Tango on Baseball Archives

Tippett and DIPS (August 1, 2003)

Tom Tippett responds:

But my work fully supports several of McCracken's most important observations: that pitchers have much less influence than most of us believed, that there's a lot of randomness in single-season results, and projections of future performance need to take these two things into account.
--posted by TangoTiger at 01:22 PM EDT

Posted 2:01 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#1) - Joe Dimino(e-mail)
NOTE: scroll down to or do a 'find' on "In-play average, the aftermath, part 1" for the entry Tango referred to, as Tippett continues to post, the relevant entry moves down the list . . .

Posted 2:47 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#2) - jto
good stuff...someone should post this over on clutch hits as well so more people will see it....

Posted 2:49 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#3) - Joe Dimino(e-mail)
Just did that jto, you must be pyschadelic or something . . .

Posted 2:51 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#4) - Aadik
Interesting- comes across as a good guy as well.

Posted 3:04 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#5) - Barry Bonds
comes across as a good guy as well

What does that have to do with anything?

Posted 3:08 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#6) - kevin
I've always felt that knuckleballers were a separate breed. They survive by not allowing solid contact or timed swings. I think Tom's research supports that. And I suppose that's why Wakefield et. al. get no respect. Everyone thinks they are some kind of fluke.

"Ball Four" actually did a pretty good job of portraying the prejudice these guys have to endure.

Posted 3:14 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#7) - Ben
Personally I think that pitchers do not control the outcome of singles, but they do have some control of the outcome of extra base hits. In the words of a friend of mine: There are groundball pitchers and there are flyball pitchers, but there are no line drive pitchers.

Has anybody ever attempted to correlate something like isolated power against pitchers to see if that is consistent year over year?

Posted 4:10 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#8) - James Baldwin
I'm a line drive pitcher.

Posted 4:38 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#9) - Albie Lopez
Me too.

Posted 4:46 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#10) - kamatoa
Regardless of whether one believe Tom Tippett made an important contribution or not to McCracken's work (I happen to think he added a lot to the conversation on BABIP), his approach toward other researchers and his critics is impressive. It was a class act to cite both Voros's and Woolner's follow-up work and he was even-handed in answering his work's critics.

Not having played Diamond Mindh, I'm not sure how adding BABIP to the game will affect outcomes - if I read Tippett's evidence right, the variance accounted for in any ability to affect BABIP is pretty negligible for all but the most extreme outliers (knuckleballers included in the outlier category). Would accounting for pitchers' ability to affect BABIP truly influence a projection system to the point that it would affect outcomes? From a theoretical standpoint, the possibility to affect BABIP is interesting - from a practical standpoint, how much can the discovery of this minor ability affect accurate prediction? It seems that the error variance here is larger than the variance explained by the actual effect.

Although Tippett presented some interesting examples in his original article that showed an apparent ability - I'm also wondering what the population mean would be. That is - what is the average ability of a pitcher to prevent BABIP. If it's close to zero, then that could also mean that, in aggregate, bringing BABIP into the equasion wouldn't add much to a prediction system.

Posted 4:51 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#11) - Dactyl
Regarding prejudice against knuckleballers. The Braves refuse to let their pitchers throw knuckleballs, whether they're in the minors or majors. This is apparently a holdover edict from the time when Bobby Cox was GM. This is kind of ironic, given that the Braves once had one of the most successful knuckleballers of all time.

Posted 4:55 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#12) - Patriot
Could someone please explain to me what they learned from Tippett's article that they didn't know before? I don't see anything in it that seriously contradicts Voros' work in any way.

Posted 5:02 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#13) - Dwight Gooden
I'm a line snorting pitcher.

Posted 5:06 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#14) - kamatoa
Patriot,

I learned from Tippett's article that there is a minor ability for pitchers to affect BABIP. Although this ability may be impractically small, Tippett's data set had so much power that he was able to detect it. On the other hand, why do you think he contradicts Voros? He said here that his research "fully supports several of McCracken's most important observations."

