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Aging Patterns

June 26, 2002 - Charles Saeger

Interesting stuff. A few questions, since you have the data --

How does a player's individual stats progress? Batting average, home runs, walks, steals, yadda yadda yadda. Does a player who was, say, a high-average player lose more batting average (relative to ability) as he ages? Does he lose more speed?

Is there any change in the rate as the march of time has progressed?

Do some positions age faster than others?

Forecasting 2003

February 13, 2003 - Charles Saeger

A thought -- why not use single-season similarity scores? I know it's not OPS, but it would be interesting, though it you would need to do a PA correction or something.

Bruce, Lee, and the Goose

December 17, 2002 - Charles Saeger

Tom -- nothing to add, but I must say that this was a great article.

DIPS bookmarks (September 13, 2003)

Posted 8:28 p.m., September 14, 2003 (#4) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  Say, Tom, has someone ever looked at the randomness of pitcher/batter matchups to see how much of this explains year-to-year $H variations? Say, facing Tony Gwynn 8 times one year and 1 time the next and 7 other average yahoos would be about .42 hits over the course of the year, using Gwynn's career average $H.

Pitchers, MVP, Quality of opposing hitters (September 19, 2003)

Posted 12:54 p.m., September 20, 2003 (#5) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  Tango -- a long-time thought, I'm sure I posted this elsewhere, but I'll reiterate. Could one use opposing hitter quality to get a handle on the luck factor of DIPS?

Sabermetrics >WIN SHARES bibliography (September 19, 2003)

Posted 1:11 p.m., September 20, 2003 (#6) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  studes -- I've played quite a bit with it, and have a few changes, mostly on the defensive side and listing expected Win Shares, FWIW.

Pyschological Impact of a Devastating Outcome (September 27, 2003)

Posted 1:16 a.m., October 8, 2003 (#10) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  One thing at which I've wanted to look was the Tony LaRussa complaint -- that blowing a 3-run save in the 9th will just kill a MLB team. It has always struck me as CYA complaining from a manager who does not want to change his strategy, and it would be easy to check, noting the following:

* Record of this team in the previous three games.
* Record of this team in the next three games.
* Did the team win or lose the blown save game? There may have been a few wins in there.

You might want to control for home/road and opponent's records, but I'm not sure those will matter much.

Anyhow, were TLR to be right, there would be a significant drop between the team's record in the previous three games and the following three games, not explainable by a change of home/road venue or quality of foes.

Evaluating Catchers (October 22, 2003)

Posted 9:41 p.m., October 28, 2003 (#21) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  Good study, Tango. Awfully darn clever, I might add.

Win Shares, Loss Shares, and Game Shares (November 15, 2003)

Posted 5:15 p.m., November 17, 2003 (#22) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  studes is taking more or less the approach I take with Expected Win Shares. I could always easily partition the idea of Loss Shares between the hitting and the defense and between the pitching and the fielding; those ratios always work.

But studes is accepting that either someone needs to have an expected total, or accept a negative total. I fall into the former category; the idea of a negative Win Share means (to me) that I really, really believe this is replacement level, and I sure as hell don't have any idea where replacement really is. It becomes a philosophical divide, one not worth bridging.

Incidentally, I do take into account negative batting/pitching performances in the Expected Win Shares idea, though you need to reconcile the league totals. There's nothing too magical or original in the various concepts; basically negative claim points means you add Expected Win Shares to your original totals based on playing time. I haven't run basic tests mostly because everything is so flipping obvious. :) I spent enough time playing with the fielding formulis this spring.

Win Shares, Loss Shares, and Game Shares (November 15, 2003)

Posted 6:11 p.m., November 17, 2003 (#24) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  Charlie, I'd love to see your system, of course. I am struggling with the defense side of the equation, though I've really just started.

By contrast, that's my specialty. :) Really, what work I have put into there is trying to improve the various formulas. Most of the stuff works -- and working through the math, the stuff was more mathematically sound than I had thought at first glance -- but there were some things I know that Bill doesn't know, some things neither one of us knew until I started looking (I adjust DER for team assist rate, for example) and there's some just flat out, lame stuff -- Bill's inability to evaluate Passed Balls for anything, the idea that a position with 45 out of 100 points really meant a .450 DWP (and the subtraction of the bottom 20% of the rating that happened as a result of that). I can dig out the basics, I have them on my hard drive written up nice and neat in some folder somewhere.

