The Problem
Wins, Losses and Saves are possibly the most arbitrary statistics in all of baseball. At times, wins are given to pitchers who had poor games, but were saved by their offense driving in high amounts of runs. Other times, pitchers throw gems, only to be penalized by their offense's poor output. And saves are given almost by simply showing up at the end of the game. None of these stats are tightly based on any sort of statistical analysis - they are given according to a set of rules that don't take the quality of the pitcher's performance into account.

The Solution
Win Probability Added and Leverage Index, I believe, are possibly strong tools for awarding wins, losses and saves. While there are strong criticisms of the use of WPA and LI in aggregate, they are excellent at telling us how well a player did in a given situation or game, and how much that performance was worth. By analyzing how well a pitcher performed in a game we can properly dole out wins, losses and saves - these are single game awards.

Continue reading this post »

I read in today's Clemens update:
""I did everything I wanted to do with the baseball, pretty much," Clemens said, though he cited some problems with his splitter because of the difference in size between the Major and Minor League baseball"

The balls in MiLB are different than in MLB? I wasn't aware of this - are they smaller, bigger, and why?

Was discussing the Carlos Zambrano mystery with a friend of mine, and it came up - did Zambrano play winter ball? Could he be nursing an injury from then? Is there anywhere that has, at the very least, a list of players who participated in winter leagues? It would be nice to have statistics too, but it would be helpful just to have a list of who played.

A while back I mused on converting player VORP by position to see what a player might be worth at a different position. For calculations I used the formula stated by hentler a few diaries ago. It's not perfect, I checked the calculated VORP against the "official" VORP from BPro. Most were close (Joe Mauer) but some were pretty off (Granderson, Sizemore). I'm not sure where the discrepancy comes from.

Anyway, I've got the basic functionality of the little tool down. There's plenty of bugs in the cosmetic function, and it looks ugly, but it works. It also displays comparable VORP scores of players at the "new" position (so if you move Granderson to 1B, it will show his 1B VORP compared to his CF VORP, and then will show the 1B players with the most similar 1B VORP scores). So far, this is 2006 data only. I'll work on other years at some point.

Oh, batting VORP only.

http://www.cephyn.com/vorp/vorp.php

Jeez the offseason is TOO LONG. Killing me. Come on baseball!!!

So Neyer had a short article on ESPN today about VORP. I showed it to a non-saberfriendly pal. His biggest question was: OK, so how well does Joe Mauer do if you move him to first base?

Is there a VORP calculator out there? Is the formula and the numbers needed readily available? And can you apply a conversion to a VORP score directly, or do you need to recalculate from the start?

If someone has this or an excel sheet that will do it, I'd love to play with it - if not, then if someone can point me to the formulas and data, I might build something myself.

Can someone tell me how Pedro had a month like he did and get no wins? Dear lord....has anything that ridiculous happened before? You'd think that 42.0 IP, 55K, 2.14ERA, 0.74WHIP, and 9.17K/BB would result in, oh I dunno, a win?

Via Hardball Times:
Fangraphs is now tracking WPA stats for all players.

Fangraphs, which has been generating Win Probability Totals graphs for every game, is now collating the Win Probability Added (WPA) totals for all players and listing them on the team pages.

I know David plans to develop a "WPA leaderboard" soon, but I thought I'd jump the gun and list the top 10 WPA leaders, based on a quick review of each team's list. Remember that every 50 WPA points is a game above average.

Player           WPA
Pujols           323
Swisher          195
Carpenter        183
Chavez           171
D. Sanchez       157
Jeter            156
Ensberg          155
V. Martinez      151
Papelbon         150
Gomes            148

You could almost field an entire team from this list, with a starter (Chris Carpenter), setup man (Duaner Sanchez) and closer (Papelbon) on the mound, a catcher, first baseman, shortstop, third baseman (two, actually) and a couple of outfielders. Biggest surprise to me is the Mets' Sanchez, who has given up no runs in 17 innings and pitched in some high-leverage situations.

Other totals of note include Barry Bonds (138, despite the low batting average), Lance Berkman (138 too), the Reds' Todd Coffey (137!!) and Tampa Bay's Ty Wigginton (130!!!!!).

still not working! For any SB site that I read too. Any word on this? I can't be the only person who relies on RSS... 8(

One-line diaries are prohibited on Beyond the Box Score. Give your diary a bit more thought, then give it another shot. If you have nothing to add to your proposed diary, then it probably belongs as a comment under another appropriate thread.

The minimum is 300 characters.

Saw this on Baseball Analysts:
"# In total, there were 156 runs scored--or an average of 11.2 per game--in the first 14 contests. Last year, the average number of runs per game for the season was 9.2. Just wait 'til we run those #4 and #5 starters out there."

