rolling sabermetrics and statistics thread

because i'm tired of all the outdated annual threads on this board. baseball prospectus has a new pitching metric, SIERA, and you can read all about it for free in these five articles:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=10027

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=10032

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=10037

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=10042

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=10045

tom tango and matt swartz (one of the two guys who came up with this) have a LENGTHY exchange about it here that i'm still working my way through: http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/siera/#comments

i am not even close to comprehending of a lot of the math involved but their explanation of the stat is pretty readable. if it works, it's probably some of the most interesting stuff bpro has done in a while.

I just heard about SIERA this week...

Sorry, just started a new annual thread a minute ago; guess the specific book issues can go in there.

yeah i was thinking we could use this one for any interesting statistical stuff no matter what the source

Adam (Minneapolis)
Could you ever see a team going completely by the numbers? That is to say, being an "every day player" would be meaningless because the team would play the statistical matchups every day no matter what in an effort to maximize output.

Rob Neyer (12:52 PM)
You mean like Casey Stengel in the 1950s? No, I don't see that happening anytime soon. Too many relievers on the roster, too many guys who would be unhappy with irregular playing time.

(You guys have read about how Stengel used to use pitchers? Today's MSM would have a collective stroke.)

i always figured no one will actually do closer by committee these days because guys come up with the expectation of having a set role.

u got a link i can read?

yeah, you'd have to insert a fatigue factor as well... haha, this sounds like MLB THE SHOW (nb: Dr. Morbius, this is a videogame).

yes, I HEARD OF IT

cad, read the Robert Creamer bio of Stengel (or for the pre-Yankee years, S. Goldman's)

I belong to the "Your role is to pitch when you're needed" school.

it'd be interesting to see an org try to adopt it from the low minors on up. you'd still have issues with outside guys though.

dudes with dreams of a 10 figure contract to rack up saves would take umbrage with such a system

huh - i was thinking about this last night.
i think all it will take is a team with morbs' (superior) "Your role is to pitch when you're needed" system to win the ws and we might see the floodgates open.

aka the "bullpen by committee"

zmg since when were high-leverage innings a Morbius creation!?!

didn't bobby cox have a 'platooned' closer last year with soriano and gonzalez

sort of -- it was like 70% Soriano/30% Gonzalez

not really SABR but interesting stat:

Through the first 1/3 of the 2010 season, the AL East has four of the best five records in the league.

If the season were to end today, there would be 2 teams in the AL East NOT advancing to the playoffs despite better records than all but one other team in the league.

Tampa, Yanquis, Toronto and Boston are all on pace for 90-win seasons.

more small sample size fun: 12 of the 16 starting catchers in the NL currently have an above average batting line by OPS+

49 years later, Roger Maris wins AL runs scored title:

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/4513/the-truth-is-always-being-rewritten

I'll post this here, even though it has partly to do with some back-and-forth on the Pujols thread. Bear with me--and when you jump all over me, please remember that I bought my first Zander Hollander guide in 1970. I've been there and back, and back again.

There's a blogger in San Francisco I read, Steve Rubio (a Prospectus writer when it was still fairly new, I think), and the other day he linked to the following from Jennifer Doyle, who seems to mostly write about soccer. I love what she says, and she captures some of my own feelings when I get into old-vs.-new-stat discussions on this board:

"Beware of sports writers who pretend to mastery of the facts. I come across a different version of these people in academia--they can recite a bunch of dates, or quote Hegel, and for this reason they seem to think that they've figured it all out. The ones who listen, however, who have a good sense of humor and know how to hold contradiction in their head without trying to resolve it--those are the ones who are most likely to say something interesting, something insightful, something new...Reader, beware of the sense of mastery which comes at the cost of a sense of wonder."

