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SABR 201: Linear Weights by the 24 base/out states, 1999-2002 (June 10, 2003)

Posted 9:50 p.m., June 13, 2003 (#14) - Silver King
  Pardon the interruption. The address I've been using for fanhome's strategy'n'sabermetrics is broken. This also happened a couple months ago, and that's when a Primate supplied me with this link:

http://pub162.ezboard.com/fbaseballfrm8

Can someone point me back to the site, and does somebody know why the addresses seem to eventually go bad?

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

Posted 3:11 p.m., July 13, 2003 (#6) - Silver King
  The idea that the little gains from the productive outs are more than cancelling out the gdps is pretty hard to get one's mind around.

For example, I'm in a Diamond Mind league and two of my players (low k, good baserunners) are top five (in a large league) in gdp. I'm the OBA leader by a nice margin, so you're gonna have some gdps, but they're really painful to watch. It's hard to feel like that's just a high-visibility side effect of a net positive from their ground ball outs. Alas, DM doesn't have a 'productive outs' or ground-vs-fly stat.

I have a strong urge for a high-k, fly-oriented slugger right behind each singles'n'walks guy. (This is a stars league, so I have some impressive examples of both to work with.)

Neyer - Angels (August 15, 2003)

Posted 2:34 p.m., August 15, 2003 (#4) - Silver King
  Very interesting. Thanks for the UZR'n'stuff analysis, Tango.

Double-counting Replacement Level (August 25, 2003)

Posted 4:07 p.m., November 4, 2003 (#44) - Silver King
  What's the name of that fallacy where you take logic that applies in a certain situation and then slosh it all over society? Is David (or ?) an impartial or accurate arbiter of that which is--inherently obviously, sounds like--better? "Everything is relative" is a more dismissable version of "everything is context dependent" - to whom, for what purposes, under what conditions?

Anyway, thanks for the commentaries on Clay's chat comment; I was wonderin' about that.

I'm really curious about how far the new/revised/expanded/? player cards will go. They've promised for a few years now that they'll put up translations for every player season in history. That would be really fun. Also, Clay has mentioned before that he's revised his defensive measures. I expect that's forthcoming; I hope there'll be interesting article(s) about his improvements.

Oh, and I'm _sure_ looking forward to whatever MGL and Tango are writing. It'd be delightful to have a lot of this stuff in clearly-worded (an MGL specialty, I think) all-in-one-place form. I'd happily subscribe to you guys' premium website. ;)

Double-counting Replacement Level (August 25, 2003)

Posted 11:44 p.m., November 4, 2003 (#48) - Silver King
  I agree with your point, David, about replacement level.

Our logical assessments of things beyond baseball are in far more peril of not taking nearly enough into account, while we tend to leap to assume we're making a clear-cut correct value judgment. As RossCW neatly caught, even the chosen-for-its-utter-obviousness steak/poop dichotomy misses a serious consideration.

We often don't get enough information (little access, or it's buried under 'mainstream' and trivia) about other perspectives to know if we're making a viable assessment of them. We should always be working on this, and re-forming our necessarily provisional assessments.

Tango, as long as you're making a book, can you put stuff in the appendices like SLWTS player reports for the past decade, etc? =)

Bonds, Pujols and BaseRuns (September 6, 2003)

Posted 3:45 p.m., March 16, 2004 (#32) - Silver King
  [I just posted this on Fanhome, but thought I'd post it here too. It's frustrating that BsR seems valuable yet remains hard/confusing for the very lay person to have any confidence in applying. I'd like to see that rectified in general, and I have...]

2 main questions about using BaseRuns:

Assuming I 'know' their effective true talent, I'm trying to compare various players in terms of how many runs they'd add or save relative to an average player. For hitters, I'm using LWTS. For pitchers, I gather that BaseRuns is good. (In fact, it seems to me that someone who knows what they're doing should post lists of pitchers compared by BsR, since it's apparently so good for describing pitchers due to the interactiveness thang. I'm surprised I've never seen that. If someone did that and explained it step-by-step, that'd help me a lot in appreciating/using BsR; presumably others too.)

