rolling sabermetrics and statistics thread

Not sure if there would be an article out there on that but I’m interested in analysis about players who lose their ability or perhaps willingness to draw a walk as they age. Specifically thinking about someone like Albert Pujols, and whether or not it has mostly to do with pitchers challenging him more as his skills erode, thereby not pitching around him anymore + not IBBing him nearly as much (if ever!) I’m interested primarily bc of the many aging players who either retain those skills or sometimes even improve them over time (one example: Willie Mays drawing a career-best 112 walks in his age 40 season.)

My guess is there’s a lot related to bat speed and players having to cheat a bit more, which means they’re simply not going to be able to wait that extra split second anymore. But it’s interesting to me how some players completely lose a skill that seems to be one that would age well (and often and perhaps usually does!)

i think with pujols specifically it's that pitchers aren't afraid to challenge him anymore. same with the ghost of chris davis. i'm not so sure that they necessarily had a walk 'skill' so much as it was a by-product of their other skills

curtis granderson, on the other hand, has seen his walk rate go up even as his power fades. it is intersting

James once wrote about the Mays phenomenon--great hitters who lose their bat speed and become more selective to compensate.

I saw this stat and read the list and had a good chuckle on how many of these guys I knew as players from baseball cards or reading the Sporting News all the time as a kid.

Yonder Alonso: Similar Batters through 30

Sid Bream (966.4)
Doug Mientkiewicz (959.4)
David Segui (955.0)
Mike Ivie (946.9)
John Mabry (941.7)
Casey Kotchman (940.1)
Nick Etten (939.0)
Gerald Perry (938.2)
Babe Dahlgren (937.0)
Todd Benzinger (936.7)

https://www.tradingcarddb.com/Images/Cards/Baseball/80/80-445Fr.jpg

I’m not sure how, but a cleveland reliever got a save tonight in a 19-4 win

Think if you pitch three innings or more it doesn't matter what the score is.

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/24/sports/baseball/24rangers.html

Today around the #statcast lab we worked on naming/defining a bunch of new metrics around reaction, burst, & route-running, and I'm very excited for them to be ready. We also kicked around what's driving the xwOBA-wOBA gap we're seeing, because that definitely seems like a thing.

— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) July 19, 2018

the xwOBA-wOBA gap
😕

it's league-wide, too, right?

this gap is going to be the end of us all

here is the draft schedule for the Boston Saberseminar

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VID-J4MUyRtzsXv3o9Ie7pH029VVb8GJ6jJfFNGBnOY/edit#gid=0

...so former players Fernando Perez and Nate Freiman will be presenting.

https://imgur.com/a/Z04LVtf
is this becoming a thing??

https://imgur.com/a/Z04LVtf

god, i hope it becomes a thing.

*sigh*
https://image.ibb.co/byvn8o/Screen_Shot_2018_07_24_at_9_22_55_PM.png

It was kinda bizarre listening to broadcasters extol the virtues of advanced stats for a half-inning; it was awesome, i don't know if it's a regular thing anyone does

BABIP is kind of a weird one to use

honestly if they could only pick 3, i'd take BB%, K%, and OPS. it's usually possible to get a decent idea of what kind of batter someone is by those measures alone

wRC+, OBP, ISO

bWAR, fWAR, GWAR

babip is also not a weighted metric

ha good catch

Got curious so searched for baseball's best inning-eaters and came across these numbers on a fantasy baseball site.

Starters throwing a heavyweight innings workload over a season are a declining breed. The number of starters pitching at least 180 innings has dropped year-on-year.

2014: 66 starters
2015: 56 starters
2016: 45 starters
2017: 35 starters

The trend is dramatic, and although it is unlikely to fall by another 10 this season, it is also unlikely to increase. So in 2018, there are only likely to be 30-35 heavyweight starters.

Looking up the top innings pitched numbers in MLB, there is a decent chance that the number might not hit 30 starters throwing 180 innings.

I created this tool that shows frequency of trade partnershttps://t.co/ncInXyCYKa pic.twitter.com/fPHGMWSlIc

— Dan Hirsch (@DanHirsch) July 28, 2018

This was kind of interesting.

From Day 1 of Saberseminar... BP has a new stat for you!

