THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

are people really saying NPB>MLB?  i mean besides bobby valentine?

Team Japan > Team USA
MLB > NPB

These are not mutually exclusive statements.  An MLB allstar team would not just include born in USA players, but the best of Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Dominican, and HALF of TEAM JAPAN’s starting lineup.

No way the players left in NPB could compete with that.

rally - exactly.  thats why i cant fathom how people are actually claiming that NPB is better than the MLB.  the fact that japan has good players just makes the MLB stronger since most of them are playing there!

I can’t believe no one knew how good Cleveland State’s basketball team is. I mean, they beat Wake Forest by 15 points. If Cleveland stat played in the ACC, they would have been a third seed this season and just beneath Duke in ACC play.

Oh, did you know that three of the Seattle Mariners 61 wins last season came against the Red Sox?

Even with my earlier statement, it looks like team USA had more talent than team Japan.  Of the players I have projections for:

McCann > Johjima
Granderson > Fukudome
Pedroia > Iwamura

I don’t think those are controversial in the least, since we see 162 games that demonstrate these as facts.

Japan has an advantage here:
Ichiro > Dunn, with the edge all coming on defense.

They may have had an edge at 1B as Mark DeRosa was playing there, but I don’t know enough about the Japanese player.

While I also don’t know much about the left side of Japan’s defense, I would be shocked if the LF and 3B came close to Braun and Wright, and if their shortstop was in the same league with Jeter and Rollins (though his D was better than the cap).

On the mound, my projections have Dice-K, Oswalt, and Peavy as equals.  Darvish is probably the best overall pitcher on either side, and it is possible, though not certain, that he is the best pitcher on the planet right now.

Not a slight against team Japan in the least, they played great and deserve their win.  I just don’t think they would hold up against team USA if the WBC was 162 games long.

#1: are smart people saying that?  No, of course not. 

However, Mark Kreigle of Fox Sports:

Jeter was asked if he still felt that Major League Baseball — another way of saying American baseball — was the finest caliber of ball in the world.

“You’d like to think so,” he said.

Judging from Sunday, however, you’d get a lot of argument. I know it’s not football. I know one game is just one game, and that the best of baseball teams win but sixty percent of the time. Still, the Americans were embarrassed last night.

Does he explicitly say NPB>MLB?  No.  Does he raise the possibility?  Yes.

And yes, he does sort of conflate MLB w/ “American baseball”, which confuses the issue a little bit.

Major League Baseball — another way of saying American baseball —

uh, no, it’s another way of saying the best baseball players in the world playing in north america (but mostly american) cities.

I wonder what he thinks of NHL .... Canadian hockey?  North American hockey?  Or simply, where 90% of the best players play?

The Japanese team was more clutch.  And had more heart.  And gave 110%.

I think that on pure talent the US team is better than Japan, but maybe not in practice.

There were so many factors keeping the US team from playing up to it’s potential. Bad roster (it seemed like DeRosa was the only bench player). Bad lineups (why wasn’t Dunn the DH? honestly any other player must be better than him in the field at any position). Bad tactical decisions (Why wasn’t Oswalt pulled earlier, why did Longoria bat trying to hit into a headwind and out of platoon instead of Victorino?) Those are rhetorical questions - I already know the answers.

It seems that the US was playing spring training against some foreigners while everyone else was playing to win. Even so, I was really impressed with the Japanese team. It still takes a very good team to make the US look bad even if they are playing with one hand behind their back. A whole team of Ichiros and Ichiro lites with world class pitching is a pretty good team.

Matt

Good point on Dunn.  They could have played Rollins at short and Jeter in right field and vastly improved two positions.

Even if they say that this was no time to have Jeter play a new position, it is a joke to have him in the field and Rollins, possibly the current best defender at the position, as a DH.

Davey Johnson was always considered a sabermetric type manager, you’d think he’s read a little about Jeter’s range.  But then he is the guy who played HoJo at short, so he’s old school saber, OPS rules and defense doesn’t matter.  Most of this breed died out around 2002.

Another possibility is that it’s an ego thing.  And that is very disturbing, and should cause those how think Jeter is the ultimate clutchgamerteamplayer to think a bit.  How much of a team player are you if your ego prevents your team from putting the defensive alignment on the field that is best capable of winning?

One should perhaps add here that having team USA make a good showing but not win (such as getting knocked out in the single elimination stage) is probably pretty close to ideal for the purpose of what MLB wants out of this turnament.

