THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Vote: Most Outstanding Players of 2008

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

The worst hitting season of all-time?

It seems that this year’s Tony Pena, Jr is in the discussion.

His Situational Wins (aka WPA/LI) is -2.45 in only 235 PA, making it a rate of -7.3 wins per 162G.  However, he was super clutch (for him), Ortiz-like.  On Aug 10, in extra innings, he got an RBI single.  That was his most high-leveraged at bat.  In his next most high-leverage situation he faced, he got another RBI single on opening day.  On June 12, in a tie game in late innings, he scored on a wild pitch.  (Ok, that may have been lucky.) Anyway, the point is that with the game on the line, he went from being one of the worst hitters in the entire history of baseball, to simply being one of the worst hitters in baseball this year.

That’d be like someone who couldn’t score at a whorehouse, to becoming someone who managed to be able to speak to the girl next door.  If that isn’t clutch, I don’t know what is.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Chipper Delgado

Through June 30, Chipper Jones after 71 games had this line:
BA OBA Slug%
.394 .485 .630
He seemed a shoe-in for MVP. From July 1, Delgado after 73 games is:
BA OBA Slug%
.320 .403 .629

Combined, this perfect hitter after 140 games: .355/.443/.630, with 39 HR, 102 R, and 111 RBI.

Albert Pujols after 142 games: .348 / .453 / .631, with 34 HR, 94 R, 106 RBI.

Albert Pujols is the same as Chipper’s incredible first half AND Delgado’s revitalized 2nd half.

Perhaps Delgado or Manny winning MVP will be the catharsis we need for us to finally ignore BBWAA’s voting on the matter.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Manny being Pujols

With all the Manny and Delgado MVP talk, I wanted to do something really easy: look at the hot streaks of all the hitters and see how Manny really compares.  Luckily for me, this has already been done by William Burke and Jay Jaffe at Baseball Prospectus.  Great job guys!

Specifically, what Manny has done with the Dodgers was matched, and easily surpassed, by Pujols and Berkman earlier in the year.  If you take out those 180 PA from Manny, Pujols, and Berkman (let’s say they are all a wash, even though Manny’s streak is the worst of the three), what do you get?

Manny: zero PA.  Zero everything, naturally.
Pujols: 416 PA, .450 OBP.  !!!  That is, Pujols currently has a .461 OBP.  If you take out his best stretch of play, when he had a .492 OBP, you are still left with a .450 OBP!  That settles the argument right there, doesn’t it?  What is more valuable to his NL team: Manny being in Boston, or Pujols having a .450 OBP?

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

The Tiered Hall of Fame Plaque Room

Patriot highlights something that we’ve discussed in the past (I think back at Fanhome) about a tiered (Pyramidial) Hall of Fame (Plaque Room).  I don’t remember who originated the idea, but I like it.  The good thing is that if every you think that there are too many players in the Plaque Room, you add another tier to the Pyramid, and adjust all the numbers.  Say we want an Inner Circle Top of Pyramid Plaque Room of 25 players.  And you want a Penultimate Level of say 50 players.  And then a third from the top of 100 players.  And a bottom level of 200 players.  You can vote Tim Raines into the first level (everyone starts at the first level), and as Patriot noted, leave that for the writers to do.  You can even lower the acceptance level to 50%.  Or, as I like to do, ask the writers to vote “Yes, No, Ask me next year”, so that a Dwight Evans can continue to be on the ballot.  Once he’s in, you can have another committee decide if in one year the player can go to the second level.  And in 3 years if they can go to the third level.  And 5 years later if he can reach the pinnacle.  And if the pinnacle gets too big (say now pushing 30 players), create a fifth level, and move players up as appropriate.

As Patriot noted, whatever we do or so is irrelevant since we will never affect change here.  That position is not important for our purposes for discussion purposes.  Discussion as in discuss, not as in “this s-cks because...”.  You can take those posts elsewhere.  This thread is for classroom discussion purposes.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Best performances of 2008, as of today

Chone checks in.

And in the comments section, he reminds us that ARod has not been performing with the game on the line as he should.  In fact, as of today, ARod will once again win the Choker of the Year.  Don’t you love a stat that truly reflects the opinion of the fans?

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Observed Performance Inferring True Talent (OPITT)

I talked about this at length in the Edgar thread, so let me reserve this thread for more generic and technical arguments and presentation.

Let’s say you have someone who has a .380(*) career wOBA in 10,400 PA (16 seasons of 650 PA).  How many standard deviations (SD) is he from the league mean of .340?  Answer: 8.0

(*)For those new around here, a .380 wOBA is the same thing as a .380 OBP, with a corresponding profile of SLG, something like .475 or so.