The highlight of the morning, however, did not focus as much on pitching. Instead it was a presentation by Jonathon Judge on a companion stat to DERA, Deserved Runs Created. DRC should appear on Baseball Prospectus in the next couple of weeks. And, it promises to be one of the best comprehensive hitting stats for overall offensive output. In particular, the DRC+ version (adjusted for parks) looks to be particularly useful. Judge was also quick to back up the data by showing the reliability of the stat for players switching teams as compared with alternative measures such as wOBA or wRC+.

https://thesportspost.com/mlb-saberseminar-boston-diversity-all/

further

https://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/fantasy-relevant-information-from-saber-seminar/

I check the WAR leaderboard on Baseball Reference every two or three days, mostly with an eye towards the awards. Something I will never understand (i.e., not the first time I've encountered this): Scherzer's dropped by 0.3 from a couple of days ago without making a start.

Is it possible that it's a case of the R in WAR getting better?

I think I mentioned that as a possible explanation when I brought this up a few years ago. But the replacement level changing by a third of a win in a couple of days seems like a pretty wild swing.

Wonder if the replacement level calculation gets updated every so often rather than changing automatically.

could be other things getting updated, too, like park factors? i'm not sure. if the replacement level for calculation for pitchers was updated, wouldn't that affect all pitchers WAR?

Maybe on days when you're not playing, they factor in intangibles. Were you offering your teammates moral support from the bench, or did you spend the game in the clubhouse getting a massage? Were you out there for yesterday's bench-clearing brawl? Did you make yourself available for autographs before the game, or did you tell some seven-year old to take a hike?

4 bonus points for playing the game the way it was meant to be played

And that game in question was Euchre by clubhouse rules.

Baseball Statisticians Unveil New Analytics Model Measuring Precise Amount Of Joy They Suck From The Game https://t.co/4ljqgrBotM pic.twitter.com/lFpw3jOchd

— Onion Sports Network (@OnionSports) August 24, 2018

guest Onion editor Goose Gossage

https://sabrstatanalysis.blog/2018/09/11/what-a-drag-it-is-getting-old

good old players are disappearing . . . since roughly around the time that steroid testing really kicked in

and yet further CBA ramifications

useful link for the future: http://tangotiger.com/index.php/site/article/re288-run-expectancy-by-the-24-base-out-states-x-12-plate-count-states-recu

the first image is the good old run expectancy chart, broken out by pitch counts:

https://i.imgur.com/sfBkCBd.png

the second is the same data presented in a different way, relative to the 0-0 count. it took me a second to figure out wtf was going on, but you start with the number of outs and the position of the runners on base. then move to the 0-0 column. from there, it tells you how every subsequent pitch to that batter affects the run expectancy.

https://i.imgur.com/riTvIO0.png

Quite interesting:

http://www.billjamesonline.com/jack_kralick/

Was Jack Kralick the best pitcher in the American League in 1961? WAR says yes (bWAR, anyway), James says "Are you kidding?"

Baseball Prospectus followers: did they ever publish the detailed mechanics/formulae/algorithms of DRC+, like they said they'd do back in December? Couldn't immediately find it in the archive, and although I'm not a subscriber, it seems that is not the reason, as the titles of other subscriber-only articles do show up.

There was a good reddit thread where JJudge mentioned some more info was coming...

https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/a747wg/hello_im_jonathan_judge_bachlaw_senior_metrics/

given the monumental wealth of statistical information available now, and advances in AI, surely 95+% of managerial decisions could be outsourced to a real-time computer? and if this is true, wouldn't it be borderline negligent not to?

some of them have been outsourced, to the degree that the field manager is expected to share the org's philosophy more specifically than ever.

Sabrites have said for awhile that allocation of playing time is more crucial than in-game tactics, and the front office has more to say about that too.

According to a friend who works for a team, most teams have their own proprietary algorithms and analytics departments. He likens SABR/FanGraphs intel to an open source resource like wikipedia.

nothing new here but https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/sports/sean-forman-sports-reference.html

this is, hands down, my favorite statcast discovery so far

i looked at every two-pitch sequence (within PA but not across) in 2018 to see which combination is best at inducing swinging strikes

the result: throw the same exact pitch right before it! pic.twitter.com/8KZ8aaiGMM

— Alex Chamberlain (@DolphHauldhagen) February 21, 2019