THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Here are a couple things I did that are similar

RBIs, Opportunities and Power Hitting

http://cyrilmorong.com/WEB.htm

Do Hitter’s Get Their Expected RBIs?

http://cyrilmorong.com/RBIEXP.htm

I generally found that batters got about the number of RBIs you would expect once you take opportunities and their normal hitting into account

Thanks for the link, Tango, but man, there should be a standard disclaimer for any ESPN link warning the reader to NOT read the comments. 

(Joking about the disclaimer, but the comments there are brutal)

Oh?  I didn’t read them.  Let me go look…

Most of the anti-saber arguments are coming from one guy:
Dontblindlybelievethenumbers

What an ironic name.

I just can’t believe he has that name.  This is exactly the stance I take, and what sabermetrics is all about.  He may as well call himself BillJames or PetePalmer to show his absurdity.

In any case, if you remove that guy, you have a pretty decent comments section in that thread.

SweetSpot is a mixed bag.  A couple of months ago, someone put forward OBI% (OBI/ROB).  To make it worse, in the comments there was a fair amount of railing against these new SABR stats.  That was right around the time I stopped visiting SweetSpot…

And then finally, you get to Linear Weights and RE24.

...and then to WPA.

Just had to say it.

The thing is, if a player does not take a lot of walks and has a low BA, but a decent or high SA, he could easily amass a lot of RBI, even if the hitters in front of him don’t get on base an inordinate amount of time.  So, to be fair (to the RBI lovers), RBI does tell you something about a player’s power and to some extent his hitting in general (those RBI singles). But, that is obviously not the whole story, by a long shot.

Certainly if you want to judge a player’s value, even using junk stats, it is ludicrous to only look at his RBI totals, again, not withstanding the “opportunities argument.”

You would always want to look at another junk stat like RUNS (or perhaps runs minus HR), which would be equally reflective of a player’s getting on base value (and his speed).  Looking at RBI alone to get a feel for a player’s value is like looking at OBP without SA or SA without OBA.

Basically, what I am saying is that if you are going to look at a junk stat or stats to get a feel for a player’s overall value, why look only at RBI?  That makes no sense even to the (statistically) very unsophisticated fan.  Runs + RBI or Runs and OBP is really the only way to go if you want to go in that direction (and not concern yourself with opportunities).  In fact, for Joe Carter in 1990, if we look at Runs Scored, he comes in at tied for 43rd in MLB and around 9th in RBI+Runs. And Howard last year is tied for 6th or 7th (with little defensive value of course)…

If you have all his other stats (hits, walks, HR, etc), say you have his overall seasonal line, and even have his seasonal line with men on base, would you think that the RBIs adds anything to your understanding of the player’s impact?

It’s like saves and pitcher wins.  If that’s all you have, or are too bored to look at anything else, then, sure, RBIs are ok to look at.

"In the end, this is just further evidence of why you shouldn’t place much emphasis on a hitter’s RBI total. It’s simply a tally of something that happened”

Nobody says you should use RBI’s to the exclusion of other stats, just that RBI’s tell an important story of what happened. 

The saying “Simply a tally of what has happended.” makes me LOL.  What happens when a batter gets credited with an RBI?  The scoreboard changes.  The team that has the most RBI’s usually wins the game.

“There’s another major flaw with using this method of evaluation—it doesn’t account for walks.”

Now while walks are indeed valuable, it’s tally does not tell you how often that walk ACTUALLY contributed to a scoreboard change.  We just know the league average number of runs scored per walk.  Why doesn’t someone tally how many runs a players walk actually contributes to a teams runs?

“But you may have noticed another problem here: By just tracking runners on base, it doesn’t account for where those runners were on base.”

BP’s numbers also do not account for self RBI’s from HR.  However, they do breakdown the runners on each base, so why doesn’t anyone use them?. 

Seems nobody appreciates the RBI until their team does not get enough of them. 

Something to be said for stats that say what really did heppened rather than using only stats that are simply estimators with an unstated/unknown margin of error.  No law against using both to see the big picture.

"Nobody says you should use RBI’s to the exclusion of other stats”

Nobody says to use it to the exclusion, but then they overweight it to such an extent that it’s a defacto exclusion.

“The team that has the most RBI’s usually wins the game. “

The team that scores the most runs ALWAYS wins the game.  Why not the reverence for runs scored by player?

RBI adds very little to our knowledge of a players batting results.  When Hack Wilson set the RBI record in 1930 he had a great year with the bat; his 56 HR would last as the NL record until Sosa/McGwire in 1998, and he led the league in BB.  But the 2 guys who usually batted 3rd and 4th in front of him got on base about 600 times, after subtracting out their HR’s.  Kiki Cuyler hit 50 doubles and led the league in SB.  Wilson may have had more base runners on, and more in scoring position than any other batter in history that season.

