looks like he was a cool dude.
― call all destroyer, Saturday, 30 January 2010 20:44 (fourteen years ago) link
would go to SABR meetup if it was just a bunch of grandfatherly guys telling stories
well in that case you could just meet morbs for lunch
― Goon's Anatomy (J0rdan S.), Saturday, 30 January 2010 20:46 (fourteen years ago) link
^my new Facebook friend, no good deed goes unpunished!
cad, the MC at the NYC chapter meeting is totally like that! except he's past 80 and may have quit that post. The rank-and-file are by no means fierce statheads.
― Rage, Resentment, Spleen (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 30 January 2010 20:49 (fourteen years ago) link
hey, I just tied for 4th place at the NYC SABR trivia contest! 17/30, I NEVER do that well. Too bad the prize is 2 passes for the Babe Ruth Museum (been there, not sure I'm getting to Balt in the next 16 months).
Question I'm proudest of getting: Since the Yankees won their first world championship, name the 3 Hall of Fame players who:
*were Yankee teammates*each played at least 20 regular-season games for the Yankees*never won a WS with the Yankees.
I got it in about 30 secs w/ no references.
― Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 6 February 2010 22:33 (fourteen years ago) link
that's easy: Dave Winfield, Rickey Henderson, and class of 2011 inductee Don Mattingly
― sanskrit, Sunday, 7 February 2010 00:05 (fourteen years ago) link
yukyuk... work on the 3rd one
― Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 7 February 2010 00:13 (fourteen years ago) link
hey, I just tied for 4th place at the NYC SABR trivia contest!
wow that is awesome dr. m -- congratulations!
― Lee Dorrian Gray (J0hn D.), Sunday, 7 February 2010 00:24 (fourteen years ago) link
thx JD (it's a full life)
Lotsa the regular contenders fell by the wayside cuz there was an unusual number of post-1960 questions.
― Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 7 February 2010 00:32 (fourteen years ago) link
I will be going to loltimore sometime in the next 16 months!
― Astronaut Mike Dexter (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Tuesday, 9 February 2010 02:15 (fourteen years ago) link
have you been to the Babe's Birthplace?
I can't bleeve no one wants the trivia answer...
― Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 9 February 2010 02:21 (fourteen years ago) link
It was killing me, I had to look it up.
― I Am Curious (The Yellow Kid), Tuesday, 9 February 2010 05:45 (fourteen years ago) link
for the incurious: Phil Niekro
― Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 9 February 2010 14:28 (fourteen years ago) link
my co-worker is agonizing over this question right now
― call all destroyer, Tuesday, 9 February 2010 14:42 (fourteen years ago) link
I should email the guy for all 30 questions.
― Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 9 February 2010 14:43 (fourteen years ago) link
do it! i could torture the guy across from me (baseball nut and jeopardy auditioner) for days
― call all destroyer, Tuesday, 9 February 2010 14:46 (fourteen years ago) link
I'm embarrassed at some of the easy ones I missed -- like who's second to Ruth in career American League HRs.
― Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 9 February 2010 14:54 (fourteen years ago) link
arod?
― call all destroyer, Tuesday, 9 February 2010 14:56 (fourteen years ago) link
Yep! (New data takes a few years to penetrate many members' heads.)
I'll ask for the NY Q&A, but you can download trivia from last year's national convention here (I'm sure they're tougher than what I got last weekend):
http://convention.sabr.org/archive/sabr39/112-sabr-39-trivia
― Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 9 February 2010 15:25 (fourteen years ago) link
To shatter the myth that all SABR activities are stats-centric -- the May 2010 Pictorial History Committee photo supplement:
http://www.sabr.org/cmsFiles/Files/Mysteryphoto5-10.pdf
― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 22 May 2010 14:30 (thirteen years ago) link
ok that is a completely awesome piece and I had an awesome time reading it and it even made my hangover seem less life-threatening!
― in which we apologize for sobering up (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Saturday, 22 May 2010 15:05 (thirteen years ago) link
also, Wilbert Robinson has one of the all-time faces.
― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 22 May 2010 15:12 (thirteen years ago) link
It's the 40th anniversary of SABR.
http://sabr.org/40years
― satan club sandwich (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 10 August 2011 19:53 (twelve years ago) link
Not sure where else to ask this... Does ERA measure a pitcher's ability any better than hits allowed? I guess I'm asking: is it a thing that better pitchers pitch better when there are runners on base?
