THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Erstad should have been included in the Top 50 just due to his having one at multiple positions.  Not that he would be likely to win at either 1B or OF.

Jesse Barfield and Rabbit Maranville should be there.

Ken Griffey Jr was not one of the best defensive centerfielders of his time, let alone an all-time great.  Oh well, this is nothing new.

Junior won 10 “Rawlings Gloves”, and therefore he qualifies for the “Rawlings Greatest Gloves”.

The Gold Gloves doesn’t reward the best fielders of the year, and this project doesn’t reward the best fielders of the last 50 years.

I’m guessing Mariner fans would vote for Cameron and Ichiro ahead of Junior?

Expos fans would likely vote for Marquis Grissom ahead of Larry Walker, though Hawk would probably be ahead of both.

Angel fans would probably take Erstad and Pettis ahead of Edmonds?

We can go on and on for each team.

All these corporate-sponsored awards are just not worth our emotions or intellect.  What’s left, except for physical response?  Don’t vote.

My thoughts exactly, Junior was a good fielder when he was young, but Ichiro! and Cameron have been superior, at least based on my memory.  Plus, the whole Jeter thing makes the point moot anyway.  The award is less than worthless.

I’d take Erstad and Pettis ahead of Edmonds, but (just going subjectively) the gap is not large.  I do recall Edmonds scoring well by ZR in the old STATS books.

Of course, his career in CF is a bit longer than the other two guys’ (1365 games to 1128 for Pettis and 454 for The Punter).  Pettis, of course, was nowhere near the hitter to gain support for a list like this, which speaks to its ultimate silliness.

Here’s something I wonder about fielding (and I apologize that this is only tangentially related to this discussion, but thinking about how good or bad Yaz truly was in left has sparked this question). 

When we compare players in distinct ballparks, like left-fielders in Fenway, we can use the performance of all visiting players as some kind of comparison.  However, those visiting players only get between 3 and 10 games per year in front of the Monster.  Manny gets 81.  Shouldn’t the expectation of his performance be not just equal to the average of all visiting players, but better?  Going further, shouldn’t the performance of all fielders at home be better than the average of all visitors?  Has this ever been tested?

I guess I’m asking… what’s the home field advantage in fielding?  And is this even a valid statistic anymore, given that GMs might actively seek out players whose defensive profiles are suited to their particular park? (since, for example, Theo surely does this regarding offense at Fenway)

#3 says it all.

HFA in DER, eh?  Good question.  The answer is just a slight tweaking of the work I did for park factors.

The overall runs and wins leader in HFA is Coors.  Their runs differential at home is 1.94 runs higher than their runs differential on the road, and their winning percentage is .178 higher at home than on the road.  (The average team is +.77 runs and +.077 wins, for a 10:1 runs to win ratio.)

For HR, 21 parks had a positive HFA, while 6 had a negative HFA (i.e., home field DISadvantage… total of 38 parks).

The 2B+3B hit showed a similar HFA.

The percentage of 2B+3B that were 3B showed an even wider HFA (34 positive, 4 negative).

For DER, 30 teams showed a positive split, while 5 showed a negative split.  Remember, I’m looking at DER differentials, and so, it is as much a product of hitting as it is defense.

Regardless, the home field advantage holds across the board.

Over the last 4 years, the “raw” home fielding advantage on DER is about .0065. About 85% of this is from hits prevented, the rest from fewer errors and failed fielders’ choices. 

However, it is likely that the home team puts slightly more difficult balls in play. Using retrosheet data, the LD% by home batters is .186 vs .184 by road batters and the fly to popup ratio is higher: .279/.078 = 3.56 at home vs .276/.078 = 3.47 on the road. Besides hitting balls in play with slightly more difficult trajectories, the home team probably also hits the ball slightly harder; the HR% on line drives is higher for the home team at .026 to .023, and .121 to .120 on fly balls.

These differences are all slight, but collectively can explain at least a third of the raw DER advantage. [The rest of the 6.5 point advantage would have to be divided between “familiarity with the park” and other possible home advantages (such as sleeping better at home, crowd support, umpires giving the home team a break on infield hits ...)]

Fielding metrics which do make adjustments for batted ball trajectory and distance therefore will already be accounting for a decent part of the “home field advantage” for fielders.

Tango - These questions have nothing to do with the topic at hand, but since this is the only place I can find where you “ post “, I’ll ask them here.

1.) Do you have historical FIP numbers?  A spreadsheet or something?

2.) What do you think of The Book on The Book: A Landmark Inquiry into Which Strategies in the Modern Game Actually Work.  I know it’s outdated, but I have the opportunity to purchase it for an extremely cheap price.  Will I learn anything new? How does he present his work?

I do not have historical FIP numbers, but you can calculate it easily enough with the Lahman database.

***

As for the Felber book, I was pretty disappointed with it.  I’d recommend the BP Betweeen the Numbers, which is at a rock-bottom price here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000MKYKB8/

The review for the Felber book, along with reader comments can be found here:
http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/reading/discussion/the_book_on_the_book/

Tango - I’ve read baseball between the numbers.  It’s a good read.  And regarding the Lahman database - I don’t have excel, so what other database do you suggest using that’s pretty simple?

You can try Google Docs, which is free.

RS,
If you don’t have excel and need a basic spreadsheet program, I recommend the installing the (free) OpenOffice suite.