THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Sabermetric Playoffs

Put your thoughts here on the games you are watching…

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Plate Discipline v2

Derek Carty extends Pizza’s work on Plate Discipline:
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/fantasy/article/introducing-plate-discipline-stats/
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/fantasy/article/plate-discipline-stats-in-action/

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Brian Shouse

In close to 700 PA against both lefties and righties, Shouse (LHP): 0.375 wOBA against RHH and 0.275 wOBA against LHH.  One SD in 700 PA is 20 points.  The typical split is 20 points, so what we have here is 80 points farther than expected, which is 4 SD.

His K/BB ratio (excluding IBB, including HBP) is fairly impressive: 164/30 on one side and 52/58 on the other side.  Guess which side is which.  We can convert this into an ERA fairly easily: 5.4 minus 12*KBBdifferential/PA.  That’s 5.51 against one side and 3.33 against the other side.  The split is very real (K, BB splits are more real than other components).

Even his BABIP is fairly substantial: .328 v .278.  (Sean shows .319, .258; he seems to count ROE as an out, and removes SF from the denominator; even then, I can’t reproduce his numbers.) That’s based on 500 BIP, meaning 1 SD = 20 points.

And yet somehow, he’s faced almost as many RHH as LHH.  This is true of his career, and of the last 3 years.  If you have a .275 from one side and .375 on the other side, and the average reliever is around a .330, and if you give him 50% PA for both sides, you get an overall Shouse of .325.  Shouldn’t there be a better way to leverage such a pitcher?  In Orosco’s last 3 years, he faced 221 LHH and 133 RHH, or 62% LHH.  Couldn’t Shouse have been used to that extent somehow?  Instead of 100 PA against LHH and 100 PA against RHH, then he gets 80 against LHH and 50 against RHH?  If you do that, you get 130 PA of .313 wOBA.  As long as you can find someone better than .346 for the other 70 PA, you come out ahead.

Hmmm… that might be tougher than it looks.  It seems that even with someone with such an enormous split, it may be pretty difficult to get Shouse to pitch less than he does.  The only thing you can possibly do here, to evaluate his usage by his manager, is to go to the gamelogs, and look at his usage, game-by-game.

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Strategic Walks

Good post by Peter:

My preliminary studies have shown that if I define three categories: intentional walk, strategic walk, and non-strategic walk, then I get more accurate results with run values set as .10 for IBB, .27 for SBB and .33 for NSBB with about 25% of the non-intentional walks falling in the SBB category. 

The idea here is accurate, and really represented by win values of the walk.

We can see a more basic version here:
http://tangotiger.net/RE9902event.html
Where we only consider the base/out state (we should also consider inning/score).

On average, the run value of the walk is roughly 10% more extreme than the out, and of the opposite sign.  So, if the run value of the out is -.30 runs, then the run value of the walk would be some +.33 runs.

If we go to the above link, we can see that the run value of the walk with bases empty and less than 2 outs is some 50% higher than the run value of the out.  And with 2 outs, it’s some 10% higher.  So, we can say that a walk in the less than 2 outs, bases empty situation that those are not strategic walks.

The more basic situation is the one with 1b open (runner on 2b) with 1 or 2 outs.  In those cases, we see that the run value of the walk is some 40 to 50% LOWER than the run value of the out.  These we could classify as “strategic” walks, especially if they were given to good hitters.

So, I agree that there are nuances to the run value of the walk, and calling them as Peter is doing is a great way to make the point, and to show which pitchers/batters are using the strategy.  But, overall, the run value of the walk remains what it is.

Monday, August 18, 2008

Man v Machine

Poker bots are about to eliminate crime as a byproduct:

Unlike checkers, the key to poker is to predict whether other players are bluffing. On the Internet (without the possibility of visual cues), computers are probably better at predicting a rival’s hand from his or her past play. But computers are much better at confounding the expectations of their human opponents. Computers can play randomized strategies much better than we can. Our brains are so hardwired to see patterns, it’s devilishly hard for most of us to generate random behavior.