A guy with a .380 wOBA in 10,400 PA is roughly +36 wins above average (WAA) and 69 wins above replacement (WAR).  This is around the discussion level of someone being a hall of famer.

Now, suppose someone has a .420 wOBA.  How many seasons does he have to play in order for us to say that he is 8 standard deviations from the league mean of 8.0?  Answer: 4 seasons.  That gives him a WAR of 26 wins and WAA of 18 seasons.

And a wOBA of .460?  A little under 2 seasons.  And a wOBA of .500?  Just one season, with a 11 WAR and +9 WAA.  That is a Bonds-like or Pujols-like season at their best.

So, is that enough?  Is it enough to say that your performance is 8 standard deviations from the league mean, in order for your Observed performance to infer great talent?

I don’t know.

Now, let’s try asking: how far away are you from a .300 wOBA level, which is right close to replacement level.  Here’s how that looks:

Read More

Friday, August 01, 2008

Edgar

My quick Edgar post:

Read More

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Jose Vidro: the race is on

I asked Mariner fans (.599) and non-Mariner fans (.666) what they forecasted in OPS for Vidro the rest of the way.  Marcel also chimed in with a .707.  Check in at Baseball Musings as we track his development, starting from July 14, 2008 to the end of the season, and see who provides the most insight.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Willie Bloomquist on the cusp of a MLB record

Do you know who Sammy Strang is?  Yeah, me neither.  However, in 1908, he had 23 walks without an extrabase hit.  Willie Bloomquist is sitting there with 17 walks (including one intentional!!).  The dude is close.  Real close.

You guys know how much I like the guy.  He is the prototypical replacement-level player.  I would even say we should change the name of Replacement Level to Bloomquist or Willie.  It’s not WAR, but WAB or WOW (wins over willie). 

It would be so sweet if he were to do the one thing that he was perfectly designed to do.  We’re pulling for you Willie!

I can’t believe a GM would prefer seeing his signature on the same page as this guy, instead of Bonds.  It’s like in Little League, where everyone gets to play, and it doesn’t matter who wins.  “Yay Willie!  Get a double!  We’re rooting for you!  We don’t care if we win, as long as we have fun!  Uhh… we’re not having fun in Seattle are we?  So… uh… why can’t we sign Bonds for charity money?… Uh… Hurry up already Willie.  Can you believe we’re paying Willie more than we’d be paying Bonds?  Boy, I sure hate the thought of winning more games.”

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

This time it (still doesn’t) counts

I abhor All-Star game articles, but I can get behind one that tries to abolish the abomination of “home field advantage”, especially since the advantage only happens in Game 7, and there hasn’t even been a Game 7 since the Seligula rule came into effect.

The article was written last year, but it can get reposted every year in place of the one thousand other articles we see about the All-Star game.  Since 1969, one-third of the games have gone 7, with the last one being 2002, the year before “this time it counts”.

Which reminds me, I would prefer the Olympic-style playoffs: when you get down to the final four, make the #1 seed in the NL play the #2 seed in the AL and vice versa.  Since the NL is the inferior league for a few years now, it’s a joke to continue to treat them as equals.  The World Cup invites more teams in Europe than from North America, just as NCAA doesn’t give equal representation.  Better leagues get more teams, or get their teams a better chance.

It’s a joke when the climactic games are the LCS and not the World Series.

Monday, June 16, 2008

DH in the Hall of Fame

I give all DH -2 wins per 162G (700PA) for their “position+fielding”.  That is the equivalent of a bad fielding 1B.  In fact, I put a floor of -2 per 162G for all players for their pos+fielding.

I also give DH a bonus of +0.5 wins per 700PA, for those PA as a DH, in deference to Andy’s findings in The Book for a DH penalty.

Or, if that was too complicated, DH are compared to a tinge below average hitters, while the rest of the players are compared to replacement-level players.  The “replacement-level” DH is, basically, a guy who is an average hitter, but can’t field at all.

IIRC, Hall of Famers are around +60 wins above replacement playerand above.  So, for a full-time DH to make it, he’d have to be around +50 wins above average hitter.  Edgar just slides above that line.  Edgar also had the misfortune of getting his 1000th PA when he was 28 years old.  That makes him an even older callup than Ryan Howard if you can believe it.  Anyway, Edgar should make it in. 

Seeing how long Raines will have to take, I don’t expect the Holy Writers to be on top of this one either.  They’ll have to investigate and study this, and it will take years for their non-dissertations to finally reach public consumption.

The Greatest Play Ever

Joe Posnanski has his criteria:

• in a hugely important game
  
• more than brilliant … it has to be utterly unrepeatable.
  