Posted 5:08 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#15) - Patriot
I said "I don't think there is anything that [seriously] contradicts Voros in any way."

Nobody has ever concluded that pitchers DIDN'T have some ability over $H. I think most of the "revelations" of the Tippett study are the results of misunderstanding over Voros' work.

Posted 5:08 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#16) - kamatoa
Patriot - I should have read your question better - you weren't asking what Tippett did that contradicts his work, you're asking what people see in Tippett's article that seriously contradicts his work. The answer to that question should probably be "Nothing." Tippett's work supports Voros's, and extends it in interesting, if not earth-shattering, ways.

Posted 5:14 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#17) - kamatoa
Patriot:

Nobody has ever concluded that pitchers DIDN'T have some ability over $H. I think most of the "revelations" of the Tippett study are the results of misunderstanding over Voros' work

If people misunderstood Voros' work, Voros might have contributed to that. On the original Tippett thread, Jim R. (Post #15) wrote:

Its amazing the amount of revisionist history that goes on about Voros' statements. I distinctly remember the "hits allowed are not particularly meaningful in the evaluation of pitchers" and "major-league pitchers don't appear to have the ability to prevent hits on balls in play".

I also remember these kinds of comments. Tippett is showing that these comments are incorrect. Although it's possible that Voros overstated his own findings with comments like these, the fact that the original researcher would make these kinds of statements at least shows that Tippett's research was an extension of the findings and not simply redundant.

Posted 5:18 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#18) - kevin
kamatoa,

If you expect to be taken seriously in any intellectual discussion, you are required to cite previous work, even it it contradicts your own. Tom Tippett was only doing what was required of him.

Nevertheless, he gave credit where credit was due. And I think his work refines Voros' work rather than contradicts it. Kind of like the concept of punctuated equilibrium refines Darwinism.

Posted 5:21 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#19) - Patriot
The original Voros comment of not "appearing to have ability" was clearly contradicted/corrected by his later work. "Hits allowed are not PARTICULARLY meaningful" still strikes me as an absolutely correct statment, depending on how you take "particularly".

BTW, my query was not posed specifically at you(many people have praised the Tippett article), so don't feel like I was challenging you or anything.

Posted 5:45 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#20) - cj
I am not a DIPS guru at all, but Greg Maddux's BABIP(.278) is lower than all but 2 of his teammates yet he is having one of his worst seasons in recent memory. Seems like his so called "ability" to prevent hits on balls on play really doesn't mean much. IOW, even if he does has this ability that Tippett says he has, it can be ignored and we can still see his true ability coming through. Maddux is getting old and it is showing. He just gave up his career high 20th homerun and its only August!. What do you guys think about this?

Posted 7:05 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#21) - Crack
How come nobody else has commented on the laziness of Tippet not to have seen Voros DIPS 2.0, or the research mgl presented on DIPS a year or 2 ago. Tom Tippet, you are a good analyst, but like Bill James, you would be better served by getting your head and ego out of your ass and paying attention to what is going on.

Posted 7:35 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#22) - Greg Maddux
If I couldn't prevent hits on balls in play, I'd be completely toast.

Posted 7:37 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#23) - Some kind of poster
Re cj: The whole point of Voros, Tippets, etc work is that the ability of elite pitchers to affect BABIP is so small as to be pretty unimportant. So whats your point? That Maddux is getting old?

Posted 7:47 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#24) - cj
No, my point was that its another example of BABIP ability being pretty much meaningless in evaluating a pitcher even though it appears to be there...And I have to say appears...there is so much noise going into that small number, who knows what is creating it..park, defense, luck, weather...all that stuff we talk about

Posted 9:57 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#25) - Joe Dimino(e-mail)
Crack, you couldn't be a bigger moron. Well you could be, but I'd be surprised if it were possible.

Tippett said in the response linked above that he went to baseball stuff page and didn't see anything there and assumed it was a complete list of Voros' work (a reasonable assumption). I think that's a reasonable effort on his part. He also said that as soon as he heard about it, he read it, and he changed his article accordingly.

