"OPS+ vs. wRC+" or "The Battle of the Stats"
by Wraithpk on Jan 19, 2010 2:38 PM EST
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PrintIn a game of numbers like baseball, fans and GM's alike have looked to many stats to attempt to quantify the offensive prowess of a player.
Probably the oldest stat is Batting Average, which tells us how many hits per at-bat a player got. The flaw with this statistic is that walks are completely left out, neither counted as a positive or negative. Also, the power of the hits is not taken into consideration. A single is counted the same as a home run. To validate the ineffectiveness of this stat to tell the whole story, Ichiro and Albert Pujols have almost identical career AVG's, at .333 and .334 respectively. I don't think anyone would argue that Ichiro is as good a hitter, however, so clearly Batting Average is not telling us the whole story.
Another widely used stat is On-Base Percentage. This stat is similar to AVG, but it also counts walks and being hit by a pitch. Similar to AVG, its main failing is that it counts a Home Run the same as a single or walk. So, for the same reason that AVG does not show us the whole picture, OBP is likewise flawed.
A stat that rectifies the issues with AVG and OBP is Slugging Percentage. This stat counts how many total bases per at-bat a player got. While it addresses the main flaw of AVG and OBP, it has its own flaws. First, it, like AVG, ignores BBs and HBPs. Second, the weights used for each type of hit are not indicative of how many runs, on average, it will be worth. SLG counts a Home Run as four times more important than a Single, but a Home Run does not net you four times as many runs as a single, on average.
While they have their failings, OBP and SLG do tell us very important things: how good is a player at getting on base, and how good is a player at getting extra-base hits. An attempt to merge these two together into one all-around "offensive prowess" stat is OPS, On-Base Plus Slugging. It is exactly what it is named, OBP + SLG = OPS. Since its introduction in 1984, this stat has become very popular because of its simplicity. It is its simplicity, however, that is its greatest downfall. First of all, it is based on two very flawed statistics. Rather than fixing the flaws inherent in either stat, it just adds them together and hopes their flaws cancel each other out. To a certain extent they do, but this is certainly not the best way to go about doing this. Second, OBP and SLG are on completely different scales, so adding them together is meaningless if you don't scale them together first. For example, say you have two players who both have an OPS of .800. Player A has an OBP of .400 and SLG of .400, while Player B has an OBP of .350 and SLG of .450. OPS says these players are equal, but that is not true at all! Player A will create more runs for his team with his ability to reach base. Plainly put, OPS undervalues OBP, and overvalues SLG.
Finally, we reach the first finalist in our battle of the statistics, OPS+, or On-Base Plus Slugging Plus. OPS+ takes OPS, makes an adjustment for the parks the player played in, and then compares that result to the average in the league that year, making a score of 100 average, anything below that below average, and above it above average. This does two things to make OPS better. First, it takes into account if a player is in a hitter friendly or pitcher friendly park. Basically, if two hitters have equal OPS, but one plays in Coor's Field while the other plays in Petco Park, the player who plays in Petco is actually better because he's hitting in a tougher ballpark, and OPS+ reflects this. Finally, OPS+ allows us to compare players across different eras. A league average OPS is defined as an OPS+ of 100 in any given year, so we can see how good a hitter was for his day, and compare hitters across any era of play. While OPS+ is an improvement over OPS, is still shares the inherent problems of OPS, though.
Let's take a different approach now. Throw all the conventional stats away. What is the purpose of offense? It's to score runs, am I right? As I mentioned earlier, one of the flaws of SLG was that it valued a HR as four times better than a single, but a HR will not net your team four times more runs than a single, on average. If there is no one on base, a HR gives your team one run. If in that same at bat, the hitter gets a single, there is still a chance he will come around to score. How many more runs, on average, will a HR net you than a single? Enter linear weights. By analyzing decades of data, Sabermetricians were able to find the average run value of every possible outcome at the plate. For instance, a HR has a run value of greater than 1, since you might have runners on base. A single has a greater run value than a walk because runners will often go from second to home, or first to third on a single. By comparing every result of a plate appearance to an out, which is defined as a run value of 0, we can find how many more runs each result is worth above an out.
This brings us to a wonderful statistic known as wOBA, or Weighted On-Base Average. This statistic weights the different outcomes of an at-bat, similar to how SLG weights different hits, but it uses the linear weights found by analyzing the decades of data we have. The following is the equation for wOBA:
((0.72 x NIBB) + (0.75 x HBP) + (0.90 x 1B) + (0.92 x RBOE) + (1.24 x 2B) + (1.56 x 3B) + (1.95 x HR) + (.25 x SB) - (.50 x CS)) / PA
NIBB is non-intentional walks, since batters have no control over an intentional walk, and RBOE is reached base on error. First of all, wOBA is great because it uses much more precise weights than SLG. It also accounts for pretty much anything a hitter can do at the plate, and even includes stealing bases. This lets us judge the overall offensive ability of a guy who steals a lot of bases against a guy who hits a lot of home runs, and see which is actually producing more runs. wOBA is scaled to look like OBP, so league average is around .340, which fluctuates from year to year, a great hitter is above .400, and a poor hitter is below .300. wOBA is also great because it lets us easily calculate how many more runs above average a hitter will get for your team in a year. All you do is take the difference of their wOBA and the league average wOBA, divide by 1.15 (which is the scaling factor used to make wOBA look like OBP), and finally multiply by the hitter's plate appearances.
Finally, we come to the second finalist in our battle of the statistics: wRC+, or Weighted Runs Created Plus. For those of you who are good with analogies, wRC+ : wOBA :: OPS+ : OPS. Put simply, wRC+ takes wOBA, adjusts it for park factors, and then normalizes it so that league average in any given year is a wRC+ of 100. As you can see, wRC+ comes out looking just like OPS+, but it is based on the far more accurate wOBA. It also includes more information, like stealing bases.
While wRC+ might not be absolutely perfect, it is by far the best statistic we have to judge overall offensive production right now. You can find wRC+ on www.fangraphs.com under the "advanced" tab for hitters. With the advent of wOBA and wRC+, there is really no reason to ever use OPS or OPS+ ever again.
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btw...
sorry this is so long, but if you bear through and read the whole thing, I think it will enlighten a lot of you and help you be better judges of baseball ability.
Well that's condescending as F
http://newyorksportsjerk.blogspot.com/
by New York Sports Jerk on Jan 19, 2010 3:34 PM EST up reply actions
Ok, what I said: read this article about stats having to do with baseball ability, and you might learn new things about stats that will help you in your judging of players. How is that condescending at all? If there was even one thing in the entire article you didn’t know, then that sentence is a fact. If you knew all of it already and didn’t learn anything, then it doesn’t apply to you. I wrote the article to help fellow Yankee fans understand some of the more modern player evaluation tools, not to be condescending to anyone.
Here's how I read it...
“All the stats you use to measure a player’s ability are worthless, here’s something I know that you don’t.”
I wrote the article to help fellow Yankee fans understand some of the more modern player evaluation tools, not to be condescending to anyone.
That’s pretty much the definition of condescending, since it suggests that your evaluation of players is better than anyone else’s.
http://newyorksportsjerk.blogspot.com/
by New York Sports Jerk on Jan 19, 2010 5:14 PM EST up reply actions
As for the actual content of the post...
…I’m sure wRC+ and the like are wonderful tools, but I’m satisfied with a simpler measure of a player’s ability that doesn’t require an applied mathematics degree.
OPS+ is a solid statistic. If using it makes me (at 30 years old) seem like an out-of-touch dinosaur, so be it.
http://newyorksportsjerk.blogspot.com/
by New York Sports Jerk on Jan 19, 2010 5:22 PM EST up reply actions
Hardly out of touch
Using OPS+ means that you understand and acknowledge important concepts like park values, average for era, and on base percentage.
