20
2013
The Problem With the Aggregate Approach to Offense
An article by 
One of my favorite sci-fi flicks is Star Trek: First Contact. The first 20 minutes are some of the greatest deep-space action sequences I’ve ever seen, but what makes the movie great, of course, is the villainous Borg. The Borg function as a hive, they are profoundly creepy in an elemental way, they make us wonder about ourselves and our deterministic exceptionalist tendencies as a species. Maybe we’re doomed to be swallowed up by some sort of advanced ant-like social collective. Like Stephen Hawking says, if an alien species were to actually make contact, we’d be toast. Scary stuff.
You know what’s scarier than an alien invasion? I think the Borg have taken over statistical analysis in Major League Baseball. There is a collectivism in the approach to team statistics that would make a Borg Queen blush. The famous Billy Beane paradigm where they try to build Jason Giambi by incorporating the sum of his parts into several cheaper players, a Frankenstat-Giambi if you will, has resulted in a tendency to look at team offense in the aggregate more so today than at any other time in the history of the game. The extent to which front offices have applied these attempts to build statistical by-products into their offensive attacks would make Mary Shelly proud.
On a more theoretical plain, when looking at an aggregate (the macro-level) you invariably dilute the significance of the exceptional (the micro-level). Would you miss the significance of a Vladimir Guererro in your lineup as a result? I should hope not, but by focusing on collective stats such as OBP (because they run up pitch counts and wear out opposing starters), you may miss the individual contributions of exceptional performers. For instance, if you look at a Mariner’s mediocre at best offensive performance as a whole you might miss the remarkable achievements of Ichiro Suzuki. Does it matter if in the end the team reaches the same statistical milestones? Well, that’s what I’d like to try and answer.
What if you took two teams with comparable statistical outcomes, but one reflected a more balanced performance across all members of the lineup while the other had a few players who performed poorly and a few who were truly exceptional “superstar” types. Which is better? The end result, the aggregate, is more or less equal, in terms of runs scored, OBP, slugging, but the two differ in how they got there.
Lets look at two teams with some comparable aggregate statistics.
|
OBP |
BB% |
AVG |
Runs |
WAR |
|
|
Team 1 |
.315 |
7.9 |
.251 |
669 |
25.9 |
|
Team 2 |
.319 |
8.8 |
,247 |
651 |
25.6 |
With a few exceptions these two teams are fairly similar, in fact they are ranked in succession offensively on fangraphs. Team 2 has a slightly higher OBP and walk rate while team 1 has a slightly higher AVG and a few more runs. One major difference, however, is payroll. Team 1 has a payroll of $82,203,616 with an average salary of $2,935,843, while team 2 has a payroll of $55,244,700 with an average salary of $1,973,025. Team 2 ended up with some remarkably comparable aggregate statistics for 27 million less in annual salary.
Some of you may have already guessed at the identity of team 2 by their payroll, they are of course Alderson’s old team the San Diego Padres, and they reflect the kind of on-base presence we’re used to with Alderson’s teams.
Team 1 is a playoff team that packs a whole lot more star power, they are the Cincinnati Reds. They sport a perennial MVP hitter at the center of their lineup not to mention some major power threats. The aggregate effect of their talent is more concentrated in a few truly exceptional players and is less the blanket product of a trickled down organizational principle.
Teams historically have attempted to piece-meal collective benchmarks into their lineups that they could not otherwise afford were these accomplishments a product of individual players.Teams like the Twins, the A’s, and the Braves have spent modestly, drafted wisely, and have developed consistently serviceable major league players, but there’s no such thing as a free lunch. These three teams have made the post season a whopping 33 times since 1975, but for all these appearances they have only 4 World titles between them. Seems like a statistical anomaly when for much of that time they were competing in a 4 team tournament doesn’t it? Good but not good enough in the post season — lacking those exceptional (and expensive) talents that might have pushed them over the top.
The problem is that lots of guys in the minors have a good eye but there aren’t that many Miguel Cabreras. Sure you can draft and develop with an eye on clogging the bases, and this approach might even get you to the playoffs, but once there who would you rather have come up in a tight spot against Matt Cain, Yonder Alonso and his .348 OBP or Joey Votto? Yonder might carry you during the regular season when you’re going up against league average more often than not, but I think you want Votto in there if you’re facing Roy Halladay in a deciding game. Institutionalized directives such as Alderson’s OBP bias and Beane’s desire to spread around dismembered Jason Giambis are all fine and dandy until the poop hits the fan and you end up staring down a Justin Verlander fastball. When the aggregate is equal, exceptional talent is the tiebreaker … the player who can actually hit a Verlander fastball out of the park or who can actually strike out Cabrera.
Exceptional talent must be met with exceptional talent if you want to win the big prize. There is simply no way around that. The Padres played “Alderson-ball” right up there with the Reds, they walked, they got on base, they hit, they even scored a similar number of runs, but in the end they sure didn’t win as many games. Why? While the Padres were able to perform according to many of the tenets of Alderson’s offensive philosophy, they didn’t have the exceptional abilities that the Reds have in other offensive domains, namely slugging and power skill sets that are considerably more expensive to procure.
|
HR |
RBI |
H |
SLG |
W-L |
|
|
Reds |
172 |
636 |
1377 |
.411 |
97 – 65 |
|
Padres |
121 |
610 |
1339 |
.380 |
76 – 86 |
What does all this mean for the Mets? Building from the farm is great, being more selective and improving plate discipline system wide is terrific and may win lots of games. During the regular season an aggregate effect spread across a given lineup may wear down lesser opponents more often then not, but if you want to win big you have to augment with free agents possessing those harder to come by skill sets. If we ever wish to reach the promised land again our owners are going to have to open their wallets and spend big on the exceptional, those select few who can put you over the top.
About the Author: Matthew Balasis
I’ve been a Met fan since August 1969 when a fire resulted in the Red Cross placing my family on the 6th floor of a building in Willets Point. I could see Shea from our balcony and I knew something big was going on. I followed them through the dark years and the resurgence of the 80’s only (sadly) to miss the fall of 86 because I was in Boot Camp. I've been serving penance ever since in Minnesota where I'm an SLP. I've written a lot about the Mets in an effort to share with my kids (and anyone else who might listen), a sporting tradition that made much of my childhood worthwhile. Follow me on twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewBalasis
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Er, there’s one rather major problem with comparing the Reds and Padres and drawing the conclusions you do. You ignore the other half of the game, namely, preventing runs. The Reds got 21 WAR out of their pitching – 5th best in the majors – and the Padres got 5.7, second-worst. Using UZR, the Reds had the 10th-best defense in the majors, and the Padres had the 21st. So although the Reds only scored 18 runs more than the Padres, they gave up 122 fewer runs. If you want to know why the Reds won 19 more games than the Padres, look no further than that. It’s not the Padres’ lack of star power on offense; it’s their poor pitching/defense.
Well Jesse even if what your saying is true….
Who exactly was it who ignored half of the game when they built thier team?
Reds have Stars Padres do not, Reds have Defense, Padres do not….
In order for the Padres to equal the Reds in offense CHEAPLY what they didn’t pay for they didn’t GET on the defensive side…..Reds did and paid for it!
Perhaps the reason the Red have a better Defense is because they didn’t try to do what Matt has suggested SD did and tried to get the performance of one star out of many CHEAPS!
And as a result of trying to get cheaps the reason they were cheap in the first place is due to the fact they were not very good defensively and take 4 roster/lineup spots to get the offense of one player which means 4 guys with other weaknesses must be used to get the ADDITIVE numbers of the guy the Reds get from ONE roster/lineup spot. Reds can get the same offense out of one that SD is getting from 3 or 4. And if the Reds guy is not the BETTER defensive candidate than the other 4 at least it is a weakness at only ONE position in the lineup and not the aggregate of FOUR maybe not as weak as the one but weaker than league average. WHich is why they were cheap in the first place!
That’s a fair point. Votto and Phillips are gold glove caliber defenders. However, as Matt clarified more times than was probably necessary, his article was about offense only.
But even if he left out Defense in his statement…..
Your assuming that all the conglomerate of players you used to get the Offense are better than average Defenders….
What if they are just average defenders as is the one guy they are meant to replace….
Your making a point about ignoring the defense but it actually goes to YOUR favor not his…
By doing that you take out the potential ramifications of The Reds can get the offense without having to have a good defender but the other tyeam can’t do that because if they did they woud weaken 2 or 3 positions in the Defense where the other team is weak at only one!
Just as your using 2 or 3 players to get the same Offense your probably also using 2 or 3 players and getting the compilation on the defensive side!
So not only are thier Offensive numbers aggregated but their defense is too!
So your pointing out of Defense being important to disproving what he said works just as well against you as it might before you…
Because your conglomerating your conglomerating on both sides of the field!
Is one Stanton not better than two Duda’s?
Even if two dudas could equal the Offensive output of one stanton?
What does having to play both do to your defense then?
Lets take the other side of it….
You have a 1B who is great with the bat but his glove isn’t all that good…..
You have a weak glove at ONE position…..
So you decide to make up for it by getting 2 OFers to replace the offense….
You could just as easily be forced to play two defensive liabilities instead of one for the same offensive output!
Maybe as a whole they are better than the one guy at 1B but they are still LESS defense than you could have gotten for those positons ifyou didn’t need to make up for the loss of the 1B in two places on the field!
And certainly more Defense AND offense than you could have got if you kept the 1B and found two guys better than the ones you used to get one player’s production….
Metsie, several of us already pointed out that Matt neglected defense and pitching and Matt has directly said that he was focusing on offense.
I think you’re leaving out a major point in your offensive comparisons, namely the 31-point difference in slugging. You opened with Giambi as an example of trying to find someone who does each individual thing well, then left out the power, which is what he was most known for.
The Reds also had two pitchers who got Cy Young votes, four startes with an ERA under 3.75 and two setup men with an ERA under 3.00
I think you’re drawing your comparison from a very incomplete set of data.
You hit the nail on the head with your second point. The difference between the Reds and Padres was mostly their pitching (and to a lesser extent, their defense). It wasn’t the hitting.
Well, there is also park effect, the Padres play in an extreme pitcher’s park while the Reds play in an extreme hitters park. The Padres also walked more, scored a comparable number of runs, were close on hits and AVG, ran the bases WAY better (68 more stolen bases) had a better walk rate and a lower K rate. … which is why the Padres offense was ranked as COMPARABLE to the Red offense …
But the point of this article is that I don’t concur, I think the reason Fangraphs ranked them in succession is because they’ve focused too much on WAR and other such aggregate data that diminish the impact of home runs and power categories (as you correctly point out) …
So yeah, I AGREE, the two offenses should NOT be “side by side,” and yet they are:
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=0&type=8&season=2012&month=0&season1=2012&ind=0&team=0,ts&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0
Matt, yes, Fangraphs crunches the numbers to figure out WAR and takes things like park factor into account, but just look at runs scored. That doesn’t require any fancy calculation, and in that ranking, the Reds and Padres are only 2 ranking (and 18 runs) apart. You’ve basically made a hypothesis (offensive star power = wins) and, rather than looking at a much more reasonable explanation (comparing 2 teams with nearly equal offenses, the team that won 19 more games did so because of much, much better pitching) you’ve just decided to confirm your hypothesis.
That’s what I am confused about. How can you say an offense that barely scored more runs than the other over the course of the season was drastically better and was the key to them winning games when there was such a dramatic difference in pitching?
But forget about wins, (maybe I shouldn’t have included the win column) we’re looking specifically at team offense in isolation … fangraphs is saying the two teams are “comparable” and I don’t think they’re as comparable as fangraphs makes them out to be because of a couple of exceptional talents on the Reds … who, incidentally, dramatically bolster power categories.
And for the record, the Reds offense IS ranked above the Padre offense.
I think you’re missing my point now. First of a, you don’t agree with the notion that WAR is reflective of how a team’s offense plays, yet you linked to offensive stats sorted by WAR. So that’s a little confusing. Also, the vast difference in slugging despite the similarity in most other categories shows that there was something you left out of your comparison that the Padres did far better than the Reds, and that was baserunning.
Jesse I think you miss my point to some degree — I specifically didn’t want to look at anything besides offense for the sake of this discussion. When you look at these two offenses (and they are ranked as comparable), one reflects small market aggregate effects while the other packs some concentrated star power — but beyond the other obvious deficits on the Padres, I don’t think the San Diego’s offense is actually comparable to Cincinatti’s (in isolation) because they don’t possess the exceptional talent, namely those pricey “slugging” skill sets.
but if the bottom line is that they scored roughly the same # of runs, playing in more of a pitchers park, in a division with stronger pitching staffs, on a much smaller payroll, how can you argue that it is a bad thing, or somehow the wrong way to go about putting together a roster (especially since having a lower payroll will exclude you from getting any high priced stars on the open market).
good point about park factors. their respective stadia are on opposite sides of the spectrum.
“I specifically didn’t want to look at anything besides offense for the sake of this discussion.”
But you used the fact that the Reds were a playoff team to demonstrate that they are better. You can’t just hand wave away pitching if you are doing that. Especially when there was such a gap between both teams there.
What I wanted to isolate was the odd “comparability” of these two superficially disparate offenses, one of which reflects small market aggregate effects while the other possesses much more star power, and how I believe that is an artificial perception because the Reds have more exceptional individual hitters who can go up against exceptional pitchers … the fact that the Reds happened to win more should have perhaps been noted as more of an aside but yes it is not germane to this discussion … this discussion is about the aggregate vs. the exceptional.
So without that, other than the almost insignificant difference in runs, what shows that the Reds offense was significantly better than the Padres?
Power.
That’s about it. They have a few exceptional talents that bolster their power output (Votto, Bruce, Phillips).
But my point is that it’s precisely these type of exceptional talents you need when going up against exceptional pitching … so they might not be better “in the aggregate” but they are better “in the playoffs.”
And just to clarify, I think Votto is better than anyone on the Padres in any park regardless of size and in any universe … Votto is the definition of “exceptional.”
But you are just restating the argument, not supporting your stance.
Believe it or not, I agree with your stance. I’d rather a few legit game changers and plug the rest with role players.
I just find your argument spurious.
Well, lol, it’s tough to quantify, I’m open to suggestions.
I mean in the end they scored a comparable number of runs so there are strong arguments on both sides.
If you could really show for instance that lineups with less concentrated statistical groupings in individual players performed poorly against Ace level pitchers you’d be onto something, but my data collection skills aren’t there yet!
So simply expand the data pool. Look for more examples of both methods. At the very least, you’ll know if either way in consistent.
Yeah, although there aren’t that many teams that strictly adhere to one approach or the other.
The Reds don’t adhere to one strategy.
But the point of an offense is to score runs. the Padres were close to the Reds even before taking park factors into account.
I might be missing your point then, as well. What if they traded pitching staffs? Granted, the competition might be more difficult in the NL West, but for the sake of argument, let’s assume the Giants and Dodgers are the Cardinals and Brewers. If they traded pitching, then wouldn’t the star team with high priced sluggers go home in October, while the cheaper “aggregate” team make the playoffs? Because it seems that the only difference between the two are the pitching.
I don’t understand – comparable in what sense? The Padres’ offense scored only 18 fewer runs than the Reds, and at least some of that was almost certainly due to playing half their games in Petco (5th worst run-scoring environment in the majors) as opposed to Great American (6th best) – http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/parkfactor/_/year/2012. So they certainly are comparable. You argue in the article that “in the end [the Padres] sure didn’t win as many games [as the Reds]. Why? While the Padres were able to perform according to many of the tenets of Alderson’s offensive philosophy, they didn’t have the exceptional abilities that the Reds have in other offensive domains, namely slugging and power skill sets that are considerably more expensive to procure.” This argument is pretty clearly wrong, because it assumes that the Padres and Reds are otherwise equal teams. The vast discrepancy in pitching/defense between the two teams proves otherwise. You can’t just look at offense in a vacuum and assume that the Padres’ lack of offensive star power (and, by the way, Chase Headley would take exception) caused them to lose 19 more games when all evidence is to the contrary.
not quite sure what you are saying here. is it that a team is better off having a few studs in the lineup, with the rest being crap/filler pieces, rather than having a more balanced top to bottom lineup?
There may be a case where being = in RS is not really equal inthose 2 scenarios, but I suspect it would have to be a totally subjective supposition that you can’t prove!
and as others noted, runs are nice, but run differential is vastly more important.
“not quite sure what you are saying here. is it that a team is better off having a few studs in the lineup, with the rest being crap/filler pieces, rather than having a more balanced top to bottom lineup?”
YES!
Bingo, you win the prize!
Yet what are you basing that premise on other than just traditional thought as your numbers don’t really back that up?
That’s an excellent question TR, I thought about that, and the only thing I could come up with in the time I had is the playoff record of teams that have employed this aggregate approach to “spreading stats across a lineup.” Namely the Twins the A’s and the Braves (who have been for long criticized for not bagging the big expensive Free Agent who might have put them “over the top”).
Their record against top flight opponents is not good.
Those teams have made the playoffs 33 times since 1975 and have only 3 titles to show. One in 11 attempts in a tournament that was (for the most part until 1996) a 4 team format, that’s awful.
Well for one I would take making the playoffs as much as the Braves for sure. However, I wonder besides the Yankees and maybe the Cards who has made it more and who has a better percentage. Let me add that I would count the Marlins due to other circumstances.
Matt out of those 3 teams, Atl, Oak and Min they have 4 titles. The Twinkies have 2, 87 and 91, the Braves 1 in 95, they lost in 91,92, 96 and 99, the A’s have 1 in 89, lost in 88 and 90 so that’s 4 titles out of 9 WS appearances. We have 1 title and 5 playoff appearances during that time frame.
!! How did I miss that? I live in MN …
fixed it, thanks.
Good insight, but you can’t do a straight up comparison of SD’s and Cinci’s offenses and say that is why Cinci made the playoffs while SD did not. Look at their pitching
Cinci had a 3.34 team ERA while SD posted a 4.01
Also, you seem to be hung up on OBP, arguing against a point no one ever made. No one says it is the be all end all of offense.
“Institutionalized directives such as Alderson’s OBP bias and Beane’s desire to spread around dismembered Jason Giambis”
Except that isn’t true. Especially in Beane’s case. Beane wanted to keep Giambi, but he couldn’t afford him. He was forced to find an alternative.
I agree with your premise, find yourself the best players you can. You always want game changers. But the way you are presenting it is off.
If Alderson was only about the aggregate why didn’t he get 3 decent prospects for Beltran instead of a 1 top flight potential game changer?
“but if you want to win big you have to augment with free agents possessing those harder to come by skill sets. ”
But your own positive model here defies that. Other than Ludwick, none of their big offensive performers were free agents and he wasn’t a game changer for them.
Free agency is one way to acquire stars, and is honestly, the messiest and most short term way.
if anything, Giambi was the ultimate moneyball player. Especially when you are (to quote someone close to the mets) going for “moneyball with money”.
totally a myth that moneyball was ever about having a low payroll or ditching anyone making a real salary. that was just a reality they were living with. So what is being postulated here is the philosophical aspect of it.
Indeed.
CIN had one of the best pitching staffs in Baseball – in spite of playing in a more hitter friendly environment. They also had an unusually healthy pitching staff.
At the same time, the Padres had one of the worst pitching staffs in Baseball including ballpark effects and playing in – arguably – the most pitcher friendly park in Baseball.
And indeed, the Reds had several players with low OBPs but high SLG totals – and a good defensive team as well.
So, comparing these two teams to the Mets or what Alderson & Co. have tried to get doesn´t make a lot of sense.
What the Mets are trying to do is pretty easy to understand:
Build around a strong young rotation and a few key offensive pieces that are surrounded by various bits & pieces. Pretty much what the SF Giants have done over the past 5 years.
Whether it´ll work as planned remains to be seen. Likewise whether the Mets will indeed start spending again with an almost clean financial slate for 2014.
Dooby,
I wanted to look at offense in isolation because fangraphs ranks the Reds and Padres offenses in succession (I did a double take when I saw that — I didn’t think the Padre offense was that good) … so I looked into it and I believe there is an “over-emphasis” to some degree on aggregate metrics like WAR and team OBP and I feel like this approach diminishes the impact (no pun intended) of power categories … which I think is a problem in general because those impact power categories are usually bolstered by exceptional talents.
See for yourself, they are ranked as comparable, which I think is insane:
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=0&type=8&season=2012&month=0&season1=2012&ind=0&team=0,ts&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0
Yet they produced almost identical runs, right?
Right.
So how can you actually determine that the Reds offense is vastly superior?
I don’t know about “vastly” but I believe they have more “exceptional” talents, they type who might be able to go up against a Verlander or Sabathia, all things being equal (as far as team stats) I’d go with a team that has a few studs and a bunch of fillers, over a group of decent but mediocre players … even though in the end their TEAM stats might be comparable. My reason being I’d prefer to have exceptional hitters going up against the exceptional pitchers you will invariably face in the playoffs.
I’d prefer the lineup with the name “Votto” in it. lol.
It’s not about names, it’s about numbers on the scoreboard
The Reds went up against a team with great pitching in 2010 and 2012 and didn’t get out of the first round in either case. Good pitching beats good hitting unless that oitcher is not on his game on a particular night. I don’t think you can say because the Reds have star power they’ll be able to hit the Verlanders of the world when they got shut down by the Phils staff and the Giants staff.
But you used win totals and playoff contention as your measure of who was better. There is a major flaw there since Cinci’s pitching was far better than SD’s.
The point of an offense is to score runs. Cinci scored 18 more runs than SD but played half their games in a far more hitter friendly park.
I am confused. Wouldn’t you have to include pitching and defense somehow?
