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Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Partial mail:
I’d like to comment on a shortcoming that WPA has as a story stat. Or to use your analogy, I maintain that there are cases where the screwdriver screws the wrong screw. I still love the stat though.
WPA does a great job when the story is batter vs. pitcher. As this is the main story line in most games, WPA gets it right most of the time. However, whenever the story relates to fielding, WPA misses the boat. What bothers me is not so much that it doesn’t credit great/terrible fielding, but apportions both the credit and the blame to the wrong players.
My best example is one of my most favorite games, Yankees vs. Mets on June 12th 2009. With the score in favor of the Mets 8-7, bottom of the 9th, men on 1st & 2nd, 2 outs, A-Rod hit a pop up off K-Rod to Luis Castillo. He dropped the ball and the Yankees won. A-Rod was awarded 0.818 WPA points (I think perhaps the most in his career for a single play!) and K Rod “awarded” -0.818. Neither of them deserved either the credit or the blame.
Similarly, in cases where a 1st baseman makes a tremendous play and turns an unassisted double play by doubling off the runner, the pitcher receives all the credit, the batter all the blame, while the fielder receives nothing.
My response:
There’s nothing in WPA that prevents the awarding of the play to the fielders.
I will point you to the very first time I did WPA, where I go out of my way to talk about Moises Alou, and Gonzalez, and really, all the fielders. NEVER do I say it was ONLY Mark Prior.
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/crucial-situations
That Fangraphs or BR.com does not have the fielding data to do the split is not a problem with WPA. It’s a problem with them, or rather, the lack of data that describes the fielders in detail.
I’ll also point out that WPA only described who was INVOLVED. It does NOT try to establish who was RESPONSIBLE. In the above example, ARod and KRod were involved. Now, it would be nice if Fangraphs and BR.com captures the fielders as well. But capturing fielders is really not so clean. The best example there is that the 1B is simply the end point of the putout, and he is basically “just there”. Was he “involved”? You can make the case that he was involved. You can also make the case that he was incidental.
If someone wants to create a process for WPA that also includes the fielders, then go ahead. You may get to the point that it ends up hiding the story you are trying to show.
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
a) WAR is wins above replacement.
b) WAR is a framework.
c) WAR presents the performance of a player into a single number.
d) WAR is limited to the data points it considers.
e) WAR is limited by the bias in the data.
f) WAR is not all-encompassing.
So, what does all that bullsh!t mean?
Read More
The new face of sabermetrics.
Charissa Thompson has made her mark across sports and entertainment covering an array of events from the NFL, to hockey, to basketball to the red carpet. She has now signed on with ESPN and is co-hosting a new show, “Numbers Never Lie” starting in September 2011.
Another from Tyler, but this time, I agree with him completely. And I’m glad he did the research.
I assumed that she didn’t mention the June numbers – when the Canucks playoff run ended ignominiously because they were simply to horrible to mention. No Canucks playoff hockey in June 2010 and an awful ending to Canucks’ playoff hockey in June of 2011 must surely have unleashed the “…violent subculture of masculinity fed by hockey, UFC and other activities that define men through violence and (lead them to) start drinking hours before they commit public or private acts of violence.” I’m a brave man with a strong stomach so I looked. 13 reports of sexual offences in District 1 in June of 2010 and…11 this year.
Tyler proposes:
One solution might be punishing teams in cities that have problems with a points deduction the following season. English football does something similar for teams that go into administration during the course of the season. UEFA, the governing body of European soccer, holds teams accountable for the conduct of their fans – Serbia was recently punished for out of control fans within a stadium. I’m not aware, off the top of my head, of teams being punished for the conduct of supporters outside of the stadium but if the conduct is related to the game – and Stanley Cup riots obviously are – I’m not sure why you wouldn’t hold the people profiting responsible for them.
Tyler is wrong here because the team can only police on the property it actually controls. That the fans riot outside the arena/stadium now absolves the team. Otherwise, if you make them responsible, you are now saying that they “own” the policing of the fans on public streets.
I like the idea that you can punish a team for the actions of its fans within its building (and baseball has had its forfeits like the Disco Game). But, you can’t go beyond that.
