THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Friday, May 16, 2008

When to walk ‘em…

MGL takes it on, in part one.

Scouting Mussina

Knowing that a guy’s fastball speed has dropped 4mph is an important thing to know.  What you’d also like to know is if the movement on the fastball has changed to compensate.  This is where PITCHf/x comes in.  Similarly, a guy’s fastball could have stayed the same, but if it was accompanied with much less movement than usual, that’s also important to know.  Anyway, great job, and I’m looking forward to seeing more scouting aging patterns among pitchers.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Place Hitting

I haven’t even read Walsh’s piece, but I’m excited to.  BRB.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Do hard throwers perform better than expected than soft throwers?

Rally asks:

What I want to do is see if, given a pitcher’s projection from his MLE, whether fastball velocity tells us any more useful information for his projection. In other words, do fireballers beat their projections? Do soft-tossers fail to live up to theirs?

If you don’t want to read his study, the answer is:

Knowing a pitcher’s velocity doesn’t tell you anything about his chances of success that you didn’t already know by looking at his minor league numbers.

Curveball v Fastball

Josh Kalk walks us through it.  A link at the bottom (references) showing the results, would be a welcome addition.  Otherwise, excellent article.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Make me a deal for Leverage Index

You guys know I love the Wisdom of the Crowds approach.  So, let’s use it for something that has an outcome, rather than just the academic exercise we’ve been doing.  I offered for Leverage Index to be part of the Bill James Handbook. 

For a non-commercial product (specifically, if one of my readers can get the product or service for free), I have a free licence for it.  I figure that as long as you guys don’t pay for it, I’m happy to donate it to these guys so that you in turn can see it in action.  That’s why I’m happy that Fangraphs and B-r.com has taken it. 

Now, other commercial ventures have approached me for it (video games mostly).  I’ve turned them all down, because now that’s a consumer-paid product (as opposed to the ad-driven service that Fangraphs and B-r.com offer), and I honestly don’t know what it’s worth.  Plus, I never play video games, so I don’t really know how it’s going to be used, etc.

So, this is where you guys come in.  What is a licence to Leverage Index worth?  You can state it in terms of dollars, in terms of % of revenue, in terms of value per book sold.  You can state it in terms of in-kind, like data(*).  Or in other terms that you can think of.  Maybe make Bill James agree to drop Runs Created in favor of BaseRuns!  Whatever.

(*) For data, I already have an understanding that any work I do with BIS-related data at Fangraphs is published at Fangraphs.  So, I’m thinking there is a limit to the value over and above this.  But, maybe you guys have other ideas here.

Make me a deal guys.  You are the wise ones.

Pitcher wearing down

Some great data by Pizza, on the relationship between pitch counts and performance.  If the numbers look low he notes: “Again, these numbers are lower than might be expected due to some of the methodological problems I ran into.  If I have a moment I might try to correct for it.”

Regardless, the pattern is fairly plain to see.  Roughly speaking, it looks to be almost 2 wOBA points per 10 pitches thrown.  There are roughly 33 pitches thrown per time through the order, so that gives us an average change of roughly 6.5 wOBA points, each time through the order.  In The Book, table 82, I show that each time through the order shows a difference of 8 wOBA points.  So, fairly close.

Pizza: can you add a parameter for “time through the order”?  Table 80 makes it seem like there is a definite jump each time.  Perhaps your results are smoothed out what may be a staggered effect.

Monday, May 12, 2008

PITCHf/x Summit Recap and Presentations

All your links courtesy of the fantastically accessible Sportvision, and a recap from PITCHfx-er Ike Hall.

Mailbags on Parade

UPDATE: Ok, we are now live.  You can click the links at the top right corner of any page on this blog, right where it says: “Mail”.  I’ve started answering a few.  When we have updates, I will make a note of it in the comments of this thread.  Thanks.