― Mordy, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 00:33 (twelve years ago) link
Obv walks but...
― Mordy, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 01:02 (twelve years ago) link
pitching better when there are runners on base sounds suspiciously like repeatable clutch ability, so I have doubts that it's substantial.
― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 03:13 (twelve years ago) link
couldn't windup vs. stretch have some statistical difference?
― iatee, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 03:15 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?id=hallaro01&year=Career&t=p#bases
― Mordy, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 03:20 (twelve years ago) link
I'm not sure if those numbers are significant or not, but there does appear to be variation
like, the tOPS+ goes (significantly? idk) down for each runner on base after the first
― Mordy, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 03:23 (twelve years ago) link
probably not significant after looking at other runner combos (like 12- is below average)
― Mordy, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 03:24 (twelve years ago) link
Does anyone know how comparable pitcher WAR is to batter WAR? Also -- to what extent hitting stats are factored into a pitcher's war? Like does a hitting pitcher's WAR account for the added hits he gives his team above a comparable pitcher who never hits?
― Mordy, Sunday, 4 September 2011 02:49 (twelve years ago) link
There is WAR for pitching, and then total WAR for the player that adds in his pitching and fielding. You can see the diff on both the B-R and Fangraphs charts if you look at all of them, I think.
― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 4 September 2011 04:40 (twelve years ago) link
his batting and fielding, I meant
― Mordy, Tuesday, August 30, 2011 5:33 PM (4 days ago)
Generally, a groundball pitcher will allow less extra base hits vs. a flyball pitcher. Flyball "hits" tend to go for extra bases. Therefore a groundball pitcher could give up 3 singles and get out of an inning unscathed, whereas a flyball pitcher could give up 3 homeruns... etc. Both pitchers allow 3 hits, but one will earn 0 runs and the other one will earn 3.
Note: this only answers the first part of your question and has nothing to do with pitchers who perform better out of the stretch vs. wind-up.
― citation needed (Steve Shasta), Sunday, 4 September 2011 04:47 (twelve years ago) link
xp to Morbz: I'm hunting around on fangraphs but I can't figure out where the batting + pitching WAR is -- do u have a link to it?
― Mordy, Sunday, 4 September 2011 14:08 (twelve years ago) link
Nope! maybe I was wrong about FG -- I really don't look at theirs too much (I mistrust the defensive weights, which seem offkilter from what I see elsewhere).
― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 4 September 2011 15:02 (twelve years ago) link
and thx Steve -- that makes a lot of sense. is there any book about sabremetrics that's as readable as moneyball but at least a little more informative than narrative?
― Mordy, Monday, 5 September 2011 02:14 (twelve years ago) link
I'd recommend any and every Abstract, especially the Historical Abstract, but they're not really about sabermetrics, even though they're the beginning of sabermetrics. I think this biography of James provides sort of an informal history, though:
http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Bill-James-Complete-Outsider/dp/0385514646/ref=sr_1_14?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1315189250&sr=1-14
― clemenza, Monday, 5 September 2011 02:21 (twelve years ago) link
I'm not sure there is a Sabermetrics 101 book, as the stats are changing all the time. I really liked Alan Schwarz's book about the history of stats, The Numbers Game.
― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Monday, 5 September 2011 02:22 (twelve years ago) link
Moneyball had a history too -- I mean more something that talks about a lot of the contemporary stats that are in use, and maybe tries to address some of the big questions (stuff like clutch, player value, calculating fielding value) in an informal way
― Mordy, Monday, 5 September 2011 02:22 (twelve years ago) link
oh, that sounds interesting. i'll check it out xp
The WAR thing about pitchers is interesting. I instinctively feel comapring a pitcher's hitting to the generic replacement hitter is unfair - they should realistically be compared to a generic replacement pitcher-hitter, so replacement level would be something like .130/.170/.180 or something. That way a great/terrible hitting pitcher still benefits/loses out, but not by comparison to bona fide hitters.
― Mark C, Monday, 5 September 2011 10:42 (twelve years ago) link
I was thinking that the value added by having a hitter in that 9th spot must be huge if most teams just have a blackhole there but it occurred to me that a) even the best pitcher hitter only hits every 4-5 games and b) will only rarely hit throughout the entire game, so it's probably not as huge an impact as I was imagining.