Sports Quotes (November 18, 2003)

Posted 12:38 p.m., November 18, 2003 (#4) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  Uh, the 1869 Cincinnati Reds?

Baseball Musings: Defense Archives (December 5, 2003)

Posted 2:43 a.m., December 7, 2003 (#6) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  One reason Jeter probably rates so badly is that the "subtract 0.200" rule serves to exaggerate fielding Win Share differences. James takes a rating 20 on a 0-100 scale as a .200 DWP, when it isn't -- in the case of fielding (as opposed to hitting), the team rating determines the fielder's effectiveness. Runs Created is a team-independent method of offense determination (well, mostly), so thus it is possible to say safely what a player's OWP is. For range, when divvying up the claim points he's just assuming a team is average until they actually stake claims on those Win Shares. (Were James to use something like CAD or DFT which make full estimates of fielding skill before Claim Points, that would be different. I'm not saying what James uses is wrong, because I happen to like looking at a player's skills from about a zillion different angles, but he's using it wrong here.)

I took a look at players when they change teams, and as best I can tell, dropping out that 0.200 makes little difference in year-to-year consistency when changing from a good team to a bad team and vice versa.

Baseball Musings: Defense Archives (December 5, 2003)

Posted 11:13 p.m., December 8, 2003 (#15) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  +30 runs would lead the league in CAD in most years as well, and in DFT.

The talent distribution that Bill James brought to everyone's attention is not nearly as skewed for fielding as it is for hitting.

One thing that I have noticed (and I wrote about it in a BBBA once upon a time) is that the gap in terms of runs between the best and worst fielders at any given position is about the same, save for maybe catcher, where teams value the ability to catch more than differences in that ability. The reason I have always assumed for this is that teams will move a crappy shortstop or center fielder, thereby keeping those positions responsible for the most runs from having a really lousy performer afield. It's something to keep in mind at a less-demanding position, primarily first base (because if you're a really good left fielder, you play center field).

Do Win Shares undervalue pitching? (December 15, 2003)

Posted 10:00 p.m., December 15, 2003 (#6) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  So, I'm a little lost ... how would you go about fixing this? Something like multiplying Claim Points by ERA+ or something?

UZR, 2000-2003, Adjusted by Difficulty of Position (December 21, 2003)

Posted 7:33 p.m., December 21, 2003 (#2) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  Looks like Jeter is somewhere below a third baseman.

UZR, 2000-2003, Adjusted by Difficulty of Position (December 21, 2003)

Posted 1:18 p.m., December 23, 2003 (#25) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  One thing to keep in mind is that the value of a play saved in the outfield is greater than in the infield, since outfielders are responsible for preventing extra-base hits.

UZR, 2000-2003, Adjusted by Difficulty of Position (December 21, 2003)

Posted 2:04 p.m., December 23, 2003 (#27) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  Are you sure those proportions are correct? Since UZR doesn't have a flyball component for infielders (unless I am mistaken), more than 90% of all infield outs would be singles. Very few extra base hits come from groundballs.

UZR, 2000-2003, Adjusted by Difficulty of Position (December 21, 2003)

Posted 5:16 p.m., December 23, 2003 (#30) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  Using Chris's numbers: 2b/ss 0.753, cf 0.842. That's about 0.09, and that can add up over the course of a year; an SS who is +50 plays versus a CF who is +50 plays has a difference of 4.5 runs.

Valuing Starters and Relievers (December 27, 2003)

Posted 2:41 a.m., December 28, 2003 (#10) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  Very pertinent points made all around.

03 MLE's - MGL (December 28, 2003)

Posted 12:52 a.m., December 29, 2003 (#13) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  MGL -- do you keep batting outs or at bats as the constant, and do you adjust for times on first base before adjusting SB and CS?

FIP and DER (December 30, 2003)

Posted 4:48 p.m., December 31, 2003 (#11) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  One thing I feel the need to add to all this is that the non-FIP portion of RA/9 has changed (diminished, IIRC) over baseball history. (I ran FIP for postwar leagues awhile ago and found this.) No idea what to do about this, but I thought it worth saying.