There's a lot of stuff out there, and Primer was still fairly new when Voros' second article came out, it would have been easy to miss.

Plus the people actually doing research don't necessarily have the time to read everything that comes across the web, they're busy actually researching. I'd venture a guess that Tom spends most his day working on his game, answering email, and I'm sure, watching games. There are only so many hours in a day, and those of us that have full-time jobs don't necessarily have time to read everything written on this site.

He answered every major question that was asked of him based on the article; and he was quite forthcoming and pleasant about it.

You turn around and just snipe away behind the anonymity of the name 'crack' and take potshots, I can't really think of a more annoying style of posting. Morons like you are the reason analysts like Tippett and James can't bother to waste their time reading the good work on sites like this.

Posted 10:04 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#26) - Jim
Regarding Ben's comments in #7, I'd like to see how pitchers fare in 2B+3B rate, the theory being that doubles and triples generally represent harder hit balls than singles. But I'd bet that pitchers don't really have much control over doubles vs. triples, i.e. triples likely differ from doubles only in terms of baserunning speed and defense/park effects. So slugging (or isolated power) probably adds too much noise by weighing triples too heavily. If Tippett is correct, I'd expect a higher correlation of year-to-year pitcher 2B+3B rates than 1B rates or BABIP (IPAvg).

Posted 10:46 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#27) - Craig B
Like Tom Tippett isn't busy enough putting together the greatest baseball game of all time. Crack, go home.

Jim, Robert Dudek has been doing some work on park factors; he told me about some of it at the Rays/Jays game on Thursday. One of the interesting things he has found is how high the correlation is year-to-year for 2B/3B rates by park. You would, therefore, expect higher correlation of pitchers' year-to-year 2B/3B rates regardless, because the ballparks are quite stable with respect to 2B/3B rates and less so with regard to singles.

It's going to be important, in doing studies like this, to park-adjust the numbers.

Posted 10:55 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#28) - DMB player
"- in our work on version 9 of the Diamond Mind Baseball game, we've added IPAvg as a stat that can be included in various batting and pitching reports, and we'll be using those reports to identify and write about notable IPAvg performances (projected versus actual, 2002 versus 2003, and whatever else seems interesting)."

I'd like to know nore specifically how Tippet's conclusions will affect his product! Will pitching/defensive ratings be modeled on (modified) DIPS . . . ?

Posted 11:20 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#29) - Jim
I'm not surprised that 2B/3B rates by park correlate well from year-to-year. I wonder if they correlate as highly as HRs? I'm not at all suggesting that we ignore park-effects. But intuitively, it seems to me the whole DIPS debate is about whether bad pitchers get hit "harder" than good pitchers, even on balls put in play. One way to test this would be by looking at play-by-play data, although that introduces the subjective element of line drive vs. fly ball. My suggestion is simply to look at 2B+3B rates, adjusted for park effects. If pitchers can indeed affect balls in play, perhaps they'd do so in such a manner that reduces extra base hits.

Of course, it might turn out that pitchers with low 2B+3B rates turn out to be groundball pitchers with slightly higher BABIP, while those with high 2B+3B rates are flyball pitchers with a lower BABIP.

Posted 12:58 a.m., August 2, 2003 (#30) - tangotiger
Year-to-year correlation, pitchers, from 1969-2002

minPA HR/PA BB/PA K/PA bipH/PA n
500 0.20 0.45 0.61 0.22 2814
200 0.13 0.36 0.56 0.17 6690

bipH: H-HR
n: number of pitchers

Seems to me that if HR/PA and bipH/PA are pretty close, we'd expect (2b+3b)/PA to also be close.

Using /PA or /BIP or /(AB-SO), I don't think, will make much difference.

Posted 7:29 a.m., August 2, 2003 (#31) - Jonathan Davenport
Great stuff. Although he probably didn't intend it that way, Tippett's article exposes McCracken once again as a quick & dirty (albeit creative) researcher who seems more interested in making controversial statements than adding something to the understanding of the game. This behaviour represents the worst in sabermetrics: using incomplete numbers to shock the common sense and discard all observation-based analysis. If a thorough researcher like Tippett had discovered DIPS first, it never would have been such a shock as Voros' version was. (With the 3yr Maddux/Martinez-examples and the "major-league pitchers don't appear to have the ability to prevent hits on balls in play".)