Indeed, take a minute and try to write down a random sequence of 200 heads or tails. If you actually flip a coin that many times, there’s a very large chance (98%) that there will be a run of at least 6 heads or 6 tails in a row. But very few people can bring themselves to produce such runs in trying to be random.

Friday, August 15, 2008

The Game Inside The Game

Love this stuff about Papelbon, Holliday and the Sox coaching staff:

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Situational Hitting and Adam Dunn

Adam Dunn is what WPA/LI was invented for.  In 4500 PA, his wins added over an average hitter, given the base/out inning/score opportunities presented to him was +18 wins.

The most similar player to Adam Dunn in terms of OBP, SLG, and PA is JD Drew.  In his career, Drew is +25 wins.

Three other players with less PA are: Teixeira (+12 situational wins), Bay (+14 wins), and Miguel Cabrera (+20 wins).  If you add up their totals (+46) to Drew’s (+25), and take 30% (to align them to the same number of PA as Dunn), you get +21 wins. 

I think there may be something to the fact that Dunn is not a good situational hitter (or that his skillset doesn’t lend itself to good situational hitting).

He’d definitely be a good case study.

Here is the comparison line, as of today:
+18 situational wins, .247 / .380 / .519 Dunn
+21 situational wins, .290 / .382 / .522 Dunn’s top 4 comps (Tex, JD, Miguel, Bay)… situational wins prorated to Dunn’s PA.

Thursday, August 07, 2008

The Perfect DH rule

A while ago, someone wrote me with what he thought was a good alternative to the current DH rule: make it the home manager’s discretion.  I love it!

We already have two variations of this rule currently in practice in MLB settings:
1. World Series alternate the DH based on the home park
2. Spring Training games have both managers come to an agreement as to DH/noDH

The one being proposed would be somewhat similar in that we expect half the games to have the DH rule in effect.  Plus, it adds great strategy (should we force Ortiz to play the field? do we want a DH if Owings is pitching?).  It has story potential ("We should have forced them to have a DH and put a better fielder at 1B!").  As I see it, no downside.

Furthermore, this should appeal to both sides.  The “yes DH” crowd can easily accept this.  They don’t like the pitcher batting, naturally, but giving it to the home manager’s discretion has great strategy appeal.  The “no DH” crowd should be able to accept this, at least a good portion of them, since they will still see no DH around half the time (which is what they are used to). 

If we accept that in the next 20 years we will never get an “all or nothing” solution, this seems more than ideal.

In the end, it sorts of maintains the status quo, but instead of the demarcation based on something as arbitrary as the league, it becomes a tool for all managers to use.

So.... let’s have at it.  What pros/cons do you see here? 

Note: don’t talk about why you think an all or nothing DH is better and forget all other solutions.  I can point you to a thousand other discussion forums for you to make your opinion known.  In this thread, I’m soliciting opinions on this particular proposal.

Thursday, July 31, 2008

How to approach a pitcher who only gives up groundballs?

Rany says to bunt all the time.  Brad Ziegler looks like a fascinating pitcher to watch.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Brian Bannister, Hardball Times, and FIP

The blogger di tutti bloggi Joe Posnanski (*):

Brian Bannister feels nervous over breakfast. And when Bannister feels nervous, he goes to the numbers. In rough times, he has always found comfort in numbers. “Look at my xFIP,” he is saying as he pulls out a few pages he printed off the Internet site, “The Hardball Times.” He points out his xFIP

(*)If it wasn’t for blogs, I would never have read a Posnanski article.  Because of blogs, I now read too much of Murray Chass.  Equilibrium.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Late-inning fielding replacement

I know I wrote a post on how to figure out if a late-inning substitution, trading offense for defense, makes sense.  From what I remember figuring out, if you are trading one extreme for another extreme, then you should do it in the 9th, maybe in the 8th, and definitely not in the 7th or earlier.

If someone can point me to what I wrote, I’d appreciate it.  I don’t want to bother redoing everything I did.

