Comments on: 2009 Replacement Level: Left Field

By: alskor

alskor — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 20:06:47 +0000

Ah, yes… park factors. Thanks again.

By: Trenchtown

Trenchtown — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:48:45 +0000

OK I looked over the previous posts a couple times to see if I was missing something, I must have missed it regardless.

By: Finn

Finn — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:41:25 +0000

hahahahahahaha

By: NadavT

NadavT — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:09:01 +0000

Trenchtown:

Dave’s not drawing conclusions — he’s just providing illustrative examples. In the first post in this series, he explained that he’s choosing his examples from the pool of players who have signed minor league contracts. These are players who are no longer prospects and who have not been valued highly enough to merit a major league roster spot.

By: Trenchtown

Trenchtown — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 07:43:55 +0000

Dave I have a concern, exactly what are your qualifications for replacement level/freely available talent? What is to stop you from reverse engineering this by figuring that replacement level is about 2 wins below average and then cherry picking examples to come up with a group whose aggregate works out to be -2 wins? Please note I am not excusing you of this in any way I was just wondering what the counter to that argument would be and what your selection process is.

Just a quick example I would give is that Guillermo Quiroz of the Orioles is a replacement level player in my opinion who has been freely available for the past several offseasons, but was not included in the catcher’s portion, or Michael Aubrey for first base? Are 6-8 guys really a large enough sample to draw conclusions from? I understand that there are time constraints, I am just really curious how you chose the players in the group samples

By: Dave Cameron

Dave Cameron — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 04:41:04 +0000

We’re using .330 because that’s the league average wOBA in the CHONE projections for 2009. .330 is just a stand in for whatever league average wOBA was in any given year.

In ’07, league average wOBA was .331, and then the Batting Runs also include a park factor to adjust for Fenway. We talked about park factors a month or so ago, and listed the factors we’re using here on the site.

By: alskor

alskor — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 03:48:49 +0000

((.315 – .330) / 1.20) * 600 = -7.5

Where can I find an explanation of this formula…? Why is .330 the bench mark for wOBA. I would assume that’s default league scale it to match OBP.

Was this formula explained and i missed it? I went back through each of these replacement level articles and all the Win value explained stuff… cant find the explanation.

I thought I had it figured out, but if I take a players wOBA on their player page and run it through this formula I dont get the same “Batting” runs value as on the player pages. For instance, Youkilis, 2007: ((.373 wOBA – .330)/ 1.20) * 600 = 21.5… Yet his batting runs that year under the value section are listed as 19.2.

Am I being dense here and missing something obvious…?

By: Jerry

Jerry — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:00:38 +0000

Great stuff, Dave. Keep it coming.

On an aside, given the direction the Mariner’s new FO is headed, it may be time to consider changing your signature blurb… :)

By: Matthew A.

Matthew A. — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 22:11:11 +0000

If anyone’s looking for further examples of what exemplifies a replacement level left fielder, just look at whoever is playing LF for the Mets this season. You won’t be too far off.