THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

If you presented this to Scioscia, he might agree with you on all counts but one....I’d bet he’d argue that ARod’s HR/PA is greater than 12.5% given what he’s done in the playoffs, against the Angels and against Fuentes in his last at bat.  I don’t think that Scioscia would be right in making that argument, but I think that’s what his argument would be.  I think a lot of analysts, managers and other people in baseball would agree with Scioscia too.

So the point you’d need to “prove” to those guys is that ARod is not >12.5% HR/PA even given what he’s done recently in the playoffs.

So, in practical terms, aren’t you basically saying that it’s a wash, that it doesn’t matter whether or not you intentionally walk ARod?

If you believe that ARod is the greatest hitter in the history of MLB, then yes, it’s a wash.

ARod has to hit a HR in 12.5% of his PA for it to be a wash.  So, that’s 1 HR per 8 PA, which is roughly 90HR in a full season.

If you want to say that that’s reasonable level of talent for ARod, then yes, it’s a wash.

In PRACTICAL terms, this is a ludicrous assertion to make.  Therefore, it is not a wash, nowhere close.

This is the entire point of the post, that in order for it to make it a wash, you have to believe that ARod is the greatest hitter ever (not arguably the greatest, but THE greatest).

What I’m saying is that lots of people believe that certain hitters at certain times are the equivalent of the best hitter in history, if not better.  They may not believe that will continue for that player’s career, but they do believe that is what their talent level is at that particular at bat because “they are so locked in”. 

So, what I’m saying is that is the argument you will hear, and that’s the argument you need to attack.  All the other stuff goes through one ear and out the other because it is irrelevant for that particular at bat.

FWIW, I do agree with your point, but I think you think everyone automatically sees it the same as you.  I don’t think that’s the case at all.  Call them stupid, superstitious, illogical, slaves to recent small sample size, relying on B.S. gut-feel, whatever....the fact is that even if they understand and agree with your math, they may still disagree with your final answer on a completely different level.

King, I was responding to Chuck, not you.

I agree with King.  Indeed, I’d have to agree with him, because that’s how you justify it.  You can walk Marco Scutaro because you can believe he’s the king of clutch, and so at that moment in time, the manager, some manager, is going to believe he’s Babe Ruth, and so, he can justify walking him on that basis.

It’s pure b.s. of course.  However, because all these are estimates, any single move can be defended on the b.s. basis.  Only if you build up a log of all such moves that shows how preposterous the manager is can you show him how full of sh!t he really is.  Until then, this is exactly like the guy who told you he won 1000$ at AC, without telling you about all the other times he lost 2000$.

Until you actually systematically log all moves by a manager, he can defend himself on the flimsiest of reasons.  And there’s really nothing for us to do than sit there and take it.

I disagree that managers (and fans and commentators) think that a “locked in” player like A-Rod is equivalent to the greatest player in the history of baseball.  They think that they are better than their normal true talent level, but I don’t think that they believe that they are superman in a baseball uniform. The disconnect is that they don’t realize that even if we bump A-Rod’s production up to reflect the fact that he is hot (incorrectly of course, since hot and cold performances for batters have zero predictive value - but let’s assume that they do), the IBB is STILL not correct.  That is the problem.  The manager or the commentator has NO IDEA what the break even point is for something like that. How would they?  That’s the point I have been making for 20 years.  It is impossible for anyone to know what to do in many of these situations without an analysis on paper.  So they guess and wing it and half the time they are wrong.  It is as simple as that.

Basically they start by making one false assumption, which in this case is that a “hot hitter” is going to continue to be “hot” and then they compound that mistake by assuming that if you are a little better than your usual true talent level, you should be IBB’d (or whatever the strategy decision is).

Again, it boils down to ignorance.  And the answer for some team that is willing to actually sit down with their manager before the season starts, is to educate him on all these things.  Explain to him by showing him the numbers that hot and cold streaks for batters have no predictive value and that even if they had a little predictive value an IBB to A-Rod would still not be correct.  Show them how we can prove that batter/pitcher matchups have no predictive value either.  How hard is that to do for a team that is willing to take the time to explain these things to a manager and for a halfway intelligent manager to actually comprehend these things?  Someday that will happen.  It may take 5 years or it may take 30 years, but I believe that someday it will start to happen among the sabermetrically oriented teams.  For some reason that seems to be the last bastion for teams that are already sabermetrically inclined.  Or it is taboo.  For some reason, they are unwilling to educate their managers on proper in-game strategies and once and for all get rid of all the nonsensical conventional wisdoms and cliches that lead managers to constantly make sub-optimal decisions.  It is really annoying for a fan like me to see managers make bad decisions each and every game.  It is kind of like watching umpires for the average fan.  The umpires seem to average around 1+ bad calls per game in the post-season (I’m sure they do also that in the regular season, but no one really notices it then).