We can dither all we want about position values or how much one park differs from another- that’s a more nuanced argument that half of the sports writers in the country are able to make.
"Have faith in the Yankees, my son. Think of the great DiMaggio."
you don't need
an applied mathematics degree to understand weighted averages. I believe that was covered somewhere between 8th and 11th grade.
by tombradylikesdudes on Jan 19, 2010 6:16 PM EST up reply actions
I couldn't concentrate in math...
…the girl who sat in front of me had a really nice ass.
http://newyorksportsjerk.blogspot.com/
by New York Sports Jerk on Jan 19, 2010 6:22 PM EST up reply actions 1 recs
That's fine.
But I take exception to you calling Wraithpk “condescending.” He is explaining mathematical concepts that you yourself admit is beyond what you studied in school. Fine. But, it’s not like he is pulling these voodoo stats out of his ass. People much smarter than you, me, Wraithpk, jscape, etc. are using these tools to evaluate players right now.
For example, many around baseball agree that the Mariners had one hell of an offseason. Behind that effort was Jack Zduriencik and his assistants who saw a market inefficiency that undervalued defense last year. You can bet that he cares about wOBA and wRC+ along with UZR/150 and whatnot as he constructs his team.
My point is that you don’t need to know the precise formula behind these stats. Just don’t write them off so quickly as they are most useful to people who are REALLY making player movement decisions.
by tombradylikesdudes on Jan 19, 2010 6:35 PM EST up reply actions
uhm ...
I don’t mean to speak for N.Y.S.J., but i believe the ‘condescending’ remark was solely directed at this statement (being a reply to it and all):
“sorry this is so long, but if you bear through and read the whole thing, I think it will enlighten a lot of you and help you be better judges of baseball ability.”
the “i think it will enlighten a lot of you” is fairly condescending from an objective standpoint, given that it implies that we (fellow avid baseball fans) require an explanation of statistics. I believe that was all he meant, and if it was, he was right … it was “condescending” in the sense that it showed “a sense of patronizing superiority”. (kind of like how i was condescending just then by putting in the definition of “condescending”.)
relax
Listen, I’m sure that if Wrathpk’s true goal was to condescend and offend readers of this blog, he would have written something very simple – along the lines of f*** you – as opposed to spending probably two hours composing this blog.
The reality is that any time we take about advanced statistics beyond just a casual mention, we get inevitable comments like “I wonder if there’s a stat that measures how thick the corn in my crap is” or “you people must not like to watch games”.
This post was enlightening. I’m sure his intent was not to be condescending, at least not any more condescending than then “corn in my crap” comments, so if you’re feelings were hurt, I’m sure he’s very sorry.
Now that it’s been said, please move on.
no need to relax.
i was merely suggesting a clarification. To this line specifically:
“But I take exception to you calling Wraithpk "condescending." He is explaining mathematical concepts that you yourself admit is beyond what you studied in school. Fine. But, it’s not like he is pulling these voodoo stats out of his ass. People much smarter than you, me, Wraithpk, jscape, etc. are using these tools to evaluate players right now.”
I was merely pointing out that he didn’t think the explanation was condescending, but only the remark after the explanation.
no more lectures, eh?
Did the Yankees
use these stats to put together the team that won 4 World Championships from ’96 – ’00?
I don’t think these were around back then, but they most certainly used whatever stats they thought were the best judge of talent at the time. Do you think GM’s just give contracts to players blindly without looking at what they’ve done?
That is what
I was getting at. “looking at what they’ve done”, + OBP, RBI, R, BA w/RISP, isn’t all they need? Isn’t that what baseball IS? Guys scoring runs and guys driving runs in?
How good a hitter is is much more than that. As was said, things like RBI and Runs are far too dependent on your team. If you have a good team around you, these numbers will look better. wRC+ tells you how good a hitter is. It is a much more accurate tool than OBP, BA, or SLG, and it is just one stat instead of comparing 3 stats.
I think
the availability of good statistics is good in the same sense as having any good set of tools would be for whatever you’re doing. That’s what the stats really are in the hands of a GM: tools. Some of the newer statistics put more refined tools into the hands of the user… or more focused ones… or more specialized ones.
I see two mistakes that can happen here… and again, these same mistakes happen in all other walks of life, too.
Mistake 1: someone who’s been doing things a particular way ignores the new tools as if they don’t exist… ending up in a position where others who are<.strong> using the new tools have a competitive advantage.
Mistake 2: becoming so enamored of the new tools as to lose perspective, and view everything through only those tools… much like the business MBA types who know the company financials through a spreadsheet but never have walked through a plant or chatted with any actual workers to understand how their company actually goes about doing their business.
I suspect the best GM will operate on a combination of baseball knowledge and statistical analysis… that would give them a better vantage point than either could alone.
I absolutely agree
for someone who’s a GM of an organization, you need both good statistics to tell you what someone has done, and good scouts that can tell you things that the stats might not reflect. Maybe a young player doesn’t hit a lot of HR’s, but he hits a lot of flyballs that die on the warning track. With some more growth and strength training those balls will start going over the wall.
If the stats were the end-all be-all, we would have no need for scouts. The problem is that a lot of fans think they can judge players by eyeballing like a scout does, but we are not scouts! Unless you’ve actually been a scout for a major league team, we should all stick to the stats.
but you apparently don't agree ...
he called it a “mistake” to become “so enamored [by] the new tools as to lose perspective, and view everything through only those tools”. you respond by saying we should stick to the stats unless we’ve worked as a scout … am i missing something? Do you actually find your knowledge of baseball so deficient that you can’t see potential in a young player without crunching numbers?
No, if you actually watch all the games, I’m sure you can judge players decently well. I watch every Yankees game, so I could tell you how good each player is. I don’t watch every other team’s games, or minor league games. The majority of seeing other players is on highlights on ESPN, and they obviously only show the good moments. If you trusted that, you would think Pujols only hits HR and never strikes out, because that’s all they show him doing. Obviously you can tell he’s a great player, but how great? The stats tell you that.
Your argument is entirely unmerited, though, because wOBA is easier to calculate than OPS is. It’s not condescending to say that wRC+ is a far better stat than OPS+, it’s a fact that it is more accurate for predicting the run value of a batter. Why would you purposely use a less accurate statistic when a better one is very easily available to you? Stubbornness is the only reason.
no, stubbornness is not the only reason ...
look at all the statistics you want, one need only watch a ball player to tell if he’s any good. I mean really, you need a mathematical formula to tell you Pujols can hit? Can you not tell from his confidence at the plate, a simple batting average, and watching him bat a couple times?
Statistics just crowd out common sense and actual baseball knowledge.
But what if you went to a game and watched
Miguel Cairo go 3-5 and A-Rod got a golden sombrero. Using your eyes might not let you know who is really the better hit.
Crowds are won and lost and won again, but our hearts beat for the diehards.
by Edwantsacracker on Jan 19, 2010 9:20 PM EST up reply actions
really?
take a lesson from tombrady and at least give me a hard one …
and yes, if the choice is between cairo and a-rod, eyes are really all you need (and maybe not even that) to let you know who is the better hitter. If you can’t, i’m going to assume you’ve never actually picked up a baseball bat, are following the wrong sport, and/or know nothing about how baseball is actually played …
wouldn’t that be a safe assumption? all this talk of statistics aside, wouldn’t it?
Eyes CAN deceive... unless you're watching a lot of baseball.
I’m finding Ed’s example valid… say you watch only one baseball game in a season and in that game, Cairo and A-Rod perform as suggested… one would have to conclude that Cairo was the better hitter.
Unless you mean watching each player’s approach at the plate, what their swing looks like and such are the things to watch in determining which is the better hitter. That seems to be where you’re going based on your Pujols comment? For now I’ll assume that’s the case.