Because the point of the article is the “over-reliance” on aggregate effects such as WAR, OBP, plate discipline metrics and so forth results in websites like fangraphs actually ranking the Padre offense as comparable to the Red offense when it they are not at all IMHO “comparable.” Reasons being (as stated in the article) that while the Padres do a few things better (they get on base and score runs), they are far inferior in “exceptional” and more expensive power categories …. which should count for more … but I guess according to WAR it does not.
But you used playoff contention as the standard.
When you look at runs scored and then adjust for park factors, they actually are very comparable.
Would you take the Padre offense over the Red offense if you were going into the playoffs? I wouldn’t
Again, it’s a discussion of two offenses that are ostensibly similar in the aggregate but overtly disparate when looking at individual contributions (the exceptional).
I would take the exceptional every time because they stand a better chance against the exceptional pitching.
How does your post prove that they would stand a better chance against elite pitching? It really doesn’t does it? It just proves that the Reds offense in a hitters park was slightly better than the Padres minus the star power and flashy numbers.
“Would you take the Padre offense over the Red offense if you were going into the playoffs? I wouldn’t”
In a short series? I can see the Reds having the advantage but but pitching is generally the deciding factor in play off series. But how do you declare the Reds so much better when the Padres score runs at a comparable rate?
I think part of your problem is, you only went with 2 examples. And your positive example even defies the point you were making toward the end. For all we know, this was just one freak occurrence. Especially when you bring in park factors.
Donal,
No, forget about pitching, I’m saying if you had to pick an offense going into the playoffs …
It could very well be a freak occurrence, like I said I did a double take when I saw the Padres ranked up there with the Reds … I think park factor certainly has something do do with it, but in the end it’s still surprising to me that the Reds were ranked only slightly better. The thing about the Padres is they have a terrific farm system loaded with talent, their complementary players are all pretty good across the board, but the Reds production is concentrated in a few truly exceptional players and I think I’d rather have those exceptional talents going up against the ace caliber pitching you invariably face in the playoffs.
So, is your problem that Fangraphs was factually wrong to say the Reds and Padres had comparable offenses?
Or that the idea goes against your preferences and preconceived notions?
Probably a little of both but I’m open to the discussion regarding the merits of San Diego’s offense.
For all I know maybe spreading an “effect” across a lineup puts more sustained pressure on opposing pitchers (no easy innings — you can always walk Votto) …
But again if I had to choose, especially in the post season, I’d go with the exceptional talent (game-changers) on my roster supplemented with fillers.
If given a choice you should take the team that scores runs. It’s not about celebrities.
But what is your proof that those things did impact them negatively as we have no proof that it was their offense instead of their pitching and defense.
WAR is not an offense-only stat. It also includes defense, baserunning, position. I’m not sure what to make of this article. Very confusing.
“Because the point of the article is the “over-reliance” on aggregate effects such as WAR, OBP, plate discipline metrics and so forth results in websites like fangraphs actually ranking the Padre offense as comparable to the Red offense when it they are not at all IMHO “comparable.”
But you just (unwittingly, probably) proved that they are. You just described near identical offenses. One has more power and one helps themselves more on the bases. It’s not practical to use team results when comparing offenses because there’s equally-as-important facets to the game that have just as much impact on winning as offense.
Ding ding! Unwittingly, this article proves the exact point it is trying to refute.
“One has more power and one helps themselves more on the bases. It’s not practical to use team results when comparing offenses because there’s equally-as-important facets to the game that have just as much impact on winning as offense.”
Wait, now I’m confused,
I’m looking at offense in isolation, nothing else.
These two offenses are ostensibly similar in the aggregate but overtly disparate when looking at individual contributions (the exceptional).
… that’s it, that’s my premise and I’m sticking to it! lol.
so my point is that they aren’t really “comparable” (especially in the playoffs) because the Reds have a couple of “exceptional” hitters who can match up with top pitchers.
I guess I see what you’re driving at, but I don’t particularly agree. The Reds offense disappeared in the playoffs. Didn’t Halladay pitch his no-no against them? The Yankees looked like the Bad News Bears against Verlander and Scherzer. The Triple Crown winner, Fielder and the rest of that offense looked the Bad News Bears Breaking Training against Cain and co. Having star power or a power advantage has little to do with offensive success in the playoffs, especially in short series. In short series, everything needs to work, not the just a handful of guys, then take two innings off till they come up to bat again.
Well, yes, but my point is in a hypothetical world would you rather go into the playoffs with a Padre-type offense (the small market “stats spread out across a lineup” composition) or a Reds (stats concentrated in a few exceptional talents) type offense?
I would take the Reds.
I’m sure the 2012 San Francisco Giants agree.
To be fair, Panda yacked three times in one game. However, given the choice of those two and ONLY those two, I guess I can’t answer, because the Padres pitching and defense aren’t good enough to get that offense to the playoffs. However-ever, the Giants offense does more closely resemble the Padres than they do the Reds.
lol, so you’re saying the Giants rotation would have rather faced a Reds lineup rather than a “Padre-type” offense? Because the Padres were 6 and 12 vs. the Giants.
But again we’re getting off the subject, which is comparing team offense in isolation.
The problem is, you have _only_ your premise, and no evidence to back it up.
First, you point out that the 2 teams have comparable batter WAR, and you decided that that can’t be right because the Reds’ offense is so much better (to you, subjectively) than the Padres’ since they have more power. So WAR must be over-emphasizing “aggregate stats” like OBP, which you’ve decided intuitively is bad. The Reds, after all, are so much better than the Padres.
Except that the Reds/Padres offensive equivalence is borne out by their near-equivalence in runs scored! So it’s not WAR that’s painting an inaccurate picture. The WAR picture is accurate – it is your premise (that the Reds’ offense must be better than the Padres’) that is wrong.
But not willing to give up on your premise, you turned to the teams’ records, and say that proves your point – even though the offenses scored a near-equal number of runs (despite the Reds playing in a much better hitters’ park), the Reds’ offense must be better because the Reds won 19 more games and made the playoffs. Except that the Reds’ pitching staff was vastly superior to the Padres, giving up 122 more runs – and, incidentally, accounts for almost the entire win differential between the 2 teams if you use pitching WAR. So again, WAR is consistent with reality.
So you’re sticking to your premise (that the Reds’ offense last year was better than the Padres’) despite the fact that (a) you offer no real proof for that, and, (b) the little proof (the Padres won more games) is easily explained by other causes.
Look Jesse,
Don’t get me wrong, there’s certainly an argument for the Reds/Padres offenses being comparable — i don’t think they’d have been ranked in succession on fangraphs if they weren’t. I’m just sayin, if I had to pick one or the other I’d take the Red offense because Votto, Bruce, Phillips, are “exceptional” type players who can go up against “exceptional” type pitchers. Spreading offensive stats across an otherwise mediocre lineup may get you to the same place, but I’d wager most top pitchers would plow through a lineup that doesn’t include a Votto type hitter. That’s all I’m saying, my premise is actually rather straight forward. All things being equal, I’d rather have a few studs and a bunch of “fillers” rather than a lineup of 8 “ok-mediocre” types who won’t strike fear into the Verlanders of this baseball world.
I also believe that aggregate team metrics cloud this very important element of needing an exceptional talent to go up against exceptional opposition (which, again, is the point of my article).
But your stats do not back up your premise. Again, I too would rather have the Reds lineup so don’t get me wrong. However, your stats are actually making the case for the opposite of what you are trying to prove.
So, you are saying that my stats make the point that the Padre lineup is better than the Reds lineup?
Define your terms, you’re losing me.
Nope it shows that even without the star power and playing in a pitchers park the Padres offense only produced a slight difference.
That could very well be Trs,
But let me be clear I’m not degrading the aggregate approach to the extent you think I am — in fact I think that during the regular season it has it’s benefits (you can still operate even if a couple of key players go down). I’m not even necessarily convinced my conclusion is correct, like I said in another thread, for all I know the “sustained attack” where every hitter decent if not great may have the effect of wearing down pitchers faster — no easy innings (you can always walk Votto),
But if I had to pick a side, especially in the playoffs, I’d go with the lineup that had the few “game changers” in it because exceptional talent tends to rise to the occasion.
Well prove your premise. Go and look at playoff rosters, take the rosters with the top 3 individual hitters and see how the offense performed in the playoffs. Do it for a few years and see if you’re correct. You may very well be, I don’t know, considering the sample size of a playoff series I think there’s going to be too much variance to come to any definite conclusions. Until you do that though, It’s quite unfair to use an unproven theory to try and disprove anything else.
lol, well I’m not going to quit my day job if that’s what you’re hinting at.
I could make a snarky comment about considering the quality of this commentary you shouldn’t quit your day job but instead I’ll just say this:
You posted a premise and to support that premise you cherry picked two teams and then ignored basic facts about those teams while saying ‘see that proves what I’m saying.’ If your have a thesis you need to prove it and I’m not trying to be a jerk or anything, I legitimately wonder if you’re correct.
BTW you really walked into the day job quip, that’s the internet equivalent of a hanging slider.
Your point is nonsense
Stop. It is not. It’s open for debate is all.
Nope
Fair points Matt, but you neglected to mention a huge difference between the Reds and Padres that would impact their slugging considerably: One team plays in a hitter’s haven and the other plays in a park that may be an even better pitchers park than the old Citi Field. You should have compared two teams that play in similar type parks. Or used park-adjusted numbers.
The Padres just made big changes to their outfield walls this winter. They recognize what a big impact the park can have on slugging and offense.
Metro,
I actually had a discussion of park factor in the original text but edited it out for space considerations — I speak to it however in the comments above.
That being said, I don’t think park factor in and of itself is enough to rank these two offenses as “comparable,” I think the Reds have a much better offense.
The point of an offense is to score runs. the Reds straight up scored 18 more runs than the Padres.
If we took park factors into consideration, what would that actually look like?
There’s certainly an argument there I suppose, but I still think the Reds have a more dangerous lineup because their power advantage is significant enough so it should translate to almost any park … but I’m not so sure to be honest, that’s a tough one to quantify.
Well, how about this angle? If the Reds lineup is more dangerous because of a power advantage, and they played in a hitter’s park to accentuate it, yet still had a near identical offense as SD did, then perhaps there IS something to the “aggregate” numbers you intended to diminish.
Not to mention that SLG% is aggregate in it’s own right.
Yeah, I guess different people take different things. But for myself, the fact that they are so close in runs considering the parks and the power difference shows that base-running and overall game can make up for power deficiencies. Of course it also shows that you need pitching and defense to win.
Point is though I’d still rather go with the Red offense in the playoffs … really, mostly because of Votto lol.
Oh, personally I would take the Reds offense as well but I don’t think any of your research helped you or I determine that. The Reds offense when looking at names did look much better but in terms of results, not that much better. In fact maybe you could even say it under-performed?
But the Red offense did look better … the power categories … which means they have players (Votto, Phillips, Bruce) who can do more than get on base.
BUT they produced very similar runs.
Yes, but you don’t get points for style. They put a comparable number of runners across home plate while playing in very different parks.
No doubt that I would trust Votto, Phillips and Bruce in the playoffs more than any Padre, but I think maybe I’d trust Headley, Alonso, Quentin and maybe even Forsythe over any of the other Reds.
Again, the exceptional vs the aggregate, who would you take?
That’s a tough call, because the Reds are not exactly the poster children for playoff success offensively. Neither are the Yankees and the Tigers didn’t exactly light up the scoreboard.
You take the better offensive team, whoever has th better ops+. The end.
The only way to analyze offensive beyond predictive or counting stats is runs scored the ultimate benchmark of an offense.
You cannot judge wins by offense alone.
Take a blah offense and stack the pitching with cy young caliber pitchers and a dominant bullpen plus a stellar defense. Guess what you have a playoff team.
and you win 2 out of the last 3 World Series
Wow, Matt, that’s a great. And so well written! Over at “2 Guys” we call them difference-makers.
Seriously, terrific job.
Hi James,
I’m curious to know if your definition of “difference-makers” is at all similar to Sandy Alderson’s definition when he said that adding a “difference-maker” (or two) was one of his offseason objectives.
Mission accomplished?
Depends on what TDA becomes.
Assuming that TDA is a difference maker, then wouldn’t it be a wash at best? A net gain of zero? Wasn’t Dickey a proven difference maker? So how did he add a difference maker or two? Guide me through the math here.
Don’t sleep on Cowgill.
You are right, but I think it goes back to the did he mean for the short-term or the long-term? I think many of us are trying to rush things when it’s been pretty clear that was never the intentions regardless of what is said or not said in the media. Most of us knew when Alderson came in that it would 2014 before the Mets could even think about being normal again as an organization.
When the term difference maker came up in the Francesa interview, it was in the context of the 2013 season and what was he going to tell Mets fans about his offseason goals to erase the memory of the 2012 season. It was Alderson who coined the phrase actually, and not Francesa. That’s what Alderson said he’d need to get to make 2013 competitive. And unless D’Arnaud (and Cowgill
) produce like Fred Lynn or Mike Trout did in their rookie seasons, we lost a difference maker for 2013 and not gained one. As for beyond this season, that’s a different story.
“I think many of us are trying to rush things when it’s been pretty clear that was never the intentions regardless of what is said or not said in the media.”
So to make a long story short, your answer is that, “No, we did not add a difference maker for 2013.” Which is exactly what I was saying in the first place. As I said, whether we did or not beyond 2013 is the different story entirely and we can only hope that we did.
I think the bigger issue here s even if TDA is a differencer does he make as much of a difference as Dickey would have over the next three years?
If TDA could be enough to get us into the playoffs and/or WS what does he have to do to be MORE of a difference than Dickey would have over the next three years?
And lets just say they BOTH could have gotten us to the WS as EQUAL….
Who would be the better one to have?
We all seem to think that Pitching wins championships and NO ONE in the MLB would be better and more able to start 3 games off the mound in a WS situation than Dickey would.
I guess it comes down to this….(back to the long/short term)…
If TDA is enough and equal to Dickey in getting us into the postseason…is that something he can keep doing past the first 3 years?
But for the next three if Dickey could have gotten us to even ONE WS and could win it no one would care about the next 3 years after that!
It would just be gravy!
Not even the 86er were a dynasty when all was said and done….
We should be playing to win YEAR TO YEAR…Not playing for someting 4 years down the line because as Beltran, Santana, Delgado, and the 86ers showed….ANYTHING can happen after 4 years….
Get the win as soon as you can get the win and worry about year 4 when year 3 rolls around and tells you what it is you NEED to make year 4 meaningful!
Cause what you think will help 4 years from now might show that it won’t help in 3 and you wasted the two previous years for a dream that can never come to pass!
Because you woke up a year before the dream could complete!
Even if he meant the long term….
At the time Beltran and Santana was signed they were both considered LONG TERM plusses at the time….
Did you get that long term?
At least in thier case they were proven….There is no proof we will even get SHORT term out of TDA yet do we?
He already has a bad back and some knee history….
His LONG TERM could be very much the way Beltran’s Long term turned out.
We certainly HOPE that is not the case….But you never know….
Thats b/c John Buck is the ultimate difference maker !
For me not until it is on the major league level. That is how I read Aldersons comments. So if TD is sent down the mission, as he defined it, was a failure.
Matt, I’ve always been of the opinion that I’d rather have three studs in the lineup with role players to fill in the gap, rather than just having eight nondescript, average or “just-above” average players. In New York especially, you still need the “straws that stir the drink” and the types of players that fans pay to go see.
Joe, that’s an entirely separate argument. Now you’re talking about an attraction rather than production.
That’s true, and in a way it makes it difficult to differentiate what a big market team in New York needs to do as compared to what small market teams do. The dynamics and parameters are far too wide apart to draw a fair comparison. That’s why I get a little annoyed when I see so many using Oakland as a blueprint for what we should do in New York. That is most certainly and categorically the worst thing the Mets should do.
Winning is winning it makes no difference.
Yep but building to win against the average does nothing for the winning vs the ELITE!
Sure you can make a playoff when you live in a division that us belw average and win vs other average teams in the league….
But it’s a short lived playoffs because the teams that didn’t build to be better than the average and built to be better than the rest of the league will clean your clock when you meet them!
There may be only one or two teams in the league that can beat the entire league but they will in most cases be the team you have to get past to advance in the playoffs.
Hence Oakland….Lots of playoffs and div titles and sent home each time EXCEPT the one time THEY were the ones who HAD the STARS!
“Yep but building to win against the average does nothing for the winning vs the ELITE!”
YES!
Thank you!
Exactly!
But neither team seems to be able to beat the elites in the playoffs. At least the Padres’ offence has an excuse.
The best teams do not win the playoffs. It’s random. The series are too short.
I wouldn’t go that far. Random chance certainly has increased influence during the short series. But, you still want to go in better prepared. And strong pitching does more to neutralize random chance than anything else.
Baseball is a sport where the best team only wins 60 per net of the time. Playoffs are mostly random. The best team in the league is not the World Series winner it’s the best record.
Oh trust me Matt they GET what your saying but it touches a sore spot with them and wish to deny the truth of it
while they go chasing CORRELATORS to equal the Yankee production vs the league they don’t realize that what you do vs the league in 162 is all thrown out the window when you go head to head with the team that got what you got only MORE EFFICIENTLY!
The core point your making (although you may not have touched it directly) is the Reds were MORE EFFICIENT with thier roster and in an important game like a playoff or WS it is usually the best most EFFICIENT ROSTER that wins….The better player will ALWAYS overcome the lesser players head to head….And since both sides are limited in how MANY they can play at any time during the game the one who doesn’t need to make substitutions to produce will always have the edge!
the Aggregators have to use their ENTIRE roster to beat the average teams during the regular season….
The Efficient Star builders don’t!
And in the Playoffs those stars will overmatch the parts and relegate them to less than the whole you thought you had.
Sure you can build a team with a good record in the regular season but the playoffs is all about what you do vs the BEST!
You might have a great record and only lose to the BETTER teams in the league and clean up when your not playing them…..
But those team you lose to are the ones you will face in the playoffs!
And you can’t repeat the performance you got in the season because there are no more average teams to get the numbers from!
Yet the guys who have a few stars have more roster spots to work with and can get EQUAL or BETTER players into those spots than the aggregator and be better throughout the playoffs.
In the end it’s about work and effort….
Aggregator has to put MUCH MORE effort into winning than the Efficient star builders.
One has to sweat while the other can do the same without breaking a roster sweat!
And the effort needed is easier to sustain when you have a few stars than it is when you have to get everyone playing to equal what they do!
Oh no doubt in terms of attendance and star power you need the Wright’s and Davis’ (hopeful on that last one).
I think one of the knocks on Omar was though that he always went for the biggest name, spent the entire budget and then back-filled the other holes with crap. The old argument of would the Mets have been better off spending the 12M on Perez and getting Wolf AND Garland for the same price per year? Or instead of spending the money on Bay spreading that money around on multiple holes?
Maybe he did that, I’m not sure he filled the team with any more crap than Sandy has….
The ony difference I see is Sandy has to PLAY the crap he signs because he doesn’t have those stars and Omar was only forced to play the crap when the stars got injured which is always the risk but you can’t build your team based on things you can not predict….
You give the medical exam and if it says the guy is fine then you have to trust he will be.
In the example of what Matt is saying in essence Sandy is building the team Omar would have had to start if his stars got injured!
The only difference I see is there are no stars to get injured other than Wright at this point.
One built to be good if no one gets injured one built to be the same as that team we got when it WAS injured.
Not talking about backups for injury. Talking about things like Murphy starting in LF for a team with a 140m payroll and playoff dreams. It always seemed the Meta spent everything they had on that one player and then back filled.
Why was he in LF TRS?
Becaue Alou got hurt?
What difference does it make if BOTH have a Murphy (or Duda) playing LF?
You can’t knock the one who did it out of a need but you CAN knock the other for doing it as part of his plan!
Omar tried to build a better team and when thwarted was forced to play guys Sandy was not FORCED to play he merely PLANNED on playing them from the get go!
Your knocking one who had no choice but to play the players he did and not knocking the one who HAD a choice and chose to sign and play the same players Omar didn’t REALLY want to have to play!
“I’ve always been of the opinion that I’d rather have three studs in the lineup with role players to fill in the gap, rather than just having eight nondescript, average or “just-above” average players.”
Joe,
Precisely! That is exactly the point of my article. You need those studs if you’re going up against top tier pitching (of course this didn’t help the Reds against the Giants), but this is why I’d take the Red offense over a “Padre-type” offense in the playoffs. You need those exceptional talents.
Another thing I didn’t touch on below….
Great to build a team that statistically can beat the AVERAGE team during the season but when you get to the playoffs you won’t be PLAYING the Average team….
Technically they are supposed to be the cream of the crop!
And above average simply doesn’t cut it there!
” In New York especially, you still need the “straws that stir the drink” and the types of players that fans pay to go see.”
Why? What if I said winning teams will produce the guys that are the “straw that stirs the drink”?
I’m a huge Giants fan but even I’ll admit Eli Manning is a little over rated. And he’s the closest that team had to a superstar for a few years now (assuming we consider Strahan a super star).
If a team wins, guys will be declared “difference makers” and everyone will retcon how good certain guys were (The Second Derek Jeter Effect).
the whole “New York deserves XYZ” is silly and just marketing hype. I want a winning team. I don’t care if half of them came from the Witness Protection Program.
None of that article made any sense
Maybe it wasn’t initially clear, but Matt clarified in the comments and did a lot of good research for it.
No he didn’t. Big names does not an offense make.
Better ops, score more runs. That is all. Names don’t matter.
Ok so you think the Padres have a better offense than the Reds??
Look at the numbers and tell me. Don’t look at the names. It’s not about names. Score more runs and you are better, the end. (Except for park factors)
The Reds scored more runs, they also hit more homeruns and had more rbi and more hits and hit for a higher average.