Tango :
“Only if you build up a log of all such moves that shows how preposterous the manager is can you show him how full of sh!t he really is.”

That sounds like a great project that would add expected wins without costing much money (relative to player salary)!

"If you presented this to Scioscia, he might agree with you on all counts but one....I’d bet he’d argue that ARod’s HR/PA is greater than 12.5%”

That might be true, because it’s the only way to justify the decision once you walk through this kind of analysis.  But that presupposes a correct WPA analysis, which (like MGL) I doubt Scioscia actually carried out, even in a roughly correct way.  My guess is he never thought past Tango’s 2a: which strategy has best chance of zero runs scoring?  Actually, maybe not even that, but just: which gives me best chance of avoiding HR?

The formulation of “A) X decision only makes sense if Y is true, and thus B) the manager must believe Y” assumes what needs to be proven:  that the manager employs some kind of at least roughly correct WPA analysis.

Tom, excellent article with well-explained math.

I think King Yao’s point is dead on. The outcome of your math relies on what inputs you use, and that’s the part people would disagree with. (And yes, of course Scioscia doesn’t know anything about this kind of analysis, but “what the correct decision was in this particular situation” is a completely different topic than “managers and many baseball people are idiots and don’t know how to make decisions”, and imo the latter subject is not all that interesting compared to the former.)

“The breakeven point is if you give ARod… .475 OBP, .882 SLG.”

Note that ARod’s 2009 postseason numbers are .486/.967, and I think a lot of people believe that AT THAT MOMENT IN TIME (i.e. in the ninth inning about to face Fuentes), Arod’s expected performance is not too far off that mark.

So that’s really what this all comes down to, isn’t it?  - if (and how much) recent past performance affects present performance, particularly given the situational factors of postseason/"clutch" moment and one of the best hitters in the game (i.e. - if humans did have the ability to increase their performance in big moments to different degrees, we’d expect this particular moment and this particular player to be near the top of the range of expectation.)

Non-believer math note: for a true mean OBP of .400, 95 percent of the 40 PA samples will range between .248 and .551.

"Again, it boils down to ignorance.  And the answer for some team that is willing to actually sit down with their manager before the season starts, is to educate him on all these things.  Explain to him by showing him the numbers that hot and cold streaks for batters have no predictive value and that even if they had a little predictive value an IBB to A-Rod would still not be correct.  Show them how we can prove that batter/pitcher matchups have no predictive value either.  How hard is that to do for a team that is willing to take the time to explain these things to a manager and for a halfway intelligent manager to actually comprehend these things?”

Most commentators, managers, and people I suppose don’t *think* in terms of probabilities.  A move is good or bad depending on the result.  Look at how trades are evaluated.  It doesn’t matter if you traded a deadbeat hasbeen veteran for six minor league aces; if they flame out and the veteran goes on to help a team win a World Series, you got “fleeced.”

You have a poker background so consider the analogy: This is not to say that no one “gets” the break even concept, only that they aren’t consciously considering it.  It’s much like fold equity, which many professional live players had never heard of but nevertheless understood.  They know that the value of a draw is often in getting someone to fold out his equity in a pot, even if they’ve never heard the term before.

Similarly, managers and players do many things because they will work in the long-run, and they know that.  But even though they KNOW the value in playing for the long-run, they can’t really articulate it or be persuaded to do things differently.  I just can’t see the day when an announcer speaks in terms of break even points and percentages.  When they DO speak about percentages, it is usually THE percentages, and typically in a disparaging light.  THE percentages say to do this, but we all know - all of us living and breathing organisms - that that strategy is ludicrous.

Nor can I imagine sitting a major league manager down and showing him a simulation which said, “IBB walking A-Rod in That Spot is worse than PHing Hairston for him.” 8 out of ten managers would guffaw.  One would die.  The other, new to the job, would tilt his head sideways and mumble, “Possibly.......”

