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THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

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Tuesday, November 08, 2011

Rates without Sample Size

By Tangotiger, 11:44 AM

I agree with Matt wholeheartedly.

***

I’ve had a minor issue with Pizza Cutter’s threshold for “stabilization”, which I’ve mentioned several times in this blog.  Basically, Pizza sets the threshold at r=.70, whereas I set the threshold at r=.50.  Why do I prefer mine?  Because with my threshold, I can tell you exactly how much to regress the stats.  It gives you extra information.  In addition, I can explain it in English.  If I set the OBP threshold at PA=210, then I can say: “If the player has 210 plate appearances, then his OBP is half real and half noise.  Regress his OBP by 50% toward the mean.”

And, if the player had 500 PA, then you would regress by 210 / (210 + 500) = 30%.

For Pizza, r=.70 would mean THE EXACT SAME THING.  But his threshold would be PA=500.  So, his threshold say: “If the player has 500 plate apperances, then his OBP is 70% real and 30% noise.  Regress his OBP by 30% toward the mean”.

So, exact same thing.  But, if the player had 400 PA, then what?  Well, in my case, you know exactly how much to regress by: 210/(210+400) = 34%.  But with Pizza’s case?  You’d have to do: 1-400/(400+.3/.7*500) = 34%.  That 3/7ths thing there is not very attractive to me.

Pizza is as stubborn as I am, because we both knew exactly what the other guy meant, and still, both of us stuck to our guns on this issue.

Note: no actual pizzas were hurt in the creation of this post.

***

Derek Carty posted the 50% threshold here:
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/when_is_the_observed_data_half_real_and_half_noise/

(20) Comments • 2011/11/09 • SabermetricsStatistical_Theory
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November 08, 2011
Rates without Sample Size