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Felipe Alou: Is He Afraid of the Walk?

November 13, 2002 - David Smyth

Good post. I would add to that that we should also look at the quotes Alou has given over the years with regard to plate discipline and walking. I am not sure what they would indicate, because I never "followed" Alou, but I am willing to guess that he has probably made several statements suggesting that "you can't walk off the island", etc. If he hasn't, then he probably wouldn't be stereotyped in the way that Tango points out. That his influence would not likely "pollute" Bonds or Giambi, if they were on his team, says more about the character of Bonds and Giambi than it does about Alou. C'mon, Tango, you are capable of a more unbiased analysis than this...

Felipe Alou: Is He Afraid of the Walk?

November 14, 2002 - David Smyth

I read MGL and Rauseo's comments here about mgl being flamed and treated poorly. Can someone tell me where to find that? I'd like to see what it was about.

Felipe Alou: Is He Afraid of the Walk?

November 14, 2002 - David Smyth

I read the mgl stuff. It wasn't near as bad as I expected. I mean, it's not like someone attacked his ethnicity or anything. As mgl said, it goes with the territory. When you position yourself as an expert (as he definitely is in certain areas), there are always people looking for any small mistake to take a shot at you. I guess it makes them feel one-up. MGL's mistake (whatever you want to call it) was implying (even if unintended) that the GM was only interested in Williams because of an ability misjudjement, when in all likely reality there are significant financial mitigating circumstances. And that is certainly something which should have been pointed out. Only not so rudely, of course...

And as far as mgl not posting anymore on Clutch Hits, it's none of my business, of course, but isn't that akin to "cutting off one's nose to spite one's face"? I mean, there are certainly high-quality discussions on Clutch Hits. You just have to pick your spots, and have a good idea who you are interacting with...

Banner Years

November 2, 2002 - David Smyth

Hey mgl, I took linear algebra in high school (advanced placement, etc.). The only problem is that I never took a statistics course :).

The poster Contrarian mentioned Walt Davis. We can all see by his posts that Walt is very bright and apparently has very good statistical training. But where are his articles? Where are his original saber studies? MGL and Tango are not PhD mathematicians, but at least they are out there, taking the lead in this field (along, of course, with others).

Forecasting 2003

February 13, 2003 - David Smyth

Tango, I think this is fantastic topic. Although I greatly respect the technical expertise of expert projectors such as Voros, MGL, etc., I still cling to the belief that I can do "almost" as well, looking at the back of a baseball card for 30 seconds or whatever. What is important to me is not whether they can "beat" me (I have no doubt that they can), but rather what is the magnitude of the discrepancy. If I can get 90% of the way there doing 10% of the work, I'm quite happy with that, in the knowledge that even the most accurate projections are still off the mark a noticeable percentage of the time. I don't mean to leave an impression that advanced player projection is for stat nerds only--I realize that this is one of the "higher" forms of the science. But what is of a large impact conceptually is not necessarily matched in the practical arena.

Forecasting 2003

February 18, 2003 - David Smyth

I'm a bit confused about what this project is trying to do with respect to the inclusion of "outside information" (outside the stats, I mean). There are 3 "levels"-- the basic, the "back of card", and the advanced. What would be the results if the 3 levels were restricted to pure stat information? This is what I am most interested in knowing. But the way this seems to be set up, it is what would be the results if each level has different information. If I submit a "back of the card" entry, it will not consider any inside info, such as injuries or new pitchers, etc. It may "infer" such, due to a lower AB total in 2002 or whatever, but will not seek to learn or directly include such such info. But this may not coincide with what some other back of card primey submits, or what R Shandler has taken into account. It is easy to say that inside info tends to be unhelpful overall, due to low reliability. But for a small selected sample of "oddball" seasons, outside info might be invaluable.

I just want to make sure that apples are being compared to apples--or, if they aren't, that there is a compelling reason for such. And if there is, that the interpretation is taking all of this into account.

Forecasting 2003

February 19, 2003 - David Smyth

I'm clear now, Tango. But I want to point out something else. The design of the project would seem to put the expert forecasters like MGL and Voros at a disadvantage. That is, their procedures are specifically designed to provide the best accuracy for the overall mass of players. They were not specifically tailored to provide the best accuracy for players who had an unusual season in 2002. Their method might be sacrificing outlier accuracy for bulk accuracy. I have no such restriction as a back of the card guy. In fact, I would be stupid if I didn't take this into account and choose to regress more, or less, than I normally would. So, I question that this project will really reveal the "true" differences between the "levels" of forecasting complexity.

Crucial Situations

December 3, 2002 - David Smyth

Cool charts, Tango. I'm not getting the color in your description. Any idea on how to get the red and grey, etc.?

Are Managers Optimizing Their Best Relievers?

January 6, 2003 - David Smyth

Tango, if you still check this thread, I came to this and the Sutter thread late, and I just want to give you your props. Really, really good stuff. I think we should take up a "collection" to get Tango the PBP from 2002. :)

OPS: Begone!

May 20, 2003 - David Smyth

One thing they didn't really explain in Moneyball is how DePodesta came up with the 3 to 1 ratio foe OBA and SLG. I think I figured it out...

The max OBA is 1.000, and the max SLG is 4.000. At either of these levels, the team will score an "infinite" number of runs, so the max OBA and max SLG are equivalent on the team level. The equalized ideal ratio is therefore 4.000/1.000, which comes to 4.0 (duh). The actual ratio of SLG to OBA in the mid-late 90s AL was about 1.3 to 1. So if you divide the 4.000 by the 1.300, you get 3.08, which they rounded off to 3.00. What this means is that there is 3 times as much proportional movement needed to get from the avg SLG to the max SLG, as there is to get from the avg OBA to the max OBA.

That's an interesting insight, but what does it have to do with comparing the value of OBA and SLG for real-life ballplayers? The answer is...(drum roll, please)...nothing!! DePodesta screwed up, and so now Oakland is overvaluing OBA to the same degree as OPS undervalues it. This does not include the differences in the "price" of OBA and SLG, and I guess any pitch count benefit. My calculations showed a value of 1.7*SLG. Pumping that up a bit due to these extra considerations, and the Oaks should be weighting OBA as 2*SLG, not 3*

OPS: Begone!

May 20, 2003 - David Smyth

Obviously, I meant that Oakland should use 2*OBA + SLG (not that OBA=2*SLG).

OPS: Begone!

May 21, 2003 - David Smyth

It's interesting that the best fit for the team was 1.56*, and for the individual added to the team it was higher, at 1.64*. I would have expected the opposite.

OPS: Begone!

May 21, 2003 - David Smyth

I think some people are being to kind to DePodesta, in some sort of PC fear. This is a saber site and discussion. How easy Paul D is to get along with, and what his college was and degree was in, has next to nothing to do with anything (how do you like *that* sentence, Tango). Let me quote the relevant passage from moneyball about the 3 to 1 ratio: "He proceeded to tinker with his own version of Bill James' runs created formula. When he was finished, he had a model for predicting run production that was more accurate than any he knew of. In his model an extra point of OBA was worth 3 times an extra point of SLG."

Now, that is a definitive statement. Whether it's from DePodesta, James, Gimbel, Einstein, or me, it is either true or false. All the evidence suggests that it is false, and that even if you give a bonus for taking pitches and the lower salary cost of walks, you'll be hard-pressed to even get the ratio up to 2 to 1.

It's true that we don't have a detailed explanation from DePodesta, and that Lewis might have gotten the details wrong. In an earlier post, I gave a theory as to how Paul D got his result, and that it was bogus. Maybe my theory is wrong (I doubt it), but the bottom line is that 3 to 1 is way off, based on what info we have to evaluate what DePodesta meant. Let us not kiss his ass because he has a "job". There is no doubt that the people named such as Voros and Tango could do DePodesta's essential job, and probably better.

OPS: Begone!

May 22, 2003 - David Smyth

Another way to test for the best OBA factor is to use the "plus 1" method, and find out which factor produces the most correct ratio between avg event values. The critical one in this case is the HR/BB. Doing that, and keeping in mind that OBA includes the IBBs as regular walks, I find the best factor to be 1.7. Tango got 1.56 and 1.64, I think, but he only included a handful of possible teams. Until someone shows otherwise, I would use 1.7*OBA + SLG.

As far as increasing the OBA weight because of the "wearing down the pitcher" theory, it should be kept in mind that another way to make the pitcher exert himself more is by the threat of power. As you all have read, the lack of worrying about a batter's power is frequently cited as a primary reason why dead-ball pitchers were able to pace themselves and save their best stuff for crucial moments. I don't see why the same argument shouldn't apply to power hitters and non-power hitters in today's game. So that would suggest an increase in the weight of SLG, canceling out the added OBA weight for taking pitches. All in all, just use the 1.7 if you want to use WOPS at all (Weighted OPS).

OPS: Begone!

May 22, 2003 - David Smyth

When you got the 1.83, Tango, did you include an adjustment for the IBBs? Without it, I got 1.8. With it, I got 1.7

How are Runs Really Created - Second Installment

August 24, 2002 - David Smyth

Tango, don't let the lack of response deter you from completing this project. It is important to get all this down on paper in one place. Combined, it will become an important source for proper RC understanding.

How are Runs Really Created - Third Installment

September 18, 2002 - David Smyth

First, I'm enjoying all of the commentary, pro and con, and I thank everyone who has participated. As far as the "my stat is better than your stat" stuff, all I have ever wanted is for BsR to be better known, and considered to be an equal alternative to the "standard" run formulas. Sometimes it might be a better alternative. For example, there is always talk about whether they should walk Barry every time (in fact there is a current "clutch hits" discussion of this on this site), and I think that BsR will likely provide a better answer than RC or XR (although a good simulation would be best). Another question might be, how often should you try to steal against Pedro, or against J Lima? BsR will provide custom values for the SB and CS for each pitcher, so that you can compute a custom break-even point. You could do the same with RC, I think, but the CS value in RC seems to be too high.

Also, those B coefficients given by Tango vary on what is included in the A and C factors. Someone asked for an actual practical version of the formula, and unless I'm mistaken none was given by Tango in the articles. (Tango, I thought you were gonna give a version which includes all the minor stuff, like ROE and WP.) Anyway, here is a version that I use most of the time:

A = H +BB +HBP -IBB -HR B = .1*(BB+HBP-IBB) +.8*1B +2.3*2B +3.6*3B +2.1*HR +SB -CS C = AB-H +CS D = HR

This will give you a good estimate of the number of expected runs generated over the long-term. You can also reconcile the entire B result to a league or team by multiplying it by 1.01, or .98, or whatever produces the correct run total.

Tango, I appreciate the work you've done, and the publicity you have given BaseRuns. The info is there for anyone to decide for himself what he wants out of a run formula, and which one best meets those needs.

How are Runs Really Created - Third Installment

September 18, 2002 - David Smyth

Ugh! The formatting came out bad. I'll reprint that formula and try to make it come out better.

A = H +BB +HBP -IBB -HR~~~~~~~~~~~B = .1*(BB +HBP -IBB) +.8*1B +2.3*2B +3.6*3B +2.1*HR +SB -CS~~~~~~~~~~~~~~C = AB-H +CS~~~~~~~~~~~~~D = HR

How are Runs Really Created - Third Installment

September 18, 2002 - David Smyth

I'm glad Patriot mentioned the accuracy thing. I don't know where the idea got started that BsR has less accuracy. As far as I know, BsR has a noticeably better RMSE than RC for real teams. I am assuming that the same elements are included in each tested formula version, although I have reason to believe that BsR in even it's usual limited version (not including IBB, HBP, GDP, SF, K, and SH) is more accurate than the full RC formula. That was a result of testing done by J Furtado. I would not be at all surprised if BsR were more accurate than XR, assuming the same elements in each version, but I am not sure about that. BsR will not be more accurate than a proper regression using the same elements, because the regression automatically produces the most accurate weighting. But that regression formula will then fall apart when used against individual game data within that set.

The stuff concerning the rearranging of the B factor is interesting. The outs are supposed to represent the negating of the positive value which has been given in the formula to the runners who don't score (mostly those left on base).

SABR 101 - Relative and Absolute Scales (June 6, 2003)

Posted 12:41 p.m., June 9, 2003 (#8) - David Smyth
  Bill James may be guilty of 'piling on' against LW too much. But the point he makes is correct. Sure, if you interpret LW in the accurate way, like Patriot and Tango do, then LW is just fine. But those lists in Total Baseball are implicitly intended to be a ranking of players according to their value. If not, can someone show where Palmer makes that clear?

After Sabre-School Special (June 19, 2003)

Posted 3:43 p.m., June 19, 2003 (#1) - David Smyth
  These comments are for the After Sabre School thread, but there is nowhere to post a reply there.

Bill James does the following in settling on a PF for, say, 1998:

1996, 1/8
1997, 1/8
1998, 1/2
1999, 1/8
2000, 1/8

This a bit different than just using the 5 prior seasons. He is weighting the indicated season higher than the others to account for weather differences and other real year-to-year variations. This is reasonable since he is not using actual weather info. Maybe the weight should be less than 1/2, but aside from that, I think his structure is fine.

And as far as the Pythagopat, I thought it was settled, from your little study, to use .28 (not .29)?

After Sabre-School Special (June 19, 2003)

Posted 5:42 p.m., June 19, 2003 (#3) - David Smyth
  As far as using the B James Theoretical Team concept with BaseRuns:

The usual procedure is to substitute the player into an avg team. But the more correct concept (I believe) is to substitute the player into a "random" team. It may seem, at first blush, that this amounts to the same thing. But maybe not. If you put 2 players on an avg team, who both have the same runs added, but 1 has a hi SLG profile, and the other a hi OBA profile, they might NOT have the same impact added to a random team. And that is because SLG (advancement) has pretty much the same value in every realistic context, but the value of baserunners varies more. Therefore, I propose that a hi OBA player is actually more desireable than a hi SLG player, even if they seem to have the same value added to an avg team. I am going to compute some examples of this, but I will be surprised if it doesn't hold up. And if it does, that means that the proper measure of a hitter's ability lies somewhere between Theo. Team BsR and pure Bsr>

After Sabre-School Special (June 19, 2003)

Posted 8:18 p.m., June 19, 2003 (#7) - David Smyth
  Well, I didn't say that the difference will be "big". I just said that it should be "systematically real", and as big as a lot of the other minor differences that people like Tango, MGL, Patriot, try to elucidate and quantify. Why is this concept apparently being held to a higher standard of significance?

Strike Zones (June 23, 2003)

Posted 7:00 p.m., June 23, 2003 (#1) - David Smyth
  I understand the concept that the umps are supposed to call the rulebook strike zone. But it's also true that the rulebook strike zone is supposed to delineate what is a "hittable" pitch with a "normal" swing. The problem is that the normal stance and swing has changed through evolution, to the point that batters can hit the pitch which is a bit outside, but cannot hit the pitch which is a bit high. I believe that the umps changed the way they called strikes as a response to the reality on the field. In many areas of life, there are rules which are still on the books, but which have become antiquated and no longer apply, and therefore ignored, with the understanding and blessing of everyone involved.

This has nothing to do with problems of umpire consistency or umpire ego. Those things can be problems no matter what strike zone is being called.

Why don't they just consider making the plate a bit wider, and lowering the definition of the high strike? Then the umps could both call the rulebook strike zone, and the "actual" strike zone/

Reliever Usage Pattern, 1999-2002 (June 24, 2003)

Posted 7:54 p.m., June 24, 2003 (#11) - David Smyth
  I agree, the LI concept is good, creative analysis by Tango.

But, although it is technically correct that the manager makes a 'decision' to leave Franco in batter by batter, this does not really seem to be what actually happens. The primary decision is when to bring a certain reliever in; whether to leave him in is a secondary decision. Therefore, it *may* be that the more informative way to look at reliever usage is what was the situation when he was brought into the game.

Redefining Replacement Level (June 26, 2003)

Posted 4:28 p.m., June 26, 2003 (#5) - David Smyth
  There is little question that this approach gives a "true" answer to some question or set of questions. Therefore it will be useful in certain lines of analysis. The problem I have with it (and also chaining) is that it does not answer the "main" question about player value, and is thus not a very good format for the general evaluations or comparisons of ballplayers.

Redefining Replacement Level (June 26, 2003)

Posted 6:04 p.m., June 26, 2003 (#9) - David Smyth
  "Nevertheless, the problems with defining replacement level are just another reason to measure relative to average."

No. Why is it better to use an "exact" calculation which has limited real-world utility, than a more "inexact" calculation which has proper real-world relevance? That might satisfy the human urge for math exactitude, but the "primary" goal should be to try to measure, as best possible, what logic tells us is a better concept of value.

It is better to simply recognize that many/most below-avg players have value, and to try to come up with a reasonable model for that, then to get bogged down in an obsession with getting a stat which is mathematically exact.

So, give me 80% of avg, or 75% of avg, instead of 100% of avg.

Redefining Replacement Level (June 26, 2003)

Posted 5:45 p.m., June 27, 2003 (#16) - David Smyth
  The problem with the long-term replacement concept of Silver/Tango is IMO that it is based on faulty assumptions about the 'granularity" of value. If you use the Silver/Tango procedure (substituting a continuous replacement for a player's entire career), you are implying that the "unit" of value for a ballplayer is not the PA, or the inning, or the game, or the season. Instead, it is the career.

But the Win Probability method that Tango has been promoting implies otherwise--that value is created on a discrete, play-by-play basis (and therefore that career value is essentially the sum of these independent PBP occurances).

If you accept this notion (that value for ballplayers is created on a PBP basis), then you must, in stating a player's value, be true to this notion. And that implies treating each PA as an isolated event, where if there is a substitution, there is no "time" to make a roster move, or to acquire a .500 player, or even to institute "chaining". And this implies that the expected replacement on this level would always be our old friend--the typical .375 player at the end of the bench.

