THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Good luck Will.  But I want no part of it.  I have no interest, never have, in being a sabermetric evangelist.  I do what I want, and if anyone else is interested in what I do, then that’s cool.  And if not, to each his own.

My site would be the same if I had zero hits instead of near 350,000.  I put it up there because I wanted easy access to my WAR database whether I’m at home, at work, or on a train with my iphone.  The web seemed like the best solution.  If others want to look at it too, so be it.

I don’t think there’s any difficulty or need to change if we’re truly trying to educate (indoctrinate?) people that are “willing to listen and (want) to learn”.  Those people are evolving at a pace that suits them, IMO…

However, I am picking up a definite undercurrent of wanting to go beyond that “willing” segment, an undercurrent aimed at the rest of baseball fans along the lines of “this is the right way to appreciate baseball, so let me help you do it right”. 

The fact is, people who don’t go in for advanced stats don’t need fixing, they are fine as is.  And so are the folks who enjoy advanced stats and analysis.

There’s no need to teach a mole how to fly, and no need to teach an eagle how to dig holes in the ground.

Now, maybe if you’ve got an ulterior motive (say, encouraging more subscriptions to your information service), then I understand why you might want to strap some wings on the mole and hand the eagle a shovel… but other than that, I think people ought to just serve the core customer base (and those that are interesting in joining, i.e. the “willing to listen...” crowd), and let the rest just sit back and enjoy the game…

Bill James said this:

To address the question on a somewhat more sophisticated level. . .changing opinions is not a rear-guard action.  There are cutting-edge thinkers, there are well-informed people who keep up with the cutting-edge thinking, and then there are several grades of people who lag behind the curve.  You don’t change opinions by worrying about the people who lag behind the curve.  They’ll catch up eventually.  You change opinions by addressing the people who are nearer the head of the parade.

That is basically my entire philosophy.  Those who are willing to be educated, those are the people you reach out to.

Tango, I think the James quote is what Will is getting at in his post.  He believes the iPad is what will bring mobile computing (or at least web surfing) to the masses because it will be simple to use and meet everyone’s needs.  He’s wondering what that same thing is for baseball, what’s the thing that will make people want to have a deeper understanding of the game of baseball?

Mitch, would there really be one thing that would make people want to have a deeper understanding?  Does the average fan even care about that?  Those who want to have a deeper understanding of the game will do so.  Most people look at baseball and other sports as purely entertainment and a deeper understanding for them isn’t necessary.  It might even ruin their experience.  The type of fan Will is speaking about is likely in that group. 

Do we really need all fans to be on the same level?  Is that even possible when you consider the varying degrees of interest by different types of fans?  I’m no sabermetrician and often don’t even understand the math, but I seek out baseball research because I enjoy it.  I don’t search for that deeper understanding so I can be as informed as Will Carroll wants me to be.

Ron Shandler (or someone using his name as a handle for some reason) showed up in that thread and pretty much handled it:

“Fantasy is the gateway drug”

Yeah, basically.  Anybody competitive and fantasy-inclined is going to be after the best projections.  And once you start investigating projections, it’s all downhill from there.

Ditto what Rally said.

There are 3 kinds of people in this world:

1) Those who purvey things for money/fame/glory/power.

2) Those who purvey things for the good of others.

3) Those who purvey things simply because they like those things and are under the impression, mistakenly or not, that other people are missing out and NEED those same things to be more happy or fulfilled.

The vast, overwhelmingly majority of people/things in this world fall into category one.

Will’s article, while written very well, is 90% category one and 10% category 3, in my opinion.

Sure, young people and people in general can use sabermetrics as an example of the kind of critical thinking process that can and should be (and unfortunately is not nearly enough) used to address important problems.

But, the notion that the average baseball fan or anyone for that matter “needs” sabermetrics and advanced statistical analysis is so much hooey, I am left speechless…

Will’s hitting on a couple of my pet peeve’s as a science and sometimes math teacher:

1) When students throw their hands in the air and say or simply believe “I’m just not good at math!” and this prevents then from trying to tackle anything analytically.  Will’s saying this and I think it’s a cop out.

