Jimbo on "Wright, Reynolds and Zimmerman"

Jimbo — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:19:06 +0000

Sometimes it is tough to separate pre-conceived notions about a player from honest assessment. After the Check the Position post for third base, I was wondering how these three really should be ranked. I'm relatively new to a lot of the stats used on fangraphs, so if anyone would be willing to educate me on a stat-driven ranking of these guys I'd greatly appreciate it.

Based on my prefrence for quality hitter profiles, I'd probably rank them Wright, Zimmerman, Reynolds...but for 5x5 who would be the best pick? I'm fairly certain I want at least one stud at 3B, and may have to overpay a little.

(Maybe Longoria should be in the group as well.)

recca on "Replacement Level Team"

recca — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:22:33 +0000

Can someone refresh my memory? How many wins would a team filled with 0.0 WAR players accumulate?

recca on "Greg Dobbs and the Playoffs"

recca — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 21:05:24 +0000

Should Greg Dobbs have been starting against right handed pitchers in the playoffs? Dobbs hits right handed pitchers much better than Feliz can. Dobbs is nowhere near the fielder Feliz is but does the upgrade Dobbs could give you on offense offset this?

Mike Ketchen on "Is this a skill?"

Mike Ketchen — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:18:11 +0000

I apologize in advance if this gets wordy. When looking at swingK% on http://www.statcorner.com I noticed that Verlander had a huge 6% spike this year. I checked his Pitch F/x and noticed he had about a half inch gain in rise on his FB. So my question is, is this sustainable or simply noise in a long career? I am intrigued because he did not see a huge spike in velocity or change in pitch selection. Simply put his FB was better. So can this be sustained? Thanks for any respones.

Daern on "BABIP"

Daern — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:45:40 +0000

I was unaware of the possibility but apparently it exists: a player can have a BA higher than his BABIP? Maybe I'm being obtuse, but how does that happen? For instance, according to this site, Ian Kinsler had a .245 BABIP and a .253 average. Whaa?

Zachary Klaas on "Jeter Fourth Gold Glove"

Zachary Klaas — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:06:40 +0000

In what can only be seen as a deliberate poke in the eye to the sabermetrics community, managers and coaches have voted Derek Jeter another Gold Glove.

Does anyone on here want to comment on why their statistics convince so few people who manage and coach at the big league level?

tklimson1 on "Regarding fangraphs"

tklimson1 — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:22:21 +0000

Gentlemen I don't really have a specific subject to talk about I just want to say I really believe this is the absolute best baseball, if not the best sports website in existence. I think I may speak for a lot of people on this site Fangraphs provides incredible analysis and insight and I thoroughly enjoy every writer who contributes.

Zachary Klaas on "Why I Distrust Rate Statistics (Or, Fun With Homers)"

Zachary Klaas — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:38:34 +0000

Here are some numbers I just crunched for Mark McGwire showing rate statistics for how many home runs he hit in the various years he played.

Most humans who watch this sport prefer to summarize a slugger's prowess via the raw number of home runs hit during a year. But it's also possible to represent things as a "home run average", similar to a batting average except you're dividing homers by At-Bats. (An even more exacting version of the average might divide homers by Plate Appearances, perhaps.)

These wouldn't penalize the player who doesn't play as many games as the person who is leading in raw numbers of homers, so it should be fairer to the player in terms of showing home run hitting ability. The leader in raw homers might be shown to be a "better home run hitter than he really is" because he got to play more games.

Okay, so here are McGwire's numbers for HR, HR/PA and HR/AB over the course of his career, sorted by descending HR/AB.

Year	HR	HR/PA   	HR/AB
1998	70	0.102790015	0.137524558
2000	32	0.099688474	0.135593220
1999	65	0.098335855	0.124760077
1995	39	0.092417062	0.123028391
1996	52	0.094890511	0.122931442
1997	58	0.088280061	0.107407407
1993	9	0.084112150	0.107142857
2001	29	0.079670330	0.096989967
1992	42	0.073555166	0.089935760
1987	49	0.076443058	0.087971275
1990	39	0.060000000	0.074569790
1989	33	0.056218058	0.067346939
1994	9	0.052325581	0.066666667
1988	32	0.050393701	0.058181818
1986	3	0.051724138	0.056603774
1991	22	0.037606838	0.045548654

Though his 70-HR season still is tops on the list, a 32-HR season is next. Then comes the 65-HR season, but then comes a 39-HR season.