But what if you were watching Cairo and Dave Winfield. (I know that technically couldn’t happen since their playing time didn’t overlap.) Suppose Winfield struck out every time up on that particular day, and Cairo had a HR, a 2B, plus two well-hit line drives that were hit right at outfielders. Winfield’s swing looked all herky-jerky, and he often even fell down after missing the ball. Seeing that from a guy who strikes out every time, if that’s the only game one saw, would have to lead to an inaccurate perception that Winfield was a terrible hitter, no?
If you instead watched a large number of games, you could have a much better chance of seeing all the hitters in more accurate terms. Seems to me statistical data is the stand-in for going to every baseball game played in a given season. It doesn’t replace watching baseball, nor common sense, nor actual baseball knowledge, but it’s a handy supplement to those things, to offer another data point and make the above misreads less likely. It’s not about either-or, it’s about the right mix of both.
but ...
that’s only if you equate a bad performance one day with being a bad hitter overall. Even great hitters go through slumps … they’re still great hitters, they just didn’t get a hit.
“Unless you mean watching each player’s approach at the plate, what their swing looks like and such are the things to watch in determining which is the better hitter.”
that is close enough to what i meant …
“It doesn’t replace watching baseball, nor common sense, nor actual baseball knowledge, but it’s a handy supplement to those things, to offer another data point and make the above misreads less likely.”
then we agree to a pretty fair extent. I’m just one who doesn’t think it takes a mass of statistics to determine the difference between Cairo and A-Rod. I also think people should relax and just watch the games …
but hey, if statistics do it for you or make the game more fun or easier to understand, then by all means …
The problem with this example is that
you already have a clear idea of what Cairo/A-Rod can do because you’ve seen their careers unfold over your lifetime. And the hypothetical one day sample size is bias by what you already know.
How about this hypothetical? Say you are hired as a GM of an expansion teams in the Nippon Baseball League and have 3 days to prepare for the draft. It seems that your strategy would be to pull three all-nighters to watch video of all available Japanese baseball players. Seems awfully inefficient to me, not to mention incredibly ineffective.
by tombradylikesdudes on Jan 20, 2010 2:12 AM EST up reply actions
I think
that’s how we wound up with Igawa.
"Have faith in the Yankees, my son. Think of the great DiMaggio."
so has no one else been paying attention?
no scouts? no staff?
let me say ...
i don’t think they are altogether useless …. i just don’t see the same value in them you do.
I think we should also consider
that stats aren’t normally used to compare A-Rod and Miguel Cairo. It seems pretty obvious that stats can be very helpful when comparing to similar* players, as opposed to players that are vastly different in talent. Sure, a GM can watch players all day and conclude that A-Rod is better than Cairo, but I don’t think you could say the same about comparing A-Rod and Pujols, or Cairo and Hairston jr. This* is where the stats actually come in, and if the naysayers of baseball statistics want to keep ignoring these advantages than I’ll just have to be content with the fact that they’re not running the Yankees.
because
A. you can’t really see everyone all the time.
and more importantly
B. because your using extreme cases, yes anyone can tell that Pujols is awesome and say… Yuniesky Betancourt is bad. but what about players much less extreme? say Swisher vs Nady, or insert a random collection of everyday players that aren’t bad but aren’t super stars either.
C. Because players are not always in the same mold, how do we compare a Adam Dunn (a guy that should DH , can’t hit for average but walks a ton and hits things he does manage to touch a long way) against a Melky Cabrera? ( a guy that hits for better average. but much less walk / power, better defensively as well and a bit of speed value). (WAR says that last year they’re very similar in overall value)
teams make and break seasons on the margins, no one lose because they can’t tell if Pujols is better than Casey Kotchman, they lose because they can’t tell if Nick Swisher is better than Xavier Nady.
by RollingWave on Jan 20, 2010 10:46 PM EST up reply actions
Just as an example
A guy at the gym who I talk to a lot about baseball used to really talk up Nady. I’ll admit I didn’t know much about the guy. My buddy convinced me that Nady was an All-Star caliber player, and it was a huge hit when he got injured and Swisher was put in to replace him.
Here’s what the stats say. The following are 3 year weighted averages. In case anyone doesn’t know how to do weighted 3 year averages, you multiply 2007 stats by 3, 2008 by 4, and 2009 by 5, add them all together and then divide by 12. This gives you an average that weights more recent years higher. For Nady I used 06-08 since he was injured all of 09.
Swisher: wRC+ = 117, WAR = 2.7
Nady: wRC+ = 117.8, WAR = 2
Conclusion: Offensively they are equal. The higher WAR is because Swisher averaged 151 games per year, while Nady in 06-08 averaged 134 games. That’s 15 games where you don’t have to use your 4th outfielder to start. Also, Swisher is an average defensive fielder, while Nady has been below average.
Why was my friend so off with his judgement? He put way too much emphasis on Batting Average. Swisher’s average the past 3 seasons has been .243, and Nady’s was .288. People who rely on incomplete stats like Batting Average are doomed to make bad judgments on players.
when shelley duncan first came up
he looked very confident at the plate, had a good batting average, and hit a couple bombs.
by tombradylikesdudes on Jan 19, 2010 10:36 PM EST up reply actions
and it's pretty clear that most scouts
see him as a AAAA player that can run into a fastball but his deficiencies greatly outweigh his strengths. My point is that over a small time period, anyone, not matter how great/sucky can look very good/very bad.
by tombradylikesdudes on Jan 20, 2010 2:00 AM EST up reply actions
Here's a better hypothetical.
The Yankees are looking for a RH platoon partner for Gardner. Can you use your common sense and baseball knowledge to enlighten us as to who of the following would be the best option?
(1) Reed Johnson
(2) Xavier Nady
(3) Fernando Tatis
(4) Anyone else that is RH and costs <5 million.
by tombradylikesdudes on Jan 19, 2010 10:40 PM EST up reply actions
i choose #4
i’d have kept melky or hairston, jr.
i’m still pissed about the Nady trade.
based on what?
I was hoping for a substantiated argument.
by tombradylikesdudes on Jan 20, 2010 1:56 AM EST up reply actions
Simple answer...
…OPS+ is more than enough for my statistical needs as a fan, and if I made an attempt to learn every new stat that comes out I’d have no time to do anything else. When the hell would any of these numbers come up in a person’s day to day life anyway? This degree of statistical analysis is designed for people who work in scouting departments, and to settle silly little arguments on sports message boards. That’s not stubbornness, that’s called “reality.” This information is useless outside of those two areas I described.
And no, it isn’t condescending to claim one stat is better than another, what is condescending is acting like you’re Moses, coming down from the mount to “enlighten” us on how to be better fans. Regardless of the statistics, games are won and lost on the performance of the players on that day, not what they’ve done up to that point. They are useful only in telling you what has happened, not what will happen.
http://newyorksportsjerk.blogspot.com/
by New York Sports Jerk on Jan 21, 2010 1:08 AM EST up reply actions
To each their own
I’m reading a science article right now about some super atom collision machine that has cost $9B+ to built. To me, the machine is stupid and a complete waste of resources.
I remember being taught in grade school that an atom is the smallest particle of matter that exists. That “fact” isn’t true anymore and I could care less about an atom’s actual composition.
Future scientific debates by interested parties will be spawned concerning the new findings.
Just because I find all of this science irrelevant doesn’t mean that it’s insignificant as many aspects of future sci/med/tech/etc. advancement could be affected by this collider.
