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Friday, August 29, 2008
BP has two measures that do similar things. One is called VORP, by Keith Woolner, and another is called RARP, by Clay Davenport. They both exist because BP was allowing its analysts to develop their own metrics, which is a good thing. According to BP’s glossary, VORP is “The number of runs contributed beyond what a replacement-level player at the same position would contribute if given the same percentage of team plate appearances” and RARP is “A statistic that compares a hitter’s Equivalent Run total to that of a replacement-level player who makes the same number of outs and plays the same position”.
RARP data. VORP data.
First, a big thanks to BP for making the data so accessible. And, they are pretty good on name matches, making my life alot easier. There were only some 40 or so names out of 912 that I had to match manually.
The total VORP, as of today, is 4436 runs. And for RARP, it is 4735 runs. This is based on around 154650 PA, which means that per 700 PA, we have this:
VORP: +20.0 runs
RARP: +21.4 runs
As you can see, both have a very similar replacement baseline. Indeed, this is a very common baseline. MGL uses +19.4 runs, and I use (roughly) +19.8 runs.
The question is if either measure shows much difference. This is the 10 guys that VORP likes more than RARP:
Read More
Colin looks like he’s going to do what I’ve been meaning to do for years, and what others have been asking for a long time: look at run creation at the inning level, so that we can get far more extreme environments than simply looking at seasonal data or even game-level data. The article I am linking to is a preamble to his work next week. I’m looking forward to seeing the results.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Great job by Clay in going through a list of the best minor-leaguers over 30. He concludes that the best nonpitchers would score 3.7 runs per game, and the pitchers would allow 5.0 runs per game (and when you include the slightly below average fielding, all the way up to 5.2 runs per game). That works out to a .350 win%.
The best team of players who have no hope of playing in MLB would win 35% of the time. Most analysts have argued that the number is somewhere around the 27% to 35% level. Clay’s number here is a bit on the high-end, but certainly believable. I would not be surprised that the players have a selection bias and probably not enough regression, and so, we can see that perhaps they would really score 3.5 runs per game and allow 5.5 runs per game. That would imply a .300 win%.
Clay’s WARP however presumes a 25-win level for a replacement level team, or a .154 win%. I hope that Clay may have convinced himself that WARP needs to rethink its position about replacement level, and join the rest of us. A guy who puts in as much effort and thought in doing the work he does to distribute the work to as many people as he does deserves our respect. There is a sizable community that takes this WARP stuff seriously, and hopefully Clay can recognize that.
UPDATE: For those who want more of my takedown of WARP, you can read about it here.
UPDATE2: And here.
I’ve always found it weird the way MLB deals with potential draft picks. There is supposed to be no contact regarding contract negotiations between team and player until the player is actually drafted. Yet reading Moneyball, it seems that this rule is blatantly ignored. The slotting by the commissioner’s office seems inappropriate. So, now they extend the deadline by a couple of hours, and finally the union steps in? Here’s their statement.
Isn’t it really weird as well that MLB.com hosts MLBPA press releases? It’s great that MLB.com can act at arm’s length from MLB, when it deals with MLBPA. Still, kind of strange that MLBPA’s entire site is hosted by MLB.com.
Lots of people are doing setups of PITCHf/x, and some are sharing them. Here’s another from Dan Turkenkopf.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Easy. If you always had this rule in place, would you ever go back to the original rule?
Ask NHL fans if they would like to abolish reviews on goals. Of course the review rule on HR is needed. Once it’s in place, twenty years from now, the clear majority will not say “get rid of the review rule”.
The DH is another matter. Clearly, it’s not working. Has there been any change in rules in baseball that after 35+ years, it still has not been accepted by the clear majority, or at least reviled by the vocal minority? That’s why I support the “home manager” discretion of whether to have DH or not. You will always have that vocal minority, but at least this way, you are reducing them to a tiny minority, like the tiny minority that prefers things simple in the good ole days (that never were other than in selective memory).
Would you go back to a time where you have 4 teams make the playoffs, or 2 teams? The wild card is a good rule for a 30-team league, if you are going to have playoffs.
If you limited mid-inning relief changes in some form (say by making it a 1-0 count count when the 2nd mid-inning reliever comes into the game at any point not just the same inning, 2-0 the third time, and 3-0 the fourth and subsequent times) say in 1972, would we today say “man, I wish they would remove the disincentive, so we can have more mid-inning relievers come into the game”? No, certainly not. No one would say that. So, this makes this a great rule.
