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What's a Ball Player Worth? (November 6, 2003)
Discussion ThreadPosted 12:47 p.m.,
November 7, 2003
(#8) -
Danil
I still have doubts about WPA....
Here's an example of a kind of question that I don't know the answer to: Consider a 9 inning game, with final score AWAY 3, HOME 2. Before the first pitch, HOME had win probability q, AWAY 1-q. So over the course of the games events, the credits and charges for the AWAY players must sum to q.
Now, rather than trying to get down and gritty with the accomplishments of individual players, suppose we simply lump everything into two categories - offense and defense (defense == pitching+fielding). How much variation is there in how the total credit is divided among these categories? That is, if the credit is distributed differently depending on when the runs are scored, what pattern maximizes credit to the offense, which to the defense, and how wide is the swing between those?
What's a Ball Player Worth? (November 6, 2003)
Posted 6:49 p.m.,
November 7, 2003
(#12) -
Danil
Making reasonable but consistant assumptions of the relative strengths of the two teams:
300000000
200000000
000000003
200000000
000000003
000000002
Do these lines all end up with the same division of credit among offense and defense for the winning team, or are they different. If different, by how much, and which distribution of runs maximizes the credit to the offense, and which distribution maximizes credit to the defense?
Where have you gone Tom Boswell? (January 7, 2004)
Posted 11:49 a.m.,
January 7, 2004
(#1) -
Danil
Are you really being fair to Boswell? I'm not convinced he's changed a whole lot. This is the same man who wrote "NOTHING is more important than RBI" (it's in one of his collections, the essay on Cecil Fielder).
He still writes the story well, better than most, but makes the usual choice twixt fact and fancy. I think of Matthew Harrison Brady - "it is you who have left us, by standing in one place".