His last creaky season, in which he hit 29 HRs, comes off on this better than his sensational 49-HR rookie year.

Batting averages are, of course, tossed out when the number of At-Bats is so low that the ratio stat could just represent a fluky streak rather than a sustained performance. But what's interesting about this is that McGwire did play enough to have a ratio stat "count" in some seasons when he nevertheless did not play enough to make a serious run at the home run crown for that year...and in some of those years he was hitting homers at a higher clip than he was in years when he did win the home run crown (and by spectacular amounts as well).

What do I conclude from this? Raw numbers of homers _are_ what we want to measure here. What would the Cardinals have preferred to have on their team? The McGwire of 2000 (32 HRs, .135 HR/AB) or the McGwire of 1999 (65 HRs, .124 HR/AB)? _Obviously_ McGwire '99.

McGwire's HR numbers were _only_ higher in 1999 than 2000, however, because McGwire himself played in more games in 1999.

(All of this may be relevant to another thread on this forum site where we were recently arguing about how it might be preferable to have a player who plays more games and gets more Outs than a player with a higher Range Factor, which is a ratio statistic relating Outs to Innings Played, and which can be high even if one plays few games.)

Cody on "Anderson"

Cody — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:44:03 +0000

he's already battle tested , and he's a year younger than Matusz.

Zachary Klaas on "Buck and McCarver dis Jeter fielding critics..."

Zachary Klaas — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 19:57:38 +0000

Anyone catch that? They just made their comments about a minute before I'm making this post.

McCarver said that those who call Jeter the worst shortstop in baseball are now all "silent" after his performance this year. Buck said there isn't a scout in baseball who would be afraid for batters to hit the ball toward Jeter.

I suppose they're just "idiots", huh? :)

Sorry, it just made me smile.

Newcomer on "Measuring SP Consistency"

Newcomer — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:40:37 +0000

Talk about starting pitchers often includes descriptions of consistency as a positive value to contrast with upside. "He's no ace, but he's a steady 4," "He'll keep you in the game when he's on the mound, and that's all you can ask of a 5th starter," "He knows how to pitch even when his stuff's not there," etc.. That got me to thinking about how we could quantify that, and here's what I've got.

You can use ERA, FIP, tRA, or whatever you want as a base. But the idea is you get two numbers.

Part 1: ERA is an average. It tells you how many runs a pitcher a pitcher allows per nine innings pitched. It tells how the pitcher will be performing, on average.

Part 2: You take a look at the pitcher's performance in each GS, and you want to determine the level of production your starter matched or exceeded in, say, 80% of his starts (an arbitrary number). We'll call this ERAc, c for consistency. This is what the manager can feel pretty confident he'll get, even if the pitcher isn't really on. 80% might be demanding a lot of consistency, so maybe something like 65% (a good majority of his starts) would be a better bet.

Here's where it gets fun. Take the difference, ERAc-ERA, and you have the consistency factor, CF, which tells you how close to his average performance a pitcher performs in at least x% of his starts.

I imagine this would take a large sample to become stable, but we're usually talking about long-time veterans when consistency comes up. I'm not ready to put in the work just yet, but I'd like to see what kind of results we get. How wide is the spread between, on the one hand, pitchers who perform about the same every time out, and on the other hand, pitchers who are either really on or really off? It would be nice to see this expressed in a number, or maybe a set of numbers based on different percentages. People often look at how long a pitcher stays in the game, or how often they got pulled before 5 innings. This could provide another measurement of consistency.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Has this been done somewhere? Is there some obvious reason I'm missing why it won't work?

JoeR43 on "Saves: The most selfish stat in sports?"

JoeR43 — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:49:56 +0000

Okay, just throwing stuff out there, but do you notice a lot of times, when writers attempt to disparage a good player, they refer to their numbers like they were compiled for the good of a contract and not the team, or some other bizarreness?

