MGL - Questec and the Strike Zone (March 20, 2004)
MGL's work on Questec. (And, you can also find his 2004 super-LWTS nicely formatted too.)
--posted by TangoTiger at 09:46 AM EDT
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.
Posted 4:40 p.m.,
March 20, 2004
(#2) -
Sky
There should be a file called questec.pdf
Posted 4:51 p.m.,
March 20, 2004
(#3) -
tangotiger
questec.pdf - MGL's new article
superLWTS2003.html - super-LWTS nicely formatted (I just uploaded it to replace the old one that was there)
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...
Posted 7:53 p.m.,
March 20, 2004
(#5) -
Jim
Does UZR account for shifts like the one used against Giambi? If he pushes a ball down the line, towards the normal position for a third baseman and soft enough where the play was made 90% of the time, does this count against the third baseman who is positioned at short?
Posted 8:54 p.m.,
March 20, 2004
(#6) -
MGL
Hey, this is a Questec thread Jim! No, UZR does not account for shifts. It assumes everyone is playing a normal position, but of course the baseline percentages are based on an average configuration for all fielders, which includes all the shifts, so that a player that never shifts or a player that shifts more than average will have a UZR that is slightly screwed up...
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.
Posted 11:13 p.m.,
March 20, 2004
(#8) -
MGL
Plus, Bonds' defense and baserunning is starting to hurt his overall value. I expect that it will be even worse this year. Amazingly, his SB/CS totals were 7/0, a better net than some of the so-called best basestealers in the game...
Posted 10:41 a.m.,
March 21, 2004
(#9) -
f_k_a Scoriano
Jeff DaVanon? Do the Angels have something funky going on in their OF. Erstad, DaVanon and Garret have all had some amazing stats at various points the last few years.
Posted 1:04 p.m.,
March 22, 2004
(#10) -
FJM
MGL: "I suspect however that the change in ball to (called) strike ratio in the league as a whole in 2002 and 2003 has nothing to do with QuesTec and everything to do with the fact that it took a year or so for many umpires to get used to the new strike zone."
There's just one problem with that theory. Based on your data, it appears that the umpires were able to make that transition successfully in 2001 in the future QuesTec parks but it took them another year or two in the other parks. Since they had no way of knowing that QuesTec was coming, much less where it would be, that seems like a bizarre result. I suspect the explanation lies elsewhere, either with the home batting bias you mentioned or perhaps with a bias created by the usage of umpires themselves in Q/non-Q parks.
Can you post the Ball-to-called strike ratios for each of the 30 MLB parks for all 4 years? That might help us to understand the large differences that apparently existed between future Q/non-Q parks back in 2000 and 2001.
Posted 12:20 a.m.,
March 23, 2004
(#11) -
MGL
re's just one problem with that theory. Based on your data, it appears that the umpires were able to make that transition successfully in 2001 in the future QuesTec parks but it took them another year or two in the other parks
FJM, I will post the ratios for each park in each of the 4 years if you like (home team hitting only or both teams?), but you are not reading the data correctly.
Here's what the data is "saying":
In 2000, the soon-to-be Questec parks/teams had a lower ball-to-called strike ratio for whatever reasons (park effects, their hitters). Ditto for walks and K's. The ratio of the soon-to-be Questec parks' ball-to-called (b-t-cs) strike ratio's and the league's b-t-cs ratio was around .90 (.891).
In 2001, the strike zone changed. In the league as a whole, the b-t-cs ratio dropped. It also dropped in the Questec parks as we would expect. The Questec/league ratio is about the same (.875 - not statistically different than .891).
In 2002, it drops again in the league even though the strike zone has not changed again. I suspect that more umpires are calling the new strike zone (in all parks of course). What happens in the Questec parks now that Questec cameras are installed? It goes up a little. Were the cameras not installed, we would have expected it to drop again on the Questec parks like it did in 2001. The difference between the expected drop and the actual increase may be due to the camera's influence on the umpires. That's the thesis of the article/study.
In 2003, nothing weird goes on ay all. The league-wide ratio drops a little again, maybe just a fluc or maybe even more umpires are calling the higher zone. Drops a little in the Questec parks as expected. There doesn't appear to be a "delayed affect" with the Questec cameras (more umpires being influenced by it in the second year of Questec than in the first).
Were you not aware that Questec was installed in 2002? Maybe that is where the confusion lies. Otherwise there is nothing in the data to contradict my theory of the b-t-cs ratio getting smaller in 2001 and then again in 2002, in both Questec and non-Questec parks...
Posted 10:32 a.m.,
March 23, 2004
(#12) -
Wayen Woodland
I think the best thing that ever happened baseball was the interdiction of the revolutionary Questec to the game.
Posted 12:09 p.m.,
March 23, 2004
(#13) -
Anonymous
Posted 7:29 p.m.,
March 23, 2004
(#14) -
FJM
I don't read the data the same way you do. You are assuming that there is something inherently different about the future QuesTec parks, as evidenced by the disparities in Ball-to-called-strike ratios between them and MLB as a whole in 2000 and 2001. I admit that's a possibility, which is why I'd like to see the data park-by-park. But I think that it is unlikely.
