What is Sabermetrics supposed to be?

[Honus Wagner Rules]

Grant over at McCovey Chronicles is one of my favorite baseball writers. Here is his humorous take on Matt Cain and xFIP.

An Open Letter to the Viceroy of Stats
by Grant on Jan 14, 2011

Dear Viceroy of Stats,

First off, thank you for the stats. If I were to do a line graph comparing my love for baseball and the rise of the internet, the two lines would start rising dramatically around 1996 without a single dip. The stats are a big part of that. One of my favorite things in the world is feeling superior to other people. Now when someone references RBI, I know I’m objectively better than them in every capacity. You can’t buy that feeling, and I have stats to thank. Plus, when people argue about "sabermetrics" vs. "sabremetrics", it reminds me of the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912 joke,and that’s always a good thing.

But I also remember those early days of the internet stats. No-hit, all-glove wizards were not tolerated. Teams and GMs who signed players like Royce Clayton, Rey Sanchez, and Mike Bordick were mocked without mercy. The new stats, though, tell us that some of those guys had pretty valuable seasons. Jose Vizcaino, for whom I had a strong distaste in 1997, was actually a 2+ win player that year. Well, I’ll be. This isn’t to suggest that because the methods of evaluation have changed, people should discount every innovation because it’s likely to be considered wrong in a decade. Of course not.

It might not be a bad idea, though, always to assume that stats are likely to contain some measure of imperfection. When I see single-season WAR totals used with a dogmatic certainty, it makes me uneasy. I have a feeling that the formula for WAR will be updated and tinkered for years, if not decades, because it’s surely tricky to combine hitting stats with something as variable as single-season fielding stats to produce a single number. Yet there’s a small faction among us who likes to use single-season WAR as a blunt object. It feels like some folks -- certainly not most or all -- use the stat without the spirit of intellectual curiosity with which it was created.

So I’ve searched for the most diplomatic way to phrase this, and I think I’ve arrived at something that fair, honest, and non-combative. Here goes: Matt Cain is good, and people who use xFIP as a blunt object can shut their yap holes. The idea of normalizing ERA to account for luck with balls put in play is a fine one. Trying to normalize home runs per fly all is a good idea too. Assuming that the current construct will work as an infallible predictive tool for every single pitcher in professional baseball right now? Not my favorite idea.

Matt Cain has outperformed his FIP for four straight seasons. He has probably benefited from some measure of luck, especially in 2009, when he beat the mark by a full run. The traditional stat, ERA, indicates that Matt Cain is an elite pitcher. FIP suggests that Cain is merely very good. That’s a fair debate. Pitchers can do that sort of thing for an entire career, but they’re the exceptions, not the rules. The burden of proof would probably be on the person suggesting that Cain is elite.

However, xFIP suggests that Matt Cain is an innings-eater of the most ordinary capacity, like a Jon Garland or a Joe Blanton. Matt Cain’s career xFIP is 4.43, and aaaaaaany day now, his ERA will regress to meet that mark. Some people pounce on that, and they froth at the mention of Matt Cain as a top pitcher. And I’m forced to react like a troglodyte, mentioning that a) I’VE TOTALLY WATCHED, LIKE, EVERY ONE OF HIS STARTS, AND MY EYES ARE MORE BETTER THAN YOUR STATS, and b) but his ERA! ( ) I don’t like both of those arguments. I can link to a study by the wizard who actually invented FIP, which acknowledges that there could be outliers like Cain when calculating xFIP, but because the math hurts my brain, I can’t do anything but appeal to his authority.

It feels like with some folks, you get "Matt Cain’s xFIP is this. His ERA is that. The difference means there is something wrong with Matt Cain." I would like more, "Matt Cain’s xFIP is this. His ERA is that. Maybe there’s something that makes this happen every year." That’s all. I would just like the small, vocal minority to use stats like WAR, FIP, and xFIP as useful tools, not divinely inspired scripture just yet. Please command them to do so with your powers as Viceroy of Stats.

I would like to end this open letter by noting that Matt Cain did not allow an earned run this postseason, and contrary to popular belief, that performance has tremendous predictive value. I predict that in 20 years, Matt Cain’s performance in the 2010 playoffs will still have been totally awesome.