Yet they are somehow ranked as “comparable” on fangraphs, which like i said above I did a double-take when I saw that.
I would have guessed that the Red offense was not just better, but way better.
Thing is collective team stats (the aggregate) can be deceptive because while the Padres might not have a single guy who can do what Votto does (exceptional talent), they’re all pretty good.
Which is better? The “spread around” aggregate approach to performance or the exceptional (focus on the individual player) approach?
That was the question I put out in this article.
Not sure I answered it (or if there really is an answer) but oh well I tried!
The answer to your question is that the better team is the one that scores more runs. It’s not complicated.
It kind of deends on who they score them against though doesn’t it?
Sure you can score 20 runs vs a scrub team doing what the padres did but when they have to face a GOOD team the following is true…
1) They may not be able to get those 20 runs vs a GOOD team
2) They may need 21 Runs because the team they are playing can get that many!
You know the Padres play against the Dodgers and Giants, right?
There’s a very specific reason for that. The Reds stadium is far more conducive to producing raw offensive numbers than the Padres stadium. It’s really that simple and says nothing about depth of the line-up vs peak of the line-up or any other factor. What you attempting to do is apply your gut feelings to actual events and grasping for factors why they don’t match.
I think the aggregators are missing the KEY advantage the Reds have over SD as far as the construction of thier team…..
Red have some stars….They get a set amount of production from those three ROSTER/LINEUP spots. With that in thier pocket they now have 5 remaining Lineup spots and positions to get more production out of.
SD needs two players to equal every star the Reds have (Probably need more but lets play conservative)…
To equal the three stars the Reds have they need to use 6 Lineup/Roster spots. Leaving only TWO positions to improve upon compared to the 5 the Reds have. And thier philosophy of getting TWO to get the production of ONE will waste those last two spots and COULD fall 8 players short compared to the Reds if the Reds keep doing what they have been doing so far.
This is why I get so aggravated by those who complain about Money and Cost as if there is some BENEFIT to being cheap because the Money you can spend is only truly limited by the revenues you bring in. We talk about Payroll flexability as if it is important but we already have payroll flexability as far as what your ALLOWED to spend…Revenues is the only thing that can limit you. What is key is ROSTER flexability!
What IS the most limiting factor on how you can build your baseball team? It sure ain’t money!
It’s ROSTER SPOTS
It’s the fact that you can only play and get production from 8 or 9 players at a time during a game. And while you can REPLACE one with another over the course of that game you lose the ability to use the guy you replaced for the remainder of it.
So you really need to build your team based on how to get the MOST out of every roster spot and position you have.
Replacing a Giambi with 4 players might work offensively but to get what you used to get from Giambi you lost what you might have gotten and improved upon from the other 3 Lineup/Roster spots which makes it all the more difficult to improve your team.
Sure it might be easy to improve one of the Frankenplayers on an individual basis but all you really accomplished was akin to improving Giambi! Which the other team could do by merely finding a player as good as you to ADD to Giambi
They say the WHOLE is greater than the sum of it’s parts but if the WHOLE is required to get the same production as someone gets from one of thier PARTS you really haven’t a chance of getting better than them…Whoever you add they can add as well and in the end they can keep on adding because they have room on the roster and the lineup and you do NOT!
Maybe if people concerned themselves a little less about Wasted money and concerned themselves more with wasted Roster Spots we wouldn’t have to worry about what we are spending because the team would be getting production for EVERY roster spot in relation to the competition and winning ballgames in the proccess!
Getting and having a few stars DOES that and will bring in the Revenue to cover all the extra spending!
Why have the Yankees been as successful as they have?
Because the rest of the league has been trying to make up what they get from one guy with multiples of cheaper players and wasting those roster spots the Yankees then use to get another palayer the others can’t make up the production of because there is no room on the roster!
Metsie, now that you are here this should easily have 300 comments by 9 PM.
I don’t know I thought the same thing with the OBP articles but they gave in an admitted to my position before we got halfway there! LOL
Or simply got tired of correcting you.
No Martin admitted OPS correlates better tyhan OBP and Connor admitted SLG does!
Sorry you missed it (actually I’m not it made the day and the debate MUCH MUCH better without your interference and subject changing tactics)
But that was never your point. Your point was RBI was better.
Again, people just got tired of you derailing the conversation and moving the goal posts.
No all I did was post what correlated statistically….RBI does correlate better than OBP
As does SLG and OPS….
RBI was noted as correlating better than both when correlated in the same way as the others….
My ARGUMENT is and has ALWAYS BEEN!
OBP does not correlate to RS better than SOMETHING ELSE!
And both Connor and Martin admitted that statement is TRUE!
The fact I showed THREE metrics over a year ago to show this and it took this long for you guys to admit it just goes to show how stubborn you guys are about your OBP myth and the defense of a FALSE PHILOSOPHICAL BELIEF!
Your point about RBI is mind numbingly stupid.
And your sore loser mentality is quite childish!
Thank you. Yes. That is the perfect way to describe it. Its not just incorrect or poorly argued. The very premise of the argument is mind numbingly stupid. It ignores logic, math, rational thought, facts, evidence . . ..
Yes, we already know you don’t understand correlation and causation. I’m done with you now.
Yeah I don’t understand it yet your the guys who came up with the WRONG ANSWER on ewhat CO-RELATES better!
Your problem here is OB does not CO-RELATE!
CO-RELATING being that the adjustment of one will adjust the other!
RS RELATES TO OB Because it has to be an OB to be an RS and will in it’s creation INCREASE OB at some point during the excercize!
An OB does NOT CO-RELATE because an OB does not HAVE to be an RS and can not on it’s OWN Increase RS except in the case of the HR!
And RBI CO-RELATES because an RS CAN increase the RBI the same way it created an OB and an RBI will ALWAYS increase RS
Something an OB can not do or guarantee!
It’s you guys who think you know what CO-RELATED means but don’t!
CORRELATE
Have a mutual relationship or connection(, in which one thing affects or depends on another
Since RS can’t be guaranteed by an OB it can’t DEPEND on it! RS however DOES perform ONE SIDE of the correlation, an RS HAS to be an OB but an OB does NOT have to be an RS. But for the sake of your argument it really doesn’t matter what RS has to ALWAYS be just what CREATS IT (something OB does not do by itself!)
The RS doesn’t have to be an RBI but since it is the GOAL it doesn’t matter what RS always is! but an RBI HAS to increase the RS!
They CO-RELATE
Get as RS you got a good chance (better than 50/50) chance of getting an RBI….
Get an RBI you got a 100% chance you got an RS….
Get an RS you got a 100% chance you got an OB…
Get an OB you got a _______% chance of getting an RS…
And you want to build a team playing for the longshot!
Yes, you used a lot of words to prove me right. Nifty
Yes and you wee wrong and were dumb enough t think your right because it is easier than making up an argument (Jessup didn’t write for you) to prove your point…
Just easier to say your right and hope someone buys it!
DONE WITH YOU!
You didn’t make a case and I did!
That always wins every debate!
Nobody admitted RBI correlates to runs scored because anybody that has a clue about baseball knows that’s the most ridiculous correlation to runs an individula could make. Like I said in that thread, it’s like saying cold weather correlates to snow better than warm weather. You’re lucky Joe D was kind enough to let you embarass yourself by posting that ridiculous article. You went from saying BA is more important than OBP to RBI correlates to runs. OPS and OPS + is numero un, OB + Slugging in that order. Once again RBI’s do not crate runs, runs create RBI’s.
OK Fonzie prove your point…(for once in your life)
Write a peice and create a scatter chart for OBP correlation vs RBI correlation and prove RBI does not correlate better than OBP!
Go on I dare you!
RBI correlates better with RS than OBP does. You win.
But just remember that you might as well be saying:
Cold weather correlates to snow
Clothes correlate to things made out of cloth
Runs correlate to runs
I already have and so did Connor and Mr North Jersey. I have given you examples of teams top offenses with high OBP and poor offenses with low OBP. All you did was show a couple of exceptions with teams that hit an inordinate amount of HR’s compared to everybody else. If Toronto with it’s 240 something HR’s has a halfway decent OBP they blow every team out of the orbit in runs scored instead of only coming in 6th. A team like Minnesota with less than half the HR’s had a higher OBP and scored more runs. You think because the rankings aren’t inorder or because a team with a 325 OBP score more runs than a team with a 330 OBP that OBP deosn’t correlate to runs scored. No one ever claimed the team that came in 1st in OBP had to come in 1st in runs and then the 2nd, and 3rd and so on an so on. The team that comes in 1st will always be a top offense even if they came in 3rd in runs. A team that comes in 6th n OBP may come in 2nd in runs. That doesn’t mean OBP is not an indicator of runs. It just means that that team had a higher Slug pct which is why we all say OPS is numero uno.
Lol, Comnor that’s why I said everyone is wrong. Runs per game is the stat that correlates the best with runs scored. It’s 100%, top that RBI.
RBI are no more RUNS than OB are!
They are a metric that is DERECTLY related to run scoring where OB is not!
It’s just funny watching all of you make a chart based on TEAM STATS, TEAM OBP, TEAM RS, TEAM SLG, TEAM OBA and then when you find RBI correlates better than all of them you throw it away because it is a TEAM STAT!
Well RS in your OB world is also a TEAM STAT…OB by itself can’t score on it’s own the fact an RBI can be yourself doesn’t make it the SAME thing as RS!
You guys just keep trying to find ways to get rid of it because you won’t admit I was right all along!
And Connor you did admit it….The other two will never even after seeing this chart!
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5oCUR11M24mekZubnc4ZUFCUU0/edit?usp=sharing
See ya sometime next year there Fonzie!
I did what you said was mathematically IMPOSSIBLE!
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/ops-for-the-masses/
Correlating with Offensive Production
I’ve mentioned that OPS does an admirable job of correlating with run production, but how does it stack up against other sabermetric measures? To find out I took a look at aggregate team statistics for the period 2000-2004 encapsulating 150 teams and calculated 13 different common sabermetric measures for each team listed below.
•Team Walks (BB)
•Home Runs (HR)
•Batting Average (AVG)
•On Base Percentage (OBP)
•Slugging Percentage (SLUG)
•On Base Plus Slugging (OPS)
•BRA—the Palmer and Cramer creation discussed previously
•Runs Created Basic (RC Basic)—this is the simplest of the Runs Created formulas developed by Bill James
•OPS’—some analysts have noted, as discussed by Michael Lewis in Moneyball, that each point of On-Base Percentage is more valuable than each point of Slugging Percentage. How much more has been the topic of some discussion over the years, but a multiplier of 1.8 has been suggested. This turns out to be the value that results in the maximum correlation coefficient.
•BaseRuns—this is the formula developed by David Smyth that I’ve discussed on my blog.
•Extrapolated Runs Reduced (XRR)—this is the basic run estimation formula created by Jim Furtado in the late 1990s that I discussed in an article on another popular formula called Estimated Runs Produced.
•Runs Created (RC)—this is the full version of the formula used by James in his more recent Baseball Handbooks.
•Extrapolated Runs (XR)—this is the full version of Furtado’s formula.
Scroll down and look at the chart!
Notice RBI is nowhere to be found on a list of statistics that correlate to runs scored. Reason for that is there is no correlation. You making up your own chart does not count in real baseball. Show me one not made up by you. If there was a statistic for making up your own facts you and Joey would be neck and neck for 1st Place.
You lost the Bet Fonzie your not supposed to be posting here!
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5oCUR11M24mekZubnc4ZUFCUU0/edit?usp=sharing
RBI correlates better than OB!
See ya next year!
When you say I “admitted” it what you mean is I “always knew”. You were talking about RBI, not obp vs ops.
Youknow full well what I was arguin against Martin so just deal with the fact my argument has always been that the Phrase OPB is the BEST (MOST IMPORTANT) METRIC CORELATOR to RS is a pile of BULL!
Meant to promote the looking for OBP in team building over anything else!
And now that some people have actually bothered to DO some research on it and saw what I saw without trying to change the subject to RBI or Semantical Beuracratic recording of stats we FINALLY got to the TRUTH of the conversation!
Why did RBI get mentioned at all?
Because it DID correlate better than the metrics people thought were MORE IMPORTANT!
Would I shoot for RBI over OBP? Sure I would!
Because I know the guy who drives in a run is a bit more important to that RS than the guy who got on base and couldn’t create a run all by himself!
Batters will get on base an average of a little under a third of the time….
Batter who drive them in will produce more runs than getting more guys on a little more than a third of the time!
because those guys who drove in the runs will get on almost the same third of a time as someone else!
The correlation of SLG is exactly the same (very little difference, debends on the data you are using). Also, you never admitted that you were wrong about wOBA, never gave an example of a respected statistician saying that OBP best correlates, or to the YouTube video proving that there is a correlation. I also adressed your point about statisticians being biased, just making up those numbers because they wanted the sats to look one way. Completely shot down your argument on that.
I gues that wasn’t enough
No all you did was limit the answers I could give you for quotes when you know full Well and YOUR ARTICLE TITLE REPEATED!
OBP Correlates the Better than others….
Unfortunatly only when you cheery pick the others used in the comparison!
“No all you did was limit the answers I could give you for quotes when you know full Well and YOUR ARTICLE TITLE REPEATED!”
What does that sentence even mean?
“Unfortunatly only when you cheery pick the others used in the comparison!”
*cherry?
Oh please! I gave you PLENTY of data proved mt point very well. I even looked up middle school math videos for you on the definition of a correlation. (Probably didn’t watch it) I even gave you links to other research projects that proved my point exactly, one from a college physics professor. I don’t see how you can deny the facts when all you’ve given me are sentences in all caps and the past five years’ rankings for OBP and runs scored.
Don’t worry about it. At some point we have to realize that it is pointless and no matter how many times proven wrong he will just respond more and louder.
I guess so. I feel like most of the people who dislike sabermetrics have a) never actually looked into them and are just spitting out nonsense or b) don’t understand them and are therefore intimidated by guys like Beane, Alderson, James, etc.
Sabermetrics isn’t about the stats, it’s about looking past the traditions and getting down to the cold-hard facts.
Yu know whats funny about this is you guys keep saying I’m the one who was proven WRONG yet I’m the only one who said OBP didn’t correlate better than something else!
What you tried to say about me TRS is actually decribing YOU not ME!
You were the guys proven WRONG!
I was right and got two of the posters who argued with me to admit OBP wasn’t better than something else!
Or perhaps those who LIKE them don’t really understand them but because they are posted on BRef and Fangraphs think Wrell hey it’s on the internet so it MUST be true and never test them!
BONJOUR!
Obviously OB and OBP does not directly relate to RS…
In fact the majority of OB doesn’t relate to RS in any way shape or form!
OBP does correlate to runs scored. Better than HR’s, better than BA and most definitely better than RBI”s which is not mathematically possible to be in the equation. OBP 1st and Slug by a hair 2nd, which equal OPS that’s the end all be all to predicting runs. It’s fact and you can write in caps until the cows come home you have never produced a shred of evidence to dispute that because there is none. And not one single person ever declared that an OB scored on it’s own so moving the goal posts is not working to your benefit. You always claied that BA is more important that OBP and said BA should replace OBP in OPS. Everyone here from the get go has been steadfast in disputing your belief that BA is more important than OBP and has backed it up with facts.
“definitely better than RBI”s which is not mathematically possible to be in the equation”
Funny my Excel just did it and pretty much made a STRAIGHT LINE in a SCATTER CHART!
You have not proved OBP correlates to RS In fact Fonzie you have not even MADE a point in this debate all you have so far been Capable of adding to this entire conversation so far is…
“Yeah What HE Said! Metsie is DUMB!”
LETS TRY THIS!
I will BET you POSTING PRIVS FOR A YEAR!
If you create and POST the Two scatter charts of OBP and RBI correlations on the same page!
And the OBP scatter is LESS scattered than the RBI…
Then I will not post for a year….
And if RBI is less scattered than the OBP BYE BYE FONZARELLI!
Deal?
You ready to put you FAITH in your FACT and lose a year of commenting on this site because YOU KNOW your just that right?
So do you take the bet?
I have the link already to go to show you just how STUPID everything you just said is ESPECIALLY the inability mathematically to correlate RBI to RS….Which I have to say took me two minuted to stop laughing before I could make this post!
TAKE THE BET YES OR NO?
Funny my Excel just did it and pretty much made a STRAIGHT LINE in a SCATTER CHART!
You have not proved OBP correlates to RS In fact Fonzie you have not even MADE a point in this debate all you have so far been Capable of adding to this entire conversation so far is…
“Yeah What HE Said! Metsie is DUMB.
Your excell sheet makes no sense an RBI can not create a run since the RBI gets awarded only after a runs scored which comes from a man being on base first. The OB is what creates runs. I never said you were dumb only that your premise was dumb because RBI’s do no correlate to runs score because they are rewarded after the run is scored and not before. OB + Slug =OPS is the number one stat. OB 1st and Slug 2nd by a micro fraction. And note Slug is calculated by total bases from hits 1B, 2B, 3B and HR’s and where do those hits get calculated? You guessed it OBP.
I have made the same points for nearly 2 years on this subject and the only thing you proved as Donal correctly stated that you don’t understand correlation and cause. Connor and MNJ provided the same evidence that anybody else would.
There is no links for your RBI correlation because it doesn’t exist. You are the only one to ever make the claim. What correlates to snow cold weather or warm weather. It’s the same as saying RBI and runs correlate
. At least you come to grips with OPS and Slug being an indicator of runs. Once you understand the importance of OBP you will be all caught up.
LETS TRY THIS!
I will BET you POSTING PRIVS FOR A YEAR!
If you create and POST the Two scatter charts of OBP and RBI correlations on the same page!
And the OBP scatter is LESS scattered than the RBI
This is impossible since like everybody has been trying to explain there is no correlation with RBI and runs. There’s only one piece of reference to go by and it’s your fan shot. can’t prove what does not exist. Runs create RBI’s and you can’t score a run or be credited with an RBI without a man on base.
I will BET you POSTING PRIVS FOR A YEAR!
If you create and POST the Two scatter charts of OBP and RBI correlations on the same page!
And the OBP scatter is LESS scattered than the RBI…
Then I will not post for a year….
And if RBI is less scattered than the OBP BYE BYE FONZARELLI!
Deal?
You ready to put you FAITH in your FACT and lose a year of commenting on this site because YOU KNOW your just that right?
So do you take the bet?
I have the link already to go to show you just how STUPID everything you just said is ESPECIALLY the inability mathematically to correlate RBI to RS….Which I have to say took me two minuted to stop laughing before I could make this post!
TAKE THE BET YES OR NO
You should just stop posting because you have created a correlation that does not exist and is mathematically impossible. Remember you can score a run without an RBI but you can’t scoree a run without an OB.
OBP is easy.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0ApxE2V-jZhJHdGpIS0E5c01mblpWeWtkZmhod2hfLVE&gid=2
Look at the bottom offensive teams and the top offensive teams and you will see the correlation.
See ya next Year fonzie when you get back!
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5oCUR11M24mekZubnc4ZUFCUU0/edit?usp=sharing
Your right I didn’t watch it Connor because I took the college course on it!
Unfortunatly you took MUTUAL to mean only ONE way….
Your point?
How OBP DIRECTLY RELATES to RS
THAT was the title of your article….
And then showed a bunch of charts two of which were ON charts and the other the RAREST form of RS that exists…
What you REALLY DID and will learn if you take a statistics course when you get to college is you made a chart that showed TEAMS who do whatever it is that is needed to have a high RS ALSO did whatever is needed to have a high OBP!
But you have YET to relate how an OB increses the RS by ITSELF which is the KEY point you NEED to prove to make the title of your article TRUE!
Your charts showed at BEST a CIRCUMSTANTIAL PARRALELL between High RS and high OBP but it also showed that for some team HIGH OBP is not needed….
Which leaves two options you have yet to deal with or consider…
1) something OTHER than OB is what is needed to have a high RS and it probably also CONTRIBUTES to a high OBP
or
2) Something ELSE creates a HIGH RS and it doesn’t matter what the OBP is provided you have enough of whatever that something else is to make LEAGUE AVERAGE OBP score!
But none of our charts and none of your conclusions DRAWN from that chart has proved or established the relationship between OB creating more RS!
Beacuse in REAL LIFE (meaning not a chart) we ALL KNOW a team can have 10 hits and an OBP of .400 and STILL LOSE the game 1 to nothing to a team with ONE hit or any number you want LESS than 10 and get shutout!
And that fact ALONE proves that OBP doe not REALLY relate/CORRELATE from a cause and production standpoint….
It is merely INCIDENTAL (as the PA is) as something that you get by doing the thing that DOES create the RS and the OB and for some teams produces the RS even without needing the OB to get it!
“And then showed a bunch of charts two of which were ON charts and the other the RAREST form of RS that exists…”
Home runs actually account for about 1/3 of runs scored.
“But you have YET to relate how an OB increses the RS by ITSELF which is the KEY point you NEED to prove to make the title of your article TRUE!”
I have actually talked about this. OBP is a flawed stat, and doesn’t take into account the actual value of hits, which wOBA does. Then there’s defense, park factors, ability to steal bases that might give one team a few more runs than another team with the same OBP. InwOBA, the most significant error is eliminated. There are still minor problems with the statistic, like the problems I just mentioned but they are almost insignificant.
“Beacuse in REAL LIFE (meaning not a chart) we ALL KNOW a team can have 10 hits and an OBP of .400 and STILL LOSE the game 1 to nothing to a team with ONE hit or any number you want LESS than 10 and get shutout!”