As I stated above, there are certain lines of analysis in which the long-term framework will be appropriate, but I maintain that it is a limited "specialized" concept, and not what we are looking for in a general system of player evaluation.

Redefining Replacement Level (June 26, 2003)

Posted 6:55 p.m., June 27, 2003 (#18) - David Smyth
  I don't understand why, on a PA basis, the comparison should be to the avg player. We are looking at replacement, right? If, at some point in tomorrow's game, Sosa or Grudz or Patterson or Alou (to use a Cub example) needs to be substituted for, why should we assume an avg player instead of a .375 player?

Redefining Replacement Level (June 26, 2003)

Posted 9:07 p.m., June 27, 2003 (#20) - David Smyth
  No, Patriot, I don't agree that there is anything about the PBP level which inherently calls for the comparison to one's .500 opponenent instead of the replacement substitution...

Redefining Replacement Level (June 26, 2003)

Posted 7:22 a.m., June 28, 2003 (#23) - David Smyth
  The first part of your posts, Tango, and Patriot's posts, are fine with me. They have nothing to do with what I am talking about. I'm just saying that, since value is *created* on a PA by PA basis, that the most *fundamental* way to *evaluate* it should be on a PA basis, with each PA being independent of all other PAs.

If Sosa misses, say, 40 more PAs this season, but in a random pattern (1 PA here due to getting hit in the eye by a wine cork, 1 PA there due to a hangnail on his index finger, etc.), then each PA will likely feature that .375 substitute. But if Sammy goes out for 8 consecutive games with a strained hammy, the team can use the "consecutiveness" of those 40 missed PAs to lessen the damage, by chaining or signing Rickey. The question is, who gets "credit" for that. Perhaps in a way it should go to Sosa for providing a favorable missed PA pattern to the team. I know that sounds kind of silly, but at least that is a real-world way of justifying looking at each PA independently.

Tango wrote, "Use a different baseline for different needs." Right, and for the common need of a general rating system, ala Win Shares or Total Player Rating, or even Slwts, I think the standard 75 to 80% baseline should be applied to every player.

Redefining Replacement Level (June 26, 2003)

Posted 8:33 p.m., June 28, 2003 (#27) - David Smyth
  Patriot, using the .500 chance of winning a game vs avg opponents, etc., is based on an assumption that starting the game with players who give you a .500 chance of winning implies that those players have no value--that a .500 chance of winning just appears out of nowhere. I assure you it does not.

Redefining Replacement Level (June 26, 2003)

Posted 3:38 p.m., June 29, 2003 (#29) - David Smyth
  Patriot, maybe I'm not understanding the application of the sliding repl level concept. Let's say we have two teams. Team A has the same 3Bman for 20 seasons, and he puts up a .500 season every year. Team B has the misfortune of losing the incumbent 3Bman on a career-ending injury ever spring training. Thru good luck and good management, each of the 20 yearly 3Bmen puts up a .500 season.

So the career value for 3Bman for Team A would be based against a 20 yr repl level of about .480, while the career values for each of the 20 1 season 3Bmen on team is based against a 1 yr repl level of about .410. Therefore, the sum of those 20 is also based on .410.

So, even though the performances at 3B are the same for each team, the values are different because of whether there is either 1 face, or 20 faces, under the baseball caps?

So, even though the

UZR inter-positional linear correlations (July 6, 2003)

Posted 7:32 a.m., July 7, 2003 (#3) - David Smyth
  I don't know why a correlation of zero should be the expected. That would imply that teams have no plan for constructing their defense; that they simply plug in the players they happen to acquire. But a common plan is to have good up-the-middle defense, and sacrifice on the corners. It seems to me that this can 'explain' most of those correlations. Even the low correlations such as +.06 for 2B/CF are in the right direction (I hope I remembered that one correctly).

What value firemen? (July 6, 2003)

Posted 8:41 a.m., July 7, 2003 (#4) - David Smyth
  Slightly off-topic, but is it true that Bill James has now "admitted" that he was wrong about closers, that you need 1 guy to handle the final inning, etc. He is implying that the considerations of psychology and having well-defined roles are more important than he (we?) thought...

UZR, multiple positions (July 7, 2003)

Posted 5:19 p.m., July 7, 2003 (#1) - David Smyth
  Nice work, Tango. I encourage and appreciate all of the effort possible with this method (the DPA). But in the end, I don't think it will ever equal the OPA (given sufficient sample size for both).

UZR, multiple positions (July 7, 2003)

Posted 7:24 a.m., July 8, 2003 (#5) - David Smyth
  According to those numbers, the 3B DPA is at +5 (meaning 5 runs better than avg). Assuming that his OPA is at zero for the sake of argument, this means (I think) that the 3Bman is essentially about 5 runs/162G better than his adj. Slwts/162G. So if a 3Bman and somebody at another position both have +25 adj Slwts/162, the 3Bman is actually better, or more valuable. So an avg 3Bman is an above avg player overall, I guess. But since every team has to field a player at each position, it's not apparent what advantage this could confer. I guess it might be useful in MVP discussions.

UZR, multiple positions (July 7, 2003)

Posted 10:14 a.m., July 9, 2003 (#9) - David Smyth
  The Yankees thing is pretty cool. Obviously, if they made that change today, including Bernie at 2nd (healthy, of course) and Ventura at SS, they would not gain 15 runs. They would lose runs, I think. And once you inlclude all of the other variables in the conversion, you probably end up where they are now.

Tango, how much confidence do you have in those UZR conversion values, compared with the OPA values? And you did not elaborate on the process you used to generate your "final" values.

UZR, multiple positions (July 7, 2003)

Posted 5:49 p.m., July 11, 2003 (#15) - David Smyth
  The endpoint of this process is the ability to compare a player to an avg player at an avg position. You can get there, in principle, by doing what Tango is doing here--trying to create a satisfactory DPA (defensive positional adjustment). But as he states, his UZR DPA values are only a first step. And these steps are not easy or straightforward. Another approach might be to simply devise an additional adjustment to the OPA (offensive positional adjustment, used in the Slwts method). The OPA is much more inclusive and complete, compared to the DPA. The only problem is that it doesn't go far enough, and essentially assumes that every position has an equal talent level. The examples used to "disprove" this (high school SS, QBs vs linemen, etc.) are fine, but we "know" that any similar discrepancies in ML ball are on a much smaller scale. Still, it is entirely possible that there are minor differences in positional talenet levels. Can these be detected and adjusted for?

I think the answer is yes, at least in principle. For example, let's say that we expect that the current SS group is an above avg set of players, due to the emergence of ARod et al at around the same time. So the "avg" SS is a better player than the "avg" LF (let's surmise). But the "average" is just a math construct. Where would the actual SS advantage lie? At the star level? At the avg starter level? At the backup/replacement level? All of the above? My theory is that the backup/replacement level should be about the same (in terms of absolute talent) for all the positions. The reason is that it is essentially capped at both ends. At this level, there is a large group of available players, which caps it on the low end. And on the high end, if you are above a certain point, you will be a regular. So there is no reason that I can think of why a backup SS should be a better player than a backup LFer, despite the ARods and Nomars.

How to quantify this? If the marginal player at an avg position is worth -25 Slwts runs/162G, then maybe the marginal SS is worth -29 runs, because of ARod et al. That difference of 4 runs should be added to the adj Slwts/162 for SS, as a secondary adjustment. Of course, I just picked SS as an example to explain--I have no idea, despite ARod and Nomar, whether SS is actually an above avg position. The "range" of this type of adjustment should be much less than the OPA itself--maybe from -4 to +4 runs?

I am not the guy to figure out how to technically compare the low level talent at each position. Maybe use a "percentile" method, over some reasonable sample size of seasons. Tango???? And if there should turn out to be essentially no difference among the positions, then maybe we shouldn't worry too much about the "theoretical" problems with the OPA...

Ruane - Cost of outs, and speed (July 9, 2003)

Posted 7:37 p.m., July 9, 2003 (#2) - David Smyth
  That study, and that specific part, is the reason I never wanted to include GDP in a run estimation formula, and the reason I thought it might be better to handle GDP differently in Slwts.

Fewest BB / PA, since 1947, min 150 PA (July 10, 2003)

Posted 6:45 p.m., July 10, 2003 (#3) - David Smyth
  I have no idea how much of this is conscious strategising by Wells, but if he as a 40 yr old pitcher without good stuff decided to simply throw the ball over the plate and see what happens, then he is a "genius". Most pitchers are unwilling to concede what should be conceded. Wells seems like he has a big ego in life, but as a ballplayer he seems like an analytical trailblazer....

SABR 201 - Should we non-sac bunt more? (July 10, 2003)

Posted 7:10 p.m., July 10, 2003 (#1) - David Smyth
  I don't have anything specific to add, but I have always thought that there should be more bunting for a hit. Even by Barry Bonds and his ilk. It's all about "taking what the defense gives you". Barry is quite willing to take the walk that they would rather give, but what about the easy bunt hit with the 3Bman playing who knows where?

SABR 201 - Should we non-sac bunt more? (July 10, 2003)

Posted 4:22 p.m., July 11, 2003 (#5) - David Smyth
  If you use that .440/.675 example, those are his stats with the defense ignoring the bunt and positioning themselves to better prevent other outcomes. So, does that BE pt include both the effects of the bunts themselves, plus the benefit (presumed) to his non-bunt events from the defense having to play more "honestly"?

Sabermetric Site to Visit - Patriot (July 25, 2003)

Posted 6:58 p.m., July 25, 2003 (#3) - David Smyth
  Hey, is Patriot still 17 yrs old? :)

Seriously, I had not seen Pat's updated site. I am impressed. I will have to spend some time to absorb all that is there.

And I notice that Patriot is very complimentary to me in his comments. Thanks, bro.

Leveraged Index (LI) - by the 24 base-out states (July 30, 2003)

Posted 9:23 p.m., July 30, 2003 (#2) - David Smyth
  You can combine similar situations, according to their LIs and their frequencies. I only have frequency data from 1987, so I combined that with the LIs above:

0 outs, .37
1 out, .34
2 outs, .29

Bases empty, .38
Runners on, .62

Scoring pos., .40
not Scr. pos., .60

So fewer outs in the inning is more "important" than more outs in the inning. And Runners on is more important than bases empty. Scoring position/not scr position is about the same as empty/runners on, so there is no big reason to divide runners on/empty into sub-categories.

Essentially, this means that you need on-base with bases empty and slugging with runners on. The runners on part is more impactful in real baseball (but not necessarily in any possible context). This matches up nicely with a weighting of OBA/SLG which I saw about 15 years ago in a Bill James Analyst newsletter article. The author used the shortcut RC formula of OBA*SLG*AB. He found that OBA should be weighted at .7*OBA w/bases empty +.3*OBA w/runners on base. And SLG at .85*SLG w/runners on + .15*SLG w/ bases empty.

Leveraged Index (LI) - by the 24 base-out states (July 30, 2003)

Posted 9:25 p.m., July 30, 2003 (#3) - David Smyth
  Forget my comment about empty/on base vs. scr pos/not scr pos.

Leveraged Index (LI) - by the 24 base-out states (July 30, 2003)

Posted 9:29 p.m., July 30, 2003 (#4) - David Smyth
  Another breakdown:

Bases empty, .38
Scor pos., .40
1st base only, .22

John Jarvis SABR presentation on the IBB (August 1, 2003)

Posted 8:59 p.m., August 4, 2003 (#3) - David Smyth
  I'm surprised that this thread has not gotten more of a response. Jarvis is, as far as I can tell, the leading analyst on IBB. He has more stuff on it than anyone else. I think that there is a ton of information and possible insight in this article...

Tippett and DIPS (August 1, 2003)

Posted 2:57 p.m., August 4, 2003 (#65) - David Smyth
  I realize everyone wants to move on, but I came here late.

I think Crack is a rude *******, but I also think his essential point is right on. If Tippet happens to independently devise BaseRuns while sleeping tonight, and presents it in a speech at SABR next year, an excuse that he missed Tango's series on run creation will be no excuse at all. "Professional" sabermetricians like Tippet, Bill James, Pete Palmer, etc., should make it a point to visit sites like Primer, Prospectus, FanHome, etc., on pretty much a daily basis. In one of his recent writings, B James admitted that he should do this but doesn't bother to. Of course, I don't know how much this applies to Tippet, but I think he should have been aware of DIPS 2.0 and the long discussions on it.

I don't know the identity of Deep Throat of Watergate fame, but I do know Tango's real name. You can hammer splinters under my fingernails, but I'll take his secret to my grave. :-)

Tippett and DIPS (August 1, 2003)

Posted 3:07 p.m., August 4, 2003 (#66) - David Smyth
  I went to the Primer home page, clicked on Authors, scrolled down and Voros' DIPS 2.0 article was right there. Took 6 seconds to find it. So apparently Tippet didn't know that Voros was a Primer author, or he would have checked. Voros was writing articles on Primer for a year or two. Draw your own conclusion.

DIPS year-to-year correlations, 1972-1992 (August 5, 2003)

Posted 11:16 p.m., August 6, 2003 (#43) - David Smyth
  Very interesting. I'll have to read this thread in more detail to make sure I understand.

I don't know what #5 in Tango's post means.

Does all this suggest that, instead of projecting next years H-HR by using a mix of K (r=.8) and BABIP (r=.2), that maybe it would be better to simply use this years H-HR (r=.4, perhaps)?

DIPS year-to-year correlations, 1972-1992 (August 5, 2003)

Posted 3:21 p.m., August 18, 2003 (#128) - David Smyth
  That's a great idea, Tango. If it were written up, it would be easier for everyone to understand the material, including myself.

Hoban - A player ranking (August 8, 2003)

Posted 5:38 p.m., August 8, 2003 (#5) - David Smyth
  What a waste of time "Professor" Hoban is.

Advances in Sabermetrics (August 18, 2003)

Posted 7:32 p.m., August 21, 2003 (#30) - David Smyth
  "A player will regress 100% towards his true mean."

What does this mean? The way it is worded, it seems silly. Bonds has regressed from 2001/2002, but who is to say that his 2003 performance is his true mean? I assume that I am misunderstanding that statement, but it needs to be clarified.

Advances in Sabermetrics (August 18, 2003)

Posted 3:59 p.m., August 25, 2003 (#43) - David Smyth
  You're not supposed to regress "to" the mean; you're supposed to regress "towards" it.

Double-counting Replacement Level (August 25, 2003)

Posted 3:55 p.m., August 25, 2003 (#4) - David Smyth
  That's an interesting comparison. I'm not sure what conclusion to draw. It almost seems like, on an overall basis, managers don't worry about fielding; they just select the best hitters at a position. If they happen to get a good fielder also, that's great, but they don't seem to actively seek it out. Maybe that's because they simply have very little ability to evaluate fielding. IOW, they think that some of these regulars are better defenders than they really are.

Double-counting Replacement Level (August 25, 2003)

Posted 4:22 p.m., August 25, 2003 (#5) - David Smyth
  I think that BP would (will?) say that they are aware that their setup does not add up to an actual ML repl player, and that they did not intend for it to be taken as such. They want to compare a plyer to the worst players in MLB in every phase of the game. There is probably some logic in doing this, but the problem is that people will regularly misinterpret the results.

Double-counting Replacement Level (August 25, 2003)

Posted 6:41 p.m., August 25, 2003 (#10) - David Smyth
  "I agree with Patriot..."

So do I, if you were referring to my post. I was trying to explain it, not defend it...

Double-counting Replacement Level (August 25, 2003)

Posted 10:33 a.m., August 31, 2003 (#16) - David Smyth
  Tango found -22 runs/162 for the backups (all players with <300 PAs). Just for the record, I prefer a different concept of repl level. It doesn't matter to me what an avg backup hits, or the effect of chaining. It doesn't matter to me how good an actual expected repl would be. What matters to me is the performance of the the worst players who are still good enough to play in the league, because these players are making the baseline contribution to wins and losses.

So I also looked at the Slwts (the 2000-2002 instead of just the 2001). I found the avg of the worst 20 players who had at least 900 PAs over that period. It was about -35 runs/162. That works out to a .350 player. A team of such players would win about 20% of their games. Is that hard to accept, considering that the Tigers, who are bad but certainly not composed of the 25 worst players in baseball, are winning about 25% of theirs?

Double-counting Replacement Level (August 25, 2003)

Posted 10:44 a.m., August 31, 2003 (#17) - David Smyth
  Let me add that most of those 20 players are still playing in 2003. There are reasons for this. In short, the managers think that these guys are better than they really are, for a few different reasons. If the baseball selection process were perfect, then the baseline player would be somewhat better, say .400 instead of .350. But it really doesn't matter, because wins and losses are simply a product of who is actually playing and how they are performing, not who *would* be playing in a perfectly selected league.

Double-counting Replacement Level (August 25, 2003)

Posted 2:06 p.m., August 31, 2003 (#20) - David Smyth
  I don't see why regression should be part of this. I don't care "who" the players are each year who perform at -35 (IOW, whether they regress towards the mean the next year and another group of -35 players appears). As long as the bottom level is pretty consistent each year at -35, then that is what should be used (according to my concept of replacement).

Double-counting Replacement Level (August 25, 2003)

Posted 4:55 p.m., August 31, 2003 (#22) - David Smyth
  Tango, you're right (as usual). You should regress, even in this application.

So I have an observation (more of a question, I guess). Let's say that a team will replace a player when there is more than a 50% chance that he is of replacement ability. So they could use the standard 3 weighted seasons approach. But in the real world teams have to make these the decisions in real time, and there is an "urgency" consideration, to minimize the "damage" by such a player.

