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
If I understand SportVu correctly, couldn't it be used to determine all defensive players' initial starting position? I think STATS, INC. acquired SportVu and I'm interested to see how they use it for MLB.
Gotcha. I went back and looked, and I guess I thought we were using $85 million (not $80 million) because I thought the $/win was $2.28 million and the FA rate as $4.56 mil. No worries...
I don't know if this has been discussed yet, but when I was browsing the Red Sox's newspaper online blog, they posted team payrolls for the 2008 season (courtesy of the AP). I did a rough estimation of each team's payroll and the average team payroll has now jumped up to $90 million. Obviously the AP reports on team payrolls may not be exactly perfect, but given that we had an average team's payroll at $80 million a couple of months ago, an increase by $10 million clearly affects the $/win number of both tango and MGL. I thought it was interesting...
Nashboy, I don't think there is anyone out there that can do what you're asking. In the Rolen's/Glaus deal, Rolen's obviously is one of the best 3B defensively (and Glaus is not very good), but it seems unlikely that he will play as much/more than Glaus over the next two years. His injury, according to reports, seems to be far worse than Glaus's. Also, Rolen's is slightly older and is being paid more money in average annual salary. I don't think anyone can accurately project what is going to happen to each player over the next two years, but a doctor could tell you the likelihood of the injury recurring, etc.
That brings up another good point...we need to know what statistics and such regress to what subjective characteristics if we don't want to regress to zero. Do we regress defense to speed score, height, weight, age, round drafted, etc. or just speed score? That goes for linear weights, UZR, etc. There are a lot of different things we can regress to (I only mentioned a few above) and we may not need to use them all for each compenent we're regressing. In other words, different components will have different variables that we regress to (other than zero). I don't think anyone has 100% determined what those are for each component, but it seems like we're moving in the right direction.
I went to high school in Dallas, TX, so I've been watching hockey for awhile now and going to a lot of Stars games. If you watch a lot of games, you'll see that the game can be analyzed quantitatively like baseball. As Tango said, there are a lot of young guys playing who are just as good, if not better than a lot of the 26-28 year-olds.
Yeah, it does seem that a lot of OF's who are deemed "great defensively" get that personal bias sometimes when rated subjectively.
Rally, I don't know if MGL regresses to the speed scores in his UZR even with the article...I know he listed sample size issues, etc. Either way, it's a step in the right direction towards not just regressing to zero (I know we talk about regressing towards height, etc. but I still don't think any forecaster does that).
Tango, a few things. I was surprised that Edmonds was rated as a better CF defensively by the fans than Cameron...if he can still put up a good OBP and have a SLG in the .400's, it doesn't appear like the Padres will lose much going from Cameron to Edmonds.
I was surprised that the Padres didn't offer a similar type contract to Cameron (I live in San Diego now, and the newspapers were saying that Cameron's price was too high). The Padres have a good front office in place and $4.22 million for one-year plus a team option (which they wouldn't use) would seem to be a good deal for the team. Maybe they were concerned about him missing 15% of the season...
MGL, when doing park adjustments for linear weights and your other stats, do you weigh the RPG at home against the RPG on the road or compare home context to league context?
I thought the additive/multiplicative debate was settled. When using component park factors (and measuring ability) it is best to not use the multiplicative method (that is, if a player hits 40 HRs in a neutral stadium and is traded to a team with a HR park factor of 1.15, you say he’ll now hit 40*1.15 = 46 HRs). They are based on the fact that every player is affected the same, which is of course not true. I remember MGL saying that he used different HR park factors for different parts of a ballpark and then applied those numbers as an additive effect to opportunities. Seems to make sense...
So, for a park run factor, which is based on runs per out, it should be okay to use the multiplicative method because you're simply measuring value.
David, Clemens never said “Why don’t you tell ‘em I never used steroids.” It was more like "I took care of you, why did you turn your back on me."
G-Man, are you serious? Right now, all we know is that Clemens knew it was being recorded. If they both knew, then we might as well throw the recording out because it's useless.
