Loving Longoria
Odds are, you know Evan Longoria is pretty good. He’s just 23, but he’s already made his mark on the American League with a stellar rookie season, and he’s followed it up with a strong start to the 2009 season. It wouldn’t be that controversial to call Longoria the best young player in the American League.
I’m here to say we can take the word young out of the previous sentence. Evan Longoria is the best player in the American League. He’s not that far behind Albert Pujols for the title of best player in baseball.
So far, Longoria has racked up 637 major league plate appearances, basically one full season’s worth. His career line – .291/.356/.574, good for a .395 wOBA. His power has developed earlier than anyone expected, making him one of the premier sluggers in baseball. He covers the plate, drives the ball to all fields, works the count, and crushes mistakes. The list of players who have hit this well at this early stage of their careers is littered with Hall Of Fame talents.
If that wasn’t enough, Longoria might just be the best defensive third baseman in the game. He posted a UZR of +14.9 in 119 games last year, he stood at +4.5 through the most recent update last Sunday. His career UZR/150 stands at +20.5, thanks to his excellent footwork and reactions, which allow him to swallow up nearly every ball hit within shouting distance of third base. He was praised more for his glove than his bat coming out of college, so this kind of defensive excellence isn’t a surprise. He really could play shortstop, and probably be above average there.
Add up the total package, and in 151 major league games, Longoria has been worth +7.8 wins to the Rays. In what amounts to one season’s worth of playing time, Longoria has performed at a +8 win level that is rarefied territory. Our win value data goes back to 2002, and in the 7+ years of data that we have here on the site, Pujols and Alex Rodriguez have a massive lead over everyone else. Pujols has +56.7 wins, while Rodriguez has +55.2 wins. On a per year basis, those totals work out to just about +8 wins per year.
Longoria, in his first season’s worth of major league performance, as a 22 and 23 year old playing in the toughest division in baseball, has performed at a level essentially equal to what Pujols and Rodriguez have sustained for most of the decade. His rookie “season” was the equal of most MVP seasons.
This kid is sick.
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While I agree that Longoria is a great baseball player, it’s premature to start tossing around Pujols/A-Rod comps. He’s not there yet, and he’s not yet close.
His career OBP is .356 and he’s recording a .37 BB/K ratio. He’s not a contact hitter (75%). Only two of his ten home runs this season would have left all thirty parks and four would have left less than half of them. His average distance is 379 feet; to give a comp, that’s a little less than Edwin Encarnacion managed last season. His current HR total is deceptive. In summary, he has nothing like Pujols contact skills, nothing like his plate discipline and no where near his power. He’s a damn fine 3B, there’s no question about that.
Once we dig past the surface numbers, we see that Longoria does not yet have an HoF skill set. Maybe he will develop that in time, but player development is very hard to predict.
What about last year when his twenty 30-park shots led the league? At age 22? In 500 at bats? Did you happen to miss that?
Not a contact hitter? You know who else wasn’t a contact hitter? Babe Ruth. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?
Babe struck out in just 12.5% of his career plate appearances while walking in 19% of them, which is to say that he makes Longoria look like a child and you look like someone that doesn’t know what the hell he is talking about.
Longoria did not hit 20 30-park shots last year, nor did he lead the league in 30-park home runs.
Babe Ruth struck out once every 6.3 ABs and every 8.0 PAs. Longoria has struck out every 3.8 ABs and every 4.2 PAs. Ruth hit .342 compared to a league average over his career of .285. Longoria has hit .291 compared to a league average of .272. Ruth was a much, much better contact hitter than Longoria. He also walked more than twice as frequently (every 5.1 PAs compared to every 11.4 PAs) to go along with the strikeouts.
Or was this post being facetious to reflect the hyperbole of the original post?
Oh, you’re right. Silly me. Babe Ruth was a great contact hitter. I must have been confusing him with that other five time strikeout king…
And yes, Longoria did have twenty 30-park shots including the postseason last year and yes, it did lead the American League. Did you even bother to look it up? It would have taken literally two minutes of research on your part to verify the first number.
If you are going to include postseason statistics, you sort of have to point that out, since, you know, there are sort of standards for reporting season baseball statistics. For example, everything in this article is talking about his regular season production. Or, you might commonly see that Ruth hit 60 HR in 1927. If someone wanted to say he hit 62 home runs that year, they would say he hit 62 home runs including postseason play. And you would never include postseason stats with regular season stats to determine a league leader.
Ruth did strike out about half as frequently as Longoria does, so I still fail to see the value of your comparison. It makes about as much sense as me comparing Longoria’s contact ability with Mark Reynolds’. Besides, that, the Ruth comparison doesn’t make any sense anyway. So a hitter who was vastly superior to Longoria in pretty much every way was a great hitter? What is that supposed to be saying about Longoria?
Okay, fine. He was second behind A-Rod if you exclude the playoffs. Does that really change anything? I included the playoffs because he was already at a huge disadvantage, you know, missing a quarter of the regular season and being twenty two and all.
The strikeout rate in Ruth’s day was less than half of what it is today. Saying Ruth was a good contact hitter for his era is like saying Walter Johnson wasn’t a good strikeout pitcher. The only point in bringing him into the discussion is who said that the best player in the league had to be a good contact hitter and why didn’t Mike Schmidt get the memo?
“The only point in bringing him into the discussion is who said that the best player in the league had to be a good contact hitter and why didn’t Mike Schmidt get the memo?”
No flippen shit.
No one compared him to Pujols or A-Rod.
“Evan Longoria is the best player in the American League. He’s not that far behind Albert Pujols for the title of best player in baseball.”
That appears to be a comparison.
It’s not even close to a comparison. It’s a statement of value. I could say that Longoria is more valuable than Roy Halladay, but it would have nothing to do with his ability to pitch.
Statements of value are comparisons when they contain a reference to something else of the same sort. If I say, “This car is worth $100,” then I haven’t made a comparison. But if I say, “This car is worth more than any other car on the block,” then I have. And that’s because I’ve measured it’s value relative to other things of the same sort.
That’s precisely what you did in your post. It appears to me that you’re simply trying to define your way out of the claim. Why not just defend it?
Because you guys are obfuscating the entire point of the post with side arguments that have nothing to do with anything?
As stated in the post, Longoria has been as valuable to the Rays in his first “season” of major league baseball as Pujols is to the Cardinals in a typical Pujols season. That statement of value was put there as a reference point for people to understand just how awesome Longoria has been since getting called up to the majors.
The comments that followed comparing his walk rate and selectivity at the plate to Pujols miss the entire point of the post. I never even got close to saying that Longoria is like Pujols, so differentiating them based on skillset differences is pointless.
To use your analogy, this is like me saying that this car is worth $100, which makes it more valuable than any other on the block, and then people arguing with me because the car is red and that other valuable car down the street is black.
There was no effort or intention to say that Longoria is anything like Pujols. The point was that Longoria was as valuable in his 151 games of major league service as Pujols generally is in a full season. Point of references aren’t comparisons.
This should be a pretty easy thing to grasp.
It’s one thing to tell us how valuable Longoria *has been.* That’s part of what I took you to be doing. No one is disputing that here.
But you also claimed that he was the best player in the American League. I think that when we have discussions like that, we’re usually talking about what we can expect from a player in the future and the likelihood of consistency. If those judgments were purely on the basis of what has happened, we’d change our judgment every week.
I’m disputing that Longoria is one of the best players in the game when by “best” we mean to include some probabilistic measure of his potential future value.
You should really give a few people an outline of what you are trying to say and then have them proofread these articles if that is true. Because the statement “Evan Longoria is the best player in the American League. He’s not that far behind Albert Pujols for the title of best player in baseball,” is a pretty prominent part of this article. And it invited every bit of criticism that has been brought up. It’s like you saying that the $100 car is the most valuable car on the block, and everyone pointing out how dumb it is to say a $100 car is more valuable than all the other cars on the block when it clearly isn’t, and then you getting angry because one of the more valuable cars is black.
If the whole point was to look at Longoria’s Win Value in his first full “season”, and to see how it compares to the best in the game, then that paragraph is completely out of place. And the whole point of this is basically to save us 2 minutes of looking at Longoria’s page, thinking, “I wonder how that compares to Albert and A-Rod?” and then looking at their pages. And then ignoring that both of them have had multiple seasons over a full win better than Longoria. And then ignoring that there have been 20 seasons better than Longoria’s career WAR in the 7 years recorded on this site, and that in 6 of the 7 seasons, the leader in WAR has been over a win better than Longoria’s. So, if you’re going by Win Values, which seems to be the case since it’s what you are writing about (which apparently doesn’t mean it’s what you are trying to say, so sorry if that is not the case), then his “season” is not really equal to most MVP-caliber years.
Right on. That’s exactly the point.
“And then ignoring that there have been 20 seasons better than Longoria’s career WAR in the 7 years recorded on this site, and that in 6 of the 7 seasons, the leader in WAR has been over a win better than Longoria’s. So, if you’re going by Win Values, which seems to be the case since it’s what you are writing about (which apparently doesn’t mean it’s what you are trying to say, so sorry if that is not the case), then his “season” is not really equal to most MVP-caliber years.”
In the AL a WAR of 7.9 would have lead the league in 2008, 2007, and 2004. The times it wouldn’t have has been primarily thanks to A-rod. Dave is basically right that a WAR of 7.9 is equal to most MVP seasons, as any player that reaches around that level is worthy of MVP consideration.
Then, I find it a little ridiculous that you critisize this statement because 6 of 7 of the years the leading WAR is more than 1 full win above 7.9 (First that’s in MLB, not one particularly league where an MVP is being handed out). That is all from basically from Pujols, A-rod and Bonds. Three, not only HOF players, but inner circle HOF players in the peaks of their careers (ok bonds was in his late 30′s but that a different discussion). We are talking about Longoria’s first ~150 games in MLB for christ sake. I’ve been critical of Dave at times, but this is just ridiculous.
That means that 4 of the 14 MVP-level seasons, if we define MVP level as the highest WAR in either League, have been as low as Longoria’s career WAR. Many have been multiple wins better. That’s not equal to most MVP-level seasons. That’s on the bottom end of what we have seen lead either league. The average leader of either League over the past 7 years has been 9.2 WAR. The average MLB leader has been 10.3 WAR. So we’re not really talking about the equivalent of most MVP-caliber seasons in recent memory. It’s not like it was just those three putting up Win Values that high either. Just looking at other third basemen, David Wright, Scott Rolen, and Adrian Beltre have all had seasons with better Win Values than 7.8.
Of course Longoria is just 23 years old. He is a great young player, and he shouldn’t be expected to be as good as the best in the game right now. And he isn’t. That is the point.
The average MLB-leading WAR is not the same thing as the skill level of the game’s best player. Not even close. There are no 10 win players. Outside of Bonds, there isn’t anybody who’s even managed to average more than 8.5 wins a year in any three year stretch since 2002. Your argument is severely flawed, completely without merit and increasingly off-topic but as Dave would say, thanks for playing.
Thank you Mr. Heckles, that was much more eliquently put than my attempt to explain the exact same thing…..
The comparison to Pujols is silly. Pujols is able to put up an OBP of .400+ and a SLG of .600+ every year. That means that each of his individual seasons is considerably better than Longoria’s first season of playing time has been.
The usefulness of comparing Longoria to players like Pujols and Rodriguez has to be in what the comparison tells us about how Longoria’s career is likely to go. Lots of players have terrific individual seasons, but we think such comparisons are not apt. That’s because we believe the individual seasons are outliers and that they won’t be able to sustain the performance. That’s why you’re not writing a post arguing that Aubrey Huff’s .304/.360/.552 line from last year puts him in the company of Rodriguez and Pujols.
If you think that the case of Longoria is different, it’s presumably because you believe 1) he will one day actually put up a line like the one that Pujols puts up every single season; and 2) he will be able to do it consistently. If you don’t hold (1) and (2), then the comparison is a pretty poor one. If you do hold (1) and (2), then you need to do a lot more than show that he was able to put up a .930 OPS for a full season of playing time. You’d have to talk about the kind of secondary skills that Fresh Hops is talking about in his comment. And when you do that, it doesn’t look like Longoria yet has anything like the patience or contact abilities that players need to put up Pujols-like lines on a consistent basis.
Perhaps Longoria will learn these skills. But that’s a matter for speculation. He’s raking right now. However, even as he’s raking, he’s still not walking much and he’s striking out in nearly a quarter of his at bats. Neither of these represents more than a small improvement over last year’s numbers and neither comes close to Pujols. So, even the speculative case is lacking.