So let's say that a player is 35 yrs old, and was a .475 player the last 2 full seasons. He starts out the season 0 for 100. Adding this to his prior seasons will suggest that he is still an above-repl player (I assume). But what if you apply a suitable, larger regression to those 100 PAs. Is it possible that on such a test the player will show as having a >50% chance of being below repl level? IOW, how well have these regression factors been determined? And how do we know that we should apply the same regression to every 100 PA sample, regardless of the performance quality of the sample. I mean, if some test shows that 100 PA samples should be regressed 70% (just making up a number), why should we assume that it applies to players who go 0 for 100, or 26 for 100, or 100 for 100?

Double-counting Replacement Level (August 25, 2003)

Posted 7:38 a.m., September 1, 2003 (#24) - David Smyth
  So if you are supposed to regress, say, 95% for a 100 PA sample, and if a Roy Hobbs comes out of nowhere and goes 98 for his 1st 100 ABs, you would still regress that 95% of the way towards .260, for an estimate that Hobbs is actually a .296 hitter?

Double-counting Replacement Level (August 25, 2003)

Posted 7:46 a.m., September 1, 2003 (#25) - David Smyth
  The difference between a coin flip and a hitter is that the bias of the coin cannot change, while the ability of a hitter can change (see Bonds, Barry). I suspect that some statistician might say that the normal regression would not apply in my Hobbs example above.

Double-counting Replacement Level (August 25, 2003)

Posted 6:45 p.m., September 3, 2003 (#31) - David Smyth
  "I think I may be onto something here."

Well, I hope so. I've been making occasional posts about "signature significance" (as Bill James called it) on fanhome for a couple years and never got any "positive" response from the more statistically qualified people. Maybe my latest attempt at it here will satisfy my urge to know for sure (whatever the result may end up being).

Double-counting Replacement Level (August 25, 2003)

Posted 4:40 p.m., October 31, 2003 (#40) - David Smyth
  ---"As an example, John Jarvis shows, using regression, that the value of a double is .67 runs. This is laughable."

Come on, Tango. You know better than I do that is not what the .67 is intended to mean. People will read that and think that regression is bad, when all it really means is that regression must be interpreted properly. Regression is a useful tool in analysis.

Double-counting Replacement Level (August 25, 2003)

Posted 6:23 p.m., October 31, 2003 (#43) - David Smyth
  Looking at the actual Davenport stuff, Tango is right on. Clay essentially is using the "copout" of saying that you can define replacement anyway you want, and as long as you handle the math properly, none is inherently better than another. That's just another of the "everything is relative", politically correct type of nonsense we are subjected to all the time in America nowadays. Radical Islamist homicide bombers are just "freedom fighters", no worse than the Americans of the Revolutionary War. Rap music is every bit as good as classical music; after all, music is subjective.

And on and on. Come on, Clay---admit you blew it with the super-low Spiders repl level. It is not the equal of the .375 concept, simply because it does not answer the relevant questions about modern baseball nearly as well.

Double-counting Replacement Level (August 25, 2003)

Posted 7:09 p.m., November 4, 2003 (#46) - David Smyth
  Silver King, no, I don't try to set myself up as an especially important judge of what is "better". I am probably wrong my share of the time. But that doesn't mean that everything is created equal. The way to judge which repl level is better is to determine which one is best capable of answering the most relevant and important questions about modern baseball. And I believe that such a determination can be done with enough objectiveness that we CAN say that the .375 level or thereabouts is "better" than the .130 level or whatever it was.

The reluctance to use our brains to make logical assessments about what is "better" is one of the problems of our society. Eating dogshit is not the equal of eating filet mignon, no matter how many people say that it's simply a matter of taste.

Double-counting Replacement Level (August 25, 2003)

Posted 8:41 a.m., November 5, 2003 (#49) - David Smyth
  ---"'Tis true, there are many people in the world with a clear understand of the difference between right and wrong who would tell you that eating dogshit is, morally, vastly superior."

Well, you know how I am sure that eating filet is superior? Because if you eat nothing but pit bull turds, you will die. So eating steak is "better", no matter what some confused people think is "morally" superior.

And yes, Silver, good information is critical, but not really necessary to form one's core principles.

Mike's Baseball Rants - Sac Flies (August 28, 2003)

Posted 4:25 p.m., August 28, 2003 (#1) - David Smyth
  The link is not working. I have always wondered, why is an out in play which allows a runner to score more noteworthy if it is a flyball than if it is a groundball? What about a "sac grounder", or SG?

Certainly, a SF should be an AB, but so should a BB or a HBP, etc. Why take the overall PA category and create a sub-category (ABs) which consists of the hits and the outs? Why not list the batting outs, instead of having to compute it as AB-H?

Give me 10 minutes and I'll create a stat tree which makes sense.

Mike's Baseball Rants - Sac Flies (August 28, 2003)

Posted 7:16 p.m., August 29, 2003 (#4) - David Smyth
  "...hitting the FB to the OF is generally more likely to score the run than a GB."

Maybe so, but we are only awarding statistical credit here for what did happen, not for what was most likely to happen. Furthermore, the only studies I've seen suggest that there is no "ability" to hit a FB in a SF situation that is different than the player's overall tendency to hit FBs. Since that topic has not yet received the detailed scrutiny that DIPS has, I am not going to assume that the conclusion is correct. But I have seen studies which suggest that GB hitters tend to be as good or better at advancing runners on outs as FB hitters are. Yet the FB hitters get all of the credit (in SFs) while the GB hitters get all of the debit (in GDPs). IOW, the official statistics in this area are biased in favor of FB hitters, for no good reason that I can see.

Mike's Baseball Rants - Sac Flies (August 28, 2003)

Posted 9:19 a.m., August 31, 2003 (#6) - David Smyth
  If you (RossCW) think that anything your post contradicts anything in my post, then you simply were sleeping while reading it. :)

Mike's Baseball Rants - Sac Flies (August 28, 2003)

Posted 2:21 p.m., November 3, 2003 (#10) - David Smyth
  ----"I doubt this is true but why would it matter?"

Well, I got that from a study in a STATS Screboard book. As I recall, a batter's longer-term rate of hitting a SF (in a SF situation) is the same as his tendency to hit FBs in general. So if batter's do not have greater success in a skill when they are (presumably) trying for it, then it does not matter at all what their intention was. So a GB or a FB which scores the runner are essentially the same thing. But they take out SF in the Bavg and Slg, which is a bias in favor of the FB hitter. Furthermore, a study by Tom Ruane (you can probably find a link on this site) showed that GB outs are significantly more effective in advancing runners overall than FB outs, even including the greater # of GDPs by GB hitters.

The end result is that, according to MGL's PBP research, a GB out(including all runner advancement and GDPs) and a FB out(including SFs, outs on OF Assts, etc.) have almost exactly the same value.

So I just don't see what is the special quality of SFs which merits their being kept as a special category in modern baseball.

Bonds, Pujols and BaseRuns (September 6, 2003)

Posted 8:20 p.m., September 7, 2003 (#2) - David Smyth
  It's always interesting to see what a different brain can do with BsR. I've probably come up with 20 decent versions, and none of them were very similar to Dudek's. I used the plus 1 method to see what the values are for the 1970-98 sample of teams:

BB (non IBB) .327
HBP .343
IBB .172
1B .460
2B .740
3B 1.019
HR 1.395
SB .181
CS -.312
GDP -.329
SF .111
SH .045
AB-H-K -.0802
K -.0866

The only value that I have a real problem with is the IBB. My understanding is that the .17 would be the correct value if the walked batter and the following batter(s) are avg hitters. Since that is usually not the case, the IBB is worth less, say .11 or maybe even .05 runs. And the win value is pretty much neutral from what I have read. So if you are going to put the player's BsR into some sort of win conversion, the IBB should probably be left out because they are not subject to the standard R/W converters. J Jarvis' latest research on IBB suggests that the value is heavily dependent on the batter's ability, and (therefore) that the IBBs to Bonds are probably an overall plus for the opposing team. To give him .17 runs for his IBB seems to me to be wrong. It is not Bonds' fault that he is so good that he can be neutralized in this way, but that happens to be a part of the game.

I'll also say that I don't like the partial baserunners in the A factor. Unless it results in significantly more accurate result, I would stay away from that sort of thing. I (think I) do agree with the inclusion of CS in the A factor, because this "should" result in more accuracy without a corresponding sacrifice somewhere else (conceptually). It is always more accurate to include as much "known" information as possible, as long as it also applies similarly to individuals, and it is certainly known that baserunners who are CS or GDP have no chance of scoring. I personally would not include GDP(or SF in their correct weight) in a formula based on the official stats, because the official stats do not include the greater advancement potential on outs by GB batters. There is a bias against GB batters, because they have fewer SF and more GDP, but the greater advancement on GB outs is not included. This opinion is based on the study by Ruane.

Bonds, Pujols and BaseRuns (September 6, 2003)

Posted 3:34 p.m., September 8, 2003 (#12) - David Smyth
  I'm not sure what the basis is for saying that IBBs are win-neutral for specific players. I thought the idea was that IBBs, on an overall basis, are win neutral. That doesn't imply to me that this applies to any specif player, just to the hypothetical composite player receiving avg IBBs.

Bonds, Pujols and BaseRuns (September 6, 2003)

Posted 5:35 p.m., September 8, 2003 (#16) - David Smyth
  Well, how does this jibe with the results of John Jarvis, who has done the most detailed studies of the IBB. In his latest, he seems to be claiming that, assuming that IBBs are handed out in an avg fashion (which may not apply to Bonds), that if the batter has a SLG below .600 it is a bad move for the defense, and vice versa for batters with a SLG over .600.

Here are a couple quotes from his latest study: "I have shown...that the IBB creates runs (for the offense) when the batter receiving it has a SLG less than .600."

"The IBB is only justified (for the defense) for the very best players.

I realize that he is talking in terms of runs, while we are talking in terms of wins, but Jarvis is well aware that the relationship between IBB runs and wins is unique, based on his prior study, which showed that, while the (avg) IBB creates runs for the offense, the runs are distributed in a way which is overall win-neutral.

Something about this analysis by Tango and Colin does not ring true with me, based on all my prior reading on this subject. Usually when I go against Tango, I lose. But still...

Bonds, Pujols and BaseRuns (September 6, 2003)

Posted 6:54 p.m., September 9, 2003 (#24) - David Smyth
  I come back to a point I made earlier--that there is no reason to assume that every player's IBBs are win neutral relative to what he would hit if they pitched to him. If Tango or anyone else has evidence to the contrary, please post it. Until I see that, I will assume that the IBBs to Bonds, given in typical IBB situations, are negative (for Bonds) and that the IBBs to an avg batter are a positive for him.

Jarvis, in his latest IBB study, seems to be saying that the breakeven point for IBB is about a ".600 SLG batter". This implies about a +.08 lwts runs/PA player, or a player who is about .20 absolute RC/PA.

So the more I see of this stuff, the more I am tending to go simply with the .17 value for an IBB, subject to the standard R/W conversion of about 1 W = 10 runs.

Bonds, Pujols and BaseRuns (September 6, 2003)

Posted 7:25 a.m., September 10, 2003 (#25) - David Smyth
  I'm wrong. You would have to go with +.08 as a "standard" value for IBB, even in an "absolute" run formula. And that's because you have to account for the fact that if a player was pitched to instead of being IBBd, he would make a goodly number of outs, and that impact has to be accounted for.

So, for example, if Bonds gets 60 IBBs, that's 60*.08, or 4.8 runs, which is about half a win. Bonds gets his credit here compared to simply ignoring the IVVs. But if the opposing team had pitched to him in those 60 PAs, he would likely have produced about 1 win. So the opposition has saved about half a win by IBBing Bonds. This assumes, of course, that Bonds IBBs are standard IBB opps, and Bonds is the one player for whom that is not necessarily true.

Bonds, Pujols and BaseRuns (September 6, 2003)

Posted 4:11 p.m., September 11, 2003 (#27) - David Smyth
  "This seems to be the position taken by David."

Well, I'm not trying to take any position of my own, I'm just trying to interpret what Jarvis' latest study seems to be concluding. I case you haven't seen it, I'll post a link in a minute.

And Tango, you mentioned some published research will shows that IBB are win-neutral for the given batter. Could you post a link to that?

Bonds, Pujols and BaseRuns (September 6, 2003)

Posted 4:14 p.m., September 11, 2003 (#28) - David Smyth
  Jarvis link

http://knology.net/johnfjarvis/baseball.html

Scroll down to the link for "Trends, Exceptions...

Bonds, Pujols and BaseRuns (September 6, 2003)

Posted 6:42 p.m., September 11, 2003 (#30) - David Smyth
  "It'll take me a while to get through that."

Join the Club. There's lots of gold in Jarvis' stuff, but for the average person it's a pretty slow slog. For that reason, perhaps his work hasn't gotten the attention it deserves, especially on the IBB.

Bonds, Pujols and BaseRuns (September 6, 2003)

Posted 6:30 p.m., March 18, 2004 (#35) - David Smyth
  ---"Any fudge factor you apply can ONLY be applied to the "B" component."

I don't understand that. When I worked out a shortened form of BsR against Tango's full form, I had separate fudge factors for both A and B, and the largest was for A. IOW, if the full A was 2100 for a 4.5 R/G avg, according to Tango's full version, and I only wanted an A factor with H+BB-HR, then this might total to only 1900, so I would multiply A by 2100/1900, or 1.105. Similarly for an abreviated B factor, which came out to about a 1.02 fudge. So MOST of the fudge is in the A factor, not the B factor. And if you include a couple other subtle considerations which are relevant for a short formula, then ALL of the fudge should probably be in the A factor, to deliver the best real-world accuracy.

Livan Hernandez and Scouting (September 10, 2003)

Posted 8:15 p.m., September 10, 2003 (#5) - David Smyth
  I, like Warren, am not a statistician (not even close :)) But at the major league level, and for an 'experienced' pitcher like Livan, I would put zero stock in a scouting report about his 'arm angle' before the fact--that is, before any improvement in performance has been manifested. After the fact, I wouldn't pay much attention until about now--after a couple months of consistently improved pitching. At that point it is reasonable to start wondering. But I am watching Livan vs the Cubs as I am writing, and all I see is a pitcher with poor velocity who is trying to make up for it with control and guile. Livan's main problem (as I recall) has been a huge number of HR allowed. As soon as the batters adjust, I expect him to decline. Another pitcher who has shown sudden significant improvement is E Loaiza. For some reason, I see his breakout as more likely to be 'real'.

Accuracy of Run Estimators (September 12, 2003)

Posted 7:44 p.m., September 13, 2003 (#16) - David Smyth
  If you want a run estimator which tries to model the process, them BsR seems to be the best one available now.

If you don't care about models, and are more into powerful statistical techniques, then use the regression formula.

All of the other variations, including the ones tested by Patriot, and certain other formulas, are pretty much superfluous, IMO.

To say that all run estimators are equal, simply because the seasonal RMSEs are similar, is to try to be politically correct. Logic dictates otherwise. Since that is the prevailing sentiment in our society on a variety of important subjects, it is not surprising that it would tend to filter into the area of baseball stats. Nobody wants to hurt anyone else's feelings.

I am not completely immune to these 'pressures'. As the person who came up with one of these formulas, and as a person of moderate technical sabermetric ability, I tend to defer to the James's and the Davenports', etc., in my written statements.

But no more. Give me BsR, give me the regression formula, and give me the PBP coefficients. They all have their place. But let the RCs, the EQAs, the ERPs, etc., be consigned to the historical stat museum which contains the Lindsay formula, the Gimbel formula, the TA formula, and others.

OK, I have my helmet on. Let the bashing begin...

Accuracy of Run Estimators (September 12, 2003)

Posted 10:17 p.m., September 13, 2003 (#19) - David Smyth
  Your disagreement is noted and respected, Patriot. But nothing you wrote comes anywhere near to refuting my post...

Patriot: Baselines (September 17, 2003)

Posted 6:57 p.m., September 18, 2003 (#5) - David Smyth
  There is NO baseline which is inherently "correct". Therefore it is silly to speak in those terms. This is what leads to these "politically correct" ideas to hold them all as "equal, just different", or to present a column with 3 of them, for the reader to pick his fave. Tango's suggestion just to present that raw materials and let the reader apply his his own baseline transformation is, technically the wisest course, but not very user-friendly.

So I look at all this, with understanding of all of the chainist, progressivist, etc., constructions--and I have no doubt that, if I had to pick just one as the best blend of quality and quantity rating, I would go with the "minimalist", as Patriot christens it. If you don't want to be forced to pick one, you can follow Tango's approach. I would not be very excited to see a rating list according to chaining.

Patriot writes that most analysts prefer the minimalist level as the "defacto" level. There is a good reason for that.

Patriot: Baselines (September 17, 2003)

Posted 6:58 p.m., September 18, 2003 (#6) - David Smyth
  Oh, I forgot to mention--great work, Patriot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Patriot: Baselines (September 17, 2003)

Posted 7:54 p.m., September 19, 2003 (#14) - David Smyth
  Trying to figure what is the probability that a player is a repl player was the method used by B James in (I think) the '82 and '84 Abstracts.

All of these repl schemes can be looked at in terms of the context they imply.

Patriot and Tango prefer the context of an "avg team", with typical players in all of the roles. This allows you to do such manipualtions as chaining and the "tax bracketing", etc. There is certainly a good deal of logic to this approach.

The "minimalist" approach implies a context of a team of all FAT players. Since this is less "realistic", how can it be justified? A context of an avg team is not a context of "no value". An avg team, with a 60 million$ payroll, contains a good deal of value within the system. A reference team with no value (within the baseball universe) would be a FAT team. There is no such thing in real baseball, but there are obviously loads of below-avg teams, and there are the Det Tigers, with a record not very far from that of a repl team. It's not hard to imagine a financially-strapped team sending out 25 scrubs, at a total cost of about 7.5 million.