Yeah, yeah, he revised it later, after he was famous. Why is McCracken such a cult hero among statheads?

Remember, this is also the guy who has repeatedly asserted that "clutch hitting does not exist, because we cannot measure it." And he'd probably say that "the Braves have such a good record in one-run games, because they are incredibly lucky."

Look, I'm all for using DIPS and Pythagoras as forecasting tools, but whatever happens on the field, is the truth. If Smoltz closes out a 1-0 game by succesfully inducing a GIDP, that's his ability. If Tino Martinez hits a two-run HR off him, that's HIS ability.

Posted 7:30 a.m., August 2, 2003 (#32) - Crack
Joe D, I'm not *really* a moron; I just use the name Crack when I post something which might be perceived to be moronic, Anyway, the excuses for Tippet ring hollow. So he's busy, so what. If you are going to do a project and make public your results on someone else's work, it's your duty to be aware of the relevant literature in the field. It's one thing to overlook an obscure study in some small scientific journal. But when you overlook a major article by the author whose work you are going after--that's unforgiveable. And the same goes for Bill James, another star who is too "busy" to find out that his revolutionary fielding system is similar to those by Saeger and Davenport.

Posted 9:27 a.m., August 2, 2003 (#33) - studes (homepage)
I have to admit that I agree with Crack. I was very surprised to see that Tippett hadn't read McCracken's second article. I mean, he was making public statements about McCracken's work, and I tend to think he has a moral obligation to make sure he has seen all of McCracken's work. A simple Google search would have uncovered the primer article.

Posted 9:32 a.m., August 2, 2003 (#34) - studes (homepage)
By the way, Tango, call me slow, but your correlation table indicates that pitchers have even less control over HR% than on BABIP. In fact, the difference is probably even greater than the relative coefficients on your table, because there are less extraneous factors, such as defense, that cause the BABIP correlation to decrease. Does this make sense?

Posted 11:11 a.m., August 2, 2003 (#35) - Laurent
One pitcher that is worth checking into with regards to DIPS is Glendon Rusch. He periphial statistics always looks sooo good. And his best season was with the 2000 Mets that sported SI's "The best Infield Ever!".

Other than that season however, Rusch has been bombed. He seems to me, to be the classic DIPS poster boy. Good with a good team, BAD with a BAD team.

It would seem to me, that if a team like the Cardinals got Rusch he would be ok? Thought comments? I am an idiot rants?

Posted 1:17 p.m., August 2, 2003 (#36) - Joe Dimino(e-mail)
Crack, I agree that he should have read the article, and so does he. That's why he mentioned it in his response. He looked for it and missed it. He made a mistake of not finding something he didn't realize existed, big f-in deal. It's not like the second article made nearly the splash of the first one, it was just a revision to the method, and didn't generate quite the same 'buzz' as the first one.

What I objected to was this, "you would be better served by getting your head and ego out of your ass and paying attention to what is going on."

That tone is totally uncalled for, and is shows you as being a royal a$$hole. It reeks of yahoo message board crap, in an otherwise intelligent discussion, and that's why I figured I'd throw it back at you. The fact that you knew you were acting like an a$$hole and chose to name yourself something that fit with it makes you a coward as well.

Posted 1:29 p.m., August 2, 2003 (#37) - Joe Dimino(e-mail)
Laurent, I've always sort of liked Rusch too. I was actually pissed last year when someone else outbid me for him in our auction (he went for like $17!). Pitchers are weird though. Maybe he's been pitching hurt or something, they're just hard to project.

One thing that would be interesting to research would be the "DIPS friendliness" of pitchers that struggle for a few years and then 'find it' and go on to have decent careers.