Additionally it sure seems to me that HR's are WAY up in the first couple days of the season. And then in today's Cub game, 4 HR in 5 innings, including one by Bronson Arroyo! I thought steroids were gone? Or is it that greenies are gone and the pitchers are suffering?

Too soon for hard numbers maybe, but it sure seems like a lot of HRs....

Around many of the SBNation blogs I've noticed site admins doing the "predict player x's line" posts. They then take the users' predictions, average them, and say "here's our prediction!"

I had two long term thoughts on this:

1)How do the sites populations' predictions compare to PECOTA?

2)After all is said and done (next year, obviously) - who ended up closer?

Just some things I thought today. I wonder if the various site admins wouldn't mind sending/posting their sites' predictions to a nice simple place (BtB cough) where we could hold them for analysis next year.

Congrats to the winner! (dunno who it is though, hehe)

I had fun, and I was in the Championship Game, which was exciting. Only league I made it that far in this year. I woulda won too if I had chosen the right kicker! Tough to lose the whole shebang on one bad choice. Ouch.

Thanks again for including me. 8)

"He's a guy who's gotten better. I remember my old general manager Al Campanis telling me that a player doesn't reach his peak until he's somewhere between 32 or 36 [years old] and beyond, and it depends on how his legs are and his desire and if he keeps his weight down and his waistline down. I don't see D-Lee having any problem with that."
--Cubs manager Dusty Baker, on the origins of his veteran fetish (MLB.com)

Yeah DLee is good and all, but come on. Al Campanis vs. actual statistical data? No wonder Dusty wants to play old guys -- they MUST be better because Al Campanis said so!

And now Neifi(!) wants to come back, but only if he's an everyday starter. sigh Maybe its just me, but that strikes terror in my heart...

So prickly!
http://www.suntimes.com/output/cubs/cst-spt-cubnt19.html

And so full of it! Come on, no youngsters in a playoff chase - please. Comparison to LaRussa and Cox. Come on. Man he drives me nuts. Can we get a new manager please? This article is really critical of Baker's BS, which is good -- does anyone still believe him anymore?

In honor of the Cards being tops in the BtB powerpoll (and just because I'm curious) I ask the BtB Oracles: Are the Cardinals better this year than last? I'm personally inclined, on gut instinct, to say yes. But do the stats back it up?

This question stems from a small discussion here:
http://bleedcubbieblue.com/story/2005/8/18/145720/046

We had a nice discussion of salb's mOPS a while back. I just wanted to point out (because it was new to me) Mark Pankin's OPS work for SABR34 last july.

His conclusion:
Relative value depends on particular team

In most cases marginal OBP >= 2 SLG

Much higher for some lineup positions

"Improved" OPS:

-- OBP + SLG + (OBP - 0.340)
-- 0.340 is typical ML average in recent years
- Will be posted on www.pankin.com
We see that the marginal values depend somewhat on the
particular team, and in a lineup, the values can vary quite a
bit due to the strengths of the preceding and following
hitters. None of this is a surprise.
Based on overall average performance, an estimate that an
extra point of OBP is worth two or more of SLG seems
justified. Can use 2 to improve OPS by giving a "bonus"
point for each point OBP is above average or assessing a
"penalty" point for each point below average.

Interesting. A different slant than salb's and I just wanted to bring to to the attention of anyone who might not have known about Pankin's work. My apologies if this is obvious and well known.

http://colorado.rockies.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/press_releases/press_release.jsp?ymd=20050713&co ntent_id=1130468&vkey=pr_col&fext=.jsp&c_id=col
DENVER - In their second transaction of the day, the Colorado Rockies on Wednesday evening acquired OF Eric Byrnes and INF Omar Quintanilla plus cash considerations from the Oakland Athletics in exchange for LHP Joe Kennedy and RHP Jay Witasick. Byrnes will be placed on Colorado's 25-man roster and Quintanilla has been assigned to Class AAA Colorado Springs.

What is it? I dont want the little Baseball Prospectus definition, I want to know what it takes into account and how it is calcluated. I have a friend who doesn't believe its indicative of anything, and I don't really have any argument as to why it is.

Any help guys? 8)

300 characters can be a lot sometimes, but I have nowhere else to turn!

To see what I could see, for myself, I downloaded retrosheet data for Oakland 1982. Rickey stole 130 bases that year. What I wanted to know is if having Rickey on first with 2nd open bothered pitchers enough to make a difference with the batter.

I've never worked with retrosheet data before, so additionally this gave me a way to start to familiarize myself with the files.