UPDATE: I’ll just rewrite what I think below:

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Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Highlights and lowlights from the ASG

#1 highlight:  Josh Groban’s singing of GBA.

#1 lowlight: Edinson Volquez’ hat.

It was interesting that with almost everyone wanting the game to end (I assume), the home plate umpire, Cousins, calls the winning run out when he was clearly (at least if you watched the replay) safe by a mile even though the throw beat him.  I guess Cousins was positive that he was out, even though he was wrong.

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Would you EVER walk in the tying run in the bottom of the 9th?

At Baseball Fever, the question on the table is whether you would EVER walk in the tying run in the bottom of the 9th.  My reply:

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Friday, June 27, 2008

Are home teams cheating this year?

So far this year, the home team has won 56.64% of its games.  The last 3 full years (05-07), the home team WP has been 54.2%.  The difference in 1174 games so far in 2008 is 1.65 SD.  The difference may even be less than that because in 2005, while the home team won 53.7% of its games, the home and road team run scoring suggested that the true home team WP was 54.4% (using a basic pythag formula).

This year, the home and road run scoring suggests a true 56.4% home team WP (as opposed to an actual WP of 56.6%), so perhaps we can say that the home team wp is 2% higher than over the previous 3 years.

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Thursday, June 26, 2008

The clocked game of baseball

If you look at all the overtime games in the sports, the most thrilling is NHL playoff hockey.  It combines the two things we love the most: no clock, and sudden death.  Football is close, but it’s very one-sided.  A game could reasonably end with one side never having the ball on offense.  In hockey, each side is basically given 20-seconds to do something, and then you have a turnover (that’s the nature of the game).  Football is about ball-possession, and so, it’s not a sudden death, but a long-winding torture.

But, the tensest I was in watching an overtime hockey game was the 1994 Olympics, where they had shootouts to determine the winner.  It was tense, and dramatic.  While they decided to get rid of the clockless aspect and with it the sudden death, it was still an incredibly tense feeling to see Peter Forsberg skating down all by himself on a breakaway, and making that move.  Before the game, I hated the idea of it.  Once you are part of it, you can’t deny the feelings.  You want to hate the idea, but you are simply enthralled. 

Baseball extra innings is great.  It’s got the same long-winding torture of football, and the clockless aspect, but both sides get a chance at it.  Now, we hate what they did with hockey (and soccer) with the shootout… but we still are captivated by it.  In Europe, they’re trying something: put guys on first and second to start the extra inning, with 1 out.  We know that in a normal situation (bases empty 0 outs), the chance of a scoreless half-inning is 71%.  So, the chance of having a scoreless 10th is around 50%, a scoreless 10th+11th is 25%, and so on.  (We also shouldn’t forget the chance of both teams scoring the same number of runs.) With man on 1b, 2b, 1 out, the scoreless half-inning is still 57%.  For such a drastic rule change to have such little impact, I don’t think it’s worth it.  If you are going to bastardize the game, the payoff better be there.  You want that Brandi Chastain moment here.  I don’t think you’ll get it here. 

You’ve either got to do man on 2B, 0 outs, or men on the corners, 1 out.  I’m not saying this is a good rule.  It may be a bad rule.  But, like shootout hockey, it may be riveting, as much as we continue to hate the idea.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Should a manager sacrifice his team’s WE in order to “teach a player a lesson?”

In the WAS/SEA game tonight, the Mariners, down by 2 runs, has runners on 1st and 2nd and no outs.  Yuni was asked to bunt.  No big deal.  He worked the count to 3-2, and everyone assumed that the bunt was off, as it usually is with a position player at bat and 2 strikes.  Managers know that bunting a position player with 2 strikes is incorrect and rarely do it.

Managers do however, occasionally bunt a position player with 2 strikes, as “punishment” for not getting it done before 2 strikes.  Now, we don’t know whether Yuni missed a sign or not, but the commentators seemed to think that this was a “punishment” bunt.  I agree.  Obviously the M’s are going nowhere, but should a manager be doing this?  Should he be taking his frustration out on the players, at the same time knowingly reducing their chances of winning a game (obviously not by much)?

