Throw the Bum Out - Hall of Fame Edition - Page 21 - MLB

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Posted by tecwrg on 2/22/2012 5:56:00 PM (view original):
Posted by jrd_x on 2/22/2012 5:50:00 PM (view original):
So what? Two years ago Jayson Stark said on the radio that he'd rather have Ryan Howard than Joey Votto.

We know better know.

What would seeing them pitch tell me that the stats don't?

Two years ago, Ryan Howard had a ROY, and MVP and three other top-5 MVP finishes on his resume. Votto had two full seasons and an MVP-22 finish on his.

That's hardly a comparable comparison to two pitchers whose careers started at roughly the same time and had concurrent primes.

It was after the 2009 season. Howard was 29, had just hit 45 homeruns with a .279/.360/.571 triple slash. Votto was 25, hit 25 homeruns with a .322/.414/.567 line. Both are great seasons, but any analyst worth a damn could see that Votto was a better bet going forward. And he has been.

The two pitchers' careers started at the same time. But one was better while their careers overlapped and then kept pitching for another 1800 innings.

2/22/2012 6:05 PM

trsnoke

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I think stats have definitely taught us things that haven't been picked up from decades of game watching. First of all, it's just not possible to watch enough games to really grasp the true skill level of all the players we want to discuss - there's just too many games and too many players. We see highlights and are moved by the big play or the clutch hit. Those alter our perceptions and are just small samples of each player's overall body of work. We should seek other evidence and new evidence should cause us to re-examine our opinions. Maybe our opinions get reinforced, maybe they don't, but we should be open to having them changed. Sports writers, collectively, are great at telling stories about games and players, maybe not so great at player evaluation. That's partly why there are threads going on now about who should be kicked out of the Hall of Fame. That's why OBP was generally ignored for so long in favor of AVG. It still is by many (most?). Heck, scouts and managers and guys who have made their living evaluating players and trying to put together winning teams have missed things stats have shown us they should have been looking at. Anyway, I think watching a player and using stats to evaluate him tell a better story than either one alone will. Stats have the benefit of covering every IP and every PA, even every pitch! The problem is that there are so darn many stats that using some without others can mislead and who heck wants to wade through every stat? The value of some the new stats isn't that they really teach us something new about the game (though a lot try and some have probably succeeded) but that they are starting to quantify the average value of events we didn't fully appreciate before. The range of outcomes of each event for each player, though, are still subject to luck, park, weather, rest of team, etc., so true skill will always be impossible to calculate perfectly and watching a player can also help fill in some of those gaps, plus it's more fun.

2/22/2012 7:20 PM

jrd_x

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This^

2/22/2012 7:23 PM

trsnoke

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Does anybody read Posnanski? Timely blog today. http://joeposnanski.blogspot.com/2012/02/first-argument-of-spring.html
I don't get this particular argument, but to each his own. In my mind, it was started by somebody just wanting to tick of Red Sox fans. A noble cause ...?

2/22/2012 9:42 PM

toddcommish

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All the stat geeks are looking for the magic stat, and it's always changing. For awhile, it was OBP, then OPS, then WAR or UZR. Next year, it will be something different. Even now, there are mutliple versions of WAR floating around out there.

That's why you can't depend on stats. The goal of the game is NOT to compile stats. It's to WIN games, and preferably win the World Series. Wins cannot be disputed. Raw stats cannot be disputed. Ratios CAN and should be disputed, since they're approximations. We KNOW Ty Cobb hit .367 for his career. We don't know for sure if he was x WINS better than Ruben Sierra or Pete Incaviglia.... that's just someone's guess based on stats.

BABIP and FiP seems like a nifty way to measure a pitcher's "value" for now until someone comes up with another goofy formula that has a slightly better correlation to WINS for the team, which should be the ultimate goal.

2/22/2012 10:28 PM

jrd_x

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I don't think you really understand stats. BABIP isn't an attempt to measure value. It's just a record of what happened like IP or ERA. FIP does assign weights to HR, BB, and K's, but the actual calculation is as simple as ERA.

The goal of baseball is to win and advanced stats help us better understand what leads to those wins.

2/22/2012 10:53 PM

MikeT23

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Posted by toddcommish on 2/22/2012 4:51:00 PM (view original):
I'm pretty sure this has broken down to a generational debate between guys who actually WATCHED THE GAMES in the 70's and stat monkeys that study numbers in their mom's basement

Yeah.   And it always ends with "You don't understand stats" as if there's some magical new stat that is the ULTIMATE STAT.

As I mockingly said earlier, I think most of us have known that walking a batter is bad.   Not allowing a batter to put the ball in play is good.   And letting the batter hit the ball a long way is bad.   I haven't needed a stat to tell me that since I first picked up a bat in 1969.   But I also learned that it was easier to hit some pitches much harder than others.   Easier to square up on the ball on certain pitches.   And, despite playing against other 6 year olds, it was sometimes better to take a pitch that you couldn't hit well than to weakly tap it back to the pitcher.

