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
This assumption of "perfect information" is inherently flawed. No matter what information is out there (WAR, VORP, etc), free agency is about paying for future production, not past production. Even if you make the argument that all 30 teams agree on how to value production (which I don't think you can), you also have to say that all teams agree on how to value projected performance going forward. It seems to me that if what the union says is true (multiple nearly identical offers to many free agents), there are only two possibilities. Either the teams agree on how to evaluate both past and future performance, or there is collusion. It seems to me that its more likely that the teams collude than agree on evaluations.
Think we could get it so the "Show hits from:" could have a setting for "ALL", so that we could look at all of Granderson's 2009 hits over Yankee Stadium?
A problem with this study might be, that the walk rates it used encompass the whole league.
Maybe that's too big a view. What if the game did change, but without the overall player set having changed? Say for example, all the Moneyball players were collected by the Red Sox and A's, leaving all the lousy ones remaining for the Royals... Overall walk rates remain the same, but the game definitely changed, among the teams that matter.
In any given situation (ie 4th inning, down by 1 run, 2 outs, man on 1st) there is a Win Prob before and after a successful SB. This WPA should accrue to the baserunner who steals (or gets caught/picked off).
Wouldn't it be more accurate to look at individual WPA accrued through baserunning in this fashion rather than determine the league-wide win value of a SB and multiply by a player's SB? This would account for stealing (successfully) in high leverage situations rather than presuming that the leverage of SB would even out over time.
Wouldn't SB be better evaluated with WPA +/- LI? It seems like this could give a true measure of the value of each SB without resorting to average values of SB for the league. I imagine this data would be available in retrosheet. . .
Awesome, thanks. Is it cool to talk about specific projections in a blog as along as we link back? Like say we wanted to blog about the Pirates pitching staff?
ESPN is using B-R to change the stats, go to Holliday's B-R player page, neutralize stats, 2008, AL, Oakland.
For the last 3 you need to be a B-R subscriber.
I'm not opposed to a simpler tax system (eliminate most of the overhead of the IRS) like a sales tax. However, my concern is that it may do exactly what we don't need - limit spending. I'm not an economist, so I don't know if this is actually a problem, but if you have a national sales tax, the price of good will go up (since the tax is added in), and this may decrease spending. Which may be healthy for individual families, but not be so good for the country. I'd like to see some details on projections for the GDP under a tax system like this.
May I ask from where it is that you (Peter or MGL) are compiling your data? I wouldn't mind having a run at this, but other than BB-Ref's PI feature which doesn't provide quite enough detail I'm not sure what else I could use.
Fargo/7. In regards to pinch hitting for a pitcher in the 2nd vs the 6th, win expectancy should be the driver of the decision. The fact is that in the 2nd you much more of your scarce resource (outs) than you do in the 6th. A team down by 3 runs in the 2nd has a much better chance of winning than a team down by 3 runs in the 6th. Hence, the change in WE that a team would get from pinch hitting for a pitcher in the 2nd would be much less than the change in WE that a team would get from pinch hitting for a pitcher in the exact same situation in a later inning. Also, pinch hitters are a scarce resource too, so burning your better ones in situations that don't have as large of an impact on your WE would be foolish.
And as you mentioned, the affect on the pitching staff and how you would prevent runs is important...not only in the remainder of that game, but in subsequent games pitching with a shortentened staff. Which is why I mentioned the idea of tandem starting above.
Brian/3 Exactly...run expectancy really needs to be evaluated in a situational basis. A walk by the #8 hitter (w/o PH for the pitcher) <> a walk by the #1 hitter. All it takes is a simple decision tree to realize this but often you see #7 hitters bunting guys into scoring position only for them to be stranded, like in your example.
Secondly, if teams used some sort of tandem starting pitchers (or short starter>long reliever>set up men), they could utilize pinch hitters more often and in higher leverage situations.
A number 9 hitter gets roughly 4 PAs per game. The delta between a pitchers OPS and PH OPS is roughly 300 points. If we assume that a starter roughly bats 2.5 out of those 4 times under the normal strategy and 1 out of those 4 times in a tandem starting strategy, that will result in a weighted average increase of over 100 points of OPS in 10% of your teams PAs. It also allows the flexibility of being able to double switch to put your better hitters in higher leverage situations. And if a team employed that strategy they would most likely construct their roster to have better PH options than a typical NL roster has, so that delta between a PH and a pitcher would increase. And not to mention that below average starters should probably be tandem started anyway.
MLB 2K8, by 2K Sports, has WPA in this year's game, I was shocked to see it and frankly amazed that it was. In each box score it lists the players WPA, it shows the game graph, much like what fangraphs does, and it shows the WPA season's leaders. They seem like they are using new information for good not evil, hopefully others would do the same with LI.