Whether we choose to ignore it or not, sabermetrics is in fact currently affecting the way on how most baseball general managers are making organizational decisions. Some of us inquisitive fans want to attempt to delve deeper into understanding those said GM’s thought processes and “different” ways of evaluating players.
by Scooby Snacks on Jan 21, 2010 3:22 AM EST up reply actions
I just don’t understand your reasoning, though. wOBA is more simple to calculate than OPS. It’s the same thing as SLG, except it uses more accurate weights for each type of hit and includes things like walks, HBP, and stealing bases.
Really, though, do you actually calculate these stats yourself? I don’t know about you, but I just look them up on websites. Even if you don’t understand everything having to do with wOBA and wRC+, if everyone on here is agreeing that wRC+ is much more accurate than OPS+, why wouldn’t you use wRC+ instead? They even look exactly the same, they are both normalized so that 100 is average.
Like I said, practical application...
…at what point in my life would I ever need such a precise measure of a ballplayer’s ability? I assure you, when I’m sitting there watching a game with friends at a bar, I really don’t need to know a player’s wRC, or even OPS for that matter. At least I can explain OPS as “on base plus slugging” should the need arise, which it probably won’t.
You can tell me all you want about a player’s stats, but ultimately the only thing that matters during any particular game is whether or not he comes through. Unless I end up with a job in a scouting department or with a Hall of Fame vote, such detailed statistical analysis is ultimately worthless.
Maybe that’s me wanting to enjoy the game on a simpler level. I’m not in charge of building a roster, my only role in the game of baseball is as a fan that watches games.
http://newyorksportsjerk.blogspot.com/
by New York Sports Jerk on Jan 21, 2010 1:32 PM EST up reply actions
that's true...
the only need we would have for these stats is in discussions with other fans. It’s not like I’m pouring over stats when the game is on, I just look at them when someone asks me my opinion of a player, then I’ll take a look at what they’ve done.
Am I the only one that
sleeps with a Bill James Handbook under my pillow and keeps a ruler in the bathroom to measure corn bits?
by Scooby Snacks on Jan 21, 2010 2:36 PM EST up reply actions
Wouldn’t a compass be easier to use?
"Have faith in the Yankees, my son. Think of the great DiMaggio."
I’ll readily admit that my method could be possibly flawed. For the purpose of compiling sufficient sample size data, I can’t really afford to stab and corrupt my subjects with a compass spike since I don’t have very steady hands. You could suggest that I eat more corn but I prefer to limit my daily carb intake.
by Scooby Snacks on Jan 21, 2010 3:34 PM EST up reply actions
"better judges of baseball ability"
OBP, Hitting WRISP, RBI, Runs scored, Good glove. That’s how you judge a baseball player. What these new statistics do is just dissect these numbers.
You can’t judge a player by some of these numbers. I explained thoroughly the problems with OBP. RBI’s and Runs scored are entirely dependent on your team. If the guys in front of you aren’t getting on base, you won’t have many RBI’s. Likewise, if the guys behind you aren’t driving you in, you won’t have many runs scored. We’re attempting to find an overall offensive statistic that is entirely up to the batter and not dependent on what the guys before or after him do.
One thing that wRC+ does not report is something like hitting with RISP, because it is designed to not care what the situation is, it’s an overall average. If you want to see how much better someone is in clutch situations, look at the “clutch” stat on fangraphs. This takes into account men in scoring position, how late in the game it is, how close the score is, etc.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.
That’s one of the problem with these internets. That being said, if you were trying to be witty, a hearty chuckle in your direction sir.
If not though, wow. I’ll leave the others alone in favor or “Good glove”. Going by that, certain players have “good gloves” because they get bad reads off balls and compensate with excellent speed, or because the national media votes that they were better at their position relative to other players at his position through the course of the season? I agree with most when I say that there isn’t currently a statistic that perfectly encompasses defensive ability. UZR does a courageous job of trying to take into account average amount of chances and outs made by a player while also taking into account more traditional stats like fielding percentage and assists. However, simply watching 3 games of a guy playing centerfield and seeing him make a diving catch or a couple running catches doesn’t give you the right to say he has a “good glove”. It really is ridiculous.
I’m not sure I even want to touch the quantitative stats “RBI” and “Runs scored” that you mentioned since they are pretty much universally agreed to be just about useless since they depend entirely one’s teammates.
Again, disregard all of this if you were being sarcastic, which I sincerely hope was the case.
by Leviticus6688 on Jan 19, 2010 3:29 PM EST up reply actions
Excellent post by the way Wraithpk
Personally I’ve always preferred wOBA or it’s sister stat eqA (Equivalent Average) simply because they compare with regular stats OBP and AVG well. That is, if a player has an eqA of .300 and a wOBA of .380, it’d be easy to see he is an excellent hitter simply by plugging these numbers into conventional stats.
Good work on the Post Wraithpk
Comparing eqA and wOBA to their corresponding regular stats worked for me for some time, but after a while, I realized all I was doing was determining how far away the number was from the average and how far away it was from the premier players. Basing the number off of 100 makes that even easier for me.
Yeah, I kind of consider wOBA and EqA to be pretty interchangeable. I saw an article once where a guy compared them for players over years of data, and they are within a couple percentage points of each other. I just prefer wOBA because that’s what fangraphs uses, and also because of how easily it translates to Runs Above Average.
I wonder if they have a stat...
for predicting the circumference of the corn in my crap?
It gets late real early out here....
Nah
My money’s on Nate Silver. He could probably also figure out the crap’s Water Displacement Above Replacement.
"Have faith in the Yankees, my son. Think of the great DiMaggio."
Good job
Note that the SB and CS terms should be in the numerator alongside all the other variables.
evaluating batters
What if we graded batters on their performance against potential. A batter coming up with no one on base has a potential of 4 bases. A single would give him a .250 average. A home run would give him a 1.000 average. If the batter comes up with the bases loaded, he has a potential of 10 bases. A walk would get him a .100 averrage; a hit scoring two and leaving men on first and third would be worth 6 bases of the ten available giving him an average of .600. I don’t know what the numbers might look like over the period of a season, but the batter would not be penalized if his teammates fail to get on, and would not be unduly rewarded if they did. It might be hell to keep teack of, but I think it would clearly define the clutch hitter.
RE24 takes into account
how many players are on base (where 24 denotes the 24 base states or outs/on base permutations).
by tombradylikesdudes on Jan 19, 2010 6:25 PM EST up reply actions
along those lines...
the “Clutch” stat on fangraphs gives you a nice overall idea of how a player does in High Leverage situations. A score of 0 means they perform exactly the same in high leverage situations as they do in leverage neutral situations, a negative score means they do worse, and a positive score means they do better.
OK thanks!!
I bookmarked this. I’m going to have to come back here to remind myself of what these things mean probably ten times before it sinks in. I hate math.
Really well done Wrathpk.
I though you made the concepts of OPS+ and wRC+ fairly accessible to everyone.
On a side note, the negative commentary is both disappointing and exasperating.
by tombradylikesdudes on Jan 19, 2010 6:20 PM EST reply actions
Nice job
That was quite clear and well motivated. I wouldn’t have minded a few specific examples, though. For instance, since you used them for your counterexample to AVG, what are Pujols’ and Ichiro’s career wRC+ (or even wOBA) values?
Usqueadbaugham! Anam muck an dhoul ! Did ye drink me doornail?
Pujols: wOBA = .436, wRC+ = 173
Ichiro: wOBA = .356, wRC+ = 122
Just to show how good Pujols has been, Bonds’ career wRC+ was 177. This brings up another advantage to wRC+. If you look at Pujol’s numbers, they don’t look as high as Bonds. This is because the run environment now is lower than it was in the 90s and early 2000s due to rampant PED use. This shows that Pujols is almost just as dominant today as Bonds was in his career.
Thanks. I think those wOBA values compared to each other as well as the ones Scooby Snacks posted in the next reply line up pretty well with my gut feeling of where those two rank relative to each other and other players.
