THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Geoff’s yelling at me.  Don’t pay him any attention - he just likes to try and start fights with USSM to try and drive traffic to his blog.  We’ve stopped responding to him, and now he just fires off one of these every few months.

Here’s my question about all the stuff we can’t quantify (chemistry, one player “making another better” by his mere presence, etc.): If we are able to quantify hitting, pitching, defense, baserunning all with a fairly reasonable certainty, how much of the pie is left for those things?

To put it another way: Say we had perfect measurements of all those quantifiable aspects (we removed all luck from pitching, our defensive metrics were perfect, etc.), what percentage of “what makes teams win” would that stuff total? Even right now with imperfect measuring tools, it seems to me that we’re in the 95%+ range. There is refining to do, always, but I simply don’t think there’s a lot of room left for chemistry and the other unquantifiable stuff because all the stuff we can count pretty much completely accounts for wins. And if chemistry and the other stuff isn’t causing a team to win, doesn’t it then not matter?

Baker is also using a strawman argument, I believe. I don’t know any Sabermetricians who legitimately think that team chemistry has zero effect on the game, or anything like that. I do think that most Sabermetricians “discard” intangibles like team chemistry is that we have not yet been able to (and may never be able to) quantify these things (perhaps evident by the term intangibles).

Is it not more dishonest to toss an intangible into an analysis without having proven to what degree this intangible does or does not affect the results? I would rather leave out this intangible altogether until I find out its magnitude.

That’s being intellectually honest. It’s not on Sabermetricians to disprove that intangibles have any effect but on Sabermetricians (and everybody else) to prove that they do.

This sound right to you guys?

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot measure, the cameras to measure the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference…

Bill is right, this is an embarrassing strawman. The sabermetric proponent doesn’t say, “There’s nothing to a catcher’s ability to call a game/handle a pitcher/do seemingly intangible thing x!” He/she says, “There may be, but the data doesn’t shown any evidence. Since there isn’t any evidence, it may be unwise to act as if the supposed intangible were true.” That’s all.

But the Bill James reference annoys me. It hearkens to the typical “Oh, the students got so ahead of themselves they forgot the essential wisdom of their teacher in the process.” It’s not vilifying the sabermetric community, but rather patronizing it entirely, as if Bill James wisely taught everyone to look a little closer, and we’ve looked so deeply that we now need James to enlighten us on our mistakes and pull us back into reality.

Show me, Mr. Baker. Don’t just reference empty storylines that aren’t analogous. Show me how/we’re we’ve gone wrong. What specific stats are, seemingly from the article, eve harming proper analysis. I’d love to see any real evidence, rather than erroneously claiming that we set about to disprove intangibles.

Change team chemistry to lucky socks and it’s a work of satire.

Dude doesn’t read this blog much.

I have spoken to Baker and have read a few of his articles.  He is normally a pretty good journalist especially when it comes to understanding sabermetrics.

This article is just horrible though. It is all over the place and I have no idea of his point - who he is criticizing or lauding.  None, whatsoever.

Here is another senseless quote from the article:

All I know is, he correctly predicted the M’s would not contend this year. He also predicted the Oakland A’s would be a surprise team, which they have been despite a ton of injuries that have made them worse than they could have been.

@8/MGL: I agree that Baker has been one of the more sabermetric-friendly writers, and while I don’t particularly enjoy his blog I commend him for being able to advance his thinking and gain a better understanding on baseball statistics. However, as Dave referenced above, he loses sight at times and displays that he still is not fully grasping the concept(s). This article is a reflection of that.

My personal opinion on chemistry is that of the accepted sabermetric community, but with a twist. While we can quantify on-field outcomes very well with statistics like WAR, how players achieve their value can vary. I feel that chemistry, or at least relationships within the clubhouse, has a large impact on the development of players. How can we quantify that change in development? I have no idea. But I’ve heard numerous accounts of Cliff Lee heavily contributing to the advancement of Jason Vargas, and specifically his changeup.

And, of course, the irony is most of the people he criticizes do not spend much time on “team chemistry,” but, rather, attacking stuff that’s “quantified with numbers” like measuring batting ability by RBIs, or pitching ability by wins, or fielding ability by fielding average.

This is an...interesting...way to look at things:

All I know is, he correctly predicted the M’s would not contend this year. He also predicted the Oakland A’s would be a surprise team, which they have been despite a ton of injuries that have made them worse than they could have been.

James won’t boast about it, but I will do it for him. He was right and a lot of his subtle detractors, well...let’s just say they weren’t quite right about things.

What did Bill James actually predict in the interview Geoff Baker links to?  This:

I think the Mariners are a tremendous organization and I think they’re getting really close to being on the same level as the Angels. But I think that this is a consolidation year. They’ll play at a similar level to last year, but not better. And the team that will take a step forward in the division this year is Oakland.

The AL West, compared to last year’s record pro-rated to this year’s number of games:
+5 Rangers
+4 Athletics
-10 Angels
-15 Mariners

The article you link to is obviously completely over the top.  Foolish, really.  I would imagine that, once the dust has settled, we’ll see that he generated more site hits and advertising revenue than any other baseball article published in a U.S. daily on this day.  That’s what he his paid to do, so it’s not fair to criticize.

The Bill James’ quote is good, though.

That’s a guy who got famous writing terribly naive stuff for years.  Now he’s much, much better, at least I think so.  And he seems to get less respect.

Earlier today someone sent me some MLB analysis to check, with regard to half season splits.  Fascinating stuff, though I highly doubt that it will get posted anywhere.  This even though I can’t see the commercial value in it.

