Sabermania

OldSkool2,

Perhaps you don’t think OPS is superior to BA as a stat to judge hitters, but I assure you in the world of Sabermetrics is it.

No.

So you think that other people won't understand it?

Exactly!

So you think that the average fan won't understand the easy stuff like OBP, slugging. K rate, BB rate and groundball %? Or even wOBA, which is very simple.

The saber geeks who argue about the lineup are completely overlooking the human element which they have zero access to. They don't know if a player came in the locker room completely distracted because he's having marriage problems or his kid is in the hospital. They don't know if a player is healthy or not. They don't know if a player is being disciplined. There's so much that's internal to the team that has nothing to do with stats.

Kind of like how when Bonds was coming back from the hospital from visiting his dad and just slaughtered a 99 MPH fastball from Randy Johnson. We didn't know how he was going to respond to that, and neither did anyone else. What makes you an expert on how people respond to things? Players aren't robots, if they are getting a divorce some players react positively to playing and some negatively. You don't know and neither do the Managers.

There is countless story after story about how someone shows up hungover or sick, doesn't want to play and goes 2-4 with a bomb. Humans react in a variety of different ways, assuming that the Manager knows more than anyone else is nonsense.

Health is different story, but see the previous paragraph.

Also JBB makes an excellent point, when faced with each other, do pitchers and hitters go to the mound/plate with those individual stats in mind? I don't think so. 

Greinke does. He announced it when he won the Cy Young. He said his goal is to keep his FIP as low as possible. Same with Max Scherzer, he has said he uses it to help him.

Originally Posted by OldSkool2:

I did base running and Base Runs and wRC+ for my softball team. It's not hard to do. It's also amazing what people will respond to. It was a bunch of people who only wanted to know about batting average, home runs and rbi's and then they started to really want to know about the advanced stuff.

I’d sure like to hear how you did that without BPFs and league averages for everything. Of course you may have that for your softball league, but there’s no way to get it for the level I score at, which is HS. There’s no central location for all the data, and dang sure no validity checking of the numbers.

Heck, I do a runs created and have been doing it for over a decade, but its not something I have any faith in as a meaningful number. When I run RC for our team using the formula:

RC= (H+BB-CS)*(TB+(.55*SB)/AB+BB the total runs predicted are 158, while the real number of runs scored are 213. Doesn’t seem to be very accurate to me.

OldSkool2,

Have  you played baseball? College or professional?

...assuming that the Manager knows more than anyone else is nonsense.

Do not agree with that.  At least he should if he's a good one.

If they could predict the future, they probably wouldn't be Managers.

I think what TPM was trying to say is that while he might have certain goals in mind out on the mound I doubt very highly he is calculating his FIP. The same can be said of a position player who has certain goals. I doubt Miggy is counting and calculating RBI when he is up at the plate. Hitters would love to face a pitcher who s mind is so full of stats he cant figure out how he is going about pitching to certain hitters.

I think you got what I was saying.

I also think that oldSkool2 has come to just stir the pot, therefore,  I am out.

What does playing baseball at any level have to do with understanding how to analyze the sport?

Ha Ha.  Funny.

Have you never 'managed' an employee in any profession?  Your comment makes me believe you have not.

I don't know what 'managed' means. Why did you put it in quotes?

You need the run environment, that's the key. I was usually within 20 runs every year. Also, original James Runs Created breaks down in non MLB run environments. It was created for MLB only.

I just looked up the definition of FIP. According to Fangraphs in FIP a walk is less harmful to pitcher then a home run and a strikeout has less impact then both. Well it would seem to me that the SITUATION would determine what is more harmful or impactful. Let my pitcher give up a solo shot leading 4-0 no big deal. Let him walk the first two late in a 1-0 or 2-0 game and now tell me what has more impact or is more harmful if those two score. Lies, damn lies and statistics!

Go look up WPA, you'll like that more.

Your point is what's called anecdotal. You've provided one moment in time in a million-plus at bats over a period of time. But thank you for setting me up to make my point again. These are situations where a manager has to be able to read the human element and judge each situation individually. By the way, your attempt at a personal attack just undermines any point you're attempting to make.

The point of FIP is that pitchers can basically only control BB, K, and HR -- they have limited impact on what happens on balls put in play that the fielders have to deal with. In predicting a pitcher's future value, BB rate, K rate, and HR rate are the essential stats (there's also some effect from GB rate, but I'm ignoring that for the moment).

In a given game situation, these predictors are, of course, swamped by random (and not-so-random) fluctuations. So how a pitcher/player is going to do in a given PA is only predictable with very large error bars.  I can tell you that Aroldis Chapman has struck out 41% of hitters he's faced in the majors, so there's a pretty good chance he's going to strike out the next one, but that won't mean that my forecasting ability about him is wrong if he doesn't, or if he blows his next save.