As for Pujols’ (and Bonds’) wRC+ values, those are startlingly high.
Usqueadbaugham! Anam muck an dhoul ! Did ye drink me doornail?
2009 wOBA values
for each position needed to get league average and replacement level production:
(Average Level wOBA / Replacement Level wOBA)
All MLB players: .327 / .289
C: .310 / .273
SS: .320 / .280
2B/3B/CF: .326 / .289
RF/LF: .342 / .305
1B: .350 / .313
DH: .366 / .329
Good post, with questions.
Thank you Wraithpk, your fanpost was a good read and very helpful. I didn’t feel like you talked down to me and assume that wasn’t your intent, either. It’s easy to misread things when all one has is the text, with no visual feedback, sound of one’s voice and such… that’s the downside of written posts on the Internet I guess. One has to write carefully to avoid those sorts of potential misreads.
I do find a couple questions about what you’ve presented.
How is a sacrifice factored into wOBP and wRC+? It’s not a hit, walk, or RBOE, but it does result in a run scoring, and more often than not it’s something the batter intended to do. If it’s a product of the at-bat, generated a run, and we have statistics to track it, how is it reflected in the wOBP formula?
I’m having a problem understanding the weights assigned to 3B vs. HR. If a 3B is credited as generating 1.56 runs, why is a HR credited with only 1.95 runs? Presumably the HR results in exactly the same scoring as a 3B but by definition with one additional run (the batter)… so why wouldn’t the HR be weighted as something like 2.56? Likewise, why would HBP have a different weighting than NIBB? The game treats both identically: the batter goes to first, and any runners advance one base each. So why are those events treated as if they generate different numbers of runs?
Thanks for the help, this is great stuff.
Weights
The linear weights in wOBA and wRC+ were determined empirically by measuring the average run expectancy before and after every type of play with each one of the 24 possible base/out states. Then by weighing each change by the chance a player will come to bat with that particular state, you can determine the value of each type of play.
Specifically, HBP and NIBBs have different coefficients because they occur at different rates in different situations (Walks happen more often when first base is open). The small difference between 3B and HR is because, as you say, they are the same event except that an additional run scores with a HR and all bases are empty. For a triple, all bases are cleared and a man is left on third (unless an error occurs). The average difference between having a run score and having a man on third is .61 runs. That additional run will score eventually much of the time.
As to Sacrifices, (I think) they’re not included as a judgement call. Looking purely at Run Expectancy, in most cases, a Sac actually decreases the run potential in an inning. The coefficient would most likely be negative. However, we can agree that many Sacs actually increase the team’s chance of winning the game. This is because they are usually done in Game Score situations where the certainty trading a run for an out is beneficial, or at least not as harmful as the pure base/out state would have it appear. Since linear weights doesn’t take score, or variation in the expected performance by subsequent hitters into account, the coefficient would still be negative. As a judgement call, Sacrifices are excluded for that reason, and because they say more about the base/out/run state that the hitter finds himself in than the ability of the player in question.
Regarding the naming of the stats
For those lost with some of these names…
Seems to me every stat with a lowercase “w” in front uses those linear weights in its calculation, and every stat with a “+” at the end is park- and league-adjusted, plus normalized so 100 represents league average.
So OPS+ is OPS having been park- and league-adjusted, and scaled to 100 average.
And wOBP is similar to OBP but calculated using linear weights.
And wRC is a calculation of total runs created by that hitter, calculated using linear weights.
And wRC+ is same as wRC but park- and league-adjusted, and normalized to 100 average.
That makes it a little easier to remember which “special sauce” is in each of these calculations.
while i appreciate
the value of statistics and their uses in analyzing sports, I’m curious about one thing:
It was stated:
You can’t judge a player by some of these numbers. I explained thoroughly the problems with OBP. RBI’s and Runs scored are entirely dependent on your team. If the guys in front of you aren’t getting on base, you won’t have many RBI’s. Likewise, if the guys behind you aren’t driving you in, you won’t have many runs scored. We’re attempting to find an overall offensive statistic that is entirely up to the batter and not dependent on what the guys before or after him do.
Isn’t baseball a team sport? And the objective is for the team to win the game? How do your stats (or are there any) take into account a player’s team performance in relation to the team he plays on? If player A has a higher than average HR total and higher than average BA but has low RBI and Runs totals, do you have a stat that accounts for the poor production of those hitting ahead of and behind him? I understand your point about trying to find an offensive statistic that measures the player’s individual performance but I’m just wondering if we’re still missing a stat that reflects how much of a player’s performance is dependent on his team’s performance.
Team Performance
Baseball is a team sport and RBIs and Runs are good stats with which to measure teams. However, on an individual level, they add very little to player evaluation. RBIs on a player level measures the chance that runners are on base for the hitter and the chance the player has of getting a hit that will bring those runners in. The only thing that is the hitter controls in that situation is the chance of getting a good hit. That is better measured by something like SLG. He can only be credited with that part of the equation. Similarly with Runs, a player can only account for his OBP, credit for knocking him in should go to batters that follow him.
If you wanted to see why a high BA/HR guy has a low RBI/Runs total, you just need to look at the OBP/SLG of those around him. These two statistics aren’t really designed for this but they will serve as a good proxy since stats designed for this aren’t out there.
To my knowledge there aren’t many publicly available stats that measure a players performance (how well the player is hitting, not how many rbis or runs he’s scoring) in relation to the players around him. This is probably because the team has only a very small effect on the individual player. For all the talk about protection in line ups, it doesn’t have a measurable effect on player performance. That’s not to say it doesn’t exist, simply that it doesn’t cause a significant enough change in BA, OBP SLG or HR etc, to measure.
I think it’s best to put it this way – getting on base is the sole responsibility of a single hitter, while scoring a run (except for a solo home run) is a shared responsibility between at least two hitters.
It’s very not advanced, but taking Runs Scored/Times on Base and also RBIs/Number of men on base is going to give you a general idea of how good the team around a given hitter is.
Case in point – in 2004, Barry Bonds had one of the best five or ten seasons ever by a hitter (chemically enhanced or not). He reached base safely 376 and scored 129 runs.
Meanwhile, in 2008 Hanley Ramirez reached base safely 266 times and scored 125 runs.
Obviously, Ramirez stole 35 bases in ’08 while Bonds stole very few on ’04, and position in the batting order is going to matter somewhat as well. But in the end, the number of runs a hitter scores or drives in is directly related to how well everyone else is doing.
thanks
for both your responses :)
They answered my questions quite aptly.
One more question: is it possible to average out a team’s weighted averages like you can with averaging out the team’s ERA or batting average? It’d be interesting to see the Red Sox OPS+ vs the Yankees OPS+, averaged out, to see who really has the better offensive numbers, rather than looking at position vs. position or player vs. player.
I’m guessing that runs scored and RBI might be good data to compared team vs. team and leave the individual stats alone, but I’m just curious.
Thanks again for your good replies.
Evaluating Teams
When measuring a team’s offense, the unit of measurement should usually be Runs Scored since that’s the overall goal of an offense. In the middle of a season, you can use actual Runs, or better yet, some run estimator. The reason it’s often better to use a run estimator than actual runs is that the estimators will not factor in context dependent data that is most often the result of luck. Baseball Prospectus has EQR, equivalent runs, and it’s freely available. It’s also possible to create a team wOBA and use that to estimate run potential of the offense.
That’s all well and good when judging a team in season, but if you want to predict what adding a particular player would do to the offense, you can add player’s projected wRCs (not wRC+, which is a rate statistic based on 100 as average) together to get an idea of how good each lineup is, or how many runs the lineup is likely to produce. Note that this isn’t a good way to predict the teams Runs for the season because bench players often take up a sizeable amount of plate appearances and wRC is rated to expected playing time. The reason that adding/ averaging wOBA or wRC+ is a good way to measure a team’s offense is because they are run estimators, and therefore value individual player contributions proportionally to the number of runs a team would score.