I guess my point is that (though it appears at times contradictory) even though many players and managers employ the ideas reinforced by sabermetrics, they don’t have a vocabulary for them, and they cannot appeal to them cerebrally, only instinctively.  The stuff they do right is probably mostly accidental, partly because it works and can be informed by experienced.  It’s not feasible then to show them why their cliches are wrong; they know what they’ve heard, what they’ve seen, and what everyone else has seen and heard.  They’ve been indoctrinated into a society of broken baseball thought.  Persuasion will fall on deaf ears because they’re working through instinct, experience, and results, NOT probabilities and simulations and studies.  It’s not that they’re necessarily irrational or stupid.  It’s that their understanding of baseball - and maybe life, who knows - is so fundamentally different (and I’d call it irrational...) that approaching it as you’re proposing isn’t just odd but insane.

I do agree with your longview assessment.  We’ll get to that point someday, I think, as sabermetrics gains more and more traction, which it’s been doing steadily these past years.  Eventually many teams will hire managers who are not only “players’ guys” but who are also amenable to mathematical thought.  Every so often one of these managers comes about, but they’re few and far between.  The success of teams like the Red Sox certainly helps, because even casual fans know that they’re a “numbers team.” People like black boxes.  They may not understand Epstein’s sabermetrics, but they’ll give him the benefit of the doubt because his results have been good.  Unfortunately the opposite is true, too, as how often have we heard the phrase “NUMBERS DON’T PLAY THE GAME,” and as evidence of that maxim one parades out the Oakland Athletics?

minesweeper, good post…

What’s the break-even point on the count?

This was mentioned by Tango in the other thread, but say you give Fuentes the “pitch around” command. 

If it’s a bad move to walk at 0-0 then it’s a bad move to walk on a pitcher’s count.  But if Fuentes gets behind when do you walk?  1-0?  2-0?  2-1?

I don’t have my copy of the book handy, but if I remember the “pitch around” study concluded that you increase strikeouts and walks, but otherwise batter performance is the same (if differently shaped).

Yes, The Book suggests that pitching around a batter has no effect, so I wondered why Tango suggested that.

Although, as I have mentioned many times before, and as Tango mentioned, the advantage of pitching around or just pitching period is that you can still issue the IBB at a 1-0 or 2-1 or 3-1 count and continue pitching if you are in a pitcher’s or neutral count.

Plus I am not convinced that the evidence in The Book is 100% correct.

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/pitching-around-batters

Pitching around has no overall effect, but what it does do is increase the rate of walks and strikeouts.

So not surprisingly, we find once again that, in situations in which a walk is a good option, the pitchers indeed walk the batter more frequently. Also, by pitching around the corners, the batters occasionally will swing and strike out, leading to more strikeouts.

However, what we hoped to find was that, when pitchers pitch around the corners, batters tend to make worse contact (if they make contact at all). And we don’t see this. Instead, we again find that, if walks are ignored, the two types of hitters perform equivalently in wOBA.

The basic point is that once a pitcher has identified a situation where an IBB may be the best option, but he’s not sure, then throwing pitches only to the edges would be, at worst (overall), the best thing he could do.  He’ll still get his fair share of walks (which is the breakeven point), and then the rest are either K or his typical contact wOBA.

Just two points:
1. If Fuentes also believes that A-Rod can hit like he hit in playoffs, than you have to IBB A-Rod, because pitcher’s performance will suffer.
2. Any quick calculation done on the spot, even with correct data, will say “roughly even”. If it’s roughly even, you don’t let him beat you.

#15: “1. If Fuentes also believes that A-Rod can hit like he hit in playoffs, than you have to IBB A-Rod, because pitcher’s performance will suffer.”

This sounds plausible, but do you have any evidence?  This could easily be one of those things that seem to make sense without evidecne, but really doesn’t with evidence.

If a person would have to bet on the outcome of a PA, there’s no way that the above statement would be uttered.

Opinion without evidence = b.s.

I am sure I’ve offered my opinion without evidence in the past, and it should be weighted appropriately.

Given the rapid increase in real-time baseball-related data computing capabilities, we can’t be too far from a team coding its optimal in-game strategy and telling the manager to follow it without question, right?  They could even use a random number generator to truly randomize pitch selection for pitchers.  Why wouldn’t a team like the Red Sox experiment with something like this in the minor leagues?

Mitch, sure, absolutely.  That would be the correct thing to do.  The Red Sox are a good organization but you give them more credit than they deserve.

If Fuentes also believes that A-Rod can hit like he hit in playoffs, than you have to IBB A-Rod, because pitcher’s performance will suffer.

The problem with that statement is that there is almost no chance for anybody outside of clubhouse to know if Fuentes is at that point afraid of A-Rod. Only someone really close to him may know that. Knowing that fear adversely affects skills that need control, Manager should never allow pitcher he thinks is afraid pitch in important situation.