rolling sabermetrics and statistics thread

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

Amusing if you grew up with this:

https://i.postimg.cc/ZRPJVS6M/lineup.jpg

They've got #2 wrong: that was your fabled bat-control, hit-and-run guy.

"guy who sees 10 pitches per AB"

That too, yeah--give your leadoff guy a chance to steal. Neither of the first two #2 hitters I think of, though, match the stereotype: Griffey for the Big Red Machine (faster than Rose at leadoff), and Alomar for the Jays' WS teams (would have been a #3 hitter on many teams, but the Jays were overloaded with hitting).