But, at the end of the day, the game is about scoring/preventing runs.   And part of that is getting/preventing baserunners.

We can sit back and look at stats 40 years later and say "Carlton struck out more batters and gave up less homers.   He was obviously the better pitcher."   Or we can say "They allowed almost an identical amount of runs per 9 innings.   In fact, against the top competition in the playoffs, it pretty obvious that Hunter did better. But Carlton did pitch a phenomenal amount of innings in his career."

2/23/2012 8:41 AM

MikeT23

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Posted by trsnoke on 2/22/2012 7:20:00 PM (view original):
I think stats have definitely taught us things that haven't been picked up from decades of game watching. First of all, it's just not possible to watch enough games to really grasp the true skill level of all the players we want to discuss - there's just too many games and too many players. We see highlights and are moved by the big play or the clutch hit. Those alter our perceptions and are just small samples of each player's overall body of work. We should seek other evidence and new evidence should cause us to re-examine our opinions. Maybe our opinions get reinforced, maybe they don't, but we should be open to having them changed. Sports writers, collectively, are great at telling stories about games and players, maybe not so great at player evaluation. That's partly why there are threads going on now about who should be kicked out of the Hall of Fame. That's why OBP was generally ignored for so long in favor of AVG. It still is by many (most?). Heck, scouts and managers and guys who have made their living evaluating players and trying to put together winning teams have missed things stats have shown us they should have been looking at. Anyway, I think watching a player and using stats to evaluate him tell a better story than either one alone will. Stats have the benefit of covering every IP and every PA, even every pitch! The problem is that there are so darn many stats that using some without others can mislead and who heck wants to wade through every stat? The value of some the new stats isn't that they really teach us something new about the game (though a lot try and some have probably succeeded) but that they are starting to quantify the average value of events we didn't fully appreciate before. The range of outcomes of each event for each player, though, are still subject to luck, park, weather, rest of team, etc., so true skill will always be impossible to calculate perfectly and watching a player can also help fill in some of those gaps, plus it's more fun.

As I've said several times, everyone knows BB are bad, HRA are bad and K are good for pitchers. We haven't needed a stat for that since the beginning of baseball. FIP, the "big" stat that's been argued in this thread, is a predictive stat and is not meant to measure past results. However, one individual who has been rather prominent in this discussion has tried to use it to prove his point.

It's fine to use this advanced stat, the one that utilizes information that everyone has known since the beginning of baseball, if you want. But, please, I beg of you, use it properly.

2/23/2012 9:01 AM

MikeT23

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Posted by jrd_x on 2/22/2012 10:53:00 PM (view original):
I don't think you really understand stats. BABIP isn't an attempt to measure value. It's just a record of what happened like IP or ERA. FIP does assign weights to HR, BB, and K's, but the actual calculation is as simple as ERA.

The goal of baseball is to win and advanced stats help us better understand what leads to those wins.

HA! I knew it was coming!!!

"I don't think you really understand stats"

2/23/2012 9:02 AM

Jtpsops

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At least he's changing it up a bit.

"There are outliers for everything!!"

2/23/2012 9:26 AM

jrd_x

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"FIP, the "big" stat that's been argued in this thread, is a predictive stat and is not meant to measure past results"

You're mistaken. FIP is not predictive, it only measures past results. xFIP is what you're thinking of.

From the Hardball Times definition of FIP:

"FIP helps you understand how well a pitcher pitched, regardless of how well his fielders fielded."

2/23/2012 9:39 AM (edited)

MikeT23

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I'll go ahead and say that I'm old-school. I care about the W not the "good stat". Nonetheless, I like the "advanced" stats. They provide another angle. However, I think some are quite useless. FIP happens to be one of them. It tells you something you should have already known and ignores everything else. What it doesn't tell you is how effective a pitcher is. BABIP is a nice stat. Most pitchers fluctuate from season to season. However, some are always near the top and some are always near the bottom. There is a reason for it and it's not the all-inclusive "luck". The pitchers at the top are likely hitting the meat of the plate while the pitchers at the bottom could be doing a couple of things: 1. Setting up hitters 2. Hitting the corners. I think someone said Hunter was one of the all-time leaders. It stops being luck/defense at some point.

Use the stats. But don't pretend you have a deeper understanding of them.

2/23/2012 9:46 AM

jrd_x

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You should try to get a basic understanding and then come back.

2/23/2012 9:48 AM

Jtpsops

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jrd, I've already given you some key examples of where your approach to "important stats" is flawed. Do I really have to play your research monkey and find even more examples?

2/23/2012 9:52 AM

MikeT23

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From fangraphs:

- FIP does a better job of predicting the future than of measuring the present, meaning there can be a lot of fluctuation in smaller samples. It’s not a great choice when trying to describe how a pitcher performed during a single game.

2/23/2012 10:03 AM

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