Defensive Indifference: Strange thing in BOS/CIN game today

In the bottom of the 10th inning in today’s BOS game, CIN was down by 2 runs with 2 outs, with Jolbert Cabrera, a veteran journeyman player, on second base.  With Griffey on base and the shift on, Jolbert easily took third on the next pitch, since no one was playing near third base.

Now, obviously being on third base is no better than being on second in that situation.  In fact, you can make an argument that a foul ball occasionally hits a runner on third in fair territory, so that it is better to be on second, although I don’t think I’ve ever seen that, and it is exceedingly rare (if it has ever happened at all).  Plus, being on second base, you can possibly steal the signs or the location and relay it to the batter, although runners rarely if ever do that anymore (I am not sure why).  On the other hand (that is the last hand, I think), being on second might be a distraction to the batter, although certainly you are not going to be “jockeying” on the basepaths and you certainly don’t need to have any kind of a lead since it doesn’t matter if you score on a hit.

Now, even if he can walk to third on the pitch, which was apparently the case, there is a non-zero chance that you could trip and fall and get thrown out.  I found it curious that a guy who has been playing baseball for almost 30 years would do that (take third).

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Just put me on TV for one game (that’s all I would last anyway)…

Bob Brenley, former player, former catcher (supposedly one of the “smartest” players on the field), former manager, long time analyst and announcer:

Bottom of the seventh in Cub game, 1 out with runners on 1st and 3rd, Lee hits a dribbler between the pitcher and the third baseman.  No reason to think it is going to be a base hit, but obviously it is not going to be a DP.  Soriano holds at 3rd and the pitcher throws to first as he is supposed to, of course (that is his only play).

Brenley calmly says, “Soriano held at third as he is supposed to.  The only time he is supposed to run is on an obvious double play ball.  You don’t want to get thrown out at home in that situation.”

Huh?  Is that what he taught his players when he was manager?  Is that what his coaches and managers taught him when he played?  And I have never played the game, right?

In case anyone does not know what I am talking about, you go on any ground ball because there is always a chance that you will make it at home, since it is a tag play, and if you get thrown out, there are runners on 1st and 2nd and 2 out, which is not a whole lot different than 2nd and 3rd with 2 out (.567 RE to .433).  Not to mention that the Cubs were down by 1 run, which makes it even more imperative to try and score the run before 2 outs.

Anyway, the break even point, in RE, is 9%.  IOW, if you go on the ground ball and they throw home, you only need to be safe 9% of the time and the RE is exactly the same as if you stay at third and the runner gets thrown out at first.  And of course, some of the time on a dribbler like that, they will not throw home and will go to first anyway.  So when they do throw home, the BE point is going to be even less than that.  Throw in the fact that you are down by a run in the 7th inning, and the BE point is even less than that!

And you think managers know what they are doing on complex issues?  They can’t even get a basic play right that a Little League coach would or at least should know!

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Rebutting MGL’s Walk article

By Peter Jensen

Friday, May 23, 2008

Taking on 3-1: What are they thinking?

In the Phillies, Astros game today, the Phillies were down 1 run with 2 outs and runners on second and third in the top of the 9th.  Victorino, a lefty, was at the plate, and Valverde, the Stros closer, was on the mound.  The count went to 3-0 and then 3-1 and then Victorino popped out on the 3-2 count.  The 3-0 and 3-1 pitches were 92 and 93 mph fastballs right down the middle (the 3-1 pitch was about knee high, middle of the plate).  Valverde can throw up to 97.  It looked like Victorino was taking on 3-0 and 3-1 (we can’t be sure), and in fact, the announcers casually remarked that “he was taking on 3-0 and 3-1,” as if that were the most natural thing in the world.

At least one of the announcers played ball professionally, I assume. Now, maybe it is correct to take the 3-0 pitch (I am not even sure about that), but surely it can’t be correct to take the 3-1 pitch in that situation!  Don’t baseball players, managers, coaches, and announcers (former players) know that?