2) The idea that when things are dumbed down they become more fun and engaging.  Basically, the idea that even when it comes to a game or hobby really thinking about something is best avoided when someone else can just give you the answer.

If I were to evangelize about anything it would be against these ideas.

The concepts of sabermetrics are pretty easy to grasp.  They really are.  The problem, at least towards attracting those who don’t like math, is when you explain the math without really explaining the concepts.  This is one of my pet peeves, and it’s why I love guys like Dave, Studes, Neyer, etc. who have the ability to explain the concepts behind the metrics so that the fans can understand why we use them.

I guess we just need more of those guys, maybe designate someone to write a whole series of primers on each individual topic of Sabermetrics, and how the stats we have reflect those concepts.  I’ve written a couple of primers on WAR so far, really trying to emphasize the concepts, but they were only written for a certain group of Cardinals fans and, to be honest, too much of my free time is taken up with doing research to be able to cover all of those topics in depth like I would like to. 

That’s why I think that what Graham at Lookout Landing is doing so far is great:

http://www.lookoutlanding.com/section/sabermetrics-101

He’s basically breaking down the entire foundation of sabermetrics into little parts to be easily digested.  I think we just need to get his articles some more exposure.

To J. Cross/8, I agree.  Somehow it’s perfectly reasonable in our society to just throw out things like, “I’m just not good at math,” while it would be ridiculous for someone to say, “I just never understood that whole ‘reading’ thing.” Some people almost take a sort of perverse pride in their innumeracy.  One of the larger problems with innumeracy is that learning math often helps to develop logical and critical thinking skills that are applicable all over the place.  It’s not a coincidence that mathematics majors score the highest of all majors in both the LSAT and GMAT.

*Disclaimer: I may be a bit biased as I have mathematics degrees.

You don’t war with intellectual incuriosity because that’s warring with a wall by using your forehead as a battering ram…

Just try to be as engaging as possible to those who are interested in the conversation.

As an aside, the top three discussion topics that bring the worst internet behavior out in humans are:
1) politics
2) religion
3) baseball

J.Cross/8 and mickeyg13/10, speaking as another mathematician I’m inclined to agree with you here. It drives me nuts when people say “I’m not good at math”, and I really wish math education in general at least made an effort to point out that the point of mathematics is not math itself but critical thinking and problem solving skills. Students universally despise ‘word problems’ because they just memorize formulas instead of trying to figure out the best ways to use them.

I think one thing to keep in mind here is stressing the difference between derivation and usage. Most people that see a roll-out/explanation of a tool like SIERA or even wOBA (which, as an end result, aren’t really that complicated at all) along with all the explanations, regressions, data mining, etc that derived them and are convinced that black magic is going on.

To make a math analogy - most engineers and scientists have no deep understanding of how calculus actually works, but they use it all the time. There should be more of a focus on something like “this is how we effectively use these tools” vs “this is where these tools come from” for the average fan. People who care will find their way to sites like this anyway, just as people who care will take more advanced mathematics courses.

BPro’s main audience is still the fantasy baseball addicts. It gives a platform for people doing sabermetrics, but I think they are way too inefficient because their consumers are really fantasy players, and they need to do a better job explaining how to use their tools than how to derive them.

Just my 200000 lira

"UPDATE: Will is open to me being on BPR, but I declined.  I don’t have a good reason for declining, just that I decline all non-email interviews.  As I said, not a good reason, it’s even a terrible reason, but it’s my reason.”

Tango’s shot me down for the same thing, fwiw.

How about MGL?  He was good during the Justice interview a couple years ago.

I’m not all that good at math… but then it’s at least partly a matter of interest.  I tend to be reasonably good at things I like to do.  So I ended up a History major.