What about stopping a regular season game after 12 innings (tie), or going to Olympic-style OT in 1976? Would the fan complain, and want the game to be prolonged? Of course not, since most fans actually leave the ballpark already. They have already voted with their feet that they do NOT want to see games that go on too long (in the regular season). So, some sort of accelerated end to a ball game would be a good rule.
But, MLB is unique in that they think they need to bend over to the vocal minority that has seen Field of Dreams once too often. The common man will break a lifetime contract of love with his spouse and turn over 50% of his assets before agreeing to prevent runners from bowling over a catcher.
Before you complain about proposed rule changes, or what I’ve said here, think first and ask yourself the question: “If we always had this rule in place, would I ever go back to the original rule?”
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
I’ll be penning another article for the 2009 Hardball Times Annual. I’ve started and stopped research on a couple of things, because I’m not satisfied they are (going to be) strong enough for an annual publication. Other things on my todo would simply be too long to research, or be too numbers-intensive, or “boring” to be good.
The WOWY articles I wrote last year I was very happy with, since they used numbers to tell the story, more than it being about the numbers. Though the numbers were the final selling point that you couldn’t disagree with.
So, what good oomph-type of research would you like to see. Preferably, it would make use of the PBP data, maybe even pitch-by-pitch (but not location/pitch type).
Give me some ideas…
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Comments • 2008/08/29
Goalies always have the best stories. I wonder how often a 13-yr old scrimmages with professionals?
And 19-yr olds that burnout from playing hockey?
It is something the greatest player in history, Wayne Gretzky, talked about repeatedly: How teenagers should be exposed to many different sports as they develop, and that the answer sometimes was to do less sport-specific training in order to develop all-round athleticism and maintain a healthy love of the sport in which their primary abilities lie.
Fun, something else Gretzky stressed, generally doesn’t get mentioned nearly enough these days, either.
Is Google Books a good thing or a bad thing? The 2008 Hardball Times Annual has limited preview for anyone with a google account. As luck would have it, both of my With or Without You articles are available for preview, in their entirety (p.140-152). So, sit down and enjoy. If after reading that, you don’t agree that Jeter is a below-average fielder, then please explain. But, you must read the article first.
The two best articles in that book don’t have the same benefit. Walsh’s article only has the first page (p.165), while Greg Rybarczyk’s has parts of his article in it, including some great work on Torii Hunter and Andruw Jones (p.176-180, minus 177).
If you click at the Amazon link at the top of this page, you will see that The Book is now part of the “Search Inside” feature of Amazon. As long as you have an Amazon account, you can search through The Book, without even buying it! So, for any of you stragglers wondering about it, but did not want to buy it, you should be able to read several dozen pages from your computer.
As usual, even if you do not intend to buy The Book, make all your Amazon purchases via the link at the top of this page. We get a small referral fee directly from Amazon for any Amazon purchase you make via that link (at no cost to you). We don’t make much, just enough to cover our annual expenses.
Anyway, thanks to everyone for your support. The Book is still the #2 baseball book in their stats category. And this is against super heavyweights like ESPN/Palmer, Bill James, and Baseball Prospectus. And, we have no promotional muscle to speak of. We’re like My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
Our buddy Eric Seidman has a book out called Bridging the Statistical Gap, which you can get from Lulu or Amazon.
I did not even realize this book was out. Even his own site has no links to his own book. I always get the feeling that Eric’s got a hundred and one things going on.
Anyway, I’ll be getting this book shortly, and if anyone’s read it already, please post your thoughts as to who this book is best targetted for.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Similar to my “Fixing VORP” blog post, treat this post as a “Sabermetric Announcements of Public Service” (with the unfortunate acronym of SAPS). John Dewan talks about long and short atbats, and the profile report is now part of Bill James’ site, to which I replied:
John, Bill:
I’m not sure that your readers appreciate the bias in the long and short AB data. What an AB of 1-pitch represents is: “What happens when the player makes contact on the first pitch” (*).
If the batter swings and misses at the first pitch, it does not count toward the 1-pitch data, and instead will now be part of the 2-pitch data. (Similarly, a called ball on the first pitch will remove it from the 1-pitch data.)
As the league data shows on the 1-pitch at bat (very high) it makes it seem like everyone should be swinging on the first pitch. But, the data itself is the *result* not the *approach*.
If on the other hand you asked: “What happens when the batter swings at the first pitch”, you will get different data, because now this will include the swing&miss.
You guys are probably aware of all this. But, seeing posts on outside forums, and lots of readers simply are not thinking of it in those terms.
