THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Agreed.

I’m not an evangelist for sabermetrics (I think I stole this line from David Smyth; if not him, than somebody else).  I don’t care to convert you.  I will do what I am interested in, and if it interests you, great.  And if you want to ask questions about it, great.  But I’m not going to come to your door and try to hand you my pamphlet.

Even if I was interested in outreach, the selection of players for the Hall would be one of the last areas I would attempt to penetrate.  Because 1) I don’t consider it anywhere near as important as team decision making, which also happens to be the area in which there is the most potential value to the adopter and 2) as we have discussed before, I have fundamental problems with the way the Hall is structured.  That’s not a sabermetric issue, either--you could pick players by the Triple Crown stats, unadjusted for era and park, and still want to have tiers or a “maybe” option on the ballot or any of the other things we’ve discussed.

Have not RTFA, but I agree with Patriot and Tango, and will add, very simply, that sabermetrics is the utilization of scientific principles to infer and present various “facts” and theories in baseball.  Nothing more and nothing less.

As in all scientific endeavors, today’s “facts” and theories are simply those which we flawed human beings have determined to be supported by the data and the scientific and mathematical tools we foist upon that data and use to analyze it. Some, perhaps many, of those theories and “facts” will be repudiated, expanded upon, or “tweaked” or added to in the future.  That is the nature of all branches of science and all scientific endeavors.

What the “purpose” of sabermetrics is, depends on you persepctive and agenda.  Some scientific inquiries are for the sake of knowledge and enlightenment alone.  Others have more practical applications.  As I have said many times, sabermetrics is such that I don’t think the world is necessarily a better place because of it, other than to the people who enjoy it and whose lives are enhanced by it, for whatever reasons, for the jobs that it creates, and perhaps most importantly, for the application it has to other more important things, in terms of encouraging and helping people to act and think more critically and rationally.

Sabermetric science can benefit from a two-way conversation with the “mainstream” baseball world.

The data that Alan Nathan, Mont Hubbard, and others could gather about the aerodynamics of spinning baseballs in laboratory settings pales in comparison to the wealth of experimental data we have from the PITCHf/x system supported and implemented by the mainstream world.  Similarly, the mainstream baseball world has benefited immensely from Sportvision and MLB’s decision to make the PITCHf/x data freely available to the sabermetric/scientific community.

PITCHf/x is a great example of the benefits of cooperation across communities.  Generally speaking, nobody’s been looking down their noses at each other in that conversation, even while the conversation has been pretty frank about shortcomings and desires for future enhancements.  A lot of the credit there has to go to the established institutions setting the tone from the start, but I’d like to think that the professional nature and high level of input from the sabermetric community has contributed significantly to that tone as well.  I think everyone who attended the summit in San Francisco in May came away amazed at the progress that was happening and the community that had evolved in support of the effort on all sides.

A fair enough response. 

I do think it’s a good idea to avoid ignoring the broader baseball community not just for evangelical purposes (for lack of better way of putting it) but also for the sake of sabermetrics itself.  Limiting the conversation to only those who agree with A, B, and C makes it less likely you’ll get to J, K, and L. 

I also think the claims that sabermetrics is scientific is overstatted.

Given the issues I’ve had trying to engage BP on the problems with VORP, I’m finding it hard to engage Chris’s larger point and play it straight.

My feelings on the whole matter of the four of them being admitted into the BBWAA:

* In the long run this is probably - but not certainly! - a good thing for baseball in general.

* In the interim it’s probably important to note that these four were chosen mostly for being the least threatening choices. They’re the members of the “sabermetric” community who are closest to being part of the mainstream media - it’s hard to be more mainstream and corporate than ESPN in sports media, and BP is definately moving in that direction (look at their partnership with SI). Even the BP writers chosen were the ones closest to the BBWAA’s type - I understand he’s probably too busy for it these days but a much more interesting (and incindiary) pick would’ve been Nate Silver.

* Enagagement with people who disagree with you is an important virtue, but I don’t know if that’s particularly salient to the divide between “sabermetrics” and “traditionalists,” or a wholly (or even mainly) sabermetric failing even in that case. Saberists - in my estimation - have been far more willing to engage the mainstream opinion than the mainstream opinion has been willing to consider them.

* The fact that Neyer and Law aren’t that thrilled with the idea of joining a social organization that just as recently as a year ago openly admitted the two of them weren’t “their type” is, I don’t think, little more than a footnote and - if you look at the context - at least as much a point against the traditionalists as it is against the saberists.

* It is very difficult for me at this point to see BP as being on the side of open engagement. Clay’s recent work on WARP could perhaps sway me to think otherwise, but I’m quite frankly a little exhausted and frustrated with BP in general right now.

I also think the claims that sabermetrics is scientific is overstated.

I think that sabermetrics is nothing BUT science, using a liberal definition of science (the scientific method, scientific inquiry, etc.).  Now, how rigorous some of the work is and to what standards that work reflects is another story.  In all scientific endeavors, there are good and bad researchers and good and bad work.  That does not make something more or less “scientific,” I don’t think.

I think the ellipsis from Chris’ quote could be the most telling part of the argument: Say what you will about the members of the BBWAA, they do a better job reflecting what the masses think that any fistful of THT columns. That is how they keep their jobs.