I have no problem at all with VORP and WAR and the like, as long as you view them as just more pieces of the puzzle. But I sometimes get the feeling that when someone throws VORP at me, it's like when someone yells "Challops!" on ILM, or "Muslim!" in Palin World--it's meant to end the discussion, not add to it. Obviously, we're a million miles ahead of the days when people used to think Steve Garvey was the best hitter in baseball because he'd go bat 700 times and knock in 100 runs. (Pointing out, however, that even James revised his thinking on Garvey when he reissued the Historical Abstract--one of many reasons I like James so much more than his disciples.) I wouldn't want baseball arguments to return to that level of thinking. But to echo Doyle's last sentence above, if your belief in the infallibility of VORP and WAR lead you to shrug your shoulders at the prospect of Pujols or Votto winning the Triple Crown, that's a place I don't want to end up.

I'll have more to say on this in my upcoming book, VORP: The God That Failed.

haven't you heard, the triple crown is now comprised of VORP, WAR, and WPA/LI

WPA/LI: "Well Played, Albert (Lasting Impressions)"? I can't keep up.

win probability added divided by leverage index

it's generally about the same as the batting component of WAR though, so not very useful. plain WPA is more interesting and kind of like the sabermetric equivalent of RBIs.

Thanks. I'm dying to find out what Ray Oyler's Leverage Index was for 1969--not very good, I'm guessing.

clemenza otm. James revolutionized my thinking during the mid/late 80s, but my enthusiasm for the game waned in the 90s when it seemed like the New Math was press-ganged into service to fantasy baseball. In the late 90s I sort of got my mojo back by actually watching a lot of baseball instead of reading about a lot of baseball. Sabermetrics are good corrective lenses, but I had to remember to use them to watch baseball games, not read box scores. I get a lot more fun out of the game that way.

leverage index is just a value which quantifies how "important" any single plate appearance is to winning that game

so bases loaded, 2 outs in a tie game would have a really high value whereas bases empty in a blowout would be really low

Has a leverage index been developed for relief appearances? Inherited runners stranded/scored drives me bananas.

Admission I'd rather not make: I'm still stuck in a place where I follow baseball primarily through the lens of statistics (more traditional statistics, but statistics nonetheless). Getting back to actually watching more baseball is my next therapeutic goal. (Part of this does have to do with the overload of baseball on TV. Somewhere along the way, it just became too much.)

well yeah it works both ways

if a game situation is a 1.5 LI for the hitter (1.0 is average) then it's a 1.5 for the pitcher too by definition

tbh i'm a math nerd and i love all the baseball stats stuff but i think sabermetrics folks tend to have too much confidence in their own metrics, there's not nearly enough self-evaluation in the "field".

i think the offense stats are pretty close to complete but there's still so much we don't understand about pitching, let alone defense or player development

I think there is plenty of self-evaluation in the field; the BP guys debate stuff all the time, and most if not all recognize that these metrics are imperfect tools.

(not that I have the time to read all the articles or watch a game every day, understand)

i think the offense stats are pretty close to complete but there's still so much we don't understand about pitching, let alone defense or player development

Agreed. And just to really horrify VORP disciples, I think you can even learn something from Joe Morgan when it comes to "in the field" stuff. I realize Morgan is considered a human punchline by most everyone who's been influenced by James, but if you can look past the many blind spots that someone of his generation probably carries around (having to do with character, clutch play, the value of a .300 average in and of itself, etc.), there are going to be some things that he's learned about the game that I just don't believe you can arrive at through abstract statistical analysis. So treat him skeptically, for sure, but don't try to ridicule him out of extistence. (When the influence of James on me was at its peak in the late '80s/early '90s, Kubek used to drive me up the wall for the same reasons.)

So treat him skeptically, for sure, but don't try to ridicule him out of extistence.

Not sure I can follow you this far.

Morgan does not deserve to have the most prestigious color commentary job for baseball in the world. That doesn't mean he's never insightful. But the fact that he has insights into baseball is meaningless. He lacks the ability to express those insights or the work ethic to learn about the teams he's watching. Orel Hershiser is a far better analyst. Keith Hernandez is another guy I've enjoyed. Neither of those guys is a stats guy, but both actually do the legwork to bring some on-the-field insight to the presentation.

Also, while I have my issues with Morgan, there are plenty of guys who are worse. Rob Dibble springs to mind.

