Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate DHestiny

Great info.

for the continually awesome posts. I would actually pay to be a member of AN just to read your stuff.

1. Thank you. This is beautiful…and awesome.

2. I think this illustrates why Cust can be so frustrating to watch and it gives me some hope that we are better off with Godzilla.

3. This is way more interesting than working on my final research paper of the semester…and way more awesome…and beautiful…

Rec’d.

This is kinda mindblowing, elcroata. I’ve been tossing around the idea of making a strikezone heat map for batters, but this is far better than anything I could have thrown together. Most excellent.

about the A’s signing Matsui. I hope he can keep his fitness level up and continue to deliver.

Some of the donuts look to be swinging a lot more than I would expect. What kind of sample sizes are we working with on the donuts?

TOP 20 guys with the longest average distance for balls put in play (HR included)
Dunn, Adam – 275
Cabrera, Miguel – 269
Morneau, Justin – 265
Rasmus, Colby – 265
Barajas, Rod – 263
Hamilton, Josh – 260
Howard, Ryan – 260
Ramirez, Aramis – 259
Hawpe, Brad – 259
Bay, Jason – 258
Helton, Todd – 258
Hart, Corey – 258
Werth, Jayson – 258
Swisher, Nick – 257
Votto, Joey – 256
LaRoche, Adam – 256
Wright, David – 256
Cruz, Nelson – 256
Soto, Geovany – 254
Smith, Seth – 254

and 20 shortest ones

Pierre, Juan – 172
Castillo, Luis – 172
Borbon, Julio – 176
Valdez, Wilson – 181
Andrus, Elvis – 183
Gomez, Carlos – 185
Gardner, Brett – 187
Gwynn, Tony – 188
Morgan, Nyjer – 189
Bourn, Michael – 190
Aybar, Erick – 191
Suzuki, Ichiro – 194
Escobar, Yunel – 194
Punto, Nick – 195
Eckstein, David – 195
Jeter, Derek – 196
Theriot, Ryan – 196
Izturis, Cesar – 198
Figgins, Chone – 198
Santiago, Ramon – 199
One of these guys is getting paid 51m over next three years – he must be a great defender.

Funny, Adam Dunn has 100ft on Juan Pierre.

The bit about Cust not pulling anything for power is disturbing, and I agree, this does put me a little more at ease with signing Matsui, even if this does confirm “Matsui makes better and more frequent contact than Cust,” which I already figured.

Matsui also scores higher on my “Respect” metric, where I compare all the wrong calls that went against the hitter and the ones that benefited him.

I have nothing new to add, but I’ll hope that Matsui can repeat his 2010 performance. I have my doubts, but I suppose it’s possible he completely defies aging and park effects.

Somebody needs to convince Billy Beane to make a strong push to get Rasmus. The Cardinals might say he’s not available publicly, but with LaRussa assuming more and more power and Rasmus’ father summoning Ed Crosby, I’m confident he can be had.

Whoever was kind enough to place the 26th rec for this FanPost triggered a little celebration as it makes it a total of 500 recs for my AN articles.

Thank you all.

The visuals are excellent! Thanks for this.

{maybe take it easy on the gradients and rounded edges next time}

Amazing. Rec’d

Rec’d, and I think the most informative part for me is Cust’s inability to handle the inside fastball last year vs. Matsui’s mastery of it (Matsui’s walk-off win off an inside Craig Breslow fastball last year comes to mind). Let’s hope, if the A’s complete the Matsui deal, that he keeps that short stroke and pops a few onto the right field staircase for us.

godzilla should be holding a pornographic magazine

and that says a lot since most of his stuff is incredibly informative.

The other thing that clearly makes Matsui appealing to the A’s is the fact that he will bring in a lot of additional revenue. I read something, think it was in a Slusser article, where she quoted Tim Mead (Angels PR guy) as saying that they brought in an extra seven figures by Matsui’s presence alone thanks to advertising from Japan.

I got to think this took forever to put together. Great stuff!