― Mordy, Monday, 5 September 2011 14:41 (twelve years ago) link
they should realistically be compared to a generic replacement pitcher-hitter
As a practical matter, I agree. I'm wondering if the sum of all the WARs on a team are supposed to add up to something that mirrors actual results--that if replacement value is deemed to be .450, then all the WARs, plus and minus, sum to however many wins the team is over .450 (=73 wins). I don't know, but that would explain why a pitcher's hitting can only be compared to a real hitter.
― clemenza, Monday, 5 September 2011 15:20 (twelve years ago) link
I was wondering today if there's a stat that calculates ERA in light of the fact that the later into a game a pitcher goes, the more tired he gets. Something that could take poor managing out of the quantification - maybe something that would weight late innings pitched in a game more heavily than early innings (so that the first inning pitched w/out runs isn't worth the same as the eighth inning pitched w/out runs). I don't think ERA already does this... is there something that does?
― Mordy, Tuesday, 6 September 2011 04:28 (twelve years ago) link
I believe there is a "close and late" stat. Not just late in the game, but with a further provision that the effort is of high-leverage. Let me poke around.
― citation needed (Steve Shasta), Tuesday, 6 September 2011 05:18 (twelve years ago) link
It looks like ESPN used to have it available as a "situational" statistic, but it's not showing up for 2011 data.
― citation needed (Steve Shasta), Tuesday, 6 September 2011 05:23 (twelve years ago) link
I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but Baseball Reference gives detailed inning-by-inning stats for every pitcher. They're not cumulative, though--you'd have to calculate that yourself. Verlander: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?id=verlaju01&year=2011&t=p. They also split a pitcher's line so you can see what he did in innings 1-3, 4-6, and 7-9. Verlander's ERA is 2.30 in 1-3, 2.60 in 4-6, and (smaller sample, but to me still amazing) 1.88 in 7-9. When they pull him out of a game in the 8th or 9th inning, they should bring him back in to close for himself.
― clemenza, Tuesday, 6 September 2011 11:13 (twelve years ago) link
http://itsaboutthemoney.net/archives/2011/09/06/is-war-the-new-rbi/
discus
― NoTimeBeforeTime, Tuesday, 6 September 2011 21:10 (twelve years ago) link
I found myself agreeing with a lot of this. There are too many weird year to year fluctuations in many players' defensive WAR numbers, I don't trust those numbers very much.
― NoTimeBeforeTime, Tuesday, 6 September 2011 21:13 (twelve years ago) link
dumb question i should look up but cant be bothered
whatever offensive element used by WAR - wOBA or something.. does it account for each situational at bat? with enough plate appearances it should all wash out but does it make a differentiation between going 3/3 w/ 2 BB against John Lackey and the same line against Justin Verlander?
shouldnt pitching WAR be cross-relational to batting WAR faced that day and vice versa?
― sanskrit, Wednesday, 7 September 2011 02:15 (twelve years ago) link
Just the fact that there are 2 different computations of WAR makes it clear that it's not "finished." xp
Neyer's response:
http://mlb.sbnation.com/2011/9/6/2408060/limits-of-war-zobrist-analysis
― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 7 September 2011 02:18 (twelve years ago) link
Mordy, this is what I meant re WAR 2 weeks ago; look at the first and scond tables here:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/NL/2011-pitching-leaders.shtml
Halladay leads Lee in Pitching WAR (2nd list), but when their offensive and defensive contributions are added in (1st list), Halladay gets knocked down 0.1 and Lee is boosted 0.6.
― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 18 September 2011 17:42 (twelve years ago) link
find your regional meeting on the map here (you don't have to be a member to attend).
http://sabr.org/sabrday
there are a few on Feb 2, like D.C. (which has Sean Forman and Tim Kurkjian).
― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 23 January 2013 16:20 (eleven years ago) link
happy SABR Day, what a fine occasion for the board's two dumbest football fans to knock each other cold.
― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 26 January 2013 13:36 (eleven years ago) link
once again, check your local here
https://sabr.org/sabrday
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Friday, 25 January 2019 20:21 (five years ago) link