THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Does the UZR number include arm? I have Sori at +20 runs in 361 opps and Swish at -5 in 362 opps. That’s about equal to 2 seasons’ worth of OF play, so the difference between the two players, just for arm, is around 12 runs per season.

You could regress that number, of course, but I haven’t worked out how much regression is appropriate.

Actually, no, so good point. 

With arms, I think we should be careful.  Let’s take IRod.  At his peak, virtually no one should have tried to steal on him.  The runners should have been 0 SB, 0 CS.  In effect, his arm should be neutral.  Instead, not only did the smart baserunners run on him (good), but alot of stupid ones did too (bad).  So much so, that his arm was a huge net positive.  This basically, should NOT happen.  Why would you give someone with a gun any bullets?  The best way to neutralize IRod would simply be for everyone to agree: don’t run, since we are not smart enough to figure out who are the good baserunners.

Similar deal with Soriano.  I have to believe that his arm cannot be that good, that, basically, everyone is running on him, even guys who normally wouldn’t, simply because they don’t think giving him bullets is going to cost them.  That, in time, runners will realize that he does have a good arm (though not GREAT), and will run more smartly on him.

So, while he gets credit for the baserunner kills for the past, I don’t see how this could last into the future.

John: can you do a WOWY on him, showing the runners that are running on him, and comparing how those specific runners are doing with other OF?  There must be a subset of runners that simply don’t go on other OF that simply go nuts on him.  Or did, anyway.

Well, it seemed like runners stopped running on Soriano last season.

We know that his Hold+ (normalized Hold rate, 100 is average) was 96 in 2006, but it jumped to 108 last year, which is very good (ranks 3rd for LF in 2007). 

So runners are not running a lot on him, on the contrary, but he still had more than twice the assists than an average OF would have had.

I’m not set up to do a WOWY analysis, unfortunately. It’s on my list of things to implement at some point.

I thought Swisher was the poster boy for walks and power.  I guess he represents clubhouse chemistry.  Either way, despite very different styles he seems to be about equal to Soriano.

“What’s next, Pamela Anderson over Meryl Streep?”

Uh, yes.  Though maybe the author was thinking of a different question than I am.

So where do we factor in that Swisher probably hasn’t had his best days yet and Soriano’s are clearly behind him? Not only are Swisher and Soriano about equal now, Swisher is far and away a better value and it’s reasonable that he’ll get a little bit better. Soriano is already likely on his decline.

Right, that’s the Marcel for one year only.

If you want to look for “next 5 years”, and until I come up with a function for WAR, you can use Win Shares here:
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/win_shares_aging_curves/#13

If you have 2 20-win share players, one aged 28 and the other aged 32, then they will get this:

28 year old:
23 + 0.64 * 20 - 0.78 * 28 = 14 win shares per year x 5 years = 70 win shares

32 year old:
23 + 0.64 * 20 - 0.78 * 32 = 11 win shares per year x 5 years = 55 win shares

So, a pretty hefty difference to be sure.  15 win shares = 5 wins of difference, spread of 5 years.

I have Swisher much the better player with a +18 offensive projection, Soriano around +9, and the same in defense.  Swisher’s better offensive projection is as a result of his age.

I dig the use of “Runs Participated In”.

The entire “problem” of “Runs Produced” is the name.  “Runs Participated In” at least is clear.  An empty HR means you participated in one run, not two, just like an unassisted goal.

I don’t think arms are worth more than plus or minus 5 runs a year, at the extremes, and one of the reasons is what Tango says.  If you have a great arm, the most you can do is prevent base runners from advancing.  You shouldn’t have that many kills, unless it is a fluke or runners and coaches are really stupid.

It is kind of like with a catcher. NO catcher should EVER have a CS percentage above around 30%!  If they do, it is a fluke, or base stealers and managers are really stupid (or they are only running in situations where the BE point is really low).

Anyway, I have Sori’s arm lwts at +4 in 06 and -1 in 07, so I see nothing there that suggests he has a great arm, only that runners ran too often on him in 06 thinking that he probably had a 2nd baseman’s arm and probably because he threw like an infielder (side-arm) and not an outfielder.

Swisher looks like he has a bad, but not terrible, arm, maybe a -2.  So I would have no problem giving Sori the edge in arm by 2-4 runs a year.  Swisher is still the better player and much the better value as time goes on.

I don’t think you would EVER convince a baseball insider of that.

Just like you would NEVER (ever) convince a baseball insider (or most outsiders) that there were 48 players in baseball worth more than Jeter, even if you asked them to ignore “leadership, chemistry, etc.”

This is just like when I said Polanco is as valuable as Jeter, if not more.