I'd probably still take a flier on Rusch if he ended up with a good team :-)

Posted 2:48 p.m., August 2, 2003 (#38) - cardsfanboy
ok...quick comment not about the dips stuff, but about the other thing he wrote(under complete games) he makes the assumption that say it takes 5 pitches to for an out...then that equals 135 pitches...

the highest batter pitches per batter is edgar martinez at 4.4 pitches per plate appearance...i'm guessing the league average is closer to 4 pitches per bat(108 pitches). of course he could have been adding the extra pitch per at bat to compensate for hits in the game(which would be about 27 extra pitches, which would be about 6 extra batters.)

Posted 3:42 p.m., August 2, 2003 (#39) - Patriot
Dimino, how come you don't bring down your righteous fury on the guy ripping on Voros as well?

Posted 8:59 p.m., August 2, 2003 (#40) - Crack
OK, Joe D, I tried to repost my thought in more measured terms, but apparently it wasn't good enough for you. You don't have the balls to admit I am right, tone or not. You sort of allude to it, yes, but in a way to minimize it. The fact is, Tippet's big, hallowed project on DIPS turns out to be yada yada yada. He made a silly, careless error in his research, and that deserves to be pointed out. I would not have used such strong language in my first post had I not picked up on the "free pass" he was being given, just because he has a "name" in the field. The fact is, you should be pissed at Tippet, James, and other sabermetric "superstars" for thinking that their thoughts and work are so far above all us mortals here at Primer and elsewhere, that they don't have to invest any time to follow what is going on. Them follow? Hell no, they are the "leaders".

Joe D, get *your* head out of your ass and quit being such a "groupie". And as far as my tone, if your parents see *your* tone in your last couple posts, they will want to spank your butt.

Now that I've let that out.....can't we all be friends? :)

Posted 9:46 p.m., August 2, 2003 (#41) - tangotiger
I was a little surprised by my results, esp since the HR is so related to the park too.

However, Tippet, is a much larger study, shows the "r" of the HR to be much higher.

Lots more work to do.

Posted 10:08 p.m., August 2, 2003 (#42) - Jim
Tango, maybe I'm also misreading your numbers, but those correlations also appear quite different than what Tippett reported:

Tango: MinPA 500, Years 1969-2002, sample size 2814
Tippett: MinPA 400, Years 1913-2002, sample size 7486

Tango: HR corr. 0.20, BABIP corr. 0.22, K corr. 0.61, BB corr. 0.45
Tippett: HR corr. 0.29, BABIP corr. 0.09, K corr. 0.73, BB corr. 0.66

Am I missing something in the way these numbers were computed, or did pitchers in 1969 suddenly learn how to control in-play balls while losing their ability to control strikeouts and walks?

Posted 10:10 p.m., August 2, 2003 (#43) - Jim
Tango, just saw your latest post. Can't wait to see more research in this area!

Posted 4:19 p.m., August 3, 2003 (#44) - tangotiger
Please note that every size sample comes with its own error range.

As well, the different environment almost forces you to start separating by era.

It could very well be that Tippett's findings and my findings are consistent from being drawn from the same population, and the differences can be explained to chance. I don't know that. But, as with everything, we should always report the margin of error.

Also note that we did not use the same denominator.

And, we should also try to control for change in home team.

I don't expect to do much work in the near future, but if I do, I'll report whatever I find.

Posted 9:09 p.m., August 3, 2003 (#45) - Joe Dimino(e-mail)
"Dimino, how come you don't bring down your righteous fury on the guy ripping on Voros as well?"

What comments are you referring to? I don't see any personal attack on Voros before my initial post to Crack? Maybe I'm just missing it, I only skimmed through that point just now, but I don't see anything against Voros personally.

I've always been against unprovoked personal attacks. It's just stupid, and does nothing to advance the discussion. Crack could have made his point without being a prick about it, this isn't Fanhome, that was my point.

It has absolutely nothing to do with being a groupie or anything. It's just common courtesy. I simply don't think it does anything to prove your point by saying things like, 'get your head out of your ass'. It's just stupid immature bullshit, that's all.

I'm done on that angle, don't want to drag this out anymore.