So this viewpoint tells a player's "maximal" value. If, in your rating system, you want to be as inclusive as possible, and use a sort of zero context which does not mask real differences between players, then a minimalist approach using a .350 or so baseline for all players is appropriate.

Patriot: Baselines (September 17, 2003)

Posted 11:06 a.m., November 12, 2003 (#21) - David Smyth
  The comments about the relative scale are correct; I mean, all of us here understand what TPR really means.

But James is also correct in his interpretation of what Palmer *intends* TPR to mean, because Palmer has stated that he uses .500 because a sub-.500 team cannot (usually) make the postseason. So he is implying that *real* value starts at .500. Given that, the interpretation by James of Herman/Myers is logical, and is indeed a *reductio*--relative to Palmer's stated interpretation.

Patriot: Baselines (September 17, 2003)

Posted 7:26 a.m., November 13, 2003 (#25) - David Smyth
  No, Patriot, the Palmer quote was (probably) in the last version of TB. I'll reread your article to see what he said in the current TB.

Patriot: Baselines (September 17, 2003)

Posted 3:42 p.m., November 13, 2003 (#27) - David Smyth
  By "last" I meant the version right before the current version.

TheStar.com - Analyze this: NBA '04 (September 19, 2003)

Posted 8:07 p.m., September 22, 2003 (#7) - David Smyth
  Maybe you guys aren't familiar with the basketball stat analysis books from the late 80', early 90s. The most prominent was probably Dave Heeren and his TENDEX system. This was a linear system, giving x points for each (of 10) individual official outcome. He had an adjustment for context called "game pace", which was simply based on total points scored and allowed per game. There were a couple other analysts who had an annual book run for several years. I had them all, and I think I saved one from each guy. It was the same as baseball, that these stats were pretty much as good as could be done, unless PBP type data were to become available. Maybe it is available now, so that defenders can be evaluated on more than just their blocks and steals, for example.

Instructions for MVP (September 22, 2003)

Posted 3:38 p.m., September 22, 2003 (#1) - David Smyth
  It doesn't just say "actual value of a player to his team"--it says "actual value of a player to his team, that is, strength of offense and defense." That qualifier is all-important, as an attempt to clarify. It completely, and presumably intentionally, avoids mentioning the quality of the team, or whether they make the postseason. Someone can try to argue that such a consideration is inherent in the term 'actual value', but that is debatable. The purpose of a clarifying phrase is supposed to be just that--to clarify what may be unclear. That it does not include any hint that the team's playoff situation should be a factor, implies to me that they didn't intend it to be.

Instructions for MVP (September 22, 2003)

Posted 4:00 p.m., September 22, 2003 (#2) - David Smyth
  Of course, in the first part it essentially says that the MVP is whatever any individual voter wants it to be. That seems to be a more modern add-on, as opposed to the other part from 1931, which, given the first part, it seems they're just keeping aroung for historical reasons, not because it still means anything.

Instructions for MVP (September 22, 2003)

Posted 6:15 p.m., September 22, 2003 (#4) - David Smyth
  "The genius of BBWAA"? Yes, you are probably onto something.

Thinking about it, there is really nothing wrong with that--throwing out a common English phrase (Most Valuable Player), and, realizing that this a vote award instead of a math calculation, keeping it somewhat ambiguous. Autonomy is a central characteristic of a vote system.

So what that boils down to, is that the most important variable is who the voters are. THAT should pretty much be the sole focus of MVP criticism.

I sort of think that it is better to "open up" an "award" system as much as possible. So I say, screw the BBWAA and let the "fans" vote for MVP, in the same way they vote for the ALL-Stars. Whether or not that would result in a more "sabermetric" choice than the present system, I have no real idea. But I would greatly prefer it. The sportswriters may be more informed than the typical fan, on a one by one basis. But the fans greatly outnumber them, and so some guy who has a buzz up his ass because Ted W or Bonds Jr "disrespected" him in some way will not have a great impact.

Who was it that decided that, among sabers, avg fans, players, managers, and sportswriters, that the latter have some sort of greater connection to the truth?

Open the vote as much as possible, and I am very confident that the correct player will be chosen much more often then nowadays..

Instructions for MVP (September 22, 2003)

Posted 8:21 a.m., September 29, 2003 (#10) - David Smyth
  RossCW, where does it say anything about team wins in the guidelines for MVP?

Instructions for MVP (September 22, 2003)

Posted 10:55 a.m., September 29, 2003 (#12) - David Smyth
  As so many do, you have chosen to ignore the second part of that same sentence, which is "...that is, strength of offense and defense." It doesn't say "...that is, relative to how many games the team won."

Sure, you can figure out a way to get around that, in order to justify what you *want* it to mean. But as Bill James once wrote, "Very like a whale".

Instructions for MVP (September 22, 2003)

Posted 7:02 p.m., September 29, 2003 (#16) - David Smyth
  I interpret the "The MVP need not come from a division winner..." guideline in a different way than RossCW. To me, that statement, especially considering the specific "strength of offense and defense" guideline, is saying something like, "Vote for the best player, regardless of the quality of his teammates."

If you look up "value" in the dictionary, there are several definitions, but none which is directly applicable to baseball. There is no clarification of whether it should mean value in actual games won, or value towards winning games, or pennants, yada yada. So the clarification (strength of offense and defense) is, to me the only thing there is to hang one's hat on.

The only problem is, people want the MVP to be about what THEY want it to be about, and so they, perhaps subconsciously, look for ways to get around the most logical and literal interpretation of those written guidelines.

The worst offenders, of course, are those voters who say that a pitcher should not be MVP, and that a reliever could never be valuable enough to win. Maybe I'm blind, but I do not see even a hint of such a sentiment in the rules. And the interpretations of people like RossCW are really just more of the same types of bias, only presented with a bit more surface logic.

Aging patterns (September 23, 2003)

Posted 9:43 a.m., September 24, 2003 (#11) - David Smyth
  What about loss of speed having a role in the BABIP decline?

Aging patterns (September 23, 2003)

Posted 1:21 p.m., September 24, 2003 (#14) - David Smyth
  Sorry for the rip-off, studes. It wasn't intentional.

Factors that affect the chances of scoring (September 24, 2003)

Posted 9:02 a.m., October 10, 2003 (#32) - David Smyth
  "The single/walk thing does not have much."

Well, I guess maybe not enough to affect the results, or maybe there is an offset. But I believe that that there is some hidden speed info in 1B and walks. At least, I know that the fastest runners tend to hit more 1B (per PA) than the avg batter, and draw fewer walks. As well, they tend to hit fewer HR, an avg number of 2B, and many more 3B (duh).

Pitch Type and Count May Increase Risk of Elbow and Shoulder Pain in Youth Baseball Pitchers (September 27, 2003)

Posted 1:59 p.m., September 28, 2003 (#3) - David Smyth
  The pitchers with the highest % of fastball thrown in 2002 were:

v padilla, 77.1
d lowe, 76.4
g maddux, 76.3
a ashby, 72.7
k rueter, 70.7
j washburn, 70.6
d baez, 70.5
k millwood, 70.4,
a leiter, 70.2
ru ortiz, 69.1

changeups?
glavine, 33.6
moyer, 32.4
d moss, 30.2
m redman, 24.3
k rogers, 23.6
neagle, 19.4
maddux, 19.4
pedro, 18.6

Maddux is on both lists.

Batting Average on BIP, 1999-2002 (October 10, 2003)

Posted 5:51 p.m., October 10, 2003 (#8) - David Smyth
  Not to disrupt the good posts here, but on Tango's link there is an explanation of terms section, and one of the entries is:
Team: the team involved
Thanks, Tango, for making that clear. :)

Pythag Expansion (October 11, 2003)

Posted 7:04 p.m., October 11, 2003 (#7) - David Smyth
  That is, I think, equivalent to what I did when I came up with the Base Wins formula in the early 1990s. Base Wins uses 2*X.

Anyway, it is true, is it not, that the variations in the R/W converter are due to the run distribution patterns at various levels of R/G. So, is there a "natural" or inherent R/W converter which would be correct if there were no luck involved in how the runs fit together? Well, if you have 4.5 R/G, then the only distribution where we would know for sure what the R/W is every time is team A=9 R/G and team B=0 R/G. You have 162W, no losses, every time. So the R/W converter is 729RAA/81WAA, which is 9.0.

And this also works at the 1 rpg level, which is the level where all the formulas break down except for PythagoPat. It's just that at 1 rpg, there cannot be any distribution other than the one in which no "chance" is involved.

Pythag Expansion (October 11, 2003)

Posted 1:45 p.m., October 12, 2003 (#9) - David Smyth
  Patriot, I wasn't trying to advocate using 2*X as a standard R/W converter. But I think it does have a place, depending on the question you are asking.

Pythag Expansion (October 11, 2003)

Posted 10:41 a.m., October 13, 2003 (#11) - David Smyth
  "Each rpg level would presumably have a certain avg level of luck."

Sure, that's what you get from Pythagopat (but not from Ben .91).

But if you take the idea of putting a player into an "avg" context as far as possible, that would imply translating their stats to, say, a 4.5 rpg context (with fixed avg component frequencies) with a .5 avg run difference (or whatever the avg diff. is in a 4.5 rpg), and using whatever the fixed R/W is for that (9.2 or whatever). So all the work would be in the "translation". After that, you could use fixed event values and a fixed converter. This approach contains invalid assumptions, of course (that all player performances would translate the same in different contexts), but that assumption is used in lots of other methods (such as Slwts, etc.)

Pythag Expansion (October 11, 2003)

Posted 4:42 p.m., October 13, 2003 (#14) - David Smyth
  The Ben .91 only properly accounts for the luck in an avg context (or, more properly, in the weighted avg of all known contexts). It is not handling the luck of the run distribution patterns any differently than 2*X is, in principle, because that is not linear.

Pythag Expansion (October 11, 2003)

Posted 7:30 p.m., October 13, 2003 (#16) - David Smyth
  I did as Tango says and when I click on the icon I get a "no preview available" window. If someone can tell me how to fix this I would appreciate. I am not very computer savvy.

But the idea is that it does always answer every question to use the Tango distribution or Pythgopat. This is not a discussion on which R/W converter is most "accurate"; there are some questions where a less accurate R/W converter might be better suited, due to other features.

Odds of Cubs losing an 11-run lead (October 11, 2003)

Posted 7:12 p.m., October 11, 2003 (#1) - David Smyth
  Do those odds of the Cubs blowing the 11 run lead take into account the Alfonseca factor, or the Veres factor, or the Cruz factor? :) I would be interested in knowing the odds of blowing, if you assume a FAT pitcher until the end of the game.

Odds of Cubs losing an 11-run lead (October 11, 2003)

Posted 11:31 a.m., October 12, 2003 (#3) - David Smyth
  I think Dusty probably knew that it was quite unlikely that the relievers would blow the game. A factor in all experienced managers' moves is the desire to cover their butts. If he leaves Prior in, the Cubs win. If he takes him out after the 5th say, and the game gets interesting (say ending at 11-7), he will still be criticised. And if Prior is less effective in the next start and the Cubs lose, then it's Prior's fault. However, Dusty said he was "surprised" for being taken to task by the media/public for leaving Prior in. He will start to realize that people now have greater sophistication about the workloads, and so if the same thing happens next year, he'll probably pull Prior after 7 innings instead of 8. :)

RISP for hitters and pitchers (October 13, 2003)

Posted 8:23 p.m., October 13, 2003 (#2) - David Smyth
  A batter is generally in there for all his ABs--RISP or bases empty. But some relievers are brought in primarily because there are RISP, and in a fairly close game. With such a more 'concentrated' situational usage pattern, it is entirely reasonable to examine the performance of relievers in those splits. I have always believed that it is more likely that there are clutch pitchers than that there are clutch hitters--simply because the pitcher is the initiator, and they are involved for several consecutive PAs (where any particular mental set is likely to persist).

So, I think (or assume that) there may be a 'qualitative' difference between pitchers and hitters with RISP. If such is not the case, it should easily show up in the stats, properly analyzed. That BP is apparently assuming such a difference means either that they have studied and confirmed such, or that they are simply following the conventional line of thinking.

Game State Matrix (October 13, 2003)

Posted 8:48 p.m., October 14, 2003 (#4) - David Smyth
  This is a much-discussed topic, but the problem I have with this kind of stuff is that what is an independent situation or opportunity for an individual is not the same as such for a team. So, for example, if a reliever has a 1.8 leverage index, that's fine to evaluate his win probability added----but, "who created" that 1.8 boost, and who should deserve credit for it? Should it be the reliever 100%? Should it be the reliver and the manager? Should it be the reliever, the manager, and the starters in his games who got it to that point?

Yes, runs at certain times have more importance, but the attribution of those runs is not as straightforward as some seem to be portraying...

Graph - RPW Converter (October 13, 2003)

Posted 8:29 p.m., October 14, 2003 (#1) - David Smyth
  If you try to visualize that graph extending from 16 rpg to infinity, it looks like all of those lines should converge, and the run differential will make no difference. A differential of 0, or 1 million, will result in the same answer. Therefore, one can make a case that the "avg" run differentials at various realistic rpg levels are not part of "ability" and should be "ignored" (unless you are simply after value).

Anatomy of a Collapse (October 15, 2003)

Posted 8:39 a.m., October 16, 2003 (#26) - David Smyth
  What about the probability of the *larger* collapse? What are the odds of the Cubs losing the last 3 games, with 2 of them at home, and the advantage in the starting pitchers?

Relevancy of the Post-season (October 16, 2003)

Posted 8:56 p.m., October 17, 2003 (#10) - David Smyth
  This thread is 100% semantics.

If you want to define the "best team" as the one which won the most regular season games, or the most total games (reg season plus playoffs), or had the best scoring ratioo, etc., that's one thing.

But baseball has set up a specific format for declaring a champion. According to this format, the games at each step on the ladder have differing weights or value. The teams know this in advance, and are free to make whatever moves are necessary to come out on top.

I agree with RossCW. There is no intrinsic, or inherent, definition of the term "best". That being the case, the most logical thing to do is to accept the definition that has been set up in the rules of the game, and to declare the WS winner as the "best" team that year.

100% semantics.

Relevancy of the Post-season (October 16, 2003)

Posted 9:39 a.m., October 20, 2003 (#15) - David Smyth
  I don't like that at all. Why should the postseason have zero weight?

This could be mostly taken care of by using a different phrase. Instead of asking who was the "best team" (something which is understood by most to have a theoretical meaning), ask instead "which team played the best?". It is easier then to discuss how to weight the regular season vs the postseason. My own opinion is that the team that played the best (including playing better when it was more important) is the team that wins the WS (regardless of someone's opinion of how much was due to luck).

Evaluating Catchers (October 22, 2003)

Posted 7:32 a.m., October 24, 2003 (#12) - David Smyth
  Nice work, Tango. I'm wondering, did you look at the unadjusted rates for thoses outcomes to see how much of a difference it really makes to adjust according to pitcher? Especially for the majority of pitchers who have little or no contact with knucklers.

Evaluating Catchers (October 22, 2003)

Posted 7:33 a.m., October 24, 2003 (#13) - David Smyth
  I meant "catchers" in that last sentence, not "pitchers".

Results of the Forecast Experiment, Part 2 (October 27, 2003)

Posted 3:05 p.m., October 27, 2003 (#7) - David Smyth
  What about you, Tango? Did you participate?

Results of the Forecast Experiment, Part 2 (October 27, 2003)

Posted 6:36 p.m., October 27, 2003 (#27) - David Smyth
  Can you give the results broken down by pitchers and non-pitchers?

Results of the Forecast Experiment, Part 2 (October 27, 2003)

Posted 9:05 a.m., October 29, 2003 (#68) - David Smyth
  This crap by some saber-types conceding that you have to combine sabermetrics with a "feel for the players," scouting, and other traditional evaluation techniques, in order to evaluate players and put together successful teams, is just that - a bunch of pandering, lip service crap - and I'm not afraid to say so!

Well, it's 95% crap, and the problem with the other 5% is that it only "proves" itself in retrospect, at a point where everyone knows about it, canceling out any "inside info" advantage. For example, I expect that even the professional forcasters will weight Loaiza's 2003 season heavier than normal in their 2004 projections, because his claim of learning a new pitch has been backed up by a reasonable performance sample. But he claims IIRC to have learned the pitch and used it with success in his last few starts of 2002. To upgrade his 2003 projection just based on that would have been foolhardy, but ultimately correct.

So, the point is, even if you have legitimate scouting info, the only way to differentiate it from all of the usual scouting "noise" is to wait and see. And then it becomes part of "everyone's" projection. Is there a forcaster out there (MGL?) who would go strictly by the numbers with Loaiza for 2004?

Results of the Forecast Experiment, Part 2 (October 27, 2003)

Posted 6:01 p.m., October 30, 2003 (#72) - David Smyth
  ---"...given his age and weight..."

I realize that this is a trivial part of Walt's post, but Giambi was only 32 this year, and he does not look fat to me at all. I see no reason to have docked him more than the usual age adjustment.

Gleeman - Jeter - Clutch (October 30, 2003)

Posted 6:23 p.m., October 30, 2003 (#5) - David Smyth
  There is too much emphasis on ability or future expectation when deciding who is a clutch hitter. Because of the sample size problem mentioned by Tango, the focus should simply be on the past. IOW, the label of "clutch hitting" is/should be a retrospective award, not a prospective one. If a guy hits .450 with RISP over a season, then he was a "clutch hitter" that season, and probably created more wins than his regular stats would suggest. That's really all there is to it--what you accomplish, you get credit for. If you hit well "in the clutch", then you hit well in the clutch, and were a clutch hitter over that period.