Sincerely,
Some English Major

[nerfan]

All stats are just tools, much like my high school crush's ex-boyfriends. And like those ex-boyfriends, only a few of them have any value whatsoever. It's not like there's one UBER-stat, but I find myself using only 5-7 on a regular basis.

[scorekeeper]

All stats are just tools, much like my high school crush's ex-boyfriends. And like those ex-boyfriends, only a few of them have any value whatsoever. It's not like there's one UBER-stat, but I find myself using only 5-7 on a regular basis.

Only tools? Absolutely. But, only a few having value? That’s where I beg to differ most vociferously.

Every single metric ever devised has value. However its value fluctuates with its audience. And, not only can it fluctuate with its audience, it can fluctuate in value to an individual. FI, when I’m thinking about hitting, I couldn’t care less what individual pitchers’ WHIPs are, so WHIP has very little value at that time.

I’ve found that everyone does what you do, i.e. only regularly use a very small number of different metrics. But, in most cases, those limited metrics are seldom the same from person to person. However, no matter if a person likes just one or all metrics, sooner or later there’s a question that comes up that no metric known can provide the answer to. That’s when things get dicey.

[Victory Faust]

Only tools? Absolutely. But, only a few having value? That’s where I beg to differ most vociferously.

Every single metric ever devised has value. However its value fluctuates with its audience. And, not only can it fluctuate with its audience, it can fluctuate in value to an individual.

Exactly. This holds true for FIP and WAR as well as pitcher wins, RBI and saves.

[jalbright]

James writes that his goal is to seek the truth. He uses numbers a lot because (1) they collect a lot of useful information, and 2) though they have biases inherent in them, many of those biases can be found and adjusted for. Ideally, that is what sabermetrics are about.

My own experience with Japanese baseball may be instructive. I still can't read much Japanese, but I was able to figure out their baseball encyclopedia. I'd say 80-90% of what I know about Japanese ball, I learned from that encyclopedia. James has written that baseball statistics are a language all their own, and have the ability to tell stories. I can attest to the truth of that, having taken a lot of the stories I found in the Japanese baseball encyclopedia and turned them into words.

[BaronSamedi]

What sabremetrics really is is a way for one person arguing about the worth of his favorite player to avoid conceding defeat when the person he's arguing with is clearly going to win the argument.

[SABR Matt]

It sure is convenient when you can dismiss a whole class of people because you don't like the way they view the world and have therefore ascribed straw man attributes to them with a broad brush.

[BaronSamedi]

It sure is convenient when you can dismiss a whole class of people because you don't like the way they view the world and have therefore ascribed straw man attributes to them with a broad brush.

What, slipping in a dry sarcastic comment is disallowed now? It was my way of saying I'm not sure if anyone really knows what sabremetrics are, especially after reading that first post. Apparently there is a school of thought which believes sabremetrics is science, and another which thinks it has to do with statistical analysis. To me, it has to do with numbers and formulas determining which players are most effective in certain situations. Kind of like physics.

[SABR Matt]

Sarcasm does not translate well online, and that comment sounded snarky and mean spirited (allowed...but I'm also allowed to protest), rather than contributing something to the discussion...if you'd jsut said what you said in this last post first, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

BTW, you comparison to physics doesn't track for me. At least ideally speaking, physics is a pure scientific discipline...why would you compare physics to something just about numbers and formulas? That's not how I at least view physics.

[Steven Gallanter]

Only tools? Absolutely. But, only a few having value? That’s where I beg to differ most vociferously.

Every single metric ever devised has value. However its value fluctuates with its audience. And, not only can it fluctuate with its audience, it can fluctuate in value to an individual. FI, when I’m thinking about hitting, I couldn’t care less what individual pitchers’ WHIPs are, so WHIP has very little value at that time.

I’ve found that everyone does what you do, i.e. only regularly use a very small number of different metrics. But, in most cases, those limited metrics are seldom the same from person to person. However, no matter if a person likes just one or all metrics, sooner or later there’s a question that comes up that no metric known can provide the answer to. That’s when things get dicey.

Sabermetrics is a thought process.