A few years ago there was strong support for Howard over Pujols for MVP based largely on RBI.  I looked at their numbers in some detail.  Pujols was better with the bases loaded.  He was better with runners on 2nd and 3rd, with runners on 1st and 3rd,and with runners on 1st and 2nd.  He was also better with runners on 3rd.  Howard was better with a runner on 1st or 2nd and he hit bases empty HR at a higher rate.  To Howard’s advantage, a runner on 1st or 2nd would be more common than the situations where Pujols was better, and Pujols missed more games than did Howard.  Of corse Howard had more RBI because he had more runners on and more RISP than Pujols, not because, in any meaningful way he, was better at RBI than Pujols.

The only stat that wins games is the run.  How valuable the walk is, for producing a run, depends on how well the bats are behind the batter walking.

Sometimes when I read these type of messages on this board, I wonder if you geniuses realize that a hit that drives in an RBI and is not a homerun, also puts the batter on base for the next batter to drive in.  Kind of like a walk, but, umm,,, guess what? BETTER!

If you have a batter that is coming to bat with more men on base than anyone else in your lineup, and he has weak batters behind him, do you seriously prefer a walk over an RBI?  Seriously?  You would rather your power guy, work a walk, not get the RBI, in hopes that the .230 hitter that is on an 0-fer 40 streak, will drive him home? 

Math formulas can be built in a subjective manner. Values applied to variables can be given value subjectively. Variables can be discluded that should be included, and vice versa.  All of this can lead to faulty math. The average or median answer, will not apply to hitters on the extreme end(positive or negative) of the median/average value.

You know what I trust more than faulty math?  My intelligence combined with common sense. I think for myself. There is nothing wrong with reading, exploring, absorbing new ways of looking at things, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to accept it as gospel like a lemming. Amazing how few saber-heads actually put real thought into the crap they spout.

---"Seriously?  You would rather your power guy, work a walk, not get the RBI, in hopes that the .230 hitter that is on an 0-fer 40 streak, will drive him home? “
**************

Who says that if he doesn’t “work” a walk, that he will"get" the RBI? If by attempting to get the RBI he must swing at bad pitches, then yes I’d prefer he take the BB. If it means being aggressive on a good pitch to hit--even if it’s the first pitch--then that’s fine.

Why do you think that what saber people want a batter to do is try to work walks as the primary goal?

Sid/12: Why are you here?

Tango/14 I was referred to, and was reading through the conversations.

I can guarantee, 100 percent, that if my comment was one of full agreement, you wouldn’t be asking why I am here.

That’s a bullsh!t statement you made, just making it up out of thin air.  Your guarantee is not a Mark Messier guarantee. Since you are new around here, bullsh!t is not inflammatory, and it means “summary opinion without evidence”.  Which is what you did with regards to me.

I have no problem with disagreeing.  If you can make sense.

You made two ridiculous statements:
1. “do you seriously prefer a walk over an RBI”

No one said that given the choice, AFTER THE FACT, of a walk or an RBI, that they’d choose the walk.  You are just making more stuff up out of thin air.  If you get an RBI, you probably ALSO got a hit.  And a hit is better than a walk.  Now, if you meant RBI as in “sac fly”, and the batter after you is a bad (non-pitcher) hitter, then we can have a productive discussion, where everyone can learn.

So, do you want to have a discussion, or do you just want to spout your bullsh!t?

2. “Amazing how few saber-heads actually put real thought into the crap they spout”

This is rich!  After you finished your spouting your bullsh!t, you turn it around and say that we are the ones doing it!

Listen dude, the political crap is for politics.  If you don’t want to learn, then just watch the political shows, where every politician believes every story has just one side to it.  That even though every decision made is like a 60/40 kind of deal (close call, but leaning toward one side), every politician talks like the decision is a 99/1 deal (barely no uncertainty).

So, if you have an open mind, and you don’t have your opinions already formed (and therefore have a need to defend them like a politician who has no uncertainty in his opinion), then leave!  This place is not for you.

If you want to think, discuss, and… ackkk… actually change your mind in the face of new evidence, or at old evidence in ways you have not considered, then stick around.  We’ll grow on you.  Like fungus maybe, but at least we’ll grow on you.

Your choice dude: be challenged, maybe have fun, and stay here, or be happy in your unsupportable ignorant but blissful opinions and leave.

Sid/15:

I’d guess it has a bit more to do with your tone…

Tango, is Sid’s streak of comments including at least one straw man the kind of streak you like or dislike