baseball – Coffee Spoons

When Is a Torpedo Is Not a Torpedo?

When it’s a torpedo bat.

Last week I looked at baseball’s new torpedo bats in a humourous light. But I did want to take a more serious look, because bat evolution has been part of the tale of baseball since its beginning. Back in the day bats featured long lengths and heavier weights. These days, bats are in the mid-30 inch length and mid-30 ounce weight. Current regulations limit bats to 42 inches in length and a maximum diameter of 2.61 inches. ¹ (There is some other stuff in there that is not terribly relevant to the torpedo bat.) And that’s it. Nothing about where the widest part of the bat need be nor the overall shape—merely a round, solid piece of wood.

The solid piece of wood is connected to corked bats. At my age I remember seeing the ESPN clips of Sammy Sosa’s corked bat in 2003 and the story of Albert Belle’s bat, stolen from the umpire’s room.

The torpedo bat, however, is not corked, instead it uses increased mass at the bat’s sweet spot, where it generates the greatest exit velocities when the batter hits the pitch. This graphic from ESPN shows how this works.

How a torpedo bat differs from the normal bat

Overall I like the graphic. The use of contrasting red and blue does a good job highlighting, particularly at the end where the normal bat continues with its edges running parallel as a regular cylinder. The torpedo bat changes into a cone with its top sliced off then rounded. I might have exaggerated the vertical dimensions of the bat illustration, but it still works.

Additionally, as I understand the design, it maximises the diameter of the bat to the aforementioned 2.61 inches. I have heard—but not confirmed—most bats do not reach the full diameter. If that is true, perhaps an illustration where the red lines fell below the maximum diameter of the torpedo bat could do a better job differentiating between the two shapes.

I prefer the above illustration to that produced by the Athletic/New York Times, which attempts a similar distinction.

I think ESPN’s overlay better shows the difference and that the Athletic’s wood pattern distracts from the graphic overall. Whereas ESPN uses the solid red vs. blue hatching to distinguish between the two shapes.

Of course that begets the question, why doesn’t every batter use the torpedo bat?

Suffice it to say, some players are better at hitting the ball consistently at the same spot on the bat. If a hitter can repeatedly make contact at a specific spot along the length of the bat, it makes sense to concentrate the mass of the bat at that spot for better hard contact. If, however, a hitter spreads his contact out along the length of the barrel, he probably wants a more evenly distributed mass to help create a better spread of good contact.

Regardless, as I wrote on Friday, the torpedo does not look like a torpedo. If anything, the normal baseball bat looks more like a torpedo than a torpedo bat.

Credit for the ESPN piece goes to ESPN’s graphics department.

Credit for the Athletic’s piece goes to Drew Jordan.

https://mktg.mlbstatic.com/mlb/official-information/2025-official-baseball-rules.pdf ↩︎

Damn the Torpedoes!

Baseball is back and so bring forth the controversies. One of the ones from last week? The torpedo bat. To be clear, the torpedo bat has been around for a few years—it’s not new. However, on Opening Weekend, the Yankees beat up on Milwaukee Brewers’ pitching. But a Yankees announcer specifically pointed out the design and the hype and the controversy was on.

But since this is a Friday, we’re going to look at a semi-humourous take from Davy Andrews of Fangraphs, a statistically-inclined baseball site. He uses illustrations to focus on the shape of the torpedo bat, which to my mind instantly did not look anything like a torpedo. (Read the full article for a funny aside about the shape’s resemblance—or lack thereof—to a torpedo.)

To be fair, I did not immediately think either old timey bomb or pregnant whale, but rather a bowling pin.

Credit for the piece goes to Davy Andrews.

The Red Sox May Finally Have a Second Baseman

Last week was baseball’s opening day. And so on the socials I released my predictions for the season and then a look at the revolving door that has been the Red Sox and second base since 2017.

Back in 2017 we were in the 11th year of Dustin Pedroia being the Sox’ star second baseman. That summer, Manny Machado slid spikes up into second and ruined Pedroia’s knee. Pedroia had surgery and missed Opening Day 2018 then struggled to return. He played 105 games in 2017 then only three in 2018 and then six in 2019. And thus began the instability. Here’s a list of the Opening Day second baseman since 2017.