That doesn't have a lot to do with Jeter, who apparently has not been a clutch hitter in the postseason overall. Of course, he has had a few big clutch hits in the postseason, which has led to his apparent stellar reputation. That's essentially a media-level analysis, which is of course usually only half-baked. Remember, there's another deadline tomorrow, and you have to come up with an interesting slant.

Value of keeping pitch count low (October 30, 2003)

Posted 8:08 p.m., October 31, 2003 (#7) - David Smyth
  I agree. Power pitching has no inherent connection with control.

ALCS Game 7 - MGL on Pedro and Little (November 5, 2003)

Posted 6:03 p.m., November 6, 2003 (#12) - David Smyth
  The interesting thing from this thread is whether a manager should remove a pitcher based on 1) visual observation of his mechanics, velocity, etc., 2) results only, or 3) statistical info only, such as his performance after x pitches, etc.

There are advocates for each approach. If I were forced to pick one out of those three, and for a season length sample, I would probably go with #3, the statistical tendencies, properly regressed and interpreted. But the real truth is probably some mix of all three, reflecting the general truth that more info is better than less info, assuming a fixed quality of interpreter (whether mgl or Walt Davis or a typical manager). And the fact that it was an elimination game game has to be factored in, in the most appropriate way. Nobody has really discussed how that factor did/would influence their choice.

Me, I think I would have sent Pedro out for the 8th, but on a much shorter leash than G Little. First baserunner or hard hit out, he's outta there. That is, admittedly, not the most scientific way to integrate all of these concepts, but that would have likely been my way of combining them in that real-life situation.

Win and Loss Advancements (November 13, 2003)

Posted 11:18 a.m., December 3, 2003 (#24) - David Smyth
  Tango, could you explain that a bit more. I don't understand what you are doing. The top 330 pitchers? Aren't there about 330 pitchers in the league at any given time?

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

Posted 3:03 p.m., November 16, 2003 (#2) - David Smyth
  Here is a post I made on stude's site in the Loss Shares thread.......

Tango wrote----"I don't subscribe to the Patriot/David model of absolute wins / losses. In fact, I don't even believe in absolute wins / losses. Everything is marginal from my perspective."

I'm not sure what it means that you don't "believe" in absolute runs/wins. They certainly exist. The Cubs in 2003 scored 724 absolute runs and had 88 absolute wins. That' a fact. If you are saying that it's impossible to build an analytical system based on absolute runs/wins which works, then I beg to differ. I have a framework using only absolute runs scored and allowed which I believe is every bit the equal of Win Probability Added. The "assumptions" are a bit different, and IMO, equally valid, or more so. These assumptions allow for a much simpler system which, I believe, is very logical and adds up properly. I will prepare a thread on this for FanHome...

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

Posted 8:04 p.m., November 16, 2003 (#4) - David Smyth
  ----"To convert from a marginal utility to a total utility will require some weird things, like negative wins."

Well, why is negative wins so weird, compared to some of the stuff you come up with? :)

Thinking about it quickly in those terms, I think batters can get negative run shares and negative win shares and pitchers/fielders can get negative runs allowed shares and negative loss shares. An example would be a batter who strikes out with 2 outs and bases loaded, or a reliever who comes in and retires a batter with the bases loaded and 2 out.

I suppose I should come up with a different term than "shares" to avoid confusion.

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

Posted 9:07 p.m., November 16, 2003 (#6) - David Smyth
  Well, I don't think that's what I am doing, Tango. Maybe I am and don't know it. I'll be happy to see you debunk it if it's bad.

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

Posted 8:16 a.m., November 17, 2003 (#8) - David Smyth
  ----"For example, you lose a game 5-4. In any other approach, you have to make those 4 runs as worthless"

Well, in terms of actual wins, they *are* worthless. That is a truth, and just because you don't like it doesn't mean you have debunked it. Have you ever applied that concept to a batter over a season's worth of games? The end result is very similar to what you would get with the usual methods. I have only checked this with made-up examples, but it seems to work.

Again, you may not think a system which attributes actual runs and wins is "fair" ("fairness" usually dictates a "hybrid" of value and ability), but that doesn't mean that it is not as "perfect" as WPA, or that it gives weird results for real players.

I prefer it to WPA (I think), at least in theory, because I'd rather deal with reality instead of "probabilities".

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

Posted 10:45 a.m., November 17, 2003 (#10) - David Smyth
  Well, I'll post it so you can see if I'm doing it right. It's so simple, and yet it seems valid to me, as valid as WPA.

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

Posted 7:18 p.m., November 17, 2003 (#26) - David Smyth
  As I promised, I typed a long post in at Fanhome. But, those motherf*ckers deleted it due to some crazy crap in their program. I mean, it's fine to not let the post go thru if something is missing. But why do they have to also delete the entire post, which I spent 15 minutes typing in.

Anyway, I'll do it again when I get the urge...

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

Posted 2:33 p.m., November 24, 2003 (#41) - David Smyth
  Yes, Colin M has it right--I did not give .50 to both the 3b and SF.

I could launch another response rehashing what I have already said on the "absolute" method, but it's pretty much all there on the Fanhome thread.

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

Posted 3:06 p.m., November 24, 2003 (#44) - David Smyth
  ---"David, how can I view the fanhome thread?"

I'm not sure what you mean, Colin. Go to fanhome.com, go the the baseball forum "Strategy and Sabermetrics", and click on the Absolute Wins Produced thread. If you want to post a reply, you have to register.

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

Posted 6:09 p.m., November 24, 2003 (#48) - David Smyth
  Colin wrote---"Tango, I think we are actually in agreement.", after seeing the fanhome thread.

What does that mean? Does that mean that you think that Tango successfully debunked my viewpoint? If so, please be specific. My interpretation of Tango's "conclusion" is that my method (or some refinement of it) is essentially sound, but not his particular "cup of tea".

For me, this "exercise" (as Tango called it) has sort of opened my eyes to something. And that is that baseball is actually simpler than we (statistical analysts) have been making it. Baseball consists of a few fundamental elements (bases gained and lost, runs scored and allowed, outs made and gained, and wins and losses). Most of the fancy statistical "gyrations" (probabilities, exponential formulas, multiple regressions, etc.) are necessitated due simply to lack of complete data. The more data you have, the simpler the analysis should become. Instead, the more data that becomes available seems to be leading to more mathematically complicated analyses. I submit that this is because people are not seeing the fundamental relationships which emerge from a concrete analysis of complete data (although even PBP data is not complete enough to avoid the use of some probabilities or partial-bases). I am usually regretful that I do not have the technical statistical training or computer ability that some others possess. But sometimes, as in this case, I wonder if that might be a blessing, since it forces me to try to "see the forest for the trees".

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

Posted 6:33 p.m., November 24, 2003 (#49) - David Smyth
  ---"Again, I'd say, yes, this captures reality, since the impact, in real-time, is felt much much more in the bottom of the 9th than in the top of the 1st."

Why should we care, in the context of analysis, where the imact was "felt"? I don't care whether fans were more on the edge of their seat in the 9th than in the 1st. And ditto for the players or managers.

If you can show evidence that what is "felt" materially affects the performance of a typical player (IOW, clutch), then I will have more affinity for it. But absent that, what is the big deal about holding players to the base/out/score/inning impact? Do those things have more of an effect on performance than some of the things in my system, such as a pitcher's offensive and bullpen support? As far as we know, most "non-ability" factors are pretty much random in terms of impact. And if that is true, then why "stop", in terms of a value system, where WPA stops? Why not simply forget about intent, and focus only on the final result? The final result is wins and losses, runs scored and runs allowed, outs made and outs gained, and bases gained and bases lost.

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

Posted 8:01 a.m., November 26, 2003 (#54) - David Smyth
  Tango wrote,---"Well, David's assumption is that hitters create runs and runs create wins. Pitchers allow runs and runs allowed created losses.....If you can't buy into that, then you won't buy into David's system."

Yes, it is an "assumption", and one that I did not set out to make. But as far as I can tell, it is the only assumption that will hold water, in the context of an *absolute* system. If someone can figure out how to handle it with a more *conventional* assumption, and not be unknowingly reverting to a marginal concept, I'll be glad to see it. But I doubt it can be done. And if not, that means that my "assumption" is correct. And if it is correct, then it doesn't matter whether most people choose not to "buy into" the system. I can choose not to "buy in" to the theory that matter is made of atoms, but if that theory is correct, then I'm only hurting myself by not accepting it.

I'd love it if so PBP analyst would buy into it enough to try it out and get some actual results.

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

Posted 10:07 a.m., November 26, 2003 (#56) - David Smyth
  "What I think absolute wins are going to reveal is very little, in my view."

Well, that is your expectation, but I am not quite so sure. It will reveal a "performance layer" which we now don't have. It will add to our knowledge of what really happened in a ball game. It should be useful in answering certain relevant questions.

For example, it might have been helpful in answering the Bonds/Pujols MVP question (as might WPA). If their Slwts were the same (I'm not saying that they were), but one guy had a significant edge in AWP (or relative AWP), that would be enough to sway my vote.

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

Posted 8:23 p.m., November 26, 2003 (#59) - David Smyth
  ---"If you tell them that you only looked at the 15% of the PAs that the player had, what do you think they will say?

Well, if that's *all* you tell them, then of course. But if you also tell them that the reason is that those 15% of PAs contain all of the *tangible* value, and the other 85% are just noise, maybe some of the brighter ones would get it. I don't want to sound like some sort of snob, but I am not going to limit myself by what the "average person" will understand or accept.

And Tango, you keep comparing the virtues of AWP with those of WPA. But I have not urged that AWP should "replace" WPA--just that it be part of the arsenal.

---"It seems to me that the problem with an absolute system is that there really is no absolute when measuring the value of a player."

Agreed. I have always said (I think) that value is relative, and that to use AWP to measure value you have to relate a player's result to some standard, such as how many AWP an avg or repl batter would have generated. I have not thus far posted my idea on how to do this in the best way, but now that there is some interest in the method, I will do so.

ABB# (November 24, 2003)

Posted 7:55 p.m., November 24, 2003 (#15) - David Smyth
  Without going into any real detail, I think that the best choice in this area is probably something I have posted before, which is OBA*SLG*34, which is on the R/G scale, which is more satisfying than the BA scale, which has nothing to do with anything, really. In choosing one of these simplified OPS "competitors", you have to not only look at the overall R squared results, but also the results for the best and worst hitters in baseball, and the overall scale they determine. It is very difficult to find a batter who is significantly out of whack with OTS, given normal speed. You can do the +1 technique to determine where OTS falls short in theory, but for some reason it seems to balance out quite well for real players.

ABB# (November 24, 2003)

Posted 10:58 a.m., November 27, 2003 (#30) - David Smyth
  Here is the same list Tango gave, using OBA*SLG*34. The scale is RC/27. I rounded to 1 decimal place in acknowledgment that this is only a quick-style approximation.

Bonds, 13.5
Pujols, 10.0
Helton, 9.8
Sheffield, 8.6
Edmonds, 8.1
Giles, 7.5
Thome, 7.5
Hidalgo, 7.5
LGonzalez, 7.3
Berkman, 7.2

Delgado, 8.6
Ramirez, 8.5
ARod, 8.1
Nixon, 7.8
Giambi, 7.4
Thomas, 7.5
Ortiz, 7.4
Mueller, 7.3
Posada, 7.1
Ordonez, 7.1

Not bad, huh? I prefer it to the "GPA" because it's on a better scale, and is a bit easier to calculate.

I want this named after me. Even though OBA*SLG was invented by D Cramer 25 years ago, I am the one who thought to multiple by 34. Since Cramer called his stat Batter's Run Average, I going to call this one the Smyth BRA. And no, I don't wear a bra. :)

ABB# (November 24, 2003)

ABB# (November 24, 2003)

Posted 6:34 p.m., November 29, 2003 (#34) - David Smyth
  ---"What is the one-line definition of OBAxSLGx34?"

Allow me 3 lines in the interest of avoiding a long, "run-on" sentence.

OTS*34 is a quick estimate, using seasonal data, of the number of absolute runs created by a batter per offensive game. An offensive game is 27 total outs by this batter, or 25.2 batting outs, or whatever the equivalent is from the dataset you are using. By "absolute" runs created, I am refering to the numbers generated by, for example, the "new" B James RC, XR, or even your own conversion from LWR of (.47*plus)-(.10*minus).

Tango, you know all this, so why are you challenging OTS*34 with such "ferocity"? Are you ticked that your objection on the grounds of batter self-interaction is, in effect, not correct?

Bottom line for me--OTS*34 is an easier quick calculation than Aaron's GPA, plus it is on a more accurate scale than BAvg. This "scale" consideration is not only preferable on simply esthetic grounds, but also if you are doing a large study and want to use a simple stat. If you use a BAvg scale and one group is better than avg by 50%, and another group is worse than avg by 50%, you can't assume that they balance out to the avg, for example.

ABB# (November 24, 2003)

Posted 9:04 p.m., November 29, 2003 (#36) - David Smyth
  Sorry, but I have no idea what you are talking about, Tango. It seems that you are trying to debunk OTS*34, simply as a way to debunk the father stat RC/27. If you don't like RC/27 (because it is not on a LW basis or whatever), that's fine, but lots of people do like it and understand what it means. I am certainly not trying to claim that RC/27 is a state-of-the-art way to rank batters, but it's certainly much better than BAvg, and since it's been around for 20 years and is on a natural scale, the "interpretation" of a simple quick estimator is not a problem with the average informed fan. And the PA thing with Bonds, who cares about PAs if you are on an absolute scale?

ABB# (November 24, 2003)

Posted 11:20 p.m., November 29, 2003 (#38) - David Smyth
  ---Are you saying that the definition is:
"Barry Bonds created 13 runs per 27 of his own outs, within the context of that performance occurring with 8 league average hitters"?

I guess the answer is yes, but I'm suspicious that that is sort of a trick question.

ABB# (November 24, 2003)

Posted 10:49 a.m., November 30, 2003 (#40) - David Smyth
  ---"What 34*OTS represents is the number of runs Barry Bonds would create playing with 8 of himself, but limited to the league average number of PA/G."

Thanks, Patriot, I think that's correct. I think I now realize what Tango was trying to get at. He was asking what OTS*34 *does* represent, rather than what I was using it as a proxy to represent. So I guess his point is that it's an *accident* that OTS*34 works. Sure, no problem, but since it's only a quick estimator, I wasn't all that concerned about that. I think that other virtues are more important in the specific matter of a quick estimator.

ABB# (November 24, 2003)

Posted 3:21 p.m., November 30, 2003 (#42) - David Smyth
  BAvg itself is a probability, but just because GPA is on the Bavg scale does not mean that it also is restricted to between 0 and 1. Plug a perfect batter (1.000 OBA and 4.000 SLG) into GPA and you get 1.45, not 1.000. So I don't see how you could apply "statistical probability distribution techniques" to GPA.

Anyway, this topic doesn't really warrant this amount of discussion.

ABB# (November 24, 2003)

Posted 7:57 a.m., December 1, 2003 (#45) - David Smyth
  Sure, Greg, but you could do the same thing with OTS or any other stat. But you then lose the value of having it be on a well-known scale.

Baseball Graphs - Money and Win Shares (November 28, 2003)

Posted 12:22 p.m., November 28, 2003 (#1) - David Smyth
  ---1."Virtually every successful team, even the Yankees, had players who were paid less than $1 million but who delivered significant value. Without these players, you can't buy your way to the top."

So a team essentially needs to develop some players who are good enough to significantly contribute but young enough to have low salaries. A few good, young players. Also, maybe some journeyman veterans who can contribute in a platoon, or solid, veteran lower-salaried middle relievers.

---2. "You will make mistakes with your large contracts. You should expect them."

So a team should be conservative with large contracts, and only offer them for players who are still in their 20s and are "proven" stars, particularly at up-the-middle positions.

3. "Pitchers are much more likely to be expensive mistakes than everyday players."

So don't sign a pitcher to more than a 3yr contract, and look closely at his past durability and work habits.

The Problem With "Total Clutch" Hitting Statistics (December 1, 2003)

Posted 2:05 p.m., December 1, 2003 (#11) - David Smyth
  I found this article very interesting and timely. I too have called into question whether WPA reveals enough new information (compared to OPS, say) to be worth the huge increase in data and computation. I know that much of that is mitigated today by computers, but still it reminds me of an old B James line, where he likened some advanced version of some stat to tying to use a 40 pound garden hoe. If the increase in accuracy (or new info) is only 10%, but 20 times the amount of work is required...

A few of you may have seen my recent discussions of a stat called AWP/ALP, which is certainly not going to take the sabermetric community by storm. But it measures something "real", and I expect that the correlation with OPS would be much lower than that of WPA and OPS, suggesting that the information it is adding is different. The objection to AWP is whether the added info is "worthwhile". I don't mean to "hijack" this topic at all, and if anyone is interested they can check and post in those other threads. But I thought it fit right into the general concept of this thread.

The Problem With "Total Clutch" Hitting Statistics (December 1, 2003)

Posted 7:08 p.m., December 1, 2003 (#20) - David Smyth
  ---"No one, I don't think, is discounting performance in high leverage situations. What is in dispute is whether those performances were the result of some ability, as opposed to random statistical variation (i.e., luck)."

Another paet of the "dispute" is, or eventually should be, is who should get credit for a player performing in more (or fewer) high leverage situations. If you want to automatically give that credit only to the player, then when is the manager ever going to get credit? If E Gagne posts a 1.20 ERA in 80 IP, who deserves the credit that these IP were in (relatively) high leverage situations? Gagne? No, it was the manager who brought that about. If you want to reply that every manager uses his best reliever as the closer, think again. Every year, there are middle relievers who post better ERAs than the closers on their teams. Some of that is random variation, of course, but some of it is likely a real failure on the part of the manager to identify who his best players are, and how to maximize their leverage within the overall team framework.

