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Official Stats Thread
Topic Started: Mon Apr 14, 2008 5:54 pm (1,075 Views)
sportslover
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Infallable
Fri Jun 13, 2008 5:10 pm
Hyltzn
Fri Jun 13, 2008 4:13 pm
OWP = :thumbsdown: :thumbsdown:
OWP?
Offensive Winning Percentage. Created by Bill James, and it derives from Runs Created, which is what makes it :thumbsdown: .
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Infallable
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I don't break character until after the DVD commentary

Hyltzn
Fri Jun 13, 2008 5:12 pm
Infallable
Fri Jun 13, 2008 5:10 pm
Hyltzn
Fri Jun 13, 2008 4:13 pm
OWP = :thumbsdown: :thumbsdown:
OWP?
Offensive Winning Percentage. Created by Bill James, and it derives from Runs Created, which is what makes it :thumbsdown: .
Yeah, I looked it up. What in the blue hell would anyone use that for?
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sportslover
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Infallable
Fri Jun 13, 2008 5:13 pm
Hyltzn
Fri Jun 13, 2008 5:12 pm
Infallable
Fri Jun 13, 2008 5:10 pm
Hyltzn
Fri Jun 13, 2008 4:13 pm
OWP = :thumbsdown: :thumbsdown:
OWP?
Offensive Winning Percentage. Created by Bill James, and it derives from Runs Created, which is what makes it :thumbsdown: .
Yeah, I looked it up. What in the blue hell would anyone use that for?
No idea.
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sportslover
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Quote:
 
BABIP: Batting Average on Balls In Play is a statistical spawn of the DIPS theory discovered by Voros McCracken at the turn of the century. Essentially Voros found that pitchers have next to no control over balls put in play against them, which is why certain pitchers would surrender a ton of hits one year and much less the next. From a control standpoint, the goal of the pitcher would be to get an out. Once a ball is put in play, unless it is hit right back to the pitcher many defensive aspects have to coincide for an out to result. Take a groundball for instance, one between shortstop and third base: both fielders have to understand whose territory the ball occupies and that fielder has to have the proper range in order to field it, all in a very short amount of time.

There are plenty of other variables as well but what should be clear is that the pitcher has no control over them. He may have control over sustaining a certain percentage of balls in play each year but the hits that result are almost entirely out of his hand. In fact, the only aspects of pitching over which he has any type of control are walks, strikeouts, and home runs allowed. Everything else is dependant on the fielding and luck.

BABIP is calculated by dividing the Hits minus Home Runs by the Plate Appearances excluding Home Runs, Walks, Strikeouts, and Sacrifice Flies. If Player A has 30 hits out of 90 at-bats he will post a .333 batting average. But if 8 of those 30 hits are home runs and 8 of the outs are strikeouts, in BABIP terms he would be 22 for 74, or .297. This explains that, of all balls put in play–any hit or batted out other than a home run–29.7% fell in for hits.

FIP: a creation of Tom Tango’s, Fielding Independent Pitching takes the three controllable skills of walks, strikeouts, and home runs allowed, properly weights them, and then scales the result similar to the familiar ERA. The end result explains what a pitcher’s skillset suggests his ERA should be around. Someone with an ERA much lower than their FIP is usually considered to be lucky while the inverse is also true. The statistic is kept at Fangraphs and ERA-FIP was recently added as well in order to allow readers a glimpse at those under- or overperforming their controllable skills.

ERA: arguably the most popular pitching barometer, ERA can be calculated by multiplying the earned runs of a pitcher by nine and dividing that product by the total number of innings pitched. While not a terrible stat it suffers from some pretty drastic noise. For starters, what are earned runs? The surname ‘earned’ implies there are other runs that can be given up and that these must satisfy a specific criteria. For instance, if a fielder botches a routine play with two outs, and the pitcher then gives up seven runs, none will be earned because the inning was extended by the poor play of the fielder. This gets into all sorts of questions regarding exactly what an error is and how that factors into a pitcher’s performance.

