Basebology (The Study of Baseball)

I haven't talked about Mariano Rivera's usage pattern in a while...

2010-10-19T09:08:00.001-07:00

...so I'm gonna let Rob Neyer talk about it for me.

I lied. I'm also gonna talk about it.

Bottom line: I think Rob is correct: Joe Girardi did the right thing by not using Mariano last night in a (superficially) close game. Perhaps, perhaps, there's an argument if the Yankees were only down one run, and certainly he should have and would have been used if the Yanks had been tied or ahead.

But down two runs in the ninth inning is not a terribly high leverage situation. In fact, it's a very low leverage situation (see here). The Yanks have games today and tomorrow. In my opinion, it's worth more having a rested Mo today and tomorrow than it is to try and keep a two run deficit at two runs, especially when your reward for doing so will just be more Cliff Lee.

When will the madness stop?

2010-07-31T19:49:00.001-07:00

One of these years I will actually manage to disengage the MVP discussion. This is not that year.

During two broadcasts today, I heard the same sentiment expressed: that Miguel Cabrera was obviously the MVP so far this year. This is crazy. Let's run down the list of contenders using BPro's WARP and Fangraphs' WAR, both of which measure wins above replacement:*

Josh Hamilton, 5.7 WAR, 5.2 WARP
Justin Morneau, 5.2 WAR, 4.3 WARP
Robinson Cano, 5.1 WAR, 4.8 WARP
Carl Crawford, 5.0 WAR, 4.0 WARP
Adrian Beltre, 4.7 WAR, 4.8 WARP
Evan Longoria, 4.4 WAR, 4.8 WARP
Miguel Cabrera, 4.4 WAR, 4.5 WARP

Note that WARP and WAR vary a bit due to methodological differences. I prefer Fangraphs' WAR; whatever. The point is that Cabrera is not obviously the MVP by these objective measures.

Let's grant for a second that Cabrera is clearly the league's best hitter, though clearly Morneau and Hamilton have cases too. He still is not clearly the league's Most Valuable Player because there's more to playing than hitting. Cabrera plays first base and not particularly well. Morneau on the other hand is an excellent fielder at first base. Hamilton plays left field, a more important defensive position (though not much) and he plays it better than Cabrera plays first. Thus, even if Cabrera were clearly a better hitter than these guys, and he isn't, he still probably doesn't deserve the MVP over them. That's why they have higher WAR scores than he does.

And what about Robinson Cano? He plays a premium defensive position, plays it well, and has been raking all year. Sure, he's not a Cabrera/Hamilton/Morneau caliber hitter, but: second base. It matters, people.

So why are people talking about Cabrera with Bondsian reverence? The triple crown stats. Cabrera has a shot at the triple crown. And if he wins it, or is close, he's probably a lock for the award.

So where are all the sportswriters out there blowing a gasket, tripping over themselves to excoriate the numbskulls who don't get out and watch baseball, who just look at numbers in Mommy's basement, who compute their Chadwick Batting Average and their Runs Batted In and don't appreciate the little things? As of right now, they are nowhere. It's absolutely insane. Once again, the people who can't wait to congratulate themselves for watching every game and appreciating the ins and outs of the sport are simply going to be blinded by three of the stupidest statistics in baseball.

If you watch a lot of baseball here's what you know: defense matters, playing a premium position matters, that there's more to the game than AVG, HR, and RsBI. WAR and WARP actually help capture these things. You know why Crawford does so well? Because his insane speed puts his defensive numbers through the roof. You know why Cano does so well? Because he's a slick fielding, sweet swinging second baseman. Miguel Cabrera is a (ahem) rotund slugger who plays first just well enough not to have to DH. Why do our self-appointed guardians of the holy baseball not see this? I have no idea.

Look, there's still two months to go. Anything can happen. Cabrera could wind up passing all these guys on the strength of his hitting. And I've ranted and raved about the MVP before only to have the writers get it right. I probably shouldn't be lumping them all together just because Michael Kay and Mark Grace haven't thought this through. Sorry, sportswriters who are competent.

Still, I just want recognition from these guys that there's more to an MVP award than triple crown hitting stats even when a guy has a chance to win it.

* I'm limiting this to hitters. Yes, I know pitchers can win, but: who cares?

Lance Berkman

2010-07-30T15:52:00.000-07:00

Rumors have the Yankees set to acquire Lance Berkman. Whatever. He'd be a DH for the Yanks and he's still got a useful bat, even if its not quite as potent as it used to be. Here's the thing though: the Yankees really should not have to give anything up to get him. He's due $15M this year with another $15M next year or a $2M buyout. And given his past performance, that's roughly what he's worth.

But what's the upside for the Yankees? They're already the best team in baseball, on pace to win 104 games. So Lance isn't going to get them over the hump. He's not under a favorable long term contract. The Yanks already rotate guys like Jeter, A-Rod, and Posada through the DH slot on a regular basis, so his impact there is muted. There's almost no upside in the regular season for the Yanks.

And I'm sure they know this. Getting Lance Berkman would be about October. But given that the Yanks are already loaded and that the postseason is such a crap shoot, how much value does he really add there? Still not that much, though, of course, with an extreme amount of variance, given how elevated the stakes are (note, of course, that this variance cuts both ways).

There's just no way the Yanks should be giving up something of value, like a decent player under team control at cut-rate salary for the next three to six years, so that maybe Lance Berkman might have a big postseason hit. I know it seems crazy, but given Berkman's salary, age, and performance, he's just not worth that much in a trade.

In any case, the current rumors have the Yankees sending Mark Melancon and Jimmy Paredes to Houston. If so, I suspect it's a reasonable deal. Melancon could become a useful reliever, but as far as young relievers go, he's not high on New York's list. Paredes is a C prospect but still too far from the big leagues to really have a good read on him.

Anyway, I hope these rumors are true, not because it would be a good deal (it seems pretty balanced to me), but because when I heard the rumors initially, I was scared half to death that the Yankees would actually give up a top 10 type prospect, which (again) would be a ridiculous overpay for a few months of Lance Berkman at this stage in his career and with his salary. That does not appear to be the case. Phew.

** UPDATE ** It now appears that the Astros would pitch $4M in as well. That pretty much makes the deal as even as it could be.

Yankees I loved to watch

2010-07-29T19:49:00.000-07:00

For no reason and in no particular order, here is a list of Yankees that I've loved to watch play:*

Derek Jeter: I could watch him shoot the ball to right field all day.
Robby Cano: When he's right, he makes everything look so easy.
Gary "Ultimate Team Player" Sheffield: An ass, but probably the scariest looking swing I've ever seen.
Nick Swisher: If he and Brett Gardner were rookie space marines, Nick would be the naive, amped-up show-off who can't wait to get into the action and kick some alien ass; Brett would be the taciturn, duty-first jarhead. One of them would get eaten by a giant space bug on their first mission and the other would spend the rest of the film learning to deal with the tragedy. Also, Jeter would be the veteran field commander with the stern demeanor who actually deeply cares about his men. Yes, I have thought too much about this.
Alex Rodriguez: I've spent so much time defending the guy that I enjoy his every success.
Mariano Rivera: Death.
Mike Mussina: So under-appreciated. Wish we could have got you that ring.
Ted Lilly: One of those guys I just liked for no apparent reason.
Joba: We'll always have 2007.
Phil Hughes: Keeping my fingers crossed for the future.
Edwar Ramirez: Does he win the worst pitcher with the best pitch competition? If he had two more miles per hour on his fastball, he'd have been unhittable.
Bobby Abreu: Never seen a guy work the count full from 0-2 so much. If I had a list of Yankees I hated to watch play, he'd make that list too for his fielding.
El Duque: There was something just so magically old school about his pitching.

* NB: Not the same as a list of favorite Yankees.

Dear Broadcasters

2010-07-29T19:44:00.000-07:00

Dear Broadcasters,

Please stop giving us players' batting statistics against a particular team as if it were actionable information. Batters do not hit against teams. They hit against individual pitchers.

That is all.

John

Enjoying baseball

2010-07-26T07:30:00.000-07:00

Every now and then, you watch a baseball game that reminds you why you love it so much. Last night's Cardinals-Cubs game was one such game. It had just about everything you could want: power, speed, good defense, plays on the bases, pitchers working out of jams, clutch hitting, strategy, and extra innings.

Hell, I even though that the broadcast crew was fantastic. Orel Hershiser and Bobby V. engaged the viewer all evening with information that is not available with a simple Google search. Orel talked about pitching strategy and mechanics. Bobby emphasized little managerial considerations that might not occur to the viewer otherwise. There were a couple inevitable rough spots, but all in all they delivered a package head and shoulders above normal color commentary.

There's really no way to describe how sublime it is to simply kick back and watch two teams play an exciting regular season baseball game. It's exciting, but not tense. It makes you smile, but not leap for joy. It's engaging, but not riveting. It was perfect.

What am I missing?

2010-06-10T05:22:00.000-07:00

Rob Neyer has been one of the few people defending Bud Selig's decision not to overturn Jim Joyce's safe call. Here he quotes Craig Wright who I will also quote:

You now know that the Commissioner is not going to change the call, which is absolutely the right decision. That would have been totally unprecedented and it would not really be in the spirit of the broad powers given to the Commissioner. The rules are very clear that this decision is to be the judgment of the umpire at that point in the game. What if it had been the other way around, that umpire Jim Joyce had called the batter out but the replay showed he was safe? Would you take away the perfect game and replay the game from that point somewhere down the road? No, of course not.

I love Rob and usually agree with him, but I do not understand people who are hiding behind the precedent argument.

First, as noted by Keith Olbermann, league officials have overruled umpires' calls on the field in the past. They've even done it when it means erasing the results of games and replaying them from the point of the bad call. Pine tar game, anyone? So the idea that this is without precedent is nonsense. You may not like the precedent, but it's already there.

Second, it's easy for the commish to overturn this call without establishing unwanted precedent. Simply say that you reserve the right to overturn any call that would not require the game to be replayed and would not alter the outcome of the game. There! Simple! The number of situations when this would apply are limited by definition to those situations when what's at stake is merely of historical interest and not of importance to the outcome of the game.

Note that this kind of rule means that you would not reverse the incorrect out call that preserves a perfect game. And that's fine. People clearly understand the difference between overturning a call that means a game has to be replayed and the outcome potentially changed and overturning a call that has none of these implications.

So I ask people who are using the precedent argument: what the hell am I missing?

lolwut?

2010-06-08T16:26:00.000-07:00

This is the only proper reaction to Stephen Strasburg's curveball.

A simple formula

2010-05-31T22:16:00.001-07:00

Here's how to calculate perception of Derek Jeter's defensive value:

Take a reasonably objective measurement of Jeter's defensive value.
Negate it.
Report this result as Jeter's true defensive value.

Seriously, how else to explain this article? Here's the summary on ESPN's front page:

It's been on New York's mind for a while now. Derek Jeter is getting older -- and his defense has seen better days. Is it finally time to talk position switch?

Here's a slice of the article itself:

The recent stories and rumblings have harped once again on Jeter's range. The sabermetricians are out there again, taunting Jeter with their numbers.

The statistics say Jeter is still going to his right fine, but in the early part of the season, he was having more trouble going to his left.

Remember the recent Sunday night Mets game, in which two balls to his left rolled under his glove? Those helped lower his plus-minus rating, according to Baseball Info Solutions (which looks at how often balls in play are turned into outs), to minus-7 on balls hit to the left of the typical shortstop's spot.

He's since improved that to minus-3, a slight drop from last season. Going left has been an issue for Jeter before -- one he's improved upon greatly after posting ratings of minus-25, minus-10 and minus-14 from 2005 to 2007. The early struggles this year again raised questions.

Note the common trick of taking a small sample, making it even smaller, and then casually noting that once you add the data you removed back in, things don't look as extreme as you want them to, though none if it should matter at all anyway given the sample size involved. And let's just brush away the whole oh-by-the-way-his-defense-has-been-improving-for-the-last-couple-years thing. Classic. Also, is going to his left all that matters? Who cares about one facet of his defense? It's the whole package that matters.

Anyways, according to the UZR numbers at Fangraphs, Derek Jeter's defense has not seen better days. This is thus far Jeter's second best season defensively on a rate basis. Last year was his best. So why is it that now that defensive metrics are actually showing Jeter to be a net positive on defense the media have decided the time has come to bring up his defense as a negative? After all the years of praising his defense when the number showed it was not great, it's now time to make an issue out of it? What gives?

The answer, of course, is that it is driving the Derek Jeter contract story. The Captain's contract is up at the end of this year and he's not getting any younger. This is a legitimate story and a big question and concern for the Yankees. Still, I would prefer if the real reason, risk associated with aging, were driving the story and not a generic-yet-somehow-still-sensationalist take on how a shortstop normally ages. Jeter is not normal. Let's not simply break out the boilerplate aging story because we're too lazy to tell the real one.

A simple formula to calculate perception of Derek Jeter

2010-05-31T22:16:00.000-07:00

Gardenhire gets it

2010-05-15T09:26:00.000-07:00

So. Last night, Alex Rodriguez hit a come from behind grand slam in the seventh inning after the Twins walked Mark Teixeira to face him. Good for A-Rod. Of course, the press couldn't help but report that the man that Ron Gardenhire brought in to face Alex, Matt Guerrier, had surrendered three home runs to A-Rod in only six at bats.

Now, you and I know that that stat is nearly irrelevant. A-Rod has faced a ton of pitchers and has hit a ton of home runs. He's gonna have some stats against pitchers like that purely by chance. And naturally, we expect the press not to understand this point. But Twins' manager Ron Gardenhire? Usually I expect managers to also not understand this point, but here's what he said after the game:

"We're always aware of the numbers," Gardenhire said. "I know he has been good against Matty. Sometimes you can't do anything about the numbers. We're going to go with our best pitcher at the time."

The best part about this quote is that Gardenhire didn't say "we went with out best pitcher." He said, "We're going to go with our best pitcher." He wasn't rationalizing his decision ex post. He was describing how the Twins make decisions and will continue to make decisions ex ante. My respect for Ron Gardenhire has grown.

Back in the saddle

2010-05-10T19:27:00.000-07:00

After an extended weekend of Yankee baseball, I feel like I finally have my baseball legs under me again. Some thoughts:

I'm really fine with Joba in the bullpen. This may surprise some. However, the Yanks did what I wanted them to do: they gave Joba a real chance to start and he just didn't seize the day. They've only got five starting pitcher slots and so it's time to give Phil Hughes a chance. I have no problem with that. But:
Let's not kid ourselves, this is emphatically not the same Joba that everyone remembers, despite all the assertions to the contrary from ESPN's crew this evening. A few years ago, Joba hit triple digits out of the pen. Tonight, he was 95-98. That's great, but it's not awesome. More importantly though, his slider is just not the same pitch. To my eye, his slider a couple years ago had a brutal, slashing, darting late action. It was hard, heavy, and just bored in on batters' feet. The pitch he was throwing tonight was nothing like that. It was a decent change of pace from his fastball: an 86-88 MPH pitch with good break, but much more arching than biting. With that stuff, Joba can be a good relief pitcher for many years, and maybe be a great one for a few, but he's not gonna be 2007 Joba with it.
Magglio Ordonez really bailed Jim Leyland out with his nice catch in the eighth. Leyland, in my opinion, really turned in a headscratching performance managing his pen. I thought extending Joel Zumaya into the eight was fine, but then I thought he was only doing it for one batter, since the next two guys were a lefty and switch hitter. Zumaya faces the righty, finishes with 25 pitches, and then Coke gets the next two. Then you can get Valverde to close it. Easy. Instead, Leyland had Zumaya go after the righty, lefty, and switch hitter. He got none of them out, and so Leyland ended up extending Zumaya too far, burning an extra pitcher on top of Zumaya, Coke, and Valverde, and got bad matchups to show for it. Bizarre. Why extend Zumaya so far without a reasonable backup plan?
Small sample size disease lives. ESPN is doing a nice job introducing viewers to some more saberesque concepts this year, but it's just amazing how much people continue to treat 100 plate appearances as meaningful. They just aren't. *sigh* That said, when Bill Simmons announces that he's aboard the sabermetric bandwagon, it makes you realize that we've come a long, long way.
I've given a lot of thought to my baseball fandom over the last few months. Work and other interests (video games, economics) have crowded out a lot of my baseball consumption. There's nothing wrong with that; I love my job (and video games and economics), but since I only write a baseball blog, it means that I just don't have a lot about which to blog. I've come to two realizations. First, I think all the analytical low-hanging fruit is gone in sabermetrics. There is a lot of awesome work being done out there in the sabermetric community, but it now takes ten times as long to fully understand all of it, not to mention actually doing it. I think this is a normal progression for most fields of scientific inquiry. Anyway, I just don't have that kind of time anymore, if I ever did (or maybe I'm just not as motivated to understand it). Because of this, I find myself just wanting to watch baseball, unencumbered by the feeling that I'm falling behind the curve. I'm not quite there yet; I really felt naked watching the game tonight, realizing that I didn't know any of the relevant analytical measures for the players involved or even just basic baseball news from the last few weeks. It was odd. I haven't been in that position in years. I haven't switched into a state where I can just check news and stats without being compelled to also read for a few hours about the latest research. I've lumped the two together for so long that when one goes, the other goes with it. But it didn't matter. Baseball is still awesome even when you don't know Austin Jackson's WAR or Jose Valverde's Fair ERA. I suppose I always knew this, but it's good to have it confirmed.
I should be going to a game Wednesday. I'm excited about that. I've got plans to see a game or two in Toronto and a game or two in Cleveland. I'm excited about that. Heck, there's an off chance I could get to New York or Chicago. That would be exciting. I'm just not that excited about baseball analysis right now, and I don't know why.

Ernie Harwell, 1918-2010

2010-05-04T19:08:00.000-07:00

"Whatever happens, I'm ready to face it," Harwell told The Associated Press on Sept. 4, 2009. "I have a great faith in God and Jesus."

Rest in peace, Ernie. Not many people hold a cherished spot in the memories of thousands and thousands of total strangers, but for me and so many others, you will always be the voice of baseball.

(Source)

It's prediction season...

2010-01-30T12:02:00.000-08:00

...so I want to link back to this old post of mine addressing the right way to interpret predicted performance. I'm sure some brilliant writer out there on the Internet can express this concept more clearly than I can, but I've not seen that article yet, so you're stuck with me linking to myself.

What caused the "Steroid" Era?

2010-01-26T07:22:00.001-08:00

That's the question that J.C. Bradbury asks in this post. If you've followed my thoughts on steroids here, you'll be familiar with his answer. Nonetheless, his post is worth reading as a concise, focused, and effective primer on what happened and why in the 1990s.

Valuing wins

2010-01-23T08:12:00.000-08:00

Baseball Prospectus' Matt Swartz posted a fantastic article this week on the valuation of player contracts in Major League Baseball:

If baseball free agents were in a typical, perfectly competitive market like those you see in the first chapter of your introductory economics textbooks, the price per win would have to be linear. Basic economic theory of perfectly competitive markets would say that anything other than the same price for all wins would create arbitrage opportunities where teams could perpetually trade their way to the top of the league.

Later on:

In the case of baseball free agents, there are two main reasons why the baseline’s assumptions don’t apply. First, these markets aren't thick enough that teams can sign and trade players so easily and quickly swap out players for others like investors can do with shares of Microsoft. There are only so many teams, and there are limits to making this kind of move in general. Second, you can't employ 60 Garret Andersons on a team and suddenly become the best team in baseball. There are only 25 roster spots, and only so many players can realistically get enough playing time to realize their true value.

This a subject that I've given a lot of thought lately, to the point where I may actually do some original research on the matter in the near future.

In any case, my intuition is that teams should pay disproportionately more for a seven win player than a five win, three win, or one win player. I have a hard time seeing a team trading Alex Rodriguez for ten or twelve players barely above replacement level unless they are also saving money in the deal. I think Matt's reasoning is spot on: there are only twenty-five roster spots. You can't show up with sixty one WAR players and expect to make the playoffs.