Orel Hershiser is a far better analyst.

Which reminds me, John Smoltz has been an absolute treat this year since he sorta retired.

Keith Hernandez is listenable mostly for the crazy shit he comes out with. He calls Jeff Francoeur "a streaky hitter."

I probably haven't listened closely enough to Morgan to be defending him. The back-and-forth between Miller and him is easy enough on my ears that I've never quite understood the intensely negative feelings about him that I keep encountering, but maybe that's all credit to Miller. And I have the additional bias that the mid-'70s Reds were my favourite team. This goes back a ways, but I used to think Palmer, Seaver, and Reggie were great in the booth. As analysts, I can't remember. I just liked them.

to clemenza, i don't know dude, you seemed pretty "blinders-on" when discussing Bonds' achievements and were in the process of pooh-poohing him on the Pujols thread so........... idk, was tbh hard to take you seriously in your short shrift dismissal of him as a legit triple crown candidate given the 232 BBs that got in the way of him chasing such a "retro-cool" counting achievement (all the while destroying almost every offensive record in the process).

but kudos to all y'all who were reading bill james in the summer of love~~~

i don't mind Morgan and Miller, because they're both local guys. Morgan seems way worse on the page then in the booth ime.

francoeur is a streaky hitter in that he has a lot of cold streaks

Steroids notwithstanding, I really wasn't discounting the magnitude of Bonds's statistical achievements--just that I thought the walks ruled out him ever having a realistic shot at the Triple Crown. Not just in terms of RBI, but, I thought, also in BA. But Ciderpress's math made me realize that he in fact likely would have won one, maybe even two. Which was your point to begin with--you were right, I was wrong. What I didn't appreciate, though, was pulling out VORP as kind of a gotcha moment, like I'd just been teleported out a 1974 issue of Baseball Digest. (Not to knock BD, which I used to love.) Again, I've been reading James forever.

That's cool, just like I said, you appeared to be full blinders in your take on Bonds achievements.

Also, VORP was introduced 9 years ago by Keith Woolner. Bill James has always preferred win-shares and runs-created in my 10 years of being familiar with SABR. IIRC.

who went to the pitchF/X summit in SF?

i liked this little bit from the pitchFX summary on bpro:

5:39: Brad Hawpe play: starts with a >80% chance of catching the ball, but freezes in place and fails to make the play. Difficult to represent visually, because the out probability plummets while Hawpe stands in place and time elapses. In a different Hawpe play, his first step gives him a lower probability of catching the ball, since he broke in the wrong direction. Rumor has it no Rockies reps are in attendance, but they’re not missing out, since they’ve enjoyed a front-row seat for this sort of action for the last several years.

haha

http://www.baycityball.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/chernoffteams.png

wau

source?

http://www.baycityball.com/2010/09/01/wednesday-graph-major-league-chernoff-faces/

players w/an OPS of 1.000 or more in 2000

Todd Helton
Manny Ramirez
Carlos Delgado
Barry Bonds
Jason Giambi
Gary Sheffield
Vladimir Guerrero
Frank Thomas
Sammy Sosa
Moises Alou
Jeff Bagwell
Nomar Garciaparra
Richard Hidalgo
Alex Rodriguez
Brian Giles
Jeff Kent
Mike Piazza
Troy Glaus
Edgar Martinez

players w/an OPS of 1.000 or more in 2010

Josh Hamilton
Miguel Cabrera
Joey Votto
Albert Pujols

jim thome and justin morneau deserve a mention on that too for partial seasons of 1.000+

yeah it is a fluid situation for sure

trying to figure out why there's such a huge disparity between the 2015 phillies' UZR (-15) and DRS (-98) - one thing i didn't know was that DRS also calculates pitcher defense while UZR doesn't even attempt to. a lot of the difference between the two is just DRS giving a lower rating to their defenders across the board, but there's also 22!!! runs lost by the pitching staff. 5 pitchers have a DRS of 1 and the rest have a combined DRS of -27. there are 3 pitchers worth -4 runs and 2 of them are relievers. refuse to believe that ken giles, who had 1 error all year, somehow cost his team 4 defensive runs in 70 innings of work

i generally get that, but then i remember jon lester playing his position a few years ago, when he forgot how to throw first base for a while

those would generally register as errors though wouldn't they? so what's the knock against giles, he wasn't rangy enough? hard to figure out what the individual components are on bbref pages. lester did have a pretty bad season (-7 DRS) though he never had more than 3 errors in a season - i think that's mostly because he allowed a lot of SBs that year.

