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Tuesday, August 19, 2008
It’s the 6th Annual Fans’ Scouting Report.
Every year, I get a jump in participation, from the first year where I had close to 500 ballots, to last year where it exceeded 2000 ballots. If you’ve enjoyed my blog, appreciated my work, or somehow wondered what you could do in return, this is it. All I ask from you is 5-10 minutes of your time, and we’ll call it even. And, if you have a blog, please, spread the word.
I am extremely grateful to all those who take a few minutes out of their lives to share their observations with the rest of the fans. Your contributions exceed whatever you think it may be worth. As we continue to build upon the past reports, this data now begins to take on historical value.
I know only of gushing reports about the fielding of Paul Blair. Mickey Stanley sounds like some cross between Darin Erstad and Endy Chavez. That is based on the writings of the generation that preceded me. In my generation, I can only attest to the fielding prowess of Gary Pettis. The new generation knows as little about Pettis, as I know of Blair and Stanley. When the next generation comes along, I want to be able to point them to the Fans Scouting Report as the contemporaneous view of the fielding talents of Ichiro and Rolen. And Manny and Dunn. We can breathe life into their fielding accomplishments.
Thank you for your invaluable time.
Tom
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Thursday, September 04, 2008
Non-sports post. Enter at your peril, avoid at your pleasure.
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Comments • 2008/09/05
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Blogging
The most important rule change ever implemented in the history of sports is when baseball allowed instant replay on HR calls. Now that we’ve had our taste of the first one, perhaps now all our phony outrage over the change will go away. I hope the phony outrage slippery-slope arguments will go away too.
It was and is no big deal in the NHL, and they review every single goal (6000+), though some are more obvious than the others. I blame Field of Dreams. I love that movie, but g-dd-mn it, it has reinforced this romantic notion among some fans that their spouses wish they would heap on them from time to time. These baseball romanticists will agree to dissolve a contract-for-life made of love and give up half their assets more readily than to accept any intrusions into their virgin baseball game.
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Comments • 2008/09/05
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Blogging
Yet another mailing it in article about sports athletes making too much money prompting another mailing it in blog post (mine).
Yes, yes, we get it. If a sportswriter could play baseball at such a high level that millions of people would willingly pay to see him, and thousands of companies would fight over each other to sponsor him and his team, said sportswriter would take the equivalent of what a teacher makes, and let the owner take the rest of the money. If we was told that he had to play in Cleveland, even if he really wanted to play in San Diego, well, he would do what’s right for the country and play in Cleveland. It is no surprise that we have such a moral compass in our sportswriters that we’ve given them the task of being the Holy Voters to determine permanent enshrinement in the Hallowed Hall of Heaven.
Really? I mean… really? I see this all the time, in every facet of life. You walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, and guess what: you are no better than that person. Spare us your moral indignation. You are a schlub, just like the rest of us.
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Comments • 2008/09/04
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Blogging
One of my favorite writers, now available at Hardball Times. I suspect there are lots of people who wish they were non-tall, non-white, non-blonde after that.
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Comments • 2008/09/05
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Blogging
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
More kudos to BPro for rolling out comments on their articles. You must be a subscriber to post, but anyone can read them. Here’s Dave Pease introducing it.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
I’ve had a very interesting email discussion with Clay, which I will reproduce here. The quoted parts are him. I also have to say it was very pleasant, as are all my discussions with him. He certainly seems willing to make corrections where needed, and offer alternate solutions.
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I have received 9 Scouting Report ballots from a single IP address, which is owned by TW Telecom based in Colorado. All of the ballots resulted in no data being transferred over. These are the only ballots affected in the 1300+ I currently have. That’s more than a coincidence.
If your service provider is TW Telecom, please send me an email at tom~tangotiger~net (replacing the ~ with the appropriate character) so we can test this.
Thanks, Tom
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Non-sports post.
Back in the day when TV actually had more impact than it has now, one of the really good shows was Taxi. Go to the 1:10 mark and watch my favorite Jim moment.