This site is blocked at the office, and Google Reader only shows a portion of it. I can only presume that the author will use illogical or irrational reasoning (or has such a myopic view that he misses the entire point of WAR) to try to make some sense to support his thesis, because that’s what ALWAYS happens when someone says WAR doesn’t work. (I’m just applying Bayes here.) It’s the same kind of reasoning when one says “OBP doesn’t work” to point out “BB=HR? It doesn’t work!”.
But, I’m willing to play along and post this thread blind, and be embarrassed, as the author makes a cogent or insightful argument. I’ll read the rest of the thread at home tonight, unless someone wants to post it below, starting from after “There’s only one problem. It doesn’t work.”
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Comments • 2011/09/12
Using my extensive baseball lawyer training from the back streets in Montreal, and having just seen the Larry Flint bio movie last night, this is how I see it.
Since the replay can only be used on “HR calls”, that would mean the following:
1. The call on the field was a HR, and you view the replay to either
(i) affirm the call as a HR, or
(ii) reverse it into something else (interference, double, etc).
2. The call on the field was NOT a HR, and you view the replay to either
(i) affirm the call as whatever the ruling on the field was prior to the replay, or
(ii) make it a HR.
This is what makes the replay viable: it has to be a HR call. Either the call made was a HR, or the eventual call made is to turn it into a HR. This is a pure, strict, legalese interpretation.
Those are your only options. The rule is not “regardless of what the call on the field is, if the play is close enough to a HR, even if it was not originally called a HR, then you get to view the replay, and then make the correct decision, even if it was not to make it into a HR”.
This would be similar in hockey, where the replay is made on goal or no-goal. If in the process of viewing the goal / no-goal, you see some tripping or other penalty, you can’t then call the penalty and nullify the goal call. You do NOT look at “all available evidence” on the replay.
As Andy wrote in the other thread, you can’t stop someone for a broken light, and then inspect his trunk. So, Joe West made a bullsh!t call, based on the rules. It’s the baseball equivalent of an illegal search.
In the play in question, we had situation #2: a non-HR call is what was made on the field. If there are TWO challenges to the play, one based on fan interference, and one based on the HR, then the correct order would be the following:
A: the umpires are to determine if fan interference exists, or not, without looking at the replay. They can then change the initial ruling on the field, from a double into a fan interference, and create a NEW ruling on the field. Joe West could have said: “fan interference!”. The replay could not be used here, because it was not a HR call. Joe West had to first decide if it was a double or fan interference.
B: now that we have a ruling on the field, #2 above STILL applies. The current rule on the field is now (in this hypothetical, presuming step A was followed) fan interference, and the umpires are going to go to the replay for the first time to see if THAT ruling should be affirmed, or whether it needs to be reversed into a HR call.
If the umpires would then have seen that there was NO fan interference, AND that the ball would not have carried over the fence, then it CANNOT be reversed into a double call.
You have to apply situation 1 or situation 2, and the only remedies is what I’ve specified there.
Monday, September 05, 2011
The takedown we needed and deserve. Thank god Poz is on the side of logic. I’d hate to do battle with someone that good a writer who somehow was irrational.
By , 02:01 AM
Last night, in the PHI/FLO game, Anibal Sanchez was asked to lay down a sac bunt with runners on 1st and 3rd and 1 out in the second or third inning. No one batted an eyelash (but me). You see this all the time. It is SOP.
In The Book, in the chapter on sac bunting (if you haven’t read it, what the heck are you waiting for?), we say that a pitcher should rarely bunt with runners on 1 and 3 and 1 out. To me, that makes perfect intuitive sense, even from the standpoint of a manager, media analyst, fan etc. By sacrificing, you give up most opportunities for a run to score on that play (via a hit, sac fly, non-DP ground out) and you give up an opportunity for a walk, even though that rarely occurs. In exchange, you only move a runner from first to second, which is not that valuable when giving up an out when there is already 1 out (we are going to assume that a sac bunt means one runner advances and the batter is out), which is why a position player, even a poor-hitting one, never bunts with a runner on first and 1 out. In fact, the average RE (using the 99-03 NL run environment) for runners on 1st and 3rd and 2 outs is .509 and with 2nd and 3rd, it is .574, a pick up of only .065 runs. So a bunt is not THAT much better than a K or other out that does not advance the runner.
