THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Tuesday, May 08, 2012

“Look ma, no [ hands | glove | feet ]”: Barenaked plays

Not sure what to call these plays, but I like the idea behind them.

1. John Buck and Chipper Jones lead with the most outs made, without using their gloves.

2. Alexi Casilla / Gonzale lead with the most outs made, without using their hands.

3. Freddy Galvis leads with the most outs made, without using his feet.

Teenager single-handedly throws a no-hitter

Love stories of kids overcoming adversity.

Plausible deniability of circumventing caps

Dave links to a Baseball America article on this issue of international signings.

Pujols’ future

Matt tries to find comps for Pujols, comes up with a pretty small set, and see that those hitters continued to hit extremely well.

Monday, May 07, 2012

Cole v Bryce

Wait… what?  Hamels hit Harper because… what?  If Harper is too close, you give him a brushback.  Pedro used to revel in brushing hitters back.  So, going directly after him was bad enough.

But, Hamels admitting to intentionally hitting Harper?  He did that because… what?  Because that’s what a pitcher is supposed to do to… what?  A great young hitter?

I though Cole Hamels was a really smart guy who is often misunderstood.

Now, Zimm intentionally throws at Hamels (we presume).  Zimm won’t admit it, because the unwritten rule is you hit the guy without admitting to it.  It’s a question of liability with the commissioner.  As long as everyone pretends it could have been an accident, then everyone looks the other way.

Hamels however is like the magician who told everyone how the magic trick worked.  Selig will either have no choice but to suspend him, or somehow suggest that the punishment was taken care of on the field (Harper scored the run, and Hamels got plunked).

Hamels makes about 100,000$ per team game.  Look for a half-million dollars in lost pay.  Hamels seems more Tim Robbins than Kevin Costner in this episode, and Harper is the one who ends up looking like Crash Davis.

Ross Detwiler: Losing to the statistical gods

This was a mailbag question from nearly two years ago (Aug 26, 2010):

I noticed that Ross Detwiler has never had a HR/FB% over 6% in any of his stints in his professional career. In his last 6 stops, he has had a 4% HR/FB% or less in all of them. By my math, that is about 19 HR allowed in 552 estimated Flyballs which comes out to a 3.44 HR/FB%. Let’s say I was off a little and his HR/FB% is really 4%. Can we say that he has a skill for reducing his HR/FB% rate. Or is it a fluke based off his sample size (Around 500 professional innings)?

At the same time, Detwiler has allowed a BABIP over .323 in every stint in his career except for 1 4 Inning fall league appearance. He’s ranged from .323 to .378 in BABIP. By my math that might be slightly off, his BABIP in his career is about .345. It looks like his GB% is normal (Around 45-50%). Do you have any reason why his BABIP is so high consistently. In his short big league career he has a 24.8 LD% (89.2 IP). Assuming he is around that in the minors, does that even close to explain his abnormal BABIP. Does he have a skill for real high BABIP? And is there some kind of link between his real low HR/FB% and his real high BABIP?

Sure enough, in 2011, his BABIP was .272, and in this early 2012, he’s at .215.  So, the reader seems to think he sees a “pattern” of a high BABIP, but the sample size gods were not kind to the reader.  As for his ability to suppress HR, in 2011+2012, he’s given up 9 HR on 92 FB, which is right around league average.  Sample size gods are not nice.

I get these kinds of emails all the time, that someone thinks they found THE fluke guy.  But, it’s the same thing every time.  Seriously, if you really think you know more than the sample size gods, then pick out the twenty things you really believe more than everyone else, write it down, and then two years from now, tell me how you hit on 15 of 20.  (Of course, if enough people do this, SOMEONE is going to hit on 15 of 20 due to the binomial gods of random variation.)

My suggestion: stop looking at numbers looking for patterns and building narratives in your mind, and instead enjoy the numbers for the actual stories they tell.  Meaningless stories, stories that don’t carry over to the next day.

Sabermetric Primer Book

I had a link on this a year or two ago, but, I liked the book, and I like Lee, so, since he has another blog post on it, I’ll give him one here as well.

Saturday, May 05, 2012

FIPer

This blogger is certainly correct that I shouldn’t have IP in the denominator.  I’m pretty sure I talked about this a few months ago.  You can just replace IP with PA/4.3, but it’s going to affect the coefficient of the K slightly.

Anyway, while it is very interesting that his version of FIP (that excludes BIP in the denominator) has as good or better correlation with next-year ERA, it really doesn’t make logical sense.  Consider a pitcher like Radke or Rueter that has 80%+ of his PA as BIP, and a pitcher like RJ that has 65% of his PA as BIP.  That knowledge is thrown out the window.  If they both happen to have the same “core” ratio, they get the same score.  So, that part doesn’t make sense. Now, the blogger is saved by the fact that most pitchers don’t have this problem.