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Comments • 2008/08/31
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Blogging
Friday, August 29, 2008
BP has two measures that do similar things. One is called VORP, by Keith Woolner, and another is called RARP, by Clay Davenport. They both exist because BP was allowing its analysts to develop their own metrics, which is a good thing. According to BP’s glossary, VORP is “The number of runs contributed beyond what a replacement-level player at the same position would contribute if given the same percentage of team plate appearances” and RARP is “A statistic that compares a hitter’s Equivalent Run total to that of a replacement-level player who makes the same number of outs and plays the same position”.
RARP data. VORP data.
First, a big thanks to BP for making the data so accessible. And, they are pretty good on name matches, making my life alot easier. There were only some 40 or so names out of 912 that I had to match manually.
The total VORP, as of today, is 4436 runs. And for RARP, it is 4735 runs. This is based on around 154650 PA, which means that per 700 PA, we have this:
VORP: +20.0 runs
RARP: +21.4 runs
As you can see, both have a very similar replacement baseline. Indeed, this is a very common baseline. MGL uses +19.4 runs, and I use (roughly) +19.8 runs.
The question is if either measure shows much difference. This is the 10 guys that VORP likes more than RARP:
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Colin looks like he’s going to do what I’ve been meaning to do for years, and what others have been asking for a long time: look at run creation at the inning level, so that we can get far more extreme environments than simply looking at seasonal data or even game-level data. The article I am linking to is a preamble to his work next week. I’m looking forward to seeing the results.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Great job by Clay in going through a list of the best minor-leaguers over 30. He concludes that the best nonpitchers would score 3.7 runs per game, and the pitchers would allow 5.0 runs per game (and when you include the slightly below average fielding, all the way up to 5.2 runs per game). That works out to a .350 win%.
The best team of players who have no hope of playing in MLB would win 35% of the time. Most analysts have argued that the number is somewhere around the 27% to 35% level. Clay’s number here is a bit on the high-end, but certainly believable. I would not be surprised that the players have a selection bias and probably not enough regression, and so, we can see that perhaps they would really score 3.5 runs per game and allow 5.5 runs per game. That would imply a .300 win%.
Clay’s WARP however presumes a 25-win level for a replacement level team, or a .154 win%. I hope that Clay may have convinced himself that WARP needs to rethink its position about replacement level, and join the rest of us. A guy who puts in as much effort and thought in doing the work he does to distribute the work to as many people as he does deserves our respect. There is a sizable community that takes this WARP stuff seriously, and hopefully Clay can recognize that.
UPDATE: For those who want more of my takedown of WARP, you can read about it here.
UPDATE2: And here.
I’ve always found it weird the way MLB deals with potential draft picks. There is supposed to be no contact regarding contract negotiations between team and player until the player is actually drafted. Yet reading Moneyball, it seems that this rule is blatantly ignored. The slotting by the commissioner’s office seems inappropriate. So, now they extend the deadline by a couple of hours, and finally the union steps in? Here’s their statement.
Isn’t it really weird as well that MLB.com hosts MLBPA press releases? It’s great that MLB.com can act at arm’s length from MLB, when it deals with MLBPA. Still, kind of strange that MLBPA’s entire site is hosted by MLB.com.
Lots of people are doing setups of PITCHf/x, and some are sharing them. Here’s another from Dan Turkenkopf.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Easy. If you always had this rule in place, would you ever go back to the original rule?
Ask NHL fans if they would like to abolish reviews on goals. Of course the review rule on HR is needed. Once it’s in place, twenty years from now, the clear majority will not say “get rid of the review rule”.
The DH is another matter. Clearly, it’s not working. Has there been any change in rules in baseball that after 35+ years, it still has not been accepted by the clear majority, or at least reviled by the vocal minority? That’s why I support the “home manager” discretion of whether to have DH or not. You will always have that vocal minority, but at least this way, you are reducing them to a tiny minority, like the tiny minority that prefers things simple in the good ole days (that never were other than in selective memory).
