Progressing Toward Better Stats Thread

[Sultan_1895-1948]

Any luck with updating some of the folks requested:
David Ortiz
Lance Berkman
Reggie Smith
Jeff Kent
Will Clark
Cesar Cedeno
David Concepcion
Phil Rizzuto
Harry Hooper
Joe Sewell
Toby Harrah
Kiki Cuyler
Heinie Groh
Zack Wheat

Thanks : )

missin a few but main post in red are your guys

[Stolensingle]

Actually wRC+ is a better version OPS+. It will have a similar scale, so like 100 is average and 200+ is Ruth territory If you took wRC+ and did your rrOPS+ adjustments you would actually get a better estimate of players' relative batting value and you could adjust WAR directly. wOBA is complicated, and I will have to go back and read the details but it tries to create a scale similar to all time on-base percentage levels, so like .330 might be average, and .400 would be MVP level. It is superfluous to wRC+, but really just an attempt to make it look like a traditional percentage.

wOBA is not superfluous to wRC+! wRC+ is calculated from wOBA. wRC+ is weighted runs created relative to average, and wOBA is used to determine weighted runs. Yes, wRC+ is an easier stat to use; you can tell at a glance how good a hitter a player is. But wOBA is a rawer value. If wRC+ is like OPS+, wOBA is like OPS.

[LongBall50]

If anyone is interested in a graphical method of looking at player performance, based on simplified base-out ratio, take a look at the static and dynamic charts at http://www.offenseratio.altervista.org/ An example of a static chart is given below. No claim to be representing the most accurate method of production in terms of runs or wins, which I gladly leave to others, just a fun way of looking at how batters compare using the most basic raw stats.

HOF.jpg

[brett]

Ok cool. So wOBP is the one that weighs each event right. So like a single is worth a certain amount with nobody on and a certain number of outs in a certain inning with a certain score? And that value of a single changes with someone on base and stuff? I like that and it makes sense. I also like things being put in batting average form. It is one of the things I liked about PCA, makes the scale understandable when you know, say, .280 is the avg.

they both weigh each event the same way. wRC+ looks like OPS+ so if a guy is 150 he is producing 50% more runs than an average player. wOBA is scaled so that it looks like on-base percentage. Since I am pretty good at math and I still have to go back and look up how to get wOBA I don't like it-I think Tom Tango came up with it and while it was a nice idea to show a casual fan a number that looked like a regular percentage, wRC+ is easier to explain mathematically and the number of people who can handle the math of wOBA and who are also casual fans of baseball and sabermetrics is virtually zero. It basically serves two hypothetical groups. It works to show people who know the traditional percentages how good a player is with a single number that looks like a traditional percentage and tells them about how likely he is to do good things over a period of at bats. A .400 wOBA guy is going to get you maybe about 4 "weighted" total bases in 10 at bats while a .300 is going to get you about 3. There aren't a lot of people out there today who know what slugging percentage and on-base percentage mean who also can't get wRC+ though, but maybe a coach who has been making lineups for 20 years. The second group is super saber nerds who want to go through the math process even though wRC+ tells you everything you need to know to evaluate a player. Anyway, I would see wRC+ and wOBA as being like using two different temperature scales like centigrade and Fahrenheit to talk about the same temperature, or using miles above sea level or kilometers above the bottom of the ocean.

If you do rrwRC+ you can later try to put it into wOBA. Anyway, rrOPS+ is neat to me because it is actually the best prediction of what a player would do with a neutral home park based on their home and road statistics. There may be players who would have done better or worse, but it is the best prediction possible of a player's predicted neutral park rates without actually trying to analyze every park in every year for its tendencies. rrwRC+ would give you the best stat for rating a player's value versus average.

You could even take rrwRC+ and built in baserunning, and fielding, and positional baseline to create a super rrwRC+. So maybe a guy like Rickey Henderson scores 130 in rrwRC+ but 155 when baserunning and everything else is factored in. That is actually a very quick calculation once you get rrwRC+. Though technically there are park tendencies for baserunning and fielding too which we are finding.

[Sultan_1895-1948]

Actually wRC+ is a better version OPS+. It will have a similar scale, so like 100 is average and 200+ is Ruth territory If you took wRC+ and did your rrOPS+ adjustments you would actually get a better estimate of players' relative batting value and you could adjust WAR directly. wOBA is complicated, and I will have to go back and read the details but it tries to create a scale similar to all time on-base percentage levels, so like .330 might be average, and .400 would be MVP level. It is superfluous to wRC+, but really just an attempt to make it look like a traditional percentage.

Ok cool. So wOBP is the one that weighs each event right. So like a single is worth a certain amount with nobody on and a certain number of outs in a certain inning with a certain score? And that value of a single changes with someone on base and stuff? I like that and it makes sense. I also like things being put in batting average form. It is one of the things I liked about PCA, makes the scale understandable when you know, say, .280 is the avg.

[brett]

What are the differences between wOBA and wRC+

Would there be any utility in combining those two and rrOPS+ into a "mega" stat? Asking for a friend :P

Actually wRC+ is a better version OPS+. It will have a similar scale, so like 100 is average and 200+ is Ruth territory If you took wRC+ and did your rrOPS+ adjustments you would actually get a better estimate of players' relative batting value and you could adjust WAR directly. wOBA is complicated, and I will have to go back and read the details but it tries to create a scale similar to all time on-base percentage levels, so like .330 might be average, and .400 would be MVP level. It is superfluous to wRC+, but really just an attempt to make it look like a traditional percentage.