So, in all of these systems which try to apportion all of the credit to the players for what "happened", is there ever going to be any "space" for the manager?

Marcel, The Monkey, Forecasting System (December 1, 2003)

Posted 6:50 p.m., December 1, 2003 (#17) - David Smyth
  So Marcus performs about as well as Mickey? (Yes, I am aware MGL didn't participate; it simply had a nice ring.) Not surprising, because the data necessary to separate *real* changes in ability ( apparently Bonds in 2001, perhaps Loaiza in 2003) simply is not available, before the fact, and perhaps will never be.. So all of the "small" adjustments made by the "systematic forecasters" (or whatever Tango called them) are drowned out in an ocean of noise. I do believe, however, that the systematic forecasts can be improved from what they are now, using the available data, by more analysis on exactly what "goes into" real unexpected changes in ability, and how to "detect" that from the available data. Or it may turn out that, even with such refinements, the noise is still overwhelming. But I do know, at least, that more work can be done in this area...

Bases Batted Forward (December 3, 2003)

Posted 8:15 p.m., December 3, 2003 (#2) - David Smyth
  ---"My perspective is that if you've got access to the play by play, then you have to realize that not all bases are created equal (from the standpoint of player evaluation)."

The key phrase there is the part in parentheses, whatever that is supposed to mean. But, assuming you have all of the data to work with--all of the bases--then I believe that all bases *are* created equal. It takes four consecutive bases to make a run. If any of those are removed, the run is gone. Why is 1st base worth .27 and second base only .17 additional runs in a conventional weighting system? Because that reflects the *odds* of scoring, without knowledge of whether the runner *did* score. But when we have all of the data, we don't need to worry about that. So, yes, .27+.17+.17+.39 does sum to 1, but so does .25+.25+.25+.25.

I disagree with Tango about the merits of "base-centered" evaluation systems. I think they are the real deal, and will eventually be the basis for sabermetrics. I think they remove a lot of the need to *estimate* things by means of probabilities. Why use probabilities when you have the actual data? Of course, there will (presumably) always be a need for such, as in the "attribution" of a base when more than 1 player is involved (on both offense and defense), but the more you can reduce the dependence on probabilities and use actual outcomes, the better off you are.

As far as the problem of not having proper opportunity factors, the proper opp factor depends on what you are trying to evaluate, but with full PBP data, it should be possible to construct appropriate opp factors for every application.

Bases Batted Forward (December 3, 2003)

Posted 5:04 p.m., December 4, 2003 (#6) - David Smyth
  Well, this goes back to whether you are measuring in real-time or after the fact, which we have discussed quite a bit lately. I was probably a bit "optimistic" in that quote you cited, because I certainly don't have any influence on what the saber gurus of the moment are interested in. I will say, though, that 1) bases are the stuff of which runs are made, and 2) with the PBP, bases can be accurately counted instead of estimated. It seems reasonable to me, therefore, that a "base-centered" evaluation method is a natural thing to have. That doesn't mean that the abstract thinkers can't have their "marginal" frameworks. But for those who like to first take care of what is non-abstract and concrete, the scanty attention paid to bases is disappointing. Why is Tuttle's Base Production system, which is intricate and well thought-out (over 30 articles explaining it on rsbb), almost never mentioned?

Bases Batted Forward (December 3, 2003)

Posted 5:15 p.m., December 4, 2003 (#7) - David Smyth
  ---"Outs? Bases? Runs? Nope, nope, nope. Wins."

Well, wins are made up of runs (scored and allowed), and runs are made of bases (gained and lost). It is misleading to suggest that wins are a "first-order" and independent entity. The decision to treat them as such and figure out the applicable math and probabilities is just that--a decision or preference. Don't try to say that it is more "fundamentally" correct to do it that way.

Bases Batted Forward (December 3, 2003)

Posted 5:52 p.m., December 4, 2003 (#9) - David Smyth
  ---" The backward looking stuff is really just for fun, and has no real-word impact. MVP, HOF,all that stuff... just fluff really. The good stuff is the estimating the future, and how much to pay for it."

That is your opinion, and you are entitled to it. But don't state it as fact. And as we have seen with Marcel, predicting the future is not the most difficult thing in the world. Personally, I find the explaining of the past to be just as interesting as the predicting of the future.

---"Anyway, I really have nothing more to add to this topic, so I'll bow out at this time."

Why do people have to "announce" that they are bowing out? Why not just not post anymore? And what if somebody posts something really good or interesting after you say that? And it's not like anybody has been rude or anything on this thread. To me, that sort of "announcement" is just sabermetric snobbishness--Tango has his mind made up, and doesn't want to be bothered with it anymore.

Sorry Tango, but that's how it strikes me. I may be wrong, of course. You are generally very polite and accomodating. But those "announcements" bug me (even tho I have done the same thing myself). :-)

Bases Batted Forward (December 3, 2003)

Posted 6:14 p.m., December 4, 2003 (#10) - David Smyth
  I almost missed this.

---"The good stuff is the estimating the future, and how much to pay for it."

Then why do you devote your efforts to WPA? Why not just help MGL to refine Slwts?

Bases Batted Forward (December 3, 2003)

Posted 6:01 p.m., December 5, 2003 (#13) - David Smyth
  I apologize for my tone, Tango. I might have just been a bit frustrated that hardly anyone seems to be interested in base-centered analysis.

Bases Batted Forward (December 3, 2003)

Posted 6:10 p.m., December 6, 2003 (#14) - David Smyth
  ---"As for superLWTS, WPA will one day supplant it."

I guess I'm probably beating a dead horse, but why is that so (if you will break your "announcement" and reply)?

Slwts is designed to measure ability. AWP/ALP is designed to measure value. WPA is designed to measure something in between (although I am certainly aware that none of these is a "pure" measure of anything). WPA might be as good as, or as desirable as, these other approaches, or perhaps even better in a total evaluation, but I still don't see that it is the "holy grail".

Baseball Musings: Defense Archives (December 5, 2003)

Posted 3:12 p.m., December 8, 2003 (#14) - David Smyth
  nice work.

---"(though the mean of the regulars is ever so slightly better)."

Could this be because the sample size of playing time for the regulars is larger, and that after you regress to the mean based on playing time the 2 groups would be almost the same?

Building the 2004 Expos (December 8, 2003)

Posted 5:36 p.m., December 8, 2003 (#2) - David Smyth
  Tango, maybe the Expos simply want to deal fairly whenever they can, especially to a player they have developed and featured for years, and feel they simply can't afford to keep. Your #1--Vlad rejects, there's no way they could assume that, unless they had a gentleman's agreement with Vlad to offer arbitration, even tho he told them he'd reject, just so they could manipulate the system to get a bit of compensation. That's not "kosher". And your #2--Vlad accepts and they "pull a Manny Ramirez", that is just misleading Vlad and the public about your real intentions. Why is it assumed by some that a team is dutybound to exploit every "loophole" they can find? I, for one, find it refreshing that the Expos decided that they can't or don't want to afford Vlad, and simply did the appropriate and "moral" thing.

Absolute Wins Produced (December 8, 2003)

Posted 6:12 p.m., December 9, 2003 (#6) - David Smyth
  Yes, AWP/ALP is not intrinsically a "value" stat; it is sort of a "counting" stat. The next step is to convert it into a value stat. I prefer to say convert it to a "relative" stat instead of a value stat, because that gives you the freedom to choose what you want to relate it to. My choice is a repl player on an avg team, who produces the same (relative to the team) in the team losses and the wins. That means that he produces the same proportion of the team's runs and outs in every game he appears in.

And as to how well the method "correlates" to the "real world", I gave a couple examples of World Series results, one of which was the 2003 Series. Take a look at that post, and see if those final results don't pretty much reflect a rational MVP analysis.

As far as writing an article, Tango, thanks for the invitation. I am not a very good writer by the standards of the Primer authors, so I find that a bit intimidating, but I'll see what I can come up with.

Correlation between Baserunning and Basestealing (December 10, 2003)

Posted 8:32 p.m., December 10, 2003 (#15) - David Smyth
  ---"I just assumed that a player with 100 SB and 20 CS would be faster than a player who had 100/40, even though the 100/40 attempted a steal more often?"

That is not a safe assumption to make.

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

Posted 6:06 p.m., December 15, 2003 (#1) - David Smyth
  Ahhh, the old WShares analysis. The Fibonacci is much better, but as I recall from doing lots of playing around with this topic, there is no inherent reason to think that Fibonacci must be correct. So far, I have not been able to call up properly the article cited by Tango.

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

Posted 6:14 p.m., December 15, 2003 (#2) - David Smyth
  No offense to anyone, but I posted the Fibonacci thing at least a year ago on Fanhome. And the Fibonacci is not perfect either, because it is just a "ratio" based calculation.

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

Posted 6:24 p.m., December 16, 2003 (#23) - David Smyth
  Bill James has admitted, I think, that WSh undervalues pitchers. It should not be assumed that there is only 1 cause--it may be that there there are problems on the different levels (offense vs defense, pitchers vs fielders, pitchers vs other type pitchers) that happen to go in the same direction instead of canceling out.

In any case, the main subject of this thread is the larger offense vs defense level. It is interesting that, because James has put himself "out there", it is very easy to trace what has gone on.

Tango used the phrase "house of cards" to describe another system (where it doesn't really apply), but it applies to Win Shares like paint applies to drywall.

James first constructs the system with the "ideal" .5/1.5 ratio. Then he realizes that pitchers (or, more properly, defense as a whole) are being "undervalued". So he starts moving off the .5/1.5. But when he gets to the region (say, the Fibonacci) which takes care of *that* problem, another has surfaced--that of having regular players and even a few teams which are below the zero point on offense. So James, having no clear conceptual underlying fabric, tries to compromise by moving to a point (.52/1.52) which does nothing other than produce an end result which is the most palatable to his own sensibility.

But that doesn't mean that he has solved the problem within the system. And, he is quite aware that he hasn't. His "house of cards" is still standing, but it is weak. To make us (and perhaps himself) think that it is strong, James adopts the strategy of acknowledging the problem (of undervaluing defense)--thereby selling us on his honesty and awareness--but at the same time writing in a tone which is intended to minimize (in our minds) the magnitude or significance of this drawback.

The system is state of the art and must go on, he says. Every system has imperfections and is capable of being refined, he says. Twenty years from now, someone will solve the problem, he says--maybe even his own son.

Sorry Bill, but these types of problems are not really capable of being solved within the system--because that's not where they are located. The problem is the system itself.

UZR 2003 Previews (December 18, 2003)

Posted 6:39 p.m., December 18, 2003 (#12) - David Smyth
  With all due respect, this idea of position changes based on UZRs is, for the most part, quite amateurish. Each position demands a different body-type and physical skill set. Just because a guy is a great CFer does not mean in the slightest that he could be a capable performer at SS. And even a good/great corner OFer does not likely possess the essential skills necessary for CF. Jenkins is a 29 yr old white guy who steals 3 bases per year. Yes, I know J Edmonds seems to do OK in CF, but when contemplating a position change for a player in mid-career, I think the evidence that he can sucessfully make the switch should be almost overwhelming. What to do with Jeter? He has the body-type and essential physical skills of a modern SS. If you move him to a lesser position, you will be wasting some of those skills and losing the advantage of his bat at SS. My instinct is that, as long as he can "handle" the SS position (on visual observation) he should probably stay there. Sometimes you simply have to take the good with the bad. I have a hard time imagining that Jeter would be more valuable, overall, at another position.

I am a bit surprised to see A Ramirez so bad at 3B. I have only seen Aramis in the last half of 2003 as the Cubs 3Bman. He seems to have a good initial reaction to the ball, good reflexes, and a strong arm. I am, of course, aware that he makes "too many" errors. I suppose that the data is not available, but it would be interesting to see his UZR data for just his Cubs stint. I have no problem with him at 3rd next year, hoping they can work with him to cut down his errors. He seems to be a talented hitter, certainly more talented than the typical 3Bman. I'll take him on the likelihood that he is entering his prime and might put it all together in a hurry.

UZR 2003 Previews (December 18, 2003)

Posted 7:18 p.m., December 18, 2003 (#16) - David Smyth
  Well, if you haven't noticed, most CFers are black. And most sprinters are black. And most wide receivers are black. And on and on. Without having personal knowledge of the speed of Jenkins, I have to form a guess based on what I do know. If you think that is somehow "racist" (meaning that I don't like blacks or some such), then you are an a*shole who needs to take a reality pill.

UZR 2003 Previews (December 18, 2003)

Posted 7:48 p.m., December 18, 2003 (#19) - David Smyth
  Tango, you are the voice of maturity. I will divorce myself from this escalation, assuming that it is reciprocated, (even tho a good back and forth can be fun to those of us who are still somewhat immature). But instead of bringing some old thread forward, why don't you simply comment on whether you think that my original comment, that knowing that a player is white, 29 years old, and stealing 3 bases per year, is or is not statistically meaningful in guesstimating whether he is a likely candidate to sucessfully man CF. And I even mentioned Edmonds, to show that I understand that there are exceptions. Erstad is another example. But he, even though white, has better speed indicators than does Edmonds or Jenkins.

UZR 2003 Previews (December 18, 2003)

Posted 8:23 p.m., December 18, 2003 (#21) - David Smyth
  ---"If you think that race is a better indicator of whether someone can play centerfield than UZR's in leftfield are then you're an idiot."

Well, it is entirely possible/probable that, in the corner OF positions, raw speed is much less important than certain other skills. It is not necessarily a continuous scale, with speed and other skills needed in the same proportion. And a look at the speed/skills ratio of the players who actually man these positions suggests that the speed/skills ratio is different in CF . So, after a player has manned CF for a certain amount of time, I am happy to ignore race, age, and other "extranneous" factors in favor of his actual UZRs. But before the fact, I want to know whether a player is a good corner OFer primarily because of speed, or because of other skills. In the case of Jenkins, an admittedly cursory evaluation suggests that his success in LF is not speed-based. As J Cross mentions, I am not particularly knowledgable about him, and I am quite willing to be corrected if he is, in fact, a speed guy who simply chooses not to steal, and was shuffled off to LF along the way by his minor league teams, perhaps for no other reason than that he is white and has power.

UZR 2003 Previews (December 18, 2003)

Posted 8:57 p.m., December 18, 2003 (#22) - David Smyth
  ---"As per Primer policy, I can (and have) removed posts that don't move the discussion forward. I try not to, and I would ask that you police yourselves."

Tango, you go ahead and do whatever you think is consistent with "Primer policy". But I will respond to someone's post as I see fit, without regard for whether it is consistent with Primer policy. As you have seen by my last post, I chose to address the "substance" of J Cross's post, after a momentary flash of anger in my prior response. We are capable of "policing" ourselves, and do not really need or want you to do it for us. You have better things to do....

UZR 2003 Previews (December 18, 2003)

Posted 6:23 p.m., December 19, 2003 (#35) - David Smyth
  First of all, sorry J Cross and Tango. I am normally the most laid-back guy you will meet, but all of my "jerk" posts have come after I have scarfed a couple large glasses of wine. That doesn't mean that I think my points were wrong in essense, just in delivery.

But as far as the assertion by mgl that the corner OF positions are essentially the same as CF, but just to a lesser degree--I don't see why this should be assumed. The CF coverage area might be twice as large as the LF area (just making up these ratios and numbers for emphasis). But the LF balls may have more curvature or whatever. So maybe CF is 90% speed/10% skills, while LF is 50% speed/50% skills. There is no reason to assume that a Jenkins, who "might" (according to general speed indicators) be a "skills" LFer, would translate to CF in the real world as well as his UZRs might suggest. That is the only reason I mentioned his race (as well as his age and SB totals)--to get a general idea of whether he is likely a good LFer because he is very fast, or because he has other skills which will not translate as well to CF.

Also, I think MGL said that when a player is way above avg at his def position, that he should (in theory) be transferred to a more difficult position. When you do that, say with Jenkins, you are making a tradeoff--lowering his relative defensive value, while raising his relative offensive value relative. I am not sure why this should be assumed to be a net gain. Unless (in Jenkins case) an avg (O+D) LFer is significantly easier to find than an avg (O+D) CFer, to cover the position he is not at. I am not aware that such is the case. And even if it were the case to a small degree, the practical detriments to changing a player's position will likely be a much larger factor...

UZR 2003 Previews (December 18, 2003)

Posted 8:02 p.m., December 19, 2003 (#38) - David Smyth
  MGL, I think I understand all you are saying, and I simply don't agree--or, more properly, I weight each factor in the equation differently.

---"Since I don't know anyhting about Jenkins, the absolute best estimate of his UZR in CF is going to be his LF UZR projection minus 5 or 10 runs, or whatever Tango says the adjustment is, based on hsitoricla reuslts from all players who have played both LF and CF! Sheesh!"

Fine. I was addressing the specfic example of Jenkins, not the generic example of LF to RF. Based on that, I have reason to suspect that Jenkins would not benefit from the avg adjustment to CF. I *do* know something about Jenkins.

Look at it like this. When you switch a player to a more difficult position, we can pretty much assume that his offense will transfer without a hitch. (Of course, there is the common suggestion that a player's offense might suffer a bit if his concentration is distracted by a more difficult position, but let's assume that this is false.) But his defwnse is (IMO) more likely to suffer (relatively) than it is to prosper (relatively). If Jenkins hits .350/.500, we can assume he will do so whether he is in left or center. But because of the different blends of skills which lead to performance at each position, we should not make the same assumption, even if we know nothing in particular about the player. The best estimate *might* be an equal transfer, but the chances of a "collapse" are greater than the chances of a "breakout", IMO, to use the Pecota terminology. And that is simply because we should assume that, in real baseball, players are put at certain defensive positions based to a large degree on their position-specific abilities and physical attributes, rather than some abstract evaluation of their ability at an "average" defensive position.