Longoria is great and he’s a terrifically fun player to watch. But this post is too hyperbolic to take seriously. A better pick (though perhaps not the best) for a player most likely to resemble Pujols in the long run is Ryan Braun: he really does appear to be learning the discipline and patience that a player needs to be able to put up Pujols-like numbers on a yearly basis. Moreover, his first full season in the major leagues was considerably better than Longoria’s (if we leave the defense aside, of course).
Apparently defense doesn’t matter. You’d think this site was started yesterday.
Therein lies your problem. You can’t ignore his defense.
Nor the strength of schedule which together bridge the gap by at least 35 points of wOBA.
Yeah, we really shouldn’t be just comparing Pujols’ bat to Longoria’s bat. The positional and defensive differences make doing that stupid. If we just look at A-rod’s bat though, where at least the position is the same, though the defense is much different.
A-rod walks in about 10-11% of his PAs.
Longoria walks in about 9% of his PAs.
A-rod now Ks in about 22% of his PAs.
Longoria Ks in about 25% of his PAs.
A-rod’s LD% is about 20%
Longoria’s LD% is about 20%.
A-rod’s HR/FB% is about 24%.
Longoria’s HR/FB% is about 21%.
So A-rod is slightly better across the board, but Longoria is just 23, so I’d expect that HR/FB% to go up, and indeed it has so far this year (though he’s probably not going to maintain that, at least not yet). Then Longoria is the better defender than A-rod. So he makes up the disadvantage on offense with the advantage on defense.
So yeah, Longoria is the 3rd base equivalent of a Pujols, and pretty much A-rod’s comp. It might be a little early to anoint him, but not by much. Longoria has crushed AA/AAA pitchers, and didn’t skip a beat moving to MLB.
Remember how high everyone was on David Wright in ’05/’06, and how that turned out? Well Longoria is ahead of Wright…
So is this hyperbole? I don’t think so. I’m with Dave on this one.
This comment makes me sad. It’s amazing how the sabermetric truisms of the 1990s were just so wrong and still so prevalent.
What would be the current sabermetric truisms that would say that Longoria is better than every player in the American League and close to Albert Pujols for the best in the game right now?
I’m not sure what you mean by the “sabermetric truisms of the 1990s.”
Is it my comment about defense? Surely defense matters. But it seems like a bad idea to me to generalize about defensive ability on such a small sample size. And especially so given that Longoria was not a stunningly good defender in the minor leagues.
Is it my focus on OPS? Here are some other metrics by which to compare Pujols and Longoria:
Pujols 2008 WARP-3: 11.7. 1st in baseball
Longoria 2208 WARP-3: 7.0. 36th in baseball
Pujols 2008 wOBA: .458. 1st in baseball.
Longoria 2008 wOBA: .373. 41st in baseball.
The OPS comparison isn’t close. Neither are these.
Perhaps the first five weeks of Longoria’s 2009 season have convinced you that he is one of the best players in baseball? It would be silly to dispute that Longoria has been one of the best hitters in baseball in 2009. But that’s not interesting: lots of players are great for a little while. The question is: will Longoria *remain* as good as Pujols? And in order to answer that, I think we need to know whether or not he’s got the kind of secondary skills that seem to underlie HOF-type performances. It doesn’t appear to me that he does. If you think he does, I’d like very much to hear why.
Longoria’s a really great ballplayer. Lots of Hall of Famers had rookie seasons worse than his. I wouldn’t deny that it is quite possible that Longoria will turn out to be nearly as good as Pujols over the long term. But I wouldn’t bet on it without more evidence that he has excellent secondary skills.
For the record, a vague comment about truisms isn’t an argument. Neither is denying the comparison in the first place.
WARP? What is this, 1996?
A 23-year-old with a .395 wOBA who also doubles as a gold glove defensive third baseman is a freaking monster. That this is even being argued is sad.
Aren’t analysts supposed to separate correlation from causation? Yes, Longoria has put up a .395 wOBA, but is there any reason to expect that to continue? His walk rates and plate discipline stats are below average, his contact rate is below average and his power, while very good, probably isn’t as good as his 20% HR/FB ratio so far.
As for his total value, a lot of it is racked up in his excellent defense. His UZR/150 is 20.5 so far, however that only comes in a little over 1000 innings? Didn’t MGL say that you need at least 2 years of defensive data, to semi-accurately gauge to true talent level of a player defensively? It would be foolish to automatically call Longo as +20 defender based on such a small sample size.
If you regress his offense and defense to the mean (which you should do with any player who has a small sample size of major league data), than he looks more like a 6.5 WAR player, which is good, but it doens’t make him the best player in the AL, and it certainly doesn’t make him as good of a player as Pujols.
“Longoria has put up a .395 wOBA, but is there any reason to expect that to continue?”
Yes. Or at least something pretty darn close to that. He’s 23, he put up a .373 wOBA last season, without being particularly lucky. He’s also post excellent wOBA’s in the AA/AAA (.417/.399) as a 21 year old.
“his contact rate is below average”
So, that’s one piece of a big puzzle. His contact rate is nearly exactly the same as A-rod’s contact rate. Longoria 75.5%, A-rod 74.9%. Their swing percentages are nearly the same as well. I’d like to know what Ruth’s swing percentages and contact rate were. If you swing and miss more often, you can make up for that with how hard you hit the ball when you do make contact.
“his power, while very good, probably isn’t as good as his 20% HR/FB ratio so far. ”
I’m not sure how you say his power isn’t as good as the 20% HR/FB. At twenty 21 (again in AA and AAA) he hit 26 HRs in 575 PAs. So you’re surprised when that same guy at 23 hits 27 HRs in 508. Then somehow you expect that 23 year old to see his power DROP as he ages? Longoria might not be a 25% HR/FB hitter as he has been so far this year, but 20% or a little more is perfectly reasonable. And you don’t have a shread of evidence to suggest that 20% is an overperformance. In fact, the trend line is that he’s BETTER than 20%. That line might have a large beta value, thanks to the small sample size, but its going up.
“It would be foolish to automatically call Longo as +20 defender based on such a small sample size. ”
I don’t think anyone is saying he will remain a +20 fielder, but if you have a +20 through half your required sample size to meet some sort of power requirement, chances are very good that you are still a darn good fielder. Even if he’s league average for the next season (not likely), he’s still going to be +10. And if he ends up at +15, he’s still one of the best defenders at the position.
“If you regress his offense and defense to the mean (which you should do with any player who has a small sample size of major league data), than he looks more like a 6.5 WAR player”
What mean are you regressing him to? His mean? The league’s mean? You don’t have a meaningful mean to regress him to. He’s still establishing what we can expect from him, and all his data in the minors and MLB suggest he’s becoming, if not already is, one of the very best players in the game.
You fail to mention that he has been, arguably, the best defensive player at his position over that time. That is a claim that neither Bonds nor Rodriguez can make. Shiny trophies aside.
Bonds and A-Rod were both incredible defenders in their primes. A-Rod was +15 at short before he had to be moved to third.
A-Rod hasn’t played SS in 6 years. Though good, that was some time ago. 2004 was his only crazy good season at 3B. Check out his UZR/150 in 2006 BTW. Bonds was lethal in Left in his prime, but IMO that was much before 2002.
I must have misunderstood what you were trying to say.
Viva, If we are comparing the defensive additions to WAR and there is only data for that from 2002 on, we can only look at that term. Neither Rod nor Bonds were crazy good after that, without looking it back up I think A-Rod had one silly season and then has been average-terrible since.
Longoria already has a homer today.
So does Paul Maholm….
Longoria has obsene power… this is not debatable. He probably has more “wrist flick” HRs than any player in baseball. What I mean by that is, on a majority of his HRs, he looks like he makes weak contact and kind of just flicks his bat out there, but the ball keeps carrying and carrying and carrying. His wrist action and bat speed are incredible.
I do think that it is premature to compare him to Pujols or A-Rod. Longoria really isn’t close to being as good of a hitter as those guys are. His plate discipline has been below average, with only a 9.0 BB rate and a 27.2 O-Swing, and his contact skills are pretty bad as well. His success this year has come with a .410 BABIP, which will obviously go down. His power is for real, but with bad pate discipline and below average contact skills, it is unlikely that he will be able to sustain a ~400 wOBA.
Also, it is highly unlikely that he is actually a +20 defender at third. In a limited sample size, he has managed that, but as you all know, UZR takes a lot more innings to accurately measure a players true talent level. No one has ever been that good a third base over an extended amount of time, and I find it hard to believe that Longoria is that good, especially considering the small sample size.
While Longoria is an excellent player, automatically naming him the best player in the AL isn’t prudent. Guys like Mauer and Sizemore have had a longer track record, and a more sustainable approach. Even A-Rod is probably better than Longoria now. The best comp for Longo, when you consider his defense at third and his power, is Scott Rolen, but even Rolen had much better plate discipline than Longoria when he first started.
I think you’re putting too much stock into the swing data. Its not just about how much you swing at pitches out of the zone, or how much contact you make in or out of the zone, or both, but what you do with that contact. And Longoria does more with it, as he has shown a lot more power than Sizemore. Despite less contact, Longoria has a similar LD%. Longoria also has a higher HR/FB%, which only stands to improve, while Sizemore’s HR/FB% is pretty well established, and probably won’t go up a whole lot more. Longoria also walked more in the minors. Posting K/BB ratios ~2x what he has so far in MLB. Not that I think its likely he matches those, but as he ages, he should get close to them than he is now.
If I had to bet on who leads the league in WAR over the next 5 years, I’m taking Longoria, though Sizemore might be my second pick.
Leave B.J. Upton out of the top two at your own risk. :)
I’ll take Hanley
I’d like to see Hanley remain roughly average on defense for a little longer to be certain he’s going to stay at SS before taking him. And Upton needs to tell me he can hit more than ~15 HRs a year before I take him.
I see both of those players with more problems than Longoria.
Wally- if I’m understanding you correctly, you are saying that Ramirez might not be better than Longoria because his defense has only been average for 1 season. Doesn’t that sound a lot like another player relevant to this debate?
Ramirez has only had one bad season defenisvely. It looks like that may be an outlier and he is pretty average defensively at SS. Which is still wildly valuable, as he is an amazing hitter.
“if I’m understanding you correctly, you are saying that Ramirez might not be better than Longoria because his defense has only been average for 1 season. Doesn’t that sound a lot like another player relevant to this debate?”
Sigh….Hanley has more data than one season however. So far his UZR/150 is -7.6 (No Matt H that isn’t “pretty average”). That’s after plently of data, according to you, to make an accurate judgement of his defense. Longoria hasn’t had the track record yet, but is about 65% of the way to the required sample size (1300Innings/2000Innings) with a UZR of +22.3. Chances are very bad that he completely reverses that over the next 700Innings, to become a +10 over all defender as was argued. Please, go ahead and do the weighted average calculation and tell me how bad Longoria has to be over the next 700 innings to make him a +10 defeneder, then come back and argue with me that it is likely….I’d love that.
So yeah it sounds similar, unless of course you actually pay attention to the details.
What do you mean by “required sample size”, and why is it 2000 innings? The general rules of thumb I’ve read from MGL or Tango have been along the lines of UZR samples needing approximately twice as many games as batting statistics to be as reliable, and that usually you would want at least 2 years (using the previous guideline, this would be about the reliability of a full season of batting stats) and preferably 3 years of data to get a good evaluations of a player’s true talent. 2000 innings would not be an ideal sample under those guidelines. I have also read in an interview with MGL that he does not believe that 1 year UZR ratings (such as Longoria has) are all that useful in projecting a fielder’s true talent level, though I don’t know if he has made adjustments since then that would change that.
Using Hanley as an example, since he’s already in the discussion, he’s had over 1300 innings in each of the past 3 years. His UZRs have jumped from -5.3 to -19.2 to -0.7. That’s a change of 18.5 runs from one sample of Longoria’s size to the next in the past two years, and another jump of nearly 14 runs. UZR’s can jump a lot in samples of this size. It’s possible that Longoria is a 20+ run defender, but it’s more likely that he’s closer to 10 runs.
I used 2000 Innings because that’s what I remembered being pressented with. I guess that’s the problem with relying on memory when unwilling to look it up. But regardless if its 2000 or 2600 (two season’s worth) the basic point remains the same. For Longoria to be a +10 defender over this required sample size, then he’d have to be below average from here on out. I do not find that a likely scenero.