That being said, I think there are really two questions here:

What do teams pay for wins?
What should teams pay for wins?

Any approach that uses existing contracts as its basis, like Matt's, is going to end up answering question number one. I'm really more interested in question number two. Unfortunately, answering question number one is much easier: we have a whole lot of data on how players performed (and how they were expected to perform) and what they were paid. The question is essentially positive. Question number two is a normative question that involves a variety of assumptions about why teams pay players. I'm not going to delve into those here.

I'm not sure if Matt's article is subscriber only or not, but if it isn't, it is worth your time.

Twenty-five days until pitchers and catchers report!

**EDIT** I had originally misspelled Matt's last name. I've fixed that.

A brief basketball note

2010-01-18T08:48:00.000-08:00

I'm not a huge basketball fan, but I do enjoy the occasional University of Michigan game. This was the case on Sunday when I watched Michigan beat the University of Connecticut. It was a very good game and an important win for U of M.

However:

After the game was over, University of Michigan fans rushed the court to celebrate. This is embarrassing. The University of Michigan is not some small town university that just pulled of a once in a lifetime upset. We are large university that has no excuse for not being at least a minor contender in any major sport year in and year out.* That the basketball program has suffered as it has over the last decade is shameful.

UConn was ranked 15th. 15th! The University of Michigan itself was ranked that highly earlier this year. This is a Michigan team that is viewed to be underachieving! We made the second round of the NCAA tournament last year! More was expected this year. This wasn't some scrappy underdog rising up to take down an elite, once-in-a-lifetime, superstar team. It wasn't even a program in an off year beating a hated rival. It was a non-conference game at home against a good quality opponent. We should expect to beat a team like UConn. Indeed, here is the AP's first sentence in their writeup (emphasis added):

Michigan looked like the team it expected to be while No. 15 Connecticut struggled -- again.

Rushing the court sends the message that you viewed your team as massively inferior to the team you just beat. It says that you view the victory as one of the greatest victories in school history. It is something that should be reserved for wins that define an entire program, not wins that ought to be a matter of course for a team that should be in the NCAA tournament more often than not.

I sincerely hope that Michigan fans, especially the student fans, will learn how to behave as if they root for a team that aspires to be "the leaders and best," not just a bloated, underachieving, has-been in college basketball.

* Here pause and weep for the football program.

On making predictions

2010-01-16T08:33:00.000-08:00

If you're up for reading an economics post from the most verbose writer on the Internet, try this post from Scott Sumner.

Yes, but if we don’t have standards, if we aren’t going to hold people to their words, then what do we really have? Suppose I said; “I predict a major 20% to 30% drop in the S&P500 within the next 4 years. And if it doesn’t happen, but happens sometime later, I should still get credit.” Would you take me seriously? People don’t seem to understand that unless a prediction is both accurate and timely, it really isn’t of much value.

I would phrase this differently. I would say that the timeliness of a prediction is part of its accuracy.

If I predicted every year from 1919 through 2004 that the Boston Red Sox would win the World Series, should anyone give me credit for a successful prediction in 2004 despite being wrong in each and every other year?

The answer, of course, is that it depends. If my predictions were based on an objective model with independently demonstrated accuracy, then, yes, I should be given credit. Of course, this is an extremely unlikely scenario, since we would probably never be able to identify a model that fails in a such a spectacular fashion as this one as actually being accurate. Nevertheless, it's the process that's important, not the results, because the process is what we can control ex ante. If I am known to have the correct (or most correct, given available information) prediction process, then the results don't matter; I have made the best prediction I could.*

On the other hand, if my predictions are unsystematic and wildly subjective, then I should be vigorously laughed at for making such predictions. I should receive no credit for a successful prediction in 2004. As the saying goes, "Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day." We don't give the stopped clock any credit for this.

I think most people know this intuitively, but I think a couple things happen that cause people to take unsystematic predictions more seriously than they ought to:

We have a cognitive bias that causes us to remember successful predictions more often than unsuccessful predictions. Unsuccessful predictions are everywhere. Successful predictions, especially successful predictions of really spectacular events, stand out to us. We then grant undue expert status to the successful predictor causing us to overweight his analysis in the future.
We are fooled into perceiving patterns and systems where none exist, giving us the illusion that we are operating systematically. For example, there were people who argued that the Yankees would never win a World Series with Alex Rodriguez for any number of reasons. Most if not all of the reasoning in these predictions involved extrapolating from small sets of data to proclaim large significant patterns. We see how well that worked out.

So you have to have a system, but you also have to let the system speak for itself. You can't say, "Well, I predicted the Red Sox would win sometime between 2000 and 2003, but they won in 2004... hey, I was pretty close!" If your system did not predict this, then you cannot call it a success because your system provided no useful information ex ante.

It's important to keep all of this in mind when you hear experts going on and on making wild predictions, whether those predictions are about baseball or economics. We must insist that we operate with in an objective, systematic framework or we will find ourselves falling victim to a whole host of epistemological charlatans and stopped clocks.

* Of course, the best way to evaluate or process is by the results it produces. A process that consistently produces poor results must eventually be rejected. The key is that any one outcome of a process is not sufficient evidence. We must have a large sample of unbiased outcomes before we can make a correct determination on the efficacy of a particular process.

**EDIT** See also: Robin Hanson. He's talking about economics, but the lessons are applicable everywhere.

Let's talk some baseball

2010-01-11T17:10:00.000-08:00

I'm starting to get my baseball juices flowing again. So here's some notes on some stuff that happened at some point in the past month or three:

The Hall of Fame gained a new member: Andre Dawson. I probably would not have voted for Dawson. Indeed, I've written against his candidacy in the past. Still, it isn't an atrocious choice. Nonetheless, the most positive development of this year's voting is that Bert Blyleven is now only five votes shy of enshrinement. It's highly likely he'll make it in next year and pass the title of "Most Clearly Deserving Player Not In The Hall of Fame" to someone else.
Mark McGwire admitted to using steroids during his career. I wish Mark would have said this to Congress five years ago. I don't know why he felt he could not. Nonetheless, his statement is one of the better ones you'll read on the subject, keeping in mind all of the problems that plague these sort of things. Even though it's been suspected for a long time that he used, it was good to see him come forward more or less of his own volition. See also: Rob Neyer's take on the situation.
The Yankees traded for Curtis Granderson. There's not much to say: in short, it was, in baseball terms, a good deal for New York, though the nature of it did prolong my apathy by a few more days. I have two essentially incompatible wishes: for the Yankees to win a gazillion World Series and for them to do it with a ton of homegrown players. And since the latter wish is dependent on the former, they might as well do their best at winning as many World Series as they can and let my feelings on the nature of their victories sort themselves out.
Ditto for Javier Vazquez, though I will root harder for him than Granderson, given his shoddy treatment in New York the first time around.
There are only thirty-seven days until Christmas in February. I cannot even begin to tell you how much I'm looking forward to watching a baseball game with no implications other than the sublime meaning in taking the extra base, turning a double play, hitting a triple into the gap, painting the corner with wicked curveball, drinking an extra beer, putting Stadium Mustard on a grilled Kosher hot dog, and doing nothing all weekend but basking in baseball, glorious baseball.

A world without Ernie Harwell is a worse world...

2009-12-30T10:28:00.000-08:00

...so we should probably start steeling ourselves for it. In the meantime, here's yet more evidence, if in puff piece form, of how awesome Ernie really is.

The Colts suck

2009-12-27T17:32:00.001-08:00

Apologies for another football post, but...

This.

I'm sick and tired of the idea that somehow winning the Super Bowl is so important that a team would risk an undefeated season for the smallest hint of an improvement in their chances of winning one. Have these people gone totally crazy?

Why play sports? Why compete? If you're any kind of athlete it's for one reason: because you love the competition itself. It's the striving to be the best, the greatest, the undisputed champions that makes the competition great. No one plays a sport with the opportunity to become an alright player. No one plays a sport to go 9-7 or 84-78. What Olympic sprinter dreams of setting the second fastest time in the history of the world?

No athlete does this. Not one. Not even the scrub wide receiver on a Class D high school football team who only got to play because the team was too small to cut anyone (trust me).

So why, why, why do professional football teams insist that winning a single season championship is worth more than being able to say that you accomplished THE GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT IN THE HISTORY OF YOUR SPORT?!?!?!??! It's absolute madness.

I just cannot get over this. A Super Bowl title is given out, well, every single year. Yeah, it's great. Yes, you strive to win one. Yes, it's every team's ultimate goal, but only because going undefeated and winning it all is so damn hard that teams don't even consider it realistic enough to make it a goal in the first place! It's like saying, "Man, my goal was to save up my money and buy a Cadillac, so I guess I'll turn down this chance to own the freaking Batmobile." Why blow it when you have the chance?

And to blow it for almost nothing! The advantage you get by resting your best players, if it even exists, is nearly infinitesimal. Yes, they might have gotten hurt, but the odds of that happening are stunningly long. And if they did, where's the shame in getting up to the podium and saying, "You know what? We had a shot at immortality, at accomplishing the ultimate feat in our sport, at being the best there ever was, and we took it. It didn't work out. But we played our best every minute of every game this year and we can walk away from this knowing that we didn't leave anything on the table."

If there is such a thing as football justice, the Colts will lose in the first round. We have simply got to start the meme that resting your players and punting on undefeated seasons hurts your football karma, because if we ever needed a good bout of irrationality, getting professional teams to actually try to reach the true pinnacle of their sport would be a good place to start.

This is a shitty, shitty day for sports fans. The Colts ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Baseball apathy

2009-12-23T14:26:00.000-08:00

So I found myself in a very weird place a month and a half ago: I suddenly found myself not that interested in baseball. I haven't been to this place in over a decade. In fact, I haven't been there since I started caring about sports in general, sometime in middle school.

But more strange and more troubling than just my general nonchalance vis-à-vis baseball was the fact that the event that triggered this creeping malaise was my favorite team winning the World Series.

This is not how it's supposed to be. Apathy is not the reaction sought for by one who invests so much emotionally in something as unimportant as baseball. Indeed, the realization that I was not super excited about his development disconcerted me greatly. What the hell is wrong with me? I've been asking myself that question for weeks now.

It's not as though I don't care greatly about the success of the New York Yankees. If you've read this blog, or watched a Yankee game with me, or needled me about the Red Sox, you know this isn't true. Indeed, I even had an email conversation with a friend in the last year in which I admitted that the first three things that came to mind as things for which I would trade time off my life were all Yankee-related events (specifically: winning the 2001 World Series, winning the 2004 ALCS, and getting Mike Mussina his 27th out).

Furthermore, there were times during this postseason when I was literally sick to my stomach because of the tension. I enjoyed the whole postseason thoroughly. Why didn't I get the emotional payoff I expected?

The first thing that occurred to me was that my predominant immediate reaction to the Yankee win was relief. Relief that we didn't blow the Series; relief that we had vindicated our position as the best team in baseball; relief that A-Rod and CC had put those inane monkeys on their backs to rest. I think that this relief was in part due to the nature of the final game (it wasn't close) and in part due to the nature of the Yankees' season as a whole (again, it wasn't close). By the time it was over, it was so blatantly obvious that the Yankees were the best team in baseball that winning the World Series was almost the thing that they had to do so that they wouldn't embarrass themselves. Actually winning was practically anticlimactic, especially given the nature of the final game.

Then there was the timing of the Yankee World Series "drought:" it lasted exactly as long as Mike Mussina's tenure as a New York Yankee. No more. No less. This was and is absolutely maddening to me, because even though I know it's just random, it still seems so cosmically unfair. This ground on me for days after the World Series win.

The Yankee victory also meant the end of baseball for 2009. That's a depressing thought, even if the Yankees went out the best way possible. It also meant that I would now have to hear about how my team "bought" a World Series and (worse) that I would have to admit to myself that the accusation was essentially true.

I've spent so much time preaching about how there's no moral component to baseball, no higher power at work directing the fates of the players, no overarching story waiting to be told, no reason why our guys "deserved" to win or had more "heart" or "wanted it more" that when my guys actually win I can't self-assuredly pat myself on the back about how awesome I am for rooting for "the good guys."

None of which is to say that I wasn't happy when they won. I was. Nor is it to say that I haven't experienced the delirium of winning a World Championship recently: I was ecstatic for weeks when the Giants beat the Patriots.

So why? Why did I react the way I did to the 2009 New York Yankees' World Championship? Why did I sit on the edge of my seat all throughout October if not for this? Why did I follow the Yankees day in and day out all year if not for this? What the hell was I expecting to happen?

I don't know. I don't think I'm ever gonna know. And that's the trouble. I've spent weeks dwelling on this and I don't have an answer.

And so that's how I found myself in this place of not caring about baseball. Indeed, I've almost dreaded baseball news because it reminds me of the weird place I'm in.

I have thoughts on the Yankees offseason, but I'm gonna save them for another time, a time, hopefully, when I will actually care.

Joe Mauer

2009-11-24T07:35:00.000-08:00

Hey, at least 27 of 28 MVP voters made the right decision.

Tex finishing ahead of Derek Jeter is disappointing. Is Derek Jeter the most underrated overrated player ever? I think the answer has to be "yes," if you can parse what that even means.

A surprising find

2009-11-23T22:37:00.001-08:00

Bill Simmons, of all people, makes the best argument that I've seen against Bill Belichick's fourth down decision:

Given these realities, if you're feeding me "Here's what happened in this situation historically" numbers, shouldn't we be looking at the data for two-point conversions?

After all, this was essentially a two-point pass play. The Patriots went five wide, stuck Tom Brady in the shotgun, shortened the field and tried to find a quick-hit mismatch. Sure sounds like a two-point play. So what's the recent history of teams passing for a two-point conversion on the road? Peter Newmann from ESPN Research crunched those numbers for me.

2009: 9-for-28, .321 (overall); 3-for-10, .300 (road).
2008: 23-for-52, .442 (overall); 13-for-32, .406 (road).
2007: 14-for-38, .368 (overall); 6-for-23, .261 (road).

That's a great way to look at it. I wish I'd thought of it, although I would much rather see the numbers for all two point conversions on the road, not just passing attempts on two point conversions. Bill's rationale for using passing attempts only is decent (the Pats didn't have a running back in the back field), but it's still relevant because the Colts have to make decisions about personnel before they see how the Pats line up. It's a minor gripe though.

I will also note that the two are not strictly identical, since the Pats can theoretically score a touchdown on the fourth down conversion attempt but not on the two point conversion attempt, but the difference in win probability between converting the fourth down and scoring a touchdown is not large. In any case, the two point conversion a good proxy and the numbers are pretty bad. That's a good data point against my argument.

I'd be remiss though if I didn't chastise Bill for this:

But Indy had already started and completed two long touchdown drives in the fourth quarter against a good defense. Had the Patriots punted, Indy would have had to pull off a third long touchdown drive to win the game. I asked Peter Newmann to research the number of times a team started and completed three touchdown drives in the fourth quarter to erase a double-digit deficit and win an NFL game since 2005. Here's how the list looked before that fourth-and-2 call.

The list, naturally, looks really, really bad. Of course, Bill is overlooking a pretty obvious flaw in his analysis: the question should not be:

"How often do teams pull off three touchdown drives in the fourth quarter to erase a double-digit deficit and win an NFL game?"

The question should be:

"How often do teams pull off three touchdown drives in the fourth quarter to erase a double-digit deficit and win an NFL game given that they have already pulled off two touchdown drives in the fourth quarter?"

I'm not gonna argue that drives in the NFL are IID, but there's no way that it's not relevant information that the Colts had already accomplished two thirds of Bill's criteria when the time came to make a decision. This is basically the argument that the odds of a coin coming up heads after it has come up heads twice in a row are only one in eight because the odds of a coin coming heads three times in a row are one in eight. No, the odds of a coin coming up heads three times in a row are only one in eight if we have no other information. If we know it's already come up heads twice in a row, then the odds are one in two. This is basic stuff.

Furthermore, given that pulling off two touchdown drives under the circumstances is (probably) rare, you probably aren't drawing on a huge sample once you pare it down correctly. Hell, you can even make the argument that the fact that the Colts had already done it twice is evidence that they are not more likely to do it a third time, not less.

In any case, the two point conversion proxy analysis is a great idea. I still stand by my original conclusion that Belichick made the right decision, but I am now less confident that I am correct.

Victory

2009-11-18T07:26:00.000-08:00

Sorry, all you non-VORPies out there, the nerds just won:

“I thought that could push him over the top, because his won-loss record was way better than mine,” Greinke said. “But I’m also a follower, since Brian Bannister’s on our team, of sabermetric stuff and going into details of stats about what you can control.”

And later on:

“That’s pretty much how I pitch, to try to keep my FIP as low as possible,” Greinke said.

Yeah, that's Zack Greinke, AL Cy Young award winner. And, yeah, that's FIP: Fielding Independent Pitching, a geek stat that estimates a pitchers ERA independent from his fielder's ability.

Players are starting to adopt this stuff. They're starting to learn from it and use it to make them better players. How long until mainstream sports analysts catch up?

(Hat tip: Rob Neyer).

A quick football post

2009-11-15T21:30:00.001-08:00

If you didn't watch Indianapolis rally in the final four minutes to beat New England tonight, you missed a fantastic game. More importantly, you missed an amazing decision by Bill Belichick. Here's the setup:

The Patriots had a 13 point lead with just over four minutes to play. Peyton Manning, unfazed, marched the Colts down the field for a touchdown in less than two minutes without using any of Indy's three remaining time outs. With the two minute warning also remaining, Indy decided to kick it deep to New England and trust their defense to get a stop. New England could not convert a third and two from their own 28, and so were facing a fourth and two with just over two minutes remaining, deep in their own territory.

Belichick decided to go for it.

I loved this call. Absolutely loved it. Let's look at the possible outcomes. If you punt, you give Peyton Manning the ball with what amounts to an eternity for him: over two minutes with two clock stoppages (the two minute warning and one timeout). Yeah, you're probably still likely to win, but he's Peyton Manning. Furthermore, there's some evidence that your defense is worn out. I really think this is a shitty position to be in. Maybe that's just the fan in me, but no one wants to see their team playing Peyton Manning when all he needs is one touchdown drive to seal the game.

If you go for the first down conversion and you make it, the game is basically over. You might need to get one more first down, but if you don't and still have to punt, the two minute warning will be long past and the Colts will have burned their last time out. That is an astronomically harder situation for Manning. Furthermore, you've been having your way with Indy's defense all night. The probability of converting that fourth and two is extremely high.

But most importantly, the cost of not converting is just not that high, in my opinion. You're talking about a forty yard difference compared to punting, but that forty yards is highly likely to be made up by Manning in less than a minute, given the way defense is played in that situation. Furthermore, because you are up by six, even if the Colts get the touchdown, it's impossible for them to end up ahead by more than two points. This means that you could win the game on a field goal.

In other words, the worst case scenario for the Pats was not that Indy would get a touchdown. The worst case scenario is that Indy would get a touchdown with no time left on the clock. This scenario is far more likely if you punt than if you fail to pick up the first down (and of course, getting the first down is the ultimate win).

This call took a lot of balls and I think it was the right one. I just don't think that the forty yards you'd net on the punt matter all that much in that situation. Peyton Manning is just so highly likely to make those yards up and still have plenty of time to win it that the price of failure is easily offset by the reward of success.

It didn't work, of course. Indeed, New England then made what I think it was their truly critical mistake (other than wasting their timeouts earlier in the half): they let Indy run time of the clock by tackling Joseph Addai inside the five yard line with about a minute to go. At that point, your best chance to win is to let Addai score and play for the field goal. You just are not that likely to deny Peyton Manning and the Colts with four cracks at the winning touchdown inside the five. Far better to let Tom Brady have a chance to get into field goal position at that point.