And yes Crack, we can all just get along now. And I didn't allude to anything, I flat out said you were right :-)

Posted 2:19 a.m., August 4, 2003 (#46) - unc84steve(e-mail)
I was surprised that Voros McCracken's model seems to have worked well dating back to the dead ball era. Pete Alexander & Walter Johnson can be explained as being beyond the skill level of the batters. However it's striking that pitchers Lefty Grove, Carl Hubbell & Bob Feller aren't on the top ten lists.

Seeing Warren Spahn, Tom Seaver & Jim Palmer on the list made me wonder about pitcher intelligence. Roger Kahn's [i]The Head Game[/i] shows Spahn to be witty and always thinking. Palmer would reposition his outfielders constantly. I assume those three had a game plan. Greg Maddux has that reputation.

So "lack of time era change" & "intelligence" are my final answers.

Posted 9:05 a.m., August 4, 2003 (#47) - Patriot
Umm...#32

[i]Tippett's article exposes McCracken once again as a quick & dirty (albeit creative) researcher who seems more interested in making controversial statements than adding something to the understanding of the game. This behaviour represents the worst in sabermetrics: using incomplete numbers to shock the common sense and discard all observation-based analysis.[/i]

That's about as big of a "personal attack" as you can bring agaisnt someone from a sabermetric perspective.

Posted 9:21 a.m., August 4, 2003 (#48) - Crack
I can't resist. Joe writes, "I've always been against unprovoked personal attacks." Then, 2 sentences later, he throws in an unprovoked personal attack against Fanhome. If you say that Fanhome is a site and not a person, I'll say that Fanhome is a group of people, who you have now grouped in with the likes of me. They deserve better. :)

Posted 10:00 a.m., August 4, 2003 (#49) - tangotiger
Voros is an excellent sabermetrician. Fanhome has a great group of guys who post consistently with the same handle (which is as close as you'll get to a signature.)

Posted 10:16 a.m., August 4, 2003 (#50) - Patriot
I missed the FanHome "crack" from Joe. I am just dying to hear about all the "pricks" on FanHome.

Posted 10:26 a.m., August 4, 2003 (#51) - Joe Dimino
"I can't resist. Joe writes, "I've always been against unprovoked personal attacks." Then, 2 sentences later, he throws in an unprovoked personal attack against Fanhome. If you say that Fanhome is a site and not a person, I'll say that Fanhome is a group of people, who you have now grouped in with the likes of me. They deserve better. :)"

I love fanhome, all I'm saying is that they have no problems with ripping into people on a personal level over there, that's one part of it that I don't like.

Fanhome is the home of some of the best statistical analysis around. I have absolutely no issues with it, other than what I mentioned. Sorry for any confusion.

Patriot, my post was #25. I only skimmed after that, I was in and out quick Saturday. But, yeah, you are right, there's no need for that either. You agree with him or you don't, you don't need to call him a quick and dirty researcher, because anyone that know Voros knows that's absolutely not the case. When he first presented his findings, he basically took the tone of, 'I wasn't looking for this, it just hit me like a ton of bricks. I did everything I could to disprove it, and I couldn't.'

I guess what I'm saying is, why can't people just make their points without feeling the need to attack people on a personal level?

I guess Crack's post was just the straw that broke my back and I felt the need to say to something. Sorry I've caused this much of a stir, I just don't see the need to get personal about this, it's not necessary to make your point. The only reason I sunk to that level was because Crack had already lowered the bar with his post, so I didn't feel like he was entitled to that courtesy.

Seriously, I'm not an uptight jackass (although I realize that's how it might be perceived off this thread), ask Tango :-) I just get annoyed when people feel the need to personally rip people, it's unecessary, and easy to do when you are hiding behind a keyboard in cyberspace.

Posted 10:30 a.m., August 4, 2003 (#52) - Patriot
"I love fanhome, all I'm saying is that they have no problems with ripping into people on a personal level over there"

Examples? Seriously, I don't have a clue what you're talking about. There are far more "personal attacks" on Primer than there are on FanHome.