Of course, the manager is scared to death of a DP to end the inning. How often does that happen? Well, about half of all ground ball outs by pitchers with a runner on 1st and less than 2 outs are DP’s. About 30% of a pitcher’s PA end in a ground out, so about 15% of the time, they hit into a GDP. So basically in exchange for moving the runner up at first and avoiding an inning ending DP around 15% of the time, they give up the chance for a walk, hit, sacrifice fly (and of course an ROE, but that can happen with a bunt also), or a ground out where the runner scores. Again, this doesn’t seem to me to be a fair exchange. And The Book says that it is not even close.
Let’s look at the data again - roughly.
We’ll assume that the “successful” sacrifice results in runners on 2 and 3 and 2 outs, or an RE of .574.
What happens if the pitcher swings away?
First we’ll look at all the positive events. Here are the frequencies and the resultant RE plus any runs that score:
S .125 1.924 (I am conservatively assuming that the runner on 1st only advances 1 base)
D .019 2.404 (I am assuming, again, quite conservatively, that only one run scores)
T .0013 2.985
HR .0013 3.286
BB .034 1.553
ROE .0075 1.924 (again, assuming runners advance only one base)
SF .058 1.239
Ground out, no DP, runner scores: .105 1.287 (I am assuming that 2/3 of the time, runner scores, and 1/3 of the time, he gets thrown out at home. I am also assuming that half the time the runner on first advances.)
Now, the negative results:
DP (GDP and other DP, including runner thrown out at home on a fly ball out) .163 0
K .348 .509
Fly out and no runners advance .058 .509
LD out and no runners advance .03 .509
Ground out and runner gets thrown out at home (1/3 of all non-DP ground outs) .052 .437
If we add all these RE up, we get: .741
So, as we suspected, it is not even close! You are at least (I made lots of conservative assumptions, I think) .20 runs better off not attempting a sac bunt with an average hitting pitcher and runners on 1 and 3 and 1 out. According to The Book, when pitchers did not sacrifice in that situation, an average of .962 runs were scored, much larger than our expected .741. That is likely because these are the better hitting pitchers, the defense was probably somewhat surprised (resulting in more hits), and the hitting environment was probably high as well.
So how much does this egregious mistake cost teams? It looks like managers actually bunt around half the time in these situations and that occurs around 1.5 time per team (in the NL) per year. That is a cost of at least .3 runs per year, probably closer to .4 or .5. Not much, but still, in the scheme of things, it is a lot. Given that a win costs around 4 million dollars, a manager should be fined $40,000 dollars every time he asks his pitcher to bunt with 1 out and runners on 1 and 3!
By , 12:27 AM
Most of you probably read about or watched the controversial umpire call in the PHI/FLO game yesterday. If not, here is a recap:
Score tied 2-2 in the top of the 6th. No outs and Howard on 1st for the Phillies. Hunter Pence hits a line drive to the wall in RF. The Marlin’s RF’er goes back and leaps for the ball at the top of the wall. Some fans ostensibly reach over the wall at the same time. The ball caroms off the wall and Pence has a double with Ryan on third.
Peterson and some other Marlin players are motioning that the fans interfered with the ball. The Marlin’s manager comes out and argues with crew chief Joe West.
The umpires get together, view the play on video, come out, and declare Pence out for fan interference and send Howard back to first.
Manuel, the Phillies’ manager comes out of the dugout to argue, gets ejected from the game (I guess you can’t argue replay calls), and files a protest.
The Phillies and their fans are basically arguing that the play is not reviewable since only a “HR call” is reviewable. They are also arguing, I guess, that even if the play was reviewed as a “HR call,” they cannot then rule on interference based on the replay.