MGl, what you said here describes the whole situation:
"I have known many people who were guilty of one thing or another but for whatever reasons they dug their heels in and acted as if they truly believed they were innocent."
We have all been accused doing something we knew was wrong and didn't want to get into trouble, so we lied and denied it to the fullest extent (even though we knew we were wrong) because we think to tell the truth would just be even worse. The accuser doesn't have suffcicient evidence so it is possibly to deny such claims. This is the EXACT situation with Clemens. It's quite clear.
Basically, I agree with mgl. What Clemens said during the phone conversation led me to believe that he was inferring to McNamee "why did you rat me out i've been good to you" instead of "i'm innocent so you should stop lying." I'm sorry, but Clemens is a complete joke to me...as a Red Sox fan I thought he was all about money and fame when playing and now I think he's even more of a piece of shit (pardon my language). If every single person out there doesn't believe he's lying then they're kidding themselves. I just have two things to say: 1) Clemens did admit that he and Pettite "casually" had discussed the steroid stuff when there was news on the topic, and given that Pettite is his closest friend in MLB, how the hell did he not know Pettite was on HGH at some point? I'm sorry, but we all have best friends, and some people may be able to keep better secrets than others, but someone ALWAYS knows what's going on. Plus, I work out quite a bit and my roomates and I are always sharing vitamins, protein stuff, etc. so Clemens HAD to know Pettite was on HGH or doing something else. If not, he clearly would have seen Pettite do better in workouts, etc. 2) When people lie, they get DEFENSIVE. In the 60 minutes interview, Clemens was doing more yelling and accusing than explaining why he was innoncent. His body language clearly should show that he's lying...
McNamee had NOTHING to gain by implementing Clemens and everything to lose by not telling the truth. Clearly this guy doesn't seem to be the intellect, and it seems to me that Clemens is using his power (money, powerful lawyers, etc.) to try and bully McNamee around.
Tango, from what MGL is saying (and has been saying), his replacement level is either 18 runs or 20 runs below average, which is basically what you've been saying (right?). So, I don't think there's that 16% difference that you believe there to be...I understand you're reasoning if MGL's numbers were way different than yours (because a $5.1 mil/win is a lot different in terms of money/salary than $4.4), but I don't think you guys are that far off...
You may be right. You calculated it so that a replacement level team has a .300 winning pct (48.6 wins). With a replacement level team playing at a .300 winning pct. and an ~ $11 million payroll, and with the average MLB payroll about $80 million, the extra $69 million will buy a team 32.4 wins ((.500-.300)*162), or ~ $2 million per win. And then you just got the 4.4 for FA from there. So, MGL's may have to be higher...
Isn't MGL's replacement level like 17 or 18 runs below average? Does that constitute a 5.5 or 6.0 MM per win number? If so that's definitely surprising given that just a few years ago we were at $3 mil/win. Interesting.
I agree with Tango regarding the Lowell signing. The Red Sox are my favorite team and I follow them the most and given that Lowell is a FA (and will be overpaid no matter what, technically), signing him for 3 years (rather than 4) and less than $40 million is about as good as we were going to get. There's no way in hell Lowell would take $30 million or less as a FA. Will he produce the same numbers as last year? Probably not, but I don't see him putting up numbers similar to his last year in Florida either given that he plays half his home games at Fenway Park. The only thing about Lowell is his defense...last year he made more errors and didn't seem to be as "solid" as the year before (subjectively speaking), but if he can play slightly above average defense I think we'll be fine.
I read the SOSH thread as well, and it was a good read. Mike Fast is exactly on point and the whole situation is tricky: The sabermetricians are probably paid about right, but if I was a Tango or MGL I would not work for anything less than $70K (depending on the city and cost of living, of course), and if a team really did offer them a job that would be unpaid that's a disgrace. While I understand that sabermetricians aren't dealing with the media and overseeing multiple departments (i.e., GM), if I was the GM of a team I would do my best to convince my owner to spend a good deal of money on five of the best stats guys I could come up with because ultimately they will help the organization profit-wise and on-the-field. It's completely understandable why the majority of teams don't need/want to spend a good amount of money on guys like Tango or MGL, but why be like the majority when you have a chance to improve and be more efficient? It's not like the owner can't afford that type of money anyway. I think the one problem/inefficiency there is among teams is HOW they allocate their resources (paying for FA over spending on player development, not spending enough for top-of-the-line employees, etc.). I think a lot of teams just spend money to spend money.
