Alomar
Matt Williams
Albert Belle

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Comments

Choo was the only one to hit the mark last year, right at 20. And he has 15 this year. No one else is close to hitting 20 in 2010.

by dgcambridge on Aug 27, 2010 11:35 AM EDT reply actions

Great job, but of what value is this information, beyond educating people of it?

http://www.justingermanofanclub.com/

by westbrook on Aug 27, 2010 2:54 PM EDT reply actions

I think it’s cool, and it helps us understand the game better. I don’t think it’s going to lead to a great statistical revolution in which pull-heavy lefties are suddenly valued more than their right-handed counterparts or anything like that. Just a little tidbit.

Come on, four billion!

by Joel D on Aug 27, 2010 3:13 PM EDT up reply actions

we should shift more with runners on?

fka "DaytonDogg". Now a contributor to SBN's Dawgs By Nature. www.dawgsbynature.com

by Ryan Kelsey on Aug 28, 2010 10:15 AM EDT up reply actions

Some of the names on this list really serve as cautionary tales of the difference between our hopes for a player’s career and what reality serves to tell us. It kind of bums me out to think of the dreams I had for some of these guys.

Come on, four billion!

by Joel D on Aug 27, 2010 3:07 PM EDT reply actions

Marty Cordova OPSed .854 in 122 games for us.

I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.

by notthatnoise on Aug 27, 2010 3:27 PM EDT up reply actions

Hmmm, Gerut, Shoppach, Peralta, Garko, Sorrento.

I had the opposite reaction from seeing the list. Lots of the guys who hit 20+ for us came to us late in their careers, after they were established. Some were expensive, but not all.

by dgcambridge on Aug 27, 2010 3:53 PM EDT up reply actions

I really thought Jody Gerut was going to be in our outfield for a long, long time.

The Once and Future King

by FlaGators on Aug 27, 2010 10:29 PM EDT up reply actions

I was one of the people who didn’t help. And I still think that if you’re getting paid to do that research, you should know a thing or two about these teams and these players, and you should have some way other than polling diehard fans at blogsites in order to find the information. Unless your employer is willing to pay some LGT’ers a commission. But hey, maybe you (and others) disagree. Judging from how you describe the help you got at this and other blogs, it seems that other people were less grouchy than me.

In the new Geico commercial, Marte sings "Let me be myself" on Wedge's front lawn (with the cavemen).

by V-Mart Shopper on Sep 2, 2010 10:20 PM EDT reply actions

I suspect you are vastly overestimating what a writer can make researching a piece for Baseball Prospectus. if you make a reasonable estimate and then re-think your little thesis here, my guess is that you’ll change your mind.

I don’t think Matt was starting from a point of zero knowledge about every team. We get silly conclusions when we run to an extreme premise.

by Jay on Sep 3, 2010 12:50 PM EDT up reply actions

I never suggested what he was doing was lucrative, nor is that relevant, IMO. If this was a one-time thing, then I understand if they contracted out some work to someone who was willing to do it, even if not an “expert.” It just really strikes me as odd that he actually works for them on a regular basis, even though I got the impression from his initial inquiry that he knows very little about the Indians. (Not zero knowledge, but very little – an amount that could not be called an expertise). I would think someone who works for baseball prospectus would have a good deal of knowledge on all teams, but maybe he doesn’t actually work for them as a regular employee and that is where my misunderstanding stemmed from.

In the new Geico commercial, Marte sings "Let me be myself" on Wedge's front lawn (with the cavemen).

by V-Mart Shopper on Sep 3, 2010 2:09 PM EDT up reply actions

That seems a little much to be asking from someone. How is he supposed to deduce the shift on teams he doesn’t watch? You can’t Google that. He could watch every team play for a week to get the info he needed but then he’d have lost more than half the year. We like to tout ourselves as being the most informed Indians fans in the world, why wouldn’t he ask us?

by Brad D on Sep 3, 2010 3:24 PM EDT up reply actions