Also by “required sample size,” I mean the sample size required to meet an acceptable level of certainty (power). Basically you have data that has a particular varience, and you need to know how much of this data (sample size) you need to have to acheive statistical significance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_power
Now as for Ramirez, he’s actually a terrible example, most players don’t jump nearly 20 runs from one season to the next. Yes, UZR has more varience than batting statistic but if it made jumps from a player being the worst in the game at his possition (basically) to average very frequently, this measure would be completely worthless. It would be nice to know the actual varience, but just looking around at several players, hardly any see swings greater than 10 runs, and its often around 5 runs.
So in conclussion, I think its most likely Longoria sits around a +15 talent at 3rd base, which is still going to make him one of the best defenders at that possition in the game.
The required sample size has no real meaning without context, though. You need to define what levels of significance you are requiring, and be able to test the data for those levels of significance. The data is consantly getting better as it grows with no point where it hits a required level, unless you have a set level you’re looking for (which would be in chances, not innings, and way more than 2000 or even 2600 innings worth unless your significance was really low).
Longoria does not have to be below average to be a true talent +10 defender. He just has to keep putting up numbers around +10. Unless he retires or gets hurt after two years, then he will keep putting up UZR’s that will increase the accuracy of its evaluation of his defense. It’s not like 2 years worth are his level and that’s it.
Fielders above 20 runs away from average are much more likely to see larger swings than most fielders. Looking at the top and bottom of the spread generally gives you players who over- or underperformed their talent level and are more likely to see regression. Like Carl Crawford, who went from a -1.2 UZR/150 in 2007 to a 19.6 in 2008 (if you include this year with last year, which puts him at about 1200 innings, he jumped from -1.2 to nearly 24 from one 1200 inning stretch to the next). Or Coco Crisp, who went from .9 to 24.4 to -8.6 from 2006 to 2008. Pedro Feliz dropped from 20.8 in 2007 to 7.2 in 2008. Omar Vizquel went from 5.2 to 20.2 to 4.9 from 2006 to 2007. All I’m doing is looking at the past couple years at players who are 20 run defenders, and most of them don’t stay anywhere near that. These guys are all known as great defenders, but holding at close to 20 runs very rarely happens. While UZR generally doesn’t swing that much when you look at everyone, when you are looking at players who are this high in one season, large swings are actually pretty common.
“The required sample size has no real meaning without context, though. You need to define what levels of significance you are requiring, and be able to test the data for those levels of significance.”
Yeah, well this is about where our conversation is going to end because I don’t think either of us, despite all these comments, has the time or motivation to set the desired levels of confidence, gather all the data, and do a power calculation. Unless of course you link to the study showing 2-3 seasons give you ??? confidence?
“The data is constantly getting better as it grows with no point where it hits a required level, unless you have a set level you’re looking for”
This is not true for baseball where a player’s true talent level is always changing.
“(which would be in chances, not innings, and way more than 2000 or even 2600 innings worth unless your significance was really low).”
Ok, I was using innings because that’s what is given. I don’t even see a “chances” column in the fielding data at this site. If you can link to an article on the how confidence rises with sample size for UZR that would be great. Otherwise we’re basically getting no where.
“Longoria does not have to be below average to be a true talent +10 defender. He just has to keep putting up numbers around +10. Unless he retires or gets hurt after two years, then he will keep putting up UZR’s that will increase the accuracy of its evaluation of his defense. It’s not like 2 years worth are his level and that’s it.”
True….but….that isn’t really illuminating in this discussion, is it? We’re talking about what he’s LIKELY to become. So, if the required sample size to make a strong conclusion (yes this is relative, we can still make a conclusion based on this one year, the strength will just be lower) to what his skill level is LIKELY to be is 2-3 years (if I trust your memory, link?), and he has ~ 1 season worth of data, then Longoria has to be average, at best, for the next year to bring that down to +10. So, the question is, small sample size and all, how likely is that? I find that very unlikely because in the absence of any variance numbers, few players see +/- 20 run swings in UZR over 1 season (changes over more than 1 seasons are going to be increasingly likely to be from skill changes and not random variation), and because the scouting reports are that he is a very good fielder, with all the tools to remain a good field (and yes scouting reports matter).
“While UZR generally doesn’t swing that much when you look at everyone, when you are looking at players who are this high in one season, large swings are actually pretty common.”
Ok, here’s where we need variance data. I’m betting this idea that players who are ~+20 see larger swings is complete BS. If its random variation causing these things, why does matter if you are good, bad or average? As for some of those on your list, you are completely ignoring the possibility that the changes in UZR aren’t from skill level changes.
“Omar Vizquel went from 5.2 to 20.2 to 4.9 from 2006 to 2007.”
That 4.9 is thanks to playing in 84 games, his UZR/150 was 13.1.
“Like Carl Crawford, who went from a -1.2 UZR/150 in 2007 to a 19.6 in 2008″
But Crawford’s entire history has been remarkably consistent outside that one year in 2007. His sequence of UZR/150: 17.5, 13.9, 23.2, 14.2, 9.6, -1.4, 25.6, 20.7. That -1.2 looks like a major outlier. In fact looking back at the injury history, it appeared he was battling some leg injuries that year, including a sprained ankle, strained groin and strained hamstring. So again, skill level change.
“Pedro Feliz dropped from 20.8 in 2007 to 7.2 in 2008.”
Ok, you really need to be controlling for games using UZR/150. But regardless, this one is kind of meh. So he went from +23 in UZR/150 to 9.3. In his career at 3rd he’s been 24, 27, 32, 20, 14, 22, 9. This is playing ~50 games at 3rd for the first 3 samples. Its pretty obvious he’s a damn good fielder and it isn’t swinging around that much: 20-14-22-9 in full seasons…
Anyway all this isn’t very telling, just one player at a time. So, if I may approach this slightly differently. I went through and averaged the UZR/150 career averages of all the players to record a single season >20 UZR/150 season. My average came out to +14, with a standard deviation of 6. Which pretty much meets my +15 guess. Of course its very hard to do this. We only have data back to 2002, so several players on the list only have a few years worth of data to make an average from. And of course in my 28 player sample, only 1 player had a career UZR/150 lower than 5, Joe Randa at 1.8, who was basically washed up the season after he posted his +20 season. Which was in just 119 games, if I put a 130 min game requirement the (remember Longoria has 150 now), the average goes up to 15.5, the St dev holds at 6 despite losing 8 samples….
So you want to say he’s “closer to +10?” Fine. I suppose +14 is closer to +10 than +20, but +14 is a lot closer to +15…. And I’d argue the 15.5 average is more representative of Longoria’s situation sense he’s played in 153 games (remember we’re talking strength of conclusion from playing in more games…). Now, until I see a better examination of what we can realistically expect from Longoria (I’d like to see a how young high UZR/150 players develop), I think this issue has been put to bed.
That’s why I was asking what you meant by required sample size, and was unsure why you pointed me to a link about statistical power. I’m not saying you should be doing that, I was just wondering what you meant by that or why you told me that was what you meant. Chances are usually approximated by innings well enough (just that you wouldn’t want to run the type of test you linked me to with innings instead of chances, which is why I mentioned that), but the DG and exO are both more or less representative of chances in UZR.
Here is Tango giving the guideline that it takes twice as many games of a UZR sample to give the reliability of a batting sample:
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/best_and_worst_of_2007_uzr/#18
Going by that, 2 years of UZR would be about as reliable as 1 year of batting stats. 3 years would be somewhere around the 1000 PA mark. What is considered a large enough sample depends on how accurate you want to be, but that’s about how reliable those size samples would be. And yes, statistics do improve in accuracy as the sample grows, even though players’ talent levels are constantly changing. That’s why we would rather look at a batter’s season statistics than his statistics over the last week, even though his talent level may have changed. You can always weight the more recent data more heavily in projecting a talent level, but if you have more data, you generally use it because it makes for a more accurate projection of talent.
In the data that is available for UZR on this site, the correlation of a player’s UZR/150 from one season to the next at a position, looking only at the players who qualified at a position in consecutive years, is about .47. When you only look at the seasons where a player had a UZR/150 of at least 20 and qualified at the position the following year, the correlation is only about .18. So no, that’s not BS. It’s a pretty clear selection bias of the sample of players who put up single seasons above 20 being players outperforming their talent level and prime for regression. These players averaged +24.5 runs the year they were at least +20 and +11.9 runs the following year. That’s a drop of 12.5 runs the year following their years of +20. The only ones who stayed above +15 were Andruw Jones and Chase Utley.
Of course you should also consider scouting reports. Those were all players with good scouting reports too, and who mostly remained good defenders. But neither do the scouting reports say that Longoria is a +20 run defender nor do most other good defenders with good scouting reports remain +20 defenders after posting that for 1 season.
Just to address something Wally said towards me (He noted a -7.6 UZR/150 was not “pretty average” in regards to Hanley), that is true, however he ignored the fact that I said there was a chance the -20 year was an outlier (something I believe Eric Seidman wrote about before the season). The other 2.2 years of data say that he is probably “pretty average” at least in the -2 or -3 range. If that isn’t “pretty average” I guess I should use different language. But dismissing the fact that one year looks comepletely different and is skewing the total for Hanley seems a little ridiculous to me.
I think we’re mostly in agree through the 1st half of you responce, though I’d still hold that after 3 years of data to allow for a high level of statistical confidence to make a conclussion about a players talent, that season 3 years ago is so far away that it isn’t going to help you determine what the player is right now. Maybe it helps as an average over the 3 years, or in that middle year (using a sliding 3 year window for example), but going foward it doesn’t carry as much weight. And sure you can weight these years, but then the question comes up of how do you weight them? And if that last year is only weighted by 10%, how much do you really need it to make an accurate judgement of the player? Obviously you could do multiple regressions all day long and go out ten years and the last year might have a coeffiecient of .01…but is that really helpful?
“In the data that is available for UZR on this site, the correlation of a player’s UZR/150 from one season to the next at a position, looking only at the players who qualified at a position in consecutive years, is about .47. When you only look at the seasons where a player had a UZR/150 of at least 20 and qualified at the position the following year, the correlation is only about .18. So no, that’s not BS.”
But again you’re hitting sample size problems. I’m not at all surprised that a sample of some 20 players has lower correlation coefficient than the entire league (and what makes consecutive year’s the thing to look at? Why not player average? Aren’t we in agreement a single year is subject to a lot of variance?). Obviously, the variance in a small sample is going to be higher in a large sample. Think of it like you flip 20 coins once, and wonder how well that reasult predicts the same 20 coins being flipped again. Then, you flip 1000 coins and wonder how well that result predicts the same 1000 coins being flipped again.
“But neither do the scouting reports say that Longoria is a +20 run defender nor do most other good defenders with good scouting reports remain +20 defenders after posting that for 1 season.”
May you don’t mean to be here, but you bulding a straw man. My possition is not that Longoria actually is a +20 defender. My possition is he’s more likely to be +15 than +10, and from the data I ran, it appears he’s just as likely to be +20 as +10.
Now to Matt H.
“The other 2.2 years of data say that he is probably “pretty average” at least in the -2 or -3 range. If that isn’t “pretty average” I guess I should use different language. But dismissing the fact that one year looks comepletely different and is skewing the total for Hanley seems a little ridiculous to me.”
What is actually ridiculous is to just ignore ~1/3 of your sample for no reason other than you THINK its an outlier, and thus it doesn’t fit your predetermined conclussion. If you can come up with good reasons why that -20 season is not repressentative of Ramirez’s true talent, other than its an outlier, I’m all ears. If he was battling a lot of injuries, had problems at home, maybe if it was his first year at the possition (it wasn’t), I could believe some of what you’re saying. As it is though, I’m using all available data. He’s obviously free to prove me wrong, and maybe he’s actually just improving, but as we’ve been going over, we need that year to make an accurate projection of his fielding skills…
I did look at player averages as well. The players averaged a drop of about 12.5 runs. They averaged a UZR of 11.9, but they also averaged a couple runs better than Longoria in the predictor sample, so Longoria could be expected to be a little closer to 10. Looking at consecutive years is a pretty common statistical method when you want to know how well a stat can predict future performance, or estimate true talent level. Since you are looking at an aggregate of several seasons, you are dealing with significantly larger samples than 1 player-season, and it’s the closest sample you can get to the one you are testing that is without the influence of that sample. Which is important: we want to know how well a single 20+ run season can estimate true talent level, so we need to be looking at samples that don’t include that season when we test how good a predictor that sample is. Which means career averages are not that good a sample to use, especially for players whose career UZR is made up largely of that one season of 20+ runs.