I've contacted both Tango and MGL in the past and I would have no problem spending money to have them on my staff because I know they would be a significant help. I don't think teams realize what kind of impact these type of guys can have on a team...
I'm a 19 year-old sophomore at SDSU and I ultimately want to work for a major league team; it's all I've ever wanted to do, in fact. It's a hard industry to break into with little pay (as shown in the SOSH thread) and sometimes it can be discouraging (I know, I know, I'm only 19. But, if there's one thing I've learned so far in life it's that there's no such thing as starting too early (in terms of preparing for a job/career). I've been doing my best at this by doing things like reading The Book, reading online about baseball on websites like this one, picking the brains of tango and MGL, contacting several front office members and PR directors of multiple MLB organizations, etc., but it's still going to be hard as hell to land that first job even though I know I could do a good job for a team. It seems like the best way for me to start out is to get an internship with a minor league team over the summer while school is out. I've already been in contact with several teams (they're fairly easy to converse with).
Besides all my ranting, I would just like to say that while MLB teams may not appreciate the likes of tango, MGL, etc. I want to thank all you guys personally for improving my knowledge of the game over the past couple of years. It's been a tremendous help.
Just thought I'd let you know I bought the book. It's the first THT Annual I've bought but from reading everything, it seems like a) it's going to be a great book, and b) you guys deserve some type of compensation for doing us a service.
Looking forward to it!
Tango/14.
My bad. We've actually emailed each other a few times. I definitely remember you talking about arbitration value before, but I forgot about the numbers. Thanks for posting them.
While we use the $4 or $4.4 million per win value for FA now and the 20/40/60/80 arbitration values, if we were able to calculate the exact value of a marginal win for each team, would the former two numbers used to calculate a player's dollar value still be necessary? Thinking out-loud here, I guess if we knew the exact value of a marginal win for each team, then we could really evaluate each contract signing as "good" or "bad," because as MGL pointed out, the $4-4.4 mil/win value is merely what the average market price is nowadays, not the optimal price each team should/can be spending. Just something to think about I guess...
Good stuff. It would be nice to know the marginal dollar value of a marginal win once and for all, but I think your assumption is going to be close either way. It's funny how just a few years ago we were saying $2 mil per win is what you should strive for and now we've doubled that number.
With that said, because your number is for free agents, would you use that same $4.4 mil per marginal win to calculate the value of an arbitration/non FA player? Wouldn't be (technically) have to create another $/marginal win number for these players that are not FA or you have already signed (and what to know what they are now worth in present value)?
Going further, if we had access to team financial data and could calculate the dollar value of a marginal win for each team, I guess that would take care of non FA. I really wish someone could get hold of that data because that combined with slwts would get use nearly to 100% of what each player is really worth. I know a lot of players' value wouldn't change that much, but I think the information would be worthwhile.
Also, I thought MGL once told me this as a rule of thumb:
First basemen and LF are generally 11 runs above average compared to the league average batter, RF are 8 runs above average, CF’ers are average, third baseman are 2 runs below average, second baseman are 6 runs worse, SS are 9 runs worse, catchers are 14 runs worse and DH’s are 5 runs above average.
This is obviously just offensively, but if so, the gap is not 5 runs, but over 10, for Braun moving from 3B to LF offensively. Overall, the move to LF is probably the best move for Braun, but I don't think that he will be gaining THAT much more value by moving to the corner OF.
The only thing I notice is that many of the players (including Braun) would see little difference in performance between LF, CF, and RF. All the numbers are close to each other for the players you gave examples of...seems like there would be a larger distribution for the OF positions.