That might have been a little wordy, but yes, as a shortcut, just averaging each player’s wOBA or wRC+ will give you a decent idea of how good an offense is.
Question
In the wOBA calculation, why is it that stealing a base has a weight of +1/4, but getting caught has double that weight of -1/2?
Does that seems kind of drastic to anyone?
I don't think it's drastic
I believe the number of outs there are in an inning have a slightly greater impact that what base a runner is on when we’re talking about the probability of scoring a run.
Using the same types of historical weighted data that’s used to drive the wRC stat, It’s been proven that, in a vacuum (i.e excluding extreme situations like extra innings in Game 7 of the World Series), sacrifice bunting with no outs and a runner on first only increases a team’s likelihood of scoring by a negligible margin.
I don’t know where to look up the probabilities (i.e a runner on first, no outs gives you X% chance of scoring a run) but I do know that the difference between a runner on second and no outs and nobody on base and one out is HUGE, and that’s why a caught stealing carries twice the weight of a successful steal.
Right,
The difference between having a runner on first and having a runner on second is reflected in the stealing coefficient. The difference between having a runner on first and having no runners on with an additional out is reflected in the caught coefficient. Take the case of a man on first no outs steal attempt.
Man on first 0 outs: ~.9 runs
Man on second 0 outs: ~1.15 runs
Bases Empty 1 out: ~.28 runs.
That’s a .25 difference gain for a steal to second and a .6 loss for getting caught. The actual weights of .25 and -.5 account for all possible stolen bases, the rate at which they occur / the number of opportunities for each, and all possible results after the steal including errors on the throws.
Thanks for the run-down. Seemed drastic to me at first, but this was enough to convince me.
As a side-note, is there a list of which spring training games will be on YES? Seems like the yankees.com and yesnetwork.com don’t have it posted yet.
by YankeesPWNu on Jan 20, 2010 11:21 AM EST up reply actions
In the history of the game, moving up a single base is rarely as valuable as making an out is negative. Unless you steal home, contact or an error is still needed to score, while every out brings the team 1/3 closer to ending the inning.
I think it’s were some of the history of eyes v. stats rancor comes in- while bunting and stealing bases feels and looks valuable, statistically it’s of marginal importance.
"Have faith in the Yankees, my son. Think of the great DiMaggio."
Amen!
while bunting and stealing bases feels and looks valuable, statistically it’s of marginal importance.
Ignore this at your own peril!
To be honest,
bunting has always seemed intuitively like a bad idea to me. First, it doesn’t always work. When it does there’s a guy on second but also an out… and it still takes a hit to score that run… even that’s not guaranteed with a very slow runner. As for stolen bases, my intuitive take has been that it’s great as long as the base stealer succeeds almost every time… even failing, say, 40% of the time means lots of additional outs and not all that much benefit.
Turns out the statistics seem to say the same thing. Gotta say I find that comforting… in these two situations at least, it validates that what I felt intuitively was in fact accurate, and explains why in a more quantitative way. It’s great to be able to reconcile the intuitive with the quantitative like that.
yeah, SB’s are a bit overrated. If you steal at an 80% clip, which is pretty good, you would have to go 16/4 before you would match the run value of a HR. So a guy like Crawford, stealing 60 bases, is equal to a guy who steals no bases and hits 6 more HR’s, assuming everything else is equal of course.
Here’s where the 16/4 stat value becomes arbitrary… You have blazing speed and am taking a significant lead off 1B. You’re keeping a middling pitcher on his heels and he’s now pitching out of the stretch. Your opponent’s normal defensive alignment is altered. The pitcher is more likely to throw fastballs which in turn helps the batter/team.
If you actually watched ballgames, Wraithpk, you would know this. =P
by Scooby Snacks on Jan 20, 2010 8:57 PM EST up reply actions
I do know this, and believe it or not, but the stats actually confirm that having a man on first disrupts the pitcher and the defense. My point, though, is that stealing bases is overrated by most people.
If you had a choice between a guy that hits 20 HR and steals 60 bases and a guy that hits 30 HR and doesn’t steal bases, the 30 HR guy will actually net your team more runs. Most people would think it was the other way around, but if you stole 60 bases and never got caught, you would gain 15 runs for your team, but if you hit 10 HR, that’s 19.5 runs. If you’re stealing at 80%, which is better than Crawford’s rate btw, you only net 7.5 runs by going 60/15. The implicit advantage of disrupting the pitcher might raise the actual value a bit, but it won’t make up the 12 run difference.
Just playing devil’s advocate. I was explaining to my avid Met fan friend the other day that, for next season, a healthy Jose Reyes and his stolen bases isn’t going to mitigate David Wright’s diminished homerun production if his one-year trend continues. He regularly reads the New York Post sports section so it’s pretty hopeless.
by Scooby Snacks on Jan 21, 2010 12:19 PM EST up reply actions
yeah...
Wright’s regression last year was startling. They need him to hit for power to have a chance.
I dunno
he could have been using HGH, but why would he all of a sudden stop? They still aren’t testing for it.
I meant PED
Don’t know, conscience? Testing isn’t the only way to get caught, i.e. Clemens. There’s always somebody who knows something.
good point
I never thought of it that way but it does make sense to have a heavier negative when you make an out, because bunting or stealing a base (unless you steal home) is a risk that produces an out with no positive impact, unlike a sacrifice fly that produces an out but gets a run in from 3rd base (and in that case the run scored is way more valuable than the out produced).
I think a sac fly or a sac hit and run are the only productive outs in the game. I’m not crazy about calling a sacrifice bunt all that valuable when you’re just moving a guy into scoring position. I’d rather you get him home with a hit, and make it a productive at bat with a hit, not an out.
With no outs, groundouts to the right side moving the runner on second over to third are useful as well.
by Scooby Snacks on Jan 20, 2010 12:23 PM EST up reply actions
Good post man
rec’d
I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious.
Vince Lombardi
I like oWBA but ...
This stuck out to me …
( additive chain of weighted stats ) / (Number of Plate Appearances)
Yet …. “NIBB is non-intentional walks, since batters have no control over an intentional walk”.
I can’t say I agree that a player has no control. A-Rod has done nothing in his career that earns the intentional walks he gets ? Bret Gardner is equally likely to be intentionally walked ?
I understand that for any given situation, the exact cause of an intentional walk may be different. Seems reasonable that the statistic should not benefit from them, but this formula actually assigns a penalty for intentional walks as they do count as Plate Appearances. It would seem more fair for it to be:
( additive chain of weighted stats ) / (Number of Plate Appearances – Number of Intentional Walks)
Where do the park adjustments
come from… is there a table somewhere that we could look at? And are they calculated as a single number… such as normalizing for number of homers each park allows… or are parks weighted independently for different types of event, such as a park that maybe has a propensity for allowing doubles but also allows very few homers? I’d like to learn more about this part of the calculation.
They calculate it every year, basing it on runs scored in the park. Obviously, the longer the park has been open, the more accurate the calculation gets.
Just as a surprising note, in 2009 Yankee Stadium was actually slightly a pitcher’s park. It had very high HR numbers, but very low 2B and 3B numbers. Basically, you had to hit the ball out of the park to get extra bases because there isn’t a lot of room in the outfield and outfielders were running down balls that would drop for extra bases in more spacious outfields. Park factors can change wildly from year to year, though, which is why it gets more accurate the longer a park is open.