Earned runs are also a direct result of hits, which have been proven to be largely accrued through chance via the DIPS theory. So, if pitchers cannot control the percentage of hits they give up on balls in play, then fluctuations in hits can either inflate or deflate an ERA regardless of the pitcher’s skill level. Therefore the FIP is more indicative of performance level because it only measures the three aspects of pitching he has control over which should not suffer from much fluctuation at all, as Pizza Cutter showed not too long ago that these skills were some of the quickest to stabilize.
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sportslover
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Some asshat at FF said the Torii Hunter signing was great because of his leadership and crap. I took a look and said this:

Quote:
 
What? Are you serious? Let's find out using something called WAR (Wins Above Replacement).

In order to find WAR (for hitters), you need some elements. I have those elements as being: Hitting, fielding, adding a positional adjustment, adding a replacement-level adjustment, aging, and if it makes a difference (say with a guy that is a great baserunner like Chone Figgins) then baserunning, but usually baserunning makes a small ripple on a player's value (unless it's Juan Pierre, and your baserunning is one of the primary reasons why you are in the majors). We're trying to find his true talent level here, and not just last year's performance. We can do last year's performance, but then we wouldn't be able to find Torii's market value.

I'm not going to explain how I get each win value for each element, but I can explain if you're skeptical about it.

Anyways, I have Hunter as being a true talent 3.5 WAR player. Now we can see how much he should have made given today's market. According to some market studies, in the 2008 Free Agency, major league teams payed $4.4 mil for every marginal win. So in order to find his FA value, we simply do:

3.5 * 4.4

So Torii Hunter's 2008 value is around $15.4, and he's actually making $16. So they're not terrible overpaying for him, but they still are. Even if they had given him $15.4 which he's worth, that still wouldn't have made it a great signing, it would have made it an average signing (remember 4.4 is the average amount that was paid). Now, we only looked at the 2008 season; we haven't looked at every other year in his Torii's contract. To do that we have to adjust for aging and market inflation. For aging, a rule of thumb is to subtract .5 every year (that is the average amount of WAR that a player will lose from year to year). Torii Hunter is a 32-year old CF (abuses the body a lot), so taking .5 only seems fair for Hunter. As for inflation, according to market studies done by Studes or Eric Seidman (I can't remember who it was, but they both write for The Hardball Times), teams pay 10% more every year (so in 2009 teams will be paying $4.84 for a marginal win). Let's look at what Torii Hunter SHOULD be making given his talent level, aging, and market inflation:

1st year: $15.4
2nd year: $14.52
3rd year: $13.31
4th year: $12.90
5th year: $10.63

That's basically a 5/$65 contract considering I rounded up on some of those years.

Now here it is presented comparing what he should be making (according to me, and what he'll actually be making):

1st year: $15.4/$16
2nd year: $14.52/$17.5
3rd year: $13.31/$18
4th year: $12.90/$18
5th year: $10.63/$18

They're overpaying for him by about $25 mil, which is terrible. By no means was this a great signing; it was a bad one. And no, I'm not going to consider leadership....because that's BS, and "leadership" has absolutely no effect on a team's win total. Let's enter a theoretical world where leadership does matter as much as actual performance....don't the Angels already have a ton of leaders? Vlad Guerrero, Garret Anderson, Chone Figgins, John Lackey (?), Scot Shields....and Mike Scioscia, who is a good manager and a great leader....so why do you need more?

That is my review of the Hunter signing.
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sportslover
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Hyltzn
Mon Jul 7, 2008 7:00 pm
Some asshat at FF said the Torii Hunter signing was great because of his leadership and crap. I took a look and said this:

Quote:
 
What? Are you serious? Let's find out using something called WAR (Wins Above Replacement).

