rolling sabermetrics and statistics thread

I don't know how many of you (if any) subscribe to James's site. He's been great lately. Right now, I get the feeling he is to sabermetrics what Andre Bazin ended up being to auteurism: original inventor (not quite true of Bazin, who was more the inspiration), now a somewhat skeptical onlooker. Bazin had that famous quote: "Auteur, yes--but of what?"

Here's James a couple of days ago on jargon:

Along the lines of your "PDO" story. . .at a spring training game in 2004 I was sitting in front of Mark Bellhorn's wife and son, and this boy, who I think must have been four years old at the time, is kind of chattering to his mom about the game. A player comes up that he doesn't know, and he says. .. I swear I am not making up one word of this. . . "Is he a good player? What's his on base percentage against left-handers?" That will always stick with me as the moment at which I realized that sabermetrics was mainstream, hearing this kid who I am sure hadn't started school yet ask about a player's on base percentage against left-handers.

But the question you pose is more central than you realize, I think, because what you are really asking is "How do you reach the public with your information?" I think the distinction I would make is between careless and careful progress. After RBI were introduced to the public and explained to the public, about 1912, there as eventually a column added to the Sunday batting summaries in the paper, "RBI". Somebody who saw the new column and didn't understand it could ask "What is this, RBI?", and there was probably a code at the bottom of the column that explained it.

That is CAREFUL progress. On the other hand, people will write articles in which they introduce LIPV (Leverage Index Performance Variation) and PAD/1000 (Pythagorean Advantage per 1000 games) and EBOR (Enhance Base/Out Ratio) and sixteen other measures, and then toward the end of the article they'll write that Michael Bourn had a 163 LIPV despite his -43 QXTR and his pathetic .721 M2D2, and you're thinking "What in the hell is he talking about?" That's careless progress.

My attitude has always been "Be sure that you take the public with you,"--or, at least, do what you can to take the public with you. Don't start speaking your own language that only you and two other people understand; take the time and make the effort to give anybody who wants to understand what you're saying a fair shot at it. I'm sure that sometimes I have failed to do that, but that's what I believe in. Take the time to type out "Batting Average on Balls in Play", rather than BABIP, and "Wins Above Replacement", rather than WAR. It just takes a few seconds.

Three things James often says that I love:

1) I need to look at that again.
2) I was wrong.
3) I don't know.

Especially the last one. I don't see those words too often around here. From at least a couple of you, I'm not sure if you're even familiar with those concepts.

Let me preemptively provide you with your comeback:

"I sometimes think Clemenza makes sense. I need to look at that again."

Every major saberoriented writer I'm aware of says there are tons of things we don't know.

But this was Neyer the other day disagreeing w/ James about the lingo thing:

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/5960/lets-not-call-the-whole-babip-thing-off

There's this really cool thing called Google. There was a time, not so long ago, when if you were reading a book or a magazine and you came across some obscure technical term and couldn't figure out what it meant, you were basically stuck.

You're not stuck anymore.

...Bill knows what BABiP means. The great majority of Bill's readers -- all of whom are interested enough to spend actual money to read his missives on the Internet -- know what BABiP means. BABiP's been around for 10 years, and is well-established among the people who pay to read Bill James. In that particular space, spelling out Batting Average on Balls in Play would be almost as pointless as spelling out Earned Run Average.

I think Bill just doesn't like BABiP because he didn't grow up with it. When I worked for him, he didn't like it when I wrote that a player slugged .472 (or whatever)....

You wanna put me on TV, before the great unwashed masses? Then I'll spell out anything you like. Until then, I'm going to reserve my right to use acronyms and abbreviations that I believe you can handle.

"There's this really cool thing called Google."

No kidding, plus sabermetric writers are writing for a sabermetric audience. That audience (the one that presumably pays their bills, not the "great unwashed masses", not that I have any idea how these dudes make money) isn't going to want to read every acronym spelled out.

Every major saberoriented writer I'm aware of says there are tons of things we don't know.

