rolling sabermetrics and statistics thread

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+

man some of the names on that 2000 list

Richard Hidalgo is the one that jumps out at me. I sort of remember him...I think.

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).

Just digging into Ted "Big Klu" Kluszewski's career a little bit and happened upon this remarkable stat, which seems unlikely to ever be repeated for even a month, much less four seasons:

At his four-year peak, Big Klu had more homers than strikeouts.

Wow. Anyone done it since 2011 (min. 20 HR)?

https://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/10091.html

Bonds and Brett the only two guys on there after 1956.

Mattingly came very close a number of times in the '80s: he had consecutive years of (HR/K) 23-33, 35-41, 31-35, 30-38, 18-29, 23-30.

Interested in the other extreme, too. Teams will put up with 200 K if you hit, what, at least 30-35 HR. Wonder if anyone's been over 200 K and under 20 HR? That would seem to be a quick ticket out of the league.

Yoan Moncada had 17 HR and 217 K in 2018

Drew Stubbs in 2011 had 15 HR and 205 K

(xpost) Yikes! That's gotta be the worst ever. Maybe even more amazingly--that's not an easy thing to fix--he came back the next year and hit 25 HR with only ("only") 154 K, and hit .315.

So Stubbs is slightly worse. Also kept his job--I'm clearly wrong about that.

9 of the 39 190+ K seasons in MLB history were achieved by a Chris, Khris, or Kris.

Negro League stats incorporated in with MLB, pretty cool

https://apnews.com/article/negro-leagues-statistics-4a204a3cac0527ab5be750783fd411df

A rundown of all the changes on all-time seasonal and career leaderboards:

https://www.mlb.com/news/stats-leaderboard-changes-negro-leagues-mlb

I had no idea this was happening! Amazing!

I had no idea Josh Gibson died age 35.

And in 1947, making it one of the most poignant moments in the Ken Burns film. (Jan. 20: I assume the Dodgers had already announced their intention to bring Robinson up.)

not sure how i feel about this

on one hand, it's cool that some great players get recognition

on the other hand, waiting until essentially all the negro leaguers are dead and then claiming them as part of its history is kinda fucked up for an organization that specifically banned them for 50 years!

on the other other hand, it's all just numbers and lists; does it really matter

saw someone suggest that we treat pre-fully-integrated baseball (i.e., before the red sox called up pumpsie green in 1959) kind of like the deadball era -- it happened, but it operated under circumstances so different as to be barely applicable to today's game. that will never happen -- we're too attached to ruth and dimaggio and williams etc. etc. -- but it's an interesting thought

It's weird: Baseball Reference still has Cobb first, but they also--and have for a year or two now--have Oscar Charleston second and Jud Wilson fifth. Is it that Gibson's career was too short? (But wouldn't bRef be using the same benchmarks as MLB?)

Howabouttttt.....

giving Sadaharu Oh the all-time home run title?

From a friend:

“I caught part of an interview on NPR with the guy who started doing the research. There were no databases so he had to enter stats from each game by hand. He said that one game took about 30 minutes and he had 16,000 games. Yikes.”

(xpost) The one caveat I'd throw up about that is the occasional ex-MLB player who went over to Japan and went from being a journeyman to a star. There were a handful of famous examples in the '80s I'm blanking out on. Obviously we've seen a number of Japanese players go in the other direction and become stars and superstars and Shohei. Maybe the overall depth 50 years ago wasn't what it became later?

Bob Horner!

I'm not sure I follow the argument though. There were no gentlemen's agreements excluding hundreds of Japanese players from MLB - this harmonizes American professional baseball nothing more. If someone wants to create a composite chart of the world's baseball players, including Cuba and the DR etc - nothing's stopping them

RANDY BASS

For every Randy Bass mention, I am legally obligated to repost this amazing story (esp. if gyac has yet to encounter it).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_the_Colonel

Yes--Randy Bass! His '85/86 seasons in Japan, which were Bonds-like numbers (54/47 HR, .350/.389) after a six-year, .212/.284/.326 career. Anyway, it's an interesting point about Oh. Posnanski had him #85 on his list, with, as remember, lots of evidence (beyond just his HR) that he would have had a great MLB career. If they were to make that change, I'd be fine with it.

Wasn’t Davey Johnson huge in Japan? I just read a book about American players in Japan you think I’d remember

Had a big year there in '76, yes. (Mind you, unlike Bass, he was a legitimate MLB star who hit 43 HR with the Braves one year.)

randy bass was also part of the fabled* 1980 denver bears team that also featured a young tim wallach and very young tim raines among other recognizable names

*also* randy bass spent 2005-2019 in the oklahoma state senate as a democrat

I'm excited about the Negro Leagues stats announcement, this will hopefully lead to a lot of new research and debate.

However, incorporating their stats into MLB doesn't really address the real problem. We don't know whether Josh Gibson would have had a higher BA than Ty Cobb had they played in an integrated MLB. A lot of the weaker pitchers that Cobb faced wouldn't have been in the majors if the league had been integrated. I don't know what Cobb's BA would have been, but surely a lot lower than .366. And you could make the same argument about Gibson. Putting Gibson and Cobb on the same leaderboard gives the illusion that they were contemporaries whose stats can be compared (which is possible post-1947, or post-1961 expansion), but it's not so straightforward.

(actually, if we're going to fantasy book an integrated MLB pre-1947, then a racist like Cobb might have refused to join it and instead found a white-only minor league to play in, in which case we might not know his name today)