Posted 10:50 a.m., August 4, 2003 (#53) - tangotiger
By the way, I once dared ask if Babe Ruth would have been an average hitter today, and I went through a rigorous thorough analysis of how he would hit today. And based on the assumptions and analysis, of which NO ONE questioned, I was forced to conclude, at that time, that Ruth would have been an average hitter today. My conclusions were questioned, but instead of going back to where I went wrong, people came back with other arguments.

Afterwards I realized that my error was in not handling regression towards the mean (of which I was not aware of at that time), the most important concept any sabermetrician should be aware of.

I'd hate to think what people would have called me for making the first statement that Ruth might have been an average hitter today, while not recognizing that I corrected myself in further research.

This is why we have peer review after all, something that Voros was extremely open to, publishing virtually all of his findings. This is a far cry from some sabermetricians who will only publish their results (which I do time to time).

Now, Tom Tippett was very thorough and honest with everything he's done, issuing corrections and addendums to his conclusions, based on new material that he's been made aware of. He's opened himself up to peer review, and so, we should try to further his findings.

So, can we get back to the matter at hand? Let's talk about the topic, rather than people's opinion of the topic, and people's opinion of people's opinion of the topic.

Posted 11:46 a.m., August 4, 2003 (#54) - Crack
I'd like to conclude here by saying that I disagree with Joe and others who say that using a false name is "cowardly". A more accurate term would be "prudent". There is a legitimate place for anonymous posting. It allows us to post our darker thoughts/opinions while preserving our good name. If you want to call that cowardice, go ahead, but it's really not.

Posted 12:09 p.m., August 4, 2003 (#55) - Joe Dimino(e-mail)
Crack, after the direction this discussion took, I probably should have used a false name :-), sorry for derailing your thread Tango.

Seriously, I apologize if I hit below the belt, for some reason I felt now was the time to take a stand, I probably overreacted somewhat.

For the record, I don't mind false names like TangoTiger, Patriot, Shredder, etc. if that's the name you use all the time; hell I was Scruff in this group for the first year and a half, I only changed because of some confusion with my signature being Joe Dimino when I'd post threads. I don't like it when people use one name for the mean things they don't want to associate themselves with and another when they want to be taken seriously, maybe coward was too strong a word, but I was kind of pissed of the other day, and I do think you should be willing to stand behind whatever you say, or it probably isn't worth saying :-)

And I also think we should remember that 'our darker thoughts/opinions' are sometimes aimed at a an actual person, and not just a name in cyberspace; that was really my entire point, that a person can make a point that's critical of someone/something without hitting below to belt to go for the laugh/dig, etc.

/righteous rant

Posted 12:11 p.m., August 4, 2003 (#56) - tangotiger
When you post under a different handle than what you normally use, the point is exactly for the reason you are specifying: to protect your good name, from the darker but still real thoughts that you have. If it's not cowardice, it's dishonest.

(If it's not cowardice or dishonest, what in the world would you have to do to be a coward? It's like Reagan saying "no, that's not a threat... that's a promise". No, it's a threat, because there's nothing worse that you can do to make that "promise" a threat.)

If I want to say that Bill James "just doesn't get it" about linear weights, and that "Runs Created is dead", those are pretty harsh words, and I'll stand by them. For me to say that with a big over my head... what does that do?

And before anyone asks, Tangotiger is my handle or nom de plume, one that I use with the same thought and respect that I would use with my real name. For privacy's sake, I don't give out my real name. (I figure Mark Twain and Dr. Seuss don't have a problem with nom de plumes, and those "names" are much more valuable and well-known than Samuel Clemons and Theo Geisel.)

Posted 12:28 p.m., August 4, 2003 (#57) - tangotiger(e-mail)
And that's my last comment on "etiquette". If anyone else wants to talk about this issue, send me an email, and I'll open up a separate thread, where those who want to continue this, will have their chance.

Posted 1:45 p.m., August 4, 2003 (#58) - cj
sorry not related to this discussion...but is Rob Neyer pronounced nay-er, nare, or nye-er...its been bugging me.