2018 Eduardo Nuñez
2019 Eduardo Nuñez
2020 José Peraza
2021 Kiké Hernández
2022 Trevor Story
2023 Christian Arroyo
2024 Enmanuel Valdez
2025 Kristian Campbell

And, again, by comparison…

2007 Dustin Pedroia
2008 Dustin Pedroia
2009 Dustin Pedroia
2010 Dustin Pedroia
2011 Dustin Pedroia
2012 Dustin Pedroia
2013 Dustin Pedroia
2014 Dustin Pedroia
2015 Dustin Pedroia
2016 Dustin Pedroia
2017 Dustin Pedroia

But not only is it a lack of stability, it is a lack of production. Wins Above Replacement (WAR) is a statistic that attempts to capture a player’s value relative to an “average” player or substitute. A below replacement level person is less than 0 WAR. A substitute is 0–2, a regular everyday players is 2–5, an All Star is 5–8, and an elite MVP level performance is 8+ WAR. And, spoiler, the Sox have not had a 5+ WAR second baseman since Pedroia’s final full season in 2016.

Suffice it to say, the Sox have long had a need for a long-term second baseman. The graphics I created were meant to be two Instagram images in the same post, and so the the axis labels and lines stretch across the artboards.

The graphic shows pretty clearly the turmoil at the keystone. The two outliers are Kiké Hernández in 2021 and Trevor Story in 2022. The latter is easily explained. Story was signed to be the backup plan in case shortstop Xander Bogaerts left after 2022. (Back in 2013 I made a graphic after a similar revolving door of shortstops in the eight years after the Red Sox traded Nomar Garciaparra. Then the question was, would a young rookie named Xander Bogaerts be the replacement for the beloved Nomah. Xander played 10 years for the Sox.)

Kiké, however, is a bit trickier to explain. WAR weights value by position. A second baseman is worth more than a leftfielder. But shortstops and centrefielders are worth more than second baseman. And Kiké played a lot more shortstop and centre than he did second base, which likely explains his 4.9 WAR that season.

And so now in 2025 we had yet another guy starting at second. His name? Kristian Campbell. I saw him a few times last year as he rocketed from A to AAA, the lowest to highest levels of minor league player development below the major league. I thought he looked good and so did the professionals, because he’s a consensus top-10 prospect in the sport.

Going into Monday’s matchup between Boston and Baltimore, Campbell is hitting 6 for 14 with one homer and two doubles, an on-base percentage of .500 and an OPS (on-base plus slugging, which weights extra base hits more heavily than singles) of 1.286. Spoiler: that’s very good.

Boston beat writers are reporting the Sox and Campbell’s agent are in talks for a long-term extension.

It looks like the Sox may have found their new long-term second baseman.

Credit for the piece is mine.

Predicting…the Known Stats?

I have been trying to post more regularly here on Coffeespoons, but now that baseball’s postseason is in full swing—pun fully intended—my free time is spent watching balls and strikes at all hours of the day. (Though, with the Wild Card round over and the move from four to two games per day, my time will likely expand as the week winds down. Sort of. More on that in a moment.)

What I have noticed on a few broadcasts, however, is the broadcast team touting Google’s ability to forecast a player’s ability to get on base. Most recently, on Sunday afternoon my mates and I were watching the Phillies–Mets contest and the broadcaster announced or the graphic popped on screen claiming Google predicts Francisco Lindor has a 34% chance to get on base in the plate appearance.

That can be a useful nugget of knowledge. And wow, that is crazy that Google can predict Lindor’s chances of getting on base.

Except it is not.

Francisco Lindor’s on base percentage (OBP) for the 2024 season was 0.344. In other words, in 34.4% of plate appearances (PAs), Lindor either gets a hit or takes a walk. With a entire sample of 689 PAs, Lindor got on base 34% of the time. Maybe Google was taking into account some other factors, but that was just the most recent one I can recall.

I wish I could recall which batter first keyed me into this situation. I want to say it was a high OBP guy, and for whatever reason I pulled my mobile out and opened the batter’s page on Baseball Reference only to find the prediction matched the OBP exactly.

Then it happened again. And again. And again.

