25 March 2011

With or Without Crowley: 2011

This is a simple statement of intent.  It will be more interesting after the season.

For many an Oriole fan, the presence of Terry Crowley in the dugout has been a sore point.  A long time ago, I tried to loosely determine to what extent Crowley affected hitters.  This year, I am going to trying another way of exploring to what affect his absence from the everyday running of the clubhouse will have on the players.  Wanting a robust sample size, I have chosen to compare the projected performance of Orioles who played last season currently on the team as well as those who have left against their performance last season.  Why am I including the castoffs?  In order to determine if there are any lingering effects of Terry Crowley roaming the underbelly of Camden Yards.

The metrics I will be most interested in will be % walks, % strikeouts, number of pitches, and your basic slash line (AVG / OBP / SLG).

So I guess we will see after the season.

2 comments:

  1. NCBirdfanMarch 26, 2011 at 2:42 PM

    What happens if a player that was under Crowley's wing last year, has a breakout year? Is that because of Crowley's teachings from the past or did the new BC make the difference? Was the player playing with nagging injuries in the past, and now if finally healthy? There will be many more questions unanswered.

    Evaluating his input with stats alone is a very difficult, if not impossible, thing to do. There are many variable involved beyond what you mention. I applaud you for the attempt though and will look forward to seeing your results.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jon ShepherdMarch 26, 2011 at 3:13 PM

    I agree. It is a difficult thing to accomplish. I figure though that by pooling the data and comparing it to projected performance that aging, break outs, and break downs should be largely averaged out.

    ReplyDelete