• decide the game
  

His focus was on football, to which these three criteria make the most sense.  Anyway, in my lifetime for MLB, and sticking to the above rules, I guess it would be Kirk Gibson v Eck.  But baseball is really about the build-up of drama, not that single event that really marks football.  In basketball these rules wouldn’t even make sense.  In hockey, these rules would only make sense in an OT game, and the goalie can never win here.

What rules can you make up for baseball?  First, I’d call it the Greatest Moment ever, since that’s what baseball is about, not a single play.  The first criteria is fine, and the third criteria would be “impact the game hugely” (basically, a high WPA play, or a series of such plays).  The second criteria would be “I don’t believe what I just saw”.  Kibson/Eck still qualify, but now you have the 8th inning of Cubs/Marlins and Pedro/Little game added in (again, in my lifetime).  Carlton Fisk, but that was just a bit before my time.  9th inning of 1986 Game 6.

In hockey, I’d keep the first criteria, and the new second criteria ("I don’t believe what I just saw") and the third criteria would be ("back-and-forth action, where each team was about to take a huge lead or win the game; or a play that you can relive knowing that you’ll never see such a play again").  So, the Rangers/Islanders Game 5 would be one such game (1984).  The Gretzky/Lemieux Canada Cup 1987 winning goal.  I’m not happy with that third criteria, since it lets you bring in the 1972 Summit Series, but not the 1980 Miracle on Ice.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

The Most (in)Complete Hitter in Baseball is…

Tony Pena.  On the other hand, the Fans and UZR are in agreement with his fielding (a shade above average).  If he gets 262 PA more PA this year, he will have 1000 career PA in MLB.  That may be enough for him to succeed Willie Bloomquist as the worst player under 30 in MLB, who was given way too much chance to prove the point.

Good and bad pitchers’ hitting

Nate takes a look at everyone’s favorite topic. 

If Nate is out there, can you add a blog post describing the method?  I’m guessing you did component regression.  How much did each component regress?  Generally speaking, I agree with all his points.

I remember putting out a list of worst hitting pitchers, and, IIRC, I had Ben Sheets as worst hitting pitcher in the league.  Actually, let me see… Of pitchers born since 1960, I’ve got Harang as the worst (Nate has him as #2), Davis as #2 (Nate has him #3), Clark #4, Dempster, then Sheets.  Don’t know why he has Hill so bad… I’ll have to look into him.  Gorze is also bad.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Please explain: Kevin Jarvis

Of all pitchers born since Bob Feller’s birth year, 1918, and allowed to accumulate 500 innings, Kevin Jarvis is probably the worst pitcher in baseball out of those 980 pitchers.  And he stuck around for 780 innings.  There’s only five pitchers that you can shake your head as to how they could have been allowed to accumulate that many chances.  But Jarvis stands out because in this day and age of information, what more did we need to know?

So, explain to me how Kevin Jarvis survived as long as he did while posting a worse than average ERA in every single one of his years.  And, Jarvis, the perfect example of a below-replacement level pitcher, managed to earn 10 million dollars in the process.  That is called winning the lottery.

Friday, March 28, 2008

Blackjack

Phil looks at James’ targetting (subscription required) phenomena.  What he noticed was not so much the “getting to 20”, but rather the letdown in going for 21.  And not by the pitcher, but by the team. Fascinating, and points to the genius of Bill James: (a) Have a cool idea, (b) write extremely well about it, (c) come up with some reasonable numbers, (d) leave an honest mess, and (e) end up having a really smart guy like Phil Birnbaum to tidy it up with great analysis, for free.

By the way, Jeff Ma of ProTrade fame, had his story told in Bring Down The House a few years ago, and was fictionalized in the new movie 21, starring Kevin Spacey:

In an recent interview, BDTH writer Ben Mezrich said Jeff Ma and one of the movie producers were playing Blackjack at a Las Vegas casino “The Playboy Club”, and after a few rounds of hands 3 big security guards told Jeff he couldn’t play there. Ma was using his real name and casino security said when they typed his name into their computer “bells and whistlers practically started flashing in the security room”.

Lots of great stuff in that link.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Pre-Eulogy to now-ex HOF head Dale Petroskey

Eric Enders

Friday, March 21, 2008

2007 NL MVP

I don’t particularly care about who won, just the process in trying to determine it.  So, looking at Chris’ article on BTF and some of the responses, this is what I think:

Read More

Monday, January 14, 2008

The Best Current Players Not in the Hall of Fame

The Hall of Merit does one thing I like: force a specific number of players elected (Elect2 or Elect3, depending on some alternating scheme).  Anyway, there are 12 players from this generation that were voted into the Hall of Merit, but still await the fate of the Holy Writers Who Use Numbers But Don’t Judge Players By The Numbers Of North America (HWWUNBDJPBTNONA).  Dewey Evans is probably the one player that has received the biggest shaft of them all.