First:
I'm looking at pitchers in terms of recent offensive context, the high-offense/high-power era of the last dozen years. I want to work with just basic stats: walks, hbp, homers, and hits (or singles, doubles, and triples, since I'm happy with assuming a league average assortment of these hit types). Also have K's, if that's useful. Near the end of the discussion following Tango's final installment of his Primer BsR-related article, David finally posted a nice & simple filled-in formula--filled in with the constants.

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

R = A x B / (B + C) + HR

I'd use this, but it'd be better if I had a version of the B-term constants that was geared to the last 10 years or really any segment thereof. Yes, I know that y'all have posted ways to derive the constants from the league environment, but I don't really understand how to do it. Please, can you tell me a good set of the constants for recent years? (Robert Dudek gives a recent-years version in an article from last September, but in Pr. Studies discussion of it, David indicates he's sceptical or unclear about that version. Also that version had some other variables and changes that I don't want to use, but I don't know if I can just drop them out.)

I see that about a year ago on Fanhome, someone named rmiller posted this:
--------
Since robls needs the formula for PITCHERS, what formula of BsR should he use? This one?
A= H+BB-HR
B= (H+HR+.1BB) *X
C= IP
D= HR
The X multiplier is around .41
This gives runs. If you want it in ERA form, divide by IP and multiply by 8.2
Runs (A*B*x)/(B*x+C)+D
x=(C*(Runs-D))/(B*(A-Runs-D)
--------
Tango and David picked at this, but didn't lay out what version _would be_ good. Is there a good pitcher version? How 'bout for recent levels of offense?

Second:
How d'ya compare apples to apples here? With LWTS for batters, I compare their LWTS runs-above-average given the same # of plate appearances, 650. I'm not worrying about their health or stamina here, just wanting to gauge which would be better to have in a lineup. Same thing for pitchers, and I used to again use LWTS per N opponents' plate appearances. But I gather that BsR is better and I'm trying to switch.

I'm confused as to whether I should look at BsR per N plate appearances, or per N outs. (or something else?) If I compare how pitchers would do given the same # of innings (opponent outs), is that sort of double-counting the effect of their opponent OBA? Or is it _supposed_ to be 'double counted'? With batters, we care about what they can do when they come to the plate. But with pitchers, don't we care about what they can do in N innings? Both ways seem to have good arguments. What's the 'proper' way for me to do it?

Baseball Musings: Defense Archives (December 5, 2003)

Posted 5:16 p.m., January 15, 2004 (#20) - Silver King
  I enjoy similar diversions to what Colin mentions, and am therefore also interested in 'best available' defensive info. I'm not very interested in Win Shares though, figuring Davenport's is at least as good (and I like the idea of the historical adjustments for comparing players across time, even though it's untransparent (to me)).

I'd _love_ to eventually have Michael Humphreys' results available, base on what I read of people's excitement over his innovation. And of course, for the most recent times, MGL's UZR.

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

Posted 7:13 p.m., January 12, 2004 (#15) - Silver King
  Intuitively, I expect there to be a limit or drag or diminished return to how much difference a great defensive talent could make at 1B compared to at CF. Such that even if Erstad's abilities are also pretty much suitable to 1B, he'd only get 70 cents on the dollar or whatever out of it at 1B 'cuz you just can't make the same degree of difference.

If that's not true, it's really interesting--that defensive ability would tend to be like water, and could be poured in different shapes or sit at different heights but remain the same effective quantity. In general, I'm finding the whole discussion about relativity between positions to be really interesting. Thanks.

I'll go ahead and mention about UZR. Thanks oodles for the 00-03 UZR info and the clear spreadsheetable format and the by-position break-down!!!

MGL, in the past you presented UZR for '98 and '99. On Fanhome a good while back, you also alluded to having the potential ability to work up SuperLWTS (and thus I assume UZR) from years previous to that. Do you suppose we'll get to enjoy (latest version) pre-'00 info somewhere down the road?

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

Posted 7:14 p.m., January 12, 2004 (#16) - Silver King
  Intuitively, I expect there to be a limit or drag or diminished return to how much difference a great defensive talent could make at 1B compared to at CF. Such that even if Erstad's abilities are also pretty much suitable to 1B, he'd only get 70 cents on the dollar or whatever out of it at 1B 'cuz you just can't make the same degree of difference.

If that's not true, it's really interesting--that defensive ability would tend to be like water, and could be poured in different shapes or sit at different heights but remain the same effective quantity. In general, I'm finding the whole discussion about relativity between positions to be really interesting. Thanks.