A few comments and a question
Very interesting post, and well written; I think I understand it well enough to agree with most of it, but:
> Where a batter is in a lineup, and who hits in front of him or behind him, matters. Look how much better Texiera did when A-Rod came back into the lineup and hit behind him; he got better pitches to hit.
> There should be an adjustment for double plays hit into
> Sacrifices do matter; the ability to produce a bunt or a fly ball when needed, or move a runner along by hitting to the right side can make a difference in a game, and the purpose is to win the game. Otherwise they are treated the same as strikeouts.
> The ability to get a hit in the clutch probably cannot be measured. This is not the same as RISP, which ignores the score at the time of the hit, and is not the same as game-winning hits, since a hit in the middle of the game-winning rally is overlooked.
All of which is OK with me. I like the formulas, but only as a starting point in a discussion, not as a final answer.
My question: the best hitter I ever saw was Ted Williams. How does he come out in the formulas?
Mickey C
Ted Williams does quite well.
I looked up his information at both baseball-reference.com and fangraphs.com.
Baseball-reference lists his OPS+ by year and for overall career. Wraithpk and metric tell me wRC+ is a more accurate stat that tracks similar information, and they’re probably right but at the moment I’m more familiar with OPS+.
Fangraphs gives the wRC+ values by year and for overall career.
To put things in context: I recently did a fanpost looking at Don Mattingly relative to other standout players of his time, specifically focusing on the 1984-88 seasons. Mattingly came out of that second only to Wade Boggs during that timeframe… both performed at a level beyond their peers. Not counting active players, I’d have to say those two are the best hitters I’ve ever seen.
Mattingly’s best OPS+ during those seasons was 161. Boggs’ best was 173. Those numbers mean Mattingly and Boggs had performed roughly 61% and 73%, respectively, better than their peers. Those are excellent numbers.
Ted Williams AVERAGED an OPS+ of 191 over his entire career. He had seven full seasons where his OPS+ was 200 or higher. His best seasons were 235 and 233.
He was well before my time, but just looking at those numbers and putting them in the context of Mattingly and Boggs’ best seasons, I can begin to appreciate how good Ted Williams must have been. What a pleasure it must have been for you to watch him.
What’s even more amazing is that he missed full consecutive seasons for military services and, when he returned both times, didn’t skip a beat.
by Scooby Snacks on Jan 21, 2010 12:20 AM EST up reply actions
Joe DiMaggio said of Ted Williams, “He was the best pure hitter I ever saw. He was feared.”
Mickey C
After the War, Joe D and Ted Williams were nearly traded for each other. Two pull hitters playing their home games in parks that so obviously favored them… they could have put on a ’98esque home run chase.
"Have faith in the Yankees, my son. Think of the great DiMaggio."
Yogi Berra said
Joe D would not have done well in Fenway… if memory serves, his reasoning was that Joe was a line drive hitter and a lot of his homers in Yankee Stadium would have ended up hitting the Green Monster instead.
I’m going off of Richard Ben Cramer’s description in “The Hero’s Life”. He thought Joe D would have put those line drives over the wall.
Maybe he’d hit .400 instead of 61.
"Have faith in the Yankees, my son. Think of the great DiMaggio."
Ted Williams
I could go on and on about Ted Williams; there is enough material for a separate fanpost. As noted by Scooby Snacks, he lost almost five seasons to military service, three in WWII and two during the Korean War (he was a fighter pilot in the reserves and his unit was called up). One of the “what-ifs” is where Ted Williams would be in the record books if he had actually played those five years. If you prorate his actual performance up for another 700 games, he would be first in RBI, runs scored, and walks, and in the top five in doubles and HR, and people would have a better idea how good he was even without the OPS+.
Mickey C
Counter imagine:
If Ruth hadn’t spent his early years as a pitcher.
"Have faith in the Yankees, my son. Think of the great DiMaggio."
To me
Babe Ruth is the greatest player in baseball history, because he was arguably the best hitter in history AND was arguably the best left-handed pitcher of his time, and quite possibly one of the best in history. No other player has ever been both a competent hitter and a competent pitcher, much less exceptional at both. For me that puts the Babe in a class of his own.
Joe Jackson
While we are doing history and talking about the best hitters, here is Babe Ruth on Joe Jackson: “I copied Jackson’s style because I thought he was the greatest hitter I had ever seen, the greatest natural hitter I ever saw. He’s the guy who made me a hitter.” Several years ago, I saw an interview with Casey Stengel that had been taped in the early 1950s. The interviewer asked him about the best playersw of all time. Stengel named the usual suspects – Dickey as catcher, Gehrig, Hornsby, Wagner and Traynor in the infield. For the outfield he gave four names – Cobb, Ruth, DiMaggio, and Joe Jackson.
I’m not saying that he was a better hitter than Ruth; as a deadball era player, he never really showed power. However, based on the testimony of his contemporaries, he should be in the discussion.
Mickey C
this is where wRC+ shines
It can show us how good he was in his era. Looking at his stats, he only hit over 10 HR in a season once, but he hit a lot of doubles and triples, and not many players hit a lot of HR in those days, thus the “dead ball” name to the era.
His career wRC+? 171. He was basically the Barry Bonds / Albert Pujols of his day.
Maybe not
He had 521 HRs in 2292 games played. If you assume another 700 games from the lost seasons, and prorate the HRs, that is an increase of 30% or so, to about 680 HR. Very respectable, but short of the Babe.
The person who might have passed the Babe, if not for military service, was Willie Mays, who put in two years during the Korean War and still hit 660 HRs.
Mickey C
to Mickey C
to address the points you made:
1. Stats actually show that the “lineup protection” idea has very little effect on a hitter. It’s negligible enough to ignore it. I think Teixeira’s performance had more to do with him being a poor hitter in April, and he just happened to start hitting his stride right when A-Rod came back.
2. Hitting into double plays is a bit subjective. It depends on there being men on base, and some hits that go for double plays when the infield is playing further back would be hits under normal circumstances. For that reason, it’s really hard to include those in a statistic rating overall offense.
3. I agree that sacrifices do matter, but wRC+ does not take into account the situation, just overall performance. A stat like RE24 does take into account the situation, so this is what you should look at.
4. Clutch actually can be measured. Check out the “Clutch” stat on fangraphs. I don’t really understand exactly everything they do to calculate it, but it has to do with how much better or worse a player performs under high pressure situations than they would do under neutral situations.
Thanks
for your response. I’m not sure I agree about the “lineup protection” part and would be interested to se how the stats were developed.
Maybe the lesson for me is that there is no such thing as the perfect statistic, and that may be just as well; we don’t want to lose the beauty of the game in numbers. To quote Jimmy Breslin, “Baseball isn’t statistics. It’s Joe DiMaggio rounding second base.”
Mickey C
Here ya go:
http://mlbresearch.blogspot.com/
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=1042
http://www.sabernomics.com/sabernomics/index.php/2004/09/the-protection-externality-it-doesnt-exist/
http://www.thediamondangle.com/marasco/opan/protect.html
There seems to be some debate as to whether it’s true or not.
Very interesting
The results seem to depend on exactly what you measure to make the determination. I note that none of the brief descriptions talks about how they define the superior following hitter.
Maybe we should break it down into two pieces:
> does a pitcher pitch differently to a batter if someone like A-Rod or Barry Bonds is hitting behind them? The pitchers themselves would know the answer, but none of the statisticians has actually asked them.
> If the “protected” batter gets better pitches to hit, does he actually get more hits? One of the authors opined that pitchers in that situation actually got more outs because they put a little extra on the pitch. I am not sure how you prove it: how do you detect a little extra?
I think this may be one of the unprovables that will engender endless enjoyable discussions.
Thanks for the references.