Yes, that can happen and is a specific situation that does happen. However, thanks to the good ole law of averages, regression to the mean, whatever you want to call it, over time, the team with the higher OBP/wOBA will score more runs.
“It is merely INCIDENTAL (as the PA is) as something that you get by doing the thing that DOES create the RS and the OB and for some teams produces the RS even without needing the OB to get it!”
A team with a .000 OBP will score 0 runs. A team with a .100 OBP will score very few runs. You need OBP to score runs.
“But you have YET to relate how an OB increses the RS by ITSELF which is the KEY point you NEED to prove to make the title of your article TRUE!”
Nobody has ever said that OB increases runs by itself. Stop moving the goal posts. His article was true and he backed it up with facts. Facts that you don’t understand. No baserunners no runs. Can’t score a single run with basrunners. Even a HR is an OB.
Fonzie your the one moving thre oal posts…either it corelates meaning OB affects RS and RS affects OB or it doesn’t and there is no Correlation…
So make up your mind and get back to us….
Yes Connor HRs do account for agood deal of the RS recorded….
Both as an RS itself and ON TOP of that any ob that couldn’t be an RS without that hit being made….
So statistically a HR accounts (BY itself close to a third and MUCH MORE than just itself when you count the runners OB….
But the HR is STILL a rarer event its just very efficient at scoring runs and much mre efficient than an OB is at doing it.
What your really arguing is the same as the age old little ball big ball argument….
And it is the SAME PHILISOPHICAL starting place that got people complaining to Matt about aggregation and Less of MORE….
It may even be the same POV that says trading an All star or Cy Young winner is WORTH IT if you get two kids who MIGHT give you more than the guy you traded when put together…
It’s the argument of QUANTITY over QUALITY!
The OBPer think well since an RS must be an OB if you get more of the LEAST ACCOMPLISHED (and easier to find) act you might get a few more RS in the proccess…Go for the Easy Quantity and HOPE it translates to a little more of what I REALLY want.
Just as the Aggregators or NON SPENDERS have argued It’s hard to find GOOD players but it is EASY to get 4 lesser players to get whatever it is the one GOOD player got me….
And if you get the SAME output what is the difference? Spend LEss you can buy many more guys to make up for one good one….Get MANY and HOPE it ends in MORE or ENOUGH
And the Traders Think having ONE good player isn’t as good as the TWO lesser players…because they HOPE the two will be good enough to be better than the guy they traded!
The Soviets vs the US had much the same poles working….
Soviets built inferior and cheaper Military hardware in great numbers hoping Quantity could overwhelm Quality. We on the other hand made fewer but BETTER equipment and every time the equipment was pitted head to head the Soviet client LOST IT”S SHIRT!
As for your final point show me a team that has a 0 OBP…
Then show me a team that has an OBP above .500….
Just about all have an OBP between .300 and .400…
the problem with OBP is MANY EVENTS in OBP do not and WILL not score a run unless there are EXTREME circumstances involved….
You have no clue what kind of OB your getting with an OBP of .500!
Could be all walks…Your HOPING it’s the kind of OB that scores a run…
HOPE is no way to build a baseball team!
Of course it correlates and of course OB affects RS. You can’t score a run without it.
There is no corelaion a all…
Is a walk as RS without something else? NOPE!
Is a single without something else? NOPE
Is a Triple without something else? NOPE!
The only OB that RELATES to RS is a HR!
RS relates to OB but only ONE type of OB relates to RS!
they do not CO- RELATE!
One is the other but the other has one shot in four of being the other without something else happening!
See ya next year Fonzie!
Yes Metsie, and because that team only got one walk, their OBP is low, and they will score fewer runs. You are proving my point.
Oh Please Connor show me a team with a .500 OBP and tell me that a .500 OBP is LOW!
Inning
single
out
walk
out
walk
out
OBP=.500
RS=ZERO
High OBP (higher than ANY team has ever achieved in history)
ZERO RS!
If a .500 OBP can not guarantee a RUN and no team can achieve an OBP high enough to ENSURE a run it is rediculous to try to do what has never been done and say doing it means MORE RUNS WILL SCORE!
It happens but NOT because of the high OB it happens because whatever it is that drives in runs also happens to increase OB AT THE SAME TIME as a matter of COINCIDENCE
AND most of the time it’s a HIT not just a mere OB…Walks rarely drive in a run….
And those acts that do are awarded an RBI which you REFUSE for some dumb reason to consider because it happens to be as dependent on someone else on the team as an OB is as far as scoring a run in concerned EXCEPT in the case of the HR!
And we have already established the run from a HR constitutes 20+% of the RS scored PLUS whatever runners happened to be on base when it was hit.
Since I could not find a source that showed me RS off Homeruns I could not calculate the TRUE RS percentage of the HR And I’m not suggesting GMs look for the HR but I HAVE suggested the RBI can be important and maybe MORE important than OBP merely for the fact is it tells you what Percentage of his OB actually was useful!
“Beacuse in REAL LIFE (meaning not a chart) we ALL KNOW a team can have 10 hits and an OBP of .400 and STILL LOSE the game 1 to nothing to a team with ONE hit or any number you want LESS than 10 and get shutout!”
BINGO…look at the 2007/2008 mets…they couldnt buy a hit with RISP…but yet they would have 12 hits in a game with a bunch of walks…
if u have a batter that has 5 PA…and in 3 of them, got on base, and never scored, nor drove anyone in…and in the other 2 hit into a double play with runners on 1st / 3rd or 1st and 2nd or bases loaded…or hit into an inning ending double-play when an OF throws out the runner tagging from 3rd…
the player still has a nice OBP for that game…but that dont mean squat…we measure the game in RUNS…not OBP
thats why u gotta watch the game…not just the chart…
The 2007 and 2008 Mets couldn’t by a hit with RISP? Really? How in the world did they manage to finish 4th in the NL in runs scored in 07 and 2nd in the NL in runs scored in 08 then? Pretty hard to do when you can’t buy a hit with RISP.
By being 5th in RBI and HR in the NL in 2007 and 3rd in RBI 7th in HR in 2008
THATS how!
How did they have RBI’s? According to Captain Pikachu they couldn’t by a hit with RISP.
By hitting a HR with a guy on first!
A Double or Triple could do it as well….
Never occurred to you that where the runner is on a base really doesn’t matter provided the BATTER does somthing at the plate that CAUSES a Runner to score that couldn’t score all on it own…..
Did it?
Metsie, to be totally clear. I don’t think anyone gave in and admitted your position. If you truly believe that, it actually explains your total inability to comprehend basic concepts about math, logic and baseball.
No one agreed with your position. Everyone got tired of having to break out the crayons and use stick figures to explain it to you.
You are, and I want to be very clear with my language, never ever correct. Ever.
Oh they sure DID agree with my position….
My position has ana ALWAYS WAS OBP does not correlate BEST to RS than other metrics!
The fact that it is THE TRUTH led you to try and CHANGE what my point was to something else you felt you could defend better than the one I MADE and you were WRONG about!
And Martin and Connor BOTH AGREED OBP is not the BEST CORRELATOR!
But we (I don’t know about Martin) never said that at all! We just said that even in its most basic form, OBP correlates very well to runs scored. Then I asked you for proof that any respected statistician had ever said that, and you never responded. You don’t have any proof. You are arbitrarily assigning (see what I did there
) quotes to make people believe your point.
You know Connor if it was just me and you debating yesterday I might have stuck around to argue more but the idiots were just not worth weeding through in the email subs and I decided to just unsub after getting you to admit something CORRELATES better!
As for Respected Statisticians….
Since you think they have NEVER said it then WHY do you think THEY have never said it?
And why have I been fighting this PHRASE for two years running and being called all the names I got called yesterday>
Point is it doesn’t CORRELATE very well from a OB to RS creation POV….
OB doesn’t create the RS something ELSE does….
Whatever that is probably also creates the OB when it creates the RS!
The good SLUG drives in a run and at the same time the good SLG produces an OB…
It’s not the OB that drove in the run it was the TYPE of OB it was in that case isn’t it?
It’s what the BATTER did!
And once you get the OB the OB can no longer CREATE an RS it can ony BE ONE but by itself it can not upgrade itself!
So more OB does NOT create more RS….More OB that CREATES RS does but not all OB does.
And unless yourt looking specifically for the OB that drives in runs you can’t be sure your increase in OB is actually going to add to the RS column!
You say you increase you chances of scoring…Maybe but that CHANCE is STILL DEPENDENT on the next guy getting the thing needed to drive in runs not the OB that occurred previosuly doesn’t it?
So that OB is useless without whatever it is that the next guy does!
If you look for the thing that CAUSES runs to score (we have established OB doesn’t cause it just makes it easier for the next guy to cause it) then EVERY HITTER will have what it takes to increase the RS and at the same time will collect a lot of the OB you thought was doing it in the first place!
Good teams are good in many metrics.
All you showed was that what is needed to score a lot of runs is the same thing that causes a lot of OB….
But nothing that showed the OB was more imprtant than the something else!
Hence the argumenty we had which would have continued in a meaningfull and insightful way except for the fact tat all those NON-RESPECTED Statisticians who hang around here who have said many times OBP is the BEST CORRELATOR to RS….
Look at my fan post on the subject…
I didn’t just make a chart I did it on a year by year basis and SHOWED that if you want to know who scored the most and how they fared compared to the rest of the competition….
The one stat that was the BEST at showing who scored the most runs was RBI
Second OPS
Third SLG
and coming in Last the OBP who everyone WANTS to say Correlates well but actually doesn’t because it’s circumstantial not correlated or MUTUALLY affects the RS the way the whatever creates the RS affects the OB!
Thanks Metsie. I respect your debating. No name-calling. Just point for point.
“You know Connor if it was just me and you debating yesterday I might have stuck around to argue more but the idiots were just not worth weeding through in the email subs and I decided to just unsub after getting you to admit something CORRELATES better!”
I admitted in the article, before I even started commenting that something else correlates better.
“Since you think they have NEVER said it then WHY do you think THEY have never said it?
And why have I been fighting this PHRASE for two years running and being called all the names I got called yesterday>”
If by they you mean the other commentors, they have never said it because it isn’t true, and if they did say it, they’d be lying.
“So more OB does NOT create more RS….More OB that CREATES RS does but not all OB does.”
So you’re saying the act of not getting out does not increase your team’s chances of scoring? Obviously not all OB lead to RS. (No one says that either.) It’s not about the time you get on base it’s the percentage, and since baseball’s beginnings, the higher percentage you got on base, the more likely you were to score. If team A has an 11% chance of scoring (increased by more runners OB) and Team B has a 5% chance of scoring each time they come up (thanks to fewer batters OB), Team A is going to score more runs the vast majority of the time, which is why my chart looks the way it does.
“You say you increase you chances of scoring…Maybe but that CHANCE is STILL DEPENDENT on the next guy getting the thing needed to drive in runs not the OB that occurred previosuly doesn’t it?”
And that thing that drives in the runner will most likely be a OB.
“So that OB is useless without whatever it is that the next guy does!
If you look for the thing that CAUSES runs to score (we have established OB doesn’t cause it just makes it easier for the next guy to cause it) ”
Just makes it easier for the next guy to cause it i.e. increases chances of scoring.
“Look at my fan post on the subject…
I didn’t just make a chart I did it on a year by year basis and SHOWED that if you want to know who scored the most and how they fared compared to the rest of the competition….”
Yep, I read your fanpost. IMO, that is hiding behind the rankings. Going by rankings is just hiding behind a small sample. Team 7 could be one run in front of team 8 who can be 50 runs in front of team 9. Why not just use the totals?
“The one stat that was the BEST at showing who scored the most runs was RBI
Second OPS
Third SLG
and coming in Last the OBP who everyone WANTS to say Correlates well but actually doesn’t because it’s circumstantial not correlated or MUTUALLY affects the RS the way the whatever creates the RS affects the OB!”
We’ll agree to disagree on the RBI. Over the history of baseball, OPS has correlated significantly better than both SLG% and OB%, with SLG% and OB% VERY close to each other. With those two, it really depends on the sample size you have. I’m not sure what the correlation figures are since 1900 (that would take quite a long time to compile if you’re not familiar with SQL, which I’m not) but I’ve seen samples where OBP is 5% better, where they are tied, and where SLG% is a bit better. They are REALLY close.
Without even looking I’m sure you DID and if you look at my initial response to your article you will see I commented on the Metrics you decided to use in your piece and the issues of using a scatter cart tightness to dicern something about baseball cause and effect.
As I said above you charted COUNTS of one vs PCT or counts of another.
You didn’t actually chart a relation just showed two numbers that seemed high among the same teams…
And you based your article on the scatter charts YET ignored the List of High RS vs High OBP teams which showed a very BAD correlation not a good one!
The title says it correlates well but therein lies the question does it actually relate or is it circumstantial.
By THEY I was referring to your RESPECTED SABERMETRICIANS not the peanut gallery here the peanut Gallery here HAVE said it and if you look they even said it the last two days we have been debating this….
Martin said it first only to go back on it….
What you said is TRUE for the RESPECTED ones…Not true for the people arond here!
they HAVE said it and yes IT IS NOT TRUE!
“And that thing that drives in the runner will most likely be a OB”
maybe maybe not, so you say OBP is important but then again only 50% of it actually is…And No it doesn’t REALLY have to be an OB does it?
“Just makes it easier for the next guy to cause it”
Not really….He has pretty much the SAME CHANCE to do what it takes to drive in a run as he did without a guy on base…1 in 3, His probability really doesn’t increase at all…only the probability that if he beats the 3-1 odds he has a better than X amount chance to get the run home after he beat the first probability problem.
You can look for all the OB you want but your talking about the difference of less than one OB per every 10 PA…
“that is hiding behind the rankings. Going by rankings is just hiding behind a small sample”
Pray tell how is hiding behind a FULL SEASON rankings a small sample?
It sure does far better than what you did to lump a decade together to hide the fact that some teams scored more in EVERY ONE OF THOSE YEARS and MORE than someone who did what you say means more RS….
SO no I didn’t hide behind ranking I merely simplified who scored more than the other based on rank to simplify the differential math!
“Over the history of baseball, OPS has correlated significantly better than both SLG% and OB%, ”
Yes it has but it didn’t correlate better than RBI which the only reason why people don’t want to accept it’s correlation….
To say RBI is a team stat so what because OB in the way you need it to work is ALSO a team stat!
One OB is usless without someone else on the team getting another!
If only every other guy gets an OB you get ZERO runs!
Walk
out
walk
out
walk
out
Change of sides!
OBP of .500 yet not a single run has scored has it?
High OBP no RS result is there?
as for SLG close but OBP does NOT get the cigar….
And if you had included it in your piece and titled it SLG correlates with RS and better than OBP you wouldn’t be arguing with me right now you would be arguing with all those guys who argued with me because I dared speak the TRUTH and said OBP isn’t as important as they make it out to be!
“And that thing that drives in the runner will most likely be a OB”
maybe maybe not, so you say OBP is important but then again only 50% of it actually is…And No it doesn’t REALLY have to be an OB does it?”
The vast majority of the time it is an OB
““Just makes it easier for the next guy to cause it”
Not really….He has pretty much the SAME CHANCE to do what it takes to drive in a run as he did without a guy on base…1 in 3, His probability really doesn’t increase at all…only the probability that if he beats the 3-1 odds he has a better than X amount chance to get the run home after he beat the first probability problem.”
Nope. You are more likely to score with runners on base, or further along the basepaths.
http://tangotiger.net/retrosheet/reports/chance_scoring_by_base_out_retrosheet_years_since1993.html
“It sure does far better than what you did to lump a decade together to hide the fact that some teams scored more in EVERY ONE OF THOSE YEARS and MORE than someone who did what you say means more RS….
SO no I didn’t hide behind ranking I merely simplified who scored more than the other based on rank to simplify the differential math!”
Again, we are going to have to agree to disagree. I firmly believe that my data is more accurate than yours. Rankings don’t tell the whole story. Actual amounts, however, do.
“One OB is usless without someone else on the team getting another!”
That is why teams with high OBP score more runs
“If only every other guy gets an OB you get ZERO runs!
Walk
out
walk
out
walk
out
Change of sides!
OBP of .500 yet not a single run has scored has it?
High OBP no RS result is there?”
Again, you are going back to specific situations. These things happen, yet the law of averages, regression to the mean, etc. balances them out and in the end, teams with high OBP score more runs. It’s a statistical trend (i.e. correlation)
Law of averages balance whatever those wierd situations are out. You can keep saying these rare scenarios but it’s not convincing anyone.
The Law of average also says players will get on about 3.4 times every 10 PA too!
Look at your split between top and bottom it’s MINIMAL!
In order for OBP to CAUSE a rise in RS the OBP has to be over .500 or it doesn’t guarantee a single run!
NOT A ONE!
And your saying you should try to do what the law of averages says is IMPOSSIBLE!
CAN’T BE DONE!
Yes, absolutely, OBP does appear to have a very high correlation with runs scored. It does above, as well. The Padres got on base at a higher clip than the Reds and even though the Reds had much better power numbers in the end they scored almost the same number of runs.
“OBP does appear to have a very high correlation with runs scored…
Appearances can be decieving though….
It might appear that High OBP highly correlates with RS but it could also be whatever makes RS high also has a tendency to make OBP high as well!
As the last chart Connor showed yesterday the list of High RSers did not JIVE with the High OBPers….
Low OBPers were included in the HIgh RS list!
That is not dismissable it is SIGNIFICANT especially when you can’t find a true relation of cause and affect between the two they just both look the same when a chart is made.
Metsie we know you realize you are wrong now, you are not fooling us. Also the word is jibe not jive.
Read it and weep Martin
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5oCUR11M24mekZubnc4ZUFCUU0/edit?usp=sharing
I was totally right!
You guys were wrong!
It even correlates better than your OPS does!
And you still conceeded the loss in the OBP correlates better so don’t think I’m going to let you try and continue to say I’m wrong…
YOUR WRONG and you know it!
Not wha Marti was claiming. The RBI comparison is invalid bc of the reasons laid out dozens of times.
WRONG reasons your talking about like RBI is the same as RS…
If it’s the same then why aren’t thier totals equal Connor?
They are the same right so they should be 1 for 1 in count….
Are they?
POOF goes your dozens of time reasons!
Nope but it’s very close to 100%
Yes it’s very close but it’s not the same….
And yur suggesting that we throw away the stat that is VERY close to RS in favor of looking for something only works more or less a third of the time to get the result and only because there are those RBI guys accounting for 21% of all RS in a single AB and driving in those guys who couldn’t score themself with help from a batter ort defense!
Please answer my question from above.
“Oh they sure DID agree with my position….
My position has ana ALWAYS WAS OBP does not correlate BEST to RS than other metrics!”
Nobody agreed with your position. Not anybody who understands baseball 101. Your position was never that other metrics correlate better to runs scored. Your position was that BA was more important than OBP and RBI correlates to runs scored better than OPS. You were proven wrong in both instances now your twisting things around to say OB does not correlate besr to OTHER metrics. The only metric you used was RBI which was as Martin so perfectly stated ” Mind Numbing Stupid”.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5oCUR11M24mekZubnc4ZUFCUU0/edit?usp=sharing
See ya next year!
You lost the bet!
Hey Maniac….Off Topic but I thought you and Bayonne might get a bit of a chuckle from this….
http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Newspaper-Lanza-built-spreadsheet-on-mass-murders-4365136.php
“I think the aggregators are missing the KEY advantage the Reds have over SD as far as the construction of thier team…..”
Pitching.
Donal
You’re still missing my main point, which involves team offense in isolation for the sake of discussing the cost/benefit of taking an aggregate approach to team stats rather than one that highlights individual performance.
To do this I chose two offenses that reflect this distinction.
These two offenses are ostensibly similar in the aggregate but overtly disparate when looking at individual contributions (the exceptional).
My point in the end is that I don’t believe they are as “comparable” as they appear (in the aggregate) because the offense with stats concentrated more in a few individuals shows greater versatility in the power categories and has exceptional talents who (in the real world) you want going up against the exceptional pitchers you face in the playoffs.
That’s all I’m saying really …
Aggregate vs the exceptional.
1) No, Metsie is way off. He’s the one who brought up defense to try and support your point
2) I get your point. I just don’t think you are defending it well. If the point of offense is to score runs, they scored a comparable amount, and the Padres played in a far more pitcher friendly park, why is the Reds approach so much better? It seems all you have is they are more aesthetically pleasing.
I think his point is that he lives in a name and celebrity obsessed culture. Maybe kim kardashian should bat leadoff
Yeah thats why my way has produced 8 of the last WS winners and your way has produced NONE in the past 20 years except maybe the White Sox and diamondbacks….
(and I’m not even sure about the Whitesox being an example your just not worth the bother to go and check so I gave you one for free!)
what? Seriously, done with you.
Donal, the only reason to respond to this guy is if you want to poke fun at him. But you have to realize by now you are wasting your time responding to his direct points to correct or refute him.
Facts and logic have zero meaning in his world.
Its actually scary at times.
You wer eone of the idiots who said OBP correlated better than ANY OTHER metric…
Your were wrong and yes your DONE that goose has been cooked!
See Ya!
So, ya, you just made some stuff up. You are lying in order to defend your indefensible position.
Yeah they are so indefensible tat Martin and Connor conceeded my point was right…OBP is NOT the best correlator!
Yep you go right on thinking that Slappy!
Show everyone just how smart you REALLY are!
stop saying that. you are lying. so stop saying that. i said that obp was the best of the basic stats, meaning AVG and the stats regular people know. i always said OPS was better. so stop saying that. stop lying.
Donal,
Ok gotcha,
like I posted (way) above …
it’s tough to quantify & I’m open to suggestions.
You’re right in the end they scored a comparable number of runs so there are strong arguments on both sides.
