THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I hate the grains of salt that come into play when someone’s loyalty is to a brand name instead of objectivity.

I’ve also railed on BP for replacement level and using Runs Created.  Those however are more philosophical disagreements. 

I like to consider replacement level at around .300, and could live with it being as low as .250.  Clay (and by extension BP) uses .150.  Clay is in the clear minority on this one and has a tougher job to explain himself.  But, he could possibly muster enough evidence to support himself.  However, that has never happened.  I’d also be willing to debate that with them.

Strangely, rather than using EqR as their basis for VORP (and MLVr), they use Bill James old RC equation (one that even James himself doesn’t use).  It’s one of those things that is so buried under the machinations of the process, that no one bothers to look, and deride BP for using.  This one, while blatantly a very poor choice, is not “wrong”, because anything short of an all-encompassing sim would be “wrong”.  However, it’s an extremely poor choice, one that BP should not be making.  BaseRuns is the obvious choice here.

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One thing that BP has straightened out is they have gotten rid of Pythagenport in favor of Pythagenpat.  What would be nice however is if they call it Pythagenpat or whatever name David/Patriot want, rather than continuing to use Pythagenport as the name.

And another is that Woolner did use the Tango Distribution over his, even though that was also a philosophical choice.

In both these instances, they went with the cleaner method that works a bit better in the normal range, and much better at the extremes.  {clap clap clap}

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While I’m here… will OPS+ go away please?  No one will bother to calculate OPS+ on their own.  So, why not calculate some form of Runs Created as a “+” metric.  I made my voice loud and clear in posts 193, 195 here:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/suggestions

Even if Sean doesn’t make the change, what I like is that he has a public forum about it.

I can live with OPS as it is easly calculated and understood by everyone, especially the casual, yet somewhat statistically oriented, fan.  However, I agree with Tango that since no one is going to calclate OPS+ AND it is only a relative number, why not use a MUCH better estimator of context-neutral offensive contribution, which is clearly some version of lwts.  It would (can) yield a number that looks exactly OPS+ (100 is league average, etc.) but the underlying metric (lwts rather than OPS) is MUCH better.  I “gag” when I see/hear analysts quote OPS+, either for a career, or year, or what have you.  They are ALL taking it off of the B-R site, so why not have the B-R site supply something much better and just as easy for them to compute (lwts+).

I would be happy to provide them with my lwts formula which is based on Palmer’s, but separates things like GB outs, FB outs, K outs, and infield singles, and uses lwt values tailored to the current run environment.  You can optionally include SB/CS if you want, although that is probably not advised since SB attempts are something else, just like defense and non-SB baserunning are something else as well.

Can someone send these last 2 posts to Sean?

Regarding your comment on VORP, can BaseRuns be applied to players?

Let’s say I wanted to use a run estimator on the Lahman database. What formula should I use? Is BaseRuns right for team and league calculations, and something else for players?

LWTS for hitters, BaseRuns for pitchers.

However, with the “8/9ths” approach that MLVr uses, BaseRuns is what you want.

Yes what Tango said and BaseRuns for teams.

On a somewhat related note, Nate made reference to WARPs (too-)low baseline in his recent chat:

Dave B. (Lowell, MA): Nate, How on earth is Rollins now a front runner for MVP? He is having nowhere near the season Wright or Ramirez are.

Nate Silver: Rollins has an 8.8 WARP1 as compared with Wright’s 9.5 and Ramirez’ 7.6. You also have Chase Utley at 8.2 and Jose Reyes at 8.0 and Albert Pujols at 10.1. Pujols, really, should probably be the guy, but if you restrict yourself to contending teams, then I think Rollins, Wright and Utley are all pretty reasonable choices. I give Utley a little bit of extra credit because WARP really punishes you more than it maybe should for missing playing time, and Rollins because he’s creating a few extra runs on the basepaths that aren’t reflected in his SB totals.

Doesn’t really belong here, but someone was asking about how to link a player’s performance to how he should be used in the bullpen.  I came up with something really quick.  No idea if it really works, but, it’s probably a decent approximator:

To help in your regression, you can try to convert LI into a rate.

rateLI = LI/(LI+1)

An average LI will have a rateLI of .500.  League leaders have an LI of around 2, so they get a rateLI of .667.  League trailers have an LI of around 0.5, so they get a rateLI of .333.

If the team ERA for relievers is 4.50, with a range from 3.0 to 6.0, you can probably due:
rateLI = (tmERA - ERA)/10 + .5

So, an ERA of 3.00 ends up with an expected rateLI of .65.  And rateLI of .65 implies .65/.35=LI=1.86.

Seems like a reasonable approach…

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Any word from BP that they will abandon their LEV in favor of LI?  My terms for using LI are fairly lenient: use them as you like, without having to charge someone to see the results.