I don’t see it, perhaps because the sports reporting in the Bay Area is so bad.  And Neyer and Law - with completely different perspectives from most sports reporters - have such a huge following that it basically forced the BBWAA to take them on.

It actually reminds me of something Bill James once wrote about how NFL players could never really go on strike: unlike baseball, the gap between the “amateurs” and the “pros” is just too small.  Give sports reporters a year off and give the “amateurs” resources and access to players and management and you’d have a lot of reporters who wouldn’t be coming back to work after their year off.

Maybe I’m deluding myself, but I think a lot of baseball fans do appreciate reasoned analysis, particularly of scouting data, like the nice plots you can get of release point out of PitchF/X.  Or something like what’s in the intro of the first Fielding Bible - watch video of Derek Jeter making 40 throws to first base...then watch Adam Everett do the same and try to convince yourself that Jeter’s better - that’s an angle that appeals to people.  You almost never see it - or there’s too much math for the uninitiated - so you might convince yourself that most baseball fans just want to read about guts and glory.

I’m going to give one-and-a-half cheers to Chris for saying what he has. I submit in evidence the Hall of Merit at Baseball Think Factory. If you look at its rather elaborate Constitution, it’s guaranteed to compel you to vote in a certain way. And, in that sense, it is taking the position that ‘only one point of view has any validity’.

Since Chris is writing about the HoF, and I sympathize with his position using the HoM, it may be that his generalization only applies to such institutions. The rest of you are approaching it from a different perspective.

As for the question of science, I kind of agree with mgl (and disagree with Chris) that sabermetrics is ‘nothing but [scientific method]’. I think most people get into a state of semantic muddle when using ‘science’ where they mean ‘scientific method’. Scientific method is good; science, maybe not.

”...it’s guaranteed to compel you to vote in a certain way”

Here’s the HoM constitution:
http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/hall_of_merit/discussion/our_constitution/

Before I read it, I should say that this group is not necessarily representative of the sabermetrics “movement” any more than Pope John Paul II is representative of priests around the world.

Ok, I read it.  I don’t see anything about the constitution that would necessarily favor Dav Stieb over Jack Morris, even though the voting overwhelming shows it.

As an aside, if you use the word “guarantee”, please back it up if it’s not self-evident. 

Unless you are Mark Messier, no one should make any guarantees.

If you read the comments, The idea is that virtually every voter will consider only on-field accomplishments for virtually every player for virtually every ballot. (#10, Rob Wood).

At the beginning of the Hall of Merit, it was very clear that what was intended was an electorate that was more or less agreed on what was the basis of electing people. I find the HoF’s more elastic approach to criteria more appropriate, in that sense.

Fortunately, in practice, the Hall of Merit ended up being more elastic than it appeared it might have turned out. But it put me off at the time.

It’s a shame stuff got lost in the transfer from Primer to Think Factory, because if my memory serves me right and there was an earlier, more restrictive draft, my word ‘guarantee’ might not seem so out of place.

So shame on me for not double-checking the available text, but I can assure you that at the time the HoM was launched it looked like it was going to be a ‘dictatorship of the sabermetricians’.

I think it’s a fair point to debate whether “on-field only” should be the criteria.  For example, when L.T. was being debated, one of the Holy Writers said he was going to wait to hear an apology from LT before casting his vote.  THAT turned me off.  He got, IIRC, 32 of 35 votes.  (I don’t know how that compares with others.  If that’s typical of all-time greats, fine. )

So, to establish before-hand, so that everybody knows, that how Albert Belle treats a reporter is irrelevant is good.  To establish if Dickie Allen treats his teammates, such that his teammates may perform worse, is good.  I find no problem in establishing the parameters of what should be considered.  Their constitution looks fairly reasonable.

The constitution barely even tells you the reason for its existence (selecting “best” players),with so little guidelines as to what to consider (a longer list of what NOT to consider fills the constitution).  From the way you are speaking, this constitution seems to have your approval.

For me, I prefer the hockey mindset: Bobby Orr is one of the 4 best hockey players of all-time.  You have Gretzky, Howe, and Mario as the only other contenders.  Each was considered the best player of his time, at some point in their careers.  Some had a very short career (Orr) and others incredible long (Howe). 

For baseball fans who look at “longevity”, NO ONE would put Orr in the same breath as Howe.  For “peak”, you can split it 50/50.  So, you’d expect say 75% of the baseball fans to put Howe ahead of Orr.  And yet, I have no problem whatsoever accepting Orr might be better than Howe.  Indeed, more people put Orr ahead of Howe than the other way around.

When I look at the HoM results for those in the Orr family (not to his level of course), and I see Stieb and Saberhagen and a few others with better peak than Morris, but shorter careers, I am floored by how much these pitchers were selected above Morris.  Clearly, the HoM voters did not bother with the sabermetric-manufactured longevity v peak analysis.

I’ve long supported the OPITT view (observed performance inferring true talent).  Orr’s performance could only have been accomplished by one of the best players ever, and regardless if he played 10 more years, it was barely going to nudge his position. 

I think this view is implicitly accepted by people without realizing it.  Well, accept for the Holy Voters, who look at “counting aggregate” numbers, because they can’t be bothered to learn division.