The Reds were technically ranked slightly above the Padres … but when you look at salary … jeez.
If you could really show for instance that lineups with less concentrated statistical groupings in individual players performed poorly against Ace level pitchers you’d be onto something, but my data collection skills aren’t there yet!
We can all agree that your data skills are horrible
And we can all agree that regardless of his statistical acumen what he said has been historically CORRECT!
It backs up what he has said!
Yes, the variables he introduced are factually correct. It is his methods and conclusions that are shaky at best.
It’s actually been historically incorrect. But ok.
Historically? Like the Braves?
You don’t think the Jones’s count as stars? And the JD Drew’s, Sheffield’s, Javy Lopez’s, a couple of huge years by Brian Jordan and Andres Galarraga? Those two were surrounded and there very much a “grouping” as you put it.
I think the Braves either didn’t have quite enough exceptional talent or were always missing something, for a while it was their bullpen then they moved Smoltz to the BP but still didn’t quite do it. They never had a Hank Aaron type on those teams and they have over the years been criticized for not going for the top free agents out there. I win in 16 tries just, there almost has to be something behind that, can’t just be bad luck. They’ve never gone all out and spent over their limit even when they were close for all those years, that’s a big sore spot with Braves fans, I actually have a few I consider friends, lol.
I agree they had some bullpen issues, but here I thought we were talking about offense. Secondly, if people are waiting for the Braves to sign the next Aaron, they’re going to very disappointed for a very long time. They’ve had several 35+ home run guys from 1990 to 2005. They were well prepared offensively.
ell what you prefer?
9 Jones’ or 9 Pujols’
Lets play the same game you tried to play yesterday!
Yeah well over the last 20 years which type of team has won the most WS titles?
Which team has been #1 or #2 in ALL the Metrics you seem to think are important as well as the Metrics everyone else thinks is important?
The Aggregators or the spenders?
seems more or less a hybrid of the 2. While you can certainly name the big hitters on say, the Cardinals, they were also pretty solid line ups top to bottom.
“And we can all agree that regardless of his statistical acumen what he said has been historically CORRECT!”
I just read that statement again. Wow.
Martin,
Thank you you are too kind,
I welcome any and all statistical addenda!
The question is on the table nevertheless Mr. Martin,
Better to go with the few exceptional “game-changers” supplemented with fillers
Or a lineup where everyone is “good but not great” ???
The Playoff records of the A’s, Twins. Braves seem to point to the exceptional
The end.
Thank you for your support!
You wouldn’t count guys like Joe Mauer or Brian McCann as exceptional?
I wouldn’t put them in the same category as Cabrera and Votto …
Mauer is actually I think a tad overrated. He gets a ton of singles but his power never really developed … and the thing about all those singles is he gets left on base a lot, it’s not like Reyes where he singles you blink and he’s on third.
How about Chipper or Andruw Jones?
Chipper more so than Andruw.
The goal is to have a lineup that scores runs, not to have famous players.
Matt why are you asking this question when it answers itself? The better strategy is the one that creates more runs. That is the goal of the offense. You could have Barry bonds and 8 midgets or 9 bob horners and if the score the same, they are the same. What metric are you gonna use to determine that the star laden team is better if not run? T shirt sales?
Well, we have to define “Ace level” and determine of that is a plausible measuring stick.
In my opinion, there are maybe 3 or 4 legit aces in the league right now so I don’t think there is a really a point to comparing how a specific offense would do against an “ace”. And you can’t assume every ace is in the playoffs and every playoff pitcher is an ace.
Also, there is the assumption that it all evens out in the end.
Another somewhat relevant factor: Joey Votto spent almost 2 months on the DL last season Cinci was 32-16 in that stretch. Wouldn’t that speak to the value of Cinci having a deep line up?
Donal,
Right, you would have to define what is an ace but it’s possibly i suppose if you set your parameters right.
& yes Votto was out for a while … which again, I think points to there being more separating the two offenses than what fangraphs would have you think.
I actually think it shows the Reds offense was more balanced than you claim.
Your using wins again … you’d have to look at a possible dip in offensive metrics for the period of time that Votto was out. Their record with Votto out may have been more a product of their pitching.
Assuming the same guys were pitching (none of the starters missed any time), it is pretty reasonable to say they got the same productivity then as they did when Votto was in.
I’ll look deeper into it later.
OK, so Votto missed most of July and all of August.
Cueto’s worse month was August, when he sported an ERA over 5.
Latos’ second best was August, when he had a 2.61 ERA
Homer Bailey’s second half was a long gradual decline.
So, it looks like the pitching didn’t really light the world on fire while Votto was gone.
They did have a 3.03 team ERA in July, 2nd lowest for a full month, pretty darned good, and 13 saves. There was also a slight dip in runs for July. ALso, Bruce had a big month in August with 7 homers and 21 rbi. Ludwick was on fire in July & August.
The injury factor makes it clear it is better to have no stars and have the production distributed among many lesser players.
“If you could really show for instance that lineups with less concentrated statistical groupings in individual players performed poorly against Ace level pitchers you’d be onto something.”
I only spent about five minutes looking at some numbers and this is as dirty and as unscientific as possible, but here are some quick facts using runs per game amongst the four LCS teams (the largest sample sizes, although still small)
In 2012, the Giants outscored the Tigers and Yankees
In 2011, the Brewers outscored the Tigers
In 2010, the Giants outscored the Phillies and were neck and neck with the Yankees
In 2008, the Dodgers were the highest scoring team and the Rays were right behind them, over the Phillies and Red Sox
So it looks like there’s plenty of room for debate, as it seems the teams with less “star” power regularly outscore the stars.
This Is like asking if you rather have a 100 dollar bill or 5 twenties. They are the same value regardless of how the value is distributed.
And in the case where you are limited by only being allowed to have 25 Mills which one would you prefer to have and which one will be able to get you the most money if you collect more of them?
Lets see you will get at best $125 dollars collecting $5 bills but a team like the Yankees going for those Franklins will collext $2500 WITH THE SAME 25 BILLS!
metsie, the point was that the bills added up to the same amount. the reds and padres scored roughly the same number of runs. it doent matter if the runs were scored by a famous player or a guy you never heard of.
Yes Martin I get your point did you finally get mine regarding the Roster Spots?
Sure go for the Quantity over Quality you MIGHT equal a FEW of the players on the other guys Roster….
But the guy who was more efficient with his roster has more roster spots he can work with to get MORE than your roster can get in the end!
You have to use 25 guys to get what another team gets half the amount and all the other guy needs to do is put one more GOOD player in one of those roster spots and your out of roster spots to make up the difference?
Metsie the whole point of this example is that the teams score about the same. So they dont use the extra roster spots more efficiently. Please pay attention, in the example the teams score about the same. Wy don’t you listen to anything?
I’m sure this has been covered in the comment section. I haven’t yet had a chance to read through.
But I’m not sure how you can make an argument comparing the two approaches to offense, declare one the clear winner based on number of wins, and not in any way reference pitching.
In fact, I think that the two teams you chose to use as examples actually contradict the point you are trying to make.
The difference between these two teams was pitching. 100%. That’s it. Offensively speaking, the architects of the Padres offense did as good a job as the architect of the Reds offense. They accomplished the goal of an offense to almost the exact same extent as the “better” team.
ROTK
Yes, it was covered in the comments, but the discussion is offense in isolation independent of pitching defense etc., I should have been clearer.
Like if you were to take just an offense would you rather have the Padre offense or the Reds offense.
I would rather have the offense that scored more runs. Period full stop. that is all an offense can do. Try to score runs. An offense cannot win a game. That’s not the goal of offense, technically speaking. Its to score as many runs as possible, which contributes to a win or loss.
I think that people who say those offenses, in isolation, are comparable, are correct. They are comparable. That doesn’t mean one is not better than the other. Yes, one is better than the other. But in the grand scheme of things, and looking at the spectrum of results across the league in one season or over a set of season, their end results are in fact comparable.
But I think that’s a very different discussion than your post indicated. Once you use wins as a metric to gauge anything, the lack of a discussion about pitching and defense becomes glaring.
I know, if I had to do it again I would have left wins out of the discussion and been clearer about discussing offense in isolation. Good post by the way.
Kudos to you, by the way, for your measured responses and positive tone in responding to those of us who have been critical of the post. And thanks as well.
I get what your saying. I think a good way to support this would be that in general, star players are better power hitters than average players, and it’s much easier to score a quick run with a home run rather than a few hits. So in the context of a playoff series when you’re facing great pitchers, it would probably be easier to get a run with a votto homer than with multiple hits/walks.
It’s still kind of hard to explain though.
Cackletta,
Wow, if you had posted your comment a little earlier we could have avoided about a 150 comments!
exactly what you said, in a nutshell.
… and yes it is kind of hard to articulate this premise through standard statistical interpretation … but one idea that did come out of the comments above is that it might be fun to look at how lineups who have star players accounting for most of their production do against ace caliber pitchers vs. lineups whose production is spread throughout.
This would have been a lot more effective, and a lot less confusing , if it were about 2 paragraphs and read “This is how I would build a team if you gave me a choice of similar outcomes” rather than “I have a premise, here’s a lot of words/stats that had nearly nothing to do with my premise/hypothesis and/or even contradict my premise/hypothesis and in conclusion I believe in my premise/hypothesis despite not even attempting to prove it above.”
Well yeah if you want to be that frank, I have to agree.
““This is how I would build a team if you gave me a choice of similar outcomes”
There are two problems with that, firstly, I’m not convinced taking a the more balanced spread out lineup isn’t the better option during the regular season. If one or two guys go down it’s not the end of the world. Also a sustained attack puts a lot of pressure on the opposing pitcher, no easy innings (you could always walk Votto). Also, during the regular season you face a lot of league average pitchers who end up reaching their pitch limits if you sustain pressure by being more selective.
Secondly, I’m not exactly sure if the choice I made (going with the “game-changers”) is the right one, and perhaps that uncertainty made it’s way into the article. Yes I would want to have some exceptionally talented hitters going into the post season, but ideally I would want both a team that can produce sustained offensive effects in the aggregate with a select few exceptional talents interspersed.
The “which is better” argument is important only in so far as how much you can get away with NOT having exceptional talent while still producing a desired effect and the Padres are an outstanding example of that.
I’d keep an eye on the Padres by the way. Everyone is talking about the Dodgers and the Giants in that division but the Padre minor league system is stacked.
… and don’t call me Frank …
Hi Matt,
“The famous Billy Beane paradigm where they try to build Jason Giambi by incorporating the sum of his parts into several cheaper players.”
Actually, what Billy Beane only did was get cheaper players who did not need to to have the sum of their total parts even come close to Giambi’s MVP (steroid enhanced) 2001 stats because of all the other great players who were returning. As Tony LaRussa pointed out:
“[The A's] won 20 in a row, [in 2002], qualify for the playoffs, go two [games] up on the Yankees [in the AL Division Series], and there wasn’t anything in the movie except a brief about Miguel [Tejada] and Eric [Chavez], the three starters [Mark Mulder, Barry Zito, Tim Hudson] and [closer] Billy Koch.
“It was about a couple of trades and turning Scott [Hatteberg] into a first baseman. That club was carried by those guys that were signed [and] developed the old-fashioned way. That part wasn’t enjoyable, because it’s a nice story, but it is not accurate enough.”
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20111102&content_id=25871454&c_id=mlb
Because of that great pitching, the loss of Giambi’s bat would only make the score of the game closer.
For example:
The 2002 pitching staff was first in ERA and second in fewest runs allowed (654). They were only 8th in the league in runs (800). Yet they outscored their opponents by 146 runs. The year before they were fourth in the league in scoring with (884). So their offense lost 84 runs with Giambi (and let’s not forget Damon). They were again were second in the league with the fewest runs allowed (645).
So they went from outscoring their opponents by 219 runs to 146 runs. Now in 2002, three teams had a bigger margin – Yankees outscored their opponents by 200 runs, the Red Sox with 205 and the Angels 207.
In 2001 Seattle amassed 300 more runs over their opponents. That was the only team to have a bigger run differential than Oakland. So Oakland was still near the top of that category two years straight – with and without Giambi. Their pitching was still just as stingy giving up runs and that was their strength.
Giambi’s big bat was a tremendous offensive addition but without it the A’s had a very good returning team and with their outstanding pitching remaining in tact, run scoring was where they could afford – as a team – to loss something. Had they not had that great staff but let us say a decent one, then they would have been in more trouble.
So my question is why do so many look at the players Billy Beane acquired so much instead of those he had returning – the point made by LaRussa? Is it because it makes for a good but fabricated story? Or is it trying to give credit to the combination of sabermetrics and moneyball to which was undeserved?
That has always been my contention – that baseball is being perceived, and it’s history is being re-written, to make it seems that statistical analysis is revealing something that was under-appreciated by those in the past. And that money ball is a new concept – the Yankees outspend their opponents for 15 years and never produced a post-season club while teams with less money were while Billy Beane and Sandy Alderson were being lauded as looking outside the box. They didn’t introduce any new concepts to putting together a team – they just executed those concepts (or in Sandy’s case, the people working for him) it better than their opponents.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/OAK/2002.shtml
You do realize that moneyball the movie, moneyball the book, and moneyball the practice are three, yes three different thing?
Hi Trs,
Oh, knew the movie was full of factual holes – including the insinuation that the Red Sox had followed Beane’s concept of money ball and went on to win a world championship – ignoring that the club had already made it into the playoffs and fell short – with mostly the same personnel and that after experimenting with Bill James suggestion to use their best reliever earlier in the game and not as closer had been scuffed (no put down of James, it just didn’t work out). I knew all those things that were left out to fabricate the story – but wanted to quote LaRussa so to make my point valid.
Haven’t read the book – there is so much material written about the concept of money ball not just in baseball sites but on financial journals that were focusing the same principles into business.
My understanding in general terms is that it is the concept of assigning monetary value to those whom might not be perceived as talented enough by other clubs and thus under-appreciated in respect to certain important aspects he can bring to a team that (and thus can be obtained less expensively) to provide the ingredients that might not look impressive in basic stats but invaluable to the success of a team in both wins and saving money. But at the same time was not what Beane did due to the players he already had coming back.
In terms of finances, most teams I think try to be fiscal but don’t incorporate the practice to the degree as was the myth with Oakland because they both don’t have the financial restrictions faced in Oakland and also that – as Sandy said – one cannot expect to win with inexpensive players.
I had read a few years ago an article that dealt with teams that also relied heavily on advanced statistical analysis and others that didn’t. What was really fascinating is that the teams that either didn’t put too much emphasis on the usage of stats or were starting to get away from it still feel a definite need to employ these advanced and perceptive type of statisticians and rely heavily on their input not so much to advise them what to do for their own club but to actually disseminate what other teams might be attempting to get an edge over their opponent’s in-house strategies (computer hacks without the hacking LOL). It’s advance scouting taken to a higher level.
Of course, the problem is that eventually other teams are going to catch on by it being revealed in the manner in which they play – hence, Bobby Ojeda pointing out how Met hitters were telegraphing a team concept in a batting approach.
The Red Sox are one of the most Saber-Friendly tems. So are teh Cardinals, and ~20 other teams.
SABERMETRICS do not equal MONEYBALL….Sorry….
Sabermetrics creates a ist of players who have a quality your looking for…
Money ball takes that list, throws away any candidates who make too much money and looks for whatever is left on the list that they can afford!
“Haven’t read the book – there is so much material written about the concept of money ball not just in baseball sites but on financial journals that were focusing the same principles into business.”
Then try reading it first instead of taking 2nd hand accounts. But even the book doesn’t accurately describe the actual strategy. In fact only the A’s at the time could tell you what strategies they were employing.
All that said, I still don’t think that the Mets are actually following money-ball nor do I want them to.
“– with mostly the same personnel and that after experimenting with Bill James suggestion to use their best reliever earlier in the game and not as closer had been scuffed (no put down of James, it just didn’t work out).”
Because their bullpen sucked. All of the pitchers were really bad. That is the only reason anyone inside the org was even willing to listen.
And besides, the Red Sox only made a half hearted attempt to implement it.
HI Donal,
After the Red Sox acquired Kim from the Diamondbacks in late May, 2003, after a few starts they used him in various relief appearances before keeping him as their closer. He and Timlin were their only dependable relievers that season – though it was still at the height of the steroid era, you were absolutely right about – it was awful even for those days.
But one cannot call it a half-hearted effort. They experimented with it on the advice of Bill James who had joined the team that year and found it was not helpful.
” He and Timlin were their only dependable relievers that season”
They were their least crappy. Big difference.
Hi Donal,
LMAO – yes, that is another less-polite way of putting it. Except for Pedro and to a point Wakefield, their starters weren’t that much better than the ones who came in after them.
It’s amazing that the Sox could win 95 games with pitching like that but that’s what happens when a team can score an average six runs per game even though it also gives up an average five in return. That’s why they always blew it in post-season when pitching is usually so dominant.
Bless them steroids!
The Redsox did implement Beane’s philosophies. The Redsox are as big a saber oriented club as any other. The Redsox are a moneyball with money team.
SABERMETRICS and STATISTICAL ANALYSIS do NOT EQUAL MONEYBALL!
SO there is no MONEYBALL with MONEY!
There is Moneyball that uses Sabermetrics and then throws out the expesive guys it says are best and then there ois what the Red Sox do which is go get the guy Sabermetrics says is BEST!
Red Sox are not and have never been a MONEYBALL team!
I never said Sabermetrics and statistical analysis is the same as moneyball. Pay attention. I said the Redsox implemented Beane’s philosophies.
And yes the Redsox are considered a moneyball with money team. Payroll size has nothing to do with moneyball. Do you not ever get sick of being wrong?
No you just said the Redsox were Moneyball with money….
Well the only parts of Moneyball they actually used was the use of Sabermetrics!
So they were not MONEYBALL
MONEYBALL is SABERMETRICS – EXPENSE cause there is NO MONEY!
Red Sox used Sabermetrics and didn’t avoid what the Sabers said because it cost too much!
BIG BIG DIFFERENCE!
http://www.maxim.com/the-big-leagues/baseball-economics-expert-billy-beane-the-man-behind-moneyball
The conquest of baseball by Moneyball methods was formally sealed in 2004, when the Red Sox of John Henry and Theo Epstein won the club’s first World Series since 1918. In 2007 they won another. In a way these were triumphs for Beane, but they weren’t visible triumphs.
Once almost everyone in baseball went Moneyball, the A’s lost their advantage.
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=olney_buster&id=1792101
But Boston plays the “Moneyball” style — never bunt, don’t take chances on the bases, sit back and let your hitters hack away and do the work regardless of the game situation, regardless of the identity of the opposing pitcher. Other teams — the Anaheim Angels and the Florida Marlins, most notably — prefer to use their outs productively, by bunting, employing the hit-and-run; they put runners in motion and emphasize aggressive base-running as part of a larger strategy to put pressure on the opposing pitcher and the defense behind him.
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/11/rise-and-fall-moneyball
A year after the book appeared, the Boston Red Sox, with the 30-year-old Yale graduate Theo Epstein as general manager, won the world series of 2004 using Moneyball methods. In 2007 the Red Sox won again. Other teams began hiring Epsteins and Beanes rather than clubbable ex-players. Last season only three of 30 GMs in the major leagues had played professional baseball, none of them very successfully. Beane has ended up restricting job opportunities in baseball for people from backgrounds like Beane’s….The New York Yankees recently hired 21 statisticians, Beane marvels.
http://sonsofsamhorn.net/topic/68317-the-red-sox-and-moneyball/
http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/Moneyball-theory-still-relevant-to-mlb-8-years-later-but-debate-has-shifted-092011
John Henry, whose ownership group purchased the group in December 2001, wanted to apply principles from his success in the investment world to sports — and objective analysis was part of his mandate.
Henry offered Beane a record contract for a GM — five years, $12.5 million. When Beane said no, Henry turned to a Beane admirer, Theo Epstein, who had graduated from Yale and was then 28.
“Even before the book came out, even before Theo actually had the job in Boston, we had been friends,” Beane says. “He believed in some of the metrics available.
“Then, when John Henry bought the Red Sox, you had an owner that had a belief system in objective analysis. When he buys one of the biggest franchises in the game and hires a guy like Theo, that was a big accelerator.
“You could see it coming. There was an underlying current going on with some of the teams, and first and foremost with the Red Sox.”
For me, it started in San Diego, working for a small-market team,” says Epstein, who spent five seasons in the Padres’ baseball operations department before joining the Red Sox as an assistant GM in March 2002.
“I spent the vast majority of time focused on players who were undervalued for some reason or another, trying to build value through small acquisitions, through looking at players through a slightly different lens than the marketplace.
“When I got to the Red Sox, our roster at the time had plenty of star power, but the second half of our roster was not strong. It was a nice opportunity to apply those principles in roster construction to a big-market club.”
Three undervalued players — first baseman Kevin Millar, third baseman Bill Mueller and designated hitter David Ortiz — were among Epstein’s initial acquisitions. The 2003 Red Sox came within five outs of reaching the World Series. The ’04 Sox won the Series, ending The Curse of the Bambino once and for all.
The ’07 Sox featured three prominent Epstein draft picks – second baseman Dustin Pedroia, center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury and closer Jonathan Papelbon – and won the Series again.
“The 2003-04 teams that Theo assembled had a Bill James-type textbook offense,” Henry says, referring to the influential sabemetrician who is now a senior advisor with the Red Sox.
“The 2007 team had young players drafted with certain principles now widely employed. But our success has been in being very aggressive on all fronts including scouting and player development – all while continually drafting near the bottom.”