FIP and DER (December 30, 2003)

Posted 7:55 p.m., January 1, 2004 (#16) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  Yes, I agree, Tango. I need to figure out some way to do that as a next step. I'd like to refine this analysis, and then use it to replace the current Win Shares methodology for splitting runs allowed between pitching and fielding.

Studes: the stuff I sent you, aside from the strikeout adjustment (which is highly malleable, BTW), is based on run values for the pitching/fielding split. I've done a TON of work here.

FIP and DER (December 30, 2003)

Posted 10:26 a.m., January 2, 2004 (#18) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  Yeah, the strikeout adjustment. If you use a run-value based strikeout adjustment, you'll have tons of folks astonished at the differences in defensive Win Shares between one team and the next. The primary reason I wrote it like I did was that no one would accept it otherwise.

In relation to the other elements of the formula, use a run-value of 3/8 for a strikeout if you're going that route. It's the value of the actual strikeout, the value of not giving up a hit and the value of keeping another batter from coming to the plate.

FIP and DER (December 30, 2003)

Posted 2:42 p.m., January 3, 2004 (#23) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  What studes said, though there's more numbers floating about here than anyone else here has seen. This is actually why I started with the expected Win Shares approach, since in terms of actual wins being parceled out, I couldn't see how fielders on high-strikeout teams would not earn less than fielders on low-strikeout teams, since technically the pitcher did more of the work and more to earn the win.

This isn't an issue of ability, it's an issue of the system, and that is what I was addressing.

Win Values: Updated for 1969, 1974-1977 - Rob Wood (January 6, 2004)

Posted 9:43 p.m., January 6, 2004 (#1) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  I have all of Bert Blyleven's starts from 1972-1977 (his Pythagorean win short period) in a spreadsheet, and have looked at them in depth, though I'm sure I have a start or two in error somewhere in there. A few notes:

* Blyleven's support, relative to his team, was pretty bad. For this period, he was -30 runs of support below expectation, which actually is pretty good compared to 1970-1, when he was -42 runs. He was a pretty typical hitter for a pitcher, so that can't be it ...

* Blyleven's record by run support is eerily consistent. When shutout, Blyleven went 0-17 with 2.59 ERA in 18 starts. When supported by 1 or 2 runs, Blyleven went 15-43 with a 2.53 ERA in 63 starts; he won 10 1-0 games. When supported by 3 to 5 runs (Bill James's favorite range), Blyleven went 37-27 a 2.97 ERA in 80 starts. When supported by 6 to 9 runs, Blyleven went 30-1 with a 2.81 ERA in 40 starts. When supported by 10 or more runs, Blyleven went 14-0 with a 2.43 ERA in 15 starts. I would expect the ERA to match the support more, since the run support would have been influenced by the environment, but I really don't know what this should look like.

* When you break his stats down by Win, Loss or No Decision, however, is when the data become really bizarre. When he won (96 starts) he had a 1.38 ERA. When he lost (88 starts, I'm short one, my mistake), he had a 4.24 ERA and he had a 3.47 ERA in 40 No Decisions. But, when we look at "why?" things become bizarre. His support (everything hereafter W-L-ND) went 5.76-1.89-4.50 R/G. His $H was .241-.306-.308, his GDP/Opp (an Opp is 75% of (H-HR), BB and HBP less WP and Balks times BiP/BFP) goes 16.2%-9.4%-10.8%, his UERA (that's Unearned Runs/9) was 0.23-0.58-0.41. Blyleven's pitcher-only stats are, oddly, consistent: HR/9 going 0.28-0.88-0.82, his BB/9 going 1.91-2.41-2.95 and his K/9 going 7.44-7.11-6.94. If I figure his FIP and add 3.2 we have ERAs of 2.62-3.76-3.84; his ERCs go 1.56-3.83-3.91. He pitched worse in his losses and no decisions, naturally, but not as bad as one would expect.

I somehow suspect the friendly voice coming so often on my television in the summer was an absolute terror in the clubhouse in his 20s. I'd expect his team to have performed worse, but this much?