Anyway, I wish Belichick's gambit had succeeded because it would make other coaches less reticent to try the same thing. I firmly believe that NFL coaches treat fourth downs too conservatively. Belichick lost this time, but hopefully he's not naive enough to let the result of one play (and the ensuing media backlash) alter his conviction. In the long run, that style of play will pay off.

**EDIT** I should note that the call should have worked. The receiver on the play, Kevin Faulk, bobbled the ball and thus did not receive forward progress beyond the first down marker. Had he not bobbled the ball, he would have gotten the first down. Furthermore, he still may have converted it, but the spot by the officials was not favorable to New England and with no timeouts they were unable to challenge the decision.

**EDIT #2** According to this website, the failure to convert knocked New England from a 77% chance of winning to a 66% chance of winning. If we assume that New England would have won 90% of the time if they had converted, we find that New England needs to convert that play only 50% of the time for it to be the right call. I guarantee that New England is likely to convert that play better than 50% of the time. Almost any NFL team is likely to convert that play better than 50% of the time, and this is one of the best offenses in the league. It was a good call.

**EDIT #3** The website linked above put up this post also defending Belichick's decision.

World Championship Thoughts

2009-11-04T22:29:00.001-08:00

Wow. I've got a whole bunch of actual non-Yankee baseball thoughts kicking around in my head, but I think I'll save those for a later date.
This is the fifth Yankee championship that I've experienced. The win in 1996 was amazing simply because it was so unexpected. The Yankees really haven't been the underdogs since. In 1998, winning was something that had to happen. You can't win 114 games and not win the World Series. The victory was as much about not screwing up as it was about making the case for being the greatest team in history. In 1999 and 2000, we were building a dynasty. This time I can't really describe how I feel. My perspective on baseball is completely different from nine years ago. The Yankees were the best team in baseball this year, but that's been the case for many of the years we didn't win. Winning here is as much justification of the 103 wins during the regular season as it is anything else. I also feel vindicated personally for seeing my faith in A-Rod (which is to say my faith in talent over superstitious mumbo-jumbo) pay off. I feel great for him.
Part of me is also annoyed that we managed to win in 2000 and 2009, but couldn't manage a win in 2001-2008, which happen to correspond to exactly the years Mike Mussina was pitching for us. I know it's just a freak coincidence, completely random, but it's still sad to me that we managed to completely bookend his stay in New York. I'm sure that I'm exactly one of two Yankee fans that feel this way, but I loved me the Moose. Sorry, Mike.
Joe Girardi is going to get plenty of accolades for his managing because he won. Some of those will be deserved: going with only three starting pitchers, aggressively using Mariano Rivera, using Damaso Marte over Phil Coke; others will not: benching Nick Swisher, burning through relief pitchers like crazy, overmanaging for small advantages at the expense of the big picture. It's important to remember that all these things were true ex ante. They aren't any more or less true simple because the Yankees won.
Fox sucks. It's just amazing how much advertising they can cram into each broadcast. I can't get over how progressively absurd their "Keys to the Game"-type feature kept getting. They had a handful of good moments, but mostly it was all lost in a sea of advertising.
You couldn't ask for a better face for your team than Derek Jeter. It was sweet seeing him hoist the trophy again. I can only imagine how sweet it feels to be back on top after all that early success and the subsequent failures. And as usual, he made me happy to be a fan of him and of the New York Yankees. I get tired of the doe-eyed fawning over Jeter that seems to never cease, but I really do love the guy, not because he's clutch or calm or a great leader. Nah, I love him because he's a great player who doesn't seem to have the affectations of one. His personality is such that he makes you think that he's the guy you'd be if you were as awesome as him at baseball. I couldn't even begin to identify with Derek Jeter, but Derek Jeter makes me think that I can. Who knows why that is (I certainly don't), but whatever the reason, I can't not feel anything but awesome every time Derek talks about winning championships for the New York Yankees.
I'm tired. I got work tomorrow. I'll be digesting this one for weeks. But for now:

THE NEW YORK YANKEES ARE YOUR 2009 WORLD CHAMPIONS!

Quick World Series Thoughts

2009-11-02T20:35:00.001-08:00

A-Rod now holds the New York Yankees' RsBI record for a single postseason. No joke.
How can you give Cliff Lee the Player of the Game award for his Game 5 start? He pitched decently, but he only won because his team scored eight runs. I mean, WTF does Chase Utley have to do?
Speaking of Chase, at this point there's a decent chance that he could win the World Series MVP award without the Phillies winning the series. The Yanks are in an odd position where no one has really stood out. A-Rod has had big hits, but is still only hitting around .200. Damon's been great offensively, but a liability defensively (not that I expect the voters to care about that part). CC's pitched decently, but would probably need a good to great Game 7 to win it. It's a really funny situation.
From The Department Of Things That Mainstream Analysts Will Ignore While Lauding Derek Jeter, I couldn't help but notice that Cap'n Clutch hit into a devastating double play with two on and no one out trailing by three runs in the ninth inning today. It's just baseball, folks. There's nothing special about clutch situations in the postseason.
The Phillies forcing a Game 6 is good for baseball. You really can't keep having the World Series decided in five games or less year in and year out.
Is this the year that people will realize that home runs and doubles (as opposed to bunts and stolen bases) are what wins baseball games in October? I suspect not.

Further ALCS thoughts

2009-10-20T21:16:00.000-07:00

What a performance by A-Rod and CC Sabathia so far this postseason. There's not much I can really say. The media will do a fine job of lauding them without my help. But still: damn.
Good to finally have a bit of a laugher, though even still this game was tight and exciting until the eighth.
The bad umpiring (and man was it bad) continued in Game Four. Fortunately, two of the bad calls (the blown Swisher pick off and the blown Swisher tag up) mostly cancelled each other out, and the stunning what-the-hell-was-that-how-are-they-not-both-out call at third didn't lead to anything, but still... not great. I don't like the idea of using instant replay NFL-style. I don't like the idea of adding challenges to the strategy of the game. No, baseball needs two things: a lighting fast, deadly accurate ball-strike system that can be invisibly relayed to the home plate umpire who will call them as normal, and a dedicated replay umpire with the ability to overturn any call at any time without the field umpires having to stop play. These two measures would be completely invisible as long as the right calls are being made. The game would look and feel the same. Nothing would change, except for the quality of the umpiring.
I don't know why the Yankees have Freddy Guzman on the roster. Joe Girardi prefers to use Gardner, even when he's pinch running for the DH, negating Gardner's defensive value. The Yanks clearly don't want Guzman hitting, since they chose Cervelli over him in Game Three. They don't want him playing left field, since they chose to lose the DH rather than play him there. Eric Hinske, on the other hand, would actually have been useful in almost 1,000,001 situations in Game Three. Another baffling management situation from the Yanks.
I wonder if the mainstream media will pick up on just how much this postseason has demonstrated the importance of hitting home runs and not giving them up. The ability to strike at any time is so much more important than any of the "small ball" skills even in a close game, but only long ball skills let you put the game well out of reach.
I hereby authorize use of the term "Girardiproof" to describe games in which a starting pitcher carries his team for eight or more innings while his offense accumulates a lead of five or more runs. Apologies to anyone who may have already started using this term. What a relief not to see Joe deploying his quick hook over and over and over again tonight.

ALCS Thoughts

2009-10-17T22:28:00.000-07:00

Bullet point style!

Man, Game 2 was amazing. It really felt like one of the Yankee playoff games from 1996-2000.
I can't decide if Joe Girardi is some kind of mad bullpen genius or a poor bullpen manager. His pattern of plowing through relief pitchers even in the face of extra innings is maddening, but on the other hand, it's also working. It's entirely possible that the way the probabilities break down, the right play is to burn through pitchers in an attempt to keep the game scoreless and accept that you will basically have to forfeit if the game goes too long. I'm not sure that's the case, but if Joe's strategy keeps working, I'll have to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Tim McCarver's impassioned defense of Derek Jeter from all the people out there proclaiming him "done" last year really rubbed me the wrong way. First, no one claimed he was "done;" no one sane anyway. Second, most of the performance analysts who were saying he was on the decline were at the front of the line to talk about how great he's been this year. Third, many, many people, even in the mainstream media, have talked about how much better his defense has been this year. This implies that it was worse in previous years.
Therefore, it was fantastically ironic that both Joe and Tim agreed that if you wanted a groundball hit at one guy with two outs in the ninth of seventh game of the World Series, it would have to be Derek Jeter. Not only does this bizarre and idiotic platitude not have anything to do with Jeter's range, but later in the game he booted a groundball hit right at him. I guess one out with a runner on first in the eighth inning of a tie game in the ALCS isn't clutch enough for him.
In that same vein, let me be the first to point out that Alex Rodriguez is not clutch, not in any meaningful way. Yes, there is evidence that clutch skill exists, but the effect is very, very tiny. No, Alex is mostly the same player in the postseason that he always has been: one of the greatest of all time. He's more likely to succeed in clutch situations mostly because he's simply so much more likely to succeed in general.
I understand why the Angels were so mad about the ruling that Erick Aybar didn't touch second base. The so-called "neighborhood play" is really common. Nonetheless, he didn't even make a hint of an attempt to touch the base, nor did he ever come close to doing so. Furthermore, he did this on purpose in order to not have to deal with the oncoming runner. There has to be a line drawn somewhere, and I think that this play was on the other side of line. You've got to at least pretend to try to touch the base. Yes, I know I'm biased because I'm a Yankees fan.
Returning to Joe Girardi's bullpen usage, I do want to give him special props for his usage of Mariano Rivera. Mo pitched efficiently, and Joe used this efficiency to stretch Mo out over 2.2 high leverage innings. Brilliant. Now let's work on doing the same with Phil Hughes.
Jerry Hairston actually screwed up when he scored the game winning run. If Chone Figgins had simply picked the ball up cleanly after Aybar threw it away, Hairston would have been dead meat at home plate, turning a bases loaded, one out situation into a second and third, two out situation. That's a critical mistake. Aybar's throw was bad, but Figgins' failure to simply pick the ball up was just as costly, if not more so. The Angel's screwed up twice on that play and Hairston was the benefactor.
Bobby Abreu played the right field wall really well in these two games. Where the hell was that last year, Bob?

Misleading journalism

2009-10-13T08:55:00.001-07:00

I don't know why, but for some very poor reason, I found myself reading this piece by Wallace Matthews of the New York Post.

There's no need to go through [Alex Rodriguez's] October numbers once again except to say that he did more in the three games of the Division Series against the Twins than he had done in his four previous Yankees postseasons, at least after Game 3 of the 2004 ALCS.

Let's try to forget for a moment that this piece is the predictable response on a good series by A-Rod: a backhanded compliment designed to remind the reader of how much A-Rod sucks and to set up the story line in case A-Rod plays poorly in the future. Baseball writers just can't get enough of the "A-Rod is a choker" story, so they're gonna try to keep it alive at all costs.

But let's try to forget about that for a second. The real highlight of the above quote is the way Matthews deliberately skews the reader's perception of Alex Rodriguez's past postseason performance with the New York Yankees. You see that last dangling clause there" The one that says, "at least after Game 3 of the 2004 ALCS"? That phrase does three things to poison the well against A-Rod:

Conjure up memories of the 2004 ALCS, every Yankee fan's worst nightmare.
Sweep away games before Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS as being irrelevant to the discussion.
Leave the impression that the period before Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS only barely alters the argument.

There's only one problem: Matthew's claim is completely unsupportable if one considers the period he's trying to exclude! The impression that he's deliberately attempting to leave is completely at odds with the facts, and it's not close! A-Rod's performance before Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS was incredible. He hit .421 against the Twins in the ALDS that year with three doubles, a home run, three runs scored, three RsBI, and one very clutch stolen base. In the first three games of the ALCS, Alex accumulated six hits, including a home run and two doubles, scored seven runs, and picked up three RsBI.

So, yeah, if we ignore some minor games where A-Rod got fourteen hits, five doubles, two home runs, ten runs scored, and six RsBI, then his series against the Twins in 2009 obviously dwarfs all his previous accomplishments.

Also, it should be noted that in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, Alex hit a two run home run in the third inning while the game was scoreless. You'd have been forgiven for thinking that Alex was a one man postseason wrecking crew at that time. He didn't start playing poorly until Game 5.

Remember: never let facts get in the way of a good story.

Postseason thoughts

2009-10-10T08:20:00.000-07:00

Don't be distracted by the media throng clamoring to tell you why it's different for A-Rod this time around. The story is not about how he' s more relaxed, more focused, having more fun, doing more of the little things, or feeling less pressure. The story is that anything can happen in a small sample. Given enough time, the real A-Rod was going to show up in the postseason, as he has in the past.
Sentences like these: (emphasis mine)
"With Weaver picking up right where Lackey left off for the Los Angeles Angels, not even Josh Beckett could keep the Boston Red Sox off the brink of playoff elimination."
"Erick Aybar followed Izturis' RBI single with a two-run triple during the Angels' two-out rally in the seventh to break up a stellar pitching duel between Weaver and Beckett, Boston's ace and most reliable playoff pitcher."
make me wonder if anyone actually paid attention to the postseason last year, when Beckett was stunningly awful and crushed the Red Sox' chances to win. As with A-Rod, the story with Josh Beckett is that he is very good pitcher when healthy, not that he has some magical postseason powers.
I've absolutely had it with Joe Girardi's bullpen management. He has a decent idea of who to pitch in particular situations, but he manages like any relief pitcher that throws more than five pitches must be removed from the game. Seriously, what the hell was he going to do if the Yanks hadn't won in the 11th last night? He had used every relief pitcher except Chad Gaudin! This is not uncommon. Girardi burns through pitchers in a quest to win the most marginal of advantages by matching up against hitters. It's got to stop. At the very least, your relievers must be able to through complete innings, sometimes even against both right and left handed hitters.
Baseball has an umpiring problem and it's getting embarassing. The biggest issue is with the erratic strike zone, but it's affecting every area of the game. You have to feel for the Twins, who got robbed of a potential lead in the 11th inning on maybe the worst call I've ever seen. Tigers fans will perhaps see this as poetic justice, but baseball needs to see it for what it is: a big, big problem that needs to be addressed in the offseason.
TBS has been a mixed bag for me broadcasting. I like that their HD broadcast has PitchTrax displayed for every pitch. They've gotten some great reaction shots from players. On the other hand, the commentating has been atrocious (and getting worse) and there isn't a single thing to which they won't attach an advertisement. *sigh*

Sportscaster laziness

2009-10-04T12:49:00.000-07:00

I think what mostly drives me crazy about sportscasters isn't so much that they do not see the baseball world like I do. There's room for healthy disagreement there. No, I think the thing that drives me crazy is that they are too often lazy in their analysis. Willing to fall back on clichés, they often slip into a sort of absurd autopilot in which certain events automatically trigger certain comments regardless of their correctness.

Here's the example that set this off. During the top of the ninth inning of today's game pitting the Tigers against the White Sox, the Tigers had a double play opportunity with a runner on first and no one out while protecting a two run lead. Mark Kotsay hit a groundball to Adam Everett. Everett went to second for the force, but Placido Polanco's relay to first was slightly offline, and Miguel Cabrera came off of first to field it, so the runner was safe. Rod Allen (I know, I know; fish in a barrel) immediately praised Cabrera for his decision to leave the bag and ensure that the runner didn't move into scoring position.

This is autopilot extraordinaire. It's the ninth inning with a two-run lead. That run does not matter. Any baseball fan worth his salt knows this. The only thing that matters are outs. The only advantage of keeping the runner on first by coming off the bag and forfeiting any shot at a double play is that you keep the double play in order for the next batter. Note further that even if you stretch and don't get the double play, it's not assured that the ball will get by you. You still may knock it down and prevent the runner from advancing. Thus, to come off the bag in that situation, you have to believe that the odds of not getting the double play AND having the ball get by you were so high that it was more likely that the next batter would hit into a double play.

This is highly unlikely. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that for any relay throw that is not truly atrocious (which again, Polanco's was not), the better play is to stretch for the throw. Furthermore, Fernando Rodney, the current pitcher, is not an extreme groundball pitcher (he's roughly neutral for his career). Alex Rios, the next batter, is not a groundball hitter (about three groundballs for every four flyballs in his career).

Sportscasters should know this. They should be able to make this point. They should be able to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of each decision. They should not default to meaningless and unhelpful platitudes. Rod had a great chance to talk about the little details of baseball and he blew it because he, like so many other sportscasters, are just up there spewing trite baseball clichés and cashing a paycheck.

I should note that the fact that Rios actually hit into a double play does not change the analysis. This result was far from certain and could not have been known ex ante.

Payroll and Playoffs

2009-10-01T12:08:00.000-07:00

Rob Neyer discusses the implications of the fact that six of the nine top teams in payroll are making the playoffs this year:

Well, you can't really compete with the Red Sox. Not unless you're the Yankees, anyway. But there are still plenty of teams wasting plenty of money. The Twins probably aren't going to the playoffs, but they certainly could have. The Rays are stuck in the wrong division. And more to the point, we just can't read too much into one possibly anomalous season.

The Forbes article to which he links also notes: "In 2006, three postseason clubs (Tigers, Twins and Padres) ranked 14th or lower."

Here's the thing. The Tigers are now one of those top payroll clubs making the clubs. Payroll is not static. Should we hold it against the Tigers that they've turned themselves into a top spending club in just a few years? That's a good thing. We want teams that spend to have greater success. It encourages owners to keep investing in their product on the field. The Tigers are a great example of what we should be encouraging in baseball.

Looking at payroll is misleading because teams let their payroll rise and fall over time depending on how they perceive their chances of success. Teams correctly recognize that they should spend more money when the marginal value of a win is the highest. Generally this occurs when a team is the 88-92 win range and additional wins will drastically increase the likelihood of making the postseason. Teams can and do let their payroll spike when a playoff berth is in range.

Thus, focusing on payroll is missing the point. No, the focus should be on whether or not all teams have roughly equal opportunity to support a large payroll. What Major League Baseball needs is a revenue sharing system based on teams' revenue potential, not their actual revenue. This correctly lines up the incentives in the system and ensures that all teams have an opportunity to let their payrolls rise when they get the chance to make the playoffs.

Higher paid teams are always going to be (and should be) more represented in the postseason. Instead of trying to fight that trend, MLB should be trying to find better ways to balance access to revenue.

Is the wins statistic useless?

2009-09-29T06:02:00.000-07:00

Over at Rays Index, they make the case that wins, as a statistic, are not useless (hat tip to Rob Neyer).

The problem with Wins as an evaluator of starting pitchers is not that it is bad statistic. It is simply a matter of sample size. In a single game, a win or no win is not a good indicator. Why? Small sample size (n=1). However, ERA, for example, is a per inning stat. So in a single game, a pitcher’s ERA will have 5-9 data points (n>>1). Over the course of a full season, stats like ERA+, FIP and tRA have a sample size of 150-220 for each pitcher.

And later on (emphasis all mine):

In fact, in the absence of other stats, Wins is a very good, if not great, indicator of a pitcher’s value. So next time you hear somebody say Wins is a crappy way to evaluate a pitcher, throw a drink in their face and then make them read this post.

To me, this is a lot like saying that in the absence of anesthetic, a piece of wood to bite down on is a good pain management tool. Yeah, I guess that's sort of true, but it's also a completely useless observation in the modern world where anesthetic is always an option. Sort of like how, given the plethora of available information, wins are... ...completely useless. You would and should never prefer them when you have access to other, better statistics. Opting for wins to evaluate a pitcher is like opting for the piece of wood when your leg is being amputated. In the modern world, it's never defensible.

Also, the problem with wins is emphatically not small sample size. Even if pitchers played 1,000,000,000 games every season, wins would still be worth shit because pitchers play with the same offense and bullpen day in and day out. Those pitchers with better offenses and better bullpens will get more wins than those without and there's nothing that a large sample size can do about it. Indeed, larger sample sizes will make clear exactly how large this bias is. Wins are bad because they can do nothing to correct this bias.

Do not use wins. That is all.

**EDIT** J.C. Bradbury gets in on the action here. Worth reading.

Let the games begin!