We have thousands of readers at this blog, but just a small portion of those readers actually post on our blog.  Presuming that there are some of you that prefer a different avenue to make your comments, we have started a Mailbag, whereby you can provide feedback, ask questions, or whatnot.  We guarantee to not only read them all, but reply to each one, either by selecting it for our blog for public viewing, or replying privately.  Your name and email address will be kept private.

Quick Park Factors

This idea stemmed from the original Historical Abstract.  Here’s what I wrote to David at Fangraphs, and I’ll provide further commentary:

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Friday, May 09, 2008

Be Jolly stats users

This is a question solely for those readers who are subscribers to Bill James Online:

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By The Numbers

Two excellent issues from editor Phil Birnbaum (Nov 07, Feb 08).  Here are my thoughts:

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Playbook on Maddux v Molina

This is where game theory and PITCHf/x will collide. 

Suppose: if you know the batter knows the data, then you make a change to your approach.  But, since the batter knows you know he knows, and he knows you’ll change your approach, the batter’ll change his approach.  But, what if you don’t know that the batter knows the data?  Do you presume the batter doesn’t know and keep pitching the same way?  But, if the batter actually does know the data, but the batter knows that you don’t know that he knows, then he’ll cream you.

Question: are you better off if everyone knows, or are you better off taking the chance that he might not really know?  That is, might it be to your benefit to know 100% that everyone has the data and compiled in the same way you have it, or is it to your benefit to have that data well-compiled, while the other guy may or may not have it, and you have no way to know whether he has it well compiled?

Someone can insert the Princess Bride youtube clip right about.... now!

Amount of regression: Here is an interesting question having to do with one of the other threads…

Maybe Tango and some of the other stat guys can take a stab at this.

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Ninth Inning: Game theory, C.J. Wilson, and Adrian Beltre

Wed. night in the 9th inning of the Tex/Sea game (not that anyone would be watching that game), C.J. Wilson, the Rangers’ regular closer, came in in the 9th inning to preserve a 2-run lead.  (Padilla had pitched a very good game, throwing 96 and 97 mph gas!)

Wilson pitches to the first batter and goes 1-0.  Remember that Texas is leading 2-0, there are no outs and no one is on base.

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Thursday, May 08, 2008

Distributing excess wins and losses in Win Shares

Guy has it right when he says:

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Bill Werber

Interview with a now 99-yr old former MLB player.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Why is offense so much higher in the NL so far this year?

David Pinto wrote the following article for the Sporting News:

http://www.sportingnews.com/yourturn/viewtopic.php?t=408997&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=11&sid=4194213d79bc564dbdf2b9b2f5d2ca23#comments

I don’t see any real analysis in the article other than the fact that the average age in the NL (among position players I assume) is younger.  I don’t see how that can account for the difference.  Not even close.  I could be wrong though.

And I don’t see how you can say anything about the hitting without also looking at the pitching, as several readers pointed out in the comments section.

Any ideas?

Please explain: Kevin Jarvis

Of all pitchers born since Bob Feller’s birth year, 1918, and allowed to accumulate 500 innings, Kevin Jarvis is probably the worst pitcher in baseball out of those 980 pitchers.  And he stuck around for 780 innings.  There’s only five pitchers that you can shake your head as to how they could have been allowed to accumulate that many chances.  But Jarvis stands out because in this day and age of information, what more did we need to know?

So, explain to me how Kevin Jarvis survived as long as he did while posting a worse than average ERA in every single one of his years.  And, Jarvis, the perfect example of a below-replacement level pitcher, managed to earn 10 million dollars in the process.  That is called winning the lottery.

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Get The Book

For those of you who have already gotten The Book (through purchase, loaner, or theft), please make your Amazon purchases by following the link at the top left.  We get referral fees on any purchases you make, The Book-related or not.  It’s not alot, but it is enough to just cover our annual expenses.

For those of you who have not gotten The Book and are regular readers here… what are you waiting for?