Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Useless knowledge

The following is recap of the Wild Things' record and attendance figures at the all-star break each season, along with a hitting statistic that Washington first baseman Ernie Banks (pictured) leads the league in by a large margin.

This is the first time Washington has been as low as fifth place in the standings at the break and eight games out of first place is the most they've trailed the division leader. In 2006, they were in fourth place, 7 1/2 games out of first, and still made the playoffs.

The first-half attendance slipped for the second year in a row (though only by 165 per game, which in this economy isn't bad) and is at the franchise's all-time low. A game this year against Gateway drew a paid attendance of only 1,340 – the smallest in franchise history – and there couldn't have been more than 500 people in the park.

RECORD AT THE BREAK:
2002 - 23-16
2003 - 26-20
2004 - 30-17
2005 - 27-18
2006 - 21-22
2007 - 28-17
2008 - 26-24
2009 - 21-27

ATTENDANCE AT THE BREAK (PER GAME)
2002 - 2,942
2003 - 3,390
2004 - 3,242
2005 - 3,048
2006 - 3,133
2007 - 3,180
2008 - 2,899
2009 - 2,734

One of the sabremetric categories is Batting Average on Balls in Play. This is a measure of the number of batted balls that safely fall in for a hit. The sabremetrics people do not include home runs when calculating this, but for our purposes we will. If you take every Frontier League hitter with at least 100 at-bats and toss out their strikeouts, no player has a higher batting average than Ernie Banks, not even Rockford's Jason James, who has a 38-game hitting streak. In other words, when Banks makes contact, he's been hitting like, well, the other Ernie Banks.

The 5 highest batting averages of balls in play:

.526 - Ernie Banks, Washington
.480 - Joseph Scaperotta, Gateway
.473 - Jason James, Rockford
.446 - Charlie Lisk, Gateway
.436 - Frank Meade, Evansville

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11 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Transactions being made over the all star break....

July 14, 2009 at 3:56 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

No concert updates? Anyone go to the show on Monday night?

July 15, 2009 at 10:23 AM  
Anonymous H.M. said...

Regarding the concert...had friends who sat in traffic for over 2 hrs. No parking available in at the ballfield...only at the Mall with a $2/person shuttle fee. By the time they got there Willie Nelson was already done and so they decided not even to buy tickets...turned around and went home!

July 15, 2009 at 11:12 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Tell them to show up early like most people. Gates opened at 5 o'clock. Willie didn't go on until 6.

July 15, 2009 at 11:25 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"show up early...."
people started lining up at 6:30 AM!!!

July 15, 2009 at 1:36 PM  
Anonymous Barney Ruble said...

Wait until next year's concert when they put out their cigarette butts on the tax payer turf.
Would it be natural to smoke grass on taxpayer turf?

July 15, 2009 at 6:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

either than the traffic, another parking circus, the concert was great. I had a great time.

July 15, 2009 at 7:14 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Parking, Politics, And Taxpayers and the field...will it ever end? Wow.

July 15, 2009 at 9:22 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Parking, Politics, And Taxpayers and the field...will it ever end? Wow.

Will YOU ever go away?

July 16, 2009 at 10:06 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Having a high average on batted balls isn't always a good thing. It usually means that the hitter is very lucky.

July 21, 2009 at 6:40 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Having a high average on batted balls isn't always a good thing."

Hahaha. That might be the dumbest thing ever written on this blog ... and that's saying something

July 22, 2009 at 2:02 PM  

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