THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Sabermetric Moves of the 2009 Pre-Season

Here we go again…

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

What would happen if the shootout period was 10 minutes, not 5?

This is going to be a math-heavy post.  Be forewarned.

Java Geek answers it most correctly, in this blog entry by James Mirtle, with data supplied by Gabriel Desjardins.  Gabe says that the number of goals scored in OT (4-on-4 hockey) is 7.14 per 3600 seconds, and that it’s fairly uniform.  In these kind of scenarios, it’s always best to answer the question: what are the chances of it NOT happening.  The chance of not scoring in each second is 1 minus 7.14/3600 (or .998).  If you have a 5-minute OT (300 seconds), then you take that .998 figure we just got, raise it to the power of 300, and that tells you the chance of the game still being tied.  That figure is 55% (meaning 45% of the time you have a winner).  If it was a 10-minute OT (600 seconds), then you do the same thing, but raise to the power of 600, not 300.  That figure is 30%, meaning that 70% of the time, you have a winner.

Another way would be to realize that with 62 goals and 54 shootouts in the 5-minute OT, then this means that you were tied 54 out of 116 times, or 47% of the time.  If you had a 10-minute OT, you square that number (that is, if the chance of not scoring per 5 minutes is 47%, then the chance of not scoring per 10 minutes is .47*.47), and you get 22%.  So, 78% of the time, you have a winner.

The short of it is, that if you double the amount of overtime, then you chop in half the chance of going into a shooutout.  It works out this clean, because per 5 minutes of OT, half the time the game ends still tied.

How to calculate the area of a baseball field

Suppose it’s 330 down the line, 375 in the gap, and 405 to CF, and the fence is smooth.  What’s the area of the baseball field?  I come up with a figure close to presuming one-fourth of circle of radius 370.  Can someone with knowledge walk me through the correct answer?

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

The Holy Writers strike again!

I don’t know what’s more dangerous: leaving children alone on a deserted island, or giving sports writers the keys to the pearly gates.

Here’s Grant Wahl, the Lord of the Ties, talking about resetting history, ala Quantum Leap:

But over the years SI has been proud to serve as the conscience of sport, and taking a stand against McGwire and Sosa… would be taking a stand against the steroid era in baseball, to say nothing of the performance-enhancing drug era in all of sports.

And then he goes off and talks about Zidane not being a good enough recipient because of a red card (which didn’t stop him from being named the tournament player of the year, with full knowledge of that red card).  And also implicates the NHL, even though hundreds of NHLers, in the 1998, 2002, and 2006 Olympics passed every steroids drug test (except for one, who failed during camp and never made the squad). 

Writers, please, don’t show us your halo.

RARP v VORP, take 2

Three months ago, I did a comparison of RARP and VORP.  I presented my findings to Clay, and he said he was going to make at least one change (as it relates to pitchers-as-hitters).  I don’t know if he did any other changes, yet.  (As I right these words, I haven’t looked at the data.) You can click on the above link to get all the particulars.  I made no changes to everything I’m about to analyze, other than to update the data.

Let’s get on with it:

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Estimating BABIP

Good stuff.  Unfortunately, it is presented as a black box, but I like all the different components that were presented.

Monday, December 01, 2008

What was Pedro worth?

In his 4 year with the Mets, Pedro was worth around 9 WAR (wins above replacement). 

He was +2.7 WAA (wins above average) according to WPA, and +3.2 according to WPA/LI.  An average pitcher, given Pedro’s 487 innings for those 4 years would be +6 WAR.  Pedro was 3 wins above this level, making him a 9 WAR pitcher.

If you start him at 3 WAR in 2005, and decrease him by 0.5 WAR each year, that totals 9 WAR from 2005-2008.  Giving dollars per win of 3.3 in 2005, and increasing by 10% every year, the total comes out to 35MM.

So, that’s pretty much what Pedro produced for the Mets: 35MM of performance, compared to the 53MM he was paid.  Unless they managed to get insurance to cover some of that (and it’s very possible that it did), then Pedro was overpaid by 18MM.

Get Rice in the Hall already

Best Five Offensive Seasons According to:
- WPA (denominated in Wins)
- SitW (Situational Wins, aka WPA/LI)
- wOBA (simple average)
- WiSh (Batting Win Shares)

Raines’s wOBA excludes 1981.

For someone whose calling card is his peak offensive play, Rice doesn’t compare to Tim Raines.  He’s between Dewey and Dawson in terms of batting peak.

Dawson and Dewey’s calling card (and so far, it’s been a tough sell to the Hall voters on Dawson and gone with Dewey) includes their Gold Glove defense and longevity, two things Rice doesn’t even have.

I’m pulling for Rice, if only for the reason that it makes it easier to justify Hawk and Rock.  For Dewey, all I can say is that he deserves it as much as Dawson, and much more than Rice does.