I'm sure that's true. Like I said, I just don't hear it very often around here. I guess I could do a search, but if Morbius ever came on and said "You know, you're right about that--what was I thinking?", I think I'd have several heart attacks on the spot.

As far as the acronyms go, I realize James is being disingenuous; he used to use things like RC/27 habitually. But I agree with his central point that jargon is odious. I deal with it every day in my job. No one can dream up ridiculous acronyms like educational resource teachers. Our big focus right now is "TLCP": Teaching Learning Critical Pathways. Which'll be in place till they dream up a new one.

clemenza, I try not to post anything here I'm not certain of. I save that for the politcs thread.

also, jargon SAVES TIME.

Okay--I'm headed over to the politics thread to sample the humble, truth-seeking, "You know, I was wrong about that" version of Morbius!

no, that's not what I meant...

I'm with Morbs on this one!

no, that's not what I meant...

Bizarre notion: explaining what you meant may actually help explain what you meant.

are you this passive-aggressive with your middle school students?

I try not to take the bait from Morbius's amen corner. But I do appreciate your contribution.

"now go to the principal's office"

I think I literally send a kid to the principal's office every two or three years. But is there any way I can send you back to the politics thread?

pretty funny nerdfight going on in here: http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/pujols_the_57mm_man/#comments

the nemeses part cracked me up

Praiseball Bospectus is my one-stop shop for sabr-slapfights:

http://praiseball.wordpress.com/

oh ok, hi Shasta.

The guy who does that blog seems to use "SABR" as jackassedly as you do. Ignorance is the new skinnyjeans.

nice one SS, will bookmark

morbs no collins bump?

where are u looking, on the politics thread?

also, why get excited about a middle manager?

damn.. some club just flat out bought the CHONE numbers and the guy who put em together. i kind of slightly liked those more than MARCEL.

http://www.baseballprojection.com/

damn, his projections were the most accurate the past few years of any of the public systems, free or subscription

ZIPS is the best one now i guess

I SO SAD

http://www.anditisliz.com/lusciousliz/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/figgins.jpg

if you'd like to attend a sabermetrics seminar at Harvard in May:

http://sabr.org/latest/sabermetrics-scouting-and-science-baseball-may-21-22

off praiseball, this is hilarious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carson_Cistulli

particularly the wes anderson casting call photo

this seems cool:

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/shutdowns-meltdowns/

A reader comment from High Heat Stats that I think is quite good:

"Vida Blue's 1979 season is one of a thousand examples why W/L record is essentially meaningless." I think a better way to put it is "W/L record is often deceptive when used as a method of ranking individual pitcher performance". I looked at both the Wins and WAR of the 200 pitchers with the most career Wins over the 1962-2011 period, a group that takes you from Greg Maddux at 355 Wins to Dave Burba with 115 Wins. I ran CORREL in Excel and found the correlation between Wins and WAR among these 200 guys to be .85. (1.0 is a perfect correlation, -1 is a perfect negative correlation and 0 is random relationship with no correlation at all). .85 suggests a meaningful but not perfect correlation. In other words, Wins usually, but not always, tells a lot, but not everything, about a pitcher's WAR-type value. When I look at W-L records today, what automatically runs through my head is that I am looking at a set of numbers that combines individual performance with some team quality and some luck. That's not meaningless, just limited.

He's not saying anything startling, but I like that he took the trouble to actually investigate.

Neat chart from "Hey Bill": Power/Speed/Walks rating ("the harmonic mean" of three stats, an extension of his old Power/Speed rating). The Top 10 all-time, prompted by a letter about Abreu:

First Last HR SB BB P-S-W

Barry Bonds 762 514 2558 822.2
Rickey Henderson 297 1406 2190 661.5
Willie Mays 660 338 1463 581.7
Joe Morgan 268 689 1865 524.6
Alex Rodriguez 629 305 1166 523.9
Hank Aaron 755 240 1402 483.5
Bobby Bonds 332 461 914 478.1
Gary Sheffield 509 253 1475 454.9
Craig Biggio 291 414 1160 446.8
Bobby Abreu 284 393 1419 443.1

Thought I'd spaced that better.

you have to put everything in between CODE signs (see formatting help, below) if you use spaces to organize things into columns.