Any road, I googled the subject and got a couple of links to this blog.  Your writing on the topic was terrific, the translation to math ... not so much.

My favourite definition of math is Einstein’s “Math is the poetry of logical ideas”.  That’s true, and the beauty of it is that it is not ambiguous poetry.

My favourite quote about math also comes from Einstein: “pure mathematics is well and good, but nature is leading us around by the nose”.

I went on an Einstein bender after a discussion of Raffi Torres’ shooting percentage moved a physicist to mention Brownian movement elsewhere on the web.  A quick google and read and you realize, contrary to preconcieved notions, that Einstein was not a brilliant mathematician, he was McGyver with decent math.  Honestly, who thinks up this stuff?  And upon reading it, why didn’t everyone else realize this much earlier?  Proposing crazy experiments, based on notions, that work ... against the intuit of everyone at the time.  Madass.  Of course, if not for Max Planck, we might not even know about the guy.

But I digress.  Your commentary on the subject of summer hitters was terrific.  I do wonder what you could do if you were brash enough to ignore the advice of your colleagues and commenters.  And if you built your models from simple bricks, as James usually does, rather than accept convenient shortcuts and the praise of those who do likewise.

Baker’s post was a bit of a ramble, but I think he was pretty much on the mark.

The Mariners did get carried away with the defensive angle and ignored some obvious offensive problems. He lays this at the feet of the sabermetric angle and wags the finger at the sabermetric crowd which was euphoric about the Mariners moves to almost a comical degree.

It’s a bit strange because he wrote earlier that management’s moves were not nearly as focused on defense as the saber crowd thought.

He probably went a bit overboard on the chemistry thing but he obviously thinks things are a lot worse than they need to be because of poor chemistry which may have a bit of truth to it. The Mariners do seem to be a bit of a toxic brew.

I don’t think his assessment is that far off.

CHONE predicted 77 wins for Seattle.  Oliver predicted 79 wins.  The preseason Vegas line was 83.  So I’d say sabermetric thinking was actually ahead of the curve as compared to common wisdom.

Now if you want to cherry pick predictions in retrospect, I’m sure you can find people who thought they would win more than the Vegas line, but that’s an intellectually dishonest way to approach the question.

I predicted the AL West as follows:
Texas 85-77
Anaheim 83-79
Seattle 81-81
Oakland 78-84
I’m not going to fall on my sword over that.  I’d be curious to see Geoff Baker’s preseason prediction.

I found it.  Hah.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/marinersblog/2011508895_mariners_dont_look_better_than.html

The best prediction:

I actually think the offense will be better than it looked this spring and will score a bunch of runs more than it did last year.

And his prediction of the standings:

Many of you keep writing in and asking for my official AL West prediction. I’m not going to run off and hide with it, so here it is.

Much as I was hoping to give you some better news, I just can’t justify picking this team any higher than third place at the moment. Even with the division expected to be a three-team dogfight. Having looked at the teams competing in the AL West, I’d say the Angels are still the best squad in the division with the Rangers poised to give that title a challenge.

The Mariners might be able to step in and make some noise that counts. Meaning in September.

And that’s why I just can’t get over the feeling that this version of the team is a largely unfinished product. I think it has the talent to hang around for a while, but unless Jack Zduriencik and ownership—meaning the guys holding the purse strings—put the finishing touches on it, I still see two AL West teams not involved with the city of Oakland finishing ahead of Seattle in the standings.

So he was right in there with the mainstream sabermetric thinking in the preseason.  Good for him.  But now he acts like he knew all along that the team was gonna be mired well in last place and all the saberists were overly optimistic idiots?  I don’t buy it.  That’s rewriting history.

ZiPS had the Mariners winning the division with an 86-76 record.  It was the most optimistic of any of the projection systems about the M’s.  Because of the org rankings thing, people think I had some kind of wild optimism about this team - in reality, I projected 83 wins and a second place finish behind the Rangers. 

Rewriting history is a good way to describe people’s reactions to the M’s season.  No one projected that Chone Figgins, Milton Bradley, Jose Lopez, and Casey Kotchman were all going to have the worst year of their careers.  The idea that this was somehow predictable is a joke. 

The Mariners got the 10th percentile performances out of most of their position players.  No one saw this coming.  No one.

I think Baker is referring to the overall attitude of the USS Mariner and Fangraphs crowd which was all pretty optimistic and declaring Jack Z a genius. Honestly, from reading the stuff, it seemed they thought they were going to 90 games at least.

He’s primarily referring to the people he deals with as hometown fans and not the sabermetric community at large. Even so, the Mariners did get a lot of mention as a first-place team.

He wasn’t saying the falloff was entirely predictable. He just said even if Figgins hit up to expectation and Bradley had a good year, the team would still have had problems because they had no power. They were a flawed team and he disagreed with how the approach.

They decided to combat their offensive problems with run prevention. People can argue for the defensive formula but it is a high-risk approach in a run-scoring league.

It’s a bit of a strawman to say that Baker said it was predictable.

Obviously, everything has gone wrong for the Mariners. They couldn’t even trade away with Silva without it coming back on them.

As I recall, there was quite a bit of naysaying about James saying the Mariners were a lucky team last year because they were way negative with PT%. That’s one of the things Baker was referring to. That’s true. That did happen.

I think Baker is referring to the overall attitude of the USS Mariner and Fangraphs crowd which was all pretty optimistic and declaring Jack Z a genius.

The “USSMariner and Fangraphs crowd” guy is right here.  If you’d like to present evidence for anything you’re saying, go find a quote of something I wrote supporting your assertions. 