[Sultan_1895-1948]

What are the differences between wOBA and wRC+

Would there be any utility in combining those two and rrOPS+ into a "mega" stat? Asking for a friend :P

[Stolensingle]

StolenSingle...do you personally see any reason/utility in considering stolen bases as TB, as a way to further even out the various roles in the lineup. That would help us better compare certain stats between hitters. This thought mainly comes from Rickey being under-rated imo. Obviously he didn't have the true SLUGGING ABILITY of some peeps but he had other skills that I feel are under-valued in some advanced metrics...and some of which truly go un-noticed in the stat realm. Should there be some stat that attempts to even out the value at all? What say you.

Why? Rickey gets credit for the SB. You could certainly create a stat that would add SB to TB, but it wouldn't change how we value them.

Modern metrics do account for cutting off gaps.

[Jar of Flies]

Will get to those in the next month. Promise.

Sweetness, thank you

[Sultan_1895-1948]

Any luck with updating some of the folks requested:
David Ortiz
Lance Berkman
Reggie Smith
Jeff Kent
Will Clark
Cesar Cedeno
David Concepcion
Phil Rizzuto
Harry Hooper
Joe Sewell
Toby Harrah
Kiki Cuyler
Heinie Groh
Zack Wheat

Thanks : )

Will get to those in the next month. Promise.

[Sultan_1895-1948]

I haven't seen Sultan's posts in a while. Anyway, Layson has been working hard on looking at some road defensive splits. As some of us had predicted, Dimaggio looks like he was hurt substantially in sabermetric defensive measures at home. The theory was that having to back up and cover gaps in such a large field cut down on his total chances. Unlike having a home park that hurts batting, Dimaggio's lost defensive war may have not been value "lost" but value that was produced, but not caught by modern metrics which fail to account for cutting off gap hits (as far as I know and at least going back quite a ways).

Anyway, it looks like Y.S. cost Joe around 225 total chances over the course of his career speculatively due to the need to play deeper to cut down extra base hits. A T.C. in the outfield (added to the whole outfield) would theoretically be worth over .7 runs! as a typical extra play made in the outfield is equivalent to turning a single or double into an out. Turning a single into an out is worth about 0.7 runs, and turning a double into an out is about 1.0 runs if I remember how to use linear weights.

That means that 225 TCs lost could have cost him 15-22 defensive WAR! In reality, I suspect that 225 TCs lost would have been picked up in part by other fielders, so dWAR probably is going to credit him with somewhat less than 15-22 extra dWAR as an extra TC by a player probably does not save the full .7+ runs for the entire defense, but It could be on the order of 10 war lost to his parks dimensions and special requirements of cutting down gap hits.

Combine that with his road predicted batting numbers and reasonable WWII losses and he looks like he would have landed somewhere around 110 WAR in 2100 games. That's about as many WAR as Mantle in 300 fewer games and basically matching Lou Gehrig's career WAR and games played.

Just saw this. That is a pretty f+ckn big deal

[Sultan_1895-1948]

StolenSingle...do you personally see any reason/utility in considering stolen bases as TB, as a way to further even out the various roles in the lineup. That would help us better compare certain stats between hitters. This thought mainly comes from Rickey being under-rated imo. Obviously he didn't have the true SLUGGING ABILITY of some peeps but he had other skills that I feel are under-valued in some advanced metrics...and some of which truly go un-noticed in the stat realm. Should there be some stat that attempts to even out the value at all? What say you.

[Jar of Flies]

Bump with discussion of plate appearances or outs thread, highlighting the slugging efficiency stat in this thread and the awesome work in general:
https://www.baseball-fever.com/forum...rances-or-outs

[Bothrops Atrox]

Bothrops Atrox It really looks like some factor or factors produced a much more dramatic home field advantage prior to the mid to late 40s. It could have been travel, or something related to televised games which I think started in the early 40s. Perhaps umps favored the home team more prior to televised games. The league home road OPS+ variation went from around 9% to around 4% suddenly in the 40s and has drizzled down even lower today. Those effects would lead us to predict that everyone would tend to get their relative numbers hurt on the road, but when calculating rrOPS+, we compare a players road drop to the league road drop. Anyway, it might matter, and might even support the idea that Umps were the main effect if they might have given big name opposing pitchers more benefit.

By the way, I seem to remember a study that proved that most home road variations even today are the result of umpires favoring the home team. With instant replay I wonder if that goes down.

Yes. SI did a massive comprehensive study/report about 5-6 years ago on a bunch of team sports and found officiating was by far the largest factor in home team advantages.

[brett]

If this is the case, we need to look at why dnraa++ is moving guys from one group of a few decades collectively one direction and the exact opposite for recent decades. There is a pretty staggaring pre expansion/post expansion correlation here. Very unlikey a coincidence.

Bothrops Atrox It really looks like some factor or factors produced a much more dramatic home field advantage prior to the mid to late 40s. It could have been travel, or something related to televised games which I think started in the early 40s. Perhaps umps favored the home team more prior to televised games. The league home road OPS+ variation went from around 9% to around 4% suddenly in the 40s and has drizzled down even lower today. Those effects would lead us to predict that everyone would tend to get their relative numbers hurt on the road, but when calculating rrOPS+, we compare a players road drop to the league road drop. Anyway, it might matter, and might even support the idea that Umps were the main effect if they might have given big name opposing pitchers more benefit.

By the way, I seem to remember a study that proved that most home road variations even today are the result of umpires favoring the home team. With instant replay I wonder if that goes down.