Incidentally, when I compute custom PythW for each GAME (i.e., if the Twins scored 5 runs and Bert allowed 2, I'd plug those two numbers into the Pyth formula and multiply the result by the number of decisions Bert had in the game, 0 or 1) and add them together, I come up with -1.6 -- no real shortfall. I'm not sure it's a good idea to do this, but it was interesting.

Win Values: Updated for 1969, 1974-1977 - Rob Wood (January 6, 2004)

Posted 1:54 p.m., January 7, 2004 (#3) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  All your other numbers in the third bullet are because of your sampling... because he lost, we expect him to have had bad H, HR, BB rates.

I know that. However, without being able to pull specifics out of my ass, pitchers usually don't hold up as well as Blyleven did. Really, his only difference was the home run rate. When he didn't win, he was a league-average pitcher who went 0-89. Somehow, I find that remarkable.

Win Values: Updated for 1969, 1974-1977 - Rob Wood (January 6, 2004)

Posted 4:33 p.m., January 7, 2004 (#5) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  I would have expected a great pitcher to still be noticeably worse than league average in his losses. He did lose, and I would suspect giving up more runs than a normal pitcher would be the reason.

Where have you gone Tom Boswell? (January 7, 2004)

Posted 8:25 p.m., January 7, 2004 (#4) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  Statisticians proved long ago that a blown save does more lingering damage to a team -- precipitates more losing streaks -- than any other event in the sport

Has anyone actually studied this? I've wanted to see this study for a long time. Somehow, I really doubt this, especially since teams tend to win about 25% of all Blown Saves anyways.

BABIP and Speed (January 7, 2004)

Posted 8:14 p.m., January 7, 2004 (#1) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  I took a look at the 1992 NL once upon a time, and found this advantage to be around the same, I found adding Speed Score/200 to a base negated speed, or .005 points of BABIP per point of Speed Score.

MLB Timeline - Best players by position (January 14, 2004)

Posted 7:39 p.m., January 14, 2004 (#7) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  This is a nice presentation, like others have said, and unusually good for something coming out of Pravda. Having said that, I cannot see why one would say Willie Mays was a better player than Mickey Mantle from 1958 to 1962.

MLB Timeline - Best players by position (January 14, 2004)

Posted 7:45 p.m., January 26, 2004 (#33) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  XM: I took a closer look at M-M, and I do see from 1959-1961 Mantle's XR over 61% league park adjusted is only about 12 runs better than Mays's. One could go either way, with defense and MVP votes and team performance making things muddled.

DRA Addendum (Excel) (January 16, 2004)

Posted 4:46 p.m., January 20, 2004 (#15) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  Again, terrific stuff and well-written! People don't realize yet that DRA is by far and away the best metric out there using traditional fielding data (not PBP data). It will some day be the gold standard!

DRA is solid, but there's nothing I can see that shoves it above other metrics. It's another look. Most of its findings are right in line with Davenport's (CAD is usually pretty in line with DFT also), which means to me that we may have reached a point for fielding data where we need to take another approach. All systems will fade as we take them back farther in time, DRA probably more so since it starts with PbP and reconciles it with traditional data. Those relationships probably don't hold up as well in 1910, and we would need to adjust everything accordingly.

Endorsing a system without being able to see its underlying nuts and bolts is a bad move, even if it uses one's own system as a basis.

DRA Addendum (Excel) (January 16, 2004)

Posted 9:16 p.m., January 22, 2004 (#18) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  DRA differs meaningfully from DFT, based upon how DFT is described in Mike Emeigh's "Jeter" articles. Clay's website says that the DFT methodology has been updated (including by ignoring errors--maybe Clay read the DRA articles).

I never said it did not. Read what I wrote again; I said that the *results* do not differ significantly. And I never, ever discussed Win Shares, which I have mentioned many times does not have replicatable results. I actually like having a second context system, but especially with separating multiple fielders at one position, it has issues.

(And DFT was fully explained in a BP. I'm not extolling it, I should note, but its results are widely available.)

And I for one, with modern computers, see no reason why formulae need to fit in one line. The structure, yeah, that should be easy to explain, one line. Ockham's Razor leads us to prefer simplicity when we can. But when one needs an extra computation, there's no reason not to use it.

