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SABR 301 - Talent Distributions (June 5, 2003)

Posted 11:36 a.m., June 5, 2003 (#1) - PhillyBooster
  It seems from those charts that it should be possible to determine the quality of the "median" baseball player (or, the same thing, the quality of the average plate appearance).

I have wondered whether, in calculating a stat like OPS+ or ERA+, whether the comparison should less 100 as "league average" rather than "league median". Assumedly, adding a handful of greats will not effect replacement level or median, but it could have a big impact on "average".

Value over replacement is useful for looking at what happens in Player X is injured in June, but when determining who to sign in a relatively plentiful free-agent market in December, it should be worthwhile to know how Player X (who, let us assume, is exactly 'average') will measure up in a typical plate appearance (against a pitcher who, by the definition of "typical", is exactly 'median').

On, to look at it another way, a median player is the 375th best player in baseball (halfway point on thirty 25 man rosters). Is the average player the 350th best? The 300th best?

SABR 301 - Talent Distributions (June 5, 2003)

Posted 12:48 p.m., June 5, 2003 (#7) - PhillyBooster
  Perhaps I am misinterpreting the Chart 4 and Chart 6 in the article.

I interpreted Chart 4 to say that average major league talent is at about 4.45 standard deviations (the x-intercept of where the blue line crossed 1.00 on the y-axis).

But then, I then looked at Chart 6, and saw that 4.45 was also the high point of the skewed bell curve. From eyeballing the chart, it appeared that there were more plate appearances to the right of 4.45 than there were to the left,and that those to the right extended a greater distance from 4.45. Therefore, I concluded that the average major league plate appearance was in fact performed by a player better than 4.45.

If more than half of all plate appearances are by players who are better than 4.45 standard deviations, then the "average" plate appearance would be by a 4.50 or 4.55 player. The 1.00 in Chart 4, I therefore concluded, represented not an "average" player (a player who, for all over at bats, half are by someone better than him), but a median player (a player who, for all other players in MLB, half are better than him), who was somewhat worse than an average player.

Perhaps, though, I have misunderstood.

SABR 301 - Talent Distributions (June 5, 2003)

Posted 12:50 p.m., June 5, 2003 (#8) - PhillyBooster
  My question, I guess, is:

1. What does it mean that a 4.45 player has a talent level of "1.00"? and

2. What does it mean that more than half of all plate appearances are above the 1.00 level?

SABR 301 - Talent Distributions (June 5, 2003)

Posted 2:52 p.m., June 5, 2003 (#10) - PhillyBooster
  I will try again, since I guess I was not very clear.

Chart 6 has a Y-axis labelled "Playing Time" 1-100. Draw a vertical line on that chart so that there is exactly as much Playing Time on each side. That line would probably fall between 4.50 and 4.55 (in any event, to the right of 4.45). But 4.45 is defined as 1.00 ("MLB average") in chart 4.

Why is the mid-point of Playing Time chart (Chart 6) not identical to the MLB average (1.00) in Chart 4?

Cycles (June 27, 2003)

Posted 12:06 p.m., June 27, 2003 (#1) - PhillyBooster
  "Single: 17.10% Double: 3.83% Triple: 0.88% Home Run: 1.60%

Today doubles and home runs are more plentiful and singles and triples are rarer than the historical average (Actually a league has not recorded a single or triple percentage as high as the average since the mid-Forties)."

This makes a huge difference, though. Assume that the chances of A happening are 0.5 and the chances of B happening are 0.5. The chances of A and then B happening in sequential at bats is 0.25.

But what if the 0.5 is just an average? To simplify, what if at any given moment, the chance of A is either 0.8 or 0.2, and the chance of B is 0.2 (when A is 0.8) of 0.8 (when A is 0.2). Over the decades, the chance of A and B are both 0.5, but that is just an average.

Now, the chances of A and then B in sequential at bats in not 0.25. At any given time, the chance will be 0.8*0.2 (or 0.2*0.8), which is 0.16.

In an era with a very low triples rate, using the higher 0.88 number should increase your chances considerably. Also, for most of the time that the triples rate was high, the homer rate was much lower than the multi-year average, so the chances were probably overstated for the dead-ball era as well.

Best time to bring in your best reliever (October 23, 2003)

Posted 8:45 p.m., October 26, 2003 (#1) - PhillyBooster
  "However, as soon as you get men on base, there are some situations that just shoot way way up"

One would suspect that the manager's job is to know when to pull the pitcher and bring in the fireman BEFORE the runners get on base and the LI approached double digits.

"Skipper, he's gone 8 innings and looks like he's about had it!"

"Let's leave him in for one or two more batters, though. Runners on second and third will really leverage our closer's inning!"

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

Posted 9:14 a.m., December 3, 2003 (#22) - PhillyBooster
  Question:

How would you regress a player with only 1 year of data available?

If Player X emerged fully formed out of Zeus's forehead and hits .360 in 2004, without knowing anything else about him, how would you predict he would hit in 2005?

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

Posted 9:40 a.m., December 3, 2003 (#24) - PhillyBooster
  Thanks!

By The Numbers, Dec 7 (December 8, 2003)

Posted 10:42 a.m., December 10, 2003 (#3) - PhillyBooster
  I think a third dimension of being a good baseball city would be actually being a city. Florida is a state.

Clutch Hits - Race and Violence (December 18, 2003)

Posted 3:01 p.m., December 19, 2003 (#3) - PhillyBooster
  I am not convinced that Black Pitcher (or Hispanic Pitcher) is necessarily an important category. I do not believe that pitchers are, overall, more highly paid, or more likely to be considered "intelligent" (certainly some are, but the Wild Thing image is just as common.) It's like saying black players are disproportionately at second base instead of shortstop. Maybe, but so what?

The numbers I would like to see are Minority Catchers. The Catcher is the Game Caller (perhaps a better QB analogy). Catchers are also more likely to be considered intelligent, and are disproportionately made managers.

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

Posted 11:44 a.m., February 3, 2004 (#13) - PhillyBooster
  Perhaps I was not reading closely enough, but nonetheless here is my question:

It is stated that players, as a whole, perform worse in situations defined as "clutch."

Taking that as a given, is a player defined as a "clutch player" for purposes of this study if he plays exactly the same in clutch and non-clutch situations? Should he be?

I'm not sure what I think the answer to the "should" question should be. On the one hand, performing the same doesn't really seem very "clutch", on the other hand, a relative increase in performance is still meaningful, no matter what you choose to call it.

Mo and the HOF (March 25, 2004)

Posted 4:39 p.m., March 26, 2004 (#12) - PhillyBooster
  Rivera will completely look different in 10 years when the HoF committee gets to him.

Will he reach 1000 innings?

If so, where will he fall on the ERA+ career leaderboard.

He'd currently be #1, but what if 5 more seasons drop him down to "only" a 150 ERA+?

Suddenly he's looking pretty much like Dan Quisenberry, or half of Hoyt Wilhelm.