Rather than advocating a belief, say, Barry Bonds is the greatest hitter of all time, facts are gathered and conclusions are derived. Adjustments are used in an attempt to normalize and center facts in ways that have probative value.

To wit: A fact that may be inflated in a certain environment is still strong relative to the environment it is in.

[Honus Wagner Rules]

They have a new contributor over at the McCovey Chronicles blog.

Bridging the Gap

by JT Jordan on Mar 22, 2011 10:44 AM PDT

Grant was kind enough to introduce me to you all the other day, so this should come as no surprise. My name is JT Jordan, and I'm the new guy- the "stats guy," to be exact. I ran the Giants-oriented site Triples Alley, and I also contribute to The Hardball Times. And it's an honor to say that I'm now writing for McCovey Chronicles.

This is new for all of us- aside from Steve's Minor Lines and the occasional overflow thread, the main stories are Grant's. And all of a sudden there's this new guy - and not just any new guy, but one of those dreaded "stats guys." You know, one of those guys that probably lives in his Mother's basement, living off of Cheetos and Hot Pockets. One of those stats-crazed dunces that Bruce Jenkins despises so darn much. One of those mathy Nerdy-McNerd-Nerds that is actually nerdy enough to believe that baseball isn't actually played by people; it's something that is completely and totally quantifiable by whatever your spreadsheet tells you. And all he probably wants to do is suck the life and soul out of a game you hold so near and dear to your hearts by telling you that everything you ever thought you knew about the game of baseball was dead wrong.

This couldn't be further from the truth.

Believe it or not, I'm not here to persuade you to become lovers of sabermetrics. There's no need to worry- I won't be going door to door with a copy of The Hidden Game of Baseball, asking if you've accepted Pete Palmer as baseball's lord and savior. I don't pray to Bill James. I don't live in my Mother's basement. I like Cheetos every once in a while (I'm a Kettle Chips kind of guy), but I don't really care for Hot Pockets. I'd actually be proud to be a nerd, too - because that would mean I "avidly pursue intellectual activities, technical or scientific endeavors, esoteric knowledge, or other obscure interests." The rest of the definition, "(...) rather than engaging in more social or conventional activities," though, doesn't really fit - I love going out, playing sports, and going to ballgames. Which...also means that I don't believe the game is played on paper.

Huh. Well, there goes that stereotype. And if you ask a bunch of other "stat geeks," you'll probably hear the exact same thing.

I love sabermetrics because it's a form of critical thinking that allows me to study a game that I grew up with and love with all of my heart. Once I stopped playing, I needed another outlet for my baseball "fix," and found sabermetrics to be a wonderful way of finding more meaning in the game. Bill James refers to sabermetrics as "the search for objective knowledge about baseball," and I can see why this turns so many people off- by making the game objective, you're stripping it of its subjectivity, which in essence turns it into a science more than an art. By quantifying different aspects of the game and attributing numerical values to it, you're taking away some of the magic that comes by simply watching and enjoying the game. I wholeheartedly disagree with this sentiment - I don't feel any different watching a game now, despite being "tainted" by sabermetrics, than I did when I was a little boy. In fact, it's increased my appreciation for the game. There's still that sense of wonderment when I'm at the park or when I'm watching a game on the 'tube. Astronomers still marvel at the beauty of the universe despite spending countless hours studying it, so I fail to see how sabermetrics is really any different. The passion for the game is always there; the difference is in the approach. Some are more than happy to just watch the game and love it for what it is; others are more interested in the nuts and bolts and ways to quantify what it is we see with our eyes.

Baseball and statistics have been intertwined throughout the course of the game's existence. Baseball has a very rich history - one that has seen many adaptations in the way it is played and approached, but interestingly one that's seen very little advancement in the way it is interpreted and analyzed until recent years.* It's been dominated for well over a century by very crude ways to value performance - batting average, runs batted in, wins and losses, etc.- but the game, as we all know, is much more complicated than that. To use such unrefined measuring tools...well, it's almost an insult to the complexity of the game. Sabermetrics is our collective attempt to better capture that complexity. It's there to supplement the game and to enhance our knowledge of it, not to reinvent it or to ruin it.