Nonetheless, I ran the same test you did just to check. And I got an average UZR/150 for the group of 14.5 with a standard deviation of 6. But only after I counted Andruw Jones’ career 5 times (once for every season over 20 runs), Carl Crawford’s twice, Chase Utley’s twice, and everyone else’ with multiple 20+ run seasons multiple times. The problem with that is, Andruw Jones didn’t have his career 5 times. He had it once. If we instead look at what the actual aggregate career UZR/150 of players who have had seasons over 20 runs, it’s only 12.2. Which, of course, still contains the problem that we are using our predictor sample (a single season of 20+ runs) in the sample of talent level we are predicting. So we can take the 20+ run season out of the career sample (or, with players with multiple 20+ run seasons, only take out the first) to see how well that season predicted the rest of the players career. Once we do this, the players’ aggregate UZR/150 fell below 10 to 9.4.
Four of the players maintained 15+ run UZR/150s over the rest of their available careers. Ten maintained UZR/150s below 10. Even if you include the predictor year and just take each player’s total career UZR, there were more players below 10 than above 15. So why would he be more likely to be +20 than +10 if this is the data you’re going by?
“Which is important: we want to know how well a single 20+ run season can estimate true talent level, so we need to be looking at samples that don’t include that season when we test how good a predictor that sample is. Which means career averages are not that good a sample to use, especially for players whose career UZR is made up largely of that one season of 20+ runs.”
I’m not sure how valid doing that is. I understand the codependency issues of keeping that 20+ season, however, why is that 20+ season then ignored when determining the player’s true talent in the career average? What makes that plus 20 any less indicative of his true talent than his other +10s or +15s? So, both sides represent a problem. One is codependency the other not measuring what you actually say you’re measuring. Obviously a player’s true skill is going to look worse if you take out their best year. And obviously players without much data beyond one 20+ season aren’t much use to us anyway. So for this purpose we need players 3+ season of UZR/150 data, and see how well close the +20 represents their skill. If that’s the question, I don’t see much reason in ignoring the +20 season. That is part of the sample to determine how good they really are.
“Nonetheless, I ran the same test you did just to check. And I got an average UZR/150 for the group of 14.5 with a standard deviation of 6.”
Yes, that’s what I reported. I then moved up my games requirement to 130 and came to 15.5.
“But only after I counted Andruw Jones’ career 5 times (once for every season over 20 runs), Carl Crawford’s twice, Chase Utley’s twice, and everyone else’ with multiple 20+ run seasons multiple times. The problem with that is, Andruw Jones didn’t have his career 5 times. He had it once. If we instead look at what the actual aggregate career UZR/150 of players who have had seasons over 20 runs, it’s only 12.2.”
But that isn’t the question we’re asking. We’re asking how often a +20 UZR/150 season is representative of a player’s true skill? We shouldn’t hold it against the +20 seasons that ~1/3 of them come from just a couple of players (isn’t that telling right there?) Andrew Jones had those +20 seasons, so they count.
“Four of the players maintained 15+ run UZR/150s over the rest of their available careers. Ten maintained UZR/150s below 10. Even if you include the predictor year and just take each player’s total career UZR, there were more players below 10 than above 15. So why would he be more likely to be +20 than +10 if this is the data you’re going by?”
Because I do not believe that data is telling for the question we’re asking. The +20 seasons do count. Particularly sense we have such a small sample size with several of these players. Then, of course, we’re ignoring the changing skill level of players. Take Ellis for example his UZR/150 go .6 (85 games), 3, 8.3, 8.5, 9.2, 23.7 (in just 115 games), 18.8 (so far this season). He’s gone up in every season, excluding this short season though that trend is likely to stop, so he could have just gotten better. Maybe not to +23.7, but that was done in a smaller sample than we have for Longoria, and we don’t have much data after that 23.7. So, we don’t know he’s actually improved to be that good or not.
Over all, I think we know this: Longoria is a damn good fielder. I don’t think he’s going to remain a +20 fielder, but I don’t think there is a whole lot of data to support a claim that he’s going to drop all the way down to a +10 fielder.
The reason we don’t want the 20+ run season in our sample is because we want to know how good an indicator that season is of what the player is expected to produce. If the season is reflective of the players’ true talent level, then the rest of what they do should be around that level as well. For example, in Andruw Jones’ case, that level does seem to be reflective of his true talent level, so taking out a season of 20+ run defense doesn’t really change anything. If the sample drops considerably without the seasons you are testing to see how well they represent the players true talent, then it is an indication that most of those seasons were outliers. We’re not taking out each player’s best season. We’re taking out their first 20+ run season to see how well that projects their talent level. The fact that that is the best season for most of them is another indication that these seasons are more likely to be outliers. But even if you do include them, there are still more players under 10 on their career than above 15.
Counting Andruw Jones, et al multiple times does nothing but taint your sample. We want to know how well a season of 20+ run defense represents what else a player does-all you’re doing is showing that players who consistently put up 20+ run seasons are better than players who put up 1 20+ run season. That doesn’t tell us anything about how likely a player who has 1 season of 20+ run defense is likely to perform. If you were only looking at the following year and not the career, you could count each one separately and see what happened after every year of 20+ run defense, but as it is, you are just counting the exact same seasons over and over to artificially drive up your results.
Yes, we are dealing with significant changing skill levels in some places. That’s one of the problems of looking at each player’s entire career and not just the next season, but that was your approach, not mine. Which is probably one of the major reasons my approach only yielded a drop of 12.5 runs instead of the 14.2 run drop looking at career totals yields.
“The reason we don’t want the 20+ run season in our sample is because we want to know how good an indicator that season is of what the player is expected to produce. If the season is reflective of the players’ true talent level, then the rest of what they do should be around that level as well.”
But we know there is a relatively high year-to-year variation, leading great difficulty in obtaining an accurate judgment of talent. So you are still skewing the over all talent measurement of the player by taking out their best season. Just random example, player A posts UZR of 10, 15, 5, and 20 over a 4 year span, what’s most likely his true talent? The average of all of them (12.5), or just 5, 10, and 15 (10)? That’s the question we’re asking. What’s the players true talent, and how close is that to 20? Not what his UZR/150 was after and/or before his +20 season.
“For example, in Andruw Jones’ case, that level does seem to be reflective of his true talent level, so taking out a season of 20+ run defense doesn’t really change anything.”
Ok, but we also have this problem of limited data. I have 12 players that have recorded greater than or equal to +20 UZR/150 over a 130+ game season. Crawford, Utley, Crisp, Feliz, Vizquel, Everett, Traveras, Cabrera, Patterson, Rolens, Beltre, and Jones.
Outside the 2007 season (with all those injuries) it looks like Crawford is in that 15-20 range. Utley appears to be that good as well. Crisp was a fluke. Feliz was that good. Everett was that good. Traveras was a fluke. Cabrera was a fluke. Patterson just might have been that good, the 4 year stretch around his +20 was +18.5 (unweighted average, but should be close enough, and would be actually higher if weighted). Which brings us to the changing skill level problem. On either end of that 4 year span Patterson was -10 (ouch) and roughly average. Then with Beltre, Rolen Visquel we hit age related issues. For Beltre its very likely he’s just aged off his fielding peak where he put up 2 +20 seasons out of 3, but we don’t have data for UZR for his 3 seasons before that. Rolen is a similar problem. And I don’t really know what to do with Vizquel. He was 40 when he put up that +20. I don’t suspect he was actually that good… So we have all kinds of issues making this average. Several players where in their peaks when UZR first becomes available and we’ve seen them age, bringing down their average. Several players have seen a few successful seasons, and we may see more.
“Counting Andruw Jones, et al multiple times does nothing but taint your sample. We want to know how well a season of 20+ run defense represents what else a player does-all you’re doing is showing that players who consistently put up 20+ run seasons are better than players who put up 1 20+ run season. That doesn’t tell us anything about how likely a player who has 1 season of 20+ run defense is likely to perform. If you were only looking at the following year and not the career, you could count each one separately and see what happened after every year of 20+ run defense, but as it is, you are just counting the exact same seasons over and over to artificially drive up your results.”
Ok, but by taking out the +20 season you’re artificially driving down your measure of the player’s true skill. And both of us so far have completely glossed over how a player’s skills may have actually changed. For example, why are we looking at Rolen’s 2002, age 27, +20 season, taking it out of his sample, then averaging his UZR from age 28 to 34, when he retired? Looking at his UZR/150 data, its a pretty obvious downward trend as he ages. So who’s to say that age 27 season wasn’t perfectly representative of his skills at that time? And the 16.1 career average, which would only be brought down by taking out that age 27 season, is a better measure of how well that one age 27 UZR/150 predicts his talent?
“Yes, we are dealing with significant changing skill levels in some places. That’s one of the problems of looking at each player’s entire career and not just the next season, but that was your approach, not mine. Which is probably one of the major reasons my approach only yielded a drop of 12.5 runs instead of the 14.2 run drop looking at career totals yields.”
But we don’t want just one more year or a career either. What we really need is a complete picture of an aging pattern along with the variances (which we don’t have enough history on to make). Which has been my basic my point. Longoria is young and very talented, so I’d expect him to be more likely to repeat than some one like Cocco Crisp, who was 27 when he put up his +20 and has struggled to keep an everyday job. Out of the players on this list, he seems more like a Jones or Crawford, than Traveras or Cabrera, don’t ya thing?
If we want to know how well a 15+ run season reflects a player’s value, then we look at everyone who had a season like that, and then we look at what they did outside of that season. If we want to look at how well a season between 13 and 17 runs reflects a player’s value, we do the same. It’s the same no matter what predictor sample you are looking at. We’re not simply throwing out everyone’s top season. We’re doing one specific thing: looking at our predictor sample, and seeing how well that projects the rest of the sample. We’re not looking at one player with UZRs of 10, 15, and 20 and trying to figure out what his talent level is. If we look at everyone who is +20 one season, and they overwhelmingly end up at 15 or worse, then we can reason that most of the +20 seasons are probably skewed high and not reflective of the true talent level. If we look at the +15 seasons and find that we get a lot of +10s and +20s in our results, then we can say that the +15 seasons are more likely to be around the player’s actual talent level.
The whole reason you look at only the next season is to avoid what you are talking about with Rolen (who is not retired, by the way). This was your method. Is the only reason you wanted me to use it so that you could poke holes in what you knew was flawed?
Now you’re going back into the subjective looks at individual players and ignoring the aggregate results. Weren’t you shunning that method earlier?
“If we want to know how well a 15+ run season reflects a player’s value, then we look at everyone who had a season like that, and then we look at what they did outside of that season. If we want to look at how well a season between 13 and 17 runs reflects a player’s value, we do the same. It’s the same no matter what predictor sample you are looking at.”
I’ve explained the problems with that at least twice now, and they remain the same for +15, or 13-17 or -2…or any other random numbers between -20 and 20 you want to pick. We aren’t asking the question of “what are the career averages of players with a +20 season when not including that year?” I can’t say it any more clearly than that. We are asking “how representative of a players true skill is a single +20 season, specifically going forward for a young player?” When doing that, we don’t want to throw out ANY season, because ALL seasons are needed to establish a player’s true talent. You can keep repeating yourself, but it isn’t going to change that.
“The whole reason you look at only the next season is to avoid what you are talking about with Rolen (who is not retired, by the way). This was your method. Is the only reason you wanted me to use it so that you could poke holes in what you knew was flawed?”
If you think that’s what I wanted you to do, you missed the point (and no, only looking at the next season isn’t telling for reasons I’ve already stated). I did an admittedly simplistic analysis at how close those +20 seasons where to career averages and stated some problems with that (and continue to do so), in an honest discussion about how to approach this problem. You then modified my simplistic analysis to throw out the +20 season (and repeated +20 seasons from a single player, which again changed the question we’re asking, but fine, we’ll go with that). I’ve stated problems with that, the main one being that, that season counts in establishing a player’s true talent. I then discussed what information we need to gather to really be able to answer this question (aging patterns), which neither of us is likely to do, and we probably don’t have the available data to do it anyway.
“Now you’re going back into the subjective looks at individual players and ignoring the aggregate results. Weren’t you shunning that method earlier?”
What I did was go player-by-player through our entire sample of +20 fielders to illuminate problems with the way we’re doing this analysis (our sample wasn’t indicative of the player we asking the question about), and why we need aging patterns. For example, Vizquel putting up a +20 season at the age of 40, doesn’t tell us much about how likely a 23 year old is in repeating a +20 season, or what his true talent level is. Think of the hitting equivalent. Does Luis Gonzalez posting a .453 wOBA, career best by about .050, at the age of 33, and how well he was able to repeat that, give us much information about how well a 23 year old with a .453 wOBA will repeat that? Aren’t their projected career paths much different, and thus the likely hood of each of them repeating it very different? Now fielding might “age” very differently than hitting, but we don’t really know yet, do we?