That's some really interesting stuff tango. That type of data could really help teams decide what position is the best (and next best if he fails) for every player. Those teams with this type of info would be able to find players and maximize their production at certain positions that other teams might not see with their own eye/subjective defensive analysis...without explaining the whole process, how did you come up with the position-specific weights?
Also, this type of data could be taken a step farther (I think MGL said the Cardinals did this) and you could assign a value to each trait per position (some traits would obviously be more valuable at different positions) and then come up with a linear weights number from that...this would allow you to compare to/and use in conjunction with UZR when calculating a player's total value. This would be especially important for those players with 3 years or less of experience.
If I understand SportVu correctly, couldn't it be used to determine all defensive players' initial starting position? I think STATS, INC. acquired SportVu and I'm interested to see how they use it for MLB.
Sabermetric Moves of the 2008 Pre-Season (Mike Flatt) —
Gotcha. I went back and looked, and I guess I thought we were using $85 million (not $80 million) because I thought the $/win was $2.28 million and the FA rate as $4.56 mil. No worries...
Sabermetric Moves of the 2008 Pre-Season (Mike Flatt) —
I don't know if this has been discussed yet, but when I was browsing the Red Sox's newspaper online blog, they posted team payrolls for the 2008 season (courtesy of the AP). I did a rough estimation of each team's payroll and the average team payroll has now jumped up to $90 million. Obviously the AP reports on team payrolls may not be exactly perfect, but given that we had an average team's payroll at $80 million a couple of months ago, an increase by $10 million clearly affects the $/win number of both tango and MGL. I thought it was interesting...
Sabermetric Moves of the 2008 Pre-Season (Mike Flatt) —
Sean Casey just signed with the Red Sox. What's his defense like according to the sophisticated systems?
MGL Component Park Factors (Mike Flatt) —
Awesome, I've been waiting for something like this for awhile. I'm going to read it over the next few days when I have some time...
Sabermetric Moves of the 2008 Pre-Season (Mike Flatt) —
Nashboy, I don't think there is anyone out there that can do what you're asking. In the Rolen's/Glaus deal, Rolen's obviously is one of the best 3B defensively (and Glaus is not very good), but it seems unlikely that he will play as much/more than Glaus over the next two years. His injury, according to reports, seems to be far worse than Glaus's. Also, Rolen's is slightly older and is being paid more money in average annual salary. I don't think anyone can accurately project what is going to happen to each player over the next two years, but a doctor could tell you the likelihood of the injury recurring, etc.
Sabermetric Moves of the 2008 Pre-Season (Mike Flatt) —
That brings up another good point...we need to know what statistics and such regress to what subjective characteristics if we don't want to regress to zero. Do we regress defense to speed score, height, weight, age, round drafted, etc. or just speed score? That goes for linear weights, UZR, etc. There are a lot of different things we can regress to (I only mentioned a few above) and we may not need to use them all for each compenent we're regressing. In other words, different components will have different variables that we regress to (other than zero). I don't think anyone has 100% determined what those are for each component, but it seems like we're moving in the right direction.
Is Hanley Ramirez worth a 13 yr, 248 million$ deal, with only 2 years of service? (Mike Flatt) —
I went to high school in Dallas, TX, so I've been watching hockey for awhile now and going to a lot of Stars games. If you watch a lot of games, you'll see that the game can be analyzed quantitatively like baseball. As Tango said, there are a lot of young guys playing who are just as good, if not better than a lot of the 26-28 year-olds.
Sabermetric Moves of the 2008 Pre-Season (Mike Flatt) —
Yeah, it does seem that a lot of OF's who are deemed "great defensively" get that personal bias sometimes when rated subjectively. Rally, I don't know if MGL regresses to the speed scores in his UZR even with the article...I know he listed sample size issues, etc. Either way, it's a step in the right direction towards not just regressing to zero (I know we talk about regressing towards height, etc. but I still don't think any forecaster does that).