Then why has saves not become the most villified statistic of them all?

We all know in here that using your best reliever in 2-3 run games in the 9th for anything other than keeping him sharp is useless, as even a minimally competant MLB pitcher converts that save. For a lot of relievers, though, it's all about the almighty save, at least the top ones I should say. Often times, relievers are allowed to pursue and maximize their own save chances, often at the expense of the team (like I sort of already said, the save sometimes happens in the 7th, or the 8th, hey, maybe even the 6th).

I thought of this because I was reading the Jon Heyman dud of an article on his Hall of Fame vote, where he refered to Blyleven as a "compiler", all the while voting for K-Rod as AL MVP. And yes I know that there needs to be a little bit of an edge to a guy to pitch the 9th, and the current closer model works fine when you have a loaded pen a la the Red Sox / Yankees / etc, but is it really that necessary to use your best guy to shut the door on a 2-3 run lead?

This was a rambling post, but whatever.

potterfw on "Foul Ball Statistics - Playoffs vs. Regular Season"

potterfw — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:29:47 +0000

Does anyone have any statistical data on the number of foul balls hit in an average playoff game vs. a regular season game? Seems like there are many more fouls in playoff games, but perhaps that's because I tend to follow these games more closely. Could also be that players are more focused in playoff games, or better hitters on the best teams spoil more pitches. Thanks.

Zachary Klaas on "Triple to HR ratio"

Zachary Klaas — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:20:43 +0000

I was wondering whether anyone had ever written something sabermetric-ish about the career ratio of triples to home runs for selected players.

The person who posted a while back about Sam Crawford got me thinking about this...since Crawford was (and still remains) the all-time career leader in triples.

Crawford had 309 triples in his career, which is way under the 762 home runs Barry Bonds has...which might superficially lead one to the bizarre statistical conclusion that it's harder to hit a triple than a home run, despite the fact that home runs are so much more useful in terms of winning ball games. (Home runs are about par with doubles, as Tris Speaker has the record with 792, and singles are much easier, with Pete Rose having 3215 of those.)

Of course, we're all aware that there were eras in baseball history where home runs were harder to hit, and where legging out a triple became much more of a valued activity. The deadball era from baseball's founding to the end of the 1910s were the highwater mark for this sort of thing. Teams ran more (stolen bases were through the roof) and the power hitters on the team tended to hit more triples than home runs.

What I'm wondering is, has anyone written up something that might use the ratio of triples to home runs characteristic for an era (say, 1900-1919) as a way of projecting how many home runs that player might have hit in another era?

Something along these lines...suppose we had an era where people normally hit 3 triples for every 1 homer. But Joe Player from that era hit 2 triples for every 1 homer. That suggests that Joe Player was heavier on the homers than he should have been for that era, and thus would have hit somewhat more homers than would be normal for a live ball era as well. But Bob Player hit 4 triples for every 1 homer. That was even more triple-happy than was normal for the era, so in a live ball era, it would be expected that this player would still be more focused on triples than the long ball, even if he started to hit a few more homers because of the new liveness to the ball.

(Gary Player would still be playing golf and would not be relevant to the example, of course.)

I think that would be an interesting thing to look at, because the big triple hitters in history were disproportionately from the dead ball era, but there were a couple who were not. Stan Musial and Roberto Clemente, for example, played in the live ball era, but hit a number of triples characteristic of players who relied upon triples much more heavily. Both Musial and Clemente hit more home runs than they did triples, but their ratio of triples to homers even so would be much more weighted towards triples than is normal for their homer-happy eras. So perhaps if they played in the age of Wahoo Sam, they might have racked up somewhere in his neighborhood of triples?

Probably some people would like to take this sort of projection the other way, though...to ask how many homers Wahoo Sam or some of the other dead ball era types might have had.

teejay1324 on "New stat idea(OBP related)"

teejay1324 — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 23:12:20 +0000

First off let me just get it out of the way that I don't know if this stat already exists or would be considered completely useless and redundant. However, I don't think it exists and I think it has some value...

I would call it something like Batting average independent on-base percentage. You would calculate a player's batting average using hits/PA instead of AB to get a "true" batting average, which you would then subtract from OBP. That number would show a players ability to reach base other than getting a base hit.

