THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Make the case to put Johnny Damon in the HOF, while keeping Carlos Beltran (and Jim Edmonds) out

Go.

Bonus points for sounding clever.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Hall of Not Famous Enough

Poz’s list.

I think Raines is more a cause celebre.  And no mention of DH, but Edgar I think is the perfect example of a cause celebre.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Barry Bonds Sentenced to 15 Years… Of Hall of Fame Discussions by Holy Writers

This is going to be worse than Jack Morris.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Scott Rolen, Derek Jeter, tomayto, tomahto

Dave makes the case:

Scott Rolen has a career batting line of .284/.369/.498, good for a .375 wOBA. His park-adjusted wRC+ of 125 shows that he’s been a good hitter throughout his career.

Derek Jeter has a career batting line of .314/.385/.452, good for a .371 wOBA. His park-adjusted wRC+ of 125 shows that he’s been a good hitter throughout his career.

Despite the fact that Rolen has almost certainly provided more defensive value throughout his career, Jeter gets the bump from having played the more difficult position. Unfortunately, the pattern is generally to compare up the middle guys against each other, and then compare corner guys against other corner guys, but not to compare third baseman to shortstops, despite the fact that they stand next to each other on the field and there is significant overlap in the pools of talent at the positions.

Can we really argue that Jeter has been so much more valuable in the field than Rolen to justify the differences in their expected differences in HOF election?

Whatever positional value you want to give to a SS over a 3B (5 runs?  10 runs?  15 runs?) it won’t be enough to cancel out having possibly the best fielding 3B of all time against an average-fielding-at-best SS.  You’d have to set it at 20 or 25 runs to do that.  And if you do that, then what positional adjustment do you give a 1B?

3B is one of those in-between positions that simply confounds people unless they sit down and analyze it in a more comprehensive manner.

Monday, March 07, 2011

Do we want to know about peak years for HOF?

Adam Dorowski, as per VivaEl:

Essentially, wWAR double counts anything from 3.1-6.0 WAR and triple counts anything at or above 6.1 WAR.  You’d total these numbers for players across their entire career and use this as a Hall of Fame comparison instead of just straight WAR perhaps.... “Voters want a guy who was the best at his position for a certain period of time. Quiet consistency is boring. They want Ryne Sandberg (62.1 WAR) and not Lou Whitaker (69.7 WAR)."… If we know anything, it’s that voters for the Hall of Fame talk a lot. But are they holding true to this axiom? Adam’s anecdotal remark aside, I’ve never seen a comprehensive analysis that shows players with better peaks are more likely to get into the hall of fame than players with comparable overall value but worse peaks.  So we’re making, what seems to me, a leap of faith here that voting patterns are intrinsically consistent with an argument that’s unverified.

Fair enough.  Let me give it a first go.

I ran a simple correlation of:
1. Total WAR
2. Number of 3-6 WAR seasons
3. Number of 6+ WAR seasons

The T-stat was 0.0 for #1, 7.5 for #2 and 18.7 for #3!  That is, knowing the total WAR gives us NOTHING AT ALL, if we already know the number of good or great seasons a player has had.  The number of great seasons (6+ WAR) is what counts the most.

The correlation is r=.68 based just on these three stats (really, just the two).  Data was against players born between 1895 (Ruth) and 1958 (Rickey).  Here are some highlights:

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Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Congrats to Sean Forman

Henry Chadwick Award.

Monday, February 07, 2011

Crowded 2016 Ballot

Andy Pettitte’s HOF chances is going to depend alot more than just on his talent and production.  It’s going to depend on the limitations of a system that won’t allow for more than 10 names, even if there is a ridiculously number of well-qualified players.  At some point, the ballot is going to be so bloated that the HOF will have to do something unconventional.

By the way: Frank Thomas is going to be shielded from PED speculation, I presume.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Instant runoff Oscars

Nate uses Metacritic review ratings to describe the instant runoff system.

For those who want to see it applied to baseball, I did it for the controversial Cy Young award in 2009.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Stinkin’ thinkin’ is not just for addicts

I was speaking to a friend of a friend today.  He is a smart guy and knows a lot of baseball history. He said to me something like, “I think that the HOF should be reserved for the guys that are no-brainer HOF guys. That way we won’t have these endless debates about who is a HOF’er and who is not.”

Putting aside the issue of how large the HOF should be (IOW, where the cutoff point should be - which is quite arbitrary) , I explained that if we did that, there would still be the same gray area (although not as large, since we are limiting the number of inductees) that there was before, and there would be the same endless debates about who belongs, but this time it will be about who is a no-brainer and who is not.

He sort of got it, but didn’t really get it....

Thursday, January 06, 2011

Elect-2 / Elect-3

Rob Neyer makes an easy case that on the 2015 ballot, if the Holy Writers get their way, they’ll have 21 outstanding players eligible for the Hall of Fame.  That you can make a strong to a rock-solid case for each and every one.  That’s what happens if you only vote in one player at a time, when you should be voting in two or three at a time.  Holdovers start to get in the way.

Let me present it in another way.  These are the best players, by birth year, starting in 1958.  Note that by the logic of time, the number of players selected by birth year will match the number of players selected by voting year.  By presenting the data this way, we can make a good guess as to how many players we should be selecting per year, as well as being able to peer far ahead into the future.

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Wednesday, January 05, 2011

How many players should a BBWAA voter place on his Hall Of Fame ballot?

There was an average of six players placed on each ballot this year.  (There were 3474 yeses, and 581 ballots cast, for an average of 6.0 players per ballot.) What would happen if every writer placed 10 players per ballot?  Doing some fancy-schmancy math, this is what I get:

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Barry Alomar v Roberto Larkin = Lou Trammell v Alan Whitaker

Dave tries to make sense of it. 