2009-09-24T07:39:00.000-07:00

Which is to say, now that the Yanks are in the postseason, let's all start dissecting Alex Rodriguez like he was a stale frog in high school biology! Fangraphs' R. J. Anderson gets the party started with this fun piece. I can just smell the formaldehyde!

Sabermetric groupthink?

2009-09-21T08:47:00.001-07:00

This post by J.C. Bradbury collects some comments on the notion of sabermetric groupthink: the idea that those of a sabermetric bent, like myself, tend to unjustly treat those who don't adhere strictly to sabermetric orthodoxy as morons. I'll leave aside the question of whether a particular sabermetric orthodoxy exists. Rob Neyer addresses that question well here. I want to make a more general point.

The overarching sabermetric philosophy is not related to baseball. The core sabermetric principle, as I understand it, is that baseball must be analyzed as a science. That's it. If your analysis of baseball is scientific, it is sabermetric. Of course, the "gotcha" here is that science is empirical. It is very, very hard to have science that spurns numbers of some kind or another because numbers are the language of empirics. Thus, sabermetrics tends to focus on numbers, on the quantitative over the qualitative.

Sabermetrics does not reject qualitative analysis. There is certainly a role for scouting and experience in baseball. No sabermetrician worth his salt disputes this. However, the use of qualitative analysis cannot be an excuse to flout systematic application of scientific principles. Qualitative analysis still must be backed up by empirical research. It must have a sound empirical basis and it must be vetted empirically.

How might a team do this? A good start is trying to systematically quantify how good your scouts are. Which scouts provide the best reports? How much information do these reports provide beyond what is available statistically? Can scouting data be incorporated into a useful model of player performance?

The point is that no matter what analysis you are undertaking, it must be systematic. You must know, in advance, how new data will inform your thinking. Too often this is not the case. Too often numbers are used ex post facto to provide faux-intellectual cover for unsystematic decisions. Too often numbers are used to confirm preexisting biases of those using them. Too often numbers are ignored when they provide evidence that runs counter to a cherished belief. Too often people use scouting and experience as escape hatches to avoid having to deal with the rigors of systematic, scientific analysis.

This is what causes sabermetricians to go crazy. It's not that we can't deal with scouts. It's not that we don't like baseball stories and anecdotes. It's not that we don't think men with experience have nothing to offer. Far from it. No, the problem is that we cannot stand the unsystematic, unscientific analysis that those in highly visible positions often engage in. It's lazy and worse: it's absolutely wrong. It must be shunned wherever it is found.

Let me close with a quotation from Malcolm Gladwell from this interview with Bill Simmons:

That's why I'm such a fan of the "Moneyball" generation of baseball GMs: It's not so much that their analytical tools are brilliant ways of predicting baseball success (and I have my doubts, sometimes), it's simply that they have an analytical tool. And when it comes to personnel evaluation, any tool is better than no tool...

Bingo. The merits of any particular tool, whether it be batting average, on base percentage, VORP, or scouting reports, are always up for debate. The important thing is that you have a tool and that you apply it systematically.

**EDIT** Here is a link to the Ken Rosenthal article that started it all. I like Ken. He does good work. Unfortunately, this article is an example of exactly what I'm talking about above. Ken throws out a bunch of numbers and throws in some other observations for good measure. And the result is... what exactly? How does he propose to use all this information to come up with a decision? Ken doesn't say.

Let me highlight this extended quote:

The first criterion for the award is "actual value of a player to his team, that is strength of offense and defense." Twenty-four of Mauer's 114 starts this season — more than one-fifth — have been at designated hitter, a position that requires no defense. Mauer also trails other candidates in the second criterion, number of games played.

When Mauer first stepped onto the field on May 1, the Twins already were 22 games into their season. Mauer obviously cannot be faulted for needing to recover from offseason kidney surgery, but two other MVP contenders — Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera and Jeter — have appeared in 141 and 139 games, respectively. Mauer has appeared in 120.

Am I nitpicking? Perhaps. But Mauer's absence in April, combined with his time at DH, raises the possibility another candidate may — repeat, may — be worthier. It certainly creates the opportunity for debate, which is my entire point.

Gee, if only we had a systematic way to weigh all these factors (playing time, quality of performance, positional adjustments, etc) to come up with an answer to our question! Oh, shit, we do! We have tons of them, and they all originate in sabermetrics.

So is there still room for debate? Of course there is! None of these systems are complete. They all have weak spots. Some are better than others. We can debate the merits of any particular system until the cows come home. The point is that you can't just throw out a bunch of disjointed pieces of information and then pull an answer out of your ass, not if you want to claim any sort of validity to your answer. You must be able to establish ex ante how one can determine who the best player is and then you must let the results of that process, that system, provide you with the best answer.

A fact

2009-09-21T07:47:00.001-07:00

There is no good reason to deny Joe Mauer the MVP.

More MVP talk

2009-09-03T06:46:00.000-07:00

My mother (of all people) points me to this article by Allen Barra in the Wall Street Journal echoing my thoughts on Derek Jeter's MVP candidacy. A few thoughts:

The tone of the article is pretty funny. It essentially acknowledges that Joe Mauer has been better and should win, but says, "Hey, Derek's been great for a while and has been robbed a couple times. Let's give him this year's award anyway, as a kind of lifetime achievement award." I can't get behind that reasoning, but at least it's honest.
Naturally, the article falls back on intangibles to make Derek's case. This leads to one of my new favorite baseball quotes:
"Some people will argue that intangibles don't exist, but in the ninth inning of close games everybody believes in them." - Marty Appel
It's not quite as pithy as "There are no atheists in foxholes," but the sentiment is the same, and likely equally true.
The article strangely does not note the strongest part of Derek's case: the fact that he plays shortstop and none of the other contenders do. You don't need intangibles to close the gap between Derek and a first baseman with better offensive numbers. You just have to understand the massive, massive value of playing a tougher position.
Derek's longevity really is incredible. More than anything, this is what will get him in the Hall of Fame one day.

Thanks for the link, Mom!

Dear MVP Voters...

2009-08-29T10:19:00.000-07:00

...if you must vote for a player on a playoff team, please vote for Derek Jeter. You guys go on and on all the time about how valuable he is to New York, and this may be his most valuable year yet. His defense has been very good: by UZR, only two shortstops have saved more runs this year with the glove. He's hit for average (0.329) and, for a shortstop, power as well (17 HRs). He's stolen 22 bases and only been caught 5 times. He's got all those intangibles.

You may be tempted to vote for Mark Teixeira. Mark's been a better hitter than Derek, but not by as much as you probably think. Don't be swayed by his RBI and HR totals. They are not spectacular totals for a first baseman. Furthermore, who do you think he's been driving in? Derek Jeter, that's who. First baseman who can do what Mark does are much more common than shortstops who can do what Derek's done this year.

Look, things can change in the next month, but I implore you to look beyond a few somewhat gaudy numbers and appreciate the man who really makes the Yanks go. You assure us all the time that the game isn't about numbers. That it's about people. Prove it. Vote for the guy whose value is tied up in more subtle things than RBIs and HRs. Vote for Derek Jeter.*

* Personally, I'd vote for Joe Mauer and then Ben Zobrist before Derek, but if you think being on a playoff team is important, Derek's your man.

**UPDATE** Never mind. Derek just sacrifice bunted with a two run lead in the second inning, no one out, runners on first and second, and Jose Contreras struggling. This is a terrible, terrible play, for which Michael Kay is rightly excoriating him, noting that Derek is a great hitter having an MVP type year. Al Leiter is trying to defend him, but it's a real reach. It doesn't matter that Derek leads off now (not that lead off hitters sacrifice bunt a lot anyways, Al). It doesn't matter that it's small ball. You can't give up outs in that situation. You just can't.

Atrocious Wednesday Night Broadcast

2009-08-26T19:33:00.000-07:00

I've been watching (on my DVR) tonight's broadcast of the Yankees and White Sox on ESPN2. The broadcast team is Dave O'Brien and Rick Sutcliffe. I mean no offense to either of these guys personally but...

This broadcast is seriously awful. It's completely unfocused and disjointed. Sutcliffe just rambles about whatever the hell he feels like, throwing out random and asinine assertions left and right. Every correlation is a causation. Every random anecdote "tells you something." It's just stunning to me that these guys can blabber on for three hours and say nothing important or relevant.

If I'm not mistaken, Sutcliffe chose Derek Jeter as his pick for greatest shortstop OF ALL TIME. I love DJ, and that's just flat out insane.

Also, it seems like A-Rod has fielded every single ball in this game. That's weird. And now Jorge Posada is hurt. That's just awesome. Crap.

Anyways, let me apologize for this post. I assure you it is more informative than tonight's broadcast.

The White Sox fail horribly

2009-08-24T17:04:00.000-07:00

In the bottom of the second inning against Boston today and leading by the score of 2-0, the White Sox found themselves defending against a first and third situation with two outs. The runner on first, J.D. Drew, attempted to steal second base and the White Sox had him thrown out by thirty feet.

So what happened? They got him in a pickle and while they wasted a bunch of time trying to tag Drew out, the runner on third, Jason Bay, scored. The second baseman, Jayson Nix, even checked the runner on third before continuing with the pickle.

Now, it's not clear to me from the replay when Bay started running or how close the play might have been. It doesn't really matter though, because it's horrible baseball. If Bay was stealing at the same time as Drew, then the catcher should have simply held on to the baseball and put Bay in a pickle. Bay knows this. Everyone knows this. Thus, it stands to reason that Bay waited until he saw that Drew was in trouble. This is standard baseball fare: when a runner gets caught in a pickle, other runners try to advance.

What's really surprising is that the White Sox appeared to trade the run for the out. Let's look at the math:

Run Expectancy for possible outcomes:

Runner on 2nd, 3 out, 0 runs scored: 0.0. In this scenario, the White Sox throw home and get Bay out. I expect that this is what usually happens.

Runners on 1st and 3rd, 2 out, 0 runs scored: 0.54. In this scenario, the White Sox simply chase both runners back to their respective bags and fail to record an out. It is also our baseline scenario.

Runners on 2nd and 3rd, 2 out, 0 runs scored: 0.58. In this scenario, the White Sox prevent Bay from scoring, but allow Drew to take second. Note that it is almost no worse than the baseline and far, far better than any of the next two outcomes.

No one on base, 3 out, 1 run scored: 1.0. This is what actually occured.

Runner on 2nd, 2 out, 1 run scored: 1.32. In this scenario, the White Sox fail to get either runner and they both advance, scoring Bay.

The White Sox would have gained .42 expected runs by simply hanging on to the baseball and letting Drew steal second! Then, after throwing through, they chose not to throw back home, preferring not to risk 0.32 expected runs for the chance at -1.0 expected runs (the difference between the best and worst outcomes and what actually happened, which was itself the second worst outcome). In order for that to be a good play, you would have to believe that you had only a 25% chance at throwing Bay out. This strikes me as fantastically unlikely. It honestly seemed as if the White Sox were consciously trading a run for an out. If so, that is a gross misunderstanding of the costs and benefits involved.

And as I am typing this, the epic FAIL continues. With the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the third with the White Sox now up 4-1, David Ortiz dribbles a ball up the 1st base line. It's a fantastically easy play for the first baseman, who can tag Ortiz out by about 15 feet with plenty of time to field the ball... ...except Jose Contreras, the pitcher, runs over and muffs the play by trying to field the ball himself depsite the fact that he has a terrible angle on the ball and the runner. Run scores, no one out. It's actually stunning how bad a decision this is. Even if he picks up the ball cleanly, he has a tougher play than the first baseman.

He then walks in a run, throws a wild pitch to tie the game at four apiece, and servers up a three run bomb to ~~Basil Rathbone~~ Mike Lowell for good measure. Thanks for nothing, White Sox!

Falsifiability

2009-08-19T18:01:00.000-07:00

Why do we believe any given proposition? To my mind, there are two valid reasons for belief in any proposition. First, your belief may be logically derived from a set of axioms and other derived true propositions. Not many beliefs fall into this category because truly axiomatic propositions are not in great supply.

So what is the other valid reason for believing in a particular proposition? In my opinion, it is also valid to believe in a proposition if the balance of evidence shows it to be likely to be true. For many propositions, it is appropriate to consider both the truth and falsehood of any particular proposition according to the likelihood that each is the correct value of the proposition. For other propositions, the nature of the evidence is such that it is not worth the effort to consider the likelihood that it is false because this possibility is infinitesimal. Whether or not one should factor the likelihood of a proposition's truth value into any decision is directly related to the costs and benefits of the possible consequences of the decision.

However, even when it is highly likely that a proposition is true because of the nature of the evidence for it, you must go one step further if you desire to be truly veracious. You must be able to identify those conditions that are sufficient to disprove the proposition you believe. You must show how the proposition is falsifiable.

If you cannot identify these conditions, then you do not have a reason for believing in that proposition. You must admit to yourself that the evidence that you are using to support your proposition is simply confirming a preexisting bias because no evidence would convince you to change your mind.

Indeed, the ideal is to identify the full set of conditions that falsify the proposition. It is quite easy to identify a highly improbable criterion to falsify a proposition. We should not take satisfaction in this. If there are other falsifying conditions, we need to identify them too. Otherwise, we will build a disingenuous shield around our cherished biases by finding only ridiculous falsifying conditions. This will give us the misguided self-satisfaction of believing that we are intellectually honest while stacking the deck in favor of not rejecting the beliefs we cherish.

Identifying a set of falsifying conditions is not easy. Indeed, it is likely that we will never fully identify the set of falsifying conditions for any particular proposition. Nonetheless, by seeking to know those conditions that will cause us to validly reject the things we now wrongly believe, we maximize the likelihood that what we believe will be true. That is the best we can do.

A-Rod is so clutch

2009-08-17T08:22:00.000-07:00

BPro:

Contrary to his reputation, Rodriguez has actually been quite clutch this year; twelve of his 21 homers and 34 of his 63 RBI have either tied the game or given the Yanks the lead.

Of course, this has as much importance as all those statistics that people throw around when A-Rod fails to hit in the clutch: none whatsoever. It's just random, people. It's just random.

Rob Neyer on the MVP case for Mark Teixeira

2009-08-17T06:47:00.000-07:00

Rob Neyer absolutely crushes the argument against Mark Teixeira for MVP. He's right in almost every way, from the general tenor of the argument to its finer details:

You know what? Let's just be honest. The argument for Teixeira is an argument for doing it the way it's always been done. Teixeira is just another big RBI guy on a team with a great record. If he were a Twin and Mauer were a Yankee, Teixeira would hardly be an afterthought.

Look, Teixeira's been great, but he's not even the most valuable Yankee: that would be Derek Jeter. Joe Mauer, despite missing a month, has been far and away the most valuable player in the league. That's what happens when you hit .377 with power as a catcher.

Look at it another way: Joe Mauer is the only player in the AL with an OPS over 1.000 (currently 1.071). In fact, it's nearly .100 higher than the guy in second place, Kevin Youkilis, who has a 0.988 OPS. Only nine players, Mauer included, have an OPS over .900. Again, Joe Mauer is a catcher.

The only way for Mauer to not be the MVP at this point (remember, anything can happen in the next month and a half), is if you believe that an MVP should come from a team in contention and that the Twins are not sufficiently in contention. Of course, you still wouldn't get to make Teixeira the MVP at that point. You'd have to find a way to get Ben Zobrist and Evan Longoria disqualified too. And, of course, then the MVP would be Jeter. Good luck getting him out of the way without disqualifying Tex at the same time.

The final word on New Yankee Stadium?

2009-08-14T09:41:00.000-07:00

It does not appear that the ball carries well at New Yankee Stadium. In fact, it appears that it carries poorly. Nonetheless, it is very easy to hit a home run there. This implies that the fences are shorter than suspected. Details here (highly recommended).

I will note that this does not address how well the ball carried at the old stadium. It's possible, though I suspect not likely, that the ball carried very, very poorly at the old stadium so that the new stadium, while not absolutely high on the carry scale, still rates highly relative to the old stadium.

My bet is that the dimensions are slightly wrong. That seems to be where all the evidence is pointing.

Jorge Posada stat of the day

2009-08-13T21:03:00.000-07:00

Granting that this is some pretty hardcore data mining, I thought I'd note that there are only seven players ahead of Jorge Posada on the list of catchers who have caught at least 1,000 games when sorted by OPS+. Of those seven, only one, Mike Piazza, has a significantly higher OPS+. The other six are within four points. All seven are in the Hall of Fame, as are the next two guys behind Posada on the list (Campenella and Fisk).

Naturally, there are better ways to analyze a Hall of Fame candidacy, especially for catchers. Nonetheless, Jorge is in elite company offensively. Guys who hit like he has hit for the last decade and stick at catcher for the course of their career come along once in a generation, if that.

The truest thing ever said about steroids

2009-08-13T20:42:00.001-07:00

Bronson Arroyo sounds like a jackass in the interview cited here, but this quote is pure gold:

"If Mark McGwire is hitting 60 homers, the only thing that matters is his performance," Arroyo said, according to USA Today. "People don't own teams to lose money. If you ask any owner whether they would rather make $20 million and come in last place or lose $20 million and win a World Series, there's only one guy who honestly would take that championship: George Steinbrenner. Nobody else."

This is why Yankee fans can't help but love George M. Steinbrenner III. It hardly matters if Arroyo's statement is literally true; the fact is that George is the only owner who aggressively maintains the image that he's more concerned with winning championships than making money. And he spends like he means it. That's why even when he's getting under your skin, it's almost impossible for any Yankee fan to truly hate The Boss.

David Ortiz

2009-08-08T12:46:00.000-07:00

It's old news now, but in case you had not heard, the New York Times has reported that David Ortiz was on the list of players that tested positive for performance enhancing drugs back in 2003. This was the preliminary testing put in place to determine if regular testing was to occur. This is the same list that Alex Rodriguez was on.

Ortiz has now commented on the situation. He flatly denied using steroids and attributed the positive test to his "carelessness" purchasing legal supplements and vitamins. It has long been speculated that foreign born players, and those from the Dominican Republic in particular, are more likely to accidentally consume banned substances because regulation of these substances and other legal substances is more lax in Latin America that in the United States.

As I've talked about in the past, there is a deep epistimological problem embedded deep within the steroids issue. Who knows what one can believe with any confidence?

While on the one hand I recognize that the players here have every incentive to cheat and every incentive to lie about cheating, I also do not find it plausible that every player who was on the 2003 list was attempting to cheat by taking performance enhancing drugs. There are bound to be some mistakes. Nor do I believe that any player who may have taken now-banned substances prior to 2003 is necessarily a vile human being who should be cast out of of Major League Baseball into some fiery pit where there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Therefore, I think that we need to examine more than just whether or not a player was on the 2003 list. For example, with Alex Rodriguez, I thought that his admission to more than was publicly known was important for establishing credibilty. Similarly with David Ortiz, his past statements on the issue and his reaction to the current incidient seem credible to me. Furthermore, neither Alex nor David has failed a test since 2003. This is a large piece of evidence that must count for both of them. Otherwise, what is the point of mandatory drug testing?

We must remember that very, very few people, a group that does not include many, if any, members of the media that break these stories and drive the coverage, really know what did and did not happen. Their inferences and speculataions are perhaps only slightly more valid than my own. I don't need some moralizing columnist whose overarching goal is to sell newspapers or generate hits telling me why this player or that player is a disgraceful, lying cheat. Therefore, my position is to give the benefit of the doubt to players who appear to me to be behaving credibly.

I think David Ortiz still deserves the benefit of the doubt and I'm going to give it to him. Certainly, my trust could be misplaced. If more information comes to light and it appears that Ortiz or Rodriguex have been less than truthful, then I will reevaluate my position. Until then, I do not feel inclined to rush to judgement.

Line of the day

2009-07-31T12:26:00.000-07:00

From my brother, Robert:

Other than the C on Varitek's chest, you know what the difference between him and Posada is? The Yankees aren't scrambling to get a replacement for Posada at the trade deadline.