I don’t think there is a clear answer, I don’t know how the protest will play out (protests are rarely upheld), but I have some comments nonetheless:
First of all, I think that the chief umpire, West, lied afterward about several things in order to cover his ass, similar to the way Doug Eddings lied after the “ball hitting the dirt after a K - or not” - episode in the playoffs a few years ago.
For what it is worth, West is generally considered a terrible, arrogant umpire. Eddings is also considered a terrible umpire (along with C.B. Bucknor and Angel Hernandez). From many years of watching baseball, I agree with that consensus (about those 4 umpires).
Here is what West said according to MLB.com and other media websites:
“Because the Phillies wanted me to go look to see if it was a home run, I’ve got to judge whether it went over the fence or not,” West said. “But the plate umpire [Chad Fairchild] already thought it was spectator interference. So now we go look at the replay, we have to take all the evidence we get from the replay. That’s why we came out with, ‘This is the correct ruling.’ ”
He said that the Phillies wanted him to see if it was a HR. Manuel said he did not. If you watch the video, it does not look like Manuel ever came out of the dugout until after the review. So who exactly on the Phillies wanted or asked for a review (to see if it was a HR)? Plus it definitely did not look like a HR so I am not sure why anyone on the Phillies would ask for a review. If anything, they would NOT want a review because of the possibility of fan interference. And who else but Manuel could or would ask for a review? Again, I don’t think he ever came out of the dugout prior to the review.
That being said, according to the rules, no one needs to ASK for a review I don’t think. Here is the rule according to MLB.com:
“Instant replay will apply only to home run calls—whether they are fair or foul, whether they have left the playing field, or whether they have been subject to fan interference. The decision to use instant replay will be made by the umpire crew chief, who also will make the determination as to whether or not a call should be reversed.”
The bolding is mine. Obviously the decision is up to the umpires (the crew chief - West), but the above rule doesn’t say that anyone has to ASK for a review.
That being said, the rule clearly states that replay will only be used for HR calls. So did West decide to review the play to see if it was indeed a HR (absent fan interference or whatever I guess)? I don’t think so. I think he wanted to placate McKeon and the Marlins and see whether there was interference or not. I think that afterward when he realized that he couldn’t do that, he lied about the, “Phillies wanting to review the call to see if it was a HR?”
He didn’t have to use that lie (if indeed it was a lie). He could have simply said that there was some question among the umpires that it might be a HR, so they decided to review it. That would be perfectly legit, as far as I can tell from the above rule.
Now, let’s say that the review was legit. Can they review the play as a “HR call” (obviously when they say “HR call” in the rule, they also mean a “double call” which might have been a HR, IOW a “possible” HR) and then also decide whether it was interference or not? That is the part that is not clear, and I don’t think that there is anything in the rule that suggests they can or they can’t.
In other words, if an umpiring crew properly reviews a “HR call” (fair or foul, over the wall or not, fan interference or not), can they rule on something else that they happen to see (clearly, I assume) in the video? For example, what if they see that the fielder threw his glove at the ball, which is a penalty in and of itself, and they did not see that in live mode?
Now, the replay rule also talks about fan interference. Here is that part again:
“Instant replay will apply only to home run calls—whether they are fair or foul, whether they have left the playing field, or whether they have been subject to fan interference...”
So maybe according to that, they CAN rule on interference. The rule says, “whether they (the batted ball presumably) have been subject to fan interference.”
Obviously this ball WAS subject to fan interference, so it seems that they can rule on it, as long as they were reviewing the play based upon whether it was a HR or not, and not whether there was interference or not.
Back to Country Joe’s statements. Remember he also said this:
But the plate umpire [Chad Fairchild] already thought it was spectator interference. So now we go look at the replay, we have to take all the evidence we get from the replay. ..
I think he is lying about that too! There was no indication that any of the umpires thought it was interference. If they did, they would have called the interference right away, I think. Perhaps, when they got together after McKeon came out to argue, and after the Marlins were complaining about interference, Fairchild said something like, “You know, the fans might have interfered with that ball.” But clearly no one called interfercne right away or at any time for that matter.