Would you go back to a time where you have 4 teams make the playoffs, or 2 teams? The wild card is a good rule for a 30-team league, if you are going to have playoffs.
If you limited mid-inning relief changes in some form (say by making it a 1-0 count count when the 2nd mid-inning reliever comes into the game at any point not just the same inning, 2-0 the third time, and 3-0 the fourth and subsequent times) say in 1972, would we today say “man, I wish they would remove the disincentive, so we can have more mid-inning relievers come into the game”? No, certainly not. No one would say that. So, this makes this a great rule.
What about stopping a regular season game after 12 innings (tie), or going to Olympic-style OT in 1976? Would the fan complain, and want the game to be prolonged? Of course not, since most fans actually leave the ballpark already. They have already voted with their feet that they do NOT want to see games that go on too long (in the regular season). So, some sort of accelerated end to a ball game would be a good rule.
But, MLB is unique in that they think they need to bend over to the vocal minority that has seen Field of Dreams once too often. The common man will break a lifetime contract of love with his spouse and turn over 50% of his assets before agreeing to prevent runners from bowling over a catcher.
Before you complain about proposed rule changes, or what I’ve said here, think first and ask yourself the question: “If we always had this rule in place, would I ever go back to the original rule?”
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
I’ll be penning another article for the 2009 Hardball Times Annual. I’ve started and stopped research on a couple of things, because I’m not satisfied they are (going to be) strong enough for an annual publication. Other things on my todo would simply be too long to research, or be too numbers-intensive, or “boring” to be good.
The WOWY articles I wrote last year I was very happy with, since they used numbers to tell the story, more than it being about the numbers. Though the numbers were the final selling point that you couldn’t disagree with.
So, what good oomph-type of research would you like to see. Preferably, it would make use of the PBP data, maybe even pitch-by-pitch (but not location/pitch type).
Give me some ideas…
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Comments • 2008/08/29
Goalies always have the best stories. I wonder how often a 13-yr old scrimmages with professionals?
And 19-yr olds that burnout from playing hockey?
It is something the greatest player in history, Wayne Gretzky, talked about repeatedly: How teenagers should be exposed to many different sports as they develop, and that the answer sometimes was to do less sport-specific training in order to develop all-round athleticism and maintain a healthy love of the sport in which their primary abilities lie.
Fun, something else Gretzky stressed, generally doesn’t get mentioned nearly enough these days, either.
Is Google Books a good thing or a bad thing? The 2008 Hardball Times Annual has limited preview for anyone with a google account. As luck would have it, both of my With or Without You articles are available for preview, in their entirety (p.140-152). So, sit down and enjoy. If after reading that, you don’t agree that Jeter is a below-average fielder, then please explain. But, you must read the article first.
The two best articles in that book don’t have the same benefit. Walsh’s article only has the first page (p.165), while Greg Rybarczyk’s has parts of his article in it, including some great work on Torii Hunter and Andruw Jones (p.176-180, minus 177).
If you click at the Amazon link at the top of this page, you will see that The Book is now part of the “Search Inside” feature of Amazon. As long as you have an Amazon account, you can search through The Book, without even buying it! So, for any of you stragglers wondering about it, but did not want to buy it, you should be able to read several dozen pages from your computer.
As usual, even if you do not intend to buy The Book, make all your Amazon purchases via the link at the top of this page. We get a small referral fee directly from Amazon for any Amazon purchase you make via that link (at no cost to you). We don’t make much, just enough to cover our annual expenses.
Anyway, thanks to everyone for your support. The Book is still the #2 baseball book in their stats category. And this is against super heavyweights like ESPN/Palmer, Bill James, and Baseball Prospectus. And, we have no promotional muscle to speak of. We’re like My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
Our buddy Eric Seidman has a book out called Bridging the Statistical Gap, which you can get from Lulu or Amazon.
I did not even realize this book was out. Even his own site has no links to his own book. I always get the feeling that Eric’s got a hundred and one things going on.
Anyway, I’ll be getting this book shortly, and if anyone’s read it already, please post your thoughts as to who this book is best targetted for.
from Amazon
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