This was, of course, in reference to the absurd equivalenceies the media draw between one of the best catchers of this generation and a guy who had a couple good years.

Revisiting the American League DH advantage question

2009-07-21T14:37:00.000-07:00

You will recall, Dear Reader, that I addressed not long ago the question of whether or not the American League should have an inherent structural advantage over the National League due to the existence of the DH. I concluded that it should not and speculated that one of the reasons that the AL is dominating the NL in interleague play could be simply that the AL has more resources at its disposal.

This appears to be the case, as Tom Tango notes here:

The effect is that the average NL payroll for those five years is 74MM per team, and the average AL payroll is 84MM. Each AL team has 10MM more dollars of talent than the NL teams.

Does this explain all of the effect? I don't know, but it certainly goes a long, long way.

A pithy observation on the salaries of professional athletes

2009-07-01T09:47:00.000-07:00

Allen Barra in a short article at the Wall Street Joural outlines exactly why we as consumers should not get upset about the high price of tickets.

It isn't some vague indefinable "they" who pays the players. It really isn't even the owners. It's you, or rather, it's us. If we put our money where our mouths are and support cancer, AIDS or Down syndrome research and then buy our tickets with what's left over, athletes and rock stars will actually be paid what we pretend they should be paid.

He also includes this brilliant quote from Bill James:

One of the unwritten laws of economics is that it is impossible, truly impossible, to prevent the values of society from manifesting themselves in dollars and cents. This is, ultimately, the reason why athletes are paid so much money.

That really is James at his best: pithy, clear, and enormously insightful.

First guessing

2009-06-28T20:10:00.000-07:00

Joe Girardi just brought Mariano Rivera in in the eighth with two on and two out in a one run game. I have no idea how it will turn out, but I support this move 1000%. I just want to be up front about these things. I'm not always second guessing.

**EDIT** Mo got the strikeout. It looked like strike three was a ball inside according to MLB.com's Gameday. Now we'll see how the ninth goes.

**EDIT #2** Mariano just picked up his first big league walk, time on base, and RBI! It's 4-2 Yanks after Mo walks with the bases loaded against K-Rod in the top of the ninth. Here's hoping Tex can ice this one.

**EDIT #3** Mo gave up a dinky two out hit in the ninth before locking it down. Again, at no point was the game more on the line in the ninth than it was in the eighth. That's why you have to be flexible enough to use your best pitcher when it really matters. Tonight, Girardi was, and he was rewarded for it.

**EDIT #4** Just watched the video of Mo's RBI. He took a nice hack at a 2-2 pitch. He certainly doesn't let himself get cheated. Awesome.

**EDIT #5** Mariano Rivera is one of the few athletes to whom I can remain attached on a personal level without the jaded cynicism that seems to permeate my relationships with other athletes. Go watch his ESPN interview. Mo has an almost childlike demeanor throughout. He isn't out there trying to get a message out or trying to deflect criticism (as if there were any). For the best player ever in his role, he practically radiates humility. Indeed, he almost seems embarrased to be interviewed. Yet, he loves talking about the sport he loves playing. I will probably cry when Mo retires.

Finally

2009-06-24T19:28:00.000-07:00

It's the bottom of the eighth inning. The New York Yankees lead the Atlanta Braves by a score of 6-3. Brain Bruney is pitching for New York. He's been good this year, but tonight he starts out the inning by walking Chipper Jones. Not to worry, he promptly strikes out Brian McCann and induces a groundball to first from Garret Anderson.

Then things go south. Bruney walks Casey Kotchman and then gives up a run scoring single to Jeff Francoeur. Suddenly, it's 6-4 with two on and two out. The go ahead run is coming to the plate. The Yankees have been scuffling. They can't afford to let this one get away. So...

They go get Mariano Rivera.

YES!

YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES!

Why wait!? He's rested! He's awesome! He can get four outs! Don't let him rot while the game slips away. Go get him. You have him pitch to Kelly Johnson right now. Not tomorrow. Not next inning. Now.

And the result?

Mo struck him out.

Then he struck the next guy out.

Game over.

A must read

2009-06-20T14:13:00.000-07:00

Malcolm Gladwell adresses issues of strategy, social convetion, ability, effort, and taking Goliath down here. It truly is an excellent read.

I quibble with only one small part of Gladwell's piece. He puts too much emphasis on the fact that David wins with effort over Goliath's ability. This is true of the examples he provides in his story, but the real message is that, as Gladwell says, "when the world has to play on Goliath's terms, Goliath wins." Recognizing what your strengths are and using them to attack an opponent's weakness, especially a weakness that he exposes because of simple convetion, is the essence of the story. If your strength happens to be effort, so be it.

Think about this story the next time you hear someone complaining about breaking up a no-hitter with a bunt, or about not "playing the game the right way," or about how big sluggers "clog up the bases." It's just Goliath complaing that David won't play by his rules.

Does the AL have an inherent advantage in interleague play?

2009-06-18T16:42:00.001-07:00

Rob Neyer addresses the question of the American League's superiority in interleague play here. Then, the crowd at the Baseball Think Factory slams his post here.

A common argument against Rob's claim that the American League teams are superior to National League teams is that AL teams have an innate advantage in interleague play purely as a matter of rules. Some seem put off by the idea that the American League simply has more talent that the National League right now. Therefore, they are looking for a way to explain the AL's interleague dominance without admitting that the AL might just be better at the moment.

The argument goes like this: American League teams must have a designated hitter throughout the season, so they make an effort to acquire a good one. The National League teams do not do this, and so bat a much inferior player as a DH when they play AL teams in AL parks. However, AL pitchers generally bat nearly as poorly as NL pitchers, so the advantage is not returned when AL teams visit NL stadiums. Thus, NL teams are at a net disadvantage when it comes to playing AL teams.

On its face, this argument seems sound. I believe that it is also incorrect. Allow me to elaborate.

Certainly, if the only difference between two teams were the quality of their DHs, the team with the superior DH would be at an advantage. Certainly, we would expect the American League to have better DHs than the National League. Others have tried to argue that the DH rule does not give American League teams an advantage, but in the long run, if the only difference between the American and National Leagues is the quality of their DHs, the American League must be said to have an advantage.

But should we assume that American League teams and National League teams ought to be equally talented apart from the DH position? The question here is solely that of whether or not the existence of the DH gives American League teams an advantage in the total accumulation of talent. In other words, does the existence of the DH allow American League teams to field teams genuinely superior to National League teams?

What do I mean by "field a superior team?" I mean simply that unless the existence of the DH rule allows American League teams to accumulate more expected win production on their teams, we will have no reason to expect them to be superior to National League teams. On average, the teams will be of equal quality. The DH rule will not bias talent distribution towards the American League.

Let us assume that every team has an equal budget at the start of each year. Let us further assume that every single player is a free agent at the start of each year. Finally, let us assume that teams make correct determinations of player value. Clearly, each team should end up of equal quality since they all have the same resources, the same pool of players, and have all valued each player correctly. So, how will the DH rule change the talent distribution between the American and National Leagues?

The American League will certainly have better designated hitters. After all, they are worth more to American League teams. However, they also consume resources that could have gone to acquiring non-DH talent. The National League does not have to budget for a DH. Thus, they can devote more resources to acquiring superior non-DH talent.

There is an opportunity cost to spending money on a DH. National League teams do not have to pay this cost. American League teams do. Thus, while American League teams should have superior DHs, the National League should on average be superior everywhere else. Thus, while American League teams will have a superior team while the DH rule is in effect, this should be balanced by the fact that when the DH rule is not in effect, National League teams will tend to have superior players at every remaining position, this giving them the advantage.

What if our assumptions did not hold? Well, if the first assumption, that of equal budgets, isn't true (and it isn't), the conclusion doesn't really change. If the American League is superior because its teams can purchase both high quality DH talent and high quality non-DH talent, the cause is not the existence of the DH. If the DH went away, the American League would still be superior because its teams could devote more resources to non-DH players.

If the second assumption, that of perpetual free agency, is not true (and it isn't), the conclusion still does not change. There may be fluctuations due to timing in the talent market that give American League teams a temporary advantage. However, this same timing could also swing the pendulum the National League's way. If too many American League teams end up with too many resources committed to underperforming DHs, this would definitely be the case. On average, this should not cause the DH rule to favor the American League.

Finally, if the third assumption, that of perfect talent valuation is not true (and it isn't), the conclusion again does not change. If National League teams are inferior because they are inferior at evaluating talent, this is not a strike against the DH rule. It is a strike against National League front offices.

So what can explain the current gap between the two leagues? Who knows? Perhaps this is simply some cyclical variation. Perhaps American League teams have cultivated a resource advantage over National League teams (the AL is home to the Red Sox and Yankees, after all). Perhaps AL teams have been luckier in the draft.

The bottom line is that wins are wins, no matter how you get them. Therefore, teams should be willing to pay the same amount for a win no matter where it comes from on the diamond. The American League simply has to allocate its resources differently, but this should change the fact that, like National League teams, they are simply trying to maximize the number of wins they can accrue with the resources they have.

Over the long run, the DH rule cannot explain the difference between the two leagues.

Let's make sure this horse is really dead

2009-06-11T20:41:00.000-07:00

Last night, the Yankees lead the Boston Red Sox 3-1 with six outs to go. There was a man on first base and the top of the Red Sox line up was coming to bat. C.C. Sabathia had been cruising. He's an ace. I have no problem with having him face Dustin Pedroia in that situation.

Then Pedroia walks after a gritty* ten pitch at bat. Now it's first and second, no one out, in the bottom of the eighth inning, with a two run lead. Joe Girardi went out and asked C.C. how he was feeling. C.C. waved him off and Joe went back to the dugout. Again, C.C. had been cruising. He's an ace. I have perhaps only the smallest of quibbles with this move.

But then he gave up a single to J.D. Drew. Now it's a 3-2 lead with the heart of the order coming up. C.C. is clearly tired. He's up near 120 pitches. It's unequivocally time to go to the bullpen. Joe Girardi agreed with me. And he summoned... Alfredo Aceves.

I just... I just don't know how else to put this: you must bring in your best relief pitcher. This is it. This is the game. This is without any reasonable doubt the most critical situation you will be facing in any of the next two or three games.

This is where I get fried by bullpen usage. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU WAITING FOR?! You have the Death Star of baseball, Mariano Rivera, in your bullpen. He's like that guy from The Seventh Seal, only he doesn't fuck around with a game of chess before he separates your soul from your body. He is the ultimate weapon in the baseball universe. USE HIM! USE HIM!! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, USE HIM!!!

Last night, Mariano was well rested. He hadn't pitched in either of the series' first two games, games against the team you are battling for first place. Even if you don't want him to pitch two innings, you can't save him for the ninth. You can't save him for the bottom of the Red Sox' lineup with no one on base at the start of an inning. You do not have that luxury. Why?

Because if you don't go get him, Kevin Youkilis and Jason Bay could both single, snatching the lead from your grasp with the best relief pitcher in the history of baseball left unused for an entire three game series against your biggest rival with first place on the line. And this is exactly what happened.

I ask you, is there really more pressure pitching the ninth with a one run lead against Jason Varitek, Rocco Baldelli, and Nick Green than there is pitching the eighth with a one run lead with two and and no one out against Kevin Youkilis, Jason Bay, Mike Lowell, and David Ortiz? I cannot see how this could be the case. It would make next to no sense.

I don't have anything else to say. I am completely dumbfounded.

* Hi, Cous!

Sentences to ponder

2009-06-05T20:49:00.000-07:00

From Lawrence Lessig:

Words have meaning. We don't get to choose their meaning. If you call something "X" people will hear the equation. They won't read the fine-print which says ("By X, I mean really not-X).

(So it's not baseball related. Shoot me.)

Fun with small samples

2009-05-20T06:09:00.001-07:00

Alex Rodriguez, 2009 Season through 5/19/2009:

AVG: 0.194

OBP: 0.383

SLG: 0.611

OPS: 0.994

ISO: 0.417 (!)

BABIP: 0.083 (!!!)

It's pretty hard to be valuable when you get hits on less than 10% of the balls you put in play. You essentially have to do nothing but walk and hit homeruns, and that's what A-Rod is doing. It will all even out, of course, but for now, that's a pretty damn funny line.

Today's must read blog post...

2009-05-14T13:40:00.000-07:00

...is, of course, not found on this website. It is found here. It's short, and it has a cool animation. Check it out!

Mailbag, Vol. 1

2009-05-06T20:49:00.000-07:00

A reader asks:

What would happen if pro sports stadiums weren't publicly funded? ... Suppose that you hold demand (not quantity demanded; the entire demand schedule) as constant. I think that this is basically the case, though I could be wrong. Now, assume that there is no public funding of stadiums, and that every team needs a new stadium right now.

What does the team do? Do they raise ticket prices for the new stadium, and allow QD (attendance) to fall accordingly? Do they build a smaller stadium than they otherwise would, anticipating said drop in QD? Alternately, does someone within the team organization pick up the tab that otherwise would have gone to the taxpayer? Somone's surplus is going to be lower. Will it be the owners? The players? The fans?

I love this question because it presumes that I know something about both baseball and economics. I suppose I do dabble in both of them, but I still had to go to The Font Of All Knowledge to make sure I correctly understood the difference between demand and quantity demanded. Happily, I did. In any case, those with actually expertise in the area of economics in general or stadium economics in particular may feel free to correct me if this post is completely off base. Now, on to the answer!

I think the first key point is that the baseball team is always going to select the profit maximizing price for its tickets, regardless of the cost of the stadium (or players, for that matter). Thus, if the same stadium is being built with or without public subsidy, the ticket price should be unaffected. The same product is being offered, so there is no reason to expect a change in the price the consumer is willing to pay.

Again assuming that the same stadium is being built with or without public subsidy, it is also true that the operating costs of the stadium, including players, will be unaffected. If paying A-Rod $300 million is a money maker with a stadium subsidy, then it is a money maker without a stadium subsidy. Thus, if the same stadium is being built in both cases, the only group that can take a loss is the team itself.

Another way to think about it is that a fixed subsidy amount doesn't change the optimal configuration of the new stadium. If investing the subsidy in extra features for the new stadium could be expected to turn a profit, then the team would do it regardless of the existence of the subsidy. Likewise, if investing the subsidy in extra features for the new stadium was expected to be a money losing proposition, the team would (if able) cut back on its own contribution to the stadium, in effect pocketing the subsidy money.

However, a key element is left off of this analysis. The stadium plan is usually a large part of the negotiations with the local municipality. While it may not be cost effective for a team to invest $100 million in, for example, a retractable roof, it might be worth it if it only had to invest $50 million with the local municipality agreeing to kick in the rest.* Thus, the team will try to add features to the new stadium as long as the public subsidy increases to a level that makes the extra features a good investment of the team's money. The subsidy amount is generally not fixed with respect to the stadium plan.

What does this mean? It means that if public subsidies for private stadia ended, the team would start cutting the marginal features of the new stadium.** That retractable roof may no longer make sense. Of course, this adds a further complication. Since we are now dealing with two separate stadia, we cannot expect that operating costs and optimal ticket prices will be unchanged. Indeed, since fewer ammenities are being added, we would expect the profit maximizing ticket price to fall, not rise, since people would presumably be willing to pay more to attend games at a nicer stadium.

Thus, I conclude that public subsidies of new stadia lead to higher ticket prices for fans, but also to nicer stadia. Ending public subsidies would lead to lower ticket prices for fans, but also fewer and less opulent new stadia.

Let me finish with one final comment on the closing line from the email in question:

I just looked up the Jake on Wikipedia, and it said that they publicly funded their stadium, then sold out 455 straight games.

Jacobs Field is often used as an example of the benefits of new stadia. However, we must be very careful not to confuse correlation with causation. Yes, fans flocked to Jacobs field, but only a small amount of that should be attributed to the new stadium bounce. Indeed, the primary cause is likely to be that the Indians' general crappiness from 1987 through 1993 allowed them to draft a stunning core of players that fueled their run as a top team in baseball from 1994 through 2001. Think about what the Tampa Bay Rays are going through right now. It's like that, only in a town that actually cares about baseball. The new stadium was only the cherry on the top of the winning baseball sundae.

* I will further note that it is often the municipality that bears the risk of cost overruns. This provides a perverse incentive for owners to underestimate costs so as to drive down their share of the initial cost with the local municipality bearing any extra costs due to the low initial estimate.

** It is not clear to me what the effect would be on stadium capacity. I suspect that capacity is a relatively low cost item in the stadium plan with a correspondingly high marginal value. Indeed, ending public subsidies could even increase stadium capacity. It may be that if a team cannot charge hundreds of dollars for a more exclusive experience with many ammenities that the best option is to instead try to get as many normal blue-collar Joes as possible. In any event, I find it unlikely that capacity would decrease.

How rapidly can one naturally increase strength?

2009-05-05T07:53:00.001-07:00

Squawking Baseball addresses the allegation that A-Rod must have been using steroids because of how rapidly he increased his bench press. It's a short read, but hard to quote succinctly, so let me sum it up like this:

It is very possible to naturally increase the amount of weight you are lifting very rapidly.
It is even more possible when you are as young as A-Rod is alleged to have been when he made his rapid strength gains.
It is even more possible when you consider that A-Rod was already outlandishly gifted physically with massive incentives for increased strength.

Yes, I am aware that point three is also an argument that he did use steroids.

It's important to remember that weightlifting was something in which baseball players did not engage for many, many years. Untangling the effects of naturally increasing strength due to weightlifting from the effects of increased strength due to PED usage while weightlifting is nearly impossible.

Craig Calcaterra hits it out of the park

2009-04-30T21:25:00.000-07:00

What I do care about -- and the reason I have quoted all of this stuff by and about Selena Roberts -- is the culture of character assassination that has become inextricably linked to the subject of steroids in baseball. Every big name who has tested positive has not only been branded a cheater by the media, but a dirty cheater with evil and chicanery in his heart. Every assertion of innocence -- even to subordinate allegations -- has been met with scorn. In addition to censuring players under the rules of baseball, the media (and the public at large following the media's lead) has further demanded that high-profile steroids users be ostracized, and that the historical record be expunged, as best it can be, of their very existence. It has been a shameful few years in this regard, and I hope and pray that one day some semblance of perspective on the subject of performance enhancing drugs in baseball prevails. But we're certainly not there yet.

Read the whole thing.

Maybe it's not the new stadium...

2009-04-22T20:10:00.000-07:00

From here:

The distance of the home runs being hit this year (the true distance, i.e where they actually land, as well as the standard distance, which factors out weather and altitude) is significantly higher than last year, with the average standard distance being 8.5 feet longer this year than last.

The p-value actually works out to 0.0000341, which is a very strong indicator that something is making 2009 home runs fly farther than 2008 home runs, in isolation of the weather, and to me that implicates the ball.

Ball speed off the bat is also up. And, as you would expect, so are home run totals. I will say that, as others have observed, the ball has appeared to me to be exploding off bats this year. I've been amazed at some of the balls that have gotten out at Yankee Stadium. Maybe my observations are being influenced by other people's commentary, but I thought I'd throw that out there. Apparently, this phenomenon is going on everywhere.

One of the most underreported stories of the so-called "Steroid Era" is that the spike in offense was not the gradual increase that one would expect if steroids were slowly permeating the game. It was a very sharp spike in the early 1990's (starting in 1993, if my memory serves; could be 1994). If we are to accept that steroids caused the surge in output, we must accept that hitters all started using simultaneously. This is highly unlikely. The much more likely explanation is that something changed about the playing environment, something universal.

The most likely culprit is the ball, and indeed there is empirical evidence demonstrating that the core of the ball changed and changed enough to cause a spike in home runs. It appears that something fishy is going on again this year. I'll be very interested to see how this plays out.

UPDATE: Apparently Brian Cashman reads the same blogs I do. ESPN reports that "Cashman also said home runs are traveling about eight feet farther so far this year compared to last season." Furthermore, Cashman is quoted as saying, "The ball is going farther in every park, not just ours." Fascinating.