He just said even if Figgins hit up to expectation and Bradley had a good year, the team would still have had problems because they had no power.

If Bradley and Lopez had the years that were reasonably expected, the team would have had power. 

They were a flawed team and he disagreed with how the approach.

No he didn’t.  He’s pretending he did now. 

They decided to combat their offensive problems with run prevention. People can argue for the defensive formula but it is a high-risk approach in a run-scoring league.

Please explain how acquiring Milton Bradley and Chone Figgins was a decision to combat a lack of offense with run prevention. 

The reality of the situation is that the Mariners have gotten career worst performances out of over half the hitters on the roster.  That’s not due to their “put a good defense on the field” philosophy. 

As I recall, there was quite a bit of naysaying about James saying the Mariners were a lucky team last year because they were way negative with PT%. That’s one of the things Baker was referring to. That’s true. That did happen.

Clearly, the fact that last year’s team outperformed their expected win-loss record is why Bradley, Figgins, Kotchman (three guys who were in other organizations a year ago) are playing terrible.  It’s regression to the mean! At least, as long as you ignore the fact that the players aren’t the same, and that most of the guys regressing weren’t even in Seattle last year.

Mike/15, I remember something similar from Baker criticizing things like this and someone digging through his articles finding a horde of things that contradicted his most recent work. Facts are, he’s just driving traffic and when you can twist things around to say the most prolific team blogger (Dave) was wildly wrong and to not listen to him is a good way.

These sorts of things don’t even get a reaction out of my anymore. in fact, don’t even read them.

@JD/2

You state that we can quantify the production areas and ask “What’s left to quantify?”

The intangibles would be reflected in those production numbers. The difficulty is in trying to isolate the intangibles or chemistry from baseball randomness.

For example, how much of Hanley Ramirez’s “down year” is due to him not being happy over getting benches? How much is due to bad luck? How much is due to randomness? Scouting? Pitcher adjustments? A mechanical hiccup?

We don’t know because we cannot isolate those things, and furthermore, everything “works together”.

There have been teams that have won while seemingly hating each other, and teams that lose while being chummy. I don’t really see how this could ever be quantified as if baseball were like it is on video games where you can check and see that your team chemistry rating is 83/100.

#2 you wrote: “Even right now with imperfect measuring tools, it seems to me that we’re in the 95%+ range. There is refining to do, always, but I simply don’t think there’s a lot of room left for chemistry and the other unquantifiable stuff because all the stuff we can count pretty much completely accounts for wins.”

Lord Kelvin in 1900 is quoted as saying “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement”

The greatest obstacle to the truth is the illusion one already has it.  Those who believe sabermetrics today has it 95% covered do so as a matter of faith, and are locked in that box.

Discarding information or knowledge simply because it can not be quantified should be a sin.

#5, you wrote: “He/she says, “There may be, but the data doesn’t shown any evidence. Since there isn’t any evidence, it may be unwise to act as if the supposed intangible were true.” That’s all.”

The evidence does not always lie in the data which has been collected.  If you limit your search for the evidence to places where it does not exist, you will not find it. The absence of evidence is not proof it does not exist.  When pitchers, coaches and others say something exists, the burden of disproof is on you.  Since you can not disprove the hypothesis, ignoring it is unwise.

The article is obvioulsy nonsense.  I do wonder, though, if the M’s performance is an illustration of either the limits of the accuracy of our defensive metrics (a topic we’ve obviously talked about a lot), or an indication of some diminishing returns when high-UZR players are on the same team.  The Ms are on pace to be about +2 wins in fielding.  How much higher was the team’s defense projection?  Rally is finding almost no correlation between projections and actual DER so far.  Maybe that will improve with more seasons of data, incorporating some kind of PZR, etc.  But if not, that will raise interesting questions.

*

“The evidence does not always lie in the data which has been collected.”

I think this is 50% correct.  There will ALWAYS be statistical evidence for the impact of any factor that really matters.  If chemistry, character, clutch, or eating chicken every day really helps, that will be manifested in runs scored or runs allowed.  However, we may not always be able to measure the alleged causal factor 9e.g. “chemistry") well enough to determine whether the claimed impact occurs. 

“When pitchers, coaches and others say something exists, the burden of disproof is on you.”

I don’t agree with that.  Players and managers believe all kinds of things that aren’t true.  Their arguments should face the same burden of proof as sabermetricians’.  However, I do think that the “book”—conventional practice in the game—should be presumed correct until someone proves otherwise.  For example, we should assume there is a good reason to use a 5-man pitching staff today until someone proves otherwise.  The difference is that this isn’t somebody’s opinion, but the outcome of years of “baseball evolution” where competitive advantage tends to win out over time.

The article plays to Baker’s fanbase which is increasingly the casual fan who is mostly passing through with a passing interest in baseball in general or his small niche of devotees who cling to his blog like roaches in a dark corner of an outhouse because its their venue to troll with vile supposition meant to get a rise. I suppose because for some getting s rise in others is validating?

If saber-leaning individuals wouldn’t so readily respond to those being purposefully obtuse and only responded to those seeking an intellectually honest discussion, alot of the tripe like Baker’s formulated quoted above would basically get the audience it truly deserves....

Baker, as a beat writer, is a decent source for Ms-related information when something is actually going on-i.e. spring training for instance. But it’s the filling in the quieter gaps where he really struggles and I think he’s settled on taking the easy way…

23/A very open honest opinion in the search for greater knowledge.