UZR 2003 Previews (December 18, 2003)

Posted 12:18 p.m., December 20, 2003 (#41) - David Smyth
  ---"Tango can probably better explain why you HAVE to consider moving a player if he is way better or worse than the average defender."

Well, I hope he does so. I can certainly see why you would move a guy who is way worse than an avg defender. But I don't see why the same thinking applies to a guy who is way better than avg. I mean sure, if you have Ozzie Smith at 1b, you would want to move him to better "leverage" his defensive ability. But in the ordinary case, of which Jenkins might be an example, exactly what do you gain by moving a guy who is a good hitter and good fielder (relative to position) to a position where he is an avg fielder and excellent hitter (relative to position)? Where is the net run gain to the team? Of course, if you have a hot prospect ready to take over for him in LF, that might be a different story....

UZR 2003 Previews (December 18, 2003)

Posted 5:09 p.m., December 20, 2003 (#43) - David Smyth
  In Chicago, they've been trying to get rid of Valentin and his errors at short for several years. Nobody seems to see that he is in fact good, they think he is only acceptable at SS because of his bat. This attitude seems to include not only the sportswriters and common fans, but also his teammates and managers, none of whom seem to ever defend his defense.

UZR, 2000-2003 (December 21, 2003)

Posted 1:02 p.m., December 24, 2003 (#10) - David Smyth
  It's not the impact of a missed out--it's the impact of losing an expected out (-.3 runs) and surrendering a hit (+.5 runs).

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

Posted 6:58 p.m., December 21, 2003 (#1) - David Smyth
  I guess this is essentially a list of the best fielders in baseball?

Cool stuff! How much do you think it would likely change, after whatever refinements can be made are made?

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

Posted 9:46 a.m., December 22, 2003 (#14) - David Smyth
  Yes, Andrew and Chipper. I did mention about the leverage factor in my back-and-forth with MGL. Now that I see an example of how much of a difference it would make in the OF, the main remaining questions are, for Jenkins (say), 1) Why was he not a CFer all along (IOW, is there something about his skills/speed), and 2) what is the cost of his having to adapt to a new position, both in defensive runs and possibly in offense (if his effort to adapt distracts him at the plate).

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

Posted 11:43 a.m., December 22, 2003 (#16) - David Smyth
  ---"I just don't like all this."

Well, I like it because it (should) get us step closer to understanding the position questions. It's probably just a matter of figuring out why the results are what they are, assuming it's not just selective sampling (or rather, that the sampling component is small).

Very Good work, Tango.

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

Posted 3:03 p.m., December 22, 2003 (#19) - David Smyth
  Those numbers show the same thing for CF, as being higher in the def spectrum, as I recall some old DPA numbers did. And yet, CFs seem to be avg or close to it in the OPA. So, CFs "should" be worse hitters than they are? Or, I guess maybe, considering both O and D, CFers are the best baseball players? If you think about it, that does make some sense.

True Talent Fielding Level, 1999-2003
Adjusted by Difficulty of Position, and
Extracted to All Positions (December 23, 2003)

Posted 9:15 a.m., December 24, 2003 (#9) - David Smyth
  Good stuff. It would be an interesting comparison (to me, at least) to see it done by combining the player's UZR with the 1999-2002 OPA of the position he plays.

Batting average on balls in play, ground balls and other such beasts (December 24, 2003)

Posted 12:59 p.m., December 24, 2003 (#3) - David Smyth
  ---"That is, FB hitters have a lower success rate, given that the ball stayed in the park, than did the GB hitters. On the other hand, the FB hitter will give up more XBH than a GB hitter. Throw in the GIDP, and you have essentially a wash."

Does that also include the differences in successfully advancing baserunners on GB and FB outs?

The Base on Balls (December 24, 2003)

Posted 4:32 p.m., December 25, 2003 (#4) - David Smyth
  ---"A sharp-minded man, this guy was."

You are making a sabermetrician's #1 error there--not stating your assumptions. You are obviously assuming that this guy is dead. What is the confidence interval for that?

Just kidding. :-)

Valuing Starters and Relievers (December 27, 2003)

Posted 7:26 p.m., December 27, 2003 (#5) - David Smyth
  So, Kamatoa, you are advocating a system like ALP? (Even though you've probably never heard of it.)

I recall an old study by P Birnbaum which showed that the "reliever's ERA advantage", as a function of their role and not their talent, is about .2 runs. If the actual is .6 runs+ instead of .2, that says much about the "ability" of these pitchers.

Still, value is what it it is. If you want to determine Gagne's actual impact in 2003, and whether he deserved the Cy Young, you might want to check out the relative ALP. This method is "almost" perfect.

Valuing Starters and Relievers (December 27, 2003)

Posted 10:08 a.m., December 28, 2003 (#12) - David Smyth
  Studes,it's "Absolute Losses Produced", a companion to AWP (if you can now guess what AWP means, you're a genius). Tango has a link to a fanhome thread somewhere on Primate Studies, I think. I'm not trying to start a discussion on it here. It just struck me that some of Krackatoa's post sounded like what I tried to do there.

Valuing Starters and Relievers (December 27, 2003)

Posted 8:55 a.m., December 29, 2003 (#21) - David Smyth
  Very interesting topic. Although it is interesting to try to determine how starters would do in relief, and vice-versa, the fundamental way to handle this problem is simply to figure out what the proper baseline is for any comparison. And that would be the relacement level for innings by starters and innings by relievers. Simply look at the worst 10% (or whatever) of players who keep jobs, regress properly to handle the inning differences of starters and relievers, and voila. It doesn't matter whether relievers are failed starters or not, because when a reliever is replaced, his replacement will also relieve. This is certainly a "value" perspective in a topic with "ability" considerations, but the value perspective will get you 90+% of the way there.

Valuing Starters and Relievers (December 27, 2003)

Posted 3:51 p.m., December 31, 2003 (#49) - David Smyth
  In the 2002 Prospectus annual, Woolnergave formulas for the repl level of starters and relievers:

St: 1.37*LgRA/G -.066
Rel: 1.70*LgRA/G -2.66

Applying this to MLB 2003, and converting into ERAs, the repl ERA for starters was 5.90, while for relievers it was 5.31. The difference is .61. Tango hit the bullseye.

Of course, the repl ERA for closers is a heck of a lot different than for the mop-up man. But those formulas are a good starting point. I think the MLB ERA in 2003 was 4.35. So the repl % for starters is about 74% of avg, and for relievers it's about 82% of avg.

Valuing Starters and Relievers (December 27, 2003)

Posted 9:05 a.m., January 2, 2004 (#52) - David Smyth
  Rob, I think the 'free outs' factor is worth about .2 runs

Guy, the formulas appear to be correct to me. I did make a calculation error, though. Using R/G, as the formula does, I now get 5.36 ERA/4.95 ERA (St/Rel). Using instead R/9IP, I get 5.41/5.02 (since games did not avg exactly 9 IP). Anyway, the difference is now about .4 runs, which is about double the free outs factor.

Valuing Starters and Relievers (December 27, 2003)

Posted 9:15 a.m., January 2, 2004 (#53) - David Smyth
  BTW, Guy, I get a MLB ERA of 4.35 instead of 4.40. It looks like you simply averaged the 2 lgs ERAs together, while I combined the totals and then computed the overall ERA. Since the NL plays more games, the ERA gets weighted down a bit.

Valuing Starters and Relievers (December 27, 2003)

Posted 4:22 p.m., January 2, 2004 (#57) - David Smyth
  Thanks for the correction, Tango. I looked twice and I still missed it.

As far as what Guy is talking about in his last post, it seems to be similar to what (I recall) Tango saying earlier--that the .4 run gap should be "bumped up" because the avg starter has more ability than the avg reliever. You can do that, but there is another viewpoint which seems to be equally compelling, IMO

And that is, if an adjustment has no impact in the real world (but is true in theory), then it may be counterproductive to apply it. If avg starters are better than avg relievers, and IF this fact makes them more scarce and therefore of higher value, then we should expect to see a wider difference at the repl level than at the avg level. If the gap is the same (.4 runs), then I think that means that means, according to the laws of supply and demand, that avg starters are no more valuable than avg relievers (everthing else being equal, of course). So I would be hesitant to bump up anything.

On a related note--Woolner did find that the repl/avg gap was different for 2 positions. For 2b,SS,3b,LF,CF,RF, the repl is 80% of the avg offensive production at the position. For 1b it's 75%, and for C it's 85%. It seems to me that 1b has such good hitters that it's hard to find suitable repl hitters. And that it's relatively easy to find repl hitters at C (relative to the avg hitting C) because C are pretty big and strong (unlike SS, who are also poor hitters). Anyway, it seems to me that player valuation systems should take Woolner's findings into account.

Valuing Starters and Relievers (December 27, 2003)

Posted 7:30 p.m., January 2, 2004 (#59) - David Smyth
  I am responding quickly here, without having really thought thru your last post, Guy. But I am saying that yes, in terms of ability, you are probably right. But my point was that, if the supply of players is such that differences in abstract ability do not result in any scarcity of players to fill positions, then it might be "much ado about nothing". to quoth Shakespeare. If you give an avg starter more credit because he presumably has more ability, but is just as easy to replace equivalently, I don't think that is a good tradeoff. Obviously I am just talking about a generic starter vs a generic reliever, but wnen you start talking about a #3 starter vs a set-up reliever (or whatever), then things change. I would certainly not opt, say, to evaluate Gagne's 2003 season against a marginal closer (who is still probably a avg ERA pitcher). But I think that there are some systermatic differences between starters and relievers that I would make at least that separation in an analysis.

Valuing Starters and Relievers (December 27, 2003)

Posted 6:58 p.m., January 3, 2004 (#61) - David Smyth
  All I am saying is that, the "average" comparison level does not really tell us much about supply and demand at a given position. And the supply and demand factor tells us, essentially, whether we should be focusing more on ability or value. The supply and demand factor for starters and relievers suggests that it is about the same (according to Woolner's formulas), so that it doesn't really matter whether the avg starter is better than the avg reliever. If you are contemplating switching a specific player from starter to relief or vice-versa, you also have to take into account the expected replacement in these scenarios. And if Woolner is correct, the supply of players is such that you can "ignore" the underlying differences between avg starters and relievers.

Valuing Starters and Relievers (December 27, 2003)

Posted 9:25 a.m., January 4, 2004 (#63) - David Smyth
  The scarcity argument does not apply to repl starters and repl relievers, both of whom are presumed to be somewhat freely available, almost by definition. It applies to avg starters and avg relievers. If your team's avg starter has an ERA which is .4 runs higher than your team's avg reliever, and they both go out with injury, these results suggest that the difference in their replacements will still be about .4 runs. That starters are more valuable than relievers because they pitch more innings has nothing to do with this. Your C Lidle point is essentially a suggestion that Woolner's formula, developed over many years of data, does not apply to the present day. I have no idea if you are correct about that, but I suspect not. And I suspect that Lidle's 'ability' is much better than one bad performance sample of a 5.75 ERA. Also, the repl level ERA should he worse in the AL.

Valuing Starters and Relievers (December 27, 2003)

Posted 7:51 p.m., January 4, 2004 (#66) - David Smyth
  Fine, I'm open-minded. But show mw the evidence that a "Replacement level starter is a misnomer because he is not freely replaceable." The Woolner evidence suggests otherwise. I am aware of all the switching that goes on when teams convert a "failed" starter to reliever, etc. And I have no problem with the idea that an avg starter has more ability than an avg reliever. But if the difference between an avg starter and an avg reliever is .4 runs, and the difference (in practice) between a repl starter and a repl reliever is also .4 runs, then I conclude that the entire supply and demand mechanism for pitchers, including the shifting of pitchers from starter to reliever and vice-versa, is doing an effective job of making an avg starter and an avg reliever (ignoring the IP differences and the leverage differences) of equal net value over repl, in the real world.

Valuing Starters and Relievers (December 27, 2003)

Posted 3:36 p.m., January 5, 2004 (#69) - David Smyth
  You know, the problem here is that we are simply trying to answer questions which are somewhat different. Therefore, I think we are all basically correct (relative to question), and I guess it should just be left at that...

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

Posted 8:29 a.m., December 29, 2003 (#15) - David Smyth
  ==="..I don't recall ever seeing an actual study that suggests that a pitcher's K rate is a good independent predictor of future succss. If anyone knows of one, point me in the right direction."

Well, it depends on what you mean by 'future success'. If you mean just next season, that's one thing. But if you are looking more at longer-term development, then Ks are supposedly a huge consideration. In the 1982 Abstract B James had quite a few studies in an article called "Looking for the Prime". Among the results for pitchers:

1) In a matched pairs study of young power pitchers vs young finesse pitchers, holding age and wins constant, the power pitchers won 30% more games in the rest of their careers.
2) The power pitchers who won the Cy Young perfomed markedly better in the following season than did the finesse pitchers who got a Cy.
3) The power pitchers who won the Sporting News Rookie of the year won almost twice as many games over the rest of their careers than the finesse pitchers who won that award.
4) If the lg leader in ERA was a power pitcher, he had a far greater tendency to repeat on the list in any following season then if finesse.
5) Of the pitchers with the finest careers, almost all were power pitchers in their early years.
6) His main study in this area--coding pitchers as power or finesse, good or bad control, winning or losing record, high or low ERA, and right or left-handed, he compared the expected remaining career wins vs the actual. The power pitchers noticeably exceed their estimate, and vice versa for the finesse. This finding applied to every single combination of factors, such as any selected age, ERA, W/L, control profile groups.

This doesn't have all that much to do with exactly what MGL is talking about. I thought it would be good to post this because many people have not seen that 1982 Abstract, and this article was one of James' all-time best, IMO. But if you have 2 pitchers of the same age, with the same ERA, ERC, and DIPS ERAs--the one with the higher K rate has a greater career expectation. Maybe the effect for just the following season only is so slight as to be ignorable, but I doubt it.

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

Posted 3:32 p.m., December 29, 2003 (#21) - David Smyth
  ----"I do not think that BJ or anyone else controlled for DIPS ERA! That is the problem!"

Well, of course not, since the James study is 20 years old. Again, I didn't post that to "prove" anything, but just as a source of information. All B James showed is that, given equal overall performance (ERA, W/L %, whether good or bad), the higher K pitcher has a significantly greater long-term expectation. A pitcher who achieves his 3.00 ERA, 18 win season by means of hi Ks will tend to win more games in the future than will pitchers who do so by other means (lo BB, lo HR, lo BABIP).

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

Posted 6:57 p.m., December 29, 2003 (#27) - David Smyth
  MGL, now I understand your point. I agree that, if 2 pitchers are the same age with the same DIPS ERA, they should have *around* the same projection for next year, whether hi or lo K. That is a short-term prediction, which does not include the longer term *attributes* of the hi K profile, which is what James was concerned with. These longer term factors are still present on a season to season basis, but are dwarked by other things, and may be therefore difficult to detect in a season x and season x+1 type study.

The main advantage of Ks over the short term for pitchers is the ability to keep balls out of play. Over the longer term, the advantage of the Ks is the potential for a pitcher to "develop" secondary level skills (BB, HR) while maintaining the K level (or at least to compensate for an age related reduction in Ks). That is a much easier task than that which faces lo K pitchers who are already good in BB and HR--they have already reached the practical limit in those areas, but do not have the raw ability to improve in the area in which they are lacking. Thus the longer term advantage of the hi K pitcher (on average, of course).

When you (a GM) obtain a good FA pitcher, you are usually looking at a 3 yr+ contract. That, depending on the pitcher's age, is long enough that independent consideration should be given to the K rate.

SABR 201 - Issues with MLEs - Why I hate them (December 31, 2003)

Posted 9:13 p.m., January 2, 2004 (#27) - David Smyth
  ---" Very sharp! I think you are probably the only one who is actually reading through and making sense of my gibberish!

No offense, MGL, but these posts have an infinite number of MLE "lines" which look similar. Sure, there are a few bright and informed readers who are following it without much trouble, but for the rest of us interested stragglers, maybe you could at some point do a good and prepared summary post in simple English...

SABR 201 - Issues with MLEs - Why I hate them (December 31, 2003)

Posted 10:11 p.m., January 2, 2004 (#29) - David Smyth
  All I was suggesting was to do a summary post at the end. That's not a big deal, and will let the work by understood and appreciated by many more readers who don't have the interest or time to really follow along in detail...

SABR 201 - Issues with MLEs - Why I hate them (December 31, 2003)

Posted 2:59 p.m., January 4, 2004 (#48) - David Smyth
  Just wanted to be sure of something, Tango or MGL. On those MLE CSV files, are the lwts per 500 PA positionally adjusted or not? I assume not.

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

Posted 12:01 p.m., January 7, 2004 (#2) - David Smyth
  I credit Boswell with a great concept in Total Avg. People criticize it because he weights all bases the same, but his real problem was lack of data. If you have all of the bases and all of the outs, they can be weighted equally. If you don't, you have to weight to make up for missing data. Total Avg, in its theoretically complete form, is a real good formula.

BABIP and Speed (January 7, 2004)

Posted 8:30 a.m., January 9, 2004 (#20) - David Smyth
  MGL, you said in the Slwts articles that the value of a GB out and a FB out was about the same. And you implied that this includes all of the extra things which happen on these outs, such as GDP, SF, other runner advancement. I always assumed that the impact of ROE was also included in that statement.

