THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

In this first segment, they just introduce advanced baseball analytics. They mention a few clubs that use sabermetrics in decision-making and how pervasive it is as a whole.

Overall they’re going to examine “six basic metrics” through the course of the mini-series.

On Facebook, Collette says my little videos helped inspire this series, so I’m biased, but I think this might be the greatest thing for television ever.

So far, not so hot, in my opinion…

Good idea, skeptical about the execution.  They discuss that sabermetrics is largely focused on the “why” question, but then go on to tease the 6 metrics they’re going to look at by stating they’ll look at the formula and the leaders in that stat.

Sadly, ESPN and other mass media outlets have fallen in to the same trap of skimming over, if not completely ignoring, the guiding philosophy of sabermetrics and the conceptual logic behind the metrics employed.

I’m already cringing in advance when they start talking about the “BABIP leaders”.  They’d be much better served discussing topics like “the difference between describing the past and predicting the future” and “giving credit where credit is due”.  The setup should be:

1) We have question X
2) The mainstream uses stats a, b, and c to answer the question
3) Here’s the problem with that:
4) Now, here’s what sabermetrics does to answer the question.

Until the media appreciates that sabermetrics is not a compendium of more complicated stats but rather the application of scientific principles to the understanding of sport, these types of efforts will be largely ineffective. 

The path to sabermetrics starts with an appreciation for the flaws in the historical approach and a desire to do it better.

Can’t hear it.  Apparently, this one is on wOBA:

http://www.baynews9.com/video?clip=http://static.baynews9.com/newsvideo/bn9/web_video/sabers_part2revisedflash9test.f4v

The wOBA video was kinda brutal. First off, the graphic displaying the formula displayed the PA in wOBA’s denominator as “Pitching Average” rather than Plate Appearances.

The interviewer then does a nice job pointing out that the weights aren’t arbitrary and asks where they came from. Unfortunately, the response he gets is “people way smarter than us” (they’re supposed to be experts) and “a single doesn’t hold as much weight as a double.” (doesn’t explain anything and only states that the rankings aren’t arbitrary; the fact that the magnitudes are also not arbitrary is lost)

I don’t doubt these guys know how to explain where the weights come from when given time to think about the best way to articulate it, but this interview style format does not provide them with that.

Trying to conversationally explain and justify wOBA in under two minutes would seem to be a herculean task.

Hi all,

I’m one of the guys in it. Tom’s point in #6 is one of the issues and the interview style plus having to do it in 2-3 minutes was rather tough. The station actually reached out to us about doing it so we were so thrilled that they were open to doing a project like this that we jumped on it. We didn’t get a chance to see the final graphics before they were thrown in so we’re seeing them for the first time ourselves.

Thanks for the feedback - we’ll work hard to apply it to future pieces if the network wants to expand on these initial six.

Ok, I just heard it.  I liked it.  It was pretty good for such a small time frame.  I’m not sure how much more information you can convey.  Maybe if the interviewer provided the questions beforehand? 

The NIBB thing was a time waster.  On the graphic, they could have shown “walks” without needing to talk about IBB or not.  And so on. 

Yes, the “pitching average” in the denominator was embarrassing.

Given the conditions the guys were put in, they did well.

However, the setup was not efficient with obvious time-wasters in there.

Thanks, Tom.

The series by nature is an introduction. I think explaining why this stat was useful was the most important thing. The intended audience was probably hearing these terms for the first time and still would still argue average over OBP.

I’ll agree with the formula aspects. As Jason said we didnt see the videos until everyone else did. Looking back, it might have been best to scrap the formulas altogether since this was meant to be an intro. I know on the topic of WAR it wasn’t mentioned at all. Perhaps that would’ve been best.

The whole thing was like being stuck in an elevator with someone who just asked you what is wOBA and you have a few floors to give them an explanation.

That’s a great analogy.

WAR video:

http://www.baynews9.com/video?clip=http://static.baynews9.com/newsvideo/bn9/web_video/sabers_part4flash9test.f4v

I can’t see it yet.  Also ISO which I missed too:

http://www.baynews9.com/video?clip=http://static.baynews9.com/newsvideo/bn9/web_video/sabers_part3flash9test.f4v

I don’t consider ISO to be a saber stat - at all.

MGL - that’s completely understandable but icons like you were not the target audience for this project. The SaberLibrary project has ISO in it, wikipedia talks about it in that manner, so that’s where we are coming from.

This (Tampa area) market lives off baseball card stats so even something as basic as OPS is foreign to them. After all, Rancel’s first blog was called Outs Per Swing because a fan in the stands had an argument with us and insisted that is what OPS stood for.

We are trying to introduce advance statistics to the market in these elevator-type sales pitches and if there is enough web traffic to them, we have a very easy case to do the next level of work and further the advancement of sabermetrics. We chose ISO because it is one of the few advanced metrics that come up in mainstream media discussion so we chose to capitalize on that.

I think what WOULD be a saber-stat is Secondary Average, which includes ISO, plus walks and steals.  Basically, everything that’s not in batting average. 

The weights are wrong in Secondary Average (doubles underweighted, steals overweighted), but it’s a decent enough stat.

WAR:

I think the guys are handling themselves well.  I think the interviewer is asking the kind of questions that we’d expect a newbie to ask as he’s coming to grips with the that.

I think it might have been more productive for the interviewer and the guys to have had off-camera questions and answers so that the interviewer would have a more complete understanding of the topic, get him up to speed.  And then he can come in with the questions for viewing.

Whatever though, it’s a tough position for both sides to be in, and I’m glad it’s not me!

BABIP video:

http://www.baynews9.com/video?clip=http://static.baynews9.com/newsvideo/bn9/web_video/sabers_part5flash9test.f4v

Again, I can’t comment until tonight.  If someone wants to give us their view, please do so.

I think it’s important, and fair, to only review it as if you were put in their shoes in that context.  We can and should expect the interviewer to fumble a bit as he gets his bearings, while our guys try to answer as best they can given the conditions.