I'll go ahead and mention about UZR. Thanks oodles for the 00-03 UZR info and the clear spreadsheetable format and the by-position break-down!!!

MGL, in the past you presented UZR for '98 and '99. On Fanhome a good while back, you also alluded to having the potential ability to work up SuperLWTS (and thus I assume UZR) from years previous to that. Do you suppose we'll get to enjoy (latest version) pre-'00 info somewhere down the road?

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

Posted 10:58 p.m., January 12, 2004 (#18) - Silver King
  From my not ungargantuan vocabulary, I choose the word:

Cool...!

The future of the past looks pretty exciting.

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

Posted 5:41 p.m., March 3, 2004 (#35) - Silver King
  As others have mentioned, it's _very_ nice to have an intelligently-done version of defensive runs above average that I can easily look up for any pre-play-by-play historical player. It's very nice that it's on the free part of Prospectus (though I am a subscriber). The DFTs are the best thing going (pre-2000 or eventually pre-1989 which UZR can cover) until/unless something like DRA or CAD can be made available for any/all historical players. To whatever extent it's flawed, the best thing going is flawed, and that's a bummer.

Michael, you're noting that DFT recent seasons don't show the variance that more accurate measures show. 'Squeezed' relative to what PBP shows? Do you think that's also true of the DFTs for the previous 1.25 centuries? (Hey, why limit myself to easy questions?) The raa2 numbers are, I think, supposed to be adjusted to contemporary circumstances, so perhaps all raa2's are all in effect 'squeezed.' If they're simply squeezed, it'd be nice to know a rough adjustment factor to apply, since we're unlikely to get Clay to redo them anytime soon. To whatever extent there're other things wrong than squeezing (or shifted a bit toward negative), well, darn.

I agree that it's annoying--at best--that Prospectus basically publicly ignores the existence of other current defensive runs work and especially MGL's combo of generosity and ingenuity with PBP results.

MGL's superLWTS (March 10, 2004)

Posted 7:54 p.m., March 13, 2004 (#13) - Silver King
  Thank you - cool, cool, cool!

MGL's superLWTS (March 10, 2004)

Posted 12:47 p.m., March 14, 2004 (#16) - Silver King
  "GDP's are figured sepatately and are based on a player's number of GDP'S PER OPPORTUNITY (runner on first, less than 2 outs) above or below average."

Is that for all of his PAs in that situation (such that a high-OBA batter's high OBA will 'carry' him toward better-than-average in gdp/opp.), or is it for BIP, or outs, or nKo (non-strikeout outs) in that situation?

Am I correct that the gdp/opp. runs saved (or lost) is based on if he'd had a league-average number of opportunities during his real number of PAs? (Same question for baserunning runs, etc.)

What's the average # of gdps in N PAs, in recent years? I came up with about 12.8 per 650PA... Are the extra ones, below or above expected in the slwts column, valued at +/-.55 runs?

Further curiosity: I'd like to know the run values of A. an average nKo without a gdp, B. an average strikeout, and C. an average nKo plus a gdp. Is that knowledge you have handy? =) Or the differences between the values... I know how to operate Palmer's lwts formula and get the out value for a league, but I realize that this, call it o, is the 'stew' out value, mixing together the average proportions of nKo, k, and dp. None of those three is actually equal to o.

One thing that seems weird to me: you wrote in a past SLWTS article that a dp is .55 worse than a single out with a runner at first. (Does that mean that the difference between a an average solitary nKo and an nKo plus a dp is simply .55?) But a cs is 'only' -.45. How can the dp out be worse than the cs? The caught stealing is usually a guy who was on first, but sometimes he's on second which would be more precious, and surely the average guy who would attempt a steal is faster than than the average baserunner caught in a dp (who is either ordinary or more likely (?) worse), so he has a slightly better chance of scoring. Hmm. Even worse, some cs occur with nobody out, whereas with each dp out, there's at least one other out (the semi-simultaneous one).

I appreciate not only your work, but also the clarity with which you usually step the reader through your ideas and findings. Thanks!

ps: In the wake of that (heartfelt) compliment, lemme toss in this: how are the chances lookin' that eventually (like later this year) we'll get to see further into the past with uzr and slwts?