Math ceased being something I enjoyed once I got past Algebra 1.  Prior to that, I liked math and was good at it.  After that, the math got increasingly abstract to me.  Geometry, freshman year of highschool… that’s where Math and I started to drift apart.  It wasn’t fun anymore.  Yay, cosigns and tangents!  Why do I care?  It wasn’t tied into the real world for me.  Calculus was something I muddled through and immediately forgot.  Again, it seemed totally detacted from everyday life.  I think the school could have done a better job there.  I took a statistics class in college simply to satisfy a requirement.  I passed, but I learned nothing, because I did not try (I’m not proud of that).

Now, my wife was a math/compsci double major.  In everyday life, my math skills are equal to or better than hers, because I tend to be better at doing simple math in my head, which is all you need most of the time.  She works in IT (project management at the moment, though she used to do system support work), and I’m not sure she really uses her math skills in her work.  I think the only time she uses her academic math ability is do to math puzzles for fun.  She likes baseball, though not nearly as much as I do.  Hmm.  Maybe I should start sticking sabremetric work under her nose…

MGL is a fantastic interviewee.

Will did interview him back in 2003 or so.  Can’t remember how it went.

I’d love to see MGL on MLB Network.  Actually, I have a great contact there.  Let me email MGL and see if he has any interest.  It’d be so darn awesome for MGL to be sitting next to Harold Reynolds, don’t you think?

"It’d be so darn awesome for MGL to be sitting next to Harold Reynolds, don’t you think?”

Not for Harold Reynolds.

But yes, given MGL’s skillset, he’d be a great interviewee.  Maybe he can reach out to some of the more popular online radio shows (podcasts) and then get a more regular spot in mainstream broadcasting.  Fangraphs Radio, cough cough…

As weird as it sounds, I think MGL would be far more interesting in a mainstream setting than a niche setting.

On something like Fangraphs, what exactly would MGL be debating?

Rob, I agree with you that the way math is typically taught post Algebra I isn’t so hot. 

Geometry could be fantastic and fun but it becomes a class focused on proving things you already know intuitively (which is worth practicing- but not for an entire year).  Algebra 2 is a strange grab bag with kids learning matrices without seeing how they might be useful and memorizing all sorts of worthless/ridiculous stuff about conic sections (a cooler way of teaching this if someone feels the need would be as the basis for optics and experiments with parabolic and hyperbolic mirrors).  Then students learn all sorts of ridiculousness in trigonometry.  Spending a lot of time learning about secants might be useful if the students are about to go back in time and navigate ships.  I think the essentials of trigonometry should be taught in two weeks as part of intro physics.

I do think every (or almost every) HS kid should take calculus and should take it at the same time as physics or economics (which every kid should also take) so they’re applying it immediately.

Of course, in place of some of the other stuff I’d also have kids learning probability and statistics.  I think I’ll be teaching a probability and statistics elective next year (which we haven’t had in the our school before) and my plan is to start with some great/interesting questions and have the kids then develop the tools they need to solve them.  It *should* be a lot of fun.  If it isn’t, that’s on me.

J. Cross, that basically mirrors my experience and subsequent conclusions.  The way the normal curriculum is designed don’t seem to make a whole lot of sense and consequently it’s up to the teacher to make it work.  I don’t think it’s all that surprising that they can’t in a lot of instances.

And I have to think how well we teach math has plenty to do with responses to sabr concepts.

J. 

As a current high school student forced to sit through much of that drekk, I wholeheartedly agree .  Algebra II is really pretty bad especially.

Greg/2 - This quote interests me: “The fact is, people who don’t go in for advanced stats don’t need fixing, they are fine as is.”

This is absolutely true UNLESS THEY ARE TRYING TO MAKE ARGUMENTS ABOUT THE VALUE/TALENT OF PLAYERS. If there is a baseball fan out there who is honestly just happy watching the ball fly around the field without any care about who is good or why, if there is a fan who doesn’t have a favorite team or doesn’t care if his favorite team is making the right moves to get better, then I’ll leave that guy alone.

But once somebody starts to tell me so-and-so is better because of all his RBIs or Darin Erstad’s grindy behavior is making his teams better, then he has opened himself up to being told he’s wrong. He can’t say “Well, I don’t care about the numbers” if he’s going to make (bad) numbers arguments. They do need fixing because they’re trying to do what Tango and MGL and everyone else do. They’re just doing it very, very wrong.