Baseball is the greatest sport. One reason I love it is because you can use data and information to describe it. Plan for it. Play it. And sometimes predict it. Sometimes that works. Sometimes, when it doesn’t, it breaks your heart.

Baseball has reams of data and, yes, that data can feed into newer and cooler algorithms and models for predicting outcomes. (Outcomes that surely have nothing to do with the flood of sports gambling available on mobile phones.) But to me, it seems a bit disingenuous to call a statistic that has largely moved out of the realm of baseball nerds into the common understanding of the sport—thanks, Moneyball—a company’s new predictive statistic when that statistic has existed forever.

Separately, as I alluded to earlier, I shall not be posting the next few weeks. I have a weekday wedding to attend later in the week and then I am headed out of town for a few weeks and intend to be doing very little digital stuff. Plus, by the time I return baseball’s postseason shall likely be over.

But in the meantime, I am going to be heading out this afternoon to meet some mates as they cheer on their local squad, the Philadelphia Phillies as they play the Mets. (No, the Red Sox did not, yet again, make the postseason.)

As the first batter, Kyle Schwarber, steps to the plate, I predict he will have a 37% chance of getting on base. And look, his OBP is 0.366.

Tired of These Motherfcking Sox on This Motherfcking Plane

At least, that’s what I imagine South Siders saying in Chicago as they watch the White Sox team charter plane land at Midway. For those not following America’s Major League Baseball season, the Chicago White Sox are one of two clubs claiming Chicago as their home. (The other being the Cubs.) And the White Sox—not to be confused with your author’s favourite club, the Red Sox—are on track to be one of the worst clubs in the modern (post-1900) history of the sport. They have already tied the New York Mets’ record of 120 losses and there are still six left to play.

Earlier this month the Athletic detailed what has gone wrong for the Pale Hose. One of the things that stood out to me the most in the reporting was the complaints about the club’s charter aircraft, an Airbus A320, as the article points out a 1980s aircraft. The article in particular mentioned how other cheapskate teams—including the Boston Red Sox—opt for nicer aircraft with more first-class accommodations for players and staff. Then they cited a graphic shared on Twitter last year by Jay Cuda and when I saw that, I knew I had to cover it.

One thing I find fascinating is how the White Sox use United Airlines for their charter. United Airlines operates the charter—as it does for the Cubs and other airlines. That it does so for the two Chicago teams makes all the sense in the world as the company is headquartered in the Loop in downtown Chicago. It is also one of the largest airlines and thus makes sense in that dimension too.

But as those frequent air travellers among you will know, Chicago has two airports: O’Hare and Midway. O’Hare in northwest of downtown and closer to the Cubs and is the city’s primary airport. But the White Sox typically fly out of Midway, which is just a couple miles from (New) Comiskey. (I presume the team bus hops on the Dan Ryan/I-90 to the Stevenson/I-55 then exits on Cicero.)

Weird because United does not service Midway. And so United, which operates out of O’Hare, must fly aircraft to Midway to then transport the White Sox. I suppose the White Sox would not want to charter a Southwest aircraft, though…. In my own lifetime I think I have flown in and out of Midway only twice. And I lived in Chicago for eight years. (And the White Sox were terrible for probably six of them.)

Some non-White Sox things notable from the graphic. One, iAero no longer exists, so I would be curious whom the Texas Rangers and Oakland Athletics used this year. The Rangers probably used a reputable airline. The Athletics probably made their players and staff charter their own transport.

I also did not realise that even last year the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 still carried passengers in the United States. I assume that by 2024, the Detroit Tigers have fully transitioned to that Boeing 737. I find it fascinating that only the Tigers own their own aircraft. I would be curious to know why more teams do not, though of course it has to be money.

With whom else would the Blue Jays fly but Air Canada?

Finally, I am surprised that my Boston Red Sox use Delta, because that’s a normal, non-budget airline. And anyone who follows the Red Sox know the Red Sox are no longer in the habit of spending money. I thought they would use jetBlue, which is the sponsor for Fenway South, formally jetBluePark, in Fort Myers, Florida, where the Red Sox have their spring training and development league complex.

Anyways, happy Friday, all. At least you don’t play or work for the Chicago White Sox. (Though I suppose it is possible you do, because I do have a large number of readers from Chicago. But I doubt it.)