FWIW, humans are inherently biased towards seeing patterns in random data. That's why we believe in clutch ability, and why the fact that a guy is 6 for his last 8 means he's hot and 10 for his last 100 means he's due, even though neither of those things is inherently true.  Barry Bonds went 3-35 off Mike Bielecki in his career, and 11-27 off Tim Hudson.  That doesn't make Bielecki a better pitcher than Hudson, or a better bet to get Bonds out in some hypothetical future matchup, it's just normal variation in the performances of one great hitter, one great pitcher, and one journeyman.

Originally Posted by oldmanmoses:

…Hitters would love to face a pitcher who s mind is so full of stats he cant figure out how he is going about pitching to certain hitters.

That’s precisely the thinking that causes problems for so many pitchers when runners get on. The less a pitcher concentrates on the batter, the more advantage the batter has. So it really isn’t that a pitcher worrying about stats is a problem as much as it is the pitcher not concentrating on the batter for any reason. It also why coaches pound it into pitcher’s heads not to show emotion on the mound.

I agree that baseball broadcasters would risk losing listeners on the radio if they talked about WAR or FIP, when their audience doesn't understand what those are -- so they shouldn't. And while Ryan says average baseball fans don't care about the numbers, he nowhere suggests they're even exposed to the numbers, so not sure what his real issue is. Is he saying data is bad inherently, or only bad if it subtracts from the average fan's enjoyment of the game when it gets between him and a hot dog?

Regardless, hovering over all of this Big Data. The ability to mine every available variable (even things like personal problems or wind-speed in baseball) is not only here -- it's big business. And empirically, that can be good. If, say, we could know every possible causal factor about everyone who's ever had pancreatic cancer --  and it informed us in a good way -- wouldn't that be good?

A real example: Aramark recently planned to put food kiosks at a major university. Their telecom provider offered them data on where students congregated at specific times -- data available through wireless-device GPS feeds. Guess where they placed the kiosks -- and, of course, who was paid for that information? Shareowners, ultimately.

It's here. Love it or hate it -- and I do. But denying it is not an option -- and young people today are acclimated to it.

In the days of Mad Men's Don Draper, it was all about the sizzle, SG. But those days are coming to a close: Online user-reviews are beating out advertising as purchasing-decision drivers.

What does it all mean for baseball? Hell, I don't know. But I think the reason baseball takes a backseat in 2014 to football goes much deeper that Sabermetrics.

My only hope is that we never lose the beauty, joy and simplicity-complexity of this game.

jacjacatk, I respectfully disagree with the concept of pitchers not owning certain hitters and hitters not owning certain pitchers. It doesn't make a pitcher better then the ones a hitter cant hit or vis a versa, it does state that certain pitchers can get certain hitters out on a very consistent basis. And yes it does show that a pitcher is much more likely to get a certain hitter out at a future date. There is evidence of this type of statistics all over the place. As far as FIP goes it seems a completely useless statistical unit. What will hurt a pitcher in a given situation is the situation. Not what he gives up. The same goes for a hitter. A double in a 12-3 game means absolutely nothing compared to a walk with runners on in a 3-2 game. Situation decides everything. A 3 run home run when you are up 8-3 doesn't carry the same wait as a single to right with runners on 2nd and 3rd in a 2-1 ballgame.

You can disagree all you want, but there's no way the sample sizes for the vast majority of hitter/pitcher match ups are large enough to be at all predictive. There are ways around that, but the mostly lead back to hitters (and pitchers) performing pretty much as you'd expect them to given their overall stats and the fairly large amount of chance involved in any given plate appearance.  

And while the value of a 3-run HR in an 8-3 game is different than a single in a 2-1 game, the ability to come up to bat in those situations isn't under the control of the hitter, and in the long run those opportunities even out and what matters is predicting the future value of a player is his overall ability without regards to the situation.

Which isn't to say that you can't appreciate Phil Humber's perfect game, for instance, but you'd be nuts to think it means much about his ability given the body of evidence you have to go on for his career. 

I think you're over-reaching jac.

you completely missed the point. What good is FIB if what they are trying to quantify is based on situations. Makes no sense that a walk is less harmful then a home run and a strikeout has less impact then either. How can you quantify that without taking situation into account? Cant be done. The situation, as in a mathematical equation is the variable. Depending on what the variable is will determine the outcome. In this case, what is more harmful to a pitcher.