**EDIT** Fixed typo noted in comments.

Joe Sheehan confirms my bias about confirmation bias

2009-04-15T17:40:00.000-07:00

Sometimes being right isn't all that much fun; as arrogant as it is to say this, I'm fairly familiar with the concept. Let's be clear, too, that this applies when the first week of the season confirms my biases. The Astros are a bad baseball team that probably has the worst bottom 20 roster spots in MLB; that they're 1-5 with the worst run differential in baseball doesn't tell us much more than we knew a week ago. Just because a small sample confirms your pre-season analysis doesn't make it any more valid.

Bingo.

Correct reasoning

2009-04-13T17:19:00.001-07:00

So much of what I write here is really about correct reasoning with baseball as the example. This is because I love baseball and also want to reason about it (and everything else) correctly. Thus, this post, while not explicitly baseball related, naturally piqued my interest. Indeed, I saw it because it was linked by J.C. Bradbury over at Sabernomics, a baseball economics blog. The whole thing is well worth reading, but I will excerpt just a small amount.

If we don’t sometimes defer to the expert consensus, we’ll systematically tend to go wrong in the face of one-way-hash arguments, at least our own necessarily limited domains of knowledge. Indeed, in such cases, trying to evaluate the arguments on their merits will tend to lead to an erroneous conclusion more often than simply trying to gauge the credibility of the various disputants. The problem, of course, is gauging your own competence level well enough to know when to assess arguments and when to assess arguers. Thanks to the perverse phenomenon psychologists have dubbed the Dunning-Kruger effect, those who are least competent tend to have the most wildly inflated estimates of their own knowledge and competence. They don’t know enough to know that they don’t know, as it were.

Yes! Correct reasoning is hard. As much as I love it, I do it wrong all the time. Indeed, this blog serves to enshrine all the times I have reasoned incorrectly. I keep meaning to do a post summarizing all the analyses I've f***ed up, but I keep not doing it (insert Freudian crap about ego and id and all that jazz).

In any case, since we really don't have the time to reason correctly about every last thing, we absolutely must adopt the position that other people likely know more about any given issue and that we should generally defer to their judgement. Yes, this creates the problem of identifying who the experts are, but this is probably a more tractable problem.

The more I learn about computer programming or guitar or economics or baseball, the more I understand how little I truly know about any of them. This is why it is so important not to commit to a particular position just because you feel like you need to choose a side. You should never commit to a position until you have to, and even then you should commit to it only for as long as is necessary, at which time you should "uncommit" and continue to examine all evidence for every position. This is not easy to do.*

Finally, from the same post:

Addendum II: In the comments Pithlord lives up to his moniker:

Most fallacies aren’t really fallacies when you reinterpret them as Bayesian reasons to give an idea more credence rather than iron-clad syllogisms. Without the “argument from authority” and the “ad hominem fallacy”, you would either never get lunch or you’d give all your money to Nigerian spammers.

Bingo. Probabilistic reasoning is insanely hard. In propositional logic, it is a grave fallacy to say "A implies B; B is true; therefore A is also true." However, probabilistically, when you say that "if A is true, B is more likely to be true; B is likely to be true; therefore A is more likely to be true," you are 100% right. That's messed up.

* Please note that I am not saying that no position is ever right or wrong. Rather, I am saying that knowing which position is right and which is wrong can only occur with increasing degrees of certainty. Nor am I arguing that one should never advocate for a position or argue a particular viewpoint. Indeed, if we did not do this, we would never be able to communicate positions or viewpoints to people that need to hear them. Rather what I am saying is that the appropriate attitude when advancing a position is to remember that you could be wrong and to try to learn how you could be wrong from the opposing position.

Bill Simmons, Product of the Enlightenment?

2009-04-11T09:41:00.000-07:00

I'm gonna start this post with two asterisks: (*), and (**). Now, onward!

Bill Simmons has a great article up on ESPN right now. Strangely, it's great from an analysis point of view and not a humor point of view (some of you might have found either one strange). Bill, known for his almost fanatical devotion to the idea of chemistry in football and basketball, slams the idea that chemistry is important in baseball.

But baseball … baseball is an individual sport masquerading as a team sport. You are a worker bee. You have a job, and it's up to you to execute it. Yeah, it's always better to get along, but couldn't you say that about any work situation? Ultimately, it's just you. You're the one pitching, you're the one hitting, you're the one fielding. If everyone is pulling for one another, fantastic. You can even win a division that way -- good karma invariably leads to goofy bounces and luck. On the other hand, the deliriously happy post-Manny Red Sox mustered just three hits in their biggest game of the season (Game 7, 2008 ALCS). At some point in baseball, talent trumps all.

I am in near complete agreement with this (not so much the karma part). Football and basketball are both sports in which teammates must actually cooperate to win. The idea that the relationship of teammates to each other is important is not that far fatched. In baseball, guys have to cooperate to turn a double play or make a relay throw or something. There just aren't that many ways in which good or bad chemistry can have an effect.

I never thought I'd be linking to Bill Simmons here. Weird.

* Did I really not post at all in March? I'm shocked (but not, you know, shocked, shocked).

** My apologies to those who don't get the post title. There are maybe four people in the world who really do.

**EDIT** Fixed a weird typo.

Is VORP dead?

2009-02-28T22:25:00.000-08:00

I've said a few times that one of the things I would love from folks who hate VORP is an honest critique of it from a scientific and analytic perspective. Naturally, those who hate VORP have not done this, because to do so would legitimize the real thing that they hate: the use of science to describe something that they believe transcends such vulgar quantifications. This is nonsense, and we don't need to get into it again.

Of course, one of the hallmarks of science is that the old is always being discarded in favor of the new. Indeed, VORP has come under some criticism recently, but not the banal criticism you've come to expect from the neanderthal luddites that have a stranglehold on print, radio, and television. Rather, it's been the subject of intelligent criticism from people who understand not just how VORP works, but how science works.

The bottom line is that VORP is flawed. You can read a good rundown of its flaws here. Essentially, VORP incorrectly calculates positional adjustments and underestimates the impact of walks (ironically, it has been noted) and doubles. These are fixable problems, of course, and it may be that VORP will be adjusted in the future to account for them. Baseball Prospectus has already started to overhaul WARP to adjust for some of its deficiencies.

In any case, using VORP is still miles better than falling back on the classical trifecta of batting average, home runs, and RsBI (for you, Cous). However, just because it was quick to arrive on the analytical scene or because it's promoted by the biggest name in sabermetrics doesn't mean that deserves to stick around.

I haven't been hitting the stats too hard recently on this site. If and when I get back to it, don't be surprised to see VORP supplanted by a statistic with a better run estimator and positional adjustments. There's no reason to become attached to a particular statistic when we have the tools to progress past it.

Tim Raines: Master Thief

2009-02-27T10:54:00.000-08:00

Poaching from Tom Tango again:

Tim Raines, in high-leverage situations, has reached 1B or 2B 755 times (1B+2B+BB+HB+ROE), and has 260 SB, 49 CS. That’s 0.34 successful SB per opportunity.

Tim Raines, in low-leverage situations, has reached 1B or 2B 1312 times, and has 134 SB and 15 CS. That’s .10 SB per opp.

Do you see that? He stole a base 10% of the time in low-leverage situations, but 34% of the time in high-leverage situations.

So, to all those BBWAA writers who said that he didn’t steal enough… yeah, he didn’t pad his SB totals when the game situation didn’t matter.

Would you like player who successfully steals a base 34% of the time when it really matters? while only making an out 6% of the time? Yes?

Why is this man not in the Hall of Fame?

Properly interpreting projections

2009-02-26T19:50:00.000-08:00

Every year, right about now, you see two related phenomenon:

Fans completely misinterpreting the predictions of objective projection systems.
"Experts" releasing hilariously skewed subjective predicitons.

What am I talking about? Specifically this: people, whether interpreting objective projections or making their own subjective projections, fail to discern the difference between saying that no individual team is likely to win 100 games and that the league is likely not to see any team win 100 games; the difference between not projecting a single pitcher to win 20 games and projecting the league not to have any 20 game winners; the difference between projecting that no single hitter is likely to hit 40 homeruns and drive in 120 runners and projecting that the league is likely not to see any hitter hit 40 homeruns and drive in 120 runners.

Do you think all these things are the same? If you do, you are failing to understand a basic concept in probablility. There's no shame in this. Probability is freaking confusing. Unless you're really, really well-versed in it, you're going to screw it up all the time. I know I do. Nonetheless, let's dig a little deeper into this problem.

Let's say I have a game of chance. You roll a 20-sided die. If you roll a natural 20, I will give you twenty dollars. If not, you will owe me one dollar. What are your expected winnings? Well, we would project you to owe me one dollar 95% of the time and win twenty dollars 5% of the time. That means your expected winning from any single dice roll is exactly five cents (0.95 x -1.0 + 0.05 x 20.0). There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. We would project you to win five cents.

But what if 1,000 people play my game? Since the dice rolls are independent, we would project each of them to win five cents, just like in the individual game. But does this mean that we expect no one to win twenty dollars? Of course not! In fact, we would expect 50 people to win twenty dollars, we just can't predict which 50 people will win. Thus, each person expects to win five cents, even though roughly 50 people will win twenty dollars. In fact, the odds of not one person winning twenty dollars are less than one in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

So what good is our expectation of a five cent win? Simple: that's the expectation that will give us the least error over an infinite number of games. We can't improve on it because the only thing we haven't accounted for in our model of expectation is random chance. Note that this is different from the most likely outcome for one game. The most likely outcome from one game is that you lose a dollar. Nonetheless, we can't just ignore the (relatively) massive twenty dollar payout, even if it is (relatively) rare. That's how expected value works. It aggregates all possibilities into one number that has properly weighted all outcomes.*

The situation appiles exactly the same way to baseball predictions. Some pitchers are going to win 20 games (probably), we just don't know which ones. Some teams are going to win 100 games, we just don't know which ones. Some hitters are going to hit 40 home runs and drive in 120 runners, we just don't know which ones.

That's why when fans react negatively to a projection system that predicts no pitcher to win 20 games, they are making a big mistake. And it's also why when you see Joe Expert predicting some team to win 100 games or some pitcher to win 20 games, he's making a big mistake. Yes, these events are probably going to happen, but it's a fool who thinks he can pick exactly which player or team is going to do it.

There are too many variables that go into a baseball season to determine which teams and players will hit the highs and lows. That's why any sane projection gives numbers that fit in a much more narrow range than you will end up seeing in the real season. There's nothing wrong with this. There's nothing else you can do. If all that remains is random noise, then it will be impossible to improve on your projection's accuracy.** If you could eliminate it, it wouldn't be random would it?

If you can, it often helps to look at player and team projection in terms of percentiles instead of mean expectation. This helps you get a sense of the uncertainty in the projetion. You can more easily see highs and lows and see a variety of outcomes. However, if all you're looking at is the mean expectation, try to keep in mind my simple dice game. Even though you won't have the shape of the curve involved, you'll still understand that this is the expectation that will give you the least error when the real results finally come in.

* Note that expected value is not necessarily the right variable to use for decision making. Value and utility are not necessarily the same thing. Furthermore, it is not true that the utility of the expected value of a particular choice is the same as the expected utility. For both baseball and my dice game, the two are likely to be close enough to be interchangable. For more information, read about the St. Petersburg paradox (which is awesome, by the way).

** That's not to say that any projection system out there is truly left with nothing but random noise. There may be opportunities for genuine improvement, but these opportunities can never fully overcome randomness. Furthermore, these improvements must be derived through rigourous statistical and scientific processes, not someone's gut feeling or some arbitrary pattern they've pulled out of thin air. These are not improvements.

Andre Dawson and why one must consider the whole picture

2009-02-26T08:39:00.000-08:00

Tom Tango has a great post up here on Andre Dawson and his qualifications for the Hall of Fame.

The point is that the low OBP for Dawson can’t be looked at in isolation, as something he has to overcome. It’s one piece of the puzzle, that’s all.

This is spot on, and it's something that I've been dwelling on over the past few months (and not just with respect to baseball).

We have a tendency as humans, excelling as we do at pattern recognition, to prefer discrete classifications to continuous valuations. This is a mistake most of the time. There isn't some hard and fast line at which an on-base percentage becomes acceptable for a Hall of Famer. Any low on-base percentage can be made up for by sufficiently greater production in another area.

It's so easy to get caught engaging in this kind of analysis. We think "Player X can't possible be productive! He only gets on base 32% of the time and he's a singles hitter!" We may be right: Player X may not be productive. However, if Player X is also the best defensive shortstop in the league, there's a great chance that he is actually a highly valuable player.

At the same time, simply being the best defensive shortstop in the league doesn't automatically make Player X valuable. If his offense is poor enough, it doesn't matter that he's better at defense than his peers. In order to perform a proper valuation of Player X we need to quantify every single factor that we can and then see where our evaluation fits within the continuum of baseball players.

Now this isn't an excuse to fudge the numbers. Far from it. Just because we need to whole picture to make correct valuations doesn't mean we can suddenly start assigning arbitrary value to things like "intangibles" or "hustle" or "grit" or "heart." We still need to place analysis within the proper scientific framework.

We need to realize that things rarely fall into discrete buckets. When we bucketize continuous data, we leave ourselves open to error. That is the lesson.

The most wonderful time of the year

2009-02-17T09:03:00.000-08:00

That's right! Spring is here! What's that you say? Haven't seen a robin hopping around in your yard yet? Never fear, fellow spring lover! An even more sure sign of the end of winter is upon us. Yes, baseball players have reported to camp, and virtually all of them are in the best shape of their lives!

Julio Lugo

Julio Lugo, who came in about 5 pounds heavier (seemingly all muscle) than he did last season, said he would have played in the World Series last fall had the Sox gotten that far. He was healthy by that point, and now is ready to begin the 2009 season, completely healed from the quadriceps injury that cut short his 2008 campaign. He's also, he said, in the best shape of his life.

Ryan Ludwick

Ludwick soon expressed remorse for what he said, although he added that he was in the best shape of his life after an active winter of weight training.

Juan Pierre

"That stuff is out of my hands," said Pierre. "I learned last year I can only control what I can control. I came in the best shape of my career and I'm ready to go. After last year, they can't throw too much stuff at me I won't be ready for. Everybody knows I want to play every day, but it's not in my hands."

Dustin Pedroia

Pedroia said he gave up ice cream over the winter as part of his training program and is in the best shape of his career. He said he's ready to help the team get back to the playoffs after losing to the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series last October.

Ronnie Belliard

Bowden said Belliard is in the best shape of his career since he joined Washington two years ago. Belliard played in 96 games last year and hit .287 with 11 home runs and 46 RBIs. [John: WTF? Best shape of career since two years ago? What does that even mean?]

Brad Penny

Penny, who is younger than A.J. Burnett and in 2007 was third in the NL Cy Young Award balloting, is in the best shape of his career. He says his shoulder was so weak last year, "I never should have tried to pitch." But after a winter of dogged conditioning and buying into the Red Sox program, Penny says he is throwing "as well as I ever have" and pitching coach John Farrell now believes Penny will open the season in the rotation.

Freddie Sanchez

"I feel like I'm in the best shape of my career," Sanchez said. "This is the strongest I've ever been. There have been no setbacks in my throwing program. My shoulder is feeling good. It feels strong and I want to see where it all goes this season."

Ryan Howard

Howard's friends have been buzzing all winter about how committed he was to improving his defense and conditioning. And while it's a little early to assess his leather craftwork, there's no doubt he's in the best shape of his career, after dropping 20 pounds in the offseason.

Chris Lubanski

"I know I can run," he said. "I know I haven't run as much as I should have in the past. I've focused this offseason to get into the best shape of my life. That is one thing this year I'm going to show is my speed cause I know it is still there. I know I still have it."

Alex Gordon

He’s been a disappointment his first two years in the majors, but reports are he’s in the best shape of his life, and working with former Royals 3B Kevin Seitzer can’t hurt.

Carlos Pena

"When I tell you I was heartbroken, I was heartbroken, man. I was like, 'You've got to be kidding me.' I waited for [the World Baseball Classic] two years, I couldn't be a part of this last time. Now I'm in it, and I can't be a part of it. But at the same time, I'm making sure I take advantage of this time to heal. And I think it will all work out for the best. So I haven't spent too much time dwelling on the fact I won't be a part of it. Instead, I'm like, 'All right, I've got a lot of time to get into the best shape of my life.'"

What's amazing about this list is that it covers the entire spectrum of MLB players. For Pete's sake, last year's AL MVP says that this year he's in the best shape of his life. I have bad news, Dustin: you aren't likely to improve on last year.

Again, I have no doubt that the players believe this and that for some of them it's actually true. What kills me is that writers bother to use it and unironically at that. We get it. You worked hard during the offseason. Now let's talk about something interesting!

Also, here is a special bonus "best shape" article:

[Padres relief pitcher Heath] Bell said Monday that his workouts with the Nintendo Wii Fit were a big reason why he dropped about 25 pounds during the offseason and why he considers himself in "tip-top" shape as he prepares for his role as closer now that icon Trevor Hoffman has moved to Milwaukee.

As for the Nintendo Wii, Bell often played that with his wife and children at their home in Florida. It wasn't until the Bells purchased the Wii Fit game and board that he started doing the exercises that helped him get in what he considers the best shape he's been in since joining the Padres in 2007.

Woohoo! Happy baseball to all!

PS: Thanks, Google News!

Homer Simpson teaches us a lesson about steroids

2009-02-12T16:42:00.000-08:00

Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.

Lisa: That's specious reasoning, Dad.

Homer: Thank you, dear.

Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.

Homer: Oh, how does it work?

Lisa: It doesn't work.

Homer: Uh-huh.

Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.

Homer: Uh-huh.

Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?

[Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money]

Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.

Source.

The Epistemoligical Steroid Problem

2009-02-12T09:07:00.000-08:00

Over at ESPN, Buster Olney advocates for someone to stand up and tell the truth:

Could someone stand up and offer an unvarnished truth? Could someone please be fully credible and open and offer a complete version? Or are we going to see, day after day after day, these carefully crafted apologies, designed to tackle a public relations problem but really having nothing to do with honesty.

I could agree more. Let's have the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But therein lies the rub: how do we know that's not already what we got? The problem with all the handwringing about athletes not telling the truth is that it presumes that they have not already told us the truth. And why do we believe that they have not told us the truth? Because it does not fit what we believe the truth to be.

This is an impossible problem. Any athlete who comes out and provides a story that does not conform perfectly to what we already believe the truth to be is simply presumed to be lying. We are making assumptions that can't possible be assumed and claiming to know things that can't possible be known when we take this position.

I grant that athletes do not have a great track record here. Furthermore, all the incentives are lined up to tell as little of the truth as possible. I'm not saying you have to believe a baseball player who tells you that he bought HGH but didn't use it. What I'm saying is that you can't simply presume that what they're saying is false simply because it doesn't fit what you think the story is.

A-Rod speaks

2009-02-09T13:24:00.000-08:00

You can read the details here.

Alex admitted to taking PEDs between 2001 and 2003. He says he did it to cope with the pressure of being the highest paid athlete on the planet. He says he has been clean since then.

I want to believe Alex. I want to believe that he's sorry, that he only used for a couple years, that he hasn't used since 2003. It's important that you, the reader, know that because it can't help but color what I have to say. He's the best player on my favorite team. There's no way for me to be unbiased about this.

Much of what Alex says rings true to me. He admits to a much longer period of use than he "had" to. His reasons for taking them seem plausible. He seemed genuinely sorry, inasmuch as I can tell someone seemed genuine.

If Alex is telling the truth, and I mean the whole truth, not some Andy Pettitte truth where your story keeps evolving as more evidence is released against you, then I think he's done the right thing. I think people will be more receptive to this than they will be to a Roger Clemens style assault.