Credit for the piece goes to Jay Cuda.

I Want a Pitcher Not a Back o’ Head Hitter

We’re about to go into the sportsball realm, readers. Baseball, specifically.

Tuesday night, Atlanta Braves batter Whit Merrifield was hit in the back of the head by a 95 mph fastball. Luckily, modern ballplayers wear helmets. But at that velocity, one does not have the most reaction time in the world a number of other batters have been hit in the face. And generally, that’s not good. Merrifield went off in post-game interviews about the lack of accountability on the pitchers’ side. From my perspective as an armchair ballplayer, back in my day, when I walked up hill through the snow both ways to get to my one-room schoolhouse, if you hit a batter, our pitcher was hitting one of yours.

I have noticed in ballgames, however, I see hit-by-pitch (HBP) more often—and I score most ballgames I attend, so I have records. But I also know a handful attended per year makes for a very small sample size. Nonetheless, I know I have talked to other baseball friends and brought up that I think pitchers throw with less command, i.e. throwing strikes, than they used to, because I see more HBP in the box scores. And when I go to minor league ballgames, which I do fairly often, HBP seems on the rise there, which means in future years those same pitchers will likely be in the majors.

So yesterday morning, I finally took a look at the data and, lo and behold, indeed, since my childhood, the numbers of HBPs has increased.

There is one noticeable sharp dip and that is the 2020 COVID-shortened season. Ignore that one. And then a smaller dip in the mid-90s represents the 114-game and 144-game seasons, compared to the standard 162 per year. Nonetheless, the increase is undeniable.

There is a general dip in the curve, which occurs in the late 200s and early 2010s, with its nadir in 2012. Without doing more research, that was probably the peak of pitchers, who could command—throw strikes—and control—put their strikes where they want in the strike zone—their pitches at the sacrifice of velocity.

2014 saw the rise of the dominant Royals bullpen, which changed the course of modern baseball. Stack your bullpen with a number of power arms who throw 100 mph and just challenge batters to hit the speedball. Problem is, not everyone who can throw 100 knows where that speedball is going. And that leads to more batters being hit.

Merrifield is correct in his assessment that until pitchers and teams face consequences for hitting batters, we are not likely to see a decrease in HBPs. Or at least not until velocity is de-emphasised for some other reason. What if there were a rule a pitcher who hits a batter from the shoulder up is immediately ejected? What if a long-term injury for a batter is tied to a long-term roster removal for the pitcher? If, say, the batter hit in the head is out for a month with a concussion, the same pitcher is on the restricted list for a month?

Have I worked through any of these ideas in depth? Nope. Just spitballing here on ye olde blog. But as my chart shows, it does not look like this potentially life-changing problem in the game is going away anytime soon.

Credit for the piece is mine.

The .500 Red Sox

I initially made this datagraphic over the weekend, after watching the last few weeks of Boston Red Sox baseball wherein they continued to win a game, lose a game, resulting in an even .500 record.

When I started, the graphic I sketched looked very different as I had included timelines and highlighted key moments where key players went down for the year or the year-to-date. But after I added some context of the sport’s leading clubs’ games above or below .500, I realised most of those clubs were all those that my good friends and family followed.

Consequently I ditched my initial concept and opted to instead show how middling my Red Sox have been to the rest of them. And whilst this graphic may have a few more spaghetti lines than I’d typically prefer, it does show that squiggle of consistency in the middle that is the Red Sox 2024 season to date.

Of course, when I posted it, the Red Sox had just lost to the Yankees and I said I expected them to win one and lose one the rest of the weekend to stay at .500. So what happened? The Red Sox won both and are now two games over .500.

Baseball superstition thus requires I post more graphics about the .500 Red Sox to get them more games over .500.

Credit for the piece is mine.

Boston: Sportstown of the 21st Century

Tonight the Boston Celtics play in Game 1 of the NBA Finals against the Golden State Warriors, one of the most dominant NBA teams over the last several years. But since the start of the new century and the new millennium, more broadly Boston’s four major sports teams have dominated the championship series of those sports. In fact tonight marks the 19th championship series a New England team has played since 2001. And in those 18 series thus far, Boston teams have a 12–6 record.