The Yankees, a perennial post-season qualifier, also held low draft positions. When Cashman secured more power before the 2006 season, one of his goals was to improve the team’s farm system. At the time, the feeling among many rival executives was that the Red Sox were about to blow right past the Yankees.
Cashman, in his quest to play catch-up, hired Joe Kerrigan, the Red Sox’s former pitching coach and manager who had been replaced at the outset of the Henry regime.
“How they approached their pitching program was of interest to me,” Cashman says. “I was throwing out much more (pitching) talent than the Red Sox had and they were having more success. It goes to execution, game plans, stuff like that.”
Cashman’s shift toward statistical analysis caused friction with then-manager Joe Torre, who said in his book, “The Yankee Years,” that he told the GM to remember the human element, and “never forget that there’s a heartbeat in this game.
Joe Girardi replaced Torre before the 2008 season. The Yankees won the World Series in ’09. And today, they are among the most aggressive teams on the statistical side, with more than 20 people working on analytics, according to Cashman. The A’s, by contrast, employ one such person — “and he has a host of other duties,” Beane says.
Diamondbacks GM Kevin Towers, who worked a special assignment scout for the Yankees last season, says he was impressed that Cashman leans on not only a group of analysts led by Michael Fishman, a Yale graduate who is the team’s director of quantitative analysis, but also on top baseball people such as Billy Eppler, the team’s pro scouting director, and Gene Michael, a special adviser who is a former player, manager and GM.
“Cash does it the right way,” Towers says. “The way he works the room in meetings, it works. If he wants the analytical view, he asks (the analysts) a question and they provide the information. They usually only speak when asked.
“With the Yankees, it’s not, ‘these guys and us.’ They’re all kind of one.”
Which raises an obvious question, particularly at a time when baseball is seeking to enhance competitive balance in its latest collective-bargaining negotiations.
If high-revenue teams such as the Yankees and Red Sox are now as savvy as the A’s once were in exploiting market inefficiencies, what does that leave for the little guys.
http://excalibursportspage.com/2012/02/12/what-happened-to-moneyball/
The concept relies solely on computer printouts and statistical analysis, something that wasn’t used in baseball when Beane and Paul DePodesta introduced it into Oakland. But the Oakland model had its flaws that were never corrected, which, in turn, kept the Athletics from ever winning playoff series and advancing to the World Series. The Oakland model relied solely on a player’s ability to get on base, with the thinking that if enough guys get on base, the team will score enough runs. The older method, which looked at stolen bases and home runs, became obsolete.
That method worked to score runs, but it didn’t correct situational baseball deficiencies that matter in postseason play. The Red Sox worked on the theory by hiring statistical analysis’ guru, Bill James, and infusing him with a scientific model that was built around Epstein and his minions. The result was a hybrid school that valued some players but also looked at how to compete in situations, putting emphasis on a player’s ability to perform in certain scenarios. With the money and resources driving it, the Red Sox experienced the correction Oakland couldn’t because of a lack of resources and won two World Series.
In 2004, the Red Sox used their new method to trade Nomar Garciaparra for Doug Mientkiewicz, Orlando Cabrera, and, in an indirect manner, Dave Roberts. They did so under the computer model where they got three guys who could, statistically, get on base as much as much as Nomar did, while at the same time, improving their ability in situations.
Those situations were defense and the close, late-game ball game. The Red Sox understood that it didn’t matter if you could get on base in the playoffs because games were so uncertain in the playoffs. They realized that in 2003 when they lost to the Yankees; they lost games where Pedro Martinez pitched but won games where John Burkett pitched. There was no way to predict that, so they had to prepare for everything. By acquiring the players they got, they made up for the fact that they a) couldn’t steal bases and b) were terrible defensively, two things that Oakland outright rejected by saying a) they weren’t going to steal bases and b) they could teach anybody to play a defensive position in order to get him into the lineup.
In the end, the Boston Red Sox corrected that market issue and blew the lid off the moneyball secret. In the decade since their first World Series win, Major League Baseball has become a scientific stream of statistics for anything, finding new ways to compare who is better at one position than another.
And in that aftermath, the Red Sox themselves have been passed. In a past era, there’s no way the topic of compensation would’ve been such a hot button issue because the Red Sox would’ve taken a guy that was either overvalued or ridiculously undervalued. They’d have put an emphasis on getting a guy like Kevin Millar, which nobody understood when the Sox had to give up compensation to a Japanese team in order to keep him from leaving America. Instead, everyone knows what value is, and Epstein, the man who perfected it, stands in the way of the Red Sox’ computers, which he designed.
Yeah they think SABERMETRICS=MONEYBALL
You should ask your friends Jessup and Xtreeme if they think that is true….
Why are you still posting you lost the bet?
No they think exploiting market inefficiencies is moneyball which is what moneyball is not low payroll. Sabermetrics just happen to be one of the tools they used to exploit them.
Well they are wrong on that front too then….
Moneyball is about NOT SPENDING MONEY!
The ENTRIE THING Is about MONEY!
They may use Sabers and look for stats they feel are undervalued as they did with OBP
But never once did they use the sabers to find who was the BEST at what the Sabers told them and sign him!
Not if he was a WELL PAID PLAYER…..
Red Sox didn’t throw out the entire top of the list of performers in thier valued Sabermetric….
Oakland did which is the MAIN difference between what Oakland did and what Boston did and why Boston won a WS NOT DOING MONEYBALL while the A’s never won DOING it!
The ony reason why Sabers were mentioned in the book is because it would have been 43 pages long if they just wrote “We went after cheap players who had a high OBP and traded away our best performers we didn’t want to pay for cheap kids”
No that’s not what moneyball means. It does not mean no money. It’s finding value in assets that other teams undervalued. It just so happened that the A’s didn’t have money and were forced to construct their team in that manner. It’s not so with the other teams that were trying to exploit market ineffeciencies after ir became public what Oakland was doing. Read the book!
You know it is if you had read the book you claim to have read at all…
Otherwise why replace a Giambi who was a sabermetrically good player and replace him with some cheapo guy who they thought could be as good because of his OBP…
Your not fooling anyone….
How come nobody has been able to stop the Yankees offense who have been telegraphing their approach since the mid to late 90′s? As have the Redsox who have the same approach to offense. I’ll answer that for you. The Yankees and Redsox have had the talent to implement that approach to perfection. Which is why a Yankee vs Redsox games routinely take nearly 4 hours to complete a 9 inning game which subsequently got umpire Joe West to complain about those two teams when they play each other because they run up pitch counts.
“That club was carried by those guys that were signed [and] developed the old-fashioned way.”
That is so true, when you look at that roster you realize just how much of the movie especially was creative license if not an outright realignment of the facts. That team had some unbelievable pitching which was developed in house, but that doesn’t make for good cover does it?
There are nevertheless some eerie similarities between what happened in Oakland (and even Sand Diego) and what Alderson is doing in NY. Oakland has always had this uncanny ability to churn out front line pitchers and now all of a sudden the Mets have this abundance of pitching. You’ve seen Wheeler, what was your impression? My impression was that he’s everything he was cracked up to be, and maybe then some.
What I think is the most amusing thing about Moneyball the concept (not the book or movie)
Is for a team who went after high OBP they never ever really managed to lead the league in it the entire time! Teams who didn’t value and look for OBP when selecting players did as good or much better than the team who thought they had the secret worth writing a book over!
1995 12th ranked
1996 11th Ranked
1997 13th Ranked
1998 14th Ranked
1999 6th Ranked
2000 6th Ranked
2001 5th Ranked
2002 7th Ranked
2003 21st Ranked
2004 9th Ranked
2005 14th Ranked
2006 10th Ranked
2007 10th Ranked
2008 29th Ranked
2009 21st Ranked
2010 16th Ranked
2011 22nd Ranked
2012 24th Ranked
Funny how looking for something doesn’t ensure you actually GET it!
Well technically moneyball wasn’t all about OBP either.
Well Technically it didn’t work either but the book, the movie and a few people around here seem to suggest otherwise…LOL
OBP was the Stat they said was undervalued by the rest of the league as was the key to finding players who could be gotten cheaply without losing production.
If you think it technically didn’t work then you’ve clearly never read the book. Moneyball is an economic philosophy. It’s actually basic economics but applied to baseball. The reason is so closely associated with OBP is that people haven’t read it, and that OBP or more specifically the ability to limit outs was an undervalued commodity a dozen years ago.
The primary law behind about market inefficiency, acquiring undervalued skills that translate to run scoring and run prevention while trading away over valued skills. That could be OBP, saves, defense, stolen bases, pre arbitration talent or free agents. It’s really no different than when everyone figured out that there was such a thing as platoon splits or specialized relievers.
I read the book…I also saw the results!
Did you see how it worked?
How do you rate their performance and success in the World Series? NO Answer?
How about the ALCS? No answer again?
How about the LDS? 0-5?
If thats working what is what the Yankees did called?
Sucking Horribly?
Like I said if you actually read the book you would know better than to just equate Moneyball with OBP.
The results have been that teams who practice sound Moneyball principles has been able to compete against the rest of the league even when they’ve been drastically out spent. We see that with both the A’s and The Rays, both teams with paltry budgets yet both have had a great deal of success.
Yup, OBP can’t be moneyball any more because every team seems to now value it.
By your definition of Success Omar Minaya was a Successful GM….
I aslo believe you are mistaking the use of STATISTICAL ANALYSIS as MONEYBALL…
STAT ANALYSIS does not equal MONEYBALL
People have been doing Stat analysis for a century…
“How do you rate their performance and success in the World Series? NO Answer?
How about the ALCS? No answer again?
How about the LDS? 0-5?”
Small sample size
Or how about the Mets and the strategy they were employing? One playoff appearance. I am not saying the current philosophy will work either but lets not get so bold that we say that the A’s philosophy didn’t work and we need to return to what we were doing. Besides that, who says we are even following classic “moneyball” principles whatever that even is?
How about the Yankees and the strategy they used?
You mean having a solid line up top to bottom with no easy outs?
Sure Metsie, so all we have to do is out spend every other team in baseball by about 50M. Nice plan.
Sure works better than UNDERSPENDING every other team by 50 Million now doesn’t it?
Not for the last decade, it hasn’t.
Sure it has they have made he payoffs more than Oakland, Padres and Kansas City haven’t they!
But that isn’t considered success according to parameters set by Matt (and Joe D).
As has been proven over and over again, spending has not been the deciding factor in crowning a World Series winner.
OK then it’s settled. The Mets new plan should be to try and outspend everyone else in baseball by 50M.
There might be good news in your plan. It would completely bankrupt the owners after the first year and we would have new owners. Nice?
t me guess the two of you are slouched over and drunk in some bar coming up with your DUAL responses together?
Hits are not hits….World series isn’t always won by the bigger payroll yadda yadda yadda…
Nope WS is usually won by the team with the best ACE and Pitching….
As Martin is fond of saying it’s s short sample and the team who has the best ACE usually gets 3 starts out of him and uses the rest of their good pitching staff to great affect!
And you can’ even WIN a WS until you get into one…WHich Spenders have done the majority of the time while the non spenders once maybe twice every decade!
Small Sample?
Thats 18 Years dude! It’s longer than you have been alive!
Hi vigouge,
It didn’t work with the 2002 A’s because it wasn’t tried. All the key players but Giambi and Damon were returning and as I pointed out, with that great pitching that they had, they only needed to get players who could fill the positions and hold their own on an every day basis.
As it was, the salary for Justice was the same as the player he replaced – Damon. He saved $3.2 million over what Giambi got the previous year with Hatterberg. John Mabry made a nice contribution but in a supporting role and what he did was trade somebody who was a similar type player but four years younger than Mabry and paid less. In fact, if one wants to go OBP – Giambi’s was 68 points higher than that of his replacement while both had virtually the same batting average. The trade was only that of money – it made no difference as far as the players.
Hi Joey, I got your email and let me just say that if anyone offends you or knocks your integrity again to let me know right away or tell them to come to me.
As for the A’s, can I just say I am sick and damned tired about hearing about that team on this site.
Beane never won anything and the only success he ever had was due mostly to having some of the best pitching in all of baseball during their so-called glory years which in New York would have never been called glory years, they would have been called failures.
The idiocy in which Mulder, Hudson and Zito have been swept under the rug just too make this other agenda shine has been a marvel to see. The wonder of it is in how many fans were duped into believing it was the brainstorm of inspired genius when all it was was a little bit of assessing players differently coupled with 90% luck.
Pitching wins. Pitching has always won. Pitching will always win.
Well if you would like to stop hearing about it then perhaps we should stop bringing up Alderson’s time with the A’s as any indication of what he is or will do here? Perhaps we can give up this idea that the Mets are even playing “moneyball” to start with?
“I am glad to be joining the Mets organization. This is going to be like Moneyball with money.”
“Moneyball has taken on a lot of connotations that weren’t really intended or don’t really makes sense,” he said. “In my mind, Moneyball doesn’t have anything to do with on-base percentage. For that matter it doesn’t have anything to do with statistics. Rather, Moneyball is really about a constant investigation of stagnant systems, to see if you can find value where it isn’t readily apparent.”
Yup he did say that. However, what most here consider “moneyball” most likely isn’t even close to what the Mets officials consider it. Thus I stand by my statements.
Well TRS I will agree with you that many are misinterpreting MONEYBALL to mean using Sabermetrics….
What I see here is just Moneyball without the Sabermetrics not Moneyball with Money!
I can’t justify a single acquisition we have made to be Sabermetrically derived!
Unless the undervalued stat has changed to SUB .260 BA!
Metro wins…300 Comments!
TRS you should know by now that we have no assigned articles or quotas here. It’s a site where Mets fans can write about anything they choose to write about. I don’t dictate an agenda to any of our writers and all of them can attest to that. But to think Moneyball is not something that is relevant to these current Mets who are being steered by three of the four main characters attributed to the philosophy doesn’t make sense to me.
As one who is tuned into the importance of hot button issues and it’s value to sustaining a growing readership in a competitive market, I know better than to have a group meeting and say “hey everyone, from now on let’s ignore Moneyball, sabermetrics, OBP, WAR, etc.” That’s not going to happen here. If it’s relevant and in the mainstream it will be discussed on MMO until it loses steam. If there wasn’t an audience for it, that would be one thing, but clearly there is a huge audience for it and Met fans do want to debate it. As long as those two dynamics are in play, we’re going to provide the platform for it.
As a fansite, it is our fans who decide what the topic of discussion and debate will be. We are tuned into all social media and if it’s hot, it’s on MMO. If it’s trending, it’s on MMO. If it’s on the airwaves, it’s on MMO. All I do here is some editing, making the titles, and throwing up my own opinions from time to time. You can ignore those things like Moneyball if you want, but that’s because you choose to, not because the fan base chooses to.
What my complaint is about Moneyball is how it completely underrates the real impact of any success Beane had with those teams, and that is his Big 3 in the rotation. How can you write 100,000 words about that season and only devote 125 words to those three?
So my problem isn’t Moneyball itself, as much as it is the utter amazement that so many educated baseball fans bought into the premise of that moderate success and attributing it to some theory that it was because of exploiting market inefficiencies on offense, and completely sidestepping the fact that they really won because of the pitching.
Well then, if that is the case then you will continue to hear about the A’s. Can’t discuss moneyball without them can you?
Joe D!
How do you explain Oakland’s continued success after Hudson and Mulder were traded away from the BIG 3? Along with Tejada, Ramon Hernandez, Giambi, Isringhausen, Dye and Damon among others. They won the division in 2006 with around 93-94 wins with a lot of turnover from the 2000-2002 roster. It was basically just Chavez and Zito left from the 00-02 team.
Continued success?
You mean Like Omar’s?
There was a lot of personel changes between 2002 and 2006. Beane had been slowly replacing the more expensive players on that roster succesfully but after 2006 they then wandered five years in the desert.
The team and Beane deserve all the acolades they got for 2012.
Omar made the playoffs 5 times in 7 years like Beane? I was totally unaware. Beane lost star players and continued to win. Omar signed big stars and choked. .
Thank You Joe!
I find it odd how Oakland and Moneyball is put out there as an example of SUCCESS and yet the only WS to Sandy’s credit came before he even thought of it!
1989 was NOT created by Moneyball…PEDS Maybe…Moneyball NO!
Hi Joe D.,
That is very much appreciated indeed, thank you.
I just don’t understand how the 2002 Oakland team got this myth about it being in such bad shape and Billy Beane needed to go to extreme measures in order to keep it from falling apart. I actually did get sick watching the movie and it’s distortion of history – like watchng Gone With The Wind depicting the slaves were all happy,their goal was to serve their masters, those masters were gentile and all their problems were brought on by the north.
Do you think it’s a generational thing like we see with revisionist history, i.e., Harry Truman being seen in a different light than he was decades ago, the same with JFK, the Cuban Missle Crisis now being looked at from the Soviet perspective, Mickey Mantle the person, etc? Often, revisionists get a better perspective on past history being able to separate themselves from the time, but often they get it wrong by applying their own standards to it. I often have the problem with Lincoln because I don’t see him as a champion of freeing the slaves for even though he saw it as a moral problem it was the legal problem that was his primary concern (he was no abolitionist and felt the African American inferior to white people, even considering his own ethnic-clensing to resolve the problem). Yet, by the standards of his time, he was considered a radical for change. So we have to step away from our own biases when looking at things.
That’s what I see happening with both money ball and the belief that more has been learned -or learned to be appreciated more – about the game from statistical analysis which even allows non-experienced baseball executives to evaluate and formulate patterns related to baseball matters.
Hi TRS,
The connection with the earlier Oakland teams is essential since it involves Sandy Alderson and the need to separate the man from the myth to better understand the situation in Flushing today.
I honestly think that today’s general managers are considered the architect’s of their teams no matter if they are highly involved or not in player matters and from the information we are able to find, many of them went into such position due to their corporate skills and not their knowledge of the game. As Eisenhardt said, he found in Sandy the qualities of leadership and analysis. With Sandy admitting knowing nothing of the game professionally when he accepted the role, it is difficult to conject that he just came in like that and began building that dynasty by studying James and other motivational experts. So many of us point out the superficiality of those stats.
I don’t understand why you key in on 2002. When people discuss the Moneyball philosophy and the A’s it’s not 2002 only. When speaking of 2002 they’re speaking an approach of which 2002 is one data point, they’re talking about specific examples of trading away or allowing to leave via free agency of players that the market has overvalued, closers and base stealers for example.
And the importance of getting on base other than a hit and thus trying to work out a walk if one’s pitch isn’t there is not a new concept. And trying to obtain a player based on his OBP even if he has a low batting average shows a total lack of understanding. Yes, great hitters and those with small strike zones are going to force out more walks but when one sees a poor hitter with a lot of walks its for a reason other than batting eye. It’s due to one’s position in the batting order.
I’ve brought this up before about Brian Kenny suggesting those weak hitters with very high OBPs show an ability to get on base and thus instead of batting at the end of the batting order should be placed in the lead off position so he would be on base more often for the hitters to drive in. Larry Bowa and Mitch Williams said the reason the particular player he brought up gets so many walks is because he is batting eighth and if he was leading off that he would get none of the pitches he sees further down – the pitchers will come right at him.
And that is right – why would pitchers want to walk let’s say a .250 hitter and not go after him instead? Game situation.
Another observation about OBP that is overlooked by many.
Do you know if any team was looking for bad hitters with high OBP? In fact that’s a very rare player anyway. How high of an OBP is a guy with a BA below .250 usually going to have unless he is Adam Dunn?
Hi Trs,
I agree with you. I was referring to the conversation Kenny had about putting guys with high OBP and low batting averages up at the top of the order. Only dded the caveat about “seeking” guys with high OBP and low batting averages because so many are bringing that up as an under-appreciated aspect of a player in which Beane and some others were concentrating on when looking for other players.
But Beane wasn’t “looking for” guys with poor batting averages and high OBP. He was looking for guys with high OBP that were available for whatever reason. It could be that they were poor defenders, cheap, had low batting averages, were coming off poor years, were playing in pitcher friendly stadiums….
Even the poster child Hatteberg wasn’t brought in just because he had a poor BA and high OBP.
In fact he was more of a reclamation project if you want to say. In 2000 he had a .265 .367 .435 .801 slash line. I would think that the 100 OPS+ showed them that he had value if he could rebound. The problem is that most teams passed because he had a .245 .332 .345 .678 the year before.
Isn’t that basically what Beane did last year? Took a chance on some guys that fit a certain mold? This time it seemed to be platoon type guys with good pop and decent defense.
Hi TRS,
My comments are directed on the myths associated with that 2002 club and thus my point about the team being so solid with it’s returning players is why they did not have to go all out to obtain somebody who could even come close to Giambi’s steroid produced performance that year. The team was solid and it’s strength – that great pitching – was untouched. As mentioned, they could afford to lose some of that drop in offense that went from 4th to 8th.
2012 is another story and one I have not vetted into so closely as I am 2002 because of the magnitude of the money ball factor attributed to it. As we know, it was money ball that also caused Beane to lose many of those players to free agency seasons like Tejada, Dye, Zito or trading Tim Hudson for three scrubs.
And what does that have to do with them “searching for players with low BA and high OBP”? Where are you even getting that from?
“Only dded the caveat about “seeking” guys with high OBP and low batting averages because so many are bringing that up as an under-appreciated aspect of a player in which Beane and some others were concentrating on when looking for other players.”
Ya, that didn’t happen. He didn’t look for guys with low batting averages. It just so happened some guys had sub-.300 averages but got on base a lot.
Yup, based on reading not only moneyball but quotes from actual baseball people over the years moneyball wasn’t and isn’t just about OBP or choosing it over BA. In fact based on my interpretation if baseball suddenly stopped valuing BA and all of a sudden a flood of Daniel Murphy type players were on the market and cheap? They would turn to those guys hypothetically. I think it’s pretty clear that last off-season the A’s targeted a specific type player again and one that was undervalued and it worked for them.