Mickey C
Protection
Those are some good links by Wraithpk. From reading those and some work in “The Book” it seems that at bats do change when a batter is protected or unprotected but the production value from those at bats doesn’t. An unprotected batter may be walked more while a protected batter may get a few more chances to hit, the value of those walks/hits appears to balance out in terms of wOBA.
With regards to detecting the little extra, right now the best measures to do that would be velocity and movement (pitchf/x and break). To determine control ken kovash’s way of looking at pitches in the strike zone is a good proxy. Of course it’s difficult to determine intention because pitchers don’t tell you where they wanted the ball to go.
Whether or not protection exists, we haven’t been able to research it to our satisfaction. Maybe we’ll have the tools to do it in the future.
In one of the articles...
they base it on pitches in the strikezone and fastballs. Some say that if Pujols is on the on-deck circle, the pitcher won’t be nibbling the corners with a hitter, they’ll go right after them, but another group says that pitchers are always trying to get people out, so who’s up next doesn’t matter.
I would say that if the more pitches in the strikezone and more fastballs theory is true, it doesn’t necessarily mean the hitter will do better. The hitter still has to hit those pitches, and a pitcher attacking the strikezone isn’t necessarily easier to get a hit off of, since that’s what pitchers are supposed to do anyway.
Head games.
It’s possible the batter’s approach changes, too. Allow me to mix eras for a moment as a hypothetical. Suppose you had Wade Boggs in his prime at the plate, a runner on third base, and two outs in the sixth inning of a game you’re losing 2-1. No pitcher in his right mind wants to throw Boggs something he can hit as it’s likely to end up a single, RBI, tie game. Instead the pitcher throws Boggs a lot of junk pitches well out of the strike zone… he probably ends up walking Boggs, but there’s the off chance Boggs will swing at one and end up with an easy inning-ending out. If Boggs walks, not that big a deal on that front, either.
Now suppose Albert Pujols in his prime is the batter following Boggs. As much as the pitcher doesn’t want to let Boggs get a base hit, he’s even more hesitant to put Boggs on base to have Pujols come to the plate with two baserunners. So Boggs gets better pitches to hit, things more in the strike zone. Doesn’t mean the pitcher is throwing batting practice, though! It’s important to remember that.
For Boggs’ part, he knows having Pujols follow him will likely give him better pitches to hit, and likewise that the chance he walks has gone down significantly. So his approach at the plate changes and he’s more in a “get a hit” mindset rather than just in a “let him walk me” mindset.
But what if Boggs’ nature is to be the sort of hitter who works a count and ends up with plenty of walks? Maybe the change in psyche actually hurts him as he’s been thrown off his natural game.
So better pitches to hit may be counterbalanced by a slightly less effective hitter… with the result being… not much. The at-bat has changed a lot, but the results haven’t.
I don’t know if that’s truly the case, but it’s certainly a plausible theory.
Mickey, to me these statistics, as useful as they are, still give us a flawed and incomplete picture. Some of the warts are known, and some are not at this time… but probably will become better known with the passage of time. I find nothing wrong with that, it’s a statement of our very existence. Ask people at any point in history and you’re likely to find quite a few who feel their generation has finally attained a mastery of things… but that’s never been the case. (Sorry to get all philosophical.)
As it applies here: we have some folks who clearly have devoted a lot of time and effort to discerning better ways of measuring baseball performance, and they’ve achieved great things. Fantastic! But I think it’s always a mistake to think they’ve finally handled everything in the latest stats as that’s never the case. There are always things previously overlooked, and even some things that seem correct which further examination will reveal to be mistaken. Nothing wrong with that, it’s an ongoing process.
Very specific example with the batter protection issue. I’m not saying it’s real or imagined. It’s possible there really isn’t much of an effect there. It’s also possible the problem just isn’t being looked at in the right manner to see the effect in the stats. Heck, we had physicists telling us for years that a curveball doesn’t really curve, that we were all imagining the effect, just an optical illusion. Then there’s the aerodynamics of the honeybee, which say it should not be able to fly… and so on… and so on…
I totally agree
I don’t claim that wRC+ is perfect. Even Tom Tango wouldn’t say that, I don’t think. However, it is the best offensive stat we have right now. Someone might make something even better some day, and if I can be convinced that it is markedly more accurate than wRC+, I’ll switch my preference.
About the curveball, I think you misunderstand what the physicist are saying. The “late break” idea is an optical illusion. In actuality, the ball has a constant downward force, but it has to overcome the slightly upward velocity the pitcher puts on the ball.
Just to illustrate, if you throw a ball straight up in the air, as soon as it leaves your hand gravity starts pulling it down and slowing its velocity, until it eventually stops completely at the top of its arc, then starts to go faster and faster towards the earth. It does go faster downwards at the end, but the force pulling it down, gravity, is constant through the whole trajectory.
If you’ve taken a physics class, you know that when you throw a ball, it travels on a parabolic trajectory due to the downward force of gravity. The magnus effect on a curveball adds an additional downward force to the ball due to the spin. Like right after the top of the arc when you throw a ball straight up, the downward velocity starts slow, but as it continues downward it goes faster and faster. The same is true for a curveball, when gravity and the magnus effect add up at the end of the parabola, the ball drops quicker than it would if gravity were the only force pulling it down. So the forces pulling it down are constant throughout the entire flight, it just seems to break suddenly when the momentum of the ball starts to go downward.
Small refinement.
While not claiming to be the last word on the laws of physics, I do believe at least a portion of the “late break” is real. The ball doesn’t travel all the way to the plate at constant velocity… it slows a little due to air resistance. But you’re right, the downward pull of gravity is constant. That means as the ball travels each 10 feet from pitcher to plate, it will drop more in the 10 foot zones closer to the plate, because it spends more time traveling through those last zones. If the pitcher has “sold” the pitch properly, the result could appear to be late break… I think it’s a combination of a batter expecting to see something different, and the actual break appearing to increase (from the batter’s perspective) as the ball gets closer. Human distance perception and the concept of visual perspective probably have something to do with it, too.
Yeah, exactly. It also drops more at the end because it’s momentum has shifted downwards, so instead of gravity and the magnus effect fighting against the upward velocity the pitcher initially put on the ball, it makes the ball drop at an exponential rate. The sudden break, though, is only in the eye of the batter. My point is that the ball doesn’t go straight and then suddenly drop.
Curve balls
The original argument about the curveball was not whether it dropped, but whether the spin would make it move to the side as it approached the plate. Some claimed it was an illusion. I believe Life Magazine published pictures of a luminescent baseball clearly moving from left to right as it approached the plate, thus establishing that the spin on the ball affected its course.
As for the “sudden” drop, a ball thrown at 90 mph reaches the plate in less than half a second. Any movement in any direction that takes place near the plate will seem to be sudden.
Mickey C
The main issue here
Mostly replying to shavit.
The key here is that we’re not talking about Pujols vs Cairo, yes no body needs a stats sheet to tell who’s better . but …
A. what if we’re talking about players of much closer quality? say Nady vs Swisher, or any other solid but not spetacular MLB regulars against another.
B. what if we’re comparing players with very different set of skills? who’s more valuable last year, Adam Dunn or Melky Cabrera ? (WAR says it’s Melky by a small margin). they’re VERY different players. even though both are sort of outfielders. they’re good at completely different things. how do we weigh that against each other?
C. at the end of the day, MLB teams don’t win or lose seasons because they can or can’t tell Cairo from Pujols. they win or lose on the margins, because a good team manage to make the right call between two players who are much more similar in ability . while scounting obviously is very important. a good math analysis to really figure out the margins of different skills is very helpful as well. teams use to seriously undervalue guys who don’t hit for good average but walks a ton. (they undervalue walks in general). in the early 00s they undervalue defense (see most of the 00-08 Yankees). it is about finding those value and undervalue perceptions in the game that give teams advantages over another.
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