thing is, i don't think pitcher bWAR includes individual defense, but i think individual pitcher DRS contributes to the overall defensive adjustment. so hypothetically a pitcher could have a really bad DRS which wouldn't lower their WAR at all, but might actually raise their WAR by contributing to a bad team defense adjustment. but i'm not sure of that.

lester allowed a lot of SBs that year because he was yips-unable to throw to first and keep runners honest. so, not an error, but a definite problem on defense.

that *was* kind of an outlier though, and the ken giles example seems unreasonable

Have statskeepers ever tried to account for walkoff singles that would have been doubles or triples if they'd played out in a non-walkoff situation? Like last night, Austin Riley's walkoff would have been a double in any other inning.

no idea, but I’d guess that these are so rare that the difference would be negligible

Sounds like irresistable bait to statheads to me.

well there are def stats out there that rate hitters on hit probability based on predicted batted ball outcomes measured by contact speed off the bat, launch angle etc that would prob see such a hit as something more than a single (would not even know that it was recorded as a single) and thus reward austin riley for it based on that

yeah that’s a good point, his xwOBA doesn’t take a hit because he’s only credited with a single

xp interesting, thx

As EW pod

-ask

From Robert Christgau's monthly reader-questions column (it has a terrible name...):

Professional baseball is rapidly changing. Are you familiar with sabermetrics baseball and its implications? Or is this just too nerdy a thing to ask? — KBW, South Korea

I was reading sabermetrics pioneer Bill James as early as the ‘70s, I think--long ago, anyway. Thought all of his analysis was fascinating and a lot of it worth incorporating into the game. It really changed pitching, although not as much as the revised strength training stratagems that have generated so many near-100 fast balls. But if I remember correctly, even then I didn’t like how down he was on stolen bases--they’re too much fun (I loved how much the Yankees stole late in the past season). And when I watch the game with its radical shifts these days I sometimes get nostalgic for the old days, as well as wishing more players would settle for singles by exploiting shifts. In particular I still prefer human umpires calling balls and strikes even though what was clearly a bad call on a held-up swing prematurely ended the Dodgers-Giants championship game.

xxxxp i thought official scorers were supposed to use their judgment on walk-off hits . . . and i was wrong. this seems unnecessarily complicated, especially with the ground-rule double possibility:

2019 OBR rule 9.06(f) Subject to the provisions of Rule 9.06(g), when a batter ends a game with a safe hit that drives in as many runs as are necessary to put his team in the lead, the Official Scorer shall credit such batter with only as many bases on his hit as are advanced by the runner who scores the winning run, and then only if the batter runs out his hit for as many bases as are advanced by the runner who scores the winning run.

Rule 9.06(f) Comment: The Official Scorer shall apply this rule even when the batter is theoretically entitled to more bases because of being awarded an “automatic” extra-base hit under various provisions of Rules 5.05 and 5.06(b)(4)…

When interpreted literally, does WAR really work with an extreme closer like Josh Hader?

Hader has pitched 28.2 dominant innings and is 1.3 WAR on Baseball Reference. He's saved 26 games out of 27 save opportunities. If you actually did swap him for a replacement-level closer, wouldn't that guy likely blow at least three or four of those games?

Are you suggesting blowing a save should earn you -1 WAR? There's a whole 8 innings of player performance that happened beforehand

I don't even know what I'm suggesting...it just doesn't seem to jibe. The way a poor inning can be directly translated into a loss at that stage in the game, and the way all of Hader's innings fall into that category, throws me. But I guess he's no different than any closer since the advent of save-only usage.

how would you feel differently if he were just pitching the sixth inning every second or third day

Because the leverage would be much less, I'd assume.