"The evidence does not always lie in the data which has been collected.  If you limit your search for the evidence to places where it does not exist, you will not find it. The absence of evidence is not proof it does not exist.  When pitchers, coaches and others say something exists, the burden of disproof is on you.  Since you can not disprove the hypothesis, ignoring it is unwise.”

So let’s say all second baseman say that they play better if they hit second in the order. We go through the data and can’t find any evidence this is true. We try and try and find nothing significant.

You say it doesn’t matter, that “the burden of disproof is on you.” This is comically ludicrous. Obviously I can’t “disprove” a theory, I just can show that there is no evidence it is true.

You’re doing the same thing Baker does. I am not saying “it doesn’t exist” and I’m not saying “I’m going to ignore it.” However, I’m not going to default to it being true. That would be absurd.

"The Ms are on pace to be about +2 wins in fielding.  How much higher was the team’s defense projection?”

I have them as +33 runs projected, prorated for each player’s defensive innings on the field this year. If they are playing at a 20 run pace, that is not too bad, actually.

Here are the rest of my team UZR projections, per 150 games, prorated for each player’s time on the field, followed by the team’s approximate regressed current UZR per 150:

ALA -9 -36
ARI -22 +35
ATL -15 -15
BAL -10 -40
BOS +18 +18
CHA +4 -20
CHN +3 +14
CIN +22 +35
CLE 0 -45
COL -15 -25
DET +9 +10
FLO -15 -9
HOU +7 -35
KCA -19 -15
LAN -19 -35
MIL -6 -32
MIN -13 +30
NYA -4 +8
NYN -15 +20
OAK +25 +25
PHI -1 -6
PIT +4 -36
SDN +7 +53
SEA +33 +20
SFN +2 +42
SLN +9 +2
TBA +31 +43
TEX +2 +30
TOR -18 -15
WAS -4 -3

So a newspaper journalist is supposed to write dishonest, horrible copy in order to generate traffic?

Dave,

I think you are making an assumption that Baker was writing to you. Perhaps he was delivering a broadside directed at you, but he was writing primarily to his blog commenters which are greatly influenced by what you write without fully understanding it.

Those commenters then go to Baker’s blog considering themselves to be sabermetric experts and make posts about the Mariners and direct stuff at Baker. When he started his rant, he was responding to his readers saying that Jack Z should have known the Mariners offense stunk. He basically told them to shut up because the vast majority of what he saw was that they were all for the moves.

I’m not going to go looking up any of the stuff you wrote. But I do know that you wrote that the PT% was not something to be considered because the M’s total WAR added up to 85 wins. That was based on overvaluing a single year of UZR in my opinion.

You also wrote that the Mariners might put one of the greatest defenses of all time on the field at one point.

Let’s just say you got a little carried away and so did your readers. Baker pointed this stuff out. The M’s had Hernandez and Lee and the fans were euphoric as was much of the writing about the M’s defense by you and others.

Baker is clearly a guy that respects sabermetrics.  He is a guy that actually takes the time to read his commenters and interact with them from what I can tell.

This was just a blog post as well and he was expressing opinion. It was not something in the actual print edition.

26/ Guy wrote the quote who are responding to, not the newspaper journalist.

I don’t know what in the article is dishonest. You may think it’s horrible, that’s a matter of opinion.

But what about the article is dishonest?

bf, there is a fine line between dishonest and what Baker wrote.  Baker’s comments about Bill James pre-season assessment of the M’s was at best misleading and at worst dishonest, as Mike Fast clearly pointed out.

He also said that “all the sabermetric guys” were comically high on the M’s, or something like that, which is clearly untrue.  Is that being dishonest, saying something that is clearly untrue?

In any case, I wasn’t making the point that Baker’s article was “dishonest.” I was making the point that I find it ridiculous/sad (actually, I don’t believe it) that an internet journalist’s (for a major newspaper) responsibility is to generate hits at the expense of quality.  The article, as I said in my original post, was horrible.  Whether it was “dishonest” or not, I don’t really know or care.  That is just a word anyway, at least in this context.

"he correctly predicted the M’s would not contend this year.”

James said “there’s something like a nine-game overperformance there. Historically, the great majority of teams that overperform by that margin relapse the next season. And also, they’ve had a tremendous improvement for two or three years in a row. And historically, the great majority of teams that make that kind of improvement at some point have to take a consolidation step.....They’ll play at a similar level to last year, but not better”

Sounds like 85 wins at best, which is not in contention to me.

"He also said that “all the sabermetric guys” were comically high on the M’s, or something like that, which is clearly untrue.”

Am I reading the wrong article? If you are using quotes, then quote the article.

“Whether it was “dishonest” or not, I don’t really know or care.  That is just a word anyway”

Calling someone dishonest is not just a word. It’s an accusation. I think writing something that is dishonest is called libel. If you’re going to call someone dishonest, then point out what your facts are.

Bloggers don’t have to answer to anyone so they aren’t qualified to talk about integrity.

think you are making an assumption that Baker was writing to you.

Baker: “These same people will keep repeating that team chemistry doesn’t really matter, citing a stock quote from Jim Leyland...”

The post he’s referring to is one I wrote a few days ago. http://www.ussmariner.com/2010/07/25/the-fight/

No assumption necessary.  He’s talking about me. 

I’m not going to go looking up any of the stuff you wrote.

Because it would make it harder to make untrue generalizations about things I didn’t actually say?

But I do know that you wrote that the PT% was not something to be considered because the M’s total WAR added up to 85 wins.