The potential value behind it would be quickly being able to compare two players with similar OBP and see which one is doing it more with their hitting. I realize you could simply subtract BA from OBP in your head and get a pretty good idea of it that way but this would be a little more accurate and of course you could rank larger numbers of players.

I got the idea from when I saw ISO and thought this would be somewhat similar? I'm assuming that if there were a useful stat someone would've thought of it before me, but maybe not.

Quick example:
2009 David Ortiz: 129 hits in 627 PA for a "true BA" of .206 subtracted from his OBP of .332 for a BAiOBP of .126

2009 Juan Rivera: 152 hits in 572 PA for a tBA of .266 subtracted from his OBP of .332 for a BAiOBP of .066

Now I don't know if it's useful to anyone to know that David Ortiz reached his .332 OBP more so from doing things other than hitting far more than Rivera did. Unless, one was expecting him to maintain his BAiOBP of .126 in 2010 while hitting something more respectable with a tBA of say .235-.240. This stat might allow or help to project someone OBP in the future if they increase/decrease their batting average.

If I just wasted 2-3 minutes of your life from reading this, I apologize.

purpleReign on "Some statistical Help"

purpleReign — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:12:51 +0000

First, I was wondering what the dollar value for each player was based off of. Is there a salary cap that these numbers are meant to be reflective of?

Second, I am loving the site more and more, but there are a ton of statistics that aren't reflected within the glossary. Are there any sites that are better than most for describing what a bunch of these stats mean and how they are calculated?

Thanks

birtelcom on "A-Rod Clutch/Before and After"

birtelcom — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 12:12:50 +0000

I see A-Rod's career post-season Clutch number is now +0.69, through and including the second game of the Twins series, which included his huge 9th inning, game-tying homer. I'm curious what his career post-season Clutch number was immediately before that game.

LeeTro on "Billy Wagner"

LeeTro — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:20:23 +0000

I was looking through Billy Wagner's season-by-season stats and was shocked to see how consistently dominant he has been in his career. Besides his injury-shortened 2000 season, his ERA has never been above 3.00, and his FIP was above 3.09 in only his rookie year. He hasn't been in Rivera's class, but he's had a much better career than I thought.

JoeR43 on "Curt Schilling and the Hall of Fame"

JoeR43 — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:15:51 +0000

Okay, as a Red Sox fan, I may be a bit biased but...

can someone explain to me why Curt Schilling is a "borderline" Hall of Famer?

As fangraphs users, most of us love the K/BB stat to evaluate pitchers. He's 2nd of all time in it. The only guy ahead of him is Tommy Bond.

In plain ole strikeouts, he's 15th, and 15th in K/9 (better than Clemens)

ERA+? 127.

And I know it's overrated and SSS-tastic, but it matters to voters, so: postseason, 133 1/3 IP, 4.8 K/BB, 2.23 ERA, 0.968 WHIP, 11-2.

I know his numbers are similar to Kevin Brown's, but is it fair that because Kevin Brown signed a bad contract and made himself disliked in the media, that Schilling should be discounted? And it's not like Brown was exactly bad, career FIP of 3.33. Schilling had a 3.23. In fact, his FIP is a little better than John Smoltz, who most people I know consider a Hall lock.

So why is Schilling such a debate?

ericmolton on "2010 projections and offseason"

ericmolton — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:10:01 +0000

Does anyone know when or around what date the projections usually start rolling in? and secondly for those of you who play fantasy baseball what do you do in the off-season to get ready for the following year?

damirulla on "Brian Matusz or Brett Anderson"

damirulla — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 06:14:57 +0000

I am in a keeper fantasy league and I have to keep either Brett Anderson or Brian Matusz. I am unsure which of the two to keep as I'm not sure who will have the better career. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Also please tell me why you chose one over the other. Thanks.

dproc0219 on "Aaron Hill - .289 BABIP and .286 BA"

dproc0219 — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 18:18:41 +0000

Was looking at Aaron Hill's stats, and noticed just how close his BABIP was to his BA this year -- not sure I've ever seen one like that.