Since I was trying to make this as simple as possible, I really really cut down on the sample size. So my conclusion may be totally worthless, I may have done things totally wrong. Maybe someone could quickly run some simple numbers of their own and see if what I found holds up, or is way off base (haha!).

Basically I looked at times when Rickey was on first and second was open. I ignored times that Rickey actually stole 2nd or was caught stealing second. I ignored times he was picked off of first. I decided, arbitrarily, that these events took pressure off the pitcher.

In the remaining events, I checked for a positive or negative outcome. Positives were hits, walks, wild pitches and passed balls. Negatives were, well, anything else (outs).

With Rickey on first and second open (n=81) there were 27 positive outcomes - .333 average.

With someone not Rickey on first and second open (n=2632) there were 928 positive outcomes - .352 average.

The p-value here is 0.72, no significant difference.

I'm a little surprised by this, since intuition tells me Rickey at first would make pitchers worry and maybe get a little rattled. But maybe not, maybe its just anecdotal when he rattled a pitcher here or there, but for the most part guys didn't really care. I dunno - but this back of the envelope (of sorts) rough estimate says that pitcher harrassment by having Rickey on first, threatening to steal, didn't exist.

Has anyone looked at this before? Any thoughts? Again, this is the first time I've used retrosheet data and just thought I'd throw this out there to see if I'm doing something way wrong.

http://www.philhanksart.com/fsoils/wallyj.JPG

My "real" favorite angel is Nolan Ryan. But when I was a kid, he was already on the Astros. So I got swept up in Wally World. Poster on the wall. Starting Lineup figure. All his cards. Throughout the late 80s I followed Wally, waiting for the magical postseason to happen after the crushing defeat in '86. Eventually my interest in baseball waned, and I missed Wally's years in KC and SD.

Looking Back
http://baseball-reference.com/j/joynewa01.shtml

Wally had a very solid career. He compares favorably in basic stats to Don Mattingly, but Mattingly has better "star stats" - It's an interesting study of the difference between a Good and Very Good player.  Even in Wally's waning years, he was considered a strong addition to a team, or at least the Braves thought so.

"December 22, 1999: Traded by the San Diego Padres with Reggie Sanders and Quilvio Veras to the Atlanta Braves for Bret Boone, Ryan Klesko, and Jason Shiell."

That's a couple of good names in there. Wally didn't pan out for the Braves though, and spent one last year in Anaheim before retiring an Angel.

Wally may not have been great, but him, Devon White, Chili Davis, Brian Downing and Bob Boone are the Angels of my Childhood. I watched Mark McLemore rehab in Palm Springs. I watched and Dante Bichette in Palm Springs as well, and have a ball signed by the entire Palm Springs Angels team from some year I don't even recall. My dad took me golfing with him one day and we met a young pitcher from the team, who got us tickets to the game that night and the ball. I don't even recall his name - I wish I did. If I could find PS Angels rosters somewhere, I could probably remember.

Lifelong Angels fan. Thanks Wally.

Who's your favorite Angel?

Swept by the Mariners. Doh! As I've said before, sometimes teams just have someone else's #. The Devil Rays are 7-4 vs. the Yankees. But really that's not what happened to the Halos. Their pitching, so reliable this year, just failed on them. And Mariners fans, in their current joy, maybe have forgotten what happened in early May - the Angels went into Seattle and swept them. The Angels are now 4-5 vs. Team Trident this year. The focus now should be on how to get the halo pitching and hitting clicking again. I wouldn't worry much about the opponent at this point, the angels have done well this year regardless of opponents (they're still in first!). Fix internally and the wins will follow.

Next up, after the break, is the Twins and then the lemon-lime fun that is the A's. Team Red has done well against the Twins over the past few years, so that will be a good benchmark of how this team is doing. If we drop too many vs. the Twins, then we'll know something is very wrong. The A's are surging right now, so it would be very dangerous to face them with a team in disarray.

As to what went on here at HH.com over the weekend, well I'm still pretty disappointed. That was awful, annoying and sad. I was in Seattle recently (back when they were playing the Padres) and I loved the city, the people up there were great and I had a great time. The Mariners are very popular up there and their stadium looked great. And there are great fans in every city the MLB plays. There are crummy fans too. So now I'm going to do something I really haven't wanted to do, but I will -- here is my midterm grade of HalosHeaven:

C-

All season I've been a little disappointed with this site. My suggestion would be to look at other sites in the SBFamily for improvement ideas. The Mariners site has some great commentary from their head honcho, the Win Expectancy graphs are fun and the little game by game grades (based on win expectancy help or hinderance) are good too. Something like that is somethig to emulate. The Angels are my #2 team, #1 is the Cubs. The Cub site has a rabid, intelligent community, propped up by the honcho and has never, ever (to date) sunk to the ugliness of this weekend, even with the hated Cardinals and the Viva El Birdos crew. In fact, there's a very healthy respect there and even some collaboration has occurred. Blogging Roundtables have been very fun, and the one between the White Sox and Cubs was great! The trash was kept to a minimum even between those crosstown rivals. I fear the day a Dodgers SB comes into existence, I worry the ugliness would be even worse here. Time to rise above that.