Pythag record is useless.  People who use it are practicing bad analysis.  Anyone who thinks the Mariners won more games than they should have last year because they beat their pythag record is just being lazy and not actually looking at the issue. 

You also wrote that the Mariners might put one of the greatest defenses of all time on the field at one point.

No, I didn’t. 

I did, however, write this:

http://www.ussmariner.com/2009/09/10/gutierrezs-defense/

In the pre-season thread here where we were projecting the Mariners 2010 defensive value, I came in at around +40.  You could look all of this up, but facts apparently get in your way. 

Let’s just say you got a little carried away and so did your readers. Baker pointed this stuff out.

Let’s just say that you have not provided a single piece of evidence for anything you’ve said in this entire thread.  Your are either ignorant of the truth or willfully rewriting history. 

Baker is clearly a guy that respects sabermetrics.

I’ve talked with Geoff numerous times.  I’ve had lunch with him.  I’d imagine I have a better grasp of his opinion of sabermetrics than you do.

"I think most people know that the Seattle Mariners put a good defense on the field this year. I’m not sure many people realize that this may be one of the best collection of defenders we’ve ever seen.”—Dave Cameron, September 29, 2009, Fangraphs.

Anybody that looked at the Mariner UZR without remembering who they had on the field and decided that they were one of the great defenses ever seen should get a rumber stamp marked Dumbass and stamp it on their forehead everyday to help them remember when they look in the mirror how they can be fooled by their own statistics and love for the team.

You should have identified yourself as a troll a long time ago and saved us both some time.

What troll? It’s all there in black and white. You’re the one escalating the argument.

E-6, you may not call someone names.  Let this be a warning.  The next time, your posts will be deleted and/or you will be banned.

The best defensive team of the decade post was about the 2009 Mariners, which according to UZR they were. If you have an issue with UZR and WAR, take it up with MGL and Tango; they’re right here.

As for the Pythagorean record, who comes to this site and holds up runs scored/allowed as the ultimate measure of what a team’s record should have been?

The new refrain is that the Ms aren’t good enough at getting productive outs…

Chemistry. That one is on the shelf for a bit while it gets a little air.

Power...that’s the ticket. To bolster the argument, we need to talk about margin of error. But to lay the ground work, we’ll talk a long time about how this team can’t move runners over when making outs.  See, if only they would’ve brought a big power bat in, situational hitting wouldn’t matter.

USS Mariner (David Cameron?):

A while ago, maybe years ago, I was visiting a sister of mine who lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.  As part of her cable package, she gets local broadcasts from Washington State.  Either Spokane or Seattle, I don’t recall.  One of the two, though.

Flipping through the channels, and I came across a local show about baseball, just a few guys sitting around on cheap office chairs, and they were chatting.  Local TV production values as well.  One of the guests was a local reporter I think.  A smallish, chubby guy who looked like he’d just rolled out of bed. Another guest was a sharp cat who pulled comp numbers out his memory like a side show atraction.

Near the end of it, the dishevelled reporter character was losing confidence.  He had one eye on the increasingly angry fact-guy when he was spewing cliches.  It was terrific television, obviously I wouldn’t have remembered it otherwise.

Was that you?  If not, do you know who it was?

I’m guessing you saw this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRFaI_LQi_k

USSM was represented by Derek Zumsteg, Jason Barker, and Jeff Shaw, who were all co-authors of the site at that point.  Since I live in North Carolina, I wasn’t able to make it to the taping. 

We all still yell “statheads! anyone!” at each other occasionally.

I *love* that clip.  Jesus Christ, now I’m very upset that I have to listen to ex-ballplayers gasbagging their way to ridiculous chuckles, when such smart well-spoken guys like Derek is nowhere to be found.  MGL, too by the way, is a great speaker, and is a joy listen to.  And Will Carroll, by the way, has a great voice as well, and he’d be pretty cool as a moderator.

Really, you guys need to have a SABR channel.

That’s it I think, thanks for the link.  All the USS Mariner guys carried themselves well.

Damn, though, my memory differed.  I suspect I only saw the back half of that show when it aired.  Still, the fat reporter in my memory wasn’t quite so heavy, and was more sloppy.  And Mr Shaw was melted into Mr Zumsteg in my memory, they were one guy.  he was a big, well dressed, short haried blonde guy who never gesticulated.  And the production was also a lot cheesier by my recollection.

Funny how that works.

The one thing we’ve all learned from this, I think, is that if you are accused of a felony ... you wouldn’t want me as an eye witness unless you were guilty.

In Chicago, there’s a radio show that features a fairly adept stat guy with a meathead, and the discussion can be interesting, but far too often it goes like this ...

Meathead; I don’t like him. He’s not very good and doesn’t help his team win.
StatGuy:  According to the WAR stat, he’s worth 3.8 wins and is top 5 at his position, and has a really good WPA, but just plays on a bad team.
Meathead: Ah, I still don’t like him.

I can take the show in small doses.

A nationally syndicated saber (radio or TV) show is a great idea. If someone wants to start one, I am in!  XM/Sirius Radio might be a possibility.

This is a DECIDEDLY not-sabermetric observation, concerning team chemistry.

Would it not be more accurate to state that team chemistry does not ALWAYS matter?  If I manage a team that is CONTENDING - which is full of toxic clubhouse elements (25 Different Cabs Syndrome)- will I not say for public edification that chemistry doesn’t matter, or is over-rated?

Sometimes - like the Oakland Raiders? - the binding element of a team is that many of the key parts cannot be bound to others.  Team chemistry is not just “getting along” - it’s having a squad that optimizes personnel in whatever way actually WORKS.