That being said, I have never had any desire for the Mets to play “Moneyball” and see no evidence that they even are, yet.
You do realize don’t you that the difference between a good OBP and a bad OBP is about 1 OB per every 20 PA right?
Margin in BA good to bad is even smaller!
What is REALLY key is the proportion of his OB that ARE Hits as opposed to unearned events such as BB and HBP.
Not all OB is a sign the Batter did something….The Defense could be the cause of the OB!
But you can say the exact same thing about a hit. A fielder misplayed the ball.
Do you eve read what you say before you hit the send button?
If a fielder misplays the ball it’s an ERROR not a hit!
OBP is smart enough to NOT count it as an OB when that happens but wOBA sure does count it and counts it MORE than an actual HIT!
Actually that’s not always true. Especially a hit to the OF. Ask Lucas Duda.
Not sure I follow you there….But I’m sure whatever you mean is funny (with you not at you) LOL
If it gets to the OF and Duda has to field it they might get a triple instead of a single…But it was still a hit….
If you meant Duda got a hit but thrown out at first well it’s still not a hit!
But in either case I agree there are statues in Central park that can beat out a throw to first better than Duda could!
Nope, there are many OF that misplay balls and they are recorded as hits because the OF never could even get to the ball to touch it for it to be an error. How many balls do you think Duda misplayed last year? I bet it was a lot more than how many errors he had.
Oh please will the two of you just stop it with the inane stupid crap…
The scorer determines if the Player was at fault or not!
If he thinks the fielder screwed up he get a ERROR!
A Ball hit to the OF that he never gets to is a HIT because he couldn’t get to it!
Just like a single up the middle is a HIT because the 2B and SS couldn’t get to it!
Your both just being totally rediculous in your attempt to etricate yourself from the OBP counting BB and HBP truth!
A Hit is awarded for hitting a ball someplace you can reach first safely without defensive Mistake!
Not getting to a ball is not a mistake it may be a mstake of the Manager for not positoning him properlybut the batter hit it based on where the fielders were playing and did what your supposed to do!
So just stop already with this infantile attempt to make a HIT an unearned act!
OK, so I just want to be clear. Are you saying that if Duda turns a 360, jumps up and down and then falls down and the ball falls right beside of him that the scorer will rule that an error or a hit?
I also find it incredible that the guy saying Runs Batted In correlates to RS the best is now calling others out for lunacy. Just as stupid as me saying R/G is the best correlation to RS.
You tell me what a scorer would rule that?
What would YOU rule it a HIT?
An Error?
Take your pick whatever you pick willl be awarded to the batter or not PROPERLY won’t it?
Either he gets credited with doing something or he doesn’t!
But stop being rediculous and trying to say a scorer can’t tell the difference between a Hit and an Error…
Point remains…A WALK and an HBP is created by THE PITCHER not the Batter…The Batter can’t make him miss the plate 4 times or makie him throw the ball at him so just stop with this infantile line of questioning.
“OK, so I just want to be clear. Are you saying that if Duda turns a 360, jumps up and down and then falls down and the ball falls right beside of him that the scorer will rule that an error or a hit?”
So are you going to answer the question?
Keep in mind the rule says:
NOTE (3) Mental mistakes or misjudgments are not to be scored as errors unless specifically covered in the rules.
So what do you rul that play as TRS….When you answer you will see my point!
Your the SCORER….Make your decision on what that is and you will actually HAVE my answer won’t you?
If you think it is a HIT then the Batter earned it…
If you think it is an Error then it never WAS a hit and is not an OB!
So you tell me what you rule on the play your talking about and MY POINT applies perfctly now doesn’t it?
So Sorry but you can’t win this idiotic attempt to say all hits are NOT earned!
If they were not EARNED the scorer would not award a HIT!
“NOTE (3) Mental mistakes or misjudgments are not to be scored as errors unless specifically covered in the rules.”
Then he earned the HIT!
For the same reason they decided to make that rule!
He hit is where he mentally couldn’t get to it!
Same as hitting it where he Physically couldn’t get to it….
he STILL hit the BALL….
His SWING determined where it went….
He didn’t determine where the Pitcher threw the ball or if it would hit him or not did he?
“If a fielder misplays the ball it’s an ERROR not a hit!”
No it isn’t. Generally, the scorer only decides on an error if it hits the player’s glove. There’s nothing in the score book for mental errors.
When Pitcher throws a MEATBALL FASTBALL down the middle of the plate the Pitcher still gets a K recorded….
If a Fielder gets caught off guard by where a ball was hit the Batter still gets a HIT recorded!
He hit is where they ain’t as they say!
If he never gets a glove on it you can hardly call it misplayed!
Huh? So if an OF takes an incredibly stupid path to the ball and it falls right in front of him or goes over his head, he didn’t misplay it?
“When Pitcher throws a MEATBALL FASTBALL down the middle of the plate the Pitcher still gets a K recorded….
If a Fielder gets caught off guard by where a ball was hit the Batter still gets a HIT recorded!”
So…you agree with me?
No but I see my point went right over your pretty little head….
Keep trying there one day you will come up with some crazy idea that actually works!
You just acknowledged that players get penalized or rewarded for things not their doing.
No dummy….I said they get awarded for doing what is needed to get the stat!
Pitcher threw a strike! He may have made a mistake on location and didn’t want it to go there but he threw a strike!
Ah and when backed into a corner during a normal debate, Metsie comes out with insults. In which he will reply “Well he did it to me fwwwwwirst!!!!”
Yeah I’m the one backed intoa corner….
You two are WINNING trying to come up with some Hypothetical situation where a scorer would award a HIT when it wasn’t EARNED by the batter when the NATURE of the HIT being awarded by the scores means he EARNED it!
You two are just being sad dsacks because you can’t refute that not all OB is earned by the batter and are grasing at straws trying to find hit that isn’t earned either!
But you can’t!
Because if it wasn’t earned the player would not get awarded a hit!
GAME OVER!
Try again tomorrow!
Pooowwww witttle Metsie.
It’s OK. You can’t win them all.
Maybe not but against you two I sure do seem to…..
Says more about YOU than ME though…..
Uh oh, here comes the words in all caps. He is bound to prove his argument now.
UH Oh here comes the typical TRS act of maligning the guy who beat him on the point being argued because he can’t accept defeat!
Notice my Nick now has a link too?
MeTSie I DonT HAVe to mAliGn anY OF YOUR PoiNTS. YoU Do ThaT YouRSelf.
Let me Guess you got assigned to the Rubber room for Teachers who screw up and have nothing better to do on a school day but play the ass….Right?
NOPE the Batter hit it where he isn’t!
If the batter hit a fly ball the fielder got to and booted the catch the scorer would have awarded an error!
the Scorer doesn’t award a HIT unless he feels the Better earned it!
END OF STORY!
Yes, we all know error scoring is subjective and not a good way to measure defense.
But what about when an outfielder, we’ll call Ducas Luda, doesn’t read the ball off the bat properly and runs the wrong direction at first and has to scramble to get back under it and takes the worst route possible to the ball?
What if he then almost runs into his center fielder, we’ll call Captain Nirk, and the two stop and watch the ball bounce between them? Isn’t the pitcher, in this instance DA Rickey, charged with allowing a hit?
I do believe we have a hit.
Right error scorting is subjective….Could be a combo of batter accomplishment and fielder comlicity….
but there is NO DOUBT who is to blame for the BB and the HBP!
The PITCHER! No Subjectiveness about it!
He threw 4 balls or hit the batter…NONE OF WHICH can be induced by the Batter!
He can’t make a Pitcher throw ball 4 and he can’t make the Pitcher hit him!
OBJECTIVE not SUBJECTIVE!
So, you are saying pitchers aren’t more prone to attack certain places in and out of the strike zone based on the particular batter being faced?
“And the importance of getting on base other than a hit and thus trying to work out a walk if one’s pitch isn’t there is not a new concept. ”
So tell that to the people who get up in arms, or passive aggressive and condescending in a specific instance, when it is mentioned.
” And trying to obtain a player based on his OBP even if he has a low batting average shows a total lack of understanding. ”
Except for the power hitters with low averages and high OBP.
“It’s due to one’s position in the batting order.”
that’s what “they” say.
“I’ve brought this up before about Brian Kenny suggesting those weak hitters with very high OBPs show an ability to get on base and thus instead of batting at the end of the batting order should be placed in the lead off position so he would be on base more often for the hitters to drive in. ”
And you’ve been corrected about this before.
“Larry Bowa and Mitch Williams said the reason the particular player he brought up gets so many walks is because he is batting eighth and if he was leading off that he would get none of the pitches he sees further down – the pitchers will come right at him.”
Except Williams and Boa can’t make that point without discussing the players’ in question stats.
Also, it goes to my point about how the intentional walk is so stupid.
“And that is right – why would pitchers want to walk let’s say a .250 hitter and not go after him instead? ”
I don’t get why they want to walk him at all, never mind where in the batting order he is. He’s most likely in the 8 spot because he’s a lousy hitter. If you walk him with less than 2 outs, you just give the pitcher all the reason in the world to bunt him over for the top of the order.
“Another observation about OBP that is overlooked by many.”
Or a misunderstanding of how it is used. Or a misrepresentation.
“Another observation about OBP that is overlooked by many.”
Or a misunderstanding of how it is used. Or a misrepresentation.
Correctomundo!!! .
Oh, an Matt, your model for playoff success hasn’t won a playoff game since 1995.
So maybe the Padres’ approach isn’t so terrible.
err playoff series. My bad
Lets just say if I were to write this story again I’d do several things differently. Live and learn. That’s the benefit of posting on a community like this … tough crowd but amazing feedback.
And I’d keep an eye on the Padres …
One of the first things you should change is defining “success”.
Your bad…
NY Yankees 17 Playoff Appearances, 5 World Series Wins, 7 ALCS Wins, 10 LDS Wins….
Nah no one built as Matt suggests has ever won a damn thing!
REALLY!
Where was the weak spot in those Yankee line ups? Scott Brosius was the worst player they had starting on any of those teams.
Seriously, there were years where .350 was the worst OBP they had amongst starters.
Precisely….Where was thier weak spot? Didn’t have one because they didn’t put two weaker players in the lineup that could be exploited by a good pitcher in an attempt to make one GOOD player who was good enough to beat ANY Pitcher….
And while others had to use their entire 25 man roster to make the production the Yankees got with 9, The Yankees used the rest to get even BETTER players the others could NOT get because they didn’t have room on the roster to carry them!
“Precisely….Where was thier weak spot? Didn’t have one because they didn’t put two weaker players in the lineup that could be exploited by a good pitcher in an attempt to make one GOOD player who was good enough to beat ANY Pitcher….”
Like the Padres in Matt’s example. You really don’t get this at all.
No as usual YOU don’t get it…
Red have a more efficient roster than the padres!
Sure the Padres have 6 guys to what Reds do with 3 Roster spots…
By the time they hit thier roster limit they will have 25 guys to make up for the 12 roster spots the Reds used with the Reds having 12 more roster spots to work with an get BETTER players making thier lineup even BETTER than the Padres can be because there is no more room to COMPENSATE due to thier Roster use inefficiency!
“Red have a more efficient roster than the padres!”
And yet they scored only 18 more runs in a far more hitter friendly park.
“Sure the Padres have 6 guys to what Reds do with 3 Roster spots…”
Nope, they both use 9 places in the batting order (well, 8 if we discount the pitcher)
And the Reds actually have a pretty good top to bottom line up. the talent isn’t all focused in 3 guys.
MORE is MORE now isn’t it?
And then NEXT year if they improve one of those Roster spots they have left over compared to the Padres More is EVEN MORE!
Padres can’t do that all they can do is try to improve they guys they have…..And if they MISS they lose production where the Reds get the same from thier starters and if they fail they only hurt their depth!
When discussing an offence’s efficiency, you can’t discount park factors. the fact is the Reds scored 18 more runs over 162 games even though they played half their games in a bandbox.
Metsie. Here’s. Why your rankings methodology is wrong. One. Team could be 40 runs. In front of one team and just one behind the other. If you want to compare qthe team use runs above or below LGw average. Make the graph and it? It will show how flawed the rankings argument is.
Sorry Connor but the Rankings may be seperated by a few runs sure but one still scored more than the other based on the rankings!
In cases where two teams scored the SAME runs I accounted for that….
Which is why my chart isn’t a scatter chart I chose instead to show differential of where the metric said they SHOULD be if it correlated and where they wound up in reality!
There was nothing wrong with that methodology and if you do the comparison the way you want to do it the answer does not change ONE BIT!
The Differential is still the diferential!
If OBP correlated as many suggests it does then the 5th ranked OBP team should be 5th in the RS rankings and the 23rd best OBP wouldn’t get into the top 10!
The COUNTS are not what matters here because your have yet to say X Number of OB equals ONE RS!
That wasn’t what was claimed….
What was at issue was Is HIGH OBP what is needed to get HIGH RS, Does INCRREASING OBP really get you more RS…..
And since the rankings show some teams who ACCOMPLISHED what was claimed didn’t score MORE Runs than a team who FAILED when compared to that team but yet somehow they scored more runs….
The only logical conclusion is it really doesn’t matter what you OBP is…It really doesn’t relate to how many Runs you scored! High, Low Medium the RS column doesn’t really seem to care….
Which means something ELSE is the key to scoring runs!
Something that TRUMPS OBP!
Maybe it is RBI maybe it is not….I’m not the one who says any one stat can correlate or explain the ability to score runs…You guys are the ones saying it can be done based on a scatter chart….
But when I make those scatter charts for other stats I see OBP doesn’t actually correlate better than a LOT of things!
Perhaps instead of accepting this OBP Agenda’s argument which lets face it this scatter chart is all they have ever done (and they did as you did when published didn’t show scatter charts of ANY of the metrics that actually chart better) it would be a much BETTER excercize to find or create a NEW metric (Maybe James’ Rc is the answer) to see if something is ACTUALLY better and acceptable to EVERYONE!
Somethig you can actually look for that you KNOW if you get more you get more runs….
OB and OBP isn’t it!
The fact that bottom 10 OB/OBPers can be top a RSer is living proof of it’s failure!
So if we want to have a productive conversation of what actually drives the RS column lets stop making a FAILED correlation and start looking for the BETTER examples that actually MUTUALLY relate not just coincidentally relate…Or relate less than a third of the time but only when something else happend!
The term correlation doesn’t mean perfect. OBP and RS have a correlation of about 0.84 on a -1 to 1 scale. That falls in the range of “strong, positive correlation.” If you remember back to your college stats class, saying something correlates does not mean it is 1.
“Which means something ELSE is the key to scoring runs!
Something that TRUMPS OBP!”
Nope, it just means that there are other fctors involved. If there wasn’t a correlation, it would look like this:
http://www.psychologynoteshq.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/NoCorrelation1.png
I guarantee you, ask anyone that teaches statistics, or heck, even a middle school math teacher, and they will tell you it is a strong positive correlation with OBP and RS.
Also look at this
http://www.mathsisfun.com/data/correlation.html
more about correlations because
i don’t think you are understanding the definition
Act 1, Scene 1 “The Tragedy of the Uninformed Fan”
{scene: Macdavid sitting in a chair, watching TV
Enter Macjimmy}
MacDavid: Dude, what’s with these sabergooners on “Clubhouse Confidential?” These guys don’t know what they’re talking about. On-Base Percentage has nothing to do with runs scored/
MacJimmy: Alright then. Let me ask you some questions. What must a team not do to score a run?
MacDavid: Well, they can’t get out every time, I guess.
MacJimmy: What is it called when someone fails to get out?
MacDavid: Getting on base.
MacJimmy: So if a team gets on base more, and makes fewer outs, wouldn’t it make sense that they score more?
MacDavid: Why, yes…
MacJimmy: So their oddds are higher if they get on base more?
MacDavid:; Of course.
MacJimmy: That’s not always perfect though, right? It isn’t always the case.
MacDavid: Yes, you would have higher odds of scoring more frequently, which means you would score more. Well, that’s what they told me in my high school stats class.
MacJimmyL So I just proved you wrong?
MacDavid: Oh man!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
{MacJimmy beheads MacDavid and declares himself king of Scotland}
— curtain —
Now here is a lesson a little PAST your Middle school understanding….
“1. The problem that most students have with the correlation method is remembering that correlation does not measure cause. Take a minute and chant to yourself: Correlation is not Causation! Correlation is not Causation! I always have my in-class students chant this, yet some still forget this very crucial principle.
http://www.nvcc.edu/home/elanthier/methods/correlation.htm
Yes, and I have adressed that correlation does not mean causation (not past my understanding, BTW). However, using logic and remembering the odds of scoring with runners on base versus w/o runners on base combined with the fact that the only way to score is to not make outs, the logic that you need to identify a causation is clearly and obviously there. Whether you decline to see that is your decision to make.
Yes and then forget you said it and say getting more OB increases RS when in fact it really the other way around!
And your chart shows what you THINK the chart tells you is false because those with LESS OB actually scored MORE making the entire statement made based on a correlation that doesn’t show what you THINK it shows….
Your making a CAUSATION statement when you say HIGH OBP means HIGH RS
And even worse when you say get more OB get more RS…
The data doesn’t support any of that….Because they really aren’t MUTUAL to each other….
One is mutual to the other but isn’t mutual in the other direction
How dodoes a team score a run?
*does
I think it’s when somebody gets an rbi.
By doing something in the batters box that allows a runner to cross the plate…
Be more specific.
Sac Fly! Specific enough?
And the runner that scored… was he… on base?
Nah… The guy sac flyed himself into a run, most likely via the rbi.
What is this thing that the batter does to make a run score and what is required for this action to happen?
He has to hit the ball…He does NOT have to get an OB in the proccess….
Could but it is not required….
Now quid pro quo….
Whats the OBP of a guy who hits a Sac Fly?
Oh so NOW you decide to talk about individual OBP avoiding subject of team OBP…
You only said one hit…I assume one PA…You meant different then be more specific…
In answer to your other question sure there was a guy on base he drove in…
Someone who would still be there if he didn’t get driven in by the batter….
He didn’t CAUSE the RS the BATTER did…
If he had caused it then the batter wouldn’t need to do anything and he would have done so!
So Your not making any headway here…
To score a run something has to happen at the Plate that lets it score….
Nothing you can do on a base lets you do that….
Even a steal is more a failure of the defense than the runner causing it…
They fell asleep!
Well Metsie, now you’re changing the subject from team OBP to individual.
It’s been fun, but it’s gone on too long. I think we can easily say neither of us will convince each other of our arguments. We will have to agree to disagree on this topic.
——————————————————————————————————
Thanks for the good-spirited debate Metsie.
What the hell are you talking about?
When did I change the subject to individual I just added a question as to how the RS increase without increasing the OBP with the Sac fly….
You didn’t ask me for the TEAM OBP at the time did you?
You gave me a scenario and asked what the OBP was after one hit with no mention of PA….
In the case of the DSac Fly the TEAM OBP for the inning was .500!
As I have always SAID you have to have an OBP of .500 or MORE to score a run!
And no team ever sustains that therefore no team can get more an GURANTEE it will have ANY affect on RS!
Not until they get a team OBP of .500 or .501!
In order to prove a correlation is a causation, you have to identify the logic, which I have done.
You have showed no logic at all Connor…..
You ADMIT RBI is a cause!
PROVE an OB is the cause of an RS….
HBP! Can a HBP cause itself to score?
Single! Can a single cause itself to score?
Double Can a Double cause itself to score?
Triple Can a Triple cause itself to score?
Only OB that can CAUSE an RS is the HR!
WHICH IS ALSO AN RBI!
“You ADMIT RBI is a cause!
PROVE an OB is the cause of an RS….
HBP! Can a HBP cause itself to score?
Single! Can a single cause itself to score?
Double Can a Double cause itself to score?
Triple Can a Triple cause itself to score?”
Correct. But look at a team’s OBP when they only get one HBP or one single, or one double, or one triple.
I did that already when I said
Single
OUT
WALK
OUT
HBP
OUT
OBP .500 score NOTHING!
Lets try another way…
HBP
OUT
SINGLE (1st and 3rd)
OUT
WALK
OUT
Same .500 OBP same NO RS!
Lets try another….
Double
OUT
WALK
DOUBLE PLAY
That OB wasn’t as good to have as something else was it?
Single scores a run!
MAYBE…Just MAYBE lets try one last way….
Walk
OUT
HBP
OUT
SINGLE (RBI)
OUT
there you go you got a run with OB! .500 OBP
JUST ONE!
The problem with OB, OBP wOBA is they take a walk a HBP and RBOE as all GOOD ACHIEVEMENTS…AS GOOD AS A HIT so to speak…
But the one where the HIT comes last scored the run didn’t it? A walk doesn’t score one, another HBP does do it either. So its not the OB that is significant it is the HIT that does most of the RSing…
But if we get to admitting that OH BOY the sabers folks will cry foul because now your making BA more relevant than OB again and that will never do!
wOBA = (0.691×uBB + 0.722×HBP + 0.884×1B + 1.257×2B + 1.593×3B +
2.058×HR) / (AB + BB – IBB + SF + HBP)
And then there was this one….
wOBA = (0.72xNIBB + 0.75xHBP + 0.90x1B + 0.92xRBOE + 1.24x2B + 1.56x3B + 1.95xHR) / PA
http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2011/1/4/1912914/custom-woba-and-linear-weights-through-2010-baseball-databank-data
And just to be clear here Connor….
Other than the past inclusion of RBOE and what appears to be mis weighted weights I don’t have a real problem with what they are attempting to do in wOBA…
But if your going to weight OB then shouldn’t acts that advance the runner and create another base get some form of credit given to them?