Of the 12 titles won, the New England Patriots account for half with six Super Bowl victories out of nine appearances. The Boston Red Sox have won all four World Series they have played in since 2001. Rounding out the list, the Celtics and Bruins have each won a single championship with the Bruins appearing in three Stanley Cups and the Celtics in two NBA Finals. Tonight begins their third.

Credit for the piece is mine.

How the Globe’s Writers Voted

Yesterday we looked at a piece by the Boston Globe that mapped out all of David Ortiz’s home runs. We did that because he has just been voted into baseball’s Hall of Fame. But to be voted in means there must be votes and a few weeks after the deadline, the Globe posted an article about how that publication’s eligible voters, well, voted.

The graphic here was a simple table. But as I’ll always say, tables aren’t an inherently bad or easy-way-out form of data visualisation. They are great at organising information in such a way that you can quickly find or reference specific data points. For example, let’s say you wanted to find out whether or not a specific writer voted for a specific ballplayer.

Just don’t ask me for whom I would have voted…

Simple red check marks represent those players for whom the Globe’s eligible staff voted. I really like some of the columns on the left that provide context on the vote. For the unfamiliar, players can only remain on the list for up to ten years. And so for the first four, this was their last year of eligibility. None made the cut. Then there’s a column for the total number of votes made by the Globe’s staff. Following that is more context, the share of votes received in 2021. Here the magic number if 75% to be elected. Conversely, if you do not make 5% you drop off the following year. Almost all of those on their first year ballot failed to reach that threshold.

The only potential drawback to this table is that by the time you reach the end of the table, there are few check marks to create implicit rules or lines that guide you from writer to player. David Ortiz’s placement helps because six—remarkably not all Globe writers voted for him—it grounds you for the only person below him (alphabetically) to receive a vote. And we need that because otherwise quickly linking Alex Rodriguez to Alex Speier would be difficult.

Finally below the table we have jump links to each writer’s writings about their selections. And if you’ll allow a brief screenshot of that…

We have a nicely designed section here. Designers delineated each author’s section with red arrows that evoke the red stitching on a baseball. It’s a nice design tough. Then each author receives a headline and a small call out box inside which are the players—and their headshots—for whom the author voted. An initial dropped capital (drop cap), here a big red M, grabs the reader’s attention and draws them into the author’s own words.

Overall this was a solidly designed piece. I really enjoyed it. And for those who don’t follow the sport, the table is also an indicator of how divisive the voting can be. Even the Globe’s writers couldn’t unanimously agree on voting for David Ortiz.

Credit for the piece goes to Daigo Fujiwara and Ryan Huddle.

558 Dingers

Yesterday baseball writers elected David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox, better known as Big Papi, to the Baseball Hall of Fame. I was trying to work on a thing for yesterday, but ran out of time. While I will attempt to return to that later, for now I want to share a simple interactive graphic from the Boston Globe. As the blog title suggests, it’s about the 558 career home runs Ortiz hit between his time with the Twins and the Red Sox. He hit 541 of those during the regular season, tacking on 17 more in the post season including his famous 2013 ALCS grand slam against the Detroit Tigers. (The one where the cop’s arms are in the air alongside Torii Hunter’s legs.)

Now you can see that Ortiz was a left-handed pull hitter with that home run concentration to right field, especially those wrapped around Fenway’s (in)famous Pesky Pole.

But with the number of dots you see inside the grounds at Fenway, you can also see the one downside of a chart like this. The graphic maps home runs at all Major League ballparks to that of Fenway. Not to mention the role that the Green Monster plays in turning a lot of those line drive home runs that when hit to right field leave the yard, but to left simply bounce off the Monster for doubles or the dreaded long single. But in part that’s why Ortiz also had ridiculous season numbers for extra base hits because of all those Green Monster doubles. (Conversely, how many popups a mile in the sky came down into the Green Monster seats?)

You access this interactive piece by scrolling through the experience as the Globe chose 12 home runs to represent Ortiz’s entire career. I’m fortunate enough to remember watching several of them on the television.

Big Papi was a force to be reckoned with and watching him hit was entertainment. I’m very excited to see him enter the Hall of Fame.

This summer? It’s his effing Hall.

Credit for the piece goes to John Hancock.