Vic said:

Any road, I googled the subject and got a couple of links to this blog.  Your writing on the topic was terrific, the translation to math ... not so much.
...
But I digress.  Your commentary on the subject of summer hitters was terrific.  I do wonder what you could do if you were brash enough to ignore the advice of your colleagues and commenters.  And if you built your models from simple bricks, as James usually does, rather than accept convenient shortcuts and the praise of those who do likewise.

Vic, I have no idea:
1. who you are talking about (me?  MGL?  some other reader?)
2. what topic you are talking about

Links would be helpful.  You then provide a conclusion on this, and I don’t see how anyone can respond.

I should also say that, regardless of who you are talking about, that just because YOU thought the piece was terrific but the translation was not doesn’t mean that that’s a point of fact.  Both of those are opinions, and you can be in the minority (in one or both cases).

Basically, you are really saying “My opinion is that the piece gave me a terrific insight, and my opinion is that the math translation was too difficult for me to follow.” I mean, its inherent in whatever people say that these things are opinions, and they are personal.  But it also seems that when people state their opinions, they are speaking from the point of view of the majority.

The 1970s was filled with “toxic” clubhouses, be it the 1970s A’s or Yankees.

It’s good chemistry if the team wins, and bad chemistry if the team loses.

Basically, people know sh!t about what combination of human beings will lead to various levels of toxicity, and whether there is a positive or negative relationship between toxicity levels and winning.

Tangotiger,

If we can agree that it’s in the results that we measure success, and if it’s in the building and managing of a squad that success is achieved, can we not begin to define “chemistry” as something that succeeds, more than as something that “gets along”?  Isn’t this the convention that we’re questioning in this thread?

And, if we can, in fact, do this, can smart guys like you get outside that box of chemistry definition as it presently exists?  What is the realm of chemistry metrics in baseball?

I understand that I’m suggesting something that’s largely psychological, eternally dynamic, and moment-to-moment fluid - but doesn’t this define to a large extent the charge of a baseball GM?  (Independent of contractual concerns of dollars and term, and of the roles of personnel.)

There must exist advanced metrics NOT of “statistical” performance, but of “fitting together” of personality elements.  I think that the successful Raiders teams offer the best over-arching example:  the organizational framework builds team chemistry by contesting the idea that chemistry makes a damned bit of difference.  They are unified by their irreducible individualisms.

If SS “A” is a Hanley Ramirez-type, and SS “B” is a Jeter-type, it seems clear that the “chemistry” choice is “B”, while the “numbers” answer is “A”.  There’s a place in a team framework for either player - but not EVERY framework. 

Finally, how can this be measured without violating the right to privacy of the player?

Pizza Cutter has floated ideas for measuring the effect of team chemistry by psychologically testing the players.  Of course, that requires some access to the players.  Maybe he has that access now, though obviously testing only one team’s worth of players would severely limit the study.

Your assertion in #49 hits the nail on the head concerning this issue.

Intuitively, there has to be an effect but clearly its easy to find examples where great teams had notoriously bad chemistry which begs the question…

To me the sabermetric argument about chemistry is that it is likely impossible to measure and if it could be measured, the guess is that it’s effect isn’t that great.

The counterarguement I’ve heard is that just because something can’t be measured, doesn’t mean it isn’t important.  I think that’s a reasonable position most “statheads” would concede if not outright agree with… However, those making this counterargument also seem to adopt the position that the unquantifiable also has a large impact.

To me, it’s the latter aspect that represents the weaker position of the two stances (stat-head vs intangibles if sch a strict grouping can even be accurately drawn)…

I dont give 2 hoots about the original article except for a couple of points that I think are important:

1) It is very important to think outside the box, even in the face of the laughter you will normally receive for doing so, and

2) It is clear that chemistry can have an impact on a team’s performance.

The facts that it cannot be quantified and that there are anecdotes everywhere you look for teams that love each other who fail and teams that seemingly hate each other who succeed do not change the concept that your team mates can impact your performance.

Maybe you do well to spite them,
Maybe you like them so much that success isn’t as important as having friends,
Maybe Maybe Maybe Maybe

Regardless, I assure you that every player on every team each and every year has had his performance impacted by feelings/help/whatever that come from the people around him on the team.

Even if you had every possible stat perfected (you do not yet - witness defensive stats) there would still be some utility to understanding (even if you cannot measure) “chemistry.” Because it is likely you cannot just plug a guy’s numbers into every team and expect them to be somewhat the same.

If he is in an area he hates with players he hates, the numbers WILL deviate. Maybe up and maybe down but they will most likely deviate - that is just human nature. Something else which cannot be readily quantified.

I would bet (but don’t know) that sociologists and businesses have spent a lot of time and effort trying to identify various personality types that don’t get along well with each other and other factors that adversely affect workplace productivity.  Does anyone if there’s some scholarship on team “chemistry” and its relation to productivity in other settings?

I would also guess that those types of things wouldn’t affect major league players as much because athletes at that level have the ability to focus, shutting out everything else, during the 2-to-5 second bursts of activity required of them.

If SS “A” is a Hanley Ramirez-type, and SS “B” is a Jeter-type, it seems clear that the “chemistry” choice is “B”, while the “numbers” answer is “A”.  There’s a place in a team framework for either player - but not EVERY framework.

Change “A” from Hanley to ARod, and make “A” and “B” both costing 20MM$.  Now, which one do you want?

***

Suppose that you have a team, a good strong team, one that won 97 games, played in the World Series, but lost.