Sabermetric Moves of the 2008 Pre-Season (Mike Flatt) —
Tango, a few things. I was surprised that Edmonds was rated as a better CF defensively by the fans than Cameron...if he can still put up a good OBP and have a SLG in the .400's, it doesn't appear like the Padres will lose much going from Cameron to Edmonds. I was surprised that the Padres didn't offer a similar type contract to Cameron (I live in San Diego now, and the newspapers were saying that Cameron's price was too high). The Padres have a good front office in place and $4.22 million for one-year plus a team option (which they wouldn't use) would seem to be a good deal for the team. Maybe they were concerned about him missing 15% of the season...
Wanna do some peer review? (Mike Flatt) —
MGL, when doing park adjustments for linear weights and your other stats, do you weigh the RPG at home against the RPG on the road or compare home context to league context?
Wanna do some peer review? (Mike Flatt) —
I thought the additive/multiplicative debate was settled. When using component park factors (and measuring ability) it is best to not use the multiplicative method (that is, if a player hits 40 HRs in a neutral stadium and is traded to a team with a HR park factor of 1.15, you say he’ll now hit 40*1.15 = 46 HRs). They are based on the fact that every player is affected the same, which is of course not true. I remember MGL saying that he used different HR park factors for different parts of a ballpark and then applied those numbers as an additive effect to opportunities. Seems to make sense... So, for a park run factor, which is based on runs per out, it should be okay to use the multiplicative method because you're simply measuring value.
Clemens recording (Mike Flatt) —
David, Clemens never said “Why don’t you tell ‘em I never used steroids.” It was more like "I took care of you, why did you turn your back on me." G-Man, are you serious? Right now, all we know is that Clemens knew it was being recorded. If they both knew, then we might as well throw the recording out because it's useless.
Clemens recording (Mike Flatt) —
MGl, what you said here describes the whole situation: "I have known many people who were guilty of one thing or another but for whatever reasons they dug their heels in and acted as if they truly believed they were innocent." We have all been accused doing something we knew was wrong and didn't want to get into trouble, so we lied and denied it to the fullest extent (even though we knew we were wrong) because we think to tell the truth would just be even worse. The accuser doesn't have suffcicient evidence so it is possibly to deny such claims. This is the EXACT situation with Clemens. It's quite clear.
Clemens recording (Mike Flatt) —
Basically, I agree with mgl. What Clemens said during the phone conversation led me to believe that he was inferring to McNamee "why did you rat me out i've been good to you" instead of "i'm innocent so you should stop lying." I'm sorry, but Clemens is a complete joke to me...as a Red Sox fan I thought he was all about money and fame when playing and now I think he's even more of a piece of shit (pardon my language). If every single person out there doesn't believe he's lying then they're kidding themselves. I just have two things to say: 1) Clemens did admit that he and Pettite "casually" had discussed the steroid stuff when there was news on the topic, and given that Pettite is his closest friend in MLB, how the hell did he not know Pettite was on HGH at some point? I'm sorry, but we all have best friends, and some people may be able to keep better secrets than others, but someone ALWAYS knows what's going on. Plus, I work out quite a bit and my roomates and I are always sharing vitamins, protein stuff, etc. so Clemens HAD to know Pettite was on HGH or doing something else. If not, he clearly would have seen Pettite do better in workouts, etc. 2) When people lie, they get DEFENSIVE. In the 60 minutes interview, Clemens was doing more yelling and accusing than explaining why he was innoncent. His body language clearly should show that he's lying... McNamee had NOTHING to gain by implementing Clemens and everything to lose by not telling the truth. Clearly this guy doesn't seem to be the intellect, and it seems to me that Clemens is using his power (money, powerful lawyers, etc.) to try and bully McNamee around.
Sabermetric Moves of the 2008 Pre-Season (Mike Flatt) —
Tango, from what MGL is saying (and has been saying), his replacement level is either 18 runs or 20 runs below average, which is basically what you've been saying (right?). So, I don't think there's that 16% difference that you believe there to be...I understand you're reasoning if MGL's numbers were way different than yours (because a $5.1 mil/win is a lot different in terms of money/salary than $4.4), but I don't think you guys are that far off...