So almost every ball he put in play ended up as a base hit? Or am I missing something?

jkent on "suggestion: best games list"

jkent — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 06:59:05 +0000

After looking at A-rod's stellar performance last weekend, I wondered who else had such an impact on one game.

I think a list of the best games played each year (in terms of WPA) would be a good addition. It could be a rank of the highest WPA for a given game. One for the worst games each year is a possibility as well.

Anway, this site is great! Thanks!

labe on "fip whips?"

labe — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:55:36 +0000

is there any way to use fip to determine a fielding independent whip? i think that would be a nice addition to the site.

labe on "splits"

labe — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:57:48 +0000

pre and post all-star break splits for the leaderboards as well as for individual pages is the only reason i still check espn for baseball stats. if those come to this site, that would be great.

rileydog22 on "What's with the RSS feeds?"

rileydog22 — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:11:35 +0000

All of a sudden, the RSS feed for the site's articles only contains the first few sentences of an article, rather than the whole content of the article. I imagine that this was a byproduct of the software change you guys made. Could you change it back to the old format of having the whole article? Thanks.

Jamesian on "Ugliest Uniforms"

Jamesian — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:43:34 +0000

Perhaps this is not the best place to pose this question, but I am curious to know other people's opinions and this is not an unfamiliar topic among sports fans.

I think the Washington Nationals have hands down the ugliest uniforms in baseball. Their home uniforms anyway. The road unis actually look pretty good although I don't like the numerals.

Anyone agree or would you vote for someone else?

nathanho95 on "ESPN Fantasy Baseball Down?"

nathanho95 — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:37:52 +0000

I'm curious if there are others that were unable to access waivers in ESPN prize leagues yesterday (10/4).

My experience was a nightmare. In a prize eligible, paid for roto-league (http://games.espn.go.com/flb/leagueoffice?leagueId=218556); On Friday, I was ahead by a point or two. On Saturday, I fell back by a point or two. Yesterday, I was tied for HR, one back in SB, tied in AVG, and one back in Wins. Like anyone else in the same situation, I was waiting for the first game to start so I could feverishly load up on some of the 15-20 DET and MIN players that were still on the wire.

I was unable to access waivers at all - when I attempted to pass the login after adding a player; I received repeated DNS server errors. Calling ESPN support, this was a widespread issue for Fantasy Football, Baseball & Basketball at least - maybe Hockey, also.

In addition to spending my Sunday on the phone with ESPN support and trying not to lose it, I had the pleasure of watching my league championship rival acquire 17+ (SEVENTEEN) MIN and DET players off the waiver wire to my ZERO. I had previously added 2-3 DET/MIN players over that past several days in anticipation of a one game playoff, but I had zero opportunity Sunday to add any of the 15-20 remaining.

I'm fine with having my fantasy baseball championship be decided in a bonus playoff game, as it was last year, as long as there is equal access to the players available.

Having it decided by an event off the field is anathema to me and completely unacceptable. It's like MLB declaring a winner of the 1989 World Series based on which team had the most runs scored when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit.

Anyway, I would appreciate hearing from anyone who was similarly impacted by this gross negligence by ESPN.

Regards,
Nathan

khg on "WAR Clarification"

khg — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 21:17:46 +0000

Hey guys,

I'm new to this forum and just getting into the convoluted world of advanced baseball statistics and I was wondering if someone could give me a semi-detailed explanation of WAR. I've read a lot about this and seen it referenced however never saw a proper clarification.

Thanks for your help.

purpleReign on "Looking for Help on a possible statistic"

purpleReign — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:23:27 +0000

Hi there,

I am very new to Fangraphs.com, but even just the brief time that I have spent here so far, I have learned a ton and I already Love the site. I am still reading up on some of that stats that you guys calculate, but I was wondering if you kept track of some type of stat which best resembles the following.

Is there a stat which calculates the number of Plate Appearances (PA) in which the batter contributed positively to their team's WE compared against their overall number of PA? I am thinking more along the lines of an average which calculates the percentage of plate appearances in which the player increased the teams chance to win.

Is there an existing stat which calculates this? Or is there a better stat that I should be looking at?