Win Shares simply does not provide ratings that match well with UZR or Diamond Mind. CAD may, I just don't know.

That isn't the only point of a system (the point being to make accurate and reproduceable ratings), and that's what I meant by PbP data, reconciling to UZR rating. Mike's articles show that even those are hardly perfect. (FWIW, there is no systematically published "Diamond Mind" ratings, but you knew that. There's a set of Pr/Fr/Av/Vg/Ex grades, but those aren't good enough for research purposes, since they're somewhat subjective. And those count errors for a fielder, or use catcher or outfield arms. You know this, but some folks see "Diamond Mind ratings" and assume there's a number floating out there and start looking for it.)

DRA Addendum (Excel) (January 16, 2004)

Posted 9:19 p.m., January 22, 2004 (#19) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  MH -- just to add, I think you're reading more into my comments than is there. Indeed, aside from the first baseman's putouts issue, I don't disagree much with anything you wrote in your articles.

Futility Infielder - 2003 DIPS (January 27, 2004)

Posted 1:57 p.m., January 28, 2004 (#28) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  140 HR were hit by the Dodgers and their opponents in LA.

111 HR were hit by the Dodgers and their opponents away from LA, by far the lowest total in baseball (Montreal at 128 was next).

Chavez Ravine has traditionally not been a bad home run park, typically average, but this is indeed out-of-line. (It cuts hitting greatly, but that's because it destroys batting average.)

Futility Infielder - 2003 DIPS (January 27, 2004)

Posted 2:05 p.m., January 28, 2004 (#30) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  Tom Tippett makes a good case that there are significant methodological problems with McCracken's DIPS research, and that indeed there is more to pitching than K, W and HR allowed rates.

Tippett never said there are "significant methodological problems" with DIPS. He had critiques, yes, but has never said that the research has significant problems -- in fact, he has gone out of his way to say the opposite after his critique.

Tippett's article critiquing DIPS itself contained a pair of flaws:

* Even though there is variation in $H, how much of this is explained by a standard distribution? (Tangotiger has shown that the distribution of $H variance is not standard, but while there is some ability-explained variance, the distribution is fairly close to standard.) We'd expect some pitchers to be better or worse than average, even over the course of a career, just by the luck of the draw.

* While there may be (and in fact, there are) significant differences between pitchers in $H, the effects of those differences pale compared to the effects of those pitchers' different HR, BB and SO rates.

Smack the Pingu (January 29, 2004)

Posted 2:42 p.m., January 30, 2004 (#10) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  1215.3. I suck.

Clutch Hitting: Fact or Fiction? (February 2, 2004)

Posted 9:55 p.m., February 2, 2004 (#2) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  I too want to see this study reclassified by pitcher quality. Do good clutch performers do their work against bad pitchers? Can we see what this is in another "clutch" situation, say, runner on third and less than two out?

Nevertheless, this is interesting, though nowhere near as important as the author says it is.

Clutch Hitting: Fact or Fiction? (February 2, 2004)

Posted 8:18 a.m., February 3, 2004 (#8) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  Actually, no, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that in runs generated out of this, it doesn't look like that it affects that many runs. It's more like counting safe on errors than counting home runs.

Clutch Hitting: Fact or Fiction? (February 2, 2004)

Posted 12:39 p.m., February 3, 2004 (#15) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  As an addendum to my earlier comments, I suppose ...

How many runs are we talking about being in play here? How many runs difference are made up between, say, Ozzie Smith and Dave Winfield, because of this? This is what I'm talking about, and I'm inherently skeptical of the 28% figure. I am having a hard time accepting it without seeing the numbers.

I know this sounds very unsabermetric, but what are the differences in batting average? Are the differences due to walk rate or whacking the ball? The slugging percentage difference suggest the latter, but just making sure.

Clutch Hitting: Fact or Fiction? (February 2, 2004)

Posted 12:48 p.m., February 3, 2004 (#16) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  Ah, rereading, I see the 28% figure's origin. I took it to mean something in an overall sense, but it's just in terms of performance in these situations. It still looks like we're only talking about a couple of runs a year here, so I still can't see it as an important skill.