These are the people who need convincing. You can’t force it upon them, but you can convince people. It takes time, but I’ve converted people. Heck, I was converted by a friend of mine 8 or 9 years ago.

JD #21:

Well, I more or less agree with you - people with simplistic, and to some degree incorrect/outdated views on player value deserve to lose arguments about player value/talent… but they still don’t really need fixing, because they’re not harming anyone with their views, and I can tune them out if I want to.

A point of rebuttal though on this comment:
“If there is a baseball fan out there who is honestly just happy watching the ball fly around the field without any care about who is good or why, if there is a fan who doesn’t have a favorite team or doesn’t care if his favorite team is making the right moves to get better, then I’ll leave that guy alone.”

This seems to imply that anyone who has more than a passing interest in the game has to care about advanced stats (correct me if I’m mischaracterizing that).  I’d argue that if you think that, you’re probably overestimating how often the advanced stats disagree with the, for lack of a better term, “barstool” stats.

Nobody argues that Albert Pujols isn’t great, or that the Nationals aren’t terrible, and nobody who watches Franklin Gutierrez play the outfield thinks he isn’t a stellar defender (if they don’t know that, it’s because they don’t watch the Mariners play).

There are certainly some places where the barstool and the spreadsheet disagree, but often those cases are a) very close in terms of how good one player is vs. another, and b) subjective in terms of definitions of value.  The guy on the barstool may “value” a 10-inning shutout in Game 7 of the World Series more than he does another pitcher’s 34 career beat-downs of the KC Royals.  I think the barstool is entitled to think that way, and someone else is entitled to disagree, and they’re both entitled to try to convince others they’re right…

One more thing: on the Erstad topic, I groan every time I hear about how he punted for Nebraska, but I also recognize that when someone extols the virtues of such a grinder, they’re not suggesting that they think a double with a headfirst slide is worth more than a double without one, they’re opining that they think such a player can help motivate others to greater effort.  Is this true?  I have no idea, and I doubt anyone will ever be able to detect, or prove the absence of, such an effect, because in baseball, pure, unadulterated effort is only part of a very small fraction of the tasks a baseball player has to excel at.

Some things where “grinding” effort matters: Running out grounders and fly balls, running hard through home plate so your run counts if someone else gets thrown out behind you, and maybe an occasional choice about whether to run into a wall or pull back.  Also, maybe the determination to report to camp in good shape, rehab an injury faster, or get out on the field every day regardless of minor injuries.

Some things where grinding effort doesn’t matter: pitching, hitting, fielding.  No wonder you can’t ever find evidence of peer motivation in results!  For 98% of the game it doesn’t matter.

Most of the time, people who praise Erstad and the like do so because they like watching players like that, and they like the idea that effort matters.  For sportswriters, TV announcers, and maybe 75% of the general population, effort matters a lot in their line of work, so I say let them enjoy their 2%…

J.Cross/18 Agreed wholeheartedly about the HS math sequence. The ‘proofs’ that people do in those classes completely turn people off from proving things. If I mention the word proof in my university classes my students are terrified! Conic sections are next to useless too.

I’ve always felt that there’s two weeks of material that you have to know to do most mathematics (and that’s stretching it). The fact that most schools/univeristies tend to turn it into an entire unit/semester is an excercise in tedium and busywork. Honestly all the trig I ever remember is the pythagorean identity, Euler’s formula, and a double angle formula or two. Everything in sine and cosine. You can derive or verify whatever else you need from Euler’s formula, or just look it up

JD/21

Honestly the thing that bugs me most is people who cite W-L records for pitchers (especially, Carlos Zambrano). Drives me absolutely crazy. It’s probably the worst of all the mainstream stats.

Whoever it was on BP that said fantasy baseball is what gets people hooked on advanced stats is right. Without working in the FO of a ML team, what better motivation do you have to care about how players are valued?

edit to #23: I meant to say two weeks of material in trigonometry, not mathematics. 2 weeks of material in mathematics makes my degree worthless (dying laughing)