Sabermetric Moves of the 2008 Pre-Season (Mike Flatt) —
Mark, I think what you're wanting is present value.
Sabermetric Moves of the 2008 Pre-Season (Mike Flatt) —
You may be right. You calculated it so that a replacement level team has a .300 winning pct (48.6 wins). With a replacement level team playing at a .300 winning pct. and an ~ $11 million payroll, and with the average MLB payroll about $80 million, the extra $69 million will buy a team 32.4 wins ((.500-.300)*162), or ~ $2 million per win. And then you just got the 4.4 for FA from there. So, MGL's may have to be higher...
Sabermetric Moves of the 2008 Pre-Season (Mike Flatt) —
Isn't MGL's replacement level like 17 or 18 runs below average? Does that constitute a 5.5 or 6.0 MM per win number? If so that's definitely surprising given that just a few years ago we were at $3 mil/win. Interesting.
Sabermetric Moves of the 2008 Pre-Season (Mike Flatt) —
I agree with Tango regarding the Lowell signing. The Red Sox are my favorite team and I follow them the most and given that Lowell is a FA (and will be overpaid no matter what, technically), signing him for 3 years (rather than 4) and less than $40 million is about as good as we were going to get. There's no way in hell Lowell would take $30 million or less as a FA. Will he produce the same numbers as last year? Probably not, but I don't see him putting up numbers similar to his last year in Florida either given that he plays half his home games at Fenway Park. The only thing about Lowell is his defense...last year he made more errors and didn't seem to be as "solid" as the year before (subjectively speaking), but if he can play slightly above average defense I think we'll be fine.
Keith Law interview (Mike Flatt) —
I read the SOSH thread as well, and it was a good read. Mike Fast is exactly on point and the whole situation is tricky: The sabermetricians are probably paid about right, but if I was a Tango or MGL I would not work for anything less than $70K (depending on the city and cost of living, of course), and if a team really did offer them a job that would be unpaid that's a disgrace. While I understand that sabermetricians aren't dealing with the media and overseeing multiple departments (i.e., GM), if I was the GM of a team I would do my best to convince my owner to spend a good deal of money on five of the best stats guys I could come up with because ultimately they will help the organization profit-wise and on-the-field. It's completely understandable why the majority of teams don't need/want to spend a good amount of money on guys like Tango or MGL, but why be like the majority when you have a chance to improve and be more efficient? It's not like the owner can't afford that type of money anyway. I think the one problem/inefficiency there is among teams is HOW they allocate their resources (paying for FA over spending on player development, not spending enough for top-of-the-line employees, etc.). I think a lot of teams just spend money to spend money. I've contacted both Tango and MGL in the past and I would have no problem spending money to have them on my staff because I know they would be a significant help. I don't think teams realize what kind of impact these type of guys can have on a team... I'm a 19 year-old sophomore at SDSU and I ultimately want to work for a major league team; it's all I've ever wanted to do, in fact. It's a hard industry to break into with little pay (as shown in the SOSH thread) and sometimes it can be discouraging (I know, I know, I'm only 19. But, if there's one thing I've learned so far in life it's that there's no such thing as starting too early (in terms of preparing for a job/career). I've been doing my best at this by doing things like reading The Book, reading online about baseball on websites like this one, picking the brains of tango and MGL, contacting several front office members and PR directors of multiple MLB organizations, etc., but it's still going to be hard as hell to land that first job even though I know I could do a good job for a team. It seems like the best way for me to start out is to get an internship with a minor league team over the summer while school is out. I've already been in contact with several teams (they're fairly easy to converse with). Besides all my ranting, I would just like to say that while MLB teams may not appreciate the likes of tango, MGL, etc. I want to thank all you guys personally for improving my knowledge of the game over the past couple of years. It's been a tremendous help.
Hardball Times Annual 2008, starring... (Mike Flatt) —
Just thought I'd let you know I bought the book. It's the first THT Annual I've bought but from reading everything, it seems like a) it's going to be a great book, and b) you guys deserve some type of compensation for doing us a service. Looking forward to it!