Posted 2:00 p.m., August 4, 2003 (#59) - Rob Neyer (homepage)
Email me.

Posted 2:03 p.m., August 4, 2003 (#60) - Scoriano Berman
Tango, if you are righting a book with Lichtman, will you publish it as Tangotiger or with your real name? If the latter, it will seem obvious to Primates who Tango really is when a book by MGL with Tom as co-author comes out. Or do I take your reference to Clemons and Geisel to be that you will use your pseudo name if you publish as well? That would be quite cool IMO.

Posted 2:07 p.m., August 4, 2003 (#61) - Ben
Zoiks! I manage to not read Primer for 2 days and look what happens!

Somebody way back in this thread suggested that using isolated power would unfairly weight HR more than 3B more than 2B. Well, I think that that is quite fair. A HR is much more costly to a pitcher than a 2B or 3B.

I do agree that park effects (particularly of the pitcher's home park) will be of great importance. It's going to be much harder for instance to put up a good isolated power number on turf where a lot of balls scoot through the gap to the wall.

I think I've pretty much convinced myself that it is a pitching skill to prevent isolated power relative to park effects etc. My question is does past performance indicate future results at all? I don't have the time or the tools to do that kind of study.

Posted 2:10 p.m., August 4, 2003 (#62) - cj
They had Neyer on the radio here in Boston recently, and they pronounced it with a long I sound like ni-er or nye-er depending on how you do your phonetics. :)

Posted 2:11 p.m., August 4, 2003 (#63) - Ben
oops that last one (#62) was me and I meant it to be in response to cj!

Posted 2:22 p.m., August 4, 2003 (#64) - cj
thanks ben

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. :-)

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.

Posted 3:42 p.m., August 4, 2003 (#67) - tangotiger
I was thinking of calling the book "Tangotiger presents [The Book] by Mitchel Lichtman".

Baseball Prospectus doesn't put bylines to most of what they write in their own book. Maybe the "brand" of BP or the "brand" of Tangotiger is good enough. Maybe I can spin off magazines like Oprah and Rosie. Anyone want to design a "T" logo?

Seriously, I'll probably "come out" by that time... not that there's anything wrong with the way things are now.

Posted 4:32 p.m., August 4, 2003 (#68) - Jason Koral
Tom Tippett probably makes an OK living from Diamond Mind; Bill James sells a few books and finally got a job in baseball after 25 years; Voros is a student. None of these guys are making millions from doing baseball analysis. If I were any of them and I saw the kind of nasty throwaway comments make on these site, Id conclude Id have been better off not bothering and using my stats skills to become a rich bond trader.

People please lay off a little here. Voros' DIPS studies werent meant to be comprehensive end of all studies; he's a guy with a day job that did some work, found some interesting results, and decided to share it knowing there was still work to be done. Ditto for Tippett. I personally am glad this work was published before it was made bullet proof so that others could gain for it. I'd hate to see this kind of behavior discouraged.

Posted 12:29 a.m., August 5, 2003 (#69) - Jim
Ben (#61), I meant isolated power on balls in play. I'm not saying HRs are soley due to park effects and defense, I'm theorizing that a pitcher almost certainly doesn't have any control over a 2B vs. a 3B. If a good pitcher has the ability to prevent a ball in play from being hit "hard", it might show up as 2B+3B per ball in play, moreso than it shows up as total bases per ball in play or hits per ball in play.

In the other recent DIPS thread, it was discussed whether hitting triples is a skill beyond what can be measured by other power hitting stats. Probably yes, accounting for baserunning speed.

My question is whether preventing triples by a pitcher is a skill beyond what can be measured by other pitching stats. My guess is probably not.

Posted 9:57 a.m., August 5, 2003 (#70) - tangotiger
Triples, relative to doubles, is almost definitely due to: speed, handedness, park, OF fielding.

How do we know? Well, the age progression of triples/(2b+3b) is almost exactly the same as sb/(1b+bb). Triples is easily an artifact of speed.

Other variables, like if the batter's handedness (more balls hit to RF) and the park would explain some of the individual variations.