Note that I by no means is sugesting that either the players or the manager of the american team is “taking a dive”. But if puting some arbitrary restrictions and limitations on how the team is contructed and managed keeps certain individual MLB clubs “on board” with the concept I don’t think MLB management really sheds too many tears if that lowers the probabilty of a US champion some percentage points.

The Japanese media is having a field day with Davey Johnson, talking about how he was showing up late and attending weddings or somesuch rather than putting his all into the game.

Bear in mind this is the Japanese team whose manager several years back for the Olympics (Nagashima) had a stroke possibly in part due to the stress of being a Japanese hero.

I really hate living in Japan any time they win a major sporting event (or even most minor ones). Intolerable.

Sal,

Funny you say that. I told my wife that I was rooting for Korea for the sole reason that if Japan won they would be insufferable.

Does anyone know of decent NPB to MLB conversions?  I would be curious how good Team Japan would project as an MLB team.  On the basis of the MLB players on the team and having watched the WBC, my guess would be a below average offense, but very good fielding and pitching, adding up to a solidly above average team.  I agree with Rally that even weakened Team USA had more talent.

A commenter at BBTF made the following amusing observation: you could make a significantly better team with Americans not on Team USA than with Americans on the team.  Something like:

C: Joe Mauer
1B: Mark Teixeira
2B: Chase Utley
3B: Chipper Jones*
LF: Matt Holliday
CF: Grady Sizemore
RF: Nick Markakis
SP: Roy Halladay
SP: CC Sabathia
SP: Tim Lincecum
SP: Brandon Webb
RP: Papelbon, Nathan, Ryan…

*(ok, that is kind of cheating, since he was on the team at the beginning of the tournament, but not by the time they faced Japan.  ARod also wouldn’t really count, but he did play for USA last time.  Troy Glaus?)

Woops, forgot SS.  Actually a pretty weak point; maybe Tulo?

I have had quite a bit of lucky success in NPB translations.  Such as Kuroda last year:

Projection 181 IP, 3.78 ERA
Actual 183 IP, 3.73 ERA

I did a few pitcher projections this year.  I was considering MLE translations for a bunch more of their players, but I just never had the time to do it. Here are the pitchers:

http://www.baseballprojection.com/NPB2009p.htm

The last game made me shake my head so many times, mostly because of the bonehead decisions by both managers.

Rally ran the Japanese pitchers, which I had not. I have Oliver’s numbers for all the hitters on the Japanese WBC roster, I think I’ll put them on StatSpeak tomorrow, as I don’t have access to FanGraphs until Saturday.

Sal,

Funny you say that. I told my wife that I was rooting for Korea for the sole reason that if Japan won they would be insufferable.

I told my wife (Japanese) that I’d be rooting for Korea, and she told me, “You know they’re just as nationalist as the Japanese are, and you would whine just as much about them if you lived there, right?” And she’s right. But if Korea were to have won, I wouldn’t have to listen to their insufferable broadcasts. And it’d be much more fun hearing the Japanese media complain about how “American grass is different” or “the ball was slipperier” or “American food was responsible because it is incompatible with Japanese metabolism.”

Sal
If you hate Japan so much,
Just go back to your country.
Japan does not need you.

Glad to see that Americans are not alone withe sentiment “Love it or leave it”

Do not suck up our welfare program while bitching.

Unfortunately Japan does need me. Unless, of course, they’d prefer a bunch of Philipina and Chinese ‘Entertainers’, Nigerian ‘Students’ and Brazilian/Peruvian ‘3rd Generation Japanese Slaves of Toyota’.

Japan doesn’t want me, however. They gladly take my taxes, but won’t give me residence in the city I pay residence tax to, yet they gave the same residence to a seal a few years back. This is slated to change in 2010 or 2011, but give me a break.

Not to say that Japan is horrible, or that the US is perfect, but it really tends to put things in perspective.

United states Gov gladly takes the social security tax from the illegal.
But they do not get the green card just by paying tax.

I will repeat again We do not need you.
Just go back to United States,seriously.

You do not have the right to stay in Japan.
We just let you live.
If you want to stay,just be thankful and do not bitch.

This is just silly.  When the Cardinals won the World Series in 2006, riding Jeff Weaver’s Damn Yankees imitation, did anyone say that the NL Central was the best division in baseball?  Of course not.  And that was in a seven-game series (not to mention a seven-game NLCS and a five-game NLDS, none of which they were supposed to win). 

Does anyone think Dominican baseball is inferior to Dutch baseball, even though they played twice in the WBC and the Dutch won?  I didn’t think so. 

Anyone arguing that a one-game series in March is a indicative of anything other than who got to play Korea for a trophy is just, as journalists would say, chopping wood.