Request: MLB service time (Mike Flatt) —
Great news! Now we can test to see if the 20/40/60/80 arbitration value numbers are close to being correct.
Sabermetric Moves of the 2008 Pre-Season (Mike Flatt) —
Tango/14. My bad. We've actually emailed each other a few times. I definitely remember you talking about arbitration value before, but I forgot about the numbers. Thanks for posting them. While we use the $4 or $4.4 million per win value for FA now and the 20/40/60/80 arbitration values, if we were able to calculate the exact value of a marginal win for each team, would the former two numbers used to calculate a player's dollar value still be necessary? Thinking out-loud here, I guess if we knew the exact value of a marginal win for each team, then we could really evaluate each contract signing as "good" or "bad," because as MGL pointed out, the $4-4.4 mil/win value is merely what the average market price is nowadays, not the optimal price each team should/can be spending. Just something to think about I guess...
Sabermetric Moves of the 2008 Pre-Season (Mike Flatt) —
Good stuff. It would be nice to know the marginal dollar value of a marginal win once and for all, but I think your assumption is going to be close either way. It's funny how just a few years ago we were saying $2 mil per win is what you should strive for and now we've doubled that number. With that said, because your number is for free agents, would you use that same $4.4 mil per marginal win to calculate the value of an arbitration/non FA player? Wouldn't be (technically) have to create another $/marginal win number for these players that are not FA or you have already signed (and what to know what they are now worth in present value)? Going further, if we had access to team financial data and could calculate the dollar value of a marginal win for each team, I guess that would take care of non FA. I really wish someone could get hold of that data because that combined with slwts would get use nearly to 100% of what each player is really worth. I know a lot of players' value wouldn't change that much, but I think the information would be worthwhile.
2007 Fans' Scouting Report - Results (Mike Flatt) —
Did Braun's numbers change that much or is he still about the same in any OF position?
2007 Fans' Scouting Report - Results (Mike Flatt) —
Did you edit your previous post to have the revised numbers listed now? I'm just curious if Braun's numbers changed.
2007 Fans' Scouting Report - Results (Mike Flatt) —
He actually said it in this interview: http://yankeefan.blogspot.com/2006/02/interview-with-mgl.html I still thought he told me 3B were -2. Hmm.
2007 Fans' Scouting Report - Results (Mike Flatt) —
Also, I thought MGL once told me this as a rule of thumb: First basemen and LF are generally 11 runs above average compared to the league average batter, RF are 8 runs above average, CF’ers are average, third baseman are 2 runs below average, second baseman are 6 runs worse, SS are 9 runs worse, catchers are 14 runs worse and DH’s are 5 runs above average. This is obviously just offensively, but if so, the gap is not 5 runs, but over 10, for Braun moving from 3B to LF offensively. Overall, the move to LF is probably the best move for Braun, but I don't think that he will be gaining THAT much more value by moving to the corner OF.
2007 Fans' Scouting Report - Results (Mike Flatt) —
The only thing I notice is that many of the players (including Braun) would see little difference in performance between LF, CF, and RF. All the numbers are close to each other for the players you gave examples of...seems like there would be a larger distribution for the OF positions.
2007 Fans' Scouting Report - Results (Mike Flatt) —
I thought so. I'd be interested in helping with something like that.
2007 Fans' Scouting Report - Results (Mike Flatt) —
That's some really interesting stuff tango. That type of data could really help teams decide what position is the best (and next best if he fails) for every player. Those teams with this type of info would be able to find players and maximize their production at certain positions that other teams might not see with their own eye/subjective defensive analysis...without explaining the whole process, how did you come up with the position-specific weights? Also, this type of data could be taken a step farther (I think MGL said the Cardinals did this) and you could assign a value to each trait per position (some traits would obviously be more valuable at different positions) and then come up with a linear weights number from that...this would allow you to compare to/and use in conjunction with UZR when calculating a player's total value. This would be especially important for those players with 3 years or less of experience.