Anyway, just asking, and ✖'s reductio ad absurdum explanation basically makes sense to me.

If WAR considered game situation like that it be a very different (and not very useful imo) stat... if you're giving things like blown saves and GWRBI that much credit it throws everything else off. There's only a finite amount of WAR to go around in a season. If you're going to give -1 WAR to a reliever for 10 bad pitches, do you give +1 WAR to the two or three batters who hit them? What do you give to the completely unrelated hitter that hit 3 HRs earlier in the game to get their team in a position to do that? Or to the starting pitcher who gave up those 3 HRs and set up the save situation by pitching badly? If one inning can swing WAR a full win either way, WAR totals would be insane and meaningless.

But for what it's worth, the fWAR formula adds a leverage adjustment to relievers which gives them more WAR for pitching in later innings. Not sure if rWAR does that too.

yeah both WARs give a leverage boost to relievers (which I think is silly)

Hader has given up 4HR in 29 innings. "Not blowing games" is partly a measure of circumstance, not ability. It so happens that none (or maybe one) of those HRs happened with a one run lead.

Projected over 200 IP, it works out to about 9 WAR (better than Clayton Kershaw's best season) so if Hader was putting up these numbers as starting pitcher we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Actually made the same calculation in my head but took it further: Hader's innings and WAR x 10 = 282 innings and 13 WAR, which would be in line with Dwight Gooden in 1985 (276.2 IP, 12.2 WAR).

Did that a couple of days ago--Hader got shelled yesterday.

Not sure where to put this...James just conducted some poll on Twitter on who was the best hitter between Carew, Boggs, and Gwynn. Gwynn won handily with 65.5% of the vote; Boggs got 21.5%, Carew 13% (~1,800 voters in total).

My assumption was that Boggs would have a clear statistical edge because of all his walks, but by at least one metric, the three of them are dead even: Boggs and Carew had a career OPS+ of 131, Gwynn's was 132.

Here's the thing that caught my eye as I looked over their three career boxes. In their 57 combined seasons, they only failed to hit .300 eight times: Gwynn once (.289), Boggs three times (.259, .292, .280), and Carew four times (.292, .273, .295, .280). It's like Bill Russell's championships: they were probably only 150-200 hits short of 57/57 .300 seasons.

Never seen a saber guy on a beer before

Stuff+, now in liquid form https://t.co/sUWtppLCB3

— Eno Sarris (@enosarris) September 2, 2022

clemenza: which beverage should put Bill James on their label?

What beverage do ornery, disagreeable old guys drink?

https://www.alcoholprofessor.com/blog-posts/blog/2017/09/12/classic-cocktails-in-history-suffering-bastard

🙄

An MLB owner told Rob Manfred "analytics is an arms race to nowhere." The commissioner agrees.

Manfred: “Once everybody’s doing it, that little margin that maybe you’re getting… it sure as heck is not worth the damage that was done to the game"
https://t.co/IEHJhzOac7

— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) April 1, 2023

lol what

Noticed that Mookie Betts has crossed 60 bWAR (60.7, should be 63.0-65.0 at season's end) in his age-30 season. Some points of comparison:

A-Rod - 85.0
Trout - 82.4
Pujols - 81.4
Griffey - 76.2
Bonds - 74.0
Ripken - 69.3
-------------------
Cabrera - 54.8
Thomas - 50.5
Beltre - 44.6
Chipper - 44.3
Manny- 41.2

This is tangentially related to sabermetrics...I'm amused by how certain language has sprung up around analytics that can sometimes dress up the most basic concepts. They had a Sportsnet writer on the call-in show yesterday, and the host asked him what he'll be looking for to know that Brandon Belt is healthy and productive again. "Hard contact" the guy said, which is basically an extension of "barrel rate." "Balls off the wall," he added, "preferably even over the wall."