I think it's time for Halos Heaven to improve itself. Look at other SBNation sites for ideas about what works. I haven't looked at them all myself, so I'm sure there's more great ideas out there. The only fun thing this site has is the "predict the hits/runs" thing, which seems to have the side effect of eliminating any thoughtful posts.

Just my opinions.

I hate Dusty. I've said it before, for years, that the Cubs success in 2003 was in spite of, not because of, Dusty freakin' Baker. And he's really proving now that he can't manage his way out of a paper bag. He has lent no stability to the lineup, instead flipping people around in RIDICULOUS orders for RIDICULOUS reasons.

Then we go and think about our suggestions for his replacement. Grady Little's name came up, but really, does anyone know "how" he manages? What his process is? We know Dusty goes by his gut (which only gets us stupid decisions like Wilson, Macias, and only gets his son nearly killed), but doesn't Little do that too? Wasn't leaving Pedro in a Gut Decision?

I'm tired of the carousel, here in the MLB as well as others sports (most notably the ridiculosity that is NBA head coaches). The same hacks get jobs over and over and over. They do crappy somewhere, then get hired somewhere else for millions, do crappy there, rinse, lather, repeat. WHY? WHY do teams hire known losers instead of taking chances on NEW blood and NEW ideas?

Which brings me to my point: Why don't we find someone new and actually INTERVIEW them or REVIEW what they may have already said. Find intelligent new blood that needs a chance. Find someone who understands things like OBP (at the VERY least).

Lets start thinking the Moneyball way - find what is UNDERVALUED in managers, and find someone who excels in those things. And then start propping him up. Start a mailing campaign to Tribune and Hendry. Plaster his/her name and the reasons why they might make a good manager, in our Informed Fan Opinion. At the very least, maybe someone up top will take notice and start thinking critically about management decisions. It's worked in Boston. It can work on the North Side.

Just my (idealistic, I know) opinion and dream. But seriously, with the kind of baseball knowledge at places like Beyond the Box Score, Baseball Prospectus and the like, someone has GOT to be able to do better. At least have a better plan, for goddsakes. Dusty has got to go.

Since Sheff has made it clear he's not going anywhere, I'm starting to hear that the Eye of Sauron...er, I mean the Yankees are starting to really talk to Beane about Kotsay. Which means...what about the aced-out guy on the mets, Cameron? He doesn't typically bat leadoff, but he could and he can play both CF and RF.

Any thoughts boys and girls?

I have to I've decided. That way I can have two players from my hometown play on my favorite team. It's a good reason. The more reasons I have to root for the Cubs the better (though I don't need any!)

Seriously though -- we've been batting around ideas for trades for weeks now, and as a community we seem to shoot them all down. So what's the real plan? What do we REALLY want?

From today's post over at Baseball Analysts

And in centerfield, I offer a proposition. Andruw Jones, who will make $26.5M the next two seasons, gets traded to free up money. In exchange for Jones, Jim Hendry will offer Corey Patterson (Georgia native), Matt Murton (former GTech OF), and either Sergio Mitre, Rich Hill or Sean Gallagher. The Cubs will also pay $10M for each of the next two seasons, giving them a legitimate fifth hitter in exchange for a Wrigley not-so-favorite.

Comments?

Hey I need a little help. I'm not a total sabr-n00b, but I'm a "beginner" or neophyte. Anyway - So I'm at the Angels-Nats game last night, and the halos are down by 1 run in the bottom of the ninth. They load the bases with no outs. They score no runs.

The whole stadium was just in shock. What are the odds of this? I know I've seen a simple matrix that gives the odds to score a run, 2 runs, 3 runs, etc, with baserunner and out combinations. But I can't find it -- all I can find are Runs Expected matrices, which is great for me (I understand the concept) but basically worthless for my father -- he just wants to know the odds that a)the angels tie and b)the angels win (it would be a walkoff) given bags full, no outs.

Any help? TIA

Oh man. Oh man. Check out the comments for tonight's Latroy Blows It episode. The Giants fans are CLAMORING for Latroy to come into the game...and then distraught when the obvious (to us) happens.

I cried laughing. Poor guys.

http://www.mccoveychronicles.com/story/2005/6/1/17311/36407

And poor LaTroy. This has to mess with his head even more. Are we taking morbid bets on when he'll be out of baseball entirely?