In reference to 21 - the NHL isn't the only league that gives out MVP awards to losing teams. Mike Scott won the NLCS MVP against the Mets in 1986.
I prefer WPA as the main offensive consideration for MVP talks.
Another issue is how much consideration the team's final place in the standings should receive. I assume MGL's only going to consider teams that made the playoffs because he seems to be taking an all-or-nothing approach.
I think context is important, but I don't go that far. Hanley Ramirez's performance has to be considered less valuable because his team was out of the race early in the season, so the games were somewhat meaningless. On the other hand, David Wright (who would be pretty close to Rollins on the chart above if he was included)'s team was in the race until the final day off the season, so all of his positive performance came in meaningful games.
If Tango's right that Wang deserves some or all of the credit for the "extra" outs, then the original ranking of the Yankees as the #1 defense is undermined.
According to PMR, the Yankees defense made 61.5 more actual outs than predicted outs. 33 of those were made with Wang on the mound. If we take the possibly drastic step of giving Wang all the credit for those 33 extra outs, then the Yanks fall back to something like 7th place overall.
The same with Ortiz, earlier this season his BA was pretty low and A LOT of his would-be hits were taken away by the shifts [to the point where it was a mental thing]. Has anyone seen what Joe Maddon does to him? 4 OFers and no IFers on the left side.
To his credit, he has started to drop down some nice bunts when shifts are on in the early innings. And now he just hits everything where the shifts aren’t... in the stands.
Strasburg,3,6,6,2,94,Ryan
Standards for PITCHf/x viewpoint: catcher or pitcher? (Ryan) —
Everything should be from home plate looking out.
MLBPA: looking for evidence of wrongdoing (Ryan) —
This assumption of "perfect information" is inherently flawed. No matter what information is out there (WAR, VORP, etc), free agency is about paying for future production, not past production. Even if you make the argument that all 30 teams agree on how to value production (which I don't think you can), you also have to say that all teams agree on how to value projected performance going forward. It seems to me that if what the union says is true (multiple nearly identical offers to many free agents), there are only two possibilities. Either the teams agree on how to evaluate both past and future performance, or there is collusion. It seems to me that its more likely that the teams collude than agree on evaluations.
Three Stars of the Game (Ryan) —
It seems that after 3 days the correlation between WPA and the 3 Stars are 98%. Kind of useless.
Quickest ejection in MLB history? (Ryan) —
Suspend that ump
Super-imposing batted balls from one park onto another (Ryan) —
Think we could get it so the "Show hits from:" could have a setting for "ALL", so that we could look at all of Granderson's 2009 hits over Yankee Stadium?
Moneyball and Walks (Ryan) —
A problem with this study might be, that the walk rates it used encompass the whole league. Maybe that's too big a view. What if the game did change, but without the overall player set having changed? Say for example, all the Moneyball players were collected by the Red Sox and A's, leaving all the lousy ones remaining for the Royals... Overall walk rates remain the same, but the game definitely changed, among the teams that matter.
Anti-virus software (Ryan) —
Avast free home edition paired with either AVG or Microsoft for once a week scanning.
Win-equivalent SB (Ryan) —
In any given situation (ie 4th inning, down by 1 run, 2 outs, man on 1st) there is a Win Prob before and after a successful SB. This WPA should accrue to the baserunner who steals (or gets caught/picked off). Wouldn't it be more accurate to look at individual WPA accrued through baserunning in this fashion rather than determine the league-wide win value of a SB and multiply by a player's SB? This would account for stealing (successfully) in high leverage situations rather than presuming that the leverage of SB would even out over time.
Win-equivalent SB (Ryan) —
Wouldn't SB be better evaluated with WPA +/- LI? It seems like this could give a true measure of the value of each SB without resorting to average values of SB for the league. I imagine this data would be available in retrosheet. . .
Marcel 2009 is here (Ryan) —
Awesome, thanks. Is it cool to talk about specific projections in a blog as along as we link back? Like say we wanted to blog about the Pirates pitching staff?
Sabermetric Moves of the 2009 Pre-Season (Ryan) —
ESPN is using B-R to change the stats, go to Holliday's B-R player page, neutralize stats, 2008, AL, Oakland. For the last 3 you need to be a B-R subscriber.
