from Amazon
Friday, February 27, 2009
The New WARP
Finally! Clay has been bombarded by me on this blog regarding his low use of replacement level. Based on his article in BP09, he’s acknowledged that he’s basically the last man standing in terms of belief in his low replacement level.
Once he took the first step (making replacement level from around -3.5 or -4 wins, to -2 wins), I knew what his second step would lead to. And, I felt his frustration, and he was totally right, that he didn’t want to force the issue that the difference between average and replacement level was the same for every position, every year. He even cited my oft-made remark that in the 1950s, the CF outhit the corner OF, and so, it would be foolish to make the average CF be equal to the average corner OF, given the fact that the average CF both outhit, and (must have) outfielded them.
I felt it. You could really feel his frustration on the matter in hs words.
He finally gave in. He accepted that the average non-pitcher is 22.11 runs per full season better than replacement-level. (This is virtually identical to what I use). He accepted that the average starting pitcher should be compared to a baseline that is 1.25 runs above the league average, which is again virtually identical to what I use. I don’t think Clay has the correct replacement-level for relievers (based on his text, he is definitely wrong about it, but all he needs is to read a couple of pages from The Book to realize his error).
So, kudos to Clay for embracing what the rest of use are accepting. Now, he joins the issue of how to balance the baseline levels across positions. This is something he thinks about alot, as you can see by how he wrote his chapter. However, I don’t think he’s got it yet. Here are the technicals of why I think he needs more tweaking done:
I wrote elsewhere:
I thought I understood the new baseline for Clay, but maybe I don’t.
Let’s look at SS and CF, which will be my biggest source of disagreement.
He gives them both a baseline comparison level of .251 EqA. And, if you presume that in 2008 SS hit a (translated) .245 and CF were .260, then isn’t Clay saying that the overall average SS (off+def) will be a bit worse than the average player and the CF will be a bit better than the average player? (In 2008 anyway.) That gap looks like 10 runs.
In my case, I do have the CF being better than SS in 2008, but by 5 runs.
And Patriot responded with more clarity:
For reference, here are all of the baselines and their equivalent in terms of relative runs/out (a .260 EqA is average, and converts to .1724 runs/out, with R/O = 5*EQA^2.5):
C--.234, 76.8%
1B--.274, 115
2B--.255, 95.2
3B--.261, 100.9
SS--.251, 91.5
LF/RF--.267, 106.8
CF--.251, 91.5
DH--.285, 125.8
P--.125, 16Compared to the long-term positional averages, the ones that stick out are CF (much lower) and corner outfield (a little lower), SS (a little higher) as I’m sure everyone can see for themselves. Of course Clay is attempting to incorporate the position’s defensive value, so we wouldn’t expect them to match perfectly, nor should they.
In 08, the CFers actually had a .268 EqA and the SS had a .255. So per 450 outs, the average ‘08 CF is +6 and the average SS is -4, a 10 run difference just as you said.
So unless we’re both missing something, he is in fact saying the average CF is ten runs better than the average SS, at least in 08. And the difference would only increase over a longer timeframe, because according to EqA the center fielders’ R/O was 13% higher. For 1992-2001, the CFs were at 102% of the league average (in terms of ERP, which of course should be close to what EqA would say) and the SSs were at 86%, a 19% edge for CF.