Then, someone proposes that you trade for a great hitter, a huge ego, one who will antogonize the leader of the team (a good, though not great player), will fight with his manager, p!ss off many of his teammates, and basically be a very polarizing figure.

Do you trade for him? 

Do you trade for Reggie Jackson?  Ah, well, Reggie.... of course, now that you know how it turned out, you then work backwards and say “that’s good chemistry… a GM that was told all of that would have accepted it if he knew it belonged to Reggie”.

Seriously, it’s all so much bullsh!t the way history is rewritten with the outcomes known.  Talk to me about the expected chemical reaction BEFORE it happens, not after.

Tom, Mike, et.al.,

Maybe a model that begins with “Team Culture” can offer a starting point.

If there is an organizational mindset, or if “the” prominent player has alpha dog traits, a great statistical player - who is outside of the mindset of the organization or alpha dog - can be evaluated as to his ability/willingness to comply with, or add to the core.  (Cano growing into his role, Teixeira’s malleability, Cervelli’s hyper-vigilance, etc., in the case of the current Yankees squad.) We’ve seen this approach expressed to good results. 

But, so far, no metrics - just gut response, articulation of “the way” to the new guy, and promises uttered - mostly by the incoming player.  (The cases of Milton Bradley and Carlos Zambrano might represent the radical fringe of the new metric meeting the present order?)

As you note, Mike, each team is an evolving organism.  One way will never work forever - even for one organization.

But, a sort of “flow chart” of “if not, then . . .” relationships - born both of metrics and traditional analysis - can evolve.  I can imagine these flow charts being trans-game applicable:  not an organizational mindset, but an organization beginning at Point A, then flowing as building blocks of the team enter the marketplace.  All teams would use the metrics, and forward-looking believers would tweak the components - until some fortress-storming Jamesian character pole axes the very fundamentals of the entire assumption.  ("Let’s implant these chips that measure biorhythms in everyone in the organization, OK?")

This is all a bit cosmic, isn’t it?

If he is in an area he hates with players he hates, the numbers WILL deviate. Maybe up and maybe down but they will most likely deviate - that is just human nature. Something else which cannot be readily quantified.

Of course they will deviate for the exact reason you cite: they are human beings.

The point is trying to figure out, before it happens, if we can estimate, to any extent, whether it’s a good deviation or bad deviation.

***

You put four guys who can’t stand working with each other in the same room and told to be creative, and what’s going to happen?  Well, sometimes you are going to get sh!t, and sometimes you are going to get Abbey Road and Let It Be. 

All we can do is get the participants to tell us how they feel, how they think, but even THEY won’t be able to tell us how they will respond and what the outcome will be. 

Is having Yoko One in the recording sessions a good thing or a bad thing?  Well, everyone thought she was terrible, and poisoned the mood of the studio.  And yet, we still get one of the best albums ever.

Now, you get “yeah, it was a great album… despite her presence”.

Everything is about trying to explain things to whatever preconception you have.

I, on the other hand, take an agnostic view.  I accept human beings, and I accept human nature.  And if someone wants to evaluate and predict things things (BEFORE THEY HAPPEN), then fine, go ahead.  That’s not me, that’s not my area of expertise, so I shut up about that.  I remain silent about things I don’t know.

"I, on the other hand, take an agnostic view.  I accept human beings, and I accept human nature.  And if someone wants to evaluate and predict things things (BEFORE THEY HAPPEN), then fine, go ahead.  That’s not me, that’s not my area of expertise, so I shut up about that.  I remain silent about things I don’t know.”

Dude!, you’re such a mathmetician!

But, it seems that you question convention - you believe that there are critical numbers buried beneath traditional analysis.  You seek to understand with greater consistency LIKELY outcomes of performance by statistical analysis.

You gotta give me that there is a hell of a lot more art than science to your approach to baseball - if only in your impressive willingness to (back to the start of this thread) think outside the box.

For me, it rests in the realm of intuition - another area where gains in understanding have been made in the past 100 years.  The metrics of intuition:  I don’t seek a perfect explanation of a personality’s impact upon 24 other guys, coaches and staff, and the fans - I seek to know the likelihood of outcomes.  That’s how I roll.  (Reference again, Bradley, plus Silva:  part of it is two GMs sayin’, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot - I’ll swap you my problem for yours.” But, didn’t each have to have a glimmer that his choice was the better?  Human nature almost-never causes us to do something for no reason whatsoever.  In the case of these two GMs, I submit that statistical metrics played next-to-no part.  Ergo ("OMG, he just used ‘ergo’!"), if intuition has come into play in this deal, any ablity of a GM to metricize it would greatly benefit his analysis and decision-making.

I really should go - the nurse is insistent on keeping my meds on schedule . . .

I think that the only way in which chemistry could matter would be if it would affect a players focus and concentration.  These athletes are highly trained and usually have been playing at (age adjusted), the highest level possible for decades, so their focus should be very good, and should be able to survive many interpersonal conflicts.

As it usually comes up in the media I think that chemistry is an example of what Bill James called a b.s. dump.  Most of the talk about chemistry comes after the fact, as an explanation, and is thus subject to a great many biases.  If somebody made projections of chemistry in spring training it would be a start.  If they projected its effect on playing stats, e.g. wOBA, FIP, WAR; I would be pleased.  If they found a noticable effect I would be suprised.