What if Alex isn't telling the truth? I don't want to think that's the case, but the skeptic in me admits that it is necessary. If you want to get full-blown cynical about it, athletes have a poor record of truth telling when it comes to personal failings. Alex's story could all be a very well conceived attempt to hit the "sweet spot" between admitting so little usage that people think you're lying and admitting so much usage that people think don't care that you are sorry. Are we really supposed to believe that all of his Yankee years, in which he has the most personal investment now and in the future, and all of his MVP years, which are critical to his legacy, are clean? That only a few years were not clean? That seems awfully convenient.

*sigh*

I can't be that cynical. Like I said, I want to believe A-Rod. It is my hope that he is telling the truth and that we can all move on from this. For now, I'm gonna take him at his word.

More A-Rod

2009-02-09T08:28:00.000-08:00

If you're looking for a thoughtful take on the A-Rod situation (and profanity free!), try:

King Kaufman
So maybe the records from that time -- which for all we know is still going on, since the cheaters are always ahead of the testers -- are tainted. But they aren't any more tainted than the records from the time when baseball was segregated.
Rob Neyer
I hope Alex Rodriguez didn't cheat. If we do find out that he cheated, I will wish that he hadn't. But whatever happens, I'm not going to change my opinion that he's a great baseball player. Like many of the greatest players, he'll do whatever it takes to be the best player he can be. For a stretch of five or 10 years -- and yes, perhaps even today still -- being the best player could have meant cheating. Maybe the cheaters were wrong; that's the direction in which I lean, probably because I've got a streak of the moralist in me. But I will not sit idly while great athletes looking for an edge -- not all that different from the many generations before them -- are demonized by the high priests of baseball opinion. I will not.

If instead you want some hysterical, over-the-top reactions, try:

Jayson Stark
In baseball, we love our numbers. And we love our heroes. And that brings us to Alex Rodriguez, a man who has committed a crime he doesn't even understand:

A crime against the once-proud history of his sport.

A-Rod didn't commit that crime alone, of course. In many ways, he is just the latest, greatest face of a mass conspiracy that has now succeeded in obliterating the quality that used to separate baseball from the rest of the sporting jungle.

Once, the numbers of baseball used to mean something special and magical. And the men who compiled those numbers were transcendent figures in American life.

But not now. Not anymore.
Peter Abraham
At this point, anybody who played the game in the last 15 years is guilty until proven innocent. Nobody gets a pass. Rodriguez is the most physically talented player in decades. If he decided he had to cheat, everybody else has to be a suspect. Don’t forget, there are still 103 names out there just waiting to be leaked.

Mike Mussina went from being bounced out of the rotation to his first 20-win season. Suspect. Mariano Rivera never seems to take a step back. Suspect. Derek Jeter plays every day. Suspect. Joba Chamberlain sure throws hard. Suspect. Two years ago you would bet your house on those guys being clean. Would you bet $20 now? You can’t be sure about any player, not even the supposed good guys. If you are, you’re hopelessly naive.

Mr. Abraham's opinion and Mr. Stark's opinion are exactly why I can't stand the steroid saga in baseball. It's not that I condone steroid use, or that I don't view steroids as cheating, or that I think we shouldn't care. I just don't see why steroid use is a bigger problem than segregation, game fixing, gambling, bat-corking, ball-scuffing, or any of the other ethical problems that baseball has faced over the years.

Baseball players aren't heroes. They never have been. That's not to say that some aren't admirable. I'm sure there are good men playing baseball. But on the balance, baseball players are actually just like you and me and the rest of humanity.

If you can say that you've never cheated on your taxes, never illegally downloaded a piece of software, a track of music or a movie, never used any sort of recreational drug, never lied to a boss, coworker, or business partner, never cheated on your spouse, and never driven drunk, then you can go ahead and get up on your soapbox to decry baseball players for failing to be saints.

The rest of us should probably remember that it is in human nature to cheat when it will benefit us. That doesn't make it right. That doesn't excuse anyone for cheating, but it should give us pause when we set out to villify a select group of people simply because their job is higher profile than ours.

Shoot me

2009-02-07T09:11:00.000-08:00

Please.

Seriously, I wish I could say that I didn't care about this. I do, though probably not for the reasons most care.

I just want this whole steroid hysteria to go away. We get it. Some players did steroids. Some did not.

So fucking what?

Seriously.

So fucking what?

Athletes do whatever they can to win. They always have. Steroids are just another manifestation of that. That doesn't mean we have to turn the whole goddamn situation into a media shitstorm every time someone is "outed." That doesn't mean we have to go around leaking supposedly anonymous tests that are legally sealed. That doesn't mean that a whole era of baseball is "tainted" or invalidated or whatever. For crying out loud, it's still not even a matter of fact that steroids even assist baseball performance.

We've covered this before, so I don't want to turn this into a 1,000,000,000 word post. Every era has different quirks and idiosyncracies that make direct comparisons across eras impossible. Steroids are just another thing that may or may not need adjusting for. They are, in this respect, no different from large ballparks, loosely-wound baseballs, poor playing surfaces, shoddy equipment, heavier bats, better nutrition, better training, better medicine, or any other factor that influnces baseball performance.

The only reason that steroids are villified the way they are is because it gives media pricks the chance to stand up and ram their sanctimonious, morallizing, narrow, shallow, uniformed opinions down our throats.

Yes, let's try to keep steroids out of baseball. I think that's fine. But we also need to move on and acknoweldge that what happened happened. Please, spare me the histrionics.

I just want to enjoy baseball again. I want us all to be able to enjoy baseball again.

Won't somebody please think of the children?

If a baseball player trains in the woods and nobody interviews him, is he still in the best shape of his life?

2009-02-03T07:50:00.000-08:00

Who knows?

Mike Gonzalez:

Gonzalez has lost 15 pounds. He’s a fit 6 feet 2, 200 pounds and in the best shape of his life, he says. He had to have surgery in October to remove a fatty tumor from his back called a lipoma, but it was benign, and he recovered in three weeks.

Kasey Kiker:

“I’m definitely in the best shape of my life,” Kiker said. “Everybody tries to point the finger at, ‘You’re on the disabled list, and you got hurt because you’re not in shape.’ It’s fair, to a point. I’ve worked as hard as I could.”

Adam Dunn:

Dunn is not Ramirez, mind you. But he's 7 1/2 years younger, said to be in the best shape of his career and the only major leaguer to hit 40 or more homers in each of the past five seasons.

Russell Martin:

Russell Martin, the hard-nosed catcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers, has taken up yoga.

That’s right, the native of Chelsea, Que., best known for his dogged blue-collar work ethic and play-through-all-pain intensity, has made yoga an integral part of his off-season workout regimen for the first time this winter.

“I’ve never felt better,” he said.

How should we value closers?

2008-12-21T15:32:00.000-08:00

J.C. Bradbury, a man who writes a blog that combines two of my favorite subjects, baseball and economics, has put up a couple of posts so far this offseason decrying what he believes are the inordinately large salaries being given to closers.

His chief problem is that relievers, even the best ones, save so many fewer runs than starting pitchers that it seems ridiculous to offer relievers salaries that even approach the salary of a comparably elite starter. The usual response to this is that relievers pitch in "high leverage" situations, which is to say that the best relievers often pitch in situations where each run is of magnified importance. I think we can all agree that it is less damaging to give up a run when you are leading by 15 in the top of the ninth than when the game is tied in the bottom of the ninth.

J.C. does not agree that leverage, which amounts to a simple usage pattern for relievers, should factor in to their salaries:

I have considered the impact of leverage, but I don’t think leverage can explain the vast differences in my estimates and what is happening in the market. Leverage is a product of outside factors when a pitcher faces the same rules during all times of the game. The quality of his pitching is the same in the 5th inning as it is in the 9th.

He concludes (emphasis mine):

Another factor is that better pitchers in earlier innings affect the leverage in later innings. So, a good starter preventing runs as an impact on reducing leverage later in the game by creating bigger leads. I’m not sure exactly how to value that. So, I believe that the proper method is to treat all pitcher innings the same, while acknowledging that some elite relievers have some extra value in that they could be used in more valuable spots. But this value doesn’t necessarily come from when they pitched in the past.

J.C. is certainly right that it doesn't matter when a reliever has pitched in the past. All that matters is how a reliever can be used in the future. I will also admit that I myself have struggled with how to deal with the question of leverage when assessing player value, both in a past sense (how much reliever X contributed to a team's success) and in a future sense (how much reliever X will be worth to me next year).

I want to leave aside the question of past performance for now. I think that J.C. is in error to not factor leverage into future player value. Let me offer an analogy.

Let's say that I have been offered a prize of $1,000,000.00 if I can win a race from New York to Los Angeles. After a couple days of driving, I'm only a couple hours from Los Angeles and comfortably in the lead, by perhaps an hour or two. Suddenly, I find that I have a flat tire. Worse, I have no spare, since I dropped it to lighten my load and increase my fuel economy. I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere with no way to get going again.

But wait! Just when it seems that all hope is lost, a man pulls up beside me with tires for sale. He knows about my predicament and the prize waiting for me at the end of the race. If I act now, my lead will still be comfortable and I can cruise to the finish line in peace.

So I ask my savior, "How much for a spare tire?" He replies, "Only $750,000.00."

Obviously that tire did not cost that much to make, nor would it be worth that much at just about any other point in the race. Nonetheless, that tire is almost certainly worth that much at this point in time because I have no other options. I can either accept a prize of $250,000.00 or receive nothing. In fact, one might say that my enterprising benefactor is giving me a good deal, since I should probably be willing to accept almost up to the entire $1,000,000.00.

The situation is slightly more complicated when there are multiple tires (or relievers) on the market and multiple people bidding for them, but the principle is the same. How you intend to use a tool and the situation in which you might use it most certainly impacts how much that tool is worth, even if that tool is a pitcher.

Best. Shape. Ever.

2008-11-25T17:22:00.000-08:00

And it's not even Thanksgiving yet!

[New York Yankees second baseman Robinson] Canó, Long said, has dedicated himself to physical fitness and is in “immaculate condition.”

Let the good times roll!

Pujols and Howard

2008-11-20T18:27:00.000-08:00

From Thomas Boswell in the Washington Post:

Thirty years ago, I created the statistic Total Average. Now I'm almost ashamed to have been one of the original baseball geeks. Where did we go wrong?
This week, Albert Pujols won the NL MVP Award. Why? Mostly because he had a better OPS and VORP (Value Over Replacement Player) than Ryan Howard. Say what? Meanwhile, back in the real world, the Phils' first baseman had 48 homers and 146 RBI to Pujols' 37 homers and 116 RBI.
Earth to my baseball writing buddies: We all love the new numbers, but lets not worship false idols. When I published my Total Average numbers, I'd always emphasize that while stats were wonderful, common sense was better. When stats WILDLY contradict common sense, always doubts the stats. In the case of the goofy gap between Pujols' VORP of 96.8 and Howard's 35.3, my reaction is "Time to revisit VORP. If it can be this wrong, it's not as good as I tought it was."

Let me pull the key sentence out of that quotation:

When stats WILDLY contradict common sense, always doubts the stats.

No. This is very, very, very wrong. I know I've emphasised this over and over and over again, but it bears repeating: the proper way to use statistics is not to break them out when you already agree with them. The proper way to use statistics is to develop a model or a test that describes something useful a priori and then to let the results speak for themselves.

Let's be clear about this: anything less than that level of rigor is simply catering to your own predispositions. It's engaging in an activity that adds nothing useful to any discussion anywhere at anytime. If you only use a statistic when it validates your point of view, you are being either naïve or intellectually dishonest.

Ah, but what if it's not your opinion that the statistic contradicts? What if it contradicts COMMON SENSE?

Rubbish. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, there is no place in analysis for "common sense." All "common sense" means is that you believe that an idea is so basic that it does not require further argument. It fits some arbitrary set of criteria on which you have been conditioned to evaluate things. It says something about the person making the claim of "common sense" and nothing about the idea itself. "Common sense" is not an argument. It is a plea to avoid having to make an argument in the first place.

Common sense has its place, of course. One would rather not have to make an argument to one's self about why one should walk with the scissors pointed down or look both ways when crossing the street. But when ideas are being challenged, when ideas that you may think are common sense are being called into question, you cannot simply scream COMMON SENSE and expect that this is a rational rejoinder to your challenger. It just doesn't work that way.

Boswell has fallen back on common sense because that's the only argument he has left. He can't tell you why the numbers he hates are wrong from any real analytical perspective, so he has to claim that there is no reason to tell you why they are wrong. It's simply common sense.

The evidence that Boswell does provide forms only a narrow view of the two players. This type of mistake is easy to make. It's easy to focus on one or two of the most important issues in an argument and forget that all the other small issues, while lesser indivudually, may tip the balance in the aggregate. I've made this mistake on this blog many times, I know.

In this case, Boswell focuses on home runs and RBIs to argue that Howard's commanding lead in these categories is all you need to know. In fact, he explicitly exhorts his readership not to think beyond Howard's RBIs, simply because his lead is so large that nothing could possibly make up for it. He has to do this, because the moment you do the analysis you realize just how wrong that view is.

It's true. Ryan Howard had 48 home runs and 146 RBIs to Albert Pujols' 37 HR and 116 RBI. That is a large gap. If the only way to score in baseball were the three run home run, Howard would be the MVP in a landslide.

What happens when you look deeper? Pujols had 187 hits, Howard only 153. Pujols had 44 doubles, Howard only 26. Pujols walked 104 times, Howard only 81. Pujols made 364 outs. Ryan Howard made 475.

And that, friends, is the real kicker. Ryan Howard made 111 more outs than Albert Pujols last year. That is a ton of outs. Albert Pujols didn't just produce runs himself. He provided 111 more opportunities for his teammates to produce runs as well. Think of what your baseball team could do with 111 extra opportunities.

That's why the VORP numbers that Boswell disdains are so whacky. Yes, Ryan Howard produced a lot of runs himself, but he also drastically reduced his teammates' opportunities by using up a gigantic number of outs. In the end, that hurts run production. VORP accounts for that. Boswell's common sense does not.

The numbers don't get better for Howard as you keep digging. Pujols is one of the best fielders at first base. Howard is probably the worst. That counts. Boswell maintains that Howard was the king of the game-changing home run. Yet, when you account for the importance of the situation in the ball game systematically, you find that it's Pujols who was the better bet in the clutch with 6.39 Win Probability Added* to Howard's 2.37.

So in a perverse way, Boswell is right to complain that the difference between the two player's VORP is not accurate. In fact, it's far too kind to Ryan Howard. Once you get past the home runs and the RBIs it is crystal clear that Albert Pujols absolutely dominated Ryan Howard this year.

It's tempting to try to focus an argument down to one or two key sticking points. It's easier, clearer, and more concise. It's also poor analysis. One must account for everything. And when one finds one's opinion or common sense to be at odds with a more complete analysis**, only two legitimate options remain: demonstrate how the previous analysis fails or accept the results.

Boswell, like most contemporary baseball journalists, chooses instead to bury his head in the sand and complain about those geeks that are ruining baseball.

**EDIT** Joe Posnanski has written essentially the exact same post as I have over here, only his is better because he is a talented and professional writer and I am not.

* Win Probability Added is calculated by determining how likely a player's team was to win the game before and and after their at bat. The difference is credited to the player as WPA. You can think of WPA roughly as a raw number of wins that a player contributed to a team through his performance. Personally, I do not think that WPA demonstrates a useful skill (for reasons to lengthy to go into right now), but it does demonstrate that in those situations where the game could be greatly affected, Pujols was much more of a threat than Howard.

** It would be wrong to construe from my argument that VORP is the end all be all of analysis, nor is it meant to construe that there is only one way to perform a complete analysis. There can be many legitimate ways to analyze a problem that attempt to form a complete picture. They may even disagree. However, to not attempt a complete analysis is to pull the rug out from under yourself.

Rob Neyer on a roll

2008-11-19T08:24:00.000-08:00

Great stuff from Rob today, ~~though it is behind the Iron ESPN Curtain as usual~~ (apparently Rob's blog is free now; awesome!):

What I'm not willing to say -- what I'll probably never be willing to say -- is that Joe Mauer deserved to finish behind Justin Morneau in the MVP balloting again. Two years ago, there was virtually no evidence that Morneau was more valuable than Mauer, yet Morneau finished first and Mauer finished sixth. This year, there is virtually no evidence that Morneau was more valuable than Mauer, and yet Morneau finished second and Mauer finished fourth.
Maybe that's a sign of progress. But for as long as I've been doing this, I've been told that I don't see enough games, that I don't know what it really takes to win, that I don't appreciate the little things that don't show up in the box scores.
And for as long as I've been doing this, every time the MVP voters have a choice between the guy with the power stats and the guy who does the little things, they pick the guy with the big numbers.

This is spot on, and represents perhaps the most absurd aspect of the false dichotomy between the old-timey, out-in-the-sun, scorecard-filling, sunflower-seed-chewing, team-bus-riding, player-interviewing journalist and the new-agey, basement-dwelling, cheese-puff-eating, Internet-surfing, stat-crunching über-geek, a dichotomy created entirely by those same journalists.

Journalists use numbers too. They have to. Everyone has to. They just use different (and inferior) numbers. It's left to the stat geek to attempt to pull the little things out of the vast expanses of data routinely ignored by the mainstream MVP voter. And what's the result? The result is that despite the whining by baseball journalists about how little baseball we watch, it ends up being the stat geek that advocates for an MVP candidate by trying to obtain a complete view of the player and the MVP voter who votes on the basis of gaudy numbers.

Insanity

2008-11-03T09:28:00.000-08:00

It's become a common cliché, an oft-cited but unverifiable quote, but it remains relevant in baseball: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Why bring this up now? Because you can expect to see the sentiment Tim Kurkjian expresses here echoed a lot during the offseason (emphasis added):

But the Red Sox, one way or another, will contend next season because they have lots of money, lots of young pitching, lots of resources and a much healthier Josh Beckett.

What makes anyone think that Josh Beckett is a good bet to stay healthy over 162 games? I get tired of bringing it up (nb: not really), but Josh Beckett has had exactly one full, healthy, productive year in his entire career. Sure, when he's healthy he's generally effective and sometimes brilliant, but the fact is that he is always battling some ailment or another.

At some point, you have to stop counting on Beckett to be healthy and instead recognize that to continue to make a healthy Josh Beckett the keystone in your quest for a championship is essentially insane.

Winning baseball

2008-10-29T21:12:00.000-07:00

Question: Why did the Tampa Bay Rays make it to the World Series?

Answer: Because they hit a ton of home runs.

Question: Why did the Tampa Bay Rays lose the World Series?

Answer: Because they did not hit a ton of home runs.

It's passé in baseball to harp on doing the little things during the playoffs: bunting, sacrificing, hitting to the right side, stealing bases, etc. If you do these things well, the theory goes, you will be successful in October. Yet time and again, we find that it's the team that out-pitches or out-slugs their opponent that emerges victorious. That happened again this year. The Rays simply ran out of slug, and when they did, they lost.

In fact, they lost despite stealing a record number of bases and scoring on not a few small ball plays. That's the irony of the whole situation. I'm sure not a few columnists will take the time to point out that home runs are fickle and that the Rays simply relied on them too much to be a winner. The problem is that this is true of virtually all teams, even (or especially) championship teams. When you don't hit for any power (with men on base), it's really tough to win.

Naturally, if someone could find the fountain of hit-home-runs-all-the-time, they could practically guarantee success in the playoffs. Since this is reality, where chance governs so much of the events that make up sporting events, sometimes the power just doesn't come when you need it. So it goes. All you can do is put the best team you can out there and hope that you get some breaks. That's not a flawed strategy or one-dimensional approach to the game. It's just The Way Things Are.

Hit for power and win; don't hit for power and lose. That's the lesson of these playoffs, even if the talking heads decide that the exact opposite is true.