Sad news:Blyleven elected, will no longer be talked about ever again; Worse news:Morris not elected

Alternate headline: Bert Blyleven hands off rosin bag to Kevin Brown as best eligible pitcher not in the Hall of Fame; Kevin Brown no longer eligible with BBWAA

Tim Raines 38%, Jeff Bagwell 42%. 

Monday, January 03, 2011

Fielding value and the HOF

Ah, I like this point from Dave, that basically says that the perception of the gap between a good and bad fielder is larger than the gap between a fantastic and good fielder.  Basically, it’s as if we regress Andruw Jones and Andre Dawson’s fielding toward each other much stronger than we would regress Roberto Alomar and Jeff Kent.  One can also say that perhaps outfield fielding is given a short shrift, or that a much larger positional penalty is applied in the outfield than infield.  But, for every argument I can make like that, I can show that that’s not the case. 

Basically, there is a certain level of inconsistency, and that’s the main point I would drive home.  It’s not important that you use WAR or WAA (wins above replacement or wins above average), but that you use something, anything, to ensure some consistency in the process.  As it stands, it seems that every player starts with a clean slate, and then, some data is picked and chosen and given a particular weight that is inconsistent with other players.

You ever buy a computer online?  Try it.  Go to Dell.com, and start to customize.  You will be given every option you want, and you will be told what it will cost if you want to include, or exclude, that item. What I would suggest therefore is the following: give the voters a baseline view of what the statistical record represents, and what was considered and not.  And then they can add or subtract as they wish based on the information being considered being faulty, or the weight wrong.  Want to include clutch?  Well, that means giving Tim Raines +6 wins and Mike Schmidt -12 wins (or whatever).  Don’t like that?  Then, give it 50% weight.  But that means Tony Gwynn’s +10 clutch becomes +5 clutch as well.  Ozzie gets +15 wins just for playing SS (or whatever).  You like that?  Good, because Alan Trammell is going to get something similar.  Oh, you don’t like that?  Well, it’s going to cost Ozzie too. 

It’s a personalized ballot that adheres to some consistency.  It lets the voter choose what we wants to consider, and the computer just makes it easier to compile it for him.

Today, in 2011, it’s not practical to do what I suggest.  But, 5 or 10 years from now?  Sure, why not…

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Our HOF ballot

Ken Davidoff does us proud.  Basically, it’s like we have a seat at the table, with Ken speaking for us.

Monday, November 22, 2010

RJ before Felix: 2004

In 2004, Ben Sheets threw 237 IP, with 264 SO and 32 BB.  Though with 25 HR.  He ended the year with a 2.70 ERA.  Wow, you must be thinking, how high did he end up in the Cy Young voting?  He had a 12-14 record.  He was a career 33-39 before that.  Let’s call him “Jered Weaver”.

Now, in 2004, we also had Randy Johnson, who was a bit more super awesome: 246 IP, 290 SO, 44 BB (18 HR).  An even better 2.60 ERA.  But, only a 16-14 record.  Let’s call him “Felix Hernandez”.

The winner was Roger Clemens, with an 18-4 record, 2.98 ERA.  Let’s call him “CC Sabathia”.

This version of CC got 23 1st place votes, this version of Felix got 8, and this version of Weaver got no 1st place votes, and just one vote at all on 32 ballots.  Whatever sole writer had the foresight to give Sheets one vote: good job.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Historical precedence of Felix 13 v CC 21

Felix won the Cy Young while being assigned eight fewer wins than the league leader in wins (CC’s 21).

I looked at all Cy winners since 1967 (when it split into AL/NL winners) who had at least 150 IP (to remove most relievers), and compared their win totals to that league’s leader in wins.  In 1973, Tom Seaver won 19 games with a 2.08 ERA compared to Ron Bryant’s 24 (3.53 ERA).  That’s a difference of 5.  Reliever Mike Marshall was 15 in 1974 compared to the 20 for the league leader.  Most recently, Randy Johnson’s 17 wins (2.48) was 5 behind Mike Hampton’s 22 (2.90 ERA).

Lincecum, in both his Cy, was 4 wins behind the leader.  Rick Sutcliffe’s 16-1 was 4 behind.  And Bob Gibson’s ridiculous 1.12 ERA was 4 wins behind the leader.

There was no 6-win gap.  There was no 7-win gap.  And, now we have the 8-win gap of Felix v CC. 

Thursday, November 18, 2010

To BBWAA:

BBWAA has graduated from Sabre High!  Congratulations guys, it was a one hundred year journey, but you made it, and have now accepted everything we’ve learned through 1985.  It was a tough journey especially at the end, when you took your first baby steps, voting for Greinke and Lincecum.  And you passed with flying colors with Felix.  Pitcher wins have been officially repudiated.  Email me for your diploma.

We’ll give you the Fall recess period to recover, and then it’s time to enroll in Sabre College.  We’ve got 25 years of education ready to roll out for you.  We’re planning an aggressive seven-year program.  I know it seems tough, and most people prefer the six-year law and medical programs instead for their relative ease.  But we have faith that you will put in the hard work and learn.

Tangotiger
Dean of new-fangled stats

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Derek Jeter 5th greatest fielding SS in the last 60 years

According to the Rawlings voters.  Rawlings must love all this free publicity:
13 Gold gloves for Ozzie
11 Vizquel
9 Aparicio
8 Belanger
5 Jeter, Concepcion

“One of these things is not like the other...”

IBA Results

Plenty of consensus for the top spot in each category, except Posey v Heyward.