If you can’t measure the effect of chemistry or tell who/what has it, how can you use it in analysis? Also, for chemistry to have an effect, it must have some tangible effect, such as hitters hitting better or pitchers pitching better, otherwise, what does it do? This makes it practically impossible to differentiate between players progressing or regressing on their own and “chemistry.” When teams are joking around, loose, and winning they have great chemistry. When they are joking around, loose, and losing they lack urgency and don’t care. Certain players, such as Carlos Beltran are labeled as hurting team chemistry, when there is no evidence of it. People are just trying to come up with reasons why the team is struggling when they have none. People don’t like uncertainty or accepting luck.

The affect of chemistry is easy to measure. Just use pre- and post-Jr splits.

And that’s why they needed to bring in a power bat-because intangibles are extremely important which is why there needs to be a big margin for error.

Ya, my head is spinning too.

I guess my problem is, though I read a lot about sabermetrics and understand some of it, there still seems to be enough error in what makes a good hitter or pitcher or fielder that I’m not quite sure sabermetrics has reached the 95%+ certainty on the “quantifiable” effects referred to in #2/JD’s.

There will be a player who drops 100 points in slugging or 100 points in on base percentage, or a pitcher that improves their BB/9 rate by a batter per inning, and no real idea why. We can’t seem to really tell why one player’s 90 mph fastball tends to strike out batters more than another player’s 90 mph fastball or why one pitcher generates more groundballs with similar pitch f/x pitch characteristics to another pitcher. There are various fielding metrics systems that disagree quite often on players, and even inexplicable drops in team-wide defensive measurements. 

In other words, I think there has been some great insight into the kinds of things that are factors in performance, and some conclusions can be made.. but I don’t think we have all the facts much less the interpretation/analysis to get to that 95% certainty. If that certainty was there, would new metrics still be invented or existing “validated” metrics be revised?

So I think if we have some uncertainty about how to completely measure, factor in and analyze the quantifiable data, it’s hard to be dismissive about how much effect non-quantifiable data such as chemistry or luck can factor in.

No one is dismissing anything.

Tango/63, I tend to agree with Richard/62 that JD/2 was being far too dismissive of the challenges remaining for sabermetrics. 

If we’re at 95% knowledge, why do I feel like what I don’t know about the game is a mountain compared to the hill of knowledge upon which I stand?

He’s not saying we know 95% of baseball knowledge.  He said that given the outcomes of games, 95% of it can be explained.

I don’t have an opinion to share on the matter, but it’s two different things being discussed here.

Ah, yes, now that I read through JD/2 a little more carefully, I see he’s not saying that.

But given what he is saying, I think I’d move the number to 100%.  Isn’t 100% of baseball offense + defense?

That doesn’t tell us anything about what effect chemistry has on hitting, pitching, fielding, and baserunning.

Tango/65

But given an outcome of a game, can 95% of it be explained? For example, let’s take a narrower view and just look at one pitcher’s performance.

The outcome of Brian Bannister’s July 28th start was 11 hits, 5 runs and 2 home runs over six innings, but only walked one batter and still struck out four. He was about even on groundballs and flyballs given up. Can we explain why his performance was poor besides bad luck? Can we recommend ways he can improve pitch quality or pitch location or pitch selection that he can try to improve performance? If we can explain 95% of the outcome of the game, and can give Brian recommendations on what to do differently next time, should we be able to see a better performance assuming he is able to implement the recommendations? In other words, if we know what good pitching is and we know Brian Bannister can attempt to implement recommendations, shouldn’t we see any improvement measured in future outcomes?

Richard/67, we’re nowhere near 95% of an explanation on what you’re saying, but that’s not what JD/2 was talking about.

He was saying that if you assumed someday we could get perfect knowledge of the stuff you’re talking about, that we could explain 95% of what happens in baseball.  And that left little room for chemistry to affect anything.

That’s why I said if had we perfect knowledge of hitting, pitching, fielding, and baserunning, we’d able to explain 100% of what happened in baseball.  By definition.  Maybe you’d need to add in umpiring and the weather to make that true.  But chemistry surely has its effects, to whatever extent, on hitting, pitching, fielding, and baserunning--not separately from them.

I think JD is probably saying that if god told you the exact talent levels and personalities of all participants, that you’d be able to explain the 95% of the outcomes.  That the other 5% would be unexplained because of the uniqueness in which each player interacts with each other.

That is, god told you how each person behaves.  But he doesn’t tell you how each person behaves in a particular universe.

Tango/69, that’s what I thought he was saying at the beginning, but then you convinced me otherwise.

If we knew the exact talent levels, I’d say our ability to explain the outcomes would still fall far short of 95% because we don’t know nearly enough about how the game works.  Why does a batter sometimes swing over the fastball from a given pitcher, sometimes swing under the fastball from the same pitcher, and sometimes connect solidly with it?  There’s a ton of stuff like that which we don’t understand and which limits our ability to predict outcomes even more than our imperfect level of knowledge about true talent.

That’s not a non sequitir, either.  I’d wager that it’s in those parts of the game that we don’t really understand very well yet that player-to-player interaction is most likely to have its effect.

I’m not sure I 100% understand what I’m trying to say myself, but it’s wrapped up in the idea that I don’t think talent and chemistry are nicely separable concepts.

When I’m typing I sometimes make errors. Sometimes I hit a key a little too high or a little too low and sometimes I miss a key completely. Can I explain that? Not really, I don’t have the proper education in neuroscience/biology/whatever. It is random, but not really. There is something happening on a very small level, but we can’t see it.
The whole question of if we know 95% is impossible to answer because it is so vague. As we look at things closer and closer we realize there is more and more we don’t know.
The question of the effect of chemistry is impossible unless there is a way to differentiate players doing something themselves or interacting with other people or the various effects of weather/other stuff.