THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

In the 2005 Palmer encyclopedia, it is .22 for a SB and -.38 for a CS.

Another similar effort a few years ago was from The Sporting News, TSNdex.  That one used standard deviations from the mean in a hodge-podge of categories.  What was funny about that one was they had it for multiple sports and claimed that it would faciliate cross-sport comparions.  So if you want to know who is greater, Wayne Gretzky, Michael Jordan, Barry Sanders, or Barry Bonds, well, there you go.

In my youth, heeding James’s advice that there was no need for another hitting metric, I came up with one for pitchers adding up (something like) strikeouts/9, win%/.500, ip per start then subtracting hits/9 and bb/9. I think Nolan Ryan topped the list for every year I figured.

I wrote up my little study and sent it to James. I never heard back and saw no mention of it in next year’s Abstract.

The Hidden Game of Baseball mentioned on stat from the 1920’s I think that summed up a players value.  Add batting average to fielding average, and winning percentage if you are a pitcher.

Thank ESPN for bringing us back in that direction.

The problem is that ESPN publishes this without any oversight.

The creator had a chat:
http://proxy.espn.go.com/chat/chatESPN?event_id=16166

And he said this:

For batters, in a category that is worth 10% of rating, like HR and BA, only the top 50 score points. First place gets 100 points, 2nd gets 50.

Is that unbelievable?

In any case, big kudos to Jeff for taking lots of tough questions.  At least he’s better than David Chase in that regard.  Otherwise, it’s an embarrassing piece of work to defend, and moreso for ESPN to publish and trumpet.

***

Patriot, thanks.  I really wish people would stop quoting Palmer on the .30 thing.  I see it all the time.  Palmer is a smart guy, and he realized at some point that win-probability-wise, the effect wasn’t as large as suspected.  Such is the pain you follow if you base it on how Maury Wills steals bases.

Also, STATS had TAR, or some such, which was a sort of win probability measure.  One ridiculous thing they do, for fielding, is they split the fielding credit for everyone who touched the batted ball out.  It seems reasonable until you realize how many putouts 1B get.  (I don’t know if that’s what they did, I inferred it based on the results.  It definitely had lots of 1B ranked pretty high.)

Tom,

That’s awesome, I remember creating my own stats as a kid too.  I think I kept rigging it until Cecil Fielder came out as being more valuable than Rickey Henderson, though.

When I’ve run these kinds of numbers with VORP, I’ve found that it slightly overrates the batting average component, which would be consistent with slightly underrating walks.  I’ve also found that it slightly overstates run scoring overall. 

But—let’s be candid here—the problems are not of the same order of magnitude as the ESPN stat.  In fact, the ESPN stat is actually worse than I thought it was when I made that post yesterday, because I assumed some manner of rationality in the way the points are assigned in different categories that apparently isn’t there (e.g. your example about the 10% categories above).

Someone told me that the goulash stat made an appearance on Baseball Tonight.  I hope they’ll read that chat log from yesterday and realize that it turns off casual fans and stat wonks alike.

Nate,

I agree with your sentiment.  If on a “scouting” scale of 20 (ESPN) to 80 (SuperLWTS, with fielding), that VORP is at 60 and SuperVORP (with fielding) is at 70.  So, there is a definite chasm.

The problem with VORP was described elsewhere on my blog, and it essentially boils down to Keith using Bill James’ basic RC (which undervalues walks) as its core component.  There’s really no reason for Keith to have done that.

***

The Elias rankings have a similar style, in terms of ranking players from 1 to n, based on categories.  I have the formulas back home in Montreal somewhere, but essentially, each position class has 4 categories.  2B/SS for example would have AVG, R, G, and Total Chances, or some such.  OF would have AVG, HR, RBI, Putouts.  Don’t quote me on the categories, but that’s the basic gist.

That Bennett consulted with Elias is kismet.

Nate,

I kept trying to come up with a stat that would show Andre Dawson as the best NL player in 1987.  Eventually I gave up and accepted that voters are idiots.

The discussion of Woolner’s MLVr was from posts 52 through 63:
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/why_does_runs_created_make_sense#52

If you are only going to read two posts, then make it: Patriot’s post 58 is the proof, and my post 61 provides more evidence.

Rally, the MVP formula is pretty simple:
RBI + HR + AVG*1000

Sometimes, you get bonuses for SS, CF and C.

That’s the sad state of ESPN’s baseball coverage these days. Just like the stat, the amount of attention they devote to something is arbitrary. But then again, the network employs Steve Phillips, so why should be surprised by their silliness?

I received an email in Feb, 2005 from someone at ESPN, asking for help in constructing a player evaluation metric.  He also said he corresponded with MGL several times.  I was glad to help, but I was never contacted again.

That person was *not* Bennett.  I don’t know what happened to that fellow who contacted us.

It’s also sad that ESPN has access to fantastic PBP data, and we’d be glad to work on a fielding system for little money, yet they choose to spend a likely obscene amount of money on something as preposterous as this.

In corporate America, as hard as it is to believe, you have to charge alot of money for people to listen to you, and to think you know alot.  Given the choice between a consultant who would charge 10K And another who would charge 50K, they’d hire the 50K guy because it’s in their budget, and they’ll infer he knows more.

What a country.

Do you guys have any thoughts on why espn would actually release this?

Do they actually think it is “cutting edge” as they said on the front page or are they just trying to create some buzz...like they are apparently doing? 

I guess, I’m not sure which one I’d rather have it be…

Tom,

I doubt that ESPN spent very much on this.  On the contrary, it looks like they tapped someone from their in-house research staff.  I hope this doesn’t come across as patronizing, but I actually feel somewhat bad for Mr. Bennett.  It’s not like he’s shoving this down people’s throats; he was asked to do something that is outside the scope of his job description and the editors wound up giving it a lot of play on a slow news day.  So that’s where my criticism is directed.

I don’t remember corresponding with an ESPN guy about a player evaluation metric.

In any case, look at their (ESPN) game commentary, Baseball Tonight, their web page commentators, other than Neyer and Gammons and an occasional cogent piece from someone else.  Then look at how multi-hundred-million and billion dollar teams are run and the extent of knowledge they possess, purvey, understand, etc. 

Come on, what would you expect, given all of that?

In true Stephen Colbert fashion, “Bob Wolfley, you are on notice”:

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=619006

You actually quoted the Bennett/ESPN numbers in an article.  Maybe it was a slow news day, and you needed to fill in your column.  Even making it your lead.  You are embarrassing yourself among your colleagues, your readers, and sabermetricians.  Unless you are writing for some family member who loves you unconditionally, don’t do it again.

***

If anyone sees an article on the Bennett/ESPN numbers, please link to it here.  I think the only way to right this ship is for Neyer or Gammons to write an article about how inane and insane ESPN is to promote this.

Save us guys.  Don’t let another journalist quote these numbers again.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070612/SPORTS18/706120392/1053

STEVE SCHRADER, I’d put you on notice as well, but you had a good end to your article.  I’ll give you a pass this time.

So far, only two people have made an attempt to pass this as news.

***

There’s nothing new in this article, but I love the headline:
http://milehighramblings.blogspot.com/2007/06/peoples-united-front-against-new-espn.html

People’s United Front Against New ESPN Baseball Stats