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The Fangraphs train keeps rolling along, as David offers even more paid positions. Since the readership here and there overlap, I doubt my name means anything, but, who knows…
Dave Allen strikes again, this time from Fangraphs:
Lots of MSM chatter about the non-MSM BABIP. Love it! I made these two posts at Primer:
Although I don’t know why I think this, for some reason I have it stuck in my head that Wright’s high BABIP is likely a statistical fluke, while his high K rate and lack of power are likely something to worry about. Can someone explain to me why I am wrong?
You are not wrong.
Every metric has a certain amount of noise to it. For something like K/PA, it has very little amount of noise. For something like BABIP, it has alot of noise.
The important thing is that this is not an either-or situation.
Thus, if I accept the premise that the metric of K/PA has very little noise—which I do—then the version of it I would accept as the most quiet in David Wright’s case is the one that has 2312 PAs of information to silence the noise.
What I was trying to say is that the metric K/PA allows you to weight recent performance more heavily.
If, for example, the “standard” weights for the last 3 years is 5/4/3, then you would weight BABIP as 4.5/4/3.5, and you would weight K/PA as 7/4/1 (or some such).
You NEVER ignore any past performance. What you do is weight them based on their persistency to forecast the future.
Since players are human beings, then we want a metric that more closely aligns to his current conditioning, strength, and speed. K/PA has limited noise, and so, you weight his recent performance more.
If players were NOT humans, then you would have no reason to weight recent performance more, and you’d stick with his career totals.
I reply to a thread at Primer:
Batting the pitcher 8th, or moving everyone down a spot in the order and putting the guy you originally decided to bat 9th (when you moved the pitcher to 8th), into the 1 spot?
If this is the choice, it’s a no-brainer, and it’s the former. In no way can you put one of the worst hitters on the team at the top of the order.
***
As for the general issue, my research in The Book (see it for free on Amazon’s Look Inside) using Markov chains is that moving the pitcher from 9 to 8 will add roughly 2 runs in a 162 game season. MGL’s research via his simulator is that it’s a break-even or a slight advantage to keeping the pitcher in the 9th slot.
***
The most egregious thing you can do is move the pitcher to the cleanup slot. This would cost you 0.1 runs per game (about 16 runs in a season). Basically, moving the pitcher up the order costs you around 4 runs per slot. Move pitcher from 8 to 7 to 6 to 5 to 4 and remove 4 runs each rung. That’s the impact of a batting order. And remember, this is by far the worst hitter on the team. That’s the impact here.
I presume most people would think that moving the pitcher to the cleanup slot would cost you half a run a game.
Inside The Book blog reader asks his blog readers this question:
I was catching up on the issues of By the Numbers and read the following quote in the the November 2008 issue:
“An OPS of .800 will always generate more runs than an OPS of .700, given the same amount of playing time.”
I know the above statement is not always true, but do you? I want to give out a prize and decided that I the first person to prove that it is false, using math, will get to choose the first team I will study in depth with my new disabled list database. I know it is not much, but that is all I can really offer. Hopefully there will be more of these to come in the future.
One of his readers already gave out the answer, and not the theoretical mumbo-jumbo I am about to give below. He actually found real-life examples (though I suspect that maybe SB was in there, or park factors, or something). It’s for this reason that I want OPS to die a quick death among serious analysts (as well as its offshoot, the less obscene OPS+). It can survive for quick things. Anway here’s my answer:
Here’s the general form:
1.8*OBP1+SLG1 = 1.8*OBP2+SLG2
OBP1+SLG1+.100 = OBP2+SLG2
That’s two equations, with 4 unknowns.
***
Now suppose we make it easier to follow and create a Mr. Underrated with an OBP and SLG of .400.
1.8*.4+.4 = 1.8*OBP2+SLG2 = 1.12
.4+.4+.1 = OBP2+SLG2 = .9
So, we are down to two equations and two unknowns. This is where your high school math comes into play, and why the high school kids out there should listen to your math teacher.
Take the first equation and subtract the second equation. So:
1.8*OBP2+SLG2 = 1.12
-(OBP2+SLG2 = .9)
Which becomes:
1.8*OBP2+SLG2 = 1.12
-OBP2-SLG2 = -.9
Add the two and you have:
.8*OBP2 = .22
which is:
OBP2=.275
Which we can plug into either of our two equations and get SLG=.625
So, a .400/.400 OBP/SLG is equivalent to a .275/.625 OBP/SLG. They both have a wOBA of around .365, and similar Linear Weights.
What we see here is how OPS breaks at the extremes. If it breaks at the extremes, it’s going to bend alot as you start marching toward the extremes. How much bend are you willing to accept? Well, about as much as your seriousness on the matter.
If you are put in a position that you MUST defend OPS, then stand down and admit you have no defense. If you MUST defend OPS+, you do have one leg to stand on. But not two. You can put up a bit of defense, but not much more.
This time, it’s the Star-Ledger in NJ:
UZR is broken into different components that account for errors and other factors. In Teixeira’s case, his dropoff is tied almost entirely to his decline in the portion of UZR that accounts specifically for range. In 2008, Teixeira saved 9.4 runs just on his range. This season, he’s cost his team runs, posting a -3.6.
That said, even advanced defensive statistics such as UZR have their blind spots. And when it comes to first basemen, and Teixeira specifically, the statistic doesn’t measure one of the most important areas of contribution: scooping balls and tracking wayward throws.