Now, its been a fun discussion, and through it I think we’ve learned first hand the limitations with this fielding data, but we’re going in circles. We’re now stuck repeating ourselves (ok, really you are, and my response to that same stance isn’t going to change) over leaving out this one season. If you’re not willing to accept the problems with that approach, and move on, I suppose this discussion is over. Regardless, we don’t really have the data to get around these problems, especially given the simplistic analyses we’re willing to do, and its very possible we don’t have enough historical data on UZR to do the required analysis anyway.
Lastly, to reiterate my final basic point: The young, all-around talented players on our list of +20 fielders were able to maintain these very high levels in UZR (Crawford and Jones, which I would consider better comps to Longoria than the likes of Vizquel or Cabrera.), so I suspect Longoria is a better bet to repeat high level UZR than our sample’s average. You want to slam me for subjective looks? Fine. However, in the absence of conclusive quantitative data, its absolutely proper to make informed and rational decisions or predictions on subjective information (or do you think scouting doesn’t have its place?). I may have “shunned” subjective analysis somewhere (ref?), but at times it has its place and in others it doesn’t.
We are trying to figure out how reflective one year of 20+ run defense is of a players true talent. To do that, you have to address the question of how well one such season can project a players true talent or predict other performances. That’s a relatively basic concept. As are concepts like not including the predictor sample in your results or looking at aggregates of several players to avoid the variations you might get from only looking at one at a time. If you can honestly not understand these basic concepts, I’m sorry. If such a basic and obvious statistical approach as I used doesn’t make sense to you, sorry. It’s a very common method in trying to answer the type of question we are asking. Taking statistics classes and learning some formulas, unfortunately, does not always teach you how to use that knowledge to formulate your own viable statistical approach in the field. I wish it did, so I didn’t have to try to explain things to people who want to stick their heads in the sand and multiply Andruw Jones’ career by 5 or tie the variability of an aggregate sample to the variability of one of its components or argue on one hand that you can’t count data too far from your predictor sample for much of anything because of changing talent levels and then on the other that you have to (until it doesn’t support his results, in which case the old flaws are again prevalent) without any understanding of what really makes sense.
I could look at fielders a season between 0 and 1 run and see what that season says about a players talent level. In the available sample, they regress very slightly to the mean. Players with a season between 4 and 5 regress a little bit more – about 2 runs. Players between 9 and 10 runs regress about 4.4 runs. Players between 13 and 17, about 5.5 runs. When you only have one season of UZR, you have to regress to the mean in considering the players true talent. The further from 0 the single season of UZR is, the more runs will come off with regression. When the predictor sample rises above 20, then sample bias kicks in pretty hard in selecting primarily outliers, and regression is even stronger. But apparently you don’t get that (you demonstrated in another post that you have no clue how to regress to the mean or even what it means). I’m sorry. Fortunately, as Longoria continues to play for the next few years, this aspect of analyzing his UZR ratings will become less important, and your pseudo-statistical approach will be less detrimental to your results.
I need to apologize in advance for that post. There was no reason for me to personally attack you. I let my frustrations get the better of me, and I apologize.
Eh, don’t worry about the attack. It shows more about you than me, though the fact that you caught yourself so quickly is a good thing. Its pretty easy to just be an a-hole on the internet.
Anyway…
What we are trying to do here is not to predict Longoria’s next UZR, we’re trying to figure out just how good he is. So, if in one season he’s +20, then he regresses to the mean, maybe to +10, he’s still a +15 fielder. And at that point we’re fairly confident the +15 is repressentative of his skill level. That’s the basic reason why we need to keep that +20. Its part of the information that helps us figure out how good he is. What’s happening here is we’re trying to answer two fundimentally different questions. You are asking, “how well does the +20 season predict the next season?” I’m asking, “how well does a +20 season repressent the player’s true talent?”
Then, why might we keep Andruw Jones’ 5 +20, and Utley’s 2? Because our question slightly different still. There I was wondering how well any +20 season predicts the talent of a player. The fact that about 1/3 (going off memory here) of our + 20 seasons by UZR/150 in 130+ games, is actually a good thing. That means the best players are repeating those seasons, so to take them out is skewing the sample towards the guys that actually just had a lucky season.
The basic idea here is how you specifically frame your question changes how you analyze the data greatly. There are a lot of ways to put these numbers together, and you could do everything right mathematically, but be trying to answer the wrong question and its all worthless. On the flips side, you can put them together in 100 different ways and ask 100 different questions, and be right, everytime. Any, this is a very big problem in my field were researchers analyze the data in all the right ways, but then go on to make conclusions that over reach that analysis, or are even entirely different from that analysis.
So, what you’re doing answers one question. But, I’m not particularly interested in that question, nor do I think it is the question that is relavent to this situation. Regardless, I think the final nail is in the coffin here. I will be interested to see how UZR plays out, and its ability to predict a player’s true skill, as we get more seasons worth of data.
Been fun and educational, see you in the next thread.
*That should be 11 players below 10 runs/150 over the rest of their careers, not 10.
I think people might be taking more from the Pujols comparison than Cameron intended. I think the point was simply: through his first 637 PA, he’s produced about as much as an average Pujols season. That’s all. No more, no less. And that comparison is valid.
Just like comparing the batting averages of two .300 hitters is valid. Or the total home runs of Dave Kingman and Lou Gehrig. The WAR comparison is valid, and that’s all Dave did.
Longoria’s BB/K ratio will improve with time. He’s got an above average eye and doesn’t swing at a ton of stuff out of the strikezone (or at least it seems, there might be some numbers out there that prove otherwise). He’s also got too natural of a swing and too good of bat speed to continue to strikeout at the rate he currently does. With repetitions and seeing the pitchers in the league for a while, the contact rate will go up and the strikeouts will decrease.
Will he ever get to Pujols’ all around ability, hitting wise? Highly unlikely, but he’s still an obsenely talented baseball player and easily the most talented young hitter in the game. He’s going to be a constant 40 double, 35-40 HR machine, and with Gold Glove defense to boot.
“He’s got an above average eye and doesn’t swing at a ton of stuff out of the strikezone (or at least it seems, there might be some numbers out there that prove otherwise).”
His O-Swing has been around 27% for his career, while league average is around 25%.
I stand corrected, but he’s not a hacker who swings at everything. He’s got a pretty good eye and I expect it to increase as he ages.
Sure, but right now it is below average. In a couple of years, we might be able to put him in the same class of a player as Albert or A-Rod, however, he isn’t there yet.
7.8 WAR is 7.8 WAR.
Then what distinguishes Longoria as better than all the other players who put up better than 7.8 win seasons, and why not write an article every time some does that proclaiming him to be the best in the League?
Because they weren’t as good as Longoria?
So 7.8 WAR is 7.8 WAR as long as it is Longoria. Got ya. If Chipper Jones puts up 8.1 WAR in his last 634 PAs, then we of course must acount for the sabermetric truism that Longoria is simply better than everyone else. Perhaps you could reveal the formula you are using here, since the Win Values you are reporting as your reasoning are obviously not your reasoning. The best guess I can make is something like:
Value=WAR when WAR=Longoria_WAR
Apparently the comments don’t like my formulas formatting. Oh well. I guess the one that got posted is another possible formula.
Yes, because Chipper Jones is 23.
I don’t even know why I bother. I’ll just let you guys believe whatever you want.
I’m mostly on your side in this one, Dave, but it’s a turn-off to be reading responses like that from a writer I really want to respect. You’re obviously a smart guy, and that’s why I’m here, but couldn’t that be coupled with some tact? I would certainly enjoy FanGraphs even more if I didn’t see the writers crapping on people in the comments section, ESPECIALLY when the commenters aren’t being harsh themselves (and really even when they are).
If you want us to understand what you are doing, then tell us what you are doing. Don’t just say Longoria is the best player in the AL and right behind Pujols for best in the game and then to prove your point go Win Values! only to backtrack when that doesn’t work and say something completely different. You say something like:
“7.8 WAR is 7.8 WAR”
and then when your WAR comparisons don’t work, 7.8 WAR are no longer 7.8 WAR. You use the term “best” in your article and later claim you are simply talking about looking at what value he has provided, but when someone else uses the same methodology to find “better” players, then the methodology is no longer valid. If you want to include Longoria’s age in an evaluation of his value, go ahead. Apply an age path and work out projections of his true talent. But do that, and don’t say he is the best and talk about his Win Values, and then say you only mean to look at what value he provided and not to compare him to anyone else, and then estimate that his age makes him better than all the more valuable players without any attempt at quantifying that value. You have been all over the place in how you are valuing Longoria and other players in this article and the comments. You don’t seem to have any logical, comprehensive justification for what you are saying. It’s like you just jumping around to be inflammatory.
What makes me sad is that the guy who makes the incoherent argument gets belligerent with people who are trying to understand it and then refuses to acknowledge any of the ambiguities in the argument. Reasonable people can disagree. Shitting on the people who are honestly trying to engage your claim is pathetic.
“Yes, because Chipper Jones is 23.
I don’t even know why I bother. I’ll just let you guys believe whatever you want.”
I don’t know why you bother either…
What does age have to do with being the best (or second best) player in baseball. If you are saying this is the player I want on my team for the next ten years, yeah, I’ll take Longoria over Jones; If I want to win the World Series this year, I might take Chipper.
The past two seasons Chase Utley posted WARs of 8.1 and 8.0. It looks like he is on pace for another ~8 WAR this year.
Its not completely evident that Longoria is the best player under 28, either.
Hanley Ramirez posted a WAR of 7.6 last year. And David Wright post a 7.4. Neither is off to the hot start that Longoria is, but it’s a long season.
You really don’t think that a young player is inherently more valuable than an older player, given equal performance?
Jeff- he would likely be more valuable, given the fact that he would likely still be earning peanuts, however the debate is not about value, but about skill. Regardless of age, 8 WAR is just as good as 8 WAR.
Jeff, did you read the article?
“I’m here to say we can take the word young out of the previous sentence. Evan Longoria is the best player in the American League. He’s not that far behind Albert Pujols for the title of best player in baseball. ”
He is not saying that Longoria is the best young player, he is explicitly saying that Longoria is the second best player regardless of age. In a discreet one year sample I don’t see how being young makes a player more valuable than an older one. In fact if I want to win a World Series I might rather have veterans that have previous experience, so assuming equal performance I think a veteran player has a slight advantage.
Add a two-run double that nearly was a grandslam to his game today. That’s 15 2B, 11 HRs, and 43 RBIs for those keeping score at home.
helpful
Maybe I’m just stupid but what does a “30-park home run” mean?
It means that the homer he hit would have left all 30 parks in baseball.
Don’t worry about it. As things stand now, it’s a misleading garbage stat, because it doesn’t account well for humidity and wind speed/velocity, nor direction of the hit. When Jose Molina gets one into the new Yankee Stadium jet stream and it carries 355 feet down the right field line, that’s a 30-park shot. When Pujols bashes one 433 feet to dead center into a 15mph wind blowing straight in, that’s not, because it wouldn’t have gone out in Houston.
I know, I know, we accept these sorts of inconsistencies when it comes to plain ol’ HRs. But at least a home run measures what we expect:
*Did the ball go over the wall?
The 30-park nonsense supposedly tells us “Would the ball have gone out in all thirty parks?” and then fails to answer the question miserably.
Ignore that crap.
It does account for atmosphere, wind, and direction. There are two numbers: true distance and standard distance. The former is how far it really went while the latter is how far it would have gone adjusting to normal conditions (i.e. accounting for wind and atmosphere). That’s why you have some home runs that are listed as HR in 0 parks: they only cleared because of favourable conditions.
Re: below.
The boys at that website do a nice job overall. I maintain, however, they don’t account for weather conditions “well”. They do better than nothing, but don’t go far enough.
Further, when using “30-park” homers or similar non-useful stats as an argument basis, you run into serious problems. The purpose of the arguer is to instill in us a sense of wonder at how incredibly powerful Longoria (in this case) must be to jack so many “30-park” homers. But it has as much to do with strength and HR-ability as picking the right location: check out Longoria’s HR chart, there is a nice cluster of HRs that are considered “30-park” but didn’t clear the wall by much and/or didn’t stay fair by much.
Further rendering the data — not quite useless — not especially useful is the one-sidedness of it all. In order to be included on the tracker, a HR has to be a HR in the first place. A Pujols smash 433 feet to dead center in Houston could be a 29-park HR, instead it doesn’t get counted, because it wasn’t a HR in the first place.