Clutch Hitting: Fact or Fiction? (February 2, 2004)

Posted 5:26 p.m., February 3, 2004 (#30) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  Well, I would guess the next step is to try the same on the old classic, RISP.

Clutch Hitting: Fact or Fiction? (February 2, 2004)

Posted 5:31 p.m., February 3, 2004 (#31) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  Tom: It's not that clutch hitting didn't exist; we all knew it did. It's whether or not clutch ability exists, and I must ask to be sure, but knowing you I'm sure you already checked -- is the distribution random?

Clutch Hitting: Fact or Fiction? (February 2, 2004)

Posted 1:54 p.m., February 8, 2004 (#85) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  Ross ... oops?

Clutch Hitting: Fact or Fiction? (February 2, 2004)

Posted 1:55 p.m., February 8, 2004 (#86) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  Alright oops

ARod and Soriano - Was the Trade Fair? (February 16, 2004)

Posted 6:01 p.m., February 16, 2004 (#4) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  It's an interesting gamble. Whom would you rather have over the next seven years: A-Rod or Soriano? My guess is A-Rod, but it's just a guess. This is what Bill James likes to call a "Challenge Trade." We haven't had one this big since the Alomar/Carter/Fernandez/McGriff trade in the 1990-1 offseason.

BTW, what is George's explanation for having A-Rod at third and Jeter screw things up even longer at short? A-Rod has a Gold Glove; Jeter is possibly the worst defensive shortstop playing regularily in the majors today.

ARod and Soriano - Was the Trade Fair? (February 16, 2004)

Posted 11:05 p.m., February 18, 2004 (#36) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  Rob S: Well, that does cut Soriano's expected future value by about, oh, 35-40%. Quick rough math with a Brock2 spreadsheet; it cuts his Marginal Runs (RC/25 over 61% of league) by 45%, RC by 35%, R/RBI by 35%, BB by 34%, HR by 41% ... I'm sure Tom will have some better estimate. It basically means his best years instead of being immediately ahead of Soriano are immediately behind Soriano.

Amalgamation of Fielding Measures: Cedeno Charts (February 17, 2004)

Posted 5:24 p.m., February 17, 2004 (#19) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  studes: the structure went into Win Shares, but many of the individual criteria did not, or at least, not in the form he used.

Baseball Prospectus - : Evaluating Defense (March 1, 2004)

Posted 1:46 p.m., March 2, 2004 (#24) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  DFTs were explained in a BP a couple of years ago. Structurally, they're similar to CAD, range more like the original version, where it was handled like Bill James's old Range Index. The final numbers will be similar, though there are some differences. Clay's published 1b putout formula is better than my published formula, though I have an unpublished one that is even better yet. (His 1b putout formula is based on mine, and I was credited for it, making me I think the only BBBA contributer ever mentioned in BP.) His 2b/ss putout formulae are also better, and I have revised versions in the spirit of his, though frankly, middle infield putouts are of decidedly minor value, as opposed to 1b/of putouts, where they are bread and butter. I think he weighs an error higher than a hit, which he shouldn't do; CAD looks like it does, but actually it weighs a hit higher than an error for the team, when you use a collective performance.

I place more weight on DFTs than any other fielding measure using the traditional stats, but not because it's the best. I place the weight on it because it is publically available for all history, and because I know how it works. It's better than Win Shares, though I really like having Win Shares fielding around because it changes the context, hitting everything from a different angle. Really, though, this isn't rocket science; any frigging idiot who understands baseball and can even manually do multiple regressions in Excel can write a decent fielding formula.

Baseball Prospectus - : Evaluating Defense (March 1, 2004)

Posted 1:50 p.m., March 2, 2004 (#26) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  Another note:

I cannot understand why teams would want to evaluate current players using traditional fielding stats. Right now, they're most useful for historical evaluation, and for in-season spot checks; MGL can't tally UZR in-season. An adequate (not straight ZR, which is useless; more like the old DA) pbp evaluation is light-years better than any traditional stat method, and allows you to look at smaller areas of performance.

The 2004 Marcels (March 10, 2004)

Posted 2:39 p.m., March 10, 2004 (#1) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
  Didn't Alfonzo Soriano age a few years? You still have him as 26.