THE BOOK cover
The Unwritten Book is Finally Written!
An in-depth analysis of: The sacrifice bunt, batter/pitcher matchups, the intentional base on balls, optimizing a batting lineup, hot and cold streaks, clutch performance, platooning strategies, and much more.
Read Excerpts & Customer Reviews

Buy The Book from Amazon


SABR101 required reading if you enter this site. Check out the Sabermetric Wiki. And interesting baseball books.
MOST RECENT ARTICLES
MAIL : You ask | We say

Advanced


THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Filter posts by...

 

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Great use of Leverage Index

By Tangotiger, 09:20 AM

Leverage Index describes the “level of fire” at a particular point in time.  It understands where you are in a game, and has no idea what is about to happen, other than to expect “average” things will happen.  So, we have this great insight from a 19-inning game:

11 plays had a leverage index of 4.00 or above (meaning it was a really important play); 
only one of them involved a hit.
Pitcher     Hitter     Inn.     Outs     Base     Score     Play     LI
Herndon     Hernandez     11     2     123     4
-4     Ramon Hernandez grounded out to pitcher (Grounder).     6.86
Masset     Polanco     9     2     123     3
-3     Placido Polanco reached on fielder’s choice to shortstop (Grounder). Jimmy Rollins out at second.     6.38
Masset     Brown     9     1     123     3
-3     Domonic Brown fouled out to catcher (Fly).     5.71
Fisher     Ibanez     19     1     123     5
-4     Raul Ibanez hit a sacrifice fly to center (Fly). Jimmy Rollins scored.     5.71
Halladay     Bruce     7     2     123     3
-3     Jay Bruce singled to right (Grounder). Miguel Cairo scoredDrew Stubbs scoredJoey Votto advanced to 2B.     4.66
Halladay     Rolen     7     1     123     3
-1     Scott Rolen struck out swinging.     4.66
Romero     Phillips     11     1     12_     4
-4     Brandon Phillips picked off.     4.62
Romero     Bruce     11     2     12_     4
-4     Jay Bruce walkedJoey Votto advanced to 3BScott Rolen advanced to 2B.     4.43
Masset     Mayberry     9     1     12_     3
-3     Chase Utley advanced on a wild pitch to 2B.     4.31
Masset     Rollins     9     1     _23     3
-3     Jimmy Rollins was intentionally walked.     4.15
Fisher     Howard     19     1     _23     4
-4     Ryan Howard was intentionally walked.     4.15

This sounds like sudden-death overtime in hockey, where there’s a high stress level on every pass and shot, and the goalie turns back every shot, makes every save.  Until the last one goes through. 

***

A point of clarification with this comment:

Note that Jay Bruce’s solo home run in the tenth earned just a 2.30 LI and Ryan Howard’s solo home run to tie the game back up in the bottom half earned a 3.42 LI.

Note that the LI is assigned PRIOR to the event occurring.  It is a description of the state that the batter and pitcher find themselves.  So, Jay Bruce found himself in a state where the LI was 2.30.  What you “earn” are wins (not LI), meaning that in this situation, rather than a HR being worth around +.14 wins, they were paying off at about 2.3 times that.  (He earned +.342 wins.) The change in win expectancy is how much more relief the Reds fans got (and the level of despondency that Phillies fans experienced).  Ryan Howard’s HR spun things around the other way.

(1) Comments • 2011/05/26 • SabermetricsLeverage_Index
Page 1 of 1 pages

Latest...

COMMENTS

May 25 23:40
“Why Kickstarter works”

May 25 19:41
What sabermetrics is NOT

May 25 19:41
Pete Palmer’s new book: Basic Ball

May 25 17:32
Largest demonstration in Canadian history?

May 25 16:59
Howard Stern

May 25 15:12
Do pitcher’s reach back for velocity when needed?

May 25 12:51
Chad Curtis

May 25 11:26
Lack of hustle during a game

May 25 10:58
Rooting for laundry

May 25 02:38
NFLPA lawsuit against collusion

THREADS

May 26, 2011
Great use of Leverage Index