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Clutch Hitting: Fact or Fiction? (February 2, 2004)
Discussion ThreadPosted 11:26 a.m.,
February 3, 2004
(#12) -
cheng
Sorta new around these parts, but doesn't Tango have a "modified" OBP stat that takes into account all offensive contributions but still expresses the number in a binomial fashion? Seems that this would be a better stat to use than straight OBP. Maybe hitters like Yaz or Winfield deliberately swung for the fences in these situations? Just throwing it out there. Great article.
Silver: The Science of Forecasting (March 12, 2004)
Posted 12:14 p.m.,
March 12, 2004
(#4) -
cheng
Nod Narb - I don't have the book in front of me, but I think the physical characteristics of height and weight are the 7th and 10th factors on the similarity scoring for hitters. I believe PECOTA implicitly assumes that the differences in training and nutrition would translate to on-field performance, which account for the other 8 factors. I think height is a little more important for pitchers (fifth?) but weight comes in last again.
Also, all rates are normalized by Nate's use of percentiles - a 1-1 BB/K ratio for a hitter in the 1950 NL would be 55th percentile or so, while the same ratio in 2003 would be much higher.
This is nitpicking, really, your larger question about the predictive value of similarity scores is the important issue, and has not been empirically confirmed for PECOTA. I like tango's suggested approach of using the odd years as one data set, coming up with the system, and testing the system on the even years as a sanity check. As far as I know, this has not been done.