@JoseCanseco

I will show everyone that steroids are completely overrated once I get the chance to play aqgain.all I need is the chance

If a team would give me the chance I would not let them down.baseball is my life,I miss the game its part of me,its my addiction

I dream about playing almost every night.when I wake up and realize I am not anymore that’s when the nightmare begins

I am and will always be just simply a basball player,my tomb stone will just say. Baseball.

I’m definitely not a huge fan of Cust, and this makes me more confident in our signing of Matsui.

than whatever sad, drug-infused post I would have come up with for Monday and gotten all of 12 comments on, so thanks elcroata! Much obliged =)

How uninspiring.

Since we’re still in the market for a starting outfielder

#Athletics agree to terms with Brandon McCarthy on one-year contract.

Ultimately, they believe that Matsui will outperform Cust next year.

And this post is good, it makes me think that the team is internally creating graphs, charts, and analysis like this.

It made me truly hungry.

i said it at the beggining of the offseason,i even made a post about it,i want matsui in green in gold.and at DH.great move!

I’m going to put off reading and digesting this for post-finals goodiness (I did look at the graphics though, and they’re awesome).

Rec’d and bookmarked for now.

Way to break it down. It will be very interesting to see how the A’s pitch to Cust this year, given that they probably knew this before we did. If they didn’t, Elcroata, they should probably offer you a job.

Outstanding job, elcroata

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/12/porn_hideki_matsui_oakland.php

Flash just isn’t Matsui’s style, even if the conservative [Tokyo] Giants hadn’t frowned on such outré displays. Instructed to stay in the team dormitory and refrain from dating during the first several years of his career, so as to devote all his concentration solely to baseball, Matsui agreeably complied, without so much as a whimper. Indeed, his only eccentricity, if it can be called that, is his extensive private library of adult videos. His refreshing ability to laugh self-deprecatingly about his porno collection, reporters say, is one reason why fans and even nonfans have taken to him so much. Says former reporter Isao Hirooka: “Hideki just wants to be like ordinary people.”

http://www.time.com/time/asia/2003/heroes/hideki_matsui.html

Holy Shit!
Rangers signed Cliff Lee

Didn’t see that coming.

I remember there was some pressure for Sabathia to take the biggest deal, or at least milk the most he could out of a team (if he preferred one in particular). The fact that he’s leaving potentially $40-60M on the table could be of interest to them again…

We get Matsui, Lee to Phillies, and if Beltre goes to the Rangers, the Angels are left with what? Guerrero again?

The Yankees’ offer to Cliff Lee was 6 years, $138 million, with a seventh-year player option for an additional $16 million; total $154

Olney

Lee deal is for five years with an "easily reachable’’ vesting option for a sixth year. Not sure on $$, but it’s in excess of $100 million.

Lee To The Phillies

Thanking every person separately for their nice words seems overly courteous, not doing so might seem rude.

I read and very much appreciate every nice comment and I am very thankful for all of them. I am also very grateful for every idea about how my analysis can be made better and I take notice. Many such critique in the past has led to what are now, hopefully, better presentations. I still remember monkeyball’s comment on my very first post here — looking at it now, a very poor post indeed — where he mentioned something to the extent of fruit collection and heat processing in regards to the data I used. That, too, made me try harder in the subsequent ones.

Having said that, I hope you will not hold it against me if I don’t broaden this specific research as many of you have requested, looking at different zones or more years. I agree that these are fantastic ideas, but I only have two more days left before my hand surgery and a real job to do, too. And trust me, those guys are even more demanding than AN. I will try to squeeze in grover’s request and compare Cust’s 2010 and 2009, but that is really on the very high end of what I can afford to invest in this over the next few days.

Thanks again for all the nice responses.

But in my heart I’ve rec’d it. More than once.

and this post just confirms it. I love the Godzilla signing.

I’ll be living in your part of the world soon enough and really can’t wait to visit Croatia.
I’ve heard Dubrovnik is spectacular…

I feel better! You (and Dan) have a way of making things so easy to understand. And your charts and graphs are pretty, too. Thanks, babe!

Even though Matsui is on the downside of his career, he is still better than Cust.

I wholeheartedly agree.