THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Stupid nerd.  He should get out of his mother’s basement and watch a damn game one of these days!

I think Greinke is the current player I would most want to meet.

When I first read about Greinke’s comments, I thought someone was pulling our collective leg. It seemed to good to be true. But great to see.

Bill James has an iteresting viewpoint. But I don’t think I could identify who is at the head of the parade. I might think it is some GM. But what if he gets fired the next day?

And if you are at the head of the parade, I guess you must have alot of people trying to sway you. Maybe that is why there are lots of layers between the presient and the common folk.

I think there’s a mini-battalion at the head, say a few hundred people, not just one guy to pin your hopes on.  They are not necessarily in lock-step, but they are all marching toward a similar point, but in different paths.

Sometimes, some of those paths are leading those guys astray, and you need others in the lead to bring them back in-line.

I think a pretty good example is Clay at BPro.  I think a ton of us have caught up to him, and we kind of brought him back in the right direction with his change of heart on replacement level.

But I suspect that if I was smart enough to identify who is at the head of the parade, I would probably be one of those people anyway.

Not necessarily.  I think Jack Zduriencik, for instance, correctly identified some of those people and put them in his organization, but he’d be the first to admit that he’s not in the group of people leading the charge.  He’s an old-school guy who has recognized the value of the new-school, even if he probably can’t explain 99 percent of what the new school is doing.

I think Dave’s point needs to be taken a few steps back, and it indicates how James’s point needs some elaboration.  The Mariners’ ownership group probably includes some people would actually follow this stuff, but the main ownership and baseball leadership (i.e., the people who hired Zduriencik) couldn’t tell a FIP from a hip.  But, having had it demonstrated that old school management was throwing away millions by not understanding this stuff, they hired a guy who was open to the new analysis, even if he couldn’t do the math either.  And I think it’s fair to say they’re happy with the results so far.

What this tells me is that there should be more jobs postings on this site as time goes by.

Dayton Moore plans to call Greinke to ask him what on earth he was talking about.

"I think Greinke is the current player I would most want to meet.”

Ironically, considering his social anxiety disorder, he’s probably the least willing MLB player to want to meet you!

Too soon?

My question is this: If Brian Bannister and Zack Greinke can find the value in defensive stats AND realize their infield defense is no good, why can’t Dayton Moore? You know, the guy in charge of making these decisions? Or the owner?

Uh, this isn’t really a new thing. Bob Lemon, Whitey Herzog and Dick Howser have alwasys said the same thing about Kaufman Stadium. The Royals pitchers (under good management) have always adjusted thier game at home differently then how they pitch on the road. The hitters (under good management) have always done the same.

The Royals pitchres have never traditionally had high strikeout totals, even with guys like Busby/Leonard/Gubicza/Saberhagen, becuse they didn’t need to with the big outfield in KC, and the ‘usually’ good infield defense.

The fact that Bob McClure is the pitching coach (and pitched under some of those guys at Kaufman), and the fact that the pitching coach is supposed to impart that sort of wisdom to this pitchers, makes this a complete non-story, and that Zack Grienke is not the second-coming of Bill James. Hopefully Walter Johnson, but not Bill James.

I’m not against the sabermetric angle, but this is truly one of the times to tell the statistics to shut up. Because in this instance, coaching already knew for 35 years what the numbers say after the fact.

Way to miss the point entirely.

Here are some of the people leading the sabermetric parade nowadays:
- Greg Rybarczyk
- Tom Tango
- Michael G. Lichtman
- Prominent PitchFX’ers

What makes these people at the head of the parade is that they are generating new ideas and new ways of thinking. The people who are near the head are taking those ideas, and spreading them, adapting them, and applying them.

So to spread the latest thoughts, we don’t need to target Hat Guy, we need to target the people who actually have good use for this sort of thinking who are headed in the same direction.

If someone is using RC27, we direct them toward wOBA. If someone is using fielding %, we direct them toward UZR. If someone is using HR totals to determine power, we direct them to Hit Tracker. Ad nauseum.

People are using stats to evaluate baseball. They just aren’t usually using the best ones. It’s the job of the people at the front, and the people following with brains on blogs like this, to direct the stats to the people who are using something similar, but just don’t know about the latest thinking yet.

On page 448 of the new Bill James Handbook, both Greinke and Felix Hernandez have 26 Win Shares, to tie for the AL lead for pitchers. How can Hernandez match Greinke? I don’t see what would make that happen

Cyril, I think it’s because Seattle won 85 games and KC only won 65 games.  I believe win shares are derived from actual team wins...something has always bothered me about that.  Seattle had more win shares to give out, so although Hernandez got the same number of win shares he received a smaller percentage of his team’s win shares.

Cy, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what the cause is without going through the whole methodology, but the biggest factor is likely that the Royals played about as well as their Pyth record suggests; the Mariners ten games better.  The Royals will have ~9.7 marginal runs/win, while the Mariners will have just 8.6 (these are just approximations; James uses different park factors among other differences).

The most important factor in an individual’s pitchers WS is his runs allowed versus that of a pitcher who allows runs at 152% of the league average.  There are other things taken into consideration, of course, but this is the most important.

Just using total runs allowed (again, James uses a more involved process) Greinke is +125 marginal runs, which divided by 9.7 is 12.9.  Hernandez is +112 runs, which divided by 8.6 is 13.  Viewed in this light, it’s not a surprise that they come out even.

Mickey & Patriot

Thanks for those insights. But I think James says in the Win Shares book that what team you play for should not matter. If two guys really are equal, but one played on a good team and another played on a bad team, they should get the same Win Shares. So I guess some kind of luck or clutch factor is involved. I have not checked too much, but I think Greinke did no worse himself in the clutch.

Cy

If a team’s W/L record matches their Runs scored / runs allowed numbers, then Bill James is correct: Win Shares is not biased with respect to a team’s W/L record.

However, the Mariners greatly exceeded their expectations (using RS / RA).  Win Shares needs to account for that.  It does that in a fairly inelegant way ("You played for the Mariners in 2009?  Great!  Here’s some free wins for you, even though I have no idea if you were partly responsible!"), all in the plan to make sure everything adds up.

Good stuff as always, but you made the same mistake I and a million other writers have made.

It’s Zack, not Zach.

I hate it too. FIP, whatever. Get a reasonable name.

True.  Actually: Donald Zackary Greinke

Another one joins the parade:

http://blogs.delawareonline.com/philledin/2009/11/19/1118-era-fip-cole-hamels/

And while we’re pretty sure old-school Charlie doesn’t focus much on new-age pitching metrics, Hamels’ FIP would seem to back that notion. Hamels posted a 4.32 ERA in 32 regular-season starts, but according to The Hardball Times, his FIP was only 3.71, nearly identical to his 3.70 FIP in 2008. Obviously, Hamels was far better in 2008, posting a 3.09 ERA in 33 starts, allowing fewer hits (193 in 2008, 206 in 2009) and logging more innings (227.1 in 2008, 193.2 in 2009). But maybe, as Manuel and Dubee often have said, Hamels’ stuff was nearly as good as it was in 2008. There were other factors that caused his demise.

Hamels’ FIP — the stat Greinke pays the most attention to — would seem to prove as much.