If a Pitcher bats a runner over from first to second he should get some points for making an OB better than it was!
If a player hits a sac fly and does the same thing he too should get something for making the OB that existed better….
While he himself may not GET a base of his own he did GIVE another base to one of his teamates….
Just because it adds an out it is thrown out as Satans work by the Saber guys and why?
Because everything with them is about not making outs…Not scoring runs mind you hjust not making outs which happens 2 out of every 3 times even if your GOOD at getting OB!
Oh I Understand it….. I know there needs to be a MUTUAL relationship that change in one means change in the other!
True for RBI not OB!
“The term correlation doesn’t mean perfect”
No but it does mean MUTAL RELATION!
1.A mutual relationship or connection between two or more things
An RS is an OB and an RS will guarantee an increase in OB in it’s creation….
An OB does not guarantee an increase in RS…..
An RS can increase the RBI and an RBI will ALWAYS increase the RS
They are MUTUAL!
RS to OB is not!
Metsie, what’s with you and this guarantee thing? The stat is imperfect, and fails to account for some things, but it is 85% towards a perfect correlation even without taking into account the value of hits! wOBA’s correlation is in the mid-hish 90%! Those other small things are minor.
The point is despite these infrequent situations, thanks to the good ole regression to the mean/ law of averages, those situations have been balanced out.
Whats the point?
Because your using a Correlation to say do this get that and the this can’t guarantee an increase in that!
You think it’s showing CAUSATION but it doesn’t it is only showing you CIRCUMSTANTIAL parity because all RS are an OB just as all RS are a PA!
All RS correlate to games played to but none of those actually are the thing you need to get to have a high RS!
“guarantee”
Like I said, it’s not guaranteed because there are small factors that OBP doesn’t account for. What’s so hard to understand?
Yes like it’s inability to score itself!
Post 400!
400! woho!
Unless it is a home run, a runner IS unable to score itself. That s correct (unless they are Jackie Robinson lol).
But if a team has one hit or one walk, what’s their On-Base Percentage?
Well on hit or one walk I guess it’s 1.000!
Isn’t it?
Ever seen a team have an OBP that high?
When do you think their last game will end?
RBI is essentially a type of runs scored, and accounts for 95%.
Say 95% of ic cream sales in the world are vanilla and 5% chocolate. 99.9% of the time, the seller who sells the most vanilla will have the most total sales.
Can’t put it much better than that.
NO IT IS NOT!
One is a CAUSE the other is a RESULT!
They are not the SAME THING!
So please stop sayng that if they were the same thing then there would be no need to record them seperatly and to different players!
The ONLY case where an RBI is also an RS is the HR!
And RBI is awarded for scoring a runner who could not score on his own or in the case of a home run… scoring yourself!
Two seperate things and the only reason you guys like to think about them as the same thing is because of THIS DISCUSSION showing OBP is overrated as far as what it can do for RS!
Because they know it really can’t!
Wow, hate to break it to you but neither a run scored or an RBI is a cause, both are results. Both are passive measurements that need actions, ie causes, in order to happen. Neither can cause anything.
It’s like saying coming in third in a race is a cause, it’s not, running in the race is an action, running faster than all but two others is and action that causes the result of finishing third. So in baseball terms hitting a homerun causes both an RBI and run, hitting a homerun (cause) after someone walks (cause) results in 2 rbi and 2 runs scored. A triple (cause) followed by a 2 out grounder to the shortstop (cause) that’s thrown away (cause) results in a run scored (result).
Got news for you BOTH are a result of what the BATTER did!
The runner on base did nothing that could make himself score…the BATTER did!
Get it? Got it? GOOD!
Hey we’re making progress you at can can now acknowledge that both runs scored and rbi’s are results not actions, and that there is a concept of shared credit when it comes to both. That hitting a homerun and scoring one run has a certain value and there can be a metric that assigns credit to a player, following that logic a walk before a home run has shared credit to both the player who hit the home run and applies partial credit to the player who drew the walk, like an assist in basketball. We’re all agreed on the concept of shared credit right?
No we are not making progress….
Your talking about credit….
Who gtes credit doesn’t matter just as the guy who got hit by the car gets credit for being in an accident the one who CAUSED the accident is key!
The runner on base didn’t CAUSE the RS and it’s dumb to look for something that can NOT cause an RS instead of something that DOES cause an RS if you want to INCREASE RS
Credit, as in defining a event or series of events that lead to an outcome. A two run homerun takes two seperate acts, the first being that player A gets on base, the second being that player B hits a homerun. Without player A then only one run scores hence the need for a calculation to determine that properly values both players actions. By properly valuing all components (players) we are able to determine what actions increase the chance of scoring runs and then find out what players are skilled in those actions.
“Who gtes credit doesn’t matter just as the guy who got hit by the car gets credit for being in an accident the one who CAUSED the accident is key!”
You understand that there’s no accident without both participants correct?
“The runner on base didn’t CAUSE the RS and it’s dumb to look for something that can NOT cause an RS instead of something that DOES cause an RS if you want to INCREASE RS”
Really? So bases empty and a guy hits a single, how many runs did he cause to score? Now put a runner at third and have the guy hit a single, how many runs scored now? Similar situations, different results. It’s almost as if there were a prior action like I don’t know a runner getting to third, that combined with another action (the single) caused a run to be scored. Are you seriously trying to say that the only action that mattered was the single? Because I think both were necessary.
Oh Metsie, you were so close, I really thought you had it this time.
“Without player A then only one run scores ”
Without Player B no one scores! Which makes him the CAUSE of BOTH runs…without Player B doing something at the plate you get ZERO RS!
Hence the CAUSE of the RS!
Which in every advanced metric he gets credit. Do you not read the posts or do you read them and not understand what they say? I’ll give you a hint press ctrl+f and type ‘shared credit’, read the words before that and after that. In fact it might be a good idea to read all posts, most make good points except for this one guy who keeps saying the best way to define a set is by using it’s subset. As anyone who’s taken high school math and logic can tell you, that’s impossible, so ignore that guy.
You want to talk abut Vredit I suggest you call VISA….
You want to talk about who did the thing that made a run score then you had better start talking about CAUSE…
And tell us what the runner OB did to make the batter hit the ball someplace good so he could score…
Wave his hands?
Scratch his groin?
Blow a tobacco laced Spit Bubble?
What did that guy on the base do to CAUSE the batter to hit the ball someplace good enough so he could run and touch home plate….
You got anything? NO!
The BATTER CAUSES the run to score and to get MORE runs to score you need more of what CAUSES runs to score!
Not more of what 70% of the time just SITS THERE because the batter didn’t do enough to CAUSE him to score!
Hi Metsie and TRS,
Let’s use Duda as an example and a ball that never touched his glove. To be honest, I don’t care as much whether the batter is awarded a hit or Duda an error as I am concerned as to why. The advanced stats show his limited range factor but does not give any answer. is that due to Duda’s lack of speed and physical agility? Or is it because he does not know how to properly address the ball in flight or pick up on where it is headed to by the sound of the bat?
If it’s not physical, then his ability to get to the ball can be taught (what he does with it after that is a whole other story). And thus, the poor saber stat regarding his range i ssomething that can be mis-understood completely. Instead of just saying this guy is going to cost us runs with balls that he can’t get to, the observers – the traditionlists – can jump in and say that there is something wrong with his mechanics and/or thinking process- and not agility – that is causing this and that they believe this can be corrected so he could cover more ground.
That was the problem with Lastings. He did not play his position well and thus balls fell in front of him or went to the wall that otherwise one with his speed could have prevented and he would not heed the advise of those who saw this.
Thats because Sabermetricians have been unable to find the LEAST COMMON DENOMINATOR of Success on the defensive side unlike OB which is the LEAST COMMON denominator for success on Offense…..
Thats why thy have a real,hard time making defensive metrics….
They have no thing to make a scatter chart with!
As fo the argument ove Duda not fielding or touching a fly ball…
I say the Batter still accompished something…He hit the ball to the WORST fielder instead of one of the better ones!
Hi Metsie,
“I say the Batter still accompished something…He hit the ball to the WORST fielder instead of one of the better ones!”
LMAO – that is the truest definition of a smart hitter I’ve ever come across!
If that was accomplishable and theorganization’s philosophy, I’m sure Metsie would go along with it then.
Stats are for measuring production.
What you just described is a coach’s job and no one has said otherwise. You just built a strawman.
Hi Donal,
Not at all a straw man. It’s just another example to show that one who does not go by stats at all can see the problem and maybe, just maybe, do something to resolve it whereas one goingby just by advanced stats alone gets a superficial perspective of the player when no progression is seen year by year – perhaps because of bad coaching.
No, it is a strawman. You created a point no one made so you could argue against it.
Mechanics have nothing to do with the ability to judge a fly ball. Mechanics only come into play with throwing and batting. Judging a fly ball is not something that can be taught, You either can or you can’t. You can improve on it with repetition but you can not teach some one to judge a fly ball.
Yes, repetition is something that will definately help one with judging a fly ball – but it’s not a question of if one can or can’t. One can indeed learn how to judge fly balls better.
As the first link says about the Diagonal Run: Going back on a fly ball
This learned skill makes outfielders good defenders when they can cover a lot of ground, especially on balls hit over their head and to their diagonals. Being able to read the baseball, and then using efficient footwork to go after it, is a skill that you can always improve
Then there are the other fielding basics (i.e., mechanics) that one must be taught.
http://probaseballinsider.com/baseball-instruction/outfield/outfield-2-tracking-fly-balls/
http://www.baseball101.com/skills/defense/outfield-defense/catching-flyballs-head/
http://www.theoleballgame.com/baseball-outfield-fundamentals.html
http://www.baseball-excellence.com/index.cfm?Method=Instructions_Instructionsdetail&id=43
“Yes, repetition is something that will definately help one with judging a fly ball – but it’s not a question of if one can or can’t. One can indeed learn how to judge fly balls better”
Did you not read what I wrote? I said you can improve upon it with repetition. You can not however teach someone to judge a fly ball. It is definitely a question of whether you can or can’t. If you’ve ever played the OF before you would know this. Tracking fly ball and taking proper routes is not the same as the ability to judge the depth of a fly ball.
You can teach a player to position himself to throw after the catch, field a groundball to the OF, drop steps, crow hop throws but judging the depth of a fly ball is something that can’t be taught. There are major leagers that can’t judge fly balls. Like I said you can improve it with repitition by shagging fly balls but you can’t teach it.
Don’t give up Metsie, we can make it to 400 comments
Almost there!
It will get there if the folks who keep on trying to RE_WIN the point they already admitted I was right about….
I don’t care because I will just keep making the same argument of my position until they get tired of trying to find a chink in it or until they give up!
I got lots of time to play this game!
Thing is- you’re saying we admitted to something that we never debated.
Hey Connor what was the title of you article?
What was your conclusion?
What correlated better than what you had in the title?
What correlated better than what you concluded?
And I won’t even ask you to say RBI just the stat you admitted to SHOULD have been the topic of your atricle as opposed to OBP….
You know the one you admitted was better at correlation…..
wOBA, the improved version of OBP.
The stat is imperfect but the principle is not: get out less and score more.
I’d call it an improved OPS
Meh. All it does is give weights to OBP.
No it does more than add weights to OBP….
First off it removes IBBs, Second it adds RBOE and the weight system doesn’t seem to give any credit to a Hit’s ability to drive in a run….
If one base is worth .92 then a HR (4 bases earned) should be worth 4X .92 shouldn’t it?
Even SLG knows that!
Compare SLG graph with wOBA
I did….Still not as good as RBI is it?
I agree just as I agree OPS is better than OBP and SLG…
But then again I wasn’t the one who wrote an article about what correlates to RS and should be sought after to increase RS when I knew something else was much better at it than OBP….
Someone ELSE did that! LOL
Answer my question from above.
Hi Metsie,
For some reason I think you would be very familiair with the phrase “correlation does not imply causation” regarding stasticis but for those who are not, what it means simply is that the correlation between two variables does not necessarily imply that one causes the other, i.e.,a cause is incorrectly identified. What scientists are finding is that with so much more information available than ever before. statistics are also becoming one of the most abused types of evidence, because, as Dan Engber in the attached points out, it is easy and even tempting to come to premature conclusions based upon the appearance of correlation.
Attached is that very in-depth and probably in most instances over our head article that Engber wrote. Indeed, correlation can definitely lead to causation but in my own opinion, it means leave the art of baseball to those who have played it and not to the statistians who haven’t. Or, at best, allow those who have played the game debate the validity of the conclusions of advanced statistical analysis and not those who haven’t.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/10/correlation_does_not_imply_causation_how_the_internet_fell_in_love_with_a_stats_class_clich_.html
BTW – stastically my comment should be number 449 since 448 was the last one posted before mine, however, that does not take into account the number of other comments made between that last one and mine.
Joey, and I am asking Joey here, are you saying that increasing the number of base runners doesn’t increase the likelihood of scoring? If so then neither side will ever come to a mutual understanding and all either side is doing is wasting each others time and breaking Bays comment record.
HI Trs,
My apologies – I realize that it was appearing as if I was taking a side to the long debate between base runners and batters driving in runs nd that wasn’t the case. I made the interjection regrding stats in general and how the could easily be misconstrued as causing a result. I personally feel that it a correlation of both, men on base and clutch hitting and neither can produce a run without the other and statistcall, it is meaningless since baseball is a team sport with nine players from one side going against nine players from the other.
I was at a game in 1965 which the Mets lost to the Cubs 7-1. The headline the next day was “CUBS THREE HIT ATTACK SINKS METS 7-1″. That makes the point both ways – the Cubs got runners on base due to inept Met pitching (walking so many batters) and fielding miscues but without those three clutch hits (one a grand slam) those runners would have been stranded.
That is why I am so much in favor of not looking at the game in terms of stats for as that article stated, correlation does not necessarily lead to causation. Was it the Met inept pitching that caused all those walks or the Cubs patience at the plate? Did the Cubs put that game away or was it the Mets causing their own selves to fall so far behind? We can all guess what happened – Met pitchers were wild and got themselves in trouble and then had to come in with a fat pitch that the pre-Leo Durocher team pounced on.
But I attached that article to show a point that many do miss – that scientists and all others who look at statstical data notice a growing trend to jump to conclusions that are inaccurate because they appear to make a correlation to each other that is a false conclusion. Stasticians will be the first to admit it. In baseball, Bill James was asked this question at the end of a 60 Minutes segment about his work:
SAFER: “James says he’s always looking for new numbers to help the Red Sox. But even he admits the numbers will never say it all.”
“There’s something in baseball that you really can’t quantify. And that is, the mix of guys at a given moment, there’s some magic or whatever, that goes on. That all the James-ian theory in the world will never find the answer to,” Safer says.
JAMES: “It’s mostly intangible,” James says. “I mean, I don’t understand most of it. I don’t think that anybody in the Red Sox would tell you that we have that magic stuff figured out. But there are people here who understand that part of the equation a lot better than I do.”
Intangible means something that is incapable of being realized or defined. That is why as far as baseball is concerned, one who mostly looks at stats – no matter how analiticlly gifted the individul might be – will miss the “intangible” elements that James alludes to.
Scientists more and more stand in line with that assessment. Those who have played or coached the game on a high level have an understanding of those intangibles that James says even he does not understand. That is why I say if there are things to be learned and better appreciated through statistical analysis in baseball, it could only be recognized by those who play the game and do understand those intangible elements. That is why Branch Rickey was able to appreciate things he learned – because he was a baseball person who understood how to interpret the meaning while also saying his advanced research went on to prove other things that were indeed assumed by those in the game. Bill James referred to Casey Stengel about placing his top OBP guys at the top of the lineup during the world series – which was before Rickey did his calculation studies. John McGraw in the 20′s recognized the weakness that many hitters had against left or righty pitchers depending upon which side of the plate they hit from.
Baseball people – those who know the intangeables of the game – would be able to learn something but due to their professional knowledge of the inside game have said – of course in their own more basic language – that “correlation is not causation”. In essensce, that is what Francona and LaRussa were saying in their own diplomatic way. That is also what was said not only by Bill James, Branch Rickey and Dan Ebar but by Adar Ben-Eliyahu, Ph.D., Dr.Nathan Green, and Satoshi Kanzawa, Evolutionary Psychologist and Intelligence Researcher, London School of Economics, who said:
“What civilians fail to understand is that causation is never directly observable and causation is never in the data but in the theory.”
I think LaRussa, Francona and others would simply exchange the word “civilians” for the words “front office”.
I do not claim to be able to interpret advanced data. But the only thing I can then think of is each of the above people I’ve mentioned is “a person who has no idea how to interpret statistics”. As Bill James said, there were so many intangibles about the game which others better understand than he does.
http://chronicle.umbmentoring.org/on-methods-correlation-is-not-causation/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/jan/06/correlation-causation
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-3974752.html?pageNum=4
Joey, I uh… Have nothing to say as your refusal to answer my question shows that there is no point and it would be best for all if we just accept this divide and move on.
Hi Trs,
Did you notice that I never got myself into the debate? The reason is simply that both are vital and to try and determine which of the two is minutely more important over the other is, to me, irrelevant. Teams can play “Billy Ball” or go for Earl Weaver’s three run homer. It depends upon the makeup of the team itself. It’s not a black and white answer and why anbody here – my cyber friends from both sides of the fence – are expounding so much energy on this one point, I really don’t know because there are those intangebles that cannot be measured.
But I will take the case of when getting on base being was more critical in creating a run than one driving him in. There used to be what was called the Dodger home run – Maury Wills would draw a walk, steal second, go to third on the catcher’s errant throw and then score on a sacrifice fly. So, in that case, the entire run came through getting on base and scoring without a hit and, if Wills did not make it to third, that fly ball would not have accomplished anything.
And that wasn’t really a joke. It happened quite often. When Sandy Koufax pitched his perfect game in 1965 against the Cubs, Bob Hendly, the opposing pitcher had a no hitter going for himself as well. The Dodgers had scored their run without the benefit of a hit for they were already winning 1-0 when Hendley’s no-hitter was broken up with what I recall was a two out single in the seventh inning by Lou Johnson. That was the only hit in the game.
The 1965 Dodger hitting was anemic – even for that era’s standards.
As I said, your silence is deafening.
Hi TRS,
“the number of base runners doesn’t increase the likelihood of scoring?”
To that, the answer is a definite yes. But don’t forget I added “I personally feel that it a correlation of both, men on base and clutch hitting and neither can produce a run without the other”.
That is why I didn’t get into the debate. Everyone is correct as to the likelihood of scoring but that “It depends upon the makeup of the team itself. It’s not a black and white answer and why anbody here – my cyber friends from both sides of the fence – are expounding so much energy on this one point, I really don’t know because there are those intangebles that cannot be measured.”
“It means leave the art of baseball to those who have played it and not to the statistians who haven’t. Or, at best, allow those who have played the game debate the validity of the conclusions of advanced statistical analysis and not those who haven’t”
Spoken like a person who has no idea how to interpret statistics other than Batting Average and ERA. You’re making Branch Rickey spin in his grave right now. People who have played the game before at a high level rely on statistics. Mechanics are meaningless if you fail to produce. The game is measured on performance. Players with great mechanics couldn’t cut it in the majors and players with poor mechanices have gone on to have great careers.
One’s eyes especially yours can not be trusted to make an objective opinion about a player because they’re biased (Danel Murphy) and can not possibly record each occurence over a season by memory. Performance can not be measured by one’s eyes regardless ones backround whether it’s a former player, coach, executive or fan.
Interpretation of statistics is not all that complex. You should learn how to interpet before you condemn. Especially since you never played the game.
Spoken like anoter personwho hasn’t read or complied with the guidelines!
Why are you still here anyway?
You lotst the bey on posting for a year when I made a chart that correlated RBI to RS which you said was mathematically impossible….
I guess you won’t keep your word….
Where is the chart? Like top or middle of the comments (I actually want to see it)
Click on my nick of the post above….
“Indeed, correlation can definitely lead to causation but in my own opinion, it means leave the art of baseball to those who have played it and not to the statistians who haven’t.”
Oh, what team do you play for? Because otherwise, by your own standard, you should keep quiet too.
Yes, Donal,
That is why I vetted the opinions of all sides – to formulate my own opinionon regarding the best type of methodology and those who appear best qualified to understand that – based on the arguments made by all those involved. It is not from my own experience but being a juror on the argument handed the case and told to go into deliberation.
Did I tell anyone how to hit? Did I tell anyone to be prepared to hit on the outside? Did I say the Mets were telegraphing their hitting approach? Did I make up the stats about OBP ranges from decades ago? Did I make up the words spoken by Hudgens, LaRussa, Francona, James, Ojeda, etc? Did I make up the fact of what Casey Stengel, John McGraw and others knew long before saber stats? Did I not read up extensively on Bill James as per the attachments I posted in which he was speaking instead of going by third party explanations? Did I make up the idea that “correlation does not imply causation” or was that from experts in the field?
And did I note do extensive research on Sandy Alderson – his life prior to and after becoming a baseball executive and how he learned to understand baseball in his own manner?
That’s how I came to formulate my opinion about stats, those who use them, and how they are used.
“What team did I play for”? Call it a degree and graduate work in history which taught me indeed to look outside the box as well and be careful in understanding where those whom one is reading about is coming from. Call it analyization too.
Make that 429 since 428 was the last one posted. See, false correlations can be caused just by eyestrain!
Hi Matt,
Post 443 – my favorite science fiction film is “Forbidden Planet” with the original “The Thing” a close second.
But I’ve also got all the original series and first generation Star Trek episodes on DVD along with all the movies.