THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I think you about nailed it, average. His average wOBA the past 2 years in .360. A fella named Daric Barton managed a .360 wBOA last year too. Not exactly a hurricane of offensive force. I’m not saying Howard is bad by any means. But when ones recent offensive prowess is compared to Barton? Yikes. At least he has that 5/125 deal to fall back on.

And then there’s this (credit to Derek Carty for pointing it out yesterday).

http://thechrismurrayreport.org/2011/08/21/sabermetrics-my-a-ryans-howards-true-value-to-the-phillies/

“It’s one thing for Foreman to use all kinds of number to show why Howard may not be this elite hitter in terms of average or ops, his slugging percentage or on-base percentage. You can certainly twist numbers to mean anything.

But the reality is for Foreman and the rest of sabemetric bean counters, the game is still played on the field by flawed human beings and not in a laboratory speculating on some bizarre mathematical baseball theory. It’s not rocket science.

If number-crunching sabermetric folks really want to know how good Howard or any other hitter is, put the calculators down, go to the ball park and talk to those who are around the game on a regular basis or better yet talk to the people who actually play the game.”

What a shame that articles like this exist, and FJM is nowhere to be seen.

---"I like debates where both sides make reasonable points.”
****************

As I was reading the second argument (that Howard is elite), I wasn’t thinking that at all. I was thinking that this guy was spouting nonsense he probably doesn’t really believe because he lost the coin flip. “It’s heads. I win, you lose. I’ll take average, and you get elite. Good Luck with that one!”

Both sides make reasonable points? I guess if you define reasonable as coherent, but certainly not based in empirical evidence (other than HR and RBI) or a logical thought process. Here is a snippet from the elite side:

(These are bulleted items that support his elite-ness)

“*Game Changer: Opposing managers game plan around Howard. This is evidenced by much of the National League East loading up on lefty relievers in recent years in an effort to stop the Big Piece in later innings.”

“*Statistics: Six consecutive years of 30/100 despite having next to no protection behind him during many of these years.”

“*Excitement level:” (not even going to paste the rest of this)

“As far as men on base in front of him, players like Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez also bat in very effective lineups yet fail to match Howard’s raw production.”

He keeps saying “raw production"… but that doesn’t mean anything. I can only assume he means RBI.

If the discussion taking place is supposed to be about the quality, value, and skill of Ryan Howard the baseball player in the year 2011, there is no tenable argument that he is elite.

If you define “elite” as doing or representing things that few players do (such as putting fannies in the seats), than person B does make reasonable points.  If you define it in the context of win/run value, which person A obviously does in his arguments, then person B does NOT present reasonable arguments.  They are answering different questions.

As usual, it all boils down to the question (and defining the words withing the question)…

5/mgl

Agree 100%. I tried to imply your point with my last paragraph.

Do you guys think Howard is an elite hitter?  I get that you don’t consider him an elite player, but what about if you just limited the discussion for a moment to hitting?

I’m not sure where I stand on that.  I’m interested to hear if you think a player’s position plays into whether or not they are an elite hitter.

I wouldn’t use his position at all to determine the quality of his hitting.  Otherwise, you get into is Youkilis an above average hitter or a way above average hitter, depending on whether he plays 1B or 3B.

I argue often and often and often to not link a player’s offense to his fielding position, if you don’t have to.

Yes!  I think this is the best argument for Howard.  Over the last six years, he is third in batting WPA, behind Pujols and Cabrera.  In the majors.  To me, you can use that argument to call him an elite hitter.

if the clutchness was spread over five years id be inclined to give him credit for ability with risp due to the shift. but last i checked it really looked like a crazy ridiculous clutch single season (2009 if i recall).  other than that not too much to explain. credit him for that if you want but i find it hard to tie it to the player he IS or WILL BE.

Howard exemplifies what Bill James has written many times that players with one, easily-quantifiable skill are often overrated, while players who do lots of things well but nothing exceptionally well are underrated. It’s easy for someone to understand why Howard is a great player: he hits all those home runs! Evan Longoria does lots of things well, aside from hitting for average, so its harder for someone to wrap his mind around that.

Oh, and the above paragraph isn’t true anymore, since Howard does not hit as many home runs nowadays. To be fair, neither does the league, but Howard’s batting average is as good as Longoria’s this year.

"If you define “elite” as doing or representing things that few players do (such as putting fannies in the seats), than person B does make reasonable points.”