Again, even if one of the umpires thought they might have seen interference, or there was some legitimate question as to whether it occurred, they can not, as far as I can tell, look at the replay to clarify that only. That seems to be what they did. I don’t think anyone thought that it might be a HR and I definitely don’t think anyone on the Phillies asked for a HR review.
Now, let’s say that they reviewed the play properly and determined (correctly) that there was fan interference. What is the remedy?
Here is the rule on that:
When there is spectator interference with any thrown or batted ball, the ball shall be dead at the moment of interference and the umpire shall impose such penalties as in his opinion will nullify the act of interference. If spectator interference clearly prevents a fielder from catching a fly ball, the umpire shall declare the batter out.
Again, the bolding is mine. The first part can not always be clear since an umpire can not always know what would have happened if there was no interference. If you watch this video and ask 100 people whether Peterson would have made the catch, I think you are going to get something like a 50/50 response, 70/30 at worst (and I’m not even sure in what direction). But the second part is clearer. The interference must clearly prevent a fielder from catching the ball. Sort of like clear and convincing evidence or some such thing.
Was it clear that Peterson would have caught the ball? I don’t think so, but that is a judgment call.
If MLB decides that the review itself was proper and that the interference call was also proper, I don’t think that they can uphold the protest based on the wording of the interference rule since that is a judgment call. West and co. can simply say, “We thought that the interference clearly prevented the RF’er from catching the ball,” and that would be the end of the story…
Friday, September 02, 2011
Video.
I’ve got a slow internet connection at the moment, so only the first 50 seconds or so buffered. I’ll get to it later.
The linked spreadsheet is the real payoff. Just fantastic stuff!
Thursday, September 01, 2011
"Excessive celebration” must be the singular worst penalty in sports: Don’t hurt the other team’s feelings.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Here are the five-day forecasts for Atlantic City.
Weather.com (The Weather Channel)
Wunderground
Accuweather
Weather.gov
Just for today, the high is 77 to 83F. One site says partly cloudy, another says partly sunny, and the other says sunny/clear. Today.
Tomorrow, two says partly cloudy, another says mostly sunny, and a fourth says sunny. The range is 79F to 85F.
How about Thursday? One says isolated thunderstorms, 78F; another says partly cloudy, 10% chance of rain, 81F; a third says sun and clouds, 79F. And a fourth says mostly sunny, 81F.
Friday? Partly Cloudy, 74; Partly Cloudy 79; Times of Cloud and Sun 80; Mostly Sunny 78.
Saturday? One’s got showers, and the other 4 don’t.
Please tell me there is some independent site out there that gives us a report card on these weather sites. Sabermetric forecasting systems have more agreement than these guys.
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Comments • 2011/09/03
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Blogging
I didn’t know that the surface of tennis matches is not covered by its rule book. Fascinating.
But the physics of tennis — those impersonal forces shaping every shot — are not constant. Instead, they largely depend on three separate factors determined by the court surface.
The most important factor is the “coefficient of friction,” a measurement of the abrasive force between the ground and the tennis ball. Courts with high frictional coefficients interfere with the movement of the ball, disrupting its forward momentum. Think of a sluggish clay court. According to experiments performed by the ITF, a shot hit without spin and traveling at 67 mph will lose about 43 percent of its ground speed after contact with the clay surface, slowing down to a leisurely 38 mph. (The reason clay steals momentum is rooted in the friction of all that loose brick, which clumps around the ball. Each clump is like a little speed bump.) As a result, players have a few extra milliseconds to hit a return....
Even worse than I thought.
Some interesting stuff from Brian, as he walks you through some of the pitfalls.
Note that the same “last year drop” happens in baseball too. The reason is that this is a sampling bias. If a player has a disaster year, a certain portion of that is bad luck. And a disproportionate number of “last year” performances has more bad luck than good luck. That’s why it looks like you have a big drop in the last year. But that’s only because he wasn’t asked to come back the next year. Well, for those who WERE asked to come back the next year following a disaster year, then, guess what, that disaster year no longer is part of the “last year”. Hence, the bias.