The FairTax and other "flat tax" schemes in lieu of income and payroll taxes (Ryan) —
I'm not opposed to a simpler tax system (eliminate most of the overhead of the IRS) like a sales tax. However, my concern is that it may do exactly what we don't need - limit spending. I'm not an economist, so I don't know if this is actually a problem, but if you have a national sales tax, the price of good will go up (since the tax is added in), and this may decrease spending. Which may be healthy for individual families, but not be so good for the country. I'd like to see some details on projections for the GDP under a tax system like this.
Rebutting MGL's Walk article (Ryan) —
May I ask from where it is that you (Peter or MGL) are compiling your data? I wouldn't mind having a run at this, but other than BB-Ref's PI feature which doesn't provide quite enough detail I'm not sure what else I could use.
Letting pitchers bat: It never ceases to amaze me... (Ryan) —
Fargo/7. In regards to pinch hitting for a pitcher in the 2nd vs the 6th, win expectancy should be the driver of the decision. The fact is that in the 2nd you much more of your scarce resource (outs) than you do in the 6th. A team down by 3 runs in the 2nd has a much better chance of winning than a team down by 3 runs in the 6th. Hence, the change in WE that a team would get from pinch hitting for a pitcher in the 2nd would be much less than the change in WE that a team would get from pinch hitting for a pitcher in the exact same situation in a later inning. Also, pinch hitters are a scarce resource too, so burning your better ones in situations that don't have as large of an impact on your WE would be foolish. And as you mentioned, the affect on the pitching staff and how you would prevent runs is important...not only in the remainder of that game, but in subsequent games pitching with a shortentened staff. Which is why I mentioned the idea of tandem starting above.
Letting pitchers bat: It never ceases to amaze me... (Ryan) —
Brian/3 Exactly...run expectancy really needs to be evaluated in a situational basis. A walk by the #8 hitter (w/o PH for the pitcher) <> a walk by the #1 hitter. All it takes is a simple decision tree to realize this but often you see #7 hitters bunting guys into scoring position only for them to be stranded, like in your example. Secondly, if teams used some sort of tandem starting pitchers (or short starter>long reliever>set up men), they could utilize pinch hitters more often and in higher leverage situations. A number 9 hitter gets roughly 4 PAs per game. The delta between a pitchers OPS and PH OPS is roughly 300 points. If we assume that a starter roughly bats 2.5 out of those 4 times under the normal strategy and 1 out of those 4 times in a tandem starting strategy, that will result in a weighted average increase of over 100 points of OPS in 10% of your teams PAs. It also allows the flexibility of being able to double switch to put your better hitters in higher leverage situations. And if a team employed that strategy they would most likely construct their roster to have better PH options than a typical NL roster has, so that delta between a PH and a pitcher would increase. And not to mention that below average starters should probably be tandem started anyway.
Make me a deal for Leverage Index (Ryan) —
MLB 2K8, by 2K Sports, has WPA in this year's game, I was shocked to see it and frankly amazed that it was. In each box score it lists the players WPA, it shows the game graph, much like what fangraphs does, and it shows the WPA season's leaders. They seem like they are using new information for good not evil, hopefully others would do the same with LI.
Sabermetric Moves of the 2008 Pre-Season (Ryan) —
So how much more is Tejada worth than Adam Everett, whom the Astros will presumably be letting go?
Jimmy Rollins (Ryan) —
In reference to 21 - the NHL isn't the only league that gives out MVP awards to losing teams. Mike Scott won the NLCS MVP against the Mets in 1986. I prefer WPA as the main offensive consideration for MVP talks. Another issue is how much consideration the team's final place in the standings should receive. I assume MGL's only going to consider teams that made the playoffs because he seems to be taking an all-or-nothing approach. I think context is important, but I don't go that far. Hanley Ramirez's performance has to be considered less valuable because his team was out of the race early in the season, so the games were somewhat meaningless. On the other hand, David Wright (who would be pretty close to Rollins on the chart above if he was included)'s team was in the race until the final day off the season, so all of his positive performance came in meaningful games.
Pinto's PMR (Ryan) —
If Tango's right that Wang deserves some or all of the credit for the "extra" outs, then the original ranking of the Yankees as the #1 defense is undermined. According to PMR, the Yankees defense made 61.5 more actual outs than predicted outs. 33 of those were made with Wang on the mound. If we take the possibly drastic step of giving Wang all the credit for those 33 extra outs, then the Yanks fall back to something like 7th place overall.
The Shift (Ryan) —
The same with Ortiz, earlier this season his BA was pretty low and A LOT of his would-be hits were taken away by the shifts [to the point where it was a mental thing]. Has anyone seen what Joe Maddon does to him? 4 OFers and no IFers on the left side. To his credit, he has started to drop down some nice bunts when shifts are on in the early innings. And now he just hits everything where the shifts aren’t... in the stands.