I don’t even buy that.  Say the Phillies didn’t have the elite pitching, plus Victorino/Rollins/Utley, and the team was 72-84 heading into the final week.  In that situation Howard is just another slugger on a bad team, kind of like Josh Willingham on the A’s.

I don’t think the fans come out to watch a bad team just because they have Ryan Howard.

Ryan Howard’s wRAA (that is, his context-neutral linear weights above average) is +217 runs.  This means that without given extra credit for hitting HR with men on base, or removing credit for hitting solo HR, etc, etc, he’s at +217 runs.  Put another way, if his performance was the same in each of the 24 base out states, he’d be +217 runs.

If you include his performance by the 24 base out states (RE24), he’s at +259 runs.

That’s a difference of +42 runs (in his career, which is roughly 6 full seasons), or about +7 runs per 700 PA.  This is huge.  I don’t know where that ranks among active players, but I would not be surprised if he’s top 10, or even #1.

Whether Howard actively changes his approach to tailor to the 24 base out states (or the pitchers changes theirs and got burned), I don’t know.  And I don’t even know if it matters.  Howard doubled-down with men on base, and the house lost.

Whether Howard changes his approach, I don’t know, but the defenses certainly change their approach to him with runners on base.  They don’t shift.  That is, for all intents and purposes, a skill associated with Howard.  Bayes probably tells us to discount it somewhat, since any extreme value is likely to be due in part to luck, but he almost certainly has some intrinsic, repeatable skill in this area.

I’d be curious to take his batting line and randomly distribute events to his distribution of base/out states and see what the likelihood of being +42 runs over 4200 PAs is.  I’d guess it is very unlikely.

I appreciate the responses. I agree with your (Tango’s) point in the original post that a lot of this comes down to whether or not we’re talking about his career or the last two years. I took the approach that we’re talking about right now, in which case these last two years basically make my argument by themselves. John clearly is concerned with his whole career.

One of the points I wanted to make was about how we define “elite.” I know that the way I personally define elite is a half step below ‘unique’. I think when you’re talking about elite players in baseball, you’re probably talking about 10-15 guys. I also know that a lot of other people are more generous with the term and I did write with the more generous definition in mind.

Nevertheless, our personal definitions for common words can really muck up an argument, especially for a player like Howard. To truly answer the question of Is Ryan Howard elite, one must first decide if his power is elite (as discussed above, it’s arguable) and then decide if possessing an elite skill is the same as being an elite player.

I suspect that people generally assume that words like elite have an objective meaning and that it is the same as the personal meaning they hold for that word. The problem in my experience is that definitions are largely subjective based on our understanding and experience with that word and/or the words used to define it.

Rally, I was not suggesting that that is the case (that Howard puts fannies in the seats).  I have no idea.

Brad, it is not so much the definition of elite, but elite what?  Hitter (not including walks), offensive player (including walks), all-around player (with defense, baser running), slugger, run producer (RBI - with or without help from his teammates), HR hitter, etc.?

Questions which have no clear-cut definition (in this case, it’s not even close), are silly to “argue”, in my opinion…

Right, so the first step should be to define exactly what you are discussing. The problem I’ve had in the past RE: Howard is that people won’t agree to discuss a certain thing.

As someone who actively participates in a Phillies forum, I’ve had this Howard argument quite a few times. Usually, when I try to isolate exactly what we mean by “elite” and “production” I run into stout resistance from both directions.

The question that sabermetricians generally are asking/answering when discussing who is “better” than whom, is simply:

“If you substitute player X for Ryan Howard at first base tomorrow, who would give the Phillies a better chance of winning the game?”

Of course that only answers the question, “Who is the better first baseman?”

Trying to explain to or discuss with a non-sabermetrically oriented person the same thing but comparing him (Howard) to a player at a different defensive position is a difficult thing.  The easiest way to do that is this: Start with the assumption that the average player at any one position is equal to the average player at any other position, which is a pretty good assumption and one that most casual fan will not argue with.  Then simply compare Howard to the average first baseman including defense and baserunning. 

Now the problem you will run into with the average fan is quantifying base running and defense and then combining that with offense (the average fan will have no idea how to do that and if he has an idea it might be way out in left field).  The other problem you will run into is quantifying offense.  The average fan might put a lot of importance in RBI and clutch performance, whereas the sabermetric guy will maintain that those have little or no relevance to the question of who will help the Phillies win tomorrow’s game.

So even if you find a common ground in terms of the question between the saber and non-saber fans, answering that question to both of their satisfaction is not going to be easy…