When constructing these aging curves, it is ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS important to pretend that the future has not existed. If you want to know Peyton Manning’s aging pattern from 2011 onwards, then you have to look at other QB who managed to play at a high level at the age of 35. And do NOT look at how (or even if) they played from age 36 onwards in selecting your players. The future is unknown, from the perspective of SELECTING your players.
Once the selection process has taken place, you then do look to their “futures”. Basically, you time travel back to each QB’s point in time such that you are in the same boat as you are with Peyton. And then you travel forward in time for each QB. And since we can’t do that with Peyton without our favorite Delorean, we simply estimate that by looking at all his comparables.
Monday, August 29, 2011
By , 09:33 PM
Oakland is known as the original sabermetric team of course - at least the front office. In tonight’s game, they were down a run in the top of the 8th with a runner on second and 0 outs. The pitcher was Tony Sipp, the lefty, and the batter was Crisp, batting right handed.
Bunting in this situation is probably marginal at best, because you are the road team, and you would like to score more than one run. As most of you know, I am not anti-sacrifice bunt, by any means. In fact, this is a great time to execute game theory and sometimes bunt and sometimes hit away. However, the SS was holding the runner at second, Weeks, very close, to keep him from stealing (the previous runner on second stole third easily on Sipp) and to keep him from getting a big jump on a possible bunt. At the same time, the 3B was playing close for the bunt. There was a gigantic hole between 2nd and 3rd base. Given that, I have to believe that hitting away is much the better option.
Now here is the kicker which made the bunt a horrendous play. The count went to 2-0! As we explain in The Book, when the count is in the hitter’s favor, especially 2-0, 3-0, and 3-1, it is rarely if ever correct to bunt for obvious reasons.
So given the hole at SS, the count, the favorable platoon matchup, and the fact that OAK was the visiting team, I don’t believe that a bunt can even be close to being correct, ever, even when considering game theory.
Anyway, Crisp bunted at ball 3, it was a bad bunt, Weeks didn’t advance and OAK never scored.
I have to wonder if Billy Beane or someone else from the front office discusses these things with their manager, Bob Melvin. I doubt it. I sure would…
Michael gives us his take. We see in just 16 games, we get a high degree of correlation between goal differential and wins. He then looks at various component metrics and see how they link up to wins or goal scoring. He also shows a correlation of goals differential, year to year, which is really the key chart. I’d like to see that chart redone, by throwing out the bottom 3 teams from the league (and all their games). They obviously don’t belong in the same league. Anyway, fun study.
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Comments • 2011/08/29
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Other Sports
Nate tackles it, but I’m going to give him a single, maybe a double on this. He did one thing wrong, and one thing unnecessarily.
Wrong: he did a great job by covering how the traditional media covered it:
The Web site NewsLibrary.com is a searchable database of millions of news accounts — mostly newspaper and magazine articles, but also some sources like television transcripts. While it lacks representation of things like blogs and social media, it contains a highly comprehensive sample of what we might think of as the traditional media.
The real issue was the real-time coverage. And in this day and age, this is what the issue is about. While I expect The Weather Channel to cover it 100% of the time (it is it’s raison d’etre), should we expect it from all the networks? How proportionate of their coverage should it get? Nate did not tackle the TV coverage, and instead relied on what the above site gave, which, presumably from the description, was most about non-TV coverage. I’ll give him props for tackling it, but he didn’t stick to the debate topic.
#2: why Nate, did you do this:
This is defined by taking the total number of stories that mentioned the storm by name (for instance, “Hurricane Hugo” or “Tropical Storm Hugo”; either one is considered acceptable) and dividing by the average number of stories per day that were available in the NewsLibrary.com database during that period. I then multiply the result by 10 just to make things a little bit more legible — so essentially, a News Unit consists of one-tenth of all the stories published on a given day.
Why not multiply by 100 instead of 10, and then you can say “a News Unit is a percentage of all stories published”. Can’t you just say Irene was 22.5% of the news stories, rather than say 2.25 News Units?
I know it’s a nit, but the entire story centered around this metric. It would have been so much clearer to have said 22.5% of news stories.
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Comments • 2011/08/29
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Blogging
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