At the same time, I don't think the numbers are being interpreted correctly. I don't know why that is- I'm guessing it's because not enough warning labels have been applied, or because it hasn't been explained properly. One statistic that comes to mind is Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP). Its creator, Tom Tango, will tell you himself that FIP is meant to look at one aspect of pitching- much like how on base or slugging percentage is meant to illustrate one aspect of hitting. Yet it's being implemented as the main component of a value statistic over at Fangraphs and is being cited commonly as a solid measure of a pitcher's true value. Somewhere, somehow, someone misinterpreted it and it spread. Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) is being grossly misused as well- ask its creator, Mitchel Lichtman, and he'll give you a long list of caveats to go along with the metric. But it's still being cited left and right as being a precise figure.** And don't get me started on Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP).

Sabermetrics are far from definitive, but they provide us with wonderful tools to assess a player's performance and they give us a reasonable means to predict future performance as well. A lot of sabermetric principles suggest things that contradict long-held notions of baseball - things like clutch hitting not being a skill, or pitchers having very little control over balls in play. These are not definitive answers, yet they're often portrayed as if they are. Even with the evidence that "disproves" old-fashioned beliefs, I'm of the Sagan school of thought that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. Just because we don't have the ability to detect something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist; just that we may not have proper ways to test for it. Again, sabermetrics is far from perfect. But it gives us a better foundation than what we've had in the past, and this puts us in a better position than what we were in before.

I'm not just here to provide commentary and statistical analysis on our beloved San Francisco Giants- I'm here to bridge the gap between the saberists and the non-saberists. If you have any questions or don't understand something, please don't hesitate to ask questions. I don't bite.

[Honus Wagner Rules]

Another brilliant piece by Grant.

Point/Counterpoint: Do Statistics Belong In Baseball?
By Grant Brisbee

Jun 29, 2011 - Monday's piece on Grantland ignited another debate on statistics and sabermetrics. Do they add or subtract from our enjoyment of baseball? Here at Baseball Nation, we've set up a point/counterpoint between two people on different sides of the debate. These people represent the middle of the road in each case, so this will likely be the final debate ever on this topic. Enjoy.

POINT:
Statistics Are For People Who Don't Enjoy The Game.

by Every Traditional, Pure Baseball Lover

Baseball is a sport that is as much art as athletic competition. Nothing saddens me more than someone ruining the game of baseball with numbers, limiting the purity of the sport with mathematical reductions of humanity.

Ted Williams got a hit in 40.6% of his at-bats in 1941. If he had instead hit safely in 39.9% of his at-bats, was I supposed to be less impressed? What about the way he sized the pitcher up, the concentration that he managed on every pitch? There's no way that trying to divide hits and at-bats can tell me how good a player is. Over a season, Williams would pick up about six or seven extra hits with a .406 "average of hits per at-bats" that he wouldn't have with a .399 "average of hits per at-bats."

But when would those six or seven hits have come? In the first inning of an eventual blowout? The ninth inning of a tie game? I don't know, and you don't either just from some average-based abstraction. It doesn't make his overall accomplishments more impressive in the slightest.

Watch the game.

Go up to any stathead and ask him how many home runs Roger Maris had in 1961. If he's a true stathead, he will actually know the answer off the top of his head. While others were watching games -- tense, strategic battles of purity and wonder -- that person was apparently reading a book of numbers as if there were a test later on. And how many of those home runs led to a Yankees win or loss? No one can really say with just one number. But it must have been important for someone to keep counting up those home runs, even if it doesn't mean a thing to someone fifty years later.

Watch the game.

There will never be a test. There will only be the sublime, athletic ballet of baseball, the magic that is everything beautiful about this country. And while I'm watching a game, I'm not thinking about numbers. I'm just absorbing a game. There is no reason to record what's going on in a game; it's a flowing, free-form concert of individual struggles and triumphs, of pitches that hit their spots and pitches that don't, of hitters who guess right and hitters who guess wrong.

It's even a little gauche to note how many runs score each inning -- you can almost tell which team outplayed the other when the nine innings are up. Does it really matter if a team wins 10-5 rather than 10-6? All you need to know is that one team was better than the other that day.