You might like this chart:
http://tangotiger.net/halejon/allcounts.html
And, Linear Weights by the Pitch Count provides a great basis for figuring out the pitch count approach. But, that’s topic for another discussion.
(*) Foul balls that are not caught provide a tiny wrinkle to my statement. The general idea holds.
Tom
As AsrosFan is telling us:
I was just glancing at Andrew Dolphin’s ratings of MLB teams. I decided to go with the Predictive ranking.
Predictive Both schedule strength and rating vs. schedule strength are determined considering both the wins and losses and the score differentials. This rating contains none of the biases in the standard rating, but does weight recent games slightly more than past games since those are a better indication of the team’s current strength. This rating is the best of the first three for seeing how good teams are, and thus is the best for predicting future results.
I could have used Improved RPI, but I wanted one that included run differential. Here are the rankings of all 30 teams: http://www.dolphinsim.com/ratings/mlb/index_pred.html
The first thing we notice is that the AL is ranked as having 10 out the top 11 teams. Mr. Dolphin’s analysis shows the AL as being much stronger, and thus teams with worse records than NL teams can actually be better due to strength of schedule. Indeed, looking at it from the expected losses standpoint, which Mr. Dolphin says “can be used to rank schedules”, the top 14 SOS are in the AL, meaning all the AL teams. And it’s not really close.
That would be astonishing enough, but this is what really caught my eye. Down further on the page, the rankings are split up by division. If we scroll to the AL East, we find these rankings: Boston: 1 Tampa Bay: 3 Toronto: 7 New York Yankees: 9 Baltimore: 10 . All five teams in the AL East are ranked in the top 10, that is, the top third of baseball. Baltimore, which at the time of the latest update, had a 61-66 record and RS/RA of 653/653, is ranked two spots ahead of Milwaukee, which had a 75-55 record and a RS/RA of 616/555.
To which I responded to the above and other questions in that thread:
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Friday, August 22, 2008
Non-sports post.
I just read an email that says:
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Comments • 2008/08/26
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Blogging
Along the lines of something is better than nothing, just as MGL was nice enough to give us his notes on his pitching and fielding presentation, here you will find Andy’s presentation slides (only with IE browser), entitled: “Statistical Confirmations of Steroid Use?” You can also download the entire Powerpoint file (right-click, Save Link As).
This sounds like a great (read funny) paper to read. I was looking for something to read at lunch, and this seems to fit the bill. Wonder what the author would think of my company softball league with the .500 OBP?
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Comments • 2008/08/24
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Sabermetrics
I’ll suggest Oliver as a name.
Brian has taken the basis for Marcel, and expanded it. Very lovely. What he has done is taken something very simple, and expanded it greatly, by doing all the things that Marcel intentionally ignored (more than 3 years of data, minor league, park, separated components). It is exactly what I would do if I wanted to put the care into it that Brian has.
Ideally, it will beat Marcel in forecasting competitions. Marcel will continue to exist as the minimum level to which all forecasting systems should be compared against (if you can’t beat Marcel, then you should keep working on your forecasting system). “Oliver” (or whatever Brian will call his) would be the next level up to which forecasting systems will be compared against.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Seems like a good idea for lower-level leagues:
The A-11 base sets use two quarterbacks lined up at least seven yards from the line of scrimmage. A center, bracketed by two tight ends, comprises the three-person offensive line. Six receivers are split wide. On a given play, only six men are eligible to receive a downfield pass. But because all players can become eligible by wearing jersey numbers 1-49 or 80-99, the defense is left to guess at who is going downfield on each snap.
“We’re doing futuristic football,” Humphries said. “We’re doing football where every play is innovative, and that’s why people find it fun to watch. It’s fun to play. Every player has the potential to be a part of almost every play.”
And a website too!
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Incredibly, these are not bugs but design features. This happens to me all the time, whereby I hold the SHIFT key, think about something, and if I think too long, the CAPS lock turns on and stays on. Then, I have to remember how to turn it off (answer: hold both SHIFT keys to cancel). Anyway, here’s how to turn this feature off. That site has more stuff, which I will enjoy looking at.
If you are the Microsoft designer that actually created this function, or if you are the Microsoft Quality Control that actually let this go through, please speak up. Obviously, there must be a good reason that you did this.
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Comments • 2008/08/21
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Web Admin
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
A very good and fairly light Josh Kalk read on the knuckleball. I’d say that of all the PITCHf/x articles I’ve read, this would be one that would feel perfectly at home in a mainstream press. I also like the links to the Banks articles. Just good all-round read.
from Amazon
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