So you're saying you'd rather give up a home run than a walk? Context neutral

In predicting future success of a pitcher at the MLB level, which is the point of FIP, a walk is less important than a HR, and a K is less important (though still a good thing) than either a BB or a HR (though those are both bad).  This is the FIP formula:

FIP = ((13*HR)+(3*(BB+HBP))-(2*K))/IP + constant

Based on the coefficients, a BB has an impact whose magnitude is about 50% greater than a K and a bit less than a 25% of that of a HR.  Note, that a negative coefficient (as with the K) is better here since FIP is scaled to match ERA so lower is better.

Maybe that's all too complicated.  Ks are good, not walking guys is more important than striking them out, not giving up HR is the most important.  That's the essence of FIP.

And, although this oversimplifies things, a guy with a better FIP, all things being equal, is a better bet to succeed in a given situation, which is what I want to know if I'm trying to choose the right guy to have in that spot. If I'm running the Reds on May 20, 2013, I don't care that Aroldis Chapman gave up back-to-back HR to blow the save on May 19, I care whether Aroldis Chapman is my best option right now. And if I'm the Phillies, I don't care that Freddy Galvis took Aroldis Chapman deep to walk off the game on the 19th, he's still nothing more than a backup MIF.

I think jacjac and a couple others have done a fantastic job in this thread... of perfectly demonstrating Bob Ryan's point...

... and no doubt will continue to do so...

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." - Plato

Soylent Green - If you mean that this thread proved that Bob Ryan was correct in believing that the average fan can't comprehend basic math, then I agree. J H provided two links that outline every single decent statistic in baseball, in detail, in their greatest simplicity. jacjackatk then provided a real life example of how to apply one of the incredibly easy-to-understand statistics. And yet still, people here don't have a clue how dangerous, terribly awful and inaccurate Ryan's article is. That's OK though, we'll stop. Lions don't lose sleep over the opinion of sheep.

OldSkool(2) - This thread shows 74 total replies currently... one third are by you. Each an obvious attempt to drum up someone to argue with.  Like everyone else... I'll pass.

Mole hills into mountains again on here. I enjoy fangraphs and the information listed. I know many fantasy players who can quote the numbers ad nauseum. It creates many interesting talking points.

There is such a thing as overthinking.

And yet still, people here don't have a clue how dangerous, terribly awful and inaccurate Ryan's article is. That's OK though, we'll stop. Lions don't lose sleep over the opinion of sheep.

Dangerous?  Lions?  Sheep?

C'mon.  I've told you what my background is.  I love math..numbers.  I manage a large organization that uses advanced techniques to mine many, many terabytes of data that I can tell you affects you every time you take a trip on an airplane.

I've looked at the baseball formulas over the past several years for many of the advanced stats referenced in JH's list.  I've even got two sons who are being/have been evaluated on the basis of this stuff...one made it to MLB last year.  Interesting stuff.  But truthfully, it does not add to MY enjoyment of the game.  I largely don't read them.  I look them up about 3-5 times a year.

I do think players get hot and cold. Baseball has a very large mental component to it.  To say otherwise...to say that what a player did yesterday has no effect on today...means to me you're missing a big part of the game.  I think thats where the question about whether or not you ever played the game came from.

I'm ok with where you get your enjoyment of this game - I see no reason for you to insult those who see it another way.

Often, not always, but often, those who rant and rail against using stats only do so for a few reasons, and whether or not those reasons are valid is debatable.

One is unfamiliarity and another is aversion to change. But probably the biggest is they don’t know how to generate them for themselves, and even if they did they wouldn’t know how to use them.  What’s sad is, all of the above could easily be overcome if more people were willing to admit not just to others that they were way behind the power curve, but to themselves.

For a very long time coaches wouldn’t use new techniques for pitching or hitting, but eventually they admitted the folly of their ways and the last couple of decades has seen huge changes in the game. Eventually the same thing will happen with modern stats, because old sticks in the mud who refuse to use them, will tire of getting thumped by those who do. Its only evolution at work.

I could be wrong here and I am sure I will be corrected if I say this wrong but I don't see or hear "old sticks in the mud" type guys in baseball that I know that totally pooh pooh sabermetrics to where they say the information is not valuable.  I think the point is there is still human elements involved that can't be numberfied that do get pooh poohed. 

Take the other thread about the HS coach going off on his players. I bet there are some that are die hard Sabermetric guys who pooh pooh the human element of coaching, decision making and scouting that support the HS coach in his Rah Rah get your head out of your a## speech and would love to play for a coach like that.  They would say sometimes a coach needs to get into his players, it shows passion it shows he cares.  If one believes that to be true (I'm not saying I do), then you have to accept human elements and non-numerical, gut feeling, the coach has a feeling, the will to win in - in a player within baseball decision making.  If not isn't supporting or believing the Rah Rah coach has a positive influence to get his players attention a contradiction?

This might not pertain to any who have posted in support of sabermetrics here.