Watch the game.

Please, keep all of these advanced metrics to yourself. You can't seriously expect me to juggle an equation like (ER/IP) x 9 in my head while I'm watching a pitcher's elegant, violent delivery. That's no way to enjoy baseball. And I enjoy baseball more purely than you could ever hope to imagine. I see things by watching the game -- by really, truly watching a game -- that you can't possibly imagine. There is a truth and balance to this game that transcends numbers. All numbers.

Watch the game. It's beautiful, but only if you watch it just like I do.

COUNTERPOINT

I Hate Baseball

by Every Stathead In The World

When the New York Yankees play a game, they should score 5.25 runs. Statistically, that's what should happen. They should get on base about 340 times out of every 1,000 at-bats, and that should lead to 21 runs every four games.

When that doesn't happen, it makes me angry. When the Yankees score more or fewer runs, it disgusts me. There is enough randomness in life that I don't need it in my hobby. It makes me hate baseball.

More so, I mean. I already hate baseball. I hate the people who play it, the athletic galoots who towered over me while I grew up. I hate hot dogs, those poisonous tubes of nitrates and arsenic. The prize in Cracker Jacks is usually some crappy temporary tattoo. I'm allergic to grass, so even if I wanted to kick back and watch a game, I wouldn't be able to with all that sneezing. And I hate the sport. It's like soccer, but without all of the action.

But there is a beauty inherent in knowing what a lineup of nine David Ortizes would score. If nine David Ortizes were on the same team at the same time, I could predict their futures. I would know exactly how they would perform because I know his RC/27. I like knowing that if David Ortiz were replaced by a AAA scrub before the season started, the Red Sox would be 42.8-35.2 instead of 45-33 by virtue of Ortiz's 2.2 WAR. When you do this sort of math, you are basically a god.

Except baseball players are always screwing things up. Some guy with a .300 on-base percentage might take four walks in a game, just to challenge everything I know to be true. It doesn't convince me because I already know the truth, the stats, the essence of everything there is to know. But it's inconvenient, at best.

Luckily, I've found a solution. I don't watch the games. A bunch of guys running around after a ball? You can keep it. Just don't stop the stream of glorious data. I have the numbers automatically feeding in to my spreadsheet, and I love nothing more than waking up, getting a cup of coffee, and just reading the data from the day before, parsing the numbers, juggling them, rubbing the numbers all over my face.

That's baseball. That's what I love. And thanks for your invitation to watch the game exactly how you watch it, but I think I'll just stop watching entirely. Agree to disagree.

[Honus Wagner Rules]

A good fangraphs article.


What Is Sabermetrics? And Which Teams Use It?

[Sabo-metrics]

And, therein lies my biggest problems with some (not all) sabers: They act like their theories are absolute, 100 percent irrefutable laws; and that anyone who disagrees with them is a backward dinosaur.

EXACTLY! I'm glad someone else agrees. Brian Kenny is a saber snob on the MLB Network and Eric Karabell seems to be one ESPN. Where they take it to the point of disregarding any other information.

Baseball has the beautiful balance of decision making that can look good or bad depending on a thousand different factors.

To me, sabermetrics can be a great tool for a GM to analyze performance with an indicator of future predictions. I think where we get into trouble is trying to hand out awards for season performance based on some of these stats. An MVP should be based on what actually happened that year, not the value of what could have happened. So Wins RBIs and Runs should trump OBP for an MVP ballot IMO.

[Honus Wagner Rules]

EXACTLY! I'm glad someone else agrees. Brian Kenny is a saber snob on the MLB Network and Eric Karabell seems to be one ESPN. Where they take it to the point of disregarding any other information.

Baseball has the beautiful balance of decision making that can look good or bad depending on a thousand different factors.

To me, sabermetrics can be a great tool for a GM to analyze performance with an indicator of future predictions. I think where we get into trouble is trying to hand out awards for season performance based on some of these stats. An MVP should be based on what actually happened that year, not the value of what could have happened. So Wins RBIs and Runs should trump OBP for an MVP ballot IMO.

Shouldn't more be taken into account than just wins, RBI, and runs determining the MVP and CYA?