In order to find WAR (for hitters), you need some elements. I have those elements as being: Hitting, fielding, adding a positional adjustment, adding a replacement-level adjustment, aging, and if it makes a difference (say with a guy that is a great baserunner like Chone Figgins) then baserunning, but usually baserunning makes a small ripple on a player's value (unless it's Juan Pierre, and your baserunning is one of the primary reasons why you are in the majors). We're trying to find his true talent level here, and not just last year's performance. We can do last year's performance, but then we wouldn't be able to find Torii's market value.

I'm not going to explain how I get each win value for each element, but I can explain if you're skeptical about it.

Anyways, I have Hunter as being a true talent 3.5 WAR player. Now we can see how much he should have made given today's market. According to some market studies, in the 2008 Free Agency, major league teams payed $4.4 mil for every marginal win. So in order to find his FA value, we simply do:

3.5 * 4.4

So Torii Hunter's 2008 value is around $15.4, and he's actually making $16. So they're not terrible overpaying for him, but they still are. Even if they had given him $15.4 which he's worth, that still wouldn't have made it a great signing, it would have made it an average signing (remember 4.4 is the average amount that was paid). Now, we only looked at the 2008 season; we haven't looked at every other year in his Torii's contract. To do that we have to adjust for aging and market inflation. For aging, a rule of thumb is to subtract .5 every year (that is the average amount of WAR that a player will lose from year to year). Torii Hunter is a 32-year old CF (abuses the body a lot), so taking .5 only seems fair for Hunter. As for inflation, according to market studies done by Studes or Eric Seidman (I can't remember who it was, but they both write for The Hardball Times), teams pay 10% more every year (so in 2009 teams will be paying $4.84 for a marginal win). Let's look at what Torii Hunter SHOULD be making given his talent level, aging, and market inflation:

1st year: $15.4
2nd year: $14.52
3rd year: $13.31
4th year: $12.90
5th year: $10.63

That's basically a 5/$65 contract considering I rounded up on some of those years.

Now here it is presented comparing what he should be making (according to me, and what he'll actually be making):

1st year: $15.4/$16
2nd year: $14.52/$17.5
3rd year: $13.31/$18
4th year: $12.90/$18
5th year: $10.63/$18

They're overpaying for him by about $25 mil, which is terrible. By no means was this a great signing; it was a bad one. And no, I'm not going to consider leadership....because that's BS, and "leadership" has absolutely no effect on a team's win total. Let's enter a theoretical world where leadership does matter as much as actual performance....don't the Angels already have a ton of leaders? Vlad Guerrero, Garret Anderson, Chone Figgins, John Lackey (?), Scot Shields....and Mike Scioscia, who is a good manager and a great leader....so why do you need more?

That is my review of the Hunter signing.
I forgot to do one thing:

And I actually made one mistake. I gave Hunter credit for a full season of 700 PA, which is wrong. I should have multiplied by 80% (expected playing time). Basically, Hunter is a 3 WAR player, not 3.5. His contract would look like this now:

5/$51
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sportslover
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I figured since I already had spreadsheet downloaded, I might as well use it for non-school reasons......so I made a Wins Above Replacement spreadsheet. It can be used to find a player's WAR and you can keep it as a database. Anyone can DL and use. I don't give a shit. Anyways, here's the DL link:

war spreadsheets.zip - 0.27MB

Here's the basic terminology:

Player- the name of the player...
position- player's position...
wOBA- Weighted on base average. You can find the wOBA for every player in the majors and most players in the minors here. This isn't mean for MILB players, though. Just search the player's name.

BWAA- Batting Wins Above Average. It's wOBA converted into runs and then into wins. I randomly picked this name.

Fielding- the amount of wins a player is worth on the field.

baserunning- the amount of wins a player is worth with his baserunning. I don't really know why I included baserunning.

Adjustment- The amount of wins a player gets added for his position and league. I'll quote Tom Tango here:

Quote:
 
Since the same stats of an average AL player is better than the same stats of an average NL player (i.e., the AL is the better league)


And the positional adjustment is so a catcher isn't valued the same as a DH or LF. For example, a catcher with a .900 OPS is worth more than a DH with a .900 OPS.