Anyway, his basic idea is actually pretty good (and I’ve used a variant of it in the past for other things).  But what you also need to do is incorporate the rate of BIP per PA to get the fuller picture.

But we definitely need a better name!

Yankees with no Mo

THT reprinted the article I did from two years ago.

Which team has been beating Vegas so far?

VegasWatch compiles this great data, and the winner is… Orioles!  Followed by Rays, Dodgers, and the Nats.

Now, let’s watch this unfold, and see if Vegas adjusts, or if they will consider this small-sample-sizitis.

Friday, May 04, 2012

Reader Bleg

If someone is interested:

I greatly appreciate your work, although sometimes I don’t get all the math. Would you please consider doing, or asking one of the other smart guys to do, an aging analysis comparison of Albert Pujols and Jimmy Foxx. To my somewhat untrained eye, the similarities are remarkable. No one fell off the cliff like Foxx and now Pujols?

Anyway, please consider this because one of you could do a really outstanding analysis that many of us would find interesting and Angels officials and fans might find outright scary. Thank you for your consideration of this request. Robert

Sometimes I think I can watch a pitcher for one inning and assess him pretty well…

This does not apply to most pitchers.

I saw Rafael Dolis throw an inning today in the Cubs game. The announcers said they are thinking about using him as a closer (their ace). He has never pitched above AA in the minors I don’t think.

I’ve never seen him before and I know nothing about him.

I am pretty sure he is terrible for one reason and one reason only. He has no idea where his fastball is going, presumably because he cannot repeat his (very simple) delivery.

He threw a 92-95 somewhat sinking fastball only. He had absolutely no command or control of it, and that did not look like a fluke to me (it could have been I suppose). It did not look like he had a lot of “life” or movement on the fastball other than some slight sink. If he has any secondary pitches, I would have to assume that he can rarely use them since he is so often behind in the count or if he does get behind in the count he cannot simply throw the fastball for a strike when he has to.

The absolute, number one thing a successful pitcher has to have, almost bar none, is command on his pitches, at least the fastball. Without that, unless you have a ridiculous fastball in movement, velocity or both, you cannot be a successful pitcher. The reason is obvious but I’ll spell it out. First, you will walk too many batters, second, you will make too many mistakes with location, and third, batters will be able to guess fastball and location because you are behind in the count too often.

Why would the Cubs ever think that this guy is even close to being an ace reliever? Or maybe I am wrong in my assessment. I would not let this guy pitch in the majors yet until if an when he gains some control/command.

Name this player!

He is one of the greatest players in the history of the game. A first ballot hall of famer, easily. If you told almost anyone, including those who play, manage, coach, and broadcast the game of baseball, that if he were to get injured and lose an entire season and you replaced him with a league average player at that position, his team would lose less than a win and a half in expectancy, they would think that you were a complete idiot who needs to go back to your mother’s basement.

Who am I talking about?

Run expectancy chart on a MLB scoreboard?  Yes!

Mike and Jeff talked about it on twitter, and here is proof.  Darn images are blocked at the office, so I have to wait four more hours to see it myself.  I alerted Pete Palmer of this, since he was the one that did the most to expose it to the rest of us.  And thanks to the new Astros gang for trying out new things!

WAR updated on Baseball-Reference

I just saw the post, so I’ll read through it, and comment as appropriate.  Sean reached out to me on a couple of things, so I’m keen on seeing what the final product looks like.

UPDATE 1: I just read through all the descriptions on Sean’s site.  The explanations are tremendous, and I have no major objections.  I’ll give it a second read-through, and will just make some minor, sporadic comments. 

More updates below…

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Farm system rankings correlating to future wins

Matt goes through the Baseball America rankings, and see how many wins are generated by pre-free agents.  Good stuff.

Jon Weisman

Always good to see good things happening to good people.

MLB formally partnering with a feeder system

Since college baseball is akin to a minor league, it seems natural for MLB to finally be involved.

But, wouldn’t it be weird if the Dodgers draft a high school kid, and then that kid decided to go to Stanford, on an MLB scholarship (partially paid for by the Dodgers)?  Will this setup potential conflicts of interest, or at the very least, appearance of such?

I’d think, therefore, that if MLB is going to donate say one hundred scholarships, then the top high-school draft picks would get some sort of preferential treatment.  (Presuming there’s some sort of point-system in awarding scholarships, then the higher you are drafted, the more points you earn.)

Educate me as to how the current scholarships are awarded.

Oil Can Boyd

For those of you who missed out on the 1980s, Oil Can was one of those characters to appreciate.  Great job by Bruce!

Crowdsourcing broadcasters

Wonderful idea for a project.  I love it when people try out their ideas for all to see.

I agree that the high correlation between the separate categories is trouble-some, which really means that you either collapse the categories, or find some more granular categories to ask about.