Michael Farber

At this point last year, Scott Long put out a piece intended to discuss the link between performance and cocaine, and he used Tim Raines as his jumping off point.  Unfortunately for Scott, he wasn’t up on his history, especially when he said: 

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The 3-0 count

I love all articles on the 3-0 count because the number of choices to the pitcher and batter are very limited, while the payoffs are more apparent.  Here’s John Walsh:

I re-did the above, this time only considering cases when first base was occupied. The thinking there is that with first base occupied, the pitcher is much less likely to pitch around a batter. The data show that there was no difference with a runner on first; the ball percentage was still 35 percent.

Later John says using PITCHf/x:

What I’ve done is take all 3-0 pitches, and thrown away anything that is not classified as a fastball. I figure if a pitcher is throwing something other than the fastball, he’s probably afraid the batter might swing on 3-0 and he’s unlikely to be aiming down the middle.

Perhaps John can merge the two, and look at situations where 1B is not open AND the pitch is a fastball. 

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Question for your Fantasyers

How many hitters and pitchers are drafted in a typical league (AL, NL, and/or mixed)?

“Why in my day…”

It would seem that the genetic and mental makeup of all athletes has improved in all sports, except for a MLB pitcher.  You don’t hear the bullsh!t in the NHL about how players today are not better, stronger, or faster than of yesteryear.  While clearly some stars of the past like Gordie Howe and Rocket Richard would be stars today because of their toughness, no one is suggesting that stars today would be laid to waste fifty years ago.  Does anyone say that star players in the NBA or NFL would not have been tough enough or good enough to play in the past?  Would we say that star hitters today would not be star hitters in the past?  No, no one says this.

But pitchers?  All of a sudden…

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The History of the wOBA, part 1

Why does wOBA exist?

Here’s an extremely long post that hopefully will answer all your questions.  And if it doesn’t, well, I guess that’s why I called this thread “part 1”.

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Fans Scouting Report 2008 - Formatted results

Here you go.  Balloting is still opened.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Manny Acta says the words “PITCHf/x”

It’s true:

SB: How much, if at all, have you used pitch f/x thus far?
MA: I’m still learning. I think it’s going to be a huge part of scouting, especially when it matures and is 100% accurate, and is integrated in the minor leagues and even in college. There are so many things you can learn that we could never know for sure. How good is this guy’s slider, really? Why is it good? All of the conventional wisdom in scouting will be put to the test, and you’ll see a whole new world in terms of data and information.

Ah, so we meet again

Cool article by Pizza.  Here are my comments:

My recommended method is what Pizza is doing (Odds Ratio).  As Pizza said, in the “something better than nothing” category, you can use the differential method.

Since we know that there is an in-game advantage for the pitcher the first time meeting, it is not a surprise that the first time they meet ever happens to also match the fist time meeting in any game.

So, I’d like to see a control for the meeting within game, and for career.  That is, if you look at the 23rd time meeting in a career, and it was the 1st, 2nd or 3rd time meeting in a particular game, how does the graph look?  Is the function almost entirely an in-game effect?

Finally, sample size almost certainly accounts for the up-and-down at the end of your graph.  Perhaps you can show what the +/- 2 SD range is, based on the binomial, for the number of PAs you have at each level.

Best MopUp guy in 2008

Buddy Carlyle of the Braves.  His LI is 0.75, meaning that this guy is used in low-leverage situations quite a bit.  He had, for him, a great season.  Compared to everyone else, he had a pretty good season.  For his career, he’s -1.53 wins, which, per 9 innings is -.060 wins (i.e., .440 win%).

64% of his career PA have been as a starter.  So, replacement level would be 64% of .390 plus 36% of .480 (it would be .370 and .460 if in the AL) gives him .422.  So far, including his great 2008 season, he’s performed at a bit above replacement level.

Monday, November 24, 2008

wOBA year-by-year calculations

Here is the full specs for calculating wOBA for each season, based on the database from the Baseball Databank:

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Friday, November 21, 2008

The New Triple Crown

Matt asks:

...It got me to thinking what would a SABRmetrician’s Triple Crown be?

Sticking with basic stats, rather than stuff like Runs Participated In (R+RBI-HR) or OPS (OBP+SLG), what are the three stats you want?  The current triple crown has two counting stats and one rate stat.  Going to two rate stats (OBP, SLG) would leave room for just one counting stat.  Which one could that be?  Alternatively, if you select just one rate stat (OBP), that would mean you’d want at least HR and ... which one?

For pitchers, it’s Wins, K, and ERA.  ERA is a given.  While K minus BB is preferred, that would be mixing.  So, K it is.  Last one, I think, is another rate stat: BB/IP.

What say you?

Outcomes by pitch count

Nice.

However, more important than the “at” pitch count is the “through” pitch count.  The “at” pitch count tells you what the guy did at that count, if you knew the PA ended there.  So, for example, is it any surprise that at the starting count of 3-0 (shown as ending count of 4-0 in the linked chart), and you knew the pitcher made just one more pitch to end the PA, that almost all the PA were walks?  The “through” count tells you that starting at 3-0, this guy walked say 40 times, but he also went to 3-1 xx number of times.  And then, in those xx times, he yada yada yada.  That’s why I prefer looking at the “through” pitch counts, shown as “after” on baseball-reference.

Paraphrasing Homer’s love for donuts.... “Mmmmm… is there anything b-r.com can’t do?”