I’m not trying to get all over the fine work they do at that website. It’s good stuff overall. My primary issue is this: the “#-park” stats are virtually worthless in the context of determining who the best players are.
That’s true. They have very little value in actually assigning a player value. They’re interesting for what they are and helpful for very specific things, but there’s not really any reason to include it as a substantial part of discussing a player’s value when there are much better ways to measure the same thing than just looking at something like 30-park home runs.
Ok. I guess they were just making a distinction between inside and outside the park home runs. Kind of strange.
What are you talking about?
The distinction is whether the home run was ball-park dependent in any way. Hittrackeronline.com tracks home run trajectories and distances along with wind and atmospheric conditions and determines in which parks a HR would have cleared the fence. For example, a ball hit into the Crawford boxes in Houston might not have left Petco Park, so it would not have been a home run in all 30 parks.
PETCO shouldn’t even count. Those power alleys are retarded and I mean that in the least offensive way possible. I’m willing to bet that when you see the number 29 below “# Parks”, eight times out of ten the outlier is PETCO.
Thanks. I’d never heard of that before, but it makes sense.
He’s my MVP.
I like how he says that “EL is not far behind AP for the title of best player in baseball” and then says that he wasn’t even close to comparing the two.
Funny that these long arguments filled with insults are always in the Dave Cameron threads, and pretty much nobody elses.
If you’re gonna say that Evan Longoria is the best player in the AL and close to Pujols, then you should be prepared to talk about comparisons between the two..since that’s pretty much the headline of your article.
Somebody needs to create a value-based metric for Fan Graphs authors. Take the average number of replies across the site, multiply by .75, subtract from the author’s average…voilà! Comments above replacement.
Can we get a version of the metric that breaks down the ratio of axe grinding to legitimate?
Yeah, but then you’d have to create a separate baseline for each one and I really don’t have the patience.
Well played.
99% of the time I agree with what Dave has to say. In this case, I think I have to agree with Kincaid and his point about “7.8 WAR is 7.8 WAR… except when he’s 23.” Longoria hasn’t been the best player in baseball the last calendar year, he’s only 8th on the WAR list. And if you say “but he’s 23,” then I’ll just point out that Hanley and Wright are both ahead of him on that list, with Pedroia right behind him. So if you want to say, “going forward hes the best,” then back it up with something. Show us a projection or something, don’t just cite his age. You can calculate Marcels on THT, it will take you 2 minutes per player. You’ve said this before…. on this site, you need evidence to support your conclusions. Right now, Dave, you’re on VERY shaky ground.
This is probably the most reasoned explanation of everything. If you’re going to make a statement as matter of fact as “7.8 is 7.8″ and then say it only matters “cause he’s 23″ than you should get ripped apart. This ends the debate.
Thanks bud
If I were in 9th grade and you told me to summarize this article, here is what I would say.
“Evan Longoria’s career so far resembles an average season of Albert Pujols, who happens to be the best player in baseball right now. Therefore, Longoria is a very good player.”
Now tell me, which of these two statements is logically false? Neither of them? Then we’re in agreement, Dave’s article is perfectly fine.
9th graders are bad at summarizing things. Is that your point?
You forgot to mention to part where Dave says:
“Evan Longoria is the best player in the American League. He’s not that far behind Albert Pujols for the title of best player in baseball.”
Sure, Longoria has had one “season” in which he produced at a level that is close to that of an average Pujols season; however, you can’t just assume that he will continue to put up numbers like he has so far. Many people in this thread have outlined reasons why Longoria may not be able to sustain a 7.8 WAR pace, and a lot of them are valid.
I think Dave should start posting his articles under a different name and see if there is still the same level of utterly atrocious responses.
Nye, you help fuel the fire with your impassioned boot licking. Cameron sets out to be a jerk, and when it comes back and he gets his ass whipped, (which he has 5 times in the last 2 weeks) all your moderation from his home site won’t save him.
Imagine that, another axe grinder against USSM.
They probably miss you over at Baker’s blog, run along now.
What Baker-blog tough guy are you, CaR? You couldn’t hold Dave Cameron’s jock.
PS – Keep the irresponsible posts to yourself, please. People come here to become more educated on baseball, not your opinions.
I think Dave is wrong about this one. What would be a key word to have inserted into his post would be “potentially”. He didn’t, and defended his logic in his typical manner. Whether Longoria proves to be the best, second best, 14th best, is a question for time to answer. From appearances, it seems that a great deal of value from a “wins” perspective is derived from somewhat dubious, and definitely incomplete defensive data. I don’t buy it, and there has yet to be a real time correlation done with defensive metrics to convince me that they are more than hypothetical.
This, coupled with the hyper-attention given to defense, which in my opinion, has an underlying motive of proping up replacement-level, or AAAA roster building. Measuring every players’ contributions equally defensively and offensively is biased, and doesn’t leave enough room in value for guys that hit incrementally above the norm.
Snarfy, you are a funny cat, but its way too easy to ferret out the lookout landing nerd who is so desperate for even the slightest bit of positive social interaction. Sad.
This shitting on commentators who are calm, reasoned and offer well thought out criticism/responses to articles really debase fangraphs. It happens a lot imho.
Dave’s article doesn’t say that Longoria is a very good player, he says that Longoria may be the bestest player [sic], or perhaps merely the second bestest after Pujols. Commentators like Kincaid called him out on that reasoning, and he goes all high and mighty on them. A shame, really.
Is Dave wrong for saying that Longoria might be the best player to come for a while?
No these commenter are not providing criticism and well thought out responses they’re just trying to prove whatever Dave says is wrong.
And reading his responses he provides reasons for why he supports it never does he go out and say I’M DAVE FUCKING CAMERON LISTEN TO ME BITCHES. Rather he tells them why their logic is flawed instead of just saying he’s wrong.
From my view, Kincaid’s responses are well thought out critiques, and support their position why Longo might *not* be the best player in MLB. It’s perfectly ok for commentators to try to “prove” Dave wrong, as long as they do it in the Fangraphs way – by use of advanced baseball metrics and reason. If all they said was ‘Dave, you’re wrong, EOM’ then that would be idiotic. But folks aren’t doing that.
Dave’s responses are: ‘I’m not comparing him to Pujols’ and ’7.8 WAR is 7.8 WAR’ – without directly addressing the points brought up by the responses. Pretty much an un-Fangraphs sorta response, imho.
Lol slurve
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I believe what Dave is trying to say is that Evan Longoria is a pretty good baseball player. Perhaps you guys have the better eye on this one, see what I don’t see, and have some crazy statistics to back you up if you don’t agree, but I’d tale Longoria over 99% of the players in baseball in a heartbeat.
No he says that Longoria is not that far behind Pujols for the title of best player in baseball, which is an asinine statement, which he can not back up.
Dave DID back his statement up: he said that the 22/23 year old Evan Longoria’s performance in the first 150 games of his career was worth 7.8 wins. This decade, only Pujols and A-Rod, baseball’s two best players, have been that valuable in an average season. Longoria already performed at A-Rod and Pujols’ level (WAR-wise) for one year, and he is a great bet to perform that valuably for the next decade. Dave argues that this makes him “not that far behind Pujols for the title of the best player in baseball.” How the hell is that not backing it up?
Nowhere does Dave compare A-Rod and Pujol’s particular offensive or defensive skill-sets to Longoria’s. Here, he’s defining the “best” players as the ones who can repeat the highest WAR values most consistently. That’s why “7.8 wins are 7.8 wins.”
If anything, you’re the one being asinine because you’ve given no criteria for how YOU would determine the “best” player.
And although Dave didn’t address this, as for why Longoria compares favorably to Hanley, Utley, Jones, and Wright in his prospects for being the best player in baseball: Chipper Jones is almost 40 and misses 30-40 games per year, meaning a crappy guy takes his place when he’s out. Utley is on the wrong side of thirty. Ramirez and Wright can definitely compete with Longoria, but that’s it. And Ramirez and Wright are only average fielders, so that’s one place Longoria has an edge.
Decatur- the problem is, it is too premature to call Longoria the best player in the AL, simply because he has only had 1 seasons worth of playing time. Right now, he has a career .395 wOBA and is +20 runs defensively at third base. Those are sick numbers, but given the fact that Longoria has only done that in ~600 plate appearances, you can’t take for granted that he will be able to continue that pace:
1) A lot of his value is based on his defense, and UZR doesn’t come close to estimating a players true talent level after only 1 seasons worth of data. There are very few +20 run defenders at any position (the only guys I can think of are Guttierez, Crawford and maybe Beltre). It is more likely that Longoria is a +10 defender.
2) As a hitter, Longoria has a somewhat hacktastic approach. His BB rates and O-Swing rates are below average, and his contact and strikeout rates are pretty crappy. He appears to have tremendous power, but it is hard to maintain a .395 wOBA with his kind of approach.
Longoria is clearly an excellent young player, who will be providing MVP like production for peanuts over the next half decade. However, it is premature to call him the best player in the AL after only 1 season. Guys like Mauer, Sizemore and Granderson have all had seasons when they provided similar production to what Longoria has provided in his first “season”, but they have had a longer track record of doing so.
In the NL, there are even more guys who should be expected to be better than Longoria. Wright and Utley are both coming off back to back 7.5+ WAR seasons, and at the rate that Hanley has improved each year, he is likely the best non-Pujols player in the league going forward. Even guys like Beltran and Chipper, despite the age and injury risk, have a chance to be better than Longo over the next couple of seasons. And then of course there is Raul :)
Decatur–Maybe because best, second best, third best, ect are meaningless statements.
Over the past two years Chase Utley has average an 8.05 WAR; This year he is on pace for a similar total. Why is Longoria better? Why is Longoria better than Hanley Ramirez?
Age doesn’t matter when stating who is better currently. The point of Cameron’s post was that Longoria is the second best player regardless of age. He uses the phrase
: I’m here to say we can take the word young out of the previous sentence. Once people started pointing that that argument doesn’t really hold water, he began to backtrack and use Longoria’s age as a crutch to his argument.
“Over the past two years Chase Utley has average an 8.05 WAR; This year he is on pace for a similar total. Why is Longoria better? Why is Longoria better than Hanley Ramirez?”
Dave’s point had nothing to do with Longoria or Ramirez, you know sense they play in the other league. You even quoted part of Dave’s text that explains that, the whole thing being: “It wouldn’t be that controversial to call Longoria the best young player in the American League. I’m here to say we can take the word young out of the previous sentence. Evan Longoria is the best player in the American League.”
“Age doesn’t matter when stating who is better currently. The point of Cameron’s post was that Longoria is the second best player regardless of age… Once people started pointing that that argument doesn’t really hold water, he began to backtrack and use Longoria’s age as a crutch to his argument.”
Age does matter though. The reason is that last year, where most of Longoria’s data comes from, he was 22. But now he’s 23, he’s likely already become a better player than his statistics indicate. This a very fundimental problem with baseball. By the time you have generated a large enough sample to be confident in making a conclussion its likely the player has developed away from his previous statistics. This going to be especially true for players in their early 20′s where the learning curve is steap. So right this second Longoria isn’t the player that he was last June or September that you draw these stats from. He’s likely to have already improved many of the things we are holding against him, weak as those points are anyway.
Now, I don’t know that this what Dave actually meant, because he really has a difficult time answering critisisms, and given his attitude in that regard it would probably just be best he didn’t try. However, age diffinately matters in determining who’s actually better RIGHT NOW. Take an extreme example where an aging player has absolutely torn up the league from ages say 36-39. Would you pick that now 40 year old player to be the best in the league at the moment or the now 25 year old player that has been second best for those years? That example is of course Bonds and Pujols.
Wally- Utley and Ramirez are relevant because Dave said Longoria might be the second best player in baseball. Two players who are most likely better than Longoria right now, certainly help to dispel that notion.
Also, the whole age thing is a double sided sword. You can say that because Longoria is young, he will definitely improve, however, it is just as likely that his firs ~600 at bats aren’t representative of his true talent level. A lot of people in this thread have given reasons why Longoria may not be as good in the future as he has been in his small sample size so far, and a lot of those reasons are valid.
“Wally- Utley and Ramirez are relevant because Dave said Longoria might be the second best player in baseball.”
Is that what he said? Cuz I don’t see it…. I see best player in the AL.
“Also, the whole age thing is a double sided sword. You can say that because Longoria is young, he will definitely improve, however, it is just as likely that his firs ~600 at bats aren’t representative of his true talent level.”