Clutch

2008-10-11T19:57:00.000-07:00

4.1 IP, 9 H, 8 R, 8 ER, 1 BB, 5 K, 3 HR

Inefficiency

2008-10-11T08:52:00.000-07:00

Pete Abraham notes here (by way of this MSNBC article) that the Yankees paid 2.3 million dollars per win last year. The Rays paid only $451,000 per win.

This is actually misleading. In reality the situation is much worse. It's not possible for a baseball team to field a roster with zero payroll and it isn't likely that the worst roster a team could field (while still trying to win) would win zero games. In fact, the minimum a team could pay its players for one season is roughly 10 million dollars and the lowest win total they could possibly have is around 40 wins.

When you factor this in, what you realize is that the Yankees really paid about 199 million dollars for 49 wins, an embarassingly bad 4.1 million dollars per win. The Rays go up too; they really paid about $593,000 per win.

This distinction is actually important. For example, the Yankees are last in dollars per win, but when you adjust for the proper baselines, the Seattle Mariners are far more inefficient. Seattle paid 5.1 million dollars over the minimum payroll for each win over 40.

Inefficiency isn't just about spending tons of money. The real key to inefficiency is to pay a lot and get almost nothing for it. That's why the 40 win baseline is so important. Teams should not get credit for efficiency for winning games that they were going to win no matter how inept they were. Hell, even the 2003 Tigers managed 43 wins. They probably hold the record for inefficiency. By my back of the envelope calculations, they would have paid nearly 17 million dollars per win. If you fail to adjust for the proper baseline, they would appear to have only spent 1.4 million dollars per win.

Proper baselines: always important.

I would remiss if I didn't mention Doug Pappas in this post, since he is the man who pioneered this line of thinking, at least among those of us who follow baseball analysis on the Internet. Doug died in 2004 at the age of 41 while hiking on vacation. His presence and analysis is sorely missed. You can read his take on payroll analysis here and view his blog here. Rest in peace, Doug.

**EDIT** Fixed some egregious typos and reworded an awkward sentence.

A couple postseason thoughts

2008-10-05T22:01:00.000-07:00

Buck Martinez kept going on and on during tonight's Angels - Red Sox game about how hard closing was relative to setting up. He spouted nonsense about closers being able to pitch "with the game on the line" while setup men can't and how closers "want the responsibility" and feel like they're "carrying their 24 teammates on their shoulders."

Sucks to be a set up man, eh? Not only do you somehow not know how to pitch with the game on the line (because, as we all know, runs in the ninth inning count twice or something), but you are also an irresponsible coward. Honestly, what compels people to talk about closing this way?

Naturally, it gave me much satisfaction to see Jered Weaver, certified non-closer, close out a one run lead in the bottom of the twelfth against the heart of the Red Sox order. Closing: it just isn't that hard.
Dustin Pedroia is now something like 0 for 17 in the postseason. He is coming off an MVP caliber season. He will not be accused of choking. Why? Mostly because he's short, white, scrappy, and low-paid. People will point to earlier postseason success instead of dwelling on his current slump. I hope someone can explain to me how this is fair to Alex Rodriguez.
The bottom line with these two previous thoughts is that people on both sides of any argument can find anecdotal evidence to support their position. This is why eventually it becomes necessary to either prove a point logically from a set of common assumptions or to provide evidence from a rigorous examination of data. If you cannot do either of these, your argument deserves no respect.

Interestingly, this rigorous examination of data is called "statistics." It is the science of science in a certain sense. It exists preciesly so that arguments can be settled instead of devolving into an endless series of platitudes and anecdotes. They aren't evil. They exist because sooner or later a question has to be settled from an objective basis. For the life of me, I don't understand why more people don't realize this.

20

2008-09-28T15:26:00.000-07:00

I'd like to tell you that words cannot express how happy I am for Mike Mussina on securing his 20th win of the 2008 season. I'd like to, but it's not true. Here, let me show you how easy it is:

I'm really freakin' happy about this.

I'm mostly happy because people have unjustly branded Mike an inferior pitcher because that magical confluence of events that goes into reaching this particular arbitrary milestone never materialized for him until now. Those people are now forced to recognize The Moose as one of the best pitchers of his generation. This likely sows up a well deserved Hall of Fame spot. That makes me happy.

On the other hand, it should also give us all pause to reflect on how silly it is that for many, the key cog in Mike Mussina's Hall of Fame case was a meaningless game in September of his 18th Major League Baseball season. To many, Mike Mussina's career is now somehow significantly better because he won a game today; that his previous 535 starts are now somehow more meaningful because of his 536th.

That's a load of crap, and I hope everyone reading this realizes that. Before today Mike Mussina was a great pitcher. He didn't need this to be great. He needed it for other people to recognize his greatness. This win is a drop in the bucket; the garnish on an already excellent season; the signature on a masterpiece of a career.

But a Picasso would still be transcendent even if Picasso never signed it. The signature on a work of art has nothing to do with its inherent quality. It merely signals to otherwise uninformed that it is worthy of their respect and admiration.

People now respect Mike Mussina's career more than they ever have, even if they're only doing it because they saw his signature on what was already a masterpiece before he signed it. Sometimes you have to accept that people will do the right thing for the wrong reasons. Today, I can live with that.

Congratulations, Moose, from a fan who didn't need to see you sign your opus to know how special your career already was.

A-Rod sucks

2008-09-23T17:38:00.001-07:00

So say Michael Kay and Al Leiter. It's more of the same "You gotta watch the games" garbage that always gets thrown around.

People, get this through your skulls: perception is not reality. Just because you perceive a pattern does not mean it exists. If I could communicate just one idea to people when it comes to analysis, this would probably be it.

A-Rod hasn't hit with men on base this year. So what? He'll probably finish 25 RBIs off his excellent-even-by-his-own-lofty-standards 2007. The Yankees are going to finish nearly 200 runs shy of their total from last year. Were you expecting Alex to drive in 300+ runs?! Surely there must be some other explanation. In fact, not only is it impossible to find any real evidence that hitting with men on base is a separate skill from simply hitting in general, but the difference between A-Rod's so-called "clutch" numbers and his overall numbers is vanishingly small.

What's the difference between A-Rod's pathetic .232 average with RISP and two out and a .300 batting average?

Five hits.

Five.

Hits.

What could we expect those hits to net the Yankees? Five runs? Seven? Ten? If A-Rod's five missing hits give the Yankees ten more runs, they'd likely be only five game behind the Red Sox instead of six. With six to play. Yeah. That's a huuuuuuuge difference.

With RISP regardless of outs, A-Rod is hitting only .261, a mammoth seven hits away from .300. Yeah. Seven whole hits. A truly gigantic difference.

With runners on base, regardless of scoring position, A-Rod is hitting a pedestrian .274, still seven hits away from .300.

Notice a pattern? Not only is the difference about as far from significant as possible, but as we increase the sample size, A-Rod's numbers become closer and closer to his overall numbers.

Do you want to know something else perhaps even more telling? A-Rod's OBP with RISP and two out is .424. That's higher than his overall OBP. His OBP with RISP regardless of outs is .398, still higher than his overall OBP. Perhaps no one wants to give A-Rod a pitch to hit when he can really do damage. Note that again as we increase the sample size, his OBP retreats to his normal level. This regression to the mean is the hallmark of random statistical noise.

Does this look like the profile of a choker or someone who had "it" last year and lost "it" this year? Or does it look like random statistical variation perhaps coupled with some very cautious pitchers?

Of all the Yankees' problems this year, A-Rod's performance is probably the very bottom of the list (OK, it's more of a problem than Mike Mussina). There is no reason, there is no reason, why we should ascribe A-Rod's "struggles" to anything other than the capricious whims of Lady Luck.

I'm sorry if that makes a worse story.

Is this blog dead?

2008-09-17T19:44:00.000-07:00

Nope. Or at least, I hope not. Currently, and probably for the extended future, I am being crushed at work by a large project that does two things to me. First, it takes up more of my time than it used to. Second, it saps my mental energy to the point where I just don't want to think about analysis in any serious way. Whether or not you think serious analysis has been a requisite for posting here in the past, I certainly do not have the heart for it right now.

Nonetheless, there are still things I want to talk about, and I hope that in the future I will again be able to care enough to write about them here.

Some quick thoughts:

So much for everyone who thought the Tigers were world beaters.
So much for everyone who thought the Rays weren't.
I would not worry too much about the New York Yankees going forward. Every team experiences years like this. New York is in an excellent position to recover.
Joba Chamberlain must remain a starting pitcher.

I'll catch you all later.

Summing up RBI

2008-08-01T15:05:00.000-07:00

Keith Law in a chat today on ESPN:

Todd (MA): Perhaps the RBI stat is overvalued, but it's hardly meaningless. The team that scores the most runs wins the game, and the RBI stat helps to identify what players succeed at tallying runs for their team. The ability to hit with runners on base is arguably one of the most important abilities in baseball, perhaps second only to proficiency in getting on base.

Keith Law: All it does is tell us who happened to come up to the plate with men on base. This is not valuable information. And there is no evidence that "the ability to hit with runners on base" is at all distinct from "the ability to hit."

It's that last sentence that basically sums it up. Every single time the issue is really studied, one of two conclusions is made:

There is no ability to hit with men on base that is in any way distinct from simply the ability to hit.
There is an ability to hit with men on base, but its discernible impact is so small, that you're better off just proceeding as if #1 were true anyway.

I'm not sure if it can be summed up any better than Keith did.

But who will pitch the eighth inning?!?!

2008-07-23T06:11:00.000-07:00

Over at the RLYW, SG notes that since May 29th, seven relievers in the New York Yankees bullpen have combined for 128 innings of 2.53 RA baseball. May 29th was the day that the New York Yankees moved Joba Chamberlain out of the bullpen and into the starting rotation.

It's only been a couple of months, but already Joba, with an assist from the baseball gods, has shown people why it was absolute lunacy to consider keeping him in the bullpen. Not only has he maintained his dominant stuff throughout his starts, but the bullpen hasn't really missed him. The team hasn't been hemoragging late inning leads. In fact, as far as my admittedly spotty memory can recall, they haven't blown one game that they might have won if Joba had been available in the bullpen (confirmation bias warning).

That's obviously not going to continue, but the larger point remains: it's just not that hard to pitch one inning of baseball. The difference between Joba and some random reliever pitching the eighth inning is dwarfed by the difference beween Joba and some random starter pitching the first seven. Case closed.

The Uncanny Valley

2008-07-20T11:24:00.000-07:00

In robotics, there exists a hypothesis known as "the uncanny valley." In short, the hypothesis is that humans respond with increasing empathy to robots (and other objects) as they become increasingly human up until a point where they are almost human. At this point, humans will instead experience strong repulsion as they now perceive those characteristics that make them un-human instead of those that make them more human. However, this repulsion only lasts for a little while because as the robots become even more human we once again begin to identify strongly with them.

This hypothesis tends to ring true to me. Just look at the reaction that most people have to computer animated characters. We tend to obsess over the things that make them less human. We find them creepy, even if technically they are superbly animated. We don't have that reaction to simple hand-drawn animations. Indeed, much animation is designed to create truly unrealistic characteristics that are designed to elicit a truly empathetic response.

This, of course, has nothing at all to do with baseball. Not obviously, anyway.

I began thinking about this concept with respect to baseball as it pertains to baseball analysis. All baseball analysis is designed to simplify our view of baseball so that we can more easily extract information from it. As statistics become more and more complex, they begin to capture real baseball more and more accurately.

But will we reach a point where the models involved will be so minute that they miss the big picture? Can we create models that are too detailed? Will baseball models reach a point where they are so close to real baseball that they actually cease to tell us anything useful, instead providing us with either totally obvious or totally false conclusions?

One of the advantages of statistics is their coarse-grained nature. By not being bogged down in details, we can cut right to some important if general truths.

Obviously, I don't have an answer to these questions. And really, I probably don't need one. As long as we can measure the efficacy of the models we create, we should be able to discern between useful and useless models. Nonetheless, it's a question that's been eating at me for a few weeks. Thoughts?

A realization and another piggyback

2008-06-19T05:18:00.000-07:00

I keep meaning to do something worthwhile in this space, to explore some area of baseball research that I'm curious about or to develop some new way of thinking about a problem. In reality though, that stuff is far more involved than I'm usually willing to commit to, so I end up piggybacking off of other people's blogs, which essentially makes me like every other blog on the Internet (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Today's piggyback is from Rob Neyer, who is unfortunately behind the ESPN Insider curtain:

The "anti-scout stat geek"? He's a straw man. Doesn't really exist, at least not in any meaningful numbers. As for scouts doing "a better job of projecting prospects than the numbers do" … Well, we don't really know that, do we? When scouts evaluate players, even Class A players, they can't help but notice the numbers. And when number geeks evaluate players, they read the scouting reports.

This is a marvelous point and it points out a flaw on both the objective and subjective realms of baseball analysis.

Not only are scouts, the subjective analysts, not impervious to the influence of numbers (after all, they have to use some data to back up a projection, even if it's height, weight, age, bat speed, fastball velocity, or whatever), but they are not forced to quantify their projections into any meaningful set of numbers. Thus, unlike purely objective projection mechanisms, it's really hard to evaluate how well they've done at projection. If I were paying scouts, I'd have them rigorously quantify their projections along the lines of providing basic stat lines at various percentiles for important ages at the major league level. Then you would be able to actually grade how well your scouts do project and give them valuable feedback.

Of course, Rob exposes a problem on the objective side as well. Objective analysts too often fool themselves into adding their own subjective point of view to a supposedly objective evaluation. It drives me crazy every time I see Nate Silver hedge his PECOTA projections. Which is it, Nate? Are your PECOTA projections "deadly accurate" or do they need subjective adjustment? It completely defeats the purpose of objective analysis when the analyst starts adding his own view point.*

* Yes, I realize that BPro articles are for entertainment first, and they do entertain me, but I still reserve the right to get annoyed. I'm sure Mr. Silver understands my point without needing a correction from yours truly.

Twelve hits

2008-06-04T07:42:00.000-07:00

I'm gonna cherry pick from the boys at River Ave. Blues again, mainly because they buried this gem in an analysis of Joba Chamberlain's brief first start.

Now, we know Cano is struggling, and we know he’s swinging at everything. But here’s the reality: At this point last year, Cano’s batting average was .050 higher than it is now, and the second baseman had just 12 hits more than he did now in the same number of at bats. 12! That’s hardly anything.

This really underscores just how much small samples distort reality. If you scatter just a dozen singles into Robinson Cano's line, he's back to where he was at this point last year. Robby can make that up with a couple of hot weeks.

This is the ultimate reality of baseball: the season just is not long enough for all the breaks, bounces, injuries, good luck, bad luck, and blown calls to even out. The difference between a .300 hitter and a .280 hitter over the course of a year has more to do with chance than it has to do with skill. That's what makes baseball fun, but it's also what makes it frustrating.

Why stats are important

2008-05-27T21:15:00.000-07:00

Because I just watched LaTroy @!&*#%!*%#!&^$!(*@#! Hawkins blow a one run lead in the bottom of the 11th inning and statistics are the only thing capable of providing me with an objective point of view to prevent one excruciatingly painful moment from permanently warping my perspective.

Even LaTroy @!&*#%!*%#!&^$!(*@#! Hawkins was likely to convert that save. He didn't. It happens.

*(^#$*&#%*^#$@*#^!

Why don't we see complete games anymore?

2008-05-27T10:58:00.001-07:00

Craig Calcaterra over at Shysterball has a brief post up about why we see fewer complete games in the present than we did in the past. His thesis, and that of the gentleman to whom he links, is that because teams have more money invested in young pitchers now than they did in the past, they are more careful with their arms. They don't push their arms to their limits for fear of losing their investment entirely.

I think this is mostly true, but I want to make a finer point: it doesn't really matter how much you paid for the services of a particular pitcher. All that matters is how to extract the best value from that pitcher, or rather, from your system of training pitchers.

Once you've signed a young pitcher, the money that you have paid to him is a sunk cost. You cannot get it back. Thus, the money that you have already paid to pitchers should not factor at all into the training and usage of your pitchers. If the best way to extract performance from your pitchers is to have them all throw 300 innings immediately upon leaving high school and see which ones survive, then this will be the best way no matter how much you paid them. Thus, it would not be correct to alter your system of pitcher training and usage just because your pitchers cost you more money than they did in the past.

However, there is a cost to determining which system of pitcher training and usage is the most efficient. In the past, it is entirely possible that this cost outweighed the cost of paying young pitchers. Thus, teams simply hired as many young arms as they could, worked the hell out of them, and thus found which ones would stick. This may have been cheaper than actually determining how to maximize that value of any given set of pitchers. I think that this is highly plausible when you consider the relatively high cost of data analysis (no computers) and the relative inexpensivenesses of pitching.

Now that it costs a lot more to hire a pitcher (and a lot less to analyze data), the rewards for having an efficient system are much higher. Thus, teams are more willing to invest in research to determine which systems of pitcher training and usage are the most efficient. In the process of doing so, they have apparently determined that it is better for your pitchers to not ask them to throw twenty complete games every year.

Whether or not this is the correct conclusion is a completely different question.

The narrative fallacy

2008-05-21T08:52:00.000-07:00

The boys over at River Ave. Blues have absolutely nailed it:

The Yankees are losing now. Many people are trying to fabricate reasons why the Yankees are losing. But there is one, just one reason for their losing games:
Their pitching is allowing more runs than their offense is scoring.

That’s it. That is the reason, in totality, why the Yankees are losing games. Pretty boring, huh? So it’s no wonder why people create these narratives to explain the situation. Narrative is far more interesting, far more engaging than facts. It’s a shame that it gives us zero insight into the game.

This is so amazingly correct that I'm kind of ashamed I didn't post on it earlier.

We love baseball because we love the narrative. There's nothing wrong with that. I love the narrative too. However, it's a mistake to assume that the narrative in any way has any bearing on the decision making process associated with running a baseball team. To run a team correctly, one must be immune to the narrative. One must learn to ignore the story and analyze only the facts. That's hard, especially when it seems obvious to everyone that insert team name here is playing lifeless, uninspired baseball and is in need of a "spark."

Hank: Shut up

2008-05-14T06:46:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. Hank Steinbrenner,

You know nothing about baseball. Spend your money on people who do know something, and then STFU. Your team will actually be better off if you do. For reference, please study the last thirty-five years of Yankee baseball.

Your Pal,

John P. Lynch

Tim McCarver making sense

2008-05-03T13:42:00.000-07:00

I like to rag on Tim a lot, so I want to give him some props for his refusal to play along with Joe Buck's idiocy in regards to jinxes and curses during the Cubs - Cardinals game on Fox Saturday afternoon.

Since the Cubs were playing, Joe started rambling on about their supposedly cursed past. That Kosuke Fukudome appeared recently on the cover of Sports Illustrated also served as fodder for Joe's discussion of famous jinxes. Joe remarked that Fukudome had gone 4-4 the day after the his cover issue hit the stand. After musing over Fukudome's ignorance of Cubs history and the variety of curses associated with them, he then asked Tim if he believed in curses or jinxes.

Now, it would be normal for Tim to play along with this silly idea. Tim however chose to rather bluntly shoot it down. "No," he said, "I don't believe in curses or jinxes or anything like that."

Buck then decided to bait McCarver by talking about how poorly McCarver had played after his two appearances on the cover of SI. McCarver responded again bluntly: "Can't a guy just play badly? What can't a guy just not play well? You don't need some curse or jinx to play poorly. Haven't we come far enough as a society not to believe in those things?"

Buck disagreed. He was probably being facetious, but I don't care. This whole superstitious curse nonsense is junk. It was junk for the Red Sox and it's junk for the Cubs. Yeah, it's marginally funny, but only for so long. I'm tired about hearing about the freakin' Billy Goat. I don't want to hear about black cats.

Tim McCarver, at least for five minutes, was a stalwart defender of the scientific way of looking at things, of reason and common sense, of not being an idiot.

Thanks, Tim. I'll lay off the next time you make want to tear my hair out.