There are essentially no differences between Q and non-Q B-to-C-S ratios (or walks or K's, for that matter) in either 2002 or 2003, which appears to contradict the Schilling Hypothesis. Occam's Razor says, when faced with 2 or more possible explanations for anything, the simplest one is usually the right one. In this case the simplest explanation is that Schilling was wrong, at least overall. (He might have been right about Bank One Ballpark.) There is no reason to believe that the pre-QuesTec disparities would have persisted if QuesTec had never been implemented.
Posted 8:03 p.m.,
March 23, 2004
(#15) -
MGL
You are assuming that there is something inherently different about the future QuesTec parks, as evidenced by the disparities in Ball-to-called-strike ratios between them and MLB as a whole in 2000 and 2001.
Now I see what you mean. The whole point of my doing it the way I did it (first comparing the non-Q parks to the league as a whole before Q was installed) is because I assumed that there will be considerable real differences among parks. I still think that is the case. In fact, I'll bet bottom to dollars (or whatever the expression is) that the 98 and 99 data will be similar to the 00 and 01 data (the Q-parks will have a much lower b-t-cs ratio than the non-Q parks. If that is the case, your theory or anti-theory kind of gets blown out of the water. You are obviously saying that that the 00 and 01 Q-park numbers are a fluke and that the 02 and 03 ones are "correct." To some extent Occam's razor applies, but not if it is true that parks (and remember also that in my study I did not control for all the players as BP did - the Q-park data inlcudes not only the "parks" but the home hitters as well) have very different true b-t-cs ratios. If that is the case, than it is probably just as likely that 00 and 01 are a fluke than it is that 00 and 01 represent real "strike zone" park factors for the Q-parks as a whole...
Posted 9:23 p.m.,
March 23, 2004
(#16) -
MGL
FJM, I didn't have home/away balls and strikes for 1999, so I switched everything to both home and road teams in the Q and non-Q parks. I went back to 1993 (so last 10 years). There is going to be lots of noise due to the fact that the pitchers and hitters on the Q and non-Q teams are going to influence the ratios. Hopefully the data will still show some kind of a pattern.
Year/b-t-cs in Q parks/b-t-cs in league/ratio of one to the other
93/2.41/2.69/.894
94/2.43/2.57/.944
95/2.38/2.62/.906
96/2.37/2.48/.955
97/2.28/2.31/.986
98/2.26/2.32/.975
99/2.39/2.44/.980
00/2.32/2.45/.948
01/2.12/2.25/.942
02/2.20/2.20/1.00
03/2.12/2.13/.996
Although it is nothing definitive, there appears to be a pattern prior to 2002 of the Q-parks having a smaller b-t-cs ratio than the rest of the league, presumably because of "park factors." Starting in 2002, however, the b-t-cs ratio in the Q-parks appears to be around the same as the rest of the league, suggesting, as was my original thesis, that Questec is indeed causing umpires to call a smaller strike zone.
In 8 years prior to Questec, the b-t-cs park factors for the Q-parks combined is .9485. In the 2 years after, it is .998. I would guess that that is a statistically significant difference, but I'm not sure. Again, we have the problem of I didn't control for the fact that we have a biased sample of pitchers and hitters each year in the Q-parks, so who knows. But there certainly is a strong inference that Questec is influencing the umpires' calling of the strike zone, which seems quite logical to me. I would have been shocked if that were not the suggestion from the data. Why would umpires want to be chastized by MLB and put their jobs or assignments in jeapordy if they know that they are being "rated" in some parks and not in others and they know (or think) that the Questec machines do not consider pitches "on the black" strikes, assuming that is the case?
Posted 12:23 a.m.,
March 24, 2004
(#17) -
FJM
Well, let's see. With an average ratio of 0.925, there is no question that there were significant differences between the 2 groups back in 1993-96. That's a mystery worth exploring, but I question its relevance to the issue at hand. Virtually every park has changed significantly since then. Bank One Ballpark, where this controversy began, didn't even exist until 1998!
The 1997-99 period is a much tougher call. There does appear to be a small difference here. But with an average ratio of 0.98, I'm pretty sure it is not statistically significant. A few individual parks may be significantly different than MLB as a whole, but not the future QuesTec parks as a group.
Which brings us back to 2000-01. The average ratio for the 2 years using both home and road batters was 0.945. It was 0.883 using home batters only. That suggests the ratio for road batters (and home pitchers) was 0.825. Even allowing for the bias caused by introducing the home pitchers I find it hard to understand how the same parks (and the same umpires) could be simultaneously producing ratios of 0.945 and 0.825.
As further confirmation of this point, look at 2002-03. The ratios are virtually identical, whether you look at home batters only or both teams. The only way to resolve this mystery is to look at the data park-by-park.
Posted 1:04 a.m.,
March 24, 2004
(#18) -
MGL
FJM, how is looking at the park by park data going to resolve anything? All you are going to see is lots of noise. BTW, you would expect to see all kinds of differences in ratios between home and road teams batting (or pitching) for 2 reasons: One, sample size, and two, you have a completely different subset of pitchers - one his the home team(s) only and the other is all the rest. I think we need to put this one to sleep...