I should clarify here. Every player gets a replacement-level adjustment based on their league. AL players get +2.5 wins and NL players get +2. Then you give every player a positional adjustment.

Quote:
 
The positional adjustments are:
+1.0 wins C
+0.5 SS/CF
+0.0 2B/3B
-0.5 LF/RF/PH
-1.0 1B
-1.5 DH


So an AL catcher gets 2.5 + 1 = 3.5

WAR- wins above replacement

WAR$- THIS IS ONLY FOR THE 2008 SEASON. It's (WAR * 4.4) + .4

4.4 = how much MLB teams paid for one marginal win in 2008 FA
.4 = the league minimum

Here are the instructions:

- Go to the spreadsheet of the league you want to look at. Then go to the tab of the player's position. Then fill in the data.

For example: If you want to look at Pat Burrel's 2007 WAR, you open up the NL spreadsheet and click the LF tab.

You only fill in the yellow shaded cells. There's player which is the players name. wOBA, which I already posted where you can find that at.

For fielding, you have to eyeball and be kind of subjective. I use UZR, RZR, OOZ and Dewan's plus/minus (if it's available). If you're going to rely on one fielding statistic, let that be UZR. It's in run value, so you simply take the run value and divide by 10.5 and you get how many wins he was worth. I keep everyone within +2 (for the really good fielders) and -2 (terrible fielders) boundaries.

For baserunning, I wouldn't worry too much about this. Dan Fox once popped out the list of the best and worst baserunners using retrosheet data, and the impact they made was very small. Everyone came within 5 to -5 runs, so unless it's someone you know is very good or terrible...don't worry about it.

Once you fill in the 3 (4 if you include the player's name) cells which you need to fill, the other cells will auto-populate based on your inputs.

- The reason it says .337 or .338 (depending at what league you're looking at) is that I had to go ahead and fill that so I wouldn't get funky numbers (if I leave it blank, it assumes a 0 wOBA, so the spreadsheet looks confusing). Don't worry about that. Just erase the wOBA that's there and fill it in with the player's wOBA.





That is all. If you don't understand that, fine. If you want to understand it, then post and I'll explain whatever it is you don't understand. I know aCutb and Phillies will understand. I figured I should have shared it.
Edited by sportslover, Tue Jul 8, 2008 3:15 pm.
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sportslover
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V.2.0 of WAR Calculator/Spreadsheet

I did change something for this one. Now you have to input the playing time for the player expressed in a percentage. In the previous one I just had the playing time set as .80 (80% of 700 PA). So if a player is projected to or had 560 PA in a season, the playing time would be .8 (because 560 is 80% of 700 PA). For everyday players everyone is usually between the 80% and 90% range, unless it's someone that suffers from a lot of injuries (*coughRichHardencough*). Remember you have to enter the percentage in decimal form.

And there's a difference between true talent level value and one season's value. For example, if you're trying to find out what Mark Teixeira's FA value should be you would have to look at all of his previous seasons and weigh each one differently in terms of importance (because what he did in 2003 doesn't tell you as much as what he did last year). That's basically called regressing to the mean (because his past season is liable to be full of luck or flukey *coughGavinFloyd*). If you're trying to look at what a player's WAR in 2007 was, then you just look at his statistics for that season.
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sportslover
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I might do a pitchers spreadsheet later on tonight, but I'm not sure if I should use FIP or ERA+. What do you guys think?

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Prime Time
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Rock God, God of Rock, Tom Petty

ERA+ is adjusted to the pitcher's ballpark, right? Is FIP?

I'm really liking wOBA as a stat. You are my hero for posting all this stuff. Everyone hates you at FF for it, it seems. You disprove everything they say and all they respond with is "his BA is higherz!!!!!11111 0_o. Jo0 wrong." The AS threads are hilarious.
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