Por clemenza:

http://railsrx.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/james.png

Thanks! Such a great photo--I went to the site and tracked down the source, and it's from an early article about him in Sports Illustrated in May of '81. I've got four or five milk crates of SIs with baseball covers dating back to the early '70s, so I'll have to check if I've got that issue.

http://sabr.org/latest/unofficial-list-baseball-records-set-and-tied-2011

lol Uggla

Jo-Jo Reyes, Most consecutive winless starts, 28

this was actually news in Toronto. i went to the game he actually won to break the streak and it was mental!

ppl were rooting for a ND?

ha ha, no. the fans were shockingly pumped up, cheering for a W.

this Toronto, after all. the city of tempered expectations.

Bill James is contributing to Grantland! His first article: the 100 greatest pitchers duels of 2011:

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7480753/bill-james-100-best-pitchers-duels-2011

Anyway, a great pitchers' duel implies that there is something at stake beyond fifth place, although you don't want to place too much emphasis on that criterion, or you wind up warbling on about Jack Morris in 1991, long after anybody cares.

I attended #82, which was the SABR convention's visit to Dodger Stadium.

Pretty sure the best pitching duel I ever saw live was this:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/TOR/TOR198506060.shtml

Key had a no-hitter through 8, until Tom Brookens led off the ninth with a single; he lasted 10 innings, gave up two hits, and left with the score 0-0. Petry also pitched 10 shutout innings, giving up 6 hits. The Jays won in the bottom of the 12th on a Buck Martinez home run.

It meets all of James's conditions: low-scoring, starters pitched well and deep into the game, pitchers of stature (Key was only 24, but in the midst of his first great year; Petry was having his fourth straight good-to-very-good season), and the game meant something (the best young team in baseball vs. the defending champs).

I've mentioned mine before -- also '85, Gooden v Tudor in September division race, scoreless til Orosco gives one up in 10th:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN198509110.shtml

That's about as good as it gets, regular season; Gooden's year was historic, and Tudor would have won the Cy Young 19 out of 20 times. Combined WAR: 19.2.

Took a quick look through '65 and '66 to see if I could find a 1-0 Koufax-Marichal game, but couldn't. Such games undoubtedly occur more frequently in the post-season. Johnson beat Maddux 2-0 to lead off the 2001 NLCS, although Maddux only pitched seven.

where you can celebrate SABR Day tomorrow:

http://sabr.org/sabrday

Neyer linked to this article on Fangraphs that charts reliever usage over the past 30 years:

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/are-relievers-benefiting-from-pitching-less/

It's fairly short and to the point, basically it says that avg. number of batters faced per relief appearance has plummeted, but overall reliever effectiveness has stayed the same.

The data is persuasive, but you have to assume that 1) batters today wouldn't make the necessary adjustments if they faced the same relievers more, and 2) pitchers can be reconditioned to throw 100+ IP in relief (i.e pitchers throw a lot harder than they used to).

I was reading that last nIght - I think they had tacked on some analysis on performance in high-leverage situation. And what they found was slightly better performance in "clutch" scenarios and worse when it really didn't matter vs 30 years ago.

The Fangraphs iphone app is $1 today only. Pretty nice.

It's not too early for wild projections of meaningless metrics, is it? Good, I thought so.

If Halladay were to win the Cy unanimously this year, he'd move past Palmer, Seaver, Pedro, and Carlton into fourth place for Cy Young share on Baseball Reference. Only Clemens, Johnson, and Maddux would remain ahead of him.

That's pretty cool, actually. But he'll still move into fourth place eventually if he has a few more good years.

I think Halladay has led his league in CG's more times than any pitcher in MLB history.