this Saturday is SABR Day in America (and elsewhere)

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

It looks like ESPN used to have it available as a "situational" statistic, but it's not showing up for 2011 data.

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.

http://itsaboutthemoney.net/archives/2011/09/06/is-war-the-new-rbi/

discus

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.

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?

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

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.

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).

happy SABR Day, what a fine occasion for the board's two dumbest football fans to knock each other cold.

once again, check your local here

https://sabr.org/sabrday