It bothers me to no end that Fangraphs and other sites report numbers to one decimal place. It implies a level of precision that simply does not exist. If a UZR of +4.6 really means +4.6 +/- 2.1 (or whatever), then I’d show it as +5 and be done with it.
Non-sports post:
CNN and Newsweek magazine commentator Fareed Zakaria joined in. “Guess which country, alone in the industrialized world, has not faced a single bank failure, calls for bailouts or government intervention in the financial or mortgage sectors,” he wrote. “Yup, it’s Canada. In 2008, the World Economic Forum ranked Canada’s banking system the healthiest in the world. America’s ranked 40th, Britain’s 44th.” It all came down to leverage, Zakaria continued: the Canadian banking sector lent out eighteen dollars for every dollar on deposit. US banks had a vertiginous 26-to-1 ratio, Europe a “frightening” 61-to-1. Suddenly, our banks’ irritating tics — the negligible interest rates on deposits, the outrageous user fees, the institutionalized disinclination to lend — were being recast as signs of national virtue.
..
But, as Carney noted in a bbc interview, federal regulators also stood up to the big banks when they sought approval to jump into riskier ventures. “They didn’t like that, and they would come in and complain about it regularly, because it was stopping them from doing some of the sexier things that their international competitors were doing,” he said. “But it turns out some of the sexier things that [their competitors] were doing were quite foolish.”
Hat tip: Patriot as he highlights a site dedicated to Barry Codell, inventor of what has been popularized as Total Average. This is what baseball analysis would look like if Linear Weights didn’t take hold. And here is their glossary of what can essentially be described as “let’s add and divide numbers”.
Codell paved the way. This site has gone to great lengths to make a religion out of it. Pluto is also a dwarf planet, unless you also accept Eris as the tenth planet. You can’t stick with just nine planets.
Shysterball is talking about Fehr:
no mention of the fact that a rookie made $60,000 a year when he took over and that the game’s biggest stars are now making ten times what they made back then.
Actually, no mention from Craig if we compare the minimum salary in MLB to the NHL, a team with half the revenue of MLB, and who had to contend with Alan Eagleson, a convicted criminal for his shenanigans as head of the NHLPA:
The minimum NHL player salary in 2005-06 and 2006-07 will be $450,000; $475,000 in 2007-08 and 2008-09; $500,000 in 2009-10 and 2010-11, and $525,000 in 2011-12
That is just frankly embarrassing for MLBPA that it didn’t negotiate at least 1MM a year as the minimum salary for its players. Not to mention that players in their non-free agency years make 30 cents on the free agent dollar, a rate far far lower than what NHL players get.
What is clear is that the MLBPA has given the rights of its non-free agents away to artificially increase the value of its free agents, all on the likely idea that if one boat rises, everyone else will gain. Of course, seeing that the percentage of revenue that goes to the players is no different than the other leagues, that too is not a good idea.
Finally, since PED is a workplace issue that Fehr recasted as something to bargain away, Fehr fails there as well.
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Michael Jackson used to be a great entertainer and his time has passed in a very unkind way.
Some helpful WAR 101 for you guys in these two posts.
I love the “WAR Lords” blog title as well. I’m going to have to use that if I ever get to putting out leaderboards.
And Justin chimes in as well.
Dan is putting a callout:
With that, I am putting out a call to the readers of Statistically Speaking, asking for your help. We would all like to keep this blog going full time, and it will be a difficult task to do once Matt undoubtedly wins BP Idol. So if you are interested in writing for StatSpeak, send me and email at .
He also said that Pizza was leaving, which means it’s as bad a news for us as it is good for whoever gets his time. And presuming he’s making a rational decision, even better for the recipients.
Sherman (hat tip Primer):
What we are suggesting the Commissioner’s Office do—to save the trade deadline for gossip junkies like me—is to offer a one-time, one-contract reprieve for all 30 teams. Remember the Allan Houston Rule from 2005 when the NBA allowed every team to release one player so that the player’s contract no longer counted toward the luxury tax. The rule, however, did not remove teams from having to pay the contract, just any luxury-tax obligations.
The NHL lets you buy out two-thirds of the remaining contract. This has been exercised once or twice a year. The players have usually ended up at around break-even on the deal. It usually looks something like this: a player is owed 30MM over 4 years. The team thinks he stinks. They pay him off at 20MM. He then signs a free agent deal for 10MM over 4 years. The player gets his money. The team that loses him get to have his contract reduced on the books because they get to spread the buyout over 8 years for cap purposes. The team getting the player pays fair value for the player. Everyone wins.
I’d be in favor of a buyout at 50 cents on the dollar. This will mean that some players may lose out on the deal. If you make out the buyout too low, say 10 cents on the dollar (a “restocking fee"), then some teams get to get out of really bad contracts and those players will lose out. Not only that, but giving a team this much leeway means they would take alot more chance at big contracts.
Jul 04 01:40
BPro Idol
Jul 03 01:39
sUZR v bUZR
Jul 02 21:15
Batting Order and the pitcher
Jun 30 07:22
NHL draft analysis and spreadsheet 1994-2009
Jun 30 04:14
The Poz goes FJM on Harold Reynolds’ a$$ - gather around the kids
Jun 30 00:11
Blogosphere Question of the Day, 06/24; OR Why should OPS die?
Jun 27 16:04
Loss aversion in golf
Jun 26 16:30
Donald Fehr
Jun 26 14:04
Barry Code
Jun 26 10:33
David Wright