So: if I'm translating that correctly, we'll know Brandon Belt is back if he starts crushing doubles and home runs. We wouldn't have known that in 1975; we do know.

(I corrected five typos in that post, was headed home without a throw, then a "k" snuck into the last word.)

Brandon Belt just made hard contact with exactly the right launch angle and exit velocity and the ball went over the fence, so I know he's healthy and productive.

Just saw one of those generic Player A vs. B tables on my FB wall, this one with Schwarber and Dave Kingman. Through age-30 season (i.e., this year for Schwarber):

Schwarber - 246 HR, .227/.340/.492, 121 OPS+, 11.9 bWAR
Kingman - 252 HR, .241/.305/.504, 121 OPS+, 14.5 bWAR

Was surprised by the closeness in HR/OPS+/bWAR (I would have thought Schwarber would have a clear edge), even more so by the perceptions of each in their day: Kingman a one-dimensional freak, Schwarber an underrated analytic sleeper. There's a bit more, of course: Kingman's toxicity in the clubhouse, Schwarber's postseason heroics. But they really do underscore changes in attitudes brought on by analytics.

i bet schwarber is even worse on defense than Kingman was. though considering the "fog of glove" i wonder if the correction for his fielding ability is a bit extreme. but he's a player of such extremes overall, so who knows? i tend to think his value might be a bit more than the analytics suggest, though.

i don't think he's really an underrated analytic sleeper? i mean he's *interesting*, but there are pieces out there asking whether his are the least-valuable 40+ homer seasons ever. b-ref has him at 0.7 WAR this year with fangraphs at 1.4. he suffered from their need to use harper at DH this year, but a 119 wRC+ in itself isn't super-great for a $20m/yr player who offers nothing else (tangible)

kinda curious exactly how bad a catcher he was tho

I overstated that, yes, but I think he gets a measure of respect from a lot of fans and writers today that Kingman didn't. This evolution, of course, started 25 years ago when James would tell people that Bobby Grich and Darrell Evans and Gene Tenace were better players--contributed more to winning games--than Steve Garvey or Bill Buckner or Al Oliver did. He was widely viewed as a crackpot. Analytics isn't exactly mainstream yet, but it's getting closer and closer all the time. (Not a meaningless indicator, I'd say: WAR on Immaculate Grid today.)

Today: James is widely viewed as a crackpot, but for different reasons...progress!

"25 years ago"--make that 45

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/86275/veteran-presence-kyle-schwarber-phillies-leadoff/

I can't access this--"Is Kyle Schwarber the Weirdest Leadoff Hitter Ever?--but I'm guessing it splits the difference as to how he's viewed today.

108
115
104
126

I imagine it's really tough to have a full season in which your runs, hits, rbi, and walks are so numerically close to each other.

Not as close, but geez, his batting average was also a three-digit number starting with 1.

I stand corrected on Dave Kingman. Turns out he did have his fans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKNnXZqQom8

Sabermetrics is kind of old news; I propose turning this into a "Tommy Lasorda sure does love to say 'fuck' a lot" video thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvFMEoKI7eE

Getting back to the subject at hand, all those links in this thread's original post 13 years ago are still active. SIERA (Skill-Interactive Earned Run Average): never really took off.

Which is odd, being so easy to calculate in your head:

6.145 – 16.986*(SO/PA) + 11.434*(BB/PA) – 1.858((GB-FB-PU)/PA) + 7.653*((SO/PA)^2) +/- 6.664*(((GB-FB-PU)/PA)^2) + 10.130*(SO/PA)*((GB-FB-PU)/PA) – 5.195*(BB/PA)*((GB-FB-PU)/PA) where +/- is as before such that it is a negative sign when (GB-FB-PU)/PA is positive and vice versa.

u mad doggie?

Brian Cashman pushes back on the notion that the Yankees are an "analytically-driven" organization:

"No one is doing their deep dives, they're just throwing bulls--- and accusing us of being run analytically. To be said we're guided by analytics as a driver is a lie." pic.twitter.com/ru6gAYc0Cf

— Yankees Videos (@snyyankees) November 7, 2023