THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

On Vorp, Keith may have invented the acronym, but the concept belongs to Bill James, I think, unless somebody else did it before his abstracts.

The first I heard of replacement level was in the Clemens v Mattingly (and Rice v Guidry) comparison in the Abstract (obviously the 1987 one).

That was pretty close to Vorp right there.  Tracing its evolution, I’d consider his player ratings a step in this direction when he ranks them by .350 chance - who likely is it that this guy is actually a .350 player?  He knew a 16-16 player deserved a better ranking than a 5-5 one, and knew something was missing from Palmer’s ratings set at average.

Not really that far off from where we set replacement level know, about .375-.400 isn’t it?

Rally, what do you mean 16-16 and 5-5?

Right, that was great stuff.

He means a 16-16 record is more likely to NOT come from a .350 player than a guy with a 5-5 record.

I don’t understand.  Isn’t VORP a specific statistic that Keith invented?

He may have invented it, but Bill James basically invented the same thing.  Setting the ERA baseline at 1 above the league average is what James did.  And I think he used the bottom 10% production for 1B as the replacement for Mattingly. 

James had the framework, and didn’t bother creating a specific implementation.

Keith did the work to validate his implementation.