THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Baseball Abstract, 1983

By Tangotiger, 08:45 AM

When I was a kid in the summer of 1984, a friend lent me the Bill James’ Baseball Abstract, and I was hooked. I’d go to the bookstore downtown every weekend in the spring, waiting for the latest edition. 1985. 1986. 1987. 1988. Last year, I stumbled upong the 1982 edition in the library. And yesterday, I got the 1983 edition via Amazon. (Shouldn’t Bill James be turning all his old Abstracts into print-on-demand? If ever there was a case for POD for old books, there it is.)

The good old days were then. For those who don’t have a copy, I suggest reading the summary, and Lederer’s commentary here:

http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2004/08/abstracts_from_17.php

As I read through my copy, I’ll just make a few observations.

1. James talks about Whitey Herzog, and how he adapts to the situation, rather than force the situation. One very interesting one is how he would go about and put Andujar on a 3-day rest rotation, while putting Forsch in a 4-day rest rotation, because Whitey believed that these pitchers perform better when used this way. Kind of hard to set up a rotation like this, but in the small sample that James presents, he did it. (Cue Retrosheet.)

Here is how often Andujar pitched on 3,4,5+ days rest: 12, 19, 5.
Bob Forsch did it this often: 0, 27, 6
The other big starter on the team was Steve Mura: 2, 17, 10

(All include relief appearances.)

So, Whitey did manage to rotate his pitchers the way he thought they should be rotated. The end-result is that Andujar had his best season. We of course don’t know that that’s the reason. Whitey only stuck with the 3-day rest for Andujar through June and July. In April/May, Andujar’s K/BB ratio was 40/11, in June/July, it was 41/18, and in Aug/Sept, 56/14.

2. James presents the Power/Speed Number, as 2*HR*SB/(HR+SB). In a later edition, he tried to put in a third term (from what I remember, it was Juan Samuel, and his triples, or something like that). It was an ugly equation. However, the above can be rewritten as:
2/(1/HR + 1/SB)

You can see therefore how you can actually expand this quite easily into three, four, as many terms as you want. Just change the “2” to the number of variables you have, and you are on your way.

3. In the Law of Competitive Balance, James mixes two things up: how players, teams respond to the situation they are in, and regression toward the mean. He talks about the two, indirectly, in various examples. Read 23 years later, it’s clear that James, at the time, didn’t really appreciate that the performance results of the player and teams are in fact just observed samples, and that these samples contain random variation. As a result, he mixes up great examples, with very poor ones. Still, that he actually asked the question, and showed (at the time surprising) results was quite impressive.

• Sabermetrics • Bill_James

#1 (see all posts) 2006/07/26 (Wed) @ 15:11

I have always thought that it would be nice to get the 1977-81 self-published abstracts formatted properly into a single volume. I’d pay good money for a copy, and Bill isn’t selling copies any more (as far as I know), so it’s not like it would cost anything.

I’m just glad I got mine at a reasonable price from Bill’s wife in 1988. They’re very expensive now on eBay ...

#2 David Smyth (see all posts) 2006/07/26 (Wed) @ 15:43

It is certainly not appropriate to criticise James for devising the Power/Speed Number stat, which is 20+ years old. But it is still being printed in the B James Handbooks, which I buy every year. It’s sort of interesting to see a list of guys with decent power and speed, but that’s all it is. I don’t think there’s any real analytical value there. Although it seems to be true that players with broad skills might age better than players with narrow skills, the problem is that HR are so much more valuable than SB, by a factor of 7, even if their totals are similar. So a batter with 30 SB and 30 HR has a PS# of 30, but a player with 50 HR and 10 SB has a PS# of only 16.7. But the latter player, everything else being equal, is much more valuable in the present, and, AFAIK, has a much better longer-term outlook. So, of what value is the PS#?

#3 tangotiger (see all posts) 2006/07/26 (Wed) @ 18:15

Well, James did call it a junk-stat, so I don’t think there’s much analytical value there. And, the SB term could be a proxy for steals, baserunning, triples, and fielding. I really don’t have a problem with it, and simply serves to give you a list of guys who are pretty good in both.

That said, if you think that maybe a 10 SB, 30 HR guy should lineup against a 10 HR, 60 SB guy, then with my equation, that becomes a snap. You simply make it 2.25/(1.25/HR + 1/SB)

Both these guys get a PSN of 16. Pretty neat, eh?

#4 tangotiger (see all posts) 2006/07/27 (Thu) @ 13:23

4. Park Factors is laced throughout. When talking about the Cubs, he noted how important it is to separate day and night park factors. I think most of us who grew up in the 80s and earlier understand this, but, I’ve pretty much put it in the back of my mind by now. It’s time to think about it some more, especially when looking at historical park factors.

He also harps on the same thing I have: don’t treat park factors the same for everyone. In a good bit in the Mets essay, he shows that while Shea has poor visibility, it’s the power pitchers that should be able to take the most advantage of this. And they did.

I know mgl and others love to use *something* for park factors. However, it is my belief that we are using park factors as a crutch, something to help us hobble around. It is better than nothing, but, why use a crutch, if you can have a wheelchair or segway? Let’s stop talking about park factors in general, and let’s get into specifics, as to what parks do what to different families of players. Lefty, righty, fast, slow, power, finesse, aggressive, patient, 20/20, glasses.

#5 Tangotiger (see all posts) 2006/08/08 (Tue) @ 13:41

Wow, there is just so much good stuff in this edition. Comparing this edition to the others: the subsequent editions are much more hardcore, with alot of in-depth research. In contrast, the 1983 edition is laced with gold nuggets throughout the book. I would even say that the 1983 edition reads like a blog, with alot of great insight, but doesn’t bog you down with alot of research.

5. Fielding. James tries to make a note of how much fielding could possibly be worth. His conclusion is accurate, as can be seen when talking about Ozzie. Around 20-30 runs. But, the way he gets there is just so wrong. On the one hand, he acknowledges that Ozzie may over 100 plays that another SS would not have made. And, he somehow converts that into 30 runs or so. However, his presentation was very good, and anyone who liked his Everett/Jeter essay in the Fielding Bible would have appreciated his writings here.

***

There is really so much to like in this book. I highly recommend anyone to pick it up.

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