Exactly, his first ~600 ABs might not be representative of his talent, he might actually be…..better…..? And he has minor league data as well. And that data shows that he’s actually better at some of these secondary skills (though I’d see they are more like primary skills, but what ever) you claim he lacks. I’ve said this before, and never saw a responce, but his BB% was much better in the minors, and all the projections had that improving, except for Oliver. Then his K% was also lower in the minors, so all of the projections again showed his K% going down. If these projection pan out to be true, he basically sits even with A-rod in all of these PA% stats, while also being roughly equal across the board in the swing% stats to A-rod already. So, I see no reason to believe these secondary stats are telling us that this 23 year old is going to digress or why his previous performance in unsustainable. Maybe it would be unsustainable if his secondary numbers were expected to stay the same, but they aren’t….
“A lot of people in this thread have given reasons why Longoria may not be as good in the future as he has been in his small sample size so far, and a lot of those reasons are valid.”
The argument might be valid, but that doesn’t neccissarily mean its true. Which is what we are disputing. Ie. I could make the argument:
I am a human.
Humans can fly.
Therefor, I can fly.
Its valid, but it isn’t true. The basic argument here is:
Players with below average O-swing%, K% and BB% can’t maintain a ~.400 wOBA.
Longoria has below average O-swing%, K% and BB%.
Longoria won’t maintain a ~.400 wOBA.
So, I’m disputing the truth of this argument. I believe Longoria’s true BB% at this moment, and going foward, is better than what it was over the last year (see minor league data), and that great players with ~.400 wOBA can have below average O-swing% if they do other things well. Like have 20+% HR/FB ratios or 20% LD% (which also stand to get better as he ages).
You refuse to see the flip side of things, that Longoria may have actually played over his head in his first full season. Very rarely do you ever see a guy who is capable of putting up a true (meaning representative of his true talent level) 7.8 WAR caliber season in his first year. It is more likely that Longoria isn’t as good as he has been so far, than it is that he is actually the best young player to come along in a while.
I recognize its possible he’s worse, but I do not think its likely that he actually much worse. And sense I don’t see a whole lot of luck looking at his stats, even if he is actually worse, his development will overshadow that very quickly, if it hasn’t already.
A round of applause to all baseball blogs that get popular for dealing with stuff like this with the patience they do. Sure, sometimes the analysts have a tendency to get a little rude, but when you see what they have to deal with on a daily basis, I think an outburst here and there is acceptable. I’ve been on the receiving end of some ruder comments, but I realize I’ve said some stupid and rude things before. If we can say stupid and rude things in the comments, the authors are entitled to do the same from time to time.
Massive respect and kudos to FanGraphs and other blogs. There’s no way I could ever have the patience you guys do.
As for the article, I do have a huge man crush on Longo…so I can’t really disagree. What he does in his age 25-30 seasons is going to be scary.
Wally I agree with much of what you are saying, except for this:
Dave’s point had nothing to do with Longoria or Ramirez, you know sense they play in the other league. You even quoted part of Dave’s text that explains that, the whole thing being: “It wouldn’t be that controversial to call Longoria the best young player in the American League. I’m here to say we can take the word young out of the previous sentence. Evan Longoria is the best player in the American League.”
The next sentence that Dave wrote in that same paragraph was: “He’s not that far behind Albert Pujols for the title of best player in baseball.”
The topic of that sentence dealt with disregarding Longoria’s age, and the conclusion of that sentence is Longoria is “not that far behind Albert Pujols” talent wise as the best player in baseball. That conclusion is what brings Utley and Ramirez into the discussion.
Now Dave has shown himself to be an unclear writer in the past, so it is possible that he constructed this paragraph clearly; yet he will not clarify this point. Instead when asked what distinguishes Longoria from other 7.8 WAR players, he simply states: “Because Longoria is better”.
Now your argument of development is compelling, but that same argument holds (possibly to a slighter degree) for Ramirez. Another possible counter is that Utley played half the year with a bum hip last year, so his total numbers on the year were lower. This could easily spiral into a completely tangent argument, which I’m not interested in starting. However my point is that while one can expect Longoria to progress, one can not predict that progress, nor can one predict the adjustments that the league will make to Longoria, nor can one predict (satisfactorily) the amount of progression/regression.
Now Dave could easily clarify his point and make all this debate moot. Is he saying that Longoria is the second best player in baseball, or is he saying that Longoria is just near the top. However, when making that statement progression in the future is not to be considered, as a run created by a 23 year old is worth no more than a run created by a 43 year old.
There should be quotation marks around the second paragraph of my previous paragraph, sorry.
I noticed my own words, so no problem there.
And basically, I don’t disagree with you. I understand that some of what Dave has said was not terribly clear, or at least it wasn’t very precise, especially in the comments. I guess I’m just not as hung up on Utley (which is who I meant to say in in that supposed-to-be-quoted paragraph instead of Longoria) or Ramirez because I don’t find any contradiction when saying he’s the best player in the AL and just below Pujols. Utley and Ramirez are after all just below Pujols as well, but are in the NL. Then, with A-rod missing the first month, getting older, and the uncertainty with his hip, I don’t have too much trouble putting Longoria ahead of him. Particularly, after the lead Longoria has built up so far this season. And outside of him the AL is weaker on standouts than the NL. Sizemore and Mauer are great, but they aren’t consistent 7+ WAR players. Pedroia might be his closest competition, but again, look at the lead Longoria’s already built for this year.
I’d like to make this clear: I’m not really hear to defend some of Dave’s now typical rash, defensive and arrogant responses to criticism, or even just questions for clarification. I happen to agree with the conclusion reached in this post, but I am not necessarily happy with Dave’s defense of it, as usual.
Again, thank you Wally. I agree that Longoria is among the handful or so players that I would consider to be the best players in the AL, though I’m not sure any of them stick out as the surefire best–as Pujols does in the NL.
I agree with everything else you say, though.
Why the hell did that post as a response? I scrolled all the way to the bottom of the screen to post…
“You don’t seem to have any logical, comprehensive justification for what you are saying. It’s like you just jumping around to be inflammatory.”
The pot called and it wants it’s kettle back.
I hate to see the threads turn like this, because both sides end up looking bad even though good points are being made. Still, love the little bit-sized nuggets of wisdom from Dave, so keep ‘em coming.
If we’re talking about the “value” of a player, shouldn’t we be considering the price tag as well? After all, performance doesn’t exist in a vacuum – it has a dollar sign attached to it, and with that factor included, Longoria does look even better. If I were a General Manager, and I had to choose between Longoria and Pujols to build a franchise around, I would take Longoria every time. Choose whatever metric you want – OPS, WARP, wOBA – and I would guess that Longoria will have one of the highest, if not the highest, metric/dollars for the next five or six years. That makes him arguably the “most valuable” player in baseball.
Not really introduced as part of the equation, but since several commentators have (correctly) addressed the issue of including as much information as possible, it’s worth mentioning.
So far this year, Evan Longoria has proven himself to be capable of Russell Branyan-type numbers.
Here’s my overwhelmingly massive problem with Evan Longoria: He’s still seeing 50-plus percent of pitches in the zone. This will change, just like it has for every other elite player. The question becomes whether or not Longoria will adapt when Pitchers realize that Longoria’s just as dangerous as the man batting behind him.
By the way, Longoria’s torrid pace warrants a fairly massive small sample size caveat. He’s managed to get fairly lucky facing some very good pitchers at very fortunate times, and he’s killed Orioles and Red Sox pitching.
Everything about Longoria (swing,contact,bb:k) says that he should be seeing far less pitches in the zone, but this isn’t the case. Whether or not he’s just been facing pitchers that can’t hit their spots, or facing pitchers that figure they’d rather make a mistake to Longoria over Pena, is debatable.
Totally agree regarding the points about his plate discipline type stats.
However, I think Russ Branyen might be downplaying Longoria a little.
Also, Longoria has +15 defense at 3B, which alone makes him about 2 wins better than Branyen.
I’m not strongly disagreeing with you main points, but I think your conclusion may be a little strong.
Dave,
Great article man, just wondering if you are starting a team today do you take Longo or Hanley?
“If we’re talking about the “value” of a player”
We are not, Dave’s statement was “Evan Longoria is the best player in the American League. He’s not that far behind Albert Pujols for the title of best player in baseball.” Which has nothing to do with how much he costs.
Anyway, this is all going to be a moot point when the Jesus Lord… i mean Matt Wieters gets called up.
I don’t think that’s what he meant by value.
“Evan Longoria is the best player in the American League. He’s not that far behind Albert Pujols for the title of best player in baseball.”
Point 1: Candidates for best player in the AL include who? ARod, Sizemore, Mauer and Pedroia? Given what Longoria has showed, isn’t it reasonable to say that he might be a better player than those 4? If not, he’s certainly in the conversation.
Point 2: If you think he’s in the conversation for best player in the AL, which seems reasonable, doesn’t it seem reasonable to say that he’s not far behind Pujols, along with those other AL players, and probably Wright and Hanley?
This claim doesn’t seem to be that unreasonable to me. While yes, there are arguments to be made for others, overall, seems like a pretty reasonable argument. I think the only reason this is a big deal is because people like to argue with Dave because he rubs them the wrong way and is not the most polite of people.
There are some that would disagree with your point 1, though I guess it is a reasonable argument on both sides.
Those who disagree would basically frame the question as ‘which player would you want on your team for the next 1-2 years?’ and argue that while Longoria’s stats are obscene right now, some peripherals suggest that he’ll come down on those, unless he steps up his already above average skill set. They would take someone like Arod instead, and without much question, because Arod is what he is, the best in the AL with a track record to support it. Longo’s record is short, and the auxiliaries suggest he’s enjoying some luck.
That’s, to me, the beauty of sabermetrics. Looking at basic baseball stats, it is impossible to make an argument that Longoria isn’t Pujols II. Looking at saber numbers, one can convincingly argue that he’s a step below where his current numbers are. Sorta like bringing up BABIP as a counter-argument to anti-Sheffield Mets fans.
That Dave just flippantly brushes aside such saber based counter arguments makes him look like all those head-in-the-sand BWAA the saber community rails against.
Well, I would say that guys like Mauer, Wright and Ramirez have a proven record of peripheral stats that confirm an underlying skill set that makes them look like their success is more projectible than Longoria’s. Longoria really doesn’t have a high on-base skill set yet. He may develop one, but player development is hard to project. That was the fundamental objection to saying that he’s the best player in the AL from comment number one. No one has yet really addressed it and it’s annoying to see people defend the original claim that he’s the best player in the AL or pretend like that wasn’t an explicit point in the original post.
Honestly, I don’t think 2 is right. Pujols isn’t just the best player playing right now, he’s arguably among the greatest players ever. I think he’s the best right handed hitter ever; Jimmie Foxx is the only competition. “Pujols” goes in the same breath as “Williams, Mantle, and Ruth.” Probably the decline phase of his career will adjust our perception of him, nevertheless, right now, being second best is still a long way from being like Pujols.
Unless you are Dave Cameron, then Longoria is “just behind” Pujols.
Really embarrassing show from Dave here. That “I wasn’t comparing them” thing is the saddest shit I’ve ever seen.
It was dumb for him to say that, but we’re talking semantics here. He obviously WAS comparing the two players. His mistake is in thinking that compare is the opposite of contrast, when comparisons can reveal both similarities and differences. Plenty of people make this error, so I’m not going to hold it against him as a baseball analyst. Besides, the thrust of his argument was undoubtedly valid.
“A full season’s worth” of plate appearances over two seasons isn’t exactly a full season. I like Longoria a lot, but I want to see what he actually does over a full season. Regardless, he’s probably going to be one of the most valuable players in the AL over the next five years, if not the most valuable.
True statement, but not sexy enough. Need more hyperbole.
This discussion has involved a pretty fundamental confusion, it seems to me. Here are two questions we can ask:
1) Who has been the best player in baseball for the last year?
2) Who is the best baseball player, all things considered?
In order to address these questions, we have to make a couple of points. First, they are in fact different questions: lots of players outperform their true level of talent for a little while. That’s why we might get a different answer for (1) than we do for (2). Second, what do we mean by “best baseball player, all things considered?” I take it that we want to include some measure of past performance, some measure of potential future production (presumably along the same metric), and some accounting for age (though perhaps that’s included in a measurement of potential future production).
In the original post, Dave Cameron appeared to argue that Evan Longoria is second only to Albert Pujols when evaluating baseball players *all things considered.* But he provided evidence only for the claim that Evan Longoria has been among the very best baseball players for the past season of playing time. This discrepancy fueled my original comments.