MGL takes on the Neyer challenge (January 13, 2004)

Posted 9:05 a.m., January 14, 2004 (#6) - David Smyth
  ---"(D. Smythe, you can stop reading now lest I bore you!)"

I said "boor", not bore. And to add a bit of fuel to the fire, it is "boorish" that you don't know how to spell my last name after a few years of seeing it most days. :)

Anyway, nice little article. Everyone remember--if you want to impress, you must regress!!

MGL takes on the Neyer challenge (January 13, 2004)

Posted 8:05 p.m., January 14, 2004 (#13) - David Smyth
  I have a quick question for MGLE :) or Tango. The article gives the weights 5/4/3 for batters and 5/3/2 for pitchers. After that, each component is regressed independently. But say you want to do a quick projection for players who are "full-time" over the last 3 years (using ERA for pitchers and RC/G for batters). How should you weight the regression to avg? Should it be (for batters) 5/4/3/2, or 5/4/3/1, or 5/4/3/3 ? And similarly for pitchers?

MGL takes on the Neyer challenge (January 13, 2004)

Posted 5:51 p.m., January 15, 2004 (#22) - David Smyth
  Perhaps a slight bit off-topic, but I have a question, which will betray my duffer's understanding of regression. Let's say that the spread of observed W/L % in a lg is "always" about .350-.650. And let's say that, after the weighting by recency of season and regression towards the means (.500 in this case), the "true talent" only ranges from .400-.600. So every year, the observed range is greater, due to chance. It has been said that the true talent is the most accurate projection. But if you use that here, you are projecting a lesser spread of results than actually occurs. This implies, therefore, a built-in limit on the accuracy of the projections. But why not try to "project the luck", since it seems to have a consistent overall effect on the distribution? So, if you expect to have a .650 or so team, which team is most likely to achieve that? It should be the true talent .600 team, since they have the least discrepancy between their true talent and the .650 actual expected. And if you work that scheme out, you are essentially canceling out the regression to the mean.

Where am I going wrong here? Is it in my initial assumption that projections which feature regression towards the mean have a tightewr spread than what actually occurs? Is it wrong that the "distribution" of a projection system should be about the same as that which actually occurs?

DRA Addendum (Excel) (January 16, 2004)

Posted 8:04 p.m., January 17, 2004 (#4) - David Smyth
  To those of us who don't (yet) have excel (yes, it's true, and I'm embarassed), why not just put a "leaders" post or whatever here, so that everyone can share in the glory of DRA (absolutely no disrespect or satire intended).

DRA Addendum (Excel) (January 16, 2004)

Posted 8:44 a.m., January 18, 2004 (#8) - David Smyth
  Thanks, Tango. And MGL, it's not the money, it's laziness.

SuperLWTS Aging Curve (January 26, 2004)

Posted 11:09 a.m., January 26, 2004 (#1) - David Smyth
  It looks like including the fielding and baserunning "lowers" the peak season a bit to 26, which makes sense. I guess it might be better to use a peak "period" of 25 thru 29 in conversation, instead of trying to get more specific (peak "age").

How does this chart handle the selective sampling problems? Is this just the players who actually played?

Finally, it's interesting to compare that chart vs a salary chart. Young players get paid too little, and old players too much, relative to production. I guess to a degree that's inevitable. But why should a team pay a -13 Slwts 34 yr old, when they can find a minor leaguer of 23 who can produce the same at a lower salary, and with a better chance of improvement.

Astute Phelps learning his way with Jays (January 29, 2004)

Posted 6:23 p.m., January 29, 2004 (#1) - David Smyth
  Yes, Phelps acknowledges randomness when it suits him--when he's in a slump--but he also talked about being zoned in as a real thing, as opposed to just randomness in the opposite direction. Not saying he is wrong, because I also believe that being "on" is real (though fleeting).

Forecasting Pitchers - Adjacent Seasons (January 30, 2004)

Posted 7:56 a.m., February 1, 2004 (#34) - David Smyth
  Tango, I don't quite understand why you gave the last chart, with the forced-in regression values. I mean, if your study of regression gave the values in the middle chart, why not just use those? Why confuse us as to which chart to use?

So the general pattern is of pitchers coming into the lg with their best stuff, and learning to compensate for losing it due to aging, by increasing their control. How does your study deal with the sampling problem of pitchers who were not able to improve their control much, and therefore dropped out of the lg well before age 39? Wouldn't that make control seem like it peaks later than it really does?

And I do find the chart a bit surprising. It always seemed to me, by casual observation, that pitchers in general tended to improve their K rates and HR rates for a few years after coming into the lg.

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

Posted 7:39 p.m., February 3, 2004 (#34) - David Smyth
  I read both AED's and Tango's studies. Good work, fellas, even though I don't understand all of the technical details. But one thing that bothers me is the casual use of the "clutch" term. In the popular arena, my understanding is that "clutch" carries a connotation of a player "rising to the occasion" because of his "steel balls". These studies seem to show that there are differences in situational performance according to type of batter (power vs singles), and perhaps to some degree an individual player's ability to adapt to certain pitching patterns a bit better than his "type" would suggest (Murray?). IMO, this all has ZERO to do with any qualities of "intestinal fortitude". It is not surprising to me at all that these differences exist. That some of these situations seem to coincide with a fan's idea of greater "pressure" being felt, or with a "Leverage Index", is probably a coincidence.

There is still no real evidence that "clutch" ability exists. There is evidence that differences in "situational" ability exist. I do realize that at some point one has to define clutch in terms of specific situations, and so maybe my point has little practical relevance. But still, I wish the researchers would stop using the term "clutch". It's sloppy.

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

Posted 8:00 a.m., February 4, 2004 (#38) - David Smyth
  ---"Can't I use the term "clutch situation" or "crucial situation" there? And can't I call his trait as clutch ability?"

My opinion is no, because the term clutch, as it has been commonly used, implies 1) better situational performance 2) due to a greater emotional/mental resolve. I do not consider this as a semantical nitpick on my part.

What reason do we have to think that E Murray had more of this than R Jackson? I seem to remember you (Tango) finding that almost all of Murray's advantage was in bases-loaded situations, and not in other high LI PAs. Why would he only tighten his belt with bags full? And by what physical mechanism is this "resolve" supposed to work, given that the batter has only a half-second to react to what the pitcher throws? Much more likely that some batters have more adaptable styles, and some are perhaps smarter (than the opposing pitcher) in certain situations. To convince me that the effect is due to "steel balls", as AED put forth in his last post, would take a lot more breakdowns by different aspewcts of LI.

So yes, I would use a more conservative terminology at present.

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

Posted 7:06 a.m., February 5, 2004 (#59) - David Smyth
  ---"I think it's a fair point that if AED (and I) will define clutch in such a way that an abnormal number of those situations are with men on, then we should define the nonclutch or control group or whatever to have the same split."

I agree. Over the years 2000-2002 (I don't have 1999), Tejada hit approx. .332/.528 with runners on, and only .313/.437 with bases empty. So this suggests that a disproportion of his clutch PAs as defined by Tango were with ROB. And if Tejada has the same sort of split by ROB/BE in both clutch and non-clutch situations, this suggest that his skill is hitting with ROB, not in his game-on-the-line- resolve.

Aaron's Baseball Blog - Basketball (February 9, 2004)

Posted 3:11 p.m., February 9, 2004 (#11) - David Smyth
  Points per FGA? Don't you also have to take into account the missed shots.

I mean, a 50% 2ptFG rate and a 33.3% 3ptFG rate will both produce the same pts/att, but the missed shots have a marginal impact, pretty much like the out in baseball. The 3 pt guy is missing more shots (IOW, losing more possessions). If an avg possession is worth 1 pt, then the 3 pt "equivalent" to a 50% 2pt rate is 37.5%, not 33.3%.

Aaron's Baseball Blog - Basketball (February 9, 2004)

Posted 4:55 p.m., February 9, 2004 (#14) - David Smyth
  If player A takes 100 2pt shots and hits 50, he has scored 100 points. If player B takes 100 3pt shots and makes a third of them, he has also scored 100 pts. Each player has scored 1 pt per att.

But B has missed 67 shots, while A has only missed 50 shots. A team scores about 1 pt per possession. (This is analogous to the baseball expectancy grid of a team scoring .5 runs per inning.) So those extra 17 possessions lost are worth about -1 pt each, relative to average.

This is similar to a pair of baseball players who both create 100 runs in 600 PAs. If one has made 300 outs and the other 400 outs, their values are quite different.

Aaron's Baseball Blog - Basketball (February 9, 2004)

Posted 5:02 p.m., February 9, 2004 (#15) - David Smyth
  Patriot, I don't see the QB situation as being analogous.

Aaron's Baseball Blog - Basketball (February 9, 2004)

Posted 5:37 p.m., February 9, 2004 (#22) - David Smyth
  Tango's point seems to be, relative to the analysis I posted, that you should take into account how easy it is to get an offensive rebound on a missed 2pt att vs a missed 3pt att (plus perhaps how easy it is to convert the off. rebound into a basket). I agree.....

Baseball: Pythagorean Method (February 11, 2004)

Posted 10:18 a.m., February 11, 2004 (#1) - David Smyth
  Is this the old post from Fanhome, or a "new edition" recently submitted by Ben? If it's new, why doesn't he mention Pythagopat?

Baseball: Pythagorean Method (February 11, 2004)

Posted 11:12 a.m., February 11, 2004 (#8) - David Smyth
  The thing about the 1 rpg is that, due to the construction of the game (no ties at 0), it is a *unique point*. It is good to have a formula which handles that unique point correctly, but it would not be a good tradeoff if the formula was noticeably less accurate at normal scoring levels. Happily, that doesn't seem to be the case.

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

Posted 5:32 p.m., February 16, 2004 (#3) - David Smyth
  But this analysis doesn't really address the preferences or needs of the involved teams, not on an overall basis, but relative to time. Next year, the year after, etc..

Even if Tango's analysis had shown that, given the most accurate projections possible, it was *not* a break-even or so deal, that would not mean that it really wasn't a smart deal for each team, all things considered.

When my financial advisor comes by to re-evaluate my financial plan, he does not say that, mathematically, X is the correct path. He says that X, Y, or Z is the right path depending on my risk aversion comfort, etc.

The deal apparently makes Texas breathe easier, and makes the Yankees pant in anticipation. Who am I to try to place a numerical value on that?

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

Posted 6:18 p.m., February 16, 2004 (#5) - David Smyth
  ---"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."

Well, you know the answer as well as I do. Some combo of attracting ARod to a good team and keeping Jeter happy. It's simply a juggling act, which may seem silly, but who among us really knows what it's like dealing with world-class super-rich emloyees? If George really believes/understands that ARod is better at short, he is probably just trying to get ARod on the team, and then let those sensitive issues resolve themselves in time in a more gentle fashion...

Baseball Info Solutions (February 22, 2004)

Posted 3:42 p.m., February 23, 2004 (#2) - David Smyth
  No, just for the top ten in each category (eg., highest fastball % of pitches thrown).

The 2004 Marcels (March 10, 2004)

Posted 5:29 p.m., March 11, 2004 (#16) - David Smyth
  ---"(Feel free to quibble that this monkey is too smart for a monkey.)"

Well, you make this point in mild jest, and my middle name is quibble, but...

yes. The monkey designation carries the popular implication of "randomness". It would be silly to make random baseball predictions, so the next step up would be last year's performance. Using age, multiple years, weighting, and especially regression is not really so basic. In fact, I expect that some published forecasters do less...

Nothing wrong with what you're doing--just a poor terminology choice.

The 2004 Marcels (March 10, 2004)

Posted 7:39 p.m., March 11, 2004 (#18) - David Smyth
  Alright then, Tango, I take it all back. :-)

MGL's superLWTS (March 10, 2004)

Posted 7:26 a.m., March 11, 2004 (#7) - David Smyth
  Does this mean that we're not going to get a 2004 Slwts "article", with the better formatting (by Tango?) for 2003 and 2001-2003?

Silver: The Science of Forecasting (March 12, 2004)

Posted 7:37 a.m., March 13, 2004 (#12) - David Smyth
  ---"One, once you start using 5 or 10 or 15 "similar" players in order to forecast a player's future performance, you run into huge sample size problems."

According to Silver, "Pecota uses as many as 100 comparables in generating its forecasts." I wish he had also given the "average" number of comparables used.

---" I would want to be darn sure that "player types" are significantly related to a player's projection notwithstanding his historical stats and the usual Marcel-like projections. I have never seen anyone show that to be true"

For me, that's not the real problem. I'm willing to accept, based on logic alone, that similarity has an independent impact. But what I want to know is, what is the best way to use that insight? Do you make similarity the "focal point" of a method, or do you perhaps just factor it in to a Marcel-type system, with a certain "weight" given?

Wolverton - Wavin' Wendells - Outs on Base (March 12, 2004)

Posted 3:16 p.m., March 15, 2004 (#14) - David Smyth
  ---"well, in their essay on catcher's value (BP2004 book) in the running game they concentrate on preventing steals and rank catcher by steals prevented but talk about the extra outs as an afterthought. As far as I could tell they didn't combine prevented steals and extra outs into a value number because the value of these extra outs depends on the base/out situation and whether the team was playing for one or more runs."

My understanding of why Woolner chose to focus on SB prevented is mainly that he thinks it's a better indicator of ability, in terms of future value. He believes that, with the large amount of info available to the runners, that any weird performances (such a lots of attempts on a guy with a great arm, or vice versa) will not carryover. It's an interesting idea, but then he goes ahead and ranks catchers' careers using the same concept, which doesn't seem to make lots of sense. Sort of a "lazy" piece of work by Woolner, and also not well-written...

MGL - Questec and the Strike Zone (March 20, 2004)

Posted 3:13 p.m., March 20, 2004 (#1) - David Smyth
  ---"MGL's work on Questec. (And, you can also find his 2004 super-LWTS nicely formatted too.)

Where? All I see is a Slwts article for the 2001 Slwts, and the same csv format for 2003.

MGL - Questec and the Strike Zone (March 20, 2004)

Posted 7:32 p.m., March 20, 2004 (#4) - David Smyth
  When I posted #1, the formatted Slwts was not there. In its place, with the same Mar. 30 posting date, was an old Slwts article from Primer, 2001 I think.

Tell me that is correct Tango, or else I am nuts. Anyway, that's what I got when I clicked. Computers are very strange sometimes...

MGL - Questec and the Strike Zone (March 20, 2004)

Posted 9:58 p.m., March 20, 2004 (#7) - David Smyth
  It may be a Questec thread, but Tango also mentioned the new formatted 2003 Slwts. From that, it appears that Helton might have been the real MVP. Or maybe Javy Lopez, if you deem a special break for catchers for games played. And, as I expected, Bonds' missed games brought him down below Pujols.

Was the Eric Chavez signing a good one? (March 22, 2004)

Posted 3:23 p.m., March 22, 2004 (#2) - David Smyth
  Looking at Slwts, I eyeball about +40 for Chavez in 2004, which is probably about 10th or so in MLB. So you have the 10th best nonpitcher, and who is just entering his expected prime period. Seems like an OK/good deal to me.

---"As Aaron said on Friday, "Of course, you can take consistency like that from a young player in two ways. One is that he is a good player and consistently good production is a great thing to have. The other way is that, despite being 22 years old in 2000 and 25 years old last year, he hasn't really gotten any better offensively."

You could also turn that around and say that the consistency suggests that Chavez' peak season(s) are likely still forthcoming. But really, all that matters is his expected production vs the dollar amount.

Was the Eric Chavez signing a good one? (March 22, 2004)

Posted 6:52 p.m., March 22, 2004 (#9) - David Smyth
  I would rather just look at Slwts, to make sure that fielding is being considered as best possible. If my eveball evaluation is essentially correct and Chavez projects to be the 10th best nonpitcher NOW, at age 26 (I think), and you apply a normal age adjustment for the next 6 seasons--the peak seasons normally-- you can probably expect a cumulative performance which is somewhat better than 10th, say 7th over those seasons. That's a good player to have in any season (7th best), but as an avg over 6 seasons it's great.

Am I making a mistake in evaluating Eric so highly?

Was the Eric Chavez signing a good one? (March 22, 2004)

Posted 7:27 p.m., March 23, 2004 (#27) - David Smyth
  Not to disagree with you, MGL, but you are usually not willing to speculate about things like that. What evidence, or even common sense, supports that. Sure, Bonds might retire at any moment, and he probably has a greater than avg chance of sustaining a serious injury, but if he chooses to "play out" his career until he is no longer any good, then even if you use an accelerated age adjustment (I'm not sure what evidence there is to do so), he is at such a high point now (assuming no sudden change from stopping steroids) that it's not obvious that he can't play till he's 50, and still be a legitimate ML hitter (say what an avg 1bman hits). There is not much, if any, precedent for what Bonds is doing.

Sophomore Slumps? (March 23, 2004)

Posted 9:49 a.m., March 24, 2004 (#17) - David Smyth
  I know MGL mentioned this in passing (and I haven't read the article), but ROY are what, about 24 yrs old on avg? That is supposed to be a period of strong growth. So I guess regression is quite a bit stronger than growth, even in the stong growth period?

The Scouting Report - Compared to UZR (March 23, 2004)

Posted 7:35 p.m., March 23, 2004 (#3) - David Smyth
  I think J Cross has a good point. Why not simply ask each voter to answer a few questions about what def metrics they are familiar with, and how much they were aware of such rating for the players they voted on.

Mo and the HOF (March 25, 2004)

Posted 5:49 p.m., March 25, 2004 (#9) - David Smyth
  ---" I was expecting a piece on Mo Vaughn."

And I was expecting a piece on Willy Mo Pena. :-)