In order to make good on the claim that Evan Longoria is “not that far behind Albert Pujols for the title of best player in baseball,” you’d think that you’d have to do something more than simply pointing out that he has been that good for the last year. That’s because simply pointing out what someone has done in the past (and for a relatively short past) doesn’t necessarily tell me that he’s going to continue to do it. What if I had good reason to think that his past performance was due, in part, to substantial luck?
So, we need evidence that Longoria is going to *remain* a 7.8 WAR player (or thereabouts) if we’re going to take seriously the claim that he’s approaching Pujols. None of that was forthcoming from Cameron. Instead, he pounded his fists and stomped his feet and insulted those of us who disagreed with him. Cameron acts like we’re all idiots, but the original post, and his subsequent comments, pretty clearly conflate the two questions above.
Cameron responded to those of us who don’t believe that Longoria is nearly as good as Pujols, all things considered, by doing one of two things: a) pointing out the Longoria *has been* as good as Pujols for the past year (“7.8 WAR is 7.8 WAR); or b) denying that he made a comparison in the first place (“It’s not even close to a comparison:); or c) pointing out that Longoria is 23 (“A 23-year-old with a .395 wOBA who also doubles as a gold glove defensive third baseman is a freaking monster”); The first is an obvious non-sequitur. The second is false unless we define “comparison” so narrowly as to exclude the assessment of the value of one player relative to another. The third doesn’t come close to making the case.
Good as Longoria is, simply saying that he’s 23 doesn’t prove to me that he’s nearly as good as Pujols: I think he can’t sustain the level of performance he’s shown for the past year for reasons cited above, i.e., he lacks the important secondary skills that Pujols and some others have and that lead me to assess their value as above Longoria’s.
So, rather than having a reasoned argument – something one might not only expect, but welcome, given the cutting-edge nature of the analysis on this site – we got a bit of a tantrum. That’s disappointing. I like this site a lot and I think Dave Cameron does good work. That’s why the kind of confusion Cameron exhibits in the main post and in his comments is surprising. It would be okay if he acknowledged it. Instead he tells everyone else they’re idiots.
Well that was well said.
This is a very good assesment of what has happened in this discussion. I disagree on some of the details (the secondary skills) and generally agree with Dave’s post, but his behavoir is very disappointing, and has lowered the quality of this discussion.
I think one piece of information that could put much of argument to bed would be to know how a player’s BB%, O-swing%, etc. change as they develop, and how minor performances predict that change. This is something us commenters rely on a guy like Dave for becauce he has access to all the data, with the time, knowledge and willingness to do this kind of work. While the rest of us are happy writing a comment, or 10, that take 5 minutes each just looking up what is easily accessable. But instead of something like that, maybe in a follow up post, we get the tantrums…
Oh well, maybe we’ll get that post yet.
We know what to reasonably expect from Rodriguez, Pedroia, Mauer and Sizemore. How comfortable are you projecting Longoria?
Whether or not he’s the best player in the American League at this very point in time is a question that can only be answered in hindsight, if even then. All you can do for now is fill in the blanks.
Interestingly, David Appelman comes with a convenient solution to our offensive projection problems. The new in season ZIP’s projections projects Longoria to have a .383 wOBA the rest of the way.
Convenient? Yes. Solution? No.
How many people want to bet that if Eric Seidman or R.J. Anderson wrote this post it would have less than 10 comments?
It’s a topic that’s liable to generate a lot of debate regardless of author. I’d set the over/under more in the 30-40 range though I could see it exceeding that figure handily.
I think it also helps that in the 36 or so hours since the article was posted, the only other post has been the announcement of the ZiPS update. The Manny article from the other morning that had two more articles following it that evening and five more the next day, for example, has 126 responses but only 25 not from the same day. This article has an identical 126 responses but 48 not from the same day. You don’t get that kind of day-after response without having nothing else to compete for your attention.
Nobody likes us :(
@RJ: hahahahhah
Both are more precise writers and have shown a willingness to directly respond to questions and criticisms. Half of the posts here have dealt with trying to figure out what Dave was arguing in the first place.
Read this passage, and answer the following questions:
“Evan Longoria is the best player in the American League.”
- Dave Cameron
Dave Cameron is saying that Evan Longoria is better than:
(A) David Wright
(B) Chase Utley
(C) Hanley Ramirez
(D) Juan Pierre
(E) None of the Above
Dave Cameron is saying that Evan Longoria will be:
(A) The best player in all the land of baseball in 2019
(B) The best player in all the land of baseball from 2009-2019
(C) The best player in the American League in 2019
(D) The best player in the American League from 2009-2019
(E) The best player in the American League from his 2008 call-up to present
“[Evan Longoria is] not that far behind Albert Pujols for the title of best player in baseball.”
- Dave Cameron
Dave Cameron is saying that Evan Longoria is:
(A) The best player in all of baseball
(B) The second best player in all of baseball
(C) The third best player in all of baseball
(D) In the top ten players in all of baseball
(E) Not far behind the best player in all of baseball, though there could be an unknown number of players in between him and Pujols
And now for your moment of Zen.
“Pujols 2008 WARP-3: 11.7. 1st in baseball
Longoria 2208 WARP-3: 7.0. 36th in baseball”
- Dai
“[Evan Longoria is] not that far behind Albert Pujols for the title of best player in baseball.”
- Dave Cameron
If the answer is E all Dave would have to do is say that. Don’t blame readers for a writers unclear writing. However, he has been implicitly defending B in his responses.
I don’t approve of Dave’s attitude (not that it much matters), but I have to say that what he wrote doesn’t seem unclear to me at all. It seems to me as if the readers want him to apologize for their assumptions, and he responded unfortunately to them.
When you look at the sentence, and think about it even just a bit, it means (E), and doesn’t imply any of the others.
Look it is not the readers fault for imprecise writing–writers must be precise, that’s very simple. If so many people are making incorrect assumptions, then there must be a reason for that. If Dave meant what you believe he meant, then he constructed his paragraph very poorly. The first two sentenced combined to state that, regardless of age, Longoria is the best player in the AL. He then followed that statement by saying that Longoria is not that far behind Pujols for best player in the NL.
Now “not that far behind” is a vague statement and certainly open for interpretation. Because of that readers must rely on context clues. Now Dave just got done saying that Longoria is the best player in the AL, which is the main clue. Now the second is based off of Dave’s previous writing. On 4/27 Dave wrote that: “Albert Pujols is ridiculous” and “just remember that the best player in baseball resides in Missouri. He could retire tomorrow and he’d be a Hall Of Famer. Pujols is just something else.” Dave holds Pujols in very high regards.
Now the reader has those two context clues to go off of, I–and others–made the assumption that since Dave just got done calling Longoria the best player in the AL, and then included in the same paragraph that Longoria is “not that far behind” Pujols, someone whom Dave has praised extremely highly, that the phrase meant that Longoria was the second best player in baseball.
Now if that was an incorrect assessment, I don’t think Dave should apologize, I just think he should clarify and construct his paragraphs better.
One of the possible reasons is that the most vocal readers have the poorest reading comprehension. Another possible reason is that Dave Cameron has riled enough feathers that people aren’t willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Another potential reason is that Dave Cameron was imprecise.
There were many reasons that people believed the world was flat/the center of the universe for so long. That hardly means that those beliefs (although based on many reasons) were correct.
If this sounds like a personal shot, it isn’t intended to be. I just don’t appreciate mob ‘justice’. You are speaking on behalf of the mob.
Look at the past 2 years leaders in value for the AL. Longoria is first.
Look at the past 2 years leaders in value for the NL. Pujols is first.
If you look at MLB, Longoria is 5th (Utley, Ramirez and Beltran are 2-4 respectively).
Whether or not 80 something is ‘not far behind’ 100 something or not is subjective, but the numbers seem to support what he’s saying.
And this is just from looking at the actual numbers. Which support what he’s saying. And what I’m saying he said. And what makes perfect sense for him to say based on the numbers.
Shoving things in his mouth and then asking him to defend himself against what he didn’t say because you think he said it, and so did others, which means he must have said it, is just silly.
“Whether or not 80 something is ‘not far behind’ 100 something or not is subjective, but the numbers seem to support what he’s saying.”
If numbers truly support what he’s saying then he is making an objective claim, not subjective. So he made an objective claim that Longoria is not far behind Pujols, if the numbers back up this claim then it is an objective claim. (Objective certainty, is when the proposition is certainly true in itself; and subjective, when we are certain of the truth of it. The one is in things, the other is in our minds).
The issue of subjectivity is, then, the meaning of “not that far behind”. Now any Freshman writing course will tell you that every paragraph should present a discreet idea or thought. Now the subject sentence of the paragraph dealt with Longoria being the ‘best’ in the AL. The final sentence dealt with Longoria being “not that far behind” the best player in the league. If the idea of being the best and being among a handful of best (as opposed to second best in baseball), then a new paragraph should have been created.
Now of course Dave could be writing to an audience of morons, but isn’t the purpose of a writer to educate his audience? Maybe he can illuminate the uncouth rabble of the internet.
So, the FanGraphs community appears to like to ridicule WARP. The two primary differences, as far as I can tell, between WARP and WAR have been this: 1) WARP’s primary measurement of offensive value is EqA, while, WAR’s primary measurement of offensive value is wOBA; and 2) the defensive level of replacement players *has been* much lower than the defensive level assumed by the WAR calculations.
Dave Cameron has said on this site that there is little difference between EqA and wOBA other than the availability of the formula for wOBA and the ease in applying it. Both are linear weight formulas designed to represent the overall offensive value of a player. They’re not identical, but they’re very close. So, the ridicule of WARP can’t be on that basis.
The low replacement defense levels do seem a good point of criticism. But they’ve been changed, as Clay Davenport explained in his essay in the back of the 2009 Prospectus. They’re now roughly in line with the defensive values assumed by WAR, as far as I can tell.
Perhaps the scoffing has to do with the fact that Longoria played in far fewer games than Pujols in 2008, and so we can expect his win value to be lower? That’s why I used WARP-3, which projects win value over a full season of playing time.
Perhaps it has to do with the fact that it doesn’t take into account what Longoria has done this season? Forgive me, but including 5 weeks of a single season – one which includes a .398 BABIP – in estimating the value of a player doesn’t seem particularly prudent, even if it *does* seem right that Longoria will likely improve to some degree over last year’s win value.
It’s true that WAR and WARP use different systems for measuring the actual defensive contribution of a player (though they’re calibrated to the same averages, now). But unless there is some definitive evidence that UZR is superior to FRAA that I’m unaware of, this doesn’t appear to be a difference worthy of scorn.
Longoria’s 2008 WARP was 4.3. His 2008 WAR was 5.3. According to both, he was a very good player – especially since he racked up those totals in just over 70% of a season. This difference in the win value outcomes is due to two factors, it would appear: 1) Longoria’s VORP is much higher than the offensive production component of his WAR calculation; 2) Longoria’s FRAA is much lower than his UZR.
The overall difference probably isn’t due to (1): VORP is a replacement-level comparison, while the offensive production component of his WAR calculation is an average-level comparison. So we should expect the VORP number to be much higher. So the real difference appears to come down to defense.
If WARP is fundamentally flawed, it would appear to be because of its means of measuring defensive value. Do we *know* that UZR is superior?
UZR certainly seems to be more detailed than the formula B-P uses. From Davenport’s essay, it seems like their fielding metric more closely resembles Total Zone in that it uses simple PBP data rather than detailed data, such as that tracked by BIS or STATS, that UZR uses. It seems like they are intentionally using less precise data because they want to work with the same calculations in Major and minor league data, so that they can compare apples to apples. So UZR is probably the more reliable metric, at least given season sample sizes.
That’s still no reason to write the stat off as a sabermetric fossil from 1996. I don’t know why the aversion shown was so strong, or why the explanation, or the closest thing to it, was that it was from 1996, because as it currently stands, it isn’t.
Yeah.
Fair point – that does seem to be a much better set of data than simply PBP data.
I’m not sure why Dave is being so defensive. He brought to light how great Longoria has been at the start of his career and said that his performance is comparable to the game’s best players. We all agree that it’s true. But when a couple of thoughtful writers pointed out that Longoria has some flaws — namely strikeout rate and walk rate — Dave got all bent out of shape. Dave should just graciously thank the people who posted the additional information and either state his agreement or refute its importance.
I can’t believe people become this angry about innocuous posts on a baseball site. Everyone take a breath.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Another reason to just remove the comments section from every web site in existence.
why… no one said anything bad
Well, we can all agree at least Longoria isn’t abusing PEDs like Pujols and A-Rod. Oh, and can’t forget Manny, too!